Transcendent Importance

Senator John McCain at today's steroid hearings:

Don't you understand that this is an issue of such transcendent importance that you should have acted months ago?

Funny. I'd say the same thing about securing the levees in New Orleans. Or perhaps ensuring that important government posts are filled with competent people. Or, you know, exercising oversight power over the President's use of the military. I sure as hell wouldn't say that about an entertainment option that no one is obliged to support at the federal level. (Yes, of course, sports teams do extort awful sums of money from state and local governments...)

I love baseball, but this is not an issue of "transcendent importance." Vast swaths of America couldn't give a crap, especially when so much of the focus was the integrity of the game as opposed to "think of the children" which at least you can squint your eyes and justify.

Banned Books Week

To keep with my "real post" commitment, I'll remind you all it's Banned Books Week. Check out the list of 100 most frequently banned books of the 90s. How many have you read?

I've read 14 (4,5,7,13,22,37,41,47,56,70,77,83,84,97). Actually, number 97 (The View from the Cherry Tree) was read to us in 6th grade, but I'm counting it. Once again I find myself amazed that the public school system in Manistee was as non-repressive as it was--for a rural education, we could have had it a lot worse. I do remember one board member trying to pull The Catcher in the Rye (#13) from the cirriculum, and it not even getting to us protesting at the board meeting, as all the other board members laughed it off.

The Amazing Race 8--"Go Mommy, Go! We Can Beat Them"

Aiyee...that title fits with all the fears we have for this season.

Anyway, here's the Spoilerific Discussion Thread to bitch...or be pleasantly surprised.

Nah, to bitch.

I'd wanted to use the fan votes to calculate betting odds of elimination and of winning, but the CBS site isn't doing polls right now.

Hatblog's slight rooting interests lie with the Bransen family, as they have Hope connections. Go Dutch!

I have one fewer National to root for

I wanted to point out this article in the Washington Post about chapel service in baseball, particularly with the Nationals. Services are organized by a group called (appropriately enough) Baseball Chapel.

Now, let me say that I don't think religion is inherently a bad thing, and I don't find fault with people who find strength in it. I certainly don't think it's a bad thing to set aside a place for non-mandatory services for the athletes whose job scheduled pretty much preclude a normal in-season worship routine.

However I am going to find fault with this:

The players not only pray, but they also discuss personal matters -- marital tension, addiction issues, family illnesses, financial stress -- drawing sometimes surprising lessons. [Ryan] Church was concerned because his former girlfriend was Jewish. He turned to [chaplain Jon] Moeller, "I said, like, Jewish people, they don't believe in Jesus. Does that mean they're doomed? Jon nodded, like, that's what it meant. My ex-girlfriend! I was like, man, if they only knew. Other religions don't know any better. It's up to us to spread the word."

Yes, Mr. Aptly-Named, you were blessed with a monopoly on religious truth. All the beauty, inner peace, strength, and grace afforded by other faiths is crap and the vast billions of this ignorant world need the pearls of wisdom you dispense, if only they could reach up to your perch upon your high horse. And aren't you glad you dumped her, Mr. Church? You'd hate to be lying down with the infidel.

Now I know this is a news piece, and Church didn't go seeking attention, preaching from dugout roof or anything. So I'm being unfair by holding him up as an example of an attitude I despise, without any specific actions to criticize. Well, too bad, I feel like sounding off: Shut up, live your faith, judge not lest ye be judged, and play baseball. It's the sheer condescension in his statement above (and in the chaplain's attitude) that really cheeses me off.

That, and the fact that despite my relatively high opinion of Church as a ballplayer, he still couldn't hold these guys' jocks. But, you know, if only they knew.

Avast!

Best be ye not fergettin', today (the 19th) be National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Hoist a mug o' grog, ye bilge rats, and unfurl the Jolly Roger, or I'll se ye keelhaulled. Arr!

Rafting Report--Alive, Pancreas in One Piece, A Little Low on Adrenaline.

The rafting was awesome. We floated down the Gauley river, surrounded by forested canyon walls on a perfect day--sunny, low 80s, just a bit of haze to shroud some of the more distant peaks. This was the first weekend of a three-week period when they release a large volume of water from the dam above the river, in an agreement to give a set period of quality rapids. (They used to release the water anyway for management purposes, but eventually the rafting outfits realized they could make a tourist season if they asked the authorities to do it at a set time rather than "sometime in the fall.")

There's nothing I've experienced quite like bouncing over 3-4 foot high swells which are more or less standing waves set up by water rushing over the rocks. I took a couple of broadsides from walls of water, but it really wasn't too hard to stay in the boat, despite the stories below. Then again I have a nice low center of gravity. Going through a rapid that is an 8-10 foot drop over about 100 feet is something that I'd have to recommend you try at least once. And it wasn't all that scary. Now, the 10 foot waterfall on the Upper Gauley...yeah, I don't know if I'm up for that.

