i would suspend my hero sammy sosa, of my favorite baseball team, the chicago cubs, for the rest of this young season.

a corked bat of any sort, especially one in the hands of the most loved player in baseball today shouldnt be tolerated any more than a locker full of kiddie porn.

because what it does is makes the public wince.

we want to trust our idols, especially in chicago, especially on the northside.

especially when our magic number is 121.

some might say that a corked bat is the same as a scuffed ball, or sandpaper in a pitchers glove.

we rooted for gaylord perry and his spitball, and we smile at ty cobb sharpening his cleats.

players cover their mouths with their gloves nowadays to prevent enemy lip-readers. cheating isnt cheating in baseball it’s playing.

if you dont get caught: good for you. if you do: nice try you old dog.

but even in baseball at some point you have to draw the line and a guy who is on pace to be the all time home run king has to hit all of those home runs fair and square.

it was your practice bat? fuck you.

and fuck you for having a corked practice bat.

if i was commissioner of baseball i would be saying fuck you a lot i have a feeling.

someone got a piece of paper, rolled it up, wrote dunce on it and put it on my sammy bobblehead on my desk.

the sammy sosa story is a great one. skinny outfielder who gets tossed from team to team until he bulks up and starts hitting the ball over the ivy of wrigley field.

latin hero who blows kisses to his mother, and hustles, and has a gun for an arm.

he took the cubs to the playoffs in 89 almost singlehandedly.

and broke everyones hearts with a ground out

against the devil rays of tampa bay.

i keep telling you about night games at wrigley.

and its evil.

sk smith + lago + dancing + joh3n

one particular young woman was having a problem with hecklers. one in particular who threatened her.

but before we get to that, is there anything better than corn on the cob?

shit man.

back in the olden days i worked for some big companies as a manufacturers rep.

what i had to do, basically, was to teach salesmen how to sell better.

i would help them sell everything better and in return i would ask them occassionally to sell my stuff better.

strangely, my company hardly ever asked me to have them sell the stuff better.

anyway, sometimes i would have to give demonstrations in the stores to the general public. i really liked those days because then i got to show the salesmen that i really could stand on their floors, in their stores, in their house basically and outsell their asses on any given sunday.

it helped that i had giveaway pens, and i could call myself the factory rep, but still, a box went out that door because of me and thats all sales is.

sometimes i would be giving a demonstration to one person and several people would gather and some heckler would say something smart as he walked past.

i would say, what was that sir?

only do this when people arent buying. if theyre buying pay attention to them. if theyre not argue with the heckler, this way your pitch is delivered when people arent looking.

thats just a twelve dollar cd player with a six hundred dollar price tag! he heckled.

what was that sir?

mummble mumble.

sometimes you could call them out sometimes you couldnt. hecklers generally arent used to losing the power struggle so if you get lucky they’ll repeat themselves or say something else stupid.

im sorry sir, this philips cd-i player not only plays mpeg video, kodak photo cds, over 125 interactive titles, but the audio is crystal clear with two hundred and fifty six times oversampling, created as you probably know from the inventors of compact disc technology, and the audio tape, philips electronics.

and since i see that the pioneer cd player next to you with eight times oversampling is being sold for $199 and all it does is play cds, then how much, if you were running philips, would you sell this revolutionary device for?

i would sell it for…

a thousand dollars? well thats what marantz cd players go for. some even more than that. marantz being philips high end boutique line. in fact the marantz model that has 256 times oversampling is listed at nearly three times the price of the philips cd-i. many people buy this just to have a hearty high end compact disc player that they can show their photographs on.

why would i want to see my pictures on tv?

well i dont know about you, but i have a huge

tv.

and sometimes im lucky enough to take a picture of a pretty girl.

i would rather look at the ladies on my tv with a beverage in my hand and my feet up–

why must you lie to the people?

i know, it sounds too good to be true–

philips didnt invent the cd player.

it’s funny, one of the most common misconceptions–

Sony!

is that sony invented compact disc technology.

always stay cool people. its your house. not theres.

but if you look at the patent, for ever dollar of royalties sony gets a quarter and philps gets seventy five cents.

and in this whole store, as great as it is, you wont find one sony cd player that plays photo cds, compact disc interactive cds, movies, and audio with two hundred and fifty six times oversampling.

