Instead of a story about me being angry today, allow me to tell the tale of Delmon Young.

Delmon Young is a top OF prospect for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He is one of the best prospects in all of the minor leagues. It also appears that he is completely insane. Wednesday, he was called out on strikes and didn’t agree with the call. He stood at the plate for an absurd amount of time, and when he finally started back to the dugout you could see that he said something to the umpire who then threw him out of the game. Normally a hot-headed player will just turn around and start screaming at the ump, figuring that he can’t be thrown out of the same game twice. It turns into a big screaming production, full of fury signifying nothing. But Delmon didn’t yell.

He threw his bat at the umpire.

That’s not good. When I first read stories of the incident, they made it sound like he had just kind of flipped the bat and it had brushed the ump. I thought it was one of those things that us sports fans just love to overhype. Then I saw the video:

OK, so we aren’t talking about DeNiro in The Untouchables here, but that isn’t just a light toss either. That thing came in there pretty good, and I’d say there is little debate with regards to his intent. So far, Delmon has been suspended “indefinitely.” I say a minimum of 50 games, and I wouldn’t have a problem if the league told him to go home and come back next season. Inexcusable behavior.

By the way, this is exactly why I don’t carry a bat around with me.

The scattered posting schedule this week is attributable to my work over at Every Swingin’ Dick. We are coming up on Draft weekend, and I’m a little obsessed with assembling my Mock Draft. “Swing” on by if you are interested, otherwise just wait it out for a week and I’ll get back to being pissed about stuff before you know it.

I appreciated the fact that when I ordered a café au lait at the Stone Cup this morning, the people behind the counter actually knew what the hell it was. I appreciated the fact that it didn’t take 15 minutes to make. I appreciated the sweet, smiling hippie girl behind the counter. I appreciated the fact that it was delicious. I didn’t even mind “Captain Emo” the Barista, as he was both competent and thorough.

It doesn’t take much for me to have a good morning–just a good coffee.

Who wants to be mayor of New Orleans? 23 people. Who will win? Maybe my most favoritist person in the world, Ray Nagin. I mean, who wouldn’t want someone this clueless as their mayor? From the CNN.com article:

He has argued during this campaign that with recovery efforts in full throttle, “now is not the time to change leadership.”

I’m sorry, refresh my memory. When did this so-called “leadership” take place? I must have been sleeping on the couch when that happened.

Other stupendous candidates include the lady who displayed a promotional photo of her posing in the French Quarter. Except the Disneyland trash can kind of gave up the fact that it was really New Orleans Square in Disneyland.

Good luck on election day, New Orleans. I have a feeling you are going to need it.

I got a call yesterday morning from the same lady who had called me earlier in the week. She informed me that the landscape crew had been out on Wednesday and had everything fixed. Which I found a bit odd, considering that I had looked out my back window on Wednesday night, and everything looked just the same as it had on Tuesday, Monday, Sunday, etc. I didn’t have time to call them during the day yesterday, and when I got home from work, I saw that the fence had finally been repaired. So maybe the landscape company lied to the lady, I don’t know. Anyway, the episode is finally over.

Except that for me, it isn’t.

Yes, they “fixed” the fence. If you consider driving in a couple of new metal posts and then stretching out the trampled fence and then sort of attaching it to the new posts to be “fixed.” The compost pile repair included them straightening out the bent post and then just kind of crimping the wire back together so that when I need to expose the pile, I’ll have to cut the wire because it is now all bent out of shape.

So I still have to re-fix my compost bin, and re-pile my brush that is still strewn out all over creation back there. Bang up job, fellas!

*sigh*

Rush Limbaugh is just special. A real swell fella. Here he comments on the Duke lacrosse situation, saying that Al Sharpton is:

trying to figure out how he can get involved in the deal down there at Duke where the lacrosse team … supposedly, you know, raped some, uh, hos.

A bottomless sea of compassion, that guy. He feels terrible about it though, so I guess everything is OK.

I’m a child of the 80′s. I’m a geek. I love toys. So how the hell did these things hit the store without me knowing about it?

I just found out that Hasbro is making Star Wars Transformers.

Why was I not informed?

Finally got a call back from EPB this morning. Mr. Thomas didn’t bother to call me himself, instead he had some sweet-sounding lady leave me a message. They are going to send out Joe from Joe Bob’s Landscape Tearer-Upper Service either today or tomorrow.

Of course they are. We shall see…

I spoke with someone named Huston Thomas last week about fixing my fence. Last Monday to be more precise. He told me to “give him two days” and he would “see what he could do.”

It will come as no surprise to those of you used to the Tennessee work ethic that my fence is still broken. I called Mr. Thomas on Friday, but apparently all of Chattanooga takes Good Friday off, and he was not available. I left him several voicemail messages and am still waiting for a response.

