Last night, I was forced to confront author Dayn Perry about his recent conduct.

Awkward heterosexual man-hug for Jeremy Blachman, who has made an art form of xtranormal.

Did Billy Beane say it?!?

Click to embiggen.

The words “It’s on like Donkey Kong” were not uttered expressly (not from Jerry Crasnick’s mouth, at least), but it is, most assuredly, on — and in a manner very similar to, if not precisely the same as, the aforementioned Donkey Kong.

When I look at a child, I see the future. When I look at my wife, I see the woman with whom I’ll be spending the rest of my life. And, increasingly, whenever I look at Charlie Blackmon, I see everyone I was friends with in college.

The image to the left — of Charlie Blackmon wearing a vest and wearing a tiger shirt and eating what appears to be some kind of delicious burrito — has provoked merely the latest in a series of small epiphanies regarding how the Rockies outfielder is actually probably just one of my roommates from college with whom I’ve lost touch.

To the photo, he appends this confident-sounding tweet:

what’s better than a tiger? A Siberian tiger. What’s better than a Siberian tiger? Four of them on my awesome shirt!

And what I believe is a student film made by Blackmon and this other guy with whom we roomed.

Truffle Shuffle in honor of reader Paul, who brought the above tweet to the author’s attention.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, ancient philosopher Epicurus writes that a wise man “thinks it better to be unfortunate in reasonable action than to prosper in unreason. For it is better in a man’s actions that what is well chosen should fail, rather than that what is ill chosen should be successful owing to chance.”

Discuss the extent to which the above statement applies to recently retired manager Tony LaRussa and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position. Also, meditate on the image embedded here and ask yourself — aloud, if you need to — if this is more likely the (a) best or (b) most absurd of all possible worlds.

You have 30 minutes for this section of the test.

Not, not, not, not, not pornography.

Beyond its propensity for killing cats, curiosity has other virtues, as well — namely, in that, by placing our trust in it, we’re led effortlessly to our respective vocations and become the people we’re meant to be.

Does that idea sound Emersonian to you? Shut up, it is.

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Because a dumb Dolphins-Giants game is the only sporting event of any note this early Sunday afternoon, you’ll no doubt have a moment in your schedule to reflect on the following GIF, which depicts the most important part of Cardinal reliever Octavio Dotel’s seventh-inning Game Seven strikeout of Ian Kinsler.

Not for nothing is Nolan Ryan known as “the William H. Macy of principal owners of major-league franchises.” Nor was his emotional range on display more conspicuously than during the late innings of Friday night’s World Series Game Seven.

From irascible:

To world-weary:

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A portrait of the artist as a different, less attractive person.

After a series of rigorous medical-type tests and appointments with important cardiologists, it’s come to my attention that the place where I hate the Cardinals is in my heart.

Please recognize: when I say heart, I’m not using the word metaphorically — like in the Rod Stewart song “Faith of the Heart”, for example, or the other Rod Stewart song “You’re in My Heart”. Stewart doesn’t intend to suggest that the unnamed woman he’s addressing is in his actual heart. She’d have to be only, like, three inches tall, were that the case. And even then, there are so many questions to ask: how did she get in there? can she get out? does she live in a particular ventricle? It’s absurd.

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