Jonathan Papelbon, Crazy Motherfucker: A Tribute

It's been quite a week for the Red Sox generally, and David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in particular. But no one has really dominated our consciousness over the past ten days, from AL East clinch to ALDS clinch, like Jonathan Robert Papelbon, fast becoming my first undisputed #1 favorite Red Sox since Nomar led those hateful teams in the early 20-Aughts.

Below, submitted without comment (since none could do Paps' genius justice), a short multimedia retrospective, in reverse chronological order....

Whoring for Attention, October 4

This is our new feature, "Whoring for Attention," a link dump for things I read today that I really enjoyed. Why the name, you ask? Because the only way people are going to read this thing without us advertising it is if we link to a lot of other blogs, and they see these links, and come back to us and enjoy our stuff enough to link to us. (Gotta love the blogger circlejerk ethic.) To this point, I'm pretty sure the only people reading this site are the four of us. And my wife, just to make sure I'm not making fun of her. Anyway, on to the links....

Jose Melendez, our fellow pseudonymous blogger, has a topnotch (even by his high standards) KEYS TO THE GAME that gave me extra faith that the Red Sox will be in good shape, even if every game isn't as magically delicious as Beckett's Game One.

My favorite part is this: So what does this tell us about today’s contest? If one looks at the record, the Normans are 1-0 against the Angles historically, so one should anticipate a Red Sox win today followed by five hundred years of intermarriage, the eventual merger of the Red Sox and Angles into one team, and then centuries of colonial rule over the Cleveland Indians.

Also a big fan of the Soxaholix treatment of last night's game. Makes me wish I still worked with people who cared about baseball at all, let alone helping me enjoy the warm and fuzzy.

BC has a sneakily important game against Bowling Green (is that the Ohio one or the Kentucky one?), and Eagle in Atlanta's got your preview. Every other BC fan I know is just amazed to see a "6" or "7" next to our alma mater's name, but MGoBlog's Blogpoll seems to have noticed more than the "real" polls that our last two wins over presumed patsies have been something less than dominant.

And while I'm at it, I am in awe of the Upon Further Review that Brian puts up after every Michigan game. Bill does a good job of recapping the BC games in very general terms, even going position-by-position, but there's nothing quite like the MGoBlog play-by-play recap. And Brian is dead-on about Michigan's lack of creativity; even in row 92 of the Big House I can immediately call which direction we'll be running.

Like Justin Wolfers' students, I, too, was warned not to do sports economics papers, and that seems like sound advice. It's Toy Department Economics, and yet people love to write these papers because it's fun to write about sports. His reason #6 really carries the most weight, I think.

A bit more geekiness: the debate on Greg Mankiw's blog about SCHIP. The White House guy has a surprisingly nuanced (for this administration) argument, but of course I agree more with Furman.

Finally, any post about football that also mentions Queens of the Stone Age gets the Whoring for Attention treatment, and I'm a big fan of Big Daddy Drew's work. Kissing Suzy Kolber was obviously one of our big influences for this whole team blog thing, and it's his stuff that makes it worth the trip. But stop offering to pay people to injure Brady! I'd offer one dollar more to not injure him, but $31 times 11 defenders times 14 remaining opponents will get expensive.

Man on Man Action: Get Off The Bus

I'm obviously anti-bus, because My People aren't allowed to sit in the front. But aside from Ms. Parks struggle, there's another reason to hate that particular form of transportation:

Uggos.

When I lived in Boston, I used to take the Green Line to work downtown. The Green Line is infuriatingly slow, especially in the morning, when asshole drivers take left turns immediately in front of the train, and the "next three cars" rule at traffic lights slows everything down even further. (I prefer Houston's answer to the whole "cars in the way of the light rail" thing - the train just runs over the cars.) So to pass the time, I often liked to play a game in my head: Queen of the T (the name was Keyser's idea; turns out he was playing the same game). Simple enough, you just find the most attractive woman on the train and anoint her Queen. When she gets off (heh), a new Queen is anointed. This continues until I exit the train, or until I climax.

You can't play this game on the bus. Everyone on the bus is hideous.

