Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in The Holy Kanoot's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
10:03 am	I didn't actually do this, but I did find it highly amusing. http://www.pinnaclesports.com/ContestCategory/Magic~3A~+The+Gathering/Lines.aspx (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
10:24 am	Any Programmers Need a Job? So I've been rather circumspect in discussing what I am doing these days, but let's just say that I work for a perfectly reputable and LEGAL company who needs highly competent IT programmers. For permanent positions, we need C#/.Net people and also a kickass DBA or two. The location has great weather, pay is good, and the work environment is exceptional and extremely interesting. Additionally, I'm trying to get an IT internship program off the ground. If you are or know a Computer Science major with good grades plus 2+ years of programming course work and find yourself (them) interested in a recurring internship at a sportsbook on a Caribbean island with nice beaches and tons of Dutch interns, let me know your contact information and I'll send you my work email for a CV/resume. --TK (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 28th, 2007
5:53 am	Day 2 of This Island Life I haven't broadcast this info, but as of now I am down here in Curacao (peep Google Earth for how far South it actually is) "vacationing." It will more than likely turn into a permanent vacation as soon as my work permit from the government comes through and I find an apartment. My career transition, while turning out to be the best possible thing I could imagine, has severely cut into my ability and interest to write. When every thing you do and deal with is essentially a business secret, there's very little incentive to tell the world about it and a WHOLE LOT of incentive not to. Additionally, I figure it's time to pretend I'm a real boy and have given up my Magic Coverage gig to focus on the new job. Regardless, the need to write and communicate runs deep, so I'll post the occasional update for those of you wondering what it might be like to move to a Caribbean island and start a new life. For Day 2 of my experience, I cleverly contracted the flu and an eye infection during my trip to Japan, thus forcing me to interact with local medical personnel here in Curacao. (For those wondering about the timeline, I had literally one day at home between Japan and flying to the Carib.) It turned out to be a decent experience. The office itself might not have been as nice as you would get in the States, but it was clean inside, the Dutch doctor was swift and competent in his diagnosis, and he shipped me off to the Bodiga with scrips for Paracetimol and eye drops quickly, with an observation that I was clearly an unlucky individual to get 2 unrelated viral infections at one time. He also informed me that I was highly contagious and should avoid human contact, so no work. Yes, on Day 2 of an entirely new job, I was barred from the office by medical personnel. Le frown. Thankfully this weekend is a 4-day special, so assumig I am healthy, I may make up the time on Monday or Tuesday by doing things I can't publicly discuss. :) Meanwhile, I just wish the NFL draft would start already so I could stop hearing about where the Top 5 picks are going. Okay, I also wish I would stop having this outrageous sore throat too, but I'm guessing the draft will start before the pain goes away. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
10:40 am	A Semi-serious Question (Even if it seems ridiculous) Question: You are taking on a new lucrative job that requires you to live literally anywhere except the United States for at least a couple of years. Where do you choose to live? Why do you choose that place? Have you ever been there? (26 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
2:45 pm	Just over a week ago (and the day after I got back home from Geneva), I bowed to the opinions of sensible people and got a root canal on a molar that had bothering me forever. The procedure was relatively smooth and I was even able to eat on that side with no pain the day after the procedure. Things were going well, so I trudged up to frozen NYC for some meetings with my boss. After dragging Zvi to an Italian restaurant named Celeste not terribly far from his place, I was eating veal limone when my temporary filling - which was put in place to wait until my root sockets stopped bleeding so the dentist could crown me – cracked. This hurt. A lot. In fact, I was now in more pain than before the root canal. Life suddenly sucked again. I called the dentist emergency line on the way home Sunday and left a message about what happened. Then I called again Monday morning and heard the dentist was out sick. I stressed that I was in pain, so they gave me a prescription and then said I could get everything fixed on Wednesday morning. Bleagh. I was not happy, but what could I do? (Well, I could have insisted on a referral to someone else available, but I did not know that.) Anywho, I get le prescription and take le pill and discover that what they gave me at the pharmacy does not work. Tylenol 3? Probably refers to how many you need to take to stop any pain. This is now ridiculous, but I grind it out and try to live life normally, despite the fact that pain makes it real hard to think clearly and the stuff I need to do for work requires it. Alena and I went to dinner on Tuesday night and I kept getting more miserable, to the point where when I finally got into bed, I needed to wear clothes and 3 extra blankets to stop shivering long enough to fall asleep. Fantastic - I am now sick as well. I never get sick. Have not taken a sick day in like… 4 years. o;isahgf ;ioqwer! I go into the dentist on Weds, give him a piece of my mind, he apologizes, fixes shit, and then gives me a scrip for Vicodin plus some antibiotics to help kill any non-viral infection and sends me on my way. Since then, I have been laying in bed shivering again for the majority of the day. But at least now I have Vicodin to keep me company. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 5th, 2007
4:04 pm	I agree. Sort of... Main man Beanie Smith posted this in his journal and I got to writing a reply, but it ended up... long, so I have stolen his post and then replied to it on my own page. Man, it's been soooooo long since I had a government representative who I can point to, jive my head back and forth and go hell, yes, that's MY man! On Faux News Sunday in an interview with Chris Wallace... SENATOR JIM WEBB (VA-D): The difficulty that we have in this country right now is this. Corporate profits are at an all-time high as a measure against national wealth. The average major corporate CEO, according to the Wall Street Journal, makes $10 million a year in compensation. At the same time, wages and salaries for workers are at an all- time low as a percentage of our national wealth. And part of this is the internationalization of corporate America. Some of it's inevitable and some of it isn't. But if you're an American worker looking at the situation in America today, you see three components working against you. One is that in the shift with technological expertise, white collar and blue collar people are seeing a lot of jobs going overseas where they can be done more cheaply. The corporation benefits. The worker loses the job. The second is the manufacturing base is going away. We've lost three million manufacturing jobs during this administration. Take a look at the steel industry. A huge percentage of that has flipped into China where they have different environmental standards, different worker standards, so it's very difficult for an American worker to compete fairly even given productivity. And then the third thing an American worker looks at — people will say well, you can't export infrastructure jobs, you can't export being a waiter. But we have this massive labor pool as a result of immigration here, so even in those jobs, the wages and salaries are being pulled down. So there are ways, and obligations, I believe, from people who are in government who are representing those interests to do put them into play. WALLACE: Well, I understand all of those aspects, and I think the president would agree with you on a bunch of those, but let me just ask... WEBB: I don't see any evidence of that, by the way. I don't think I can let that one pass. Bennie:No, I think not Senator Webb. Lessee, Presidential candidate Bush had this to say to a gathering in October, 2000-- "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." Bush has been very very good to his base these past 6 years... My Response What's weird about this is that while I agree with the principles, I disagree with the specifics. He has some interesting issues to discuss, but doesn't actually make a point with any of them. Maybe immigration is a problem and maybe it isn't - an influx of workers to a productive economy where the birthrate is stagnant is not necessarily a bad thing. His comments leave me wondering what the actual issue is, minimum wage, too many workers, or raising the minimum wage. A national minimum wage would certainly be helpful in raising how much people get paid for crap jobs, but it's certainly not going to fix our flawed immigration policy. Next, labor intensive jobs without a high training threshold are almost always going to go where labor is cheapest. Right now, that place is China with India close behind. If you have any belief in free-market economics, even the regulated kind, you have to believe that this principle is generally correct and a good thing. Perhaps more interesting is that both countries are putting massive funding into better educating their populations so that they can move beyond luring just dumb industrial jobs and into luring everyone else (programmers in India, etc) as well. Guess you can do that when you aren't busy funding giant tax cuts for the rich and pursuing wars around the world. As to steel in particular, what's weird is that China's environmental standards may differ somewhat compared to ours when it comes to Steel making (I'm not positive this statement is correct), but they are greening dramatically because they realize what will happen when a 1.2B person country becomes fully industrialized. Consider the fact that they have considerably more strict Fuel Economy measures already in place and ones that are getting more eco-friendly every year, and Webb doesn't tell the full story. OMGz, a government is taking pro-active steps to protect its citizens and avoid long-term catastrophe! What a novel concept! Meanwhile in the