Zen and the art of cleaning carp

We don't feel like talking about the Royals at all...

C'mon, Scott McClellan didn't write anything that we don't already know. Geez, he was a PR guy -- OF COURSE he didn't believe the crap he was defending.

Everybody's writing a book. We hear Larry Craig's memoir is due out next year. That's not the kind of thing you'd want to display proudly on your bookshelf next to Profiles in Courage and The Greatest Generation.

Obama's actually written a few good books. The man can write.

Obama went to a black church because it was important to him to get at least some street cred. But he's still an elitist who knows about as much about the black church as he knows about cleaning a carp.

We do like the spirit of the Black Church. It's really much more interesting and refreshing than the Mega Church where the white Republican pastor is always so boring, in spite of the fact that he's always so gay.

BIG news

We just learned that Billy Butler has been sent down to Omaha. We're glad that we don't have Butler on our fantasy baseball team (mostly because we don't have a fantasy baseball team) and that we didn't name a blog after him or anything like that. Fare thee well in Nebraska, Big Honky Donkey. See you as soon as you learn to pull that inside pitch with authority and start kicking ass again.

Oh, and Aviles got called up. Can he actually play SS?

@#*!&%^@!

Well, that was one of the worst losses in Royals history (and there have been lots of them). But something important happened after the game. Jose Guillen said (and we're paraphrasing) that he's not going to take this fucking crap and that all of the fucking babies on the team who don't give a fuck about winning can take a flying fuck to the moooooooon! Jose Guillen is the fucking man. You don't know how fucking long we've been waiting for a fucking Royal to go the fuck off like that. Fucking great! We feel better. Go Royals!

P.S. Hal McRae's ashtray tirade aside, the best Fuck You moment in Royals history was when George Brett beat the shit out of that Yankee at third base just because he was George Fucking Brett. He rarely needed to go off on the media with F-bombs. He was an F-bomb on the fucking field.

P.P.S. If you haven't already read Joe Posnanski's take on last night's game, it's another instant classic.

We like winning better than losing

And losing and losing and losing. And so on.

Our impressions of last night's game:

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, YES, blah, blah, blah...CRAP.

We don't owe our lack of success to nobody

We’re done with the vacation and back at work for the American people. Today we’re writing a story about ethanol, which used to be known as snake oil.

Believe it or not, we don't think the Royals have bad plate discipline as a team (necessarily). It's just that opposing pitchers know they can throw the ball down the middle all day because nobody is going to hit it very hard.

We are thinking about reinstating our threat to sue the Royals for causing us emotional damage and severe depression all summer long. Our case, as it was conceived years ago, is built entirely on gross negligence. During the Dan Glass, Tony Muser, Tony Pena, Allard Baird, David Glass and Buddy Bell years, we’re pretty sure it was a STRONG case. And, trust us, we had DAMAGES that we could have proven in court. We’re not so sure that we could prove gross negligence this year, but we’re pretty confident that the Royals are really gross right now.

Here are some useful quotes from Catch-22 today. We don't know why you would find them useful, but maybe you'll find them either pertinent, poignant or funny.

-- "General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down."

-- He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

-- "While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it."

Beef on bun or short ends?

Getting swept by the BoSox in a four game series sucks. What doesn't suck is getting a special delivery of Gates' ribs from Kansas City. We can't fathom why anyone would EVER eat non-Kansas City BBQ made by white people. It just boggles the mind. Well, this next four-game series in Toronto is huge. The Royals could finally dig themselves that annual hole that's too big to climb out of. Or they could take 3-of-4from the Blue Jays and still feel pretty good about things.

Brian Bannister better do a lot of thinking between now and his next start. Or maybe he should try to stop thinking so much.

Has Mark Teahen now held down every position on the field where offense is supposed to be important?

Jose Guillen is starting to look like he really is worth that $36 million.

How bad would the Royals run production be if DM wouldn't have signed Guillen and Olivo last off-season?

We never thought we would be more worried about Billy Butler's bat than his glove.

What do you usually order when you go to Gates? Do you actually prefer another KC BBQ place? We've heard lots of talk about some of the other places, and we've been to most of them, but we still like Gates. And Oklahoma Joes.

P.S. Even though the Royals have been playing bad this week, our vacation has been good for the soul. Yesterday, we grilled brats at noon, drank beer, and taught some of the neighborhood women how to throw a curve ball.

P.P.S. Now it's back to the ribs.

Where have you gone, Mark Teahen?

