Via Andrew Sullivan, here’s probably the funniest Onion article I’ve seen in some time. You guys who just started up blogs ought to read it. It’s about how some dude’s mom started reading his blog. Here’s a choice line: “Mom loves hearing every boring detail of her kids’ lives,” he said. “She’d want to know what I’m eating for dinner every night, if she could. This blog is like porn for her.” Hey mom, I had enchiladas the past three nights. Bryan is encouraging me to start making my own sauce. The worries expressed in that article, while hilarious, do not apply to me. I have a great relationship with both of my parents and would gladly answer any question they would have about anything that goes on in my life. I respect them and appreciate their advice. And I don’t have any terrible habits that I have to keep secret from my parents, they know I used to dabble with illegal drugs but haven’t for a long time, and I like the sauce, but can hold my liquor and know my limits, so it doesn’t cause me any trouble. That being said, my mom doesn’t read this, although she’s seen it a few times and said she liked it. I’d welcome her readership, but don’t think the things that interest me are so terribly interesting to her that she’d become a regular reader. And I don’t go into very much detail about what I do on a day to day basis. . If anyone’s interested, I make digital video and audio materials for language classes for my job and study linguistics for my future. I’m in a reading course on Self-Organizing phonology which is a really interesting class. We basically throw out all the assumptions of standard generative phonology and try to model changes within a language sound system using only the way the mouth, nose, and throat can make noises and how the ears can hear them. It’s a very good way of doing things, and looks like it would benefit engineers making speech modules much more than the standard theories would. Something that I could see myself very much enjoying spending many years on. Also taking a course in Pragmatics, where we study non-compositional meaning transmission and conversational analysis and a whole host of other things. For example, “Would you pass the salt?” looks like a question, but you don’t answer it, you just hand the person who asked it the salt shaker. Maybe grunt, or say sure then hand it, but if you said “yes” and did nothing more, you’d be labelled a wise-ass or worse. The semester is winding down and I presented my research proposal on Wednesday. I’m writing a paper on, don’t laugh, sports commentary. There’s an interesting dynamic going on between sports commentators, the play-by-play man, the color commentor, and the audience. I’m coming up with maxims that explain why any pair of ‘tators always present the game in about the same way. Next time you watch a hockey game, pay attention to the way they talk and you’ll see what I’m talking about–few verbs, sentence fragments, total lack of expletive there… It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a perfectly OK topic for a class paper. So stop laughing, jerks… I get to watch sports as part of my job for the rest of the semester, nyahh! Too bad I didn’t think of it during baseball season, or when I had cable for that matter. I’m also reading articles about old scandinavian and early middle English, desperately looking for a paper topic on Historical Linguistics. And I’ve taken up a semantics problem involving negation that I mentioned once here as my walkin’ to work mental exercise. It involves complex NP semantics, so I need to find some models for that. Those are the kinds of things my mom would be interested, what I’m doing in school and all (that’s what we talk about on the phone), but as you can plainly see, it’s boring for everybody else.

I probably should have broken that next post into smaller pieces. Oops. Didn’t think it would go on that long. I was just gonna add an update of something I forgot to mention, but figured I didn’t want to make it any longer than it had to be. Unlike this post, which is already about, oh, 4 1/2 sentences longer than it has to be. Anyways, here’s an argument that bloggers who cover war related news aren’t totally useless.

Today I got a nice treat in the mail, with my FOID card being delivered. Also today I let a girl cut my hair for the first time in several years. I’m pretty impressed with the work she did, but it took forever. My barber in Kirksville, MO used to take no more than 10 minutes, and didn’t use scissors. But he did a great job and only charged 7 bucks. A girlfriend at the time didn’t believe that I could get my haircut so fast so she came along to see for herself. The barber ended up giving her a plant in a pot to take home. The plant didn’t survive long. But the haircut was good, and fast. And cheap. My barber now is very good, but he charges $10.

Tonight is the big Twenty Miles show, I’m excited, which is unusual for me. I wasn’t excited for John Spencer, and that was a bigger band. I just didn’t like the album that they were touring with then. Haven’t heard all of the new 20 Miles stuff, but what I’ve heard, I’ve liked.