United States, electric companies have busied themselves with producing a massive amount of quick coal power plants because they know for a fact that if they are built before the Democrats adjust the environmental laws, they will be grandfathered into the bill by the Congress. Does this make any sense? Shouldn't they get smacked around for gambling in this way when the purpose of such things is to clean up the fucking environment? Yeah, probably, but welcome to our oh-so-malleable legislative unit. The truth of the matter is that China has an eeeenormous labor pool that companies are happy to tap into and there isn't a damn thing a free-market economy can do to keep those jobs in our country because you can eat well on $4 a day there and get a cab across the entirety of Beijing for about $6... Reality here in the States shows us that CEOs get paid to try and shaft their workers as effectively (and invisibly) as possible. The better you do it (see Wal-Mart), the more the company makes, the better the stock looks, and shockingly, the more said CEO makes next year. It's bullshit, but that's the way of it, and it comes at least partly due to long-time undermining of labor unions in this country. Ask someone from middle America how they feel about unions and they have likely been brainwashed into thinking they are bad. Meanwhile, they bitch about low worker wages, poor benefits, and getting pissed on again and again by corporate America. What they don't realize is that people with money have systematically undermined worker protections for more than half a century by pushing legislatures everywhere to let them get away with it. The system exists that way because we allowed it to get that far. Economics is swell and all, but without effective regulation from governments they will eventually move toward "nasty and brutish." Hobbes was talking about government in general at the time, but when your whole society is based on capitalism, the lessons are perhaps even more important. Coming back to the topic at hand, the industrial jobs are largely leaving because a) American workers expect to get paid more at those jobs and it's vastly cheaper to employ other labor forces, and even if companies want to stay here, they can't justify it because b) our healthcare system is fucked beyond repair. Industrial jobs mean worker injuries. Worker injuries mean healthcare claims, which mean company premiums go up per worker, which means greater cost for the company with no end in site for how high costs could spiral. To me, it's troublesome that there's supposedly an exodus of "good" jobs overseas, but it's more troublesome that in spite of dramatic technological and productivity improvements, US worker compensation has been flat or declining for seemingly forever (though there was an uptick this year, actually). It's not all corporate America's fault or the Republicans fault, or anybody's really, but the bulk to the blame is largely shared by those two groups. Another part of the blame comes from the fact that Americans are lazy. Look at per capita enrollment in university science, computer, and math programs over the preceding generation and you will notice a massive drop in American attendance, while the rest of the world is happy to ship their students over here and gobble up the learning and the later jobs. This can obviously be fixed through university incentives, but god forbid we do something useful like that. I hate to say it because I am a long-time optimist, but our system is flawed, our representatives and our bosses rarely seem to have the good of the worker or the country in mind, and almost everyone is willing to sell out the greater good for personal gain. Even those who seem to want to be helpful (like Webb and sundry members of the new majority) are often selling us an incorrect bill of goods on their way to making a political point. If just half of our fucking legislation actually did what it was supposed to do when it was first proposed instead of being hopelessly riddled with holes and loopholes, we might have a shot at being a great country. As it is, it seems like we're just trying to hang on to not completely sucking for a little longer. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 26th, 2007
2:12 pm	The State of America, Part 1 The past six years have not been kind to America. A pair of presidential elections with more voting irregularities than your average trip to the polls in Africa resulted in Republican control over both the legislative and the executive branches of government, which in turn will lead to eventual Republican dominance in the judiciary as well. The “Republican” agenda advanced during that period of time was spearheaded by the Bush White House and rubber stamped by a Congress happy to look the other way with the knowledge that they would likely be rich for life as a result. Six years into King George W’s reign, America has gone from a nation that was considered (and considered itself) an example to democracies everywhere, to a nation that is reviled in large swathes of the world and whose opinion is ignored nearly everywhere else. I’m not going to say that America in 2000 looked like Britney Spears pre-Federline, but a haggard Statue of Liberty was recently seen running around New York’s club scene with Paris Hilton looking