While I'm in the mood to rant, let me talk to you about rising tuition costs. Everyone wants to place the blame here at the U on the same old things: athletics, construction cost overruns, and rising pay for top university executives. Well I say that everyone is barking up the wrong tree - the real problem is landscaping waste.

For the students who are only on campus from September to May, you miss out on what Facilities Management does during the summer. Has anyone else noticed that the U has greener lawns than anyone in Edina? Everyone else in the Twin Cities is forced to hold off on watering their lawns during these hot summer months, yet the U has sprinklers running all day long. Water isn't cheap - especially during these summer months when it comes at a premium - yet the University of Minnesota finds it important enough to waste the money of students and tax payers on keeping the grass green.

Watering the lawns isn't the only summer waste on the part of Facilities Management. Anyone spending any amount of time on campus has surely taken notice of all the employees driving around aimlessly in golf carts and ATVs loaded down with shovels and hoes. Why are we paying for all these useless employees? As someone who is currently unemployed, I know it's not easy to find a job, but why is that while everyone else is forced to lay off employees in these lean financial times the university just keeps on hiring people to do nothing? Chump students driving around in carts are not unionized, so we needn't hire them to do nothing. Just such a waste.

Homosexuality in Baseball

Okay, the "headline" above may actually be a bit misleading as I'm not actually writing right now about the sexual preference of ballplayers, but rather about how it seems everyone in Major League Baseball wants to give to the Twins up the ass.

Yes, I'm a little steamed right now. I believe I've now run out of fingers counting how many times this season an opposing pitcher has been allowed to blatantly hit a Twins batter intentionally without any sort of punishment or reprocussion. Behind me on the tv at the moment is the Twins-Indians game, in which Cleveland starting pitcher (and outlaw) Danys Baez has now intentionally hit both A.J. Pierzynski and Torii Hunter - with not even a warning from the umpires!!!

Admittedly Torii Hunter's retaliation - he picked up the ball and hurled it back at Baez - was stupid, but at least someone is trying to step up and do something. Of course, his real mistake was that he threw the ball at Baez instead of trying to knock the block off of one of the umps. If you're going to get ejected, suspended, and fined, make it worth it and bean the s.o.b. who is screwing you up the ass.

I think what bothers me the most about it all is just the way that these pitchers are getting away these hit batsmen, yet the Twins haven't been allowed to retaliate. The one time when a Twins pitcher decided to retaliate, it was Jack Cressend, and he got tossed and subsequently suspended for - sorry if I mess this up - I believe either three or four games. I just want fairness put back in the game. If you're going to let Baez hit two of the Twins' three All Stars, you'd damn well better let Rick Reed come right back out and nail Vizquel - after all, that's baseball, right?

Jonathan and I went to see Road to Perdition tonight, and I feel like I want to say a few things about it yet tonight. While the film was far from perfect, I have to honestly say that it is one of the best movies I've seen come out of Hollywood in quite some time. The film itself is an updated version of (or at least loosely based upon) the story of Moses, Joshua, and the Israelites. I don't really want to tell you any more in that respect, as I don't want to ruin the film for you if you haven't seen it yet, but you'll understand what I mean once you've seen the film. Tom Hanks was... uh... Tom Hanks. I guess if you slap a mustache on his face he's supposed to be a bad ass, but I think it takes him closer to Groucho Marx. I liked the imagination of Sam Mendes in the way some of the scenes and shots are constructed. The transitions and such sort of reminded me of a bit of influence from The Graduate. Conrad L. Hall's cinematography made it difficult to necessarily heap a lot of praise upon it. The camera spends a lot of time playing with focus between near and far objects, but sometimes it seems nothing is in focus when perhaps it should be. I know the projection work at the theater wasn't the greatest, but these unfocused shots were obviously from the camera and not the projector. Jonathan didn't like the comic relief, which I guess I can understand, as it all came in one scene and was perhaps a little out of place in the film. Overall though, as I said, I thought it was quite good compared to most of the garbage pumped out of Hollywood these days.