Entry 21: NFL and T&A

Last Saturday* the grand finale championship game of the Australian Football League was played. It featured the Collingwood Magpies and the St. Kilda Saints. Remarkably, the game ended in a 68-68 draw, so they are going to play another championship game this coming Saturday. Seriously, they are going to play a whole new game. Over 100,000 fans attended the game and they didn’t even get to see a winner. It would be like if the Super Bowl was tied after regulation and instead of playing overtime they just played another Super Bowl the next week. It seems insane to me. But, it does mean that I can watch this time. I didn’t watch last weekend.

In news about my football (NFL), I’m happy to report that they actually show it here on normal TV. I have to wake up a 6am on Monday to watch it, but still I can watch it. Sometimes they show a game live, sometimes they show it on an hour and a half delay and filter out a lot of the garbage (half time, injuries, time outs, etc.). This is nice, because it’s a condensed, action-packed version (and it means they have time to show two games instead of one), but it’s also bad because then it’s harder for me to follow the games online that aren’t on TV, because I will see online the score of the game that is on TV, and it will ruin the surprise of that game for me. So, what I do is I watch the game on TV, and I open a window on my computer that gives a play-by-play description of the Seahawks game, but I size the window perfectly so that it only shows the Seahawks game and no other games. This way I can follow the Seahawks online and watch the TV game and not have the ending be spoiled. I might even have S open and size the window for me if she’s awake, just so that I avoid any updates or pop-ups that would reveal the score.

In other NFL news, there was a story a week ago about a fluff reporter for a Mexican TV station who entered the New York Jets locker room after a game to do an interview, and complained that she received inappropriate comments and felt “uncomfortable”. I heard about this on a call-in radio show, and nearly all the female callers were taking the side of the team, saying, in essence, that the woman didn’t deserve professional treatment because she didn’t dress professionally. I thought this was quite harsh on the woman (I mean what's professional to one might not be professional to others), so I went home to see if I could find some pictures of her in a typical work outfit. Of course, it wasn't difficult (see below) if there is one thing the Internet can deliver reliably it's pictures of attractive females.


[Girls, if you want to be reporters study hard. It obviously takes a lot of hard work and schooling.]

My take on it now is this. It’s still definitely not okay for the players to catcall her. They are at work, after all. It’s not a Jillian's on single's night. But, the whole thing probably could have been avoided if she dressed like she was at work and not at a bar (apparently she wears heels on the grass sidelines, which is absurd). It’s like when I didn’t lock my bike up and somebody stole it. I wasn’t in the wrong, the person who stole it was in the wrong, but I could have easily prevented it. If this woman is sensitive to off-color comments, maybe it’s not the best idea to wear jeans that are tighter than bicycle spandex in the presence of 50 knuckleheaded, half-naked 25 year-old alpha males, with stratospheric testosterone levels. Just a thought.

*By the way I hate the ambiguity that can arise when we use terms like last, this, and next when referring to days of the week. If it’s Wednesday then what’s “next Saturday”? Is it the actual next Saturday or is it the Saturday of next week? And what’s “last Monday” is it two days ago or the Monday of last week?

Entry 20: Bellyaching

[This is roughly half of what I ate on Sunday. It was so delicious. It was almost worth it.]


It seems like I only have the time now to update this blog on the weekend. In getting settled in at work (and thus doing a bit more) and with S being back it’s hard to find the time to post during the week. I’ll try to do it at least one week day a week from now on, though.

So the title of this entry does not refer to complaining (although I do love to do that), but rather to my belly literally aching. I ate too much at a barbecue last Sunday and my stomach hurt. It wasn’t like I overdid it a bit, took some Pepto, and slept it off. I way overate (at one point I counted roughly twenty rib bones on my plate) and after the barbecue spent much of the night doubled over in pain, making moaning noises in S’s direction. She was sympathetic, to her credit, since she told me the entire night to go easy. I didn’t listen and I paid the price. I have never been in that much pain before from overeating. At one point I felt like I might throw up, so I just sat by the toilet for a few minutes. S came in to check on me and rub my head. I felt like a sorority girl who ate the fruit at the bottom of the party punch.

