I flipped on Fox Soccer Channel this evening to get another footie fix, after being orgasmic over Chelsea's title-clinching performance this morning. I was greeted with the second half of the MLS contest between locals the San Jose Earthquakes and ... what the f@#$!!! ... Real Salt Lake?!?! I raised an eyebrow or two when the MLS was first created and one of the teams was named DC United, obviously in deference to English clubs like Manchester United and Newcastle United. Now they're paying homage to Spanish clubs? What's next, AC Albuquerque? PSV Syracuse? Olympique New Orleans? As if in answer to my question, the commentators began discussing FC Dallas's performance in an earlier match. Jesus freakin' christ. When the MLS first began, of course US soccer had to do something different and made the idiotic decision that no game should end in a draw, meaning any match could go to extra time and possibly penalties. But did they stop there? Of course not ... instead of a conventional penalty shootout they instituted this ridiculous hockey-esque penalty showdown where a player gets a one-on-one with the keeper with five seconds to score. Thankfully widespread disgust quickly did that in. I have no idea why the US sees the need to try to improve upon a game that is played all over the world with near universal rules.

The quality of the league is slowly improving. I remember watching an MLS cup final around 2001 and thinking "these are the two best teams in US soccer?!". Neither team could hold possession for longer than five seconds. No skill on the ball, horrible player spacing, no imagination whatsoever. The match today wasn't much better, certainly on the losing end when compared with the skill and pace on display in the Chelsea/Bolton match. However the league is inching towards credibility, attracting higher profile players (although usually ones past their prime looking for one last payday) and honing players for the US national team. This progress was apparent in the last World Cup, where the US team was denied a spot in the semifinals only by a goalline Oliver Kahn save.

My gripes aside, i'm contemplating buying a team-specific ticket for the US for Veronica and i for the next World Cup. It would give us a decent chance of getting tickets, and hey ... despite my anglophilic leanings i AM a yank.

Said goodbye to V and Jenz at 8am this morning as they headed down to Coachella, then set myself up in my Chelsea kit in bed with the dogs to be ready for the 9:15am kickoff of the Blues at Bolton. Three points would guarantee no one could catch Chelsea in the race for the Premiership crown, but away at Bolton is no easy task. José Mourinho fielded a squad of fringe players, giving starts to Jiri Jarosik, Gérémi, and Tiago while resting Arjen Robben and Damien Duff ahead of Tuesday's Champions League second leg against Liverpool. As is Chelsea's way, this taped-together team had a tough time imposing their will early on. In fact, Bolton dominated the first half and should've had a goal or two if not for the efforts of England's best goalkeeper Petr Cech. Bolton played with their characteristic aggressiveness and physicality, giving Premiership player of the year John Terry a black eye before the half. The commentators were curious about an injury that hobbled Frank Lampard in the first few minutes then mysteriously went away ... don't know if it was embarassment or an unwillingness to correct themselves, but it was quite clear to me based on his symptoms, recovery, and subsequent laughing with Didier Drogba that Frankie had taken a ball in the nuts. All in all i was none too impressed with our performance in the opening period ... too many errant passes, not making any use of our possession.

We began to exploit holes in the Bolton defense in the second half, as the game got even testier. Bolton were livid over a few referee calls, but in all fairness they were lucky not to see even more cards. After one such perceived injustice in the 60th minute, Petr Cech sent the free kick down to Eidur Gudjohnsen on the edge of the Bolton box, who headed in to Didier Drogba, in turn heading to the left side where Lampard charged down Candela, rounded him, and sent a fierce drive past Jaaskelainen into the goal. Celebrations ensued ... we could feel the title in our grasp. I was literally screaming in joy at the tv, feeling every bit of the ecstasy that was obviously running through Frank Lampard as he revelled in front of the travelling blues fans. Bolton began throwing even more players forward, inevitably leaving themselves exposed at the back. In the 76th minute a failed Bolton attack was sent out to Claude Makelele, who spotted Frank Lampard and Ricardo Carvalho racing down the center of the pitch with no defenders within 15 yards. Lampard collected Makelele's pass, rounded Jaaskelainen with a shot feint, and bagged the empty netter. The goal broke Bolton's resistance, and 20 minutes later our championship season came to fruition. The dogs must've thought i was insane. With the confidence of this away win at tough Bolton, we head to Liverpool on Tuesday needing a win or a scoring draw to secure a place in the Champions League final. Hopefully we can field Duff, Robben, and Joe Cole at peak fitness, and get yet more stellar performances from Lampard, Terry, and Cech.

