Is on… NOW

At the behest of one of my friends, I recently began reading the 2007 edition of \”The Best American Sports Writing,\” edited by my boy David Maraniss.  For the first time last year, one of the selections actually came from a blog – and I loved it.  Read here about the Greatest Baseball Game Ever Played, and how Bugs Bunny played a large role in it.

In Maraniss\’ introduction to the book, he also has an interesting anecdote Wisconsin fans will enjoy.  When talking about his father, who was an editor at the Capital Times newspaper here in Madison, he says:

\”He took pride in the fact that one of his reporters at the Madison Capital Times broke a story that Bob Knight was leaving West Point to coach at the University of Wisconsin, and that Knight got so upset by the scoop – it was supposed to be kept secret for two days – that he backed away from the deal.\”

So apparently Bob Knight was that close to coaching at the UW, instead of Indiana.  Can you imagine how the history of college basketball would be different?  Maraniss goes on to mention how poorly Knight would have fit in in Madison, which is true.  But if The General were to have brought home three national championships, somehow I think the folks in Madtown would find a way to have accepted him.

During hunters\’ week in Wisconsin,  Sports Illustrated issues this fantastic article about the costs to humans and the ecosystem when the number of hunters drops:

But over the last decade the North American ecosystem has also seen an unanticipated trend upsetting the always delicate relationship between man and wildlife: The hunters have been going away.

Surveys by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicate hunting in general has tumbled precipitously, down 10% in the past decade alone. Bird hunting has dropped by a quarter during that time, and small-game hunting by 31%.

[…]

The news of hunting\’s decline will no doubt cheer those who see it as a cruel pastime. But what the critics do not realize is that as the hunters have stepped back, the animals (especially predators) have come forward-with potentially disastrous consequences for all.

Valerius Geist, a professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Calgary and an expert on the behavior of large mammals, calls what is happening \”the recolonization by wildlife.\” The first sign, he says, \”was when the herbivores returned,\” a reference to the overabundance of deer, moose and elk in North America. After the herbivores, Geist says, the carnivores are never far behind. \”We are just now beginning to experience that phase,\” he says. As recently as 1994 there were about 50 wolves left in the Yellowstone region (Idaho, Montana and Wyoming), but the population there now stands at more than 1,500; in Minnesota wolves climbed from about 500 in the 1950s to more than 3,000 today.

[…]

In Brookhaven, N.Y., officials are pondering how to handle the deer carcasses scattered across the town\’s roadways. In 2006 they removed 265 deer hit by cars. Last year they found 282. This year they\’re on track to remove at least 370 deer, and the cost-at $400 per animal-is straining the town\’s budget. (Across the U.S. deer-car collisions rose 15% over the past five years, costing annually more than a billion dollars in property damage and 150 human lives.)

At the same time Lyme disease-the crippling illness borne by deer ticks-has gripped the Hamptons. Suffolk County reported an estimated 585 cases last year, up from 190 two years ago. In response, some town leaders across the area turned to what they saw as the only practical solution: They contracted licensed hunters to stalk and kill deer in the tony beach towns along the Island\’s North and South Forks. Some residents ask that men like Walker do their work discreetly, so that their neighbors, or even their spouses, remain unaware of exactly what\’s going on in their backyards. But few protests are heard, in part because the deer, which eat expensive shrubbery and virtually everything else in sight, are often butchered for venison and donated to local soup kitchens.

\”I could shoot a deer every night,\” says Walker, as he stares out at the tree line, waiting for a deer to emerge. He is not complaining. He learned bow hunting from his father and his uncle, and he enjoys his night job, to the point of performing it as a free \”friendly customer service.\”

To all the boys up north:  Be safe, and bring home a big one.  It\’s for the good of all of us.

This morning a friend of mine, Louis Schubert, passed away, finally succumbing to the brain cancer he had carried for several years.  Louis and I met in 1999, when he worked for State Senator Gary Drzwiecki. He will be missed by everyone who knew him both from his days in the Capitol and as a lobbyist afterwards.  Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Heather, and his two young sons.

Well hello there.  I\’m sorry I didn\’t see you.  Please, come over and sit down.  Here, let me take your jacket.  Can I offer you some wine?  A nice riesling, perhaps?

There you go.  Get nice and comfortable.  The Yeats reading will begin in two shakes of a marmoset\’s tail.

Say, as long as I have you here, I\’d like to offer a small sampling of information for your consideration.  As it turns out, I will be a panelist on the Sunday Insight with Charlie Sykes show on the television this Sunday.  I know you don\’t have a television – neither do I – but I believe the show is also made available via computer telephone.

