At the Yankees-Reds seventh-inning stretch last night, instead of playing the usual horrible Kate Smith rendition of God Bless America, they played a recording of Donna Summer doing it. (And yeah, it disgusts me that they play this fucken jingoistic jeezus freak shitte at ball games in the first place, but whaddya gonna do?)

Can someone explain to me why all of a sudden the “Follow comments on this post by e-mail” checkbox is now default populated on every WordPress blogge that I comment on, and I have to fucken uncheck the goddamn motherfucken box exery time I leave a comment, and if I forget to uncheck it I get a bunch of motherfucken e-mails from WordPress telling me that some fuckeasse commented on that post?

Can I make this stop happening, and default to being unchecked????

These orthodox fuckers–like all religious fuckes–are scum:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/nyregion/bloomberg-among-critics-of-brooklyn-district-attorney.html

Religion is among the worst human impulses, up there with war, rape, murder, torture, and genocide.

If you really believe your fucken grant application is “paradigm shifting”, 99 percent chance you are a delusional motherfucken crank.

It was absolutely fine that Hamills plunked Harper. And then Harper punished him by scoring that inning. And then the Nats’ pitcher plunked a Phillie later in the game. It’s all part of the game behind the game that adds to the romance and interest of baseball.

But dude, they are called “unwritten rules” for a reason! Hamills deserves the suspension just for being so fucken stupid as to admit that he plunked the motherfucker because he is a young whippersnapper who needed to be taken down a notch and initiated into the hierarchy.

What the fucke is this purple thingie??? People homed in on the correct answer extremely quickly, and even taught *me* a few things about it I didn’t know.

The first to correctly guess that it is a surveillance trap for emerald ash borers was commenter chezjake.

It is hung on an ash tree and is colored purple based on empirical tests of what color attracts the most emerald ash borers. It also has some volatile chemical compounds in it derived from ash trees that further attract the borers inside, where they get stuck in some sticky shitte. The dude in the Park who I asked about it told me that ash borers have been collected as far east as Eastern Pennsylvania, and they want to know as soon as they reach Central Park.

Dunno about the accuracy of this, but he also said that the problem for the trees isn’t so much the damage they do directly (I presume by boring into the trees), but because they are the vector for a tree virus thatte fuckes the trees uppe bigtime.

Anyway, chezjake wins the prize, which is that he or she gets to ask me any question, and I will answer it in a blogge post. And, DUH, I’m not gonna give any details about myself that would make it substantially easier to determine who I am in real life (to the extent that there remains any doubt, anyway).

Anybody who can figure out what this purple thingie hanging from a tree in Central Park gets a prize: You get to ask me any question you want, and I will answer it on the blogge.

The Marlyland Court of Appeals has deemed pit bulls to be “inherently dangerous”, which means that in a civil case for damages, if the plaintiff can prove that the damages were caused by a pit bull, then she does not need to show–unlike in an ordinary negligence claim–a failure on the part of the dog owner to exercise due care:

Upon a plaintiff’s sufficient proof that a dog involved in an attack is a pit bull or a pit bull cross, and that the owner, or other person(s) who has the right to control the pit bull’s presence on the subject premises (including a landlord who has a right to prohibit such dogs on leased premises) knows, or has reason to know, that the dog is a pit bull or cross-bred pit bull, that person is liable for the damages caused to a plaintiff who is attacked by the dog on or from the owner’s or lessor’s premises. In that case a plaintiff has established a prima facie case of negligence. When an attack involves pit bulls, it is no longer necessary to prove that the particular pit bull or pit bulls are dangerous.

There is a discussion about this already going on at DrugMonkey’s blogge, with the usual apologetics of the pit bull enthusiasts.

I’m pretty convinced that this commenter has it exactly right, that pit bulls have been bred to be vicious and uncontrollable:

Genetics play a huge part in a dog’s behavior and temperament. The Belyaev experiment has been going on since the 1959, and has proven that selective breeding, in even a few generations, can produce an animal that is genetically friendly toward humans; it can also produce an animal that is genetically aggressive. If this can be easily accomplished in wild canids (foxes), it can be easily done in domestic dogs.

Pit bulls were bred by the dogmen to be “game”, which means that once they are engaged in a fight, they do not stop, despite pain and mortal wounds. They were selected through generations to be highly dog aggressive, and to not respond normally to canine body language. They ignore signals of submission. They have a high threshold for pain. They have an active defence reflex, and will chose fight over flight when challenged. They were bred to attack without the typical warning signals, since signaling intent to your opponent is a liability in the fighting pit.
While normal dogs use mostly ritualistic displays of aggression…. posturing, hackling, growling, pinning and air snapping; or use just enough force to open up a flight path, such as when a fearful dog bites and releases….pit bulls have been bred to grab, hold, and shake their opponent until it stops moving.

This behavior in pit bulls is a self rewarding behavior, just as the exagerated eye-stalk behavior of the border collie is. It is not the result of abuse or training. Current breeding practices for pit bulls continue to select for these traits…the vast majority of people breeding pit bulls todays are at best grossly irresponsible back yard breeders, who are ingoring temperament and just looking to make a quick buck, or are criminals, drug dealers, gang members and dog fighters, breeding aggressive pits as guard dogs for drug ops, or for the fighting pit.

It’s time to stop the fairy tales about “nanny dogs”, and the mental gymnastics of looking for triggers and excuses as to “why” pit bull attacks occur. The dogs are simply doing what they were bred to do. Dogs aren’t people, they are a eugenics experiment. Pit bulls were created for an activity that is now a felony in all 50 states. Its time to take a hard look at regulating them as a public safety measure.