Desipio Message Board

Jack McKay faked his own death and entered Witness Protection.

Could be genetic, before we rule anything out.

Quote from: morpheus on January 25, 2019, 12:56:28 PM
Justin Wilson.

Overall I'd say it was a pretty meh era and I'd just as soon have Jeimer Candelario back, hindsight and all...

Quote from: Saul Goodman on January 23, 2019, 01:02:21 PM

Quote from: World's #1 Astros Fan on January 23, 2019, 11:55:07 AM

Quote from: Saul Goodman on January 23, 2019, 11:41:14 AM
2019 Cubs: Harper or GTFO

Bryce Harper ain't walking through that door, homes.

Then they might have to earn my attention this year thanks to this steady diet of Ricketts bullshit we've been fed.

Lived through a thousand years of bullshit and shitty teams and "We don't have enough money for Bryce Harper" is the final straw?
I don't get this at all.

Quote from: PenFoe on April 29, 2016, 02:19:00 PM
We don't have a Penstory thread, so I'm going to post this here, since there is some relevance...

I live across the street from a former Cubs prospect. We live in a cul-de-sac on a quiet street in suburbia outside of Boulder. It's a very close-knit street and most of the neighbors are pretty close overall. Kids playing together in the street, neighborhood BBQs, etc.   Said prospect is also the head coach of the local high school baseball team.  He has another job as well, though I don't know what it is.  Overall, we're not that close with him and his family, but certainly friendly (borrowing various household goods from each other on multiple occasions.) 

Multiple times he has seen my son and I in the street, practicing baseball. Hitting off a tee, playing catch, etc. He never offers any advice, and one time when I specifically asked him if he had any tips, he basically brushed it off and went inside. Not a bad dude, just a bit distant. 

Backstory: He has a teenage son (big baseball player) and his wife died about 5 years back, before we moved in.  Super sad.  I think it was breast cancer.  After his wife died, her sister moved in to help raise the boy.   She doesn't have a family of her own.  The relationship between Dad and Sister-in-Law is super weird. We assumed for the first couple of years that they were a married couple and she was the boy's mom.  We're still not 100% sure what the relationship is between the adults, in terms of intimacy, but it's ultimately neither here nor there. It's weird and fun to speculate, but doesn't change the day-to-day dynamics whether she sleeps with him or she has her own room or whatever.  Still, for those of you for whom this is relevant, imagine your brother dying and then you drop everything in your life and move in with your sister-in-law to raise their kid.  It's at least a little bizarre.

Fast forward to about 18 months ago...

They get their car broken into in the driveway. We live in a very safe neighborhood, but it's the suburbs so this shit happens sometimes. The car was unlocked in the driveway and the robber(s) stole some golf clubs.  I think that was it. They didn't open the garage or enter the house.  Still, plenty invasive and scary.  The entire small-town police force was on the street in the middle of the night.

Since then, she has gone into epic paranoid mode. 

At least once per week now, she stops my wife to ask her if she's seen (insert Car X here, this week it's a black Escalade) driving up and down the street.  She is 100% convinced that there are people stalking her and casing her house. She has set-up many, many homemade "alerts" to see if people are on her property.  Things like Kathy Bates in Misery with the hair in the book.  Strategically placing branches in the backyard and then being terrified because they weren't exactly how she remembered them. Putting fishing wire on the back gate (the house backs to a walking pathway) and saying the line was snapped.  While I can't see them, she apparently has cameras all over the outside of the house and spends much of her nights watching the cameras from the inside, looking for shadows (of which she has seen many.) On a couple occasions when Dad and Son have been away at a baseball tournament, she'll stay in a hotel because she can't handle being in the house alone.  She texts my wife regularly to ask if there are any cars parked in front of her house.  She confronts landscapers in the neighborhood and yells at them to get away from the area (we have a park at the end of the street that the HOA maintains.) 

Yesterday, she saw my wife in Whole Foods/Target/Safeway (I wasn't fully listening) and said "I KNOW YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME BUT THIS IS TRUE."  Aggressively. 

It's a really sad situation, living across from the street from someone who truly never has peace in life because she's terrified of everyone.

