The New York Mets overhauled their much-maligned bullpen with two big moves Wednesday, obtaining J.J. Putz from Seattle as part of a three-team, 12-player trade that gives them a setup man for new closer Francisco Rodriguez.

I took note of a particular pack of teenagers who I judged to be about the same age as my partner’s high school freshman students.  There were maybe four or eight or ten of them.  They seemed to be pretty fashionable and really high energy.  I thought about Jessica and thought, as I always do, that I could never do her job, teenagers are all crazy.

Settling in to my game, I struck out the side in the final game of the World Series.

The train stopped and, as I was playing I didn’t really notice that all the teenagers were going to the next car.
A hand, seemingly from nowhere snatched the game right out of my hand.  I took off after them.

Immediately, I realized that I was carrying a coffee on a high speed chase, I was involved in a high speed chase with a group of teenagers and they were all unaware that I was chasing them.

Somehow, with the adrenaline of grabbing my toy and running away, the girl who’d grabbed it had failed to notice that I was giving chase and her friends were just running to get back on the next car on the train, they didn’t know that a robbery had occurred.

I threw down the coffee.

I pushed a straggling young boy out of the way and squeezed on the car with the gang of toughs just as the doors closed and we left the station.  He was a strapping young man and I would never have pushed him if I weren’t high on righteous indignation.

The girl who had taken my Nintendo screamed (still not aware that I was in pursuit and coming up fast behind her.

“Yo, I just snatched –“

Then she trailed off having seen me coming and been surprised.

“Holy Shit.”

“That’s mine,” I said and took it back before she could hide it away.

She started to yell at me, but it was mostly unintelligible surprised blather and, at first, she accused me of stealing it.  I started to shrink to the other end of the car, having come down enough to realize that I’d basically thrown down a gauntlet to a group of amped up confused teenagers, at least one of who thought nothing of stealing.

An then, after the broad daylight snatching of my property and my high speed car to car pursuit of this pack of marauding teenagers and my re-stealing of the game, it got weird.

“What the fuck,” one of friends said, rather timidly, I thought.

“That’s my Nintendo,” said the thief, but immediately followed with, “I stole it from you, yeah, but you pushed me!”

And they all glared.  Drawing on my keen command of language, I looked around silently trying not to seem frightened.   It was the middle of the day and the train was packed.

She started beating me with flowers.   Until now, I hadn’t noticed that she had a dozen roses in her other hand and she pounded them on me mercilessly.  This was much more harmful to the roses than to me, but it was disorienting and I had what I came for, so I retreated.

After a moment, she admitted to her friends that she’d stolen it and all I’d done was take it back, but also that I’d pushed her and that was fucked up.  I don’t think that I did, for what it’s worth, but it’s possible that I bumped her when I caught up to her at first.

She walked up to me, we were both calmer and pointed in my face and said, “Bitch ass nigga.”

I got off at the next stop and let her go on.  It didn’t take long to get the next train.

Barack Obama favorited your photo

tina fey’s twitter is great on election night - “But Daddy, Obama’s kids are getting a puppy, why can’t I?” Because Daddy voted for McCain.

Obama Day in Kenya

Phillies are up to 470 votes in PA vote count!

Planned Parenthood NYC Action Fund Twitter is the thing to be in on.

But today I made sure they knew that I was willing to canvas. And once I really insisted on telling everyone that, they eventually set me up with someone who’d been waiting for a partner.
My buddy was a man named George from Alaska who was a strong Obama supporter who grew up in Northeast Philladelphia but has lived in Alaska for many years. He was so disgusted with the choice of Sarah Palin as the Republican Veep that he came home to Philly to help secure the win for Obama/Biden. I hope he’s successful.

It’s been an amazing few days. I’ve talked to really bitter Hillary Clinton supporters who are considering not coming out, I’ve talked to an old man who told me that “the Blacks” killed his father so of course he wouldn’t vote for them. But over all, it’s been really positive. I’ve been complimented on my phone skills and my ability to deal rationally with complicated situations. It’s been good ofr the old ego, which has taken a beaten lately.

I was glad I insisted on going out. I have to stand up for myself.

One of my favorite things to watch is how the internet and TV are merging. It’s amazing to speculate what our children will be getting information from. They probably won’t understand the difference that we see between consuming media on the web and getting from the Television.

This kind of internet reality show is really just aping the stuff that’s on TV now; and I think that’s great. The more TV-like entertainment you can get on the web the less time we have left before we get to the merge.

Promo via 2dopeboys