like she’d been on a six-year bender. Mid-term elections gave the Democrats control of Congress again after twelve years as the minority party, and a wide open presidential election looms in 2008, at which point the nation will doubtless take a decidedly different turn than the direction it currently charts economically, socially, and in foreign policy. Unfortunately, there are still two years left until someone new sits as figurehead in the Oval Office, and until then there are a number of issues that are better addressed now than left alone while doing George W damage control. What follows is my opinion of where America currently stands and what needs to be fixed in the near future for the safety and security of our future and that of our children. The Greatest Heist in American History? (or It’s Still the Economy, Stupid) Economics in general is a boring topic to address to the public, but the concept of money is not. We are a commercial society, and everyone from kindergartners to octogenarians know that money makes the world (and particularly America) go round. Coming into the Bush presidency, the American government was running dramatic surpluses thanks to an unprecedented period of sustained growth during the Clinton years, and to the Republican initiative in 1994 (which won them control of Congress) of balancing the budget. That’s right, it was the Republicans who originally fought for balancing the federal budget. “Clean up pork spending!” they said. “Reform Congressional ethics!” they cried. The American people responded to this and voted for such initiatives in vast numbers, thus explaining how a man named Newt (of all things) became Speaker of the House. (Aside: It’s interesting/alarming that even smart people seem to have forgotten this simple fact, though it has certainly caused quiet, yet dramatic rifts among the fiscal conservatives and the other members of the Republican party over the last six years. Responsibility is not a word Republicans have a monopoly on, and these days a balanced federal budget is not a topic that can be divided along party lines. It’s simply a concept endorsed by people who like things to make sense, and who believe the government should attempt to act as fiscally responsible as it encourages its citizens to be.) Since President Bush took office, his tax cuts and war initiatives have taken the surplus and turned it into the largest budget deficit in the history of the United States. Now saying this is criminally negligent is tricky - the Congress technically controls the power to tax and spend, and government budgets are not identical to personal budgets though they do share some similarities. However, there’s a case to be made that the money from a yearly half trillion dollar budget deficit has to go somewhere, and an alarming number of the pockets where that money ends up are from people with direct ties to the Bush Administration and Republican party. However, before we get to that, let’s address another topic briefly, which is the widely held idea that government budget deficits, even if they are as large as a half a trillion dollars per year, are hardly dangerous. For starters, governments can and do go bankrupt, and when they do, every citizen of that country suffers. So do the children of those citizens, the landowners, and pretty much everyone doing commerce with that country. Just ask your friends in Argentina how they are doing these days compared to 10-15 years ago before their currency crashed. Or better yet, ask companies who were doing business in Argentina how their business is doing in that particularly market. The economy of the United States is much larger than Argentina, but so is our debt and our yearly budget deficits. Thus bankruptcy is an actual worry for the United States in the medium term, should deficits like those occurring under the Bush Administration continue. The other area of concern with respect to federal deficits and debt is the concept of risk, which is something those dealing with America have to increasingly take into account. Back when the U.S. was running surpluses, our economy looked like a rock and there was practically no risk associated in dealing with U.S. currency or business investment. Much like in the personal credit market, am absence of risk results in better interest rates and increased opportunities when it comes to financing debt and making simple financial decisions. On the other hand, the greater the risk associated with a party, the more they have to pay to do business. Debt costs risky individuals more, opportunity costs increase, and financial flexibility dramatically decreases. In 2006, 406 Billion Dollars of taxpayer money went to finance our government debt alone. That’s more money than the budget of every single department of the American government except the Department of Defense, and Health and Human Services. Now imagine for a second that people started to get scared that America might be forced default on its debt… when that occurs, interest rates rise, and the money paid out simply on interest could increase dramatically. At this point, simply maintaining our currently massive deficit would either require sweeping cuts in government programs, or an enormous tax hike, which would in turn take money out of the American economy and ship it directly