Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Tsunami

I can't imagine what the people affected by this mess are going through. You are able to survive a terrible natural disaster, but then you have to worry about your loved ones, and whether they are misisng or dead, whether or not you are homeless, then you have to worry aobut disease and starvation. All the everyday things you take for granted are now important things that you have to keep in mind all the time in order to survive. And while all this is going on, you have to clean up the ruins of your homes and the bodies of your family, friends, and neighboors. Seeing a tragedy like this makes me feel even more horrible about all the death and destruction that is intentionally inflicted on people. I don't know how people deal with something like this, I guess it's just because they have no choice.

I'm already tired of the criticism of the US for their paltry aid package. No one has said this is all we are going to give. If it ends up being all we give then criticize then, but for now, I'm sick of the pettiness. I don't see anything wrong with giving more money over time as needs become more clear. If that doesn't happen, then I think the criticism is valid, but so far I don't see any problems. I think it just looks bad compared to the cost of Bush's inauguration party or the War in Iraq, which are both ridiculous, but those are separate issues.

I'm also tired of the criticism of Bush for not taking time out of his vacation and making some sort of public address. I hate Bush as much as anyone, but who cares what he has to say about this tragedy? Nothing he says is going to make anything any better for those people. It would be nice if he had something to say, but I just can't get upset about it that he doesn't. If anyone's looking to him to set any kind of example in any situation, they're looking in the wrong place anyway. Just let the guy have his vacation, I say the less the World sees him, the better the US looks anyway.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Ann Coulter is such a ...

...well, fill in the blank, the word I want to use is pretty nasty, so I decided against it. Anyway, I just saw her on an interview with Bill O'Reilly, basically claiming the left is a bunch of clan members for daring to criticize African Americans Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas for being incompetent. I don't personally know enough about Thomas, but in Rice's case, it's because she is fucking incompetent.

Coulter goes on to say the the left's criticism of these two is racist because it is "only" African Americans who are criticized by the left in this fashion. She actually says that no one makes those claims against Cheney or Rumsfeld. First of all, what a total crock of shit. Who doesn't say Rumsfeld is incomptent these days, on the left or otherwise? And plenty of people think Cheney is as well, including me. And in case Coulter has been living in a cave for four years, let me point out to her that most people on the left think white-bread, man of the people, wouldn't you love to have a beer with him, can't pronounce nuclear, much less the name of the country he supposedly leads, George W. fucking Bush is an incompetent moron who probably couldn't lead the Texas Rangers, much less the United States. So you can take your racism and shove it right up your ass.

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Monday, December 27, 2004

Reggie White

It's very sad when anyone dies, especially so young. But it really annoys me sometimes when people die and everyone can't stop talking about what a great person they were, even if they weren't. I didn't know Reggie White, maybe he was a great guy, he was certainly a great football player, but let's not forget, this guy was an enormous homophobe, and he also gave a speech once, the point of which seemed to be to cram as many racial sterotypes as possible, but at the same time trying to pretend they are compliments.

When you look at the black race, black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to black churches, you see people jumping up and down, because they really get into it. White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization. You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature and you know how to tap into money pretty much better than a lot of people do around the world. Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure. When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality.

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Thursday, December 23, 2004

TIME - Man of the Year

I see a lot of people complaining about Time giving Bush the Man of the Year (or Person of the Year, whatever), and I don't understand it. It's not an award. It's not the "Favorite" Man of the Year, or "Best" Man of the Year, it's about who has had the greatest influence over events during the past year. Bush certainly qualifies. It's not about honoring someone.

Check the list, Hitler and Stalin are both on it, that alone should make people realize that it is not an award that Bush is getting. Actually, Stalin is on there twice. Also, Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr were named together during the same year in 1998. Certainly, they weren't trying to pick their favorite person and couldn't decide who they liked better between those two. It's all about people who make the news. It's not like a Father of the Year award, or Employee of the Year award, or an MVP or a Nobel Prize. It's just an acknowledgement of influence in shaping events in history.

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Don't get me wrong...

...I love sports, I especially love football, it is by far my favorite sport. And I like the NFL more than college. So I'm a big fan of the NFL, and I'm very happy that we have a team here in Jacksonville (although I am and will always be a Cowboy fan). But if I hear the word SuperBowl on the local news or radio one more time, I think I'm going to lose my mind. I'm very happy that the SuperBowl is coming here. I think it's pretty exciting and will be good for the city. But I do realize that the SuperBowl will be here without being told about it every five minutes or so. It's getting worse as the NFL's regular season winds down, and I expect it to get worse still as the playoffs get underway.