Real quick -- more in-depth donkey analysis of this stuff next week, but Mark Teahen sucks and Billy Butler is a punch-and-Judy hitter. We are very disappointed, and we're not going to keep quiet about this shit. You'd think Teahen would be able to get it; you'd think he'd have a chip on his shoulder by now. He's got the talent, obviously, but it's becoming apparent that he's a bust. If people on the internet calling him Martha don't give him the requisite chip on his shoulder that he NEEDS to play with, then he's DONE. And we are very, very worried right now about the Big Honky. More later, certainly by next week.

We miss you, Moneyball. That was a really fine seven weeks you put together a few years ago.

A no-(s)hitter

You've got to be crapping us. Luckily, we didn't listen to one single inning. We were too busy running through the sprinkler with a bunch of kids. We turned the radio on some time after 9 p.m. and the game was already over. Maybe we'll make a better effort to bring the Royals some good karma tonight. Surely they'll get a hit this time. For now, we've got to run the vacuum cleaner and feed the dogs. This is Day 2 of the Mr. Mom vacation, and we are feeling very domesticated, insomuch as Big Donkeys can adapt to domestication.

We were never even IN aisle seven

We are on vacation, more or less, this week. So posts might be spotty. We are on Mr. Mom duty for a while, taking the kid to school, picking him up, watching the soaps in between, those kinds of things. Very busy. Later on, we might even take a shower and then drink some beer.

There’s not much to complain about in Royalland right now. Joe Guillen is positively on fire. Donald Greinke looks pretty locked in, and he can always hit if the pitching thing doesn’t work out. Even Teahen hit a jack yesterday. We’re still making too many outs on the bases, but it’s too nice outside right now to worry about stuff like that.

Can we play the Tigers every day?

Tony Pena Junior is on fire! That is all.

Ex post factos

More "live" blogging on the morning after a Royals game, joined in progress:

Big Honky with a single to right.

Teahen pulls a single to right. Denny said he DRILLED it.

OMG. TPJ just walked. OMG!

Bases loaded.

Way to go Honey Bun/Albania! Royals 2, Tigers 0.

Did we just try a double steal? Shit. Somewhere Earl Weaver and Billy Beane just threw up in their mouths. Christ. This team CAN NOT afford to give up outs on the bases. TPJ was the lead runner, and Honey Bun is the only Royal fast enough to be chasing the mechanical rabbit out there.

Apparently Adam Dunn is the original Big Donkey. But that's OK. We like Big Honky even better.

Hochevar still has them scoreless.

Moneyball with the walk.

Moneyball picked off. You've got to be crapping us.

Verlander's getting pissed and nasty.

BTW, Luke's pitching a great game. May the force be with him.

LuKKKKKe! Controlling the force, he is.

Sonic Slam Inning: Guillen singles, Honky lines out (at least he pulled it), Teahen lazy fly ball, Buck pops it up. Crap. Mary Griffey of St. Joe gets two tickets to a future Royals game.

Mahay in. Do the Tigers have any left-handed hitters? Hochevar leaves with a 0.00 ERA on the night against the best hitting lineup ever assembled.

Mahay has been pretty good this season. Nice top of the seventh, Ron.

Bob thinks it's the bottom of the sixth.

TPJ with a drive to the wall for a double. OMG! OMG!

Honey Bun with the sacrifice.

DDJ with a "flare," caught by SS.

Why are they walking Grudz to face Gordo? It's lefty-lefty, but this is a mistake, Leyland.

Loaded, they are. Pitching change (Thompkins Industries). Leyland really has a lot of respect for Grudz. What happened to Gordo? Guillen is up.

Son of bitch. Shit. Motherpussbucket.

Still, it's 2-0 Royals. On to the eighth.

Polanco solid hit. Mr. Nunez in from the pen.

Sharp single. Two on, nobody out.

Double play! Wahoo!

Pena's got it. Over to first. And that's the inning, people.

Yada, yada, yada. To the ninth we go, 2-0 Royals.

Here comes Captain Zero.

K-K

We love Soria's Big Curve with two strikees. You know it's coming, but there's nothing you can do about it.

Chicken frickin dinner! Thank you, Kansas City! We'll be here all week.

Lawyers, Guns and Money

"Not too many guys can pitch all out like that right after eating a big Chipotle burrito," Greinke told Big Donkeys. "I know Gobble wouldn't have made it through six full innings tonight."

