This picture recalls a joke from Dr. Katz, one the good doctor tells Stanley at Jacky’s 33:

A mama polar bear is struggling to get her cub ready for school one day, and he asks: “Mama, Mama! Are you sure I’m a polar bear???” “Of course you’re a polar bear, baby bear, now get on the bus and go to school!” The bear cub gets home from school and asks the same question again, “Mama, Mama! Are you sure I’m a polar bear???” “Of course you’re a polar bear, baby bear, go get cleaned up before our seal blubber gets cold!” Later that night, as mama bear is tucking her bear cub into his bed, he asks her once again: “Mama, Mama! Are you absolutely sure I’m a polar bear???” By this time, mama bear is tired of hearing about it, so she asks, “Of course you’re a polar bear, why do you keep asking me if you’re a polar bear?” The bear cub answers, “Because I’m freezing!”

Aside from the 0 and the 8 joke, it’s the only G-rated joke I know. I kinda like it.

A second player is leaving college ball early to enter the NFL draft in the wake of the Clarett ruling, USC’s Mike Williams. C-Bot was asking me why the NFL wants the eligibility rule in place. I never really thought about it, for me it was more an issue of making college football better. College players and high school players especially are far too small and undeveloped to go up against against NFL players, even the most physically gifted athletes, so there’s not really that big a market anyways. I suggested a more plausible reason, that some of the smaller market teams wouldn’t be able to compete against larger market teams in scouting. It’s a lot easier to scout talent from the college programs than from every high school around the country. Now, two days later, that doesn’t seem like such a major issue, first of all because of the structure of the draft, and also the willingness of all the owners to create parity in the league. It wouldn’t surprise me if the teams agreed to share all scouting reports on high school students, and face fines for non-disclosure. But it looks like that ruling is here to stay, to the detriment of the college game.

I forgot to mention that I also got my first tattoo in Chicago last night. I took a picture this morning, and it’s available for admiration here.

I, like Jeff, went for a run this morning. More of a leisurely jog than a run, but it was four miles. It was the first time I’d run in a long, long time. I used to go out for a run around the block back when I was young enough to pull all-nighters working on papers. That’s about it, aside from playing sports. And I’ve smoked a pack a day for as long as I can remember, so I was more than a bit surprised to find myself feeling great at the end of the run. Chances are my legs will be jello tomorrow. Maybe not, I walk two miles every day to and from work.

I made it up to see Nick last night. Actually got to see his team perform too. It was hilarious. We got to Wrigleyville at 7:15 or so and ate at Bar Louie next door. The food was good, but they charged through the wazoo for brew. A 12 oz. bottle of Bud was four ducats. That’s a pretty expensive Steveweiser. We made it into Improv Olympic by quarter after 8, and Nick’s team was on first, so we missed some of it. Got to hear Nick’s friend and teammate, Sumi, do her Miss Piggy voice that she told C and I about last time we were up. Spot on. I laughed my ass off. After Nick got off the stage, he saw us and came over to watch the other two teams perform. Afterwards, we went to Mullen’s down the block for some cheap beer. Three bones for any draft, a very good deal. Lots of laughs and several Guinesses and Sam Adam’s later, the lovely ladies and I had to bid adieu and head back home. A good time, for sure.

Just as I’m mentally preparing myself to quit smoking (again), great news like this comes out.

That’s some mighty fine weather out there. I came home after class to get my shit ready for the cruise up to Chicago tonight. Got to finish up some work in the office and then I’m out of town. This time I’m determined to see Nick’s group on stage and not miss it like last time. The women said they’d be ready to go at 4:30, so I should get up there no later than 7, with an hour to spare before game time. There’s an Afghan restaurant on Clark street that I noticed when I was up there for Bouncing Souls, I think I might give it a go, heard good things about it.