So, Penstory short, I live across the street from a former Cubs prospect who won't ever fucking help my kid play baseball and his psychotic sister-in-law who has turned her entire house into a panic room for fear that "men" are out to get her.

Turns out she wasn't his sister-in-law, she was his girlfriend. We ended up getting to know her really well. She just killed herself.
It's all really sad.

Quote from: Canadouche on January 18, 2019, 12:15:27 PM

Quote from: Oleg on January 18, 2019, 12:02:24 PM

Quote from: Canadouche on January 18, 2019, 11:16:31 AM

Quote from: Oleg on January 18, 2019, 10:57:00 AM

Quote from: Canadouche on January 17, 2019, 09:18:57 AM
I love my job, but holy shit, the problems they are dealing with. Of our 45-or-so 8th graders, four have lost parents to tragedy. One's mother had an aneurysm seven years ago, and while she's still alive, she isn't remotely the person she was. We had the father of a student, and mother of another, both murdered in the span of 9 months. And one of my students is losing her mother to breast cancer.

That doesn't even factor in the number of absent fathers that many of them have. Way too much tragedy for kids who are just beginning their teenage years.

Are you still in Toronto or somewhere up north?

Toronto for life. We're actually in the process of a remodelling project on our house, which means I'll be back in the inlaw's basement for a solid year.

Technically I work at an inner city school, though it's in a nice neighborhood a good 3 miles out from the city core. You can see the CN Tower and some other buildings from one of the main avenues in the neighborhood, though.

I was just there and will be back a few times this year. I typically stay at the Sheraton City Center, which is kind of fancy but that's where they keep booking me, so whatever.  Not far from Rogers Center...and apparently, a pretty cool dispensary although I haven't been yet.

You're talking about Cafe 66, which has a number of locations in the city, including on York Street near the Rogers Center. You should definitely check it out, but probably bring cash to play it safe.

There's also a pretty good BBQ place not too far from the Rogers Centre called Cherry Street BBQ. Look it up the next time you're in town - you'll be surprised, I think, at how authentic and tasty it is.

Let me know the next time you're in town - same thing goes for any of you who come to Toronto. I'd be happy to show you around/take you to one of our local restaurants so you can experience good food while you're here.

I rode on the chairlift with a guy who lives in Toronto yesterday.
Nice guy. 

Quote from: World's #1 Astros Fan on January 10, 2019, 10:34:57 AM

Quote from: Tonker on January 10, 2019, 09:59:56 AM

Quote from: World's #1 Astros Fan on January 10, 2019, 07:56:41 AM

Quote from: Tonker on January 10, 2019, 07:18:35 AM

Quote from: Yeti on January 07, 2019, 07:05:49 PM
... I have anxiety about the Cubs continued success. What if KB isn't MVP caliber all the time? Javy probably can't duplicate his MVP season. Schwarber isn't the god we hoped for. Contreras maybe came back down. Heyward, while better, still meh. Darvish died. Lester is getting older. Russell, fuck off, and sucks. Almora is ok. Quintana hasn't been the level that they expected when they traded for him. The farm system blows now.

Now, we're in an offseason where Daniel Descalso and Cole Hamels (who was awesome, but is also old) are the big acquisitions. They could surprise everyone and somehow sign one of the 2 dudes (Machado/Harper), but I don't feel particularly inspired.

I'll love it if my internal doom and gloom about this is completely bullshit and Theo comes to my house to swing his 2019 WS winning balls right into my forehead.

I admit it: I also feel a bit like this.

I love this team and appreciate that after my own 40+ years of waiting, we finally have a team that we know will be contending in September each year.  Making the playoffs 4 out of the next 6 years is not an unreasonable expectation.

And yet as time has gone on, I've gone from hoping for a seismic historic correction resulting in 5 straight titles to hoping that they simply don't become the '85 Bears redux.  I've re-calibrated my expectations to just two more World Series titles over the next 5-8 years, but may bargain down to just one more at some point.

