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Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. This might be the first time a $90 million dollar contract is considered a bargain, as smarter people have already analyzed and concluded.

You treated Randy Johnson like shit and ultimately sold him off. Ken Griffey Jr. forced a trade out of town. Alex Rodriguez waved adios as he rode the money train to Texas. Edgar Martinez hung on as long as his hammies could hold up. And thus you finally realized that the only super-star remaining in Seattle is your face punching pal in Ichiro Suzuki. And you paid him accordingly. Brav-fucking-O. Now let’s go out there and fucking win this thing.

And please, for the love of God, don’t go into a tailspin like you do after every other time I make a Mariners post!

I watched this whole video to see whether or not he tried any Toohey’s Old. He didn’t.

Fool.

Republican straw polls show Fred Thompson is something something something. Sorry, I zoned out there. What? Fred Thompson is still getting serious press coverage?

Look America, let me go ahead and let you in on a little secret. Thompson doesn’t stand a chance. Democrats should be praying to Jesus (with a television crew nearby to capture how religious they are, of course!) that he somehow ends up on the Presidential ticket. Because if he does, they can go ahead and nominate my idiotic puppy who enjoys pooping on my brother’s X-Box 360 power cord and still feel confident that they’ll win.

I won’t waste much breath on this since it’s still so early, but if we reach March 2008 and people are still talking about this guy, I’ll delve a little deeper. But for now, I just want the rest of you to know that when I start saying “I told you so,” I wasn’t rewriting the past.

Mark my words. I’m telling you now. Fred Thompson is a joke. He will not come even remotely close to being elected President.

And I wish I was joking about my puppy.

Dear Aspiring Failed Authors,

Look, let’s just get this out of the way. Tolkien is great and all and I throughly love the land of Middle Earth, but the tradition of creating songs and inserting their words into a book is not only annoying, it’s retarded. Stop copying him. If I don’t know the tune the words should be sung to, then it’s just a poem. And I think it’s an established fact that poems suck. They’re like riddles, but with less fun and more desire to stab yourself with a spoon. He was only able to pull it off because you knew that if you just grunted through it, the next page might have some goblins or trolls or talking trees. Your story most likely has a romantic love triangle and/or a possible clue to who committed the murder in the first chapter. Chances are people are only reading your book because they’re trying to fill the time before the next Harry Potter book comes out. You could have flying space aliens bring back Abraham Lincoln in your story and nobody would really care. They’re just thinking to themselves how in the world is Harry going to get Snape. So please, for the love of all that is Holy, just stop.

And with that, enjoy your 4th of July tomorrow everybody.

Sweet. Just head to southern England and try to find any of the 30,000 plastic ducks floating towards the coast.

Personally, I think Ze Frank has something to do this.

At least, I don’t want them to think otherwise because I would hate it if they started signing me up for gay dating sites.

Here’s just a little tip to any of you employed by a company where Internet access is available while on the job. It’s 2007. Anything you do can be traced right back to you. Easily. Come on people, I thought we’d been over this by now. That chapter can be found right between the “don’t pass on chain e-mails” lesson and the “yes, Wikipedia can have false information on it” section. Get with the program.

I wish I had some awesome Rod Beck memories to share with you, but alas I only barely remember him as a semi-above average baseball closer for much of the 1990s. But the quote below from this CNNSI article makes me wish I had taken the time to get to know him just a little bit better.

While working his way back to the majors in 2003, Beck pitched for the Triple-A Iowa Cubs and lived in his Winnebago parked just beyond the outfield fence. Fans would drop by for autographs and stay for a beer, and Beck became a folk hero. Then the Padres called.

Seriously, what pro athlete is that awesome anymore? In the age where most scrub players yet alone stars live in mansions far away from us normal folks and who act like they’ve done the planet a favor every time they sign an autograph, Beck would kick back and down a brew with you in his own home. That’s just kick ass. I can only imagine some of the stories that guy must have had. May he rest a little more in peace knowing that he never had to play for the Seattle Mariners.

The fact that I didn’t first start a website catering to people who are looking for easy races and marathons to win both saddens and disappoints me. If this doesn’t have something I’d do written all over it, then I’m even lazier than I give myself credit for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go train for the Second Annual Pear Festival Marathon, which expects to top double digits in participants this year! Cheaply earned trophy, here I come!

I can’t say that I see this happening as quickly or quite this way, but this video is onto something. To say that LIFE is about to shut their doors later this year is a bit or that Google will one day be financing space exploration in search of new customers is far beyond absurd. But take for instance electronic paper, which I think will be absolutely revolutionary. Once it’s easily and cheaply mass produced, we’ll see a huge shift in the way not only we acquire information, but live our daily lives. Prosumers will be able to tap into whatever they want no matter where they are, making traditional newspapers, books, magazines, and even carrying around laptops obsolete. And as a guy who gets back pain just from carrying a laptop on a shoulder strap, I can’t wait!

[via TechCrunch and John Chow]

While sitting in a Chinese government office this week, I found myself distracted by the Chinese version of CNN being blared at around 900 decibels throughout the building. My BOSE noise canceling headphones work great on jet airplanes at 30,000 feet, but they couldn’t shake the Asian Soledad O’Brien. After conceding defeat, I figured I’d just stare at the screen a while and see what I could learn and the only thing I discovered is that China has a huge hobby for ripping off American commercials. For instance, remember this commercial below?

Click To Play

Yeah, the official Beijing 2008 Olympics Committee totally ripped that off, except they found a way to make an even cheesier and longer version with worse actors and more absurd scenarios, like a little Chinese boy running through the streets chasing his soccer ball only to be saved by an aware driver who slams on the brakes at the last minute. Quick cut to another guy standing on the curb and staring at this little Kodak moment with eyes aglow. Now, call me old fashion, but isn’t that just called being a good driver? Is it common practice in China for drivers to mow down any pedestrian in the street at will? Because otherwise, that little act of kindness was probably executed out of the driver’s desires not to end up like Jack Bauer instead of helping his fellow man.

It got better though, as one of the good deeds was done by a man walking down a crowded street and picking up a recently dropped apple by the woman in front of him, who promptly thanked the good Samaritan and chomped right into the tasty snack. Oh, I left out the part where the apple was dropped IN A PUDDLE ON THE STREET. But hey, China only has 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world. I’m sure it was perfectly healthy.

Halfway through the commercial (it was honestly about 90 seconds long), I asked the guy next to me if he noticed it as well and we spent the next hour dissecting every ad we saw as there were plenty. McDonalds has a campaign that basically rips off The King from Burger King, except it’s not nearly as funny and his face will most certainly haunt my dreams. And even though I have no idea what they were saying, Chinese car commercials looked to be just as annoying as their American counterparts. Glad to see that crappy ads screaming at you to buy a new truck is a global experience.