I think I’m due for a major site overhaul soon. And I think it will involve getting me off blogspot. The name “Hey Listen” for those of you who don’t know, comes from the old video game “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.” The hero had a little sidekick who would help him target enemies and keep him heading in the right direction, and when the sidekick had some advice, she’d pop out of his pocket and say in a squeaky voice, “Hey… Listen!” That’s where the name comes from. Very geeky, quite cocky in ambition. Might get a new name. What I’ve been thinking of for the new weblog will be pretty cool. I’m going to write a package in python that constructs a bunch of pages from text files in a bin directory and stores them in another bin for upload to the webserver. It’ll be almost like MT, but all the pages will be static. And comments will be external. My server space doesn’t allow cgi-scripting or SQL, so I’ll have to run the site-building package on a local machine. It’ll be cool to have programmed the blogging automation procedure. Almost as cool as hand-coding in html like Colby Cosh does. You’ll know when it’s up when you see it. I imagine there’s going to be a lot more involved than what I think.

Here’s a few jokes about dogs changing light bulbs. Having lived with a cocker spaniel I can attest, “It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true.”

Apparently there’s a whole new class of males out there, the whimpsters. I don’t know any of them, thankfully. Although the questions in the indentification algorithm given don’t have good answers for my personality.

I’m calling it great news that the Cards signed Pujols for 7 years at $100 million. It must have been God’s will.

Kevin of Boots on the Ground is a SAW gunner deployed in Iraq. (Near Fallujah, I think). He’s one of the few deployed MilBloggers that has unmoderated comments, and they’re being assaulted by some pretty lousy sheisters, as

this post demonstrates in particular, although I’ve noticed a few nasty flamers everytime I’ve checked out the comments there. Basically, Kevin writes that he’s frustrated that the IP failed to defend a fortified jail, although the news I’d heard was that they’d succeeded bravely. Kevin’s point was that a major setback against the IP would embolden the terrorists, and a valid point it was. The flamers showed up to call him some pretty vile things and fortunately were shown their place by some pretty solid commenters, including a fantastic putdown by none other than Wretchard. Ain’t that cool?

On a nearly completely unrelated note, my old friend Mike, who’s heading to Fallujah soon with the 1st Armored Division, is a doorgunner using one of these bad boys (the M144).

The sunhine was a treat today. I walked to class from my office in a t-shirt. Of course, that’s only a building away, but still… wouldn’t have dared do that a few weeks ago. Another winter, beaten back and mastered. I messed up big at work today and can’t seem to shake the lousy feeling that incompetent performance gives you. I was doing a studio recording and left an extra channel open on the mixer. That channel was hooked up to a bad mic cable and so it introduced a really fugly buzz into the signal I was recording. I tried for about half an hour to filter it out, but it’s pretty complex and with quite a few components in the vocal range. I can get rid of it eventually without damaging the quality of the voice I was recording, but it’ll take a few hours. And that pisses me off, since I could have avoided it altogether if I’d been thinking hard enough to do my job properly. I’d noticed the buzz coming out of the mixer, but hadn’t even thought to look into what was causing it. Very irritating. After work, I had a meeting that lasted three hours. My team broke up and worked individually, which was probably a good idea. There’s one dude in my group that’s a wicked programmer, and he’s been pretty much getting all the hard work done on his own. Today was no exception, he worked on his own to re-tool some software we’d already done to be compatible with the new training data standard we’re adopting. But in the meantime, the rest of us went off to write regular expressions to make new features for new tags our classifier needs to be deal with. I haven’t put a lick of effort into learning Python in the past few weeks, so I spent my time picking it up. After three hours, I picked up some barebones basic techniques, enough to write a very simple program that used file I/O and the regular expressions module and that gave me the correct results: it went through a training dataset and identified anything that looks like an email address that was in the right position in a line. The regular expression I used was hideous, but it worked and it was a very good thing to get back into writing code. Even if the program itself was useless, it’s useful to be able to know that I can write something useful over the weekend to get a start for the next meeting. Tomorrow’s going to be an even better day. Weather over 50, and I’ve got a date with two beauties in the evening–up to Chicago to see Nick again with the lovely lady and her sister. Improv Olympic at 8:00.

Not the Yankees, Maddux will be a Cub again. That’s going to be one hell of a rotation.

