Cults, Poop, Psycho-financial Inertia: DLD 09.16.09 ← FREE KRAUT!

Cults, Poop, Psycho-financial Inertia: DLD 09.16.09 93

16 Sep 2009  |  mk  |The Grill

1. Screw football, I spent the weekend watching Charlotte Rampling movies.

In Under the Sand, she plays a suicide widow putting on a brave face, just barely. She’s a repressed crime novelist on holiday in Swimming Pool (sex, drugs, murder, underwear theft, and gloppy yogurt mixtures are prominently featured). She graces only three or four scenes in Farewell, My Lovely, but she kills every one.

She was giving me the kind of look I could feel in my hip pocket …

2. According to the entrepreneurial masterminds at DoodyCalls, poop scooping for hire is a burgeoning market:

Currently, Americans spend approximately $34 billion dollars on their pets. That figure represents a growth rate of 100% during the past decade … And this growing market doesn’t just include individual pet owners. It also comprises homeowners associations, apartment complexes, and parks-anywhere dogs roam and “do their thing.”

I often dog-sit for my mom: Zack, a yellow lab with the energy of twenty-five toddlers and the brain power of one twenty-fifth of one toddler, and a cagey, arthritic twelve year-old mutt named Lucy.

The house is across the street from the ocean. I take Zack to the beach two or three times per day, where he chases tennis balls to the point of exhaustion and pees triumphantly on all seaweed and driftwood in the vicinity.

He is always very much at peace with the universe upon his return:

If I’d panned the camera to the left, you’d have seen Lucy glaring at the wall, grimly reminiscing about how pleasant her life used to be, before he showed up to slobber in her water bowl, bark at imaginary intruders, and hog all the human attention. My parents and I euphemistically refer to Zack as “a piece of work”. When Lucy talks to other dogs, I’m pretty sure she uses the term “retarded cousin”.

The moniker is not without merit.

If a doorbell rings on NCIS, he springs to his feet, belts out a yelp to alert everyone to the danger at hand, races downstairs doing his super-ferocious (or so he thinks) bark-growl-bristle act, then, finding nothing, shifts to a low-volume growl and performs a full property reconnoissance. I have tried to explain to him that a) the TV is not real, and b) usually home invaders don’t ring the doorbell, but to no avail.

When the house was brand new, just built, the first thing he did, seconds after flying through the entranceway in full-on oh my god oh my god new thing new thing smells! head explosion mode, was poop in the middle of the living room floor. I don’t want to paint myself as heroic or anything, but rather than hit the DoodyCalls speed dial on my cell phone, I grabbed a roll of paper towels and took care of the problem.

3. Unsurprisingly, the Italian mafia is somewhat less meticulous in the area of waste disposal than the plucky poop scoopers at DoodyCalls. Their tried and true process is to load a tanker with nuclear waste, send it several kilometers out to sea, and blow it up. No muss, no fuss, high margins.

An official said that if the samples proved to be radioactive then a search for up to 30 other sunken vessels believed scuttled by the mafia would begin immediately.

4. A belated addendum to our recent discussion concerning the cult of personality that, depending on your point of view, may or may not surround Barack Obama: just like political parties, corporations fetishize their leadership and ascribe inspiration to platitudes. To wit, Zappos:

A C.L.T. manager named Jane Judd, her eyes damp, described a Q. & A. session she had heard Hsieh conduct with some visiting Time Warner executives. “Our service isn’t everything it could be,” he’d said. “If we didn’t have to think about cost, the reps would personally get on a plane today and deliver that box.”

“I always call him my little Dalai Lama,” Judd said.

Beware the corporate definition of happiness. Most of the time it implies incessant, overbearing perkiness. Everything is GREAT, just FANTASTIC, we are a TEAM.

Zappos may not be a cult, but working there seems akin to sitting in a sports arena; you have to be prepared to stand up and do the wave at any time.

[…]

Back at Jadkowski’s twinkly workstation, there had been no sign of anything ominous. A parade of “Zappos Insights” students in suits, some wearing purple crowns printed with the Zappos logo, was tromping through the office. Their “graduation” had been marked with a serenade from an in-house a-cappella group, the Zappettes. “Congratulations on your graduation. We know you’re filled with joy and elation,” they sang. “We just want to say, we’re glad you came our way.”