2018 broke a small part of me because I would have been COMPLETELY FINE with the Cubs getting spanked by Boston in the World Series, so long as they won a second pennant.  What hurt is that in spite of their own down year they had what seemed to be a greased path as the rest of the National League was also in a funk (save for those fuckers from Milwaukee who were truly the turd in the punchbowl and if nothing else I at least now have a healthy HATRED for that fucking team).  Last year was the Cubs' first exit where I felt echos of those Ditka-era playoff disappointments, and I don't like the feeling.  Sort of a 1st world problem I know--and I've acknowledged that I appreciate what they've done thus far--but I am as unsure about this team as I have ever been since Theo came along.  I still have faith, but I'm not nearly as cocky as I was 20 months ago.

TL;DR.  THIS

I, too, am firmly on the "fuck Milwaukee" bandwagon, and am pleased to note that there are definitely a few villains (over and above Braun, natch) popping up in their lineup.  That fat shit Aguilar can get all the way to fuck, for starters.  Arcia barely knows which end of a bat is which but stick him in the postseason and he turns into Latino David Fucking Freese: fuck that.  You will never persuade me that Eric Thames got how he is by eating right and exercising regularly.  And Hader?  And honest-to-goodness Nazi whom everybody on this board with the exception of DaveB can heartily fucking detest.

They played way, way above their heads last year and I, for one, can't wait for the hangover to kick in.  Cunts.

Yeah, the Cubs were banged up and out-of-sync, and still had the most wins in the National League for the entire summer; and yet some 18-2 type bullshit was pulled from every asshole in Wisconsin and they got caught on the last day.  Had the Cubs only been allowed their rightful position in a Best-of-5 LDS, they'd have been at worst even-odds to win the pennant, I'll be forever convinced.  I even rooted for Milwaukee after that series so the story could play out but they ended up ANGERING me more by pissing away my temporary fandom by having their pixie magic end against LA.  Fuck them, I hope in all my years that they never come close to a snifffing an LCS Game 7 again.  I want the Cubs to do to them what they've essentially done to St. Louis between 2015-2017 but even moreso.

I can't believe y'all didn't hate the Brewers before this.

Fernando fucking Vina?

Fuck those guys.

Quote from: Saul Goodman on January 04, 2019, 11:55:30 AM

Quote from: Brownie on January 04, 2019, 10:02:48 AM

Quote from: Yeti on January 04, 2019, 09:57:18 AM

Quote from: Yeti on December 28, 2018, 09:12:31 AM

Quote from: Yeti on December 26, 2018, 11:00:03 AM

Quote from: Brownie on December 21, 2018, 12:07:03 PM

Quote from: Yeti on December 21, 2018, 05:13:28 AM

Quote from: Brownie on December 20, 2018, 02:30:48 PM
Are we doing this again?

Yes, I have my email set up still:
thrillhoistheworst gmail

And Thrill has been paying attention to it because when I go to pop someone in that's died, he's already have done it. So, I can set up an auto-forward (or I'm assuming I can) so both email addresses will have it in case he dies again

Excellent.

Received from Teej, Krut, and TIME TO POST

And from Huey.

I will jam myself into so many DMs. Get the shit in.

I failed to jam into DMs. I received picks from Huey, Oleg, TJ, Fork, BigDrinky (I'm pretty sure that's TW), Butthead, Krut, Wheezer, PenFoe. Missing from last year: Chuck, CT, Saul, flannj, TEC.

Come on, fellas.

Chuck is busy running for public office, saving Glenview from Communism. TEC has a young family keeping him young and making him forget death. Flannj  probably is still consuming his Christmas gifts, has started slurring his speech and thinks today is December 29. I'm not sure what CT and Saul's excuses are.

I believe my picks were basically the entire Trump Administration, which I seem to have reverse-jinxed by making them. No longer!

I just assumed you were checked into rehab after finding alcohol.

Quote from: Wheezer on December 12, 2018, 12:31:38 AM
I have no idea what this "Elf on the Shelf" business is, other than skimming the results of a cursory search. One time when I was a kid, my parents *hired* a Santa to knock on the door and deliver some of the presents while I got the rest from them under the tree the next morning.

