IMGP7196, a photo by robj_1971 on Flickr.

This is just a random post of what may be my favorite picture ever.

This one is going to be random.  I’m feeling a little scatterbrained this morning.

I was listening to 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston on the way to work this morning.  They aired an interview that was taped last night at Lelacher Park in Lowell.  It brought back some painful memories for me.

They interviewed The Dog Man.

My father and I had a split season ticket package for the Lowell Spinners.  The first game I went to I saw this idiot selling hot dogs.  He was The Dog Man… you know what?  I’m not capitalizing the name anymore, he was the dog man.  He was an old guy with a hat that was similar to the Disney Goofy hats with the dog ears hanging off the side.  He was selling hot dogs and yelling so loud he could drown out the park’s PA system.  My first thought was, wow, they sure do like the bush league crap here in the minor leagues.  By the start of the second game I was hoping that lightning would hit him or something.  Anything to shut him up.

Then in 1998 the Lock Monsters started playing AHL hockey in Lowell.  I went to a couple of games the first year, a whole bunch the second year, and from the third year on I was a season ticket holder.  For the first few years the dog man was selling hot dogs at the Tsongas Arena.  As bad as his yelling like a moron was at Spinners games, it was 10 times worse in an indoor arena.  Our seats were in the last row of our section and every time he walked by I would fantasize about someone giving him a shove and sending him hurtling down the stairs.

Ah memories.

Change of Subject

So the Republican National Convention is this weekend in Tampa.  There is a chance that a hurricane might hit the area.  If that happens, would it be entirely hypocritical of me to publically state that it was God’s will?  That it was a sign that God wants us all to vote Democrat?  Yes, it would be totally and completely hypocritical of me to say such things, but knowing that is not going to stop me if it actually happens.  I’ve never rooted for a hurricane before.  Let’s go Isaac!  I don’t want anyone hurt, or any damage or any thing, I just want the Republicans to have a little message from their lord and savior to mull over while they plan their platform.

While I’m on the subject of the Republican platform, I want to clear up a little confusion for folks like Todd Akin and Paul Ryan.  There have been questions lately about what is the true definition of rape.  I’d like to provide those who are confused with a clear and concise definition.  Consider this a public service.

If a man is having sex with a woman, and the woman does not want to have sex, then it is rape.  It doesn’t matter what she was wearing before hand.  It doesn’t matter if she was dressed like a slut.  It doesn’t matter if she is a slut.  It doesn’t matter if she’s put out for all of your friends already.  It doesn’t matter if she’s a prostitute and you just handed over your pay check.  It doesn’t matter if she’s someone you will never see again.  It doesn’t matter if she’s a friend of a friend.  It doesn’t matter if you are dating her.  It doesn’t matter if you are in a committed relationship with her.  It doesn’t matter if you are married to her.  It doesn’t matter if she acted like she was willing before the ball got rolling.  It doesn’t matter if she was in fact willing before the deed began.  It doesn’t matter if you are one twitch away from the finish line.  It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t yell.  It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t fight.

If she doesn’t want you to do it, and you still do it, then you are a rapist.  Congratulations.  It’s perfectly black and white.  If it happens against her wishes, then it’s rape.  There can be a million different circumstances leading up to the actual act.  It doesn’t matter.  If she has a line and you cross it, then it’s rape.  Plain and simple.  I don’t see what all the confusion is about.  If you are a man and she says no then act like a man and stop.  If you don’t, then you are not a man.  You are a dog.  You are slime.  You are a rapist.  It’s such a simple concept.  I hope that clears things up for Todd and Paul.

Change of Subject Again

Kinda hard to change subject to something frivolous after that, but I think I can do it.  How about we go to sports.  That should lighten the mood a little.

Bartolo Colon was busted for performance enhancers yesterday.  Let us look at his recent past, shall we? Colon pitched for the Indians and was awesome.  Colon pitched for the Angels and was awesomer.  Colon got lazy.  Colon got fat.  Colon stopped being awesome.  Colon bounced around the majors and minors for a couple of years, including a stop in Boston that was spent being fat and out of shape and in the minors and on the DL for the majority of the season.

I should point out that “fat” is a relative term.  When I say Colon was fat, I mean he was fat for a major league baseball player.  He wasn’t fat the way that I am fat.  If he were he would never have been able to play at all.  Compared to me he was a skinny little guy.  Compared to the rest of the big leagues, he was a complete tubalard.

