In the past week, I've read about two separate (but thematically-related) issues in soccer. The first involves the very controversial 6+5 rule adopted by FIFA (and currently being vehemently opposed by the EU). I really am not sure if this rule will end up being passed, because the rule does sound at the very least borderline-discriminatory. What interests me is the exact motivation behind the rule. Purportedly, the rule will preserve the connection between country and club team while at the same time limiting the difference in talent between the richer and poorer clubs. I think it makes sense, in a sport with nothing like a salary cap, to try and maintain some sense of parity between clubs, especially since there isn't even a draft system where the poorer-achieving teams get higher picks. However, the idea that the players on a club team should reflect the nation in which the club teams plays seems somehow antiquated to me (and, when put this way, does really sound discriminatory). I'm also not sure this is the most effective way to create parity among teams, as the top English players would all be offered money to play for the best English teams, whereas currently this is less the case than I'm sure it would be. Thus, the best teams would probably lose some of their better foreign players, but to replace them they would just poach the better English players from the smaller English clubs. The rule might create parity among the best clubs from different leagues (which I'm sure will probably lead to anti-English claims about FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, as the Premiership is currently the most dependent on foreign players), but I still think the rule is more likely to accomplish more intra-club homogeneity than inter-club parity.
A second article highlighted for me the massive racial (and nationalistic) issues that still exists in many European countries. I never thought much that, unlike America, many European countries have not had larger numbers of different ethnic groups until relatively recently. Spain and Italy (as well as Croatia I believe) have all been fined because of racist chants by their fans. It surprised me that even in countries that I think of as liberal (like France), racism is still such a divisive factor, although I also never considered that many European countries are much less racially diverse than the United States. I guess in the end though, it makes me happy that, despite a lot of the shit the U.S. takes for being ignorant, in race relations we are actually farther ahead than many countries. U-S-A, U-S-A.
One of the side effects of unemployment is having a ludicris amount of time to do nothing. In the parlance of our times, having many a day-off to j-off. What I really mean is that there's a lot of time to watch TV. I find it astounding how terrible the shows on TV have gotten. TV networks seem to be going out of their way to place new shows that show any promise in timeslots that will doom them to failure (Sarah Conner Chronicles, Dollhouse on Fox to name a few) in favor of more shitty shows like the bachelor and reairings of American Idol. What? Oh, I guess that's like the 4th season, not the 1st. I couldn't tell.
The catalyst for this post was scrolling through the TV guide and trying to find something to watch. The best sounding thing on? "15 Shocking Acts of Violence" on E. Really? That is the best they could come up with? It is then followed up "15 Unforgettable Tragedies." That's some good stuff right there.
Let's talk about original programming for a second. How many iterations of Law & Order are there? How many versions of CSI? I find it hard to believe that there is really a shortage of ideas for television shows out there. NBC is moving Leno to 10pm on weekdays, this takes even more time that they have to fill up with decent programming. Everything on TV now is either some reality TV trash, or a Law and Order or CSI ripoff (see Numb3rs and The Mentalist). I think Lost and Heroes may be the only shows outside of that. Cable TV's programming is either home make overs or home buying reality shows.
Joss Whedon has stated that he'll never work on TV again after Dollhouse, and work only on the web. Is that the future of quality programming? Given the current industry paradigm, I think that's the only alternative until it wakes up the big networks and they realize there is money to be made in quality shows. They just wouldn't know because it's been so long since they invested in that.
I've added in google analytics to the layout of this page and added you all so you can sign into google analytics and view site traffic and all the breakdowns etc. Thought it might be interesting to see the traffic we're getting. I suggest checking it out. If we can get our hits up, we might be able to justify throwing google adwords on or something and generating a couple bucks to get a real domain name.
Thoughts/ideas for the site? Any features you'd want to see added in?
Breaking Bad - I had seen a few episodes of this show a while ago and thought it was totally rad. For those who don't know, it's about a chemistry teacher with cancer (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) and his exploits cooking crystal meth. In less words: fucking badass. Since he's dying he takes shit from no one -- even killing a dude after a botched deal and beating up meatheads who rag on his disabled son. Season two starts March 8 and I highly recommend the short (seven episodes) first season.
