I realized this the other day, and it lacks any realistic explanation. I haven't watched a Phillies game that ended in a Phillies loss in many, many months. The last game I went to, they got their asses handed to them, which was like June 17th or something. Then their was the All Star break, and the trades. It could be that the team is just a whole new team (which is true), but then explain this...

If I happen to turn on the game in session, it will be tied or a close game, but as I'm watching, the Phillies will break out and score a lot. The other day, I turn on the game. It's in the 4th inning, 0-0. Phillies break it open with 4 runs. That's like every time I catch a game not from the beginning. Last night, I turn on the game going into the top of the 9th. The Cubs just hit a home run to go 1-1, but I missed it. Howard had homered earlier to reach 44 on the season. I watch and the Phillies win. Of course, I don't believe in circumstances like that. It is all just coincidence. But it's eirie (is that spelled right?).

Like, down the shore (in Delaware), Steve and I got done watching a movie and turned on the Phils. They won after it was a close game, with them losing at first. I missed a game that Saturday, and they lost. They went 6-4 on the home stand, and I saw only the wins, and wasn't at my TV for the other times. This is a 10 game road trip they're on now, and I've seen most of each of the games, they're 3-0 so far. They play today at 2pm. I might have jinxed them, if there is such a thing, or I'll be further delusioned into thinking I'm good luck if they win. Of course, I want them to win. Maybe I'll go down at like 2:40 and watch, to see if they score runs only when I'm watching. That would be crazy whack funky.

I had this weird dream after I fell asleep watching the replay of the Phillies game last night. It was around 12 midnight when I finally zonked out. If you've never watched a Phillies game, you still might have heard of Harry Kalas. He's the Phillies' TV and radio voice. Well, he's getting old, and his vision is fading, as well as his memory. Sometimes he'll botch calls like if a ball is caught at the wall or if it goes out and the guy there tries to catch it but it's obviously way out of reach of him, he'll report the opposite of what happened. This dream was along those lines. Basically, it was a ground ball up the third base line with nobody on base, and Harry Kalas reported it as a two run homer. I was like "WTF?".

I turned on CNN after waking up this morning, and caught a majority of "In The footsteps of Bin Laden", which is an interesting, two-sided show. It ended with me feeling rather informed about where bin Laden might be, why he "hates America", why al Qaeda was formed, and all this other stuff that will cause the FBI and CIA to beeline to this website and flag it as "terroristic". Anyway, it was over, and Anderson Cooper is on the screen, informing me of the next time the show will be on. Of course, the bad part of it was, he was basically calling bin Laden a slew of names that I wouldn't say around my neices or nephews. So, I realized I didn't like news shows telling me what to think of these people. If they realized that intelligent people watch their shows, then they should assume that most people can come to their own conclusions, and they just need all the facts in order to do this, and that's why we watch the news. Telling us that Osama bin Laden is evil is not a fact, that's an opinion. It might be a widespread opinion, but it's an opinion, and one that most people would find to be "right", which doesn't necessarily make it fact.

I bought "Munich" with my limited funds, and I've watched it three times. It's a good flick. Anyway, there's this part where the dude who plays the Incredible Hulk is in Germany trying to find answers, and he comes across this German frauline, and she's a Philosopher. She comments from a work entitled "The Philosophy of Right" I think, by some philosoph. I immediately became intrigued. I haven't researched it, but I'm sure it's a real work. Now I have to read it. Because what's right to someone is completely wrong to someone else, and therefore couldn't possibly be recorded in history books as "fact". Of course, we record it as fact, and therefore it's propaganda.

