Arise Chicken!

1) How are you feeling today, sir?
Better!
Better?
Better get me a bucket, I think I'm gonna' throw up!

So for the past few days the Resident Female has been struck down with a fairly awful case of the plague, and I believe I have now contracted it. Fantastic. And I can't really call in sick because I have too much crap to finish before I take my 4 week vacation starting next week. Bah! Hooray for phlegm.

2) Throw-away joke of the day that I'm surprised hasn't been in a movie yet:
Two men enter a private Hollywood bar called "2001", where there are several celebrities sitting around. One turns to the other and says, "My God! It's full of stars!" Ba-dum-bum

3) I still think it is incredibly stupid for home-field in the playoffs to be determined by the All-Star game. Sure, it's nice that the Sox are set up to have it for the second year in a row if they make it back, but there has to be another way. I understand the argument that an AL record isn't really comparable to an NL, so how about this: go by seeding. If the wild card team (4th seed) faces a division winner, then the division winner gets home-field. If the division winner with the 3rd best record faces the division winner with the 2nd best in their league, it goes to the #2 seed. In the event of the same seeds making the world series, only then does it go to the team with the most wins. Or hell, they could have the managers arm-wrestle for it, or have a sack race around the bases, or something. Just make the teams that get there have more of a say than the strength of the top players in the league.

4) More and more I've been thinking about this, and I don't get a lot of alien movies. Basically, when these aliens invade and blow up the place, there never seems to be an apt motive. For example, Independence Day suggested that the aliens came to strip earth of it's resources for their own use, and they went about acquiring these resources by blowing the shit out of everything. Unless the resources they were looking for was charcoal or insane ways to be defeated, they seem to have incinerated whatever it was they came for. Or how about War of the Worlds? If they really wanted to use us as fertilizer (or food, or whatever), then why did they start out disintigrating us? Or if the idea was just incineration, couldn't they just have dropped bombs on us? Okay, maybe they went the Predator route (about the only one that makes sense) and just wanted to hunt us for sport, but again, it didn't really make that much sense the way they went about it. Now, I realize I'm probably overthinking this (probably?), but wouldn't you expect that a civilization of creatures capable of mastering interstellar flight and highly evolved weapon systems would have at least some sort of well-thought-out motive behind exterminating an entire race? Or are we supposed to believe that a bunch of masochistic war-mongers somehow managed to stumble upon our planet and randomly decide, "Hey, I've got some weapons! Let's fire 'em!" I mean, there probably were easier places to test out the new military technologies than trekking across the galaxy to Earth, is all I'm saying.

5) So about 4 times in the past two weeks, either walking to or from work, I have seen a convoy of police cars/suburbans/buses filled with SWAT dudes flying around the capitol. This morning, I actually saw two buses loaded with the guys pass right by me, sirens blaring (and of course, I was underneath the department of labor at the time, so the echoes are still ringing). I'm not sure whether these huge response should make me feel safer or terrified.

6) Apparently the worst kept secret around the water cooler, Gabe "World's Strongest Jew" Kapler is set to come back to the Sox once he clears waivers in Japan. This has been hinted at for about two months, since he told the Boston Globe that he was unhappy in Japan, and the Sox need a right-handed defensive replacement oufielder. While many people bemoan the fact that Kapler isn't nearly as good a player as Jay Payton was, I would argue that the team is better off with Kapler and Bradford (who Payton is supposedly bringing in trade) than with an unhappy Payton who at this point they can't get back even if they wanted him. Apparently, he is also considered one of the better clubhouse influences, what with his sterling sense of humor and his ability to absorb attacks from behind by pieces of white trash from Worcester. Anyhow, I guess I'm pleased that the WSJ (as is his SOSH nickname) is coming back, if for no other reason than it brings back memories of the 4th of July drunken exchange with my buddy Big Watts Bernie Noneck:

Him: "Kapler? We're getting back the WSJ? Like the Wall Street Journal, that's all the Jews that's fit to print!" cue self-referential laughter
Me: "Um, that's the New York Times."
Him: "Really? Well, whatever, it's a party. Dick."

7) To keep with the linking theme, I am pleased to note that I have no intention of ever running for political office (I think my college days pretty much preclude it, though maybe not considering the current administration's collegial gallavants), but it's nice to know that I was still smarter than a lot of people to at least use an ill-concieved and idiotic alias.

8) Um, didn't we already know this about 5 years ago? Yet it is leading the technology page at CNN.com. Well, whatever, it's a party.

9) This whole Karl Rove thing pisses me off, and not for the obvious reasons. Sure, claiming that Rove is the anti-Christ and parroting whatever it is the democrats are saying about him and his leak is easy enough; Bush's continued support despite his administration saying he would fire anyone implicated is also a fairly easy target. Really, though, I am just disappointed in Karl Rove. This guy, who successfully accused a crippled war veteran of being unpatriotic for voting against a pollution bill while electing president the alcoholic coke-snorting son of an embassador as he pretend to be a cowboy, somehow managed to get caught caught with his hand in the cookie jar over a little tiff with a guy who didn't do anything but mildly break rank. Really, who would have thought that an insignifant peaon would be the one to bring this guy down? Couldn't he have come up with a better way to get revenge than leaving a paper trail to a reporter? I mean, all he did was put the guy's wife in danger for about a half hour before letting them retire and live off the profits from their book while endangering his future. I would have thought Rove was more clever than that. Perhaps he could have come up with some sort of elaborate trap like in Saw, where the husband had to decide between keeping his balls or saving his wife with the anedote surgically inserted into his vas deferens. Or roll the guy up in a carpet and throw him off a bridge. I don't know. Come on, Karl. You could have done so much better.