Where's Harriet Nelson when you need her?

When I saw this.

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

I thought of this.

My dog only eats the socks

This dog made like Avis, and tried harder.

According to a bizarre story reported in The Grand Rapids Press, Kiko smelled an infection in his owner's right big toe and set about "amputating" it. Which in doggie terms, of course, means he ate it.

Kind of puts things in perspective, hm?  But how does a man have a toe gnawed off without noticing it?

... Kiko's owner, Jerry Douthett of Rockford, Mich., lay passed-out drunk in his bed.

That will do it.

Douthett actually had type 2 diabetes and was suffering from a dangerous infection in his big toe. ... Douthett's wife, Rosee, a registered nurse, had actually suspected her husband had diabetes and insisted he get checked out. But before he did so, he had a few beers. And then a few margaritas. After that, he went home, passed out, and Kiko got to work.

When you have diabetes, one of the sillier things you can do is ignore it in favor of knocking down some cold ones.  I believe the fancy medical term for this is "contraindication," which is doctor speak for "ARE YOU FREAKING NUTS?!!??!"

If you choose to drink alcohol, only drink it occasionally and when your diabetes and blood sugar level are well-controlled. ... Beer and sweet wine contain carbohydrates and may raise blood sugar. ... Do not drink more than two drinks of alcohol in a one-day period. ... Avoid "sugary" mixed drinks, sweet wines, or cordials.

This guy's lucky his nose wasn't infected.

C'mon, don't be so lazy about it

Cara Ellison wrote a post a whiles back about scientists who were positing parallel universes, based on quantum physics.  The wild gue... er, theory, was that the extraordinarily minute effects observed in the microscopic level could be scaled up to larger objects, and viola!  Head on down to your TARDIS dealer and get away from it all.

Even if this is eventually viable as a technology, it would take a loooooooong time.  By then we may be mature enough as a species not to care to revisit our collective terrible twos, any more than you wish to go back and revisit your potty training days.  What's fun as a creative device may go a long way to ruining real life; it's probably for the best that nobody actually has super-powers when they're cutting off other drivers on the highway or getting into tiffs about whose leaves are on whose lawns.

Still, the funny comments drifting into that thread months after the fact suggest that there could be a lighter side to this traveling back in time.

There are plenty of physic scientists out there proving the parallel universes theory.
Have you ever dreamed of something that does not exist on this planet? If so where did the idea come from?
Have you ever dreamed of a looking for your sister, when in this world you have no sister?
Look at all your dreams closely and wonder where the adventures you have never experienced are coming from.

The thought that anyone on This Side may have original thought, imagination, inspiration, or creativity?  Pah!  And that is what I mean by "lazy."  Take ownership of your own thoughts, guys.  It wasn't "parallel me" any more than "the devil made me do it."  It was you.  You did it.  You agreed with Parallel You, who is right now trying to explain to Parallel Family and Coworkers that it wasn't Parallel's fault at all, see, it was YOURS.  You naughty person.  Circular logic is entertaining and all, but sooner or later, someone started to spin that wheel.

Then there was this, a month after the above, three and a half months after the original post:

And we are light energy with free will , our souls are time machines with no ending and no beginning

after death go to another parallel
no reason to stay

Either ee cummings really did go to another parallel (and forgot how to write poetry when he got there), or this is nonsense on stilts.  If there's no reason to stay, why is there a reason to go?  When you get there, what's different?  Ideas floating over to you from Parallel Person?  The upshot of this is really just another dodge, right?  We're all floating light energy with no reason to stay, going to another place.  So what are you going to do in THIS place to make it a little more pleasant for your fellow floaties?  With no reason to stay, there's no reason to take any sort of constructive action.

Heck, even Yoda thinks this is a cop-out:  "This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was! Hmm? What he was doing! Hmph."

Have a little gumption - own your behavior, own your thoughts, own your life NOW.  It counts.

Snippets and snarks

* Newly-finished: a soundtrack for the Sudden Yurt Commune.  I'll be working on the insert over the next couple of days.  Any of you Yurters want a copy, please email me - nightflymail AT gmail DOT com - with a mailing address.

* Hey, one of the SYC-OST songs is playing on the iPod right now.  Sweet.

* It is currently 92°, with 85% humidity, about to storm.  This is an improvement over last week, when it was 103°, with 174% humidity, and always five minutes away from a huge rainstorm that never came.

