R.A. Dickey is My Second Favorite Knuckleballer

I have a baseball pitcher/punching related hypothesis, hence the totally appropriate pitcher picture accompaniment.

It's double appropriate as the Rays and Red Sox have started their first series since this brawl.

My favorite part of this picture is how from this angle it totally looks like James Shields is connecting with this punch.

Shouldn't pitchers be awesome at punching stuff? Their whole job involves whipping their arm to maximum velocity, which would seem to dovetail with punching stuff nicely.

But brawls have shown us time and time again that most pitchers flail and miss wildly like Mr. Shields, or turn sideways and fall over a la Pedro Martinez. Or how about that time blog-tributor Ryan got kneed in the face? Remember that? (Sidenote: Ryan you can't get on me for not helping you in that fight, I got punched in the face, you can however blame Garnett, or Kyle who has proven quite clearly he is a liability when drinking)

To test my hypothesis I want to go to a bar that has one of those sweet punching bag games to see if punching from the pitching wind-up generates more force, and also to play that stacking blocks game because it is fun and last time I was this close to winning a mini-IPod (WSIPOD).

After the results become public knowledge I imagine pitchers will at least try the pitching windup power punch when charged, I mean even if it misses everyone jumps in so fast it won't matter.

Everyone except RA Dickey that is, both because knuckleball pitchers don't get charged too often, and also because his windup is slow, girlish looking, and balk inducing. Go Jays.

Addendum: My predicted Rance Mulliniks response to being asked to party with the DoodleBops was awkward silence, sadly I was incorrect.

Life Lessons

I've made a huge mistake....

At this very moment I am at work listening to a CD called "Opera without words" (which is exactly what it sounds like) while playing a little game called "the poem game" (which is exactly as fun as it sounds)

for those of you at home who aren't familiar with the game, and would like to play at home here's how you play: You'll need two people (one of whom is old) and a computer. The old person recites a line of poetry that he can remember, then the second person on the computer tries to find the entire poem on the internet and in the rare case he does, he then reads the entire poem to the old person out loud who then replies "ah yes i remember that one" and this goes on and on until he finishes his workout.


There's a lesson to be learned in all of this, and that is never be nice to old people or pretend to be interested in anything they say. This would have never come about had I not pretended to show interest in his book "victorian parlour poems" (which i might add he is bringing to his next workout)

Friendly Game of Fifty-Two Pick-Up Ends in Tears, Mess

The only card game I have ever enjoyed was a baseball based card game that four or five of us briefly played at lunch in high school, until I accidentally left the deck in my pocket and it went through the wash. I can't remember what it was called, and I imagine googling "baseball card game" will produce too many results to sift through. So let's just call it "Wild Cardz". That sounds believable and baseball related.

So it was much to my chagrin when I went over to my rich cousins house and despite their multiple pinball machines and 8 foot rock-climbing wall/bunk beds my lame cousin asked if I wanted to play cards instead of doing something that didn't suck.

I knew I had to feign interest or else he would lose interest in me and I would have to return home and help shovel mulch from the back of a truck into smaller piles in our driveway, avoiding doing work was the whole reason I had gone over to my cousins in the first place, so I reluctantly said yes, I would indeed play cards.

"But wait fair cousin" I began, "We should play this fun new game I just learned. Do you want to play it?"

"Sure!!" He replied, "Is it like Crazy Eights?"

"Umm it's pretty much the same, except we'll need to use all four of these decks to play. It's called Fifty-Two Pickup." (Editors Note: I am well aware this would in fact be Two Hundred and
Eight Plus Jokers Plus How to Play Bridge Pick Up)

One of the decks was brand new, so that obviously needed to be shuffled before we could play.
I told my cousin I had injured my fingers on my left hand by accidentally putting them in the toaster, so he would have to shuffle as well as get me a cool beverage to soothe my wounds.

The cards were ready, my Coke Zero was refreshing...it was the moment of truth. I could still back out of throwing all the cards on the floor and telling him to pick them up, but then I would have to play Crazy Eights with four whole decks, I realize now that the length of Crazy Eights is not affected by the number of cards used....that realization could have saved me some drama.

It was too late, I grabbed the cards and tossed them in the air, "FIFTY TWO PICK UP!" I yelled.
I grabbed my belly in mock laughter, telling my cousin now he had to pick up all the cards or else I would tell everyone he was Arch Lord Fife Twoo-loserin.

I never got a chance to introduce his Lordship to the world because my cousin broke down.
I mean the cards weren't even that widely dispersed, sure he has small hands but he could pick them up in under a minute, and reorganize them into their respective decks in another ten.

