My blood runs cold: Topps being sold

It seems Topps, the venerable baseball card company, is up for grabs. It's too bad; our memories are being sold, as well (My angel is the centerfold!) I must say, I never did get the etopps concept -- real money paid for imaginary cards you can't turn over or stain with gum. For those wondering: this is what it means to grow up American.


Meanwhile, Upper Deck, in an effort to dominate the trading card market, actually made an unsolicited bid for the company well in excess of Michael Eisner's. Folks my generation still remember Upper Deck as the spiffy new kid on the block, which means -- hang on, I have to go take my Alzheimer's meds.

In politics, a record-setting 4,125th Red Herring to your president (I sure didn't vote for him), George W. Bush. Bush was warned by advisors that, after an Iraq invasion, Al Qaida would use Iraq as a recruiting ground, and Iran would try to leverage the region.

In the face of this evidence, Bush says he still "firmly believes the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power." Making Bush the only president to live in a vacuum since Hoover.

Get it? Hoover.

-Zed

QWTOFDY
“The enemy isn’t conservatism. The enemy isn’t liberalism. The enemy is bullshit."
-Lars-Erik Nelson

Humming at an end?

Hummer Bummer?

The first private citizen to own a Hummer? My Governor and yours, Arnold Schwazenegger. (Dead Red Fish to that man.) And now there's word that someone, perhaps on his way to the dealership right now, will soon be the last.


Yes, you do remember me publishing a piece on this. Now it seems there were finally enough protests about the actual illegality of them on California roads, the immorality of their environmental impact, and-

...What?

Apparently that wasn't it.

Apparently, sales were down.

Oh, well. To borrow the title of the Giants' 1987 team video: Humm Baby, It Was Fun.

Virgin Airs:

It looks like Virgin America is finally American enough for American lobbyists -- I mean, lawmakers.

Will non-American Richard Branson topple another industry?

Meanwhile, here I am, blogging to you (shh!) from the Giants press box. I'm actually watching two of the greatest centerfielders of all time -- Willie Mays and Condoleezza Rice -- chat each other up in owner Peter Magowan's box.

The presscateers all wanted to know whether the a crowd would boo Condi (line of the night: Condi is the woman Bush always hoped Colin Powell would become.) They never got the chance; she stayed safely off the JumboTron and in Willie's lap.

[Editor's note: they did get their chance when she left the game, escorted up Aisle 121 by her Secret Service detail, in the 8th inning -- to beat parking, presumably. The lefties did not disappoint, booing her roundly.]

Politics make strange bedfellows.

-Zed

QWTOFDY
"I loved the game. I loved the competition. But I never had any fun."
-Carl Yastrzemski

Let's get stoned and play work games?

Blogging from a Windows interface. This is weird...

And how about a big Red Herring to those with too much time on their hands, and not nearly enough hobbies. Yes, in yet another great example of irony, IBM has made a video game in which the user simulates the making of business software.

Yah.

OK, it actually sounds pretty cool -- it's skill-building, for one, which you can't exactly say about Grand Theft Auto, and (get out those glasses) it's in 3-D.

It also sounds a darn sight more complex than the game we're playing for class, which I dare say is plenty hard enough.

Okay! How 'bout some sports, then!

It seems tech has come to the Olympics -- surely this has happened somewhere before, but this one has rockets. Apparently, in the event of rain, China plans to launch a ground-to-air attack against the offending cloud.

I'm thinking: Thor would have loved the Olympics.


By the way, thanks to all of you new crew for stopping by; it surely is appreciated. Just one question: where the heck is Petaling Jaya?

-Zed

QWTOFDY
"The comic book [is] the marijuana of the nursery, the bane of the bassinet, the horror of the home..."
-John Mason Brown

A blow for Wolfowitz

...Which was also the headline for the Chronicle's online piece in which the Bush White House, in a rare move, is slowly distancing itself from the original "architect" of the Iraq War. I was hoping the "blow" was the kind that's guaranteed to cause a shitstorm in that particular arena.

(Just a thought: what do Iraqis call it? The War of American Aggression, or something like that. Which, if you think for even a moment, tends to confuse it with lots of other wars.)

In other War Czar news, the Bushies finally have a new one: one of those former generals finally said yes. A big Red Herring to Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. Yes, its best to buy in low, and sell high. But when a spate of good military men start saying no to their president, you have to wonder why.

(Incidently, Lieutenant General? They couldn't find anyone with full rank?)

This one's oldish, but hey, I just found out about it: the family behind In-N-Out Burger, famous for treating their workers fairly and printing bible chapter and verse on their soda cups, have lost their matriarch. Will the company go corporate, and can it continue to stand apart?


In other business news, JetBlue has ridden an admirable business model to mid-sized success, but faces an identity crisis. After the ouster of the quirky entrepreneur who set them apart in the first place, another corporate question mark looms.

Why so much business today? Dunno. I did crib some of these ideas from class last night.

Tomorrow: half-naked girls dancing on tables.

Woo-hoo!

-Zed

QWTOFDY
"You can drag a horticulture, but you can't make her think."
-Dorothy Parker (asked to use "horticulture" in a sentence)

Pacman and babies

Pacman Benched

Much is being made about the NFL's new enforcement and suspension policy, in the wake of Adam "Pacman" Jones' season-long suspension from the Titans for one of the world's more immature acts oevr NBA All Star weekend in Vegas. Gwen Knapp, a source of good social insight, for a sports writer, weighs in.

As Knapp writes, you can take this as a move made either from strength or weakness by new NFL sheriff Roger Goodell. Pacman is simply underbred and overattended, hardly a first for a guy of his means, lifestyle, age, and background. So I'm intentionally crawling out on a limb, and giving the Red Herring here to black people.

It doesn't alight silky-smooth on the ear, does it. But there's a case. The best way to take the heat off me here would be to watch some Dave Chapelle. It's hard to say it better than he does. Plus he actually is black, so, you know.

Nestle Buys Gerber

...for five billions of dollars. For some chewed-up ex-tuna. Mmm.

My favorite Gerber story ("I got a million of 'em!") has to do with China.
See, there are so many people speaking different dialects in China, it's common practice to simply put a picture of the product on the packaging.

Imagine, then, the hubbub when those cute little Gerber bottles first hit shelves in the People's Republic.
Say it all together, now:

"Soylent Green is people! IT'S PEOPLLLLE!"

-Zed

QWTOFDY
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
-Kurt Vonnegut