We have Game Notes from last night, and we were in rare form. Now that we look back at our scribbles, it might even be necessary to edit/tone down some of the notes before we publish them for the world to see. First, though, we've got some obligatory politics to address.

Congrats to Hillary on becoming president of West Virginia. We guess the mountaineers and moonshiners didn't buy that jive about Obama not being a muslim/terrorist (obviously).

Let's see if we've got this right. Hillary is president of white trashers, Mexicans and old women. Obama is president of blacks and young eggheads. McCain is president of old mavericks. And Dubya is president of the patriotic Applebees crowd that is presently ruining America while obliviously ordering another round of hot poppers. Right? OK. Whatever.

In walks the village idiot, his face is all aglow. He's been up all night listening to Mohammed's radio.

Is Hillary going to run as an Independent?

Everybody's desperate, trying to make ends meet. Work all day, still can't pay the price of gasoline.

What we want to know is who's getting the Chinese Take-Out vote?

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain. He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fuk's, going to get a big dish of beef chow mein.

Big Donkeys likes Hot Chicken or Hot Beef with peppers and oninons.

Send lawyers, guns and money to get me out of this! (Or Ramirez, Nunez and Soria.)

Don't it make you want to rock-and-roll?

OK. Here are your (live) Game Notes:

Don't try this at home.

TPJ and Gathright batting back-to-back is like sending out the armies of Luxembourg and Albania to fight off the German Luftwaffe.

Tomkins Industries is going to be a crucial part of this game.

Greinke gets serious! Sit down Pudge!

Little looper to right by the Big Honky.

Will the Royals ever learn plate discipline?

Are we ever going to get our stimulus check from Dubya? We want our $600 dollars!

Another Sixth Inning Slam denied. Somebody punch those two guys in the Sonic commercial.

Brother just texted: "the police!" (We immediately feared the worst based on past experiences, but then we remembered he was going to the Sprint Center.)

We could all use just a little synchronicity right about now.

Robertson with something like 85 pitches thru 7 innings, even though he doesn't have great stuff at all. Way to make him work. It's not like the Tigers have a crappy bullpen. And this is a small strike zone!

Give us something to believe in. (We think that's a hair band lyric.)

Denny talking about Musial and the Cardinals. Geez.

Now Bob Davis with Stan the Man recollections. And Ramirez walks two. Cue Tompkins Industries.

Leo is a great name for a dog. Way to go Leo!

Guillen. Nice. C'mon Donkey.

Walk. C'mon Teahen.

Whatever works! 3-2 Royals.

Soria in to complete the lawyers, guns and money trilogy.

Winner, winner. Chicken Dinner! Had'em all the way, people. Now somebody call us a cab to take us from the kitchen table to the couch.

P.S. This blog is GREATLY influenced by whatever we're drinking and listening to on any given game night. It's like a junior high science experiment, and we have happily discovered that saki (sake?) and Warren Zevon combine to make something resembling plutonium.

Big Donkey or just Big Honky?

The Big Donkey has actually impressed us with his fancy, heavy-footed footwork at first base (if you don't expect too much, you might not be let down), but what he really needs some work at is RUNNING the bases. AND turning on the inside pitch and PULLING it with authority. Butler's great at lining the ball up the middle or to right with that inside-out swing of his for a solid single. But he's supposed to be a Big Donkey, for crying out loud, not just another Big Honky. Don't make us change the name of this blog, Billy.

Here's the thing Billy: You're crowding the plate, they're pitching you inside, and you're using that quick, inside-out swing to fight pitches off for singles. Move back from the plate about six inches and generate some really productive bat speed. Charley Lau would have diagnosed the problem immediately.

Go Greinke! We really need to take 2 of 3 from the Tigers. By our count (and we're probably wrong), the Royals are 7-7 within the division right now. If this team is going to have a good season, they need to stay competitive in the division and make hay against the National League. The next few weeks are very important.

P.S. Somebody tell that academic terrorist Obama to stop pausing and saying "uh" every few seconds like he's doing a perpetual egghead NPR interview. We support Obama (all in), except that we're pretty sure we would never vote for him if we were a West Virginia coal miner. Also, we would never vote for Hillary under any circumstances.

P.P.S. Listening to John Edwards on Larry King last night, we're pretty sure Edwards is the illegitimate son of Jimmy Carter.

P.P.P.S. Listening to the second half of Larry King, we're pretty sure that Barbara Walters got to the top by killing a lot of people in her way. That woman has no conscience and she thinks she's hiding it. All of those times she made people cry over the years -- she was feeding on the tears off camera like a vampire.

