Now that Manny Ramirez is an American citizen, would he play for the US in a future baseball World Cup, or would his Dominican origin allow him to play for them? I've always found the rules for who can play for what country in international competition pretty odd. I mean, we had guys on the US national soccer team in the 1980s and '90s who didn't speak that much English (or at least heavily accented English).

On the other hand, it'll work out for whatever Americans get to play baseball for Greece this summer. I imagine the Greek baseball jersey will be a big hit at the Greek Festival this year. Opa!

Blogger sprung a new look on us today, and somewhere in the changing seems to have done something to reverse the order where posts show up on the page. Hopefully we'll get this sorted out soon.

A slight organizational change to report - all the trip reports and Mark Across America are now found under the Travelin' Jones link at left. I've added a short recap of a recent long weekend spent between Chattanooga and Atlanta, most notable for our trip through the international beverage pavilion at the World of Coke.

You've probably heard about the guy who died at Six Flags New England when he fell out of the Superman roller coaster. A report about the incident suggests that a factor in the death was that the victim was too large for the ride's t-bar restraints.

While I don't want to overly personalize this man's fate and the tragedy of the situation, if he was too big for the ride at 230 pounds, how would I have fared back in 2001 when I almost went on the coaster, but passed thanks to a fear of heights?

(Oddly, I'm OK with indoor coasters like Space Mountain and the Aerosmith one at Disney MGM. I suppose I don't see the drops and thus don't worry about them.)

I'm in the office this afternoon, as the college is closing today. It's actually been pretty quiet, as check-out is running through another room in the building. The real fun will be tonight when we start to actually check rooms.

Not much to report on otherwise, other than I noticed that some committee of the Louisiana House approved of that bill that would ban low-riding pants. Now I have a cleared idea of how they once wound up with a governor's race that featured a convicted felon and a well-known racist.

While I've not read about his testimony in-depth, it seems that Donald Rumsfeld is both taking responsibility for this whole Iraqi prisoner torture thing and refusing to resign. This even though there are more photos and apparently video of mistreatment.

I don't begin to presume that I know what it takes to be Secretary of Defense, and I know that the heads of much smaller entities are often unaware of gross negligence on the part of those working beneath them. But it does strike me that keeping Rumsfeld around will hurt Bush in the long-term, especially if we start to see more images of abuse (and if the ICRC is correct in their claims that mistreatment has been ongoing and pervasive for over a year).

If Bush is smart (OK, if Karl Rove is being smart for him), they'll work on positioning someone to take over should things continue going poorly. And if there's any real sense, they'd not hand things over to Paul Wolfowitz, who makes Rummy look like Eugene McCarthy.

Bring back Bill Cohen, I say.

OK, well the finale of Friends wasn't too bad, certainly nowhere near the soul-sucking crapitude of the Seinfeld send-off.

I am a little confused by some things, though, primarily the lack of set up for the Joey spin-off. As the show left it, the only really major relocation was Chandler and Monica moving to Westchester. Given that Joey was the one who didn't want anyone to move, how does he wind up in LA? I know, wait for the first episode of the new show.

Then there was this odd bit hanging off by itself where Phoebe and her husband Mike decide they want kids. The moment is fueled by seeing the the new babies, but it was oddly out of place.

For the most part, though, it was what you'd expect out of an episode of Friends. Which is probably for the best, really.

This is marginally better for the comments. It'll do for now.

If I've done this right, we've got comments now. Maybe this will get more of you to ask me three questions.

Today marks the airing of the final episode of Friends. I know I'm supposed to be besides myself with grief, or some other emotion appropriately teased out of me by the NBC promo (by which I mean news,with all the Dateline coverage) department. What I'm actually feeling, though, is more akin to when Macy's bought out Jordan Marsh or when BU West Campus institution Ellis the Rim Man closed its doors. It's the mild unease of change, a minor signpost that the march of time continues.

Part of what feeds that is that the characters are, theoretically, contemporaries. I say theoretically given that I know no one like them. But even so, they are of a similar age and have, over the last year, transitioned into full-on adulthood with weddings and babies and the like. Given my own recent past, that does resonate a tiny bit.

Overall, though, the end of Friends isn't going to alter my life. It was a reasonably fun show that I'll be able to see from time to time in reruns or on DVD (Sarah's affinity for the show will lead to the eventual purchase of the set, I'm sure). Anything more that I take from it will come from reflecting on my own past decade. Which isn't so bad, really.

