Sunday, June 30, 2013

Matt Kenseth wins at Kentucky


Matt Kenseth won the Quaker State 400 today for his fourth victory of the season.

Kenseth's crew chief made a gutsy call on the final pit stop of the race to forgo tires in lieu of gaining track position. The gamble paid off as once again, Jimmie Johnson messed up a restart and ended up getting spun out and buried deep in the pack.

You have to give Johnson some credit though. After pitting for fresh tires, he raced through the pack to get a top ten finish though he was chirping on the radio about Kenseth's supposedly illegal move on the restart. This is some high dudgeon from a driver who's already been penalized himself this season for illegal restarts and even Kyle Petty remarked that maybe Johnson should just be allowed to make up his own rules on every restart.

heh

I'm glad that Kenseth won and also glad that Johnson did not. As Jimmie was running away with the race, I was just thinking ho hum, Johnson wins again. My buddy at work thinks Johnson's the greatest driver ever. But it is my contention that his success is more due to crew chief Chad Knaus and Hendrick Motorsports as car owner. Knaus just simply has a way with these cars that is supernatural, and I think any driver that was put with him would be winning at the same rate as Johnson.

Also, some small ups to Ryan Newman for quietly working his way forward all race and nearly cracking the top ten. Tony had a crappy day and Danica was fairly racy all day though she didn't get above 20th.



And the Red Sox won today on a walk off error to beat the Blue Jays 5-4 and take three of four in the series.

Some sads for Toronto catcher Josh Thole who was installed at first base due to an injury earlier in the game and ended up booting a routine grounder to allow the winning run in the ninth.

As a life long Boston fan, the image of Bill Buckner letting that grounder go through his legs is permanently burned into my brain. And that was all I could think of when I saw Thole get handcuffed by Victorino's grounder.

Eesh! That sucks! I'm glad Boston won the game, but I truly feel sorry for Thole. Keep your head up dude.

Friday, June 28, 2013

F*CK YOU New Yorker Magazine!

The New Yorker magazine is apparently coming out (no pun intended) with the following cover to celebrate the Supreme Court striking down the DOMA:

fuck you new yorker magazine!

I'm all willing to allow adults to do their thing in the privacy of their own homes. I don't agree with hateful discrimination in any form . . . or from either side of a debate. But as a father, I have to draw the line at willful indoctrination of innocent children into any current trendy fad.

Homosexuality is a lifestyle choice. Period. Despite millions upon millions of dollars wasted in a fruitless search for some triggering gene, apologists for gay lifestyle adherents have found nothing. Because there is nothing to find. Because it is a choice.

A choice to lead a life of aberrant sexuality.

Whether you believe in God or creaky Darwinism or some form of intelligent design, there is one truth -- we were designed to be heterosexual. Our propagation as a species relies on heterosexual coupling for breeding. Homosexuality is simply not the norm for our species.

Something like five or six percent of Americans identify themselves as gay or transgendered or whatever. This is practically the definition of a minority. And yet we are turning ourselves inside out to accomodate this lifestyle. Why? Because it is trendy. And it is anti-religious. And the current atmosphere in this country is that anything even remotely conservative must be destroyed. So advocating alternative lifestyles is on liberal's front burners right now. With Second Amendment rights and abortion close behind.

You could fill pages with the subtle, relentless indoctrination that fills television and movies today, extolling the virtues of the LGBT lifestyles. There have been plenty of reports online about elementary schools teaching children about gay sex. And I could go on about how, despite all the bullsh*t articles to the contrary, little Johnny actually needs a mommy and a daddy to grow up as a well rounded individual. A woman simply can't play the father figure properly to a boy anymore than a man can properly play a mother figure.

And now we have a major magazine pushing two iconic children's characters as gay. I'd say something about them having no decency, but it is the New Yorker -- so you know they're the scum of the earth already.

It would be nice to think that PBS or the creators of Sesame Street would object to this debasing of their characters. But as we saw in the last election cycle as Sesame Street lashed out at FOX news and cheerfully allowed Dems to use Big Bird to attack Mitt Romney on budget cuts, they're full on cool aide drinking socialists and Democratic apologists. But then I guess that's to be expected since they sup at the public trough for funding.

In fact, I'm sure we'll be hearing from the show's writers and producers in upcoming days how the characters were always written as gay. Oh it was always planned and written that way they'll say 'cause they're so evolved they had a duty to begin indoctrinating innocent children into their liberal belief system. Not unlike J.K. Rowling who did a nice job of ruining the Harry Potter series with her of course Dumbledore's gay...duh! bullsh*t while writing the last novel. Yeah, so nice to go back and look at all those heart-to-heart talks the kindly wizard had with Harry and think the old man was simply trolling a nubile young boy.

