Wordle, labrador, bygone days

[Update]: Sigh. Manny suspended for PEDs. Commence firestorm.

Today’s clash of AL West titans is set for 12:35, so I guess this can serve as a combination DLD, game thread, and postgame woe-fest orgy of jubilation.

Expert analysis (the kind you just don’t get at those mainstream blogs): Brandon McCarthy gives up lots of home runs. Unfortunately, the A’s do not hit home runs.

If you grow weary of throwing errors and strikeouts and Vince Cotroneo musing about how the team really needs someone to “step up and provide a spark”, go decipher some anagrams.

Wordle:

Labrador:

Labrador update:

Labrador update 2:

Labrador update 3:

Bygone days:

DLD 5/1/09

I’m bad at titles

Free Kraut’s brief lifespan, in graph form:

FK could use a bit more Other Stuff, so that’s what this is.

Plus, I admit I haven’t fully embraced the “Condiment Bar” moniker. While I respect the clever … ah, frak it. Why soft pedal the truth? We’re all adults here. I’ll just say it. I think “Condiment Bar” is lame. That’s right, you heard (read) me: LAME. Too cutesy. Too self-reverential. Too … I don’t know, something. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Linguistic precision is not important right now. My gaze is fixed on a far greater calling: nothing less than a permanent return to the no nonsense austerity of “DLD”.

Look, I know this won’t be easy. I know the mob is set against me. I know my allies are few, and the road ahead is mined with peril. But what is life without principle, and how better to judge the character of a man than in the face of adversity?

Goddamnit, all I’ve got in this world are Jesus, DLD’s, and a team I hope wins ~83 games this year. And you … you’re trying to rip all three from my grasp in a twisted tsunami of clown pornography, condiment bars, and shitty baserunning. Well I have news for you. I won’t have it. I have drawn the proverbial fucking line in the proverbial fucking sand. This. Will. Not. Stand.

Below the fold:

A’s pound Jays 18-2, Holliday shatters single game HR record

It’s Friday, right around quitting time, spring is kinda sorta in the air … I guess what I’m saying is that you all ought to be outside frolicking with friends and lusting after life experience rather than eating Fritos while huddled over your PC typing wry Alex Rios put downs on a blog named after a condiment.

On the other hand, mobile technology being what it is these days, I guess you could do all of the above simultaneously. In which case here is your game thread.

Lineups (barely readable print unintentional):

Outman vs Purcey

BLUE JAYS		A's
Scutaro SS        	Sweeney CF
Hill 2B      		Cabrera SS
Rios RF   		Giambi 1B
Wells CF   		Holliday LF
Lind DH       		Garciaparra DH
Rolen 3B      		Cust RF
Millar 1B  		Suzuki C
Barrett C   		Ellis 2B
Bautista LF 		Crosby 3B

Below the fold: pointless small sample fretting about Toronto’s prodigious offensive output so far in 2009; personal anecdote relating to beards and barista girls; Heidi Klum’s recipe for sauerkraut soup; various non-revelatory items concerning David Purcey; how peeing off an elevated walkway can be dangerous.

DLD 4/7/09: Cahill, lineups, Hilary Duff on the run

1. Cahill tonight! Excited about that, but sad to read this:

Roy Steele, the A’s main public-address announcer since the team arrived in Oakland in 1968, is unlikely to handle PA duties the first month of the season because of poor health.

Roy Steele anchors my baseball memories in the same way Bill King does. The soundtrack of my youth, so to speak. Bill King, Roy Steele, REM, and the endless procession of guidance counselors lecturing me about the tragic gap between my “potential” and my performance. (Maybe this is premature, but I’m going to call it anyway: that D in 8th grade World History did not actually derail my hopes and dreams)

2. Wherein Bob Geren’s alleged affinity for The Book is discussed. Tango posts lots of numbers I did not read. MGL gets huffy. Etc.

3. Another tale of monkeys on the loose, this time in Oregon.

Famed Hillsboro rhesus include ANDi, the first “transgenic” primate, born in 2001 with jellyfish genes inserted into his genetic code

Movie pitch:

So there’s this monkey. Rhesus Macaques. Cute little bugger but we can make it fierce, don’t worry, that’s what CGI is for. It’s in a lab. Cages, guys with glasses and white coats, clipboards, computers. There’ll be a hot young lab assistant – I’m thinking Hilary Duff in a breakout role – and a kindly elder statesman professor-type, Anthony Hopkins maybe. With a beard. Has to have a beard. We’ll have a love interest, obviously, and an evil scientist (Magneto to Hopkins’ Professor X), maybe a slightly less hot but dependable – and wry! – girlfriend for the lab assistant.