In other news, my adventures on the bus seem to never cease. A few days ago a man with a cane got on, attempted to walk up the steps to the back of the bus, then fell down writhing in pain grasping his knee. I yelled to the bus driver to stop the bus then the driver and I went over to help the man. Turns out he has a prosthetic leg, which somehow got caught on the step and bent his stub forcefully in an unnatural direction. We had to phone an ambulance and then take his leg off, which required taking his pants off (I let the bus driver take the lead on that one). Then we just sat there until the ambulance came – me, the driver, and the man in his underpants with half a leg. There were a few others on the bus, but they were women, who had moved to the front of the bus to avert their eyes, so as to avoid further embarrassment to this man. I wasn’t quite sure what the etiquette was while waiting for the ambulance. Could I read? Is that disrespectful? We are just sitting here waiting, after all. It’s pretty boring. I decided to listen to some podcasts on my iPod, which nobody seemed to mind. Eventually the ambulance came, they loaded him onto it, and the bus rolled on. The entire episode took about an hour.

He seemed to be mostly OK. I am not sure how serious the injury actually was. I don’t want to question his sincerity, but once, years ago, S and I were in a similar situation. An old lady fell coming out of the subway, and it caused a huge scene. To me it just looked like she slipped, but she was acting as if she was seriously hurt. A subway employee came over and offered to call an ambulance, but told her that if this was not a serious emergency, the ambulance could be very expensive, in the $10,000 ballpark. Miraculously the woman then could walk completely fine, and she left the station on her own accord. I think she was extremely embarrassed and played up her “injury” to mask the fact that she just flat out fell. I got this same feeling from the man with the prosthetic leg. But, who can say? Also, I’m not sure why he was even trying to go up the steps to the back of the bus. Almost the entire front was available. It’s very strange.

Anyway, work is going OK. I’m getting extremely annoyed with the IT support, but I was forewarned that it’s not very good. It’s an adjustment for me coming from the US which I’m finding actually has relatively good tech support. Everything here is do it yourself, which is inefficient if you are not a computer whiz (which I’m not). I need to install this program on my computer to start a project, but it fails whenever I try to do so, for some reason. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer why. There is a guy in the department who is really sharp with computers, so I’m going to ask him for help on Monday, I think. I’m completely blocked from working on the project (my main project) until this is resolved. I can work on my side project for now, but soon I need to get back to my main project.

OK, time to go. Gotta hit the gym.

PS -- Speaking of ribs, here's a classic scene from I'm Gonna Git You Sucka featuring a very young Chris Rock.

Entry 19: Another One Rides the Bus

S is back now, which is good. (I always know when she is back because my stuff is never where I leave it, and my various electronic wires are always wound around themselves and stored somewhere neatly. I had to ask S not to do this, because when I unwind the wire it has a tendency to twist itself into a spiral and it’s incredibly irritating to use, especially if it’s for headphones.) I’m back into my regular routine: wake up, get some breakfast and coffee, take the bus to work, work, have lunch, look at fantasy baseball stats, work some more, take the bus to the gym, workout, walk home, have some dinner, do a leisure activity, go to sleep. On Thursdays, we usually go out to eat. On the weekends, we might get wild and have a few glasses of wine and look for a movie to stream online. By the way, Hollywood has a great piracy deterrent – make really crappy movies. Date Night, The A-Team, The Karate Kid, Knight and Day, The Killers, don’t worry I’m not stealing any of those. I don’t understand how these movies make any money. You would literally have to pay me to watch one of them.

Anyway, I’ve been riding the bus long enough that I’ve got my technique down pat. I get on fairly early in the route, so I usually have my pick of seats. First, I always sit near the back. Overweight people are much less likely to make it to the back (especially since there a few steps to navigate), so if I end up sharing a seat with somebody I probably won’t be squashed. Second, I always sit on the west side of the bus to avoid the morning sun shining in my face. Third, I usually try to avoid the seats above the wheels for legroom purposes. One thing I won’t do is put my bag next to me to dissuaded people from sitting there. Society can’t function if people have this type of mentality.

