And what’s the deal with the Cardinals? It seems like they’re trying to bring back every player we’ve dealt away in the past seven years or so. Brent Butler, Alan Benes, Wilson Delgado, Matt Duff… I guess it’s nice that Mo Vaughn will finish his career in the Lou, but I sure hope we’re not paying him as much as the Mets were.

Update: Shows how out of it I was last night. I mistook Mo Vaughn for Greg Vaughn. Here’s the article I was reading at the time. How embarassing. That shortstop prospect we picked up from the Indians (I think it was they) looks to be someone to keep an eye on in Memphis next year.

Woke up this morning feeling a bit off. Figured I was still tuckered out from the Los Straitjackets show featuring the World Famous Pontani Sisters from Monday night. Which was mighty enjoyable, by the way. They’ve earned a new fan. At around two or so, I started to get a funny feeling in the back of my throat. Kind of like I swallowed an aspirin and it got stuck on the way down. I’d been running a cable under the floor, so I assumed I’d just inhaled some really old dust and was trying to get it out. But the feeling didn’t go away, and by ten it was becoming clear that I might be coming down with something. Hopefully not another case of sinusitis, that was really awful over the summer. Getting sick is not going to be useful for the program right now, since I’ve got a lot of work to do this week, seeing as it’s finals week and all the semester’s work must be done by Friday. Went to the grocery store and picked up some supplies for battle. Bottle of 500mg Vitamin C, two grapefruits and a box of powdered sugar, four oranges, a pint of blueberries, carton of unconcentrated orange juice, yogurt. You get the picture. So now I’m very well hydrated, loaded up with about 2000% of the recommended daily Vitamin C levels, and ready to rest. Gonna fall asleep reading Hans Kamp’s classic article introducing Discourse Representation Theory with the rebroadcast of the Jim Bohannon show in the background. Tonight’s episode is all about the Wright bros first powered heavier-than-air flight, the anniversary of which is tomorrow. I fully expect to wake up feeling like a million bucks and ready to rock and roll.

Update: IT WORKED!!! Vitamin C is your friend.

Reggie Sanders??? Four million bucks in 2005???

Donald Sensing points out a column in the NY Post praising the human intelligence work our military and intelligence services have put together since April 9th. It contains a piece of information I hadn’t read before, that Uday and Qusay’s informant tipped the coalition forces about their whereabouts in his crib because they slapped around his wife. The post above that links to some observations by John Rhys-Davies that almost makes up for Viggo’s cranial-rectal impaction. I don’t ordinarily link most of the stuff at One Hand Clapping because I read the page every day, sometimes many times a day, and I assume everyone else does too. His is probably the best all-around blog out there, with the right mix of original and insightful content, informative links with brief analysis, and personal stuff, like his hobbies of coffee roasting and trap shooting. Also everyday reads are Iraq Now and lately Belmont Club has been posting daily. And if you haven’t checked out the reactions to Saddam’s capture on Iraq the Model, then you’re really missing out on something.

Cards signed Jeff Suppan today, which knocks Simo-man out of my projected 5-man rotation. I think they have his 2003 salary listed wrong on this page, which says it was $3.8 billion. If we can get the kind of Vina-like play out of Hart or Butler that we’ll need up the middle, then he can have a great season in the Lou.

Two Reviews

I saw Bad Santa last night. I’m somewhat of a Billy Bob Thornton fan, meaning that I liked Sling Blade and The Man Who Wasn’t There a whole lot. U-Turn was good too, although I can’t say that I’m nearly as big a fan of J-Lo now as I was after seeing that flick. I laughed a lot during that movie, and most movies don’t make me laugh much. Except for Top Secret! a film I consider the funny over all others. It’s coarse, for sure. But it works. Every character in the movie is dislikable, many detestable. The funniest scene is when Thornton’s character, an alcoholic loser, is describing how he feels like he’s turned over a new leaf after beating up some kids. He feels like he’s accomplished something in life, he says. At that point in the movie, his character is so contemptible that you can’t help but grudgingly agree that it was the best thing he’s ever done. It’s a decent movie, but I doubt I’d ever see it again. Good rent-once-movie. I doubt I’d laugh much on a second viewing.

