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And the song is about you.

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author

Melvin Van Peebles also played a big part in the rise of a short-lived publishing imprint called Payback Press in the 1990s. There he championed the work of his old friend, the crime author Chester Himes and got an unusual "Melvin Van Peebles Presents" credit on a reissue of Himes' Harlem Cycle ("A Rage in Harlem," "The Real Cool Killers," and "The Crazy Kill") which are three OUTSTANDING pulp novels. A lot of people knew about the 1991 movie version of "A Rage in Harlem," but it was not easy to find the books, and reading those in 1996-97 was an absolutely enjoyable time for me. Still have my "Melvin Van Peebles Presents" edition with all three books in it.

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Melvin and Mario came to Roger Ebert’s film festival in Champaign several years ago to screen Sweetback and Mario’s Baadasss! They were a hoot.

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There are a number of Nats fans who spell the pitcher in question's last name as Qorbin when referring to him in writing.

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Seriously. Fuqq that guy.

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Only three more years till he's a free agent...

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I'm hoping that someone (Angels?) is willing to take him on as a reclamation project. I'd be OK with the Nats paying most of his salary to make that happen.

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Wait. Do we not say “fuck” around here?

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author

I have no problem with it. Sometimes a few people get a bit grumpy with me if I, personally, use excessive profanity, so I try to limit it a bit if possible. Not that I try that hard, but whatever.

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Fucking whew.

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Missed a golden opportunity to end this with “….but fuck it”

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I saw Excessive Profanity open for Industrial Shithouse at Wembley.

(I know you’re sleep deprived but it was RIGHT THERE, CB.)

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I was thinking Transgressive Little Fucks.

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Always liked Transgressive Little Fucks more than Disingenuous Jackwagons anyway.

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I was saving that for CB ;)

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Pretty sure that was the original name of the Bay City Rollers.

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Several years ago, I saw “Your Friends and Neighbors” at a film festival, and the director Neil LaBute had a post-screening Q&A. An attendee took the microphone to voice how offended he was by the profanity in the film (which if you’ve seen this film, you know the profanity is hardly noticeable behind the horrendous actions and principles of its characters, and the audience being offended is kind of LaBute’s point). The director responded with a very calm but direct, “Go fuck yourself.”

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Kiermaier lies worse than my youngest nephew, and if he's asked by his mom or grandma if he washed his hands after coming in from playing outside and he did not, he says "um, uh, I think so?" so the only way it could be more obvious is if a big flashing light went off when he was fibbing.

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If he is not well liked in the clubhouse I would believe it.

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He should. It's kind of impressive how bad he is at this, honestly. Like an alien with no awareness of how actual humans function when speaking with each other.

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What he should have said is “if you’re too dumb to keep your card, of course I’m gonna take it.”

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Exactly. And he should just lean into it now. Tell the Jays, "we're happy to give the card back. We've made copies, so it's cool if you want the original back."

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He couldn't fool anyone on the foolingest day of his life.

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He failed every class in his fooling degree at the University of Foolington.

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Kevin Kiermaier is exhibit 1 (in California the plaintiff has numbers and the defense has letters) in why you should all exercise your right to remain silent.

He didn't do anything wrong here, baseball wise* but they way he talks merits further investigation.

*in the world this is a crime. don't keep things that aren't yours

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Are you sure Kiermaier didn't do anything wrong here? I'm fairly sure the catcher has a lot of leeway when it comes to holding property through adverse possession.

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Sep 23, 2021Liked by Craig Calcaterra

That Epik hack is going to lead to a lot of people being outed who aren’t actually believers in the cause, but were “only on those sites to do research”

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Yes, which is hilarious because "only on those sites" in this case means, "registered the domain and paid for hosting for the sites."

Not that it matters to these people, of course; lying is their default SOP. But it's still amusing.

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“When it was there I saw data on racists — the hack happened so fast, honestly, hack happened so fast. I hacked it, didn’t know what it was, whether it was mine or not. They’re all pretty similar and then as I hacked it I realized it was that. I never even looked at it, I’ll say that. But at the same time, I’m not going to delete it or hand it back...Everything was so quick and after I did it I was like, ‘dang, their addresses and passwords or whatever it was, was on the site and I hacked it.’ Like I said, it got to the point that I’m not going to delete it or do that. It’s September, whatever. I didn’t know what was going on.”

- Anonymous

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Regarding the Kiermaier flap, in a somewhat analogous situation, former Congressman Thomas Downey, a high ranking member of Al Gore's campaign team in his 2000 race against George Bush, turned over to the FBI Bush campaign briefing materials - essentially materials Bush was using to prepare for his debate with Gore -- that were sent to him anonymously. He had nothing to do with procuring the materials but knew he should not have them and so he not only gave them up, but he recused himself from any further involvement in the debate preparation even though he immediately stopped reading the materials since he knew what they were and that he should not be possessing or using them. An instance of more ethics in politics than baseball? Of course, the analogy is not perfect since Downey suspected the materials had been stolen by whoever sent them to him.

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Reminds me more of McClellan's men finding Lee's marching orders wrapped around some cigars. Of course, McClellan didn't return them, either, but he was too cautious and slow to take advantage and crush the rebels. The Rays, on the other hand, continued to crush the Blue Jays, so it must be assumed they used the information to their advantage. Once again, the South shows itself to be shifty.

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Pete Walker is the Blue Jays' pitching coach, not the Rays'.

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Not one fucking Red Sox player is in quarantine right now.

