Showing posts with label mother nature is a dirty whore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mother nature is a dirty whore. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2011

Tired of Uncle Sam


Tax season is officially (well I guess only technically, you could be one of those idiots in line at the post office at 11:58 p.m.) over. If you haven't guessed by past posts, my real job involves taxes for a few months per year. By real job, I mean the one I get sort of paid to do. Unlike my other jobs, which include: blogger, professional asshole, guy who bitches a lot, sports enthusiast, video game participant, beer connoisseur, and sex machine (just ask Sports Bottle). Unfortunately, I rather enjoy the jobs I do not get paid for, and not so much the one I do get paid for. I'm probably like 99.9% of America in those regards. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that I'm waiting patiently for the residuals that Bear has assured me are in the mail, to start rolling in, and for UCSB616's job offer from Herm Edwards and ESPN.

While I wait, I'm going to make an effort to post more. You've heard it before, I've said it before, and it probably isn't any more true this time. Fuck off. As the other "members" of this blog can likely attest to, it is much harder to come up with stuff to write about than it looks like. Said task has been made harder by the advent of Facebook (in 2001, member since 2010!) and Twitter (homeless people were on before I was). I tend to waste one or two potentially great blog topics on a 120 character zinger. Which is funny because it isn't that much funnier when I stretch it into 10,000 words. Meaning perhaps I should stick to Tweets. Fuck it, I'm not going to do that.

I have found that baseball is a very easy sport to blog about, because something new happens every day. I love to blog about the Brewers, especially when something terrible happens like last weekend. I'm much more efficient being negative.

We are 15 games in, and the Crew is 7-8. Can't say I'm that disappointed. Looking at the schedule, I would've expected about 8-7 at this point. Really, we could be 12-3 or some such, but such is the fickle nature of baseball. I realized this evening as I was watching Rickie Weeks fuck up a simple double play against the Phillies which eventually led to a 1-0 deficit, that I haven't blogged about my least favorite Brewer yet this year. There are many candidates, but first I should get the qualifications out of the way. It needs to be a player that routinely seems to fuck up, and/or play well below their physical gifts/potential. This player also needs to play much, much more than is warranted, and would lead one to wonder if they have some kind of nude photo of the manager and/or the manager's daughter to use as black mail. In the Ned Yost years (other than Ned Yost himself) my least favorite Brewers were: Rickie Weeks (who has since totally redeemed himself and become one of my favorites), Jeff Suppan (who stick sucks donkey cock), Derrick Turnbow (aka Turnblow) and Eric Gagne. See, it is much easier to hate closers because they have such an obvious effect on game outcomes. I hated Weeks because Yost would stick him in the leadoff spot even though he hit about .200, and he was an abortion at 2B. I hated Suppan because he was terrible.

Right now, the following are on my list: Randy Wolf, Carlos Gomez, Mark Kotsay, Yuni Bettancourt and Erick Almonte. I'm taking Wolf off the list because he dominated in his last outing. I'm removing Kotsay and Almonte because even though they are truly terrible, they are fill in players, and will eventually be in Nashville or bagging groceries. I don't have a great feel yet for Yuni. He doesn't seem to do anything very well, but his suckiness might just be so absolute that I don't realize how bad he actually is. Plus, I had really low expectations for the Yuni era. That leaves me with Carlos Gomez. Gomez is fast, and he plays reasonably good defense (mostly because he's fast). But he is a moron. He is a terrible baserunner despite his ridiculous speed. He can't hit ATT ALL (he just got an RBI double as I type this), and Roenicke keeps sticking him at the 2 spot. He frustrates me to no end. In addition, he's got Tony fucking Plush, who is nearly as good on defense, probably as fast or faster, is a good baserunner, and can actually put the bat on the ball. In short, he's got Plushdamentals. I hate that Gomez plays over Plush for no reason.

On to this weekend again. What a disaster. Swept by a bad team. Can't happen. And what the fuck is up with Yo? He was awful yesterday. We have to get the game tonight because we get Halladay and Lee the next two games. And we can't get swept again.

OTHER RANDOM THOUGHTS

-CP3 is fucking awesome. Lakers will still win the series, relax.

-I purchased the new albums from Foo Fighters and Rise Against this weekend. The new Foo is absurdly good. The Rise Against album is solid too. One thing about Rise Against, and I've only heard the album before this one and maybe I didn't dissect it, but it seems like almost every song on this album is a political anthem. I didn't get that from the last album (although there were certainly a few). The music is great, but it is sort of a stressful and intense listen. No?

-Beer of the night: Mighty Arrow, the spring seasonal from New Belgium. A tasty pale ale if you are into it.

-Weather is calling for 6 to 10 inches of snow. This could be its own blog post. It is fucking April 18th. Seriously UCSB616, don't fucking move from California permanently. I realize there are a lot of problems there. But the weather is perfect. As awesome as we are in the midwest, the weather isn't worth it. It isn't. It is almost fucking May and I don't feel comfortable putting away my snowblower. Also, it was 40 with 30mph wind today.