And although I root for the Jaguars to do well, at least when not playing the Cowboys, I think my worst nightmare would be for them to make a run in the playoffs this year, because it would be unbearable to listen to the local media if the Jaguars had a chance to play at home in the SuperBowl. Fortunately, that doesn't look too likely with all the great teams in the AFC.

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Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Happy Festivus!

I'm tired of all the arguing and complaining about Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays and who should or shouldn't be able to say what to whom, and who's allowed to be offended by what, I just don't care. So, I've decided to ignore the whole thing and celebrate a holiday that everyone should be able to appreciate, a festivus for the rest of us!

Festivus is tomorrow (December 23rd), so get your aluminum poles out, start working out what grievances you want to air, and prepare for the feats of strength.

P.S. A donation has been made in your name to The Human Fund.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

It's gotta suck to be this guy

So your wife gives birth to a new baby girl. She does it suddenly, so you missed it, but you have a beautiful baby, who you give a name to and show off to your friends and brag about it. Happiest time of your life. But, wait, that little girl isn't really yours. Oh, and she belongs to a woman who was brutally murdered. Oh, and your wife did it. Oh, and she faked the whole pregnancy. Oh, and she's crazy and she's going to jail. So now, not only are you not a proud new father, you don't have a family at all. No baby, no wife, nothing. What a crappy couple of days he must have had.

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Please make it stop

Ok, I really like to read, and if I read a book I really like, I will often recommend it to friends. What I don't do is eagerly await news of what a title for my favorite author's next book may be or when he may finish it. I also don't tell people they should read the books I like, then get offended if they don't want to, or if they say they already have and didn't like it. All you Potter-maniacs out there, I'm glad you've found books that you enjoy, but just leave me out if it. I tried to read the first book and I didn't like it, I saw the movie and I didn't like it, nothing personal. Now just leave me alone.

Oh, and there are many, many, many good books in the world, besides Harry Potter, maybe some of you should broaden your horizons a bit, you may find that there are other books that you enjoy reading just as much or (gasp!) even more. Anyway, just make the Harry Potter Hype Machine go away, please!

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Sunday, December 19, 2004

Suck, suck, suck...all they do is suck

So I didn't expect the Cowboys to have any shot against the Eagles on the road especially the way they got manhandled in Dallas (you may not remember that game as it was quickly ignored in favor of talking about the pre-game intro on MNF with TO and Nicollete Sheridan), but when they lead the whole game and knock Owens out, I thought they may have a shot. Of course, when thr game is on the line, the defense which played well all day suddenly softens up and lets the Eagles drive right down the field for the game winning TD. Oh and Vinny - he gives us the best chance to win - Testaverde threw yet another late pick as the Cowboys had some time left to try and win the game.

And of course to make it worse, I had McNabb and TO on my fantasy team in the playoffs. I was expecting big points based on the last meeting, but of course, despite getting the win, McNabb and Owens combined for crap fantasy-wise.

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Friday, December 17, 2004

The Apprentice Finale

I like this show. I didn't like this season as much as last (I thought the contestants were far better last year), and I didn't expect to like it when I started watching last year, but I did. Mostly at the beginning, I just wanted to see Samet fired. Anyway, no matter how much I like a show, I think three hours is too long. Especially if you have to bring out the OJays (please tell the contestants that they're on live television and if they can't dance to please sit down, no shame in not being able to dance, I can't dance, but it's not something to experiment with on national live television) and have a 10 minute commercial for the next bad reality show (in which Sugar Ray (Leonard, not the band) says that it's not a reality show, but a movie about real people, which, huh?) then just cut it to 2 hours and spare us. Oh, and make Omarosa go away, we still don't like her.

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Blogging Stuff

I'm still pretty new to this blogging thing, but I've been reading a lot of them lately, and it's pretty interesting to me. That said, I notice how most people do a lot of quoting and linking and crediting other blogs and source in their posts, and I always mean to do that stuff myself, but I'm just too lazy I guess. I usually just post using the BlogThis button on my Google Toolbar (if you're not using the Google Toolbar, you really should start, by the way), so if I get something linked to the title, I'm usually doing good, so I usually don't do a lot of quoting and stuff, I just share my own thoughts. Which is not to say my thoughts are not shaped and inspired by other things I read, which is why I wanted to point out that sites I like to visit and other blogs I read and comment on are listed over there on the sidebar. So until I stop being lazy and post links and all that crap in my posts, you can look over there for things that interest me.