I've waited for eight years to enjoy a Chelsea championship, while some of my brethren have been waiting since 1955. It was worth it.

blue is the colour football is the game we are the champions and Chelsea is our name!

On our last evening with Bob, we met up with Veronica's cousins Naomi and Millie (Geoff is off in NYC on business) as well as Dionne (in the Bay Area on business) for a good Thai dinner at Erawan in Redwood City, followed by the 9:40 showing of Kung Fu Hustle. The flick is Hong Kong cinema kingpin Stephen Chow's latest, set in 1920's-era Shanghai and centering on two hapless street hustlers, a slum home to a collection of peasants and a few master warriors, and the ruthless crime syndicate the Axe Gang. As with his previous domestic release, the fabulous Shaolin Soccer, Chow balances a mesmerizing array of kung fu acrobatics and superhuman fight sequences with humor, both subtle and lowbrow. I particularly enjoyed the death scene where the fallen warrior advises his friend "with great power comes great responsibility" (a direct quote from Spider Man). He then blurts out "what are you prepared to do?!?!", acting out Sean Connery's death scene from the Untouchables. His friend asks why he's speaking in English ... hilarious. My favorite fight scenes were those involving the world's number one killer the Beast, recently liberated from a mental hospital where he claims he was letting himself be incarcerated since there aren't any worthy opponents anymore. His climactic showdown with Stephen Chow is brilliant. The movie doesn't stand up to a whole lot of dissection, but what you get at face value is plenty.

This Boxer Rebellion album keeps sounding better and better. Another band that will hopefully visit the states sometime, although the fact that a domestic release for Exits is not on the cards isn't a good sign.

music is the life man
music is the life man
cries and cries and feels so nice

Tara must've been calling in favors as her and Pepe's date with the kennel approached. The day before we were set to drop them off and head down to L.A., V gets a call from her stepdad Bob telling us that he was on his way up for the weekend. She told him that we were leaving on Saturday morning, but proposed that he stay at our house if he wouldn't mind looking after the dogs. So Tara and Pepe escaped the kennel by the skin of their teeth. I've got visions of her going through V's rolodex calling people asking "can you come take care of us?".

So Bob arrived on Thursday in time for a homemade burrito dinner. I headed off to work early the next day to host a visit from a collaborator from Australia. The day was spent walking all over campus to show him around, organizing a seminar and being told the room i had booked was in fact not reserved, scrambling to get the 30 attendees into our alternative seminar room, taking him to lunch with the radiobiology folks at the California Café, and getting unexpectedly rained on while taking him to see the new Lucas Expansion. A good day, socially and scientifically, but exhausting. On my way home i decided to reward myself and go see if Best Buy had any PSP's in stock. They did, and i was able to buy one without being forced to purchase a bunch of crappy accessories. I headed home to Bob and the dogs with the basic PSP kit, Ape Escape: On the Loose, Wipeout Pure, a 256 MB memory card, and a service plan. Not bad. We took Bob to dinner at the fantastic Palo Alto Cuban place La Bodeguita Del Medio on California. On returning home we found the power was out on our block, so i packed for our L.A. trip in the dark and was forced to leave the PSP untested as i couldn't charge it.

We left the dogs and Bob at about 8am the next morning, hurrying to get to Pasadena by 1pm for Veronica's haircut appointment. By making only one five minute gas stop and driving 85-95 the whole way down the 101 to the 152 to the 5, we made it just in time. I dropped her off and headed to Downey to see Geoff's friend Alex at his car shop, eager to get my new Alpine deck and iPod adapter installed. He was super friendly and had me hooked up in an hour. The new deck is sweet, although the iPod interface can be a bit tricky. It's a limitation of the head unit, which has a small amount of memory and can only cache a portion of the iPod's contents. However, i generally listen to my iPod on shuffle and it's great for that. It shows the artist and song on the stereo, and it charges the iPod while it plays. I'm loving it, although until V gets her new car i'll only get to take advantage of it on weekends and trips. Doh. While Alex was fiddling with my car i got my first chance to try out the PSP. Freakin' sweet. Wipeout is incredibly slick. This thing kicks the Nintendo DS's ass, hands down. Nintendo has made a slew of lousy business decisions in recent years, but i figured their stranglehold on the portable gaming market would continue. The concept of the DS is fine, but they have piss poor third party development and as usual have only released a handful of mediocre games in the months following launch. Sony might clean their clock in this battle.

