Baltimore Orioles: For baseball's Cinderella, has midnight finally struck?

After losing a heartbreaker Wednesday, the Baltimore Orioles must beat the New York Yankees twice in a row in Yankee Stadium to avoid elimination. But don't count them out yet.

By Ron Scherer,?Staff writer / October 11, 2012

Baltimore Orioles pitcher Brian Matusz leaves the field as New York Yankees' Raul Ibanez (27) heads to home plate after hitting the game-winning home run in the 12th inning in Game 3 of the American League Division Series Wednesday in New York.

Bill Kostroun/AP

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For most of the baseball season, the Baltimore Orioles surprised everyone with their resiliency, their ability to win clutch games, and their fearless play.

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Now, the Orioles have their backs against the wall.

On Wednesday night, New York Yankee left handed power hitter Raul Iba?ez, pinch hitting for a struggling Alex Rodriguez, hit two home runs. The first tied the game in the ninth inning; the second was a walkoff blast in the bottom of the 12th inning.

Down 2 games to 1 in the best-of-five American League Division Series, the Orioles have to win Thursday in order to play again on Friday night to move on to the American League Championship Series.

Can they pull it off?

?Absolutely, they can,? answers Ed Randall, host of Ed Randall?s Talking Baseball show on New York?s WFAN radio and host of Sirius XM radio?s MLB Home Plate show. ?These guys have been resilient all year there is no reason to think that losing on Wednesday put a dagger in their heart.?

To win tonight, Randall says the Orioles will have beat up on Yankee right-handed starter Phil Hughes (16-13, 4.23 earned-run average). Hughes has been far from consistent this year, with the Yankees not certain whether they will have the dominant pitcher he can be or the one who gives up too many home runs.

On Wednesday, at a press conference, Hughes tried to downplay his inconsistent performance. ?I had kind of an up-and-down season, but you can?t really look at the regular season when it comes to times like this,? he said.

For the Yankees to win, they will have to get the better of left-handed pitcher Joe Saunders (3-3, 3.63 ERA with Orioles). Saunders, who came to the Orioles in late August from the Arizona Diamondbacks, pitched the Orioles into the ALDS by beating the Texas Rangers in the American League Wild Card Game.

?He got stronger as the night went on,? says Randall. ?Throwing a leftie at the Yankees helps neutralize some of those good left-handed hitters.?

The problem for the Orioles will be getting back in their hitting groove. Some of their stars such as Adam Jones (.125 batting average in the ALDS) and Mark Reynolds (.214) have been stymied. ?Chris Davis (.357) is probably the best,? says Randall. So far, in the ALDS the Yankees have outscored the Orioles, 13-6.

However, through the year, both teams have been about equal, evenly splitting their 18 games. Even more importantly, the Orioles have not been intimidated in Yankee Stadium. ?Baltimore has outhit and outpitched the Yankees in New York,? says Randall. ?This is a very even series.?

One of the reasons why the ALDS has been so close is that Yankees star Alex Rodriguez (.083) has been ? in Girardi?s words ? ?scuffling.?

His lack of home runs in recent weeks has been in all the sports tabloids. ?He is the first to admit he has been weak and overmatched,? says Randall.

Despite the slump, Girardi says he will play Rodriguez on Thursday night. But, exactly where in the lineup is undecided. In the first three games, he has hit in the No. 3 spot.

Pinch-hitting for Rodriguez Wednesday surprised almost everyone. ?It gives lie to the theory that Joe Girardi manages completely from his binder" filled with baseball stats, says Randall. ?It is easily the most shocking move he has ever made.?

Girardi in the post-game press conference said his ?gut? told him to make the change.

If Baltimore is able to win on Thursday night, their journey to play in a World Series will get even steeper. On Friday night they would face C.C. Sabathia who beat them in Game 1. Orioles manager Buck Showalter says he will start right-hander Jason Hammel who started Game 1 (no decision).