-I did about 2 seconds of research. It seems that Tony Plush was created by Nyjer Morgan. The twitter feed is obviously not him, but he is a fascinating dude.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Super Bowl Week: Media Day Edition

I'm coming to you LIVE from radio row in Arlington, Texas! Boy, the weather here sucks! Wait, I got confused. I'm actually coming to you live from my couch as I watch UW-Purdue on my big screen. The weather however, does in fact suck, although somehow Green Bay is missing the brunt of the blizzard that is hitting southern Wisconsin. The weather is actually not all that different here than it is in Dallas. And media people HATE it. I know because I heard local and national people bitch about it all day, and I didn't really watch or listen to that much stuff today. Here is a glimpse inside my slowly decaying mind today:

-They have awful weather in Dallas right now, and it made me think of three things: 1) It SUCKS to be one of the semi-normal people that cashed in your 401(k) to follow the Packers, only to have weather fuck up your trip. Can you imagine dropping $3k on a pair of plane tickets and then sit in the airport for two days? Jesus. Or to drive through this shit to Dallas. This is costing "normal", hard working Americans thousands of dollars they can't afford. I'm not kidding that there are probably thousands of people from this area who are putting off retiring for five years, or not paying for their kids to go to college because of this game. And many are getting fucked by mother nature right now. She is a dirty whore. Anyway, I hope you all make it safe, and you still find a way to drink 31 beers at Cowboy Stadium. The rich people that are having "difficulties" can suck my dick. Make your butler drive you there in your stretch Hummer or something. There will still be a Super Bowl for you next year (right?); 2) They are going to hold the Super Bowl at an OUTDOOR stadium in NEW YORK in FEBRUARY? This is absurd. You have been playing the Super Bowl in nice weather or domes for 45 years, and now you are going to chance a blizzard? Really NFL? Can you imagine the bitching and moaning if the media had to stand OUTSIDE in below zero weather? As much as I like January football in the elements, I'm starting to not like the idea of a Super Bowl in bad weather, because...3) I feel so fortunate that this game isn't going to be outdoors with this weather, because of the way the Packers seem to thrive, at least this team, which is by passing and timing. Weather can mess that up. I just feel more confident in controlled confines with this team. I'm not saying we couldn't win this game outdoors, I'm just happy it isn't.

-Reporter: "Did you hear from He Who Shall Not Be Named, or did you call him?", Rodgers: "No." Rodgers' tone: "Why would you ask me such a stupid fucking question. Don't you get that the guy is a prick and always has been? Are your really getting paid for this shit? If he called me, I would send him a picture of my middle finger, and then a picture of me fucking his daughter."

-Did anyone hear that the Steelers have been in Super Bowls recently? And the Packers haven't? And it pretty much means that the Steelers will win 73-0 unless Ray Nitchke comes back from the dead and plays middle linebacker? I think I've heard it enough. And I don't think it means shit. In fact, I'm going to do some research on Pro Football Reference. Here is what I did. I consider a Super Bowl team to have "experience" if they played in at least one SB in the last three years. Any longer than that means most guys on the team probably weren't around. Here is the list of Experienced v. Non-Experienced: (ED NOTE AFTER THE FACT: I honestly did not doctor these in any way to come up with a conclusion I wanted)

SBI: GB (Ex.) over KC
II: GB (Ex) over Oak
IV: KC (Ex) over Min (YEAH BITCH!)
V: Bal (Ex) over Dal
VI: Dal (Ex) over Mia
VII: Mia (Ex) over Was
VIII: Mia (Ex) over Min (HEHE)
IX: Pit over Min (Ex) (I would kill myself if the Packers lost 3 SB in 6 years)
X: Pit (Ex) over Dal
XI: Oak over Min (Ex) (Or 4 in 8)
XII: Dal (Ex) over Den
XIV: Pit (Ex) over Rams
XXII: Was over Den (Ex)
XXVI: Was over Buf (Ex)
XXVII: Dal over Buf (Ex)
XXX: Dal (Ex) over Pit
XXXII: Den over GB (Ex)
XXXIII: Den (Ex) over Atl
XXXVI: NE over Stl (Ex)
XXXVIII: NE (Ex) over Car
XXXIX: NE (Ex) over Phi
XLII: NYG over NE (Ex)
XLIV: NO over Ind (Ex)

So it has happened a lot more than I thought. 23 times in 44 years one of the teams had "experience" and the other didn't. The "experienced" team is 14-9. What I was interested in knowing, is of those 14 wins, how many times was the experienced team the favorite based on point spread? Answer: When the experienced team won, they were favored 11 times. Point spread is not a perfect indicator of who is better, but it is a pretty decent tool. To me, this means that only THREE times in Super Bowl history, did a team that was "experienced" beat a team with no experience that was better. (Super Bowls IV, V and VII). And it hasn't been done since Super Bowl VII which was in 1973.

So what does this mean? It means that Green Bay is considered, based on point spread, to be the better team. Experience hasn't mattered in this situation since 1973. I think history is on Green Bay's side.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

"Once In a Decade Storm"

We got somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 inches of snow last night. We are going to get another 5 or so today. The governor declared a state of emergency. The National Weather Service said the storm is one with "Intensity that we normally see once or twice a decade". I drove 20 miles to work.

I want to recap my office situation as we speak. I am one of 8 full time people that work here. 5 of those people live within 2 miles of the office. My bosses all live less than 5 miles away. Three of them live within a half mile. Besides me, the other people live 5 and 12 miles away respectively. This was a long way to say that I by far live the furthest away. Standard procedure is that we are supposed to be here by 7:30. Some (one person) sometimes comes in earlier. A few of the bosses show up whenever the fuck they feel like it. But typically at least half the office is here by 7:30. Did I mention that I live the furthest away? And that I'm THE ONLY FUCKING PERSON HERE????? Did anyone call me to tell me we wouldn't be open today??? Fuck no they didn't. Yet I guess everyone else got the memo. When discussing the storm before I left last night I was given the old "Well, just be careful. If you feel like you can't make it, don't kill yourself." TRANSLATION: "You are out of vacation, so you better fucking show up so that we can grossly underpay you."

I'm really unhappy.

The only bright spot about being here is that the dish was fucked up at home and we have no TV. So my wife is snowed in with no TV. I am going to be cleaning up body parts later. She does not do well minus TV. The DVR is functional, so I suppose I could have caught up on some of the 40 hours of shit I've got sitting on there.