A Random August Post

As Hurricane Irene lingers over North Carolina and seems destined for retirement, I was shocked this morning when the guys at Tim Hortons mixed up my order. I opened my bagel to find cream cheese and cucumbers in it. Somewhere out there, someone received a bagel with AIDS in it, and I’m not sure if a lot of people are prepared for such a possibility in the morning.

Wow, that is a lazy and easy joke. I can roll right out of sleep and craft a similar quality yuk. I can be suffering from a concussion and still pull that off, it’s nothing to me. Just like breathing or putting up useless links.

– It was bittersweet to see Aaron Hill and John MacDonald join the Arizona Diamondbacks last night, and seeing Hill in such a non-Jays uniform was especially weird. Both started for the Diamondbacks, joining an infield already consisting of two former Jays; our old friend Lyle Overbay at first, and former super utility guy Ryan Roberts at third. Ladies and gentlemen, the infield of the 2007 Toronto Blue Jays…now four years older, busted, and in Arizona. Johnny Mac did Johnny Mac things, Aaron Hill struck out with the bases loaded to end an inning, and both went 0-4 in their debut. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

(Just real quickly, the Kelly Johnson trade is a solid win for the Jays because (a) the money’s a wash, (b) Kelly Johnson is likely the better player and the team probably feels more comfortable offering him arbitration than Hill, and (c) because Johnson now becomes a Type A free agent in the American League while Aaron Hill remains a Type B in the National League and has no chance of becoming a Type A.)

– AL’s personal campaign in the war against the wave just found some new party members.

– This is a collection of personal anecdotes from Questlove about his experiences with pretty much every celebrity in the world. It is a crazy list of people, please don’t click this if you need to accomplish something productive in the next hour. Also, if you didn’t think you could still sound really black even through the internet, then prepare to be proven really really wrong.

– Mad Men‘s lil’ Bobby Draper is being recast again for like the sixth time and basically called January Jones a bitch. Everyone reads this and thinks she’s a horrible person, but I just see a great actress honing her craft. Has anyone watched the show!?! She’s supposed to be an incredibly cold hearted bitch!

– I would love to know the backstory that inspired a man to post a sign on his house facing his cancer stricken neighbour that read…“GLAD YOU HAVE CANSER SO DIE STUPID“. I mean…that is…wow, that is some top notch, high grade, triple distilled HATE right there. Delicious. I wish I could feel that strongly about anything in my life, positively or negatively. I mean, obviously, this man lives life passionately. In this case it is a burning passion borne from hate and spite, but it is passion nonetheless. On second thought, I don’t really want to know the backstory leading up to this at all – the punchline is all I need. Something about the fact that it was posted within a Christmas wreath in August also kills me as well, there’s so many wonderful layers to this hate cake. Moist, delicious, and rich.

This reminds me of this one time I went for lunch with one of my best coworker friends, about the time that Elton John had a kid, and this made headlines in the Toronto newspapers for some reason. He was so disgusted by the notion of two homosexual men raising a child together that he hoped the child would grow up all messed up and end up murdering his gay parents. Now that right there…THAT is some wonderful old school hate. I don’t even think he was completely serious when he said that, but regardless, that type of extreme prejudice is actually pretty refreshing in this day and age. People are so dominated by an overwhelming sense of political correctness…and you know, an unprejudiced sense of decency and compassion for other fellow human beings…that to finally hear something completely honest for once is pretty great.

Though the only guy I know with two dads is Superboy (who is a composite genetic clone of both Superman and Lex Luthor) and he is kind of a douche. And also there was a story in which Lex Luthor brainwashed Superboy to make him kill his other father, so in a way, in type of thing isn’t completely unprecedented then, right? So…who knows.

We’re hoping that a change of scenery can not only spark our club, but spark these two guys.