I've also been using the Next Blog button a lot which is addictive and leads to some interesting things (where I found most of the blogs listed on here). One of which is the discovery (from my own random surfing anyway) that apparently blogs about knitting are very popular. Not up there with political blogs or teens blogs about how much they hate school or whatever, but I see an awful lot of knitting blogs which makes me wonder if a disproportionate number of knitters are also bloggers, or are there just a lot more knitters out there than I realized?

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Why Kerry lost

I'm getting tired of all the things I'm reading about how Kerry or the DNC or Holywood activists or whoever in the Democratic Party should or shouldn't have done this or that or whatever, and everyone trying to decide who was the most to blame for the whole thing. Now obviously, things could have been done differently because they lost, but let's not overlook the fact that they lost mostly because the voters are a bunch of idiots. I think Kerry must have been lacking something, because anyone with anything to offer should have been able to easily beat the idiot who won in a landslide. But just because Kerry wasn't Superman doesn't mean he wasn't clearly better than W. So let's put the blame where it belongs, on all those morons driving around with W stickers on their cars.

Serously, why would anyone vote for this guy? Ok, I'll give rich people and those in charge in major corporations a pass, because at least they voted for their own self intrests. But if you're a Republican, why would you vote for this guy? I always hear Republicans talking about small government, Bush's administration has no concept of small government. I hear Republicans criticize Democrats for "tax and spend" policies, but how are Bush's "spend and spend" policies better? We will have to pay for that spending at some point. If you're religous and you voted for Bush because of his commitment to his faith, then I would argue that you must not understand what religous preachings are supposed to be about. What would Jesus do??? Well, probably not kill a whole assload of people in the name of Democracy (which I still fail to see any semblance of in Iraq). If you voted for Bush because you think he makes you safer, then you haven't been paying much attention. The War on Terror has pretty much ignored the people responsible for attacking us, allowing them to focus on planning future attacks, while we send Americans over to get killed by other terrorists in the mean time. Also, opposing any 09/11 related investigations or reforms doesn't seem to me to be something that will make us safer.

Anyway, my point is that Bush has the voters fooled, and it's because they're stupid. It's not because of anything Kerry or the DNC did or didn't do. Sure they could have done things differently, but still the blame for the mess our country is in lies on the administration and the sheep who voted for it. It reminds me of all the people who blamed the OJ verdict on the prosecution. Sure the prosecution made mistakes, but they showed pretty clearly what happened, and it's pretty hard to screw up how a guy left a trail of blood from the crime scene to his house. Regardless of any mistakes that the prosecution made in the case, the blame for the ridiculous verdict is on the jury for being idiots. A clever ryhme shouldn't be able to excuse a mountain of irrefutable evidence. Just as the smoke and mirrors the Bush Administration uses to convince people it's on their side shouldn't be able to hide the clear and obvious evidence to the contrary. But, people (apparently) are just stupid.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Firefox: Don't believe the Hype

Ok, so I had heard all the hype about what a great browser Firefox is and how it's far superior to Internet Explorer, so I downloaded it and decided to try it out. At first, I was pretty impressed. It seemed very customizable with extensions to do just about anything you could want. Mostly, I was impressed with the things it could do that IE could not, such as tabbed browsing, an extension I found to zoon in on images, and things like that. Everything else it seemed to do just about as good as IE, so I decided to stick with it for a while.

The more I used it, the more I found problems with it. First, I like to have my browser out of the way, I want as much of my screen as possible used for the actual content. So in IE, I have my menu, toolbar, address bar and Google Toolbar all on one long row. In Firefox, to get the Google Toolbar (The Google Toolbar is a must have), I had to have a separate toolbar, which took up twice as much room on my screen. Next, I found out that a site I go to (and trust) uses an ActiveX control to display a snapshot document. This obviously did not work with FireFox. Later, I discovered that some of the sites I use for work have links and buttons that either do not display properly or do not work properly when viewed with FireFox. For these problems, I used the view with IE plugin, which worked ok. Next, I had been using a plugin to remove flash content until I clicked on a button to play it. I realized that this blocked too much stuff that I wanted to see, so I tried to disable it, but was unable to find it listed in my extensions. Also, the tabbed browsing was one of the features I liked the most, but no matter what extensions I tried to use or how I configured them, new windows would almost always open in a new window instead of a new tab, which pretty much made the whole thing useless.