On the bus, I see the same people over and over. I’ve never talked to any of them of course, but I recognize them. There is a group of three guys about 16 that are always going on about Family Guy or South Park or something like that. A typical overheard bit of conversation is something like this [said very quickly while giggling]: “Then he says, ‘There’s a bear in my cereal!’ and there is a bear in his cereal, but you thought it would be poison or something, but it’s a bear, and then she runs off with the bear, and they are in a hotel on the bed and she says to the bear, ‘I wanna go out. You never take me out anymore.’ and he says ‘I just killed somebody today, I’m tired. You know, this is gonna be a really long trip Suzy if you don’t cut the crap!’, so she looks all sad and then the bear pokes her with his toe and says, ‘Love you.’” Then they all crack up in unison. The funniest part to me is that I always know exactly what they are referring to.

There are also some schoolgirls that ride the bus who are a few years younger than the boys. I use the term “schoolgirls”, because that’s what they look like. The traditional plaid skirt and polo shirt uniform is quite prevalent here. There is one girl who is taller and prettier than the others and you can tell that she’s the unquestioned leader of the group. She thinks she is so cool.

There is a man, who I’ve only seen on a handful of occasions, who is always wearing a scarf on his head. I have no idea why. At first I thought it was because it was cold or raining, but I’ve seen him several times on warm, clear days. Then I thought maybe it’s a religious thing, but I don’t know of any religion in which men wear head scarves. Plus, it doesn’t look like anything religious. It looks like he bought a checker board-pattern scarf at Macy’s and every morning he wraps it around his head and ties a knot under his chin before leaving the house. It’s very strange.

There is this other guy who, although I’ve never met him before, annoys me to no end. His style gets under my nerves. He looks to be in his late-40s, early 50s. He has salt and pepper hair that is cropped short except for a thin, long braid that ends just below his nape. (It sorta looks like he is always wearing a coonskin hat.) He has a touch-of-gray goatee and two hoop earrings in his left ear. He is always wearing black heeled boots, black jeans, and a black denim jacket. He sits cross-legged in the front of the bus. I find the way he carries himself very pretentious. I have never talked to this man and still he bothers me. By the way, I realize this is a terrible attitude to have. People say first impressions are important, but in my experience they are also extremely inaccurate. There have been many people who, like this man, I was initially put off by who ended up being really cool once I actually got to know them. Plus, people have told me their first impressions of me and I have heard things, on more than one occasion, like the following: very serious, shy, republican, and frat boy meathead, none of which are even remotely close to describing me (I hope). I guess the moral is don't go by first impressions. Even though this man seems like a colossal tool to me, I would keep an open mind, if for some reason we were to ever have an interaction beyond me mentally mocking him from afar.

OK, time to end this entry. S wants to watch an episode of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” (we are starting season two, I’m still lukewarm on it) then we are going to a barbecue. The couple who’s hosting it is apparently slow roasting pork as I write. It’s a bad time to be a vegetarian – sorry S.

(Here's a link to a live performance of "Weird" Al doing Another One Rides the Bus. Do you think Weird Al can get women? I mean he's a famous musician and all, but still.)

Entry 18: The Football

[The All Blacks kicker lining up for a free kick.]

As far as I can tell, there are three sports here in Australia that can be called football: Australian rules football, rugby union, and rugby league. It is all very confusing to me, but I think it’s confusing to Australians as well. I tried to clear things up with somebody at one point and had the following conversation.

Me: So there is AFL [Australian Football League] and that’s football, right?
Him: Yes
Me: But the other night I was watching “Friday Night Football” but it was rugby league.
Him: Yes
Me: So… if you say football you are referring to what sport?
Him: Depends on where and who you are

So anyway, last night I went to a rugby union match, Australia versus New Zealand, but I think I can say I went to the football.* I’ll get into that in a minute, but first I want to discuss a story about football of the American variety.

