Dr. Tom

At my last apartment, my roommate's cats handled the one mouse that somehow managed to get in. We just watched and laughed. My advice: get a cat. If you can, borrow one to deal with this. Or stop being a skinflint and buy a good mousetrap.

Make me a mod so I can see what goes on behind the scenes... OMG WE NEED WEST COAST MODS~!!!!!11 Sorry, Colonel, but you live on the east coast... Anyway, after going back and looking at a lot of his Sports posts over the past two or so weeks, I'm fine with this. Messageboards are, after all, for discussion, and anyone who consistently and unreasonably thwarts discussion shouldn't be a part of the board any longer.

The Wisdom Blog? Pretentious bunch of hippies, aintcha...

He'd better hope holisitc medicine pays *really* well...

Giambi was a pretty obvious case, IMO. Just look at the skinny-armed, slender lad he was on his rookie card, and then compare that to the monster he was during his last season or two in Oakland. He bulked up an absurd degree in a fairly short amount of time.

Damnit. I guess I missed them in my haste to get it posted, since it was already late. I'll fix that. Because I think the Packers are better *right now*, which is what the power rankings reflect. By the end of the season, I expect Minnesota to be the better team, and to win the division. I realize I'm banking on them not to do their annual December choke-job, which might be foolish on my part, but we'll see.

My latest masterpiece It has stuff about Jeff George, Ty Willingham, Champ Bailey being overrated, and more, plus the usual.

Not only is it good the second time around, it's good the third and fourth times around, too. Both movies are, because they're good stories that get you invested in the characters.

Yessir.

^ That's it right there. With the ubiquity of news coverage, these people's names flash by our ears all the time. Factor in other web sites and blogs, and you're seeing the names on a daily basis if you follow current events. We don't know these people (most of us don't, at least), but we feel like we do since we see them on the news so often, and hear so many things they say. Their departures, while common in the second term of an administration, seem more jarring because we've become so used to them.

Poor Todd Heap. Without his injury, he'd have some good numbers, too. Fucking Joey Porter and his cheapshot... I hope that asshole breaks his leg in the last regular-season game.

Ravens: -- Shore up the offensive line. We learned this year that Jonathan Ogden is mortal. Orlando Brown is immature. Edwin Mulitalo is solid, but the C and RG positions could be upgraded. The unit run-blocks better than they pass-block, and they'll need to work on the latter. -- Draft a receiver. I'd love to see the Ravens trade up and nab Mike Williams, but I don't see it happening. There are some good tall receivers available in the first and second rounds on every draft board, though, and at least one needs to come to Baltimore. -- Draft a kicker. I like Stover, but he's not getting any younger, and 50 yards is about all he's good for on a FG anymore. His kickoffs are unspectacular, and Wade Richey, on the roster because of kickoffs, is hardly any better. The team needs to find some strong-legged fellow with good accuracy to handle kickoffs and long field goals, and move into the starting gig when Stover retires.

Awesome. Rivalry stories like this are almost always great.

I wonder if Blu Ray will find a niche market that lasts for years, like Betamax did.

Cleveland can go get bent. They got mollycoddled by the NFL and were handed a team within three years. Baltimore got shat upon by the NFL every step of the way after Rozelle was gone, even being told to use their stadium money to "build a museum." If people in Cleveland are bitter, fuck them. I was in Cleveland a few weeks ago and wore my Ravens jacket everywhere I went. No one said anything. I guess getting a team back after three short years heals a lot of wounds. I wouldn't know.

I remember a big to-do when it first opened, that the name was just "SkyDome," not "The SkyDome." Obviously, shunning articles is a sign of sophistication in Canada... And isn't $21m really fucking cheap considering how much the bloody place cost to build in the first place?

Irsay was unhappy with Memorial Stadium and wanted a new facility. The team had been losing for several years now, and had lost some more luster every year ever since Irsay and Carroll Rosenbloom essentially traded franchises, with Rosenbloom ending up with the Rams. Anyway, Irsay was making noise about wanting a new stadium deal or finding another city who would give him one. Indianapolis started courting him pretty heavily, and he started making more noise, this time about moving there. The new stadium deal was hung up in the state legislature, so Maryland tried to invoke eminent domain to force the Colts to stay. Under cover of night, Irsay had Mayflower moving vans go to the team's facilities in Owings Mills, MD and move the franchise to Indianapolis. I can still vividly remember the video footage of it: it was a snowy, windy night, and a local reporter was covered up against the elements while reporting on what he hoped was not actually happening. Baltimore, which supported its team even in their sorrier seasons, had its team stripped in the middle of the night with no warning it was going to happen. The Colts had a long and proud tradition in Baltimore. Johnny U. Artie Donovan. Gino Marchetti. Not only were they Hall of Famers, but they stayed in the area that had embraced them and opened businesses. That tradition was destroyed when the vans packed everything up for Indianapolis, even though the NFL considers the two franchises the same team. The famous Baltimore Colts wanted NOTHING to do with the team after it moved, and Johnny Unitas in particular said he didn't set any records in Indianapolis. Mayflower Moving couldn't get a gig in Baltimore for years after the fact. Robery Irsay, justifiably, became the object of much hate and scorn. Even today, you can still see a few "Nuke Irsay" bumper stickers on older cars in Baltimore. Memorial Stadium, called "the world's largest outdoor insane asylum" during the 1960s and 1970s, was empty after baseball season. I went to a lot of Colts games, even though I was only 10 years old when they left town. My grandfather had season tickets and I went to every home game. They usually lost, but we still went every week, braving the elements and the cold metal benches. My mother and an aunt had season tickets also, and my grandfather's best friend was the Colts' beat writer for the Baltimore Sun, so going to games was definitely a family affair. To this day, I despise the Colts and can never bring myself to root for them. I was ecstatic when Robert Irsay died, and I wish the rest of his accursed bloodline would follow him to agonizing and painful demises. I'm as a big a Ravens fan as you'll see, but like most Baltimore football fans of my generation and older, I remember the first team that played here, and I remember the heartbreak when they were stolen away.

A shame you're wasting a fast connection on stains like Insidepulse.com, though.

The McRib is the 0wn. I didn't know it was back or I would have gobbled some down already.

Jeff George's career stats The guy's not a bum. He was a head case, but never a bum.

Yet I banned none of those people. And in fact, I made a post in CE about not wanting to censor people's political beliefs, no matter how strange and fuckheaded they might be. But keep on ascribing the bannings of your martyrs to me if it helps you sleep better at night.

Special triptifan-free edition! Discuss.

What a crock of shit. The MPAA is getting to be as bad as the RIAA. No wonder so many people are pirates.

Even if Annan was not directly involved, he was in charge of the UN while it funnelled billions of dollars to a brutal dictator who routinely butchered his own people. While I'm sure Saddam is not the first of those kind the UN have supported, the glaring misconduct in the Oil For Food program occurred under Annan's watch. That's enough reason to get him out of there. The tape dispenser on my desk could do a better job.