Yes, that is a drug-dealer bolted to a post. At about the 3:30 mark shit gets real.
Friday Night Lights remains awesome and one of the few shows I remember to watch every week. The storyline featuring a Todd Marinovich-like father/son combo is pure awesome. Reading shit about Papa Marinovich massging his baby son's hammies is hilariously messed up. I also indiscriminately watch all MTV/VH-1 trashy reality shows. The Girls of Hedsor Hall, Rock of Love X, From G's to Gents. Hell, they should just make a channel that is all this shit. Oh wait...
Music
Ponytail/Ice Cream Spiritual - I missed this in the hubaloo that was 2008 and I am glad I finally got around to it. They are a crazy noise band with a female singer -- sort of a lovely combination of Lightning Bolt/Marnie Stern/Black Dice. Tons of distortion, tribal drums, crazy riffs and yelps. I love it.
Glasvegas/ST - Another 2008 release I missed, Glasvegas is big, anthemy British rock and it's pretty solid. Nothing superb, but there are some great songs. Geraldine is a jam, but I still to listen more to see if I really like them or not.
Video Games
Star Ocean: The Last Hope - I got this game to review and so far it's a good RPG. It's pretty much Final Fantasy in space, so I love it. It's also three discs, which is crazy. Great with this much free time.
Street Fighter IV - I forgot how much I loved the SF series, with fond memories of the cartoon character that was Dee-Jay and spamming Blanka's electricity -- pretty much the only move I knew how to do. This installment is great, with nice graphics, lag-free online, awesome animations and ridiculous depth in the fighting system. And dammit I love stereotypical characters in my video games.
Despite what Soulja Boy says, there is a point to da game.
Braid - Since it went on sale for 800 MS points, I finally decided to get what is probably the best and most famous XBLA game to date. Braid is a platformer/puzzle game, but unlike any game you've ever played. At first, it plays a lot like an old-school Mario -- you jump on dudes going from left to right. But the rewinding of time mechanic proves itself to be genius, much more than simply, "I died, warp back and try again."
For example, there may be a locked door blocking your path. The key is located at the bottom of a pit, with an entrance, but no visible way out. But the key is glowing green (unaffected by time), so you can jump down and grab it, and then rewind time with key in hand and unlock the door. Of course, that is a super-simple example and the later puzzles are insanely hard. The game is short, but so challenging and unique that it is worth the money.
I also picked up Left 4 Dead again, thanks to the new patch. Although it doesn't fix everything, more Tanks, a better Infected HUD, and a stronger Smoker are all nice until the last two maps go live. I am waiting for a copy of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand to come in the mail to review and it promises to be ridiculous and over the top so that should be fun.
So, I've been unemployed basically since Nov. 7, 2008. It's getting old. I've sent out several resumes and cover letters a week. I can count on one hand the number of responses I've gotten (and that includes notice of receipt), and on one finger (preferably the middle finger) the number of interviews I've had. I'm constantly asking myself what am I doing wrong? I've got a solid cover letter, I've got a solid resume in a good modern format, so seriously, wtf?
Am I looking in the wrong places? Most of my job hunting is online, I use craigslist extensively, I've got a good network of people in various places that I've gotten good tips from and have postings forwarded from them (this is where I got the only interview from a House Chief of Staff's mailing list, yay for random people!), and the HRC alumni list has been helpful too. It's fantastic that I'm getting several postings to my email every day. Unfortunately, just about everything out there is not entry level or anything that I can apply to.
You name it, I've used it: USAJOBS, Idealist.org, Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Senate employment board, Massachusett's agencies job postings, the list goes on and on. What am I missing? Are there really no jobs out there for my level of experience? What other resources are out there? I feel like no one posts real jobs in newspapers any more.
What are your thoughts on job hunting? Where would you be looking?
