The Losers (movie) was fun, The Losers (Nationals), not so much...

I just had to go and mention the Washington Nationals in the last article that I had posted.  DrGuy already left a comment on that one, and I'm sure I'll get back to that later (hopefully) and maybe we can argue about who should have bragging rights, but for now it seems his Mets are doing just fine while the Nationals have stunk up the joint for two days in a row.  As noted in the article title, they're finding themselves Losers again -- a position they were in far too frequently last year under what could only be called the incompetent management of Manny Acta.  Bleh.  Just typing that name makes me want to throw up.  Even with a two game losing streak, it's quite obvious that Jim Riggleman cares about the Nationals and the players that are on the team now also care and aren't happy losing.

Today's game featured some more dubious calling of balls and strikes by the boys in blue and I continue to wish that the homeplate umpire would lose the job of calling balls and strikes to a computer.  I wouldn't even consider the option if the umpires had any clue what a strike was, where the zone was supposed to be, and the like but they all call their own strike zones and none are even close to calling a consistent rule book strike.  Give the job to machines and let the players face the rule book strike zone again.  The pitchers would love it, and eventually the hitters will adjust.  Meanwhile the games would move much faster as pitches that are currently called balls would be called strikes (though admitted, some pitches that are called strikes now are certainly going to be called balls if a machine called the strikes).  In anycase switching to a machine would offer a much more consistent strike zone and more strikes would likely be thrown in the game.  Pitchers would hopefully face less strain on their arm from less pitches thrown, or at least less pitches thrown all over the area at the plate.

Enough of that rant.  I've been there and done that in arguing that point before.  Why bother rambling on?

Meanwhile I did as I had indicated in the prior article.  Got out and saw The Losers.  Fun flick.  Better than I thought it would be.  I think Kick A*s was a bit better, but both were fun flicks.  Comic book style.  Graphic violence.  Predictable, but still fun.  I imagine that the co-worker that loves violent flicks will be hyped up over having watched The Losers on my recommendation.  Hopefully.  Usually he seems to like the stuff I send him to, though not always.

I've been busy doing more clean-up around the house.  Shredding up a bunch of old paperwork.  I have to take breaks along the way lest I burn up the blades on the shredder, but slowly and surely I'm getting through the piles of paperwork that had accumulated over time.  That's a problem that never seems to end really.  Bills, insurance statements (explanation of benefits and the like), junk mailings to my daughter (since she's on track for going off to college in the future she's been getting materials from lots of schools trying to recruit her).  Lots of stuff with our names and addresses on them.  I know it's overkill to shred it all up, but where possible I'm doing just that.  Besides, even if not all of it needed to be shredded, having a pile of less important stuff mixed in with the more important stuff and having all of it cross-cut shredded will make it all the tougher for anyone that wanted to sit and piece it all back together to do so.  (Not that it's impossible to do that... if you've not seen the news reports on it, several not-so-friendly nations have employed a lot of manual labor to sit and piece together documents and we've also got technology that takes the fragments, scans them, and then reassembles the virtual images back into the original documents similarly to a big jigsaw puzzle.  Never assume that you've completely gotten rid of materials if you've stopped short of burning them, and even then ask yourself where the originals are and how many copies were actually made?!)

Enough for now.  If time allows, maybe I'll get something posted again tomorrow.