Now, this is not unrelated to the issue of the poors that Dr. Cartola presented. Beauty is an increasing function of wealth, as we geeks who have never touched a beautiful woman except for when paying her ten Canadian dollars per song (God bless Montreal and their liberal touching policy) like to say. You're more likely to be good looking if you're rich. Sure, there are a few recent immigrants with enchanting eyes and full Latina bosom if you can see past the unwashed hair and the feces-stained janitorial uniform, and maybe in the suburbs where the train isn't an option you'll find the occasional looker. But in general the poors who populate the buses are some combination of fat, old, handicapped, and smelly, often all four. This is especially true in Boston, where attractive women are hard to come by to begin with - thanks for sending us all the smart ugly chicks from your high schools, America!

(A brief aside: Why are rich people better looking? Obviously they can afford better hair and skin care and gym memberships and the occasional plastic surgery, but this piece at Marginal Revolution suggests that because men are shallow for good looks, and women are shallow for big wallets, a rich man will marry a beautiful woman regardless of her social status. Looks are in large part hereditary, so their children are more likely to be good looking and certainly more likely to be rich. Repeat for a few generations and you have a spoiled socialite with a puppy purse who doesn't even need the nose job you offered to buy her for her Sweet 16.)

Anyway, with my extensive experience riding public transportation in the Hub Of The Universe, here's my list of the various MBTA lines, in ascending order of average rider attractiveness.

9. The RIDE

This isn't really fair. How many hot disabled chicks have you ever met? Plus it's mostly grannies, and it takes a lot of imagination to picture them forty years younger when they had gams that wouldn't quit. Unfortunately, television has killed my imagination.

8. The Bus

The problem with the bus, besides its eco-hostility and its unpredictability, is that it tends to run through the bad neighborhoods. I'm not sure what direction the causality points, because it might be that the areas along the subway lines became better when they were connected to downtown by light rail while people moved away from the areas without subway access, leaving the subway-less areas for undesirables.

7. Orange Line

It's pretty much the bus on rails. It's only saved by the fact that you'll occasionally get the Dorchester girl with some serious booty, and I don't mind saying that I've become more of a fan of cushion-for-the-pushin' as I've gotten older.

6. Blue Line

Revere Hair alert! Only Worcester rivals Revere for bad hairstyles, but Worcester's accent isn't nearly as ugly. (Worst accent: Providence. Period.) The Blue Line is spared by the occasional airport commuter or chick heading to the beach.

5. Red Line

Upset special! Yes, you get the hot chicks who want to find husbands at Harvard and MIT that will one day be rich, but you also get too many redheaded Irish lasses, and redheadedness is such a hit-or-miss thing when it comes to being attractive.

4. Silver Line

I've only ridden it a few times, but I have a feeling that this one is going to be rising up the rankings if the waterfront area becomes the new hot area, as it appears to be.

3. Commuter Rail

There's just something about MILF's in power suits that really gets me going. Queen Of The Commuter Rail is a fine, fine game, which is good because the train from Worcester only goes like 15 mph the whole way.

2. Green Line

My old home. The most attractive women in the city go to Boston College; of course, they'll never talk to you because they're too important, but they sure are fun to look at (and my GPA in non-economics courses will attest to that fact). There's also the occasional (usually Asian) BU hottie, at least the ones who aren't 400 pounds. And the Green Line is the one that goes right through downtown, connecting the hotspots at Lansdowne Street and Fenway, the Newbury Street area, and the neighborhood around the Garden. You could do worse than to spend your Friday night riding from BC to North Station and back with your hand in your pants - of course, one trip might take you all night, but it's worth it.

1. Night Owl

Drunk chicks. Like fish in a barrel.

Man On Man Action: Bus:Poors::Camel:Sand-monkeys

Why do Kurds suddenly appear? Everytime, I drink beer.
Just like money, they long to be, grossing Jews.

Why is it that an alarming number of poor people ride the bus? The bus isn’t just a place to hang out and discuss food stamps. I take it to work everyday due to parking in Boston being relatively non-existent as do, I am sure, lots of other regular working Joes. Why must we endure their poorness?

Solution. We give the poors their own bus line. Wait a minute. Got to catch my train of thought. PETA is outside protesting Panera Bread into a megaphone. But that’s a post for another day. Anyways. The Poors. Own Bus Line. I know what you are thinking – Rosa Parks is flashing before your eyes and the riots in Birmingham. You are no doubt marching on me right now. But hear me out.

