Thursday, January 27, 2005

evening

Bullpen Buddy - Pitching Practice Made Fun and Easy

Bullpen Buddy

Spring is almost around the corner.  It’s time to start warming up your pitching arm.  So, you’re a little wild and no one wants to stand in the batter’s box when you’re practicing?  Well, now there’s a solution.  The inflatable Bullpen Buddy is brave and if you hit him in the head, he doesn’t care.  And when it’s dark outside and you’re tired of pitching, take your Bullpen Buddy into your room, just because he looks cool.  You know your friends will want one, but you’ll have him.  Ha!

I wish he’d existed when I was a kid.  Sheesh, no Big Wheels or Bullpen Buddies.  I vehemently protest the year of my birth.  Still, one of my favorite gloves (remind me to tell you of my glorious sporting youth) is still around.  I loved my Wilson A2000 XXL, but since that no longer seems to exist, check out the next best thing, the Wilson A2000 LT Pro Stock 11.75 Inch Baseball Pitcher Glove

You’re probably wondering why I’m writing about this, but someday, when I’m organized, my life history will unfold and it will all make sense.

evening

Still Figuring Things Out Here

I can’t decide how personal I want to make this site.  It’s clearly become political, even though that wasn’t particularly my intention.  I guess I’d have to have my head in the sand to not feel one way or the other about who’s in office.  I was thinking that I was going to chat mildly about The Amazing Race, my love of TiVo, how the Starbucks employees cheer me, even if they do work at a “chain”, our lousy weather the past year, why 40 is just a number.  A kinda big number.

I figured I’d write about the cute things the pets did (hey, I don’t have a baby, so I can’t write about li’l Flippy Jr.‘s first uttering of “Mom”), the annoying things they did, the outrageous amounts of money they cost at the vet, etc.

Since I don’t have any readers yet, it’s not something I need to overly worry about.  But I do, Blanche, I do.  I have all these ideas, yet they keep getting stuck in my head.  Stuck, stuck, stuck.

terribly early in the morning

Idiot of the Day - Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of “Education”

Homophobia is alive and well in Washington.  The incoming Education Secretary, her second day on the job, fired off a letter to PBS because they had the audacity to

show a lesbian couple making maple syrup in Vermont.  Apparently “Postcards from Buster”, a series about a rabbit who travels around North America learning about different cultures, is getting too edgy for the current administration.  As we all know, lesbians might convert little children and convince them that farming and making maple syrup is common and acceptable.

An excerpt from the letter: Spellings said “Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.” Spelling continued by encouraging PBS to return the money spent on the episode to the department “in the interest of avoiding embroiling the Ready-to-Learn program in a controversy.”

Will this never end?  We’re spending untold billions of dollars on the “war” in Iraq, trying to force our flavor of democracy down their throats, but the really important thing is…we mustn’t let children know that gay people exist and do stuff like make syrup. 

I’m horrified.  I’ve forgotten that our parrots watch PBS every day in the bird room.  Will I have to tell Blackjack that she can only learn about Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, guys who make lowrider bikes, the Arapaho tribe, surfers, Inuit igloo builders, et al?  The ”...lesbian couple with adopted children in Vermont who accompany Buster to a sugarhouse, where maple syrup is made, and to a dairy farm, where they watch a cow being milked” will obviously be too much for my African Grey.  I know she’s smart, but is she smart enough to resist being turned into a lesbian by PBS?  Yes, her vocabulary is that of a two year old, but just the other day she splashed her water all over the floor - I’m sure that she’s going to want to milk a cow if PBS deigns to show that episode in Las Vegas.  Oh, the worries of a parrot in Vegas.  Gambling, liquor, showgirls and really hot summers.  Thank goodness the Secretary of Education is worried about television, instead of illiteracy.  And yeah, so what if those last couple of sentences didn’t flow?  I’m not the Secretary of Education, you know.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

evening

Idiot of the Day - The Deficit

It just never ends, does it?  “The Bush administration predicted the federal budget deficit will reach $427 billion this fiscal year, bigger than the record shortfall of last year and almost $100 billion higher than the gap it anticipated six months ago.”

Well, all I have to say is, I didn’t vote for him or his off-shore money hiding cronies.  I wasn’t in favor of the “war” against the country that had nothing to do with September 11th.  My conscience is clear.  Is yours?

early morning

Work In Progress

This is obviously something I’m still working on.  I like the layout, but I haven’t decided on just the right colors yet.  I also haven’t started working on the banner.  I bought my precious “Flippy” last year, but she’s been sitting dormant, lonely and bereft.  At least she now has a little company.  I’m trying to install the photoblog template designed by Lissa Kay, but this clearly is going to take me a while to figure out.  Patience, grasshoppah, patience.