but they make nice walkmans.

after you make the pitch you have to ask for the sale.

ask the heckler how many he’d like. tell him to try it and if he doesnt like it he can return it. tell him if he buys it now you’ll throw in comptons interactive encyclopedia absolutely free. it’s a three hundred dollar value.

i dont need an encyclopedia.

what is it that you need?

not that.

you sure have a lot of questions about it. i think you love it.

laughter.

i know i love. and im not ashamed. i even bought one for my mom. and i got a roll of film put on cd and i mailed it to her along with the cd player.

because i love my mother.

it helps if youre partly insane. it also helps if youre on salary and drive a company car and have nothing to lose if nobody buys a damn cd player.

one of the best ways to close a sale is to be quiet.

and abc you should always be closing.

so if no one says anything and everyone stays seated wait just a few more seconds than you want and if you still have the floor you really have the sale so what you do is say, mario, how many of 910s do you have in stock.

same as they did for months before you showed up. three. two, really. one has the box ripped open and is missing a remote.

three!

ive got three pga golf games, a treasures of the smithsonian cd, and a coupon for a free kodak cd, but i might have three. i’ll give those to the next three players that get sold.

at this point people will take action. they will either turn to their spouses and decide, or they will ask questions. if they ask questions say, if anyone wants one right now, mario will wrap one up for you, but i will be happy to answer your question. whats that?

and point at mario.

and keep the answers short.

the heckler will walk away and you will sell out. and then you will go home. and then any time you go back into that circuit city they will say there he is.

when hecklers show up on your blogs however, ignore them completely, delete their comments, ban them from posting, never reference them, and write down their ip address.

Earth-Info.Net

please dont make fun of me.

i wont make fun of you sammy, youre my hero.

it was a practice bat.

dude, youre preaching to the choir. im willing to say it was planted.

it was a practice bat that i use for batting practice for the kids to oooh and ahhhh before the game.

sammy, its cool, trust me.

if i knew it was my practice bat i wouldnt have used it.

bro, i couldnt care less.

this sucks so bad tony.

i know. im watching them saw in half your bat that you hit your 499th home run.

i want to die.

its just baseball, buddy.

its just my whole life. my whole reputation. my whole everything. baseball is everything to me. id be a busboy in cancun without baseball.

without blogger im nothing and you dont see me thinking about slitting my wrists when people say i cheat.

i didnt mean to cheat though.

if youre not cheating youre not trying, senor, you know that.

i am trying, and im not cheating. fuck!

what?

i just saw a kid wearing my tshirt walking down the street. i hate myself.

people still love you sammy. i still have my sosa bobblehead on the dashboard of chopper one and one on my desk.

you should throw those out.

why? are they corked?

even when im so very sad you can always make me smile tony.

thats very nice. do me a favor though, por favor, ixnay on the corked batsay, k?

done.

fuck people who show up for batting practice. theyre happy just to be watching batting practice. they dont need to see you hitting the warmup pitches into lake michigan.

i know. i know

and fuck this slump youre in, and fuck this goatee you have, and fuck whatever weird stress youre putting on yourself.

do you have any idea what youre talking about?

we all have pressure, bro, we dont have to cheat or lie to stay successful.

but i want to keep my goatee.

fine, if you keep the goat, lose the bad bats and learn to relax. your team is in first place even without your massive bombs.

yes, but for how long?

for as long as guys like carlos fucking zambrano keep pitching out of their minds-o

but i am the team captain.

yes and youre also the home run king. its math. put the home run king at the plate and let him swing, eventually home runs will appear. dont force it. do you force your poops?

sometimes.

ok stop forcing those too.

the pressure is insane.

sammy. pressure is in your head. its the devil. dont listen to the devil. listen to the angels. listen to the little voice thats trying to root you on. listen to the 37,000 fans who are rooting you on. all you have to do is put the ball in play. you have over 500 home runs. you know how to hit those. just hit the ball hard.

but what if i dont hit 50 this year?

dude, youre a Cub. we expect nothing of you. we’re lucky that you even play on our field.

i love you tony.

right back at you corky.

tim blair + brian + coyote meets bush + brian

did you watch that Miss Universe pagent last night?

i sure as hell did.

