Best. Game. Ever.

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. I'm proud of the Bruins regardless of what happens in game 7.

I'm trying to get up a new post sometime today or tomorrow. But for now, enjoy.

WTF, World: Volume XX

"WTF, World" Wednesdays:

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

• Hey, the economy is in the shitter, our deficit is massive... How will McCain solve our fiscal problems? By cutting taxes for the rich, who, last I checked, not having any money issues.
• O noes! Baldness is ruled to be not a disability! Larry David must be very upset about this ruling. You may not think bald people are handicapped now, but what happens when they get into a situation where they need to, I don't know, make a rope from their hair to save their lives? Then it's a disability for sure.
• Aw, crap. I don't know what's worse, that NASA got pwnd by a 13-year-old, or that we very well may be fucked as a species come 2036. Probably the latter.
• Worst. Boss. Ever. This is almost like an episode of The Office gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Like Baseball Even Exists!

It's very tough for me to make predictions for the baseball season. 

Scratch that. Actually making predictions is quite easy, particularly for baseball. The Red Sox and Yankees will finish 1-2 in the AL East, and the Pirates will be awful. There. I have said pretty much the same thing as every baseball analyst in the world.

The tough part, for me, is making predictions while simultaneously pretending baseball does not exist.

Let me explain.

I am one of perhaps a dozen Baltimore Orioles fans in the world. If, perchance, you do not follow baseball, the Orioles (Or O's, if you will. I will.) are a baseball team. They are bad. Very bad. They also play in the AL East, along with the Red Sox and Yankees, who successfully attract and load up on copious amounts of talent pretty much every year. The Orioles, on the other hand, nurture young players until right about when they become good, and then trade them for old/injured/legally retarded players who get payed roughly a bajillion dollars a year. This is why their opening day starter is some guy named Jeremy Guthrie. They also lost one game last year by a score of 30-3. That is a blowout in a football game. In baseball, well, let's just stop there. I have coped with garbage like this for years by pretending baseball has been on a ten year strike. I encourage fans of other crappy teams like the Nationals, Royals, and Rays (if there are any of them) to do the same. Support the MLS (go Revs!) or something.

Anyway, I digress. Here's some predictions for this season.

• In late April, Mark Prior will attempt a comeback with the San Diego Padres. After throwing only his second pitch, his elbow explodes into three separate pieces which settle in far-flung regions of the Earth. Believing if they can reassemble the elbow they will have the power to dominate the game, the Red Sox and Yankees will fight a massive world-wide battle to obtain the pieces. For some reason Destro is involved.
• The Pirates hold open tryouts. They end up with nine new starters and manage to beat the Orioles in interleague play.
• A-Rod has another stellar season, batting .312 with 51 home runs and 148 RBI. His performance is widely panned, as, evidently runs only count in the 9th inning.
• During an away game at Milwaukee, a stoned-out-of-his-gourd Dmitri Young will attempt to tackle and to eat one of the competitors in the sausage race. He will fail to do so, though, as he is unable to move his 300-lb girth fast enough. He will still be paid to be a professional athlete.
• Curt Schilling will claim credit for the Red Sox having the best record in the majors at the All-Star Break, despite not having thrown a single pitch. "I really can't thank myself enough," he says in his blog. "Without my strength and know-how, we couldn't have done this, and for that I am eternally thankful." He will then masturbate to is own image and ejaculate into his "bloody" sock. In other news, if you could not tell, Curt Schilling is my least favorite baseball player. Maybe he will write about this in his blog.

ACTUAL PREDICTIONS:

AL East: Red Sox

AL Central: Indians

AL West: Mariners

Wild Card: Yankees

NL East: Mets

NL Central: Brewers

NL West: Diamondbacks

Wild Card: Phillies

Red Sox over Mariners

Yankees over Indians

Red Sox over Yankees

Mets over Brewers

Diamondbacks over Phillies

Mets over Diamondbacks

Red Sox over Mets

So there you go. Predictions from someone who has not seriously followed baseball for nearly a decade. Probably as accurate as most pundits, though, so there you go.

NOTE: There won't be any updates next week, as I'll be in Venice, which, I'm guessing, should be a considerably better place to work than "off the coast of New Jersey". See you in a week and a half. 

WTF, World: Volume XIX

Have you ever been over a friend's house to eat and the food just ain't no good?

