ashbury

So close. So close. A guy dies and is sent to Hell. Satan meets him, shows him doors to three rooms, and says he must choose one to spend eternity in. In the first room, people are standing in sh*t up to their necks. "You don't need to show me the others. I'll take this one. The next one might be Vance Worley in a blender," the guys says.

Winner winner chicken dinner. Don Mossi, widely regarded as the ugliest player in MLB history, it is.

A guy has a talking dog. He brings it to a talent scout. "This dog can speak English," he claims to the unimpressed agent. "Okay, Sport," the guys says to the dog, "what’s on the top of a house?" "Vance Worley in a blender?" the dog tries.

The blonde girl gets posted as soon as someone guesses this guy's name. Should be an easy one for folks of a certain age.

A guy meets a hooker in a bar. She says, "This is your lucky night. I’ve got a special game for you. I’ll do absolutely anything you want for $300, as long as you can say it in three words." The guy replies, "Hey, why not?" He pull his wallet out of his pocket, and one at a time lays three hundred-dollar bills on the bar. "Vance Worley, blender," he said tersely.

Boo Hiss.

This. Totally.

Got sumpin to do with a blender, I'ma guessin.

I give up. I'm going to put up the avatar of the pretty blonde girl, even though this is not a Win.

Can I un-Like my own post?

Fielder has some power.

Falling into a blender?

In a similar vein of irrelevancy, may I add that I never could eat another Hostess Twinkie after a co-worker regaled us with tales about his summer job working in their factory where it was 120 degrees inside and the workers' sweat would drip into the vat of cream filling they were mixing?