?You certainly have to think New York would be the favorite,? says Randall. ?But, the Yankees don?t want it to get there because in that game there is no tomorrow? if they lose.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/p6k7qVNGzBg/Baltimore-Orioles-For-baseball-s-Cinderella-has-midnight-finally-struck

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Jessica Biel Is Perfect for Timberlake, Says Lance Bass

Jessica Biel is perfect for fiance Justin Timberlake because "she's a guy's gal," according to pal Lance Bass. 

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/jessica-biel-perfect-justin-timberlake-says-lance-bass/1-a-493385?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Ajessica-biel-perfect-justin-timberlake-says-lance-bass-493385

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Amazon extending Kindle Owners' Lending Library to the UK, Germany and France this month

Amazon's Kindle Owners' Lending Library has grown considerably since launching in the US, and it looks like the company's finally decided it was time to let some other countries in on the service as well. It announced today that Amazon Prime members in the UK, Germany and France would all have access to the service "later this month," although it's not providing a specific date just yet. As in the US, it will let folks borrow up to one book a month for free, with over 200,000 titles available to choose from (including "thousands" in the countries' local languages). Alongside that expansion, Amazon has also announced yet another increase (of $100,000) to its Kindle Direct Publishing Select fund -- which pays independent authors who include their books in the Lending Library -- with an even bigger one planed for November. No word yet on any additional countries next in line.

Continue reading Amazon extending Kindle Owners' Lending Library to the UK, Germany and France this month

Amazon extending Kindle Owners' Lending Library to the UK, Germany and France this month originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/11/amazon-extending-kindle-owners-lending-library-to-the-uk-germa/

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Whoops! Florida governor gives phone sex number for meningitis hotline

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How to Succeed in Making Money Online | Internet Entrepreneur

It was stated in the report that each passing years, the number of Internet users and e-commerce sales, in U.S. alone continues to rise and are expected to increase. There is approximately 77 percent of the population of internet users and according to the US Department of Commerce since 2010 there was about $165.4 billion in e-commerce sales.

It was claimed that anybody can literally start their own internet business like other thousands of business models that are running online every single day. In contrast, many have failed to succeed, despite of the apparent success of the internet in helping e-commerce based business to grow. But with the help of the e-book entitled, ?The 7 Key Secrets of Internet Business Success? by Veerendra Nayak, readers will learn how to understand the main concepts of any Internet Business. This will help the aspiring and business owners to start their own business or take the existing business to the next level successfully.

A strong?leader in internet business can help blaze the way into new, cutting-edge markets. Learn more in this?article from Michael Eagar.com.

Source: http://www.internet-entrepreneur.org/how-to-succeed-in-making-money-online.html

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How Joe Biden became America?s favorite punch line

Among the four candidates on the top ballot line for the two major parties this year, only one man has never shifted roles, through five decades in politics: Joe Biden. The vice president has always been a punch line.

It?s the joke that keeps changing.

These days, on ?Saturday Night Live,? in ?The Onion,? and as @VeepJoeBiden on Twitter, Biden is represented as boneheaded and vain. A Vinny Barbarino figure. A dimwit with an eye on the mirror, squaring his jaw and checking his hairline. And nonsensically orating.

This version of Biden?let?s call him New Parody Biden?is also charming. That?s what?s most striking about it. He?s emotional and vain and likes attention, but he?s childish and thus not very scheming. He seems to be trivial and light and silly, which makes him decidedly unscary. He?s basically Dick Cheney?s opposite.

The idea that Biden is cool and dumb has occasioned a whole new set of jokes about him, ones that are actually better for the vice president?s image than previous parodies were.

Once, long ago, Parody Biden was a plagiarist. The Biden jokes of 25 years ago portrayed the presidential also-ran as a parrot.

?And so the rabbi says, ?Goodbye, Bupkis!? and Joe Biden says, ?Goodbye, Bupkis!??* (*Not a real Biden joke.)

In law school in the?60s, where he graduated near the bottom of his class, Biden indeed plagiarized a law review article for a class paper. In the ?80s, he stole other politicians? work for political speeches. When he was caught, he played dumb about the mechanics of citation?classic plagiarist move.

