Warner Robins girls softball rules the world

Full coverage, with pictures and video.


Image: Beau Cabell, The Telegraph.

Beat the rush ...

... hate Tech early.

If the facebook page I stole the picture below from is to be believed, this was taken at the press conference to announce Paul Johnson as the new Georgia Tech head coach.

Two of the non-empty seats work with me here at The Macon Telegraph.

Clearly, the excitement was palpable.

This must be the place

18 days is tantalizingly close.

I can't tell one from another
Did I find you or you find me?
There was a time, before we were born
If someone asks, this is where I'll be ... (sound)


Share the same space for a minute or two ... (lyrics)

It's just a little too early to say Okie State's scared

I love the very concept of The Dawgbone.com...

I could care less about Zac Robinson's supposed sore leg, but the idea of 60,000 Ok. State fans "collectively hold(ing) their breath" sounds like it comes right out of my game plan.

From The Stillwater NewsPress, which sounds made up:

So even three weeks before the start of the season, Cowboy Nation likely already has started to get a nervous feeling about how healthy its starting quarterback and offensive lynch pin will be this season.

Think the air might be sucked out of Boone Pickens Stadium the first time Robinson runs with the ball against Georgia, as 60,000 Cowboy fans — not to mention 130 or so coaches and players — collectively hold their breath?

If I were Stillwater, Oklahoma, I don't think I'd invite The University of Georgia Bulldogs to the first game in my pretty new stadium.


Image: Stillwater NewsPress.

Chick-fil-A peach shakes going away this month

I am sorry to report that the limited-time-only peach milkshakes at Chick-fil-A will be phased out starting this weekend.


Restaurants will keep making them until they run out of materials, so you might be able to find one for a few days after that, according to a company spokesman.



Said spokesman Mark Baldwin:

"We've introduced limited-time milkshake flavors for the past couple of years in an effort to promote our entire line of milkshakes. These seasonal flavors are not intended to remain on the menu permanently, but we use these special flavors to maintain interest among our existing milkshake fans and also to help raise awareness of our milkshakes to new customers. We of course will consider re-introducing extremely popular flavors, but we can't make any promises about the return of the Peach flavor at this point."

UPDATE: Craig Craddock, who owns two Macon area Chick-fil-A's, said he anticipates running out of peach milkshake ingredients "around the early part of September."

Auburn: Down, but still dumb

Perhaps this picture has been on the Internet forever. But its message is timeless.




In other news about people being stupid, Dawgs Online hit the nail on the head on this Forbes report.

"If you pay $2,000 for a single game ticket, you and your money were going to be parted soon anyway."

Image: If you took this picture I would like to meet you.

"If at all possible"

I am both baffled and amazed by this.

It's Time

I've had a piece of chicken. I've had a little drink. I've seen all the pretty girls, given one or two a wink. ... I been waitin' since last Saturday, to see another one beat. Friends it's time once again, to let the Big Dawg eat.

I miss my old red-tape copy of Bulldog Boogie.
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Season tickets were shipped today, according to the Athletic Association.
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The first two minutes of this video will give you the power to run through walls.
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I'd almost forgotten the absolute boil over of Bulldog information that Telegraph beat writer David Hale's blog becomes during the season. For example:

While it seems to have upset Berry, this quote made me laugh out loud:

"I remember when I went on my recruiting visit, coach (Mark) Richt had my name and stats written on his hand. I guess he thought I didn't see it or something, but I did."

Every Thursday during the season, Richt holds an informal meeting with reporters. Before one of those meetings last year, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas had paid Richt a visit. Richt then came upstairs to talk to reporters, sitting in a chair right next to me. As he discussed his excitement over meeting Thomas, I looked down at his hand. Printed on it in smudged blue ink was this:

Clarence Thomas
Supreme Court
1:30

Hale will also give you today's reason to worry, from Mike Bobo:

"We've got some experience coming back at O line, but we don't have five guys who have played the same position next to each other," Bobo said. "I know everybody thinks we're going to be awesome on the offensive line, but we've got to find some continuity right now."

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Even so, I'm looking forward to lots of this in the coming year...


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And maybe some of this...
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And as much of this as we can get scheduled:

If only it made you Tebowproof, too

There isn't a single paragraph of this story that isn't awesome:

Russian soccer fans have been told to drink whiskey on their trip to Wales for next month's World Cup qualifier to ward off the H1N1 swine flu virus, the head of the country's supporter association (VOB) said Monday.

"We urge our fans to drink a lot of Welsh whiskey as a form of disinfection," VOB head Alexander Shprygin told Reuters.

"That should cure all symptoms of the disease."

Russia's Health Ministry has issued a public warning against traveling to Britain because of the spread of the H1N1 virus but Shprygin said he expected at least several hundred fans would go to Wales for the September 9 qualifier in Cardiff.