Yes, the show "In the Footsteps of Bin Laden" is also propaganda. But there are a lot of facts in it, but we see just the facts about al Qaeda attacking US interests, and the US retaliating and weakening al Qaeda interests like their safe harbor in Afghanistan, the Taliban. Facts that try to sculpt a conclusion, in this case that al Qaeda is doing what they do just because they felt like it... with no motivation. The show brushes aside the fact that the US has held military posts in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holy land, for many years. This would be like going and taking a dump on an altar in a church. Because of oil, of course. They may be right. All they want is for the US to leave their land, which may be impossible without an alternative source of fuel. It just so happens that the biggest source of oil also happens to be a desert filled with people of another religion, and that religion's holy land. They'd drill for oil under Rome or Jerusalem if they knew there was a well there.

Oh well. Time for coffee. I'm not on bin Laden's side here, just saying that propaganda sucks, we are smart people, most of the time, and we don't need opinions of news reporters to shape our own opinions. It's weird how the two topics of this post intermingle. I like to watch a sporting event where the announcer is rooting for the same team I am, but I can't watch a news show where they are rooting for or against anyone. I don't know... does that seem weird?

It only takes me about 5 minutes of watching CNN to hate it and pretty much every news show. First, there's the incidents in Lebonon which I'm OK with watching. But then, they talk about Mel Gibson's anti-Semitist remarks, which he apologized for, leave it alone, and his DUI. Then they say his blood alcohol level was .12, and in California, the legal limit is .08. From my "alcohol" class in college (I did actually take an alcohol class... hoo boy, there's a good story to do with that too), they said that .08 is like drinking two beers and hitting the road. So .12, from math, is only 1 more beer. It's the law, and he rightfully got a DUI because of that, and that's not my issue. I know I get buzzed if it's been a while and I drink three beers in an hour or so, but comon... people are still pretty much capable of anything, and in some cases more capable of other things, after three beers. I speak of course of Beirut (AKA beer pong). CNN brought it up like it was a huge deal, and that Mel Gibson is now a lesser person, like "We can all now laugh at Mel Gibson when on coffee break." I'm not particularly fond of Mel, I'm more attacking peoples' attitudes towards someone who makes a mistake then I am defending Mr. Gibson. Give it up, Perfecty O'Perfect.

Sometimes I love TV though. Yesterday on Comcast SportsNet, on the show Daily News Live, was Charles Barkley. He's a great interview. Comcast should release that interview on DVD, and any other interview with him. He was my favorite player growing up. In fact, in third grade, I guess for my 9th birthday, I invited him to my party. I was the talk of the whole school, since I told one person that Charles Barkley might show up. I had hookups, since my Dad went to school with John Nash, then GM of the Sixers. Sir Charles couldn't make it, I'm afraid to say, but in the side door of the house, my brother noticed the door had been held open by something. We never use it but it's on the street, so easily accessible to delivery trucks and whatnot. To help you further imagine, the house is on a corner, but the front door is not on the street that the address is listed as, that door is the side door. Anyway, he checked it and it was a box addressed to me!! Charles Barkley, via John Nash, had sent me an personal autographed Sixers basketball ("To Jason Charles Barkely"), a note from Charles, and a bunch of assorted Sixers stickers. I don't know what happened to the rest, but the basketball is currently on top of our Philadelphia sports dedicated entertainment center, along with a Chase Utley bobblehead, a Donovan McNabb bobblehead, an Allen Iverson bobblehead, and I think Peter Forsberg represents the Flyers. I'd have to go check, but I'm too comfy. Anyway, I wish I'd kept the note. Oh well. Some of the stickers made their way onto various spots around the house, like the insides of closet doors (because who ever paints there!?). Definitely an exciting time, and now Charles Barkley will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame! That thing just shot up in value, but you don't ever, ever sell it because it's Charles Barkley for Pete's sake!! Oh, and it's to me... another "Jason" just wouldn't get the same satisfaction out of it.

The only channel I watch regularly now is the History Channel. I love Modern Marvels, Mega Disasters, and their special on the American Revolution, among a ton of other shows. I will watch Mail Call... hell, I watch anything on that channel. I used to be a Discovery / Learning Channel guy, and the History Channel is from the same blood, but I just find that THC has more of the stuff I'm interested in... all the time. And their paid programming doesn't kick on until 4am, which is huge for me during my time off :)

Also, you've probably noticed the news categories on the left of the main page are gone

(<---- psst... over there)

This is due to the filter destroying this page and taking up all the landscape, and no need to list categories anymore since you can just filter by them, and Todd wanted to know when I replied to his comment in "The end of the world".