“Tom Tomorrow” has created quite a stir for himself with this comic about warbloggers. I don’t know that I’d call myself a warblogger, since I write about a lot of crap, and mention the war pretty frequently because it’s important to me. It’s important to me because we have to win it or we’ve already seen the beginning of the end. It’s also important to me because people close to me are the ones fighting it, although the closest three have returned home now, (although I talked to a gal earlier in the week who deploys next month). I don’t by any stretch of the imagination discuss every article I read about the war, which would number daily in the upper teens. When I do discuss it, it’s usually with a link to an article that helps to justify supporting the war effort, and different ways that civilian scum like me can do that. Some people were offended by the cartoon, like Citizen Smash, who wrote daily updates from Iraq, activated with the Army. That was an enormously helpful resource for those of us who had family over there. I don’t think it’s very funny, but Tom Tomorrow and I have very different ideas about things. Frankly, I’m worse than the guys in his cartoon, because they’re fat older dudes, and I’m young and fairly strong (although I can’t run very far). In his world, people who support a war effort are required to enlist, and by opposing war, you will always be safe from it, because drafts are immoral and desertion is justifiable. In my world, four airplanes were hijacked three years ago and three were crashed into buildings with the intent of causing the downfall of the US government–the fourth plane was full of people who realized soon enough that war had come to find them, and they fought back, saving who knows how many lives. If we don’t take the fight to the enemy, evicting him from his opium fields in Afghanistan and now from the oil reservoirs of Iraq and tomorrow wherever nobody else will fight him, his presence here will grow and suicide bombings in cafes will become just another inconvenience in life. The flypaper theory that Tom Tomorrow’s blog scorns as hostile to soldiers is a part of that. Soldiers are better killers than cops and stewardesses, and terrorists are easier to kill when they’re playing pray n’ spray with an AK-47 and grouped up with a daisy cutter coming down from the sky than they are when they’re in strip clubs or airplanes up in the air. Now that the terrorists in Iraq are realizing that the Iraqi general population is very much not on their side, they’ve had to resort to classical terrorist techniques, by bombing roads and attacking unarmed civilians. Let me conclude, I’ll have to live my life with the uncertainty that I might be a coward since I didn’t enlist in such an important cause, maybe even a hypocrate for it; but at least I had to consider it very seriously. At the very least, when I speak with veterans of this war–the men and women serving where I might have been, I can say that I was rooting for them to do their jobs well and congratulate them on doing so. And sometimes when I heard about what they’d done in the news at the time, I shared it with friends of mine and my family on my website. At the same time, you were downplaying the fact that Saddam Hussein would never again have a WMD program, mocking the people they had guaranteed never to end up in a children’s prison or a mass grave, and drawing pictures of penguins of accusing them of encouraging terrorists to kill American civilians by hunting them down in a far away land. I’m not particularly funny, and you most certainly are not, but at least I’m trying to be somewhat useful. We may not be fighting the war, but we’re doing our best to make sure that the folks back home don’t give up on supporting the difficult and dangerous work the soldiers are doing, since then the war would be totally lost. So in short, go fuck yourself. Just because I had to look at several of your drawings to write this post. I can’t forgive that.

Jeff’s got a long post up reviewing five new CDs that he bought a while back: A Perfect Circle, Fuel, Dave Matthews (solo), Dishwalla, and Rufus Wainwright. I dug Perfect Circle’s first record a whole bunch, but haven’t heard any of these. Check out Jeff’s reviews if you dig music. I’m going to a concert on Thursday, when 20 Miles comes to town. I don’t think that I’ve heard any of their music since the first album and that was back in college. It was a great record though, I borrowed it from a friend for a few road trips. If you follow that link, you can hear some of the mp3s off the new album that they are promoting with the tour. I checked ‘em out, and liked them quite a bit. Should be a good time. Never seen these guys before, but I did see the Blues Explosion at Mississippi Nights a few years back. I like the review that they include on the webpage for the first 20 Miles album: “Dirty punk-ass blues…Twenty Miles has coughed up its first nasty, lo-fi hairball of an album.”

