What happened to baseball?

My girlfriend and I were at her son’s baseball game last night, and I have a few words to say about it. First of all, he’s eight. So it’s still not that serious. It is, however, more serious than your typical “everyone plays” league. It’s double A ball, so the kids are a little better than average, and this year, they’ve begun to allow base stealing.

Now for those of you familiar with the rules of Little League baseball, which I am not, you’ll know that up until a certain age, they aren’t allowed to steal bases, and the coaches pitch part-time for the pitchers to give every batter a fair chance at a hit. Except that sometimes the coaches screw it up for them worse than the pitcher was doing. Whatevs. The point here is that now they allow base stealing.

And encourage it.

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The Day the World Didn’t End

Space Says:

So what do we do now that the world didn’t end when it was supposed to? Well, I imagine a lot of people will be saying the same thing when December 13, 2012 rolls around. They’ll throw up their hands and say, “Uh, what do we do now? Yesterday was supposed to be it!” And what’s funny is I know some actual people who were preparing themselves for the world to end the other day, when they turned on the large collider. It was thought that it would create some black holes, you know. And the scientists said, “Yeah, well it could, but we’ll be able to manage them.”

Really.

So you have experience with black holes then? You’ve managed them before? You can somehow keep them from sucking in whatever you’re trying to control them with? Uh huh. Just push it into the trash can? Or wait, do you use another black hole to eat up the one that’s causing problems? How, exactly, tell me please, do you plan to control these black holes that might abound? Well, anyway, I’ve gotten off point. There was a lot of fear that the world would end when they switched this thing on. People were even protesting, trying to get the project shut down so it wouldn’t evaporate our world as we know it. Well they didn’t succeed. The thing is now running. And the world, so far as I know, is still here.

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Life Lessons from Space: Fighting

I figured since Shine is posting her series on “How to be a Good Girl”, I could help you fellas out from a male perspective. Now I must preface this with a disclaimer – I will not tell you how to be a “good boy” or anything gay like that. I’m not, nor have I ever been what anyone would call a “good boy”. I know nothing of it, and therefore cannot offer any words of advice in that direction. I can, however, tell you some things that might help you make it through life without being made fun of or getting your ass whipped too badly.

I also can’t promise you that I will have ten rules. I may or may not add to this list at some time in the future, but for now, be happy with the few rules you’re getting. And take these to heart. They’re coming from a tried and true bad boy with personal, first-hand knowledge on how well they work.

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Happy Gay Pride Month

It’s June. How the hell is that possible? It seems like just yesterday it was May. Well, day before yesterday. This year is just hauling ass. Like a pickup full of donkeys. But it’s also Gay Pride Month, and I’ve something to say about this. You knew I would.

Just like Black History Month. And the Black Entertainment Network. And Indian Appreciation Day. I don’t even need to delve into that bullshit and how racist and divisive it is. But Gay Pride Month? Seriously? Do we really need to proud to be gay? Well I’m okay with your being gay, and your being proud to be gay. Let me rephrase. Do we really need to have a month that condones and celebrates outward pride about being gay?

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Is it cold in here, or just me?

Tuesday in Taiwan, a man grieving over the death of his girlfriend, decided to climb into the morgue freezer with her. Good sweet shit, what the hell is wrong with people? As if it wouldn’t be claustrophobic enough in there just by yourself, imagine halving that space. And further, being in there with a dead body. Bllllrrrr… Screw that.

I’m not really creeped out by death that much. I’ve been exposed to my share of it. But I don’t really like touching cadavers if I don’t have to. And I’ve had to before, which might explain why I don’t like to anymore. Okay, so back to the point… I’ve seen that movie The Jacket where The Pianist gets stuck in a meat locker in a straight jacket-type thing. Talk about some mother effing claustrophobia. Sweet Elephant, no thank you.

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Don’t Be That One Guy

My father always used to tell me, “There are three types of people in this world. Those who can count, and those who cannot.” Smart man, he was. But I think there are more types of people than the three I just listed. Maybe there are four types. Either way, the type I want to talk about has yet to be named. I need you to help me find a name for this type of person.

