Discussion Dialogue Vocabulary Expansion Exercises

How a sport which involves sweaty sun-kissed bodies prancing around on sandy beaches became an official Olympic sport, who can say. But the gods of Athens would likely approve. In this podcast, catch some exciting Olympic volleybal

Thanks for saying it Stephen, ’cause we were all thinking it.

The Basketball Jones ‘The Fix’ — Episode 161 (.mp3)

On today’s show, Skeets and I discuss: Golden State’s ability to bounce back after giving away game 2; Russian Volleyball team member, Andrei Kirilenko; if the Warriors scarce bench is hurting them; the way your insides get crushed when your team is eliminated; and much, much more…

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Photo via PulledMyGroin.com

Title: Abby Tranel Wins 2007 Exercise for Life Scholarship


Abby Tranel from Hampton, Nebraska wins $10,000 scholar-athlete award for people with CF. Abby ran the 1.5 mile run in 10 minutes 19 seconds at Nebraska Wesleyan Universityâs track in Lincoln, Nebraska. Abby is a graduate of Hampton High School in Hampton, NE and graduated with a 3.5 G.P.A. and will be attending Nebraska Wesleyan University in the fall.

Last night, instead of writing, I read books with Keaton. She was sleepy, so she had her pacifier in and wasn’t speaking much. So, she instead pointed to different things on the pages that caught her eye. I would, in turn, name the thing she touched. “A moon,” I’d say in my daddy voice. “Bat! Fishies! Owl! Sun!” All the while she just sat there, a cute, warm little lump on my lap that I love as much as anything I’ve ever loved. When mom got home from her volleyball game, Keaton showed off her skills in reverse by pointing to things as I named them. Sharaun considers this a spectacular feat, I’m more of the opinion that it’s probably fairly normal. Either way, I’m in a different place when we’re doing things just her and I - it’s awesome.

Tonight, I mowed the lawn. I cursed myself the entire time. I let the grass get too long, and even though I turned off the sprinklers so it wouldn’t be wet - it was long enough to hold the dew and the day wasn’t warm enough to burn it all off. The thick, damp grass clogged up the bag chute right away, making mowing almost impossible. With every pass I had to stop and empty the bag. I did it with a grunt and a curse every time, thinking about the fact that I’d have to do this all over again after not being able to mow for a week in China. I finished tho, mowed it all up, emptied it all out, blew it all into the street. All the while the iPod served up a choice set of random tunes, including that one Spoon song that I absolutely love. You know the one, it’s this one here. Man that song gets me happy.

Goodnight.

Unless you were born with one of those silver spoons, you likely work a day job, sneaking time for your own business when not taking care of someone else's. You're not alone. Every week, Brandon Stosuy finds out how our favorite indie artists make ends meet...

Philadelphia duo Pattern Is Movement are about to release their unclassifiable third album All Together. Looking too deeply into childhood influences can get dicey, but maybe some of Andrew Thiboldeaux and Chris Ward's excellently unique sound came from their beginnings: They both grew up in "strict" Pentecostal households and met as teens while part of a Christian hip hop crew. They both dug Dr. Dre. I can't trace exactly how this led to their orchestral, shimmering, polyrhythmic pop -- part Pinback, part Grizzly Bear, part two-man tape-loop project, part musical, part... -- but it's likely in there somewhere. As are guest oboe, trumpet, violin, etc., fleshing out the already luxurious sounds. Really, I don't imagine you'll hear anything like it until PIM gets around to releasing a fourth record.

On top of throwing the kitchen sink into their music, the guys have jobs -- Andrew's a PE teacher by trade; Chris, a technical services assistant at the Drexel Law library who does sound in various Philly clubs at night. When you're done reading about underage jam band members, Pastor Steve, and volleyball played in a room with a low ceiling, check out All Together standouts, the super opener "Bird" and the previously posted "Right Away." We once described the latter as possessing a "contrapuntal Rodgers & Hammerstein vibe." (You might also remember We Versus The Shark's more jagged cover.)

As you will hear every now and then, I consider myself to be an “elite bachelor.” Now, stop it! Don’t laugh! I worked hard to ascend the meaningless ranks of bachelorhood to make it to this pristine position. My only disappointment at this level is that it just doesn’t pay what it should. In fact, it doesn’t pay at all. Unless you count the sympathy gifts that I receive from friends who are leaving town. But sometimes, I suspect their family conversation is something like, “Honey? What should we do with this junk? Goodwill won’t accept it.” “Oh, that’s easy. Give it to that bachelor. He’ll take anything!”

I hope that you don’t listen to this podcast just because you have a boring life. If so, the following may make your life even worse. Let’s consider some etymology. (Psst! That means “word history.”)

The word “bachelor” is originally from the Old French bacheler (say it like you’re throwing up, and it’ll sound French—“bacheler—gag”), which meant “knight bachelor.” The word was stolen by the English, who cleaned up the French vomit, and was used in reference to one belonging to the lowest stage of knighthood. (The word was used in such reference, not the vomit. I don’t know what they did with the vomit.) These lowly knights were either too poor or too young to achieve anything that great. Basically, these were the bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking slime of what was otherwise an esteemed ’hood o’ da k-night.

