“Pride stood at second watching the crowd. At the first-base coach’s urging, he tipped his cap. Pride, who is deaf, would later say that he couldn’t hear the crowd’s thunderous cheering—he felt it through the turf.“

So long, Expos. You may soon be gone, but you will never be forgotten—one day we’ll make that time machine and stop the 1994 strike just to see you win the Series.

Former military planner and retired Col. Mike Turner believes there are two options available to the U.S. in Iraq if Bush wins, and neither of them are good. And I’d have to say that I think he’s right.

I also don’t think we even have a choice anymore. Word on the street is that Kerry is a great closer, and that it will be the last weeks of his campaign that put him ahead. But he’s running out of time and the Bush campaign has controlled the media coverage almost from day one. As each day passes without a major examination of Bush’s policies to date, I become more afraid that the tale of the tape will put Bush ahead by a hair. And then we’ll find out—in the worst way possible—how right Col. Turner is.

On a slightly different note, a great interview with Errol Morris, the director of the Robert S. McNamara documentary The Fog Of War. I really do need to see this sooner or later.

I’ve run out of outrage, part 26 and a half. CBS screwing up and putting out fake memos is already bad enough. That they bumped the Niger story for more nonsense about some guy’s military service is an even bigger scandal to me. I can’t think of a better case in point of how the press has handled the presidential elections this year.

What’s worse is that CBS has effectively ruined this story because of its loss of credibility. And while another network or news outlet might pick it up and run with it anyways, the damage has been done: Bush gets to keep the water cooler talk exactly where he wants it, by focusing not on the current administration’s actions but on events from three decades ago that don’t matter. (And no, I don’t think it matters that Bush tried to duck duty, except insofar that he’s a bit of a hypocrite about the matter.) Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign continues to sputter by first failing to address the Swift Boat attacks head-on, and then failing to get back on message about Bush’s misconduct in office.

At this rate, it’ll take some wildly successful and controversial debates to focus the American public’s attention back on issues of economic recovery, the Iraq occupation and the “war on terrorism”, among other things. For what people keep saying is the most important election of our generation, we’re doing a piss-poor job of making it a valid one.

I’ve had it. From now on, if anyone asks me about the presidential election, I’ll answer thusly: I VOTED FOR NADER I HATE EVERYONE

Also, it’s my fuckin’ birthday. Bling bling.

Year after year, scorn has been heaped upon the Emmys for completely missing the boat on what constituted good television for the year. Largely this was because for the past couple of years, one above-average-to-mediocre show would sweep the proceedings, garnering an obscene number of awards and shutting out the competition. Whether it was The West Wing or ER or The West Wing or Frasier or The West Wing, it was pretty obvious by the night of the broadcast that some sort of titanic shift would give the bulk of the awards to one show. And here’s a hint: if it’s on NBC and not that amazing, congratulations! You’re a winner, and the rest of us are big losers for having to sit through more NBC commercials about how awesome their supporting actresses are.

All this while great shows get shunned—either they don’t grab the awards, or they aren’t even invited to the party. Think of the programs everyone you know thinks are good: shows like Six Feet Under, 24, Alias, Scrubs, Sex And The City, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and so on and so forth. Up until recently, all those shows and more basically got the shaft. And how demoralizing would it be if you were David Chase, sitting at the Emmys and watching The West Wing snatch another Best Drama statue? And all they had to do for it was to ruin the show, starting with an anvilicious episode about September 11th?

Of course, what did anyone expect? This is the industry that takes the motto, “Kill your children,” to heart. The number of quality shows that have garnered dedicated followings, only to be cancelled within the year, is staggering; no wonder the industry is equally clueless when handing out awards to the shows they think were the best they put out this year. And yet, the past two years have shown slight glimmers of hope. HBO has suddenly become the new powerhouse, grabbing the highest number of nominations this year and rewarding two of its veteran shows with awards. But more importantly, the Emmys have finally learned how to surprise people. The emmy for Best Comedy Series could’ve gone to any number of old warhorses; in a year when both Friends and Frasier bow out of the limelight several years too late, it would’ve been very easy for the academy to sign away the award to one of them. But behold—neither show was even nominated. (How the likes of Will And Grace manages to claw its way onto that list year after year, however, is still a cosmic mystery.) That left the prize squarely in the hands of Everyone Loves Raymond, with Sex And The City as a dark horse.

So how the hell did Arrested Development end up with the statue at the end of the night?

For a rookie sitcom to be decently-written is already an amazing feat. For said sitcom to subsequently survive its first year is amazing. For said sitcom to win an Emmy? Someone’s nipples just exploded with delight.

Could this possibly pave the way next year for an entirely revamped Emmys? Just imagine—Scrubs‘ John C. McGinley for supporting comedic actor. 24’s Reiko Aylesworth for supporting dramatic actress.

CSI: Miami for best drama. Maybe I should be careful about what I wish for.

For your consideration, an e-mail making the rounds:

THIS IS AN AWESOME ANALOGY…AND WHEN THE PANTY WAIST AND COWARDS AND SOCIALIST LEFT SAY WE DON’T NEED TO BE IN IRAQ .. AT LEAST NOW YOU HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING WHY WE ARE……….

SO THAT IN THE FUTURE OUR CHILDREN WILL NEVER HAVE TO CLOSE THEIR BLINDS

Next up: Sally, seven years old, will explain to us the intricacies of protectionist lumber tariffs. Then David, six years old, will lay out the United States’ five-year national energy plan.

It’s not often that I pull the “I’ve been there, so I should know” tactic, because I don’t know much (”but I know I love you…”). But I’d like to think that I know at least a little bit about journalism.