P.P.P.P.S. We're also pretty sure that Big Donkeys is now officially sexist.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Did we ever tell you about the time PETA wrote us a threatening letter after we had published a serious column on bass fishing? It pissed us off, so our next column was about bull fighting.

Ethnographic studies in the Midwest

We found out this weekend that the state motto of Kansas is "To the stars with great difficulty." How can you not like that? Especially when you compare it to Missouri's motto, which is this: "If things don't work out, there's always the hot dog race."

As you know, there are a lot of baseball writers/thinkers with ties to Kansas, especially to the Lawrence area, starting with Bill James. Some of the others (as you know) are Rob Neyer (we think he comes across as a jerk and writes like a turd), John Sickles (who also likes model ships and Star Trek stuff), Rany Jazaryerli M.D. (we think he likes baseball because it defies logic, not because it can be explained by logic, which is awesome, but we're not sure if he fully realizes it), Joe Posnanski (who is really from Ohio, where the motto is "If we were like lightning, we wouldn't need no sneakers") and Sam Mellinger (we're not sure where he's from, but he's the best young reporter/writer covering the Royals).

Is it ironic that so many BIG baseball fans are cerebral, while so many of the players possess the intelligence of a greyhound chasing after a mechanical bone?

At least the Royals have Banny to bring up the collective IQ of the club.

You know, Y'ALL are really the only ones who really care about how well the Royals do. Some of the players care, but they know they'll be with another team soon enough. The owner doesn't REALLY care. Heck, we're pretty sure Denny doesn't care most nights. Even the manager doesn't have as much invested as long-term fans. But this is a Major League Baseball Team. It is not OK to have a crappy lineup. It is not OK to finish last every year. Don't be denied.

Yesterday's win against the Orioles was fine, but here are some sure signs, if you start to notice them, that the Royals are DONE and it's almost time to dream of football season:

1. Club officials and talking heads start talking about THE PLAN a lot and how important it is not to do anything that would upset THE PLAN.

2. The manager starts to compare the season to a GRIND over and over, and he insists on referring to mediocre players as GRINDERS again and again.

(For some reason, it doesn't matter who the general manager is or who the manager is, all Royals officials are ultimately doomed and will begin to speak in mindless sentences about THE PLAN and THE BIG GRIND.)

P.S. Big Donkeys hates it when clueless New York or California journalists breathlessly cover tornadoes in the Midwest. They act like they are anthroplogists trying to do an ethnographic study.* Just once, we'd like to see an F-4 hit Long Island or Anaheim.

*It would be a lot easier just to go to Wal-Mart any time.

We knows just exactly what the facts is

According to Flanagan, Joey Gathright's nicknames back in Mississippi are Bubba and Honey Bun. We doubt Honey Bun's teammates have any fun with that in the clubhouse.

The other night Greinke had a lead-off guy at third with no outs. The Greinkster got out of it, of course. We've seen him do that a number of times. In that situation, the runner probably scores more than 90 percent of the time. Somebody look up the percentage of runners Greinke has let score from third with no outs. We bet it's considerably better than the average.

Also, somebody look up TPJ's batting average with two strikes. We bet it's better than his otherwise awful average. You'd think that would tell him something about his general approach to hitting.

NOTE: If you do decide to tackle any of this research, there's a pink Big Donkeys halter-top in it for you, for Mother's Day.

We just don't get Teahen. He was absolutely money for three months two years ago -- totally locked in and DRIVING the ball. Now he's a dunker, walker and striker-outer. We have been WAITING for Moneyball to return to form, defending him against all naysayers, openly rooting for him to succeed, but we're to the point where we just don't think it's going to happen. It looks like Mark might be a nice bench guy for some team. We hope we're wrong. Right now, Moneyball's value is sinking faster than the U.S. Dollar.

Vital signs

The Royals actually met some of the conditions we outlined yesterday, so maybe we won't have to make this a blog dedicated to a Canadian rock trio after all. Last night, the Royals did score more than seven runs and Alex Gordon hit a dinger. Also, the Royals hit a bunch of doubles, which are way better than singles. The Big Donkey hit one of those doubles. And David Dejesus hit a home run. Dejesus may be our best player. Sadly, it looks like he might out-homer Moneyball Mark Teahen.

Right now, the Royals are averaging about 3.75 runs per game. Coincidentally, the average price of gasoline in Missouri is currently right at $3.75. If the Royals can keep up with the price of gas, we predict a division championship.