It promises to be a wonderful display of my vast knowledge.  I will, however, not be taking questions either before or after the show.  I will also not be addressing the incident with the lime pudding and the ski poles.  We all know what happened there, and I cannot bear to repeat it.

I do have to add, parenthetically, that before my last appearance on the aforementioned show, Charlie Sykes gave me quite a bear of a time about my affinity for a young actress named Megan Fox.  You see, until recently, I had frequently cited a woman named Jessica Alba as my muse – and Mr. Sykes accused me of turning my back on Ms. Alba, as I had previously been the state\’s pre-eminent \”Albatomist.\”  I can assure everyone that the transfer from Alba to Fox is now complete – the paperwork has been filled out, and both parties have been notified of my decision.  As one can see from the enclosed photo, if any woman in the world walks into a room with Ms. Fox, the best they can do is fight for the title of \”2nd most attractive woman in the building.\”

Oooh – I can see from the rustling above that the reading is about to begin.  I\’m so happy to have you here as my guest.  Please, try the lobster dip.

It was just a matter of time.  Back in May of 2006, a Wisconsin State Journal columnist suggested \”A Day Without Gays,\” to mirror the \”Day Without Latinos\” protests that spring up once a year.  On these days, Latinos stay home from work in order to demonstrate their value to the business community.

Now, it appears \”A Day Without a Gay\” is a reality – coming to you December 10th, 2008.  Back in 2006, I fully supported the idea, if only for the entertainment value:

You\’d have legitimately sick guys from all over the state push, pull, and drag themselves into work to avoid being absent. There would be 100% attendance in offices statewide. You\’d have men that get into car accidents on the way to work that would crawl out of their flaming cars, and drag their bloody stump of a leg all the way into the office to avoid missing work that day.

I can see a guy calling his elderly mother\’s doctor:

\”Yeah, Doc – I know she\’s wheezing quite a bit, and she\’s already gotten her last rites. But I really need you to prop her up for an extra day. If she says she\’s heading towards the light, just feed her another Brandy Old Fashioned – she\’ll be fine. I cannot miss work today!\”

Some poor guy will take a little extra time getting into work to get his office donuts, and for a half hour his coworkers will be shaking their heads and saying things like \”I knew the wife and four kids was just a show.\”

Productivity would be off the charts. The economy would boom. The Dow would hit 20,000. The only business to really take a hit would be golf courses (they\’d be empty). Of course, all those sick guys at work would probably cause some kind of viral epidemic that could wipe out the planet, but at least everyone would know they\’re swingin\’ for the right team.

On a more serious note, I think this might actually cause some tension in the gay community. I\’m sure that there are some more strident gays and lesbians who resent other gays who choose to remain in the closet. You\’d have a ton of closeted gays who would refuse to take part, which could cause a rift between them and the openly gay community. Not to mention all the effeminate straight people who will have co-workers come up to them and say, \”Um…weren\’t you supposed to be off today?\” Awkward.

If you are gay, you probably are much better off staying home on December 10th, if only to avoid all the sick guys who came in to work to demonstrate their heterosexuality.

(H/T Dean)

Some of you may remember my sojourn to the doctor\’s office this summer, when the doc told me my blood pressure was creeping into the danger zone.  This little bit of news kind of freaked me out, so I have done my best to at least get outside for a run a couple times a week.  I\’ve lost a little weight, but not much – as I refuse to stop eating like a 10 year-old boy.

It was only this week, however, that I went and bought one of these little chips that you can put in your shoe that tells you how far and how fast you\’re running.  It really is an amazing piece of technology – and a little creepy.  Now, when I\’m running, it feels like someone is watching me.  I always resist the temptation to stop, since I know the watchful chip will tsk tsk me when I upload the data to my computer.

The chart below details the speed from my run yesterday.  As you can see, about the 2.5 mile mark I slowed down significantly – this was because it had snowed in the morning and Regent Street was still covered in ice.  Had I not slowed down, the line would have gone all the way to the bottom, as I would have cracked my head on the sidewalk and died.  Then someone would have stolen my chip, gone home, and claimed that 2.5 miles as their own.

Perhaps the most fun of this technological advance will be seeing the chart after I pass a hot girl on one of my runs.  You\’ll be able to tell when I speed up significantly, as the line will spike at the moment I suck in my gut and pretend I\’m Roger f\’ing Bannister.  Lord knows it won\’t be because I\’m actually excited about exercise.

