After September

October approaches as inevitably as the march of time itself. However I prefer to think of the month as Rocktober.

Wicked Good Names for Stuff

Fiction writing abounds with characters whose names give the readers some insight into that character’s character. A religion talking bird named Moses may seem to lack subtlety in some works, but I’ve stumbled across recent examples from real life that may make Moses the religious bird appear realistic if contrived.

The first being the giant HMO known as Kaiser Permanente. To translate it from both German and Spanish it would mean roughly, the Permanent Emperor—an odd choice for a Health Maintenance Organization that claims to have no ambitions of world domination.

The second, and this one is not very interesting and more just pathetic, is a ghetto housing project near Johns Hopkins Hospital called “The Target”.

The third (and finest I believe) is an organic food company recently at the center of an E. coli in spinach outbreak. It is a company that through its sloppiness and incompetence allowed E. coli to sicken many and kill a few. It's a company whose Chief Operating Officer is named Charles Sweat. And it's a company that allowed those with some resistance to this bacterium to live on and reproduce another day, thus increasing the frequency of their genes in the population. This company is of course Natural Selection Foods.

If you're reading this, you have to check out this thing with the cardboard cars from 2 posts ago. I can't get enough of those things.

Fuckery

The pro football team in Baltimore is called the Ravens alluding to Poe’s classic work “The Raven”. Fitting, in a city where the residents seem to have a certain gift with the artful turn of phrase. For instance, my mechanic described the speed with which he could get out of city phone numbers from 411 as “faster than a cat like his own ass.” The Smoked Salmon overheard a group of transit workers discussing a boss. “He used to me alright till he gave up drinkin. Now he’s written people up and shit. There’s some real fuckery going on around here” Indeed!

Cool cars

With many apologies to my e-fan base I submit this entry: http://youtube.com/watch?v=AXc71a2OKqM. A friend of mine did this. Godspeed car men.

District of Commuting

Bluefish Canoe has relocated/transitioned-to the bedroom communities of the most powerful men and women on earth. I now study at the fine city of Baltimore, MD and the smoked salmon is finishing her schooling (pun intendito, mofo) in DC. We tried to settle b/w Baltimore and DC but although the two cities are fairly close this is not an easy proposition. Public transport as I know it frequents these suburbs irregularly and the men and women of power tend commute via high speed automobile. If anyone feels these men and women of power are just regular folk like you and I, then I beg to differ. If you believe that the leadership of this country is simply faced with tough decisions in a cruel and terror filled world, and that’s why their actions appear like wild warmongering, then you have never commuted with said men and women of power. If you think that the leaders of this nation are any different from savage rulers of antiquity such as the men who invented soccer while kicking around the heads of their vanquished enemies, then you have never tried to merge onto a four lane mega-“beltway” after 6:00 AM. I will estimate that at least half of the people commuting in and around Washington DC are homicidal maniacs bent domination at any cost whilst driven mad by the sent of the blood of the weak and wounded. Just listen to a traffic report. It’s litany of carnage spoken by a chipper Midwestern woman. This morning I heard one that went not unlike this, “Hi, Mike. Things are smooth coming up from Virginia now that a motorist was allowed to blow up the Wilson Bridge. However, we do have a wreck on 495 northbound coming up on the Pine Branch Road exit [my route]. It’ll be another 22 minutes before the scavenger crew pulls all the useable scrap metal off the highway to sell to the Chinese. There have been some reports of some slippage on the blood of the drivers in the wreck, but I just hit a kidney and then a pituitary gland at about 85 mphs and I barely heard a bump. Back to you Mike.” Mike, "Thanks Staci. Another twist in the Ramsey case..."