So, now my website seems VERY busy. I want to add more crap...

I started to reply to Todd, then had to go to work, saved the text in a file on my MacMini, went to work, came home a few hours later, then the Phillies were playing the Yankees and our fearless genius leader, Charlie Manuel, had set the lineup so Abreu and Howard were sitting and Chase Utley was playing first... it was something I had to see... they won!! Amazing. I was being sarcastic about Charlie being a genius. Oh, and I watched game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, and was cheering for Edmonton so that probably doomed them, since Carolina won the Stanley Cup, those b@#tards. So, I had to work on that stuff after those games. Now it's like 2am and I have to go to bed. So, probably tomorrow Todd :)

Out of curiosity, due to the fact that when my web game comes out, it will require probably tons of disk space, I checked the amount of space left on my hard drive on this server. It's an 80 GB drive. There are a few websites on it, and one with lots of images, and this one has lots of images, and there is a lot of data in my databases, and of course Linux and software like Java, Tomcat, GNU tools, etc, etc, etc. Lots of stuff. There are three partitions, and one's not a file system (maybe it's a backup?). Here's what the "df" command in Linux returns. I was like "SWEET!"

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2             75790304   4175216  67765112   6% /
/dev/hda1               101089      9324     86546  10% /boot
none                    252864         0    252864   0% /dev/shm

We went to the Phillies game yesterday. They got romped by the Devil Rays. Our seats were in Section 104, Row 10. If you watch a replay of the game, a dude on the other team hit a home run to the exact same seat I was sitting in. Only, it was a little higher. It hit my f@#$@#ing finger!! Which I said to everyone about 10 times really loud. But, the dude behind me got it and immediately threw it back. I almost had it. Damnit! It's incredible when a baseball is coming right at you at like 3129 miles per hour and you're WASTED. I watched it and was like "That's outta here..." Then I'm like "Wait a second, I'm in right field... and it's coming right at me!!" So I stood up, put my hand out, and the sheer speed of the ball probably made me pull it down a little, due to the fear of having a broken hand or some other crap like that. Before Aaron Rowand made his courageous, nose destroying catch, he got hit by a pitch on the back of his hand. They showed it on TV and it was nasty. A huge black and blue mark. I didn't want that. I don't think that popped in my head then though. All that popped in my head was "That's moving pretty fast."

Other than that it was a great time! We had beer, and we had these neighbors at our tailgate party who had Jack Daniels and some rum. They gave me some rum, like a fifth of a red plastic cup of it. DMart had his sister there and his sister's friend... of course, they were at our neighbor's the whole time, drinking heavily, since they were almost, but not quite yet, 21. It was a mess, but it didn't detract from my good time. JY, SG and I were tossing the football around, doing spectacular one handed catches. Not to show off, but I didn't want to put my beer down :)

Then we went to McFadden's after the game. I sorta know a bartender there, she was my mortgage agent when I was looking at houses. I got a free beer from her. [General bar events and chats with girls... etc].

Good times. We're all going to Dorney Park soon too, so that should be fun.

I'm heading out to watch the Phillies today, so real quick I decided to put up a filter on the news. It's like being a proud father, you just want everyone to see your kid hit home runs. I just want to be able to have everyone search for news. You can always find quality stuff when you enter "drinking" (or "beer") into the "Text" search. I know it doesn't make sense to have a filter AND have the categories listed on the left, but I literally have to go get ready for this game and buy some beer to bring along, which of course means I have to hit up WaWa, get money, and buy smokes and something to keep me occupied while the Phillies are getting slaughtered by whoever they play today. They're the only sport right now in Philly, so when they suck, your whole summer sucks.