Decades later, the plagiarism scandals forgotten, Biden was instead lampooned as a gaffe machine?a Tourettesy type short on self-control. Jimmy Fallon riffed on this iteration of Old Parody Biden: "Joe Biden accidentally revealed the location of the Vice President's top secret bunker. The guy can't help it. But he did apologize. He said: 'I am so sorry for the mistake. The launch code is 85334. It will never happen again. It will never happen again. My Gmail password is robot23. What am I doing? The house key is under the plant near the doorstep.'"

This line of jokes came after Biden, during the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2007, unselfconsciously called Barack Obama ?the first mainstream African American??presidential candidate, presumably??who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.?

Calling a black person ?articulate? was memorably identified as weird and racist by Chris Rock in 1996. The ?bright and clean? stuff was even more disturbing. And Biden?not Parody Biden?once told an Indian American, with a straight face, ?You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin? Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.? He added, ?I?m not joking.?

This version of Biden recently re-emerged when he told supporters in Virginia, some of them black, that Mitt Romney ?is going to put y?all back in chains.? The ?y?all? was disgraceful, as far as this listener is concerned. After this tweaked-out racism, Matt Latimer wrote in The Daily Beast that Biden should step down as vice president?and that he absolutely would be forced to, were he a Republican.

But somehow even Real Biden?s tweaked-out racism has become bundled into the New Parody Biden?s erratic ?charm.? Sometimes, as in this collector?s-item ?Onion? piece from 2009, New Parody Biden?shown shirtless and tattooed, cleaning condom wrappers out of his 1981 Trans Am?lands on the goofball ladies-man end of things.

Maybe he reminds us of our dads. Joe Biden is 69, but the idea that he?s an out-of-it charmer?all hair-band ?80s heart with no indie-rock 2012 brains?seems to endear him to a Gen-X audience. New Parody Biden might even help the ticket. Politico praised Biden?s charisma not long ago, going so far as to say that the balding, error-prone septuagenarian is ?bringing sexy back.?

Biden?s impolitic spiels recall two lovable racist-sexists: David Brent in the original British ?Office? and Nigel Tufnel in ?Spinal Tap.? (?What?s wrong with being sexy?? ?Sexist.? ?Oh.?) You get the sense that these older?albeit fictional?white guys are trying extremely hard to tow a politically correct line that they can?t entirely see. The repressed returns with loony force.

In the real world, I?m not sure if that?s charming or scary. But it?s certainly familiar to anyone who?s been around white men of Biden?s age.

So which parody of Biden hits closest to home? Is he a plagiarist, a gaffe machine, or a blowhard greaser with a Trans Am? I?m going to take a stab at a diagnosis. Biden is a plagiarist. And a poor student. He doesn?t hear tone, and he snatches material away from better minds, stripping it of context and proper attribution.

Biden absorbs broadly disseminated gags from popular culture?from Chris Rock standup, from ?The Simpsons??and then unironically regurgitates them as empirical observations. Thus, he makes gaffes.

And yet, there?s something about posing, vain, cheat-on-the-test bozos trying to seem serious and grown-up that is funny-cool. Especially when they?re not in charge. Now that he?s not president, George W. Bush is funny-cool in that same way.

At almost 70 and consigned to a role without much real power, Biden has come into his funny-cool thing. Man, does he pose a lot. And there?s nothing funnier than posing.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/the-joke%E2%80%99s-on-us--how-joe-biden-became-america%E2%80%99s-favorite-punch-line.html

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Managing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - Schwartz' Four Step ...