Under threats of "I'm telling on you" I ran away, all the way home.
Oh no! My parents are still in the drive way doing "chores", if they see me they'll force me to help and I'll be easy pickings for forced apologies once my aunt calls to pass on what happened.

I manned up and did the mature thing, I hid in the downstairs tub with my laptop until the storm blew over. By the time dinner was prepared all was almost forgotten, I was able to claim my cousin mistakenly remembered the events and also got to watch the Jays destroy the Reds instead of doing work.

All in all another excellent day.

Tales From Work: Bringing Productivity To New Lows

Today at work a safety inspector came in which would have been fine had she not walked in while I was playing spice girls loudly throughout the gym (due to the experiment which shall be mentioned later) while seeing if I could knock the punching bag over with a kick (I could by the way)

I'll be surprised if the owner doesn't receieve a phone call from her as during the inspection I failed to locate a fire extinguisher (turns out we have 2) and all the ice packs that we have were currently being used to chill my drink. (I was able to locate the first aid kit though after having to use it last week after an incident involving the punching bag that we won't speak of)

Now as for this weeks old person experiment...surprisingly most of the old folks are surprisingly tolerant of spice girls, S Club 7, and other music of that nature (now whether it's because they actually don't mind it, or whether their hearing has deteriorated to the point where they can no longer hear it is up for debate) The middle aged men (age 40-50) definitely had a problem with it though...specifically to the songs "shake your groove thing" and "It's raining men". Most of them were very polite in asking to change the music, with the exception of Dave who stopped working out and stared angrily at me...Dave scares me and from here on out no more experiments will be done with Dave.

Next time on Tales From Work: Will Ryan's drinking of non-alcoholic beer cause an uproar at work?

This Is NOT a Gay Wedding Countdown Blog....Yet

As can be clearly seen I spent about zero seconds picking a name and layout for this blog endeavor (blogdeavor?).

The naming style I haphazardly chose is apparently a common one...for people about to get married.

For example: sarahandchristian.com, daveandlyndsay.com, and what I believe to be the first man-robot woman wedding blog mitchandmolly2008.wordpress.com

Heck even friend of Ryan and Brent, PJ is getting in on the wedding blog bandwagon with his inspired Thirdtimeisthecharm.com

So to head any rumors off at the pass Ryan and I are not getting married.
Especially not in the current economic state. Nope, I was just too lazy to think of the connotations, and now after creation it's too late, especially after our inspired blog progress (blogress?), we had 37 hits yesterday... 37!

Take that myfabgaywedding.blogspot.com

A Pre-emptive Strike Against Richard Griffin

I feel I have a pretty good handle of what makes hated Toronto Star columnist Richard Griffin tick. He hates anything related to "Moneyball", supports the idea that JP Ricciardi is interested only in white players, and feels common sense is optional for column writing.

After todays unfortunate Jays defeat he will write an insane column about Reed Johnson and how the Jays would be a million games better if they had not waived him. He was against the move from the get go and if he doesn't jump on this opportunity to talk about how the Jays don't value "intangibles", and grittiness", and other nonsense I will be shocked.

Did I like Reed Johnson? Sure I did, by all accounts he seemed like a great guy, and the fact he was a small white guy likely did wonders for his reputation (cough Eckstein cough).

But the fact remains that he is currently a below average offensive player coming off a few injury plagued years and right now the Jays are in the same place without him as they have always been with him. Barely above mediocrity.

In hindsight is Johnson playing better than the hydra consisting of Mench, Wilkerson, Stewart, Lind, and Coats? Yes he is, but he's still not having a great year. His homer today was only his second, and he's only OPSing in the mid-700s. Had the Jays kept him how much better off would they be? A game or two at most?

I'm also predicting Griffin will take the insane position that the Jays clubhouse is worse off for losing Johnson's inherent grittiness (read: whiteness), and that this is hurting the team greatly.

I'm praying he does do this. Supporting the opposite positions that the Jays are racist and favor white (gritty) ball players and also that the Jays were dumb to waive an average gritty (white) ball player in favor of an average African-American (not-gritty) player will please me greatly.

Please Rick (can I call you Rick?) don't let me down, I know you can do it.

It's in you, I can feel it.

The Worlds' Biggest I-Pod (A Photo Essay)

My I-Pod no longer will load new material onto it. It's quite traumatic for me as I mainly use it to listen to podcasts and thus have a constant need for new sustenance, it's like a personal auditory IV drip.

I however have come up with a new solution, I haven't patented it yet, but I call it "The Worlds' Biggest I-Pod." And now for the first time ever here is photographic evidence of its design splendor.



