Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Alex Rodriguez

This will be a cynical sports post, but I think with good reason. USA Today is reporting that the New York Yankees will attempt to get out of their contract with their third baseman Alex Rodriguez because of a news article that he purchased steroids through a clinic in 2009 and 2012. Alex Rodriguez past involvement is not news to anyone. That Alex Rodriguez used them again shouldn't be shocking to anyone. Indeed, Major League Baseball, hasn't really acknowledged sufficiently how widespread the use of steroids is. However, the New York Yankees are not pursuing this course of action as a moral stance, they are persuing it because Alex Rodriguez hit .272 last year with 18 home runs, instead of .314 with 54 home runs. If A-Rod were still producing the inflated numbers, I believe the response would have been different. Instead, the Yankees will seek to avoid paying A-Rod $114 million. There is no precedent for a team not fulfilling a player's contract on these grounds, but the Yankees did attempt the same maneuver unsuccessfully with Jason Giambi in 2004. I have heard that some people still just view baseball as a game where you hit a ball and try and run around some bases.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Reading this is a waste of your time

I went to the Public Trust Gallery last night for some art dedicated to the bicycle. That was the theme for the evening, what the artists had created their art around - the bicycle. Which is something I approve of, since the bicycle is interesting. As interesting as the art on the walls was, the bicycles parked in the rack of the public trust were even more so. When did the Bianchi single speed bicycles become the thing to have? I had to do some research, and it turns out these are "fixed gear" bikes, meaning when the tires turn the pedals turn with them. This means the cyclist pedals continuously, making them good for training and exercise. Stopping the pedals with your legs serves as your brakes, I think my banana seat Schwinn from elementary school operated on the same mechanism. Some of the people who ride these bikes go for brakeless fixed gear bikes, which I assume are just for riding on tracks in training or competition. They even go so far as to ride around the city on a bike with no brakes. Which is crazy. Crazy people. In addition to the Italian death machines, there was a red 10 speed Schwinn in the rack too. Can people not see the obvious advantage of more gears on a good old fashioned American bicycle? Oh well, there was also art! And the art was kind of minimalist, which was interesting. There were series of small postcards with strange street signs and messages on them. There was a simple 3 color almost silhouette of a red haired woman riding a bicycle against a grey background. Maybe it was screen printed. There were illustrations of bicycles on cardboard or paper. And there were photographs of a young woman in grey and a friend of hers hanging out in a drainage ditch next to an interstate. The photographs were interesting. There was graffiti on the concrete wall of what looked like a spillway, but nothing I could see clearly. It made me sad I do not own a bicycle, and it made me reflect on the marvelous thing we call the bicycle. Why don't I get one? Because I live in a fairly pedestrian unfriendly area sandwiched between two highways.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Hole Foods

So I went to Whole Foods, where groceries cost more, last night. The food was Whole. For some reason Whole Foods has started putting their soups in cartons instead of cans. I think this is some reaction to the bisphenol a concerns that have surfaced. Bisphenol A is the polycarbonate used in steel can linings. Supposedly, if you eat too much of it, you may have a vision of fiery steed riding across the sky, and the structures around you may turn to mushrooms. Anyway, the soup's in cartons. This is fine for the broth, which has a pour spout, but crappy for the prepared soups, due to the difficulty in getting the carton open. For some reason, after you lift the flap, making it look slightly like a carton of milk, you are supposed to squeeze the sides. Or, rather, the directions say squeeze the sides. (Spoiler alert: do not squeeze the sides, the instructions are horseshit.) You are then, while squeezing the sides at 4 marked points, somehow supposed to tear along a line running along the top flap of the carton. Doing this with one hand is impossible, with 2 it's difficult. WARNING: DO NOT FUCKING SQUEEZE THE SIDES, SQUEEZING THE SIDES IS A LIE! Anyway, just tear along the line, and you won't slosh soup all over yourself. See? The new cartons are tear friendly. ELEDERLY PEOPLE, DO NOT SHOP AT WHOLE FOODS, YOU WILL STARVE TO DEATH DUE TO THEIR SADISTIC PACKAGING METHODS. After you slosh the soup on yourself, you may be able to pick the vegetable bits off yourself and the unsanitary counter you haven't cleaned in awhile, and eat them. I am considering laying the carton on the counter next time and slicing a hole in the side. Or, there is always good old fashioned Campbell's with Bisphenol A. This concludes my thoughts on my exciting Thursday night. The rest of the night I listened to music and watched a fox eat marshmallows in a youtube video.

Sunday, January 06, 2013

Chilaquiles are awesome

I ate chilaquiles today, which are good. I had to have other people make the chilaquiles, since I don't really know how to make chilaquiles. (The previous sentence is redundant which is awesome.) Not that it's hard to make chilaquiles, since they are just eggs and tortillas with red or green sauce poured all over them. With cheese. (That's a sentence fragment, which is awesome.) Also, I'm bringing back the word awesome as a synonym for great, which is what we did when we were 10, which annoyed some of our teachers since its supposedly an incorrect use of the word, which, of course, is awesome. (That previous sentence is a run-on, which is also awesome.) While I was eating those chilaquiles, I noticed some men building a giant tower across the street, but a woman I asked didn't know what it was. It looked like a giant pillar with a cameraman on top of it. When you come from a generation who has been overly influenced by electronic media like television, film, and the internet, you find you don't have a sufficient vocabulary to describe things in writing to people. Instead, you find yourself using some bad grammar, and redundant adjectives, and poor diction (whatever that is, I think it has to do with the adjectives), and parenthetical statements that should be separate sentences. But, when you think about it, maybe that's awesome. Here's the guy on the tower. (You also use pictures, which are worth exactly 1000 words, which can help you make your quota).