Controlled Chaos

QUOTE(Steff @ Nov 17, 2005 -> 08:13 AM) Already planned that trip. I was thinking you did. They have a golf academy down there. They can do a swing analysis and stuff. Not sure if Jim is a great golfer or not, but it's always cool to see your swing on video and in slo-mo. Since you go there anyway, you could surprise him with that for one of the days. Golf gets my vote, but then again this gift isn't for me

QUOTE(Steff @ Nov 16, 2005 -> 09:35 PM) I'm looking at that stuff.. trouble is.. he already has a ton of it. He's a Star Trek fan (not a trekkie by any means) but he does like the series with Shatner.. I've been looking for some autographed stuff. Like a cast photo.. but no luck seeing anything I think he'd like.. Any Trek fans have any ideas...? Do you go to spring training every year?

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 16, 2005 -> 02:27 PM) I have a problem with the movie Shark Tale. I think it's message is subversive. "I can't stand living a lie" "why won't you accept me for who I am". These things are ok on one level, but manipulative on another. Not everyone believes these things are universal. A shark that just doesn't fit in with other sharks, so he dresses up like a dolphin. I know "it's just a cartoon", but that's why I have a problem with it. We put adult messages in cartoons and our kids are just left with confusion. From working at blockbuster and seeing parents rent these "cartoons" for young children makes me very upset. anyway, just my 2 cents. Oh you mean, Sebastion, the vegetarian, whale washing dolphin..with the cute little scarf and spray bottle that can't get the nonconforming father to accept him for who he is so he can stop living a lie. There's no message in there

Wow, I thought there would more than this....at least someone with "hey...ya wanna" "yeah...you?" "yeah" "ok then"

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Nov 16, 2005 -> 01:00 PM) I've already talked to Miss PA's Dad about my plans, but that was hard enough... Dude she ain't even Miss PA yet....don't go jumping the gun!! Here's my little story...not that ya asked.... My wife's parents lived by O'hare and I was going on a golf vacation with a few friends...so I was parking at my wife's house and she was gonna drive me to the airport. Well I went over there early cause I knew her parents were home. My wife wasn't going to get home till about 12:30. So I get there at like 12:00 and they let me in and I'm like....ummm....yeah... uh.....so there was like no traffic at all. Then there was some small talk with her mom and dad about my trip and then her dad is like I'm going to work in the garage. I'm sitting there thinking: oh s***....how do I even start this conversation...no wait, let me think...don't leave..s*** - f*** - dam....what do I do....too late....her dad goes to the garage. I'm thinking of aborting the whole mission. So here I am, sweating and watching the clock tick and knowing my wife will be coming home and I can't miss this chance. So I get up and tell my mother in law, I'm going to go in the garage and help. My father in law is a man of few words and he is from Italy, so he kinda speaks broken english. So I go out there...nervous as all hell...I mean how do you even start this conversation...It's not like we dated for 5 years and her parents knew it was coming. We dated for 10 months and I hardly ever really talk to the guy cause he never talks. We just say 'Hi' 'How's it going' and the like. So he's looking at me like what the heck you doing out here...and Im just like...duh...uh....well, there's a reason I came early today...and then I explained everything and asked for his blessing. He was like.......Eh...if you guys are happy, I am happy. Whew...so that was that. Then I'm like we should go in and tell Sue. He's like ok. So I go in there and give her mom the same spiel and she goes "ALREADY??" Right about there I start getting that real hot feeling, like your insides are about to explode and I'm like....gulp...yeah. We love each other and I know this is right. She's like I hope she's not rushing you, cause her cousin is getting married and she is probably getting anxious.....I'm like no no not at all. I know we both feel the same way...blah blah blah...She's like...well congratulations then. I'm like here's the catch...you can't tell her, cause I'm not going to propose to her until next week when I get back. They're like ok ok. So my wife comes home and what's the first thing her mom says "Sooooo....we just got some big news" I was like oh s***...now what ...I don't have the ring with me...I can't propose right now...what's the matter with this woman, I just told her 5 minutes ago its a secret. Well lucky my wife was carrying a bag to her room so she kinda wasn't really paying attention and didn't catch exactly what her mom said and her dad broke in and was like...uh uh vacation....we were talking about Ben's vacation. Most likely he did that cause he saw I turned white in utter astonishment. My wife came back in and was like yeah what about his vacation...and her mom was like we were just saying that it's nice to be able to go on a little golf vacation....and my wife was like...yeah yeah my boyfriend lives the life of luxury...blah blah blah and we got onto a new topic.....Talk about close calls though

