Friends, welcome once again to THIS WEEK IN GIFs. If you've been reading for a while, I think you know as well as I that some weeks are better than others. Well, I consider this to be one of the greatest weeks of 2013 to date.
Voting, as usual, will remain open until Sunday at 11 p.m. Eastern. Enjoy!
DAVID ORTIZ
Waiiiiit. Wait just a minute. Let's just settle down for a second before we decide to dispense of the landline telephone system entirely. I think folks just happily assume we're hurtling headlong toward a future in which everything communicates wirelessly, and that 20 years from now we'll ditch our electrical outlets in favor of a network of glowing obsidian orbs that power our lights via radio waves and play Sigur Ros at a low hum.
Why, though? I don't need that. I don't even need this: my Xbox connects with my router via wi-fi, even though they sit two feet away from one another. The music on my phone syncs with that on my laptop, even though I'm going to plug it into the USB port to charge it anyway.
I think we're looking to the future with the same comical misunderstanding as those folks from the 1950s who totally whiffed on the concept of the printer, and instead imagined a giant robotic hand in every household that wrote letters in cursive. The future is always more pragmatically-constructed than you think it will be.
Most of us still have those old telephone jacks in our homes. I just did some admittedly sloppy math, and I estimate that there are about three million miles of that RJ-11 cable snaking around behind the walls of American homes and businesses. We're never going to be incentivized to rip it out. And what, do you think they're going to rot or something? Those things are so well-shielded that they'd probably last 10,000 years if we wanted them to. There is still plenty of utility in hard-wired networks, and I figure that eventually, should we want to, we'll be able to re-purpose them for any number of things.
The future will reward resourcefulness, not the naive understanding of it that we clumsily cobbled together decades prior.
Thanks. Really wanted to get that off my chest.
ARTHUR JONES
(Via For the Win, submitted by @whenfirefalls)
NEVERMIND ICE CREAM IS THE FUTURE
CHAD QUALLS
Oh goodness. Our friend Chad here has a problem, you see. All y'all longtime THIS WEEK IN GIFs readers in the audience might remember this adventure from last June:
That one's an old favorite of mine. This new one might be even better. You can spell Chad Qualls without "falls," but it's a close shave.
PIRATES FAN
(Via @TPBDerek)
It appears almost certain that the Pirates' pro-sports record of consecutive losing seasons is going to end at 20, and in grand fashion, because they suddenly hold the best record in baseball. We'd better be ready for the outpouring of surplus swagger they've been sitting on.
There's a lot going on here besides Pirates Bro Prime's arm-brushy taunt of Matt Holliday. Please see the bro in the camo Pirates hat who, despite having two free hands, wants absolutely nothing to do with that ball. And once the ball knocks into the seats, the crowd looks like every painting I've ever seen of Jesus' disciples mourning him after He was taken down from the cross.
I know this is reminding you of YANKEES ENTHUSIASTS, so here's that.
GO MARINERS
(Via @CorkGaines)
So basically, interim manager Robby Thompson signaled for a reliever, but he did so by pointing at his left arm. When right-hander Yoervis Medina trotted in, the ump sent him back, because Thompson signaled for a lefty.
Baseball is America's final bastion of handedness essentialism.
JONATHAN VILLAR
(Via The Big Lead)
Being left-handed kind of sucks sometimes. School desks are uncomfortable, half the scissors in the world don't work, and baserunners can steal home on you.
JÜRGEN KLINSMANN
(Via @bubbaprog)
RIP Jürgen, Heaven needed a guy with an umlaut.
VOTE!