Aside from the DNC and the RNC, the discussion over the upcoming election has focused on practically everything but an actual election issue. Did Kerry lie about his record in Vietnam? Was Kerry in Cambodia when he said he was? Did Bush skip out on National Guard duty? Did he really earn that Distinguished Flying Unit medal? etc., etc., etc. And now we’ve got people on the internet arguing about typewriters as they attack CBS’s handling of leaked memos regarding Bush’s service.

“If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I’d like to break that story. Any time I’m wrong, I want to be right out front and say, ‘Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.’”

Memo to Rather: you can’t break that story, because someone else in pajamas already did. Check the frequency, Kenneth. You are so far from being out front on this, you are leagues behind in the dust. Have you heard of the Internet? You can find it on that weird machine in your office they call a computer.

Major news outlets are not perfect. There are many problems with the way they do things. They haven’t encouraged real debate and tend to overplay sensational stories; consolidation of ownership has weakened the diversity of voices; the nature of television news is to reduce everything to a one-minute clip and pretend that’s an authoritative take on a subject. Fine. But to pretend that somehow the guy in the pajamas is a better journalist than CBS News? How many things are wrong with this statement? Let me count the ways.

Retyping a memo in Microsoft Word is not “journalism,” and neither is trolling the web or your local library for quotes to support your argument. This sort of thing, at best, is called “research,” and at worst it’s called “speculation.” The nature of internet journalism, as it stands, is to gather news coverage from other outlets, add commentary and a sprinkling of research, and present the result as a new piece of content. But who does the legwork? Just because you looked up the accounts of the Swift Boat vets against Kerry and saw contradictory accounts doesn’t mean you’re now a journalist.

Journalism isn’t just research, and it’s certainly not speculation. Journalism is analysis as well, and it’s also about placing everything in a context. If reporters could just write stories by plugging in a bunch of facts they found on the internet, their lives would be so much easier, but unfortunately there’s this whole matter of calling people and asking them lots of questions they also have to deal with. Talking to the people involved in a story and asking them pointed questions is a keystone of journalism; without the valuable information and context interviewed sources provide, without the back-and-forth a reporter and a subject engage in, without the ability to ask important officials about the other side’s viewpoint, you lose out on a truckload of information. When journalists talk about holding people accountable, they’re not just talking about doing the factchecking, although that’s important. They’re talking about the ability to ask people hard questions and getting the answers they may not want to reveal. They’re talking about being able to hold people accountable to what they say in public. They’re talking about being able to sit down with a person, discuss a subject for forty-five minutes and synthesize an expert opinion or a first-hand account to place in a greater context.

So until the “blogosphere” starts calling up people and saying, “Hi, I’m so-and-so from myweblog.com, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about your military service,” then they should sit down and shut up about how superior they are to traditional media. Because 99.9% of the time, it’s not the blogosphere that’s going to break the story, and it’s not the blogosphere that’s going to be able to ask public officials and company officers the tough questions about what role they’ve played in it.

Absolutely not. To buy this truck—nay, monstrosity—would be to give mother nature a big fat fuck you, not to mention crosstown traffic. At an expected production run of 50 a year and a suggested retail price of around $100,000 depending on options, it’s not likely that we’ll have to deal with too many of these on the road. But aside from the fact that one is already too many, there’s also the reality that while only so many people can afford to own one, there are probably many others who see this as a status symbol—as something to aspire to, something to buy after the mortgage on the mansion is paid off, something that says you’ve arrived.

The definition of luxury is excess, and every modern culture has an aspect of excess to it. Cultures cannot sustain themselves, however, by pretending excess consumption is possible when it really isn’t. Urban centers are already hosed by gridlock, and highway systems aren’t getting any emptier. Suburban sprawl cannot last forever, and neither can our oil and gas supplies. The impact on the environment is already high, and many say it’s far too high for our continued survival already. Pretending that none of these things are true by introducing ever larger, heavier and thirstier trucks and marketing them as the pinnacle of achievement is not only crass and pigheaded, it’s destructive.

But you’ve heard all this before, I’m sure. And until the cultural zeitgeist makes a u-turn, or something drastic happens where the sudden unattractiveness of SUVs is the least of our concerns, our voices will continue to go unheeded. In the meantime, I’ll keep attacking Stanley Park with my shiny mountain bike and dreaming of a time when the bus commute won’t take as much time as walking would because of traffic.

A new design, and a new database-driven backend. Hooray. Maybe now I’ll update more often. Or perhaps not. Who knows, who cares. There are some new links on the sidebar, mostly to make fun of friends who’ve recently picked up a site of their own. (Take a good guess at which one I’m talking about.)

And just like that, I’m in the market for a new MP3 player.With the death of my second Dell Digital Jukebox, I’m ready to recommend that no one buy one until the people at Dell switch hard drive manufacturers. While the DJ is a perfectly competent hard drive music player and an acceptable yet inexpensive substitute for an iPod, the unfortunate tendency of its hard drive to seize and die after four months of use is a fatal flaw.I don’t care how good the battery life is, or how amazing Dell’s customer service is (and after three seperate incidents with Dell losing my order information, RMA request and service tag information, Dell isn’t doing so hot there, either). No one should pay $350 for a hunk of metal that stops working after four months. I didn’t buy a disposable music player, but that’s what Dell’s basically given me twice now.Sudden hard drive failures appear to be a keystone of Hitachi drives, whose hard drive division used to be owned by IBM. IBM drives were prone to failure as well, and with reports of sudden failures in Hitachi-equipped Dell DJs and Rio Karmas, it seems that little has changed. iPods use Toshiba drives, which appear to be far less prone to this sort of sudden failure; when the warranty runs out on my Dell player and they stop sending me complementary disposable Dell DJs, I’ll be picking up an iPod myself.Too bad, Dell. Solve that one problem and you’re golden again. Until then, I don’t care to waste any more money on your products.