Today's rhyme was brought to you by an online rhyming dictionary, thank you very much. I scanned the list of words it came back with, and I just thought this one was kind of funny.
I've got a dose of quick-hitters for your reading pleasure today.
* I want to be able to have a radio on my desk, dammit! The Reds are playing a day game today, and I want to listen to it. I caught a very little bit of it in my car on my way back from lunch, and it killed me (even moreso than usual) to have to turn it off and come back inside. Marty Brennamen and Joe Nuxhall are a pleasure to listen to--Marty is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and if there's any justice in this world, Joe will be too at some point. Joe is retiring after this season, so I'm going to enjoy him while he's here. I listened last night as the Reds got their first win of the season, 3-1 over the Chicago Cubs.
* Before I switched over to the Reds game, I listened to the end of Colin Cowherd's show on ESPN Radio. He read an e-mail from a listener regarding Barry Bonds which I thought was hilarious. Bonds, an outfielder with the San Francisco Giants, needs one more home run to tie Willie Mays for third on the all-time home run list with 660. The e-mail read, in effect, "Who cares about 660? I want to see Bonds hit #666, which is when he'll rip his face off and reveal that it is not steroids which are responsible for his success, but rather his allegiance with Satan."
* Speaking of the career home run list, it was 30 years ago today that Hank Aaron hit #715, moving past Babe Ruth into first on the all-time list, a position he still holds. He finished his career with 755. Bonds might approach that before he's done. Not being a fan of Bonds, I hope that doesn't happen. If it's to be broken by any current players, it's most likely to be Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. If he's the one to do it, I hope he's not playing for the Yankees by then. I hate them. He'd look nice in Cincinnati red, I think, and he'd be a more than adequate replacement for Barry Larkin at shortstop when Larkin retires at the end of this season. Yeah, that'll happen...NOT!
* I'm so tired of hearing about golf and The Masters on otherwise legitimate sports media outlets. I'm sure golf is fun to play, but it makes for lousy television and sports talk. It's just boring. Besides, there's a tendency to take it way too seriously. I remember hearing recently that some famous professional golfer had a fan thrown out of an event for heckling. Come on, that's just stupid. Real professional athletes deal with that kind of stuff all the time. Ask Ken Griffey Jr. sometime about what kind of stuff he hears from fans. It comes with the territory. All that aside, I just can't get behind a sport that is historically racist and elitist, even more so than other sports. If you spend any time listening to Hootie Johnson, you'll realize that not everyone involved with the sport has moved dramatically from those roots. Fine, you don't want to admit women to Augusta National Golf Club. It's a private club, it's your right to make that decision, and I respect that. Now shut up.
* I successfully sewed a button onto a pair of pants last night. It seems I'm going to evolve into a fully functional human being after all. Really, I don't consider it that big of a deal, but I did think it worth mentioning since my last experience with sewing was half my life ago, making a duffel bag in 8th grade home economics class.
* Does today feel like Friday to anyone else? Seriously, I have a hard time reminding myself that I have to come to work tomorrow, because it won't be Saturday. That's going to be even harder since Brandi will be around.
* This morning on my way to work, I saw my first lightning strike of 2004. Well, the first one that didn't originate from my own body, anyway. I don't know what's going on, but lately I've been shocking everything and everyone I come into contact with. I feel like Emperor Palpatine flinging electricity bolts at Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi. I haven't had this much electricity in my body since I was a little kid wearing footy pajamas which would build me up with enough static electricity to flash-fry small animals.
* Road construction today on Airport Highway closed one lane in each direction. Normally I wouldn't even mention this, since it really didn't affect traffic all that much. However, this was a section of road on which they were doing construction for the past two years. It just reopened fully at the beginning of last fall. Should they need to be doing construction on it again this soon? That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Hopefully it was just a minor thing and everything will be back to normal tomorrow.
* I want to mention this briefly without getting into it too much. A while back, the Toledo Blade published a series of articles on Tiger Force, an elite military unit in the Vietnam War, detailing some heinous actions the unit performed during the war. I must preface this by saying that I did not read the articles, but got the gist of them from reading about them. The Blade writers responsible recently won a Pulitzer Prize for these articles. However, at the time of publication and also again recently with the announcement of the Pulitzer, the Blade has been receiving and publishing a good number of letters to the editor renouncing them for doing such a story. Apparently, many of these letter-writers feel that stories like this one should not be investigated and reported on because: other countries do things much worse; it's war, and these things happen; and it's a disservice to our soldiers currently in the field. Does this kind of thinking scare or bother anyone else? To my way of thinking, there is no justification for letting this kind of story stay buried, or for refusing to hold accountable the individuals involved. It seems to me that many of these people are blindly nationalistic and hold an attitude that the United States can do no wrong and our soldiers are heroes no matter what. Sorry, that just doesn't hold water. Killing other people in the course of a war is one thing, but doing it unnecessarily is murder, plain and simple, and being under the intense strain of the unique conflict of Vietnam does not excuse this in any way.
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