I don’t like going to the dentist. I didn’t when I was a kid, like every kid. But when I was in high school, I had a surgery done on my eye using local anasthesia that was pretty horrifying to say the least. You know the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell has rings on his eyelids to keep ‘em open, forcing him to watch violent scenes on a movie screen to condition him to become ill to violence? Yeah, this one:

Well, that was me. I had a ring on my eye so I couldn’t blink, and surgeons stuck needles in my eyelid. Then there was a lot of blood and it filled up my eye socket and the room went black. Then I passed out and my heartrate dropped low enough that the anasthesiologist almost passed out too. Ever since then, I pass out cold after getting a needle. I first noticed it at the dentist, I’d get whatever work done I needed, and on my way out, I’d drop to the floor like a stone. I got a hepatitis vaccination in high school and it happened again there, but fortunately I felt it coming and successfully aimed for a comfy chair. Now, I can usually just wait it out if I really have to get a needle, I’ve had some blood taken in the past few years and managed not to drop out cold. I think the local anasthetics really hit me hard though, so I avoid them at all costs. The last time I needed some dental work, I just did it without painkillers. My dentist in St. Louis (Dr. McKenna) is a hockey player, so when I told him about my problems with needles, he suggested I just take the drill without the needles, figuring that since I used to play hockey, I’d be super tough. Tried my best not to let him down, but I must say that is some intense pain, brother. That drill feels like it’s going straight through the jaw. I’ll probably do it again if I have to though. So anyways, I bring up the story because I just made a dentist appointment. I haven’t been to a dentist in almost four years, and I smoke a lot and drink coffee if it’s around, so there’s quite a few stains on the old teeth, in spite of my intensive tooth-brushing regimen. This will probably be the first time that I’ll have noticed a difference after getting the professional cleaning, so I’m kind of looking forward to it. But if I have a cavity, I admit to not being excited about getting my mandible drilled up again. Hopefully the guy I picked uses the gas. I hear that’s some good shit.

Blues have a little two game win streak put together by virtue of playing two of the worst teams in the league in consecutive games. Next up is Tampa Bay. After that, we’ve got a tough stretch to close out February, but then March should be a breeze, easier schedule even than December. That should give Pronger a chance to take a game or two off and get everyone healthy for the end of this super-long preseason. Right now, things look horrible, the Blues look like a lousy hockey team, but by the time April comes along, we could potentially be the hottest team in the league, provided we win most of these March games that we have to win, and win a few games against quality teams. Like Detroit.

Apparently, the Yankees are also signing Maddux. Golly. A colleague just told me that it’s rumored that Jose Contreras will be heading to Texas as part of the A-Rod deal. That would be amazing if true. Too bad he can’t be a Cardinal, I’d love to see that guy pitch 30 games for us this year.

It was a busy (and outstanding) weekend, so I’m just getting around to reading a lot of good stuff out there. VDH’s column from Friday is a great piece of work.

Sen. Byrd is probably the only person in the US senate that I truly despise. He’s bundled up in so many things that repulse me: he’s a bigot, he dumps federal money into useless projects in his state that grows more useless by the day, he speaks so hyperbolically that it baffles me that anyone takes him seriously about anything. I’m not a fan of Illinois senator Durbin, but every once in a while I read about him sponsoring some minor bill in the Chi Trib that I agree with and so I don’t consider him a complete burden. West Virginia might not be the easternmost state with tumbleweed if it weren’t for Byrd’s tenure in the senate, I surmise. Here’s a letter from a retired Navy Commander to Byrd that I enjoyed quite a bit. Tip of the hat to Blackfive. Go check out the comments to that post, the first of which is from a hilarious flamer.

I was recently introduced to the music of a fantastic jazz singer named Diana Krall. Check out her album, The Look of Love that I’ve got spinning in the car, and listen to the first song. I likes it.

An inspiring post on the bravery of the Iraqi Police is up at Donald Sensing’s. Also make sure to read the Belmont Club post that he links to for more background, if you haven’t heard of the Zarqawi intercept. In another vein, Zayed posts the translation of a fatwa issued by 10 clerics, condemning terrorist attacks, and he boldfaces a section that deals specifically with assassinations against scientists and intellectuals. These guys studied Vietnam.