"Health officials say this virus is very dangerous but being a fan myself I can tell you that for a real fan nothing is more important than the well-being of the team," said Shprygin, who also sits on the executive board of the Russian FA.

"Russian fans don't fear anything or anybody so this virus will not stand in our way of supporting our team."

The Russian FA also said health issues should not prevent fans from traveling.

"We don't want our team to be without any support for such an important match so we urge our fans to go to Wales despite the health warning," a spokesman said.

Thanks to Athens Bureau Chief Brian Huff for the link. He notes that whiskey also makes you waterproof.

Greg Blue v. Soviet tank

As others have noted, The Dawgbone, a one-stop shop for just about every story written about Georgia football, is back at a new address.

But you should really visit the old address. Make sure you've got the appropriate Flash player. Don't let Greg Blue down.

Music in a time machine

The archivist for Widespread Panic has a blog. And then I'm sitting at work listening to an early version of the band play Not Fade Away in 1985 and reading the story of the band's formation:

Once we had to take our game outside, we obviously encountered the random person wanting into our circle. That’s how we met JB and Mikey. Nope, they didn’t come by and join in, but their friend Neal did. And when Neal found out that Dave and I had seen his friend JB perform solo the weekend before, he was all about making that connection. Especially when he found out Dave played the bass.

Well we met JB and Mikey soon after that chance meeting with Neal. Where I have no clue, but before long the house on King Avenue was the place to hang out….and those three guys started finding their way… which was obviously a natural progression to what JB and Mikey had been doing separately and together prior to Dave showing up.

I remember that time being just about having fun watching my friends make music in a living room in Athens. And catching JB solo or JB & Mikey together in some sort of semi-official way… basically wherever JB could talk the manager into letting him do his thing. I know they took it seriously but I still had no clue where any of it was headed. And I don’t think they really did either at the time.

This seems poorly named

TEAM, me

My Media Guide arrived Friday.

Not a single current player was featured by himself on the covers, unless you want to count Uga VII.

The front shows a team huddle. The back: Sanford Stadium.














Get yours for $15.

The danger of vanity license plates

I don't care what you think, the chances are nearly 100 percent that you're going to end up looking like a douchebag.

G.I. Joe: The other half of the battle

All those years watching cartoons, and it never occurred to me to ask "What's the other half of the battle?"

But the answer makes sense.



If kind-of-witty nerd t-shirts are your thing, you can buy this one here. Hat tip: Words Tumbl Down.

Hawaii head coach too stupid to open mouth

This is easily my favorite part of the story:

McMackin made his comments in front of about a dozen reporters, most with voice recorders, and a WAC video camera. He then tried to convince reporters not to write about his comments.

“Just please … cover for me,” McMackin said Thursday. “Go ahead, say ‘faggot dance.’ No. Please cover for me on that, too — right Karl? I’ll deny it. Anything else?”

Karl referred to WAC commissioner Karl Benson, who was in the room when McMackin concluded his comments.

You'd have to set up chart with subtypes to categorize all that stupidity.

Basically, you just try

This is from an animal control official here in Macon, where shelter workers have been nursing a kitten back to health after children, now in custody, apparently held it down and set in on fire:

“I’ve been here 10 years now. Some cases are harder than others,” she said. “You go home, you cry, you say a prayer, and you come back and do the best you can.”

Good advice on every hard day.

"Only vampires live forever"

This ad is as dumb as anything I've seen in a while, and I've been in a third world country for the last two weeks.

Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite, quite possibly the greatest T.V. newsman of all time, and certainly the most famous, has died.

I don´t have much to add, except that it was important enough for me to seek out an internet connection on a tropical island.

CBS News´ coverage, including photo archives.

His obituary in The New York Times

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., the son of Walter Leland Cronkite Sr., a dentist, and the former Helen Lena Fritsche. His ancestors had settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York. As a boy, Walter peddled magazines door to door and hawked newspapers. As a teenager, after the family had moved to Houston, he got a job with The Houston Post as a copy boy and cub reporter. At the same time, he had a paper route delivering The Post to his neighbors.

“As far as I know, there were no other journalists delivering the morning paper with their own compositions inside,” he wrote in his autobiography.

When he was 16, Mr. Cronkite went with friends to Chicago for the 1933 World’s Fair. He volunteered to help demonstrate an experimental version of television.

“I could honestly say to all of my colleagues, ‘I was in television long before you were,’ ” he said in an interview with CBS News in 1996.

Banning bottled water in Australia

A town in rural Australia has banned the sale of bottled water. I doubt that would fly in the U.S., where we're not big on banning people out of business... with a few exceptions.

But if I owned stock in a bottled water company, I'd pay attention to this:

New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees has backed the cause, ordering government departments to stop buying bottled water and use tap water instead.

Given the environmental impact of pouring 16 onces of water into individual bottles made from petroleum, the cost of bottled water, and the current economic situation, that could absolutely happen here.