It’s a pretty broad group of people, and includes all different races, sexes and ages. While it includes the woman in the Lexus talking on her cell phone, slowly drifting into my lane, causing me to swerve over and hit the orange barrels to avoid a costly collision (Hey bitch I just saved you a ton on your insurance…), it also includes the redneck who still thinks it’s funny to have a set of large plastic balls hanging from the rear bumper of his truck. Nothing says class like a set of testicles on your pickup.

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Dude, that’s a lot of money.

So by now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the guy who walked into a bank here in Fort Worth, Texas with a check from his girlfriend’s mother. Not a big deal, I guess. People’s girlfriends’ mothers give checks to them all the time, right? To open a record company and whatnot, I mean. For 360 billion dollars.

Dude, I’m sorry, but I’ve never had a girlfriend whose parents liked me. My wife’s parents like me quite a bit. But if they had 360 billion dollars to spare, I doubt they’d write me a check for it. They might give me a million if they won the lottery or something. To take care of their daughter and grandchild, right? Sounds logical. But 360 billion? From a girlfriend’s mom? Yeah. Sure. It’s believable. I mean, I’m a likeable guy, but – okay, enough on that.

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I just joined the Darwin Awards.

We used to do crazy shit when we were adolescents. Seriously. My mother used to shout at me for jumping off the roof into the pool. Man, if she had seen some of the really crazy shit I was doing, she would have begged me to keep jumping. My girlfriend pulled up beside us on the highway one night, honking and flashing her lights. It was dark, there was no one else on the highway, but my pickup was very recognizable. The graffiti-style paint job was distinct. So she pulled up and rolled down her passenger window, waving at me and shouting something incoherent. Well, I’ll just get my buddy to take over driving!

So my buddy slides behind the wheel and I hop over to the passenger side, crawl out my window and into the bed of the truck (while we’re still moving). Then I did the whole acrobatic stretch between the two vehicles and slipped down through her window and into the seat. I guess I could have just waited, since we were going the same place, and both arrived some three minutes later. I missed her though, you know?

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Not a Happy Customer

If there’s one thing I hate more than slamming my finger in a rusty door, or stepping on a squeaky nail, it’s got to be incompetence in customer service. When I’m in a store inquiring about a product, your sales staff should know the answers to all my questions. Whatever happened to training the employees on the merchandise they are selling? When I worked in the Wal Mart Photo Lab, I took time every day to stand there reading the boxes of all the cameras. I learned what the best features were on every one of them, and was able to effectively compare and discuss intelligibly the best options for the customer. So if I go into Best Buy or Circuit City, why can I not expect someone working in the television department to do the same thing?

There’s nothing I hate more than asking someone a very specific question and having them look at the damn tag. Dude, I can do that myself. And already have. For instance, yesterday, I was in Micro Center, picking up an IDE/SATA I/O controller board for my home PC. I’ve troubleshot the problem down and determined that the root cause must be a bad IDE controller on my mother board. And since the computer I built is around three years old now, it’s a little outdated. It’s still a bad ass machine. I have a Pentium 4, and a good amount of RAM. But you know how quickly technology upgrades and supersedes itself. So my point is that it’s hard to find a socket 775 mother board that still supports the type of memory sticks I have. DDR2 is the new thing.

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The Coolest Places I’ve Worked

Being an unruly and independent sixteen-year-old means you don’t take shit from anyone. Or in the parlance of the age, you don’t take shit from no one. Ever. You do as you please. You wake when you want. You go to school if you feel like it. You listen to your parents if it suits you – because obviously you know better than they… How the hell should they know what it’s like to be alive in the 80s as a teenager? They were teens in like the 50s and shit. Trust me, Pop. You just don’t understand.

It also means you have to work in as many jobs as you can fit between your sixteenth and your nineteenth birthdays. Seriously. I didn’t quit because I got sick of places. Actually yes, I did. But I was going to say that I quit because I was ready for something new. I wanted to experience it all. And both are true. How long can you work at Skaggs bagging groceries before you begin to believe you could manage the store yourself? It can’t be rocket science, dude. That’s why you, Mister Store Manager, only make like thirty grand a year. When I grow up, I’ll make twice what you make in my spare time. I’m sixteen, all powerful, hear me roar.

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