Sunday, October 28, 2007
Two-year anniversary
This is a post celebrating two years of Giant Boogers from Outer Space's online publication; quite unfortunately, it is being written eleven months and one week early. Well, what can ya do?
And such a wonderful two-year anniversary it is! Why, in just two (-11etc) short years we have experienced the following:
Who won World War II?
The identity of God
Wakka Wakka!
Lard Hock Knives
A heartbreaking postseason race
"I'm Weird"
Baru, Dark Lord of the S***
The debut of the Serif PhotoPlus 6 on MetFanMac's computer
Terry Harkness
My life's philosophy
The significance of the number 32, not revealed in the 32nd post
Woot canaw
Brain=clock
LOUD NOISES!
Some musings on natural phenomenae
The most random song ever created
Some things just depend on how you look at them
The hotline for a certain revolutionarily random revolution involving cat/cats/whatever's appropriate
This is not the New Year anyway
Rister and Rob
The delightfulness of Tenzing Norgay
Official illustrator for Quest
The 32nd post (just in case you were paying attention)
The reason geometry is preferable
The tale of the Decoy Rav Purim (which might really mean Cave Mud Priory)
Teh random grapefruit
Eric NLI visits for the first and not last time
"I am de genius! I am de robot!!"
^ [Don't] wash. [Don't] rinse. Repeat.
Musicians In Training
april fool
8:02.07
This is not your Independence Day, either
The bug that proves Darwin wrong
Musings on other natural phenomenae
Anubis Markets and the return of Today's Website
Numbered randomness--dig?
Fluffy
Merits of the Edit button
Wanna know all my passwords?
Initial stages of my yet-to-be-finished dictonary
Deconstructing Blogspot
MODEOFTRANS-
PORTATION
Renewing the Mission with a Statement
A new job...
And the first post posted from it.
A postseason race that was somewhat less heartbreaking
The injury that was (and still is) not even remotely funny
What Peter Piper did next
The repeal of the Nachshon Nonaccessibility Factor
Wow! What a maginificent [2] years those were! See you in another two years! Or a week! Or a month from Tuesday!
TODAY'S BOOK: "Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt!", by Jean Fritz ((c) 1991)
And such a wonderful two-year anniversary it is! Why, in just two (-11etc) short years we have experienced the following:
Who won World War II?
The identity of God
Wakka Wakka!
Lard Hock Knives
A heartbreaking postseason race
"I'm Weird"
Baru, Dark Lord of the S***
The debut of the Serif PhotoPlus 6 on MetFanMac's computer
Terry Harkness
My life's philosophy
The significance of the number 32, not revealed in the 32nd post
Woot canaw
Brain=clock
LOUD NOISES!
Some musings on natural phenomenae
The most random song ever created
Some things just depend on how you look at them
The hotline for a certain revolutionarily random revolution involving cat/cats/whatever's appropriate
This is not the New Year anyway
Rister and Rob
The delightfulness of Tenzing Norgay
Official illustrator for Quest
The 32nd post (just in case you were paying attention)
The reason geometry is preferable
The tale of the Decoy Rav Purim (which might really mean Cave Mud Priory)
Teh random grapefruit
Eric NLI visits for the first and not last time
"I am de genius! I am de robot!!"
^ [Don't] wash. [Don't] rinse. Repeat.
Musicians In Training
april fool
8:02.07
This is not your Independence Day, either
The bug that proves Darwin wrong
Musings on other natural phenomenae
Anubis Markets and the return of Today's Website
Numbered randomness--dig?
Fluffy
Merits of the Edit button
Wanna know all my passwords?
Initial stages of my yet-to-be-finished dictonary
Deconstructing Blogspot
MODEOFTRANS-
PORTATION
Renewing the Mission with a Statement
A new job...
And the first post posted from it.
A postseason race that was somewhat less heartbreaking
The injury that was (and still is) not even remotely funny
What Peter Piper did next
The repeal of the Nachshon Nonaccessibility Factor
Wow! What a maginificent [2] years those were! See you in another two years! Or a week! Or a month from Tuesday!
TODAY'S BOOK: "Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt!", by Jean Fritz ((c) 1991)
Labels: 32, random, the blog, wakka wakka
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
76th post
Dress code, yes; uniform, no. Those are words to live by.