The more I think about this radio chip in my shoe, the more disillusioned I become.  I mean, we now have shoes that watch you while you run, a black president, the Brewers in the playoffs, and Jean-Claude Van Damme has made a movie that is getting rave reviews.  This is not a world of which I am familiar.

I\’m just hoping they don\’t make a new kind of chip that tracks how fast you are at other things.  That could be disastrous.

Well look at that – I made the news for something other than sitting in the cole slaw at the Wendy\’s salad bar.  From Sunday\’s Wisconsin State Journal:

Who\’s to blame for state budget shortfall?

If Gov. Jim Doyle and Republican and Democratic lawmakers now find themselves in a $5 billion budget hole, it\’s because they\’ve all done part of the shoveling, budget experts said.

At least $1.6 billion of the state\’s massive budget shortfall stems from a spend-now, pay-later attitude pervasive in both political parties in the state Capitol, these analysts said.

Gov. Jim Doyle and other state leaders have blamed the two-year projected budget shortfall, which threatens everyone from taxpayers to students and the poor, on the souring economy across the country.

But commentator Christian Schneider, who predicted in January that a mild recession would lead to a $4.2 billion state budget shortfall, said the state also is paying for its failure to live within its means and to set money aside for the crisis that he and others warned could be coming.

\”We learned nothing from the 2001 downturn so now we\’re going to have to go through another painful process with this downturn,\” said Schneider, a fellow at the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. \”There\’s nobody who\’s without blame in this situation.\”

The impetus for this article appears to be this post I wrote over at the WPRI blog that criticizes legislators for creating a budget deficit, then whining about there being a budget deficit – as if they had nothing to do with it.

QUIZ: The most entertaining part of the following story is:

A)  The man\’s name is \”Drunkwine;\”

B)  The song in question is Dio\’s \”Holy Diver;\”

C)  The assault took place on one of the most historic nights in our nation\’s history, apparently unbeknownst to the patrons of Emma\’s Bar.

Beaten Over Karaoke Performance

Cops: Wisconsin man battered singer over lousy heavy metal cover

NOVEMBER 12–Meet Kyle Drinkwine. The Wisconsin man, 24, allegedly became so incensed by a lackluster karaoke performance of a heavy metal song that he assaulted the singer and a second man, police charge. According to a River Falls Police Department report, Drinkwine throttled singer James Mischler, 28, and his friend Cyrus Kozub, 29, \”over one\’s ability to sing karaoke.\” Though cops did not specify which song set Drinkwine off last week, Kozub told TSG that Mischler was performing \”Holy Diver,\” the title cut on Dio\’s 1983 debut album (the band is fronted by Ronnie James Dio, the former Black Sabbath lead singer). Following the assaults, police apprehended Drinkwine after a short foot chase. A subsequent Breathalyzer test recorded his blood alcohol content at .169, more than twice the state limit. Drinkwine was booked into the Pierce County Jail on battery and disorderly conduct counts.

Hear \”Holy Diver\” here:

You can clearly see how one would be enraged by a substandard performance of such a classic.

I have this weird habit of buying books I’ve already read.  Usually, I get a book for free from the library, read half of it, and decide whether I like it or not.  In a lot of cases, I want to highlight things for reference, just so I can come back to them later – but I can’t if it’s a library book.  So I go to the used book store to get a deal on a book that I’ve either half read or completely read.  Plus, it’s nice to have a visual reminder of what books I may have read in any given year.  Makes me feel smarter.

And for some reason, I just love used books stores – I can’t explain it, but I just like looking at books.  I look at the bindings on the shelves and try to think of how publishers try to get their authors to stand out on the shelves amongst thousands of other titles.  Then maybe if I ever get off my ass and write a book, I’ll know how it should look to trick people into buying it – as they sure as hell won’t be buying it because of what might be written in it.  I could probably bind each one of my books with a live $100 bill and still only sell about 18 of them.  I digress.

So last week I saw a book I wanted and bought it – and I’m really enjoying it quite a bit.  But as I got near the end, I realized there was a plane boarding ticket stub jammed in the back.  It’s from a flight from Chicago O’Hare to Tokyo in July of last year.  And it’s a “Premiere Executive” first class ticket, so I figured the woman whose name is on the ticket is kind of a bigshot.  So I admit, I Googled her, and as it turns out, she’s a high ranking executive at a major health care company.  So yeah, big-time.

And I can’t explain this in any rational way – but I kind of feel like I now have some odd connection to this woman.  Just months ago, she was holding this book and reading the same words on the same page that I was.  And since it’s such a good book, I kind of almost want to know what she thought of it.  We now have a shared experience, even though we’ll never meet each other in person.

