Diplomatic immunity better not cover this.

Another French deuche.

Raid reaps a bounty

Maybe if they can't release the intel from the Bin Laden raid, they can at least elaborate on what filthy porn the very spiritual guy was into.

Warning, sarcasm ahead

So some company has attempted to help all of those who can't read tone into written communications: they have trademarked a "sarcasm sign." This is to be applied when needed to try to avoid offending others.

My problem is that my communication would be littered with these things. It is a good thing it contains a period, because I may have to end every sentence with it.

Big Mac

I remember when I began following Mark McGwire as a baseball player. I was in 7th grade and just getting into baseball cards. I bought a 1988 Topps Mark McGwire card noting that he hit home runs. This was something I treasured since Jack Clark played with the Cardinals. St. Louis was never known for its power hitters, so Clark shook my imagination. I changed my hitting stance to look like him. But McGwire was the new and, my goodness, 49 homers!

I watched the 1989 World Series on TV, happy that the Athletics beat up the Giants. Watched the series in 1990 when the A's got the crap kicked out of them by Cincinnati.

In 1990 my parents took my brother and I to Chicago to Old Comisky Park to see the A's play the White Sox. My mom was pregnant with my youngest sister. It was a blazing hot day and I think mom and dad spent most of the game in lines for lemonade and ice for mom. Our seats were right on the field along the first base line in the sun (still the closest I've ever sat!). At some point McGwire came up and hit a homer to left. It made my summer.

When he came to the Cardinals my parents again got tickets. I'd just started going with my girlfriend (to be fiance, to be wife) and was reluctant not to spend time with her. But I went to the game and saw McGwire's first homer as a Cardinal. Later that summer and the next in 1998 I would go and see more of his moon shots, this time with my baseball fan girlfriend. One, against the Cubs, was the longest homer hit in old Busch Stadium. Another was when my brother took me to a game for my bachelor outing before my wedding.

So now there is the admission of past excursions with steroids. Whether they helped or hurt I don't know or really care. I never looked upon Mark McGwire as other than a hitter and someone to track. I never asked his opinion on what field of study to choose or whom to marry. I am sorry that Mark did what he did and that he, along with most of a generation, won't be given the recognition they (may) deserve.

But in the end, I really just miss watching the ball fly out of the park with him running the bases.

Decay

I'm a sucker for websites with pictures of decaying and abandoned buildings, factories, hospitals, etc. One of the best is desolate metropolis: excellent photography mainly focusing on the remnants of Detroit.

However, this link is unique. It has images from the abandoned Biosphere 2, the self-contained ecosphere in the southwest that was to be some pseudo-scientific environmental test. It, like the modern environmental climate change movement, has fallen by the wayside and left to entropy and decay. Interesting to see, but not surprising.

Safe mode?

This is unreal...would you like to boot into safe mode for your presentation, Microsoft CEO Ballmer?

Last page

I find this somewhat sad as I remember going into these stores frequently when I was younger. B. Dalton's will close its last store in Southdale mall on January 16.