A few days ago Joe Montana went on the Dan Patrick Show (which I download often) and in casual conversation mentioned that the makers of the movie Rudy embellished the story. (Joe went to Notre Dame at the same time as the eponymous Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger.) For some reason this became a national story, and Joe received some backlash, as if he was picking on Rudy or something. This is idiotic for two reasons.

For one, doesn’t everybody already know that Hollywood movies, even those based on true stories, are sensationalized. Rudy stars the kid from The Goonies. It’s obviously not a documentary.

For two, I never found the story of Rudy, even the movie version, very inspirational. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s an underdog story. Rudy is the kid who always wanted to play football for Notre Dame, but he’s too small and too slow to make the team at first. However, through hard work, desire and perseverance, he overcomes the odds and does it. He devotes years of his life to playing for Notre Dame. He gets beat up every day practicing, he sleeps in the janitor’s closet (or something along those lines), he endures hardship after hardship, everybody tells him he can’t do it, but still he fights on. Then, finally, he gets to suit up with the varsity team, the coach lets him play a few plays at the end of a meaningless blowout, and he gets one sack (really it's more like a half sack, if you notice, it isn’t even attributed to him by the commentator calling the game). That’s the payoff? It seems like a lot of wasted time and energy to me. I mean, the people who said Rudy was too small and slow to play football for Notre Dame were 99% right. It’s not like he proved everybody wrong and became the starting defensive end. He wasn’t even a solid backup. He played a few plays in garbage time the very last game of his career. That’s it. As far as underdog stories of achievement go, it’s a pretty lame one.

I’m going to write a movie and call it Sammy. It’s the story of Marcus “Sammy” Samuelson. Sammy has a boyhood dream of playing football for the University of Texas (I have to update it, because Notre Dame hasn’t been good in 25 years), but everybody tells him he’s too small and slow. Intent on proving the naysayers wrong, he tries out as a walk-on and makes the practice squad, because the head coach likes his moxie and grit. After a year of taking daily poundings, realizing his chances of having a significant role on the team are small no matter how hard he works, he quits football. Instead of going to practice every day he volunteers at a local hospital. He realizes he has a fondness for medicine and instead of hitting others on the gridiron, he hits the books in the library. He gets into UT med-school (but only after several failed attempts) and eventually goes on to become one of the most reputable cardiologists in the greater Austin region. He made it all happen by not wasting so much time and effort trying to be a really shitty college football player.

Anyway, the rugby match. It was the Australia Wallabies vs. the New Zealand All Blacks – ANZ Stadium, Sydney. It was a great time. It was me, three other blokes from work, H, T, and F, and two women, B who is H’s friend, and D who is F’s cousin (second cousin, technically). H and F are Kiwis so they were obviously pulling for the All Blacks. B and D are Australian so they were pulling for the Wallabies. T (who’s German) and I didn’t have any obvious rooting interests, so just for fun he align himself with the All Blacks and I went for the underdog Wallabies. I’m saddened to report, the Wallabies lost by one point. They had a good lead for almost the entire game, but they squandered it at the very end in epic fashion.

[A pregame ritual called a haka based on the Maori form of dance.]

It was still a great time though. We drank a lot of beer. (I’m finding this tends to happen when H and T are involved.) We went to the pub beforehand, had a few pops there, had a few more in the beer garden outside the stadium, had few more in the stadium, and then had a few more in the beer garden on the way out. H, T, B, and I then ran to catch the train back to Newcastle. (D lives in Sydney and F was staying at her place.) It’s a three hour trip, but I slept for most of it. I woke up when H threw a granola bar box at me and said, “We’re getting off here. Don’t miss your stop.” It’s a good thing he woke me up. It would have sucked to miss my stop, and I was pretty well zonked out.

We should have just got a cheap hotel room and all crashed in Sydney. It was only around 10pm when the game ended, so it’s not like it was super late, and it seemed like everybody wanted to keep the party going. There was a cover band** playing in the beer garden after the game and we were all dancing and having a good time, and then we had to end things so abruptly. Oh well.

