Big weekend coming. Looks like sun on Saturday, maybe rain on Sunday.
So, this weekend, the people who like sun will get what they like, people who like rain will get what they like. Is this a great part of the country or what? Glad nobody ordered sleet and snow.
At least the outdoor adoption groups will have one sunny day to enjoy. Bless their hearts.
STEROIDS ON PARADE: I watched the hearings. (That's one benefit of being unemployed. You can subject yourself to the slime that trots through Congress though, if we ever had a baby boy, I'd consider naming him in honor of Rafael Palmeiro who appears to be the straightest shooter in the big leagues.)
Here's my theory on baseball: The teams belong to the owners, the positions belong to the players, but the game belongs to the fans. Don't let the millionaires, the marketers, Congress or that lame commissioner's office mess it up.
And baseball is a game that takes time to watch. It's NOT a place for jazzed up flitty-eyed people with hormone-driven attention deficit problems aggravated by so many cups of high-caffeine coffee that they'll be awake for years after they're dead. Baseball is a "pastoral" game. If you decide to dedicate some time to a game, it forces you to get off the freeway of madness. It makes you take it easy in spite of yourself.
A baseball game is a good time for quiet contemplation -- except at the big league level where the stadium is filled with deafening music, goofball gimmicks and overpriced snacks and souvenirs.
Look around. We're all way too busy. Americans need time to sit and think about things. Our lives are filled with racket and stress and challenges. At the ballpark, the conversation needs to be audible, not drowned out by some assault of percussion from speakers larger than buses. We need baseball so we can sit and watch and contemplate between pitches, lose ourselves in the "ifs" of the game. Maybe lean over to the guy sitting next to us and calmly say, "The skipper better yank that rag-arm or we'll lose this one, too." At the office, you lean over and say, "OmigodlayoffsisyourpensionprotectedamItoooldnow?" Who needs that?
And, you know, Steroidensteins, baseball is not a game for giants. It is a game for people who do giant things at the right moment.
Well, I must stop this plea for sanity in Major League Baseball. But if baseball is going to allow steroids, the commissioner might as well take a really big step and help Texas Rangers pitching by making the spitball legal.
STILL NEEDING A HOME: Stoneleigh, the dog found injured, starving and suffering from a horrible head wound in the Oak Lawn area, has healed and is needing a home. (See Feb. 24 item.) Key thing to note, according to the folks at A Different Breed rescue: "Stoneleigh wants to be your lap dog though he weighs about 65 pounds."
Look, that's a fixable situation. The human simply accepts that he or she has a 65-pound lap dog. Or, maybe, you spend some time explaining to Stoneleigh, that the quilt on the floor next to your chair is much better than trying to get comfortable in a lap. He can turn around three times on the quilt without having someone gasp for air and scream, "You're killing me!" (Yes, readers, I have some experience in the field of supersized lap dogs.)
To adopt Stoneleigh, e-mail [email protected] or call 214-676-6842. Visit www.adifferentbreed.org for adoption schedules and a reminder that the city's animal shelters are open for business and have plenty of inventory!)
HUNTING NOTE: Don't forget to visit www.dontshootthecat.com -- at that site you can see how to protest a proposal in Wisconsin that hunters be allowed to legally shoot feral cats. How, looking through a scope, these camo-clad giants of intellect could tell a feral cat from a housecat on a stroll is beyond me.
Provable theory: Humans strive each day to prove that they are much dumber than previously thought.
