This Clark vs. McCain business is one of the dumbest kerfluffles yet.

Having a bad day? At least the mortgage holder of the previous owner of your house didn't break in and take all your stuff.

Happy 4th, evry'buddy. I'll be cooking meat on the grill and making sure our house doesn't catch on fire.

"OK, bottom 10, we got Nieves, Belliard, Roger Bernadina. Yeah, that sounds like a run."

"OK, bottom 11. Maybe Guzman or Dukes can hit a home run."

"OK, bottom 12. Orr, LoDuca, and Nieves. Yeah, we're screwed."

But then with two outs, Young walked (and they couldn't put in a pinch runner--I though Langerhans was still on the bench, but apparently he's in Columbus). My mom said, "If this next guy hits one, they win!" Sure, Ma, no problem.

Holy crap, Mom called it!

Cheers to TO Rob, Mikel, Blork, and all our north-of-the-border friends.

Karl Rove has much nerve calling Barack Obama a snotty guy at a country club. Because Rove himself is a NASCAR-lovin', Wal-Mart shoppin' man of the people.

Too often, folks need to be reminded to turn on their bullshit detectors.

Remember, if you don't open the e-mail, you don't have to acknowledge its contents. Thanks, President Bush, for restoring honor and dignity to the White House.

Lastly, making eye babies? Seriously? I know, I know, it's not cool to make light of other people's religious beliefs...but these mofos are crazy.

But even though it was a blowout, every time you go to a ballgame, you might see something you've never seen before. And last night's game had several such items:

• A Wily Mo Peņa home run


• Two clean-up hitters whom an outsider might believe to be Russians


• Dmitri Young turning an unassisted double play


• An outfielder coming out of the game with some sort of injury when there was no play in his vicinity. Word today is LoDuca was suddenly light-headed and was taken to the hospital. Our suspicion was that he just didn't want to play for a team getting pounded.

With Hill's crappy outing, I suspected he was still hurt, and today, sure enough. There needs to be a term for when an athlete hides an injury, thinking he can't let his teammates down, but then goes out and performs so poorly he loses the team a game. Happens with pitchers all the time.

I also attended Sunday's non-descript loss to the Rangers with the family in tow. This was supposed to be the kids' jersey giveaway, cancelled due to undisclosed reasons. Either the jerseys didn't come in from China in time, or the sponsor pulled out--and if the latter, the Nats should have stepped up and made it happen, but not with our cheap-ass ownership.

One bright spot from Sunday's game was that when we were out on the concourse, a staff member introduced himself as the concessions manager and asked what we liked in the current concessions (Hard Times, Cantina Marina) and what we wanted to see different (more ice cream carts, because the lines at the ice cream stands get really long). At least somebody at Nationals Park cares about doing their job well.

Kermit does not usually aid & abet Cookie's shenanigans so readily.

My dad had Toledo Window Box and FM & AM on vinyl, and I listened to them at a much younger age than I probably should have. His ability to play with language drew me in immediately. Years later, I would identify with his feelings for humanity in the intro to Brain Droppings: while I love and cherish the individuals that I've met, collectively I find people to be complete morons.

Tonight's forecast: dark. If you don't like the weather, move.

George Carlin R.I.P.

Speaking of gas prices, I've seen the ads for Chryslers "$2.99 a gallon guarantee" if you buy one of their cars, and I thought "Won't that just encourage people to drive a lot more than they probably should?" Tom the Dancing Bug agrees.

Lego bricks do not taste like frickin' strawberries!

Sports: Ten years since the Caps lost the Stanely Cup. I was at that game, a bummer to be sure, but then again, it's not every day you get to see the Cup awarded in person, even if it is to the visiting team. Nice gesture by MLB to "draft" Negro League players.

Lastly: Let the penguin FLY!

"Go, and do not fail us."
--two-year-old Cate, to her mother, after she and her sister requested a drink of water.

HELLS YES

I didn't bring the laptop and spent as little time as possible thinking about anything serious. The girls still love the sand and surf, we ate plenty of yummy seafood and ice cream, and Rehoboth's Funland is still awesome.

One thing troubled me, though. Our first day at the beach, there were tide pools, stagnant puddles high on the beach left behind by high tide. The kids enjoyed playing in them, and they didn't last beyond the first day, so I suppose they were related to storms over the weekend rather than a permanent new feature. But my totally unscientific opinion was that high tide was noticeably higher up the beach than last year. Which makes me wonder if in a couple years, it'll be right up on the dunes, and a few years after that spilling out onto the street, and in 20 years high tide will be right over Route 1.

So for everyone who said global warming required more study, or that we should just adapt, or swore that lower-emissions/higher-efficiency cars were absolutely impossible: Think about "No more beach vacations for anyone" for a while. Thanks a lot, assholes!

Um, no. My co-workers pretty well took care of that for me. Reports are that there were maybe a thousand people in the ballpark at first pitch, and yet they still announced the attendance as 27K, presumably the paying crowd from Wednesday night.

I spent most of the pre-game telling my friend how bad the Nats were lately, so of course they charged out to a 7-0 lead. Not sure if this is an awakening for some of the Nationals' bats, or just one lousy opposing pitcher. But then Redding had to make it interesting--what is it about him and opposing pitchers? A two-run double to Parisi, his first major league hit, and then in the 6th a three-run laser beam home run to left for Worrell, in his first major league at-bat. Ye gods.

Rauch gave up the double in the top of the 9th, and here comes Pujols to pinch-hit. Ohhhhh crap. But Rauch got Pujols looking; Albert was miffed, and Rauch was pumped. But I thought, "Don't get too ahead of yourself, still one out to go." Sure enough he grooved one to Schumaker, who blasted it to center. Milledge overplayed the ball and it got past him off the wall and rolled back to left-center; I thought Schumaker had himself an inside-the-parker. Instead, he stopped at third, and scored a moment later.

Mather's home run in the 10th felt like "Crap, we sat through all that for nothing." But one nice thing about this year's line-up: even though they're not hitting much these days, there's at least a bunch of guys who you can at least imagine hitting a home run. In the past we've had a lot of players with absolutely zero power, so it was a tall order to ask for much in the way of late-game heroics. Now, even if Wily Mo or Da Meat Hook haven't hit many homers thus far, at least you know they're capable of it. So it goes with Dukes, and on this night he did not disappoint.

As crappy as the Nats have been, they are 5-2 in games I've attended this season, with three last at-bat wins. Obviously, this means the club should pay me to come to games.

E.coli conservatism at work: Bush administration would rather you didn't test for mad cow disease. Thanks.

I want some microfiber cleaning cloths, dammit!

Probably not of interest to those who don't live around here, but anyway, this enormous new restaurant went up near my kids' preschool, and behold, Tom Sietsema gives it the worst review I think I've ever seen from him. Self-proclaimed "finest food money can buy" sets off the BS detector, big time.

Yeah, I'm exactly the kind of aging hipster dad who likes Yo Gabba Gabba, so sue me. How can you not like a kids' show that regularly features Biz Markie?

And lastly, it's the Phanatic off the top rope!!