I was needling H a little bit on the train for not pursuing D (as far as I know, they are both single and she’s cute), which I don’t think he was too annoyed by. B started getting in on it a little bit too, which was funny. I’m the guy who gets married and then busts other guys’ chops for not putting the mack down, because I know my chops can no longer be busted about such things. Actually, I’m more like the guy who has some money now, but grew up poor, so he can’t stand to see other people throw out food, even when he’s not hungry, and it has nothing to do with him. I was pretty much single for all of my 20s, so now when I'm hanging out with a single guy, and there is a nice, good looking, available girl around, who might appreciate some attention, I’m thinking to myself “come on man, don't waste this.” If they don’t try to get a number or email or something, I can't help but shake my head – a perfectly good meal dumped down the disposal.

*By the way, at first I thought it was weird that people here use a “the” when they are referring to something general – I’m watching the football, I’m going to the pub – but then I thought we do this all the time in the states too, just with different words – I’m going to the store, the doctor, etc. It’s weird if you think about it. We say it as if there is only one pub, or one store, or one doctor.

**I love cover bands. It’s the greatest way to mask the fact that you are mediocre musicians, and let’s be honest, about 95% of bands that play in bars are mediocre (or worse). Don’t try to be creative, don’t try to be original, just crank out some stuff everybody can sing along to, and we’ll all be dancing and happy.

Entry 17: Four Jags (Part 2)

Jag 3

Overall, I like the gym I’ve been going to here in Newcastle, but I have two gripes, sub-jags, if you will, that constitute one larger gym-based jag. First, there are too many dudes at the gym in “tank tops”. I use parentheses because they aren’t normal tank tops. They are those super deeply cut tank tops that look sort of like thong underwear that’s being worn as shirts. Normal tank tops must be too encumbering. It’s not enough to have a shirt with no sleeves and no neckline, you apparently need one that also reveals your nipples every time you shift your weight. It’s always the same type of guy wearing it too: late-30s/early 40s, super buff (like supplement-taking buff), super tan, covered in tats, spiky gelled hair, often a little soul patch beard, and occasionally a few piercings. Please, put on a real shirt. Everybody knows you’re ripped. We are all very impressed, but we would be more impressed if your massive, 90%-uncovered back wasn’t a foot from our faces, slathering sweat all over the machine we were going to use after you, but now probably aren't.



Second, people too often unnecessarily take the locker right next to me. This happens at all gyms and it is incredibly annoying. If you are going to use a locker here’s what you do. You come in, quickly scan the locker room for the lockers that are already locked, and then you pick the locker that’s furthest from those. Now, I understand that this isn’t always easy. Sometimes it’s busy and there are few open spots, but most of the time you can do a decent job. You can usually at least avoid the lockers between two that are already locked or directly above or below one that is already locked. It bothers me to no end when I finish working out and some guy is using an adjacent locker to mine when the rest of the locker room is free. See this pad lock on the locker next to yours? I know it was here when you came in, because your locker was empty when I put it on. Now see all those empty lockers over there? If you would’ve used one of those then I wouldn’t have to bother you while you’re in your underpants, so that I can get my stuff and drag it to where the empty lockers are and change in peace.

Jag 4
The other day I was riding the bus, reading, minding my own business like I usually do. This middle-aged woman got on with a 20-something year-old guy, and they sat directly across the aisle from me. The woman looked a little haggard, but nothing out of the ordinary. The guy looked completely normal. I figured it was a mom and son from a blue collar-ish family.

They are chatting a bit, I’m not really paying much attention to them, when the woman calls out, “Does anybody have a plastic bag?” Nobody said anything, I don’t think anything of it, and we keep on going. About ten minutes later she calls out again, “Does anybody on the bus have a plastic bag?” Some girl does and she gives the lady the bag. The woman then opens the bag and pukes into it. A beat goes by and then she does it again, no warning, no excuse me, no I-think-I'm-gonna-be-sick. Just a straight double douse of vomit. I was shocked. I quickly looked away. I could avert my eyes, but not my nose. She was about two feet from me, and the smell hit me almost instantly. It was absolutely disgusting. I had to stifle dry heaves. I heard another woman in our vicinity gasp in horror. I was repulsed to the point of nearly being traumatized. I got up and stood as far away from her as I could. I glanced back a few times and the woman was just carrying on like nothing had happened. When I got off I saw the guy throwing the puke bag away.