I'll be putting one up for pictures and downloads soon. Pictures especially needs some help. Plus, there's a major bug on the page that I notice every time I go there, like 3 times a week, and I haven't devoted any time to fixing it yet. Plus, I'll be adding more cool filter types so you can say "List news that has comments". Or like, "List news with comments between 5/1/2006 and 6/17/2006... 0 results returned!!" Oh well.

This weekend was pretty fun. I'm exhausted. Friday, my brother went to the Phillies game and left me about half a case of Busch cans. I decided to forget about anything else and just hang out front and drink beer. I was hoping my neighbors would be hanging out too, and they were, so that was clutch. We had a good time. My cool neighbors were hanging out a bit, and they asked me to go downstairs and help them with their basement. They were putting in the floor. So of course, I stumbled on down the stairs, and found the only spot of the floor that had no tiles on it, only glue. So under their tiles are two big footprints of mine! I'm forever a part of their house ;-)

Saturday was a similar day. Video games in the morning. My brother cooked ribs, we hung out front with our neighbors, except I didn't drink. We ended up eating pretty much all weekend. Sunday, the same thing. We were beat so we went to bed at like 10. Well, my brother did, I was trying to find out what show I wanted to watch that could put me to sleep. I ended up staying up until 4am, with a 9:45 tee time the next morning. I watched "The Girl Next Door" which was pretty good. I also watched a movie called "Stealth" which was alright. It probably bombed at the box office because I had never heard of it, and it was available free on demand... a rare occurrence for a movie released last year. Basically, this advanced AI controlled airplane gets struck by lightning and ends up going bezerk and almost starting war on Russia.

Yesterday we went golfing. I sucked. The first few holes I was doing awesome, but then I think the heat got to me. It tends to when it's 958643 degrees Fahrenheit in the sunlight and 958642 in the shade. I ran out of my thirst quencher on the 13th hole, but really on the 8th, since after the 8th it was like hot cocoa. Not ideal for cooling someone down. I wasn't thirsty but man was I hot. Anyway, long story short, I played my best golf for the first 8 holes, then my absolute worst for the rest of the day. I'm talking about after 6 holes, I had 26, when a pro could probably have 21-23. My drives were straight, my approaches were right at it and landing on the green pretty close to the hole. I was on fire. I ended up with a 45 on the front. Yes, 26 in 6, 19 in 3. The main problem began when I looked at my score after 5. I used to do that on this course, since I played it when growing up. I would get 28 or 27 after 5 holes. Monday I had 21. Pretty much one over after 5. But I stink.

After golf we went to my brother's house for more barbecue. This morning I feel like death.

Looking at only the first half of my life, you would not expect me to be completely opposite for the second half of my life. Up until 14, I was playing sports, from baseball, basketball, football, street hockey, and some "Kill the Man" or some other "whole street" game that we came up with growing up on my street with kids in almost every house. I was active. I played video games back then too, so they're not really the cause for my reversal in activeness. Here is the cause: I am too competitive for team games.

Those little kid leagues where the coach will play every kid for the same amount of time were the only leagues I was in. There was no competition, it was only fun. However, having a huge competitive yearning, these weren't enough for me. I can't just go out and make myself better unless I'm competing. I love competing, and I love winning. Practicing is boring, but scrimmaging was awesome. My big sport growing up was soccer. I loved that, because our practices were scrimmages, mainly. We'd have some standard drills but they would just lead up to a 6 on 6 or something. During one year of soccer, I scored a few goals, and I scored in the All-Star game... as a HALF-BACK (or Mid-Fielder). It's usually the "strikers" that score.

So, practicing is not fun because there's no competition. I guess you have to make a little game out of it in order to make it fun, but I wasn't that creative. So, when I got to high school, I decided to give up on those sports because I wasn't interested in making myself better, and I didn't play anyways. Luckily, in 6th grade, I was introduced to a little game where the competition is built in, with no one else out there. Golf.