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Ah, always a fine morning, when there's a Drive-By Truckers tune (and one of their Mount Rushmore ones at that) appended to the ol' Cuppa. (They're the band I've seen more than any other: about 35, 40 times since early '17, and that included the, um, little gap from March '20 till late August this year).

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Interesting that the obsessive rule-follower was "Craig", trying to rein in the chaos occasioned by transgressive little fucks.

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I thought we were going to get to the end of the story and have Craig say, "And I, I was that inveterate rule follower."

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Atlanta now with 3 infielders with 30+ homers. If Swanson (26) gets hot they can be the first team with all four. They are already just one of two with four at 25+.

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Thanks for the reminder of my undergrad botany class...oh yes, and for the thoughtful and insightful baseball coverage!

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You ... let the plants out and let them run around?

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Nope: 'But my God, I am fasciated with how bad Kiermaier is at lying!' Look it up, I guess...

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lol. I saw the typo in the writeup but completely missed the point you were making :). My favorite thing about fascia and fascicles and fasciation (well, apart from the coolness of the phenomena) is the word origin, rooted as it is in Roman history...

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"Christian Science forbids vaccinations against COVID"

FWIW, my mother, a devout Catholic through and through, got the vaccine after 3 priests and a Cardinal told her to do so.

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Thank goodness is wasn't one of the anti-vax Cardinals. There are a bunch.

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I'm sorry, is this meant to throw shade on the baseball Cardinals? Because they and the Rockies were the first two NL teams to reach the 85% threshold last spring.

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Thanks. I'm probably overly defensive about people assuming the Cardinals are super right-wing (although a lot of the fan base certainly is). I think I've been traumatized by Drew Magary.

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It's pretty clear the anti-tax movement transcends religious belief. I have several practicing Christian Scientists in my family and all got vaccinated.

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Rays 7 - Blue Jays 1. The defending AL Champion Tampa Bay Rays clinched their 3rd consecutive post-season berth in a blow-out versus the Toronto Blue Jays yesterday, defeating them 7-1. Six Tampa Bay pitchers combined in a 4 hitter against a mighty Jays line-up. Randy Arozarena went 3 for 5 in the effort. Austin Meadows hit a 3 run-homer 443ft in the 3rd which landed on the Black Lives Matter sign in right center field. Vlady Guerrero Jr went 2 for 3 and continues to show his impressive skills, making a difficult defensive basket catch in foul territory--always an adventure in Tropicana Field.

The Rays had a muted clubhouse celebration. Second baseman Brandon Lowe: “But to say that we don't have bigger aspirations in that clubhouse, we'd be lying to everybody. We have our eyes on something else … and we'll celebrate when we do what we want to do.”

In the 8th, Rays' centerfielder Kevin Kiermaier was HBP, resulting in the ejection of the Jays' pitcher Borucki and Charlie Montoyo, Jays manager by umpire Joe West. The benches cleared, but fortunately, no one was hurt and no fight occurred. According to the Jays, it was unintentional, however, the Rays claim it was retaliation for Kiermaier picking up their line-up card on Tuesday. Men smdh.

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Evan Longoria, when pressed by the hard hitting journalists of MLB's Intentional Talk, Kevin Millar and Chris Rose (oooh boy, it is tough to type that with a straight face), to confess which Rays player spent the most time in front of the mirror, stated that it was indeed Kevin Kiermaier. There you have it. Kevin Kiermaier is vain. Kevin also hates cats. Particularly, Craig Calcaterra's cats. Kevin is just a bad hombre, doing bad hombre things. Kevin probably puts ketchup on well-done steaks too and makes coats out of puppies. He's the worst.

This is just great fodder for when my Rays move to Montreal. They will have a built in rivalry with their fellow Canadians, the Toronto Blue Jays. Let's play ball. It'll be fun to see the Blue Jays in the post-season.

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The amazing thing about Soto's league-leading batting average is that he was good but not great until the ASB - taking tons of walks, but otherwise hitting lots of hard ground balls to the right side in the first half. Now, he's basically never missing when they pitch to him.

PS As someone who has slagged Alex Avila repeatedly here, it's worth noting that Josiah Gray's best and deepest outing (and first win!) came with the veteran behind the plate last night. I'm hoping he's teaching the young'uns how to do that next year.

PPS The EEOC claim by the Nats coaches is related to their stated objection to the use of fetal tissue in the development of the COVID vaccines, which they say violates their Catholic beliefs. The problem is that the Pope himself has gotten the vaccine and has said it's a moral duty of Catholics to do the same. It's the same NOT MY POPE BS we're seeing among lots of conservative American Catholics - including my sister-in-law, whose reason for not getting the shot has shifted over time. I'll defer to the employment discrimination lawyers here but this feels like a claim that won't hold up in court.

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One correction: They obviously do not use Ex-Lax.

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I'm looking for a religion that doesn't allow paying income taxes, if anyone knows of one.

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I have a progressive Catholic relative who is quite amused by people who quibble with the Pope or the local priest because he has the audacity to expect them to actually, you know, ACT on the tenets of their faith and really care for others and look after the disadvantaged in their community instead of just mouthing the words on Sunday and ignoring it the rest of the week.

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According to our union counsel, it's basically impossible to get a religious exemption to vaccines to hold up in court unless you're a practicing Christian Scientist (and I think Jehovah's Witness as well).

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Avila also caught Qorbin for those two starts earlier this month where he looked like a guy worth a 6 yr/$140MM contract.

Wouldn't be the worst thing for the Nats to sign him to a non-playing role next year just to be around and impart wisdom. Just don't let him play second base, even in a pinch.

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That, or "Never throw a punch with your pitching hand"

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