So all day, it’s been kind of puzzling me why I feel like this woman and I are connected, and I came up with the following:  In the days of everything being on computers and virtually all of our interpersonal relationships taking place online, we have fewer chances to share experiences with our friends.  I can literally go through the entire day reading only the news I want, listening to the music I want, and e-mailing the people I feel like talking to.

As a result, few people I know are fluent in the exact set of things I like to talk about.  (This generally means I have different sets of friends for different topics – I have my lefty music friends and righty politics friends.  One night the two groups bumped into each other and I thought the earth was going to fall off its axis.)  But now here’s this woman who has read the very same book that I have – a book that I’ve found deeply interesting.

Of course, this is all psycho-jibberish.  If I called this woman and tried to explain this to her, I imagine the cops would be at my house before I could hang up.  But it’s really interesting to me to think about who might have owned a book before me.  It’s even weirder when you actually figure out who that person is.  Somewhere, the very words you’re reading on that page are floating around in the head of someone else, perhaps in an entirely different context.  The lesson that can be learned here is very important:  I need some better weed.

I love my job.  I get to write pretty much whatever I want, and I get paid for it.  (The fact that I get paid in McDonald\’s Monopoly game pieces doesn\’t bother me much.)

I have, however, found the greatest writing job ever.  I want to be the guy that writes the little show descriptions for TiVo.  Specifically, I want to be the guy that writes the little show descriptions for all the nudie movies for TiVo.

Here\’s how it works – if you have DirecTV or TiVo or whatever, you can click a button to get info on a show.  Generally, what follows is a little one sentence blurb that tells you what the movie is about.  For instance, \”Saving Private Ryan\” is on tonight, and the blurb is, \”A World War II captain (Tom Hanks) and his squad (Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore) risk all to locate and send home a soldier whose three brothers died in combat.\”  Simple, to the point.

But what I didn\’t realize is that the guy who writes these little summaries actually has to write them for all the sleazy adult films, too.  And while I don\’t actually get any of these channels (Playboy, Hustler, Juicy, Fresh, Sexx, etc.) I just realized that you can view the informational blurbs on the directory.  And I haven\’t laughed this hard in a long time.

Just keep in mind what someone has to do to write one of these summaries – you have to actually watch the movie, boil the plot down in one sentence (my guess is one sentence is giving these movies WAY too much credit), and write about it in a way that is completely distinct from all the other nudie movies on these channels.  Which has to be impossible, because they\’re all the same movie, presumably.

So, to get an idea of what I mean, here are a few of these Oscar winning movies showing tonight on these various channels, with their descriptions:

Show: M.I.L.F.s in Heat 2

Description: Undersexed soccer moms (Chelsea, Victoria) are filmed getting their sexual appetites sated.

Ed. note:  What is the big MILF attraction?  How do they prove these women are mothers?  Do they bring a copy of their kids\’ birth certificates to the set to really heat things up?  And what are the chances anyone who orders this movie has ever used the word \”sated\” in a sentence?

Show: Nurseholes 2

Description: Women in white prepare for stiff injections.

Ed. Note: Some guy went to college for four years to learn to write this stuff.

Show: International Slut Cravings 9

Description: European women with amazing carnal skills showcase sex too hot for American girls.

Ed. Note: Didn\’t they settle this conflict with Europe at the Yalta conference?

Show: All Girl MILF Munch

Description: Sexy suburban housewives become friendly with each other.

Ed. Note: Again with the MILFS.  How does it make it hotter that these women have been to a hospital and given birth?  Is there a niche for men who like women that have had appendectomies?

Show: Ebony Assets Redux

Description: Black beauties (Roxy Reynolds, Ruby, Mone Divine) prepare for hard-core gonzo action.

Ed. Note: Whatever step forward Barack Obama\’s election was for race relations, this film alone just erased it.

Show: Gang Bang 6

Description: Annette Schwarz, Bobbi Starr, Joe Blow.  Two daring sluts and 19 men gather for a raunchy good time.

Ed. Note: 19?  Are they sure?  Was someone keeping count?  Is some guy only going to tune in if there are more than 18?

Show: Asian Fever Tokyo Girls

Description: Young and curious, these exotic beauties want to show American tourists a good time.

Ed. Note: Do you even bother with the subtitles on something like this?

Show: Backside Bangin\’ 7

Description: It is booty vision for some slutty beauties with serious backside bouncing.

Ed. Note: Isn\’t this the seventh installment of Lord of the Rings?

And it goes on and on from there.  Most of the other descriptions and some of the titles I can\’t even write without breaking some kind of decency law (But be sure to catch \”Ghetto Hot Chocolate\” and \”Monstrous Black Meat 2\”).

