The Man in Blak

And it should go without saying that the team is in absolute dire straits next year, as the free agent market looks to take a nasty upturn in salaries, thanks to compensation picks going bye-bye and teams finally getting their grubby hands on substantial revenue sharing dollars. Ted Lilly probably stands a chance at getting a Loaiza-esque 3/24 deal this year, and the Cardinals have way too many holes to fill and not enough cash to drop $8 million per slot.

The Cardinals have holes everywhere and they're more than capable of letting the Astros take the Central crown, even this late in the season. There's barely even a team to take the field outside of Pujols, Rolen and (every fifth day) Carpenter. The bullpen, in particular, has been an abomination this year and that's before walking into Houston and blowing three straight games in the ninth. If Chris Duncan and Scott Spiezio don't play over their heads all year long in valuable reservist roles, the Cardinals are probably six games below .500 right now. Here's the VORP hitters' rankings of the Cardinals this year: 79.6 - Albert Pujols 37.4 - Scott Rolen 24.9 - Chris Duncan 21.6 - Jim Edmonds 11.7 - Scott Spiezio 9.6 - Juan Encarnacion 9.3 - John Rodriguez 8.8 - Hector Luna 8.1 - David Eckstein 7.8 - Mark Mulder 5.0 - Aaron Miles -3.0 - Ronnie Belliard -17.6 - Yadier Molina I don't even have the heart to post the pitching numbers. Easily the most infuriating Cardinals team to watch over the last ten years, and that's including the 2003 Hit Parade of Esteban Yan, Jeff Fassero, and Pedro Borbon Jr.

Because he was willing to pay the bills?

Ah, I caught the comment about not liking fighters, but read right over the shooters part, for whatever reason. Well, in that case, I probably wouldn't recommend TMB and ZotE.

Crucifixio Jones would laugh his ass off if he knew that such a hysterically low-rent version of himself was running around these parts.

Since you said you were looking for RPGs, I'd recommend the Shin Megami Tensei games on the system (Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga). They mix turn-based random encounters with pokemon-esque devil collecting in a modern setting and it's so offbeat from your typical RPG that I think you might enjoy it. Don't listen to Andrew about Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. And don't listen to Bobby Peru about picking up the whole R&C series - Deadlocked is mediocre, at best. Do listen to Andrew about ZotE: The 2nd Runner, though, which is one of the most criminally underrated games to come out in a long while. Finally, I also didn't see Twisted Metal Black mentioned anywhere, so I would recommend it to you as well, just for some mindless fun.

Just for the sake of reference, does anybody recall what the distribution percentages were for the Xbox360 when it launched? Maybe I'm overreacting, but my initial thought, upon seeing that they're only bringing in 20% of the "cheap" model for the US distribution, is that Sony has completely lost their mind. Not that this is news, considering how they've acted leading up to this release, but good lord.

I retract any defense I may have made for Mike and Mike in one of the half-dozen OAO ESPN Sucks threads around here. What a fucking idiotic comment.

If the tracks from Larks' Tongue in Aspic were even half as good of their live versions between The Night Watch and USA, I wouldn't even flinch before picking LTiA over Red. As it stands, though, Red is the much tighter studio album.

"The product of the first twenty years of the internet."

Just because it isn't "A Day In The Life" doesn't mean that it's one of the dumbest songs of all time. This isn't a binary outcome - there's an awful lot of gray area where perfectly decent (but, admittedly, overplayed and overwrought) songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" can reside. So, there's no overarching storyline throughout the narrative of the song. The song isn't necessarily stupid as a result - "I Am The Walrus" and "Paranoid Android" aren't exactly re-writes of Homer's Odyssey, but they contain more than a few memorable moments on their own, just as a result of some witty turns of phrase.

I know that it's so chic nowadays to tear down Nirvana and I won't argue with anybody who wants to say that it's probably the most overrated track from Nevermind...but to suggest that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is on the same level of idiocy as "My Humps", "Peaches", or any one of Toby Keith's recent offerings is motherfucking asinine.

Maybe I need to see it from a different angle. From the three-quarters view of the baseline to the plate, it looks like a tie at worst, but that angle may also give the impression that Byrnes had more of a lead than he may have had in reality.

Yeah, like em. Surprised the art-rock crowd didn't take to them more. Clinic's got a new album, Visitations, due in October, I believe. You probably haven't heard of them because, save for two erratic albums, they haven't really done anything noteworthy since they made their big splash with Internal Wrangler.

You think he might have been a little ticked off that Ortiz did his best Joe Carter impersonation running around the bases? He just destroyed that ball.

To be fair, Al, I'm pretty sure most people identify you as the sports folder moderator, which is one of the better and most civil boards on the forum, so that's probably why you aren't receiving a lot of feedback regarding issues that are occurring outside of your perceived jurisdiction.

Hey, only five of the nine runs were earned. That's nothing compared to my double-barreled Mets ERA bomb of doom of picking up El Duque (11 ERs in 4 IP) and John Maine (7 ER in 5 IP) for spot starts over the last few weeks.

WHOIS. Nice.

Even the posters that didn't exist had something to add back in those days.

I think the reaction to the opening chapter with Roxas is very closely tied to whether you played through Chain of Memories or not. If you went straight from KH1 to KH2, then you were probably a little less patient with the beginning of the game.

Well, there already is kind of a split, if you consider the BTF/BPro "feud" to have any legs. With a few exceptions (MGL comes to mind), most of the posters at Baseball Think Factory tend to be very reasonable about statistics and mixing that information with scouting and other anecdotal evidence.

A quote from Hardcore Discussion: You seen it. You know you've thought it. And you had to know that it was coming. Again. I think that the mods at TSM should consider closing Hardcore Discussion. Yeah, I see the irony. I realize that waaaaaaaaaay back in the day, I was one of the people championing the return of the flaming folder. Of course, back when we were pushing for it, we were doing it on the assumption that A) Anything and everything would be allowed B) People posting there would be witty as well as funny But I think it's plain to see that neither of those have come to fruition...nor are they going to arise anytime soon. No Holds Barred/Hardcore Discussion will never be what the Flaming Folder was at the Smarksboard. We know that now. The fact that so many rules have been placed upon the folder says that even you, the mods of TSM, know this now. Even when there's been choice flame wars or occasional glimpses of hilarity, a loud section of TSM has been clamoring for NHB to be closed just because of the sheer stupidity of it all. The flaming folder could have been a fun, "uncensored" part of the community. Now it's just a jizz-encrusted wasteland of UGS "feuds" and loveletters from PBPs. It's a glorified troll playground, where half of the threads are spent complaining about how Hardcore Discussion sucks in the first place. Yes, I know the common defense is that "if you don't like it, then don't go in there", but the negative effects of NHB reach farther than just irritating the community here. With the board barfing up SQL errors on a weekly basis due to memory errors and network problems, you've got to drop the bomb somewhere and you might as well blow up the forum that causes you the most problems with very little gain. Move the "classic" threads into the classic threads section, if people are really clamoring for it. Many of the random discussions present there would be right at home in General Chat. And, if people feel the need to do all of the crazy shit that they used to do in NHB, they can go somewhere else (like UGS or even WDI, for example). Considering that you're worried about over-crowding (the registration cutoff), the loss of a couple of people - people who add absolutely nothing to the rest of the board - isn't going to hurt any. Hardcore Discussion exists to give posters an excuse to act like morons and drain board resources in the process...and TSM needs neither of those. Just pull the plug and let everybody move on.

When you spell out "please", you trip just a few yards before the finish line. You were so funny up to that point.

Updated For 2006, lolz.