* I've played tournaments outdoors, in the bright strong sun; on painted concrete surfaces that baked like parking lots, where you could see heat waves at the far end of the rink; I've played as many as four hour-long games in a night; I've reffed for nine straight hours each day of a weekend tournament... but I have never been as beat as at the end of my one game last week, indoors no less, during the absolute depths of the hideous oppressive weather.  The heat from under my gear felt like an open oven door.  I could feel my pulse in my neck and ears.  It was brutal.  If there had been an overtime I don't think I could have finished it.  I felt like a crayon melting in a closed car.

* I am holding an hour-long press-conference/ego-stroke/circus/charity fundraiser on ESPN tonight at 9 pm Eastern, to announce my decision about what to do with this blog.

* Speaking of which, the Miami Heat announced a free-agent deal with LeBron's former Cleveland teammate, Zydrunas Ilgauskas.  I thought he left Cleveland because they surrounded him with bad teammates?

* Today someone at work brought in donuts for everyone.  This happens about once a month or so, for no particular reason, on no set schedule, just because.  My coworkers are pretty darned cool.

* I have too good a life to be so pissy lately.

* A few months ago I was walking the Official Dog, and an orange tabby decided to trot over, tail high, to make friends.

Since then Catfriend pops around every week or so and he hangs out with the pupperkins.  She wags, he purrs.  Pupperkins must think he's the strangest-smelling dog ever, but they're buddies - unlike the day last week when a lady on a horse walked through the neighborhood.  (We have a sizable park near the house and folks will sometimes ride there.)  The Official Dog was freaked about that a little.  I kept her close to me, across the street, so she wouldn't spook the horse.

* If Ladybug wasn't allergic, I'd consider getting the pupperkins a catfriend of her very own at home.  I have always been a cat lover.  She'll have to make do with her eleven dozen toys, various snacks and treats, mild Internet fame, and the single attention of her two owners.

* There's a four-lane divided highway about a mile from our house; people enjoy making illegal lefts onto and occasionally off of said highway, despite no fewer than five signs forbidding the practice.  You'd think that you couldn't miss such instructions, nor all the helpful people honking incessantly at you, or the friendly pointing to the signs with one finger.  You'd be in error.  It's amazing that there aren't more wrecks at that intersection.

* Last night was baseball's All-Star Game, out in Anaheim.  Both leagues trotted out an assortment of pitchers who threw 95+ mph: Justin Verlander, Josh Johnson, Matt Thornton, Jose Valverde, Brian Wilson, Jonathon Broxton.  Not surprisingly, there was a dearth of scoring.  The AL's only run came off a walk, error, and sac fly.  Dodger pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo (who was dealing in the high-90's himself) helped this immensely by fielding a dibbler in front of the mound, throwing off his back foot, and airmailing it 20 feet above his first baseman's head.  Every New York Giants fan watching immediately said, "Hey - Eli Manning's in the game!"

* The NL won on a late bases-loaded double by Braves catcher Paul McCann.  They wasted a great early opportunity when Verlander struck out Ryan Braun on a pitch down the middle of the opposing batter's box.  This thing would have been wide of a soccer net.  Every New York Mets fan watching immediately said, "Hey, I thought Jeff Francoeur didn't make the All-Star Game this year!"

* Brian Wilson and Corey Hart were NL teammates.  Now THAT would be a weird musical collaboration.

* Paperwork.  Always with the paperwork.  I close my eyes and see these forms floating around, demanding to be properly catalogued and compiled.  My subconscious has turned into a flash drive.

* Mmmmmmmm...... coffee.......

*In three weeks I will have been married three years.  Wild.

* I love fonts.  Thus, I love Blambot.

* The Mother of Unfinishable Stories goes slowly in any font.  I've been writing others.  As they begin to bog down, I think that switching back to the MOUS may help get everything moving again.  I hope so, because I am enjoying the adventures of the characters in the series and would like not to have that stall permanently.

* Love you all.

Not so fast

Andrea Harris has a favorite stop of mine in blogworld.  (You can see her off to the side there in the Pantheon.)  This post of hers, about tourists having mental meltdowns when their real trip abroad destroys their romantic notions of the destination, brought brought out a comment that is making me scratch my head a bit:

Pity they didn’t bother to read about Paris (especially material not put out by the travel industry) rather than rely on a medium intended and designed to transmit lies.

