duh

Shouldn't I have known that Interpol's new album is coming out in July?



Will it be any good? Who cares! New music! Yay!

excerpt

from Percy Shelley's "Zucca" (1822)

I loved—oh, no, I mean not one of ye,
Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
As human heart to human heart may be;—
I loved, I know not what—but this low sphere
And all that it contains, contains not thee,
Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.
From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,
Veiled art thou, like a ... star.

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
When for a moment thou art not forbidden
To live within the life which thou bestowest;
And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
In music and the sweet unconscious tone
Of animals, and voices which are human,
Meant to express some feelings of their own;
In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

dulcet tones

I am digging my fav Canadian songstress, Feist.



Congrats, Todd and Kate.

seamhead

Sammy Sosa hit #600 (homers, of course), which is only good in that it beat the Cubs, and in showcasing how steroids dilutes the sport. In related news, the once strong US dollar continues to lose value.

Anyways. Speaking of baseball and money, and the All-Star Game not too far away, I found diversion in trying to come up with the best 25-man roster, using the talent pool from each of MLB's divisions (so, the best roster based on the AL Central, NL Central, etc.). By the "best" roster, I mean trying to actually build a roster like a GM should. So this means picking backup middle infielders, having enough lefthanded relievers in the bullpen, and having an players who can actually field their positions (which is not a consideration in fantasy baseball). Some players are shifted around on defense, but not into a position where he would hurt the team (no putting Jim Thome back at 3b where he used to play).

I'll just put the AL Central, since I don't think anyone else cares about the other divisions. 14 position players, 11 pitchers, as most MLB rosters are. Just for kicks, I put in 2007 salaries.

AL Central - best 25 man roster

pos, name, team hitters C - Mauer, Min 1b - Morneau, Min 2b - Polanco, Det 3b - Inge, Det SS - Guillen, Det LF - Sizemore, Cle CF - Hunter, Min RF - Ordonez, Det DH - Sheffield, Det bench C - Martinez, Cle 3b/RF - Blake, Cle 2b/SS - Uribe, Chi OF - Granderson, Det 1b/DH - Thome, Chi pitchers SP - Santana, Min (L) SP - Bonderman, Det SP - Verlander, Det SP - Sabathia, Cle (L) SP - Buehrle, Chi (L) RP - Nathan, Min RP - Jenks, Chi RP - Neshek, Min RP - Peralta, KC RP - Betancourt, Cle RP - Carmona, Cle

salaries (in $ millions) 3,750,000 4,500,000 4,600,000 4,900,000 5,000,000 916,667 12,000,000 13,200,000 10,916,071 3,200,000 3,750,000 4,150,000 410,000 15,666,667 13,000,000 4,500,000 1,030,000 8,750,000 9,500,000 5,250,000 450,000 395,000 400,500 840,000 387,500 total $131,462,405

Notes: 1. Hunter over Sizemore in CF because of the better arm.
2. This division has no decent lefty relievers. For goodness' sake.

The best that the AL Central can offer tops a whopping $131mm, which, even more strangely, would only place it 3rd in all of MLB in payroll, behind the Yankee$ and the Red $ox. The average payroll in MLB is right around $84mm.

Obviously, a great team can cost a lot of money. So, what would a "best" roster culled from the AL Central look like if forced to stay under the $84mm cap? Still a contender?

pos, name, team hitters C - Mauer, Min 1b - Morneau, Min 2b - Barfield, Cle 3b - Inge, Det SS - Peralta, Cle LF - Cuddyer, Min CF - Sizemore, Cle RF - Ordonez, Det DH - Sheffield, Det bench C - Buck, KC 3b/RF - Teahen, KC 2b/SS - Bartlett, Min OF - Granderson, Det 1b/DH - Garko, Cle pitchers SP - Santana, Min (L) SP - Bonderman, Det SP - Verlander, Det SP - Sabathia, Cle (L) SP - Carmona, Cle RP - Nathan, Min RP - Jenks, Chi RP - Neshek, Min RP - Peralta, KC RP - Betancourt, Cle RP - Soria, KC

salaries (in $ millions) 3,750,000 4,500,000 395,800 4,900,000 1,000,000 3,575,000 916,667 13,200,000 10,916,071 440,000 416,000 405,000 410,000 383,100 13,000,000 4,500,000 1,030,000 8,750,000 387,500 5,250,000 450,000 395,000 400,500 840,000 380,000 total $80,590,638

As usual, the cost cuts came in the form of backups and relievers who tended to be cheap, younger players. The bulk of the cost was the starting rotation, and big bats having big years.

I am digging the new White Stripes and the new National. Happy Friday.

cowboys

Nothing quites makes praying feel more efficacious than when someone is dying. You tend to pay more attention to words that you normally gloss over.

Saw the new trailer for "3:10 to Yuma" a cowboy flick with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.



Which looks just as good, if not better, than Crowe's other cowboy movie, the lesser known but surprisingly watchable "The Quick and the Dead" (1995).



My top 10 cowboy movies of all time? Cowboy movies seem to have died off, for the time being.