Managing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

All of us occasionally get obsessive thoughts and sometimes engage in compulsive behaviours. However, when things reach unmanageable proportions, and our lives are negatively controlled by obsessive thoughts and increasingly strange compulsive behaviours, then we know we have a problem. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can manifest itself in many ways: obsessive cleaning, constant checking, arranging things with relentless precision, repeating certain words, engaging in rituals, having thoughts of harming yourself or others and so on. A person with OCD experiences irrational thoughts which create high levels of anxiety. They then engage in compulsive behaviours to gain temporary relief from these anxious feelings. As an example, someone obsessively cleans (compulsive behaviour) to relieve the anxiety caused by tormenting thoughts that life-threatening germs are everywhere and are dangerous to themselves and others (irrational thoughts.)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can help with OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a condition which can drive sufferers into a spiral of increasingly bizarre behaviour and cause their loved ones to despair. The encouraging news is that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is extremely effective when dealing with this difficult and debilitating health issue. As with all anxiety disorders the faster you seek professional help the better. It?s known that as time passes, irrational thoughts become more entrenched as the brain becomes increasingly locked into an anxious cycle. Research demonstrates that CBT, when used appropriately, helps to manage and change the false messages which OCD sufferers experience on a daily, hourly and often minute by minute basis. A trained CBT counsellor can help you to do battle with these irrational, involuntary and intrusive thoughts and reduce your compulsive behaviour.

Self-Help: Jeffrey Schwartz? ?Four Step Method.

Alongside professional help, it is essential that a sufferer works on making changes themselves. A very useful self-help method for managing and controlling OCD, which is pioneered by many organisations who work in this area, is Professor Jeffrey Schwartz? Four Step Method.

The Four Steps are:? Relabel, Reattribute, Refocus and Revalue. Let?s look briefly at each step:

Relabel: the key to this step is learning to recognise that your obsessive thoughts and compulsions are evidence of your OCD. Pay conscious attention, in the moment (mindfulness), to your thoughts. Keep reminding yourself that these thoughts are unwanted, that they do not represent reality and that they are part of an obsessive disorder. Unfortunately, just wishing thoughts away or ignoring them doesn?t work. This is often what OCD sufferers do, as they desperately try not to respond to the bizarre messages they are receiving. It?s crucial to know that this is not an effective strategy. Although it seems counter-intuitive, the reverse approach is needed. You need to become aware of your thoughts and compulsions, look at them, see them for what they are ? incorrect intrusions and false messages from your brain ? and relabel them as this.

Reattribute: the key point of this step is to realise that the intrusive thoughts and compulsions are caused by a medical condition and your current brain chemistry. As Schwartz sums up: ?It?s not me ? it?s my OCD.? Keep reminding yourself that just because your brain gives you a message doesn?t mean that it is true. Steps one and two work together to help you to correctly recognise irrational thoughts and to understand where these thoughts are coming from.

Refocus: this is the action step. Begin to refocus and distract yourself from the irrational thoughts and compulsive behaviours you feel compelled to engage with. Schwartz calls this ?shifting gears.? Even if it is just for a few moments, distract yourself away from carrying out a compulsive behaviour, or from hearing that repetitive thought in your head. Put some music on, take a walk, phone a friend or do a crossword puzzle. Do anything to take your mind away from your thoughts and compulsions. This resistance to engage in a compulsive behaviour ? to assuage your anxious irrational thoughts ? creates key changes. You don?t have to do what your faulty brain chemistry is telling you to do. Keep reminding yourself that your brain is tricking you and become adept at distraction techniques.

Revalue: over time, and with work on the previous three steps, you can begin to revalue your thoughts and urges. You can watch how your mind works, question the thoughts that you have and remind yourself that it is the OCD which is causing the intrusive and unwanted thoughts. You will no longer feel as compelled to believe these tormenting thoughts or need to follow through with the compulsions to reduce your anxiety. As the days, weeks and months pass, the quantity of irrational thoughts you experience will reduce and your compulsions will have less of a hold over you.

Along with your counsellor, you can work on the Four Step Method, or a similar CBT method, and begin to manage this distressing condition. There is hope. With time and appropriate treatment you can get the upper hand over your OCD and get your life back under your own control.

? 2012 Ruth Nina Welsh.?Be Your Own Counsellor & Coach: http://ruthninawelsh.com/

LINK to Schwartz? Book:

amazon.co.uk/Brain-Lock-Jeffrey-M-Schwartz/dp/0060987111/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348481931&sr=1-1

LINK to OCD UK and Four Steps:

ocduk.org/2/foursteps.htm

Other articles you might like:

Tags: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD, self help counselling, self-help

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2012 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Anxiety, Counselling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/managing-obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd.htm

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