Grilled Meats Cause Cancer? Duh!

In an effort to corral my goat during paper writing time, my lovely roommate has just sent me this article espousing concerns about one of my favorite summer treats: grilled flesh. But, honestly, hasn't this warning been around forever and doesn't everything cause cancer these days? With all the EM rays floating around aren't we all destined to get ear and thigh cancer? Bah. I'll go the Graham Kerr route: I could get run over by a bus and just think what I would have missed.

Oh, Jesus. That was Terrible!

Al: What Papal name would you guys choose?
Kenny: That's easy!
Everyone Else: Huh?
Kenny: I would choose "Pourii"! (Poo-re')
Everyone: Huh?
Kenny: Because then I'd be Pope Pourii! Niiiiiiiiiiiice!
Half: Laughs for 10 minutes.
Half: Groooooooooan.

Random Sports Thoughts

Some random sports thoughts as I finish my final paper for the year.

• With a win versus the Lakers tonight Portland finished the season 4-11 and, hence, three more wins than I prognosticated. In my honest opinion, this team is a mess. What's more troubling is what to do with Darius Miles who is becoming the second coming of Bonzi Wells. Meanwhile, am I the only person who thinks that Zach Randolph is fat and stupid and should be dumped for Shareef? It won't happen, though, and the best we can hope for is that Flip Saunders comes here and coaches. Flip is a good guy but I think the wrong choice for this club. They need a guy like George Karl who can make sure that guys show up and play every day. With Damon and Shareef gone for next year, they're going to have to get veteran leadership from somewhere.


• Oakland is 7-7 despite having four starting pitchers with ERAs below 2.25. The one weak spot? Barry Zito — who has forgotten that he shouldn't throw that big fat curve ball down the pike. It's still early in the season but did they deal the wrong pitcher? (Hudson has a 0.00 ERA for Atlanta — but in typical Hudson bad-luck fashion only has a record of 1-0. The man must be the unluckiest pitcher in baseball. If he pitched for the Yankees or Red Sox he'd have 20+ wins every year.)

  On the bright side, Blanton, Harden, Haren, and Street have been phenomenal. Since that offense is never going to do much (come on, the middle order of Chavez, Durazo, and Hatteburg isn't going to put the fear of God into anybody) if Zito finds his Cy Young stuff they may slip in and win the west. I'm still a believer that the Angels are overrated. They have a nice offense but when your pitching staff is anchored by Colon then you're in trouble. [Update: As fate would have it, the second I type that and Colon goes out and scatters four hits over eight innings.] The other good news? Harden has lights-out stuff. Where the hell does Billy Beane find these guys? His fastball clocks in at an electric 97 with movement and he can down shift speeds into the high 80s when necessary. This means that he doesn't necessarily have to pitch perfectly to get outs unlike Zito, Hudson, or Mulder who only go into the low 90s. This means that they probably will have him around for another year or two until they have to trade him. Sigh. Their offense and the fact that Octavio Dotel is still the closer is going to make it a long and excruciating season to watch.



• Weird things down Cubs lane. Issue 1: Pope Dusty I?

  The Tribune reported Wednesday that Baker has started to rub holy water on the body parts of injured players.

  While Baker is not Catholic, he is a religious man who is open to new ideas. So when the team's public relations manager Sharon Pannozzo brought him some holy water that had been blessed four months ago by the late Pope John Paul II, Baker took action.

  "It's about as close to holy medicine as you can get," Baker told the Tribune.

  Baker's reasoning: What's the harm in trying?

  "It's not like voodoo or something. ... It's blessed," he said. "I didn't bless it. It wouldn't work if I blessed it. I just hope that my sinning doesn't negate the effectiveness of the water."

  The Tribune reported that during spring training, Baker poured holy water on the elbow of starting pitcher Mark Prior, who starts his first game of the 2005 season Wednesday against the San Diego Padres.

  Issue 2: Oh, snap! Some tidbits by Stoney.

  "We know Kerry's lips are in shape, we have to make sure his arm is in shape."

  "Writers get paid to write, and broadcasters and analysts get paid to talk. Pitchers get paid to pitch, and somewhere along the line you have to shut up and pitch."

  "Wood has shown no adaptability. He wants to throw the ball 95 to 96 [mph]. When he loses his mechanics, he can't get them back again. Somebody is going to have to tell Kerry the object of the game is to pitch. That's why they call you a pitcher. If not, they call you a thrower. And if they call you a thrower, and if you keep saying you can't change your mechanics, and if in fact your mechanics are partially responsible for you getting hurt every year, you've got a couple of choices: You can take all the money you've made -- which is a bundle -- and you can go sell cars. Or you can make some adjustments and try to stay around this league for 10 years."

  "If the vocal leader of the Cubs' staff, Kerry, would just take a look at probably the greatest example sitting right next to him, and that's Greg Maddux. I don't hear excuses [from Maddux], I don't hear anything. All I see is that he wins 15 or more games 17 straight years, something Kerry has never done."

  God bless that man.


• Is the NBA just getting irrelevant now? I must say that despite what the pundits say, I'm not excited to watch the playoffs at all. I guess I'll have to catch a few Phoenix games to see what the hype is all about. But from what it looks like from my vantage point, there will be a whole lot of half court offense and we'll be watching an entire month of the ball going into Shaq and Tim Duncan followed by a lot of missed free throws.


• Roy claims that he can assemble an all-white NBA team (and coach) that can beat an all-other NBA team. Ha, ha, ha, ha!! Sorry — the thought of Ilgauskas going up against Shaq and Yao is just hilarious. Admittedly, his constant devotion to white athletes and the White Sox is cute but try again dude — and next time let's suggest a sport where white athletes dominate like hockey or figure skating.

I'm Claiming Victory

With no comment spam since the implementation of MT-Keystrokes, I'm officially declaring victory.

And So It Begins

LaTroy Hawkins. Appearances: 1. Innings Pitched: 1. Blown Saves: 1. ERA: 9.00.

Sigh. Is it too late to be a New York Yankees fan? I liked Don Mattingly and Dave Spaghetti [sic]!

Fighting Movable Type Spam

I think that I've found the answer to the stupid comment spam that's now ubiquitous throughout Movable Type installations. It's called MT-Keystrokes and it's an ingenious little program. Since most comment spam is submitted through bots that exploit the <$MTCommentScript>.cgi file, this little program ensures that only comments that are actually typed into the comment textarea get posted. All it uses is a little javascript to check that keys have been stroked before the comment is submitted. There's even a check to make sure that if a user pastes text into the comment box, that this is considered legit. And, hey, if any spammer wants to sit around and manually type in comment spam into this worthless web log — more power to him.

Knock on wood but I think this will work really well. You should check it out if you're using Movable Type and especially if you're having problems with MT-Blacklist. I think this one is actually better because it will actually deny the post which won't cause Movable Type to refresh its databases.

Is the State of Illinois Cursed?

As I was watching The 3-Point Chucking Illini snatch defeat from the jaws of victory last night I couldn't help think, is the state of Illinois cursed from a sports perspective? I thought curses were only supposed to effect singular teams but it seems that since the ejection of Jordan, Jackson, Pippen, et al. from the state nothing has gone right for the local sports teams. (Then again, not much had gone right before they came, either. The Bears of 86 being the exception.)

That doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Wood and Prior are proving to be about as durable as piece of putty. The White Sox once again have gotten amnesia and forgotten that they're playing in the 3rd largest market in the United States and not in rural Kansas. Ditto the Cubs. Both teams should have been in serious bidding wars for Beltran, Beltran, and Percival. Instead, they're left with guys like Dye and Hawkins. Wait 'til next year indeed.