What the Carlos Gomez Trade Really Means...

12 walks, 92 strikeouts last year...
Roller-skate defense....
Minnesota Twins starting left fielder... for ALL of next season.

Ladies and gentlemen, Delmon Young!!

Snipers on the Auction Seas (A Tragedy in 3 Acts)

Act I (In Which Our Hero Spies the Item of His Desires)

The Protagonist is perusing eBay. He spies a copy of Quarashi's self-titled debut CD.

The Protagonist: I need to buy this!

Chorus: When last you saw this item, it sold for $90. Your coffers are far too bare for such an undertaking.

The Protagonist: Nonsense! I'd never forgive myself if I didn't at least make an attempt.

Chorus: Then make your attempt, though it be in vain.

The Protagonist: Fifty dollars ought to at least give me a chance.

Chorus: Fifty dollars is a foolish number. It is neither so small as to be sensible, nor so large as to assure victory. Your efforts are both wasted and unwise.

The Protagonist: Not at all! See there? The bid is only at thirteen dollars right now.

Chorus: Four days yet remain. Temper your unchecked optimism.

---

Act II (In Which Ominous Signs Gather)

The Protagonist: I suppose I must tell my wife about my impending purchase.

Chrous: This ought to be good.

The Protagonist: I'm buying a CD.

The Wife: Why are you telling me this?

The Protagonist: It's sort of an expensive CD.

The Wife: What do you mean? How expensive?

The Protagonist: My high bid is fifty dollars?

The Wife: ...

The Protagonist: The current bid is only fifty dollars....wait....never mind it's at fifty dollars.

The Wife: ...

The Protagonist: Don't worry, it's a collectors item - any serious Quarashi fan would pay this much and more.

The Chorus: You talk about "serious Quarashi fans" as if they are tangible things that exist in this world.

The Wife: Are you out of your mind?

The Chorus: Our thoughts are akin.

---

Act III (In Which Hope Is Dashed Upon the Rocks)

The Protagonist: With one minute on the clock, I'm still in the lead.

Chorus: Sixty seconds is an eternity in this place.

{Forty Seconds Pass}

Masked eBay Sniper the first: I strike! Sixty dollars!

Masked eBay Sniper the second: HA! I strike! Seventy dollars!

The Protagonist: Wait! NO!

Chorus: Fifty dollars was already a fortune. Seventy would be too foolish even for you. Will you relent?

The Protagonist: Yes.

The Protagonist: This is ridiculous! The eBay system is built along the concept of a maximum bid being the highest you will pay for a given item. What point is there in this pointless sniping? If the user had placed seventy dollars as his maximum bid in the beginning, they still would probably have won the CD, and I wouldn't have had to go through all this nonsense. I'm sure it saved them a dollar or two, but so what? Stupid. I hate snipers.

Chorus: You are merely angry because it's a legitimate strategy and you're neither wealthy nor savvy enough to take advantage of it.

{PAUSE}

Chorus: Well?

The Protagonist: And what if I am?

Our hero resumes his searches, knowing them to be in vain.

Great Moment in Google Search Terms, Volume 1

To whoever got here using a search for "ladybugs mating in a music video", I'm not sure what exactly you may have been looking for, but it seems unlikely that you found it here. Here's hoping that your search came to fruition at some point.

Also... it seems you found my site about 48 pages into the search. I don't mean to pontificate, but who searches through 48 pages of Google results for "ladybugs mating in a music video"? Who even wants to see that that badly?

Oh, Wow.

[11:05] The Nordqui: How's the pete?
[11:05] Pete: bogged down

That might be the lamest joke in recorded history.

Worth Noting.

Thirty degrees below zero is COLD. Even if that were "just" the wind chill, it would be brutal, but when it's the air temperature, it's murder. We hit thirty below yesterday for the first time in five years.

...and it's supposed to be colder tomorrow.

As Noel Gallagher said while bantering with the crowd at the Oasis show I saw recently, "you guys do know there's a place called 'California', right?"

Movie Review: The Happening

Dear M. Night Shyamalan,

Are you even trying anymore?

'The Happening' is one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen.

Anytime the main core of the advertising for a movie is "the first R-rated film from director x", it's basically admitting "man, we've got zero plot, so we're going to up the gore and hope no one notices". Well guess what, M - I noticed.

The best part about the entire movie is Zooey Deschanel's eyes. I am not making this up.

