Author Archive

Father’s Day Loot

Posted June 17, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Along with some nifty cards and a DVD, Pattie and Alex got me a T-shirt that reads “I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won.” I have been happily wearing this shirt all day and occasionally breaking into song with the shirt’s refrain. On one such occasion, Pattie said, “I should make a note, what you really want are puns.”

I said, “I can’t believe it’s taken you ten years to figure that out.”

Ah well, the grass is starting to grow, I’ve had chopped pork from my favorite area BBQ restaurant, and life is good.

Even though we nearly lost another balloon in the ceiling fan.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone.

Got Out of the House

Posted June 16, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Spent the day visiting with various college friends, many of whom I’ll see again next week at a wedding. Remind me to have a word with either the Yahoo directions folks or PennDOT about the direction of Germantown Pike – that led to about 20 minutes of wandering around trying to find an Outback Steakhouse. Regardless, it was good to see people and spend some time away from the keyboard and the yard. Not necessarily in that order.

The unintentional comedy highlight of the day had to be Alex, upon realizing we had not packed the specific yellow pencil that she wanted, wailing for at least fifteen minutes: “I want to go home! I don’t want to go to New Jersey!”

OK, so the Jersey tourism board won’t be calling us any time soon. Still, you gotta find the humor in the tantrums where you can.

Gridiron Perils

Posted June 15, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I gotta admit, this story is gonna be in the back of my head once football season rolls around. Autopsies have shown that a handful of NFL veterans suffered from a brain disorder that often leads to dementia and depression. One of the players in question was a member of the Philadelphia Eagles back in the 90s, who shot himself last year.

I’m wondering if there have been similar problems reported in hockey, given the number of concussions those players seem to get. Regardless, I hope the major sports leagues make some efforts to improve the equipment and safety of their games, in hopes that those improvements will trickle down to other levels.

Ah, Normalcy

Posted June 14, 2007 By Dave Thomer

The site performance must be back closer to normal. The spam comments have resumed. Ah well, at least I can access the controls to kill them.

Thanks for your patience, everyone. I’m still considering other options for the future, but for now it’s good to have things up an running.

And remember that Crowded House song I was talking about before? The video is available online thanks to an Australian newspaper.

The Jinx Is In

Posted June 13, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Last baseball post for a while, I promise.

The Phillies managed to sandwich losing 2 out of 3 to Kansas City with two three-game sweeps, so I can’t complain too much about that. They’re now tied for second in their division, and only two game behind the New York Mets. They were eight back a little more than a week ago. It’ll be interesting to see how the team deals with the injuries that have affected the pitching staff, but it looks like they’ll at least make a race out of it.

So of course I jinxed all of this by ordering tickets for a game in September. My brothers and my mom are going to go to a Sunday game. After several rounds of negotiations, we found a date that worked for everyone and narrowed down where we wanted to sit. There was an entire close-but-in-the-outfield vs. higher-up-but-in-the-infield discussion that took more effort to resolve than some multinational trade agreements. I give credit to the Phillies’ phone operators for not just hanging up on me when I said “OK, I need seven tickets, and there are a total of eight sections in the ballpark that we would like to sit in.” And they actually got us pretty close to where we wanted, so I’ll have a good view of whatever heartbreaking play extends my losing streak.

I’m telling you, I see them win a game in person, I’ll almost be OK with them missing the playoffs. Almost.

Review: Making of Star Wars

Posted June 12, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Still fighting the lag time a bit here, but you can check out my review of the don’t-drop-it-on-your-foot new Making of Star Wars book over at theLogBook.

On Richard Rorty

Posted June 11, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I learned today that Richard Rorty passed away a few days ago. I never interacted with him directly, and I disagreed with at least 75% of what I read from him, but in many ways he’s probably responsible for what I’ve done with my life for the last eight years. His work helped revive interest in John Dewey within American philosophy, even if many people subsequently disagreed with his interpretation of Dewey – and I was certainly one of them. And Rorty’s repeated claims that there are no ways to philosophically justify a belief in democracy were one of the major motivations for me to attempt to do exactly that – an effort that led to the creation of this site. So in a way, Rorty’s the reason you’re here, too. Not a bad legacy to leave behind, and people will be arguing with the texts he left behind for decades. I’m sure he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Clogged Tubes?

Posted June 10, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I’ve been having more trouble than I’d like accessing the site for the last week or two – any attempts to access the database-driven parts of the site (the current blog structure, the old forum) are just grinding on without much luck. If updates get spotty, this might be why. If anyone else is seeing this, let me know. It may be time to start thinking of moving to a new host, as little as I look forward to such a project.

If nothing else, this is motivation to get the older content moved over into one database sooner rather than later. Always good to have motivation, I suppose.

Something I Can Write About

Posted June 9, 2007 By Dave Thomer

So Crowded House’s new single “Don’t Stop Now” is now available on iTunes, and the band was on Conan O’Brien last night. So the hype is off to at least a mild start here in the U.S. Now, something about this single has rubbed me the wrong way from the start – something about Neil Finn’s vocals almost sounds like he’s trying to sing it in a way that sounds “wrong” to me. But I’ll be damned if I can get the song out of my head, so I can’t really fault it as a choice for a single, can I? And now I’m looking forward to seeing it live, so all’s well with the world.

The post title’s a line from the song, and I figured it was particularly apropos. You can go check it out for yourself at the band’s official site.

So Much for That Optimism

Posted June 8, 2007 By Dave Thomer

The Phillies have apparently decided to reinforce their bullpen by bringing back Jose Mesa, their former closer who fell down on the job a few seasons back and whose ERA is currently over 12. So he’s incompetent and he conjures bad memories for Philadelphia fans. Of COURSE you would sign this guy to a contract.

It’s enough to make me think Pat Gillick wants to be fired. Tonight’s shellacking at the hands of the Kansas City Royals doesn’t help matters. Sheesh.