Cool, now I can pay just as little attention to football during the Super Bowl as I do during the rest of the season. Only 25 days until pitchers & catchers!
That is awesome.
.
.
On patrol for squirrels in the birdfeeders
We've had quite the menagerie of birds this "winter"; last couple weeks, besides the Cardinals (I've counted up to 14 at a time), we've had a Red-headed Woodpecker, a female Goldfinch, a Mockingbird, House Finches, a Red-winged Blackbird, Mourning Doves, and several various other small birds. Plus a hawk parked on our deck rail for a couple minutes on Saturday.
I've only seen 4 cardinals (2 female, 2 male) this winter. last year, there were at least 10. The juncos have returned to the backyard after not being there most of the winter A few house finches the visited the feeder (some of them are bright red) and some chickadees. no woodpeckers and very few chickadees. I think this wacky weather chased the regular birds away.
We've suddenly lost the ability to keep birds coming to our bird feeders. There's been a neighbor cat roaming around lately, but I never see any piles of feathers or blood, and the cat mostly seems interested in the mice and rabbits.
Souhan deservedly receives a lot of crap around here for his crappy Strib articles but today's column on JoePa is pretty good. Just think what a good writer Top Jimmy could be if he dropped the lame-ass jokes and stale Mauer hate.
Good weekend for the Boy. He took third place at a mid-level varsity tournament -- his best showing ever. We have a new coach this year (he came on a month into the season when the old coach became athletic director and the district decided it had money to pay coaching stipends) -- a former Oklahoma State wrestler. He's brought a whole new level of technique and teaching to the program. I hope we can keep him.
But the important part is that the Boy is healthy and wrestling well. Two matches to go until the start of postseason.... California has a single-class state tournament, which is juuust a bit out of the Boy's grasp. But if he can make it to the Master's tournament (the single-class, regional tournament; the top 4? wrestlers in the "District" region-wide class tournaments -- there are 4, I think, advance), that would be a huge feather in his cap. Whatever happens, I'm a proud papa. He's shown tremendous growth physically and mentally over his four years.
I'm thinking if This Sounds Familiar, it's because it's last year. Again.
Can someone pick up the Wolves log for tonight? I am going to be tied up until after tip off.
I can do it
Huh...I have to miss a game, and I'm actually pretty annoyed about it. We've come a long way in a short amount of time.
I plan on taking part in this game log. Be forewarned, I'm probably just going to talk endlessly about my Pekovic obsession.
From the guy who loved ORLANDO BALLGAME, I have to say this obsession seems pretty believable.
I am obsessed with awkward eastern European players in general (Andrei Kirilinko is probably my favorite player of all time). And the fact that Pekovic looks like he spends the off season as a hitman for the Balkan mafia is just fantastic. His incessant foul trouble, his ridiculous turnovers, his clueless expressions as players bounce off him in the paint, the fact that they play the Godfather music for him at the Target Center... GAWD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!
i'll get an i <3 pek banner together for you soon.
That would be awesome. Don't forget to include his tattoo somewhere in the design!
I can see all of this. I love the awkwardness of his face as well. Kills me every time.
the fact that they play the Godfather music for him at the Target Center... GAWD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!
and they have his face on the Godfather poster instead of Marlon Brando. My friend and I had a pretty good laugh about that when we went to the game last week
That is a fantastic tagline. I want a Killdozer shirt now.
It's the part he was born to play, baby!
Incredibly, I have heard "Mistadobalina" by Del the Funkee Homosapien on consecutive days. First, on the radio and yesterday at a concert. To quote another forgotten 90s musical act, how bizarre.
I always appreciated the rhyming of Hercules with hurt ya knees.
It shouldn't surprise you that much to hear it at his concert, I do think it's the only of his Brother George tracks that he regularly performs.
I really dug his second album: No Need For Alarm
Can't top meat's fresco, but the site still doesn't have enough banners...
that's pretty awesome right there. in contrast, this is probably to worst one i've done so far:
ya get what you pay for, i guess. if i had a magic meat wand, or whatever, i could probably do better. oh well.
He said he used the lasso, and any decent editor has that. I'm guessing he left out the second tool: patience.