N.b. The Santa might have been one of their friends who rented a suit, and I thought the elves were some sort of baroque ritual added to the ususal Tooth Fairy routine for a while.

So then, you probably have limited experience with this as well?

Quote from: CBStew on December 10, 2018, 12:37:40 PM

Quote from: Canadouche on December 10, 2018, 11:46:32 AM

Quote from: thehawk on December 10, 2018, 11:41:54 AM

Quote from: Canadouche on December 09, 2018, 05:45:50 PM

Quote from: Tonker on December 09, 2018, 02:22:38 PM

Quote from: CBStew on December 09, 2018, 01:29:47 PM

Quote from: Canadouche on December 09, 2018, 08:55:14 AM

Quote from: Wheezer on December 09, 2018, 01:28:12 AM
Well, the graph of the grades hasn't been presented yet.

I teach the 7th and 8th grades (I did mention they ranged from ages 12 to 14).

QuotePhilosophy? Morality? I swear to G-d, I thought I had seen the dumbest fucking comment possible (elsewhere), but now this. "Well done"? The whole point is that it backfired. Twice. And then there's the "Fuck those parents, Kurt. They are doing their daughter no favors. That's genuinely fucking horrible." and "borders on child abuse" crap.

It backfired twice and I'll be doing the same activity next year, if I'm teaching the same grade. (Which I probably will be.) Next week I'm going to be talking about the Decemberists' tune 12-17-12 which is about the Sandy Hook massacre. I'll remind my students that nobody is promised a long life and that we can lose loved ones at any time. In my class is a student whose father was murdered two Augusts ago, and another student whose mother was murdered last May. A third student in my class is losing her mother to breast cancer. I know these kids pretty well, and they know they can take a break/go for a walk if the subject matter hits too close to home, but there's always the risk that the conversation might make someone in the class upset. So, should I not talk about something important because it might "backfire" for one of my students?

In a room of 30 kids, there's always going to be someone who doesn't want to hear it/participate. There's always the risk, as unlikely as it may be, that a 12 year old still believes in Santa. I don't think it's child abuse to perpetuate that, but I don't think the parents are doing their kids any favors by ensuring that they are the very last ones to learn the truth. Kids can be pretty cruel and excluding even without an excuse to do so.

It may not be child abuse to encourage a 12 year old to believe in fairy tales, but these parents don't want their children to become rational adults.  That is bad parenting.  A parent's function is to help the child to become a self sustaining adult.

Our ten-year-old still fervently believes in Father Christmas.  I guess this is the last year, but if it's not, then I'm certainly not going to spoil it for her next year, or indeed the year after.  She's well on the way to becoming a self-sustaining adult regardless of whether she continues to believe in fairy tales for an arbitrary number of days more.

That said, should somebody choose to disabuse her tomorrow, then at this point I'm certainly not going to get bent out of shape about it.  We had a good run.

Pretty sure I believed until I was around 10. I might have even made it to 11, for what it's worth.

Wait a minute, are you guys saying that Santa isn't real?

Bro, Santa crashed his sleigh into a tree in 1983 and he fuckin' died, bro.

Santa, and Christmas for that matter, was not part of my religious/cultural background.  Therefore, I was very confused when, at the age of 4,while in a department store with my mother,  she dropped me off in the line waiting to see Santa.  The rummy old guy lifted me onto his lap and asked me what I wanted for Christmas.  I told him that I wanted to be an Indian (I had a fixation with Tonto at that time).  He told me that if I was a good boy and ate all of my spinach (he had a fixation on Popeye at the time) that he would bring me an Indian suit.  I shook my head and told him that I didn't want an Indian suit, I just wanted to be an Indian.  I don't remember what he said in response, after all it was 78 years ago, but he knew he had to meet his quota of lap sitters for the hour and he dumped me off and called for the next non-believer, who happened to be my older brother.  I never got an Indian suit, which didn't surprise me because I didn't believe in that guy.

My kids (7 and 9) both definitely still believe in Santa and the absurd Elf on the Shelf mishaps that my wife and I come up with every night. 