I object to this, and I will explain why.  (At length - lucky you!)  Movies are not a medium intended and designed to transmit lies, any more than television, or novels, or plays, or art, or video games. All these are media intended and designed to transmit IDEAS or STORIES. Some of those may well be outright lies; some of those are excellently-crafted. There are also truthful stories, and beautiful ideas, and nobility and kindness and grandeur.

Since images and feelings are more immediate, most art aims for those instead of thoughts. No argument on that point. I do think that to simply call the whole thing "lies" by design is to miss the point, however. One of the earliest moving pictures was in fact used to truthfully answer a question: does a horse pick all four feet off the ground at once while galloping? (Turns out that they do.)

Look - I'm a storyteller by nature, if not by profession.  (And there's a long post brewing about that conflict: stay tuned.)  This is my passion.  I would be willing to go on a limb and say that for most creative community, that passion is a primary motivation.  They have turned that passion into a job.

Once you turn a passion into a means of commerce, things change.  As long as I'm just writing, I can just write.  Once I am also selling, then the writing has to meet the demands of those to whom I wish to sell.  It's a dilution - not much of one, since an audience wants a compelling story above all, and storytellers are nothing if not compelled.  Still, they may have no taste for the story struggling to free itself from my mind.  At that point it's the old familiar choice: give 'em what they want or say what I need to say?

Here's the thing, though: that tension exists in EVERY business.  Some people's passion is food.  They become amazing chefs.  They also have to consider: will people pay money to eat this?  How much?  Again, the dilution is slight.  People want great food, chefs want to cook great food.  But people can scarcely afford $100 meals every night, not in great enough numbers to keep the chefs themselves fed.  So ingredients are swapped, flavors change, and viola - Chili's.  Or Wendy's.

I won't pretend that line cooks at a chain restaurant give two shakes of a rat's patoot about Great Food in the abstract, but they care at least about how the particular food they're actually cooking, that it should be done properly and please the customers.  And the people who develop the menus care much more about that abstract, the ideal of flavors.  Even Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, cared a great deal about it, even if it was just burgers and fries.  He may not have been a chef on the par of a Gordon Ramsay or Julia Child, but he cared.  He had to.  Ultimately, if you make too many changes for commerce - too much dilution - then one loses both the passion and the commerce.

You will find the same tension in every walk of life: in education, in politics, in construction, in sports.  There is a perfect ideal, that drives everyone with a passion, and then there is the economic reality.  It would cost too much to make every teacher an Ivy League-quality professor (and not every one of them could be, anyway), though the children would benefit.  It costs money to campaign, money to run a government - too much to run unelectable candidates no matter how great they may be at governing.  Should my house get obliterated by meteorites or something, it would cost twice as much to construct the way it was originally built vs. using modern materials like sheetrock.  And the greatest players in the world command a great deal of money, more than any one franchise could pay (even the Yankees or Red Sox); so they make do with affordable players rather than pursue the perfect ideal of 162-0.

Yet those ideals exist.  Those passions are real.  Every teacher wants to teach as well as possible, every politician hopes to govern, every housebuilder (and homeowner!) wants the home to endure, and every team wants to win every game, or at least their league's chamionship.  Without those ideals, that passion, there would be no point in even starting.

That's why I say again that filmmaking is about ideas and stories, not lies.  Based on some of the loopier things that movie-folk say and do, it's easy to believe that Hollywood is full of narcissists who dictate What is Acceptable to the rest of us, when in fact they are full of crap.  There is some justice in the claim, perhaps, in certain examples.  Certainly Tim Robbins and Sean Penn have done more than their share of loopy lefty proselytizing.  But they didn't become actors to be able to dictate What is Acceptable, they did it because their passion is in the stories they tell.  Those who have lost that passion are usually the worst at their profession, and again, this holds across all walks of life.

Not surprisingly, when singers and athletes and kindergarten teachers also lose that passion, they become fairly useless in their fields as well.  That doesn't mean that music, sports, and knowledge itself is intended and designed only to convey lies, does it?

(Funny how this comes up when I'm working on a story that indirectly touches this idea - that of the storyteller as a professional liar.  Reality keeps anticipating me.  Bad reality!  No cookie!)

Hey, NYC!

Your mayor is an idiot.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Katie Couric’s show Monday night to discuss the attempted car bombing in Times Square. Between reassuring viewers at home that New York was safe and praising the city’s resilient spirit, Bloomberg wondered aloud if the culprit behind the Times Square car bomb was “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.”

