Swineburna 1/16/08

Hey guys, one of our boys, the Swineburna, is going to be writing posts from time to time about whatever it is he feels like telling yinz...He just emailed me his first post, and it's pretty damn good. He does like to rant though, so just to protect our sorry behinds I'll say his opinions aren't necessarily the views of PNA. He's an opinionated bastard, but we figured, eh, what the hell? It's a blog afterall, nothing serious like a newspaper. Check it out, and thanks again Swine, I'll see you at Crystal's lata on...

For this first installment from the Swineburna on Pierogi's N'at, I’m gonna help out my boys Big Snack and Diego with some varied content, and expand the site beyond the realm of sports. I’m gonna learn up some of you yinzers to a world outside of PNC Park, Heinz Field, and da Igloo. If you are only here for sports, please stop reading and continue to the next posting; but realize that there is more to life.

First of all I need to share a video of this hilarious kid from down unda’ who threw a house party and then got fined 20 stacks after hundreds of people showed up.

Now, hopefully everyone is following the political process; you’d actually have to be completely oblivious to not know a little. As ridiculous as the current administration is, it could actually get worse with some of these guys running. Romney is a Mormon….enough said. Huckabee…man he is off his freakin' rocker. He doesn’t believe in evolution and is workin to get the Constitution changed to ‘God’s Standards’. And still there is an unbelievable amount of idiots that vote for these people. I know it’ll (hopefully) come down to whichever Democrat wins the primaries (see:Obama, Hillary), but I guarantee some crazy stuff goes down between now and November.

And on the local political front: Dan Onorato is a jagoff. Ravenstall is our oblivious jagoff leader. I understand the 10% drink tax was the easiest way to fund our weak-ass transportation system, but he wouldn’t budge at all, even though Harrisburg presented at least 10 alternatives of funding. He’s a lazy moron who took the easy route because he copied Philly’s established model (because Philly and Pittsburgh are obviously so similar) and because he knows the drunks in this town will drink no matter what. The restaurants and Port Authority obviously have zero correlation (except that restaurant workers and bar goers can’t use it because it shuts down at 10); and they're raising fares and cutting routes. I’ve been to a lot of cities, and ours is the worst. You can’t even get an f’in cab here without getting yelled at on the phone by the lady from Yellow Cab. All we’re going to do is make a piece of crap look prettier and put stupid, colorful words in different languages on the sides of busses.

I will give it to Onorato, however, that there are more blatant abuses of power going on in the world. This one reaches into the billions, but mainstream media seems to not care a bit. Its amazing how people are obviously stealing millions of dollars with just about zero repercussions.

In sports news, I have to just mention that I don’t give a crap about steroids in baseball. It might be the most overblown story ever, and I am sick of hearing about it. Most of the guys who took HGH (or whatever type of steroid) did so to heal faster and stronger, and to prevent them from getting injured….so they could keep their jobs….and make money….and not work real jobs like us poor shlups. I’d do the same thing - I’m not going to demonize them. I don’t care that Bonds took steroids, I just don’t like him because he’s a giant prick. If there were a procedure to give athletes help with synthetic muscle tissue or some medical breakthrough like that, it would be heralded, not ridiculed. I don’t see the big difference between similar comparisons like that. Malcom Gladwell wrote a good article about this called The War on Drugs. There is a very gray area, but once the dumb ass general public of America gets hold of something, they run with it until its sickeningly used up.

Now, I think it is pretty obvious that our climate is messed up. Trust me, Pittsburgh is becoming a much more pleasant place to live and I’m lovin it, but it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the world. There is an obvious need for alternative power sources, but it seems there are a lot of special interests with an ass ton of money who still control things. There are alternatives out there, it’ll take a while. But its coming. There are solar panels that operate cheaper than coal power for the first time. There are functioning electric cars, all new buildings are ‘green’, especially here in the 'Burgh. So someday, we’ll get it together. Until then though, I’m loving global warming over here in the North Side.

In closing for this initial tutelage of the Swineburna, I am going to steal from Junker and Crowe’s 1250am morning show and offer up my vote, and take some votes from you all, for the Pierogi's N'at Jagoff of the Week. Pick anyone at all. Just let us know. My vote is for Big Snack for having to listen to his karaoke version of Bill Withers the other night….painful.

Until next time…..