So what do we do? We combine the monkey with a jellyfish, that’s what! So now it’s a transgendered monkey. No, wait transgenic. Shit. Sorry! It’s not a bisexual monkey. Not that that’s what transgendered is, but you get what I’m saying. It’s got jellyfish genes, is the point. In any case, the monkey is translucent and kind of glowing and it has these tentacle things sprouting everywhere. Pretty soon they have to put wet sand and water in its cage, and Anthony Hopkins is warning everyone about all the ethical dangers. Violation of nature, stuff like that.

This is where Magneto comes in. He wants to push it further. He won’t take no for an answer. Pretty soon, this monkey has giraffe genes, starfish genes, labradoodle genes, even human genes. Now it’s a wild-eyed jellyfish/giraffe/starfish/labradoodle/human/monkey beast of a thing, all the other lab monkeys are going batshit crazy, screaming, jumping around, but Magneto won’t stop. And now the Pentagon is involved, Professor X is killed in a mysterious lab accident, Hilary Duff is on the run, fleeing special ops forces and Magneto and terrorists – you don’t think al-Qaeda would want to get their hands on a mutant rhesus macaques? – and obviously the monkey itself, which has broken free from the lab and is terrorizing downtown Chicago.

We’re not sure how it ends but that’s why we need an advance – to finish the script. We know the monkey is gonna have human traits, it might even talk at some point, it’ll have emotions but it’s still a killer, maybe King Kong crossed with Deep Blue Sea crossed with Marley and Me crossed with Terminator. Hilary Duff gets captured but escapes, there’s some kind of antidote or serum involved – hey, we could do that scene from Temple of Doom where Indy gets poisoned and there’s chaos in the ballroom and before you know it they’re tumbling down a waterfall in raft and people are getting their hearts ripped out of their chests – anyway, she saves the day and gets the guy and we either kill the monkey – but in a sad, wrenching kind of way – or we un-mutate it, reverse the transgendering, transgenicing, whatever it’s called, and release it into the African wild where it rejoins its natural monkey clan. Maybe Hilary Duff moves to Africa, becomes, shit, what do you call those people? You know what I mean, like Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist, except hotter and blonder and always in a tank top, plus the love interest and the girlfriend move out there with her – they just want to get away from the rat race, right? And maybe Professor X didn’t get killed after all, maybe he was just in a coma but recovered thanks to the healing properties of that anti-transwhatever serum.

There you go. It’s gold. Last shot, camera slowly pans back, and you’ve got Hilary Duff and the love interest and the plain girlfriend all surrounding Professor X on a wooden porch in an African game preserve, everybody is grinning, the sunset is beautiful, the music is swelling, and hey, what’s that? Why it’s the monkey, goddamnit, back to normal, scuttling around gaily, eating apples from Hilary Duff’s hand. Fade to black, do not pass go, collect $300 million.

DLD 4/1/09: alien snuggies and verse from a not-so beautiful mind

1. A Wolff and Dellums powwow is set for mid-April. Marine Layer has yet to weigh in, but I think this quote provides the nuance and insight we’re looking for here is a quote I think usefully describes the conundrum [edited to eschew unbecoming passive-aggressive derision]:

“I’d love to see them stay in the city where they belong,” said Nico Pemantle, who manages a fan Web site called [redacted]. “But I have sympathy for the owners. There’s a lot of passion among A’s fans to keep them in Oakland, but there’s also a lot of empty seats at the Coliseum.”

2. Vegas Watch is running an MLB win totals over/under contest ($500 first prize). The A’s number is 81.5.

If the many pointy-headed (and I mean that in the most admiring and, frankly, jealous sense) denizens of Free Kraut choose to enter, I am certain they will dominate the competition.

3. Apparently Gameday data has made Questec expendable.

4. It is as if Russell Crowe is trying to be insufferable:

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue, walk with kings but not lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;

yours is the earth and everything that’s in it and what’s more, you’ll be a man.

5. This is an April Fools joke:

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper’s archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include “1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!”; “OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more”; and “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

This, alas, just reads like one:

Spider-man III does manage to offer a timely critique of the socio-political world that characterized those times. As the ensuing election proved, Americans were indeed fatigued of their own arrogance and propensity towards global domination. Arguably, these sorts of films helped pave the way by building awareness of the need for, and utility of coalition and dialogue, which are so central to the new administration.

“Arguably”, indeed.

6. Lastly … well, no commentary could possibly measure up to the spectacle. You will just have to click the link.