Last week saw some pretty lame writing from the 0l' Corner of Grace and Wayne. Sadly I was a bit swamped with issues of many varieties and there was little time left for blogging (and when I did, I rarely proof-read). There wasn't even time for Fermiball, although the weekly installment will pick up on Friday. If you didn't notice the drop-off in quality, please drop a line, because I've been considering replacing myself with an infinite number of monkey/typewriter combos and would be interesting in seeing if anyone notices a difference. I'm guessing it would be pretty hard to notice until the first copy of Hamlet popped out of the monkey-machine.

Until then, it is just this one monkey (several times evolved) working this entry. And so let's get to it.

Baseball Stuff

The Cubs were very much unable to hit Wakefield last night, and I attribute this lack of success in large part to my noting that the Cubs were hitting Boston very hard. Once again the jinx shone down upon the Cubs, and then bitch-slapped them a bit. So I'm going to try the old reverse-jinx by saying the the Marlins' pitching is freakishly good and the Cubs batters are going to be in much trouble. Unfortunately, I think this falls much more accurately into the category of "obvious truth" than "reverse jinx". And the Cubs are countering with Koronka, Mitre, and Maddux (when do Prior and Wood come back?). Should be a fun series. I will be at Tuesday's game thanks to more awesomeness by the wife's family. I will report back on the festivities.

To answer my own question, Wood and Prior will be back: soon. Wood is beginning rehab today in AAA Iowa and assuming he can get a few career minor-leaguers out without accumulating any more fluid in his shoulder, he will make another minor-league start and then maybe be back in Chicago. One time-table puts him back on a major-league mound as early as the June 20th series with Milwaukee. I will hopefully be at the June 21st game, so I might get a chance to see the triumphant return of Kerry Wood (and be able to say I was there when he went back on the DL).

Prior has finally thrown a spherical, rawhide object from the mound (as opposed to a soft, terry cloth object) and they have projected him to be back in about 4 weeks. Hopefully the Cubs can hang on for that long.



Non-Baseball Stuff

ADHD Adults struggle to focus

Well...yeah. Otherwise they wouldn't be ADHD adults. They'd just be adults. In all seriousness, though, this is a pretty big problem. The ADHD society has been trying to hammer out an agenda to further the awareness of Adult ADHD (or AADHD) for years now, but progress has been slowed due to the many spontaneous games of foosball breaking out during meetings. They hope to get this problem hey, what's that? A bird! Eating a bug!

King Tut returns to dazzle

Remarks Tut, "I had a side bet with JC as to who would return first. Lucky thing for the heathens that I'm here, because the Big Guy is bringing a whole bucket of plagues with him. I just bring style." JC was unavailable for comment.

Report: Head Start has some benefits

The main one being, of course, the head start.

144 arrested in largest "cock fight" in U.S.

You can stop drooling, I said "cock fight," not "cat fight." And if you've neven seen a cock fight busted up, well, let me tell you, it isn't pretty. Just getting the hand cuffs on the little rooster-claws is damn near impossible. Happily, this sordid ordeal was put to rest...by killing more than 300 roosters. I think it is definitely up to debate as to whether the rooster's lifestyle was improved. To answer that, one needs to know: do all roosters go to heaven?

You can't help but feel for some of the chicken owners. After all, take it from David Webb of Newport, Tennessee:

"I've been around this stuff all my life. Everything I've ever known is a chicken fight"
'Nuff said.

Tune in next time for more pithy comments about important news topics (and baseball).