Yeah, what sean said.
unfortunately, we're a little light on decent editors over here. we should be getting some patience in next week.
EDIT: (also, i like the term "magic meat wand", so i'm sticking with it) EDIT2: (all by itself, that sounds pretty horrible, actually....)
I wasn't opposed to you playing around with my wand.... Oh, right, family site....
This just in, if K-Lub doesn't sign an extension with the Wolves, it's because he doesn't want to play here...
Glad there isn't an "e" in that nickname.
I dunno. It might help in "negotiations".
Every time I wind up watching the NFL, all I want to do is change the rules. My new idea is that at the beginning of each quarter, each team designates 18 players who are active and can play for that quarter. You can shuffle the 18 players from quarter to quarter if you want, but each quarter, many players would be forced to play both ways and on "special" teams.
Part of the reason this was running through my head was seeing some of the commentary after the Pats-Ravens game. Everyone is so willing to throw kickers under the bus (especially once their career is over and they are sitting in a suit behind a desk), as though they've never missed an easy tackle or dropped a sure reception. You think it's so easy to hit that FG? Do it yourself.
My biggest rule issue with the NFL is overtime. They should just play 15 more minutes of football.
Really my biggest issue with NFL games is that they have become something like a meeting of the Zapruder film appreciation society. Wasn't there supposed to be a time limit on replay reviews? They stopped showing the time limit a long time ago, and I suspect that's because they always went over the time limit. The first thing I saw when I tuned into the Pats-Ravens game was 11 replays of Tom Brady maybe or maybe not making it over the line for a touchdown. I couldn't tell from the footage presented to me, but even though it was overturned, the Pats got a TD out of the deal anyway. Good thing I saw that non-TD over and over for four minutes.
Zapruder film appreciation society
This. It's why I don't want to see replay in baseball.
I proposed to a co-worker today that every player, the turf, and the ball get electrified coverings, like in fencing. Then lights will tell us who's got control of the ball, and when they're down or out of bounds. Also, the ball emits radio waves and the end-zone cameras can pick it up to see where the ball is in relation to the plane.
Yeah, I'm all about using technology to get the call right the first time. I just feel like there are unintended consequences to replay and it often shifts the focus of the game to the officiating rather than the playing of the game.
Moss has been inspired to propose a new NFL rule by an NBA rule. If a team has the ball inside its own zone, and calls a timeout, it then gets to advance the ball to the opponent's 25-yard line. Excitement ensues.
that might cut down on replays, too. Win, win.
Well then, it's equally fair that if they call a timeout inside the opponent's zone, then it should be called a touchback.
I had a similar reaction to the commentary on the missed field goal. All day long I've been hearing "experts" talk about why he missed the kick. Maybe, just maybe, he missed it because he's a human being, not a machine, and even the best kicker is going to miss one once in a while.
Yeah, I think the commentary I heard which was furthest from the mark talked about how Joe Flaco did a good job, but the kicker blew it. Well, as far as I can tell, Flaco threw at least one interception, which I think is right up there with a FG miss. The FG miss is a very distinct negative event that the Ravens can point to, but that doesn't absolve the rest of the team of responsibility for the outcome.
Ok, so apparently David Eckstein turned down a deal to play with the Mariners in 2011, instead opting to not play baseball. Jon Heyman (in a seemingly non-ironic tweet) associates this move with "#bigheart". Really?
Heyman makes even less sense than Eckstein's popularity.
Craig Finn's solo album is streaming on NPR's First Listen website. Haven't listened to it yet, but might tonight. Hurry, NPR doesn't keep the streams up for long.
Spells of the earlier discussion about meat's magic wand, Gimp rocks. And the price is right.
"Spells"?? Where the heck did Android get that out of "apropos"?
I figured you meant "smells"
I thought you were trying to play off the more innocent interpretation of the magic wand.
i thought you were just babbling nonsense.
Even with "apropos" instead of "spells", the post is indecipherable to me.
thanks to sean's translation, i know see what bS was talking about, and am thoroughly enjoying playing around with the gimp. this could have interesting effects on future banners...
honestly, that's still one of my favorites. i was talking with spoons about retiring banners awhile back, but i told him i wanted to keep that around as a "never forget" kind of thing.