I firmly agree with Tonk. I enjoy it, I think it's just fine for their development and when it comes to a halt, invariably soon, we'll deal with that and I'm pretty sure it's all going to be fine.

And maybe we'll get some credit for all the presents we gave them over the years instead of that fictional fat bastard.

Fred Hoiberg.

Quote from: Wheezer on November 30, 2018, 04:24:33 PM
Anyway, on the the PBR front, I was totally unaware of its near demise until just recently.

It was about 2-3 solid weeks of potential demise before it was miraculously saved.
I'm not saying it was a PR stunt, but I'm a little cynical.

Quote from: Wheezer on November 26, 2018, 01:34:41 PM

Quote from: Canadouche on November 26, 2018, 08:30:46 AM

Quote from: Wheezer on November 15, 2018, 01:18:55 AM

Quote from: Canadouche on November 12, 2018, 07:02:19 AM

Quote from: CBStew on November 05, 2018, 09:37:47 AM
I had that dream again last night.  You know.  The one where I am back in school and on my way to take a final exam in a course where I never attended a class and never opened the text book, but it didn't matter because I couldn't find the room where the test was being given.  This was a variation.  It was a Wednesday and I was booked to perform a guitar concert on the following Monday.  However, I don't know how to play the guitar and didn't own one.  To make it worse, I had picked out my wardrobe for the event.  Leather bell bottom jeans, a shiny, pointy lapeled, print, polyester shirt, a phony leather vest, and a leather cap that a pimp wore in the 1970s.  What a nightmare!

Relevant xkcd. As far as I can recall, I think I've only had one university dream since I graduated. Maybe I'm less likely to have school dreams, since I'm still in schools every day. I have had a few stress dreams about not being prepared to teach.

One of us (tinu) is an outlier. I have university dreams, work dreams, recurrent dreams where I already know the paths through the weird buildings, and wandering-around-lavatory dreams, which have a pretty obvious meaning but are nonetheless baroque. The less REM sleep the better, in my case. And then there's the issue of trying not to try to forget trying to forget this mental garbage-collection.

Screw the peribracial area and the horse it rode in on.

When I was a kid, my recurring stress dream was that I'd try to cross the street, trip, fall, and be paralyzed as oncoming traffic moved toward me.

Oh, yah, the paralysis dreams. I would also pass out twitching in these. Have I already told the story about what happened after I tried lucid dreaming per Omni magazine?

We'll stick with tonk's lucid dreams, thanks.

Quote from: Saul Goodman on November 15, 2018, 09:30:38 PM

Quote from: Tonker on November 15, 2018, 01:28:17 PM

Quote from: PenFoe on November 14, 2018, 04:46:44 PM

Quote from: PenFoe on November 13, 2018, 01:39:37 PM

Quote from: Tonker on November 13, 2018, 12:46:56 PM

Quote from: Quality Start Machine on November 13, 2018, 08:20:36 AM

Quote from: Saul Goodman on November 13, 2018, 03:19:31 AM
I humbly seek the current wisdom/learned degeneracy of the Desipio crowd.

I never tried alcohol until I was in my 30s. (I know, I know, that explains a lot.)

People keep asking me what I like and the answer is, I don't know yet. So I have a chance to do this right! No crushing 64-packs of Natty Light in a dingy frat house. No sir, I'm gonna be a classy drinker.

So what's the best stuff for a brand-new, 8-month, occasional social drinker to try and what's worth avoiding altogether? What should I order at a bar to not look like a complete jackass? This is probably your only chance to advise a new drinker without attracting police attention! I'll revisit the rest of this thread in time, but it might assume a little more working knowledge than I have. So far I've tried some red and white wines, basic cocktails (martini, old fashioned, whiskey sour, daiquiri, nothing else memorable), and some beers. Mostly pale ales and an IPA or two. And a Hefeweizen. I have not tried Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Coors, or Busch and am not really planning to change that.

And Malort is already #1 on the Try list, so don't even bother. (It's not.)

If you're in a bar and want to try a gateway Scotch, most watering holes stock either Glenlivet or Macallan. Get them neat (no ice), you can always add an ice cube if you want. For bourbon, the good starters are Makers Mark and Knob Creek. If your local bar has Woodford Reserve, try that. Again, no ice, you can always add it in if you want.