1. The Magnificent Seven - You can't really lose with Yul Brynner, can you?
2. Tombstone - James hated it when I kept saying every quote every time we watched this.
3. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - with the seminal cowboy soundtrack of all time.
4. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
5. Pale Rider
6. Unforgiven
7. High Plains Drifter
8. The Outlaw Josey Wales - I'm more of a Clint Eastwood guy than a John Wayne guy.
9. Rio Bravo
10. Shane

The last "cowboy" movie of note is "Brokeback Mountain," which I think is indicative of the genre being a little stale. Really hasn't been very many, let alone good, cowboy movies lately. "The Missing?" "Open Range?" "Shanghai Noon?" The nice thing about "3:10" is that it looks like it'll stay within the boundaries of the genre, namely, dudes with funny hats, six shooters, mustaches, horses, whiskey.

prayers for the dying

Go forth, Christian soul, from this world
in the name of God the almighty Father, who created you,
in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for you,
in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon you,
May you live in peace this day,
may your home be with God in Zion,
with Mary, the virgin Mother of God,
with Joseph and all the angels and saints.

i miss hawaii

"View from the 9th floor," 4/29/07, Waikiki Beach.

i need something to do

... because Mass and praying the liturgy of the hours, does not take all day. Still waiting on assignments from school as to what I'll be teaching next year, which spells out having a lot of free time on my hands. I'll admit, I've wasted a bit catching up on my crappy baseball team (on which I will not spend any of the money I don't have), going to the library to nap, sleeping in all the rooms of the house again because my room still feels too weird, burning DVDs of the photos we took on the tour (3+ GBs worth), and watching youtube vids of Premier League soccer, which just ended. To those of you who don't know, meet Dimitar Berbatov:



Anyway. I think I need to chew some more on the nubs of the little writing assignments I left off. The Poker story. The Project. Maybe a travelogue of what we did for 4 months, for posterity's sake. Or maybe I'll put it off and go watch the next installment of Sequel Summer, which allegedly has been getting better reviews than some of the previous installments:

oh yeah... blogging

Back home, and back to the slight awkwardness of trying to answer questions like "how was your trip?" Not that I mind the questions, but it's still hard to answer, succinctly. I just went through the photos we took on the trip (more than 3 GBs worth) and over the MAX2007 blog, and it's a lot, but at the same time, it seems like it wasn't all that long ago that we were starting. Time is far more elastic than you think, yah?

Anyways. I think these photos are among my favs:

Missy singing one of her originals to her grandmother. A very human moment of one person sharing with another.

Jun really loves crawfish.

On Jurassic Park, er, Hilo, on the volcano tour.

Most Reverend Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, signing our cross, with all the names of the kids on it. Very personable guy; has the feel of the next door neighbor you like, or a favorite uncle.

Here's a little synopsis that Cow, self-proclaimed youngest and hairiest team member, wrote on our month-long jaunt into Toronto:

In February of this year, a small team of young adults from all across our beloved continent came together in the wilds of Los Angeles, California with the humble hope of taking over the world for Our Lady as soon as possible. And thus was formed the mighty Max007 team, which gets its name from our founding saint (Always a good way to start an organization!) Maximilian Kolbe and of course this year of Our Lord: 2007.

We've spent the last four months on the road, driving all around the United States (including that envy-causing little state made up of the Hawaiian islands) and spending the entire month of May staying here in the mighty metropolis of Toronto and all the towns and areas around it, giving retreats and talks and hanging out with the youth and trying out hardest to make sure every one of them knows the message that Pope Benedict XVI wants to share with them.

First of all we let the message that God is love, be firmly known. The Holy Father asks us youth this year to "Love one another as [Christ] has loved you." God is not a huge angry old man who is just itching to catch you breaking the rules and send you packing into eternal suffering. God really is Love. Christ gave up everything in the hope that we would be able to be loved and love more deeply.

The faith and the whole of being Catholic is about love as well, and to really get anything out of being Catholic, we all have to be willing to join in that love, and really take interest and ownership of our faith. As the Militia Immaculata, we know that the best example of Christianity is that given by Mary, and so we entrust ourselves to her care and her direction to help us follow and suffer with Christ when necessary.

Through our missionary work we were blessed to be able to follow in that sacrifice in our own meager ways, as we gave up jobs, universities, our friends and families, and came here to Canada to help the teens and young adults here. The whole month we stayed wherever we could, in the basements and spare rooms of whoever could help us, and ate when we had food.

As for the events themselves, they all went beautifully. We went to parishes, prayer groups, youth groups, Catholic schools, and met with all kinds of remarkable and holy people, including Archbishop Thomas Collins and Msgr. Robert Nusca, who is both the rector of St. Augustine Seminary and the spiritual director of the MI in Canada.

When the team first arrived here in Toronto, there were less than a dozen adults who were actively involved and interested in the MI…and several of those people were already on the team. As we leave this beautiful city, the number has been bolstered dozens of times over, due mainly to the enthusiasm of the young people. It has been said on occasion that the youth are the Church of the Future.

That is wrong.

The young people are the Church of right now. Youth are the ones on the front lines, the ones who can love the world from the inside out, the ones who know that joy is worthy fighting for. The Max007 team worked hard to minister to the youth. But the youth are the ones who are ministering to us. Thank you all for such a fantastic experience in Canada.

You guys pray for us, and we'll be praying for all the people we got to meet during this month. God bless you!

And now, back to "ordinary" time.