I mean the macaroni's soggy, the peas are mush, and the chicken tastes like wood.

WTF!?

Yes, a Sugarhill Gang lyric. And now for some links.

• So, Obama's pastor goes on a rant and it's supposed to reflect badly on the presidential candidate. Meanwhile, neocons, for years, have been associating themselves with batshit crazy evangelical ministers who say things like New Orleans deserved Katrina, and, um, nothing. Please note that McCain is now also courting these people. The Republican party will probably spin this into something like "McCain has strong family values."
• Medicine and prayer: fine. Just prayer: maybe not so much. This is one of the sadder stories I have read in some time. How anyone can allow this is beyond me.
• More on "Expelled". PZ Myers, who was interviewed in the film, was also denied access to a local showing. However, the producers failed to remove his guest (and fellow interviewee) RICHARD DAWKINS. Here's a long analogy for you. Say someone makes a film criticizing the Basketball Hall of Fame for not inducting any handball players. They hold a premiere for the film, and try to keep any basketball players from attending. Someone spots, I don't know, Wally Szczerbiak, and promptly kicks him out. However, they fail to notice LeBron James standing next to him. That is basically what happened here.

We Called It Haterade

Last weekend, I think my father and I watched perhaps a bazillion hours of college basketball between the two of us. At times we had three or four games working at once (thank you, Cox Cable). However, when Duke played West Virginia on Saturday, our attention remained fixed on a single game.

Neither of us have any relation to Duke or West Virginia (other than that WV point guard Joe Mazzulla is from Rhode Island and I am thus contractually obligated to support him and his team). And yet we threw our support behind the Mountaineers like we were John Denver or something. This is because, like the bulk of the country, we hate Duke.

They're kind of like the opposite of America's Team. Don't believe me? Check the internet. It never lies. This year, there have been about 6.02x10^23 posts (including this one) that basically say something to the tune of DUKE SUCKS LOL. 

This widespread hatred, historically, hasn't been confined just to Duke. Just over the last dozen or so years, the Patriots, Lakers, Yankees, Cowboys (maybe this was just me) and Manchester United, just to name a few, have experienced the same animosity. I remember celebrating Luis Gonzales's bloop single in the 2001 World Series as if my own team had won it. I don't even like the Diamondbacks.

Why does everyone loathe Duke so much? Well, it could be that the Crazies act like a bunch of attention-hogging assclowns, or that the players flop more than the Italian soccer team. Or it could be their stupid faces. 

I think it comes down to overexposure. The team, Coach K, and the fans see more air time than most pilots (BA-ZING!). ESPN crams the Cameron Crazies down our throats and treats them like the greatest fans in the world. We've constantly heard about how amazing Duke players are, even though most of them, at best, will end up like Trajan Langdon (also, J.J. Reddick is a douchelord). But when you think about it, are their fans or players any worse than those at other colleges? I remember kids who painted their faces and looked like asses (By the way, being loud helps your team WAY more than painting your face and/or body. To the athletes, odds are you just look like a blur of [insert team's colors] anyway.) at our hockey games at BU, and yet we weren't generally hated

Wait. We were. Bad example.

Still, these people are there at pretty much every school. To a small degree, the floppers aren't limited to the Blue Devils' squad, either. Duke isn't different enough from most other colleges to engender all that hatred. But you know, what, we hear about Duke all the time, and that's annoying as hell. In the entertainment world, the same phenomenon is present. Think of the backlash against Juno, a perfectly enjoyable movie. Or that whole Ben Affleck-J-Lo thing. I don't know if the animosity towards the couple was necessarily for their actions or for the fact we had to hear about them all the damn time. It's the same thing for Duke.

Or maybe this is why they suck.

So next time you see Duke on TV, it may be good to step back and think and

OH GOD I HATE THEM SO MUCH

WTF? No "WTF, World?"

Yeah, to continue the downward spiral of disappointment, there will be no "WTF, World" this week. I've been out on the Cap'n Bert all week and haven't had the chance to provide you (could be singular OR plural!) with the links you love to hate.

There will be a new post this Friday, however.

By some miracle, I haven't been seasick yet. YET.

If You're Thinking of Going to Grad School...

Don't.

That's my entry for today. I'll post something real next week when, hopefully, my urge to smash subsides.

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!

It'll probably be about hating on Duke basketball.