diaspora

Keep instant replay out except for rare instances like determining if a home run is fair or foul. baseball is all about arguments and it has enough stoppages without replays determining if the tag was there or not. Expand the DH to the National League. ERAs are artificially low in the NL because pitchers get one free out for every 9 batters. Watch as Halladay (best pitcher in the AL) destroys teams in the NL now that he's on the Phillies. A salary cap? yeah, i'd be okay with that. I hate the Yankees. At the same time, isn't there a lot of revenue sharing going on? And while teams can be very successful with lower salaries (Twins) any owner that fields teams with salaries like those of the Marlins should be removed from the team.

I'm in 3 pools. One of them gives you 5 brackets for $20. That's the only one where i'm doing any good.

My final four includes such teams as: Syracuse, MSU, WVU, Duke with MSU vs. Duke in the finals and MSU winning. gotta have at least one bracket where your team wins it all and i got lucky this time.

I disagree. perhaps if it wasn't associated with OSU it would be different, but that song makes me vomit in my mouth.

people keep saying that this final four is a complete fluke...but aren't all 4 teams pre-season top 10? Izzo is the best coach in the country. I'm a homer, but he is definitely up there.

i used to lay in bed at 4 in the morning listening to them pull themselves along the cathedral ceiling. They were in this addition to the back of our master bedroom. It doesn't have access to the rest of the house...but, it was damn obnoxious. I am getting roofers out this summer to redo it all. i'm going to have them check the insulation/see if there is any.

Raccoons...they piss me off. first they'd managed to pry open and get into the roof in our bedroom making all kinds of noise starting at about 3 in the morning. Then they managed to evade capture/kill by the two pest control companies i hired. Now? they chewed a hole through my compost bin and dragged all the veggies and other things in there across the yard. I just screwed a bunch of chicken wire over the hole...let's hope that keeps them out. In other news...i can't wait to get a dog.

I saw this yesterday and asked my brother (lives in Portland) about it. He said he hopes Portland has more to talk about than this. (he tried going through the program, but apparently his downspouts are too close to the property line so he has to do it himself if he wants to disconnect).

This MSU fan hopes to be coming up from Cincy to Indianapolis. That'll be great for the Butler fans and hopefully they get out there and have a great time with it. I sure hope that they go home upset on Saturday night. This is the most flukey tournament i can remember. I have a shot in one bracket because i picked MSU to win it all...that wasn't really a premonition as much as a homer pick.

I get people walking through my street sometimes too...they're afraid that all the old ladies on our street are going to jump them, i think. Hey, i'm with them...old lady stink is something that doesn't come out very easily...and old ladies are like jungle cats...very stealthy and shockingly quick.

I agree...i said that the two were probably the worst in terms of terrible characterizations of nationalities.

it's not the beer...because i like beer just fine...it's the fact that Irish = uncontrollable drunkenness to so many people...and anger and fighting. It's a negative stereotype. dancing leprechauns and lucky charms and all that crap. It'd be like celebrating cinco de mayo by wearing sombreros and acting lazy and crap like that. I think that'd get more negative attention than how St. Patrick's day is celebrated.

Isn't St. Patrick's Day actually a solemn, dignified occasion in Ireland? Seriously. I understand there's not all of the drunken carousing there, like here; and no singing of hokey songs like "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" or "Danny Boy"--(which I like, but it's actually an Irish/American song. The Eva Cassidy version--which, come to think of it, I believe I posted last year--is absolutely beautiful-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=852gverKRPo&hl=en_US&fs=1&) I have never been to Ireland...it's one of my main goals...but i've heard the same thing...maybe not that it's solemn, but that it's a patron saint's feast day and is treated as such...it's a religious holiday. I have also heard that they've been "americaning" it up a bit...parades and some stuff like that. My other pet peeve that stems from St. Patrick's Day...Green beer. Ugh... I do love McDonald's shamrock shakes though...those are awesome.

Watch the Christopher Lee version first, please. Watched UP! last night...that was a great movie. One of my favorites of recent years.

St. Patrick's Day sort of annoys me...such a stereotypical depiction of the Irish. I guess St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo are probably the most insulting of the holidays.

Yeah, i made the point about how easy it was for the general public to play basketball, soccer, football, or baseball compared to hockey earlier. A lot of this almost sounds like people assume the NHL has always been a distant 4th behind the other 3 but it hasn't been.

People that claim the language is evolving in order to cover up their grammatical errors.

I'm not arguing that, but since the contract isn't with ESPN they are not going to do a lot to promote it. Take a look at what ESPN used to be, it was like the CNN of sports where they would try and cover everything. Just like CNN (and all of the news) ESPN moved towards marketing their own products. Now you have tons of b-ball, New York, Boston and LA. I turned one ESPN the other day to see some coverage of the big ten tournament (i figured they'd have to have something on) and they had a fantasy baseball show on. I'm not naive, i understand that they're a business and they're just making business decisions, but the marketing and promotion of basketball (something Stern has done very well and Bettman has not) is a huge factor in the difference between basketball and hockey. We'll see what happens to the NBA if they have a labor dispute soon. Me? I'm a Red Wings fan and a Pistons fan (not so much this year)...but i like hockey better.

Really, i think a lot of this comes down to the media contract. Not just because of where the games are, but because of the coverage that comes from it. ESPN doesn't give a damn about the NHL because they don't have any stake in the content. The NHL is stuck on Vs. and NBC which is the worst sports channel in the world.

Sequel, not remake. I try to use credit unions...unfortunately, both my wife and i have separate credit unions and both of them are out of state. Luckily we can still do banking through the shared branch agreement.

Noir? Murder My Sweet Fantastic movie.

man do i hate Piano bars...keep it down at the Banks.

her picture makes it significantly less click-worthy.

I think college kids are counted at their campus. Maybe i'm the only one here that was in college in 2000, but i was counted in my apartment, not at my home. Remember, it's a snapshot...it reflects exactly where people live at that time. I was pissed, because Michigan had recently passed a law requiring people to vote in the district where their driver's license placed them. Now, mostly it's not a big deal...except it was written by State Senator Mike Rogers who was a republican running for Congress in a district dominated by a college campus. Then i was counted in his district for census purposes (ie money) but couldn't vote there.

I actually downloaded these and have been listening to them quite a bit the last few days. They're catchy, dorky and i like electronic music. Really, a perfect storm.