Anyway, this year Colon signs with the Oakland A’s and pitches well.  I believe he has 10 wins this year.  Better than Beckett or Lester.  Now, surprise surprise surprise, he is busted by the league for using synthetic testosterone.

My question to MLB is:  What the hell took you so long?  If there is anyone in the majors who is without a doubt taking a performance enhancing drug, it’s Bartolo Colon!  I would have been testing him daily.  Happy 50 game suspension, Bartolo.  Maybe you and Melke Cabrera can start a website together.

In hockey news, prior to hearing the interview with the horrible, awful dog man, it was mentioned that one Bruins player was hopeful that the NHL season would only be locked out until November.  Most people are saying January.  I have already given up.  I’m done.  The league does not deserve my loyalty.  Good bye.

Okay… there were a couple of other random things, but I forget what I wanted to say.  Maybe later.

Until then…

Wish my brother a happy birthday.

Happy Birthday, John!

Messing around with Reddit, cheating at Flickr, looking for things to post.  That’s how I spent my lunch break today.  I started thinking about this:

June 12, 2009.  At the far end of the Ocean Beach pier, looking back:

August 12, 2011.  On the the sand at Ocean Beach, along side of the pier:

April 27, 2012.  Again, on the sand at Ocean Beach, along side of the pier.  This time zoomed in a little:

What’s the point of all of this?  I don’t know.  I was hoping you all could tell me.

Note that we have traveled to San Diego three times over the past four years.  Each time I go it gets harder to come home when the trip is over.  Each time I come home I start to look forward to the next time we go out for a visit.

So… when can we go back for another visit?

So let’s review…

Curiosity started off on Earth, blasted out of our atmosphere on a big phallic shaped bomb, flew all the way to Mars, entered the Marian atmosphere and somehow successfully landed on the surface using a landing technique that comes straight out of a crazy Arthur Clarke sci-fi novel, sent a signal back to Earth, received signals from Earth and carried out instructions carried in those signals, successfully tested a whole bunch of different cameras, successfully blasted a hole into a rock using a laser, figured out what the rock was made out of by looking at the light coming off of the rock as it was being lasered, successfully tested its ability to move it’s wheels from side to side, and now…

It’s gone for a test drive.

I know that Curiosity was not designed to find life on Mars, but why do I have the sneaking suspicion that should it stumble across some little green men it will figure out a way to drive them to Washington and drop them off at the White House?

To the Curiosity team, keep up the great work!

Go NASA!

I cheat at Flickr.

All the time.

I first started cheating at Flickr by sending links to pictures on my photostream to Twitter.  For the first 5-10 minutes or so after posting to Twitter, the pic I posted would get a handful of hits.  Sometimes as many as 10.  Woah!  10 people looking at my picture!  I feel so photographicallyer.  (I just invented that word.  You’re welcome)

Next came Stumbleupon.  Oh, did I use that to cheat at Flickr.  The first time I used it, I submitted about 10 pictures.  Within about 30 minutes many of them had ballooned to over 100 hits.  Two pictures actually got up over 700 hits within a couple of hours!  Wow!  I then started submitting pictures regularly, but that moment of magic never returned.  A submission would grab 10-20 hits and that would be all.

That would be all, at least, until I realized that if the picture were in multiple sets and groups I could submit it multiple times.  The same image viewed through a group has a different url than viewed through the photostream, or from a set.  I went nuts.  I got nine pictures up over 1000 hits.  I am a maniac when it comes to cheating at Flickr.

Now when I cheat at Flickr I am using Reddit.  I post my pictures to the itookapicture subreddit and watch the hits roll in.  I’ve been posting stuff there for a couple of weeks, and all but one picture has received over 100 hits.  (FYI: 100 hits is a mountain for me.  It’s a drop in a bucket for the really good Flickr users)  Twice I even saw submissions top 1400 hits.  It’s just out of control how much I cheat at Flickr!

This picture was completely overlooked.  I think it had a few hits, but not many.  Now after a few days on reddit?  1459, and a comment too!

I really didn’t think much of this one.  I threw it onto reddit because it had zero hits and it didn’t completely suck.  I wanted to see what happened.  By the end of the day it was over 1000 hits.  It’s at 1482 now!  Talk about cheating at Flickr!

I’m just completely out of my mind.  I cheat at Flickr like crazy.  It’s like I have a cheating at Flickr disease!

I posted one picture earlier today that has been hit over 160 times already.  I’ve even started lining up pics to post in the near future.  This one will probably go up today:

Really, I should feel guilty about how much Flickr cheating I do.  Then I stop and think for a minute and realize that no one gives a flying leap about any of this crap except me.  Let the Flickr cheating continue!

Finally…

Some one in major league baseball who isn’t associated to the Boston Red Sox in any way did something that was more embarrassing than any of the stupid things that have been coming from the Sox over the last year.

Melky Cabrera… how stupid do you think we are?  The corollary to that question is, how stupid can you be?

Read this espn article.

What the hell, Melky?

Melky used synthetic testosterone in order to cheat at baseball.  It was working.  He leads the NL in hits, he’s second in batting average, and he was the MVP of the all star game this year.  All while cheating.  When he got caught cheating he devised a scheme to try to make himself look blameless.  He was going to blame it on a supplement.  Yeah, they’ll buy that excuse.  But what supplement should we blame it on?  I know, thinks mensa candiate Melky, we’ll use a make believe company!  That way I can’t get sued when I place the blame!  We’ll make a website and everything!  WOOHOO!  No 50 game suspension for me!

What a friggin’ idiot!

Even if the 10 grand bought a totally convincing website, don’t you think the investigators would, oh I don’t know, CONTACT THE FREAKIN’ COMPANY??

As bad as the whole texting-the-owners-to-get-the-manager-fired controversy in Boston has been, including the new and improved Gonzalez-didn’t-send-the-text-Shoppach-sent-it-from-Gonzalez’s-phone version, no one in Boston, including Schmucko the Clown himself, has done anything even remotely this stupid or insulting.  Sure, Josh Beckett tried to tell us that he only gets a few days off a year when he actually gets most of October through February off, and after the whole chicken and beer collapse last season John Lackey is still parading through the club house with a beer in each hand, but neither of those things are even in the same time zone of insultingly stupid as Melky’s little ruse.

Suddenly, the fiasco that is the Red Sox looks almost acceptable.

No, actually, it doesn’t.  I’m grasping at stupidity straws here, trying to make my team look less stupid.  Melky does win the stupid prize though.

Thanks, Melky!

Monday.

Crud.

I can’t believe it’s already Monday.

What did we do this weekend?  Well, we did not go to see President Obama in Rochester.  We did have a date night in Boston where we wandered around the Back Bay until both my wife and I had incredible amounts of pain in our backs and legs.  The next morning we woke up a little late and had a hard and fast agenda of stuff that absolutely needed to be done… and then sat in front of the tube for a few hours.  I sneaked out and mowed most of the grass, until the pain in my back and legs was back in full force.  Then I went back inside and commandeered the television and watched Star Trek movies.

This morning I woke up with very sore legs and a bit of a sore back, and a bit of a stuffy nose.  Bite me, Monday.  Bite my shiny metal ass.

The grass is out there and it’s mocking me. It’s laughing at me. It’s growing and growing and taunting me. I have to cut it, but my legs are freakin’ killing me today.

Oh lawn, you are the bane of my existence.

Last night Jen and I went out for dinner after work.  She wanted to stay out late, but I was just too tired so we agreed that tonight would be a full blown date night.

We decided to go into Boston without anything planned.  We just started walking up Newbury street with the vague notion of finding a restaurant.  We stopped at a place called Charlie’s and had a nice dinner together.  Afterwards we started walking back down Boylston street with the vague notion of finding something for dessert.  What the hell, thinks us, let’s go to the Top of the Hub and see what’s on their dessert menu.

Well the Top of the Hub had a longish wait so we went down two flights to the observatory on the 50th floor of the Prudential building.  I didn’t have my camera, so my iPhone got a few snaps of the view.

From there we headed back up to the Valley and stopped at a restaurant/bar in Tewksbury because we weren’t ready to go home, and because we wanted to make believe we aren’t old.  Well, Jen isn’t old yet, but I am, so I guess I was the one pretending.  The place we went to is the same place (under new management with a new name) where I bought my first beer.  Funny, of course because I don’t now, nor never have been a drinker.  In fact, the night I bought that first beer (I only drank about a quarter of it) was not my 21st birthday, it was Larry’s; about a month after mine.

Anyhow, we had a lovely time just being together, and Boston is still beautiful.

Here are the crappy camera phone pics……..

Blurry buskers.

The first time I ever bought a beer it was in this bar. 20 years later, what did I order?