Thursday, January 24, 2013

More Reasons Football Sucks Compared to Baseball

As some of you may know, the few who read my blog, a couple of posts ago I wrote about the inferiority of football compared to baseball. Any thinking person knows this already, but let me reiterate with even more reasons baseball is superior.

First, I'd like to point out how annoying anonymous comments are to me. I'm pretty sure who wrote the five "anonymous" comments, and any reader of my little missives has every right to write an anonymous comment, that's why I allow them. However, the problem is that I have to write another blog entry to answer the aforementioned anonymous comments, especially considering just how wrong those comments are, particularly in this case. The superiority of baseball over football isn't subtle, it's considerable. A new blog entry is necessary to cover the many, many reasons I already won this debate against innumerable football fans. But here we go again, in no particular order, 10 reasons why I'm right. Enjoy!

But first...

Baseball season is just around the corner, and I can't wait. Fenway Park is pure magic, a Boston Cathedral. Did I mention that I...can't...wait. It's that kind of enthusiasm that is behind this little tidbit of information: The Red Sox have sold out every home game since May 15, 2003, the longest streak in MLB history. I know my Red Sox, and I know baseball. I know football, too, because the Patriots are so amazing. That's how I know that baseball is just a better sport. Pitchers and catchers report for Spring training on February 12! The best sport of all is coming soon. Onward to the list.

1. Baseball is not a timed sport. As Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over." You could be down 20 points in the 9th inning with one out left, and come back. They don't, "knee the football" or run out the clock. Overtime in professional football (why do they call it that? Soccer fans have a legitimate complaint) is a joke. A coin flip? Really. What a joke.

2. Cheerleaders are annoying and indicate just how boring football can be. You need distractions. Baseball has plenty of fabulous looking women in the stands.

3. The All-Star game. Baseball's mid-season masterpiece of excellence is wonderful. What does football have? The Pro-Bowl? Give me a break.

4. The NFL discards players like used condoms after they retire, and lets them deal with concussions that lead to misery and suicide. The MLB Player's Association is a great union that treats players with respect. Thank Kurt Flood for that, an amazing human being.

5. Pitching and hitting are two of the greatest skills in all sports. Sixty feet, six inches...the perfect distance to create incredible difficulty and a strategic masterpiece that transcends anything in, "football."

6. A good catcher is harder to find that a good quarterback. Another amazing talent that most non-fans do not appreciate or understand.

7. This is a big one for me. In baseball, they have open try-outs. If I can pitch or hit or catch, I can go show what I have to a baseball scout. That's it. In football, you go from college to the NFL, even though most NFL players have rocks in their heads (that sweet football scholarship). If you can play, baseball will take you. No bullshit college lie, or draft, or any of that crap.

8. Every baseball park is unique. The angles and distances are the same, but the outfield challenges vary (Green Monster at Fenway, Ivy at Wrigley Field, etc.). It makes the games more interesting.

9. The National League (and American League if they are playing in a NL park) forces the pitchers to bat, no designated hitter. The strategic decisions that come from this fact alone indicates baseball's superiority.

10. Footballs is all rules, little strategy. Baseball has simpler rules, more strategy. Just the way it should be.

Now Some Quotes:

"Baseball is like a church. Many attend and few understand." Leo Durocher

"Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical." - Yogi Berra


"Baseball is now, and always will be, the greatest game in the world." Babe Ruth


"There is no written rule, but it is part of baseball's rich common law that batters shall not glance back to see where the catcher is setting up because that reveals the intended pitch location. A catcher may give a peeking batter a polite warning. If the batter is a recidivist, the catcher then may set up outside but call for a pitch inside. When the batter leans out toward where he thinks the pitch is going, his ribs receive a lesson about respecting the common law. Sport is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things--courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship. Sport should be the triumph of character, openly tested, not of technology, surreptitiously employed." Source: Say it ain't so (Townhall.com, 02/08/2001)


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Monday, January 14, 2013

The Adoption Industry, Coercion and Lies

How Adoption Brokers See Children
Mothers are losing their children all of the time to the adoption industry, the "Adoption Brokers."