Shiny happy fascists, I say.

5. You can have your own blog in a matter of minutes. You can publish dynamic, incisive analysis, uncorrupted by the Corporate Media, for free! And anyone can read it, for free! Technology plus Democracy equals Public Square Revolution! No more bankrupt bought and sold bullshit. The barriers have collapsed, man, you don’t have to regurgitate some line, you’re not beholden to anyone. From your goddamn mother’s basement, in your underwear, you can go to war with CNN. The playing field is fucking flat.

Ah, well, it was a beautiful (if expletive-laden) dream while it lasted:

Of the top 50 blogs, 21 are owned by such familiar names as CNN, the New York Times, ABC, and AOL. And many blogs that began as solo operations are developing into full-fledged publications.

[…]

An immense proportion of the online readership—roughly 42% of all blog traffic—flows to the top 50 blogs. Their dominance of the market is reinforced by the dynamics of the Web itself: users hunting for blogs typically end up directed by search engines to the same group of highly-linked, already popular sites. What’s more, even deliberate attempts to go off the beaten path aren’t likely to lead out of the conglomerate world: the most lucrative niche categories have attracted dominant brands, too, with AOL alone owning 27 of the top 100 blogs, in categories ranging from automobiles, to free software, to independent film and pop culture. The big brands have become so powerful that it’s little wonder that 94 percent of the blogs counted in Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere report have been shuttered and abandoned.

6. We own loads more stuff than we used to, we replace the stuff we have with increasing frequency, and we spend enormous sums of money to warehouse the stuff we’ve replaced but can’t bear to throw away:

[B]y the early ’90s, American families had, on average, twice as many possessions as they did 25 years earlier. By 2005, according to the Boston College sociologist Juliet B. Schor, the average consumer purchased one new piece of clothing every five and a half days.

[…]

After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.”)

A multi-billion dollar industry built on people storing old tables and bed frames into perpetuity is one of the most egregious absurdities I can imagine. It’s the accumulation ethic gone berserk.

[shifts out of sanctimony, into sentimentality/amateur neuropsychology]

I recently sold my CD collection. It had been boxed and untouched for years, as I long ago sold out to mp3’s. Yet after they were gone, I lapsed into a nostalgic sadness, a guilty feeling almost, like I’d burned a family photo album. I could still remember buying my first CD (at the now-defunct The Wiz in NW DC), but now that the actual thing was gone, the memory seemed incomplete, less trustworthy.

Of course, memory is always incomplete and untrustworthy, and after a day or so my wistfulness dissipated and I was glad to have the cash.

Still, it seems clear that personal artifacts and storytelling reinforce memory, or at least aid in constructing the plausible past scenarios that we call “memory”. I guess this means that if you keep all your crap and talk about your life a lot, you will have better luck retaining vibrant memories than an antisocial minimalist.

93 thoughts on “Cults, Poop, Psycho-financial Inertia: DLD 09.16.09”

  1. FreeSeatUpgrade Sep 16,2009 9:25 am

    I was told a few years ago by a buddy that the Chinese government has invested heavily in self-storage companies, the better to sustain the relentless American drive to own stuff (produced by the Chinese). If that’s true, it’s brilliant.

    "Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
    • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 9:35 am || Up

      I heard FEMA actually secretly owns them all, and that’s where the camps will be set up.

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  2. FreeSeatUpgrade Sep 16,2009 9:31 am

    I spent the weekend sick in bed, again. But the time passed quickly as I watched football baseball and golf on the TV, while watching live streaming video coverage of the 24 Hours of Lemons race in South Carolina. I know I’ve plugged it before, and no one cares, but an endurance race of $500 crapheap cars with humorous themes governed by bribe-taking judges is serious fun.

    "Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
  3. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 9:32 am
    1. Do you like Rampling? “I don’t know, I’ve never rampled.” (Haven’t seen the others, but Swimming Pool is great fun. I am not going to see her in the new LvT.)
    2. Wait. Your mom is a yellow lab named Zack?
    3. Wait.

