...bright and early at 6AM tomorrow morning. I can't think of a better way to start a day (other than a little later, maybe).
In case you missed it, Jayson Stark's column about the Red Sox was the lead on ESPN.com for a good part of the day today. An image similar to the one below was proudly displayed, followed by nothing less than the clear proclamation that "The incumbent Red Sox are favored to repeat in October. Any questions?"
Yowsa...there was actually a time I'd feel nervous about such bold predictions. Such is not the case anymore, and it feels good.
Boston.com ran a piece today called "The Meanies of Life: TV and film bullies we love to hate". It included some all-time names like Biff Tannen from Back to the Future ("McFlyyyy") and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket (um, too many good quotes to list). There were other, actually nefarious characters on the list to be sure, but I found one that actually made me cringe: Ann Coulter.
Yes, she has "blonde hair, intemperate venom" and her "Weapon of Choice" is well encapsulated in the phrase "[the] Politics of outrage", but it's the description of why she was put on the list that put it in perspective for me:
Who to choose among the conservative blovation spectrum? No contest: Limbaugh may be louder, O'Reilly more self-righteous, but no one delivers a verbal rope-burn with more thuggish glee than Coulter. The meanest Mean Girl of them all, she'd doubtless take that as a compliment.
And there it was. "Bloviation". I had to look it up to get a better idea of what it was. One definition was the following:
To bloviate means "to speak pompously and excessively." A colloquial verb coined in the United States, it is commonly used with contempt to describe the behavior of politicians, academics, pundits, or media "experts," sometimes called bloviators, who hold forth on subjects in an arrogant, tiresome way.
I realized I had finally found the word to encapsulate all that I loathe about politics today. People bloviate too much. How can one have a conversation with this type of person? You can't. You don't even get to agree or disagree. You're choices are to either listen or leave; talking means nothing to these people. It's their way or...well, their way.
The irony is that they feel they have to educate, to get out the truth (or what they think it is, anyway), when in reality the means through which they try to do so has the exact opposite effect - no one wants to listen to imperious babble from an overbearing, self-important blowhard.
As if the general lack of posts wasn't enough of an indicator of how busy I really am, I completely forgot what today was until TLM reminded 10 minutes ago. The sad thing is I spent a good portion of the day today backing up data from our servers, and must've typed in today's date at least 3 or 14 times. Doh.
Yes, I am a math enthusiast and I am excited by the idea of irrational numbers and the fact that pi has been calculated to over a trillion places after the decimal. I like the official Pi Day site, too, and I think the graphic on the top is a nice touch (expand your window and it just keeps giving you decimals...).
Ok, enough is enough. Time to get back to some posting.
Today is of course February 29th, referred to by many these days (especially those at LeapZine.com) as "Leap Day". When this changed from "Leap Year's Day" I'm not sure, but the new version seems more fun to say for some reason.
Just a few days ago TLM and I were talking about the family with something like 4 children born on a leap day. Well, it turns out it was only 3 siblings from Norway, Heidi, Olav, and Lief-Martin Henriksen (only 3...come on!) born in 1960, 1964, and 1968 respectively. Is this a freak example of probabilities gone haywire (I mean, the day only comes by every four years or so, depending on the century), or is it instead a masterful example of premeditated and well-timed reproduction? You tell me.
Whatever the case, there are lots of other interesting and/or famous people whose birthday falls or fell on February 29th. For example, as if being a leap year baby wasn't enough, one set of parents in Germany decided to take baby naming to another level in 1904 by naming their son:
Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenberdorft Sr.
See the pattern? He had a name that began with every letter of the alphabet, in order, up to his last name (which wasn't exactly that short either, btw.). He could have used a different name almost every day of each month, or maybe based on how he was feeling that day. He apparently did have a shorthand version: Mr. Wolfe Plus 585 Sr., though I haven't figured out where the 585 comes in.
Oh...and is that a Sr. I see at the end? Does that mean there was a Jr. running around at some point with the same name? Had he been born somewhere like 60-68 years later, he may have opted to go with the classic Big Bird word that wasn't (see below in case you have no idea what that means).
Some other Leap Day babies include rapper Ja Rule, Pedro Zamora from Real World San Francisco, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, and Lyndon Byers, the infamous Bruins enforcer who can still be seen now and then in and around Boston bars and nightclubs. Below is an example of LB's handiwork, and one of the few times you'll see a hockey fight broken up before someone hits the ice.
