New project

So every morning we wake up with a song in our head. We realize this isn't unusual. What is strange is that we don't own a clock radio and these songs seem to bubble up from sleepy unconsciousness without a logical prompt. But EVERY morning a different random song gets stuck in our head while we're getting ready for work. There is no accounting for taste here, and we're not responsible for the morning random play selections in our head. It could be anything from "Rock Steady" by the Whispers to "Long Hot Summer Days" by John Hartford to some song we once learned at Vacation Bible School. Anyway, we have decided to keep track of the morning songs here, starting in earnest every day next week. Maybe it will give us some sort of twisted insight into our psyche. Maybe the songs are trying to tell us something, maybe they'll start to occur in some sort of pattern, maybe they'll repeat at some point like Pi and reveal the secrets to the universe?

Anyway, a blog is supposed to be more or less a stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness, right?

P.S. This morning's song, for no apparent reason, was "Cherry Bomb" by John Couger Mellencamp ("That's when a smoke was a smoke/and groovin was groovin...").

P.P.S. Yes, we'll eventually get back to the Royals at some point.

Royals, toe fungus and nymphomaniacs

Does it seem like the free agent signings are taking longer than ever before? It feels like the Royals are pretty much done, but there's got to be a flurry of baseball acquisitions in the coming weeks, and we bet the Royals still make a trade or two.

We had a rough Christmas. 2008 went pretty well for us -- until the last three months.

We have never made official New Year's resolutions before -- although we did vow to finally go to the dentist in 2008, and we actually went through with that. Anyway, here are our documented resolutions for 2009:

Go fishing more.

Make more money somehow. (Given the current situation, this one should probably just read: Stay employed.)

Cure cancer. Or find remedy for toe fungus.

Take son to Royals game.

Take son to Chiefs game and sit in front row.

Drink less. Eat better. Sleep more.

Stay away from nymphomaniacs. Unless it's necessary.

Don't fall for anymore liberal arts majors. (Try a hard-core anthropologist or something.)

Stop doing ex-wife's odd jobs.

Get new home base with backyard and dog.

Finish novel.

P.S. Junior is in Dallas with his mom. Today he is going to see the King Tut exhibit. We are jealous. We hate Dallas but we'd really like to see that King Tut exhibit.

We don't have any statistical evidence to back any of this up

There's a good thread over at Royals Corner called "Who will unexpectedly pitch well in the pen?" We think the following guys will overachieve: Bale, Waechter, Rosa and Tejeda. We expect Farnsworth to shit the bed. He is going to be this coming year's Tomko. We can't really see HoRam having a very good year either. Soria will probably be the Soria we have come to know and love so quickly, but it would be hard for him to be as good as he was last year.

So who do you think will have surprising seasons out of the rotation? We like Davies to really step it up. And we think Greinke will be a Cy Young candidate. Meche should be about the same, which would be fine with us. Oh, and Hochevar should improve steadily. We don't know what to think about Banny.

Actually, that rotation sounds pretty solid, doesn't it? Remember when we were putting all our hopes into guys like Danny Reichert, Denny Bautista, Jeremy Affeldt, Darrelly May, Chrissy George..............?!

Who are your all-time favorite worst pitchers for the Royals?

Now the offense. We think Crisp and Jacobs will have better seasons than smart Royals fans think. We think Collaspo will be really solid but not get much credit. We think Gordon will go apeshit on the league. We think Dejesus will be great but get hurt. We think Guillen will be worth more money than last year. And we think Aviles will come back to Earth.

What do you think?

P.S. There's also a funny thread at Royals Corner right now that was started by some guy called HoRambo.

P.P.S. Davies works as a construction laborer in the off-season.

Nothing here you don't already know

Well, Furcal is not coming to KC. Jose Guillen better drive in a lot of runs and stay relatively cool in the clubhouse in 2009.

Meanwhile, Gathright signed with the Cubs. And Bale is back with the Royals.

Something's got to give with the lefties in the pen. We've got Mahay, Bale, Gobble and HoRam. And Musser is still on the farm, right? Everybody assumes Gobble will be the one to go, but we think there might yet be a trade involving Mahay.