Team USA Is Back, Baby

After losing in the last Olympics in embarrassing fashion, Team USA Basketball has rebounded and is wuppin’ it up in the World Championship. The idea behind the latest incarnation of Team USA is to get a core group of professionals together and keep them together for a few years so they’re ready for the next Olympics. The problem with the last Olympic team was thought to be lack of team cohesion due to not enough games together. This new formula of a team accustom to playing together is working tremendously well and we’ve had to bring in a Team USA Team B to keep from running up the score against the other teams. Team USA B lacks seasoned NBAers and is comprised mainly of recent college grads. The only problem is Team USA B is still blowing out all the international competition. Thus I suggest we bring in a Team USA C composed of Americans guaranteed to falter against any competition on the court. I for one volunteer to join, if not lead, Team USA C. I’m whiling to play in the Olympics for my country. I’m whiling to take on fame, riches, and endless endorsements when my country calls.

Zany Google Hi Jinx

Do a Google search for the word “Failure”. It’s pretty funny.

4:45

Yesterday the Red Sox started playing baseball at 1:00 PM and didn’t get through until 12:52 AM. During this great expanse of time they played 2 games, one of which broke the record for longest 9 inning game ever played at 4 and 45 minutes. The Red Sox managed to lose both games to the Yankees. I watched the entire second game. By around midnight Fenway had gotten so empty you could hear on TV individuals heckling Yankee players over the muted and decimated crowd. I haven’t heard that happen at Fenway since the early 90s. Moreover, the game was covered in NY by the Yankee announcers, so I didn’t have to soothing cadence and salty wit of Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy to lull me through the evening (Yes I do believe Jerry Remy to be down right salinous*). I would recommend to no one watching the Red Sox lose to the Yankees for 4 hours and 45 minutes alone on a Friday night. Maybe a long work meeting or a bad movie comes close to this poor choice, but somehow not quite.

* Note: Microsoft spell checker does not believe “salinous” is a word. I feel the very institution which is Jerry Remy provides ample ground for a resurgence of this fine adjective.

Late August Baseball

The Sox are losing the first game of a double header right now. 8-3. We have John Lester on the hill for the second game and… well we’ll just say he’s due for a strong outing. It’s the point in the season were I don’t care if we win the World Series, I don’t even care if we’re swept in 3 games in round one of the playoffs. I just don’t want the Yankees to get to the post season. What I fear most is both the Sox and Yankees playing each other again in October because 1) history suggests we’ll lose, and 2) I can’t take the endless rivalry montages made saccharine by the imbeciles at Fox who cover the playoffs. The Red Sox highlights and lowlights of last 20 years are the highlights and lowlights of my life. It’s just too emotional to watch the Aaron Boone homer 50 times a day while Tim McCarver reminds us this “might be the fiercest rivalry since the Homo Sapiens finally crushed the Neanderthals.” How many times did we have to watch the Buckner error during the 04 playoffs? I don’t come to McCarver’s house and play footage of his wife and Joe Buck going at it 50 times a day, do I? (Note to self: find some way to do that; it'll be nasty but worth it.)

Blue Fish Canoe's final days in NYC

I'm movin' again. Fellas, get you drinkin shoes. We got celebratin to do.

Pandora

This dude at work told me about something called pandora.com. It’s a website which customizes a radio station for you based on a suggested band and then a series of up or down votes. It plays pretty good music and it is fun to see if a computer can grasp the subtle nuances and sophistication of my musical taste. I can test to see if the computer can find music I like as fast as I can. It’s like Kasparov versus Deep Blue or John Henry versus whatever it was that John Henry was hammerin’ against.

Ahmadinejad's comment section

I found the flags on Ahmadinejad's blog. It turns out he's got a comment section and a Q&A. I don't recommend leaving any comments on his blog if you're going to leave any trace to this blog.

Fortunately his sever doesn’t seem to be able to handle the increased workload posed by the comments.

Ahmadinejad Are You Out There?

As you may have noticed this site lacks the substantial iCrew that many of the cooler blogs role with. Today, I reach out to a new blogger and invite him into my web social scene. Today, I unveil my link to the blog of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, started a blog recently and I’m hopeful that once he sees how many hits he’s getting from bluefishcanoe, he’ll reciprocate my offer and link to this site, thus cementing our virtual relations like the Friendship Bracelets of my youth. Supposedly there is some way to look at this blog in English by clicking on the American flag. I haven’t found it yet.