I'm trying to remind myself it's only a game, but this one hurts. It would be different if the Patriots hadn't gone undefeated all year, I imagine. I'm still trying to put together thoughts about this, so here:
Taking a brief reprieve from all the Super Bowl hype (my last chance to do so), I came across this History Channel vid that describes an interesting, and I think little known, even that occurred on August 16, 1960. As part of the US's evolving space program, Joseph Kittinger strapped into a helium balloon craft named the Excelsior III with a very unusual mission. Following orders, Kittinger waited until he was 102,800 feet above the Earth (that's pretty much in space, folks), then jumped out.
Yup, he jumped. And he made it back ok.
Now though the act was really part of an experiment trying to determine the effects of high altitudes on human beings, Kittinger managed to also set a few world records. Firstly, it's safe to say that he has the distance record for skydiving (spacediving?). Secondly, because of the constant acceleration of gravity increasing his velocity all the way down, he ended up traveling over 700 mph at one point, setting the record for fastest human not in a vehicle of some sort, not that many vehicles can get to that speed. The man actually broke mach 1 about 3/4 of his way down.
I deem this worth watching at least once. At least.
"Auld Lang Syne"...in this country it's one of the most commonly known songs, of which most people know all of five words. It can be heard at New Year's parties and on the streets when the clock strikes midnight on December 31st each year, but where does it come from? Who wrote it?
The answer is Robert Burns, a Scottish poet who lived in the late 1700's and is generally regarded as the man in that country. Besides "Auld Lang Syne", he wrote many other highly regarded poems and even collected folk stories and songs from around Scotland for preservation, and in some cases like "Scots Wha Hae" (the unofficial Scottish national anthem for a long time), inspiration.
Burns is so highly regarded that Scottish emigrants (and fans of his poetry too, I suppose) all over the world come together on or around the anniversary of his birth, January 25th, to celebrate in what's become known as "Burns Night". The celebration is fairly elaborate, and sometimes very formal, a testament to how highly Burns is still regarded.
There is always a meal shared by all attendants called the "Burns Supper", unsurprisingly. A loose outline of the supper's order of events is outlined at Wikipedia (hopefully by people who actually go to these things). I found the Selkirk Grace, commonly said before the meal, particularly fun to read for whatever reason:
"Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit."
-the Selkirk Grace
So eat some haggis, have a shot or 3 of some good Scotch Whiskey, and end the night with a good rendition of "Auld Lang Syne".
Heath Ledger, who almost won an Oscar for his performance in "Brokeback Mountain", was found dead in his apartment today. So far all that's being said is that it's possibly a drug related death.
For many, Ledger's introduction came in the teen flick "10 Things I Hate About You", though personally I saw him in the movies "The Patriot" and "The Four Feathers" first. He plays the Joker in the new Batman movie coming out this summer, "The Dark Knight", one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2008.
So it'll be the Pats versus the Giants for Super Bowl XLII, and we all know that there'll be an overly excessive amount of hype between now and the big game in two weeks, so I'll keep this short.
So what happened yesterday? Well, the Patriots proved they can win even when their All-Pro quarterback is having a bad day and their number one receiver is limited to one catch. The Chargers proved they can still hang with the big boys even with LT limited to just two carries and their QB had surgery just before the game. The Giants proved they can overcome not one but two shanks late in the game to win a ticket to the Super Bowl in overtime (luckily for the other LT, Lawrence Tynes, it was with a field goal). Lastly, Brett Favre proved even a man in the twilight of a glorious career can still give away big football games.
"There are 10 (bleeping) good players on that team. But Richard Seymour is a dirty, cheap, little pompous (expletive)."
"He’s cheap and dirty and the head man just let him get away with it the whole time. They’ve got 10 great players on that team and when Jarvis Green comes on the field, they’ve got 11 great players who compete how you’re supposed to play. But Richard Seymour is the biggest (expletive) I’ve ever played."
"Head slapping, foot stomping in the pile, running by and throwing punches in your back. He’s a (expletive)...There were a lot of things he did. There’s a field goal where he was stomping feet. Who stomps feet? And the officials weren’t doing anything about it. He plays like a punk."
-Nick Hardwick, San Diego Chargers starting Center
Sorry Nick. Your (bleeping)(expletive) excuses aren't going to change the outcome of the game yesterday. Maybe next year.
On a small tangent, what is this business of Paul Pierce congratulating Plaxico Burress and other Giants players at Madison Square Garden this afternoon? I suppose New York sports fans need something to cheer about, but seriously, Paul, seriously...
