Fun op-ed

I love Maureen Dowd's final line in her Times column this morning:

The pope needs what the rest of us got from nuns: a good rap across the knuckles.

Baseball weekend

Phew! I had a career-high 10 outfield assists last night! I'm exhausted. No...wait a minute! It was some guy on TV who did that. Jeez. With the HD and the large screen and all, sometimes it's hard to tell who's doing what. But now I remember. Yup, it was definitely the guy on TV. I'm still tired, though.

Baseball's been weird and fun lately. I couldn't believe Ozzie Guillen put four pitchers into a game, each of whom walked his batter. It had never happened in baseball before. Four different pitchers in a row! And then two nights later his pitcher walks four batters in a row. The man is cursed by dog since he saluted Castro. It's an obvious dog-directed thing he's going through. Ozzie as Job: clear as day.

I also enjoyed watching (who the hell was it) who'd pitched 12 losing games in a row. Something like that pulls me into a game, you know? I hear it and I'm hooked. But he did well, the lad. One drama ended. The poor kid can sleep now.

And I don't care what that couple said on TV, they were cruel to that little boy. So there, Rangers couple! You will forever live in infamy. When little kids cry in this country, we give them the ball. It's how we roll. Understand?

Little dramas, spread throughout the leagues. I love it all. And in case this needs saying: I'm never ever going out again now that I've got an HD big-screen thing going on. Lord! (There are no lords, of course. Always remember that.)

Religion is a Ponzi scheme

Religion is the most successful kind of ponzi scheme because it hides the moment of payoff behind the impenetrable barrier of death. There's never any accounting because, ahem, no one has ever survived death.

You have to give them credit for coming up with this one. Not one person has ever come back to say, "You fiends! You liars! How dare you promise me an afterlife?! I'm rotting in my goddamn grave! Damn you!!"

And so it continues. Gullible people will always be drawn to gods, witchcraft and lotteries. And they'll get absolutely nothing for their meaningless efforts and wasted lives.

Way to go, churches! And no one can even prosecute you for your ponzi scheme! You guys are perfect, untouchable criminals. You must be so proud!

Umpire's touchy hands

During a game the other night, one of the announcers finally spoke about something that always bothered me: the way some umpires put a hand on a catcher's back during a pitch. You've got to be kidding.

They were talking about a catcher whose name I missed. Apparently, he said an umpire pushed him as he was trying to make a catch. There didn't seem to be an end to the story but I was glad to finally hear it mentioned. Duh, of course it sucks to have another person's hand on your back as you're trying to make an athletic move.

Are the umpires so old and feeble that they can't stand on their own? I mean, what the hell is this about? They should definitely keep their hands off the players.

Anyone?

The planes must go!

There have been so many stories lately of planes hurting birds. It's insanity! We can't let this go on a minute longer.

Here's what we must do -- we have to stamp planes out at their earliest stage, when they're just "babies". This means closing the factories that build the planes. We must! If we allow them to build more planes, who knows how many innocent geese may die? Surely it's clear that we have to act now.

I urge you to call your congress-critter and tell him or her to lash out at the airplane companies! Kill their incentives. Stamp out their financial streams. And insist that the world bank freeze their assets so they can't start making baby planes elsewhere!

Keep the skies free for birds!

PS: The geese had eight babies last night. They're so cute! I'll take photos soon.

Remember when the US Supreme Court used to inspire respect?

AP -- Bucking the Obama administration, Supreme Court justices seemed to find little trouble Wednesday with major parts of Arizona's tough immigration law that require police to check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons.

Writers, race and fiction

In the early days of this blog I covered the basics of writing a novel. No one taught me how to do this so I built the process myself from the ground up, and wanted to share what I'd learned. I approached it cleanly -- there would be no givens, no sacred cows. I wasn't going to try to write like others did. I'd make it up from whole cloth. This post is about where I landed on one of the issues I encountered as a writer.

One of my characters is African-American. (There are several in my books but I'm talking about one here, for sake of argument.) When it came time to write the first scene where he played a role, I wondered if I should reveal his race. I mean, if the character was white I probably wouldn't, right? So why did I have to do it for an African-American character? It seemed offensive to feel a need to state that this character is African-American. Why was that necessary? The character is a person.

So I didn't mention it. Later on in the book I alluded to the character's race in another way. But he appeared in earlier scenes that contain no racial reference. I think I like this way of doing it. If the reader is surprised later on in the book, perhaps they'll wonder why they're surprised. I like that, too.

I may not do this in every book and with every racial group, but as a writer it was an interesting issue to think my way through. As I say, I think I like where I landed.