Tuesday, May 13, 2008



Steve gave me a CD of various 90s hits. Stumbled on Frente's cover of the New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle." Temporarily turned in my Man Card and listened to it on loop for like 30 minutes.

Went to YouTube and found that it was a semi-popular song for gals to cover. Only found one reasonable rock cover.

But at worst, another song to possibly add to the acoustic concert I'll never organize. F# G# Fm F#, so easy a caveman could do it.

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Coworker with the last name Tran is giving birth to twins in the near future. Our boss sent out a mass email telling everybody that she would be taking maternity leave early. A few days later, I get a couple emails from people asking "When's a good time to visit?" and "Is she doing okay, what kind of food does she like to eat right now?"

Fought off the urge to send a sarcastic "Just because my last name is Tran too" email and instead replied with a polite "I'm not her husband."



greatguang: how does infatuation touch you?
greatguang: slow or hard
greatguang: or slow at first
greatguang: then hard

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I'm sure I've had this conversation with numerous people lately whenever AvP or Finding Nemo are on: How would you defeat Predator?



I imagine there'd be awkward conversation, something along the lines of:

"Hey Sheila, what are you doing here?"
"Hunting humans, you?"
"Same."
(awkward silence)
"So....."
"Yeah...."
"If you're not busy later, maybe we can get dinner or something."
"I'd rather not."
"Fine."
"No, I mean, I appreciate the offer, I just think it'd be better for both of us..."
"Okay, okay, you can spare me the.."
"This is so like you."
"What? You said you wanted to be friends, friends go to dinner."
(awkward silence)



"I apologize for getting a little hostile. This has been a tough week and I'm a little edgy."
"It's okay. How about I give you a call next week?"
"Alright."
"Hug?"

At which point you stab his distracted ass through the head and then tell him you've been sleeping with his best friend as he lays there dying.

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Nature's commentary on my cooking abilities:

On Saturday morning, had my roommate fetch me a carne asada breakfast burrito from Roberto's. Their egg to meat ratio isn't to my liking, so I made an extra batch of jalapeno scrambled eggs and tater tots.

Left the house and ants swarmed the burrito. But they chose to ignore the eggs.

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Latest dumb food challenge: You have 24 hours to consume a #1 from every fast food place (that has a drive thru) on Mira Mesa Blvd. The unofficial official lineup is (starting on the 805 going to the 15):

McDonald's=>Burger King=>KFC=>Taco Shop next to Panda Express=>Taco Bell=>McDonald's=>Popeye's=>Arby's=>Wendy's=>Roberto's=>In N Out.

And I forget if the Subway/El Pollo Loco count as they're not exactly on Mira Mesa as we already disqualified the Carl's on Camino Ruiz.

Possible if you start at McDonald's at like 6am and get the breakfast combo....and then get another breakfast combo at BK at like 8am. KFC at like 11am, Taco Place+Taco Bell at 1pm. McD's at like 4pm, Popeyes at 6pm. Arby's at 8pm, Wendy's at 10pm. Now here's the tricky part, I forget if the rules state you have to go in order, because you could swing by In N Out at like 1am then finish it off at Roberto's at like 4am.

And I believe my cholesterol went up by just typing all that out.



This clip might have restored my faith in humanity.

Went to my friend's birthday party and they had an organized Jeopardy round with various questions about the birthday girl. By the time we started, I had a couple beers taped to my hand so suffice to say, I looked pretty terrible.

Since we didn't have buzzers, we were instead supposed to yell out an identifying word.....ours being "COCK!"

One question was like "Which of her roommates is the most travelled?" At which point I asked for clarification on the definition of "travelled": "Do you mean travelled like most countries visited or travelled like (pelvic thrusting motions)?"

One category was "States she's visited" and the $500 (hardest) clue was "This was the 16th state to join the Union." After a couple seconds of contemplation, I rang in with "COCCCCCCCCK! What is Tennessee?" I enjoyed the stunned "How the hell did you know that?" look on our faux-Trebek hosts.

The game nearly finished until we complained that there was no Final Jeopardy round. We were in 2nd place with $1500 while the first place team had $2100 and third place had $1400.

Being a Jeopardy geek, I thought the best ploy would be to backdoor the victory by assuming everybody would get the question wrong and thus bet a smaller amount. The rest of my team wanted to do the standard all-in move, but I gradually convinced them this was the way to go.

Kurt however questioned my logic and math skills. My inebriated self decided to wager $298.

Logic being that the first place team would expect the all-in move which would possibly yield us $3000. So they would have to wager $901 to preserve the victory. But if they got it wrong, they'd end up with $1199.