My love affair with golf really started, though, in 8th grade, when I had a paper route. Our local course, Kara Kung in Philadelphia, was $8 for a junior (under 17) to walk. So every time I went out collecting for the paper, I'd come back and stash $8 lumps in a sock in my drawer. Then I'd count it up and say "I can go golfing 12 times!!" On top of that, I'd watch golf all the time, my Dad subscribed me to Golf Illustrated, and I read tons of books. But I never practiced.

"You never practiced golf?!?! You must suck!" I do. But I love it. You can go out on a golf course and compete all by yourself. Because you're competing with yourself, and you're competing with the course. You can think back, "Last time I played this hole, I got a 6..." So your realistic immediate goal is a 5, but really you'd want a 1 :P It's just an incredible game.

But it's one of those games where you find that you haven't played in almost 3 months, or a year, sometimes when you think back. Time flies between rounds of golf.

Anyway, Zatko and I decide to go golfing on Saturday. I hadn't played since last summer, probably 7 months. I'm a bit rusty. And the first thing to go when you have a long lapse like that between rounds is your short game. You no longer have any idea how a ball off of a quarter swing pitching wedge placed in front of your back foot will react. Or how firm you have to hit it, or any putt that you come across. It's like you're retarded. However, the long game, I almost never lose. That's more like riding a bike than riding a bike to me. My first two shots were a drive into the fairway, and then a 7 iron onto the green. I three putted.

This is my best shot of the day. This dog-leg right... pretty steep right turn with trees hugging the whole fairway, and a driver will surely find its way into the back trees, and the trees on the right are high enough that it's a pretty bad call to try to get over them with a middle to long iron. I hit 4 iron and it hugs the right side. It's looking like path... indeed, it does that exaggeratedly high bounce off the cart path and gives me a few extra yards. I find my ball out there, but now it's a tough shot. It's about a foot off the right of the path, meaning I'll be standing on the cart path hitting this shot. I got about 115 yards to go, but yet another dilemma. The pin is directly over the middle of this huge bunker (sand trap for non golfers), situated right in front of the green. I'm like, "Well, better to try and fail then to lay up and not even guarantee a safe shot then..." So I take out my club, take my few very boring practice swings, and let it rip. The arch is beautiful. It's heading right at it. The lack of grip on my shoes made me slip a bit on the cart path, so I end up facing the fairway, where Zatko is standing. I didn't take my eye off the ball though. It starts its descension. It looks like God hit this ball, it's still dead on. I say to myself "Get over, you f@#%@er." I see it hit the ground... The impact of the landing made sand splash up. I'm like "F@#%@". But then I see it bounce. It hit the very top of the sand trap, the lip, where the happened to be sand, but it wasn't part of the sand trap! I look over at Zatko... he saw the whole thing. I put my arms up in victory and yell "I AM THE GREATEST GOLFER IN THE WORLD!!!" I got to the green and I had about a 12 foot putt ahead of me... or a 17 footer, a 4 footer and a one footer... but I managed to make that one, sealing my only birdie of the day.

Man it was fun. That kind of stuff, for a weekend golfer, is a rare occurrence. It makes it worth it though.

Zatko always walks the course, which I have no objections to. With my lack of activity in the last 6 years (I would go skiing and stuff, and in college there were a lot of hills and drinking games), it's good to walk the course every time. However, the first time out with golf shoes is a lesson in pain. By the third hole, I felt as if someone placed razor blades in the back of my shoes, and at the same time, used a salt / lemonjuice / gasoline mixture in them and set them on fire. However, I don't regret walking at all, even with my complete inability to move faster than 4 inches a second today. To ease some of the pain, I'd kick the ground pretty hard, shoving my toes into the one inch space at the front of the golf shoes, meanwhile slicing the sides of my toes, giving me about 4 seconds of relief before they slid back into place, bringing on the salted flaming razors with a twist of lemon sensation again. Luckily, we went back to the car after 9 and got my regular shoes. After that, I was fine. As you can imagine, my toes hurt today.

