I am a human, I consider nothing that is human alien to me and open thread

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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31 Responses

  1. dexter says:

    I know that you might want to revisit your last sentence.Report

  2. dexter says:

    It’s just me, but I would change the second about to of.Report

  3. dexter says:

    I am going to assume you have been drinking and leave it there.Report

  4. Patrick Cahalan says:

    What I want to know is, where’s the justice in having multiple time zones in a country where right now… right now, mind you… two thirds of the country is at home at cocktail hour and I’m still at work?

    This is central planning at its worst, I tell you.Report

  5. Fish says:

    I arrived here at Jaybird’s house about an hour ago and discovered I had picked up a nail.  I can confirm that 1)  yes, he has been drinking, and 2) that was the most entertaining flat tire I’ve ever changed.Report

  6. Plinko says:

    I know that I’ve not been drinking nearly enough.

    I know you still haven’t played The Binding of Isaac which is still the best game of 2011.

    I know I’m going to get another drink in a second.Report

  7. BlaiseP says:

    Let’s assume I’ve been drinking, too.

    Fresh from the TMI Dept.   So was lying there watching Netflix, some Hitler Channel thing and the g/f declares she wants some beer and snax.  Highly unusual behaviour from her, but it’s March Madness and she’s been sitting here in her headphones, periodically roaring approval and groaning like the damned as LeHigh beat Duke.

    So it’s off to Gordy’s, where I got a six of MGD 64 (her), a six of Leinenkugel’s Classic Amber (me), a package of Old Wisconsin Beef Sticks, a bag of Dutch Crunch (parmesan and garlic)  chips, a bag of Chester’s Puff Corn, a jar of herring (wine vinegar), a can of Fancy Feast (liver and chicken) for the cat and a bag of Canine Carry-outs (beef) for the husky dog.

    You might say I went a little overboard.

    It’s Friday night.   Off to the west, the first big lightning of the year is dancing in the cumulus.   The town alarm siren just went off.   A guy’s four-wheeler ATV fell off the back of his pickup truck and I stopped traffic while he got it out of Highway 12.

    The cat and dog are chasing each other around, bold as brass.   The west wind is blowing in the window, warm and strange, too damned early to be this hot this early.   The willow tree behind us has already turned green.  A bizarre spring following a bizarre winter.

    Sure hope the apple blossoms don’t freeze.Report

    • Will H. in reply to BlaiseP says:

      Forgot you were in Wisc.
      Leinie’s 1888 Bock is probably my favorite beer from them.
      I think Capitol is probably the best brewery going in Wisc. They have a blond doppelbock that should be out soon. (not a bock or even slightly related, but merely a naming convention)
      O’so’s Floppin’ Opi is one of the best brown ales ever.Report

      • Plinko in reply to Will H. says:

        New Glarus is far and away the best of the Badger State Breweries in my experience, but they don’t ship out of state at all. Berghoff is up there on the list, too. There was a new small one last time I was up but now I can’t remember the name.Report

  8. North says:

    It is fishing 80 degrees (in your primitive American Farenheight scale) here in Minneapolis. 80 Fishing degrees in March!! This is insane! My cold (half)Canadian blood isn’t designed to tolerate this.Report

    • BlaiseP in reply to North says:

      They didn’t open the trails for snowmobiles once in my neck of the woods, not once, all winter.   The panfish are already spawning.   I am distrustful of this spring.   April, said Eliot, is the cruelest month but nothing is so cruel as a late snow after such an early spring.Report

      • North in reply to BlaiseP says:

        I hear you there BlaiseP. My friends who garden around here are utterly apalled. All their leaf mulches and ground coverings have availed them not at all. The ground has thawed and the plants are a-stirring. If the winter makes a come back there could be a flora massacare acros the area.

        My Mother, with her endless twisting gardens in Nova Scotia, is sitting in contented contrast with a nice solid foot of snow covering everything.Report

  9. Mike Schilling says:

    If has been fishing pouring all week here, as I should have expected for my first week of a job I have to drive to (as opposed to being ferried across the traffic-free Bay.)  No flooding, though, so I have to (this makes once) compliment CalTrans; they did sterling work on the new drainage.Report

  10. Tim Ellis says:

    I actually have a GREAT remix of “Sun Always Shines on TV.”

    Ahhh, I’ve missed this place. 😀Report

  11. Patrick Cahalan says:

    By the way, that whole album is good.  Just for the record.Report

  12. BSK says:

    I know I was hammerd long before JB even posted this but am only seeing it nw because I’m the only sub-30 without a smart phone.Report

  13. Matty says:

    What do you know about that the rest about us totally, seriously, don’t know about?