No exiled mother willingly surrendered her children to adoption.  They didn't "give their child away."  Exiled mother's babies are not gifts.  Exiled mother's babies are not unwanted.

Mothers are exiled from their babies not because they were proven unfit, but because they are vulnerable (young, unwed, sick or poor). Exiled mothers are lied to by social workers, adopters, adoption agencies and even the church in order for adopters to obtain their babies.

Mothers don't have a choice when surrendering their babies. They are coerced or outright forced into surrendering their babies for adoption.

Exiled mothers are women who wanted to keep their babies, but because of factors such as being unwed, poor, or sick, their babies were taken by force, coercion and lies.

Some mothers are still drugged when they are forced to sign the papers relinquishing their parental rights.  Others are told that they will never see their child again unless they sign the papers to surrender their child for adoption.  Others were told they would not be allowed to see their babies unless they signed the papers.  Still others, never signed but the mother's parents signed away their children.

All mothers are never told the truth about the consequences of adoption to them or their babies.  Instead, they were deliberately lied to. A cold manipulation.

Children are taken from their mothers so that the adoption industry can make money by playing the role of savior to infertile couples by selling the "ultimate gift" to them at the mother's expense.  Then the adoption industry comes out "smelling like a rose" for solving the welfare and moral problems of society.  It really all comes down to money.... keeping the mothers off welfare and making money for the adoption brokers.

The adoption industry tells mothers that they will forget.  Mothers are told to "get over it."  They are told "put it behind you."  Mothers are told to "get on with their lives."  The children are told that "their mother gave them away."

Exiled mothers never forget.  They never stop loving their babies.  They never stop missing their babies.

Exiled mother: A natural mother who has lost her child to adoption solely because of her age and/or lack of support, information or resources. An unrecognized mother, she has been thrown away, banished and discarded by her parents, the adoption industry and society, who deemed her unworthy to raise her own child.

This comes from a blog about the lie of, "open adoption" and can be found here.


15 Reasons Why Football Sucks Compared to Baseball

As we enjoy (some of us) the football season, and with the Super Bowl soon to come and dominate every bit of news for several days, it's important to remember that football is not a great sport. Compared to baseball, it kind of sucks. This will upset some people, but I have a strong case. Here it is, enjoy.
1. Any timed sport is inferior to a sport that isn't timed. You can't "knee the ball" to kill time in baseball. So long as there is one out left, the losing team can make a comeback.
Most of what they do in Football
2. Baseball has simple rules, but is infinitely complex, like chess. Football has more rules and regulations than the DMV, and is not complex...a flag is thrown on every play. It's annoying.
3. Football fans tailgate before the big game. No baseball fan would have a picnic in a parking lot.
4. "The rich history of the game is unmatched. The same 8 teams that made up the National League in 1876 and American League in 1900 still exist today, most in the same city. Baseball embraces it's past, football forgets it as it happens." - A. Ruck
5. Over 162 games, you can be confident the cream rises to the top and the best teams in baseball reach the playoffs. Can you honestly feel confident that is the case after a 16 game schedule?
6. You mever hear "We shouldve won that game!" or "We got screwed!" in baseball. You constantly hear it in football, because so often a team can out-perform another and still lose in football, aided by flukey, countless, boring penalties & turnovers.
Just a silly thing to do
7. The actually flip a coin to determine who gets the ball in OT. That's ridiculous.
8. No cheerleaders in baseball. They are annoying and completely pointless. Baseball does not need sex to sell it's game, nor a designated group of people to help us cheer.
9. Ted Williams
10. How many football players would you recognize walking down the street, excluding QB's. We see baseball players faces regularly and know them like neighbors. - E. Ruck
11. Baseball players have better character. They're more courteous towards fans, less jerky, they don't get into dog-fighting.
Fenway Park
12. Baseball stadiums are beautiful unique baseball cathedrals. The rooftops and Ivy of Wrigley field, the Green Monster at Fenway, the bay just a few feet from the field in San Francisco. The list goes on - Football stadiums are generally boring and have nothing unique like this.