      For years there have been rumours that the mafia was sinking ships with nuclear and other waste on board, as part of a money-making racket.

      What would a … non-money-making “racket” look like?

    4. Those are … nacho shoes!

      the company needs to grow in order for the movement to happen

      5. Also: I misread “celebrated with clanging cowbells, followed by vodka shots at a local Claim Jumper restaurant” as happening at a local Clam Jumper restaurant, and mentally made a note to take a roll of Kenickies there the next time I’m in NV and feeling randy.

    5. You know what would be mildly entertaining (and potentially profitable in the way that only the stupidest ideas online are)? An anti-search engine, that would send you to the least popular pages in your quest.
    6. We’ve all been living in the last scene of Citizen Kane for years — at least since Raiders of the Lost Ark
    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • mk Sep 16,2009 10:02 am || Up

      1. You might be confusing your Gainsbourgs with your Ramplings.

      5. That is a pretty good idea. I’m sure a lot of pages are tied for “least”, though, on every subject imaginable.

      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 10:09 am || Up

        1. Ah, damn. Tangent: there’s a town in VT named Charlotte, pronounced shar-LAHT. St Alban’s? SNALLbns (yes, no vowel there where the second one should be). And, of course, Calais — KALLiss.

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
      • nevermoor Sep 16,2009 4:54 pm || Up

        I feel like google should have this setting. If any FK-er works there now, they probably already do.

        "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
        • mk Sep 16,2009 5:57 pm || Up

          nevermoor, welcome back.

          For about 30 seconds this morning, I entertained the idea of incorporating an imagined honeymoon scene involving you, Mrs.nevermoor, and a heated Megan McArdle debate into this DLD. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about NAFTA or Ayn Rand to make it funny.

          Resort veranda somewhere in Mexico. Deck chairs, white sand, sunshine, umbrella drinks. Mrs.nevermoor reclines on a chaise lounge, flips breezily through the latest Atlantic Monthly. You think you hear her say “fricking glibertarian” under her breath, but you can’t be sure, part of you despairs at the ad hominem, part of you wonders if she said fricking instead of fucking for the alliteration, and can’t decide if that would be weird or awesome … hilarity ensues.

          • nevermoor Sep 16,2009 6:26 pm || Up

            Haha… awesome.

            Of course, Mrs. Nevermoor (I am nothing at all like grover this way) is far more polite than I am about people like McArdle.

            "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
  4. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 9:39 am
    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  5. mikeA Sep 16,2009 10:21 am
    • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 10:23 am || Up

      One thing’s for sure: Herzog would never make a Replacement Level Lieutenant.

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  6. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 10:30 am

    I want a pair of these

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • batgirl Sep 16,2009 12:30 pm || Up

      Having suffered through really wanting to wear these:
      rainbow socks
      when I was a kid, but always being dissapointed by how uncomfortable they were, I’m skeptical.

      • Poppy Sep 16,2009 7:16 pm || Up

        Oh, I NEVER wanted those. I could just tell I’d hate them, no matter how fun they looked.

        There's a wild thing in the woolshed and it's keeping me awake at night.
        • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 9:52 pm || Up

          They look kind of, um…fetish-y…I think I could get behind them.

          • dmoas Sep 17,2009 12:08 am || Up

            Oh, so that isn’t a picture of your feet? My bad. Oh and TWSS.

  7. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 11:05 am

    I’m sorry, but I think this is going to be just awful.

    1. Ricky Gervais isn’t funny

    2. Angry (with very few insane exceptions, none of which I can even think of right now) isn’t funny (cf, Idiocracy)

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • mk Sep 16,2009 11:12 am || Up

      Do you find The Office (UK version) unfunny, or have you never seen it?

      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 11:27 am || Up

        The former. I find the US version far superior.

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
        • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 1:31 pm || Up

          I am vehemently with you. Ricky Gervais’s humor escapes me.

          • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 1:39 pm || Up

            But — but he’s such a deliciously scandalous truth-teller and illuminator of the banal awkwardness of the quotidian!

            you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
            • mk Sep 16,2009 1:59 pm || Up

              But — but hHe’s such an deliciously scandalous truth-teller and illuminator of the often hilarious absurdity banal awkwardness of the quotidian!.

              Took a lot of red ink, but … Fixed.

              Strange that you would like the American version, given that the first season or two were basically line for line copies of the original, with worse actors. And subsequent seasons were still grounded in extracting humor from ordinaryness, an approach you appear to disdain (in favor of wacky – and droll! – hijinks in Coen “comedies”, I suppose).

              • mikeA Sep 16,2009 2:02 pm || Up

                I was with you right until the end… I’ve never gotten into the American version because the first few times I watched it was exactly as you say.

              • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:33 pm || Up

                Dwight Schrute is nothing if not wacky — and droll!

                you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
              • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:46 pm || Up

                And really, there are only 2 Coen comedies that I find at all funny: Raising Arizona and Hudsucker Proxy — and I only find the Hud “funny” in a really abstract, formalist way. (No, I don’t find Lebowski “funny” per se.)

                you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
                • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 3:54 pm || Up

                  There are a few moments in the film that are hilarious the first time through–most notably when the Sheriff of Malibu hits him with a coffee cup, when he drops the roach in his crotch and crashes his car, the opening scene where he’s writing a .69 check at Lucky’s, and “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere–let me take another look.”

        • andeux Sep 16,2009 2:04 pm || Up

          Where are mikeA and xbx? We haven’t had a good fight here for a while. (I haven’t seen enough of the british version to have a strong opinion on it.)

          Oh, and Idiocracy is hilarious.

          TINSTAAFK
          • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:34 pm || Up

            Wait. There’s a British version of mikeA and xbx? Are they less wacky — and droll?

            you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
          • mikeA Sep 16,2009 2:37 pm || Up

            I’m up there a bit to the right. I was actually thinking of using the word “creepy” again. I would say Idiocracy was “funny.” I like the Wilson family, although their films get worse and worse.

            • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 3:42 pm || Up

              So Bottlerocket was the pinnacle of their career and it’s all downhill from there?

              How sad.

              • mikeA Sep 16,2009 5:22 pm || Up

                but a good pinnacle.

                • JediLeroy Sep 16,2009 6:42 pm || Up

                  I’m a fan.

                  My brother’s seeing a girl named Ines right now. I can’t help but chuckle.

                  And I don’t know why, but the name Bob Maplethorp(e) always cracked me up.

                  az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde
                • xbhaskarx Sep 16,2009 8:29 pm || Up

                  Bob Mapplethorpe, potential get-away driver: Go!

          • mk Sep 16,2009 2:49 pm || Up

            I’m with monkeyball on his Curb Your Enthusiasm assessment. Their no script method makes a lot of scenes really tedious to watch (as the actors visibly strain to think of funny things to say).

            • andeux Sep 16,2009 2:54 pm || Up

              I’m in that tiny group of elite curmudgeons who didn’t even like Seinfeld, so I’ve never been tempted to watch CYE. I think I saw about 15 minutes of it once.

              TINSTAAFK
              • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 3:55 pm || Up

                I’m sure I don’t qualify as curmudgeonly, but I’ve never thought highly of either show.

            • mikeA Sep 16,2009 5:23 pm || Up

              I love CYE. Larry David would be funny if the show was just watching him eat breakfast or something with no dialogue.

              • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 5:27 pm || Up

                what if the way he looks annoys the piss out of you?

                • mikeA Sep 16,2009 5:28 pm || Up

                  he’s funny looking. you should laugh instead of piss.

              • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:31 pm || Up

                I agree with the latter sentence.

                I don’t dislike CYE for quite the reason mk recalls — and it’s not even that I really dislike it. I think if I had HBO and watched only a half-hour every week, I’d like it fine; however, I’ve only consumed it in voracious bites via dvd, and too much at once is migraine-inducing.

                you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
          • xbhaskarx Sep 16,2009 8:26 pm || Up

            This is the first time I’ve read FK in a long time, I’m reading A’s blogs more now that they’re actually winning a few games.
            Idiocracy is more funny as an idea than it is in the actual execution. It’s not bad but I don’t think there’s quite enough there to sustain a full length movie.
            My views on CYE and the Office have not changed at all.