I probably could have given this a '2' if the phoned in "OMIGOD, WE DIDN'T LEARN UR LESSON AND IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN" ending hadn't been tacked on. That could be seen as a spoiler, but honestly, it's the ending we knew was coming from about 10 minutes into the movie. But, hell... you had to prove your point, and I respect that to the tune of one

Please stop making movies until you learn what is and what is not a good script. Also, for the love of all that is holy, please send your next script to no fewer than three 5th graders. If even they think it's a moronic waste of time, please rewrite until you have something that makes some damn sense.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go find some lions and allow them to rip my arms from my body for no other reason than a bunch of trees told me that I don't want to live anymore. Sounds cool with me.

1/10 (This is one of the stupidest movies ever. I know I already said this but seriously, the Mummy Returns is like the Godfather compared to this pile of garbage.)

Thieves with Halos

Want to play a guitar simulation video game?
Don't want to damn your eternal soul to hell in the process?

Has 'Digital Praise' got a game for.......ah, to hell with it.

What in the hell is this?? I'll admit (reluctantly) that I used to be a big fan of all thigns Christian rock. That was, of course, before I heard all the bands that my former favorites were ripping off and sanitizing. I still enjoy some of the stuff from back in the day, but that's beside the point.

Digital Praise, the fine people that brought you those knock-off Dance Dance Revolution games, now bring you "Guitar Praise". In their own words:

"Grab the guitar and play along with top Christian bands! Shred those riffs or blast the bass…you add a unique sound to the solid Christian rock. But watch out: if you can't keep up, the artists will take a break and stop the music. Crank it up and try again ? you?ll soon be rockin' with the best while praising the Lord! Order the second guitar and jam with a friend!"

There just aren't any words in the English dictionary that describe that. Luckily, I just so happen to have one of my own.

Cockflickery.

Seriously, people. Do your own thing. Add in a tambourine, have the user wear little bracelets that can tell when you're raising your hands in praise, just don't rip off an established franchise and throw together some shitty tracklist on it and call it 'good'. By the way, out of 40-plus years of rock music (for today's purposes, we'll count the Larry Norman era as the beginings of C-Rock) you can't find anything better to put on a track list of "rockin' spiritual songs" than Stellar Cart, Superchick, and TWO Hawk Nelson songs? I could look through my (admittedly embarassing) Christian music collection and find 50 songs more apt for a collection such as this than TWO Hawk Nelson songs. Amy Frickin' Grant is more 'rock' than Hawk Nelson.

Cockflickery abounds...

Next thing they need is "Organ Hymnal Simulator 5000" for those not down with the C-Rock scene.

Movie Review: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

If I were a certain music reviewing site, I might not actually review this movie. I might instead post a picture of a chimp urinating on itself, or an "aww" inspiring apologetic picture of some pugs. I might even post a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head.

That would, of course, be letting the movie off too easily. It's easily the worst movie I've watched this year (I've been fortunate enough to avoid certain 'gems' such as "The Hottie and the Nottie"), and I honestly think it's one of the more poorly made popcorn flicks I've ever seen.

(note: I will be adding spoilers into my review of this movie. I don't feel bad about this at all, since the movie is actually an abomination that deserves to make as little money as possible, in the hopes that no more braindead sequels will be tacked onto its lifeless corpse. If you honestly want to see this wretched excuse for a movie, you've been warned - in more ways than one.)

Jet Li 'stars' as some dude I really can't remember the name of, and within minutes, he proves that he's all big and bad by pointlessly executing a friend, and getting all stabby on some chick he was putting moves on not 60 seconds prior (neither of these make sense, and just seem tacked on to show how EVIL this guy is, because if he wasn't super evil, this movie would have even less point in existing). I say 'stars' because once he does these things, the crazy witch chick curses him. This curse supposedly turns him into terra cotta, but the obscenely bad special effects make it look like he's being turned into chocolate. He's understandably upset about this, and rightfully so... because at this point in the movie, he turns into a poorly rendered CGI creature, and he stays that way pretty much the rest of the movie. What on earth is the point of having Jet Li in your movie if you're going to instantly replace him with a cartoon? (on second thought... this series does have a certain precedent for that...). He does do some of his near patented martial arts in the VERY beginning, but it's basically for the filmmakers to say "Hey! Remember this guy!? He did all that crazy kung fu shit back in the day. Where are you going? Don't leave!".

