Deep Thoughts

I’ve come to expect less and less from people these days. Friendly greetings are ignored and compliments are shrugged aside. People I once knew and considered friends moved on, and haven’t a moment of time to be a decent person to someone they once considered a friend. People frequently use the excuse that they are too busy to answer an e-mail but I know this to be an awful lie. E-mail and Facebook were supposed to bring us all closer together, but I’ve learned that people just want the ability, but not to actually do it.

Seems to me the answer is just to accept it. If people don’t want to be in touch, or have clearly moved on to be with different people and do different things, that’s where it ends. Not even a friendly greeting should be exchanged after that.

This is a cruel, heartless world and my faith is gone.

Caps Cast Video

I had a silly idea a few weeks ago to pretend to make a movie out of The Winter Classic with the Penguins and the Capitals, and the first fun part was to pick the cast. I turned it over to the readers and they had some great ideas. Then one of them sent me a video. I published this on Capitals Outsider, but I’m so happy with it that I want to show it here, too.

A Couple of Speaking Gigs

In the past week, twice I was invited to speak to people about what I do.

On Thursday, I was invited by a former coworker to speak to his University of Maryland Online Journalism class. So, I got to return to my old stomping grounds and got to see the brand new journalism building, which is amazing. The students all had Macs, which also impressed me. They were all required to get web hosting and get their own domain, which is already a step up from what other ‘established’ bloggers do. If you have a blog about a certain topic or sport, and you are established on the blogosphere, not having your own hosting and/or domain is pathetic, particularly now that journalism students get it themselves.

Anyway, I told the students some things about my sites and showed them how I use WordPress, the same publishing system they’ll be using. I even told them how Twitter can actually be useful, as well as other things about blogging.

The next gig came before the Capitals game on Saturday. Me, the folks from OnFrozenBlog.com and RussianMachineNeverBreaks.com were invited to the Capitals Fan Club’s blogger panel. They asked us questions and engaged us in discussion, and I had a great time. It was certainly the highlight of the day, considering the Capitals lost 4-1.

My grandmother was actually more impressed that I was invited to speak at these places than I was, but I must admit that I had a good time. Perhaps blogging is a true profession, after all.

Six Ways Humans Will Evolve

Humanity hasn’t physically evolved much since we took our current state, but over the years, we’ve found certain body parts and functions to serve less purpose than they previously had. So, we’ll assume evolution/natural selection will take care of some of these pesky things to bring us one step closer to perfection. And that’s when the aliens will return and deem us worthy to join them in intergalactic dominance.

1

Higher Metabolism

We are fat these days for a couple of reasons, one of which is that early humans didn’t eat as often as we do today. Fat cells are the body’s emergency storage tank, which come in handy when there isn’t much to hunt along the Bering land bridge. Today, we’re sure to have meals more frequently than early humans (I’m hoping that no one in a drought-infested desert is reading this), meaning we don’t need excessive fat for survival reasons, especially since it’s now more likely to be unhealthy.

Of course, today we also eat fattier, processed foods and use our muscles less than we did thousands of years ago, but it’s clear that excessive fat no longer serves the same purpose that it once did. We should evolve based on how we currently live and will continue to live, so here’s thinking we’ll all develop higher metabolisms to more quickly burn of calories.

2

No More Wisdom Teeth

This isn’t because I don’t think mine are super cool since they grew in straight and give me that enhanced chew while eating, it’s because so many people get them removed for dental reasons, and about 35% of people don’t get them at all. Wisdom teeth: Gone.

3

No More Appendix

We’re not entirely sure what the appendix was originally meant for, but we do know that we don’t need it, and we often have to remove it when suffering from appendicitis. Over time, it’ll shrivel up until it’s gone completely. Also, we already have something very similar looking elsewhere.

4

No More Goosebumps

Goosebumps act as the mechanism for controlling the thick hair we no longer have, whether it’s because we’re cold or suddenly frightened. For instance, when a cat gets goosebumps, its hair stands straight up. When we get it, the cat laughs at us cause we’re clearly being pretenders.

Now, the other option here is to regain the thick hair to make the goosebumps useful again. But that’s not what we prefer, so let’s just get rid of them all together.

5

Sperm Will Withstand Warmer Temperatures

Testicles are temperature controlled. When they get too cold, the scrotum shrivels up, and vice versa. This was fine for early man, as their balls were more exposed to the elements. But today, under layers of clothing in temperature-controlled rooms, not to mention global warming, they remain loose, shifting as we walk, squooshing as we sit, forcing us to frequently adjust or scratch. The constant abuse will tell the body that its design is no longer practical. Eventually, the sperm will get used to the warmer temperatures and eventually enjoy 98.7 degrees of the body. At that point, the testicles and scrotum will permanently shrivel up into the body. No more scratching.

6

Sex No Longer Leads to Pregnancy

It’s been obvious over the past millennia or so that humankind no longer has sex for procreation purposes. At least, most of the time. In fact, many feminists believe they owe nothing to the survival of the human species and find the act of sperm fertilizing an egg to be a ‘violation’ of a their body because it’s not a conscious decision, even in circumstances when protection is not used. That is why they claim abortion is ‘self defense’ against an intruder. These are real arguments, folks (and facts, according to them).

So how will the human evolution movement handle this? Obviously, sperm can’t get written consent from the woman to fertilize an egg, and it’s still too soon to phase out the uterus in an attempt to please the feminists who want even more equality with men. So, women will grow some sort of permanent barricade that will flawlessly shoo away sperm. But not a problem for the survival of the species, folks, because we still have In-vitro fertilization. Or something else. I don’t know. Anything but a violation of the body and a self defense claim.

Good Questions and Boring Ones

I rarely ask questions in press conferences, but when I do it’s because I’m fairly certain I’ll get a good response.

The other night, after the Pittsburgh-Washington game, I was in a packed press room when Bruce Boudreau stood at the podium.

The traditional media usually ask the most questions, typically to get quotes to fill in the angle of their story. That makes the questions relatively lame and not newsworthy. Questions such as: “How important was it to kill that power play after taking that penalty?”

Seriously? What do you expect the coach to say? That it wasn’t important to kill the power play? The only reason that question is asked is so the writer can enhance a passage on how the power play did. However, the coaches and players are used to taking softball questions from traditional media, so they answer it. It’s not bad or wrong, but who cares?

Several minutes in, I spoke up and mentioned something that deserved to be mentioned: Matt Cooke’s hit on Alex Ovechkin, which was knee-on-knee and could have ended Ovechkin’s season. The Penguins said they ‘clipped skates’ so I asked the coach if it was knee-on-knee.

Boudreau exploded.

“It was Matt Cooke. Need we say more? Its not like its his first rodeo. Hes done it to everybody and then he goes to the ref and says: What did I do? He knows damn well what he did. Theres no doubt in my mind that hes good at it and he knows how to do it. He knows how to pick this stuff. We as a league, we still buy into this that, Oh it was an accidental thing.”

I asked because no one else had, and it was indeed an angle I woud’ve led with on Capitals Outsider. When traditional media and other bloggers ignore a part of the game that I feel deserves a headline, I’ll be sure to cover it. After several minutes of ‘gotta get a quote for the article’ questions, I took the opportunity to mention something that should’ve been the first question asked.

The Post wrote a blog post about it. The quote appeared on several other sites, including Yahoo, ESPN and dozens of others. It was used on television, including Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, I’m told. Journalists don’t need to be attributed for asking the question that leads to the news, so there was no mention of me, and that’s fine and I understand that.

Here’s my beef: Why did it take a blogger to ask the obvious question after high profile journalists fished for routine quotes about the game as window dressing for their article?