my attorney was over, we had thai. God i love thai food. first we watched American Juniors, then we drank beers and watched Miss Universe and I have to say that I called Miss Dominican Republic, Amelia Vega. she had me at hola.

eighteen years old is the new miss universe, la times, and i dont ever want to hear any more shit from you about the ages of the girls that i date.

she was smooth, she was classy, she was happy, she had it all.

i did like the legs of Miss Namibia and the cool class of miss japan (who got robbed and should have been in the top three) and i even liked Daisy Fuentes who is still hanging in there which is tough when youre standing in front of scores of hot women from around the world.

i liked the costumes, the evenening gowns, the sexshay introductions, and even the swimsuit competition.

i liked it all, la times, and i think you did too, but i wouldnt know because i dont pick up the paper any more because you lost me as a reader a long time ago and youve done nothing to get me back.

how come you didnt do what i did and have a picture or two or three each day on your cover introducing each woman? people like to see pictures of pretty women.

miss universe is still in high school. how cool is that?

dont young women need role models any more?

isnt a high school miss universe from a country that most people cant find on a map even somewhat interesting? i think it is. but then again, i also think you suck so maybe you dont care what i think.

you suck because you pretend that you are a local paper but youre really an international paper, and then something like the miss universe pagent shows up that couldnt be more international and i dont see special sections or color full page spreads, or wagering, or handicapping.

maybe you could have given the kids of los angeles a two week geography lesson as to where most of these countries are and have a nice map and a nice picture next to it. maybe this week you could tell the kids of la about the four runners ups countries.

do you only educate the masses about geography when we’re about to blow shit up?

maybe youre part of the problem.

quick: whats the capital of canada?

how fucked up is it that the kids of los angeles know what the captial of afghanistan but not the capital of canada, our neighbors to the north.

war shouldnt be the educator of everyone, peace and love should.

lets put these beauty queens to work.

your pal,

tony

la examiner + welch + big dump truck

and thats fine. it is a mysterious thing and i cant really say that i am sold on it just yet.

i have not experienced the hallucinations that others may have, i didnt feel the urge to cut my ear off like some, and i didnt get the liquidy gorgeous dreams that helped spawn the likes of alice in wonderland.

all it did was get me a good buzz.

there is another bottle that has yet to be imbided and i hope to do that with my favorite drinking partner, miss poland, sometime soon. the only problem is shes going to be away for a while and i dont think she cares for the stuff any more.

people ask me what its made of, i tell them that i dont know. something to do with wormword.

people ask me if it tastes like black licorice and i tell them no, it tastes like black cough syrup.

people ask how they should drink it should they get their hands on a bottle from a mysterious stranger like i was lucky enough to be sponsored by.

this is how i have been drinking it.

yank a spoon from your heroin-taking roommate. take his lighter too. put a sugar cube on the spoon. pour a generous shot over the sugar. light the spoon on fire. dont get scared. let it cook. dump it into a glass. dont be scared if the glass catches fire.

be scared if the table and carpet catch fire.

be scared if your leg catches fire.

this is all a part of the crazy buzz and strange dreams.

then add a shot of water, stir the sugar cube, make a toast and shoot it down.

even under these circumstances its going to be strong and sweet and will burn a path down your throat that will go down to your toes.

kiss the girl in front of you and then hand her the spoon and repeat.

thats how i drink it.

now there are also lots of different fancy absinthe spoons. perhaps i will invest in one or more if my supply keeps coming in. i think crazy spoons are fun, especially if they are useful.

the point of the absinthe spoon is so that the cooked sugar + liquor can drip into the awaiting glass. i would also like to invest in some proper glasses.

one thing i learned in college is that there is a sacred ritual to getting shitfaced that is part of the glamourous dance and it is what seperates us from the riff raff.

enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

smell the booze, watch the flame, be one with the sugar cube, enjoy the nice kiss.

tune in next week when we discuss how to program your vcr.

reverse cowgirl + dumb monkey + cry of capricorn

hi month of gemini, you random insult generator of a month. hi.

today for no reason what so ever i feel a ton better.

last night i made an 11-page photo essay of the Tsar show on friday night. i was up till 2am so you better say nice things about it.

and be careful because there is some full frontal nudity.