Mwahahahaha!
Just to let other citizens (or tourists!) know, the donation widget is now available on the donation page. You can find it at the top, next to the reminder that everyone should behave themselves. The page may become something more in the future.
With the barrage of new banners coming in, I retired six that are outdated (what with players moving on and such).
I'd also consider retiring the Delmon banners, the Punto banner and others, if anyone cares enough to do such a thing. I just figured it made sense to keep them at a reasonable number so the current ones can be seen and enjoyed on a more regular basis.
i think once the season starts, there's a slew of "offseason" or last season banners that can be retired (going down the list: this, this, this, this, and hopefully we won't need this one, though that could come out of retirement). also, there's a few old player ones (like this, this, and the chuck james ones).
regarding delmon, punto, etc., i think they're established enough in the lore to hang around for at least a little while longer.
There's only one Chuck James one, and you can't see his head. I cropped it and put "World's Greatest" with the throwback cream jersey. "World's Greatest" is the site, but it could also be the uniform. That it's CJ was just an added bonus to me.
It's my absolute favorite of the ones I've done, and I'd really hate to see it retired.
I'd support retiring "The High Point" and "Hoe-Down" and "Doomsday" (until the Doomsday Machine is recalled from Rochester in May).
you're right. i was confusing CJ with the doomsday one. the "world's greatest" banner should absolutely not go anywhere.
cc to hungry joe: shoot me an e-mail if you've still got my address.
Facebook status of the day: "Nicholas Cage is the Nickelback of actors."
He is often (and by often I mean almost always) in the crappiest of movies, but he gets a lifetime pass from me for Adaptation and Wild at Heart.
And I can never not laugh hysterically when I imagine him running around carrying diapers.
i was about to bring that flick up. i need to watch that one again...
dido'd. I even bought it a few months ago, out of the bargain bin at Walmart.
That's one I've never upgraded from VHS. It's probably time...
...okay, never mind, it appears I did. I guess it's just time to watch it again, then.
Exactly. "Say, who wears the pants around here, Hi?"
but he gets a lifetime pass from me for Adaptation and Wild at Heart.
+ Leaving Las Vegas and Valley Girl
I need one of these.
Cool, now I can pay just as little attention to football during the Super Bowl as I do during the rest of the season. Only 25 days until pitchers & catchers!
That is awesome.
.
.
On patrol for squirrels in the birdfeeders
We've had quite the menagerie of birds this "winter"; last couple weeks, besides the Cardinals (I've counted up to 14 at a time), we've had a Red-headed Woodpecker, a female Goldfinch, a Mockingbird, House Finches, a Red-winged Blackbird, Mourning Doves, and several various other small birds. Plus a hawk parked on our deck rail for a couple minutes on Saturday.
I've only seen 4 cardinals (2 female, 2 male) this winter. last year, there were at least 10. The juncos have returned to the backyard after not being there most of the winter A few house finches the visited the feeder (some of them are bright red) and some chickadees. no woodpeckers and very few chickadees. I think this wacky weather chased the regular birds away.
We've suddenly lost the ability to keep birds coming to our bird feeders. There's been a neighbor cat roaming around lately, but I never see any piles of feathers or blood, and the cat mostly seems interested in the mice and rabbits.
Souhan deservedly receives a lot of crap around here for his crappy Strib articles but today's column on JoePa is pretty good. Just think what a good writer Top Jimmy could be if he dropped the lame-ass jokes and stale Mauer hate.
Good weekend for the Boy. He took third place at a mid-level varsity tournament -- his best showing ever. We have a new coach this year (he came on a month into the season when the old coach became athletic director and the district decided it had money to pay coaching stipends) -- a former Oklahoma State wrestler. He's brought a whole new level of technique and teaching to the program. I hope we can keep him.
But the important part is that the Boy is healthy and wrestling well. Two matches to go until the start of postseason.... California has a single-class state tournament, which is juuust a bit out of the Boy's grasp. But if he can make it to the Master's tournament (the single-class, regional tournament; the top 4? wrestlers in the "District" region-wide class tournaments -- there are 4, I think, advance), that would be a huge feather in his cap. Whatever happens, I'm a proud papa. He's shown tremendous growth physically and mentally over his four years.