to foreign investors. In short, the deficits during the Bush presidency combined with Bush’s foreign policy have increased the risk factor associated with doing business with and in America. Our massive debt is gradually becoming harder to float on the open market and - should things continue as they are now -here will definitely come a time when the market will have had enough and the American people could pay disastrous consequences because of it. What I find particularly fascinating about all of this is that our current behavior could never be considered sustainable by any rational economist. Bush’s economic advisors had to know this and also (you can be certain of this) knew exactly what impact his tax cut plan would have on the American economy even before anything like 9/11 or the War in Iraq came into the picture. Yet Bush still pushed for the tax cut plan and got Congress to approve it. Take this logic a step further and look at who profits from the War in Iraq (arms makers, Oil companies, and companies like Halliburton – all with very close ties to the Bush Administration), and who the main beneficiaries of the tax cuts were, the greatest benefits of which went to the top 1% of American earners who are overwhelmingly considered to be Republican supporters. Astute conspiracy theorists among you might come to the conclusion that the Bush Administration has thus legally gotten away with the greatest heist of taxpayer money the world has ever known. Sure, all of the money in the deficit didn’t go to friends of Bush, but a fantastic amount of money ended up being funneled BY LAW to groups and companies considered to be very friendly with the Bush family and members of the Bush Administration. All of this came at the expense of the American taxpayer and our welfare as a country. Unlike most decisions made during the Bush era, a swindle of this nature and magnitude certainly was not the act of either the stupid or the incompetent, at least not when it comes to the economy. Instead it was the act of greedy men considerably more concerned with their own personal welfare than that of what was once considered the greatest country in the world. Part II: Oil and Ice will be posted on Monday (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
1:03 am	This may be unrelateable... I can't actually talk about my current job aside from saying it is incredibly cool and incredibly stressful at certain times of the year. I can, however, say that the Fiesta Bowl game between Oklahoma and Boise State would likely have caused me to split my own head in two with my bare hands had I say... 50,000$ on Oklahoma, particularly if I had picked them to cover 7. Thankfully nothing like that was actually in play (unlike the regular season, college bowls have gone rather badly), because the ending of that game was a double nut punch of epic proportions. Behind by 18 in the second half, the Sooners (my alma mater, for those wondering why I'm even telling this story) struck back to tie the ball game. Hope has returned! THEN, with 1 minute left to go, Oklahoma intercepter a pass and ran it in for a touchdown, thereby winning the game. Suddenly I have gone from hope to elation. Or so I thought. 4th and 18 comes up for Boise with :24 left on the clock, and they not only get the first, they score a TD on ye olde hook and ladder play. Excuse me a moment while I cough my balls out of my throat. So overtime ensues, OU scores a TD on the second play, and I tell my wife, "Whew, the only way we can lose in THIS first OT is if Boise gets crazy and scores a TD and goes for two." Another fourth down occurs - after Boise looked to have possibly fumbled on the previous play (they likely did not, but that did not stop the shouting) - and once again Boise scores a TD. Then they go for 2. Long story short, after an absolutely miserable work weekend, my favorite team loses in the most colossally painful way possible to cap everything off. At least we won't need birth control anymore. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I shall go find a brick wall to ram my head into over and over again so that I might yet have a restful night of sleep. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 18th, 2006
3:27 pm	How not to do business over the Internet So Alena and I are in the process of buying a new car, which I will detail once everything is finished. The short of it is that the process requires creating market forces so that you get actual competition among dealers. Anyway, here is one reply that we received from a dealership in the same state that I found... interesting. dear ted and alena, Thanks for giving us a chance but right now mazda 3s are hard to come bye we do not have one on our lot like u are looking for . we might be able to locate one . If we had one the selling price would be 18800.00 plus fees and taxes . wich would be out the door at 19645.77 . If you would like for us to find you one jus let us know . thanks [name withheld] What's interesting is that this isn't quite true, there are plenty of Mazda 3's around and they are assuredly making more at the factory, and the price he quoted was 400 dollars above MSRP! I was tempted to reply 'r u joking?' (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