Second review is of my birthday present to myself. It’s the CZ 75 B semi-auto chambered in the .40 Smith & Wesson. Here’s the company’s specs, and here’s a picture of mine, the two-tone model with a stainless frame and a black steel slide. I chose it based on Kim du Toit’s review. It is, as he says, real accurate and simple in design. This is my first handgun and it’s the first one I’ve fired since I was maybe 14 or so. That was my dad’s Taurus 9mm. Recalling that day at the range, I was terribly unaccurate with it. So anyways, how did I do with the CZ? Not very good. I took it up to Darnall’s last Sunday, and got there just as they were closing up early. The man working there was happy to set me up in the indoor range, and showed me how to work the target equipment. I set up a big two-foot target at 15 yards and spent my first magazine. It was fantastic. With the first ten round magazine, I hit the black three times, and all but one of the rest hit the target itself. Don’t laugh, this is only my second time shooting a handgun in my life, and the last time was over a decade ago. That first magazine was much better than I’d expected to do. It went downhill badly from there. Over the next 52 rounds, I hit in the black only twice more, and the rest of the target an embarassingly few number of times. (In the double digits, but not into the teens) Fortunately, I was the only person in there. I think I developed what experienced shooters call a flinch. The recoil in the gun is straight back, and my guess is that I was expecting it to be more upwards or something, like it seems to be in this movie (large file, I recommend “saving target as…” then watching it, it’s worth it). So I was overcompensating by overfirming my wrist around an axis perpendicular to the vertical plane of my sights. Or in short, I was flinching and aiming low. I noticed that all my shots were hitting the bottom half of the target, and I confirmed that I was in fact sorta pushing the gun downwards slightly when I’d pull the trigger by watching what I was doing in safety SA mode. So I need more practice, and that is more than all right with me. I’m gonna try to get my hands on a little .22, not so much for decrease in recoil, since I don’t think that’s the real issue here. It’s my mechanics that are awful, and .22 is cheap. The .40 cal I got was 15 bucks for a 50 rnd box, you can get .22 for around 2 bucks. And I need a whole lotta practice. Forgot to mention one of the best examples of how well designed the CZ is. The first time I cleaned it, it took me about five minutes, with the manual open in front of me to show me how it’s done. The second time, after I’d fired 62 rounds through it last Sunday, it took me about 20 seconds to field strip it and about thirty to put it back together. And I was taking my time.

Update: I was also gripping the gun too tight. I was pretty high strung at the time. My gas gauge went on the fritz somewhere on one of the country roads outside of Bloomington. Basically I was lost and I saw the gauge drop before my eyes to empty. My car hasn’t been treating me nicely lately so I expected the worst, that I’d hit a stone that tore a gash in the tank or something. I’ve put considerable thought into how I was aiming and my stance and all that, and I expect to improve the next time. That’ll be around Christmas, on my way into St. Louis, at Bullseye at Manchester and Kingshighway.

Speaking of google-bombing, Patrick at Oxblog reminds us of one that isapt. Try googling “french military victories” and click the “I’m feeling lucky” button. Further down, his colleague Josh reminds that Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga constitutional assembly opened today. Also one-upped in the news was a very close assassination attempt on Pervez Musharaff.

We can expect to see the king of Big Collared Shirt of Shame pictures, hopefully today. As everyone oughta know by now, Saddam Hussein was captured hiding in a hole by a two-room mud hut outside of Tikrit last night at about 8:30. He had a pistol on him, but not a shot was fired. He’s been cleaned up and reportedly is being cooperative. As always, lots of relevant articles linked from the Command Post. And Citizen Smash has a pretty thorough roundup of Blogaritaville reactions.

My reaction? I can’t think of anything much better happening. I hope he has a lot of useful information.

Here‘s the most thorough article I’ve found so far. Time claims to have details on his first interrogation.

Most might not find it interesting, but I do. There’s a thread on Sgt. Stryker’s calling for advice from a soldier deploying soon on how to protect his electronics and such while over there. Lots of interesting insight into the mundane. It never occurred to me to include soy sauce and hot mustard packets in a care package, but it seems so obvious now.