We think Buck might yet be traded this winter, too.

Then there's still the logjam at 1B. Something's also got to give there. And you know Dayton doesn't want to start the year with Aviles at SS. He wants to get a new SS, shift Aviles to 2B, and use Callaspo off the bench. Which means German would be a goner.

Once Dayton gets a defensive position switch in his head (Dejesus to LF), you can bet it will happen eventually. We just pray that DM doesn't trade Greinke to the Braves in order to acquire his young SS.

Anyway, we pretty much know who the main position players, and pitching staff for that matter, will be. So here's our guess for the bench: Teahen, Gload, Pena (C), Collaspo.

If we could somehow dump gload for a RH OF/IB bat with pop, or just replace him with Shealy, it would look pretty good. We still assume Butler is the DH, but DM has been threatening him with that option to Omaha...

P.S. It might take Dayton another year to get Aviles off SS. In that case, it would be Collaspo at 2B and either German or Tony Pena as the bench MI.

Winter Meetings update

So we signed a meathead for the bullpen and nobody likes it because he makes too much money or whatever. We don't care. We're still waiting for that Furcal deal to go down.

The Tigers and White Sox are in steep decline (probably). The Twins and Indians aren't made of money. Whatever you think about DM and Glass -- they appear to be going for it, more or less, THIS YEAR. (This year, as in 2009.) As Donnie Baker would say, "I swear to God they are." As a Royals fan, even if you're skeptical of the moves, this has to be a refreshing thing.

Oh, we also resigned HoRam for too much money and probably got a few other guys.

P.S. As Royal Prick noted in the comments section of the previous post, Big Donkeys predicted two weeks ago that Furcal would sign with KC. We'll see. We also predicted the Coco Crisp thing a long time ago, but we don't want to brag.

P.P.S. We're pretty sure Meathead is going to be the subject of a lot of our angst in 09. But that's OK. It'll be fun.

Wonder if George Brett is at the Bellagio this week?

Well, we went into the field yesterday to interview a real-life sewer astronaut for a "Dirty Jobs" story we're working on. The stench coming out of the open manhole was just awful; we're still gagging. So, anyway, here's a hilarious video (keep the sound down at work) for you to laugh at while we're waiting for some verifiable Royals news to come out of Vegas (where we hope nobody shits their pants)...

Econ 101

We lost our new reading glasses, so yesterday we went to the local pharmacy/optical store to get a new pair. We weren't feeling well and we wanted to lay on the couch and read, so we really needed another pair of reading glasses. An older man in this small-town ma and pa pharmacy place helped us find a pair we liked. But as he was cleaning the lenses, he found a small crack. We offered to buy them anyway; they were cheap. He said he couldn't sell them but that we could have them if we wanted. This is the kind of small-town consumer experience that is going the way of the dinosaur, and we're going to miss it. Not too long ago in this same small town, we dropped our car off at the dealer for an oil change and another minor problem. But then we decided we needed to get out of town because Grandpa died. We called the dealer guy and told him that we needed to pick up the car as soon as possible due to a death in the family. By the time we got there, this guy had our car out front and told us to take care of our business and not to worry about the bill. We usually can't stand car dealers, but this kind of stuff goes a long way. (So we bought four new, expensive tires from the dealer guy a few months later.)

So as we were driving away from the ma and pa pharmacy place yesterday with our free (albeit slightly cracked) reading glasses, we noticed some construction across the street. It was a new Walgreens going up. Well, we'll continue to take our business to the old place, thank you, as long as they're still in business.

Hook, line and sinker...We succumbed to gin

We got the permanent incisor crown today. Now we have two very large and pointy incisors again. This is good. We hear the vampire look is in.

If you're a Royals fan, you've probably already seen the following You Tube. But we would be remiss if we didn't post it here.



On some level, we must be trying to emulate our hero above. After drinking too much gin the other night, we pissed ourself. No kidding. It's nothing to be proud of, for sure, but we can't deny it. This had never happened before. The warmness was felt streaming down our leg before we could process what was happening. So we just relaxed and let nature take its course. Pure gin. It was like a catharsis. We didn't even feel hung over in the morning.