Now there is a chance that the Pakistani-American arrested at the airport trying to head out of the country may have been upset about Obamacare, but I think not. And before any of you teabaggers get any ideas, Nurse Bloomberg is warning you about any reprisals against poor Muslims.

More evidence that you may have a drinking problem

When you throw up on someone at a Phillies game on purpose.

Captain Michael Vangelo with the Easton Police Department was off-duty when he took his 11 and 15-year-old daughters to the Phillies game Wednesday night.

"When I say disgusting, there was not only insults and vulgarities directed at us, but also beer was thrown at us," Vangelo told CBS 3. Unfortunately, the evening only got worse.

"I actually heard the individual behind me say, 'I'm gonna get sick', then I couldn't believe what I saw. He actually had his fingers down his mouth and into his throat to make himself vomit. He vomited and lurched forward and it was hitting my daughter," Vangelo explained.

Puking up on the daughter of a police officer. I've been to a few Phils games at the Vet vs the Mets, and with all the Mets fans coming down from North Jersey it can get rough in the stands. Serving Ortlieb's in wastepaper buckets didn't help either, but my issues in this area are well documented.

Dear God...

....they are coming here!

If you aren’t familiar with Westboro Baptist Church, they are a hate group known for targeting their hatred towards gays and lesbians. They are led by Fred Phelps, from Topeka, Kansas and according to the site’s picket schedule; they plan to picket several spots in Tampa in the next few weeks.

It's a strange mix of events they are protesting. I see no connection between Bon Jovi, Plant High (a public school with a good football team) Tampa Catholic High and Without Walls Church. Apparently there is a connection between rockers from Jersey, good high school football, papists and churches that have female pastors with big hair and bad stewardship of finances.

Actually, I'm a little miffed that my church is not on their radar.

The difference between Deepak Chopra and God..

.. is that God doesn't think He's Deepak Chopra.

The U.S. Geological Survey is blaming day-to-day seismological changes for Sunday's 7.2 earthquake along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Deepak Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine practitioner and transcendental meditation guru, is pretty sure he knows what really happened."Had a powerful meditation just now -- caused an earthquake in Southern California," Chopra wrote to his nearly 179,000 Twitter followers shortly after the quake.

And then, to clarify: "Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake," he tweeted. "Sorry about that."

The epitome of humility!

How to tell if you have a drinking problem

Is your family worried about your drinking?

Is your drinking causing problems at work?

Do you have money problems because of your drinking?

Are there times you can't account for, where you don't remember things you have done?

Have you ever thrown up on the hood of a '76 Volare?

Have you ever woken up in a stranger's backyard?

Have you ever tried to resuscitate a dead animal?

State police have charged a central Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen giving mouth-to-mouth "resuscitation" to a long-dead opossum along a highway.

Trooper Jamie Levier says several witnesses saw 55-year-old Donald Wolfe, of Brookville, near the animal along Route 36 in Oliver Township Thursday about 3 p.m. The trooper says one person saw Wolfe kneeling before the animal and gesturing as though he were conducting a seance, while another saw the mouth-to-mouth attempt.

Levier says Wolfe was "extremely intoxicated" and "did have his mouth in the area of the animal's mouth, I guess".

Oliver Township is about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

It's good to have goals...

.....even if it's to become the fattest woman in the world.

Donna Simpson, from New Jersey, weighs 273kg but told the Daily Mail newspaper she had her heart set on reaching her goal weight of 1000lb (450kg) in two years.

The 42-year-old already holds the title of the world's fattest mother after giving birth to her daughter in 2007 when she weighed 241kg.

"I'd love to be 1000lb ... it might be hard though, running after my daughter keeps my weight down," Ms Simpson told the Daily Mail.

273kg is about 600lbs, so she has a ways to go. She's eating as much as she can and moving as little as possible. But she has managed to earn a living.

To put on enough weight, Ms Simpson will need to eat 12,000 calories a day, which is six times the recommended daily intake for women.

In order to pay for the enormous amounts of food she is eating — her weekly grocery bill is $815 — Ms Simpson makes money by running a website where men pay to watch her consume fast food.

I need to get out more. I know there is stuff on the Internet to turn guys on - some of it really sick -but this specific proclivity is news to me.

