Women's soccer? No pussies allowed!

[via The Z Report]

"Fake AP Stylebook" may become a book

I've got two or three AP Stylebooks stuck in boxes around here. Not sure why I've kept them all these years. Probably should have paid more attention to them, looks like, cause now a couple of jakelegs have made up entries for a "Fake AP Stylebook" on Twitter that could become a book.

(Aside: What is an AP Stylebook? It's a book designed to answer questions about how to word stuff in a newspaper article. Reporters, in our experience, always have one handy but rarely refer to them, preferring to let editors change their copy "because that's why they're editors and that's what they're supposed to do.")

Anyway, Media Nation interviewed the founders of Fake AP Stylebook, if you want the full story.

What kind of journalistic style advice can you get from the Fake AP Stylebook?

Some examples:

* When referring to Lake Titicaca leave a lot of space afterwards for your readers to just laugh and laugh. (See also: "Ball State")

* For unnamed sources, agree on an attribution that gives the reader an idea of who it is. Ex.: "rhymes with President Bobama"

*Refer to him as "Infallible Supreme Leader of the United Smurflands" when he first appears in the article, then "Papa Smurf." afterwards.

*Always capitalize Satan. You don't want to get dead goats from those people.

* TIP: When covering City Council meetings, the Mayor is often the one wearing a large sash emblazoned with "MAYOR."

quote/unquote ...

"McKee is a longtime football fan. She is from Wisconsin. She had two statuettes of Brett Favre, the former Green Bay Packers quarterback, on her bookshelf. On the wall was a picture of a robust young man. It was McKee's son -- 19 years old, six-feet-three. If he had a chance to join the NFL, I asked her, what would she advise him? 'I'd say 'Don't. Not if you want to have a life after football.' "
--- "Offensive Play," The New Yorker, by Malcolm Gladwell, 10.09.09, referring to Ann McKee, who runs the neuropathology laboratory at the Veterans Administration hospital in Bedford, Mass.

"In the beginning, of course, there was the printing press."
--- first sentence of "Ranters and Corantos" by Richard Byrne, The Nation, Jan. 12, '09

"We're going to have a slow crawl in terms of a recovery. But the reason Warren Buffett is buying BNSF is a 10- to 20-year trend. For us near-term investors, it may seem curious. For him, the trajectory of the recovery over the next one or two years is irrelevant."
--- Matthew Troy, Citigroup analyst, about the 79-year-old Buffet buying the BNSF railroad

"It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor: for on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety."
--- Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) in "Confessions of an Opium Eater"

(Editor's Note: Compiled, per usual, in St. Louis by Wilson, whose #2 son Lou recently was named the city's "Officer of the Year" in District 9. Keep your head down, Lou!)

An omen?

You are familiar, I know, with various religous iconography that sometimes appear in unexpected places.

I never have experienced that personally.

But I swear to you that the above image appeared on the fence a few mornings ago. It's the fence on the east side of the house.

Obviously, the rays of the morning sun were bouncing off something and appearing on the weathered wood of the fence, but upon investigation it was unclear what in the Sam Hill was reflecting the light.

The photo, taken with an iPhone, was not enhanced at all on the computer I'm now tapping on. I do not know how and have never attempted to use the PhotoShop thing.

So I'm taking this as an omen. My life is just going to keep getting happier and happier.

That is all.

Here comes the Texas Tribune

The nonprofit digital newspaper launches tomorrow with a staff of 11 reporters who have abandoned their jobs with established daily newspapers.

Why'd they do that?

Well, some of them are making up to $90,000 per year, far more than the vast majority of their ink-stained brethren, according to this column by Howard Kurtz.

Happy Halloween from The B'port News

The yin-yang of the Brazos & San Bernard

First off, I read there's doody in the alleged blue-green waters of the San Bernard River.

Two days later, the water's up, up, up.

Same deal with The Brazos, expected to hit 40 feet on Halloween.

See. It all works out in the end. Somehow. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

quote/unquote ...

"The fact that a shrimp changes sex is extraordinary. They are born male, but they grow up to be females. I think if you know that, you'll eat shrimp with that thought in mind."
-- Isabella Rossellini, Newsweek 9.28.09, on her short movies about the sex lives of animals

"That was ugly. Allen was going to kill Larry Brown. He wanted me to fire him. And Larry Brown wanted him traded immediately. I just remember them sitting across from each other, and I was trying to explain to Larry that Allen sees him as the white jailer. That was just his experience. 'And Allen, you disrespect Larry when you say "(expletive) you" when he pulls you out of a game.'"
-- Pat Croce, former 76er owner, about Allen Iverson and his then coach, Larry Brown

"Johan Cruyff used to say he enjoyed hitting the post as much as scoring. He loved the sound. This might be why he is the greatest player of all time but doesn't have a World Cup winner's medal."
-- Mike Shallcross, during commentary today of Arsenal v. Liverpool, www.guardian.co.uk

"Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal." ---- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), talking about the Scots
"I don’t care if McGwire hit .500 for his career and hit 1000 home runs. The man (if you can call him that) is a cheater, a liar, and a coward. He is a disgrace to the game of baseball, the Cardinals (once great) franchise, the city of STL and every fan. The Cards might as well replace the beloved Birds on the bat symbol with Birds on a giant hypodermic syringe. As a fan of more than 30 years I find it disgraceful that the Cards F.O. would even think about bringing this cheating liar to the team. I cannot continue to support a team that allows disgraceful cheaters. The Cards will not get 1 more dollar from me as long as McGwire is part of the organization."

-- in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a comment by reader who used the pseudonym "Monster"

[Ed.'s note: compiled, as always, by Wilson in St. Louis.]

A small example of government dumbassedness

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation heard about this new "social networking" thing called Twitter and paid a public relations firm $7,500 to set up a Twitter account.

"There’s no word if ODOT also bought the clear coat rust protection, extended warranty and a credit report monitoring service, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did," deadpanned The Lost Ogle blog in Oklahoma City, the state capital.

The wiseacre Lost Ogle gang added:

Hell, it only took us five minutes to create a fake ODOT twitter account and then analyze that it’s much better than ODOT’s official one. It’s more entertaining, too. Check these tweets out:

• Odds that the Crosstown Bridge crumbles today: 6%

• We shouldn’t have to tell u this, but don’t give money to the homeless guy on 1-44 and Penn.

• North Meridian between Reno and 23rd is an absolute cluster f*ck. Avoid.

Parking perils at the new Wal-Mart across the street from the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX

Howard, a convenience store clerk with whom I sometimes converse, took a public tour of the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX, during a trip to the D-FW Metroplex earlier this month.

It was during the annual Texas-OU Weekend in Dallas. He attended the game, but the story he was most interested in relating was something he learned during the tour of Cowboys Stadium, which he said took an entire hour and-a-half.

There's a brand new Wal-Mart across the street from the stadium, he said, and on Cowboys game days the operators of the Wal-Mart are not at all forgiving toward football fans who park in the store parking lot and cross the street to the stadium in order to save the parking fee, which ranges from $50 to $75.

Wal-Mart personnel, he said, patrol their parking lot writing down the license tag numbers of the cars that are parked there, and when they come back later and check on them, any vehicle parked there for more than an hour is towed away.

"It costs you $300 to get your car," Howard said.

Howard said the gentleman who gave his group the guided tour of Cowboys Stadium told him this and I have no reason to believe it is not true.

Furthermore, Howard said, there are no signs warning parking violators of what may be in store for them if they are using Wal-Mart to save the Cowboys Stadium parking fee. He based this observation on his own personal drive-by of the Wal-Mart to look for warning signs, but I must admit I find this part of his story hard to believe; perhaps he just didn't see the warning signs, especially if they are small and placed inconspicuously.

Nevertheless, it's this kind of treatment that makes people not want to go out of their house. That's all I have to say on the matter.

When You Get On The Whiskey, as set to a Benny Hill soundtrack

Iverson, Mora, Gundy, T.O. Mashup

Joan Baez - With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan cover)

Joan Baez - With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan cover)



Shared via blip.fm

Joan Baez - It Ain't Me, Babe (Live 1965)

Ron Paul asks a good question: Why are we in Afghanistan?

Our Congressman, US Rep. Ron Paul, uses his weekly column to ask some basic questions about the continued American presence in Afghanistan.

His conclusion: we remain there to "save face."

Sound familiar to Vietnam?

The current debate is focused entirely on the question of troop levels. How many more troops should be sent over in order to pursue the war? The administration has already approved an additional 21,000 American service men and women to be deployed by November, which will increase our troop levels to 68,000. Will another 40,000 do the job? Or should we eventually build up the levels to 100,000 in addition to that? Why not 500,000 – just to be “safe”? And how will public support be brought back around to supporting this war again when 58 percent are now against it?

I get quite annoyed at this very narrow line of questioning. I have other questions. We overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 with less than 10,000 American troops. Why does it now seem that the more troops we send, the worse things get? If the Soviets bankrupted themselves in Afghanistan with troop levels of 100,000 and were eventually forced to leave in humiliating defeat, why are we determined to follow their example? Most importantly, what is there to be gained from all this? We’ve invested billions of dollars and thousands of precious lives – for what?

snip

We are no longer dealing with anything or anyone involved in the attacks of 9/11. At this point we are only strengthening the resolve and the ranks of our enemies. We have nothing left to win. We are only there to save face, and in the end we will not even be able to do that.