I then picked up a freshly shorn and colored Veronica and we headed to Matthew and Dionne's. After i lost yet again in Winning Eleven 8 International (this time squandering a 2 goal lead and going down on penalties), we all got dressed and met up with Kevin, Kelly, and fellow visitors from the north Nathan and Summerlea for an excellent dinner of Japanese barbecue at Manpuku. V even tried the surprisingly tasty marinated beef tongue. It was then off the Downey (again, for me) for Michelle's 30th birthday party. For me, it was lots of Newcastle and soccer talk with Matthew and Sean, but fun nonetheless. Pics can be seen here.

We again made hasty travel on Sunday (but not after i recovered some dignity by beating Matthew 2-nil in a final WE8I match) so i could attend a dinner with more hypoxia imaging colleagues, in advance of a Monday meeting at Stanford to discuss implementing a hypoxia PET clinical trial. Very productive. My work week is now occupied with polishing off a fellowship application for a graduate student i'm working with, generating slides for a presentation at Nuclear Medicine Grand Rounds next week, and setting up even more collaborations. Things are snowballing now, which is very good for me. I got word that i was awarded my second grant a few days ago, this one a $150k award spread out over 5 years to develop PET agents for imaging epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Busy busy!

V is heading south again this weekend with Jenz, Naomi, and Geoff to attend Coachella, aka baked indie party in the desert. The lineup is great but i 1) need a rest, and 2) don't want to leave the dogs for a second weekend in a row. It'll give me a chance to get ready for Grand Rounds next week and to devote some time to my completely overflowing cup of video games, including Half Life 2, Doom 3, Wipeout Pure, Ape Escape: On the Loose, and the now almost-forgotten Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

Got an advance of the forthcoming debut album Exits by the Boxer Rebellion the other day, and it's sweeeeet. The band has put out a few ep's over the past couple of years, including the brilliantly moody burner Watermelon, but seemed to be dragging their heels in getting an album out. Signed to Alan McGee's reemergent Poptones label, i thought maybe they'd go the way of other super-hyped bands and implode before making the scene. The album was worth the wait though ... certainly a throwback to the days of Creation, but not a weak song on the record. I find it amusing that the reviews all refer to the Boxers' sound as aping B.R.M.C.. Yeah, like those numbskulls invented that sound. Need to go back a little further, guys.

Chelsea have just kicked off in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal against Liverpool. Something not so entertaining about a European cup tie taking place between two teams from the same country. Oh well. We've beaten them three times this year, but none were particularly emphatic. Liverpool have played like crap in the league lately, but have managed to get to the CL semifinals by defeating Bayer Leverkusen and orchestrating a shocking upset of Italian giants Juventus. Their form in Europe has been the complete opposite of their domestic follies, and they seem to be building confidence so i'm worried. We can certainly win this thing, but Liverpool could be a sticky wicket. We've had nerves in our matches of late, as we try to seal the deal in the Premiership and the Champions League. We only need 1 point from four matches to claim the league title, which will hopefully come at the weekend at Bolton. However we've got to maintain our steely resolve to progress in Europe. The return of Arjen Robben will be a much-needed shot in the arm. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight guys, but let's not get blinded just yet. A sobering thought is that should we advance past the scousers, in all likelihood we will face AC Milan in the final, who have been imposing their will on the pitch with hitman-like precision and coldness.

I'm in a Starbucks in Newark at the moment, taking advantage of my wonderful little laptop and its wireless connection. I'm waiting for my Jetta to finish its 30k mile servicing at the dealer down the street ... they're throwing in a few recall-driven repairs and a battery replacement for my dead key remote as well. This Starbucks is right down the street from Newark Memorial High School, so i've already seen the parade of caffeine-fueled adolescents. Coffee has penetrated our pop culture to such an extent now that not only are 15 year olds getting their double mocha before going to homeroom, but the other day i saw three grade school kids slurping frappacinos on their way home from school. Egad. Not sure if getting youngins addicted to caffeine this early is good for mind or body.

I've also gotten to listen to a few of the Starbucks mix cds in their entirety. I was just forced to suppress the eye-rolls when one of the regulars had a conversation with a barista (don't even get me started) on the music. A Billie Holiday song was playing ... one of the most distinctive voices of the 20th century. The customer asked if it was Norah Jones as she'd just fallen in love with her. Okaaay. The barista replied that she thought it was Elvis Costello. I wanted to stand up and say i thought it was Frank Zappa.

