Harry, shot on September 28, 2012.
This little guy is the pet of my landlords, who stays with me half of the year while they vacation.
His name is Harry and he’s somewhere around four years old. Nice little tabby, isn’t he?
The NFL officials strike is now history. After the events of Monday night, no way this was going to end any differently.
It should be remembered and not forgotten that even with regular officials in place, they will get calls wrong too. Just not as frequently as these poor scabs got it wrong.
Shame on the owners of the 32 NFL teams for letting it get this far, and that too should not be forgotten.
Yes, I’m starting a fourth blog.
Trying to keep this one quiet, it may cost me a future job some day.
It’s called The Boiler Room Chronicles. I’m getting back into the telemarketing game, times demand a bit more income for me right now, but I’m taking you all along for the ride. It will be good for you, and it’ll be therapy for me!
One company already wanted my services, and I had to decline them. The reasons why I lay out in the first entry…well, one of the reasons. Never hurts to do research on some of these nationwide organizations. I should have another entry up by the end of the week.
So this whole replacement officiating situation currently going on in the NFL just got real. The outcome of a Monday Night Football game last night between Green Bay and Seattle was directly decided by a missed call of an interception that was ruled a game winning touchdown.
The fans of the NFL would be well advised that if they are displeased with what’s going on to do two things.
One: stop watching! Even if your favorite team hasn’t been “screwed” yet, if nothing is done to resolve the strike quickly, the mechanisms are still in place.
Two: appeal to the owners, not commissioner Roger Goodell. The commish serves at the pleasure of the owners who hire him. The players have no say, at least until the next labor agreement expires. Then they may bargain and negotiate as they see fit.
The average fan is just a pawn here. Until that changes and the fans empower themselves, that won’t change.
So I see that the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, is taking legal action seeking inclusion into the first Presidential debate next week in Denver.
I say, why the hell not?
I’ve never liked the premise that only the two major candidates get to debate while the others sit on the sidelines. Are they so afraid of other upstart parties and other ideas?
And doesn’t it make you wonder, even in the slightest, why the Republicans and Democrats only seem to agree on one thing these days. That the debates should be between themselves. Isn’t that collusion, really?
The media should cover this story with a bit more intensity, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Many years ago, Dick Clark asked Tony Randall on the old $10,000 Pyramid game show what not to do on a game show, and Tony had a direct and humorous retort. Had to share.
The Tampa Bay Rays have work to do.
They are (as I type this) 6 games behind the Baltimore Orioles for the second Wild Card spot in the American League, with 13 games left to play. That means they have about a 4 percent chance of making the playoffs, which puts their odds at 24-1.
Many predicted big things for Tampa Bay this season, but they lost their star hitter, Evan Longoria, to injuries for most of the year. While their pitching was top notch as it always is, their defense betrayed them this season, as they made more errors than expected.
The 2012-2013 off season will be an interesting one, provided they don’t make the playoffs. Do they shell out the big bucks to bring in a “big stick” to town?
(Final Note: The Rays beat Boston tonight 7-4 with a six-run ninth inning. This puts them 5.5 games out of the playoffs with 12 games left to play. Hopefully, there’s life in my favorite team yet.)
It is one of those nights for me. I’m trying to tell my body to sleep, but my body is rebelling these thoughts.
So, I write.
I hope I don’t overdo it on these blog entries I do noting the passing of a sports figure here or a celebrity there.
Oddly enough, these occasions are like banana peels for my mind. A marker of sorts. It’s how I tend to remember things.
Is that too weird?
It all began like this the day Elvis Presley died. I was a few weeks shy of six. It was the first moment in my life where I remember where I was when news broke.
I remember Elvis’s passing in 1977 better than I remember Michael Jackson’s passing in 2009.
Remembering things in your life based upon the deaths of people I’ve never met.
Never thought about this until now. How morbid.
Just learning that Steve Sabol of NFL films has lost his fight with brain cancer at the age of 69.
If you ask me, two things led to the rise in the NFL as THE biggest sports in the United States, both of which are TV related. The proliferation of televised pro football, mainly brought on by the AFL-NFL wars of the 1960’s, and NFL Films. TV chronicled a game you could watch live as it happened, NFL Films brought fans all the games you didn’t see on a given Sunday.
Steve, along with his father Ed (who just turned 96 and is still alive) made the NFL an art form with their films. I was always a big fan of the music that went with the films that Sam Spence did most of the composing of. It was the perfect presentation of sound and fury.
So, in honor of the fallen…here’s one for you, Steve.
And I thought the Europeans were supposed be less uptight about the whole women sun bathing without tops thing.
There’s a big furor across the pond over Prince William’s wife Kate Middleton got caught by cameras letting her twins out sun bathing in France, I believe it was.
I’ve seen the photos. I’d say she has about a B cup, maybe a tad less.
Get real, Royals. Are you trying to tell me Queen Elizabeth never did that back in her day? Please.
And what can they do to Kate, anyways? Make sure she’s not a duchess or something? They gonna whack her like the conspiracy theorists suggest was done to Princess Diana over Kate going topless, of all things?
Get over it, Queenie. Women have breasts. Some women do different things with them than others.
So as I mentioned over at my sister blog, The Big Brother Diaries, there was some major treachery afoot in the game last night.
For those of you who don’t regularly follow the show: let me explain. Those who do follow, bear with me please. The game was down to four contestants. Two contestants win immunity into the next round over the course of a given round. The first such player wins Head Of Household, and that person has to put two people up for eviction. The second such player wins what they call Power Of Veto, and that player can (normally) take one player off as a potential evictee. If the POV winner is one of the evictees, naturally that person would want to take themselves out of danger.
So that led to this moment, where Danielle Murphree, the then reigning HOH, vetoes Dan Gheesling’s nomination. Dan swore up and down that he would take out fellow houseguest Ian Terry. But he doesn’t do that: he evicts Danielle’s friend, Shane Meaney.
I do sometimes wonder if these reality game shows send the wrong kind of message to everybody, that having a lack of moral character is okay in today’s world. While everyone in that house on a CBS stage in Los Angeles is well aware that they are playing a game for $500,000, high stakes seem to breed high levels of greed. And we watch because we all think it’s entertaining.
Don’t blame Dan for what he did: the game and Danielle each allowed it to happen, mainly Danielle with her decisions. There are no rules against making unethical decisions, to make deals with people and then snuff the life out of them, in the context of a game.
Let the debate rage on. And if you have a problem with this kind of greed and sabotage, you can always do something about it with that remote control of yours.
So here I sit on this older computer I got in 2008, hearing it whirr away.
My plan is to get a new computer, although that will take a few weeks. It seems it would be more cost effective to get a new one than it would be to repair the one that just quit on me. It’d need a new hard drive and with it failing to turn on and turn off, probably needs a new motherboard too I’d suspect.
I know that the Windows 8 operating system is rolled out by late October, from what I hear, so I imagine computer prices may be at a low point, which makes for a good time to buy.
Not trying to whine, just journaling what it is I’m going through right now. Wait, is journaling a word? May have just made one up. Hah!
Anyway, I’ll solider on as I always do.
A Slice Of Big Pauly 