11:44 pm	Beer Review - Chipotle Ale Alright, my life has changed dramatically over the last 3 months, something I may or may not choose to explain in the near future, but at least one thing that has remained constant is my love of beer. Thus I give you today's new taste test: Rogue Chipotle Ale Yes, it certainly is rogue, but such is my trust in this brewery that I was willing to chance it. I'm not entirely certain I'm happy I did, but such is the life of an adventuresome beer fan. It's not some hideously foul thing to unleash upon friends like The Ferrett did with his Dr. Jones holiday pack or anything silly like that, but it's not really beer either. The color is basically that of a red ale, while the beer taste is pretty mild, neither bitter, nor rich, nor sweet, nor malty. It's really just a vehicle for a slight smoky taste up front and a very pronounced chipotle aftertaste. In fact, after a few sips, it's difficult to taste much beer at all, it's more like all you are drinking is the watered down leftovers of a nice chipotle chicken sauce that you forgot to eat. It's not a bad thing, but it's certainly not a beer choice I would make with any frequency whatsoever. Maybe buy a pair of singles and serve this with your next mexican food night with friends. In the meantime, I never thought I would suggest this, but take advantage of Dogfishhead's Pumpkin seasonal that is out right now. I typically hate stupid pumpkin or spice beers that come out this time of year, but these guys got it just right. Rating: ** (Only for a funky change of pace.) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006
10:06 am	A Conundrum What is the most effective, palatable way to get one's wife on board regarding the pending zombie apocalypse? I require something witty, explanatory, and yet chick-friendly, without too much gore. Is this just a lost cause because girls r dum? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 25th, 2006
3:23 pm	That's Entertainment! I know many of you are bored. Damn bored. Really fucking bored. I understand this and at various points during the summer I have shared your pain. In light of this, and since I am also feeling downright evangelical today, I figured I would give you a list of TV we have watched recently that you absolutely positively should start watching as well. These aren't any bullshit obscure English shows like The Ferrett would recommend to you at least partly because it would be damned near impossible to obtain them. No, for the most part these are honest-to-goodness AMERICAN shows, some of which are fun, some are cheesy, some are thrilling, and all of which tend to be really smartly written. The Wire The Wire's dashing screw-up Dominic West. I'll start with the most important one. The Wire is about Baltimore Poh-leece and the drug trade in Baltimore's urban areas. It is smart, gritty, and absolutely thrilling once you start to get involved with the characters. It is also the best cast television show I have ever seen. That said, the shows and its actors rarely get the respect they deserve. Seasons 1-3 are now out on DVD and season 4 premieres on HBO in mid-September. I don't typically do this, but I beg you to sit down and watch the first couple episodes of season 1 and see what you think (just add disc 1 to the head of your Netflix queue). If you like it, watch the rest and the new episodes as well. It baffles me that so many people LOVE Law and Order and yet when I say The Wire, few people ever know what show I am talking about. I'd like to fix that if possible, and you are as good a place as any to start. The best part is, if you start watching and get your friends to do so as well, there's a better chance that the show will be around for Season 5 as well, which is all I really want. Weeds Mary Louise Parker might just be the most attractive woman to me personally in Hollywood. Whip smart, gorgeous, sarcastic, and able to make all the boys with brains swoon, she was probably my favorite character of many from The West Wing, and her turn as a pot-dealing homemaker produced one of the very best new shows last year. Season 2 of Weeds started two weeks ago on Showtime, but if there's a reason bittorrent was invented, this just might be it. MLP is at the head of me "freebie" list, assuming my wife doesn't get to her and steal her away first. *swoon* Wonderfalls Unlike with most outstanding shows, I totally missed the boat on this one (Alena randomly snagged it from Netflix), so it's now dead and available on DVD only. That said, it's one of the quirkiest, most entertaining one-hour comedies I've ever had the pleasure of watching. If you are simply looking for excellent entertainment in one 13-episode package, check it out. Veronica Mars Kristin Bell might be second on my freebie list, but I'd need to have proof that she's as awesome to be around in real life as her character is on TV. Season 1 of VM was amazing. The script writing was fast, smart, and riddled with bullet hole of pop culture, making it right up my alley. Season 2 wasn't as good, but it was still better than merely "watchable" as evidenced by my "must watch it 15-minutes-after-it-starts just to avoid commercials" dates with the show every Tuesday night. The network it was on is now defunct/merged into the CW, but thank god VM didn't go with it, or I might have given up television altogether (an obvious lie). If you