I spent another weekend mostly cleaning, partly for Matthew and Dionne's visit as they were heading to a wedding in Pleasanton. The kitchen is now immaculate, and the living room is much improved as well. The kitchen even has food in it now, as V and i stocked up at Safeway on Saturday night after an ultra-quick but excellent Japanese meal at Naomi Sushi in Menlo Park. Last night i washed the majority of Veronica's surplus stores of clothes, and will complete the job with another couple of loads tonight. It was fun hanging with Matthew and Dionne, despite the fact that i got completely housed by Matthew on Winning Eleven 8 International. Apparently my tactics that work so well against the computer fail miserably against human opponents. Back to the drawing board. Matthew has the opposite experience, he can't beat the AI but had no trouble with me. Ah well. The real Chelsea is preparing to close out the Premiership and to tackle domestic foes Liverpool in the Champions League, so i'll just have to focus on that.

We're heading down to La-La land this weekend for Michelle's 30th birthday party. As such, we have had to find someone to take care of our little troublemakers (ha ha ha haaaa ha) Tara and Pepe. I didn't think much about it at the time, but we didn't go on any weekend trips the whole nine months that we had Cobi. Our lives can't go on hold forever though. My parents, fearful of feces about their house and the dogs' interaction with their cats Milenko and Petri, politely declined, and my sister Hilary is occupied. So off to a kennel they go. Having spent the better part of 3 years in shelters, i'm sure they're used to the kennel environment, but i'm fairly certain they're not overly fond of it. It's only for two days, so i think they'll manage. I've decided against accompanying V to Coachella the following weekend so that the dogs aren't left behind again. While in LA i'm hoping to get my new Alpine stereo and iPod adapter unit installed at Geoff's old car audio shop, so i can play with it during the drive back. Geoff da man, booyakasha.

Half Life 2 is still blowing my brain wide open. So pretty, so fluid, and so gripping. I've so far resisted the urge to run out and buy a PSP, but i don't know how much longer i'll last. The fact that a new Ape Escape installment was one of the launch games isn't helping.

Back to sipping my now-cold tea and casting judgemental glances at Starbucks customers.

there goes the fear let it go you turn around and life's passed you by you look to ones you love to ask them why you look to those you love to justify you turned around and life's passed you by

After discussing my increasing list of video distractions (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Doom 3, and Winning Eleven 8 International) the other day, i made the offhand remark that i wanted to check out Half Life 2 as well, if only my poor home PC could handle it. Well, my curiosity got the better of me at Staples yesterday afternoon while shopping for printer ink, and i headed home with both that and a copy of HL2. It's been quite a while since i played any PC games ... i believe the last one was Red Faction 2. Much to my surprise, a staggering five cds fell out of the box when i opened it. Installation took the better part of a half hour. Moore's law dictates that the number of transistors developers can pack on a microprocessor will double every 18 months, and i heard someone remark recently that software developers will chew up that performance boost just as fast. That rang true here. Anyhow, no serious problems with installation so i fired up the game.

Holy god. I've become a console-only gamer in recent years, but Half Life 2 reminded me how a well-designed PC game can blow away its Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube competitors. The game opens with Dr. Gordon Freeman (protagonist of the first installment) arriving at the fascist state of City 17 on a train. As soon as you walk onto the station platform you're greeted with a fully-detailed environment, dominated by huge screens playing a propaganda film featuring the city's leader. Valve billed this game as featuring "AI actors" and they weren't lying ... all the character models boast ultra-realistic facial expressions and movements. Gameplay is fantastic as well ... perfectly intuitive without holding your hand. I felt brilliant when i realized i could shoot the fuel cans next to a group of enemies and blow them to kingdom come. So far the game is a triumph of technology and storytelling.

My only complaint is the load times between areas, but i can wait five or ten seconds when the payoff is this great.

I keep meaning to sit down and summarize things over the last week or so, but work beckons. Or chores at home. Or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory/Doom 3/Winning Eleven 8 International. Whatever the distraction, it means the site keeps getting bumped to the bottom of the list. No longer. If only because the list of things i want to write is only getting longer.