I am loving this blog so hard right now

If you're a fan of a hard-luck sports franchise, you get completely crazy (see: all New York sports teams) or develop a darned good sense of humor.  Lately, the Isles fans are going the wrong way... witness this spectacular nitwittery in the (400+ and counting) comments, most of them ready to toss GM Garth Snow under the Zamboni for getting a low second-round pick for Andy Sutton.

Dudes... the guy is turning 36 next year, makes $3 million, and will probably leave as a free agent after the year.  Did you expect that Sid Crosby was coming back the other way?  I hate that so many of my fellow fans have decided to turn into typical "Louie from the Bronx" WFAN caller types.  Get down off the ledge, guys, woncha?

As an antidote I hang out over at Down Goes Brown.  The draft advertisement post alone is worth your repeated clickage.  ("Customers who viewed this item also viewed: Pylon, Turnstile, Wasted Money..."  HAHAHAHAHAHA)

And BTW, Isles Point Blank is also on the Pantheon, and Chris Botta, who is Lord of the IPB, is very very good.  No beef with him (even if he does spike my comments on occasion!).  It's my fellow combox jockeys who need to get back on their meds.

update and BWAHAHAHAHA - from Greg Wyshynski (Puck Daddy), the Milbury Trade Scale.  Never has mental scarring from epic failure been this amusing!

I didn't know how right I was...

....when I said that there was more proof that Obama was born in Hawaii than I was born in Puerto Rico.

A law enacted by Puerto Rico in December mainly to combat identity theft invalidates as of July 1 all previously issued Puerto Rican birth certificates. That means more than a third of the 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican descent living in the 50 states must arrange to get new certificates.

It looks like a lot of birth certificates were stolen. This is one way in which illegals who cannot habla English can pass themselves off as citizens.

Now I've got to go through this rigamarole to get a new certificate. It's going to be a real pain.

Especially since I was actually born in Kenya.

This Explains Hayworth

His birtherism, that is. It seems to be rampant among Arizona Republicans.

Nearly half of the Arizona Legislature wants to force President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate to state officials if he runs for re-election.

A state House committee on Tuesday approved the measure sponsored by 40 of the state's 90 legislators. It would require presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the requirements to be president.

All 40 co-sponsors are Republicans, comprising 75 percent of the GOP caucus. Two of them have since resigned to run for Congress.

The idea was proposed by Skull Valley Republican Rep. Judy Burges. She says if people have to prove their citizenship to apply for a job or get a passport, they should have to prove it to run for president.

With those kind of numbers his position on Obama's birth may help him vs McCain.

Toll Collector Rage in Jersey

In browsing this list, I see that many toll collectors have racial issues.

And they don't appreciate being paid in pennies.

The esteemed theologian...

....Sir Elton John.

So it comes as a surprise that in Parade magazine this week, John claims that one of the central figures of Christianity is in fact a homosexual.

"I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems," he tells Parade. "On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him."

Of course Jesus is not gay. We all know from The Da Vinci Code that He was shacking up with Mary Magdalene.

Well, McCain's re-elected

His opponent panders to birthers.

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who on Monday officially entered Arizona's Republican race against Sen. John McCain, defended his recent call for President Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate, suggesting his questions stem not from conspiracy theories that Obama was really born in Kenya but from concerns about identity theft

The one chance we have of ridding the GOP of the disease of McCainism, and we get this guy. Earlier Hayworth had called for Obama to release his long form certificate. Now that he is a candidate he has to walk back on that. So he comes up with this lame identy theft cover.

Hayworth is either a birther or worse, feels he needs to pander to them.

We'll never get rid of McCain. If you're in the Senate at 70 the only way you leave is by death. Robert Byrd has been in the Senate longewr than I have been alive. Now on his deathbed he nstiull won't give it up.

McCain is saying the right things now. But as soon as there's a Republican in the White House he will be on the TODAY show badmouthing his party and getting his toes licked my Meredith Viera.

.

You keep using that word...

...I don't think it means what you think it means.

Trouble is brewing over United States ice hockey goalie Jonathan Quick and the “Support Our Troops” slogan on his helmet. Slogans of this sort are banned under Olympic rules and Quick will be told to remove it, the International Ice Hockey Federation has told Reuters.
...
IOC rules forbid political propoganda or advertisements being placed on equipment. “If the players don’t agree with the interpretation they can ask the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) to petition the IOC.”