like actually entertaining shows with strong female leads, give this a try and then set the season pass on your DVR for season 3. Vanished Mmm, Ellen Pompeo... This is a new show on Fox that seemed vaguely interesting, so I stuck it on the DVR and forgot about it until Alena got all excited that it included one of her gay boys from Queer as Folk. It turns out the pilot is gripping and I have high hopes for the rest of the series. Starting now gives you a chance to get in on the ground floor of a show that actually seems to be good, providing later ammunition to all the latecoming assholes who weren't around to watch originally who you can now bitch at because they let another great show on Fox get cancelled. Yes, I'm still a bit bitter about Firefly. Sue me. (And for the record, it almost happened with 24 as well.) Grey's Anatomy This show actually does not need you (and neither does House M.D. really, though you should give that a try too), but I thought I'd mention what an awesome guilty pleasure it is. The writing is funny, and minus the now annoying relationship between the lead female and Dr. McDreamy (whose wife is shockingly hot - so much so that it's almost impossible to believe that she was once Drew Carey's runaway fiancée from the Drew Carey Show), almost everything else in the show is a weekly pleasure to watch. If you are struggling to find more TV, you could do worse than watching Ellen Pompeo, Katherine Heigl, and an all-grown-up-now Patrick Dempsey play doctor. That's it - I've spent my wad for now. If you've ALREADY seen all of these, you probably watch too much television. If you have not, get as many as possible on DVD and tell me what you think. If you are at all like me (meaning you loathe reality television, you like watching attractive people, and you really really like smart dialogue in your movies/television shows), you'll probably be back to thank me some time soon. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
2:41 pm	Football kNuts Update For those who care, Football kNuts has now moved to a spot on LiveJournal instead of the syndicated feed from the annoying blogger.com. The two updates this far wrap up my World Cup thoughts and also include a spectacular plan to deal with the fallout from the Italian Serie A matchfixing scandal. Starting either late this week or early next week, I'll begin breaking down the English Premier League teams before the season starts in a month. It will all be found here football_knuts for the foreseeable future. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 13th, 2006
1:41 pm	Music Recs I don't make many music recs these days because most of the friends I interact with are either recommending the stuff to me first, have different tastes, OR take actual years to get around to listening to stuff I recommend to them. Regardless, I have two female folkies to throw at you today that are pretty awesome. The first is KT Tunstall, a Scottish/Chinese artist who sounds like a very young and gifted Melissa Etheridge. That might not interest some of you, but she's also appeared on Letterman singing a different song that you may have heard on the radioas a single. Check out the first live clip below before making up your mind. The second rec is Brandi Carlile, who will be utterly familiar for those of you who share my guilty pleasure of Grey's Anatomy. Black Horse and the Cherry Tree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu7BasZwjDw&search=kt%20tunstall A cover of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eor-mHh8ww4&search=kt%20tunstall Carlile's unplugged stuff is pretty awesome, but all you can get is streaming stuff on her website. Recommend checking out Fall Apart Again or What Can I Say via Soulseek or whatever. http://www.brandicarlile.com/media.php (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
9:49 pm	Huh, how bout that... I don't think I've ever collectively lost an audience as quickly as I did by posting one of the early paragraphs from my latest footballknuts entry to some of the World Cup communities. It might have been using the combination of fallible, idiosyncrasies, ubiquitous, and jogo bonito in the same paragraph that did it, or maybe it was just me. Regardless, I forget how spoiled I am by the average IQs of my normal audiences. Oh well, I worked my ass off on that piece, and still believe that it doth not suck... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
6:31 pm	The Beautiful (Broken) Game After watching some untold number of hours of football during said period of time, I have come to the following conclusion: Football is fundamentally broken. Maybe you like this about the game. Maybe the impact of overly fallible human referees who are regularly duped by highly paid athletes and actors is an element of the sport that you appreciate. Perhaps you are of the opinion that while it sometimes ruins the game, it is also one of football's true idiosyncrasies that can no more be fixed without ruining the game than the fact that field players can't touch the ball with their hands. If that's the case, then so be it - you aren't my target audience. But maybe you don't feel that way. Maybe you hate the fact that referees seem to have at least as much impact on the game as any one player, particularly at the international level. Maybe you abhor the divers, the thugs, and the cheats that are nearly ubiquitous these days, and would like to see a lot of the grabbing, tugging, pulling, and general rugby-like elements removed from the game. Maybe you want to see football move closer to the beautiful, flowing ideal everyone talks about and not even the Brazilians truly obtain. Maybe you just want jogo bonito. If you are one of those people, then perhaps we've got some things to discuss. This discussion is continued in the latest entry from http://footballknuts.blogspot.com/ footballknuts (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
