A question for you

Pixar: Big swinging dick or biggest swinging dick? You decide!

It's Wednesday and Wednesdays suck when you work Monday to Friday

I hated on Wednesday long before I had a job. Oh Wednesday, why can't you just be Thursday and let us all get that precious first sniff of the weekend? In honor of Wednesday, here's a shitty, scatterbrained post.

Why is it "cool" to wear shirts with little logos like Polo shirts but misguidedly trendy to wear t-shirts with huge logos like Adidas on them? Is this is a question I should have asked in 2008? I ask the latter question because of the gigantic horses that adorn Polo shirts these days. Maybe Ralph Lauren got fed up with the whole world stealing his style and decided to remind us who started the damned thing in the first place. Anyway, I think it's silly to pay $100 of your own money to be a walking advertisement.

I joined the gym and it's been a solid investment so far. But last night made me feel like the managers are secretly trying to discourage me from getting into shape. As much as I appreciate a good PA system, I don't think Taylor Swift is the way to get a bunch of dudes fired up. I had my iPod on full blast and I could still hear the Top 40 playing throughout. Nobody else seemed to mind, but those other guys are in much better shape than me. They must be on a 24 hour endorphin high with the little voices in their heads constantly goading them into one more set. I figure I can reach that level by the end of the summer Then again, it could just be my insistence on only wearing white shoes that's holding me back.

Speaking of style, it's starting to get hot and my refusal to purchase or wear shorts is holding strong after ~15 years of stubborn determination. I'll stop pretending the heat doesn't bother me when they stop acting like shorts are anything other than half a pair of pants.

The World Cup is less than 48 hours away. I've never been so excited to wake up at 6 AM. (Except for that time they had Everybody who wakes up at 6 AM gets a free jet pack day. Best, Day. Ever.) Whoever wins, I just hope it's a team with less than 80% arrogant douchebags, meaning the following teams have been eliminated: France, Italy, Portugal, France, Brazil, France, Italy, Argentina, France, Spain, Italy, Italy and France. Also, eff France.

Double breaded for your pleasure

You know it's June when baseball grabs this much nationwide media attention. The town of Strasburg, Va, with a population just over 4,000 (making it the biggest town in Shenandoah Co.) was previously best known for its railroad museum and yearly oktoberfest festival, but no more!

RenameStrasburg.com is behind a move to rename the town after the heralded young Washington Nationals prospect, Steven Strasburg, who makes his major league pitching debut tonight.

Upon first hearing this, I foolishly thought that this player was actually from Strasburg, VA, but after seeing that the two names were spelled exactly the same, I realize that's all the similarities a small town requires to try and grab a cheap pop (he's from San Diego). Somehow I was out-foolished by Strasburg residents, who believed the name change was going to be permanent. Town council members probably hope for it to be a boon to the local tourism economy, because evidently towns and cities of all sizes, even those in the rural edge of Virginia, want people to come and spend money.

Of course now the pressure is squarely on the shoulders of a 21 year old expected to soon lead the Nationals rotation and make them a playoff contender. How soon people block the memories of a team which had the worst record in baseball last year, a team that was called the Expos and

played in Canada less than 6 years ago and hasn't

made the playoffs since I've been watching (they

had the best record in '94, but a strike ended the season after 114 games).

None of this stopped fans from showing up at 9:30 in the morning for a game that doesn't start until 7pm. As for baseball analysis, I don't know what this will mean for the Nationals, who at 4 games under .500 have seen a vast improvement this year, but still find themselves 5th in the fairly tough NL East division. I doubt they are favorites to make the playoffs all of a sudden, any decent team could claw their way somewhat close to the playoff race by fall, just make sure you're not named the Royals or Orioles.

I asked my Dad once who he'd root for in a hypothetical unholy pact of an Orioles/Nationals World Series, and he said Washington. As a youth he went to Senators' games with his dad in D.C, so it was originally and is now his local team. Myself, I prefer the Orioles, because during my formative years in Maryland they were the only baseball team around, and my father took me to games at Camden Yards.

Now that the Nationals are better, someone has to take the very bottom spot in baseball. I figure whatever invisible germ or baseball ghost of crapiness that determines these things simply got lazy and decided to hope off 1-95 after like 35 minutes. Baltimore has a .281 winning percentage, plopping them 5.5 games behind the 29th worst team in baseball.

My annoyance over this has been temporarily replaced by incredulousness at why there is so much hooplah over an umpire crying while apologizing over blowing a call. This is one of those things that reminds me how silly baseball is.

What would've been the third perfect game of the year is now not, because of a missed call in a sport where missed calls happen all the time, a sport that celebrates its statistics but has always had its officiating subject to human error. Somehow this entire incident was propagandized to show how some moments go "beyond the game", which I guess shows just how rare forgiveness is in our society. Baseball has the summer, but 'America's pastime' is absolutely the nation's 2nd favorite sport.