Although the word has been bounced around between cultures for hundreds of years, like a giant game of vocabularic volleyball, I think we can all agree that the meaning has not changed much.

Bachelors commonly can’t afford life, are too young to retire (despite their feelings that they deserve such pension), don’t know the difference between the oven and the dishwasher, tend to be messy, have a wardrobe consisting of usually only one basic color (resulting from washing everything together), and often congregate like rats with fellow bachelors in a cheap apartment (call a “bachelor pad”).

The average bachelor diet usually consists of 20% pizza, 20% fast food, 10% chips, 40% Mountain Dew, and the remaining 10% is usually indistinguishable, extraterrestrial, or something you would rather not know about and is probably not intended for human consumption. About 97.3% of most common bachelors are not married or at all involved with a girl. Maybe they resort to bachelorhood because they can’t get a girl. As if those five boxes of moldy pizza under the bed provide some comfort in their solace. But my personal theory is that they often can’t get a girl because there exists a quantum barrier between bachelorhood and marriage. Very few bachelors survive the crossing over. … Think about it.

I thank my lucky rubber duckies that I’ve made it through Bachelor Boot Camp. I properly separate my clothes for washing, which means no pink underwear; I shop for groceries based on price, not caffeine content or ability to double as a weapon; my couch doesn’t crunch from Doritos chips (who, by the way, do not sponsor this podcast, so don’t buy anything from them until they do sponsor me!); there is no pizza monster culturing under my bed; I can cook without using a microwave, a drive-through, or a phone to call the local pizza joint; and I have my own house, which contains more than bean bag furniture and scattered dirty laundry. This combination has earned me the irrelevant title of “Elite Bachelor.”

But as things go, Elite Bachelor is still at least one rank below Most-Eligible Bachelor. Sigh. I think it’s obvious that I’m quite hopeless when it’s the office astrophysicist who gets introduced as our company’s “Most-Eligible Bachelor.”

I wonder how hard it would be to try for another promotion. What would it take? Millions of dollars in the bank? Unrecognizably dressing up like a pirate? Highlighting my hair?

You may not believe me, but there actually was a time when girls were practically beating down my door to—Oh wait! That was when I fell asleep in the bathtub and my mom was calling through the door to remind me that it was bed time. Um … so that one doesn’t count.

But seriously now, I do remember random, unknown internet girls who would instant-message me, telling me how “hot” I was. Those were the days! Unfortunately for me, I was not the “guy in orange” from the dating website—or maybe that was unfortunate for them. Indeed, it was all a cyber mixup of world wide web proportions.

*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* Oh … hi, all of you iron-pumping, poor knights. No, no. I didn’t mean that! No, no. I didn’t mean that I’m better than you, I simply meant—wait. What are you doing. No! NO! Not the—

Hi. Are you still there? Yeah, I’m pretty beat up. But I like these little white pills they’re giving me. They taste kind of like ramen noodles! But … without the seasoning packets. Eew!

Boy, did Rush Limbaugh let loose with both barrels against Senate Democrats insistent on smearing him as — get this — unpatriotic and attacking our troops.

You can see and listen to it here:

By the way, here’s a list of indictm ents of more phony soldiers from the U.S Attorney’s Office of western Washington, called Operation Stolen Valor.

Here’s a resolution introduced into the House of Representatives in support of El Rushbo.

If anyone owes our troops an apology, it’s Democrats in Congress, who have worked overtime to undermine their morale and their mission. Have called them failures. Losers. That would be Dingy Harry. Stupid. The bottom of the barrel of American society. That would be the French-looking Senator John F-ing Kerry (by the way, did you know he served in Vietnam?) and Charlie Rangel. Nazis, the worst of the Soviet gulags and Pol Pot. That would be Dick Turban. Cold-blooded killers. That would be Chicken Jack Murtha.

Wonder if Dingy Harry and Friends will call on ABC News to retract this story on phony soldiers, broken by Brian Ross.

And Sen. Tom “Dung Heap” Harkin att acking Limbaugh is the case of people living in glass houses. Why? Sen. Dung Heap is a phony soldier in his own right. From Instapundit vis Mic helle Malkin comes a reminder that Sen. Dung Heap claimed to have flown Navy fighter jets in Vietnam, something that was proven to be completely false. That’s right, a two-but phony baloney plastic banana good old time rock-n-roller who never flew combat jets for the Navy but claimed to have done so.

Bryan Preston gives Harkin his very own Absolute Moral Authority card.

Sen. Harkin’s credibility sinks faster than Ted Kennedy’s car.

And now, Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer reports that a group of phony vets is hitting the air with a smear attack ad.

Somehow, a group called VoteVets.org not only cooked up an anti- Limbaugh hit piece at lightning speed, it had no trouble coughing up $60,000 for the occasion. Get the feeling the left had been planning this attack for some time?

Maloney lists the number of high profile lefties that serve on the Board of Advisors to the phony vets.