And I had so many three putts, that Zatko and I were taking an equal number of shots at me. We coined the term "A hard three-putt". That's one where anyone, ANYONE, who has even dreamt about one day playing golf should make in two putts or less. An easy three-putt is one with lots of twists and turns, or just great distance, or both. They're easy to three putt. I would say I three putted about 14 holes that day. And I ended up with a 90. 45 front, 45 back. Yes, 42 shots could have easily been 28. A 90 could have easily been a 76. Well, most likely not, since I always screw up at the end. I'm not sure exactly how many holes I three putted, so I'm not sure that I could have shot a 76. But just for a "for instance"... this one hole, par 3, over a lake of stagnant, malaria carrying mosquito filled water, I made it right on in one. I three putted. It's brutal.

So, if I am going to practice anything, it's going to be my putting, and it's going to be at Putt-Putt.

But, onto the other news!!

Jim and Kate had a Boy!!! Seamus Michael!!! I'll be posting pictures as soon as Kate's giganormous email makes its way from Japan. Congratulations Jim and Kate!!! I can't wait to see pictures :)

I didn't. But here's how it went down. Aaron Rowand plays center field for the Phillies. Top of the first inning, bases loaded, 2 outs. A long drive deep to center field. Rowand's going back, back, back. HE CAUGHT THE BALL!! Meanwhile, my brother's downstairs watching it, and starts going ballistic. "HE CAUGHT IT, HOLY SH@# HE F@#$@!ING CAUGHT IT!!! JASE, YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS F@#%@ING CATCH!!!" So I go running downstairs and catch it in slow motion. All I can say to describe it is "Splat". They cut back to the live action. Rowand is on his knees, leaning over, and blood is POURING out of his nose. Literally. It didn't look as horrible in slow motion as it did when they showed the live replay. That's why I use the word "Splat". It was like he was an insect and Citizens Bank Park was a car going 70 on I-95. There are these metal bars that go across the fence area in center field, he caught one directly on the bridge of his nose. It was ugly. He had complained when he was traded here that the bars are dangerous. The field crew was scheduled to pad them over TODAY! Horrible luck. You can see them in the picture, the silver part of the fence. A guy on WIP talking to Angelo Cataldi put it best. He said that he had no regard for his own wellbeing in order to improve the wellbeing of his team. Isn't that just what we want in Philly?! He described how he was in FULL STRIDE when he hit that fence. This was a bases loaded jam with two outs, afterall. If he hadn't gone all out into the fence, it was guaranteed a bases clearing triple. Phillies end up winning 2-0 after it was cut short when the skies opened up after the top of the 5th. Today Rowand lies in a hospital bed. Another article I read said, and you can imagine the severity of the injury, that Rowand "destroyed" his nose. Destroyed. Ouch. He'll have reconstructive surgery today. And what was I doing while Rowand was risking life and limb? Watching video game movies of course! It's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), where all the video game makers and hardware makers (Sony, Nintendo, etc) show all their coolest sh@%. Let me say, there's some pretty f@%^@ing cool s@#% out there! I watched a few hours of game movies last night on GameSpot. Picture courtesy of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The 700 Level has video and some better pictures.

Don't click on the news subjects on the left. I forgot to update that when I did the huge site update. I didn't test that either since testing is for losers. And I haven't been home for like 3 days... well, I have but yesterday I watched the Phillies game. They won 9 straight. Longest streak in baseball this year. The age old question is whether this train will stay on its tracks or will explode in a spectacular derailment. Stay tuned.

[Update] Site's fixed. My new "dumb" doesn't require a link object and my old site code was trying to use the link object, resulting in an invalid cast. English: It was f@#%@ed up but now it's fine.