I'm thinking if This Sounds Familiar, it's because it's last year. Again.
Déjà vu again?
is it still 2012?
Groundhog's Year
Can someone pick up the Wolves log for tonight? I am going to be tied up until after tip off.
I can do it
Huh...I have to miss a game, and I'm actually pretty annoyed about it. We've come a long way in a short amount of time.
I plan on taking part in this game log. Be forewarned, I'm probably just going to talk endlessly about my Pekovic obsession.
From the guy who loved ORLANDO BALLGAME, I have to say this obsession seems pretty believable.
I am obsessed with awkward eastern European players in general (Andrei Kirilinko is probably my favorite player of all time). And the fact that Pekovic looks like he spends the off season as a hitman for the Balkan mafia is just fantastic. His incessant foul trouble, his ridiculous turnovers, his clueless expressions as players bounce off him in the paint, the fact that they play the Godfather music for him at the Target Center... GAWD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!
i'll get an i <3 pek banner together for you soon.
That would be awesome. Don't forget to include his tattoo somewhere in the design!
I can see all of this. I love the awkwardness of his face as well. Kills me every time.
the fact that they play the Godfather music for him at the Target Center... GAWD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!
and they have his face on the Godfather poster instead of Marlon Brando. My friend and I had a pretty good laugh about that when we went to the game last week
That is a fantastic tagline. I want a Killdozer shirt now.
It's the part he was born to play, baby!
Incredibly, I have heard "Mistadobalina" by Del the Funkee Homosapien on consecutive days. First, on the radio and yesterday at a concert. To quote another forgotten 90s musical act, how bizarre.
I always appreciated the rhyming of Hercules with hurt ya knees.
It shouldn't surprise you that much to hear it at his concert, I do think it's the only of his Brother George tracks that he regularly performs.
I really dug his second album: No Need For Alarm
Can't top meat's fresco, but the site still doesn't have enough banners...
that's pretty awesome right there. in contrast, this is probably to worst one i've done so far:
ya get what you pay for, i guess. if i had a magic meat wand, or whatever, i could probably do better. oh well.
He said he used the lasso, and any decent editor has that. I'm guessing he left out the second tool: patience.
Yeah, what sean said.
unfortunately, we're a little light on decent editors over here. we should be getting some patience in next week.
EDIT: (also, i like the term "magic meat wand", so i'm sticking with it)
EDIT2: (all by itself, that sounds pretty horrible, actually....)
I wasn't opposed to you playing around with my wand.... Oh, right, family site....
This just in, if K-Lub doesn't sign an extension with the Wolves, it's because he doesn't want to play here...
Glad there isn't an "e" in that nickname.
I dunno. It might help in "negotiations".
Every time I wind up watching the NFL, all I want to do is change the rules. My new idea is that at the beginning of each quarter, each team designates 18 players who are active and can play for that quarter. You can shuffle the 18 players from quarter to quarter if you want, but each quarter, many players would be forced to play both ways and on "special" teams.
Part of the reason this was running through my head was seeing some of the commentary after the Pats-Ravens game. Everyone is so willing to throw kickers under the bus (especially once their career is over and they are sitting in a suit behind a desk), as though they've never missed an easy tackle or dropped a sure reception. You think it's so easy to hit that FG? Do it yourself.
My biggest rule issue with the NFL is overtime. They should just play 15 more minutes of football.
Really my biggest issue with NFL games is that they have become something like a meeting of the Zapruder film appreciation society. Wasn't there supposed to be a time limit on replay reviews? They stopped showing the time limit a long time ago, and I suspect that's because they always went over the time limit. The first thing I saw when I tuned into the Pats-Ravens game was 11 replays of Tom Brady maybe or maybe not making it over the line for a touchdown. I couldn't tell from the footage presented to me, but even though it was overturned, the Pats got a TD out of the deal anyway. Good thing I saw that non-TD over and over for four minutes.
Zapruder film appreciation society
This. It's why I don't want to see replay in baseball.