Good job there J.K. Perhaps we can simply re-write or re-interpret all classic children's literature to say that it's always been about promoting the LGBT lifestyle. That'll do wonders for society as a whole.

The shame of this is that choosing to be gay doesn't make you a superior person, despite the relentless media talking points. It is counter-productive to life as we know it.

If you are an adult, and choose this lifestyle -- whatever. But leave children alone. Let them grow up and make their own choices.



And here's fame-whoring Courtney Stodden at some equality rally, giving this whole situation the dignity and respect it deserves:

courtney stodden rainbow bikini equality rally



Oh gracious, where to begin? The comment below from Magic man requires a bit more than a simple reply in the comments section. And for the record, because I'm constantly having to correct visitors on this, so don't feel bad -- but this isn't Scientific American or the Wall Street Journal or the NY Times blog. I don't need to footnote or hyperlink to every little thing here. And I don't use spellcheck, so . . .

For starters, that's the biggest pile of left-wing talking points gibberish I've encountered on this blog ever. Thanks. But let's look at that provably false horsesh*t about conservatives supporting slavery and how conservative thought must be destroyed in the name of progress.

First off, it was a conservative Republican president, Abraham Lincoln (maybe you've heard of him?) along with his conservative Republican controlled House and Senate that voted to end slavery. It was conservative Republicans in the House and Senate that led the vote and outvoted Democrats to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And if you can tear yourself away from MSNBC long enough, you might want to check out images of Dr. King's march on Washington. That tall white guy? With the square jaw and movie star good looks? Yeah. That's conservative Republican actor Charlton Heston walking to support equal righs.

Meanwhile it was Democrat Governors like George Wallace turning fire hoses and dogs upon black Americans. It was Democrat Senators like Robert Byrd that were Grand Wizards in the KKK.

Yeah, let's destroy equal rights, adherence to the Constitution, less government interference in our personal lives in the name of progress. Guess it depends on your definition of progress, mate.

My statement about Darwinism being creaky is aimed at the fact that Darwin's "theory" is based on antiquated scientific methods that would only pass muster in an IPCC report today. I don't dispute his theories, only the hypersensitive adherence to them to the point that having any questions about our origins gets one labeled and anti-science troglodite. It appears we have evolved from lower beings (some of us more than others, imho) but was there a guiding force behind that? Who can say. I believe that is the case. Most intelligent people realize that the Bible is written in parable form, in such a way that those who lived 2000 years ago could wrap their heads around it. No one actually believes the world was formed in 6 days. But lay something about millennia upon those back in the day, and you'd get blank stares. So a story about man's origins in the Bible is written in terms that could be understood back then. Now we see the steps that were taken, but as I just said, is there a guiding hand behind those steps or simply a theory that everything just sort of "happened" because it had to?

Darwin's theory is just that, a theory, it's not like math. Calculus will still work a million years from now because the theorems and proofs that define it will never change. But as our technology improves and we unlock more secrets of cellular biology, what Darwin did not know could fill a library. So blind adherence to his theory is not unlike a religion. It's based on faith. My faith points in a different direction.

Also, I've seen interviews with more than a few scientists and atheists who are Darwinists who would rather believe life on Earth was seeded by space aliens that believe in God. That's where my remark about whatever form of intelligent design comes from. So I was in fact promoting three or more viewpoints there, mate.

But despite your feeble attempt to mock my thoughts on this, the point of that section remains -- we were designed to be heterosexual. Period. By whatever means fits your view of creation. Homosexual behavior is aberrant. Period. Outside the designed norm of our biological design. Period. And there is not one scintilla of evidence that anything other than a conscious choice has human beings adopting homosexual behavior. Period.

Ooh, religious indoctrination. Those Sunday morning service shows aren't forced on anyone. They are there for those who want to watch them. No one is forcing a specific religion on anyone. First Amendment, ever hear of it?

So here's an exercise for you -- find me one of the alphabet networks or major cable channels (hbo, showtime, starz, etc.) that is routinely ramming a pro-Christianity message down its viewers throats by pushing that theme in its programming.  *crickets chirping*

Now notice how many of the above networks/channels make sure that every villian is a so-called Christian extremist or Tea Party member or a white Republican businessman.