PhonyVets.org was involved in — you guessed it — a phony vet claiming he was denied VA health care during the 2006 election because of “budget cuts” from the White House. His fake injuries? Claiming they were suffered in combat, they were really incurred during a game of volleyball.

And NewsBusters is reporting that Shrillary told the YearlyKos Convention that she was indeed involved in starting Media Matters for America.

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, the leftwing organization responsible for the recent smear campaigns against Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Media Matters, has direct ties to the Clintons.

To be sure, folks on the left, and in the media that support them, will either deny this connection, or ignore it.

In the end, that’s going to be hard to do, for on August 4, while speaking at the YearlyKos convention in Chicago, the junior senator from New York boasted of “institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.”

Here’s the audio< /a> and the video can be seen here:

The relevant part is around 2:20 of the video. That means you have to suffer through The Hildabeast up until that point.

Media Matters for America, once again, is nothing more than a George Soros-funded front group for Shrillary, founded by Shrillary with all sorts of ties to the Clinton mafia. And the members of the Drive By Media looking to smear conservatives don’t actually listen to those conservatives but rather simply read the selective spin of MMfA and run with that.

Rick Moran at the Right Wing Nut House has more here.

[W]hat cloakroom genius put Senator Tom Harkin, a man forced to admit that he lied through his teeth about his own military service, out front on this issue? It’s just incomprehensible that the liberals could be that stupid. The only possible explanation is that, like Ted Kennedy’s driving problems and Barney Frank’s male out call caper, Harkin’s admission was so long ago that they figured everyone has forgotten about it.

And Crush Liberalism points out:

[I]s there anything more disingenuous for a leftist like Reid to pretend to care about the troops? Reid says that they’ve already lost the war, and he defends Abscam Jack Murtha who has slandered our troops and branded them as “cold-blooded killers” (and Abscam Jack is currently being sued for such defamation). Reid has done everything within his power to secure defeat so as to gain political power. And Reid has the temerity to pretend to care about the soldiers?

Last Congressional approval ratings were 11 percent. This ought to move Dingy Harry and Friends into single digits.

(BFF)

A couple of weekends ago I was at a party when a friend I haven’t seen or talked to in a while approached to say hi to me. I knew she recently started a long distance relationship and spends most of her time out of DC visiting her boyfriend. I asked her where has she been and that’s when she informed me that we were supposed to go see Redbelt together. I thought for a second and images of our e mail exchange hit me like a kick to the nut sack (Via email)

Her: This Redbelt movie looks good
Me: Oh yeah, I heard about it, we should totally go see it this weekend
Her: Ok, just let me know when

Fast forward to me crawling out of bed hung over Sunday, being bored and going to go see the movie by myself as I often do. Then I write about it and she reads my review about how awesome it was a couple of days later. But being the cool chick that she is and never letting anything really get to her she never said anything. The funny thing is that she knows the kind of friend I am and shit like that really pisses me off when other people do it. I was mad at myself for a little while that night for letting something like that slip my mind.

I believe that a person’s time is very valuable because it’s something none of us have enough of. To me one of the biggest disrespect you can do to a friend is to waste their time (or energy). If you say you’re going to do something then do it, follow through. It’s not difficult it’s not brain surgery. If you contact someone and set aside time to hangout with them its common courtesy to do that.

Right up there on my friendship pet peeves is EXTREME lateness (over an hour). If we’re supposed to meet up at Marvin at 9:30 and you text me at 9:45 and say you’re on your way that’s cool. But at 11:45 if you text me “you’re walking over”, I will be one pissed off dude. Especially if I’m sitting there by myself looking like an asshole. Usually I’m with a group or another wingman, but now I’m checking my cell from time to time to let you know where we’re at or if we’re leaving. Basically my mind isn’t where it should be, on that tall chick with volleyball player legs.

(Hey VK, what’s up? Let’s hang out, I’ll call you later)

As you can see from the story above though, I’ve forgotten I made plans (twice in 08) and I know I’m sometimes late looking for parking or traffic in DC, so I’m not perfect in anyway but damn do I put forth the effort. What I REALLY hate are the habitual offenders. That one friend who you know will always be late no matter what they say is bad enough. But even more annoying is if you’re sorta friends with someone who consistently contacts you and never follows through with any plans they make. After the fifth e mail you roll your eyes as you skim through reading, “What’s up haven’t talked to you in a while, I’ll call you later tonight to catch up”, then no call. When you run into them in the street they make plans to hang out with you next week, then you never hear from them. Hell, I’ve had people call me on a Friday, make all these elaborate plans to meet up with me at a certain venue that night then never show up. Don’t even get me started on their excuses; we’ll be here all night.

I’ve just learned to keep it simple with my friends. There are those that I can count on that if they say they’ll do it, it will be done. Then there are friends that whatever they say, I think to myself, “sure, I’ll believe it when I see it”. That night started with meeting friends at Reef, walking around the block to a birthday party at a billiard bar, cabbing over to Marvin to pick up a hot girl, and then ending the night at Tattoo at a table with my coworker. As far as I’m concerned my word is bond, if I say I’ll be there, you can bet on it. Even if my blood alcohol content is .21.