Here at mchuge.net, we like baseball. Baseball has no time limit. It has lots of rules but time is hardly ever called for foul play and there are no foul shots. It’s played practically every day. Greatness is earned over long stretches of time. Blah blah.

On that note, here are some shots of Yankee Stadium in the snow. I don’t claim to be a Yankee snob although they are my team. If you beat them, more power to you. These photos are offered so we may all look forward to baseball in April.

PS: I can’t believe Roger Waters sold out two nights of performing The Wall here. That’s like the blocked leading the blockers.

Glenn Greenwald compares his canonization with that of Ronald Reagan’s. Greenwald wrote a similar essay when Tim Russert died as a journalist celebrated for softballing any and all propaganda the White House dished out.

Katha Pollitt talks about his drinking and sexism.

Stories of Hitchens’ drinking bouts sometimes landed on the gossip pages and other anecdotes occasionally reached my ears. In the 2000s, he had written enough for me to disagree with him on most points so I accepted his essential schtick — the smart, drunk, party guy from the left who flipped out after 9/11 — but I was surprised anyone of the left or libertarian bent took him seriously anymore, especially his pity party at Vanity Fair. As Pollitt says, he will be missed because he was larger than life. After that, it’s the booze talking.

Rolling out old photos. It’s too cold. It hasn’t gone over 25° F for a few days and the stiff breeze hasn’t let up for most of that time and everyone can agree that wind chill is a bitch. Why is just wind chill and not chill index like its summery step-sister, the heat index? A simple case of euphony.

A few more of my friends checked in and I really do have reasons to be thankful. Two had a parent die Christmas week and another went into the hospital for a second back surgery after a whole year of being in and out the hospital. Prayers are with them and knock on head.

I signed up for oDesk early last year and was discouraged at the low rates being offered for a lot of the work. I’m giving it another try as I realized it’s the sort of thing where you have to start low and once your reputation is established, you can charge more. Also it’s the global market place. I’ll be posting these buttons in better spots after I’ve taken a few more tests. Hire me!

People ask me: “Why do you have a blog with photos and one-liners when you can do that stuff for free on facebook or even blogspot and tumblr?”

You don’t really own anything you put on a site hosted by strangers. My photos are on photobucket for now but if I thought they were really worth anything, they wouldn’t be on there. I’m in it for the long haul.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m looking into an image change. Bear with me as I try on a few different WordPress themes. In the meantime, I’m also learning how to build themes from scratch.

I had one of those rough weeks where your car is sideswiped or just some stupid biker or kid comes along and breaks the left side rear view mirror on your car and then a cop comes along and give you a ticket for it. I had to soak in the irony for a while. (There are all kinds of things you can say about hindsight.)

I drove a friend around all night doing errands before she moved to London without a left rear view mirror. Put a brown bag over your rear view mirror, tape it down, and drive around. We're not being Evel Knieval's but driving without that extra eye is scary. Getting it fixed, writing up a letter to the Ticket People took substantial chunks of my days.

Then I met with someone who pretended to care for me but didn't recall anything I'd ever said to him beforehand. You might say that would make the ideal shrink but I got upset at the lack of hindsight confirmation.

Then I rode my bike around. Tomorrow will be a new day.

A life coach is a psychiatrist/therapist with a best (possibly a mild) seller and without a degree. Instead of having a whistle and making you do push-ups and laps and drills like a sports coach, they give you list-making exercises and paraphrase Bing Crosby songs in elaborate metaphors, ending with some variation of the punchline in “Happy Talk.”

I’m morbidly watching Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. In order to be the best at what he does, he destroys himself while being an amiable monster. Picturing him in a confrontation with a life coach results in a few moments of good sitcom.

Today is my birthday. While I’ve done some stupid things, the only thing I ever punched really hard is my bed.

Fill each with a story, link them all through coincidence and circumstance, and you’ve got a novel. Eureka. I’m just laughing at the way different people write and how many of them don’t.

The Ding Dong Lounge hosted a ‘zine fair on Saturday. They didn’t do a very good job of promoting it as it seemed like only ‘zine publishers were in attendance slapping each other on the back and outnerding each other. If you want bar regulars to come in and hang around, you may not want a naked old guy with distended testicles and large man boobs walking around your zine fair. I know it’s a pagan sort of act, but it’s really grody.

I didn’t take notes but a couple of the zines I looked at were interesting and some had great color graphic work. I also looked at a couple that might’ve been done by fifth graders. You shouldn’t charge $8 for your zine if it looks like it was done by fifth graders. Given the proliferation of blogging, publishing a zine is sort of like making yourself breakfast every day and tossing it in the garbage. I threw out all of my friends’ zines from the 80s and 90s. They’re not worth anything.

Unless you’re Dave Eggers and can produce something as slick (or nearly) as McSweeney’s or n+1 or… you know what I’m talking about– don’t bother. Definitely do it in color. Maintain a nice website/blog and pass out cards with the URL. Take it multimedia people. Once you’re hipper than Dave and get an audience, you might consider charging Kindle subscribers.

The band Wolfhaven performed and Chet messed up by introducing them as Wolverines. They played really nice blues rock sort of like Masters of Reality. I like that they have “333″ in their myspace URL. That means they’re half-evil.