13. Football teams have always exposed loopholes in the game, which the NFL invents yet another rule to combat, further contributing to the ever-changing nature of football. Baseball remains virtually unchanged since the 1800's.
14. Football fields are all the same gridiron…boring! Each baseball field is within a reasonable guidance, but unique.
15. Baseball is internationally loved and the national sport of at least a dozen nations. Truly nobody cares about Football outside of the US.

The Worst Weather on Earth, Right Here in New England



Looking Northwest atop the Research Observatory
A surprising fact about my beloved New England is that, in New Hampshire, atop Mt. Washington, is a place considered to have the worst weather in the world. In the world. While the height of the mountain is a mere 6,288 feet (second tallest mountain in the eastern US, with Mount Mitchell in North Carolina beating it by 175 feet). But it's not always about size, you know. A unique confluence of odd meteorological placement combines to create a very strange place, indeed. The highest wind speed ever recorded on Earth was clocked here, in 1934, at an almost unbelievable 231 m.p.h. (a hurricane qualifies as a Category 5, the most severe, at a mere 156 m.p.h.). 


Observatory in Springtime
Mount Washington's horrific weather is pretty much an accident of geography. It just so happens that if you plot the tracks of storms as they move across the U.S. from west to east, they all converge, thanks to prevailing winds, on northern New England. The White Mountains, meanwhile, focus things further, turning already bad weather to flat-out hellish. The range stretches from southwest to northeast, pretty much at a right angle to winds sweeping down from Canada. As they run into the solid wall of peaks, the winds stream up and over the top, accelerating all the while.

That direction of flow also compresses the winds between the mountains and whatever air masses lie above, squeezing them like a stream of water rocketing through a narrow nozzle. And just for a little extra oomph, two spurs of the range angle off in just the right configuration to funnel everything right at Mount Washington itself. A calm day up here is almost unheard of.



The temperature last week was -16°, and the winds were at about 60 m.p.h., gusting to nearly 90. Temperature wise, it gets worse. Mount Washington's record low of -60 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded on January 5, 1885. More recently, on January 16, 2004, the summit weather observation tower registered a temperature of -43.6 degrees, with sustained winds of 88 mph, resulting in a wind chill of -103 degrees. During a three day stretch between January 13 and January 16, 2004, the wind chill never went above -55 degrees.
Snowstorms have been recorded in every month of the year. Snowfall averages 311 inches per year, and a temperature above 72 degrees has never been recorded at the summit. Ever.
In Summer, ascending can be done via the Cog Railroad
Not that Mt. Washington doesn't have appealing features, like the Cog Railroad and Mt. Washington Hotel (which reminds one of The Overlook Hotel in The Shining). It is quite beautiful, however, and located far from the inhospitable summit.

If you're of a mind to visit this profoundly interesting place (I'd stick to the hotel, not the observatory at the summit), here's a lovely map. Cheers!


That's it.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Of Bulldogs and Man Boobs