So who is going to be Obama's running mate? We have narrowed the field down to Bill Richardson, Ed Rendell, Kathleen Sebelius, Jim Webb and the governor of Alaska (because she's hot). Maybe, if the Royals tank tonight, we'll do a SWOT analysis of the veep field tomorrow. Because that's the kind of stuff that brings readers back again and again.

CORRECTION: The Governor of Alaska is a Republican (not that there's anything wrong with that). But she's still kind of hot.

P.S. We once considered making an entire blog dedicated to Greinkeisms, which is why this is one of the greatest threads ever.

Be cool or be cast out

We're not talking about the Royals again until Mark Teahen and Billy Butler and Alex Gordon hit their next home runs, and the Royals score at least seven runs in a game.

(Go Greinke!)

So, what's your favorite Rush album?

Let's break this down into three periods:

The seventies -- Caress of Steel (1975), Fly By Night (1975), 2112 (1976), A Farewell to Kings (1977), Hemispheres (1978), Permanent Waves (1980).

The eighties -- Moving Pictures (1981), Signals (1982), Grace Under Pressure (1984), Power Windows (1985), Hold Your Fire (1987), Presto (1989).

The nineties -- Roll The Bones (1992) and all of the crap after that.

Rush jumped the shark with Roll the Bones, which had one good song (Bravado). We don't like any of the albums after they rolled the coach.

We like to be contrarians, but we can't go against the collective will of former pot heads everywhere and pick any album but 2112 as our favorite concept album.

In a decade that is known for bad music, Rush produced some amazing albums in the eighties. Our favorites bookend the decade perfectly, Moving Pictures and Presto. Two songs on Moving Pictures are Rush at the height of their powers, "Red Barchetta" and "Camera Eye." We like Presto because it is the last album in which the band is engineering complex Rush materpieces, and they're doing it with significant independent maturity. After that, they started responding awkwardly to other musical trends. Go listen to "The Pass" and tell us that's not a good song.

So what's your favorite Rush album? Song?

What's your favorite album cover of all time, Rush and/or other? (We're talking about record album cover art here.)

P.S. Shakespeare quote of the day: "I'll so offend to make offense a skill, redeeming time when men think least I will."

Big Donkey piss is a renewable resource

We started taking notes around the sixth inning last night.

If nobody wins the Sixth Inning Slam (and we don't really remember the Royals hitting many home runs in any inning), shouldn't that pot be growing at least semi-exponentially? Seems like that thing ought to be up to a million by now.

Who in the hell taught Mark Teahen to hit that one year in Omaha? Please tell us it wasn't Mike Barnett.

Now we've got a FIVE-man rotation.

DM knows pitching. Does he know hitting?

Jose Guillen! He ain't worth 36 meellion!

We demand some offense. Yes we can!

Where are the white women at?

Wham! A homer! Shit. Wrong team.

That's a shame.

Forget about it. We'll get em tomorrow (tonight).

OK. In order to take your minds off that frustrating loss, let's talk about gas prices.

Let's see if we've got this right:

The price of oil is higher, so the price to transport gas is higher, so the price at the pump is higher, which makes it more expensive to transport the next batch of gas to the pump, which drives the price per gallon up even more. Repeat vicious cycle.

Somebody should put Buddy Bell or Sluggrrr in charge of creating a new U.S. energy policy. We couldn't do any worse. Besides, Tom Friedman's busy writing another book about Bangladesh.

Screw Alaska. Tear that place apart in search of the last drop of oil like it's one BIG construction zone at the corner of I-70 and Blue Ridge Cut-Off.

Build some goddamn refineries already. Oklahoma's not that pretty to begin with.

How come we can't figure out a way to run automobiles on urine? Talk about a renewable resource. And we call ourselves Americans. Sheesh.

If we did run our vehicles on urine, Big Donkeys would drink twice as much beer and we'd be able to top off our car, the lawn mower, and the neighbor's SUV every night. We're willing to take up the slack, people.

We're SERIOUS about this. It's all about the circle of life. The answers to everything are available by watching kids movies, listening to post-cocaine Elton John and observing NATURE.

P.S. If you're a Hoosier or a Tar Heel, don't forget to vote for Isiah "Air" Obama today. If Rev. Wright's endorsement isn't good enough for you, be comforted by the fact that Big Donkeys knows basketball and we can vouch for Barack.

P.P.S. Every time a true genius emerges, a confederacy of dunces led by Sean Hannity (aka Stuck On Stupid) will rise up to make sure BIG ideas don't get into circulation.