The Handicaps have their own Buses. Short yellow ones and THE RIDE. Why not one for the poors. I’m sick of getting a face full of unwashed Asian male crotch in my face when I sit down on the bus to and from work. The other day some dude was self-medicating himself, obviously just released from the hospital – arm in a sling, with a six pack of Bud Lite in a brown paper bag. One you say? NO, six at the same time. He asked me the time and I was all “MILLER TIME!” Not really, but it was definitely time for him to ride a different bus.

Spike Lee had it all wrong. Get OFF the bus, I say.

Rollo and Lesotho, forget prison. We need to re-segregate public transportation for the good of the nation.

This has been another random ranting of Rick Cartola.

Man on Man Action: Penal Manipulation (continued)

Note: Lex may not be sympathetic because he's not a hippie unwashed tree-hugging grad student, but real life got in the way this week, so my response was delayed. Also, football-induced hangover got in the way, but even I'm not that sympathetic to that. Anyway, here are the long-awaited details of our plan to reform the penal (heh!) system.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have two solutions for you - one immediate-term, one more long-term. Both solutions answer concerns from both sides of the aisle; they are punitive but rehabilitating, force convicts to become productive members of society while at the same time staying safely away from the temptation of potential victims and, as a bonus, help solve two of America's most pressing problems.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're sending some of our convicted criminals to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're sending others to space, to work in mines around the solar system.

Let's examine both options, beginning with the first one.

Crank It, Soulja Boy

I support the troops. I do. Why wouldn't I support them? The White Man is going to keep sending them to oil- and/or drug-producing countries whenever there's an election coming or the politicians' sponsoring industry needs an infusion of government cash, so we'll always need soldiers, and I don't exactly want to go, so I support them because I know that if not for them, it could be me.

(I'm not a coward - ok maybe I am - but mostly I'm just taking into account what we economists call comparative advantage. I hate risky activities, I suck at video games, I don't really listen to authority figures, I'm an asthmatic with bad knees; I would be the worst soldier ever. And while the guys in Iraq might be better researchers (they certainly work harder than I do), they're that much better at soldier-ing than I am, so they should do the fighting while I research why they have so much trouble getting health care when they get back. Boom, comparative advantage, and I'm delightfully shrapnel-free.)

So I support the troops, but lately we've been losing our wars. Take a look at our conflicts since the turn of the 20th century:

• World War I - We got in late, maybe made some difference, but we're talking a couple of feet in the trenches, not miles. Germany and Austria-Hungary just had the good sense to call the whole thing off before everyone in Europe got the plague again.
• World War II - D-Day was fucking badass, and we did a number on Japan, but we never win that war in Europe if Germany isn't concentrating on the Soviets to the east. Lex is going to reiterate his opinion that I'm a communist, but I almost don't blame them for keeping half the continent for the next fifty years. Almost.
• Korea - China pretty much kicked our asses.
• Vietnam - North Vietnam did kick our asses.
• Grenada and Panama - The Boy Scouts could have handled these just as efficiently.
  
• Iraq I and Serbia - See how much easier this is when the whole world is actually on your side?
• Afghanistan - Sorry, where did you say we're still doing battle? Never heard of it.
• Iraq II - The less said, the better.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think it's the soldiers are doing a bad job. If you're a teacher and you never teach them how to read, and don't tell them anything about the test beforehand, and when the test finally does arrive you tell them to draw pretty pictures on their bubble sheets instead of filling in the answers, all the while mocking the Kaplans and Princeton Reviews of the world... is it your students' fault when they get 400s on their SATs?

So if we're going to waste so many Americans' lives on something that we're probably not going to win, and even if we do win will end up with loads of casualties, why waste good productive American lives? Why do we keep sending our reservists, people who have jobs that actually keep this economy going?

Instead, we propose sending our convicts. If I may, for a moment I'm going to pretend that I'm a gay-hating, hypocritical-megachurch-going, gas-guzzler-driving, union-busting, immigrant-shooting, rich-fellating blue-blooded conservative and list the advantages of this plan from the (cough) right side of the aisle:

• They're already shown that they're good with guns.
• Convicts are goddamned intimidating, much more so than the elementary school teachers and computer programmers that we sent there already.
• Finally gets these crooks some discipline.
• Running 80 miles in 120 degree heat carrying 50 pounds of gear is way more punitive than anything we have in the American penal system, short of executions.
• America - ten percent whiter.
  