Try it for yourself, but in my opinion, far better than adding ice is to add a few drops of room-temperature water to your single malt.

I'll let others jump in on the liquor, but in terms of beer, you should try some stouts and darker beers to see if you like them.
Since this is all new, try a Brown Ale and an Amber Ale too.  You may "graduate" from those eventually, but they're very good for new beer drinkers.
After that, try a couple sours. 

IIRC, you're in SoCal, so you have no shortage of options. 
Look for Modern Times (Black House) or Firestone Walker (Mocha Merlin, not on Nitro) to start with stouts.

Even better, you should really just go into a good local brewery with a decent selection*, sit at the bar and explain to the bartender that you've just escaped from The Church or whatever depraved rationale for never having had a drink before and ask him/her to give you a good flight or two. 

There's no better way to find what you like.

*Note: I'm contractually obligated to mention that any SoCal brewery except Ballast Point is a good choice, as they are merely Big Beer in craft clothing.

I'm contractually obliged to mention that there's nothing wrong with Big Beer per se, and that Saul might find that he enjoys a Sam Adams Boston lager or a nice cold, fizzy PBR, say.  I do.

Noted.

Thanks, morans.

You won't hear me besmirching Sam Adams. 
They are (still) pretty far from Big Beer.

Also, while it's not my bag, Hard Cider has come a long, long way and I know a lot of people drinking it. 
Worth giving it a shot.

Quote from: PenFoe on November 13, 2018, 01:39:37 PM

Quote from: Tonker on November 13, 2018, 12:46:56 PM

Quote from: Quality Start Machine on November 13, 2018, 08:20:36 AM

Quote from: Saul Goodman on November 13, 2018, 03:19:31 AM
I humbly seek the current wisdom/learned degeneracy of the Desipio crowd.

I never tried alcohol until I was in my 30s. (I know, I know, that explains a lot.)

People keep asking me what I like and the answer is, I don't know yet. So I have a chance to do this right! No crushing 64-packs of Natty Light in a dingy frat house. No sir, I'm gonna be a classy drinker.

So what's the best stuff for a brand-new, 8-month, occasional social drinker to try and what's worth avoiding altogether? What should I order at a bar to not look like a complete jackass? This is probably your only chance to advise a new drinker without attracting police attention! I'll revisit the rest of this thread in time, but it might assume a little more working knowledge than I have. So far I've tried some red and white wines, basic cocktails (martini, old fashioned, whiskey sour, daiquiri, nothing else memorable), and some beers. Mostly pale ales and an IPA or two. And a Hefeweizen. I have not tried Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Coors, or Busch and am not really planning to change that.

And Malort is already #1 on the Try list, so don't even bother. (It's not.)

If you're in a bar and want to try a gateway Scotch, most watering holes stock either Glenlivet or Macallan. Get them neat (no ice), you can always add an ice cube if you want. For bourbon, the good starters are Makers Mark and Knob Creek. If your local bar has Woodford Reserve, try that. Again, no ice, you can always add it in if you want.

Try it for yourself, but in my opinion, far better than adding ice is to add a few drops of room-temperature water to your single malt.

I'll let others jump in on the liquor, but in terms of beer, you should try some stouts and darker beers to see if you like them.
Since this is all new, try a Brown Ale and an Amber Ale too.  You may "graduate" from those eventually, but they're very good for new beer drinkers.
After that, try a couple sours. 

IIRC, you're in SoCal, so you have no shortage of options. 
Look for Modern Times (Black House) or Firestone Walker (Mocha Merlin, not on Nitro) to start with stouts.

Even better, you should really just go into a good local brewery with a decent selection*, sit at the bar and explain to the bartender that you've just escaped from The Church or whatever depraved rationale for never having had a drink before and ask him/her to give you a good flight or two. 

There's no better way to find what you like.

*Note: I'm contractually obligated to mention that any SoCal brewery except Ballast Point is a good choice, as they are merely Big Beer in craft clothing.