Twitter Fight! Peter King (sportswriter) versus Mark Cuban (wealthy sportsman, entrepreneur) ¿Quién más macho?

It started Saturday night, somewhere around 10 p.m. Central Standard Time.

I was watching the last minutes of the Florida-LSU game when I noticed that @Golflogsdon asked @SI_PeterKing if the new United Football League games would be televised.

King, a well-known football writer for Sports Illustrated, "retweeted" this question and, after an ellipse (which is the proper Twitter ettiquette) answered that HDNet would televise the game though he he didn't know what HDNet is.

The exact wording:

"RT @GolfLogsdon: Is UFL on tv anywhere? ... HD Net, whatever that is*".

@mcuban, who by all appearance is the Mark Cuban who owns the Dallas Mavericks and a lot of other stuff (though I can't be absolutely sure even though @mcuban's Twitter page does link to Mark Cuban's blog, saw the comment about HDNet and responded to @SI_King Peter with this:

"Just because you are clueless doesnt mean everyone else is Peter. Is SI still in business ?"

@SI_PeterKing "retweeted" the "clueless" comment and, with raised eyebrows, wrote:

"Nice to meet you, Mark."

Then @SI_PeterKing, after evidently pondering the exchange, tried to explicate:

"Never heard of HDNet till tonight. Sue me. I cover football, not television."

@mcuban came right back at him,

"And that justifies the condescending comment? "

@SI_PeterKing insisted innocence,

"Didn't know what it was. Said so."

***

This caused a tiny ripple in the Twitterverse.

For instance, @kylerhode (some guy in Kansas) asked @mcuban:

"got some built up hostility towards @SI_PeterKing? Honestly, only reason I know about HDNet is from reading ur blog"

@mcuban denied hostility, tweeting to @kylerhode in Kansas:

no hostility at all. I didnt even know he was still writing*. Just think he took a shot that was uncalled for.

to which @kylerhode in Kansas said to @mcuban:

Fair, but your shot back was pretty low too - the guy writes a ton for SI and is on NBC, great ambassador 4 football. Thx for reply

***

But @mcuban wasn't about to let @SI_PeterKing off the hook, asserting that @SI_PeterKing's explanation that he simply was answering a question about HDNet was more sinister than that.

@mcuban did this by tweeting:

No, you retweeted a comment to 85k. More than a few of whom recognized it for what it was and were happy to pass it on to me

Whew ... that appears to be the end of it. No further Twitter shots fired as of now. In fact, perhaps exhausted from the exchange, @SI_PeterKing and @mcuban quit tweeting the rest of night, at least publicly.

*******************
*emphasis added
*******************

(FYI: @SI_PeterKing has 85,945 followers; @mcuban has 105,339.

(FYI2: HDNet was started in 2001 by Mark Cuban and Phillip Garvin.)

(FYI3: Banjo Jones goes by @BanjoJones on Twitter. He has 306 followers.)

Rusty Wier -- gone

The Fat Guy alerted me to the passing of Rusty Wier.

He wrote:

"Rusty was, indeed & absolutely, one of the originals. I count myself fortunate to have shaken his hand and thanked him for a lifetime of music.

Adios, mofo, and save me a seat at the bar."

The Fat Guy's ex had informed him earlier.

Michael Corcoran, the music writer for the Austin daily, wrote:

"Hearing was musician Rusty Wier’s last sense to go, so although he was unresponsive when surrounded by relatives and friends, including Jerry Jeff Walker, at his son Coby’s house in Driftwood Thursday night, he tried to raise up his head when the group sang “Amazing Grace.”

By the next morning the Austin musician, who had a hit when Bonnie Raitt covered his “Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance” on the soundtrack to “Urban Cowboy,” was dead after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 65.

“There’s this myth about the hippies and the rednecks meeting at the Armadillo and passing joints and Lone Stars to each other,” said John Inmon. “But the rednecks and hippies were the same people. That was Rusty. He was a redneck son of Central Texas, but he was also a hippie.”

Although Wier got his own chapter in Jan Reid’s “The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock,” which chronicled Austin’s “progressive country” scene of the ’70s, Wier’s contribution to Austin music goes back to the mid-’60s. As a student at Southwest Texas State, the Manchaca-raised Wier was recruited to play drums in the Wig, a popular regional band assembled in the wake of the British Invasion. He later played drums and sang in the Lavender Hill Express, a country/ rock cover band. But he wanted to step out front.

“One day he just gave up the drums and started woodshedding on guitar,” said Inmon, who played with Wier in the trio of Rusty, Layton and John. “He locked himself in a room and practiced and practiced. He was a natural entertainer, so he could get his music across, but it took him awhile to get good.”

He established himself in the early ’70s as a folk singer with rock and roll eyes and a trademarked, low-crowned black hat. Along with Jerry Jeff Walker and Michael Martin Murphey, Wier was one of the first Austin acts to get a major label deal. But the clubs is where he made his money."

