Pumpkins drummer says truth prevails on new album

Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin has broken his silence about the reunited band's new album... In a posting attributed to Chamberlin on the Pumpkins' Myspace.com page, the drummer said "As some of you know we are indeed creating music again -- music that comes from a place so pure it will burn the lies off the very souls of those who try to discount it."

Well, I guess we now know that Billy Corgan's pretentiousness clearly is contageous.

At Kyoto's Fenway Park, it's always October 2004 (ESPN)

A late-night stroll through Kyoto reveals white-faced geisha, the mysterious teahouses of Gion, the millennia-old Shinto shrines ... and a small red and blue sign for a bar named Fenway Park...

A shake of the head and a short ride in a cramped elevator later, you walk into a little piece of Beantown here in Japan's most traditional city. It's complete with Red Sox memorabilia on the wall and Sam Adams in a bottle. A Boston fan named Yasuyuki Ohta holds court behind the bar he owns with his brother.

Though I didn't go to Willett (I was a St. John's kid) this surely is a proud moment for my old hometown:

Attleboro elementary school bans tag

Officials at the Willett Elementary School in Attleboro have banned playground tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chasing games over concerns about the risk of injury and liability for the school.

The kids' websites have been updated with new photos from this summer: Amelia | Jeremy

The design of this site has been pretty much the same since I bought the domain in 2000, when I hastily put the site up to help with a job search. I've been wanting to redesign for years, and lately wanted to add new features and switch over to PHP. Anyway, I finally decided to do it even though the design is clearly not done. But at least I'm finally moving forward with the site and will fix it up in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, please excuse my appearance and forgive any (temporarily) broken links.

I can't stop watching this video (and singing the song long after watching it)...

The season's not (officially) over yet, but it's never too soon to begin the countdown to pitchers and catchers reporting...

The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld (Slate)

Until now, the secretary's poetry has found only a small and skeptical audience: the Pentagon press corps. Every day, Rumsfeld regales reporters with his jazzy, impromptu riffs. Few of them seem to appreciate it. But we should all be listening. Rumsfeld's poetry is paradoxical: It uses playful language to address the most somber subjects.

For example:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Rapping to the Oldies (NY Times)

Peter J. Nash, a baseball author, historian and filmmaker ... knows exhaustive details about the earliest days of baseball, endless specifics about when the game was born.

With passion in his voice, he mentions ancient clubs like the Brooklyn Excelsiors and the New York Gothams. But something else about Nash’s cool, gritty voice makes him distinctive, something that he divulges if anyone bothers to ask. Peter J. Nash was once known as Prime Minister Pete Nice [of the rap group 3rd Bass].

"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- The Ultimate Blog Post (Lore Sjöberg @ Wired)