Now, I have no doubt that everything I mentioned above that caused me to switch back to IE could be attributed to either poor design of the sites I visit or a poorly programmed/documented extension, and/or I could have fixed some of the issues by configuring things differently, researching more exactly what extensions were the best ones, or whatever. But the point is, I didn't see any reason to do that. Most of the things that I liked better about Firefox than IE were just neat things that made things more fun or interesting but not necessary, but the things I had problems with in FireFox that work fine in IE were things I needed or relied on, and since they work in IE, that's what I'm going to use.

I'm no big fan of Microsoft, and I'm glad so many people seem to have found what they feel is a better browser with Firefox, but for me, it was just too much of a hassle. I'll stick with IE, until Firefox or some other alternative works as well in the real world, without all the hassle.

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Monday, December 13, 2004

And the sucking just keeps on, errr...sucking

So the Cowboys lost again. Lucky for me I was in DisneyWorld and unable to watch. Hopefully now we can see a little more of Drew Henson, since the playoffs are completely hopeless, and even if they weren't, it's pretty clear that Vinny doesn't give them any chance of winning. If I see that he threw any late interceptions, I'm really going to be frustrated.

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Survivor

I've never been a huge fan, but I've watched off and on from the beginning. So every Thursday Night at eight this season, I've watched the current installment, which is ok. My problem is, I've watched the entire season, which fit nicely into my schedule, but now that it's time for the Finale, they suddenly switch it to Sunday Night. What the fuck? I already watch stuff on Sunday Night. Who's in charge of scheduling at CBS? I'm sure they've done this before but this is the first time I've noticed it. Hey CBS, American Dreams is a pretty good show, do you think no one watches it, The Simpsons has been on years longer than Survivor, don't you think they might have a pretty loyal audience, a whole assload of people are watching Desperate Houswives, do you think there's no overlap? Or do you just think they'd rather watch your finale than anything else? Well, maybe everyone else would, but not me. I found out who won, and that's good enough, and next time you start this show, I'll remember not to watch at all, since I never know when I'll have to miss an episode because you decide to change the schedule.

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Saturday, December 11, 2004

Disney World

So, we're here at DisneyWorld for a few days. For a while now (since September 11th, I imagine), they search your bags before you enter the park. As we were going through this, it struck me again, as it does everytime we're here, thet this bag search is a ridiculous waste of time. It slows everyone down, makes you wait in yet another line, which would all be fine, if it actually did anything to make people safer.

But they barely even look in the bag most of the time, and when they do, it's a pretty cusory glance, and if they're a real stickler, they make poke into your bag with a little rod. Aside from all the stuff that you could put in a bag that would easily make it through this "search" things could also be hidden on your person, I was wearing a large windbreaker that could have hidden as much stuff as I could carry, and my son's stroller wasn't even looked at, I could have had who knows what crammed in there.

So everyone who goes through the search knows what a joke it is, so no one in the park can possibly feel any safer, even if it was just meant as a guesture, so what's the point? Spare me the extra lines, and I'll take my chances with the terrorists, because anyone who couldn't smuggle something through that security wouldn't be able to come up with any kind of plan in the first place.

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America's Most Wanted

So, I'm watching America's Most Wanted and noticing that the person they got to do a particular reenactment doesn't seem to me to look much like the perp (yes, I said perp, shut up, I saw it on NYPD Blue), which led me to wonder if they ever get tips called in that actually turn out to be sightings of the people from the reenactments.

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Thursday, December 09, 2004

This blows

So, Jacksonville is hosting SuperBowl XXXIX and someone came up with the idea that we need a new slogan to go with all the exposure, which I don't have a problem with, since our official slogan "Bold New City of the South" not only sucks, but is also dated, andother nicknames like "River City" and "Florida's First Coast" aren't so great either. But to spend $91,000 and come up with "Jacksonville. Where Florida Begins" is kind of a joke, as far as I'm concerned.

One of the problems with Jacksonville's identity, I think, is that a lot of people simply don't know where it is, and this new sloganwon't help with that, since it isn't even true. There is an entire county tothe North of us, an entire state both to the West and South, and even to the East where it is the most true (to those people arriving to Florida by boat, I guess), there is either Ponte Vedra Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, or Atlantic Beach before you actually get to Jacksonville, which are all their own cities, even if they are small. Technically, I guess we are the first large city in Florida when coming from the North, so I guess that's the thinking behind it.

