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I can see tonight is gonna really suck at work. It is just 3 of us, the two World of Warcraft FREAKS and me. I can’t believe I will sit here another night for 8 hours and have to listen to that crap again. Its been every night this week! COME ON PEOPLE, ITS NOT FRAKING REAL! By the way they are talking you would think they were curing cancer or something. It started as soon as the last one came in at 2335 tonight. It keeps getting louder and louder and then the spit starts flying. The past two nights neither one got out of their chair to do anything at work, they were to busy with their W.o.W. blog and crap.
I’m gonna either die or go postal! GET A FRAKING LIFE!
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WHEN A SPORTS BECOME A BUSINESS
You can choose the new name of Wrigley Field here and see what it would look like on the sign
The good news is that Sam Zell is selling the Chicago Cubs. Believe me, you don’t want this goober within a foul pole of a major league baseball team. He’d be the first owner to insist on 12-man rosters and that the clubhouses go condo. Anything to save or make a buck.
The bad news is that Sam Zell is selling Wrigley Field as a separate asset, but not before he also might sell the naming rights to baseball’s second-oldest ballpark. Sam isn’t big on tradition.
Of course, when you’re $351 million in the hole (Zell’s initial stake in the $8.2 billion purchase of the now-highly leveraged Tribune Company) you’d sell your mother for the right price. In fact, she might be available on eBay right now.
So one of the most famous neon signs in sports — Wrigley’s gorgeous red marquee at the intersection of Clark and Addison — could soon be reconfigured for the right price.
No surprise there. Zell is about sell. About profit. About green — and I don’t mean the ivy on the Wrigley Field outfield walls.
But most of all, Zell is about Zell. His Sam I Am Tour of assorted Tribune media properties in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Orlando, among others, hasn’t, well, exactly had the feel of a town hall meeting to them.
The possibilities are frightening:
• Cialis Field (In the rare event of a Cubs game lasting more than four hours, seek immediate medical help).
• White Sox Park (Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf can’t outdraw the Cubs, so he deep-sixes their stadium name).
• F-Bomb Stadium (Zell’s personal favorite).
Wrigley Field, so named in 1926, is one of those places. So is Fenway Park, whose owners understood the intrinsic value of baseball’s senior citizen ballyard. So is Yankee Stadium, which will keep its proud name when the new structure opens next year. So is Lambeau Field (Lambeau Field Presented By Miller? Don’t think so.)
I know — it’s just a name. Wrigley was originally Weeghman Park, then Cubs Park, then Wrigley, in honor of then-team owner William Wrigley Jr. But still, that’s 82 years of the same identity. That probably doesn’t mean much to Zell, the billionaire real-estate mogul, but it means something to people in Chicago, to any baseball fan who’s made the pilgrimage to that plot of land bordered by Clark, Addison, Waveland and Sheffield.
The New York Mets are getting $400 million to call their new ballpark Citi Field. Can you blame them for wanting a fresh start in 2009? Anything to forget the dump known as Shea Stadium, where the rats are the size of canned hams.
The San Francisco Giants have changed their stadium name so often that they ought to write it in grease pencil. And the White Sox, who tore down gloriously old Comiskey Park for blah-ishly new Comiskey, eventually sold the naming rights to a cell-phone company. They even sold their home starting times to a convenience store chain.
Now that’s the kind of revenue stream Sam Zell can get behind. Wait — until recently Zell held a minority ownership interest in the White Sox. Uh-oh.
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NATO -OTAN… FULL OF CRAP?
Preparations for next month’s Nato summit in Romania are being overshadowed by a row – over toilets. Parliamentary official Mihai Unghianu says Nato has complained that there are not enough lavatories at the venue. Nato is said to have asked the government to install 1,000 temporary toilets – one for every five delegates, each costing $9,500 a week.
Nato has not publicly commented on the issue. Key talks on its Afghanistan mission are expected at the summit.
It will take place at the vast parliamentary palace in Bucharest, built for the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, but now the site for both houses of parliament. The palace is among the largest buildings in the world, and although it has more than 1,000 halls and rooms, and 4,500 chandeliers, it appears to be short on some of the bare essentials.
The palace’s architect, Anca Petrescu, has called the request for extra temporary facilities humiliating. She told Romania’s Adevarul newspaper that all the toilets would be working during the summit, and suggested that someone with portable toilets for hire was trying to make money at the taxpayers’ expense.
*** I just had to use the French OTAN so I wouldn’t upset them ****
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MORE POTTY NEWS
China is rushing to install sit-down loos for its 500,000 foreign Olympics visitors, after complaints that venues had only Asian-style squat toilets. A lack of Western-style facilities was a common complaint after some 30 test events at Games venues, officials said.
“A lot of parties have raised the question of toilets… We have told the venues to improve on this,” said Yao Hui, deputy head of venue management.
“Most of the Chinese people are used to the squat toilet, but nowadays more and more people demand sit-down toilets,” said Mr Yao.
Beijing is said to be spending at least US$40bn on 37 venues for sporting events at the August Olympics, 31 of which are in Beijing.
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NO POT TO PISS IN
The vast majority of Africans have no access to a toilet, according to preliminary data from a World Health Organization report to be published later this year.
The WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation said the data shows 62 percent of Africans and 2.6 billion people worldwide have no toilet at home “and thus are vulnerable to a range of health risks.”
“Sanitation is a cornerstone of public health” said WHO’s Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan. “Improved sanitation contributes enormously to human health and well-being, especially for girls and women.
“We know that simple, achievable interventions can reduce the risk of contracting diarrheal disease by a third.”
The use of toilets and hand-washing with soap prevents the transfer of bacteria, viruses and parasites that might otherwise contaminate water supplies, soil and food.
Nearly 40 percent of the world’s population lacks access to toilets, and the dignity and safety that they provide,” said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF executive director.
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The Iranian regime is evil. They are bad. Iran is run by a paranoid club of intolerant men who think God talks to them.
G. W. Bush, July 19, 2005
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305 Days Left
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Number of Operations Iraq Freedom and Enduring
Freedom casualties as confirmed by U.S. Central
Command: 4458