Thousands of years later, the most inept archaeological team in recorded history stumbles upon the site; watching their team die by booby traps¹ while happily gallivanting on their merry way. People are literally having their faces melted off, and these morons can't be arsed to watch where they walk. Kindergartners on meth would have used more caution. The professor guy predictably betrays them, then is predictably killed mere moments after.

Which is where we pause a moment. It's not terribly uncommon to make a prediction in a movie and later be proven right. Simple probabilities, coupled with limited plot twists ensure that you'll be right about at least a few things before they happen. During this movie, however, my friend and I made no fewer than 15 predictions, and were right about every single one of them. From "ah, creepy assassin chick... that seems like good girlfriend material" to "so the creepy chick with the scar on her face? yeah, she'll be fighting the female lead before much longer". This movie makes no effort to throw any curveballs. It just goes on its merry way, broadcasting every single thing it's about to do. Not that an action movie usually tries to be mysterious about its intentions, but even Armageddon had the twist ending of Bruce Willis turning out to be George Herman Ruth in disguise.

A lot of convolution later, our intrepid team ends up in the mountains. It's at this point that I lost what little faith I had that it could turn itself around. Everyone is dressed in stuff that looks like it came straight out of the LL Bean catalog. Surely the first rule in filmmaking should be "if you're making an action movie, make sure the clothes aren't better actors than the actual actors". The lead actress is wearing a blaze red parka that made me wonder if Lindsey would like something like that, and how much said item would cost. It was literally more interesting than anything happening on screen at that point in time.

15 yak puke jokes later (wow, I wish I were joking), the movie pretty much is over. There's some sort of zombie mummy fight toward the end that is well featured in the previews, but it really doesn't matter, since apparently all of these mummies are tied to Jet Li's character. Brendan Fraser's char inexplicably shouts "fight like a man" at Jet Li, who inexplicably does. Even more inexplicably, Jet Li (martial arts master extraordinaire) gets the tar kicked out of him, before getting stabbed to death. Yay, rugged adventure types, I guess.

To this point, the Mummy series has stretched a bit while calling itself "horror/comedy" (being extremely light on horror, and fairly generous with comedy), this movie stretches that genre to the breaking point, and then well past, but miraculously does so by completely removing anything that any non-lobotomized person could possibly find amusing. Nearly every joke is an in-joke, and with one exception that I can't even remember at this time, EVERY ONE OF THEM FAILS. That's right, I laughed along with this movie ONCE. One time. I think it was more of a 'chuckle' than an outright laugh, but when you're pressing that hard for laughs in a comedy, I guess it'll count. One of the few enjoyable scenes in the movie (involving yetis and the ass they so love to kick) is instantly ruined when the yetis all make celebratory moves after kicking said ass it takes the scene from acceptably cool to... something resembling a pokemon episode. More than anything, this is a movie that begs you to laugh at it, sort of like an unfunny clown (sorry, redundant). Nothing here works as comedy, and since the action and plot have so much fail in them that they're bursting at the seams, the distinct lack of any intentional humor dooms the movie.

Respected film critic Roger Ebert gave this film a somewhat positive review, noting that it was "...plain dumb fun, is why" and "absurd and preposterous, and proud of it.". I'll give him "dumb", and I'll certainly agree that it's "absurd", but it's entirely possible that he was watching a different film than the one I ended up seeing; because I'm honestly not sure how a person who had to sit through Mummy 3 could possibly call it "fun". I like dumb action movies, and I (to this point) liked the Mummy series, and this was a bigger waste of money than Indiana Jones. This movie gets tossed on the list of movies where the third installment does everything in its power to actively destroy anything you enjoyed about the first two - to the point where you question whether you actually liked the first two all that much, in the first place.

F

¹ By the way, seriously... who set those up? ...and I thought the Jet Li guy froze in a completely different pose? I know it's a touch ridiculous to expect this to make any sense when nothing else even tries to, but these are the things that go from 'suspension of disbelief' to 'you're really just making shit up as you go along, aren't you?'

Wow... Really?? I Mean, Really??

Twins general manager Bill Smith, on Livan Hernandez, who improved to 10-6 with a 5.29 earned-run average with Saturday's victory over Texas: "I'll take the (10) wins. Who do you want, a guy who's 10-15 with a 2.80 ERA or a guy who's 16-8 with a 7.00 ERA? I'll take the 16-8."

Source

 

Oh no Bill, not cool... I guess the saying goes 'I'd rather be lucky than good', but as a GM wouldn't you rather draft good, seeing as how it's a little bit more repeatable?