But the other problem I have is, what the hell does it say? Where Florida begins.....so fucking what??? First of all, I'm not sure we should be all that proud of Florida at this point, especially with everything that happened in the 2000 election, but also, even if Florida is the best state in the world, where it begins means what exactly? Congratulations on our...geographical signifigance, I guess.

Now, I'm not the most creative person in the world, so I can't really say I could come up with something great, but give me $91,000 and I could find someone who can. To me, our slogan should say something about our city, more than just where we are located, which doesn't mean a damn thing. The city is spending a lot of money improving a lot of things including a lot of road work, new Arena, new Baseball Field, Library, Courthouse, things like that, or the SuperBowl and beyond. Our slogan should reflect that somehow. It has also grown quite a bit in the last several years and that is something that should be expressed. But I guess it's possible that these things were considered and the perfect slogan was found, but rejected, because our Mayor is an idiot. My idea would be "Jacksonville, it doesn't suck as bad as the slogan does"

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Wasn't this a bad movie with Jon Cryer?

Yeah, Hiding Out, I knew it sounded familiar.

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The Great Toilet Seat Debate

So I heard a radio commercial yestrday with some lame joke about guys leaving the toilet seat up, and I know it's pretty standard fodder for joke writers, but it always makes me wonder, is this seriously something that people argue about? Because it's not a problem I've ever had, and I don't understand why it would ever be a problem for anyone for a couple of reasons.

First, ladies, if it really bothers you that the toilet seat is up, why not just put it down before you sit down? Do you put it up when you're done in case a guy wants to pee next? Probably not, so why would you expect him to put it down for you? Also, are you blind? Do you just sit down without looking, and only realize the seat is up when you almost fall in? If that's the case, then what happens when the lid is down??? Do you make a big mess peeing all over everything?? If you want the seat down put it down, simple, problem solved.

Second, and this is why it really should never be an issue in the first place. Guys, why the hell do you put the seat up anyway? There's a big hole in it, you could just pee through that. It's really not that hard to aim. Are you honestly telling me that there are people in the world who can't manage to aim into that big hole, but somehow are able to aim into a slightly larger hole without peeing all over the floor? If that's the case then you really just need to sit down and pee like a girl anyway. And even if you did happen to hit the seat a little (you know if you're drunk or a slob or something), there's almost always a little roll of paper (sometimes known as "toilet" paper) conveniently located right next to the toilet that could be used to clean up after yourself. So just leave the seat down. Again, problem solved.

I honestly don't think anyone really has this problem, but I get sick of hearing about it from comedians and such. But if anyone really does, just shut up about it, already.

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Pepsi Spice Update

Everyone seemed to enjoy my Pepsi Spice description, so I thought I would post an update. As further evidence that this stuff sucks, I noted last night that it was still sitting in the fridge over three weeks after I bought it, only missing the little of it that I drank. In a house with three teenagers, that's quite an accomplishment. I wonder if the dirt, errrr spice, settles to the bottom after it has sat this long.

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Tuesday, December 07, 2004

The Cowboys don't suck quite as bad, but it's not for lack of trying

So things are looking up for the Cowboys with Julius Jones running the ball so well. They got out to a 15 point lead late and with the running game so well, it should have been easy to hold. Unfortunately, Vinny (who apparently gives them the best chance to win) is a freaking idiot and throws two late interceptions that really turn the game around, letting Seattle not just close the 15 point gap, but actually take a 10 point lead. Luckily, Keyshawn was able to make a great catch on Vinny's desperation pass to get them a chance, then Whitten was able to recover the onsides kick and thankfully, the Seattle D was too shocked when Vinny threw it right to them on the game winning drive to actually catch it, which gave Julius Jones the chance to seal the game with his third TD.

Two things I see it this game. First, stop telling me Vinny is good, because he sucks, and anything good he does is offset by his stupid late interceptions. Second, Julius Jones looks great. Things may have been different if he had been in there all season. Oh, and the Quincy Morgan for Antonio Bryant trade was just as stupid as I thought it was at the time.