When life hands you lemons, make dishwashing fluid, hock it, buy artificial flavoring with the proceeds, and make lemonade.
Never give up! Unless, of course, the situation is completely hopeless.
There is a secret code running throughout this sentence, which is why this sentence is very long, length being a useful in hiding concealed messages and obtained via a non-paltry abundance of words, which comprise nouns, vowels, adjectives, and all those other boring stuff that you learned in school, a place that I royally detest (and hopefully you do too).
This is a matter that only those with the ability to ken will be able to wot of it.
Sure, Peter Piper may have picked that peck of pickled peppers, but does it happen to mention how much he paid for them? Well, it just so happens that Peter Piper paid a pair of pounds, plus a pitiful penny to pack them.
Some stuff is just plain dirtier than dirt, and that's why people don't step in it.
Do those meteoroligists ever take into account a storm's feeling when they downgrade it? Here's this fella (or gal), building itself up for the big time, pumping air fronts, lifting waves, making some noise, and all of a sudden it finds out it's not even a hurricane anymore! Nasty meteorologists.
TODAY'S BOOK: "The Contest Kid and the Big Prize", by Barbara Brooks Wallace ((c) 1977)
TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.cagle.com Political cartoonist Daryl Cagle runs this webpage, containing cartoons from top American (and occasional international) cartoonists on a variety of popular subjects, going back six years. Now you can relive all the hot-button topics you missed or still miss!
When life hands you lemons, make dishwashing fluid, hock it, buy artificial flavoring with the proceeds, and make lemonade.
Never give up! Unless, of course, the situation is completely hopeless.
There is a secret code running throughout this sentence, which is why this sentence is very long, length being a useful in hiding concealed messages and obtained via a non-paltry abundance of words, which comprise nouns, vowels, adjectives, and all those other boring stuff that you learned in school, a place that I royally detest (and hopefully you do too).
This is a matter that only those with the ability to ken will be able to wot of it.
Sure, Peter Piper may have picked that peck of pickled peppers, but does it happen to mention how much he paid for them? Well, it just so happens that Peter Piper paid a pair of pounds, plus a pitiful penny to pack them.
Some stuff is just plain dirtier than dirt, and that's why people don't step in it.
Do those meteoroligists ever take into account a storm's feeling when they downgrade it? Here's this fella (or gal), building itself up for the big time, pumping air fronts, lifting waves, making some noise, and all of a sudden it finds out it's not even a hurricane anymore! Nasty meteorologists.
TODAY'S BOOK: "The Contest Kid and the Big Prize", by Barbara Brooks Wallace ((c) 1977)
TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.cagle.com Political cartoonist Daryl Cagle runs this webpage, containing cartoons from top American (and occasional international) cartoonists on a variety of popular subjects, going back six years. Now you can relive all the hot-button topics you missed or still miss!
Labels: random
Friday, October 05, 2007
Not even remotely funny
There I was, Wednesday night, minding my own business... Or, rather, that's what I should have been doing. Instead, one tiny misfired neuron in my brain made me attempt to balance on a metal fence for the first time in my life. A one-foot-tall fence, at that. No harm in it, right? Right?
WRONG.
I fell the wrong way, landed smack on my left shoulder, and immediately went into pain spasms. The shoulder had been dislocated.
After about half an hour of ceaseless pain (during which I got home and my parents ran to find a doctor, it being yontif and all), my shoulder was finally relocated. That's the good news. The bad news is that the ligaments up there were torn, so turn I've got to keep my arm held against my body at a 90-degree angle indefinitely until they can operate on it.
!^%$<&^*#?%!$^&$#!?+>
TODAY'S BOOK: "Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball", by Stephen Jay Gould ((c) 2003)
TODAY'S WEBSITE: http://www.lolcats.com/ An Internet site filled with with funny videos or photographs of cats, frequently accompanied by misspelled captions guaranteed to make you, as the name shows, "LOL". Monorail Cat seems to be usually at or near the top of the popularity charts, but my personal favorite is the hysterically frightening Hover Cat. Be warned, there seems to be an an inexplicable obsession with cheesburgers (or "cheezburgrs") all over the place.