Now find me an instance in any of the above areas where a gay/lesbian is pictured in a less-than-flattering light. Show me where the lbgt character is not the most intelligent, charitable, empathic character on the screen. Actually find me an lbgt villian in any show created in recent years. You can't because groups like GLAAD and hate-mongers like Dan Savage organize massive protests against anyone who dares to do so.

In point of fact, the only safe groups to malign and demonize in society and the arts today are Christians, Jews and white men.

Your comment about why would someone choose a lifestyle they thought would cause them grief is almost too weak to respond to. But let me try -- why would someone choose to be a bank robber? Why would someone choose to be a serial killer? Why would someone choose to cover every spare inch of their body in tattoos? (and in the name of full disclosure, my wonderful son is covered in ink, so I'm hardly anti-tattoo) Why would someone fill their body with piercings? Why would some idiot put a two-inch hole in his cheek and hold it open with a wooden ring? Because God gave us the gift of free will along with our souls. We are free to make any decision we like. But we should have the spine to deal with the consequences of our decisions, not whine like spoiled children and beg for everyone to turn a blind eye to our choices and re-arrange our world to accept/accommodate (heh, got it right that time) them.

And this lack of spine is where my remark about the wasted billions on research came from. We've found genetic markers for all kinds of diseases and human conditions. I'm not saying, nor is there anything in my post to suggest I believe that the science is settled on the human genome. I leave that sort of stupidity to MSNBC watchers who bleat the science is settled about global warming (fun fact -- no warming in the last 19 years).

And this leads to your exercise for me. I don't have to do that brother because I have friends and acquaintances who are either gay or lesbian. And we've had our share of friendly conversations about their choice of lifestyle. And I say choice because in every case, that seems to be the case. At some point they realized (or chose to be) that they were gay. And then, to a person, they've gone back and re-examined their lives to create the necessary data points to lead them to their current place in life.

I saw an interview recently with a transgendered person. And she (formerly a he) told of how at age five he had put on his sister's dress and knew instantly that he was actually a girl inside because the dress felt so natural. Really?! At age five?! Most five year olds need to be told not to eat their own poop or put their hands on a hot stove, but I'm supposed to believe that a five year old knew he was a girl in a boy's body? Only in rewriting your own life's story to conform to the new social cool thing, does something that absurd have any credence.

I have more respect for someone like Cynthia Nixon, who decided that she would be happier with a female partner than a man, and publicly admitted she made that conscious decision to live her life as a lesbian, than people who try to run with the God made a mistake or it's not my fault, I was born this way prevarications. If you're so out and loud and proud, why not be proud of the decision to live your life this way?

Let's talk gay marriage for a moment. Saying gay marriage is a civil right is an insult to black Americans who endured the struggle against bigotry in this country. Why do you suppose that black voters overwhelmingly vote for traditional marriage amendments in state referenda? Because they are offended by gay rights activists hijacking a legitimate grievance issue.

In every conversation I've ever heard about gay marriage, the same path is followed -- after the usual bit about getting married in the same church as mommy or wearing a dress like mommy or whatever, we get to the actual crux of the matter -- money. Gay couples want tax breaks like legally married couples. They want access to one another's health plans or retirement benefits or life insurance payouts or whatever. How banal. So much for the soft focus, fairy tale romance angle.

Personally, I'm in favor of civil unions. If two consenting adults want to live their lives together, more power to them. The tax break thing seems a bit unfair, but I'll go along with that. And I understand the financial complaints of gay couples. They can go to the justice of the peace or non-denominational church or wherever and get their union legally sanctified. And they can call it whatever they like. Call it a marriage? Fine. But legally - it is a civil union. Why? Because marriage is a religious concept adopted into man's laws. And Christianity (along with most religions) finds homosexuality to be a sin. And we, as men (generic here, as in humanity) do not have the right to pass laws that force churches to defy their principles.

And in my opinion, that's the ultimate objective of gay activists and haters of religion like yourself (your contempt for organized religion drips from your post, so don't bother denying it). The goal is to overturn every legally adopted defense of marriage referendum passed (overwhelmingly, I might add) in states. Then after our coward-in-chief passes some politically expedient law to help in fundamentally transforming our country, some gay couple will barge into a Catholic church with their lawyers and a media entourage in tow and demand to be married. When the church refuses, then we'll see the agenda of gay activists and socialist/progressives like yourself for what it is -- an attack on Christianity (but not Islam, because you cowards would never take on a religion that actually kills gays, that would take some spine).