American Presidents who won the Nobel Peace Prize, past and present

Theodore Roosevelt , 1906, Collaborator of various peace treaties

Thomas Woodrow Wilson, 1919, Founder of the League of Nations

Jimmy Carter, 2002, "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development"

Barack Obama, 2009, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"

[See the whole list here.]

Video of "A Day In The Life" makes you wonder how much acid The Beatles dropped back in the day, and how more pain the Oklahoma Sooners can bear

The song, one of John Lennon's greatest, also inspired Patrick, a blogger for The Lost Ogle in Oklahoma City, to look deep within himself now that the Oklahoma Sooners have suffered two losses.

To assuage his melancholy, Patrick penned a new set of lyrics to "A Day in the Life" and retitled it "A Day in the Life of the OU-Miami Game."

Patrick concedes he may be "too big" a fan of the Sooners:

I read the news today, oh boy.
Stoops and the boys had lost another game.
And though the game did make me mad,
Well I just had to laugh,
I saw the mustache.
It helped make Landry a star.
He didn’t notice the defensive end rushing him.
Offensive lineman stood and stared
Like they’d never seen a defensive end before
This is what happens when the team under performs

I saw a film today, oh boy.
Venables' defense has just lost the war.
A crowd of fans turned away,
But I just had to look,
Having seen the Boise hook.
Stoops loves to turn you on…

Woke up, got out of bed,
Saw the Sooners pull ahead.
Found my way downstairs and drank a shot
And looking at the score, I did another shot.
Ryan Reynolds is slow and fat,
Runs a 40 in 5 seconds flat.
Found my way upstairs and grabbed a radio
Jim Traber spoke and I went into a dream.

Noooooooooooooo-ohhhhhhhh,
Noooooooooooooo-ohhhhhhhh,
Noooooooooooooo-ohhhhhhhh,
Noooooooooooooo-ohhhhhhhh,

I read the news today, oh boy.
DeMarco Murray ran up the middle again,
And though the holes were rather small,
They didn’t pass the ball
Nobody was really sure why they were scared to pass the damn football.
Stoops loves to turn you on…

Bloggers that examine Houston Chronicle suggests that all is not well

As I don't read the Houston daily newspaper all that much any more, I don't blog about it much either, though there are exceptions, none of which can really be related to the big picture.

But I've just realized that that there's some serious journalism critiques emanating from Houston-based bloggers. If you're a serious-minded sort who cares about local government, issues and elections, perhaps you should pay attention? So here's a brief -- and by no means comprehensive -- overview of who's doing the overviewing, so to speak ....

** Cory Crow -- On this guy's blog he asserts The Houston Chronicle has fallen into a deep sleep.

Unfortunately, the list of key issues that the newspaper has missed, due to either lack of interest or lack of staff, is growing longer by the day. KHOU broke the crime lab story, the under reported crime story and a host of others. KTRK was responsible for breaking the story about Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, scandals that could land the Commissioner in court. Then there's BARC, the reporting of which has been owned by Craig Malisow of The Houston Press and local blogger Kelly Cripe. All of these stories broken by organizations with much less funding and resources than ChronBlog.

** Slampo -- This chap, one of our favorite bloggers, lately has been doing some serious political writing on the Houston Mayor's race, and his latest offering adds further credence to the notion The Houston Chronicle hasn't been asking the right questions.

** Murray Newman -- He's a lawyer who recently left the Harris County DA's Office. In this post, he takes apart, brick by brick, a story in the Chronicle about why the jail is so crowded. Read the comments. You'll probably learn something you didn't know about how the court system works.

****************************

I have no idea if management at The Chronicle reads these blogs, much less discusses any of the issues that are raised in them.

The newspaper's "reader representative" is for all practical purposes incommunicado when it comes to dealing with bloggers who have a beef, based on what I've read in blogHouston.

Yo, I realize the Chronicle, like all the other big papers in the USA, are suffering tough economic times and have reduced staff, but you can't take your eye off the ball.

That's all I got.

quote/unquote ...

"Speaking truth to power makes no sense. There's no point in speaking the truth to Henry Kissinger -- he knows it already. Instead, speak truth to the powerless -- or better with the powerless. Then they'll act to dismantle illegitimate power."
--- Noam Chomsky, 1996

"A Conservative...is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."
--- Ambrose Bierce

"Don't expect thanks for a job well done. That is taken care of by the person who brings around your paycheck."
--- "Brutal Truths" Esquire magazine, July, 1976

"There's honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum it up the whole thing by sayin' "I seen my opportunities and i took 'em."
--- Senator Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

(Editor's Note: Assembled in St. Louis by Wilson....pictured above, seated, Sen. George Washington Plunkitt.)