WRONG.
I fell the wrong way, landed smack on my left shoulder, and immediately went into pain spasms. The shoulder had been dislocated.
After about half an hour of ceaseless pain (during which I got home and my parents ran to find a doctor, it being yontif and all), my shoulder was finally relocated. That's the good news. The bad news is that the ligaments up there were torn, so turn I've got to keep my arm held against my body at a 90-degree angle indefinitely until they can operate on it.
!^%$<&^*#?%!$^&$#!?+>
TODAY'S BOOK: "Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball", by Stephen Jay Gould ((c) 2003)
TODAY'S WEBSITE: http://www.lolcats.com/ An Internet site filled with with funny videos or photographs of cats, frequently accompanied by misspelled captions guaranteed to make you, as the name shows, "LOL". Monorail Cat seems to be usually at or near the top of the popularity charts, but my personal favorite is the hysterically frightening Hover Cat. Be warned, there seems to be an an inexplicable obsession with cheesburgers (or "cheezburgrs") all over the place.
Labels: biographical
Monday, October 01, 2007
Reflections on baseball
Well, there it went. In one last, futile gasp, the New York Mets clawed their way back to a tie for first place in the National League East with the Philadelphia Phillies on the next-to last game of the season, only to have it all come crashing down on them the very next (and last) day. This, mind you, after leading the Phillies by seven games with seventeen games remaining--and thus cementing their team as that with the worst late-season collapse in baseball history. (The team they upseated? The 1964 Phillies.)
Well, whoop de damn doo.
Am I unhappy? Well, yes. Anybody whose team collapses is bound to feel disappointed. However, I feel no more (and perhaps even less) disappointed than if this had been happening in May or June. There are varying degrees of unhappiness, and frankly, the one I'm on is pretty low.
But why, MetFanMac? The team you are a rabid fan of has just completed the worst late-season collapse in history!
Yes, I can hear you querying. You know what? I predicted this--or, rather I expected it. Not in April, not May, not even June or July. But I never felt safe with that 7-game lead. It was the last, fateful stretch that convinced me: 3 games at next-to-last Washington, 4 at last-place Florida, then home for 3 with the Nationals, a makeup game with the third-place Cardinals, and 3 more with the Marlins. Easy pickings, right?
Wrong. The Mets went 5-9 (1-6 over the last 7) and ended up 1 game out of first.
I should be angry and bitter and disconsolate.
I'm not. I'm just disappointed.
Quite apart from my inability to actually expect this 2007 version of my favorite team to achieve anything and (not unconnectedly) a lack of will to see them succeed in the postseason--both things covered quite nicely elsewhere--it's time to put things in perspective.
First off, I'm not mad at the Phillies. I'm not mad at their town, and I'm not mad at their fans. What I am mad at is Rollins and Howard and Utley and Myers and Garcia and all the rest of the Philadelphia franchise's 2007 edition--yet. Not like Atlanta or the other New York team from the Bronx Zoo.
Still, this is a chance to rectify a few things. First off, our monopoly on baseball futility. In 1962, the Mets were incorporated and immediately crashed to a 40-120 record, thus setting the modern-day baseball record for awfulness. (The now-defunct Cleveland Spiders set the all-time record in their final and most dismal season in 1899, when they lost 134 games while winning only 20, but nobody cares about 19th-century baseball. For instance, Hugh Duffy hit .440 in 1894, but Nap Lajoie's .426 in 1901 is widely considered the "real" record; the same goes for Old Hoss Radbourn's 59 wins in 1884 and Jack Chesbro's 41 in 1904, etc.) When the Detroit Tigers reached 119 losses in 2003 with two to play, there was a sense of momentousness abouit the occasion. Fortuitously, the Tigers scored 9 runs in both games to win, and the Mets' record was intact.
This is a good thing.
The loss record may not be the greatest record, but it's ours. It's a barometer of how far you've come since then, a refernce for when things go wrong, and more than that: something to look back on fondly.
Why fondly, MetFanMac?