Well it was on sweetest day. So my plan was she would be thinking this was just somethign I was doing for that. She came over to my house and opened the front door to find a big balloon with a note and a pin attached to the string saying 'Pop'. Inside the balloon, I had put a note that said "Happy Sweetest Day...continue popping!!" I had 10 balloons with notes in them...leading up the stairs and ending at my bedroom door. the last note read...."For all these reasons and so many more...." Then she opened the door and I was on one knee with a balloon attached to the ring box. I asked her...she said yes, tears started flowing......I pulled a string to the balloon drop I had rigged up over my door. The balloons fell and we are living happily ever after. I taped the whole proposal part as well. Before she got there, I recorded all the balloons and came up the stairs and said what was going to happen and hopefully the next thing on this tape will be her saying yes. Then I set the camcorder on my dresser to capture the proposal. I did get more and more nervous with each pop of the balloon...It was like a countdown to the end of my single life and I trembled with each pop..... and those dam balloons for the balloon drop. I had to blow all those up myself. I spent the whole day blowing up baloons...it's amazing I had any breath left to actual pop the question. Anyway it all worked out. The hardest part was asking her parents... Good Luck PA!!!!!!!

I thought this was interesting: One can type out k*** or gook and not the others?? They are all slurs. Just like people say dago or wop with no regard or they say white trash even. All of these are slurs, why do some carry more weight than others? If I am speaking in reference to the word 'n*****'. Why can't I use it? Can I not even type those keystrokes together?? What the heck? If a person isn't using a word in a derogatory way why can't it be typed. For the record, I'm not talking about the rules at soxtalk, I'm talking about society's rules in general. This is pretty much standard. If just the sound of the word is offensive to hear, perhaps the african american community have some work to do.

QUOTE(Steff @ Nov 16, 2005 -> 09:04 AM) I kinda remember that place.. it was in a KMart parking lot..? I never went there though. We had this one friend.. Chris.. who's mom worked nights and we always hung at his house Thursday - Saturday nights. 15 or so teenagers.. there was never a dull moment.. Yep!! We owned that place....House Boyz was the name of our dance crew and that was kind of "our place". They painted a mural on the wall with our name. Anyway, it was kinda like being on top of the world at 15-17. You'd walk into the place and everyone knew who ya were. I never waited in a line...we all hung with the DJ's, had our own little space in the back....and we'd own the dance floor whenever we went out there. As for meeting girls....you didn't even have to work at it....they came up to you. Man those were the days.... There was also Gazanders. Which was a regular bar all week and then Sunday night it was a teen club. Then I became a senior and started hating that house music s*** and listening to rock like I did back in my preteen days and that was the end of all that.... I still love hearing the old house once in a while though. House boyz....Wow that really sounds like some homosexual reference now....but I swear that's not what it was. Not that there's anythign wrong with that....

QUOTE(Steff @ Nov 15, 2005 -> 06:08 PM) LOL.. we didn't have these kinds of places back in my day. We had to get a fake id and head downtown like the adults did it. We had a place called Rock A Bee's. It was the old Harley Davidson store on 111th and Cicero. Oh man the memories are all coming back to me.

QUOTE(easyw @ Nov 15, 2005 -> 07:57 PM) Cool, thanks.. East or west of the river? East...I didn't see them there yesterday...maybe cause of the wind.

Hey these things aren't gonna start growing some kind of fungus in a few years are they???????

I think A-Rod is bush league. I think the play against the sox when he let the ball hit him was bush and I think when he tried slapping the ball out of the guys glove was bush. Most players don't even think to do s*** like that. It isn't cause they aren't savvy, it's because it's f***in lame. He's a great talent...one of the best ever...but those plays totally changed my opinion of him.

