MLB: The May Report

1) While I have developed a more well-rounded view of the MLB through living a 20 minute walk from Wrigley Field, as well as the importance of our fantasy league, baseball still begins with the Red Sox. With the loss of Coco Crisp to injury, the offense is looking mediocre at best, especially against left-handers where Nixon sits, leaving a bottom four of Lowell-Wily Mo-Willie Harris-Adrian Gonzalez. Crisp’s injury has affected us in the field, where we are now starting Wily Mo full time in center, (after supposedly determining in the first week that he couldn’t play right.) Now that is some terrible outfield defense! Luckily Ortizzle and Manny (.449 OBP) have been keeping us afloat as usual.

2) Our pitching staff was predicated on a “Schilling-Beckett pray for rain,” attitude through the first three weeks of the season, which worked to a T. Then Beckett hit a bump in the road in his last two starts, and is now sporting a 4.86 ERA. Worse, his peripherals suck: 16BB/23K and 6 HRs. Beckett is young, throws hard with a nasty curve, and once pitched well for a week against the Yankees in the World Series. And he is white. But he isn’t a great pitcher. He LOOKS like a great pitcher, but he isn’t. Meanwhile Pedro Martinez continues to destroy for the Mets despite the fact he throws in the high 80s, and looks like his arm could fall off at any second. What’s that you say? The NL is easier to pitch in than the AL? True, but there are ways of adjusting for that (ERA+) which still show Pedro as the vastly superior pitcher. And yes, we would have to pay Pedro much more than Beckett, but we also picked up Lowell’s 9 mil a year deal as part of the price of getting Beckett, while giving up Hanley Ramirez (who would be starting at short for us,) and Anibal Sanchez. I recognize we won’t be able to accurately judge the loss of Pedro until 2008, but it ain’t looking good so far. Also, did you know that even in Pedro’s “fragile,” years (02-present,) he has pitched in more innings each year than Beckett has in any year in his career? And did you know that no pitcher threw more innings (including postseason,) than Pedro the last two years? And that Schilling is a 40 year old evangelical conservative biatch?

3) Ok I’ve got to stop ranting about former Red Sox pitchers. So let’s talk about Roger Clemens. First of all, this needs to stop. Sean McAdam, who I generally dislike, echoed my sentiments in his column discussing about how Roger pimps the limelight with regards to his retirement. For McAdam, it’s gotten old. For McMarmar, it got old in about 1993. Best case scenario: Clemens rejoins the Yankees, sucks for two months, gets in a brawl with Randy Johnson, and is busted for running a child porn ring involving Yankees ballboys and Steinbrenner’s nieces and nephews based out of the site of the new Freedom Tower. Worst case scenario: Clemens signs with the Red Sox and idiot Boston fans welcome him back. If this happens, I will handle it accordingly, by refusing to acknowledge Clemens’ presence on the team through ignoring any game in which he drags his fat apostate ass to the hill.

4) One last note on former Red Sox: I would have stood and applauded Johnny Damon on his return to Fenway. However, that is a one time deal. With his hair and beard gone, wearing pinstripes, he represents a different person than the lovable Johnny Jesus who once patrolled our center field. The only similarity to Jesus that remains is that they are both oh so hateable.

5) I’ve been to a few Cubs games so far this year (three to be exact,) and am going to my first White Sox game yesterday. Wrigley is a great place to watch the game, it shares the same old school feel as Fenway, the sense that people were doing the same thing in the 1920s, with more comfortable seats and fewer poles in the way. I am a big fan of the “Take me Out to the Ball Game,” tradition, as well as the ridiculous amount of cute girls in Cubs gear. Everyone there is having a good time, watching their beloved Cubbies win or lose. Right on!

6) Which is a good thing, because the Cubbies will be doing plenty of losing this year. If not for the revival of Greg Maddux, the Cubs would be challenging for last place. Ok that’s not true, because the Pirates are terrible. But in a difficult, with an unlucky injury to D-Lee (who is their offense,) the Cubs are relying on the return of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior to keep them afloat. Relying on perpetually injured pitchers to carry is frustrating, but I trust the Cubs fanbase to keep their heads up, or at least to be too distracted by beer and those cute girls to care.

7) I also like “The Cell,” as it’s called, although I think I am unable to accurately judge baseball stadiums built after 1920 since I am stunned that 1) I can fit in the seats and 2) none of the seats are obstructed by large poles. The White Sox thus far look pretty dangerous, and as good a pick as any to win the World Series in 06.

8) And finally, I would like to report that I am still in first place in our fantasy keeper league. It’s not bad enough that I am the best looking member of the blog, I am also beating Dave at his own game. How will he respond? Only time will tell.

Poop Score

How many times has this happened to you?

You: I just dropped a monster dump.

Your friend: Not as monster as the one I dropped this morning.
You: No way, my shit was sick.
Your friend: You don't understand, I dropped a bomb.
You: We've both already flushed. There's no way we'll ever know.
Your friend: ARGH!!!

Well good news ladies and gentleman: I have a solution.