Because the New York Mets didn't set just one record in 1962, they broke two: losses--and attendance for a last-place team. 922,530 people--the 6th-highest total in the National League--clicked through the Polo Grounds' turnstiles to watch the lovable losers drop 17 straight games (and 9 in a row to start off the runway in a full nosedive), finish 60 games behind the Giants and Dodgers, and land with a thud in last place for the rest of the season in late May. And, as their unofficial scribe, the eminent Roger Angell, wrote, they were the most enthusiastic fans he'd ever seen, knowing that the team could only go up and responding to the Metsiness within each and every one of them.
This affection for the worst team in baseball continued through 1963, as 1,080,108 more people came to see the team with a .315 winning percentage.
Then came 1964 and the brand spanking new William A. Shea Stadium. As Angell noted, there was more of a sense of gentility among the crowds, less boisterousness, less tolerance for the horrors committed on a daily bases by the likes of Christopher, Smith and Fisher. Some of the fun had gone out of watching 25 men finish tenth out of 10 teams. Banners shrunk; noise muted; boos took more of a foothold. But the fanbase stayed firm, and in 1969, they were rewarded with the spectacle of the "Miracle Mets" going from ninth to first place and winning a world Series they had no business winning; the Mets were rewarded in turn with what is estimated to be the fifth-largest U.S. ticker-tape parade ever.
Then came 1970--and the 100-win Mets of yesteryear finished third.
What changed?
Not much. The Mets of 1970 were still pretty much the same Mets of 1969. Most of the same players still ran around Shea. Future Hall-of-Famers Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan and '69 World Series MVP Donn Celendenon were still there, along with the championship year's All-Star Game contingent of Cleon Jones and Jerry Koosman, and they were still led by possible future Hall-of-Famer Gil Hodges. So why the drop-off?
Why indeed? Could it be that it was the Miracle Mets that were the fluke?
Well, not exactly. As always, luck plays a decisive role in determining the direction of a team's fortunes. The '69 Mets certainly benifited from it a great deal: literally pulling Seaver out of a hat after the Braves signed him with an illegal contract, Clendenon returning after an abrupt mini-retirement in midseason in time for a trade from Montreal, Koosman called to the Mets brass's notice after a fellow soldier praised him a letter to his Shea Stadium usher brother. Still, they beat one of the best teams of the era in five games in the World Series, almost completely without obvious luck.
So, on the whole, pretty inexplicable. But similar success would not follow for over a dozen years, and the intervening time, coupled with their initial start, cemented their image: Losers. After the outburst of the '80s, the '90s muddle and The Worst Team Money Could Buy only added to the mythos.
Such a team would arguably lose a significant portion of its fan base or even drop off the face of the earth, a la those ill-fated Spiders. But like the original Mets team, the Boston Red Sox, or the Brooklyn Dodgers of yore, instead of being ashamed, the fans reveled in their team's ineptitude. Well, not exactly revel, but it was nothing to constantly mope about, but rather a sort of red badge of courage--"The worst is probably behind us."
Suffering is integral to the psyche of the New York Mets team and their fans. Worst modern record? Yep. Biggest late regular-season collapse? Ours. Those same Phils we took that record from not too long ago lost its 10,000th game, a feat unmatched in American sports. But this is only because they have been around for 125 years. The Padres (39 years) and Rangers (47) have worse won-loss percentages and less pennants combined, and even the almighty Atlanta Braves have a murky history, being the only other 19th-centrury franchise with a losing record, and the other original National League teams average a share of less than 5 championships per team after over a century of World Series play. At about a third of the Phillies' age, the Mets have won only 0.9% more of their games. Another vaunted Phillies record of failure is currently in jeopardy, as the Pittsburgh Pirates (proud owners of a .506 winning percentage and 14 postseason appearances) threaten to tie their record of 16 straight losing seasons. Let 'em! We'll shoot for it sometime in the future. After all, now that the Red Sox have excorcized their demons, we are the team with the highest-profile pain & suffering. Why should anybody else try to nudge in on our act?
More importantly, where the heck am I going with this? The answer is that I have no freakin' clue. It has been several weeks since I started this post as a draft and I can no longer remember what the intent of it was, except to sound intensely authorotative. Instead it's turned into a random ramble, which I suppose is a good thing to be in a Blog of Ultimate Randomness.