What else? Ooh, "little johnny needs a mommy and daddy" you are actually denying that? I don't need to cite statistics on that. The overwhelming number of young black men incarcerated in this country has been traced directly to the disproportional number of father-less homes among black Americans. This is a fact agreed upon by black leaders and white leaders in this country. And you don't need to be a social scientist, only a parent, to realize that a child learns how to interact by watching what happens at home. A boy learns how to be a man and how to interact with women by watching how Dad lives/loves/treats Mom. And he learns how a woman should interact with a man by watching Mom. And the same goes for a daughter. Unless you're going to be raising your child to be gay or lesbian like yourself, how can a same sex couple possibly pass these lessons on to a child they have adopted (which is a whole other can of worms I'm not opening here)?

And finally, calling the New Yorker scum for perverting iconic childhood characters isn't hateful discrimination, mate. Anymore than calling some dude an asshole for cutting me off in traffic is. It's an opinion, based on their actions.

Hateful discrimination is trying to silence those who don't think as you do. Like leading a nationwide attack on a fast food restaurant because the owner believes in traditional marriage. Or getting a guy fired from his job for donating to a petition drive to support traditional marriage. Or banning commentors from a website or online community for disagreeing with the agenda of said website or community. That's hateful discrimination, mate.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Not sure this is an improvement

But then I suppose that depends on what your final goal was.

Courtney Stodden before:

courtney stodden pre boob job and douchey husband

Courtney Stodden after:

courtney stodden post boob job

Somewhere Heidi Montag is checking her watch and going But I did it first! Isn't her 15 minutes up yet?!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Lackey K's 12 in Sox win

John Lackey struck out 12 in Boston's win today over the Rockies 5-3. The victory keeps Boston 3 games ahead in first place in the AL East.

Often pitchers who come off Tommy John surgery report having more velocity on their pitches, and today was the case for Lackey who pushed the radar gun to 95mph frequently.

Without a lot of fanfare, the bottom end of the Red Sox order has become pretty stout. Lackey's sporting a 2.99 ERA now along with his winning record and has 8 quality starts in 13 appearances this season. Ryan Dempster, who was picked up to be an innings eater leads the team in strike-outs with 94 and his 5-8 record would be substantially better if he got some actual run support during his starts. Both he and Lackey are sporting WHIP's below 1.35 as well.

After two miserable seasons in Boston, Lackey is finally looking like the pitcher the Sox traded for. He came into camp probably 20-30 pounds lighter and has been fierce on the mound, pitching with a chip on his shoulder. And nothing wrong with that. Perhaps if Farrell can get Jon Lester's head out of his ass and the docs can put Buccholz back together, this team that fans hoped would simply not be a disappointment like last year, might make a run deep into the playoffs.

How nice would that be?



And speaking of nice, here's the Tiz looking pensive as she is possibly pondering that impressive cleavage that seems to come out of nowhere:

ashley tisdale in maxim magazine

No complaints here :-)

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Boston has a rough time in Detroit

The Red Sox lost today, in part due to a disputed call by the umps, 7-5 to the Detroit Tigers to drop the series between the division leading teams 3-1.

Not wanting to go all Joe Maddon here, but the catch-drop by Nava gave Detroit the winning runs. Probably shouldn't have gotten to that point, but . . . there it is. Had Andrew Bailey not blown the save in the first game, the series would have been a split, which would have been more tolerable.

As such, the Sox are still in first place by two games over the Orioles, who got their asses handed to them by the finally red-hot Blue Jays. As I mentioned at the beginning of the season, it's only 5 games separating the first place Sox from the last place Rays. The AL East is gonna be a beast this year.



martin truex jr wins sonoma

And congrats to Martin Truex Jr. for winning the Toyota SaveMart 350 in Sonoma today. Truex broke a 200+ streak of races without a win, though he's had a maddening number of second place finishes, particularly at this track.

It was a pretty good race (I always like the road courses, though many do not), with some bumping and banging, but though the drivers were aggressive all day, no one was driving like an idiot causing a bunch of wrecks.

Nice to see the announcers bring up something I've been harping on since the creation of the Chase to the Championship. That is, the lack of a road course in the 10-race Chase. Fans are in favor of it, as well as many of the drivers. NASCAR honcho Mike Helton, in his best "I rule with an iron fist" voice said he was more than willing to add another race, but one would have to be dropped somewhere else to make room.

Yeah, like that would work. What a d*ck!