            I love reading old threads, I’m giving myself a pat on the back for defending Landon Powell after Keith Lol called him a bust (and for remaining silent on Robnett and Putnam).

  8. mk Sep 16,2009 11:11 am

    1. I’m pretty sure I could feel safe for say, $20 billion a year.

    2. I’ve always just thrown my hats in the wash and accepted the ensuing deformities, but lo, there is a better way.

    3. All in all, you losing your fucking clam rake did a terrific job of ruining my day.

    • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 11:30 am || Up

      New euphemism: to lose one’s fucking clam rake. As in, Whenever I read a post by Trainman, I just about lose my fucking clam rake.

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
      • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 1:38 pm || Up

        Hmmm. I thought it was Trainman who posted that.

  9. doctorK Sep 16,2009 11:40 am
  10. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 11:48 am
    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  11. mk Sep 16,2009 11:54 am

    Add this to the list of obvious things that never occurred to me:

    [T]he biggest cash cow is lower-division undergraduate education. Because introductory courses are cheap to offer, they’re enormously profitable. The math is simple: Add standard tuition rates and any government subsidies, and multiply that by several hundred freshmen in a big lecture hall. Subtract the cost of paying a beleaguered adjunct lecturer or graduate student to teach the course. There’s a lot left over. That money is used to subsidize everything else.

    Maybe I have this wrong (I’m hardly an expert), but it seems clear that a large chunk of undergraduate course work could be moved on-line at a rather slight cost to the intellectual development of America’s youth. And whether that is true or not, if/when the accreditation barriers fall, it seems an inevitable outcome.

    Which means the day is coming—sooner than many people think—when a great deal of money is going to abruptly melt out of the higher education system, just as it has in scores of other industries that traffic in information that is now far cheaper and more easily accessible than it has ever been before.

    • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 12:13 pm || Up

      Damn those perfessers and their anticompetitive guilds!

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 1:42 pm || Up

      you and iglew need to have coffee.

    • nevermoor Sep 16,2009 5:17 pm || Up

      It seems to me that only becomes true if diplomas become devalued.

      "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
      • mk Sep 16,2009 6:46 pm || Up

        1. What are the benefits of taking Whatever 101 in a lecture hall versus online?

        2. Assuming those advantages exist and are compelling, are they even close to being commensurate with the cost?

        3. Is it better to say “commensurate with” or “commensurate to”?

        • JediLeroy Sep 16,2009 6:59 pm || Up

          1. I see absolutely none

          I took a few 101 courses via an independent study/online option. I learned just as much in those as I did in my auditorium 101 classes, and I wasn’t forced into group activities. If someone’s just going to be talking at you the whole time, it might as well be a recording.

          az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde
        • FreeSeatUpgrade Sep 16,2009 7:05 pm || Up

          with

          "Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
        • nevermoor Sep 16,2009 10:27 pm || Up

          1. The school won’t give you a diploma unless you do.
          2. trumped by 1
          3. I agree with FSU

          "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
    • Poppy Sep 16,2009 7:27 pm || Up

      Isn’t it an online university that advertises on the radio during A’s games, using the phrase “equally as important” in its pitch about… something? I don’t know what the entire line (or the university) is, because I always have a seizure and black out when I hear the “equally as important” part.

      There's a wild thing in the woolshed and it's keeping me awake at night.
  12. mk Sep 16,2009 12:16 pm

    MGL pointed me here. I was less taken by the silliness of the article than the “People who read this also read” section:

    I think that if you are reading every day about a world filled with Manson-lite Massachusetts mothers, scandal-seeking singers who hate George Bush, and liberal newsmen professing ignorance about liberal groups running secret (no doubt liberal) prostitution rings, it is really not so surprising that you might also believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is on the verge of allowing the government to steal your Medicare.

    • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 1:53 pm || Up

      Are prostitutes, by their very nature, liberal?