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College Football is a laughing stock

If you go undefeated in the SEC (not the MAC, not the WAC, not Conference USA, the S E C) and have no shot at a national championship, then the system is a complete joke. Of course I would be saying the same thing if it was Oklahoma getting the shaft after doing the same thing in the Big 12. I'm really tired of everyone arguing about who should or shouldn't be in the championship game, because none of the arguments make any sense, and there is always an argument that is just as good for the other guy. The problem is there are at least three teams, maybe four, that deserve to be in the title game, but obviously, there is only room for two teams, so the system is all fucked up. Stop arguing about who should get screwed and instead just talk about how fucked up the sytem is. I know everyone talks about how bad it is, but then they also offer up their opinion on why one team should get shafted instead of the other. I say forget discussing that and say you don't know because they haven't played. And if Auburn wins their Bowl game, congratulate them on winning a share of the title, even though they will not "officially" have one. They should also hang a banner and get a trophy and in every way be recognized as a champion by anyone who thinks that the system sucks. Utah should do the same. If enough people recognize multiple champions, it will make the official champion all but meaningless, which could help to force a change in the ridiculous system.

Also, I'm tired of everyone talking about how now you can't excuse the BCS, now you can't tweak it to make it work, now we can see it's a joke. Was I the only one who saw that the same shit happened last year? We knew all this already. The system blows, and it will continue to blow no matter how much they "tweak" it until the top teams get on the field and determine a true champion

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Saturday, December 04, 2004

Employee of the Year

So, I've worked for the same company for 14 years. The past seven years, they've given out an Employee of the Year award at the Christmas Party. All of those times, I've felt like I deserved to win, and a couple of times, I almost expected to win, but I never actually did.

Which brings us to tonight, the company's annual Christmas Party, and this year I have no expectation of winning the award, not because I don't feel like I deserve it but because there have been other times when I did feel that way and did not win, so I feel like it's not something I have a shot at. So, my daughter is babysitting my son, and when we try to call to check on how things are going, the phone is busy, which is strange because we have call waiting. So we try several times over the next 15 minutes or so with no luck, so we decide to go home to see what's going on, since we've been at the part for a while anyway. So we kind of sneak out, so not to interrupt anything, and on the way home we hear from my daughter, everything is fine, and she doesn't know why the phone was busy.

A few minutes later, people start calling me from the party wondering where I went, and of course, at this point I have a lousy signal, so I'm having a hard time talking to anyone. Anyway, of course, since I had to leave early, I ended up winning Employee of the Year, and wasn't there to accept it. That's ok, I guess actually being there for the announcment was jinxing it the whole time. At least I didn't have to make any kind of speech. No congratulations, please, just send gifts.

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Thursday, December 02, 2004

Fallujah

Could we please stop patting ourselves on the back about our great success in Fallujah? I can't believe how much news there is about this major offensive without anyone mentioning what I think is the central issue in the story, which is that is was a failure before we even started. The reason I say this is because we announced our intentions ahead of time, thereby letting thousands of people flee the city. Also, our reason du juor for being in Iraq in the first place is to liberate the Iraqi people. So I say we failed before we started because we either let insurgents escape the city before the offensive began or we kept innocent people in the city and killed them, and probably a lot of both. I don't see any way that one or the other didn't happen. If we had some accurate way to distinguish between innocent civilians and insurgents, then there doesn't seem to be any reason to have destroyed the city like we did in the first place. And if we can't distinguish them, then we are definitely letting insurgents go free or keeping innocent people in, and most likely both.

Also, it seems obvious to me that the failure will have consequences in the future because every insurgent that was let go will be able to cause trouble elsewhere, and also for every innocent person that was killed, wounded, or left homeless, there are many new potential insurgents, who may not have had any Anti-American feelings, but do now that their home has been destroyed or their family member or friend injured or killed. And finally, how can we claim to be liberating people if we are killing them and destroying their homes? This doesn't seem very well thought out to me. After we get done blowing stuff up and killing people, anyone left gets to be free. As much as I love my freedom, this method for spreading it just doesn't seem very attractive.

I'm no military commander, and I don't know the best way to finish what we started over there, but there has to be someone intelligent in the chain of command in the military who can come with a better way, because the way we're doing it now really sucks.

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Ken Jennings

Would everyone please stop pretending this guy is the smartest guy in the world? Obviously, what he did was impressive, but he's not that unique. There have been people on Jeopardy before who could have done the same thing or maybe even better. The only reason he is the first to go so long is because they just changed the rules. I don't understand why people are so fascinated by this guy. When did everyone start watching Jeopardy, anyway? Half the people I know who were following this closely can't even spell Jeopardy. Seriously, it's like Reggie White's sack record. Sure, he has the most since they started keeping track, but it's not like there weren't sacks before they kept track. And it's not like none of the previous 5 day championions from years and years of Jeopardy couldn't have done what he did.

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