My sober self realizes that $300 was actually the correct bet although in reality we should have bet $1 for the maximum score. But I guess I wanted the flashy "backdoor the victory by a tiny amount" win. Which we got since nobody knew when the birthday girl learned how to play piano.

Although the experience has now engendered thoughts of playing Birthday Price Is Right or Birthday Press Your Luck--complete with somebody dressed as a Whammy.

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Was having pho during the week before the NFL Draft. Restaurant was empty except for this other older biker dude. He was striking up a conversation about the Draft with the waiter. Aside from being an unabashed Colt Brennan fan, he seemed a reasonable dude. Had this exchange with him as he was paying for his bill:

"My brother was drafted by the Bears back in the day." -- biker
"That's pretty cool." -- me
"Yeah, he got accidentally shot by an offduty cop and died outside of Mike Ditka's bowling alley."

So far have been unable to verify the authenticity of the story, but I was amused that he told it in such a way that he didn't even skip a beat.

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It's like shooting fish in a barrel, but I ran across this post-NFL Draft article about Baltimore/Chicago and how they did/didn't address their need at quarterback. I couldn't help but be highly annoyed with a couple observations.

"The Ravens, after trying and failing to move up for Boston College's Matt Ryan, traded down in the first round -- [b]fleecing the Jaguars for four picks[/b] in the process -- then traded back up to pick Delaware's Joe Flacco at No. 18."

At the time, it seem like Baltimore could have gotten a lot more for the 8th overall pick than the 26th/71st/89th/125th selections. According to various arbitrary value charts, the Ravens seemingly came up on the short end of that swap.

The author seems to think quantity > quality in terms of fleecing. I like to imagine him trading in a dollar bill for two quarters, a dime, and a nickel while walking away with a smug facial expression. Then he notes that the Ravens still had to trade up to secure Flacco--they had to give up 26/89/173. So using basic algebra:

8 = 26/73/89/125
18 = 26/89/173
8/173 = 18/73/125

So in "fleecing" the Jaguars, the Ravens essentially ended up with an extra 3rd round pick to fall ten spots. Oy. I think the author needs to read up on the Hershel Walker trade to get a feeling of what "fleecing" actually looks like.

"If both teams were single guys at a bar, the Ravens would have been wheeling from girl to girl, refusing to go home alone, while the Bears would have been hunkered down over a drink, rising only for the men's room."

And then he makes this analogy. The Bears went on record as saying they felt like this quarterback class was mediocre. I can respect the honest response as the last thing Chicago needs is another mediocre (rookie) quarterback in their mix.

And what a shitty analogy? I've seen plenty of the guys who act like the Ravens at bars, and the end result isn't exactly pretty. That's like saying the guy who went home with the Ugly Girl ended up in a better spot than me who said no.

.....and let's not forget the last time Baltimore refused "to go home alone" and drafted Kyle Boller.

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The NHL Draft is only 6 weeks away!

(crickets chirping)

Somebody dug up some old draft previews which are always great entertainment to see players when they were awkward teenagers.



And that's Mats Sundin about fifty pounds ago.



Cover of the 1990 preview touts a franchise goalie prospect. Martin Brodeur was taken in the first round of that draft.....



....oh wait, they meant Trevor Kidd.



Scout on Jaromir Jagr: "He's not real flashy."



Remember when the Sharks could have drafted Scott Niedermayer instead of Pat Falloon?



Remember when the Sharks could have drafted Chris Pronger instead of trading down for Viktor Kozlov?

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Somebody uncovered a "secret" website made by the Tampa Bay Lightning promoting this year's top prospect Steve Stamkos. The site contains several YouTube clips of Stamkos along with various quotes from hockey luminaries pimping his abilities.

One quote in particular bugged me: "Steve Stamkos is a guy, that when he matures and becomes the player everyone believes he can become, that will not only score 35-45 goals with 85-90 points, but will also be a plus-13. He is that well-rounded of a player" -- Phil Esposito

Taking a step back, I realize the arbitrary "+13" is just an innocuous way of saying he's good defensively. Just a quick look at players who scored 80 points this year, only 4 of the 19 registered anything less than +13:

A) If you score a lot at even strength, you tend to be a plus player.

B) Two of the four players who were minus players are ironically on Tampa, namely Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis. The latter was +35 in 2003-04, but -23 this year. So is it a more plausible conclusion that +/- has a higher dependency on one's teammates rather than one's defensive capabilities?

Another thing that annoyed me about the page was this graphic demonstrating Stamkos' offensive wizardry (don't get me wrong, he looks to be studly):



But I wondered what would that graphic look like if they hadn't cherrypicked the names of retired/current superstars:



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Why must Bad Idea Jeans be so comfortable?