P.P.P.S. On the other side of the divide, we heard this morning on NPR that some liberal professors are all upset that Ayn Rand's novels might get taught at the university level and that some students might get brainwashed into thinking for themselves. Great. Those eggheads are insufferable. We're Big Donkey Democrats, but we like a good Ayn Rand blast every once in a while to make us think. Just give the students Anthem and then make them listen to 2112. The education takes care of itself.

Nice pair of wins

Rack em.

Who needs offense when you can pitch like that?

We'd put our top four starters up against anybody.

The back end of the bullpen ain't too shabby either.

If we could just get some solid production from the middle of the lineup (Gordon, Guillen, Butler, Teahen), this team would be dangerous.

Can anybody figure out this division? We don't see a lot of separation happening any time soon.

Happy May 5. Keep the tequila away from us.

We went to a couple of art shows this weekend. We can't wait to exhibit our boob paintings. We're going to hire somebody eccentric to pose as the artist and instruct him to discuss the finer differences between pornography and art with the patrons over fancy coffee and various cheeses.

We couldn't pick a horse to save our life Saturday. But Big Donkeys' bookie needed the money to pay off Big Donkeys' dad, who won every race he bet on. He even had Eight Bells to place. Too bad about what happened after the finish.

Yes, Big Brown should have been an obvious pick. But his odds weren't any fun, and they're going to be even more boring down the line. If that horse doesn't win the Triple Crown, we'd be shocked.

Watched Waking Ned Devine again this weekend. We love that movie. The Royals are like Pig Finn. They should be perfectly respectable, but they really need to figure out a way to get rid of years' worth of stink.

P.S. If John Bale was a horse, would they have to put him down?

Into the blue again

This team isn't very loveable right now, apart from Greinke. Even The Big Donkey is in a funk.

Same as it ever was. Pretty much.

We thought the Royals were going to be pretty good, but we thought the offense would have a slightly more perceptible pulse.

We are not very impressed with Hillmanball right now.

We do have to admit that we are pretty impressed with DeJesus right now. Grudz, too. Gathright, not so much.

The word is out: Pitch Butler in tight. He's going to have to prove he can turn on one of those pitches and yank it DEEP IN THE AIR, preferably off or over the wall.

Of course, the next time The Big Donkey does hit one off the wall, he's sure to get thrown out at second.

Who will hit the next home run first: Butler or Teahen or Greinke or TPJ?

When you get shut down by Sidney Ponson, you have to start doubting yourself, and you deserve to be living in a shotgun shack.

Geez. We need some offensive PLAYERS. And there really aren't any position players on the farm to look forward to in the short term. We're just going to have to endure this for a while. Shit.

If we produced results like Mike Barnett, we would have been fired by now. (This is not really true. We work for the American people, and the less we actually do, the more likely it is that we'll be put in charge of something important. At which point, we might find ourselves behind the wheel of a large automobile.)

P.S. We've got computers. We're tapping phone lines. We know that that ain't allowed.

P.P.S. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no fooling around!

P.P.P.S. We're offering a free "Royals Fans Do It Donkey Style!" (TM) T-shirt to the first fan who can put this post into its proper musical context with an appropriately witty comment.*

P.P.P.P.S. Hillary and O'Reilly are almost certainly going to have a torrid love affair. The chemistry between those two is unbelievable, partly because they're both Butch Lesbians. Good for them. Big Donkeys wishes we had a foil to turn us on like that, but Ann Coulter won't return our calls.

*We still don't have any Big Donkeys T-shirts.

The sun's not yellow, it's chicken!

We haven't consulted Bill James yet, but we are guessing that, given average offensive production at SS and first base, the Royals would win almost 10 more games this season. That would be highly significant.

Soria, Nunez and Ramirez have been great. But the rest of our bullpen sucks. (OK. It's mainly just Yabuta.)

And Greinke's the only starter who hasn't blown up lately. Knock on wood.

The Rangers whole pitching staff sucks.

Check out Carlos Rosa's numbers on the farm.

Big Donkeys' favorite random Bob Dylan line: The sun's not yellow, it's chicken!

How good would Josh Hamilton look in the middle of the R's lineup? That guy is a monster.

The Aruban Nightmare goes today for the Texans, which is good news for the boys from Raytown.

Do you think it's possible that Sidney Ponson knows the whereabouts of Natalee Holloway?

Note to Greinke for today: When in doubt, walk Hamilton.