Maybe the woman is seriously sick, and if that’s the case I feel bad for her, but it’s still completely out of order to vomit on the bus. Am I wrong? It wasn’t something out of her control. She obviously could feel it coming on, because she asked for the bag. Five minutes went by. The bus made several stops. Is it too much to ask for her to step off the bus? I don’t think so. There is another one coming soon. I think she can sacrifice twenty minutes of her time in order to not subject a bus-ful of people to her vile regurgitation.



I actually saw this woman again on the bus yesterday. This time without incident, thankfully. When I saw her I actually felt an inadvertent tinge of repulsion. It’s the same sensation I get when I see a dead animal on the side of the road. I can only hope I never get to a point in life where my presence literally conjures up road kill to one’s mind.

Entry 16: Four Jags (Part 1)

I wrote up four jags, so I am posting two today and two at a later time.

Jag 1

The other day we made our first utility payment at our apartment here. It was automatically deducted from my credit card, and it looked high, very high, something-must-be-wrong high. S and I went back and forth over Skype about who should call to try to figure out what’s going on. I said she should call, because I hate calling about things like this (admittedly a weak argument) and because she’s the one who set it up, and undoubtedly some sort of information is going to be needed (customer number, date the account was opened, etc.) that I don’t know or have access to (a slightly stronger argument). She said I should call because she would have to do it over Skype at an inconvenient time, and I could just call from my office whenever I wanted (sadly the best argument). She won, so I called.

I’ve already been dealing with tons of crap concerning accounts in the US (Try closing and paying the final bills for six different accounts in the same month. It’s like trying to sort through a giant amorphous mass of ineptitude and incompetence.), so I was especially unexcited about making this call. I was pleasantly surprised that the automated system was easy to follow, my hold time was short, and the woman on the other end was nice. I explained my situation, gave her my and S’s names, she pulled up my bill, and then we had the following exchange:

Her: Oh… I see the problem.
Me: OK, what is it?
Her: Well, it’s… wait… I’m sorry, I’m actually not seeing your name on the account.
Me: It’s in my wife’s name.
Her: Oh… I’m afraid I can’t give you any info on this account then. Is your wife there?
Me: No she’s not, but the payment is deducted from my credit card. You have the billing info. You’re saying that you can’t give me any information about a charge from your company on my credit card?
Her: [Apologetically] I’m sorry sir… It’s just… secrecy laws. If your wife is in, I can just have a quick chat with her.
Me: [Thinking this is exactly why I didn’t want to call in the first, but much too annoyed with the issue at hand to be annoyed with that.] She’s out of the country right now, but I don't see why I can't... I mean, it's my ca-... OK, OK, if she calls, you could tell her the problem?
Her: Yes.
Me: Over the phone?
Her: Yes, and she could add you to the account.
Me: OK. So she can just call you guys, just like I did, and you’ll tell her what’s going on.
Her: Yes, and she could add you to the account.
Me: OK. Bye.

About any hour later I gchatted with S, she called the company on Skype, and the whole thing was resolved in a matter of minutes. She didn’t have to give them any security information, beyond what I had given them. This is just completely nonsensical. Who is the company protecting? If I had disguised my voice, or hell, even if I hadn’t, if I would have just said my name was S--- from the get go, they would have given me the information. That’s the policy? The honor system? If that’s the case then why not just believe me that I'm S's husband and she told me to call?

Also, S did nothing special in setting up the account. She could have given them any name she wanted, there might not even be an S---, for all they know. And of course, they had no problem with the credit card name not matching the name on the account, as long as it’s valid. Apparently this type of inanity is not just an American phenomenon.

