what you need to know about the cub convention

obviously, this page isn't going to promise you much, dear reader. but it will promise you this: none of this lot are ever going to be attending a cubs convention -- for many of the same (albeit the lesser) reasons that we wouldn't have been attending the event you see pictured here. groupthink is dangerous -- it addles the mind, slows the wit, obfuscates truth and all too often reduces the logos of men to an afterthought in the rush to standardize oneself to fit the madness of a starstruck crowd.

taken in at a safe distance, then, the cub convention -- whose agenda reads far more sedately than my daughter's lesson plan at daycare ("celebrating 20 years of vineline"? are they serious?) -- reduces over a steady boil from weekend of baseless propaganda and self-reinforcing delusion to a few trite lines:

the cubs just might use wood in the pen a bit after all -- or not:

"It just depends on how Woody is," Baker said. "We have Woody slated as a starter, but if his endurance isn't up and he's ready, then that might be another way. That's just an option."

jim hendry will never land a first-tier free agent, though the cubs will probably continue to be exceptionally profitable:

"[Furcal] got $13 [million] a year, which in the industry was almost absurd," Hendry said.

there are a number of bloggers out there pretty desperate for some publicity, however deserving or undeserving.

but finally and most importantly, the cubs convention once again transmitted this much information loud and clear, as it does every year:

virtually all the complaining and ranting of the team's fanbase is just so much sound and fury signifying nothing -- for anyone who actually pays money to the team in order to procure the right to bitch about the team will never and probably can never be an effective agent of change.

the cubs, in the end, have manipulated the angst of these unfortunately dedicated people about the on-field ineptitude of their profit engine into a profit engine itself. if that doesn't say simultaneously everything there is to know about how insidiously well this corporation is run and what goal is always and only in its soulless mind -- as well as the complete ridiculousness of the eternally hopeful cast as a source of opposition or reform -- this writer cannot envision what could or will.