Political propaganda?  Wha...?  I don't recall GOP or DNC patches on the uniforms.  Besides, this is the Olympics - the non-partisan gathering of the fraternity of athletic endeavor in which, every four years, you gather with your countrymen to totally pwn stupid furrinurs and rub it IN! THEIR! FACE!  Afterward, they give out medals to the athletes who defeat their foreign opponents, and the winners are stood on a podium in front of millions while their national anthem is played.

If they were to say that the stated rationale of the modern Games is to meet on the field of play, rather than the field of battle, then perhaps they'd have a point - but to reduce this to politics is rather like objecting to a ransom note because of the grammar.  If this is the best they could do, then it's obvious that the ruling is itself a petty dig.

Well and duly noted.  They should be told to note our mocking laughter in reply.  Patriotism is not political, and it's kind of most of the point of having Olympics in the first place.  Most of the countries participating in these Games have fought alongside our forces, or are free today only because of them.  That is a fraternity that goes far deeper than politics.  He that to-day sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...

Tim Thomas, btw, has already gone Vichy and has covered his own "Support the Troops" backplate.  I hope he gets traded to Edmonton.

(stick-tap to Gabriel Malor at the Ace of Spades)

Cry-landers

Our very young ice hockey team has had everything go sideways on them. Not a surprise, as they are still not quite ready for contention - not even in this year's Eastern Conference, which features seven or eight mediocre teams, any two of which will make the playoffs by default this season.

In their honor, I've decided to put up a post about the worst of times. It's easy to pick out the best times when you win four straight championships and nothing else; when you have seven Hall of Famers over a concentrated period and little else. But when the suffering starts to pile up - it's just about 30 seasons since "OT - NYI, Nystrom (Tonelli, Henning) 7:11" - it's time to have a laugh about crying. This is not an original idea (and Leafs fans have been waiting longer than we have), but it's cathartic. If you like, you can hum the Simpsons' "Mediocre Presidents" song in your head as you read, for these are the adequate, forgettable, and occasionally regrettable Islanders...

Starting goalie: Tommy Soderstrom - Folks are more familiar with the longer tenure of Tommy Salo, a middling enough keeper who shrank from big moments and was reduced to tears in an arbitration hearing by his own general manager. That deserves special mention. Soderstrom, however, beats him out. He wasn't really good at anything. His 3.61 GAA is lowest in the annals of the franchise for any goalie with 50 career games, save Gerry Desjardins, who is excused because he played for the team in their first three seasons. Save percentage? .886, in the dead puck era. He played ten seconds in the 1996-97 season, and that was it for his career. And then there's this demoralizing fight. Perhaps the odd helmet/mask combo fooled the Isles into thinking they were getting Arturs Irbe, or something.

Backup: Eric Fichaud - Not really all his fault. He was drafted too high by the Leafs, and then dealt off in a trade that hurt everyone involved: the popular Benoit Hogue went from Long Island cult hero to Toronto pariah, the extra picks were squandered, and poor Fichaud was tossed onto the ice to face NHL teams behind one of the most porous teams of the day. His first two teams finished in the bottom five of the league and his final team finished 19th out of 26. The only consolation for him must have been that the Leafs finished below the Isles twice in those three seasons. Just a horrible trade.

Dishonorables:
Salo. Not Ron Hextall - everyone remembers "A River Runs Through Him" but there were mitigating factors: 1. if not for Hextall the Isles would never even have made the playoffs that year; 2. the Rangers were so stacked that year that beating them would have been even more astounding than beating the Pens the year before; and 3. Jamie McLennan got similarly smoked in his game two appearance. It wasn't Ron's fault.

Defenders:
Dick Tarnstrom - drafted in 1994, finally came to North America as a 27-year old rookie and human giveaway machine for the 2001-2002 Isles. He was a frustrating player to watch; offensively gifted but lost anywhere within fifty feet of his own goalkeeper. (Penguins fans are nodding right now. Sixteen goals and 52 points while going minus 37?!? Ugh.)

Thomas Pock - three points in fifty-nine games, minus 17, hasn't played an NHL minute since. Completely overmatched by the NHL. At least he was only a waiver claim.

Bruno Gervais - the current whipping boy for suffering Isles fans. He's a polite, well-spoken, decent young fellow who likes cooking, has a cute girlfriend, and gets undressed regularly by opposing forwards. Probably not as bad as advertised, but that's a function of having a poor team: you have guys playing too many minutes, against too-tough opposition. Bruno may be a sixth or seventh guy, and he's been on the TOP pair at times. Sadly, there can be only one outcome.