I finished reading Pitching around Fidel this morning. That, my friends, is one of the most compelling books I’ve read in a very long time. It’s written by a SI reporter who travelled throughout Cuba speaking with some of the greatest athletes of our time, all of whom I had never, ever heard of. It’s worth the short time it takes to read (about four days for me, and I read to myself, meaning that I sound out all the words and don’t speed read, so I’m a fairly slow reader. . . hmm, maybe that’s why I talk so fast sometimes.) It’s worth the time just to learn of El Duque’s unbelieveable struggles in Cuba before his defection. The tone of the book starts out sort of starry eyed, that here, in Cuba, baseball and sport is played as it should. There is no free agency, no aloof superstars, teams don’t threaten to move unless the city will fork up money for a new stadium. In Cuba, the ballplayers walk home with their equipment bags slung over their shoulders and eat at the same restaurants as everyone else. From this starting perspective, the book drags you down into the grim and brutal reality of Cuban sport, and of Cuban life itself. All I really thought of Cuba before reading the book, aside from our hostile relations with its government, was that it was a place for slimy European yuppies (and Americans who look up to them) to go to sleep with 14 year old prostitutes. That’s the first step down into the darkness of Cuba. There are many more, the desperation, the near suicidal behavior of some of the Cubans: diving off seawalls into the rough or driving a motorcycle full speed on the wrong side of the street at night. The fact of the world’s greatest athletes being reduced to starving beggars. Eventually, you have read far too much, and you wish that you didn’t know about supertalented boxer Hector Vinent’s confession that he desperately wanted to defect and all the other secrets revealed, knowing that surely Castro has also read this same book (it’s implied at the end that the Cuban intelligence services found out about the writer’s interview with him and he was removed from public view). And that surely all these people had their lives shattered still worse because of it. At the book’s conclusion, the writer reports leaving Cuba with this feeling in his heart:

For me, though, the game is over. Castro’s country is a place best seen as a tourist, for from the distance of a decent hotel room it is easy to succumb to its charms. Go for the old cars or girls or rum, or a Cold War thrill, or a night at Kid Chocolate on a balmy winter evening, and you can convince yourself that any number of illusions are real. You can enjoy the passionate fans and the frenetic play, admire the skill, revel in the Cuban athlete’s palpable joy, and allow yourself the luxury of wondering if this is the way sports were meant to be. But I’m no good for that anymore. I’ve talked to too many men and women not to understand that the regime will, at the slightest sign of independence, grind even its greatest lives into powder. I left Cuba in December knowing too much and, worse, knowing that there are plenty who love a romanticized vision of Cuba too dearly to listen.

He then goes on to describe that on his return to the US from Cuba, he runs into a Chomskyite Customs agent, described by S.L. Price as “a sheep in wolf’s clothing, a U.S. government official subversively deriding his government’s policy against the enemy.” This agent spouts off a sarcastic litany that to one who has taken the path down into the darkness with Price, cannot help but see the empty, “sophisticated” rhetoric for anything but petulant, ignorant tripe. And I suppose that depending on your level of sympathy for Castro’s politics, you either envy him his illusions or want to give him the beating that surely the crushed and ruined Vinents left it Cuba would have wanted.

I strongly recommend you either buy this book or check it out from your local library.

Update: While googling around for websites about current Cuban baseball players, I ran across lots of stories about the defections of 24 year old pitching phenom Maels Rodriguez and 31 year old second baseman Yobal Dueñas last month. I don’t recall either of them being mentioned in the book, but the articles I read mentioned that Dueñas had been banned from Cuban ball for speaking with the defector Contreras, who was mentioned in the book quite a bit. Contreras went 7-2 with a 3.30 ERA for the Yankees this season, and will make 32 million dollars over the term of his four year contract.

Just got done with dinner. I tend to be a night owl. Cooked up some enchiladas, turned out good, but not great. I went cheap on the enchilada sauce and bought the store-brand. Far too salty, and not nearly spicy enough. The flavor was too heavy on the tomato and not enough red pepper. But who can I blame? I’m the one who bought cheap canned enchilada sauce. Maybe some day I’ll just make my own and freeze it in a jar, layered with wax paper, so I can pick out a little hockeypuck of Liam’s Old Fashioned Enchilada sauce. The ingredients of which would probably cause little old Mexican women to shudder in disdain.

Peter Gammons has a column here that is just chock full of rumors and rumors set aside. To sum up for Cardinals fans, if you hear the words Tino Martinez and Delmon Young in the same sentence, get excited. He also mentions that Curt Schilling doesn’t want to play for the Yankees as discussed in this trade, but instead the Red Sox, drawing a deep sigh of relief from this fan. Curt is easily in my top three favorite active pitchers, along with Pedro and possibly Billy Wagner, and if he went to the dark side, it would flat out break me. This page repeats the rumor that my brother in LA and I were discussing the other day, that Greg Maddox is likely to sign with the Cards, which would really, really tick off the cubs, I imagine, not that they don’t have us beat in the pitching department for the next several years. Also projected to head to the Lou is pitcher Miguel Batista, and Roberto Alomar to replace Vina at second, where Bo Hart may have a sophomore slump or just get traded somewhere for prospects. And that’s assuming we can re-sign Miguel Cairo, who learned to play short last year in addition to his regular spot at 2nd.