UPDATE:  The full DirecTV schedule can be seen here.  Check out channels between 594 and 600.  And yes, I am 10 years old.

Pretty much every time I\’ve ventured into the dentist\’s office for the past 30 years or so, I\’ve gotten the same speech about brushing more.  But when I went in for my cleaning today, I got the exact opposite – the hygienist told me I\’ve actually been brushing too much.

After looking at my gums, she asked me if I was an \”aggressive brusher.\”  But she said it in a way that seemed as if there were a subtext to her accusation – as if brushing your teeth vigorously was a sign of latent anger issues.  She said that my gums were very irritated and starting to recede, although there wasn\’t any sign of any periodontal disease or anything – so once again, she sharply asked me if I was an aggressive brusher: as if I\’m an angry man who wakes up every morning intent on taking out my frustration with the world on my gums.  It seemed like I was being investigated for a murder or something, with the bright light shining in my face and all.  I\’m not sure if the Constitution guarantees me the right to an attorney when being grilled by a dental hygienist.

At this point, I kind of threw my wife under the bus.  I told the hygienist that I had a toothbrush with unusually hard bristles.  She asked where I bought it.  I couldn\’t tell her the truth – that I had bought it illegally on the \”hard bristled toothbrush\” black market along with a shipment of cop killer bullets, so I told her my wife bought it for me, and I didn\’t know where.  Fortunately, I didn\’t have my hand on the Bible when I said it.  Crisis averted.

Of course, it didn\’t end there.  She went and ratted me out to the dentist, who then had to come check it out for himself.  It\’s always concerning when a doctor looks at a part of your body and acts like he (or she) sees something they\’ve never seen before.  Then he asked \”are you an unusually aggressive brusher?\”  I told him I had a brush with really hard bristles.  He glanced over at the hygienist, who shrugged, as if to say, \”I couldn\’t break him, either.\”

Finally, they gave me a brush with soft bristles and sent me on my way – but not before I punched them both out.  Shows them for accusing me of being an angry brusher.

Remember how John McCain kept saying \”I know how to get Bin Laden?\”  Now that he\’s not President, is he going to hang on to that little bit of info for the next few years?

I\’m still a little groggy from last night, so I don\’t have any long, erudite observations.  In fact, I am of two minds about the elections, and both of them are hung over.

In 2006, sensing the Democratic wave that eventually hit, I wrote this to make everyone feel better.  In sum, it says we shouldn\’t let who happens to hold any office at any given time affect our happiness.  With Barack Obama as President, it\’s not going to keep me from the joy of driving down University Avenue in Madison on a warm spring day.  It\’s not going to make frozen custard any less delicious.  And having a Democratic Assembly isn\’t going to stop me from crying during every freaking episode of \”Friday Night Lights.\”

So congratulations to the Democrats – but remember things are cyclical.  Enjoy this historic moment.  (Incidentally, I know this election was \”historic\” because all the cable news stations were telling me OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER.  Has there been any presidential election that wasn\’t historic?  Are there textbooks that have holes in their timelines during the Chester A. Arthur years?)

Finally, here\’s my column offering suggestions on how to reform the Republican Party.  I think it\’s more relevant today than ever.

Today, I showed up at my usual polling place.  Same place I have voted in every election for the last seven years.  And when I mean every election, I mean every election.  As a former campaign manager, one of the first things we did to our opponents was to look them up and see how often they voted – if they never did, that was a good talking point against them.  So I was determined never to let that happen to me – I even voted in the September primary, when there was absolutely nothing on the ballot.

So imagine my surprise when I got to the table, only to find out my name was missing from the voter list.  I had been deleted.  And I admit, I was more than a little irritated.  The poor official there tried to explain to me how my name could go missing, but I wasn\’t getting any good answers.  But I had to go over to the new registrant table and re-register, as if I had never voted before.  So, along with my name, I am certain my voter history data is gone, too.  All those years of voting, wiped away.

Now, I don\’t know how this could have happened, or who is to blame.  But I have no problem putting it on the imbeciles at the Government Accountability Board, who have demonstrated their ineptitude at managing voter lists in a spectacular way.  Whatever list they set up for cross-checking municipal voter lists managed to weed out someone who has voted in every election from the same address for seven years.  So congrats to them.  As a taxpayer, I\’ve paid $22 million for them to remove me and all my data from the rolls.

As it turns out, re-registering ended up not being that big of a deal.  But I don\’t know when our state is going to wake up and realize that when it comes to voter lists, we\’re essentially a banana republic.