Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

First off, adorable baby alert:

I know the column's too narrow here to see the whole thing, so go here for the full version. CLICK THE LINK. Isn't he a cutie???

Other things going on:

• Speaking of photos of really new things, these are supposedly screenshots from a magazine of a game for Nintendo's upcoming Revolution console. It looks good, but, again, it comes out of a magazine. Note again the fascinating hand-held control structure.

• Chuck Klosterman, who's like Bill Simmons without the sports, writes about sports here, specifically, the five problems for us as baseball fans and Americans upon Barry Bonds' steroid-fueled passing of Babe Ruth on the career home run chart. All told, it's a fascinating read.

• This is not news, but an interesting revelation. I remember as a youngster reading an anecdote in a Baseball Hall of Shame book about an English-speaking and Spanish-speaking outfield combo who kept colliding with each other, so the English-speaking guy learned to say "Yo la tengo!" which is Spanish for "I got it!" Hilarious, no? Cross-cultural communications at its finest.

  In any event, years later I discovered (never very closely, sorry) that there's a band called Yo La Tengo, and I always thought that was the weirdest coincidence: a band with a phrase as its name is weird enough, and then it's the punchline to one of those weakly amusing baseball stories of years past. Could the band have possibly gotten its name from the same story I read? As I just discovered, absolutely. The outfielders were Richie Ashburn and Elio Chacon on the 1962 Mets.

• I was talking to someone in Alaska a while back, and she was shocked to discover that at one point in the past Alaska actually had Democratic senators. I hope that conveys how anachronistic it seems, then, that one of those Democrats who used to represent Alaska in the Senate is running for president. He was an anti-war Democrat during Vietnam, and he's going to be anti-war again. This is the first time I've seen someone run for president who hasn't served in office in 26 years. In any event, he's the first official candidate.

• I always love Wikipedia entries on the occult that are presented straight. "In similarity to her Thelemic counterpart The Great Beast 666, Babalon is seen as being both an Egregore and an Office, the taker of this office is known as The Scarlet Woman." I had no idea. Also, I'm pretty sure the real Great Beast has a better grasp of punctuation.

• But if you want to see something really horrifying, look at Wikipedia's list of famous Scientologists. The number of people you'll lose faith in will be outstanding. Mary Bono? Soleil Moon Frye?? Patrick Swayze?!? I hope Xenu really is the time of your life, Swayze.

• In news almost as traumatic as putting billions of souls around volcanos and blowing them up, releasing their souls into the atmosphere, someone in San Diego just made a video of the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The second-greatest baseball comeback ever? Or just a horrible, horrible moment? Check out the video and decide for yourself.

• Are you going to try to tell me I didn't need a new cell phone with a camera? Look at this:

  

  And this:

  

  Again, for the full versions click here and here. Did I keep it like that? Looks like you'll have to call me on my new number and find out!