It’s snowing right now. We’re supposed to get 2-3 inches. It is muy beautiful.

The Cardinals just traded JD Drew and Eli Marrerro to the Braves for former Cub LHR Ray King, 5th starter Jason Marquis, and a good starting prospect in AA named Adam Wainright (10-8, 3.36, 37:128). My first reaction was “WHAT THE F&#K????,” but now I’ve settled down. I don’t like losing Marrerro, he’s the last guy off our bench. He’s also the fastest guy on the team. The second fastest is Drew, or maybe Simontacchi, and he’s gone too. Drew gets compared to Mickey Mantle, he’s a genuine talent. But in the Lou, he didn’t act like someone that wanted to play baseball all that much, and hopefully he’ll enjoy himself more closer to home. Just not when they play the Cards. He would have left in free agency after next year anyways. I predict he’ll have his first full season and put up some scary numbers. Marquis is a workable 5th starter, which gives us a full (albeit underpowered in the NL Central 2004) rotation of Morris-Williams-Carpenter-Simontacchi-Marquis. Throw Maddux in there and the division looks winnable. Of course, we need to entirely rebuild our bench, we need some outfielders, since we lost JD and Pujols really oughta be moved to first. Right now, the only fellers we have out there is Jim Edmonds, and I guess Kerry Robinson in right. If we can get Palmeiro back, he can play left as good as anyone. We need to add some speed, since the only basestealers I can see on the team are Robinson and Renteria.

Check out the pregame rosters for tonight’s Blues-Blue Jackets game. Notice something strange? The Blues only have one Left-Winger, and that’s Tkachuck and he can do whatever he wants. That’s my kinda team!

Nick wants to google-bomb Arc Flash for some reason. I figure I’ll play along with his Arc Flash plan and contribute a few Arc Flashes of my own. That makes three. Three Arc Flashes. No, now four.

Speaking of commie bastards, the local A.N.S.W.E.R. group, A.W.A.R.E., is doing something useful and highly commendable. They are having a charity dance to raise money for Oxfam Iraq, a charity group working on infrastructure and education/human assets that does not appear likely to be a terrorist front; and the Red Cross AFES program. Although their hearts may very well be in the wrong place, at least they’re contributing to a very worthy campaign.

The commie bastards stole my idea!

According to this article and a telephone conversation with my bro tonight, Greg Maddux is headed to either San Diego or the baseball capital of the world. I am prepared to welcome him.

If you feel like wasting some time, Snow Fight 3D is a great game. In the game, you’re a little weeble-wobble lookin’ dude. The object is to go around and chuck snowballs at snowmen that other kids had made. And the other kids defend them by tagging you with their own snowballs. Super fun game, but you need a pretty fast ‘puter to play. Make sure you set it to easy, otherwise the other kids are likely to smite you. Those lil bastards chuck ‘em fast. (School is almost over, I’m procrastinating again. Gotta finish a paper today.)

I’ve jumped out of airplanes four times. Lots of people wonder what it’s like. It’s fun, in short.

I finished setting up my video editing equipment today. It’s a pretty sweet setup. To test out how the analog video digitizing would work, I worked on the VHS tape of me and some friends leaping out of airplanes. So if you ever wanted to know what it’s like to fall 4,500 feet from a little single-prop plane but don’t have the stones to do it, here’s what it’s like. Note that that’s my first time ever doing it and no hesitation at all. The only mistake I made was looking down after falling about 20 yards or so. Who can blame me? Tucking in my chin messed up my aerodynamics though, and between that and the tether I did a bit o’ tumblin and candlestickin’. For a few laughs, check out my friend who couldn’t keep her grip on the strut. She landed fine, so don’t worry.

Today was the day of the anti-terrorism demonstrations in Baghdad and across Iraq. Zeyad was there, and took a whole lot of pictures of the demonstrators posing with their signs. Omar was there too and his report includes a list of all the political parties that were involved, including some of Muqtadi al-Sadr’s counter-demonstrators. Predictably, CNN, MSNBC, and FOX don’t have any coverage.

This guy is definitely going to have to lose his number.