Look for liberal cities to ban them in bars

In a much more grim condemnation of cellular telephones than this, a new study finds that using cell phones over a period of 10 years can double the risk of brain cancer. In fact, the study goes on to claim that the use of cell phones is actually more dangerous than smoking. I'm not really sure what to make of this, so I'll let you read the full story and make up your own mind - the part of your mind that hasn't been ravaged by the heinous rotting pestilence care of AT&T and Sprint.

"Hard Work" Loses All Meaning

Paris Hilton, the slow-witted hotel heiress, earns the Fool's Platinum Quote of the Month for March, with this gem:

"I work very hard and I've built this empire on my own. I think this is an inspiration for a lot of girls out there."

Senility from the Far East

The two-game series that kicked off the '08 MLB season was a little... off. It seemed like the whole thing was a little surreal, and it had nothing to do with the fact that the games started at 4 am local time. We saw a 28-year-old white rookie from Minnesota walking to the plate with 50 Cent in the background yelling "If I can't do it, homey it can't be done..." We had Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz standing back at the plate and admiring long balls that turned out to be outs or doubles. We had guys like Brandon Moss and Mark Ellis hitting the long ball, and guys like Travis Buck and David Ortiz going oh-fer in both games. And then, to cap it off, we had the play-by-play (with some bonus color commentary) by one Gary Thorne. It wasn't bad enough that the guy was calling batters by their wrong name or getting the counts backwards (0 strikes and 2 balls is not an 0 and 2 count). The worst on-air commentary I've heard in a long time happened this morning when old man Thorne apparently confused Jose Canseco with Jason Giambi. Check out the video and full story over at Awful Announcing.

DisappoinTV

So out here in the Mountain Time Zone, the Red Sox - Athletics's Opening Day game began at 4 am. That's just about too late to stay up and too early to wake up. No matter, I thought to myself, I have good ol' DirecTV with my trusty DVR. I can simply record the game and watch it the next morning over Frosted Flakes.

You can understand my confusion when I awoke to find that I had recorded three straight hours of "WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE DELAY - SEARCHING FOR SATELLITE SIGNAL - PLEASE DO NOT CALL AS WE ARE AWARE OF THE PROBLEM". Sure enough, as I fast forwarded from one hour to the next, I discovered that not even one pitch had been recorded. Evidently this was a problem nationwide.

Calm down, I thought to myself. I can avoid the internet, ESPN, and the news this morning until the game is rebroadcast at noon. Then I can just shut off my phone and enjoy the game as if it was live. This sounded like a good idea, so I ran with it. I made sure to keep the TV off, the phone upstairs, and the computer far away from me throughout the morning. And as the minutes slowly crept towards noon, I started getting excited about Opening Day. Sure, DirecTV screwed me, but good ol' ESPN will rebroadcast the game and I'll get to enjoy it all as if nothing ever went wrong! And when noon finally arrived, and I sat down with my noodles to watch baseball - meaningful baseball - for the first time since last October when I was at the World Series, I recoiled in horror at what I saw. While ESPN was going over the starting lineups, I glanced at the little scroll bar along the bottom of the screen, which read "AL: Boston 6, Oakland 5 - Final". These network executives are worse than Jack Cust with an 0-2 count.

It's been a long winter

Ok, time to stop pretending to be mildly interested in hockey and basketball. The Major League Baseball season kicks off in Japan in 12 hours. Ahhhh....

How Not To Defend

Thanks to collegepork.com.

Gimme the... loot?

This is one of the better dumb-crook stories I've read in a while. Two young boys, 12 and 14 years old, attempted to rob a police station in Port St. Lucie, Florida. I'm not sure what they expected to gain from their robbery, but within a minute or two they were surrounded by a half-dozen cops with weapons drawn.

The older kid was on probation. They laughed after they were arrested, saying "We're gonna be famous". 12 and 14 years old, trying to rob a police station. Someone get these kids a decent set of parents.

More Recalcitrance Than Talent

In communist China, everyone is equal! If one person gets an autograph by L.A. Dodgers Pitcher Chan Ho Park, everyone gets one! Because there are 1.3 billion people in China, there is no way to disperse those autographs. Thus, no autographs for anyone!

Seriously - let the guy sign some autographs.

There Goes The Neighborhood

About an hour and a half south of me on I-25 is the lovely town of Florence, CO. Nestled into the foothills in the shadow of Pike's Peak, the small town of Florence is best known for its United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX), known as a "Supermax" prison. The Alcatraz of the Rockies, as it is known, houses some of the most violent and dangerous criminals for whom a regular Maximum Security Prison is just not good enough. Inside the concrete walls of ADX Florence, you'll find your typical most wanted: cop-killers, inmates who have killed other inmates, and terrorists. The inmates are housed in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day in 7' by 12' rooms, in which every piece of furniture, including their bed, is made of poured concrete. Check out where these guys call home.

What I didn't know until just recently was how many well-known criminals live just a 90-minute drive away. The thought went through my brain that, hell, these guys could be in the same softball league as me. I ran with that idea, and tried to figure out just who would be on the softball team and which position would fit them best. If you don't recognize these players or you forget what they're in for, just click on their names for a news story about them. So, without further ado, I present to you the ADX Florence 2008 Summer Softball Team, The Florence Felons:

1) Robert Hanssen - SS - Leading off is the former FBI agent, who went from stealing secrets to stealing bases. And no, the SS doesn't stand for Sovietskikh Sotsialistichieskikh, this time it stands for shortstop.