• Those A-Rabs won't understand their rap songs any better than we do.
• Frees up room in prison to send the pot smokers and war protesters.
• Much less buttsex.

Yikes, that was scary. Now, from the more accepting, understanding, logical left side of the aisle:

• The military (at least, if you believe the commercials) provides valuable on-the-job training and structured living to the convicts.
• The possibility of combat death is an actual deterrent, unlike the death penalty or spending five-to-ten in lockup with all the people who Whitey thinks you look like.
• Convicts are less likely to spend their time learning how to be better criminals like they would in prison.
• Who knows? They might be better at this military thing. Hell, they can't be worse.
• You know, I agree with that whole "convicts are goddamned intimidating" thing.

The only downside I can see is that if there's zero chance that politicians are going to have to worry about their sons Tad and Chip possibly being drafted if the war becomes a quagmire (unless, of course, Tad and Chip are exposed in a point-shaving scheme in their lacrosse tournament), then we're going to pick more fights with countries and start more wars, and the last thing politicians (and not just Republicans) need is another incentive to be more bellicose.

Space, Bitches

Of course, our other plan will take some experimentation and some serious technological breakthroughs, but both Lex and I are equally as excited about this one as we are about the soldier one, possibly more so.

Not sure if you've noticed, but we've had some trouble creating more fossil fuels, because THESE FUCKING DINOSAUR BONES WON'T BURN GODDAMN YOU T-REX AND HEY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY I'M TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD YOU CAN'T KICK ME OUT! Leaving aside the pollution thing, coal, oil, and natural gas supplies are starting to dwindle (though, admittedly, we've been saying that for decades) and prices are climbing. Energy is not cheap, and it's not going to get cheaper.

At the same time, NASA has been a clusterfuck of uselessness. Simpsons quotes are always overused, but the "ants screwing tiny screws in space" thing doesn't seem to be far from the truth. What has space exploration ever given us besides Tang and DirecTV? (Many thanks to my landlord for not allowing me to install the satellite dish in my side yard. Now how am I supposed to watch the Big Ten Network? Whores!) It's time to direct NASA to two projects with actual utility to us terrestrial beings: (1) meteor defense and (2) interplanetary mining. We'll save discussion of the former for another time, because I want to focus on the latter, because we know our convicts here on Earth can help us out.

For centuries, unskilled labor fed our insatiable lust for such precious gems as diamonds, gold, and coal. If there's anything that convicts have proven themselves at, it's being unskilled. Put the two together, and we've got some potential. But we don't want them mining here on Earth, because mining is disruptive to the environment, dangerous, and increasingly fruitless.

So let's get Xzhibit to Pimp My Space Shuttle - add seats for about two dozen, a bigger cargo hold for energy-producing minerals, better takeoff and landing gear to handle the frequent round trips. And, of course, a motherfucking Bose stereo with heavy bass that will knock your teeth out to blast the tunes for those long trips to Mars.

Why should the unholy army of the night... er, conservatives... like this plan?

• There's something oddly erotic about watching those criminals blasted off this Earth at mach 6. After all, we've been saying for years that we should blast our trash into space.
• Cheap labor from other planets? We love outsourcing!
  
• Who do you think is going to make all the money from our space mining ventures?

And liberals?

• Space mining is obviously heavily unionized.
• It's about time we start destroying some other planet for a change.
• People will be confessing to crimes left and right for the chance to go to space. For instance, Lance Bass just admitted to being Nicole Brown Simpson's real killer just on the off chance this plan comes to fruition.
• Dude, there's got to be some killer drugs on Venus.
• A revival of David Bowie music.

So that's our plan. Bask in its genius! Bow down to the thinkers!

I'll stop here for comments, because this is already longer than my dissertation will be.

A Bunch of Cunts

I just wanted to point out that I am blogging with three of the laziest cunts to ever crawl out of an enlarged uterus.

It's no wonder they're all shitty in the sack (I asked Rollo's sister) and leave