Surviving Grady writes God on behalf of all Sox fans...

Dear God:

[T]his week is already the single most important week of the 2005 Red Sox season. The week that will more or less define my mental and physical well-being for the next half-year. And you pick the day of the first game of this particular week to kick it Noah style? Not cool.

For those of you that don't know me, I'm a by-the-rules kind of guy -- almost to a fault -- and pretty much always have been. So when I was a kid playing with Lego and read the small print on the instructions (I can hear you now: "What kid actually reads the small print on their toys?") that said that "Legos" was incorrect usage of the brand, you can be sure I never used the word "Legos" again. I always played with my Lego.

So who cares if someone says "Legos"? Just me (it's still a pet peeve of mine) and the lawyers at Lego. So I was amused to find out that if you go to legos.com, you actually get a note asking you not to use that term. Not that it's going to change anything:

Real people in the real world call the toys Legos. Real customers. People don't rearrange their idiom to suit trademark lawyers. Deal. [via Boing Boing]

Bush Tours Katrina Damage Amid Criticism

"I'm not looking forward to this trip," Bush said as he toured Alabama and Mississippi and headed for Louisiana. "It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine," he said.

Why does everything have to be weapon-related with this guy?

After witnessing Boston's four-game sweep, Tampa Bay manager Lou Piniella said, "Thank God we don't come in here anymore. I've heard enough 'Sweet Caroline.'"

Gotta agree with Lou on that one: I don't know how "Sweet Caroline" became a Fenway staple, but I could really do without it...

In the news: Movie studios worry about box office slowdown

And on a completely unrelated note, "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" opens in theaters today.

Bill Keaggy, the guy behind my favorite riding `zine from the old days (it had such an amazing design, done before computer-generated layouts were common), has posted some old-school BMX photos of himself and others on Flickr.

Jerry Remy extends his NESN contract through 2010. Nice!

You already know that the Firefox web browser will block pop-up ads. But if you use it, you might notice that there are still occasional pop-ups. This is because some "genius" is opening the pop-up ads via a Flash control on the page.

Luckily, there's a way to block the Flash pop-ups, too. Here's how...

As I've mentioned here before, I'm a big fan of sidearm pitchers. (It goes back to my early baseball years fascination with Dan Quisenberry and Kent Tekulve in the late-70s/early-80s.) I know some baseball purists don't like them -- they consider sidearmers (and knuckleballers) "tricky" pitchers, but their deliveries are so much fun to watch.



So you can guess correctly that I enjoyed watching last night's Sox game when Chad Bradford and Mike Myers pitched back-to-back. Of course, it would've been nice if they actually won the game...

Skateboarder Clears Great Wall of China

Daredevil skateboarder Danny Way rolled down a massive ramp at nearly 50 mph and jumped across the Great Wall of China on Saturday, becoming the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid.

...A crowd of several thousand people, including China's ministers of extreme sports and culture, gathered at the Ju Yong Guan Gate, about a 40-minute drive from Beijing.

You're telling me China has a Minister of Extreme Sports and the there's no equivalent office in the U.S.? What if a Chinese BMXer wanted to grind the Gateway Arch? Who would our government send to witness such an event?