Every Friday night TLM and I make it a point to go out together..."date night" if you will. This week we ate at a restaurant she had heard of but neither of us had been to called Sweet Lemons Thai Restaurant. It's a Thai food place (duh) in Weymouth which apparently has received good reviews and just become a chain (um, the other location is in Weymouth too).
I and my stomach were a little tentative at first, as I'd had a buffet lunch at an Indian food place earlier, but I was immediately put at ease by the establishment's decor and arrangement. The service was very polite and attentive, and merely the fact that the paper on the ends of the straws of our drinks were folded into little flowers serve as testament to their careful consideration of diner experience.
Though I should have probably started with some kind of Pad Thai dish as it was the first time we were eating there, I opted for the Drunken Noodle with chicken instead, and was not disappointed. It wasn't overly spicy nor overly veggie, and there was no shortage of well seasoned chicken to be had. All in all, it did not disappoint.
TLM had the Rad Na with chicken. I'd never actually seen Rad Na before, and it looked good, albeit very green, in the gravy-type broth in which it's served. She said it was tasty, though there was one small incident where she hit something that can only be described as a concentrated hot spice something, prompting her to polish off her drink, her water, and some of mine before her throat started opening up again. Yikes...sounds like my kind of spicy.
The meals were of average cost - $9-10 dollars a meal, though the restaurant did employ one of my biggest pet peeves when eating out: no free refills on sodas. Unless you ask, you find this out only after getting the bill. This was, however, the only negative critique I have of what is sure to become one of our favorite Weymouth spots: the Sweet Lemons Thai Restaurant. After one visit: 3 stars.
I've been a member of the Blockbuster Total Access movies-by-mail program ever since its inception. The deal seemed too good to be true - at prices comparable to those of Netflix you get movies by mail and then get to return them to a store and swap for other movies while you're waiting for the next ones to come in. They even gave you a bonus movie or game rental each month.
It turns out the deal was too good to be true, I found out after a short time. Blockbuster has upped its prices for the program for the second time (what used to be $18.89 is now $34.99, minus some perks), and it's a service no longer worth paying for at all, particularly in light of Netflix and the new iTunes movie rental service. Maybe Blockbuster was taking too much of a hit with the old prices, maybe they're trying to capitalize on the lack of TV shows thanks to the writers' strike...I don't know.
What I do know is that Blockbuster is a model of extremely poor customer service, and I'm notthe onlyone whothinks so. I received an email informing me that their packages were changing and was brought to a page where I could select which plan I wanted to upgrade to, if any. I went through the process 4 times with 2 different browsers, and yet my plan info still reflected no change. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I sent a nice email "making sure" my plans to continue purchasing their product registered somewhere. I got back no response. I tried a second email, this time mentioning how I hadn't received any DVDs for over half a month. I got a response that told me to make sure my queue had at least 50 selections in it (which it did), and no semblance of a response to the subscription inquiry.
For my third attempt I tried the hardline approach, and pointed out how I felt cheated that I hadn't gotten any movies for almost 3 weeks and that I expected some kind of compensation. I got a coupon for a free rental.
What they're getting is a cancellation of service starting tomorrow and this gleaming review of their service sent out to everyone I know.
UPDATE 1.18.08: This short article at Paris Lemon basically says that Blockbuster's stock is plummeting...and I couldn't be happier.
It would be remiss of me to not mention Steve Job's new announcements at the 2008 Macworld Keynote Address today, particularly that of the "world's thinnest notebook", Apple's new MacBook Air. No, it's not a sneaker with ties to a certain Chicago Bulls hall of famer, it's a laptop designed for nothing but portability and "built for the wireless world".
"Thinnovation" is their key word. Not only is this thing ridiculously small, it's ridiculously light (under 3lbs.). Amazingly, it has no optical drive. It has a USB port and a new DVI port, so you can connect an external if you want, but the really cool feature displayed was the wireless access of a shared optical drive from some other computer nearby.
I'm not in the market for a laptop, but if I were, I'd have to give this some consideration at least.
Another announcement was a (long overdue) iPhone update. No, it still can't play Flash content in Safari, nor can it read my mind yet, but it does now include some useful new features, including the ability to customize your home page and the ability to "pin" where you currently are in Google maps. For a complete overview, check out the iPhone update page.
Everyone seemed to want to get this update at once. I waited a loooooooong time before the servers cleared up enough for me to get this update, but so far it's been fun to play with the new changes.
There is still as of yet any word on Apple's progress on personal androids and flying cars. Damn...
Content found on The Neoteric is of no particular genre, topic, or focus, other than it was all at some point, in some way, interesting enough to me to write about.