      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:35 pm || Up

        No, they’re conservative because they offer services for fees on the open market.

        Pimps and sluts are liberal.

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
        • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:35 pm || Up

          (Pimps, actually, are Objectivists.)

          you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  13. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 12:33 pm

    Jesus fucking Christ. Fuck you, Ezra Klein.

    This is, on some level, paying for services that will be rendered. It’s not a penalty as much as it is a charge, as the uninsured actually do use care, and the rest of us actually do pay for it.

    He’s really completing the transmogrification, isn’t he? This sort of half-truth cover-your-tracks parsing (not to mention his rather [to me, anyway] striking Beltwayism since joining the WaPo) is Atlantic-worthy.

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 1:48 pm || Up

      I read that as fuck you, Ezra Pound. We were about to have words.

      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:36 pm || Up

        Now there was a fascist we could believe in!

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
        • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 3:42 pm || Up

          srsly.
          \

          At least he was brief.

          • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:01 pm || Up

            TWDSPS

            you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
            • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 5:10 pm || Up

              In Russia, democratic socialists party you.

              • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:11 pm || Up

                Pound arcana fail

                you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
              • JediLeroy Sep 16,2009 6:45 pm || Up

                Hey Leopold, I’m really happy for you, and I’mma let you finish, but monkeyball has some of the best Yakovisms of all time. ALL TIME!!

                az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde
  14. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 1:13 pm

    New Jeunet film sounds promising

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  15. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:43 pm

    Anyone watch the Giants game last night? Zito’s curve was back to 2001/2002-era Bugs Bunny-crazy. The 3 Ks looking on Helton were hilarious.

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:43 pm || Up

      The whole first-pitch changeup strategy was pretty great, too.

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • mikeA Sep 16,2009 2:45 pm || Up

      I watched the first couple innings hoping for something different than what happened.

    • andeux Sep 16,2009 2:52 pm || Up

      I too watched the first couple innings.

      But that reminds me: a few days ago when Vicente Padilla was pitching against SF, KrukKuip spent about 2 full innings marveling about the fact that he had been available on waivers. I guess they don’t pay much attention to what’s going on in the AL.

      TINSTAAFK
      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 2:56 pm || Up

        Yeah, I noticed that as well. I had assumed that Padilla’s douchebaggitude was common knowledge.

        {insert cheap Bonds wisecrack here}

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  16. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 3:07 pm

    Criminy. WTF is up with TNR’s redesign? What an incredibly stupid font — makes me feel like my eyesight is failing.

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • Leopold Bloom Sep 16,2009 4:00 pm || Up

      It’s a conspiracy.

      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:02 pm || Up

        Who said that?

        {flails wildly with cane}

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
      • nevermoor Sep 16,2009 5:43 pm || Up

        to achieve?

        "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
    • mk Sep 16,2009 4:18 pm || Up

      1. The ever-changing front page photos are problematic.

      2. The old site sucked worse.

      3. It’s all about dynamism and collaboration and various other things. Obviously.

      • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:01 pm || Up

        WE’RE ALL GONNA DYNAMISM!!!

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
      • mikeA Sep 16,2009 5:25 pm || Up

        1. emulating slate is about the worst thing to do with a website (or the worst thing to do in life generally).

        • monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:29 pm || Up

          portmanteau: emuslating

          you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  17. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:04 pm

    I think “Max Raucus” would be a good nom de punq

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  18. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 5:17 pm
    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  19. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 6:04 pm
    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  20. monkeyball Sep 16,2009 6:10 pm

    I thought the Chairman’s mark was what Frank gave Mia for talking back.

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  21. mikeA Sep 16,2009 6:53 pm

    Best start of the year for Cahill. Good to see.

  22. batgirl Sep 16,2009 7:01 pm

    This DLD is awesome, by the way. That picture is delightful. My lab loves the beach too. Except that she can’t swim and her chosen activity besides tennis ball chasing is drinking sea water and then barfing it up.

  23. mikeA Sep 16,2009 10:19 pm

    Giants made me a little nervous there, but it ended in the appropriate comedy.

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