And ending on a happy note. My favorite english teacher, Olivia Sprauer, slips into a nearby phone booth and nyut nuh nah...

olivia sprauer aka victoria v james

...emerges as hottie model Victoria James!

We're saved!

Monday, June 17, 2013

Public school system, part duh

In what I sadly imagine could be a daily feature, I bring another example of the fine young minds being turned out by our public school system:

At work today, I go to lunch and stop by 7 Eleven to get a soda. I bring my Super Big Gulp (f*ck you, Michael Bloomberg!) to the register.

Surly young dude, looks at it, mumbles something about "Anything else?" then rings it up and says "$1.79"

I hand him two dollars. He gives me back twenty-nine cents.

?!?!

I'm looking at the quarter and four pennies and thinking "Really?" I'm struggling, trying to imagine exactly what combination of coins could he possibly have been thinking he was giving me?! I mean, four pennies?! WTF?! Of course by now surly dude has shambled off to do something else, so I can't even give him back the money he over-paid me.

Again, you've got a freekin' register right there, man! It does the math for you if you're too stupid to do simple arithmetic, but seriously how hard is it to figure the change on this transaction?!

These high school kids can play the hell out of video games or create mean Facebook pages, but give them a simple math problem and total brain failure.



And then there's this -- Kelly Brook went to the beach in Cancun today and took her bikini top off and lolled around on the sand for a while. The fact that paparazzi were able to take stunning hi-res images of her half naked is complete providence on their part. I'm sure she had absolutely no idea they were there . . .

kelly brook topless at the beach
kelly brook topless at the beach
kelly brook topless at the beach

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Happy Father's Day!

Kind of fun to be able to wish my son a Happy Father's Day this year. And good wishes to all you dads out there as well :-)

As I mentioned in my Father's Day post a couple of years ago, my dad was pretty much everything to me. And one of the coolest things was that he was my best friend. So in honor of that, I've decided to share one of my favorite stories of him --

In the 70s, one of the local tv stations used to run something called Shock Theater on Friday nights. Remember, this was before cable television, so you had three vhf channels and one uhf channel that you got on your outside antenna. Television went off the air in the wee hours and came back on in the early morning.

Shock Theater ran old horror movies from the fourties, fifties and sixties. And lots of those lurid, color-rich Hammer Studios films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and the like. Fabulous stuff. Dad and I would stay up late every Friday with the house to ourselves watching horrible old movies. And in the middle of the movie, the local sports guy Andy Hardy would come on with the owner of the Columbia Restaurant in Tampa, Manuel Biero (I think) and they would have a table full of food and Biero would go over the weekend's specials at the restaurant. Then Biero would raise his glass and proclaim for the camera "Salut and Happy Days, 1362 times!" or some such number as they kept track of how many times they had done the promo. Small market kitchy goodness you'll never see the like of again. How I miss it!

Anywho, it's the middle of summer, we don't have air conditioning so the house is like an oven. All the windows are open with only gauzy curtains to block someone from seeing in. Dad and I are in the family room at the back of the house watching some gloriously horrible old flick when I notice the living room is pulsing red and blue.

After my initial shock, I point this out to my Dad and we creep into the living room to see what the eff is going on. Peeking through the curtains, we see a police car across the street. He's got some dude pulled over and has his trunk open and is giving it a pretty thorough search. We can't see well because we have an ear tree in the front yard blocking our view. I suggest we go to the other end of the house, to my mom's office (my old bedroom) and peek out there.

So we sneak quietly back there, but the room's very small and only one of use can lean over mom's desk to see out the window. I look first and after a minute, Dad wants to see what's up. We switch places and I back away to give him some room. The room has original terrazzo floors with no carpets or mats down. And mom has some crappy torchiere lamp standing by her desk. So naturally I bump into it and knock it over. I catch the lamp pole, but not before knocking the metallic shade off the lamp.

The truncated conical shade hits the floor and makes the loudest clang you've ever heard. Plus it keeps rattling around while I try to grab it. Remember, it's like 2:00 in the morning, deathly quiet in the neighborhood. My dad whips around and yells "You horse's ass!" and I bust out laughing. The cops have turned their lights on our house now, and we are laughing our asses off as we scramble to get back to the back of the house.

We must have laughed about that for another half an hour that night/morning. But even better was when we told mom about it the next morning. She's looking at the two of us like we should both be locked away somewhere and we're laughing so hard tears are rolling down our faces.

God, how I miss him! Love ya Dad!


And it's not a Father's Day tribute, but I loved this from what has become one of my favorite all time comic strips: