Love those I-don’t-practice-enough blisters!

Any time I break out a guitar for even a couple of minutes, I feel the need to take a picture, just to prove to myself that I actually did it.

15 minutes after buying a brand of strings that I didn’t want I found a stash of the strings I normally use. Where? In the cellar under the desk next to my board and 8-track.

Crap.

Why is it getting difficult to find Dean Markley strings in stores? Did I miss a memo?

I’m stuck with these, and I’ve never liked these.

First Twitter blocked Instagram users’ access to their list of Twitter contacts. Now today I find that Instagram has removed Posterous from the list of services you can automatically share your Instagram pictures with.

I used Posterous to auto post Instagram pictures to this page. I guess I won’t be doing that any more.

When it comes to apps that make crappy camera phone pictures look all “vintage”-ish, I think Hipstamatic blows Instagram out of the water, but Instagram has all of the groovy social functions that Hipstamatic doesn’t have, so I tend to go to Instagram more often.

I would say that dropping Posterous (which is owned by Twitter, which is probably why it was Insta-Axed) would win the battle for Hipstamatic, but didn’t I just read somewhere that Hipstamatic pretty much laid off its entire staff?

Crud.

The President is making a pair of campaign stops in New Hampshire tomorrow.  The kids are going to one of them with their dad and step mother.

I will admit it…

I am jealous.

Do you think a New Hampshire campaign office will stoop to give some tix to a lowly Massachusetts resident like me?

Doubt it.

It’s official.  My step son has braces.  He got them earlier this week.  It’s worse than that though… he got head gear.  When I came home from work yesterday he was sitting on the couch looking miserable, starting at a blank television screen.  I felt so bad for the poor little man.  He seems so sad.

He’s not allowed to wear the head gear in a moving car, which means he has to take it off and put it on quite often.  He can’t get it on himself yet, and given how complicated the process is I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to do it.  I had to put it on for him this morning and it was difficult.  It took much longer than one would expect.  You actually have to hook it onto the braces by sliding this tiny wire into these microscopic looking holes, all while holding his jaw open and his cheeks apart so that you can sort of see what you’re doing.  Oh, and there is a good chance you’re going to stab him in the gums when you don’t line things up perfectly.

Eventually he’s going to have to wear this thing for 15 hours a day.  He’s so sad about it.  My heart goes out to the poor little man.

We’ll get through this together, buddy.  I promise.

Felix Hernandez pitched a perfect game for the Seattle Mariners today.  That is the 23rd perfect game in the history of professional baseball.  Congratulations, King Felix.

It seems to me that along with the complete and total destruction of the Boston Red Sox, a big story this year is that there have been a large number of perfect games.  Actually, I’ve been thinking that the number of no hitters and perfect games has been on the increase for a while now, but this year felt like more than usual.

I was right.

There have been three perfect games this season:

Phillip Humber of the White Sox against the Mariners on April 21st.
Matt Cain of the Giants against the Astros on June 13th.
Felix Hernandez of the Mariners against the Rays on August 15th.

So the Mariners have been in two perfect games this year.

So that raised the question, has there ever been three perfect games in one year before?

No.  There have been two seasons with two perfect games… sort of.

There were two in 2010, Roy Halladay for the Phillies and Dallas Braden of the A’s.  There were also two in 1880.  Yes, I said 1880.  The rules were very different then.  There was no pitchers mound.  The pitcher threw from a flat box that was only 45 feet away.  A base on balls was not four balls, it was eight, and a hit by pitch did not earn you first base.  For all of those reasons it was probably easier to throw a perfect game under those rules.  Unfortunately for the pitcher though, they were only allowed to throw underhand.  So score one for the hitters there.  The two perfect games that year were all of five days apart and both pitchers played for New England teams:

Lee Richmond of the Worcester Ruby Legs against the Cleveland Blues on June 12th.
John Ward of the Providence Grays against the Buffalo Bisons on June 17th.

Yes, the first professional perfect game ever was throw in Worcester, MA.

The only question remaining is, have the Red Sox ever been involved in a perfect game?  Yes… sort of.  The first perfect game of the modern, hit batter/four balls for a walk/pitchers mound 60ft 6inches away from the plate, era was thrown by Cy Young himself.  Yes, he of over 500 wins, a record that will never ever even come close to being broken, threw a perfect game on May 5, 1904 for the Boston Americans over the Philadelphia A’s.  They were called the Americans then, but it is the same franchise that we call the Boston Red Sox now.  Yes, the same franchise that is a pathetic, sub-500 team managed by a clown and whose players seemingly running up the back stairs to the owners office to cry like little babies about how Schmucko the Clown is a big bad meanie.

Urgh.

You can learn all sorts of cool things from wikipedia.  Just saying.