Seattle Mariners’ pitchers and catchers reported to spring training today; the rest of the team checks in on Wednesday. Coincidentally, it’s a bright sunny day in Seattle. Spring is almost here. Really. Repeat it often enough and you might begin to believe it.
“Pocky Eaters of the World” will enjoy Dave’s Wonderful World of POCKY, a tribute to one of my favorite Japanese snacks. Some people got boxes of See’s candy for their Valentines; I bought coconut-chocolate Pocky!
Unfortunately the images at the haunted painting link I posted yesterday are no longer working. They were still working when I checked yesterday. Sorry. Just take my word for it, it was creepy.
The Grim Reaper’s Age Guesser did a remarkably good job at guessing my age in response to seemingly vague questions. (It was only two years off.) What’s even cooler is that after it’s done, you get to see a page that explains how the thing works.
The haunted painting item below somehow got a bad URL. Here’s the correct link.
Ingenious put-on or truly haunted painting? I don’t know, but it’s definitely creepy artwork, and someone was willing to bid $1000 for it. Haunted or not, I don’t think I’d want to hang this in my living room.
Spring must be coming! I heard a neighbor mowing his lawn this weekend. Unfortunately, he wasn’t lawn mower racing.
Happy Valentine’s Day! If you forgot to buy your loved one a gift, you can always go to the Cyrano Server and, via a Mad Libs sort of process, create a customized love letter to e-mail your sweetie. You can also create a break-up letter,but y’know, dumping someone on Valentine’s Day would be really mean. It would probably come back to bite you later. Don’t do it.
Someone was inspired by my screencam to make his own screencam with an AppleScript he wrote himself.
Charles Schulz died in his sleep last night. Coincidentally, the final Sunday ‘Peanuts’ strip is scheduled for today’s newspapers. Bye, Sparky, and thanks for the years of enjoyment.
Got a couple of new cds in the mail from Not Lame: Saltine and The Heats. Both have been added to the d23/poprocks playlist. The Heats album is just a cd version of vinyl I’ve owned for years, but the Saltine single is new. Good stuff, not even slightly unlike the Posies. Listen and enjoy.
The Sporting News has an editorial that says it pretty well, I think. “The point is not that Griffey wanted to leave. The point is, rather, how he decided to leave.” Exactly. I know at least one of my friends would disagree with this, but Junior could have dealt with this in a much better way — and that’s putting it mildly.
My most recent band, Doom Puffin, can finally be heard on MP3.com’s Doom Puffin page. No pictures, nothing too exciting, just a couple of MP3s. Please humor me and check them out.
About yesterday’s Coca-Cola rant, Coke themselves have a slightly different take on the situation. According to Coke,
We also asked the creators of this site, a web design firm called Maxistore LLC, to provide us with information to show that the vintagecocacola.com website was created by senior citizens who wanted to showcase their collections. However, Maxistore has not done this. As far as we can tell, the website was created solely by Maxistore LLC, which was using our trademark to advertise its own services and to provide links to auctions of Coca-Cola memorabilia. Up until February 7, 2000, the site contained advertisements for Maxistore.net and its web hosting services.
Hmm. The FAQ goes on to say that Coca-Cola has no objection to their use of the domain name as long as the site carries no commercial content, and that they’ve allowed other collectors’ sites to use Coca-Cola in their domain names.
A couple news stories I’ve seen seem to tell a different story. But having read all of this, I must say Coke’s explanation does have a ring of truth to it.
Regarding the Ken Griffey Jr. trade, MSNBC has posted an article that pulls no punches, headlined It really is time for Junior to go/Mariners grew sick and tired of Griffey’s constant whining. An excerpt:
In truth, Griffey for years has used his flair for the spectacular to conceal a crabby side that has turned a once bouncy clubhouse into something that feels like a deflated beach ball.
Sadly, I think whichever side you’re on, the entire Griffey affair has got to leave a sour taste in your mouth. It’s heartbreaking for a baseball idealist like myself. What’s worse, my memories of that magical 1995 stretch run have been tarnished by the way Junior’s Seattle tenure ended. I’ll never be able to enjoy those memories in the same way.
I had another paragraph to add here, but I really don’t feel up to posting it. It was bitter. Let’s just say that if would be true justice if the M’s win the Series this year.