The crickets you hear chirping are the Twins bats.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3953[/ATTACH] I've been asked about my daily choice of avatar(s). That joke has pretty much run its course so I'm not going to continue it indefinitely, and I thought I should just put the lengthy explanation here as a blog entry for possible future reference. I started out without any visual embellishment to my postings. After a while I decided to try it out, after seeing others' choices. I didn't like my own photo for the purpose, and the first one I settled on, inspired indirectly I suppose by USAFChief's lovely older woman, was the equally lovely Amy Farrah Fowler. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3954[/ATTACH] Amy seems to capture the analytic tone I aim for in my posts (when I'm not being goofy). Why not Sheldon Cooper, if "analytic" is the aim? I don't know, I just find her character funnier, and I liked the incongruity of picking a female. I went back and forth with variations, such as this one. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3933[/ATTACH] Anyway, I later decided I needed an avatar to counterbalance my snark instead of amplifying it. I found this one, during a phase when TD policy was being enforced to achieve a kinder gentler forum, [ATTACH=CONFIG]3936[/ATTACH] and it felt right for the purpose and I used it for quite a while - you can say the rudest things and the sunshine just takes the edge right off. However, I went back to wanting something that said "no, I meant it that way." I settled for a while on McKayla Maroney, an internet meme after her Olympics medal ceremony went a little wrong: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3937[/ATTACH] I tried a similar one with McKayla and Obama [ATTACH=CONFIG]3948[/ATTACH] and I found one of Hrbek with the same looking frame of mind [ATTACH=CONFIG]3949[/ATTACH] I played around with a couple of other avatars of interest only to someone in my particular location: Tahoe Tessie [ATTACH=CONFIG]3945[/ATTACH] our local answer to the Loch Ness Monster, and Archie the mascot of the AAA Reno Aces [ATTACH=CONFIG]3946[/ATTACH] He's gross. I also tried this one. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3947[/ATTACH] Now, around this whole time, a TD advertiser was selling t-shirts. Bad Idea. (The company name, not a critique.) They used one model who was particularly striking, so much so that I figured it would kind of violate TD policy if it was not in an actual ad. So, naturally, I adopted her as an avatar. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3938[/ATTACH] As my project leader at my first job at Control Data would probably still say, she's a real day-brightener. (He would have been fired in the first week, nowadays, nice guy or not.) Notice the artful Twins logo I added, covering up the company blurb. To my surprise, this actually provoked a large quantity of (positive) feedback - and here I was trying to make a post-feminist statement or something. This photo was especially popular during game threads, garnering comments and making people not notice Aaron Hicks hadn't had a hit yet. It may have been due to her large bosoms, I can't quite be sure. At any rate I felt weird having her as my permanent avatar. So I hit upon the idea of using her strictly as an in-game avatar - a good luck charm. This, unfortunately, coincided with a bad few games for the Twins. So I tried mixing things around, using her as a reliever after she failed in the starter's role; she was there for Tyler Robertson's last home run, so I banished her from that role too. For a while she was the game-winning celebration avatar, where she couldn't cause the team any trouble. I still hate the idea that female members of TD would avoid the game threads on my account, though. Meanwhile, the Sunshine avatar got re-purposed for Kevin Correia - KC and the Sunshine Band, get it, get it? (Not unless you are over 40, probably.) It worked well in that role so I didn't want to change that. I also attached another internet meme, Allison Stokke [ATTACH=CONFIG]3939[/ATTACH] to Pedro Hernandez, who also did well with her as a good luck charm. (In addition to being pretty, Allison was a straight-A student in high school and got accepted at Berkeley, and set a freshman HS national record for the pole vault, prompting one wag to comment that she was the winner of the genetic lottery.) Yes, I added the tasteful TC artwork to her uniform too. I have not succeeded in finding a suitably lucky avatar for Mike Pelfrey; I tried the Free Beer one, and here's a more recent example: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3943[/ATTACH] but it did not help past the 5th inning yesterday. Worley has had mixed success with this one of a Yoga-ist [ATTACH=CONFIG]3940[/ATTACH] courtesy of Willihammer, but the Vanimal still gets the early-inning jitters so I may keep searching. I've tried this other t-shirt model for Scott Diamond [ATTACH=CONFIG]3944[/ATTACH] without resounding success for the pitcher (but plenty of positive feedback from other posters.) Oh, and here is another day-brightener who I tried as a good luck avatar but brought only bad luck (I think it was for Pelfrey again): [ATTACH=CONFIG]3950[/ATTACH] As for the bats, I have tried a change of pace for a "rally avatar" when the Twins need some runs in the late innings; I had high hopes for this one [ATTACH=CONFIG]3942[/ATTACH] but nothing materialized, and the following avatar was in place when Arcia hit a 3-run shot in the 9th [ATTACH=CONFIG]3941[/ATTACH] but it was not enough for a win, and in a more recent game it was used again but Arcia languished in the on-deck circle when no one ahead of him reached, so the jury is still out. I used the one-and-only Don Mossi one game: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3992[/ATTACH] I think that mainly covers it. I still had an idea or two for future games, but aside from that the joke is pretty much played out and I am retiring it, particularly as it is about as offensive to some as if I used photos of minstrels. But for people who want to see the Bad Idea girl in the future, well, she's blogged right here as an encore: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3938[/ATTACH] I do not however endorse this form of horndoggery.

All right, Vanimal is right, at last. Let's score some runs and make it a game.

Oh YOU'RE the one that put the curse on it.

True, but (not to put a curse on anything) Vanimal has had first inning jitters before. Last game, we noted that he delayed it to the second inning jitters; same diff. He's shown the ability to settle down and make it through 6 innings, so we can hope he holds to form here and gives his team a chance.

2-0. That didn't take long.

Batting leadoff against Verlander will tend to bring your batting average down to human proportions in a hurry.

Game avatar for Vanimal is now up, courtesy of Willihammer. Willihammer is invited to discard his current avatar for something a little less disgusting, BTW.

I've got a quick surgery scheduled this afternoon to get a broom removed from an orifice. After a week's recovery time I'll revisit this thread and see if I still feel the same way.

I agree with you 100%. It is crazy.

English is not Carlos's first language. I saw a taped interview Darin Mastroianni gave in Spanish, but I'm not qualified to judge how understandable he was; are you?