One thing that has brightened my month so far is the initial review of the NIH grant, which i received a few weeks ago. A grant is first evaluated to see whether it even merits the review committee's time. If it passes this test, it is then discussed by a "study section" and assigned a numerical score. Lower scores are better, with the best being 100. The grants are then grouped in percentiles, and the top whatever percentiles are funded. So far all i've got is the numerical score, which was a 193. I'm told this is on the fence and may or may not get funded. Why am i so excited then? Well, first of all the grant passed the initial evaluation, which considering the NIH's shrinking budget (thanks, Dubya) is no small feat. Second and more importantly, if the grant doesn't get funded i'm allowed to resubmit it, commenting on what i've done to address the reviewers' concerns. Typically resubmitted grants have a higher chance of getting funded. For my first-ever submission, i'm friggin ecstatic.

My assorted projects at work have been gaining steam, making me feel ever more comfortable here. My postdocs Ivana and Lan are nearing readiness to submit their first papers, and the software i developed for display and analysis of PET/CT images is now becoming more popular for research projects within the department. I've developed several good friends within the Stanford molecular imaging program, which has made me feel much more at home with my colleagues in the Radiology department. I may be ready to call an end to the initial uncomfortable period that i go through with each new job.

My other jobs lately have been the house and the dogs. Last weekend i spent all day Sunday pulling weeds and trimming plants around our front and back yards. It took about 7 hours, manly because most of the plants had become quite overgrown since the last time i did yardwork. I find that pulling weeds out at the roots is a sort of perverse thrill. And there's something heartening about getting your hands dirty and doing some honest-to-god, back-breaking work. Both yards are now much improved, although i still have to find a way of cutting the back lawn now that the grass has overgrown so much it has rendered the rotary mower useless. I'm still getting over the soreness, but all for a good cause.

The weekend before last Michelle and Sean came up from L.A. to spend their last few days of spring break (they're both teachers) with us. V took them to Popscene on Thursday night, and i came from early from work on Friday to have lunch with them at the quite good Palo Alto Creamery in the Stanford Shopping Center. That evening the three of us hopped on Caltrain and met V in the city, where we then headed to Jillian's in the Metreon for my good friend (and wedding officiant) Michael's going away party, just two days before he headed off to a new job in Vietnam.

Allow me now to take a sidebar and say what a great friend Michael has been over the years. We met in the summer of 1995 ... i was berating my roommate Jayson as he was going to be in the UK when my new favorite band the Verve were in town, thus depriving me of someone to go to the show with. He suggested i call his friend Michael as he would probably be going. Michael was more than happy to let me tag along with him and his friend Tim, and i had a great time. Not long after the two of us again met up for a free Gene show in Union Square, and things snowballed from there. Both of us britpop junkies, Chelsea fanatics, and obscure music inside-joke purveyors, we just click. Over the years i feel like i haven't spent enough time with him, but he knows i love him (and that i'm just a flake). I hung out with him at the party to the end, when Peter loaded a ridiculously drunk Michael into his car at the garage across the street. I hope he has the greatest time in Vietnam, and that he knows that there's always friends for him back here. I'll be in the far east to visit before long, no doubt. By that time Michael will certainly be the mayor of Saigon.

That sadness aside (i tried in vain to get a tributory Campari and soda before the end of the night, but failed), V and my weekend with Sean and Michelle was fun. We saw Sin City the next night at the AMC 1000 Van Ness with Geoff, Naomi, Nathan, and Summerlea. Camps were split on the movie ... Geoff and i thought it was fantastic, with brilliant visuals and a nastily violent and biting sense of humor. V and Nathan however contended that the last half of the movie dragged and didn't hold up the pace and artistry of the first half. To each his own. My feelings was that it was exactly a comic book brought to the screen. Shot composition, lighting, color ... everything was as you would find on paper. Now to read the original graphic novels.

Chelsea's magnificent season has lately been overshadowed by manager José Mourinho's antics and the club's feud with UEFA (the governing body of European soccer). The manager's accusations of referee misconduct during the Champions League first leg match against Barcelona ended with a two match ban for Mourinho for making false statements. I was actually happy about that, as i wanted to get the whole affair settled. Any punishment short of getting kicked out of the Champions League was fine by me. A few days later however an UEFA report that seemed to back up Mourinho's claims surfaced. Mourinho also was reportedly upset that Chelsea didn't back him up more in his case, and allegedly was considering quitting. During the first leg of the CL quarterfinal against Bayern Munich, rumors swirled that despite his ban Mourinho was communicating with his assistants on the sideline via cell phones ... the media pointed to a "suspicious hat" being worn by the fitness coach and his unusual involvement in most coaching decisions during the match. We won the tie 4-2 and headed to Munich the next week to seal the deal. Mourinho then further pissed on UEFA by sending his fitness coach and fourth choice striker to the pre-match press conference (in contrast, Bayern sent their manager Felix Magathe and captain Oliver Kahn). What does all this mean?