Quite a beaut isn't she? Just like an I-Pod it plays all the music and podcasts I desire. And its battery power lasts for a couple hours, plenty of time to get to the gym and back.

There is a downside I hadn't considered however. While walking downstairs in the witching hour with my WBIPOD I became blinded. The WBIPOD has a much brighter display than a RSIPOD (regular sized) and it doesn't automatically turn off after a few seconds. I couldn't see the steps in front of me, even with tentative baby steps I became unsteady and almost fell to my doom.

I put the ungodly memory behind me long enough to recreate the chilling tableau.

(DRAMATIC RECREATION)

As you can see I am blinded by the light.
I was going to make the area surrounding me dark to indicate that it was nighttime. But it turns out I have no idea how to use the fill-in tool in MS paint.

As such there is a helpful ghost (Mortimer) there to remind you that it is very dark apart from the screen on my WBIPOD.




(DRAMATIC RECREATION BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS)

Oh no!

I am cut open on the chin and even after falling the WBIPOD is still shining in my eyes, giving me no respite from everlasting day.

On the plus side, the WBIPOD is still trucking, it appears no worse for wear after my almost trip headfirst down the stairs.


Despite its weaknesses at night I am still very pleased with my WBIPOD during the day and as a workout tool.

Here I am coming home from a run, headband in place and bandage on my horrific wound.

(Full disclosure: I tried to take my WBIPOD to the local gym to get pictures of me shooting hoops and having fun. But since my brother isn't a member he couldn't get in and I had to ask a staff member to take my picture.
Following questions of "wait, what are you doing?" And statements of "No, we don't allow picture taking in here, we've had problems with people taking pictures of children." I was forced to return home, alone, and defeated, and pictureless.)

When everyone has a WBIPOD and I am famous they'll be begging me to come back and take a picture at their gym.

You'll see.

Blogging From The Past!

I wanted to write a post about the Jay's glorious extra inning win last night over the Mariners, but unfortunately the baseball gods had other ideas...so instead here's something I wrote several years ago...

I've never really caught on to the whole axe thing (you know the deoderant spray) but I was going through my spongebob mini garbage can the other day (where I keep my random stuff) and I realized I have like 7 cans of it, and I figured well I might as well put this stuff to use. So over the past week I have sampled the various scents and spray techniques in order to better understand the axe phenomenon.

Monday: Today I sampled "pheonix" the axe website describes this scent as a "bold and maverick scent" which confused me so I went to dictionary.com where it described maverick as "un unbranded cow, or other range animal who is separated from it's mother) Why I would want to smell like that also confused me, but i suppose that cowboys probably smell like that, and if there's one thing in life i've learned it's that cowboys are sexy. I used the "T" spraying technique (across the chest and down the middle) I suppose i kinda smelled like a cowboy, one that was drenched in cheap deoderant spray, but a cowboy nevertheless. I was feeling confident...but maybe a little too confident, and that night I was walking to the lcbo when a wave of bravery came over me, i promptly looked up at the sky and challenged any aliens out there that they couldn't get me (i'm deathly afraid of aliens by the way) I'm not sure if the axe wore off right then, but i immediately realized what I had done and promptly turned around, ran back inside the house, and buried myself under the covers.

Tuesday: Still nervous from last nights happenings and a lack of sleep, I decided to go with "Orion" who apparently was the ancient god of hunting. Sounds like someone aliens wouldn't want to mess with! I also switched up my spray technique to a basic circle. The combination proved to be a resounding success, not only did I not get abducted by aliens, but i actually talked to a girl....on msn.

Wednesday: Despite the thrilling success of Tuesday I wanted more, it was time to pull out the big guns, Axe unlimited, a scent rumored by the Axe website to give me unlimited power. And if that wasn't enough I changed my spray technique from the basic circle to the the five pillars of Islam! With this combination I had enough confidence to leave the house for the first time since Monday's little incident. I started my day by going to the grocery store because I was out of soy milk, and that's when the power of unlimited first began to show. I was walking by the bank on the way to ultra when this guy was coming out of the bank and he was holding the door open for me, and even though I wasn’t going in the bank I went in anyways because I was afraid he would hurt me. I then stood there awkwardly for a few seconds then pretended to look at my watch and ran home to play Pokemon...what a glorious day, i finally caught a pikachu!

Thursday: Woke up feeling great. The last two days had been successful beyond my wildest dreams. I began today by watching David Blaine and I was inspired by him because he was able to stand on that pillar for like a day and a half to really test his limits and see what he is really capable of. So I decided that this morning I would test my limits just like blaine so I planned on standing at the curb at the end of my driveway for as long as possible. I ran upstairs and sprayed on some axe (went with pulse today, it apparently will get me in the rhythm, and balance and rhythm are pretty much the same thing) and to enhance my balance further I just used one long straight line down my middle. anyways things were going great until I saw two guys with G-Unit hats walking towards me and I had to go inside.