    I could tell you but then…

    You know the restReport

    • Tom Van Dyke in reply to Matty says:

      What do you know about that the rest about us totally, seriously, don’t know about?

      Howzat:  

      “Taylor was given out lbw by umpire Billy Doctrove off the bowling of Dale Steyn late on the second day. The delivery was reverse-swinging after pitching on middle and struck Taylor on the full. Ball-tracking predicted it would have hit middle and leg, which would have required a significant and unnatural angle change. In fact, after Virtual Eye was recalibrated, the ball would have only shaved leg stump. Doctrove’s decision would still have been upheld by the television umpire, Aleem Dar, but the difference was still striking.”Report

      • Fish in reply to Tom Van Dyke says:

        I watched cricket once.

        Once.Report

      • BlaiseP in reply to Tom Van Dyke says:

        Ecch, baseball’s terms of art are no less bizarre.

        Let’s work that in some baseball-esque translations:

        Taylor was given out: (declared out by the ump) lbw (leg before wicket, moral equivalent of crowding the plate in baseball)  off the bowling (pitching) of Dale Steyn late on the second day (of a series of five days in a test match)

        The delivery was reverse-swinging (roughed up ball, different aerodynamics, not allowed in baseball, the ball would be replaced if it looked too worn) after pitching on middle (straight down the plate at the middle of three stumps) and struck Taylor on the full (remember, his leg is in front of the wicket ) .   Ball tracking predicted it would have hit middle and leg (two of the three stumps) which would have required a a significant and unnatural angle change (one way Taylor could have been saved was a “no ball”, for the pitch to be declared against the rule)

        In fact, after Virtual Eye (think electronic strike zone software ) was recalibrated, the ball would have only shaved leg stump.   (There was another way Taylor could have been saved:  if the ball wouldn’t have hit a wicket, and believe me, New Zealand’s DRS appeal was a big deal) .   Doctrove’s decision (to dismiss Taylor) would have been upheld, etc.   but the difference between what the folks at home would have seen on the Virtual Eye trajectory and what everyone saw were two different things

        DRS is a big deal now in cricket and not everyone likes it.Report

        • Fish in reply to BlaiseP says:

          Thanks for that, Blaise.  I actually understood the “cricket-ese” (for the most part), but it isn’t a sport I’d choose to watch again (much like baseball).  Nor is college basketball, if Kansas doesn’t hurry up and pull their heads in!Report

        • Tom Van Dyke in reply to BlaiseP says:

          Well done, Blaise.  In the pre-technology days [and India still declined to use the new technology in the last Test series with Oz], the batsman was customarily given “benefit of the doubt” by the umpire, IOW, there were more actual LBWs than were given.

          The benefit of the doubt particularly hurt the spin bowlers: as long as the batsman came up the track a bit, the spinner wasn’t credited with some of the severe angles that would have caught the batsman plumb.

          Of course, in the days of non-neutral umpires, the LBW calls can and did turn many Test matches.  Pakistan was particularly notorious for a high % of LBWs given.

           Report

          • BlaiseP in reply to Tom Van Dyke says:

            Americans would love cricket if only someone would write up a decent primer in vocabulary they’d grasp.    Trouble is, the game requires more gear than baseball but not a whole lot more.

            Cricket is in serious trouble, ethically and as a game.   ODI has made for a bad game and it’s getting worse with Twenty20.    Nowadays it’s a batsman’s game, they get all the breaks.  One bounce per over?   Absurd.  Furthermore, fast bowlers rule Twenty20 and their shoulder joints wear out in no time.Report

            • Tom Van Dyke in reply to BlaiseP says:

              I love and have played both games, Blaise.  But I don’t think America will ever love cricket.  I’m not even sure is as good a game as baseball: I’m mostly attracted for its international dimension and rich history.  Baseball does have extra cool stuff like stolen bases and double plays.

              Hell, even a lot of English I meet can’t stand cricket.  It is said, and properly though, that the national religion of India isn’t Hinduism, it’s cricket.

              But cricket is far more manly—it’s about the size of a baseball, and a little harder.  But the fielders don’t get gloves.  Oy.Report

              • MikeSchilling in reply to Tom Van Dyke says:

                Cricket in England is a bit like baseball here: not the most popular game (in both places, that’s a sport called “football”, even though they’re different things), but the people who like it tend to love it, both for itself and for its tradition and history.  And both travel well, if only to selected places: India and Pakistan for cricket, Eastern Asia and the Caribbean basin for baseball.Report

  14. Michael Cain says:

    Sigh… I am getting too old to enjoy fencing in epee competitions with people 20, 30, or (Lord help us) even 40 years younger than I am.  Patience and guile are no longer enough to offset youthful energy and enthusiasm…Report