1. UEFA are a collection of retards.
2. While his escapades may have some positive effects, José Mourinho needs to tone it down a notch before the whole world hates us.
3. Our squad is stronger than previously thought.

On the video game front, i was getting a lot of time in with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I'm on the fourth or fifth mission now, and am quite liking the minor improvements to the series. The bank mission was a lot of fun, stealing documents and some bearer bonds to make it look like a heist. As always, SC boasts the best graphics and lighting effects around. The AI is improved in this round, with guards much more likely to pull out flares and flashlights to investigate the dark spots that formerly provided nearly infallible hiding places. The other day however i received Doom 3 for Xbox from Gamefly and have been loving that. The game is almost the reverse of Splinter Cell: whereas in SC you're looking for those dark areas to hide, in Doom you dread them as they typically conceal some snarling demon. Doom 3 has made me jump on more than one occasion. When the lights suddenly go red and you hear a low rumbling laugh, fear of a horde of bloodthirsty monsters taking you apart grips you. The graphics here are no less impressive than SC, with fantastic texture work and character modeling. Now to just check out Half Life 2, if my PC can handle it.

I keep finding myself listening to Iron Maiden's 1988 concept album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I had the cassette in high school, it was one of my swim meet favorites. The record's story about the titular seventh son, his clairvoyant ability, and the village whose destruction he foretells, is a bit difficult to glean from the lyrics but is discussed in detail on a number of web sites. The music is a bit more synthesizer-driven than Maiden's previous efforts, but not overly so. "Can I Play With Madness" is almost atypically poppy but is a great song nonetheless. "Infinite Dreams" is a fantastic sprawling Maiden opus. A great album all around, and none of your "Iron Maiden?!?!" cracks please.

In more indie cool-friendly music, i heard a great Cocteau Twins song on VH1's The Alternative last night. I don't dislike the Cocteaus but hadn't until yesterday heard anything that really got me going "wow!". "Love's Easy Tears" has several fantastic bright, sustained, echoed guitar pieces, over Liz Fraser's typical lyrical gobbledygook. A few years later Chapterhouse used a very similar sound and riff for "Something More" on their classic debut album Whirlpool. The question however, is why can't i find any Cocteau albums that sound like this?

A while back Roo asked me if my site supported RSS, to which i replied that i had no idea what RSS was, so probably not. Since then i've poked around a bit and learned that RSS is a mechanism for syndicating site content so that it may be broadcast to any of a number of RSS readers. It's a quite useful strategy for receiving updated content from news sites and blogs. I therefore spent a few hours learning the guts of an RSS document (and a bit of XML in the process), and have now produced a CGI- and perl-generated RSS feed that syndicates the most recent journal posts and albums of the ~week on this site.

If this is up your alley, you can subscribe to my RSS feed by pointing your reader at the following URL. Enjoy!

http://www.fac13.net/rss/fac13.rss

With the country hopelessly mired in a no-win situation in the Middle East, fearful of an economy that can still be described as "sluggish" at best, and ready to sign the death certificate for social security, our fearless leader George W. somehow sees debating steroids in sports and euthanasia as a wise use of our government's resources. The whole Terri Schiavo thing could have been solved by locking her husband and her parents in a room and letting them figure it out. Instead, it turned into a political hot potato and sucked up god knows how much time and money, for no apparent benefit. Meanwhile, Congress convenes a hearing to discuss steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in sports. I'm as opposed to them as the next guy, but again ... this is not even close to being the most important problem facing the country today. Now we've got congressmen in North Dakota submitting legislation to have Roger Maris's 1961 single-season home run record reinstated, seeing as the three men who have bested it in recent years (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds) are all under suspicion of having used performance-enhancing drugs. Again, not the worst idea ever concocted, but i don't pay taxes to ensure the accuracy of baseball's record books.

The worst thing is that Jeb Bush keeps finding ways to interject himself into the national spotlight. And you thought the reign of the Bushes would end in 2008 ... guess again.