I don’t blame the woman, well I do, but only as much as I blame myself. We all just put up with this bullshit, even though we know it’s bullshit. She doesn’t want to get in trouble with her job, and I don’t want go on a frustrating, time-consuming crusade against this company’s ridiculous policy. It’s easier for both of us just to abide by it. The problem is that these things then just continue, and pretty soon we are doing more and more things that are completely contrary to common sense. Think about how much of your day you spend doing things or dealing with things that don’t make sense to you. I’ll bet it’s remarkable high. We would probably be better off in the long run if we all said “screw this” and stood up to all the annoying nonsense we endure, but we almost never do. I know I almost never do (unless bitching about it on a blog with a readership in the high single digits counts as standing up to it.)

Jag 2

ESPN has a series of 30 short documentaries for their 30th anniversary, appropriately called “30 for 30”. The first one aired some months ago and every so often they broadcast a new one. They are up to film 20 or so. I have seen a few of them and they are pretty good. (This is somewhat surprising since over the last 10 years or so ESPN has devolved to the point of near-un-watchability*.) Last night I thought to myself, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I could watch some of them online? Not the new ones of course, ESPN would never let me watch those, but maybe the older ones that are rerun all the time on ESPN2 in the States.

So, I went online and checked things out and of course, you can’t watch them online, at least nothing more than a two minute teaser. Then I thought maybe they are on iTunes, so I looked and they are – for $5.00 a pop. Seriously? I’d have to pay $150 to download every episode. That’s ridiculous. We are talking about hour-long shows that they air for free all the time on their network. They can’t let people stream the older episodes online, or download them for a nominal fee from iTunes? I mean, I’d pay a dollar or two, but I’m not laying down a fin an episode. Throw in a few ads if you need to. You could even promote the upcoming shows (because that’s what ESPN needs, more self-promotion). This is exactly why people pirate things, by the way. Well, okay, not completely. Some people just want to steal stuff, and it wouldn’t matter if it costs $5.00 or $0.50, but I have to think it severely exacerbates the issue if your consumers feel like they are being ripped off when they buy your product.

*The trajectory of ESPN is somewhat similar to that of MTV. They both were cool when they first came out, because they had decent products (good sports coverage and music videos). Then they got really big and multiplied and spread their actual good content eggshell thin over all their networks and filled in the gaps with crap and hype. Now they both suck. I don't even think they show music videos on MTV anymore, and on ESPN there are way too many non-stories (Brett Favre), way too much faux-hipness, and way too many idiots yelling at each other.

Entry 15: Books

I finished Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl today. I thought it was excellent – tragic, but a great book. Actually the diary itself is not tragic, but the epilogue obviously is. The diary is just normal teenage thoughts (albeit in remarkable circumstances), the types of things that everybody goes through at that age – quarreling with you family, wanting to be independent, going through weird physical changes, being curious about sex, etc. Throughout the book Anne talks about how, although she is outwardly talkative, inside she is so private and nobody knows or understands the really Anne. This made me laugh, because, of course, this is what all teenagers think, when the actuality is everybody understands you a lot more than you know, because everybody thought the same thoughts you did when they were a teenager. You are just too obliviously self-absorbed to recognize that everybody can see through you.

Anyway, that’s my first book down on the big list. Next up is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I leaped-frogged a bunch of spots, because books were checked out, or I had already read them, or some other reason. I started at number 8 on the list and now I am on 16. (Apparently, I am moving in multiples of 8.) Honestly, I am not super excited to follow up Anne Frank with Lolita – one young girl being terrorized by the Nazis, another by a pedophile. It’s not the most pleasant sequence of stories, but Lolita is next up on the list, and I already checked it out. I actually started it once before when I was about eighteen, but I couldn’t keep my focus. I did that with quite a few of the “classics” (some of which I have read subsequently). In retrospect, I think my reading skills at that age just were not strong enough to hang with anything much beyond Bo Knows Bo. It took me a few years in college to really become a decent reader. I'm still a pretty slow reader, by the way, but I'm persistent. Slow and steady wins the race (which is why you always see sprinters walking their races slowly and steadily).