Rod's coming to Bangkok on March 4th! I really want to go but it's expensive and I've been watching clips on youtube that look as if he's just been mailing it in for the past 10 years. I haven't seen a single one where he gets through young turks without flubbing his lines somewhere. I love the guy, and he has so many sweet grooves, but I feel like I'd rather stay home than see him on stage just going through the motions. Am I passing up a huge opportunity here? Guidance sought.
So I've been listening to Sirius radio over the Internet since I figured out I can use my dad's account to access it over the Internet. Despite having (at least) two of the most annoying people ever as DJ's, the indie channel has been playing some rad tunes as of late. What I like most is they play singles that are out before the album comes out, and since I don't download illegally before an album is released, I get to hear some great songs for the first time on the show, such as:
"No You Girls" - Franz Ferdinand: While this one certainly doesn't break their template, perhaps that is its strong suit.
"My Maudlin Career" - Camera Obscura: They're last album is a favorite of mine, and this song indicates their new album could be filled with more of the same gloriously sentimental indie pop gems.
"Zero" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - I just heard this one today and it got me pretty amped for their latest. I've never been a huge fan of them, but they have a knack for a catchy tune, as showcased here.
Ever since I got out of high school there has been one thing that I've wished I had: personal finance education. About half way through my JR year of college I realized that I have no idea how to manage my own money. Aside from one survey course in economics, all of my education related to money has come from AP news articles and wikipedia. Given that the bulk of our lives are spent trying to produce money, maintain it, and grow it, wouldn't you think that we should know more about how we do that?
Over the past several months I've taken some simple steps to get a better handle on my finances and spending. In 2006, I switched entirely over to Bank of America, mainly because at the time I was going to Texas for an internship and Cape Cod 5 just doesn't seem to have ATMs there yet (I hear in the next couple months, or maybe it was eons..). Well, BoA turned out to be a good decision, I've got free checking, 0%apr on my credit card over a year later (I'm not gonna ask and jinx it), and free online bill pay. Perhaps the most useful tool I've gotten out of it is the online banking. Sure, I used it with CC5 in the past, but BoA has a much more evolved set of tools that allow you to better see your transactions and analyze your financial situation much more readily. If you're thinking about switching to a nationwide bank, I'd recomment them.
Something else I've done to help educate myself on personal finance is to beging reading several finance blogs. Some of my favorites of these include: The Simple Dollar, Lazyman and Money, Free from Broke, and The Tao of Making Money. These all vary in their interests and there are plent of other sources out there, but these are some pretty good general interest personal finance blogs that I've found some helpful articles on. One great thing I got from these is the 100% free credit report site CreditKarma.com. Unlike Freecreditreport.com, it's actually free and pretty helpful. They make their money through suggestions for other services, but if you just ignore that its a pretty great site.
Today I started using Mint.com which has turned out to be pretty fantastic. If you're looking for a utility to see your entire cashflow, it categorizes all expenditures and graphs it, and gives you budgeting tools. So far I think it's pretty fantastic. Once I get into online stock trading (whenever that is) it should be that much more useful for keeping track of my portfolio. It's completely safe and worth checking out.
I am pretty sure Skip Bayless was responsible for deciding this.
So in my copious amounts of unemployment time I have been watching a lot of T.V. ESPN decided to pick up Bill Simmons' idea of creating a Mt. Rushmore of sports for each city.
But fuck that, it's too complicated. On First and Ten (formerly Cold Pizza, a.k.a. Skip Bayless tries to pop a vein in his forehead screaming about A-Rod), they were talking about just a general Mt. Rushmore of sports.
To me, the first three are easy. It's Jordan, Ruth and Gretzky. You've got three major sports and super-recognizable guys who are arguably the best ever in their respective sports.
I have been struggling with number four. Is it Jack Nicklaus? Tiger? Some tennis player? I don't think it can be an NFL guy, as it's far too team-reliant to pick one guy who represents football.
So, who disagrees with my three? Who's the fourth?
After a lengthy process of seeing over 50 movies I hadn't see yet, here is my list of the best movies from the year. Check it out, let me know what you think. I'd love it if you guys made your own lists too. Either way, feedback is a plus.
