This is Not a Baseball Blog 21

Both men frail, very frail.

Red Sox principal owner John Henry

C. Montgomery Burns
.

Recipe Corner

Dear snack addicts;

Here's a scrummy and simple self-assembly sandwich cookie that gives a sort of satanic twist on the concept of PB and J. This does have a nutty, preservey essence but- woo- lets give it a spin off axis.

You will need the following:




Open the Goya cookies- remove two from the package. Spread one with nutella. Spread the other with orange marmalade. Press together, not forgetting to lick the excess oozage from the sides of the cookie sandwich.

Nutty, dark chocolatey, bittersweet orangey goodness. Enjoy.

(PS: Over at the Newbie Blog, the child eats, moves laundry, and dances while the Weasel speaks!)

Hire these students immediately

Pupils Sent Home For Turf Prank

Benny Hill Day at the BBC Online?

Best headline evah:

Great tits cope well with warming

Gentlemen, on with the mittens and prepare your hot water bottles.

The countryside is beautiful, the cities can be elegant and exciting, the culture is a joy and the food is my anchor, but oy! the people!

As someone who on his last visit home endured the joys of travelling cheek-by-jowl with his fellow Britons aboard an overcrowded train while they acted like pigs and sharp-elbowed gollems; who sat wreathed in the smoke from a thousand cigarettes in an unventilated basement restaurant; and who revelled in the intensity of the surly bad service given by shop assistants and waitstaff across several counties I have to say that the Rough Guide folks are being pretty fair:

New guide to 'irritating' England

Quaint bobbies prepare to greet colourful drinkers at chucking out time, any British town, any Thursday through Saturday night

Only a few leaves ever stand between Britain and chaos

From the fantastic When The Wind Blows
Courtesy of the BBC:

Nuclear threat sparked tea worry
The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, documents reveal....Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be "very serious" after a nuclear war.

"It would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week could be ensured," they stated...

Radiation burns, mass death, the collapse of central government, and a return to the lifestyle of the middle ages we could just about take. But to do it without a cuppa- oh, the humanity!

Wherein Basic Predjudices Long Unexamined Doth Boil Up

I personally don't belong to any faith and find the whole business of mumbo-jumbo and mystery in general to be a tremendous cop-out from embracing the truly exciting concept of the universe being powered by chaos, random events and competition between natural systems. That said, I was raised in the warm bath of generalized British soft protestantism and so when the Pope recently came to the United States for a visit I had the following reactions:

1) Ugh, the Pope.

2) Look at him, all conservative and hypocritical.

3) Wait a minute, who are all those cheering people?

4) Bloody hell, there is a significant percentage of the world's population who love the Pope and think he's a force for good.

5) I think I need to work on my empathy.

The Pope, as I've always seen him and his predecessors. Not a view shared by all, nor even the right one?

The Wide World of Sports

Baseball is America's game. Football, or soccer if you prefer, is the sport beloved of the rest of the world. With that in mind, would you rather:

a) Be a lying, arrogant, greedy, adulterous kiddy-fiddler whose ass bled from too many performance enhancing drugs and who has squandered the trust of two great sports towns and some shite outfit called the Yankees?

Or:

b) A pie-loving, perpetually adolescent set of giant teeth with a gut and feet of gold attached caught up in the ol' Eddie Murphy "my gaggle of prostitutes have testicles" caper?

Answers on a post card to MLB and FIFA. The winner will be selected between rounds as Sepp Blatter and Bud Selig wrestle to see who can make their beautiful game more tawdry and attractive to borderline Nazis (the late Marge Schott would have made a perfect Lazio Ultra).

Match the athlete to his date

Searching

Every now and then, its refreshing to remind oneself how people stumble onto this site. Here's some of my favorite recent searches by poor deluded fools:

story of rick manning's affair with denise eckersley
hodmatod
se5a propeller
how does a weasel defend itself
(The ever popular) where to buy urinegone
the ironic tickler

And my personal favorite:

aerial pictures of thetford in 1737
And how, one wonders, was someone to create an aerial picture of Thetford 50 years before the first manned flight in a hot air balloon? I suspect this search was fruitless.