Nancy and I approach Massachusetts General Hospital, the Eye & Ear Infirmary, the luxurious Liberty Hotel, and Charles Street as our Red Line "T" subway car galumphs along the center of the Longfellow Bridge, which spans the Charles River. The Charles is half frozen over with very thin ice. A rare sight that speaks to the cold weather we've been having. A computerized voice over the PA system, not unlike the Hal 9000 from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, informs us that we were approaching Massachusetts General Hospital. We knew that because Nancy and I spend a great deal of time at MGH. It is something of a second home for us. While it is unfortunate that we are qualmish and quite delicate regarding our health, we're lucky to live a mere 10 minutes away (via the"T") from the best hospital in the country. And there is a dandy of a view of Cambridge and Boston as we cross the bridge.
We enter the Charles Street/MGH "T" Station and fight the exiting crowd along the platform, down the stairs, past the turnstiles, and out the door. It's a large station with a lot of people, and that makes us nervous. Outside, Nancy clearly considers smoking a cigarette before crossing over to the Wang Building, but decides against it. My pipe is in my pocket, and I'm tempted myself, but being within 100 meters of the hospital and 10 meters from the "T" station makes smoking a very dangerous enterprise. We both decide against smoking without saying a word to each other, and fight the traffic across Charles Street. In the distance, a street musician is attempting to sing Edith Piaf's signature song, La Vie En Rose. While I appreciate the effort, it annoys the Hell out of Nancy. She is unforgiving of street musicians, and is certainly not a fan of Edith Piaf . To me, it speaks to the artistic vitality of a large city, to a diversity of experiences that make city living superior to living in the woods or suburbs. To Nancy, it's just a person singing poorly and trying to convince a rube to cough up some money. In addition, she simply appreciates the aesthetics of silence, the calming affect of a void of reverberating silence. I understand that, but I still enjoy the amateurish attempt at singing. As we stride past the Liberty Hotel ($250-$900 a night) a man is talking to himself, the screeching of a subway car yowls like a feral cat in the distance, a taxi driver is yelling at a bicyclist, a very tired and spent looking man is selling soft pretzels, a packed double decker tour bus passes slowly by and I wave to help create the illusion that Bostonians welcome the tourists who pour into the city daily, and there are 1,000 other background noises. It is music to my ears, not unlike jazz. No melody, just people playing off of each other and they don't even know it.

Nancy want to slug this guy
An hour later, after a consult with my endocrinologist (which involves a prostate exam, which I do not enjoy), I find out some fantastic news. My thyroid does not need to be removed, despite all of the various and sundry problems it exhibits. As he tells me that I feel like jumping up and dancing like Snoopy.


We talk about my penis, libido, erections, coming, ejaculations, my sex life, and prosthetic testicles. The idea of prosthetic testicles causes me to bust out laughing. Sure, I'd like to have balls and feel normal after losing them to cancer, but it is just not on my mind. And naturally testosterone, and then another bit of great news is dropped in my naked lap (endocrinology exams are rather thorough). The news? I qualify for breast reduction surgery because it is not cosmetic. I have a condition called gynecomastia that developed as a result of a lot of hormone problems. Basically, gynecomastia is something that I should be too embarrassed to talk about, but I'm not because it's a real problem that makes a lot of men miserable. So, to Hell with it. I have man-boobs, and they need to go, as they are not the result of a weight problem but a hormonal problem. Together with the testosterone I'm taking, I could easily end up with breast cancer. With this condition, I'll likely have the surgery before the spring. Today's consultation made me a happy man indeed. A word or two about it here:



That about covers the news of the day. We made it back to Somerville in good time, and Nancy is at a friend's flat, and I'm going to eat some sharp cheddar on a cracker watch The Fugitive, or perhaps Trollhunter.

One last matter that needs to be mentioned. Matt Oresko, a friend of mine, is a huge Atlanta Bulldogs fan (or "Dawg's.") As a friend of his, I decided to share his enthusiasm for his favorite team. Not just a college team, either, his favorite sports team, pro, college, or otherwise. Here you go, Matt...



Just remember, my friend, to get a Red Sox jersey or T-shirt in the spring!





Monday, January 07, 2013

Of Diversity, My Sexy Therapist, and Banjos

The traffic on College Avenue makes it difficult to dart from one sidewalk to the other unhurt, or squashed beyond recognition. A biker annoys me particularly, as she pisses on by me. Davis Square bikers are assholes. The point of my being out of the house at all is to attend my therapy session and stir my mind, loose some thoughts, and address the emotional discord that is making the adventure of living a more arduous undertaking than it needs to be. Like the grounds that inevitably free themselves after poorly made coffee in a French press. The little grounds represent all sorts of issues.Therapy is the time and effort spent to pick those little flakes of coffee out. After all, the flecks could be bugs. Get it? I want that metaphor to be clear, especially since it sucks.



