Barry Bonds, I Have a Scheme for You

I got to work from home today, on account of a rampant case of stinky-hallway-itis. At about 10 AM, the power to our office building got shut off. When it came back on, the whole hallway smelled like a tire fire. In some situations (I'm thinking of an actual tire fire), that's not so bad, but it doesn't work when some of us have high quality software to produce. I spent the rest of the day at home.

I can now say that I'm incredibly productive when it comes to working from home. This surprises me too; I was certain I'd spend the afternoon playing charades with the cat. Like all aspiring shut-ins, I've always wanted a job where I could telecommute, and this little experience gives me faith that I could actually do it. Please let the hallway reek of crap tomorrow!

I've been thinking some about Barry Bonds lately, and how he's about to break Hank Aaron's homerun record. As a baseball fan, I should care about this. As someone who once dressed up as Hank Aaron for Halloween, in what was surely one of the most misguided costumes ever, I should care about this. The problem is, I'm kind of indifferent. If he weren't such an ass, I could root for him. If I thought he was the only person who used steroids, I could root against him. Unfortunately, he is an ass who's really good at baseball, but still used steroids, although lots of other guys did, but he's still kind of an ass, so my mind isn't made up.

Since I'm not sure what to think, I came up with a good homerun scenario that would please the people in my camp. Right now, Barry's tied with Hank. Let's imagine that at his next game, he's up to bat and he just crushes the ball. There's absolutely no doubt this is a home run. Immediately on contact, he turns to the fans and screams, "I retire!" He starts to round the bases, everybody's going crazy, and then the ball strikes a seagull in the outfield, only to fall short of the fence. Technically, it's not a homerun, even though everyone sort of agrees that was a homerun. Being a man of his word, Barry stays retired and everyone gets to debate forever whether or not he's the true homerun maestro.

If possible, someone pitch this idea to Barry and a trained seagull.