PICAYUNE

First the signing of the cancerous Ray Emery…

Then the trade involving Chris Pronger which could result in some ugly press…

Now Mike Knuble has left to play for the Capitals, leaving a huge hole in my team’s offensive capability on the RW position since Lupul went to Anaheim.

Admittedly Knuble was a late bloomer and when the Flyers picked him up from Boston my initial reaction was, “Who’s this guy again? How is he going to replace John LeClair and Tony Amonte?” Despite some rocky times, Knuble was a diamond in the rough and he was one of the best players during the 2006-7 season, aka the meltdown. Did Holmgren reward him? Nah, he’ll probably sign someone worse for more money because that’s what Bobby would do.

I think Clarke’s influence did extend to Chicgao today regarding Marian Hossa. No one with half a brain signs a forward to a 12-year contract. A goalie or a defenseman? Maybe. Never a forward.

Those season tickets for the Austin Stars can’t get into my hands soon enough. I’m going to continue being a Flyers fan yet I think I may suspend my support until next year, if this roster nightmare continues.

Should they land Dany Heatly, then I definitely want to be awakened.

It's soooo cute! I just have to hug the tiger! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

By adding the pink bow to let you know the Alien is a girl, this will reach out to the important 12-25 female demographic who are into Hannah Montana and the stuffed tiger covers the 3-11 year olds.

Maybe the joke is funnier just as a picture.

My co-worker Daniel recently scored this groovy Alien action figure. I thought it was the original one from the last Seventies due to its size but I was wrong due to its articulation at the ankles, knees and hips. To display his latest acquisition, Daniel put it up where everyone could see it. I’m not sure where the little tiger came from yet he positioned it like the picture shows. Then I had to throw in the feminine touches because I keep hearing Mila Kunis speaking: she’s yelling at Ashton Kutchner to buy the stuffed toy. Mila Kunis? If you’ve seen the blind-date skit on Robot Chicken, then you can imagine it.

My cool friend in Phoenix shares his birthday with the birth of a country, our northern neighbor Canada. I would recommend you sing “Happy Birthday” instead of “Blame Canada” though. Then again, I think I’ve accumulated a string of better songs to celebrate, especially the cool track The Bird & The Bee did on their latest album.

I do hope he has an awesome day with his wonderful wife Kim and neat kids Owen and Kylie. Rad is definitely one guy I’ve always been glad to have in my corner, especially when the homeless dude in Milwaukee made a weird, sudden move on me in 1993. I knew Rad had some moves, I just didn’t want to see him demonstrate a roundhouse kick through a strangers head.

If you know the Radman, drop him a line and wish him bon anniversaire!

In light of the upcoming holiday weekend, I will be taking my Mac Mini offline Thursday night or Friday morning to back it up. Something I haven’t done since Memorial Day. I promise to have it back up and running by Saturday so you can spend the remainder of the three-day weekend reading/posting. I can hope.

Well, Somara and I will be finally giving out the overdue results of our Name the Muppet contest afterwards. Not a bad idea to celebrate my site’s fourth anniversary in its Blog incarnation.

I think I’ll make the shift to WordPress 2.8 too. Anything to get rid of the annoying HTML formatting gripes I’m experiencing when I try to make the text another color, namely links.

Yeah I’m rather late to shill on about my employer’s latest line-up shifts but only recently have I had an opportunity to see the new MacBook Pro 13″ and iPhone 3G S in action.

Back when the MacBook was moved over to the unibody like its larger Pro siblings I was only disappointed by its lack of FireWire ports. USB 2.0 is a joke. Only boobs at Fry’s and the Geek Squad truly believe it’s faster because anything developed by Apple can’t be any good despite all those distinctive, white earbuds you see everywhere. Then Apple revamped it by moving the 13″ portable into the Pro line which means a more expensive APP to cover it but I got my FireWire port back, even if it’s the 800-speed kind. You can purchase an 800-to-400 cable at Fry’s of all places. Thanks to this and its improved battery performance, I may make the push to sell off this MacBook before its APP expires. Any takers? I’m thinking $500 OBO. It has 2GB of RAM and 250 GB HD when it originally had only half the memory and one third the drive space.

Meanwhile, the new iPhone 3G S does live up to the publicity. Two friends of mine scored them. My current 3G is fine as a phone and its core feature. I just have a little envy over the built-in video camera. During its release weekend, I wish I had one to capture footage of Akuma (a neighborhood cat) getting attacked by a mockingbird. Jeremy was nice enough to let me operate his enough to experience the improvements in in speed too. Alas, Somara and I can’t make the move without hefty penalties until April 2010. I will definitely consider it next Spring.