I proposed to a co-worker today that every player, the turf, and the ball get electrified coverings, like in fencing. Then lights will tell us who's got control of the ball, and when they're down or out of bounds. Also, the ball emits radio waves and the end-zone cameras can pick it up to see where the ball is in relation to the plane.
Yeah, I'm all about using technology to get the call right the first time. I just feel like there are unintended consequences to replay and it often shifts the focus of the game to the officiating rather than the playing of the game.
Moss has been inspired to propose a new NFL rule by an NBA rule. If a team has the ball inside its own zone, and calls a timeout, it then gets to advance the ball to the opponent's 25-yard line. Excitement ensues.
that might cut down on replays, too. Win, win.
Well then, it's equally fair that if they call a timeout inside the opponent's zone, then it should be called a touchback.
I had a similar reaction to the commentary on the missed field goal. All day long I've been hearing "experts" talk about why he missed the kick. Maybe, just maybe, he missed it because he's a human being, not a machine, and even the best kicker is going to miss one once in a while.
Yeah, I think the commentary I heard which was furthest from the mark talked about how Joe Flaco did a good job, but the kicker blew it. Well, as far as I can tell, Flaco threw at least one interception, which I think is right up there with a FG miss. The FG miss is a very distinct negative event that the Ravens can point to, but that doesn't absolve the rest of the team of responsibility for the outcome.
Ok, so apparently David Eckstein turned down a deal to play with the Mariners in 2011, instead opting to not play baseball. Jon Heyman (in a seemingly non-ironic tweet) associates this move with "#bigheart". Really?
Heyman makes even less sense than Eckstein's popularity.
Craig Finn's solo album is streaming on NPR's First Listen website. Haven't listened to it yet, but might tonight. Hurry, NPR doesn't keep the streams up for long.
Spells of the earlier discussion about meat's magic wand, Gimp rocks. And the price is right.
"Spells"?? Where the heck did Android get that out of "apropos"?
I figured you meant "smells"
I thought you were trying to play off the more innocent interpretation of the magic wand.
i thought you were just babbling nonsense.
Even with "apropos" instead of "spells", the post is indecipherable to me.
Translation:
Spells [ed: Author meant apropos but was overruled] of the earlier discussion about meat's magic wand, Gimp rocks. And the price is right.
aaaahhhhhhh...
sean speaks android bS? What can't he do?
thanks to sean's translation, i know see what bS was talking about, and am thoroughly enjoying playing around with the gimp. this could have interesting effects on future banners...
What have you unleashed upon us, bS and sean?
Hopefully something better than Tolbertin' Ugly.
honestly, that's still one of my favorites. i was talking with spoons about retiring banners awhile back, but i told him i wanted to keep that around as a "never forget" kind of thing.
Mwahahahaha!
Just to let other citizens (or tourists!) know, the donation widget is now available on the donation page. You can find it at the top, next to the reminder that everyone should behave themselves. The page may become something more in the future.
With the barrage of new banners coming in, I retired six that are outdated (what with players moving on and such).
I'd also consider retiring the Delmon banners, the Punto banner and others, if anyone cares enough to do such a thing. I just figured it made sense to keep them at a reasonable number so the current ones can be seen and enjoyed on a more regular basis.
i think once the season starts, there's a slew of "offseason" or last season banners that can be retired (going down the list: this, this, this, this, and hopefully we won't need this one, though that could come out of retirement). also, there's a few old player ones (like this, this, and the chuck james ones).
regarding delmon, punto, etc., i think they're established enough in the lore to hang around for at least a little while longer.
There's only one Chuck James one, and you can't see his head. I cropped it and put "World's Greatest" with the throwback cream jersey. "World's Greatest" is the site, but it could also be the uniform. That it's CJ was just an added bonus to me.
It's my absolute favorite of the ones I've done, and I'd really hate to see it retired.
I'd support retiring "The High Point" and "Hoe-Down" and "Doomsday" (until the Doomsday Machine is recalled from Rochester in May).
you're right. i was confusing CJ with the doomsday one. the "world's greatest" banner should absolutely not go anywhere.
cc to hungry joe: shoot me an e-mail if you've still got my address.
This is so disgusting.
I saw that. Nice sport you have there NFL.
Nice work. Pretty scummy thing to do.