Another prognostication turned to dust when George rather than Jasmine got the boot from American Idol earlier tonight. We're now down to four women, which for this quartet means a lot of belting and glory notes. God help us all.

More importantly, the Sox finally won a game outside of the AL East, besting Cleveland 9-5. Now if Oakland can just do us a favor on the other end and snap the Yankees' winning streak...

Three more questions to answer, courtesy of W. Scott Monty:

1) What is your favorite breakfast cereal?

A tough one! If forced to choose one, I'd go with peanut butter Cap'n Crunch. This elicited an "eewwww" from Scott, which just means more cereal for me.

2) If you could live anywhere in the country, where would you choose to live?

Somewhere coastal between Salem and Newburyport, MA (I grew up in a town on the coast between the two). Wouldn't have to be right on the water, but I'd like to be able to see the ocean every day.

3) What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? (European, if you must know).

According to this article, 11 m/sec or approximately 24 mph.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a show whose idea of big band music results in more Barbra Streisand songs being performed than Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday combined. But that's what we got tonight on American Idol, as the big band competition resulted in a score of Mrs. Brolin 2, Actual Legends 0. The real loser, of course, was the viewing public.

That being said, the night made it pretty clear that Fantasia and La Toya are much better than the other three singers. Not that that's going to get them into the final. As far as tonight goes, any of the other three could go, and for no particularly good reason I'm going with Jasmine. Not the first time, but she seemed to fit into the theme least.

And for those of you who find my following of this show problematic, I will happily say that I did not watch last night's clip show. There are some limits.

Got my first set of three questions, thanks to Greg Sorenson:

1. What one question in your life are you most sick of people asking you?

Right now, it's "when is your Millionaire episode going to air?" I like that people are interested, but when I've answered the question 4 or 5 times for the same person, it gets old. Listening is at least as fundamental as reading.

2. What was the first *compact disc* you purchased?

It's a tie: Mermaid Avenue by Billy Bragg and Wilco, and Painted From Memory by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach.

3. What, if any, (movie/show/book) kept you up all night scared?

Summer 1980. It's a hot and sticky night, and the power's gone out. For whatever reason, I could not get the sinister cat-eye drawings from the Choose Your Own Adventure book The Mystery of Chimney Rock out of my head. (Yes, I was a dorky kid, too.)

Just read that Al Gore is planning to buy NewsWorld International, a cable channel that currently airs international news broadcasts, in order to form a new network with a liberal bend.

While the last thing we need is another politically-slanted cable channel (regardless of slant, though some of the fringier groups could have interesting programming), I more lament the loss of a US outlet for international news. We get so little idea of what others are reporting, either in general or about the US, that even a slightly-watched channel is a valuable resource.

I suppose we'll still have the news on BBC America, and whatever random sightings of Deutsche Welle one can find.

Counter worked, but I didn't like the location. Let's see if this is better...

Testing a new counter...

After a long time riding pine, welcome back to Matt Couture! His second go at blogdom is linked on the left, and in honor of his return I'll do as he asks in his second entry.

All readers of this blog should email me and ask me three questions - no more, no less. These three questions can be on any topic. I would then request that you (assuming you have a blog or LiveJournal or such) do the same for your readers.

As sometimes happens when you watch TV, you see something that triggers a memory. For better or worse, my most recent example of this is snack food related.

Last night we were watching an episode of Unwrapped about snacks, and they went to the Wise plant to see them make Cheez Doodles. This got me thinking of another Wise product which I hadn't seen in years, which had these wafery cracker type things sandwiching an orange cheese food-type product which should have been on some sort of USDA watch list.

This led me to get on the Wise website, and discover that the product, known as Cheeze Waffies, still exist. I don't know why it's 'waffies' rather than 'waffles' (which would make more sense given how they're shaped), but they're apparently still out there. A quick scan of the supermarket shelves this evening didn't turn them up. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's probably for the best.

If you happen to see them in your travels, let me know. I'd be interested to see where exactly they turn up.

My tendency to get paged during movies has followed me home. Tonight, just before the climactic Battle of the Bands in School of Rock, the pager went off. This necessitated a five minute pause as I sorted out what was, in essence, stupidity.

In any case, tonight's movie was much better than last night's. I tend to think Jack Black is a taste best doled out in small doses, but his manic personality worked pretty well. Bonus points for making my general disdain for Sarah Silverman work for me by casting her as a completely disagreeable shrew. Extra bonus points for the use of Joan Cusack in a supporting role, too.