I am definitely not opposed to being the person to write this post, however it would have been done much earlier if a certain brother would have stepped up to the plate.

Anyway, this is a far over due tribute to Kirby Puckett. I grew up in Minneapolis right in the middle of Puckett’s best years. Of course I was a huge fan, who wasn’t. This guy would take homeruns away from three rows back. My parents have countless pictures of me trying to catch “home run balls” like Kirby. Call me a dork if you want but it’s true, when I was a kid I lived the Twins. My summers were completely consumed by playing baseball and nothing else. My brother and I would wake up, and as soon as my parents would let us out of the house we would go start a game, play until lunch, leave our gloves on the field, have lunch, play some more, have supper, play some more and repeat it the next day. Yeah, I know, it’s pathetic but it’s what we knew.

The highlight of my childhood at that time was definitely going to the Metrodome and watching the Twins play. If you had the opportunity to see them play while Puckett was on the team the place went crazy every time Kirby did anything, especially when he came up to the plate. The Twins announcer, Bob Casey, did his best to make this special for everyone, his announcement went something like this “Batting third for the Twins…number 34…the center fielder…Kirbyyyyyyyyyy Puckett.” You really have to hear it to completely understand what it was like.

As a player Puckett did everything: he stole homeruns like no one else, he sped around the bases, and he seemed to be able to hit anything. All of this from a chubby short guy from inner city Chicago, awesome. When asked how he is able to hit so well, his response was, I just get up there and swing as hard as I can and hope I hit something. With this strategy he managed to have a batting average of over 300 for his career. Kirby also won 6 gold gloves over his career along with leading the Twins to their only World Series victories in 1987 and 1991.

On top of his on the field abilities, Kirby was a leader in the clubhouse. Teammates talk constantly of his cheerfulness and infectious smile and laugh. In game six of the 1991 World Series the Twins were at home and also one loss away from loosing the Series. He told his teammates before the game “Jump on my back boys, I’ll carry you home” he definitely did. He had an amazing game, and topped it off with the game winning homerun in the bottom of the 11^th inning. My favorite quote of all time is definitely from that moment. In the words of Jack Buck, “And we’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Kirby was one of those players that everyone loved, he will be remembered as one of, if not the greatest Twins player. He will always be at the top of my list.

This is not going to be a full-blown article on this topic, it is just something that has been pissing me off lately.

http://www.dpworld.com/subpages.asp?PSID=1&PageID=21

Anyone who has been following the national news as of late is familiar with the congressional bru-ha-ha going on over the Dubai Ports World deal. Basically what’s happened thus far is that DPW had placed a winning bid to administer control over the U.S.’s largest ports. President Bush gave his support to this deal for what appear to be economic (both above and below the table) reasons and was speaking out to garner approval for this decision.

What happened next is mind-blowing. Congressmen from both sides of the aisle starting speaking out against DPW controlling these ports and Bush’s decision to support them. I don’t mean that it blows my mind that Democrats would grow spines and speak out against Bush’s decision or even that staunch supporters from his own party decided to buck six years of cow-towing to the president. What pisses me off is the reasons that they give for not wanting DPW to control these ports.

It seems to me that maybe you’d want one of the largest port operators in the country running your facilities. It may be possible that somewhere along the way they picked up a little something on how to efficiently run a port, and it may even be possible that they can competantly secure the facility against ‘terr’ (pronounced like Bush says it).

What pisses me off here is that the only argument that I have heard against DPW revolves around them being a Middle Eastern country. ‘Some of the 9/11′ hijackers came from Dubai’ cry lawmakers. Oh yeah? Well I think a couple may have come from Saudi Arabia, good thing we don’t do them any favors.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that I see this issue boiling down to one simple thing. Call it racism, call it stereotyping, call it prejudice if you prefer. Its there is spades. There is no reason to not let DPW run the ports in this country. Just because Dubai is an Arab country does not mean that they are inherently linked to terrorism or are automatically more likely to look the other way on security issues.

Now the idea is to have a domestic company run the port. All right! A union-run port administrator. We all know how vigilant and incorruptible they are!

I have not heard one logical argument against DPW thus far. I think what this issue has really shown us is just how far our own politicians will go to get re-elected and associate themselves with the war against terrorism.

