Friday, November 10, 2006

Armistice Day

I wanted to give a shout out to those that did some fighting for freedom in the olden days of WWI.

Jozef Bialynia - thanks for defending Lwów in WWI.

Celestyn - we remember you for fighting and planning the Wielkopolska Uprising in 1846. You made us proud.

Tomasz, Ferdinand, Jozef and Celestyn - thanks for taking part in the January Uprising of 1863.

Thursday, February 23, 2006


World Baseball Classic? I'm excited!

Finally, a World Cup for baseball. I keep reading and hearing talk of the WBC being stupid and pointless (Mike Downey for the Chicago Tribune, Boers and Bernstein on WSCR 670), but it's stupid and pointless to those that don't get the purpose of it. Baseball is an international sport, and I can't wait to see how the USA's best stack up against the opposition. It will give many stars the opportunity to play on great teams before they go back to the mediocre teams they are stuck on. I love the idea of seeing players representing their nations. I hope that eventually the WBC becomes more important then the regular season, just as the World Cup trumps anything else in soccer. I hope that players will fight for spots instead of being begged to play. What worries me is that most of the stars may not play in the games, they're dropping out like flies. I hope Hideki Matsui gets ridiculed and humiliated for not playing for Japan, I hope Aramis Ramirez lives to regret his decision for dropping out.
Most of all I hope to see hardnosed competitive baseball.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Want to watch the Turino Winter Olympics live in the US? You're out of luck, unless it's hockey you're after. NBC and its stable of cable channels has decided to once again tape delay the Turin Olympics for your enjoyment. For example, ski jumping occured at 12 pm EST on Sunday, but NBC waited a full six hours to show the event. It wasn't preempted by luge or men's downhill or anything else, it was delayed because NBC wants to show the olympics in primetime. They think that they'll increase ratings this way. What they do is confuse the hell out of the viewer, I missed ski jumping yesterday because I wasn't able to tune into NBC for its full four hour primetime block. NBC doesn't tell you what time a specific event will air, and they intermix events so that you never know what you've missed. Still, I have a solution for those who actually want to see the events LIVE (what a concept!), download the program ppstream and tune into CCTV5. PPstream is a P2P TV streaming program, it is currently limited to channels in Asia, but for the Olympics it does the trick. I was getting 400kb/s constant stream of CCTV5 yesterday, and I got to watch a lot of the events LIVE in the US. Screw you NBC!

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

He loves us! He really really loves us!

A historic statement was made today by aspiring Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, he said, and I kid you not, that he has high respect for Poland and its "contribution to world culture, economy and the present day affairs of Europe and the world." Okay, what in the world is going on here, and where did they stash away the real Putin? Just months before Polish diplomats were being beaten up in Moscow by what looked like sanctioned retaliatory acts. Polish-Russian relations also hit a lowpoint when Poland aggressively and openly supported Viktor Yushchenko's Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. So to hear Vlad say he has high respect for Poland is, well, out of the blue. Which begs to question, what does Vlad want from Poland? This is, in diplomatic terms, a bribe. We'll just have to wait and see.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The big 29. I only have a year of the twenties left in me, quite a depressing conundrum. What do I do with my last year as a twenty-something? I am quite surprised how unexcited I am at the prospect of turning 29. 28, 27, 26, they were afterthoughts, and birthdays are always fun, but this 29th one is different. I'm not looking forward to it at all. It's like a countdown to 30, and even though they say 50 is the new 30, 30 is not the new 20, or even 25. 30 is what it is, 10 years removed from 40. If you haven't accomplished anything by 40, you probably won't, that's just the way things are. So at 30 you get to feel all that pressure of having to make something of your life by 40. And at 29 you know that all that pressure is just around the corner. Plus, did you know Michelangelo was 29 when he completed David? That really makes me feel good, aughhhh. 16, 18, 21, all those birthdays gave you stuff to look forwards to. 29? It should be called 30 -1.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

And now an excerpt from the unfinished masterpiece titled "Idiocy?", currently in its seventh year of being written:
My thoughts switched again to my crumpled suit. It was a cheap one I picked out during my first year at U of C. I wouldn’t let my parents buy me one, I guess I felt guilty that I was wasting their money on an education that I wasn’t using. Regardless, even with my healthy new checks, I never felt like getting up to buy a new suit. I picked the dark olive suit off the floor and tried to straighten it with my hands. I knew it was a feeble attempt, but it was out of habit. I looked in my drawers, great, all out of socks and underwear. Well, I’d been out of socks and underwear for two days as it was, so it was another day of smily face boxers for me. The socks I wasn’t happy about, I turned over old newspapers searching the floor until I found a pair under the bed that looked like they hadn’t been worn in a while. You have to understand my theory on clothes, especially socks. Socks are only good for one day of wear, maybe two if you’re lucky. Now, if your socks haven’t been worn for two or three weeks, I firmly believe that the odor and whatever else your foot projects onto the sock, evaporates. Therefore, I usually have no problem with wearing old socks, the only exception is if you’ve already done this to the sock twice. Then the sock must be washed. Underwear on the other hand is a completely different matter. You can wear underwear as long as it feels good, but you may in no way ever put on an old pair of underwear, it doesn’t work the way the socks do.
So, I put on my navy blue socks, smelled my white shirts that hugged all the corners of the room as if saying “please, please, not me!” I did a smell check and decided which one was the best. I put on the only tie in sight, pulled on my suit, and looked in the mirror. Yes, I was a used car salesman. A little cologne, and I was ready to leave. A little light went off in my head saying “pack”, I hated those lights. So I got my old, worn, brown briefcase, looked over the room and decided I would buy some clothes in Warsaw. I threw in my trusty deoderent/anti-perspirent, and I was ready to go. Getting into my car I could feel my feet, and figured that maybe it was time to amend my sock theory.


Now if that isn't some A-grade writing I don't know what is, I mean Kant, Hesse, Hemmingway, Dostoyevsky, they all come to mind.

Monday, January 23, 2006

The race is on! To find a picture with our President Dubya and "Radioactive" Abramoff that is. Time claims to have seen five pictures featuring Dubya and Radioactive together, unfortunately they're all from the same event. Still, I would like to see these photos, so if you have 'em send them in. I, for instance, have a picture with former Illinois Governor James Thompson's two dogs, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Thursday, January 19, 2006


I did not know this, but apparently to prove that cancer isn't that big of a deal, Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

I also found out that according to the actor's publicist, Jeff Duclos, Norris' favorite Chuck Norris fact is the one about the Boogeyman: "When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris."

The Random Chuck Norris Fact Generator lists the most popular Chuck Norris fact as "Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried."

Monday, January 09, 2006


Does anyone really believe that Cheney was hospitalized for an apparent shortness of breath because of medication he was taking for a foot ailment? What, are we that stupid? The guy has a ticker that would have gone a long time ago had in not been for the pact with the Devil. I did make the prediction of a staph infection for Cheney last year, this year I predict...