QUOTE(easyw @ Nov 14, 2005 -> 11:49 PM) My search continues: Food-4-Less had ugly t-shirts stuffed inside a plastic mug. $10. Dick's has some stuff, but its still at WS prices and spread all over the huge store. Sports Authority had the best selection (and highest prices) of anyplace I went. The stuff is already 30% off, but since it was priced higher to begin with, the prices are about the same as Dick's. Caps n shirts $20 each. I'll try downtown again this week. Does the Grandstand have any stuff on sale? Dude, same place as I told you last week. I walk past them every night at about 4:15. Madison and the river. they have $5 hats. Knit hats or baseball hats....black and pink. I haven't bought anything from there, so I don't exactly what they have...I've just seen the table with the sign that says $5.

Flipping through channels with the wife and we caught this show a couple times and watched it for a few minutes. Is it a reality show or a sitcom? My guess is they give the kids a script of sorts and then let them ad-lib through it, but I don't know. Anyone? Anyone?

All over the place cd, but it's good party music...or driving

QUOTE(Steff @ Nov 14, 2005 -> 04:14 PM) That's what I'll be doing... Liar...you'll be at the Bears game sucking back a six pack....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!! Have a good one!!!!!!!!!

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Nov 14, 2005 -> 12:25 PM) See, Bush's policies must be working because they seem to have cut poverty across the board by THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE! DOH!! Dam, I had it right the first time I typed it, but then I retyped it to include the link and blew it!!! Thanks for catching...everyone add a few more zeros there. For what it's worth on Bush...I'm not even looking at him or the politics behind this. I'm just looking at right and wrong and it certainly seems race shouldn't be a factor with this scholarship.

QUOTE(Brian @ Nov 13, 2005 -> 07:33 PM) You'd think Bush could find bigger things on his agenda between vacations. You would think, but instead he's once again trying to just help his "friends" aka white people. It's all about him and his rich friends. Kanye West had him pinned right. Oh wait....it seems there are some poor white people in this country. I bet they could benefit from this scholarship. In fact, there are way more poor white people in this country than poor black people. approx 24,000 to approx 9,000. So excluding whites is excluding a pretty dam good chunk of poverty stricken people. Color of skin should have nothing to do with this....If it's a scholarship to help the poor, then make it about the poor not about race.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 11, 2005 -> 04:59 PM) I disagree Kap, what a surprise. It's a shame that any Veteran that doesn't toe the party line is so ostracized. I thought the smearing of the Purple Heart, to attack Kerry, was the saddest thing imaginable. This thread is about respecting Veterans, and calling attention to those Veterans that were not respected, does that. It is a great reminder that our soldiers are not all cut from the same ideological cloth. It is a great reminder that not all soldiers remain hawks. War changes people, we hear that all the time. Too often for political, personal, or party gains, we lose the respect we should have for the uniform, the traditions, and the service. How does remembering their initial sacrifice, and their sacrifice in the political wars, not respect that? You seem destined to start s*** in this thread and I'm not sure why.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Nov 11, 2005 -> 11:47 AM) That was 1st time read for me, but a very good one. Went from to to haha me too!!

Thank You!! Thank You!! Thank You!!

Found this in the tribune today Chicago, IL (AP) - A seven year old boy was at the center of a Chicago courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with the child custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible. The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him. After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him. After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Chicago Cubs, whom the child and court firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone. Wait till next year.

Mary Mapes: Bush National Guard Story Still "Is a Good Story" Good Morning America Interview...Some excerpts... It's amazing to me that someone that has been in the business for 25 years doesn't understand the onus is on her to prove the authenticity of what she puts on the air. This isn't the Weekly World News lady.

Is it possible that all the position players remain the same and the DH spot goes to a speedy guy in the 2 hole? I know it's not the norm to take the power away from the DH, but if speed is what we want, that's a way to get it and keep the same defensive setup. It would take an extremely unselfish player, as he will be asked to take pitches, hit and run, hit to the right side, sacrifice and then he goes to the bench. Not too much glory in that. With a 2 hole guy that plays the field, at least your still out there making plays...... and with a normal DH you get the glory of a home run once in a while. This type of DH will strictly be playing a role. He may only get the opportunity to really swing away once or twice a game. Weird strategy, but it does keep speed on the base paths. Even if the lead off guy doens't get on, this guy can get on and be the same base stealing threat. Also, if both get on the double steal is always a possibility. Im sure the pitcher and cather will have that on thier minds as well, while facing our #3 hitter. This of course is only if Pauly is signed and Frank is elsewhere....but if Frank is back and healthy he is the DH and it's back to the drawing board.