TODAY'S BOOK: "The Hunt Club", by John Lescroart ((c) 2007)
TODAY'S WEBISTE: http://www.baseball-reference.com/ Honestly, could there possibly be a different option for a post such as this? Unlike its online competitor http://www.baseball-almanac.com/, the exhaustive Baseball-Reference has no "frills"--no opinion pieces, no player biographies, not even a gaudy layout--opting for a stark, undistracting setup that reminds you that this is a site that deals only with the purest of baseball data, statistics (plus an easily-overlooked section that links to a select few news stories). And, boy, do they have a ton of them. Bonus feature: the Oracle of Baseball, allowing you to play Six Degrees with any baseball player to ever appear in a major league game. Warning: intensely addictive.
Well, whoop de damn doo.
Am I unhappy? Well, yes. Anybody whose team collapses is bound to feel disappointed. However, I feel no more (and perhaps even less) disappointed than if this had been happening in May or June. There are varying degrees of unhappiness, and frankly, the one I'm on is pretty low.
But why, MetFanMac? The team you are a rabid fan of has just completed the worst late-season collapse in history!
Yes, I can hear you querying. You know what? I predicted this--or, rather I expected it. Not in April, not May, not even June or July. But I never felt safe with that 7-game lead. It was the last, fateful stretch that convinced me: 3 games at next-to-last Washington, 4 at last-place Florida, then home for 3 with the Nationals, a makeup game with the third-place Cardinals, and 3 more with the Marlins. Easy pickings, right?
Wrong. The Mets went 5-9 (1-6 over the last 7) and ended up 1 game out of first.
I should be angry and bitter and disconsolate.
I'm not. I'm just disappointed.
Quite apart from my inability to actually expect this 2007 version of my favorite team to achieve anything and (not unconnectedly) a lack of will to see them succeed in the postseason--both things covered quite nicely elsewhere--it's time to put things in perspective.
First off, I'm not mad at the Phillies. I'm not mad at their town, and I'm not mad at their fans. What I am mad at is Rollins and Howard and Utley and Myers and Garcia and all the rest of the Philadelphia franchise's 2007 edition--yet. Not like Atlanta or the other New York team from the Bronx Zoo.
Still, this is a chance to rectify a few things. First off, our monopoly on baseball futility. In 1962, the Mets were incorporated and immediately crashed to a 40-120 record, thus setting the modern-day baseball record for awfulness. (The now-defunct Cleveland Spiders set the all-time record in their final and most dismal season in 1899, when they lost 134 games while winning only 20, but nobody cares about 19th-century baseball. For instance, Hugh Duffy hit .440 in 1894, but Nap Lajoie's .426 in 1901 is widely considered the "real" record; the same goes for Old Hoss Radbourn's 59 wins in 1884 and Jack Chesbro's 41 in 1904, etc.) When the Detroit Tigers reached 119 losses in 2003 with two to play, there was a sense of momentousness abouit the occasion. Fortuitously, the Tigers scored 9 runs in both games to win, and the Mets' record was intact.
This is a good thing.
The loss record may not be the greatest record, but it's ours. It's a barometer of how far you've come since then, a refernce for when things go wrong, and more than that: something to look back on fondly.
Why fondly, MetFanMac?
Because the New York Mets didn't set just one record in 1962, they broke two: losses--and attendance for a last-place team. 922,530 people--the 6th-highest total in the National League--clicked through the Polo Grounds' turnstiles to watch the lovable losers drop 17 straight games (and 9 in a row to start off the runway in a full nosedive), finish 60 games behind the Giants and Dodgers, and land with a thud in last place for the rest of the season in late May. And, as their unofficial scribe, the eminent Roger Angell, wrote, they were the most enthusiastic fans he'd ever seen, knowing that the team could only go up and responding to the Metsiness within each and every one of them.
This affection for the worst team in baseball continued through 1963, as 1,080,108 more people came to see the team with a .315 winning percentage.