Janne Niinimaa - if you look at his numbers, they're actually not bad. Janne was never very comfortable on the Island but he didn't disgrace himself, either. On this I think some of my fellow fans were overreacting. Then again, you can go to any Isles blog and see that for yourself: if they win a few games everyone is mentally organizing parades and banner-raisings; lose a few and it's "trade everybody, those guys stink!" In other words, we probably owe Janne a fruit basket or something. I hope he's happier wherever he is now.

Dean Chynoweth - this was hardly Dean's fault: he was very frequently injured. The trouble was that he was drafted in the first round ahead of some talented players, such as Joe Sakic and John LeClair. (I'm leaving out others like Mathieu Schneider who actually later became Islanders... including the 114th overall pick, who is now their general manager.)

Scott Lachance - much like Chynoweth, he wasn't openly dreadful the way some of the others were, but it's all about opportunity cost. The Isles took him FOURTH overall in 1991, leaving on the table players like Peter Forsberg, Brian Rolston, Alexei Kovalev, Ray Whitney, and Markus Naslund. Heck, they could have taken Richard Matvichuk if they wanted a defender. Then again, it also comes down to player development; had they taken Matvichuk maybe he's on this list and Lachance has a long career as a respected blueliner for Minnesota/Dallas.

Dishonorables:
Most of the folks I could list here just weren't around very long, so instead, some follow-up trivia about 1991: the Isles took Ziggy Palffy in the second round of this draft, after all the above-listed players were off the board. Nice pick. And the all-time scoring leader for that draft class, surprisingly, is NOT Forsberg or even Eric Lindros. Injuries limited their playing time too much.  With 408 goals and 980 points (and counting), it's Kovalev.

Forwards:
Kirk Muller - public enemy number one for a large number of Isles fans of my age. He'd won a Cup with the Canadiens - beating the '93 Isles in the conference finals along the way - and midway through the shortened '94-'95 year, the Isles traded for him and Matheiu Schneider. However, it cost them Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov, depriving the Isles of their most talented forward and defender in one shot.  And Muller flat-out did NOT want to play for the Isles, bitched about it publicly, and dogged it while on the ice. The Isles were forced to accept pennies on the dollar for him midway through the very next season. Oh, we'll be talking about the GM of THIS trade in a few minutes, thankyouverymuch. Sonofab...

Brett Lindros - Don Maloney bragged upon his selection in 1994 that he had "the better Lindros." It was not to be. He was even more concussion-prone than big brother Eric. Eventually he was forced to retire after just 51 games. He scored twice in that time. Nobody was ever angry at Brett they way they were at anyone else on this list, really; he may well have made good on his potential. (Of course, with Milbury on the horizon, he would have done so in another jersey.) This is just a very sad story.

Alexei Yashin - I remain convinced that the real problem with Yashin was not his talent, nor his production. He played well, if not as well as he had in Ottawa. He overcame a severe injury that affected the tendons in one of his hands, which could have ended his career. I don't buy the "aloof Russian" reputation crap, either. Nobody would have thought he was aloof if he was only paid $3 million per year. No, the real issue here was that the Isles paid a king's ransom for him (soon-to-be franchise defender Zdeno Chara, checking forward Bill Muckalt, AND the second-overall pick, which became Jason Spezza), paid him a kings' fortune, and then were stuck with the bill after the lockout and the new salary cap. Eventually they were forced to buy him out; now he plays back home in Russia and sleeps with Carol Alt, so who's laughing now?

Oleg Kvasha - no discussion of Yashin is complete without Kvasha. When it comes to enigmatic Russian talents, this was the poster child: a large, physical player with gifted hands who could never top 15 goals in a season. Eventually went back to play in Russia as well, though his tastes in supermodels are unknown. Talk about enigmas: either there's another dude named Oleg Kvasha out there, or he has hidden musical talents.

Mike Comrie - anytime a guy plays for five different teams before his 30th birthday, something's up, but when he's done two separate stints for two of them, then it's on a whole new level. The guy's obviously got great talent, but something makes him very easy to part with despite it all. Incidentally, one of the prospects he was once traded for, Rob Schremp, is currently an Islanders rookie, and off to a promising start.