Review

Listen to our podcast at Kylesjob, I beg you. Please. Mr. Geography may be among the coolest people on the planet. And if you listen, or even if you don’t listen, please right a review of the show. You can do that by going to the link above, clicking on “Add to iTunes” in the right corner, then from iTunes click on write a review also in the right corner.

Also we will be contacting Mr. Geography again so if you have question that you think can stump him then email us at questions@kylesjob.net

Oil Can Update: Really bad outing in 87

Oil Can Boyd’s hopes of returning to a baseball diamond as a pro player were dashed earlier this year when ongoing legal problems resulting from threats he made to a former business partner that the “authorities” deemed “highly credible” voided a contract he had signed with the Nashua, NH, Pride. Evidently, Pride ownership insisted on a special Can clause in Oil Can’s contract which stipulated the Can must remain out of jail for lengthy stretches of the season. Once again the lawyers ruin all our fun with senseless detail and frivolity.

However, amazingly, The Can managed to get in the August 3 addition of the Boston Glob in an interview with a man named John Orrico. Orrico was the bat boy for the visiting teams in the Kingdom from 1986-1987. Why the Orrico interview was published the August 3, 2006 addition of the Globe remains unclear. However Orrico does recount the following incident:

“He [Oil Can Boyd] was a piece of work," according to Orrico. "He was this wiry, crazy guy, and he's out tossing the ball. Then he came in, and there was these wood lockers and he started biting them. I don't know why, but if the Kingdome was still there, you'd see a full impression of his teeth in those mahogany-stained lockers. You could have taken dental records off them."

Twenty years later, The Can instantly remembers the incident. "Yeah, it happened," he said on a recent visit to Fenway Park. "Bad outing. Really bad outing."

Pennyyya

The Red Sox just lost 5 straight to two of the worst teams in baseball, the Devil Rays and the Royals due mainly to terrible pitching. When you’re a fan of a game like baseball that has such a strong chance or luck component you have to expect this type of thing from time to time. Bad teams will beat good teams. Unfortunately for the Sox, this slump has coincided with a Yankee surge and the Sox have gone from first to 3 games back. The only solace in all of this is that Willy Mo Peña homered last night and the man the Sox traded for Willy Mo, Bronson Arroyo, has now dropped to 9-8 after going 9-3 to start the season; and thus the sting of a trade of dubious wisdom is not so sharp.

This brings me to another point. Why does it always take me 5 minutes to find non-standard letters in Microsoft Word? How many Peeanyyas do we need in this country before we get a decent way to type the “ñ”. My personal feeling is that it should have become standard after Tony Peña. I use the “^” once every five years and I’m not even really sure what the “ ` ” or the “ } ” are supposed to indicate, but I can’t get a decent way to put an “~” over an “n”. I’m sure the right wingers will quake over the symbolic implications of the “ñ” on their keyboards, no doubt ruffling their mullets and smudging their camouflage face paint as they sit hunkered down along the southern boarder with big nets or automatic weapons. But for normal people it’s just a matter of convenience.

Smoking Study

A study done by the NYC Department of Health on teenage girl's smoking habits found that every girl who smoked said that the show “Sex in the City” helped inspire them to smoke. It’s a truly influential work.

Hitting Slump Ends

I know there may be many things going on in the world now. However, you’ll be happy to hear that my long standing slump at the plate (softball hitting) has ended. I went 2 for 4 yesterday in our win against the Department of Finance. Unfortunately, after hitting my second hit of the day at my second at bat, I went 0 for 2, kicking off a new slump.

Jedi Squirrles

Things have been a little busy here in the big pond (fish metaphors, the people love the fish metaphors, hit them relentlessly with fish metaphors). But on another note check this out:

New Shirt

At my most earnest behest, the Smoked Salmon got a new shirt yesterday. It simply reads, "Hummers are for dicks."