*sigh* Well, I guess it is time to yell…

I thought that I had rested my case of Teri Hatcher being a disgusting hag, but thanks to the What Would Tyler Durden Do website, we have some new evidence:

I challenge anyone out there to make a legitimate case for her being attractive. Can’t be done.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been laying off Veronica Mars rah rahs this season. Not because the show hasn’t been great, but because I’m sure you are all sick of hearing about it. But right now I don’t care. How stupendous was this week’s episode? Highlights include:

- Paula Marshall, Paula Marshall, Paula Marshall!!!
- Trippy dream sequence
- “Did you watch House of Wax again? You know that Hilton girl gives you nightmares…”
- Baby on board t-shirt

That is all before the opening credits.

- Logan’s retelling of the time Veronica met Lucky
- “Ah, does this assignment come with potstickah?”
- Somehow managing to make a Brokeback Mountain joke funny instead of boring and tired
- “Patience…dwindling…”
- Daddy Mars with his dating uniform doing “interviews”
- Veronica in the closet, and then getting outed
- Marcos with the “Draw Me” Turtle in the sketchbook

Really good stuff. And Veronica / Kristen Bell? How can you not be in love with this girl (photo courtesy Kristen Bell Online):

This is an actual email I received from a customer today. The only alteration is the removal of my co-worker’s name.

I leave a message for (name withheld) E-mail still is not working right and new message takes mintues to get into.

To quote Dean from The Venture Brothers, “I DARE you to make less sense!“

Customer calls. “Your boss said he was going to come out and fix something. Blah blah blah blah blah blah (for about 2 minutes).” I explain to him that my boss is out sick, but that one of us will be happy to take care of his problem. “Any idea when you are coming out here?”

“Um, who are you?” I ask.

These customers just love to blather on for an indiscriminate amount of time without identifying themselves, like I should just know who they are because they are so important and know every little detail about their situation and should pucker up and kiss their ass and make them feel all good about themselves etc, etc. I’m pretty damn smart. But I’m not omnipotent. And I’m not in the ass-kissing game, especially for customers that buy one thing every year or so, and about 1/2 the time their checks bounce.

I hate people.

If I read or hear about Katie Holmes and her “silent birth” one more time…If the birth is so damned silent, why won’t everyone just SHUT UP about it already?

At this point, I don’t care if she has the damn thing come out of her armpit, so long as I don’t have to hear about it.

As expected, I didn’t receive a phone call from the lovely people at EPB on Friday. So I called them this morning.

I spoke to a nice lady named Cassandra. I told her that I had not received a call and wanted to get something resolved. She then informed me that they had 24 hours to respond to these types of complaints and that I had called at 9:52am on Friday.

I sat in silence to see if she would be able to figure out the math on her own…Nope.

Someone is going to call me today. Yeah right…

See, here is the deal. I don’t necessarily WANT to yell at these people, but what choice do I have? Customer service departments are in the business of pacifying people but not doing anything to give results. The only ways to get anywhere is by being either the squeaky wheel or a ranting lunatic.

I’ve had better nights than the one I had on Thursday. I was already tired, really tired. I went to bed about 11:30 ready for a full night of sleep. That didn’t end up working out so well.

Before I got into bed, my five-year-old UPS started beeping. Figuring that it was just starting to die, I just powered off my PC, turned off the UPS, and went to bed thinking that I would worry about it the next day. About 12:30, I heard a thunderous boom and saw a bright flash outside my window. And along with that my power instantly went out. At that exact moment, I really had no clue what was going on. When I came to my senses a few minutes later, I realized that a transformer had probably blown, and the beeping UPS was probably a clue that something wasn’t right. Well, I was still a bit groggy and out of it, and not too sure what had happened. I was scared to try and go in the backyard to investigate, because I didn’t know if a power line had fallen or something, and didn’t want to be walking around back there if that was the case. So I stayed up for about 1/2 an hour to make sure there wasn’t going to be a fire or something, then went back to bed.

About 2:30am, I was awoken by loud shouts and the rumbling of a big diesel truck. EPB (the local power company) was here to investigate. Loudly investigate. They frittered around back there for I don’t know how long, with me trying desperately to get back to sleep the whole while. Finally they must have left and I went back to sleep again. Until 6:30am when they came back with reinforcements. I guess they had to go and get parts or wait for it to get a little bit light out or something, I’m not sure. But after an hour or so, the power was back. “Wow,” I think to myself, “that was really great response. Good on them.”

Then I looked out my window.

There is an easement / power cut behind my backyard. My fenced-in backyard. That now has a lot less fence. I’m a little irritated. You know, the cable guy managed to get OVER the fence. EPB seems to favor the theory of going THROUGH obstacles. I’m still trying to figure out exactly why they felt the need to cut the wire on my compost bin. But they did. Please note that they also completely unpiled my freshly made brush pile.