yes it’s still gray and crappy in la but its beautiful because people said nice things to me last night.

one particular girl is trying to tempt me into doing bad things and when i tell her that she needs to stay away thinks im kidding, but no, you need to stay away.

normally i am in control of the things that i do, but for some reason with her im not so sure i could hold back my emotions and lustful feelings.

dont you women want honesty from us?

heres the honest message: stay away until this clears up.

bad part about animal magnetism isnt the animal part because that can be satisfied, it is the magnetism part because that never goes away.

so go away temptress, go away for a little while, i care about you and i want the best for you.

i hear metallica is releasing their cd early so as to thwart downloading. is this reverse psychology?

i wasnt even interested in even downloading the new metallica because they do nothing for me any more and i disagree with their politics.

but now, just to spite them i want to download their new cd and “share” it with all my anonymous friends.

is this just some genius marketing ploy on their part similar to when they first started out and acquired a grassroots fan base when they encouraged people to make tapes of their first recordings and trade them?

only the devil knows.

speaking of which, i dont want to see any more mean comments in this thing. this is a place of peace and happiness and if you need to be reminded, this is what is ok for comments: questions, praise, links to similar subjects, praise, clarifications, praise, and praise.

xeni + oliver + instapundit

trouble starts every time you catch yourself rooting for a team called the mighty ducks.

then theres the fact that theyre an orange county hockey team.

fuck orange county, fuck hockey in orange county, fuck the ducks.

im into puck as much as the next guy, and in hollywood the next guy doesnt give a cluck about puck, and i give less.

i grew up in the midwest and my friends played hockey. i know hockey.

i was able to hang out with the girl who would be my first girlfriend because of hockey, so it’s not like i dont appreciate it. i do.

and because i do i feel weird rooting for the maroon and teal.

down with disney.

are they my hometown team? no.

the la kings are my hometown team.

eazy-e never wore a mighty ducks hat, therefore neither will i.

and shit.

in other news i still havent done my laundry.

in other news i love my tivo.

in other news i told the pretty girl at work that she missed out on a naked man by not going to the tsar show, she didnt seem all that impressed.

in other news, wormhog flowed the busblog ten bones.

57. wormhog

in other news my new best friend wants to send me more absinthe from overseas.

bless you, mysterious stranger.

yes, more please.

we took one down and passed it around, now theres only one bottle of absinthe one the wall.

why cant all of you send me wonderful gifts like my man did?

except for you, artistic woman who sent me two color photographs in a hand drawn envelope.

bless you too.

hell, bless you all.

even you mighty ducks of anaheim.

least intimidating sports franchise ive ever witnessed.

which may be their secret weapon.

that not so fresh feeling + lamelist + anti

im feeling better this afternoon. im not sure whats wrong with me.

maybe its the month of gemini. im all crazy inside. im all happy happy sad sad. now im mellow mellow.

i still dont want to work.

im on a government mandated fifteen minute break so i can answer all of the fan mail that i have been getting.

the first piece of business is to answer the question as to why i am putting these beauty queens on here day after day after day after day. the answer is simple. it is to promote my favorite beauty pagent, the Miss Universe pagent.

many people have approached me and told me that the busblog is a pretty sweet marketing platform and i look at them and say whaaa?

then they stuff money in my pockets and tap me on the back and leave after whispering things like talk about this, or talk about that.

is this to insunate that the busblog can be bought? you bet your bottom dollar. its just zeros and ones hippies and if the ones go infront of the zeroes then alls good in the hood.

meanwhile enjoy the parade of smiling faces and imagine the possibilities.

people ask me if i will promote this or that and without the proper zeroes and ones the answer is no.

then the correct ones appear magically and they ask if i would be kind enough not to say fuck this or fuck that and i say maybe.

then more zeroes and ones appear and poof the curse words disappear.

dont call it a sellout, ive been selling out for years.

every day that i walk into a profession that im not totally in love with and do the work of the man while he laughs at my lack of courage to go for the gold is a sell out.

if somehow i can weave the will of one with the art of another, thats not selling out, thats just beautiful.

and if i can get paid, then thats fucking rad.

heres to making dreams come true.

next year it wont be free, mr. trump.

brian has a good picture of karisa + bitchen + shark bitten + kate sullivan makes me love rock