Various, but not Sundry

Sandals & Sox: The Annual Event

Lucky you! You can vote [1] for the annual Sandals'n'Sox [2] "Soxer of The Year" Hurry up and vote before the year is over!

I voted for Wally, although the Bruiser almost edged out Wally. But the Bruiser's peculiar choice of headware voided his sandals and socks faux pas. A guy with so many fashion faults must be doing this by design!

Great site, lots of fun looking at the pictures.

Well Maybe This One is Sundry

My buddy Keith Povall [3], always a reliable source of off-color humor on the web, as well as some other very interesting sites, sent over this link [4].



Not at all Politically Correct, but pretty funny. The cheesy music accompanying the site adds to the inanity of it all. Sounds like Giorgio Moroder Disco tracks after being run through the Muzak process!

Keith, by the way, is also the force behind that Sandals & Socks [5] site.

ALTERNATIVE NEWS SOURCES

Been very busy: work is hectic, went up to BloggerCon, had some personal business to attend to, blah, blah, yada yada.

Have barely had time to read the paper, browse the usual sites, and so forth. Ready for this: I didn't even get either of the two Sunday papers that are like a religious custom for me . . . for the past 2 weekends. Well, my Dad did save me the Sunday Times from the weekend I went to BloggerCon . . . but he managed to somehow not give me three of the key sections I always read!!

So how does one stay in touch and in tune with the events of the world when one is in some sort of variation of a self-imposed News Blackout?

Via Blogs, that's how!

I read Natalie Davis' All Facts and Opinions [6], Lisa English's Ruminate This [7], and take quick looks at some other more traditional news websites.

Reading Natalie Davis [8], actually, I get just about all the news I am interested in, plus some other stuff. And since I am all but 100% in sync with Natalie's politics, it is a pleasure to read her take on events, as well.

Readers of this space already know how much I enjoy Ruminate This. Funny confluence of events: in today's entry, Natalie mentions Lisa's blog. Great minds work alike!

Then checking out one more blog that serves something of an aggregator purpose for me, I click on J.D. Lasica's blog [9], and I am fully in touch and in the know about everything that is of note. Well, fully except for Baseball News ---- and all one need do is hit some or all of those links over to the right to get up to date on Baseball.

Baseball, of course, part of the reason this time of year that there's just not enough time for everything else. Read on.

The Post Season!

Yeah, yeah, so I am busy as can be. Me and just about everyone else this time of year, or so it would seem.

Add to this the Baseball Post Season! ALDC, NLDC, and now the ALCS and NLCS. All along I stood by my predictions, and it is coming down to the nitty gritty:

ALCS: Yanks in 6

NLCS: Cubs in 7

World Series: Yanks in 6

For those readers who are snickering, thinking this is posted rather late in the game, let me just point out that I made these very same predictions to anyone who would listen up at BloggerCon, and have sent out a number of e-mails to this effect to many of my baseball colleagues and correspondents.

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

In many quarters, even the New York Times Editorial Page, various and sundry dreamers are waxing poetically over the idea of a Red Sox [10] and Cubs World Series.

To which I say: Feh! and Ptui!

The Cubs and their loyal fans, although long-suffering, have certain wonderful aspects of their existence. Ernie Banks, Sammy Sosa. Players who so exude joy in the game, the sport, the thrill of playing and being involved in the pursuit ... the positive aspects of baseball. Wrigley Field is storied, as is the franchise.

This year's Cubs, with Sammy Sosa and Kenny Lofton, and those two pheenom young pitchers, would be a great sight to see in Yankee Stadium. Sosa could well break the record, with that swing of his, and hit four home runs in one World Series game. That would be great.

The Red Sox [11], on the other hand, may have a very special ballpark, but their fans don't have as much of a seeming love affair with the team (as do Cubs fans) as they do a sort of drunken revelry with them.

Yeah, sure, there are legions of wonderful people who are great fans of the great game, fine human beings, Red Sox fans. I know a bunch of them, and it is great to take in a game with them.

But then there's the other 99% of their fans, that rowdy bunch that seems to perceive the ball park as a place for fisticuffs and public drunkeness. Fans who express anger in their reactions, whether the play is good or bad. This, as opposed to the cheering for good plays and the sighing disappointment over bad ones. The warmth, the love of the game, the appreciation of all that is the game, seems lacking in this 99% of Red Sox fans.

So all that romantic waxing over a Boston-Chicago series -- yecch!

And let's give this some thought: There's The Curse of The Babe [12], so Boston cannot make it [13]. Nuff said.

And if Boston and the Cubs actually got the the World Series, how could this be? This is a series in which, by nature and the rightful way of things, neither team could be the winner!

If these two teams were to meet in the Series, all sorts of normalcy, life as we know it, would cease to be. The world would possibly come to an end. Gravity would cease. The planet would start spinning in the opposite direction. It would snow in Hawaii.

And instead of that domsticated eagle Challenger flying in from Center Field to the Pitcher's Mound before the first game, there would be a completely different event: Pigs would fly in.

All laws of nature are still in force as I compose this blog entry. Neither Boston nor Chicago has made it to the Series. Mark my words: this cannot and will not happen. Too many people would have to change religion, too much of the way of the world as we know it would be upset.

It is a fact of nature: there cannot and will not be a Boston-Chicago World Series.

---

Then again . . .

Ahh-nold is the Governor-elect of California.

The Supreme Court did install a President who lost the popular vote.

And we are living in a time when the government spends more on a continued occupation and invasion of Iraq than it would cost to provide complete and total health care to all Americans, and still have money left over for gratuitous projects for Dick Cheney & Company.

The world, or at least out part of it, has already gone kerflooey.

Maybe there will be a Cubs-Red Sox series . . .