Looking to cure my case of writer's block

To be fair, I should probably apologize. I've come down with a slight case of writer's block. It hasn't completely stopped me from working. But it has made my writing about as predictable as a "Saved By the Bell" episode.

It's something that I get from time to time. You can't really explain block. It's an uncomfortable sensation, it's sort of the same feeling you get when watching a movie sex scene with your parents in the room.

Basically writing my column has become much like my golf game - a tense, tedious, mind-numbing, temper-tantrum inducing two-hour experience.

There really is no exact cure. Usually, I just spend my time watching TV and reading anything I can get my hands on to take my mind off it. My antidote automatically begs the questions: "How can you actually get writer's block when that's all you do in the first place?"

So since my attention span has been the same as a fruit fly with A.D.D. and since I feel like I am channeling Jessica Simpson when I write, I am breaking out that cure-all of cure-alls. You guessed it. Random thoughts on random things is back ...

After a June filled with rain and cold, it's finally starting to feel like summer. The days are hot, the evenings are warm and strangely the baseball parks are empty.

The youth baseball and softball leagues wrapped up their seasons about a week and a half ago. So much for the whole boys of summer thing.

How can baseball season end a week after the first official day of summer and a week before the Fourth of July?

I realize this is not the first year this has happened. Little League baseball has changed vastly since the days I played or even helped umpire. In the past, games were played during the day and the season started right after school got out for summer break.

Now, baseball is played on chilly, spring evenings starting in May.

There are pros and cons to both sides of this argument.

Parents like this format because it allows them to help coach, or see their kids play. By having games earlier in the year, it also allows parents to take summer vacations and not have kids miss games.

The argument against this is, "Excuse me, but when did the parents start playing the games."

This whole setup seems largely based on making things easier for parents, when they're not even the ones out there playing.

I'm not saying change the whole structure of the league, but something has to change or something additional needs to be offered. It's the middle of July and kids are sitting around with nothing to do.

I do have a bit of advice for parents. I can do this because there is still a pretty safe bet that I will never be one.

If your kid has a Playstation 2, X-Box, computer or any electronic gaming device, declare it off limits in the summertime. Get them out of the house and doing something outside.

Yes, little league may be over, but that doesn't mean you can't round some friends up and go the park to play home run derby or something.

PS 2's and X-Box are slowly turning our kids into lazy shut ins. I'll admit I have a Playstation 2 myself, and have logged several hours on it. But that's what Havre winters and summer rainstorms are for.

Instead of kids playing baseball or basketball in a virtual world, have them get out there and do the actual thing.

Maybe my writer's block has been caused by West Nile. I know I have it. I feel run down, tired, nauseous and achy. Something like one in every 16 mosquitoes in the area is said to have the virus. If that's the case, who doesn't have it.

If Coach K would have went to the Lakers, it would have been one of the top five moments in my life. It's not because I am Lakers fan, it's because I hate Duke. Coach K leaving would have slowly eroded that program down to the depths of despair it should be at.

Both the University of Montana and Montana State University are raising prices on tickets, athletic fees and even luxury skyboxes to offset their athletics department budget deficits. In an even stranger turn, both MSU Geoff Gamble and UM president George Dennison have managed to see their salaries increase every year.

What's even crazier is that the administrators at places like UM can vote on their own pay increases. How insane is that? Imagine if you had that power.

I guess I'll vote to give myself a raise here at the good old HDN. And at the same time, I will vote myself to be the best-looking sportswriter in the history of the world and from this point on people will have to address me as Lord Ryan.

Can you see I'm struggling here to fill space? That's usually not a problem.

Mike Tyson wins this month's University of Montana money management award. After squandering his millions of dollars from his previous fights and being more than $30 million in debt, Tyson admitted he was living in homeless shelters and cardboard boxes.

At the same time, he was suing Don King for $140 million for fraud - a suit he had a good chance of winning. Instead, Tyson settled out of court for only $14 million which will go immediately to repaying his debt. Let's see here, $140 million or $14 million, and they say boxing doesn't damage people's brains.

Britney Spears is getting married again, this time to dancer Kevin Federline. A dancer? A bleeping dancer?!? There are so many jokes and insults I want to write now, that my fingers are shaking and smoke is coming out of my ears.

"I kissed a bunch of frogs and finally found my prince," Spears told People magazine.

Oh my God. I am on overload here. Too many jokes, must mock Britney.

There have been accusations that she didn't really sing her latest song, "Everytime," and someone else did. Come on, how can you say something like that? Can't you see how great of a singer she is? Haven't you heard her perform live, she is never out of key and has a better voice than Mariah Carey.

For those of you who don't the meaning of sarcasm, now might be the time to look it up.

Maybe those hours upon hours of watching "The Real World" and 90210 reruns and reading People and US magazine have cured my block. Maybe, I am just using my block as an excuse to watch too much television and do far too little work. Maybe, I really never had writer's block at all.