12:46 am	No More Owen and a USA vs. Ghana Preview The early morning update includes my thoughts on England now that Owen is gone (they are likely better off without Sven having the option of continuing to play him), schizophrenic Mexicans, and how USA vs. Ghana will play out tomorrow morning. footballknuts (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
11:07 pm	Beer Review - Delerium Tremens Belgian beers are always a dicey proposition for me. They never contain too many hops, so bitter beer face is rarely a worry, but they frequent toe the line between beer and something else entirely. The massive amounts of sugars confuse the palate – is it a beer? A liqueur? An alien substance designed to induce massive hangovers and brain damage to make it easier for them to take over the world? I guess your answer rather depends on whether you like the taste and how drunk you are when you are drinking it. This review would not be happening if not for an overly kind gift from Colorado’s own Scott Marshall. He delivered a hefty bottle of today’s brew while I was in Charleston, SC this past weekend and I looked at it as an excuse to bring back the beer review. Rating System: * - This is swill. Avoid it if at all possible. ** - You can drink this at parties if forced to, but I wouldn't spend money on it. *** - Pretty standard stuff, really. If it's a good value, then you might drink it frequently, but if it's expensive, you'll want to find other stuff. In short: You can do better. **** - Better than average. The B+ of the bell curve. Enjoyable beer that you would want to drink on a regular basis, regardless of the price. ***** - A brilliant nectar of malt, yeast, and hops. To be savored with great food and great company. This is the type of beer you would evangelize about, forcing your friends to start buying it as well. Today's Beer – Delerium Tremens Cost: It was a gift, but I think it was expensive ;) Rating: **** Value: One of the classic Belgian beers. Not perfect, but very good (and strong - 8.5%). There are certain “Belgian” beers that I love, including Dogfish Head’s Raison D’etre, which is sweet, but not too sweet and might just be the best mass production beer that fine brewery produces. (Midas Touch gets my vote for their best beer that I’ve had.) Anyway, since my early days of beer sampling, I have generally avoided traditional Belgian beers. I loooove the whites – they are typically crisp and spectacular, but as I mentioned earlier, the normal ales tend to be sweet, and sometimes obnoxiously so. Tremens starts with a very spicy scent of both sugar and citrus, with sugar at the fore. The body is only slightly darker and more golden than the whites, but the smell is much stronger. The taste is… well as far as I can tell, it’s unique to Belgian ales. The sugar is obviously the first thing to hit your mouth, and then it’s very broad in taste (this is difficult to describe) with almost no back end aside from an alcoholic sugary taste that’s left in your mouth. These days I like it, though back when I was first trying things out, it weirded me out. The other thing to note is that it doesn’t particularly taste like beer. When you pour it, it acts like beer, forming a head and all, and it kind of smells like a particularly sweet beer, but the taste is much closer to a mild brandy than it is to beer, at least in my opinion. Of course, that doesn’t bar it from being good, it just means that it might not be what you expect to get when you first start drinking it. I highly recommend at least trying this beer, but if you are just getting involved with Belgians, then it might help if you strap on some training wheels and do the Dogfish Head first, since it’s a bit less overhwhelming. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 19th, 2006
8:22 pm	Home Again, Home Again I'm back. Honest. No more trips until the weekend of the final, and then there will be a good chance I'll watch it from a bar in NYC. Expect some stats analysis in the next day or so, assuming I get caught up on all my editing duties first. In the meantime, you get my belated thoughts on both U.S. vs. Italia and France vs. South Korea. --footballknuts (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
1:53 am	Day 5 Analysis I did not get a chance to watch South Korea vs. Togo, so there will be no mindless blathering about Lees, Kims, Ahns, Parks and Togoats/Togeese/Togolese. For those of you disappointed by this news, my sincerest apologies. For those of you looking for brilliant and insightful analysis (Translation: more mindless blathering) about the France and Brazil matches, then you have come to the right place => http://footballknuts.blogspot.com/ --footballknuts (1 Comment |Comment on this)