Well, it’s Friday.

I took a break from constant posting to allow others to post. As you can see, it’s only been Kerrie. Misc.Asst. will probably end up turning into the Corey and Kerrie Variety Hour.

Eat your heart out, Nick and Jessica. Whoops — they’re divorced.

Maybe the Variety Hour idea isn’t as good as I had hoped.

I digress. The real reason for today’s post is to open up the world to some online comics that I regularly read. There’s a lot to choose from out there, and I’ve brought all of my favorites together in my RSS reader Newsgator — the best blog reading tool on earth.

Right. You don’t want to spend hours stumbling through Peanuts and Family Circus online sites to find your daily dose of pencil drawn humor, so here’s your guide — at least, a guide to the four or five that I frequent.

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Calvin and Hobbes

None of us should forget the brilliant Calvin and Hobbes. I found this at uComics.com, where you can nearly any comic strip published in the past ten years. The best part about getting Calvin and Hobbes daily is that I’ve realized just how good the strip was. At the age of 11 a lot of it was lost on me; yes, I knew it was funny, but I didn’t fully grasp what creator Bill Watterson was doing.

Now I know.

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Dinosaur Comics

There really isn’t much drawing involved with Dinosaur Comics — it’s a strictly text based comic in that creator Ryan North uses the same six frames every day. It’s the words themselves that change, and each day finds a new look into some philosophical rant by T-Rex, along with a rebuttal by this other orange dinosaur.

It’s a lot funnier than it sounds.

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Red Meat

I discovered Red Meat comics through some friends of mine. Of course, these are the same friends that had me convinced that watching professional wrestling was going to help my life in some way.

Red Meat features a variety of characters the likes of which are either completely crazy or incredibly familiar. There’s Milkman Dan and his ongoing feud with… There’s Ted Johnson and his family, and there’s Priest and his conversations with God — and there’s not a sane eye in the house.

Experiencing Red Meat is like watching your first good sketch comedy troupe — you’ll never go back to traditional humor again.

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The Perry Bible Fellowship

This series was shown to me by C00kedview — an alternative to the usual comic, the PBF leans heavily on irony to make their comics work. All are very artfully done, and while the main page seems difficult to navigate (each picture leads to a random comic) you can find an all-encompassing archive around there somewhere. The PBF is well worth checking out.

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This Modern World

Tom Tomorrow has perfected the satirical political comic. While Doonesbury is subtle, crafted primarily for the comics page of a major newspaper, This Modern World is more blunt, more to the point, and this has relegated the comic to the opening pages of more independent minded publications like The City Pages.

Tomorrow’s This Modern World does what it can to bring to light the foibles of our government — from both the right and the left, though since most injustices come form the right, they’re featured more prevalently. When I want to sound political, I’ll mention This Modern World and see if anyone notices.

They usually don’t, but it’s worth a try.

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Anyway, that’s it. Those are my comic choices for the day. If you have any other suggestions, let me know — I’m always open for more time-wasting endeavors, and reading comics sounds like a classic one.

I know I will get in trouble for this one. But since none of you are vocal as of late I’m going in for another entry.

The moral of the story: If you’re afraid of the answer you might get, don’t make the request.

A person, who shall remain nameless, was having a hard time getting out of bed this morning. A dog named Becket was in what I lovingly call hard-ball stage next to unnamed person. (Hard-ball stage, for those of you without animals, is when said animal is curled up in a ball enjoying a nice slumber.)

Unnamed person: “Becket, help me get out of bed.”

Becket: Looks up with glazed eyes and barfs.

On the bed, mind you.

Unnamed person suddenly has initiative to jump out of bed and start his day. Of course, the usual sequence of events related to starting one’s day does not usually include dragging the bedspread to the shower and spraying it down, but hey, it worked.

Under normal circumstances, Becket gives warning on when he may barf. That mammalian gag reflex and pumping of stomach will usually give us enough time to at least get him on the tile floor, or more conveniently outside. But, this morning a question was asked, and Becket responded—in a smart and terrier-like manner. Really, he did the only thing that he thought would work– he barfed. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised he didn’t ask for a treat afterward.

And people wonder why we don’t have children.