Let's put it this way. If I were to pitch in the major leagues, I'd understandably have a complete inability to get anyone out. I'd give up 96 runs in the first inning, and I'd only start people out when their arms were literally too tired to swing the bat. However, for the sake of this hypothesis, let's also say that my younger brother is toeing the rubber against me. He give up his 342 runs and then he starts walking people. The result is a thrilling 956-872 game, and I end up winning.

Now let's say that the very next day this happens. Scott Baker goes out and gives up 2 hits, one of which happens to be an unlucky home run. He loses because of his offense's innate disability to score runs behind him (this is actually the THIRD time he's lost 1-0 in this not-at-all-hypothetical-all-too-real world).

Who pitched a better game??

Exactly. Wins are overrated. A pitcher can pitch the game of his life, but unless the strikes out every single hitter, he's not in complete control of the outcome - and even then he still has to get some hitting behind him. Seeing how no one has ever done that, (not even Ron Necciai, though that one game was one of the greatest feats anyone has ever accomplished in sports), there has not been a single instance where a pitcher has won a game all by himself. A win is supposed to be a nice indicator of which pitcher pitched better on a given day, but it's a horribly flawed stat. I fear for the Twins, who seemingly have a GM who doesn't grasp that concept at all.

 

Coincidentally, Livan earns his own tag with this post. I'm kind of shocked he didn't already have one. His name has also been added to my computer's dictionary. Truly we live in harrowing times.

Well... I Didn't See That One Coming...

For the record, Kevin Slowey is a pitcher (a starting pitcher, at that).

No, that isn't an all too common "Gameday Typo", that is the direct result of carrying THIRTEEN pitchers on your major league roster. Here's the situation.

Mike Redmond (the Twins backup catcher, for the uninitiated) gets a single with one out in the 8th inning. The Twins are down by a run at this point, and Redmond is not known for his blazing speed, so Gardy puts in Kevin Slowey (again... a starting pitcher) as a pinch runner. The fact that Slowey was recently injured doesn't seem to factor into this equation. They pinch hit for Craig Monroe with Jason Kubel. They then pinch hit for Delmon Young with Joe Mauer, who ends the inning without getting the run in. After all is said and done, Kubel takes over in left field, Mauer takes over catching, and Jessie Crain comes in to pitch. Because of the shenanigans, we almost had ANOTHER pitcher batting in an AL game (this coming just a couple weeks after Bobby Korecky had the Twins' first hit by a pitcher in an AL game in, like 30 years).

So, the question I have is this - how many more times do we have to see pitchers roaming the basepaths in American League games before the Twins get fed up and DFA Juan Rincon? We can't keep doing this, it makes games interesting, I'll give it that, but it's not a great way to win a ball game. I thought that the whole reason we kept 3 catchers up last year (a horrible decision, btw) was so that this would never happen.

I'm confused and somewhat horrified. Hopefully this doesn't come up again.

Vehicle Issues

So, my car started making a clicking sound a week or two ago. Eh, whatever... I thought something was a little odd about that, so I got an appointment to have it looked at.

I get a call back yesterday, bearing the fantastic news that my clutch is blown and I'll need a new one.... $800. Fantastic.

I get a call back today, bearing the even better news that my transmission is also dead, and I'll need a new one.... $1600. Even more fantastic.

I think the next couple of months could be a lot of fun.

Wait... What?

While unpacking boxes in my office, I found a list I must have made in 3rd grade. It reads...

Paul Revere ("british are coming" guy)
George Washington (first president)
Babe Ruth (home-run hitter from back in the day)
Jimmy Stewart (great actor)
Abraham Lincoln (beard-faced president, fond of top hats)
Lou Gehrig (Hall of Fame baseball player, has crippling disease named after him)
Randy Stonehill (one of the so-called "fathers of contemporary Christian music.")

Whomever can explain what the common between those people is, I'm all ears. I mean... Randy Stonehill?

Note: I've put up the MP3 links on my 'Top 20 Albums of 2007' post. Go there, and see (and hear)what music I enjoyed this past year.

The Worst Thing Ever

Follow this link and prepare to not believe your eyes: http://www.iawareables.com

Because really... who DOESN'T want Gonorrhea as the template for their tie?
Even better are the conversation possibilities that having an Avian Flu tie could bring up. "Hey, cool pattern, what is it?""The doom of the human race"
Of note: they have plushies. Yes, that's right... Plush gonorrhea. Your life is so close to being complete, order now.