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Former Gator David Ross (that whole is his official name, I had it legally changed, despite his protests) hit a homer Monday night to take a lead over the Cardinals, but it wasn’t enough cushion for the Reds’ struggling bullpen, as the Reds lost 11-7.

To me, you score seven runs on a team, you oughta beat ’em.

Apparently the ownership agreed with this assertion, and Reds manager Jerry Narron was uncermoniously showed the door.

Now the rumour mill is churning up potential replacements. But they’re all former managers, and they’re going to run into the same issues that Narron did– lethargic team captains, a bullpen about as stable as a newborn giraffe, and a comparatively shallow experience pool.

It’s time to shake things up, to snap baseball out of its love of management musical chairs.

An icon, such as Johnny Bench, might be able to come in and trade on his achievements to motivate the players. Pretty much, if baseball still means anything at all, when someone like Johnny Bench says you ought to do something, you ought to do it, and everyone on the team knows it.

Or here’s another idea: Make Ken Griffey Junior or Adam Dunn the player/manager. Either of these laid-back team leaders might benefit from a new perspective, from having his name prominently associated with a team on track to lose 100 games this year. And if they’re trying hard, the team follows suit.

Or you could even go all out and say, “Pete Rose is the Reds manager again”. Banned from baseball? Too bad. Kick us out if you dare. The publicity alone would be worth it, and at the rate things are going, there’s little to lose.

Sure, that’d be a rotten thing to do to Barry “Better Living Through Chemistry” Bonds during his assault on Aaron’s home run record. But who wants to go through life with an asterisk stuck to his last name, anyway?

Just as an aside, the “wave” is about the most annoying, disrespectful, useless things ever created by a herd of people.

Looking back at runaway housing inflation, and seeing the breadth of spec development that it spawned, and wondering how severe the impact is going to be when it all collapses, I came up with what is in retrospect a brilliant idea:

Tie development impact fees to the prime lending rate.

The lower the lending rate goes, the higher the impact fees. That would help put a governor on the misperception of instant riches to be found in unrestrained development.

There’s some applicable saying about “hindsight”, but there’s another one involving a barn door and a horse.

Is it just me, or are the remote ATM charges spinning even further out of control?

Last one I saw was $3.50, not counting what my own bank would charge me. Since we’ve allowed the definition of usury to be inflated beyond any practical use, technically it’s even legal.

The worst part is when they ask you if it’s all right to charge you. Often people needing cash don’t have the option of saying “no” at that point– they’ve bought groceries, or perhaps found themselves short of cash after a purchase or hotel stay, and their native ATM isn’t accessible.

But why do they only give you two options? You know some bean-counter is taking this to senior management to justify the fees. “See, boss, 99% of the people approve of the fee!”

I think that if the menu option read like this:

Leech America Bank will deduct a $3.50 service charge from your account. This is in addition to any fees your institution may charge you. Do you agree?

• Yes, proceed. I understand that a $3.50 service charge will be deducted from my account.
• No, cancel my transaction.
• Hell no. Give me my money, you bloodsucking vultures, and stuff your “service charge” into any orifice that causes you pain.

there would be a much more accurate accounting of how people really feel about it.

The world sometimes seems hell-bent on keeping me up-to-date on the lastest melodrama concerning Paris Hilton.

My assertion is that she is simply a personal hallucination, a la Harvey, and therefore not an appropriate topic for polite conversation.

I’m the first to concede that there might be a few holes in that theory, but you have to admit, it does do a good job of clearing some of the clutter from one’s mind.

Toppled in the median near my home, roots to the sky, lies a very expensive tree.

Not expensive merely because it was a fully-grown palm, which means a price tag in four digits, possibly five.

Expensive because, in this case, it cost two Gainesville teens their lives.

When the median decorations first went up people complained that they were dangerous, that they blocked the view of oncoming traffic, that they could become obstacles in an accident.

No one listened.

Perhaps they’re listening now.

*Roads are not parks.* They are not Commons for grazing. They are not opportunities for beautification. They are tools, and any beauty they possess derives primarily from their functionality.

From that perspective, our roads are uncommonly ugly.

It seems that we have all the money in the world to build bike lanes, and sidewalks, and landscaped medians, and curbs, and fancy illuminated “No Turn On Red” signs, and intersection cameras, and so on and so on.

When asked to make the roads actually work, to make traffic actually *flow* for a change, our commissioners and the DOT turn out their pockets and weep big crocodile tears and moan, “Poor! Poor!”

It’s time for a change. Now we are not merely wasting money. Now we are not merely wasting citizens’ time.

Now we are paying with lives.

We must make the roads functional and safe. No more games. No more hidden agendae. No more political maneuvering.

I’ve been complaining about this problem for some time.

No one listened.

Perhaps they’re listening now.

Oh, I’m just in a mood tonight. Time to vent.

“In this age of unfettered violence, isn’t there something that can be done to prevent the sale of semi-automatic weapons to anyone not in a police agency? Surely a homeowner wishing to protect his or her family would find a revolver sufficient for such purpose.”

A revolver is a semiautomatic weapon, numbskull. The term means that the gun fires as quickly as you pull the trigger; you don’t need to manually chamber your next round.

Fully-automatic weapons– that is, machine guns– fire as long as the trigger is depressed. Private ownership of them has been illegal since the 1950s.

If any of those facts surprise you, you probably should do some basic research before voicing an opinion in the gun debate.

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, [the George W. Bush] administration has been the worst in history.” — former President Jimmy Carter

Begging your pardon, Mr. President, but didn’t your administration help depose the Shah of Iran (himself no sweetheart) and support his replacement, a radical Muslim whose publicly stated goal was to control a country in order to bootstrap jihad, and who wasted no time in taking 66 Americans hostage, holding 52 of them for almost a year and a half, until the very day you left office?

Not to say that you didn’t inherit your own problems, or didn’t face tough choices, but maybe a more supportive attitude would be more constructive in helping the current administration deal with issues that your administration helped create– or, at absolute best, failed miserably to solve.

“(My) Turn Offs (include): lack of intellegence.”

[draw breath to reply]

I–

Bu–

[shake head, defeated; turn around and walk out]

The no-name, non-tropical storm currently spinning off the Jacksonville coast has been driving the detritus of fires in the area down our way with gale force.

Impressively visible on the satellite, conditions here were terrible yesterday, with smoke masking the sun and covering everything like a thick yellow fog.

Ash fell like snowflakes, landing on any horizontal surface, getting in your eyes and lungs.

At one point I though the sun would never shine out of this ash hole again.