Chris Simon - long one of the league's better enforcers, but had good enough hands to score 29 goals one season. Also good enough hands to clobber Ryan Hollweg in the face with his stick. In fairness to Simon, it was later revealed that he had been concussed by an illegal hit from behind that received no penalty at all. He claimed later that he didn't really recall what he'd done to Hollweg because of it; I only note that he certainly recalled which player was responsible for it. He was later suspended again for stomping on a guy with his skate. Now out of hockey.

Joe Sacco - remember those players I didn't mention above, who eventually became Islanders after being drafted after Dean Chynoweth in 1987? Joe was one of them, but he gets mentioned anyway, because while on the Island, he put up one of the most confounding statlines in league history: in 73 games in 1998-99, he scored three lonely goals with zero assists - zero as in nil, zip, none, bubkes. Nobody deflected one of his shots in, or scored on one of his rebounds, or even had a fluke shot off his rump and into the net, much less converted an actual pass. It's astonishing. He wasn't a brawler, either. One would think that even in just ten minutes played per game, you could get an assist just by accident, at least once. I mean, even Mick Vukota never went an entire year without an assist, and he took 250 penalty minutes a year.

Scott Scissons - it seems odd to hate on a guy who played all of two NHL games, and scored no points. Wonder no more. He was taken sixth overall in 1990's entry draft. Eighty-seven different players taken in that draft had points in the NHL, including eight goaltenders. If that's not enough, one of those goalies is still playing in the area: you may have heard of him, fellow by the name of Brodeur, the NHL's all-time wins and shutouts leader in the regular season.  Scott *($$!?%^* Scissons, people!

Dishonorables: I'll take nominations from the audience here. I just can't go on. Scott Scissons....

GM: Mike Milbury - the easy choice. He was the engineer of so many disastrous moments during his inexplicably long stay in the organization. Tops was trading Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen to Florida for Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish: that's one of the five best goalies in the league and a perennial 30-goal scorer (if a touch of a headcase) for one of the other guys on this list and hard-working yet clearly secondary scorer. Then there's Spezza/Chara for Yashin, the constant coaching changes, exiling young talent before it could develop, whiffing on top draft choices... to say nothing of the already-mentioned arbitration hearing where he savaged his own starting goalkeeper. It was a comedy of terrors with Mad Mike at the helm. O to put it another way - searching his name returns his wikipage as the top result, and a blog called "Mike Milbury Sucks" as the second. The third is his current job as an analyst on NBC and CBC. The fourth is "Mike Milbury's Bad Deals."

Dishonorable: Don Maloney - the former Ranger played a bit for the Isles before moving up to the front office in 1992. He came into a team with a lot of offensive talent (four 30-goal scorers) and a reasonable defense (Norton, Kurvers, Krupp, Malakhov, Pilon, Kasparaitis), and they shocked the two-time champion Penguins in the conference semifinals in 1993. He didn't feel like they could get any farther without better goalkeeping, though. He brought in Hextall. That, as we have seen, didn't work out so hot, so he panicked and sent Hextall right back to Philadelphia... for Soderstrom.  Later that very season, he bundled Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov to Montreal in the infamous Kirk Muller deal. That was pretty much all she wrote.

Muller was eventually dealt for Ken Freakin' Belanger, straight up. Schnieder is STILL playing, but was long dealt away: the Isles got Kenny Jonsson for him, which was nice, and the first-round pick that was part of that deal became... well whodathunk it? Roberto Luongo, who was part of Mad Mike's finest moment as GM of the Florida Panthers. Oh, wait... he was our GM, wasn't he?

:::facepalm:::

So just three degrees of separation for the two worst trades in the history of the franchise (Turgeon/Malakhov for Muller/Schneider and Luongo/Jokinen for Kvasha/Parrish). Shocka. We'd better not be out of beer...

Trivia - Maloney and I were born on the same date, but not the same year. We also share a birthday with Jesse James. I am the only one of us not to kill a person or a franchise.

Now this is progress...

...at least he's bowing to an American.

The fortunate lady is Pam Iorio, the mayor of Tampa and the scene is MacDill AFB on Thursday.

Am I over the top with these comments? I may be watching too many clips from the racebaiters at MSNBC, but if there is another pic of the president bowing to a Caucasian I haven't seen it.

(nf - you are perhaps a touch intemperate.  Don't let them drag you down to their level, my friend.)