1420

Once again, some major credit goes to my friend Mark for notifying me on this web site called There, I Fixed It. You will see some frightening pictures of people “repairing” objects from cars to furniture and other creative means for moving cargo.

More proof that the upcoming Era of Idiocracy will soon be upon us.

It has been a busy week for the obit pages. They usually say death comes in threes but either it starts over due to it being a new week or maybe there’s a range of days to envelope it in. I’ll go with it coming it fours this once.

Now I really regret the opportunity I missed to see him do his thing at the monstrous HEB Somara used to work at. I can’t remember what he was promoting yet I didn’t care, he was one of the more memorable pitch guys plugging a product which actually worked. Trust me, Somara used the Oxyclean material on her culinary school/bakery uniforms with great success.

Not only is blistering hot this Summer in Austin (over 100 F/40 C today), June has been a blur for 2009. I can hardly believe next weekend will be the Fourth of July but I’m excited about our first vacation of the year starts in two weeks and we’ll be on the plane in 17 days!

The good part about the nation’s birthday is my tradition to score a pair of jeans from the Lucky Brand Store at the Domain with an Apple Store across the street: Somara does need a new wetsuit for her iPhone.

I want to recommend their jeans, so much I’m plugging them in my website because I prefer them. They’re definitely an incentive to get my weight down since they don’t go beyond 40 in men’s sizes. I got on the scale this morning and I’ve been managing to stay under 225 this quarter which is a good thing. The objective is to finally get under the 220 mark before New Year’s. I do admit the upcoming Wii Fit Plus is another possibility to help me achieve this.

Go to their official site to find a location. You can usually find them at your regional mall, if you live in a decent-sized city.

Jun 29, 2009 Update: Looks like my weight loss is progressing! I could comfortably fit into a pair of 36s instead of the traditional 38s I’ve bought in the past.

Chris Pronger? Once again, my team has decided to bring on another aging All Star whose expiration date is nearing: Hatcher, Forsberg, Hackett and Nedved quickly come to mind.

My personal guess is this is what was racing through GM Holmgren’s mind: Philly wouldn’t get squat in the first round of a mediocre draft and then the salary cap only got raised by $100,000. Philly’s chances in the upcoming Jay Bouwmeister Derby evaporated right there. So now we’ve taken the (alleged) Casanova of Edmonton to fill the defensive holes we’ve had since Desjardins and Johnnson were shown the door.

This did send my Detroit-fan friend to write me a tirade which included insulting Obama. I oddly replied calmly and (hopefully) thoughtfully back that we should relax. Like Emery, Pronger only has one year remaining on his contract. If he doesn’t produce, he will be a free agent looking for a new team. Plus he needs to prove he’s good because Philly fans are very fickle, they practically helped Forsberg pack his bags when Holmgren dealt him to Nashville. I had to remind him about Detroit’s lack of class when they took Todd “Attempted Murderer” Bertuzzi off Florida’s hands in a failed run for the Cup in 2007.

I guess this makes me a poor fan by not getting my blood up too high on this and politely seeing a silver lining (his brief tenure). I mean, I’m not pleased with this acquisition. Pronger is a tough, dirty player, even by NHL standards. Yet he’s a good D-man who helped Edmonton and Anaheim go the Cup. The last thing I want to see though, is Pronger crushing Cindy Crosby’s nose with his elbow. The Penguins are a bunch crybabies but I don’t want to see anyone seriously injured, including hated rivals.

It will be next season against the Bruins in Fenway Park. It sucks that it’s in the heart of Masshole country but I think it’s a miracle Bettman allowed my team to participate at all. These ridiculously overpriced match-ups people pay a small fortune to attend outside (horrible weather) in a stadium (poor view) on New Year’s Day is another demonstration of the NHL’s greed and short-sightedness. The game which started it all (the Heritage Classic) was different. It was the Canadiens versus the Oilers in Edmonton. I know it didn’t take place on New Year’s Day, it was much earlier (November 2003). Best of all, there was a two-period game of the teams’ legendary players before the regular season yawner was carried out. The 2008 and 2009 contests were more cynical demonstrations of commercialism minus the “old timer” game.

I do admit the 2009 game involving the Blackhawks and Red Wings was more interesting. They’re both cities with big hockey followings, I can’t imagine it with the Sabres and Penguins. The former had a bankruptcy problem recently and the latter extorted a new rink out of its city; I’d still like to see those crybabies try to make a go of it in Kansas City or (snicker) Oklahoma City as the rumors went.

Being a fan of the Broad Street Bullies, I’ll probably try to take in the game and get a jersey. Philly’s can’t be very “retro.” Their general design hasn’t changed much since the team appeared in 1967 unlike Chicago and Detroit going all the way back to the Twenties.