Author: cosmo

The City of New York, in its infinite wisdom, has just passed what may be the first law of its kind in the country: it’s now illegal to use a metal bat in a high school baseball game.

Yes, indeed, there are few more pressing issues in the Big Apple than the rampant use of aluminum swat sticks at these games. It’s a good thing the city council took action, because heaven knows the devastation that would continue if they hadn’t. They cited two examples of serious injuries during high school games: one pitcher was killed and another injured (in two separate games) by baseballs hit from metal bats. But it’s not like these incidents occurred in New York at all, and they had to comb years of high-school data to come up with these examples. But clearly, they argued, it was the bats that caused these problems. Yeah.

I’m sure the next item on the docket is removing all of the playground equipment at elementary schools, since it poses a grave danger to the kids. Why, I myself was kicked in the head as a third-grader by someone on a swing*, leading me to break my collarbone! These things are simply unacceptable. Kids should never ever get hurt. Ever. Let’s take away anything that could possibly cause harm.

* Okay, so I was running under the swing at the time. But obviously it’s not my fault.

Happy Pi Day!

3.14… sometimes called the “most irrational day of the year”. Bada-bing.

(Also Albert Einstein’s birthday…)

I’m heading up to Seattle tonight, and in the past I’ve always been there in May or June when the weather was absolutely gorgeous.

This time, not so much.

Come on– rain every day?

This describes my work life so well it made me bust up.

My music player, AmaroK, has a fun feature called “50 Random Tracks” which will pick 50 songs from your entire collection at random and play them. It’s always a bit of an adventure doing it. I’m working now and listening to a crazy mix that includes things like Elvis Presley (“All Shook Up”) followed by Joe Satriani (“Summer Song”), a bit of Enya (“Book of Days”), and of course a little Weird Al (“Polkamon!”) to round out the set.

Whee!

“It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.”

— Woody Allen

Yesterday we were in church, sitting behind our friends Rich and Christina and their kids. At one point during the service, their youngest son Elliott (age five) started unbuttoning his shirt. Christina leaned over to him and whispered frantically, “It’s not Muscle Time!”

Curious, I asked her later what Muscle Time was. She said Elliott really enjoys stripping down to his underwear and running around the house flexing his muscles and showing everyone how strong he is. In fact, she said, he often does this for an hour or two at a time. Of course that’s not a big deal at home, but I imagine she’d be mortified if it happened at church.

On the other hand, sometimes church could really use a little incident like that…

“There once was a city planner who chose land at random.  It was his lot to allot a lot of lots by lots.”

— Shane Hathaway

The weather this winter has been both a blessing and a curse for skiing. Three times now I’ve had to cancel ski trips because it was bitter cold. I was all set to head up to Copper Mountain tomorrow, but NOAA says this about conditions:

Fresh powder is always a bonus, but a wind chill of 35 below zero? Brrr.

This has to be one of the most awesome spam messages I’ve received in a long time.

That’s right, ladies– you can win a dinner date with Steve-O! And just looking at ol’ Steve-O, we can all see what a strapping young hunk he is. Hopefully he puts on a shirt and hikes up his underwear a bit more prior to the date, but hey… maybe girls like that kind of thing.