Speaking of racing, I'd been getting into a grove running over the past few weeks, but I tweaked my hamstring somehow, which sucks. It’s just the tiniest tinge, but I can feel it, and I know if I’m not careful it will just nag me for months. I can still do some exercises, but I can’t run, which is irritating, because it’s such great cardio. I just don’t feel like I get the same work out on an elliptical machine or an exercise bike. Plus, the treadmills at the gym are the only equipment with little TVs, and they frequently show US sports. The commentators always say weird things like “Tom Brady is a throwing star” or “And the New York Yankees win the match five nil”, but still.

In other news, I shaved today for the first time in about a month. It was long overdue. I need a haircut too. The idea of growing a huge beard and growing my hair long (if that’s still possible) is always intriguing, but it never works, because it looks so terrible and gets so annoying that I have to get it cut. I just need to find a barber now. There are about five hairdressers on my street, but they all look like expensive places for women. I just need like a $15 no fuss, no muss cut – nothing fancy. That’s one of the underrated annoying parts about moving to a new place, finding somewhere inexpensive to get a decent haircut. I'm damn close to that point in life some guys get to where they just get a set of clippers and give themselves a buzz cut whenever they need a haircut, but I'm not there yet.

Entry 14: Crocodile DG Raw

I’ve noticed that most of my waking time these days is spent doing what is traditionally known as the three Rs – Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. I don’t like the term “three Rs” though, for the obvious reason that only one of the words actually starts with an R*. It’s very cheap. To make it even worse, you could actually get a legitimate acronym from the three Rs, two of them, RAW and WAR. I prefer RAW, because WAR is already used for a baseball-nerd stat (Wins Above Replacement), so that’s what I’m going to use from now on. It’s a shame this didn't catch on earlier, because the posters in my elementary school would have been great. I’m envisioning Mr. T sitting at a desk, with a writing pad in front of him, holding a calculator in one hand and a book in the other, and the caption is “DON’T BE A FOOL. UNLEASH YOUR RAW TALENT.”**

Anyway, on to my RAW.

Reading
I’ve been reading books a lot more lately than I usually do, because I read on the bus to and from work each day and in bed each night, and I never buy the newspaper or magazines here. I recently finished a great Bill Bryson book about Australia called Down Under. *** Now I’m going down the goodreads Best Books of the 20th Century list. It’s not that I have any great desire to complete this list, it’s just that I don’t have any better ideas on what to read. Plus, most of these books are probably decent and will be available at the library. I’m allowing myself to skip books on the list if a) I’ve already read it, b) It’s over 600 pages (The Gone With The Wind Clause), c) It’s part of a series and I haven’t read or didn’t enjoy the predecessors (The Harry Potter Clause). Based my rules, I actually started at book 8 on the list, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. I’m almost finished with it. Up next is The Little Prince which is very short, and then One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’m a bit wary of this one because I thought Love in the Time of Cholera was overrated, but I’ll give it a go.

Arithmetic
Well, I’m not exactly doing arithmetic, but I am doing some math. It’s going pretty well. I’m working on two problems – my main problem and then a side problem. I like my side problem more, but the main problem is really what I’m being paid to do, so I have to spend the majority of my time on it. There was already some work done on the side problem, but I showed that it basically was all wrong, so now we’re reworking things. The ideas were loosely there, but the formulations were just flat out incorrect. It’s bittersweet to prove a bunch of work is wrong, because on the one hand, it usually requires some smarts, so you feel good about yourself, but on the other hand it means that you can’t use it now. It's like you simultaneously accomplished and un-accomplished something. To any event, I’m finding the problem quite interesting.

Writing
I’ve kept this blog going pretty consistently since I started it and I don’t plan on stopping now. This particular entry however I am stopping now.

*This is similar to when you see people, full grown people mind you, at sporting events holding signs that spell out the initials of the broadcasting company, but not all the letters in the initials begin the word. It’s sort of sad, really. That's the best you could do? It’s like seeing an adult working on a book of word searches. That’s your mental challenge?

**Also, by calling it RAW, I have a reason to link to this clip from Eddie Murphy Raw. Note, this is not suitable to watch at work or near kids. It’s toilet humor, literally.

***In the States it’s called In A Sunburned Country. I’m not sure why it’s different here. Is sunburned an offensive description?