Then came 1964 and the brand spanking new William A. Shea Stadium. As Angell noted, there was more of a sense of gentility among the crowds, less boisterousness, less tolerance for the horrors committed on a daily bases by the likes of Christopher, Smith and Fisher. Some of the fun had gone out of watching 25 men finish tenth out of 10 teams. Banners shrunk; noise muted; boos took more of a foothold. But the fanbase stayed firm, and in 1969, they were rewarded with the spectacle of the "Miracle Mets" going from ninth to first place and winning a world Series they had no business winning; the Mets were rewarded in turn with what is estimated to be the fifth-largest U.S. ticker-tape parade ever.
Then came 1970--and the 100-win Mets of yesteryear finished third.
What changed?
Not much. The Mets of 1970 were still pretty much the same Mets of 1969. Most of the same players still ran around Shea. Future Hall-of-Famers Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan and '69 World Series MVP Donn Celendenon were still there, along with the championship year's All-Star Game contingent of Cleon Jones and Jerry Koosman, and they were still led by possible future Hall-of-Famer Gil Hodges. So why the drop-off?
Why indeed? Could it be that it was the Miracle Mets that were the fluke?
Well, not exactly. As always, luck plays a decisive role in determining the direction of a team's fortunes. The '69 Mets certainly benifited from it a great deal: literally pulling Seaver out of a hat after the Braves signed him with an illegal contract, Clendenon returning after an abrupt mini-retirement in midseason in time for a trade from Montreal, Koosman called to the Mets brass's notice after a fellow soldier praised him a letter to his Shea Stadium usher brother. Still, they beat one of the best teams of the era in five games in the World Series, almost completely without obvious luck.
So, on the whole, pretty inexplicable. But similar success would not follow for over a dozen years, and the intervening time, coupled with their initial start, cemented their image: Losers. After the outburst of the '80s, the '90s muddle and The Worst Team Money Could Buy only added to the mythos.
Such a team would arguably lose a significant portion of its fan base or even drop off the face of the earth, a la those ill-fated Spiders. But like the original Mets team, the Boston Red Sox, or the Brooklyn Dodgers of yore, instead of being ashamed, the fans reveled in their team's ineptitude. Well, not exactly revel, but it was nothing to constantly mope about, but rather a sort of red badge of courage--"The worst is probably behind us."
Suffering is integral to the psyche of the New York Mets team and their fans. Worst modern record? Yep. Biggest late regular-season collapse? Ours. Those same Phils we took that record from not too long ago lost its 10,000th game, a feat unmatched in American sports. But this is only because they have been around for 125 years. The Padres (39 years) and Rangers (47) have worse won-loss percentages and less pennants combined, and even the almighty Atlanta Braves have a murky history, being the only other 19th-centrury franchise with a losing record, and the other original National League teams average a share of less than 5 championships per team after over a century of World Series play. At about a third of the Phillies' age, the Mets have won only 0.9% more of their games. Another vaunted Phillies record of failure is currently in jeopardy, as the Pittsburgh Pirates (proud owners of a .506 winning percentage and 14 postseason appearances) threaten to tie their record of 16 straight losing seasons. Let 'em! We'll shoot for it sometime in the future. After all, now that the Red Sox have excorcized their demons, we are the team with the highest-profile pain & suffering. Why should anybody else try to nudge in on our act?
More importantly, where the heck am I going with this? The answer is that I have no freakin' clue. It has been several weeks since I started this post as a draft and I can no longer remember what the intent of it was, except to sound intensely authorotative. Instead it's turned into a random ramble, which I suppose is a good thing to be in a Blog of Ultimate Randomness.
TODAY'S BOOK: "The Hunt Club", by John Lescroart ((c) 2007)
TODAY'S WEBISTE: http://www.baseball-reference.com/ Honestly, could there possibly be a different option for a post such as this? Unlike its online competitor http://www.baseball-almanac.com/, the exhaustive Baseball-Reference has no "frills"--no opinion pieces, no player biographies, not even a gaudy layout--opting for a stark, undistracting setup that reminds you that this is a site that deals only with the purest of baseball data, statistics (plus an easily-overlooked section that links to a select few news stories). And, boy, do they have a ton of them. Bonus feature: the Oracle of Baseball, allowing you to play Six Degrees with any baseball player to ever appear in a major league game. Warning: intensely addictive.
Labels: baseball, deflated rant