I called customer service yesterday morning. I was too tired to yell. I told the nice lady that I appreciated how quickly they responded to the problem, but I didn’t appreciate all the damage they left in their wake. She took my number and said that she would have someone call me to make “arrangements.” I never got a call on Friday. I’m assuming by Monday, I will no longer be too tired to yell. So I guess that is what I will do. And I’ve already got an idea of what kind of “arrangement” I will suggest:

“Why don’t you come out and fix all the crap you broke?”

The Mac just became an even more appealing product. Apple has released a piece of beta software called Boot Camp that will simplify the process of installing a copy of Windows on their computers.

Most of the Mac users will respond with the typical “who wants to run Windows” line, but for a lot of people Windows is a necessity. If a user works in a Windows environment at work, he pretty much has to run it. Application availability is another reason. Many programs don’t have a version for the Mac. There are tons of reasons someone would want to dual-boot. For someone like me, the ability to have both OS X and Windows available for my tech work is very appealing.

Not that I’ll probably ever own a Mac, as I just can’t afford them. And I’m sure this isn’t an altogether altruistic move, as the ability for dual-boot configurations may help them make a few sales. But still it is a really nice service to make available to their customers. Kudos to them.

Homeland Security official Brian J. Doyle arrested in child sex sting

“Allegedly,” Mr. Doyle has been chatting up a bunch of 14-year-old girls in an attempt to, well I think we all have a pretty good idea of what he was attempting to do.

Doyle, in the first conversation, told the detective his job with the department and “started immediately into pretty vulgar language. He explained in graphic detail the sexual acts he wanted to perform with this 14-year-old.”

Nice. Real nice. I’m ever so comforted that this is one of the individuals charged with protecting this country.

Also…

Elementary Teacher Charged With Rape

34-year-old Rachael Holt allegedly had sex 28 times during the last week of March with her 13-year-old student. Oh, and on at least one occasion allowed his 12-year-old friend to watch. That is stupendous.

It is a banner day for pedophiles and sickos.

Last nights task–clean up all the dead plants from its wintery death.

How’s that for a brush pile? I have some sort of plant of which I do not know the name that has some sort of bamboo-like quality that lines the back and both sides of my back yard. They are great come summertime for privacy, as they grow like weeds. Too much almost, as they are completely overgrown by August. However, they die a quick death once it gets cool, but they just kind of die and keep standing. So I had to go through and snap them all off at the base and drag them to the brush pile. Did I say pile?

Make that piles. Now I’m wondering what in the world I will do with these piles. I’m hopeful that the material will break down significantly on its own. If that doesn’t happen, I may have an “Angry B Weenie Roast” come fall.

Inside Man.

I’m a sucker for a well made heist film. Unfortunately, most of them tend to not be well made. After seeing the trailer about a month ago, Inside Man definitely looked like it would be a worthy entry into the genre. I was especially interested in this movie because of the main participants: Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Spike Lee. How did they do?

Clive Owen – A movie god. Why he isn’t a huge, huge star, I just don’t know.

Denzel – Terrific. He really does a nice job of being the character instead of going all Training Day-overboard on the whole thing.

Jodie Foster – Again, another fine job of being the character, and not just showing up on screen. Also, on a superficial level, might I note that she is 43-years-old. And looks fantastic.

Spike Lee – I really liked the film structure (whether or not that was Lee or the screenwriter, I don’t know) and a lot of the camera work. I think Spike Lee could quite easily be a mainstream movie maker if he so chose. And I kind of wish that he would choose to do so, as I think he could drag some of these mainstream movies above what they aspire to.

William Dafoe – I’m not a big fan of his in general, but I would like to recognize his performance. Very understated, almost taking a character actor approach to the role. After his first scene, he ceased to be William Dafoe and become the character. Not something I’m used to with him. Well done.

I’m not going to really discuss the film much. It is a heist film. If that is enough to interest you, then go see it. The only criticism I have unfortunately I can’t reveal without compromising the film. To be vague, there was one component of the film that I felt was underdeveloped. I think some choices were made in the editing room to trim out some scenes that could have fleshed out some of the subplots. I think. I guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD to see what scenes were left out.

Final verdict? Recommended.

I was very surprised by my theater experience. I have almost ceased going to the movies entirely, as I am sick to death of the noise, cellphones, kids attending completely inappropriate movies with their parents, etc. I somehow got very lucky this weekend, as none of these things came into play. The theater was maybe 2/3 full, so there was plenty of opportunity for noise and distractions, but it was never a problem. So kudos to that audience. Of course, not five hours later, 31 police officers had to show up to break up a big fight that ended in seven arrests. So I’m not ready to forgive the movie-going audiences just yet.