Friday: I had been saving a special scent for Friday...thats right, clix, the new scent endorsed by the super sexy and talented nick lachey, if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me. To make the day even more exciting I actually had a pitch counter that I could walk around with, just like in the commercial. But first I had to judge what should constitute a "click". In the commercial they "click" everytime a girl gives them a sexy stare, but my pitch counter only went to 999, and I can only assume that on an average day I far exceed that. So I decided that i would "click" every time a girl initiated a conversation with me. Final tally for Friday...1 (thank god my mom called).

Final Thoughts: Overall I would have to say it was a pretty typical week for me. But if I had to judge the most effective scent I would have to go with "orion" and as for spray technique, i figure my best bet would be to spray it directly into a girls eye and then kidnap them while they are disoriented.

On tap for this weekend: I have the whole house to myself this weekend, so as any typical 19 year old university would do I plan on building a fort, getting into my spongebob jammies, and going from there...

Foolproof

I spend an exorbitant amount of time planning ways to escape situations that will never happen to me.

For instance while I was in public school I often thought about how I would handle it if liquid magma seeped under the door while I was in the bathroom.

My plan was to hop up on the weird hand-washing fountain thing Crossland PS had. Up there I would just wait until the lava hardened and then I could waltz my way out of the school and over the charred remains of my schoolmates. I would get the added benefit that the motion sensing fountain would cool my ankles with refreshing water as I waited.

This all assumes that lava can't melt plastic, and that its radiant heat could be withstood by sprinklings of ankle water. I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that both of those facts are true.

Seriously, how do people manage to die unnaturally? Tornado? Run away from it.
World War I? Don't get shot. Cancer? Just don't get it.

If the world was entirely populated by me things would be different, the population would be 10 billion, pro sports would be in shambles, and asexual reproduction would be the rage.

One day perhaps.

Tales From Work: Bringing Productivity To New Lows

I'm pretty impressed that I was able to upload a picture and you should be too...

Now that hockey season is over my fun with excluding all hockey related news on the sports board at work is over, replaced by fake hockey news beginning with this piece courtesy of the onion http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/hockey_ticket_sales

and more fun at hockey's expense http://www.theonion.com/content/video/nhl_star_called_up_to_big_leagues

Old guys's response to seeing "Hockey Ticket Sales Tapering Off Slightly" as a headline on the board "Isn't hockey season over?" and my reply "It sure is" he gave a me a slightly confused look and then continued on with his workout...sadly nobody else has noticed.

Also how do I make those fancy links that don't show the whole address?...you know, the ones where just one or two words are highlighted and then you just click on them...I'm looking at you Brent, our blog does not yet at this moment have millions of readers worldwide, that will take at least a few weeks, possibly more if you don't include any fancy pictures and links like me.

Next time on Tales From Work, old people's response to the spice girls and other music of that nature.

Misc.

Everyone who drives slower than me is old and doesn't know what they are doing.
Everyone who drives faster than me is dangerous, and a menace to all our safety.
People who drive at the same speed as me are annoying and blind spot hazards.

With the advent of the Internet, and all its wonders, I find mannequins to be far less attractive.

The twist ending of The Happening should be that it was all an M. Night Shyamalan dream.
He then slowly awakes turns to the camera and says "I shouldn't make that, that would be an awful movie."

Three Things I care far less about now than I did in Grade 2, 1) Peer pressure 2) Cursive writing and 3) The Suntots

Three Things I care about far more now than I did in Grade 2, 1) Showing people who care about things how little I care about that particular thing 2) Proper, comma, usage and 3) The Smoggies

I have no recollection of how the Billy Goats Gruff Story ends. I'm going to postulate that the goats become scared once they realize a Troll is under the bridge that they wish to cross. First they look for an alternate way to cross the chasm, but there isn't one. They try to get a beaver to cut a tree down that they can use to bridge the gap, but the beavers union wants an outrageous amount of goat dollars to commission the job.

Eventually the goats decide to make a run for it, and just like in the real wild, the Troll only eats the old and the sick, in this case being Grandpa Goat. The rest of the goats make it across the bridge to Goat City where they quickly forget about the troll and go about grazing and other goat like activities.

The thing I like about my version, is that it teaches children how it really goes down in the wild.
I would also think about replacing the bridge with a field, and the troll for a pack of wolves.