I think it means "The Fishes"

Name three Disney songs.

Go ahead, do it. Just think of three songs from Disney movies. Any movie, any time, there are plenty to choose from.

Now name three more. You might have to dig a little deeper for these, but you should eventually be able to come up with them. Granted, Disney has pretty much hit rock bottom -- a remake of The Shaggy Dog? Starring Tim Allen?? Is this a joke? Still, though, everyone, and I mean everyone, has seen at least a couple of the big hits -- Aladdin, Lion King, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and of course the classics Cinderella, Mary Poppins, Pinocchio, etc.

So with a little thinking you should be able to remember a handful of their songs. Many of them won Oscars and Grammys. You may even remember a fun song from Newsies. But I will bet that not one of the songs you thought of was Les Poissons.

The four sweetest words

It's never quite so dark and cold, and visions of sunshine and green grass aren't quite so far off*, on the day you can utter these words: "Pitchers and catchers report."

In honor of pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training today, and moreover in the spirit of a new spring's endless possibilities, I have reinstated the Cubs' link on the right. This is still probationary, though. If those a-holes pull any of the same shit that happened last year, i.e. playing like a bunch of languid fourth graders, that link is coming right back off. I got real sick by last June of someone pitching their ass off, giving up just a couple of runs over seven innings, just to have the offense blow every opportunity and lose 3-1. The thing is, though, I don't know where any offense is going to come from this year. Lee and Ramirez are the only legitimate threats, and an outfield of Matt Murton, Juan Pierre, and Jacque Jones isn't exactly going to put the fear of God into anyone, offensively or defensively.

But this isn't the time to worry about those small details! At this point, nobody can question my reasoning or sanity if I say, the starting pitching is going to be excellent (especially if Wood stays healthy), a bullpen by committee will work for three innings a game, and there's enough speed-and-average guys to get on base and be in scoring position for the couple of big guns, plus we can always trade for another slugger, and if that all comes together, this could be the year! Just 47 days til Opening Day!

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*Granted, this winter has been fairly sunny and mild on its own, and I wouldn't trade that for the alternative. But I grew up in northwest Indiana, where winter lasts about five months. There's snow, there's ice, there's sub-zero temperatures, there's a wind chill factor, it gets dark around 3 pm, and spring can never arrive soon enough.

Passion Lives Here

After the Olympic mascots (which officially became self-parody with the Atlanta "Whatzit"), the first thing I would eliminate is the tacky slogans and mottoes of each Games. That said, my thoughts after the first few days of the XX Winter Olympiad:

• Does anyone really acknowledge or remember the Roman-numeral ordinal label of any Olympics? I've only ever read, heard, or said the year and city when discussing previous years' games. It's just as bad as the Super Bowl. At least the Olympics only add I every IV years...the Super Bowl got to the "enough, already" point with XXXVIII.
• Why did they decide to give out CDs on a ribbon instead of medals?
• I didn't care four years ago, nor do I care now, what Apolo Ohno's middle name is.
• If, after reading the above, you immediately thought to yourself, "Anton," NBC was happy, the US skating officials were happy, some marketing wizard was happy, and I died a little inside.
• Coming up in 9 minutes, more figure skating. I swear, if NBC showed more than four consecutive minutes of any other sport without mixing in some figure skating, there'd be a riot.
• Speaking of figure skating, I doubt it's keeping with the true Olympic spirit of competition to contest events judged not by who's faster or stronger than whom, but by who wears the most sequins and represents the country that corrupted the most judges.
• Do they ever have to Zamboni the luge run?
• Cross-country skiing is the winter version of race-walking.
• For every minute of actual competition shown on NBC, there are three minutes of backstory, vignettes, or pointless interviews that make watching their coverage a true ordeal. This story pretty much sums it up.
• Bob Costas -- zip it.

The best laid plans...

I've been wearing my glasses since the Fiesta Bowl because I decided it was time to seriously investigate laser eye surgery. You have to have been out of your contacts for at least three weeks before they can measure your eye in its "natural state" so I figured my timing was perfect: Contacts out through January, examination and surgery in early February, and be completely recovered by Feb. 27 for the first Bandits game. (Most people are up and running just a couple of days after Lasik, but they say it can take up to a couple of weeks for some nagging side effects to disappear.) Of course, this is my life we're talking about, so nothing can be easy. I had a three-hour eye exam on Friday, during which my eyes were poked, prodded, measured, beamed with invisible light, and saturated with all kinds of drops. I was also dilated, which I highly recommend if you want a completely trippy experience. I'm extremely nearsighted, but after my eyes were dilated, I became farsighted, and being able to see better at distance is something I just can't wrap my mind around. They gave me a pamphlet to read, and on instinct I held it close to my face -- but it was blurry! I held it at arm's length and it came into focus -- very weird!

The end result of this marathon exam was that while my eyes are healthy, I have thin corneas. The average person's corneas are about 550 microns thick, while mine are around 520. The doctor even put the eyelid spreader in and put me under the laser used in surgery, but for the purpose of getting more precise cornea readings on nine different sections of each eye. I heard his assistant read off the measurements, and my highest out of the 18 was just 540 microns. Since Lasik surgery requires the creation of a 150-160 micron thick flap, the elimination of 10-12 microns of the underlying cornea for each diopter of correction (and I'm pushing a -8 in both eyes), and the desired residual corneal thickness of 270-280 microns (not counting the replaced flap), my eyes just don't have the structural integrity for the operation.

So Lasik is out of the question, but PRK is still an option. That's another form of laser surgery that shaves the top layer of your cornea rather than the middle of it. No flap is created, so it can be performed on people with thinner corneas. The downside is it takes much longer to recover from -- two to three weeks as opposed to three days. So after having spent all last month researching Lasik, talking to people who'd had it, and familiarizing myself with the procedure, I have to start over at square one with PRK. Not to mention the fact that the timing is all thrown off now, because they have to examine me again in two weeks and then if all is well do the procedure a week or two after that, by which time football season will be underway and I don't know how the surgery, recovery, and return to normal vision can all be worked around the games.