The rapids were swift but we were guided well, although we dumped two people in one of the Class V's (Upper Mash) when we grazed on rock on the front right and our front right passenger flew into our front left passenger, and they took a spill. We had to yank them back in. Yours truly did a fair share of the yanking, thus proving that I know which safety lectures to listen to and which ones are safe to ignore. That was by far the freakiest part; as we were still in the middle of the rapids, trying to get people back in, with very little ability to control our path while we were focused on rescue. But it turned out just fine. We also lost two people (Bess and the poor front right passenger) when our guide missed a rock as she was watching another stuck boat in fairly still water. But that was an even easier rescue. Nonetheless, we clearly earned our merit badges in "yanking people from the water."

I definitely can recommend our outfit, Class VI, as we were well lead and well fed.
It worked out well for my insulin pump, as our tour leader's husband was also and insulin pump user--and raft guide. So she had plenty of experience in keeping a diabetic safe. (For the record, we threw the pump and my meter in a "dry box", and kept it safe there, and pulled it out for lunch.)

If you think this sounds cool...well, you're right, and I'd highly recommend you check it out.

Hatblog: Remote From the Mountain State

Who knew you could get the Internets in West Virginia? Well, OK, I did, since I saw my hotel had free wifi (like I said at Christmas, this should be an expectation and not a perk at this point.) Anyway, why the hell am I in Beckley, WV tonight? Pete talked me into meeting him and his lovely bride Bess to go whitewater rafting tomorrow. I've never done that and it should be fun, as long as I manage not to break my $5,000 pancreas. I will gladly sacrifice bones, short of my skull, to not break that. I do have a hardened, plastic, waterproof enclosure for it. Or perhaps I'll take it off and take shots at lunch and after the trip. I'm not sure yet.

I had my first Google Maps failure, as it decided to confuse the "Hylton lane" this hotel is on (which is course the access road in the middle of hotels, Applebee's, etc.) and a Hilton lane which acquainted me with some of those 16.4% of families below the poverty line the Wikipedia article mentions. But hey, it's not a real vacation until you get lost, right?

Ranting at CNN

I've ranted about this before, but I haven't blogged it, so there.

Which one of these "Breaking News" emails they sent me yesterday (I am signed up for them) is not like the others:

-- New Orleans mayor issues order authorizing the forced removal of people refusing to leave the city.

-- Louisiana Superdome, where thousands were stranded after Katrina, is likely to be torn down, state official tells CNN.

-- Actor Bob Denver, 70, of TV's "Gilligan's Island" fame has died, his agent tells The Associated Press.

Oh, yes, let me stop what I'm doing and weep. Gilligan is dead.

Seriously, they consider it a news alert all the time when some two-bit celebrity has died at a sufficiently old age, and it irks me. Rehnquist, Pope John Paul II...these are deaths worth alerting me of. Given everything that's going on, this should even make the news, let alone bother me with.

Also this morning, I don't know who the weatherman was, but he was talking about Tropical Storm Ophelia, and had to comment, "Hmm. Unusual name. Don't know about that." Way to whip out that classical training, there, sir.

Sticking My Fingers in My Ears, Chanting "La-La-La"

As if my outrage fatigue wasn't bad enough, Will's all over a lot of the issues, The First Idiot is staging photo ops in the middle of the disaster, and the statements he and FEMA director Mike Brown have made to the effect of "no one could predict this" are discredited by...oh, well, two posts down, and all the news organizations linked therein, and the experts they quote...oh hell, Jeff Masters says it better in his new Katrinablog:

A horror unimagined by anyone, except by every hurricane scientist and government emergency management official for the past forty years and more. It was a certainty that New Orleans would suffer a catastrophe like this.

So, one last comment which forms a segue into talking about something else, and then I am going to perform metaphorically the title action of this post for a bit. Bush went back to New Orleans today...and at the Nats game, we clearly saw Marine One go overhead on the way back. At 3:52 PM EDT. When I know, from watching CNN this morning, that he was in the White House at 8 AM. Nice trip. The nation's got a fuel crunch, and he can't even be bothered to stay long enough to hand out a blanket or something.

Segue: Nats game! They won 5-2 and still hot in the wild card chase. Let me tell you, even if it's a holiday, there's nothing like being at the ballpark on a sunny weekday afternoon. Especially if the doofuses around you want Livan Hernandez pinch hit for in the 8th, despite the fact that any healthy body on the bench who is actually better than him has already been used, and he comes through with a two-out single to key the rally that breaks the game open. Good times.

Also spread the smile vibe: My hovercraft is full of eels. Just because.