Lunar Obverse

Over the weekend, Josh Marshall took a break from his usual excellent journalisming about politics and mused about the esoteric topic of baseball team loyalty. He’s trying to pick a team, now that he’s living in New York City.

Basically, he’s asking if he should root for the Yankees. In his words:

“But the Yankees? Becoming a Yankees fan almost seems like apostasy.”

Essentially, Josh is pointing out that a little suffering makes enjoying the victories sweeter. And since the Yankees hardly ever lose, there’s really not enough suffering to make it enjoyable.

Don’t look at me like that. I understand him completely. Maybe only baseball fans can get that.

At any rate, he asked for comments and suggestions from fellow baseball fans.

I sent him the following:

I don’t know if you’re a fan of “Get Fuzzy”, a syndicated comic strip about a guy named Rob, his dog Satchel (named after, of course, Satchel Paige) and his cat, Bucky (named, of course, after Buck O’Neil from the Negro Leagues)…

…but I think, if you are, all you need to know is that Bucky is a Yankees fan. Do you want to be like Bucky?

The comic is set in Boston, though (which coincidentally is the hometown of the artist, Darby Conley), so that might tend to explain things.

Last Thursday, a co-worker announced over the tops of the cubes, “I get the most boring spam ever!” With much vehemence.

Since I was the only one there in at least a 4-cube radius, I wandered over.

He had his personal webmail open, and was going through and deleting vast numbers of messages. “Here’s one for donuts,” he complained. “Another one! One for a Chevy Tahoe! Mattress offers!” Delete, delete. “J. C. Penney!”

I said, “Dr. Seuss? Insurance? You’re right. Very very boring.”

He shook his head. “I must not go to the really exciting websites.”

“Listen, if you want, I can show you some… I get porn spam all the freakin’ time.”

He looked up at me. “Nah. I’m too old for that shit.”

“But you had to think about it, didn’t you?” I smiled back.

Just as it was last year, I still hate surfing the internets on April Fool’s Day. I can typically spot the fake or funny posts, but sometimes it takes me a minute or two of pondering.

If you’re interested in some of the best, Andy Baio at Waxy has a compilation post.

Just for the record, I will never ever post a fake entry. I have a terrific sense of humor, trust me (or, trust my friends), it’s just that April Fool’s jokes are overdone.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go finish running the marathon I started this morning.

Damn, if only I could have waited a month and a half, I could have saved $300 off the cost of my new sexy thing (click on “Special Deals”, then scroll down the page).

Of course, then it wouldn’t have been a new sexy thing. It would have been a refurbished-to-new sexy thing.

Is that worth $300? Um… duh.

Update 4:03 PM 31 March 2006: fixed broken link

A month or two ago, I forget exactly when, I was at work, and having contact lens problems. I keep some saline solution at my desk, so I took the saline into the men’s room, took out my contacts, rinsed them off, put them back in… all was fine.

Except that I left the bottle of saline solution in the men’s room. Forgot it was there.

Couple of weeks later, I was in the men’s room and that bottle was still sitting on the counter next to the sink.

…or was it the same bottle?

Had somone else used it in the meantime? Probably not. But… I can’t tell. And, just like girls are told not to use each other’s makeup because they can pick something up, I’m wary of using a saline bottle or eye drops that someone else has used.

Trouble is, I can’t tell if someone else has used it or not.

Is that paranoid? Yeah, probably. Better safe than sorry.

So I was having contact lense issues today.

Think I’ll go up to the drug store and buy another bottle.

Better safe than sorry.

When did The Oregonian become a real newspaper, like we had in the olden days where the reporters would, y’know, report the news without “balancing” it with a fake opposing viewpoint?

First, I read about (on Glenn Greenwald’s excellent blog) The Oregonian’s lawsuit to unseal some crucial documents in a NSA wiretapping case.

Now, with all the excellent coverage of Dave Boyer’s early resignation from the county.

Because the Boregonian only allows access to their articles on the web for 14 days, I’ve saved and archived them all as PDFs.

• 13 March 2006 – “County finance chief takes his leave early”
• 15 March 2006 – “Linn denies pressing finance chief”
• 16 March 2006 – “Forced out by the ongoing feud” (editorial)
• 17 March 2006 – “Financial chief asks county for severance pay”
• 24 March 2006 – “Emails script clashes between finance chief, Linn’s top aides”
• 25 March 2006 – “Finance officer said ‘no’ to spinning numbers” (editorial)

I’ve also included the letters to the editor that The BigO has printed, Willamette Week’s article on the topic, as well as another copy of Dave Boyer’s original resignation letter.

But, maybe it’s just because The Big O has decided that Diane Linn, Multnomah County Chair, has got to go?

I do notice, however, that the Boregonian has been silent on Dave Boyer’s other accusation – of differential treatment for line staff, managers, and executives?

Damn, I’d like to bring that to their attention. I just wish I could think of some examples of that bias. Oh, well, I’ve got to go; I need to talk to a co-worker who testified against Jann Brown and is getting laid off… after interviewing for a new position on a panel that, completely coincidentally, included Jann Brown…

Update 28 March 2006 – I have added the link and the PDF of The Oregonian’s front-page article detailing the internal battles between Dave Boyer and other managers at the county. Interesting read, and I completely forgot to include it earlier. My bad.