Ahhh, Spring

Mais oui, je suis Anglais. Porquoi?

British cuisine has made great strides over recent years. The rationing-blighted food memories that GIs brought home to the States in the forties might still dominate popular culture's references to Brit-grub, but as anyone who has eaten in Blighty recently can tell you most dishes are delicious (if a bit on the starchy, waterproofing side of the ledger).

So it is with a mixture of both trepidation and excitement that I offer up the bangers-and-mash cone. As described in the press release:

"It may look like a 99 Flake* from afar, but it’s just the latest sign of the British adapting eating habits due to increasingly cold summers. Aunt Bessie’s is breathing new life into the fortunes of the ice cream van by offering cones filled with creamy mashed potatoes and a banger (sausage) topped with gravy and a sprinkling of garden peas."

Yum.

(*A true delicacy).

This Is Not A Baseball Blog 20

In a fitting tribute to the roots of this feature, this one comes from my darling wife Country Mouse. Watching the Red Sox in morning baseball action yesterday, my beloved took one look at pitching phenom Clay Buchholz* and announced:

"Clay Buchholz is a lady".

You be the judge:
A Lady...

Clay Buchholz

(*Her irrational whipping-boy of the 2008 season: last year it was Wakefield, in 2006 Papelbon)

Marketing Thought

In much the same vein as when retired senator Bob Dole endorsed Viagra, perhaps male urinary weak stream medication Flomax should ask retired NASCAR driver Dick Trickle to serve as pitchman.

I've Seen This Movie....

....and it was terrifying. Don't go into the fog. Nor apparently leave any skunk un-beheaded:

Rabies Plagues Camden
To pick a few choice quotes:

Roberts found himself this past week in the uncomfortable position of beheading two of the skunks.... "If you find something like that, don't handle it without gloves and a shovel," said Roberts..... For burial, one should make sure there are at least 18 inches of soil covering the grave..... aim for the heart, not the brain "Because the brain needs to be intact," he said.... "It was a long afternoon," said Roberts.

"Where do you get your ideas?" the budding writer asked Maine novelist Stephen King.

Run cat, run!

Terms

OK Mr. Norris: here's the first challenge issued to you, as the losing party, in our first Red Sox vs.Yankees face-off of 2008.

1. Visit your local supermarket, corner store, or bodega.

2. Purchase a carton of Tropicana or other similar beverage.

3. Purchase a sleeve of the smallest Dixie Cups (or equivalent) you can find.

4. Go to a bar, your place of work, a nearby Home Depot, or somewhere you won't get beaten up.

5. Pour the beverage into the small cups.

6. Put on your Yankee hat.

7. Offer the cups to passers by, friends, or associates saying each time:

"I am a New York Yankees fan, so can I offer you a shot of juice?"

That is all (although a photo would be nice).

The Yankees' Jason Giambi before...

...and after

Yay!

First blood to me. Watch this space.

Its That Time of Year Again

Bill Norris, the man who put the sex in Tex Mex, is a Yankees fan. I am a Red Sox fan. For a couple of years now, we have been operating under the following rules throughout the baseball season whenever the Sox and Yankees meet:

"So, I propose some sort of bet, to be played out here and in his own pages. Not anything of monetary consequence, as I am poor and he's soon to be betrothed, but rather something visual, to be blogged, a picture perhaps, of Wisdom sporting an "I Heart Jeter" shirt should the Yankees win the series and something equally mortifying to me in these pages should the unthinkable happen and the Red Sox win.

Then, as the season progresses, we can continue this, in the spirit of good natured ribbing and mutual mortification.

I'm willing to take suggestions on the terms, keeping in mind that the embarrassing gesture need be: a) cheap, b) easily blogged and c) funny."

This Friday the 2007 World Series champion Boston Red Sox meet the team that couldn't beat Cleveland for the first time this season. Its a three game series and by Sunday night either Bill or myself will have egg on our faces.

I already have a forfeit on hand (thanks to BioChris's eagle eyes) but both Bill and I feel the challenge needs a shake up. So we are soliciting suitable punishments from you all. If you follow the "betting" tag you'll see what we have done in the past. Be creative and keep it legal in Texas.

On to Friday, and victory!