2) John Walker Lindh - CF - The perfect man to cover all that ground in center is a man who spent years covering the vast mountainous terrain of northern Afghanistan. Lindh is still surprised when opposing fans boo him.

3) Zacarias Moussaoui - 1B - This guy's bat is a weapon of mass destruction, but he is always getting caught up with something right before the game.

4) Eric Rudolph - LF - Batting cleanup, Mr. Rudolph is now hitting bombs, instead of just detonating them.

5) Richard Reid - 3B - Every time he slides, it's cleats up - constantly trying to hurt people with his shoes.

6) Terry Nichols - RF - From crazy right-winger to crazy right fielder, Nichols is involved in the game planning but is always far from the action on the field.

7) Anthony Casso - 2B - Not a great defensive second-baseman, you'd think he'd be able to flip the ball better.

8) Ramzi Yousef - C - From Praise Allah to Base Ballah.

9) Ted Kaczynski - P - "The Professor" is known to write delusional manifestos to opposing hitters before games. He relies on two things; his Harvard education to plan his game-strategy, and his signature pitch, the screwball. He is a bit of a recluse around the locker room, however.

The team is managed by Omar Abdel-Rahman, who never seems to know what's going on in the game. And there you have it.

Oz. of Au for a K

Gold reached $1,000 an ounce today, which is bad news for those of us looking at wedding rings (although platinum is looking nicer and nicer). Precious metals do better (the price increases) with rising inflation (up a full point in January alone). The thing that seems out of whack to me is the rate at which gold has increased. It is up 20% in 2008 so far, and it rose another 32% in 2007. In 2002, gold was $278.20 an ounce. As you can see from the chart above, gold has steadily increased over three-and-a-half times from '02 to today. In other words, if you invested $1000 in gold at it's low point in 2002, you would now have $3,595. That's nothing to laugh at. What other investment could more than triple in less than 6 years?

With oil now up around $110 a barrel, the dollar hitting it's lowest point against the yen in 12 years and a record low against the euro, and the fed rumored to be cutting rates again on March 18, it's time to start seriously worrying about the state of our economy. I'm not sure about you, but my pay raises aren't going up a percentage point a month. Here is my plea to Ben Bernanke: let the economy go through it's natural cycles. Stop with the sudden rate adjustments. The housing bubble burst, there is a "credit crunch", we can deal with it. What we do not need is an incompetent Federal Reserve adding to inflation to somehow steer us away from a natural recession. Let the recession hit. Recession is better than stagflation, Bernanke, and it's better than depression. President Bush, what impact with your $600-per-family tax rebate drop of water have on the vast ocean of our multi-trillion dollar economy? Seriously - let people control their own finances, let people take responsibility for bad decisions, prosecute lenders who break laws, but otherwise leave the economy alone. It will right itself. If you really want to help, Mr. President, take those $600 checks, combine them, and create a lucrative salary package to coax Alan Greenspan out of retirement.

Client 9

On Wednesday, Eliot Spitzer's inflatable human-suit announced that it will be resigning as governor of the state of New York.

The people of New York are left wondering how an upstanding politician such as "Spitz" even comes in contact with high-priced prostitution rings.

To the right of Mr. Spitzer's man-suit stands the lovely Silda Wall Spitzer, two-and-a-half diamond quality. Eli, why go out for filet mignon when you have petit filet at home? Silda looks weary in this pic, but check out New York's first lady here - come on, Spitz... At least Larry Craig had his excuse.

Typo Eradication Advancement League

Check out the website of the month, TEAL. These guys are driving around the country documenting typos on signs, menus, posters, etc. The reason this site is funny is because they're actually fixing the typos with their correction kits of white-out, sharpies, and colored markers. Then, they take pictures of the fixed typographical errors and post it to their blog. Funny stuff here. Even NPR thinks so.

The Mosh Pit was Lame

Abby and I went to see Billy Joel last week for her birthday. Aside from that "Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack" song and the a cappella, Longest Time, I didn't know any Billy Joel songs at all. Ok, I knew We Didn't Start the Fire too, because when we were in grade school we used to sing "I didn't fart, you liar. It was just a breeze I didn't squeeze the cheese." But aside from those, I had no idea what we were in for. I had lumped the Piano Man in with Elton John and Jimmy Buffett (yeah - quite a range) as kitschy pop rock that fell somewhere between "We appreciate your patience, please continue to hold..." muzak and typical top-40 hits a la 1983. I went into the show prepared for three hours of boredom, and I ended up being dead wrong.

You can't underestimate the old boozebag. He's been around for decades for a reason. Billy Joel plays the hell out of the piano - and the guy is a hell of a songwriter. I can say without embellishment that I've never heard anyone grind on keys in person like he did. They started the show with the sick, rhythmic piano-intro to Angry Young Man (check it out live here), and then went on to My Life, which I'm sure everyone knows. I was surprised that I recognized almost half of the songs, like Piano Man, Tell Her About It, Uptown Girl, and Only The Good Die Young, not to mention the song I could have sworn was from The Lion King, River of Dreams (In the Middle of the Night). The guy is a prolific songwriter to be sure.

This show marked the first time I've watched an entire performance while sitting in my seat. It also marks the first time I've been embarrassed to admit I had a great time. Billy Joel. I never thought that things would go this far. By the way, if anyone can find the link to the Saturday Night Live skit where Horatio Sanz plays Billy Joel driving his daughter home shitfaced, please let me know.