"Even though the Toronto Blue Jays have offered Corey Koskie back to the Twins at a discount price, the trade talks Wednesday were officially pronounced dead."

-Strib

The poker match between J.P. Ricciardi and Terry Ryan, general manager of the Minnesota Twins, is moving at a snail's pace..."I've talked to the Twins (about Koskie) a couple of times but there's not much going on right now," Ricciardi said yesterday. "I wouldn't say the talks are dead but they're going real slow."

-The Toronto Sun

TRUTH AND BEAUTY A Play By Batgirl

A man and a woman sit at as bus stop. The woman reads a newspaper that has a pleasing, highly readable font with enormous graphics to make the whole news reading experience less taxing. The man fiddles with his iPod. He can't get it to work. His son said it would be so easy, he said it would change his life, he said even the basest moron can use an iPod, but the man can't understand it. It does not belong in the same world as he, it belongs in this new universe of hip hop and high speed and digital everything and he does not understand it, not any of it, and as he tries to bring up his menu, he feels, suddenly, the twinge of his own mortality. The world has passed him by, and he is nothing, now, just an artifact, a sorry remnant of a forgotten world. He sighs and lowers the infernal contraption, the sleek plastic memento mori, and stares at the ground. Then, suddenly, he espies something growing from a crack in the concrete slabs in front of him. He stands up.

Man: (gasping) Look at this beautiful flower!

Woman: (looking up) That is not a flower.

Man: Not a flower? Of course it's a flower! Here, in this wasteland of the city, a bit of beauty sprouts. (The man bends down.) I don't know how it could have survived here on this sidewalk. How no one's stepped on it! This flower is a miracle. This flower is a survivor. This flower gives us all hope.

Woman: That is not a flower.

Man: Not a flower? Of course it is! It is a flower of the genus Cordelus species Koskosa. Delicate, graceful, balding. A sweet odor. Thrives in cold weather. Rare. Likes ice fishing. Highly breakable.

Woman: That is not a flower.

Man: A flower, it is! The seed-bearing part of a plant. Here, the corolla, here the calyx. Here, the stamen, here, the pistil! A whole reproductive system in one, just waiting for the merry bee to buzz along and be seduced by its sweet, sweet nectar. A flower! Art and science married to produce one beguiling whole. You can have your computers, your gadgets, your whozits and whatfors, I say there is no technology on Earth greater than that used to make this noble wisp. A flower!

Woman: That is not a flower.

Man: Argh! (straightening) For heaven's sake! If it's not a flower, what is it?

Woman: (standing up, smiling pleasantly) It is a gun.

She bends down, picks up the flower, points it at him and shoots. The man screams and falls to the ground. Blood seeps everywhere.

The woman sticks the flower back between the cracks in the pavement and stomps on it. Tony Batista walks onto the stage, gives a low bow in the Japanese style, then enfolds the woman in his arms and kisses her. With tongue.

Curtain.