Poop Score

Finally, a way to score the quality of a poop. I have been working with a local think tank to come up with a system of points that can used to help quantify a poop. It's not perfect, but it's the best we've got right now. Feel free to send in comments and suggestions.
Research seems to dictate that there are three main aspects of a poop: Size, length and style. It would be unfair to let any one aspect overshadow another, so a score will be divided up into three sections as such:

Size:Length:Style

The size score will simply be a metric measurement (grams per cubic centimeter) of the density of the poop. We realize that not everybody has a waterproof scale near their toilet, so we believe the best way to maintain accuracy is to score in ranges.

1 g/cm3 to 10 g/cm3 = range 1

11 g/cm3 to 20 g/cm3 = range 2

21 g/cm3 to 30 g/cm3 = range 3

And so forth. We decided that anything less than 1 g/cm3 should not be considered a poop, but rather a hershey squirt.

The length score will also be a metric measurment (centimeters) from one end of the poop to the other. We considered measuring the longest intact section of the poop, but decided that little sheep pooplets deserve to be considered along with everybody else's poop. The same ranges as above will be used. If there is any question as to which range your poop may fall in, round down.

1 cm to 10 cm = range 1

11 cm to 20 cm = range 2

If you manage to produce a poop that is less than 1 cm long but greater than 1 g/cm3 in density, then you, my good man, have created the elusive 'Pancake' poop and will be awarded a medal.

The style score is a little bit trickier. We can't award points for every stylistic aspect of a poop so we feel that a somewhat subjective 1.0 - 10.0 range is best. Like gymnastics. The following characterstics shall be judged by the style score:

Smoothness

Staining the toilet

Smell (Potency/Duration)

Variablity of color (Less variablity is good)

Sounds

There you have it. As stated before, please send in comments, suggestions and even some of your own poop scores! We hope that this sytem can used to help foster competition and encourage people to strive for the best.

Chinese Restaraunt Review: Eat First

I have decided to start a regular feature in which we will rate Chinese Food restaraunts that we eat at. The rating system will consist of a 'Hunan Manor Rating' and a 'Hon's Wok Rating'. The Hunan Manor Rating will rate the overall excellence of the dining experience and the Hon's Wok Rating will rate the value and service. Both will grade on scales of letters. The amount of the word 'Hunan Manor' or 'Hon's Wok' that is spelled out will correspond to the rating. a rating of "H" will be the worst and "Hunan Manor" or "Hon's Wok" are the best. Without further ado, I give you the inaugural review:

Eat First Restaraunt, Washington D.C.

We went here right after attending the Chinese New Year Festival and were very hungry. The restaraunt was not very big but the line was long. There didn't seem to be a lot of waiters either.

Appetizers: I ordered Shanghai Rolls and they were decent. The hot mustard was hot, the duck sauce was fine and the chili sauce was good. And they were pretty inexpensive, probably since they weren't very big. Each spring role was about the size of 3 big toes.

Meal: Egg Foo Young. It was good. The gravy wasn't as thick as I might like it but it was definitely better than average. I also tasted a few bites of Orange Chicken. This was also good. Some restaraunt's Orange Chicken doesn't taste as 'organgey' as other places. This place defintely was on the 'orangey' side.

This was a decent meal. A little pricey but the food was good. It's nice to try new places. But after all that has been said, I will probably never eat here again.

Ratings: "Huna" & "Hon"

Friends 4 Ever

Read this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4152447.stm

It is about a lonely, lost hippo who was found by wildlife rangers in Kenya. He was placed in an enclosure at a wildlife sanctuary in the coastal city of Mombasa and befriended a male tortoise. The pair have become "inseperable" and the tortoise "...behaves like a mother to it".

Here are my thoughts:

1) This sounds like some weak ass Disney movie. I assume eventually some evil guy is gonna kidnap the tortoise to eat it or something and the hippo is going to to have to round up a rag tag bunch of other wildlife sanctuary animals to rescue him. Perhaps the smooth talking cheetah. The old, wise orangutang. The comic relief hyena. I also now realize that I am gonna have to stop saying "This is SO fake" under my breath to all my friends whenever I go to Disney movies from now on.

2) That is quite possibly the most boring mother to have. A 100 year old Tortoise. I'm starting to think that hippo would have befriended a big rock.

3) Look at the picture. The tortoise looks like he has no idea what's going on. Like that old lady in "Batteries not Included" who thought that guy was her son when he actually wasn't; he was just trying to get them out of the house or something so that the construction company could tear it down. I hope the park rangers are keeping watch on this hippo. Or the Tortoise might wake up one morning, penniless.

4) Remember that game 'Hungry, Hungry Hippos'? Was there any strategy to that game? I feel like everybody just hit the button as fast as they could. That is the worst game of all time. Now that I think about it, do they even make board games anymore? I know they still make Monopoly and Jenga and shit, but do they still make those crappy ones? Like I had one where you were supposed to be some Indiana Jones type guy and you had to make it to the top of some mountain or something. And the big gimmick was that there was this big boulder that could come crashing down on you and blow you away. Except it was more like something slightly lighter and less aerodynamic than a ping pong ball that would roll into your plastic adventurer and he might fall over. That game was terrible.

Welcome

This is the first post. Hopefully we will continue to post. Hopefully we will gain more writers. Feel free to criticize. Feel especially free to offer up suggestions for future posts.