So far, therapy has been efficacious, but I'm milling about outside the door to the clinic, which looks like a large house. My therapist has a good sense of humor, puts me at ease, and is the first therapist ever who is actually helping me. Every so often I imagine kissing her, but that's true of every woman. It made watching the London Olympics awkward...but I would lay one on the Queen, and that's the truth. Truth be told, I imagine my therapist in the buff, but I understand that's common.



People are coming and going into the clinic, which has a large, "GLBTQ Friendly" sticker on the front door. Inside, in the waiting room, are copies of Bay Windows, Boston's gay as all get out newspaper. The reason for all this is to make it very clear to clientele that this particular clinic is not only gay friendly, but friendly to all sorts of minority groups; Malaysian pickle vendors and Native Americans and beet farmers and hoarders and poor people. You know...diversity.



There is a woman coming down the street. At a distance, she looks like a fuzzy ball of womanhood, a stick figure of womanhood, anyway.But as she gets closer and passes the man nearby holding the leash of a shitting dog, the more I admire her cashmere ruffle coat. I'm also waiting to look at he ass when she passes by. Then it hits me like a polo mallet...it's an ex girlfriend. Sadly, she and I did not break up well. My eyes are locked on her, and when she sees me (my black Fedora gives me away, I think), she looks up and sees me and smiles, her eyes get wide and she conveys a modicum of adorable amazement. She speaks and I listen, my eyes widen and I smile. My teeth make me self-conscious...an upper and lower incisor are broken. My anxiety blooms like carrion flower. My affability is wretched and rarely opens, not to mention, it stinks, but it speaks to a change of disposition...I look happy to see her, although I can't imagine why. We hug, our unpleasant break-up, now 14 years old, seem to have been forgotten. She hasn't changed at all, but I have. I've lost some hair and I lost about 250lbs. But I still feel fat.

As I said, she speaks. "Darren, what have you been up to? It's so good to see you!" I balk. I'm stymied. What do I say to that? The last time we spoke, she chalked up our 18 month relationship to us being under the influence of rum and marijuana. At the time, it was an offensive take on our time together. Now, it seems accurate.


Finally, I find some words. "Well I'll be damned, it's good to see you!" Not entirely a lie. The last time I saw her, the very last time, was at a Thanksgiving dinner among Somerville artists the night before they all had to go home for real Thanksgiving dinners. The last thing I did to her was throw a dinner roll at her, playfully. It was fun. Although I wish I had a hard loaf of stale Scali bread to hit her with at the time.

As we spoke about nothing, and I kept catching glimpses of her face and body, I realized that time wasn't as kind to her as I had thought. Not that I could put my finger on it, but time was somehow cruel. It is to all of us. Then I thought of the first time we met. She was 21 and I was 28, and within a few minutes of meeting her, before we knew each other's names, she showed her ass to me. Specifically, she showed me a very red and painful looking tattoo of a butterfly on her right ass cheek. Sure, we were drinking, but it shocked me. It was like, "Hey! Check out my ass tattoo, I just got it!" Then boom, ass in my face. A bit like this,except different tattoo, and less swollen, red, and new.



I have to admit, it's a fine way to meet a woman at a party. All those years ago.

We spoke for 6 and one half minutes. She was taking the banjo when last I saw her, and was still taking it. It occurred to me that she must be a master at that instrument by now. I keep thinking about that banjo, although I don't mention it.

After that, I told her that I had a therapy session I had to get to. She looked a little sad, and that pissed me off a bit, I'm not sure why. What I was sure of is that she walked away finally, waving, and I saw her ass in those tight jeans. I sighed, and felt a little guilty. After that, I kept looking at her ass and almost walked into a very "diverse" client of my clinic who looked like the woman one the covers of, "Confederacy of Dunces."



Ten minutes later, I sat in the office of my therapist. She asks me how I'm doing and I say, "Banjo, I got a banjo on my mind." A banjo. No two banjos are exactly alike.