That sucks. I'm gonna delete the "Flyers Playoffs 2006" news category because I thought it was going to go further than 6 f@#%@ing games. F#@%

Game 5 in Buffalo on Sunday. The Sabres just got dissected like a freaking pig fetus in Biology class. Coach Hitchcock analyzed the team down to the threads on their jerseys, and came up with a plan to make their speed less effective, and concocted a plan to make our team, and what we have available, more effective. Granted, it was only a 5-4 game, but that last goal was a fluke. Sabres again got up 2-0 in the first period, but the mastery of Forsberg got us back in it. He can win this thing by himself.

I have to say I've been a Freddie Meyer fan since he came up from the Phantoms, and he played a great game too. Pitkanen too. Desjardins had a shakey game, falling into Esche after making a breakaway save, putting the puck into the net giving Buffalo their 2-0 lead. But later scored after Forsberg literally SKATED CIRCLES around Buffalo and fed Desj at the point for a blistering slap shot.

The Umberger / Carter / Dimitrakos line finally scored in this series, which is huge. That line is awesome, but it seems the guys with the most playoff experience have been stepping up, and that's Forsberg (with 61 playoff goals in his career), Gagne and Knuble. They've been awesome.

And of course, Esche is an oak.

We're so misunderstood. People in other parts of the country, and most recently Buffalo (since the Flyers are playing the Sabres), hate Philadelphia fans. They call us "Scumbags". They say we have no class.

I say, we have passion. We have a f@%$ing TON of passion. We hate the other team, the other team's fans, the other team's fans' kids, the other team's fans' pets... everyone and everything that has to do with the other team. When the Olympics were on, and the teams split up to go to their National teams, I hated everyone on the Flyers, even, who wasn't American, but only for those two weeks :) When it was Forsberg and Niitymaki in the final game of the Olympics, I had calmed down on my hatred a bit, but had no idea who to cheer for, since they're both great Flyers.

Flyers fans will throw beer, punches, kicks, bras, food, truckloads of profanities, and anything else they can get their hands on. They will get kicked out of the game. And they will love every minute of it. If you are cheering for the other team, you will have never experienced as much misery in your whole life than during those three hours. We'll try to fight the players on the other team (Picture Tie Domi in the penalty box). We'll cheer when they're injured. We'd give anything to see a fight.

But we love our teams. We love the Flyers. And they love us back. It's an "us against the world" mentality. We stick together through the thick and thin. If the team senses that the fans aren't cheering enough, they'll go knock someone's head off. If the fans aren't sensing that the team is giving it their all, we'll BOO the s@#% out of them. It's a two way deal. We're both crutches, carrying our crippled city's championship history to the goal. A championship in Philadelphia. With our help, and some sh%^ kicking, jaw gnashing, hatred of the other teams, we will make it.

So, other cities of the NHL, understand that when you think lowly of the fans of Philadelphia, and the team of Philadelphia... you only make us proud.

NHL Playoffs!!!! Holy crap I'm excited. My defibrillator should be coming in the mail today, which I'll certainly need for those close games, up by 1 with a few minutes to play, or down by one, or overtime in Game 7, etc. NHL playoffs are the most exciting time EVER. And they happen nearly every year*.

GO FLYERS!!!!



*Not last year.

Ahh, March Madness. I entered a tournament over at the local sports radio station (perhaps you've heard of it)... 1700+ people. It's round two. I'm in 16th place. Really it's like I'm in 4th, because of the grouping. (Drexel Hill Voodoo REPRESENT!!)

The rules are as follows: 1st round, 4 points each game. 2nd round, 2 points each. I think the rest are 2 except for the final game. That sucks too because that one team (The Minutemen) went 16/16! They'd be up there but, instead they're tied with me. First place gets $3000.

This bracket started Thursday at noon, you had to have your picks in by then or you weren't playing. I signed up for the site at 11:53 PM that day, then noticed a clock ticking down. It had 3 minutes left. It was the time you had to have half of your first round picks in! I panicked. But I got them in and went 25/32 in the first round. Fun stuff.