In January, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana turned its office windows into a billboard with scrolling text ridiculing the Castro government, giving updates on Cuban-American sports stars, and quoting George Orwell. The Cubans responded by planting a field of 148 flags on tall poles in front of the building to block the view.
This is the kind of awesome story I only ever read when I bother to buy a print copy of the Post.
My favorite from the first 20 or so:
The Bible
Good opening chapter. Main character arrives halfway through, but gets killed off early. Some decent (if dated) commandments. Cracking ending. Slighty too open to interpretation.
Related: Busy, Busy, Busy
(This will be the last baseball-related post of the day, I promise.)
I'm watching the Yankees-Red Sox game on ESPN right now, and I keep hearing really good reasons to heed the call that inspires this website.
Christ, what a moron.
This is annoying, and I've seen it at least twice today.
First, in a Washington Post article on high-school baseball chatter:
Chesapeake catcher Zach Moore is known as being somewhere between a chatterer and a jockey. He doesn't speak directly to the opponent's pitcher, but he does have a cache of one-liners he employs liberally.
"If he's throwing high," Moore says, "I'll say, 'Get 'em a bucket!' " The jab, of course, being that the pitcher is throwing up.
When the pitches are missing low, Moore's go-to quip is, to put it delicately, the opposite of saying, "He can't keep it down."
And then just now (in another baseball story), from the Associated Press:
Burnitz has one hit in his last 26 at-bats, but was strongly defended by Tracy after being asked if the outfielder had to start producing soon to keep playing.Burnitz also was booed Wednesday for not running hard on a groundball he possibly could have beaten out.
"I'm not talking that, by May 14, if so-and-so doesn't have two hits in a game his (rear end) is out of here," Tracy said. "If you played the game, then you know what he went through. You think those guys are enjoying that, think it's fun for them to be going through it?
"It's no fun for them. And they don't need to get up in the morning and read a lot of stuff from their manager, that he is completely down on them or is disconsolate with them."
Emphasis added in both cases.
Apparently, "He can't keep it up" and "ass" are too obscene for quotation. That's bullshit. If the words are worth reporting, they're worth reporting accurately. Style guidelines that treat readers like fragile Sunday-schoolers are tedious and disruptive.
And here is their coaching staff:
The Pittsburgh Pirates are 10-25.
From the Desk of Prof. Charles Soludo, Central Bank Governor:
THIS IS TO NOTIFY YOU THAT YOUR OVER DUE INHERITANCE FUNDS HAS BEEN GAZZETED TO BE RELEASED, VIA KEY TELEX TRANSFER (KTT ) - DIRECT WIRE TRANSFER TO YOU OR THROUGH OUR LONDON OFFICE BY THE SENATE COMMITTEE FOR FOREIGN OVER DUE FUND TRANSFER.
It's about time! Those obstructionists on the Senate Committee for Foreign Over Due Fund Transfer have been stonewalling for far too long.
I have found recently that some things that seem obvious to most people only become apparent to me after extended trial and much, much error. Horrible, shameful error in some cases.
One of these things — of much less consequence than some others, but suitably innocuous for this website — is that small speakers plugged into laptop headphone outlets are not appropriate tools for evaluating pieces of music.
For example: I have only in the last week become a Wilco fan, and we are nearly halfway through 2006.
People tend to think I'm joking when I tell them that Spacehog's Resident Alien is one of my favorite albums. But I am very serious about that.
Sometimes I get the same feeling of eerie relevance from daily webcomics that other people get from horoscopes.