Instapundit links to a very powerful essay in the LA Times by Yale Prof Dale Gelernter, reflecting on the lessons of Vietnam and how they are to be informatively applied to the campaign for Iraq. I highly recommend it. If you aren’t already registered for the LA Times, this is a great time to do so. It’s free, after all.

Somebody has got to convince those ChiCom kids to loosen up!

Holy cow do I like this shirt!

After 13 games, the Blues are off to a good start, compiling a record of 9-3-0 and 1 overtime loss. That puts them in second place in the NHL with 19 points to emerging arch-rival Vancouver’s 22, who have played two more games, and at the top of our divisons, again ahead of teams having played two more games than us. That’s all a good thing: consider that the upcoming 4-game road trip through the southwest is against teams that we should beat, and that 9 of our 14 games in December are at home. We could put together a nice little lead in the Central. Meanwhile, the Rams have put together a 6-3 record which has us in a tie with the fading Seahawks. That follows on Seattle’s loss yesterday and our sloppy (DS) win last night. These are things which please me, and let me forget about the horrors of the baseball season and the absolute shock of this Illinois football season. Speaking of college football, the greatest thing I’ve seen all season was a block that Marcus Vick laid down in the third quarter of VA Tech’s squeaker loss to Pitt on Saturday night. The runner initially cut to the left and had to back up from pursuit, then he ran to the right. Marcus Vick blocked a defender chest-to-chest and the guy dropped like a stone. That is one tough kid, and I bet his linemen love to smack people around for him.

Weekend’s over. I got my 16,000th hit today, more evidence that I rock that cazbah. Rams are looking good in the first. Hilarious new King of the Hill. Met a nice girl last night, but she disappeared before I could have much of a conversation with her. Probably wise on her part, I’m a damned heartbreaker. My pal and former college roommate Chris started up a blog, not much content yet, but I’m sure it’ll be good, the dude’s hilarious and has an entertaining writing style. I think he’s already making fun of me though, with just one post up, for blogging about cutting the grass. He’ll get his. . . mark my words, he’ll get his!

What follows is incoherent rambling: A bunch of jihadis blew up a compound full of Saudis today in Riyadh. When I woke up this morning, I cooked 4 strips of thick bacon then fried 4 eggs in the grease, and washed it down with a carnation instant breakfast with 2 scoops of whey protein. I talked to a drunk Korean girl last night who really, really hates the US. I told her that young Koreans are childish in their political thinking, that they imagine all their problems stem from the US and not from the 170,000 fixed artillery pieces trained on Seoul. She thinks Noh is a jackass, and on that we both agreed, me because he’s childish in his political thinking and she because he’s Bush’s tool. Whatevah. Also saw this gal Candace that I met a few weeks ago, but I forgot her name. She remembered mine. Such an asshole. . . . I’m reading a book called Pitching around Fidel, all about Cuban sports, mostly baseball, boxing, and track. It’s a great read, and I recommend it highly. The Blues game is on WB11 in St. Lou, and usually Cards and Blues games on WB are carried on the local Champaign-Urbana WB23. Not this one. They figured that a two hour Blind Date and Elimidate marathon would be more enjoyable for people without dates to watch on a Saturday evening. I’m listening to the KTRS feed online, probably will catch the end of the period and then head out to see what sorts of trouble I can get in tonight. There’s a Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese party tonight. There’ll be some very nice looking gals there that I look forward to seeing. Last SIP party that I went to, I ended up carving a jackolantern, filling it with paper, saturating the paper in lighter fluid, and throwing the flaming pumpkin off a third story balcony. Probably the second coolest thing I’ve done in life, after this. Not including pillowing type stuff, but that’s not to be mentioned in this place. My friend Tom’s website is looking real slick these days. Check it out, he’s put a lot of effort into it. My drinking team of Caleb and Chris both wussed out on me this weekend. Chris has a good excuse, he’s caught the lung plague. Caleb has no excuse, except “I wanna graduate.” What a sissy. The terrorists think they are going to kill some of us before November 25th. I sure hope we kill them first. I bet one of the two big targets, OBL or SH, are gonna be captured before Ramadan ends. The football team lost today, lost on a qb scramble with 24 seconds left in the game, to fall to 1-10. Our last game is next week and against Northwestern. So keep your fingers crossed! We can have a season having beaten a Division I-AA team and the only Big Ten team secure enough in their own skins to wear purple. OK, first period’s over, Blues up 1-0. I’m out.