The Dord of Darien

Musings from the Mayor of the Internet

MORSPAM

Got this today:

Freddie Mac dies of pneumonia

How do I put this? Freddie Mac, like his sister Fannie Mae, is not actually, you know, a person. There’s been a bit in the news lately about how Freddie and Fannie both may be dying, and how we citizens may have to put out a fairly large load of money in order to keep them alive (for our own good, don’t you know), along with quite a bit of talk about what might be the cause, but I don’t think pneumonia is in consideration.

And, of course, the links don’t go to CNN.com. As if you thought they would.


August 13th, 2008 Posted by | Bullshit | no comments

Fear, hate, and everybody else

Found this on Digg, of all goddamn places.

I’m a big fan of Penn & Teller, and of Penn Jillette in particular, and I watch a lot of the Penn Says (I have a link to it in the Bogroll even), but I hadn’t seen them in a little bit, so I missed that one. It should come as no surprise to anybody that I’m also rather fond of Bob Barr, since you can see his smiling face over there on the right (he’s underneath Zul’jin and Gygax but above Hitler), and everybody knows I’m a Libertarian, and on and on and on.

So I was pretty fond of that video. I live in western Massachusetts — the very town, in fact, where the ice cream dude Penn mentions is from — so I’m right in the middle of all the western Massachusetts liberals. And I really appreciate Penn’s description of the Democrats. It matches my view so closely, but I was never able to figure out how to say that. So I just wanted to call that to everybody’s attention. And I apologise for Crackle being such a shitty site; I know that, but, hey, you gotta get your Penn on somehow, hey?

Also it seems to me that if we’re going to have a party of fear and a party of hate, we sure do need a party of destruction also. But everybody will bitch unless they pick a dark and gloomy official party colour.


August 11th, 2008 Posted by | Bullshit | one comment

Spam

I, like everybody else in creation, get a lot of spam. Most of it gets eaten by filters before I so much as have to deal with it, but, of course, every once in a while some gets through. I usually look at the subjects on those just for fun; sometimes they’re good for a laugh, even if I already have enough penis enlargement pills to last me well into next year. I got a spam the other day, though, that was truly above-average. I’d say it’s the worst spam of all time.

The subject line was "truckload of dead puppies."

I’m wondering if that was one of the pseudo-random subject lines put together by the spam subject generators or if somebody actually thought that one up; perhaps somebody actually thought that would generate a click-through (it didn’t, by the way; I was afraid it would have pictures). My new goal in life is to come up with an even worse sales pitch than that.


August 9th, 2008 Posted by | My new goal in life | one comment

On criticism

I’ve had a fair few people tell me that critics are useless because, hey, how can Roger Ebert know what I’ll think about a given movie? He can’t. So fuck that guy, amirite? I mean, amirite??

I suppose that position would hold water if all Roger Ebert did were list a whole bunch of star ratings. Ratings are basically the headlines of the review business — they don’t carry near enough information for you to understand the whole story, but they give you the proper context to evaluate what the review is going to say. And it’s the job of a reviewer not just to rate things but to explain why he’s done so. I’ve liked a fair few movies Ebert has rated low, and I’ve disliked a good many he’s rated highly. But that doesn’t make his work useless to me, since there’s plenty of text there that I can read to find out whether or not we’ll agree.

Now, I’m a critic myself, so you may say that I’m just making excuses. And, hey, if that’s your thing, be that way. But there are a lot of movies and books and video games out there, and there’s just no way you can sift through them all by hand. Having a trustworthy source evaluate them for you is a major advantage.

So you need to know how to identify a trustworthy critic — someone you won’t necessarily agree with, but someone you know isn’t feeding you a bunch of bullshit for personal gain. As in, somebody who isn’t being paid by the people whose products he’s reviewing. All I’m saying is, when you’re reading a 10/10 review (of, say, Metal Gear Solid 4) on Gamespot, and the window background and sidebars are papered with ads for that same game, well, think long and hard before you take that 10/10 at face value.

Decent reviewers aren’t on the payroll of the people they review, like Roger Ebert or Dan Rutter or, hey, me. When I tell you Super Mario Galaxy is great, it’s not because Nintendo told me to. It’s because it is. So, what, I’m a big man now? I’m saying I’m better than Gamespot? Come on, seriously.

Have you ever known me not to say a thing like that?


August 2nd, 2008 Posted by | Games | no comments

There’s no crying in baseball!

Just petulance, apparently, if you’re a highly-paid superstar who can’t endure the last grueling two months of your $180M contract. Not that I’m talking about anybody in particular, mind; I’m just sayin’.

Speaking of money, I was talking to Dave the other day, and he was complaining about baseball’s financial policies making it impossible for poor teams to contend with rich teams. Setting aside for a minute whether or not that’s bad, I gotta say I just don’t see a lot of evidence that it’s even true. Dave’s a Red Sox fan; I think a lot of it comes from his unique view of baseball as The Struggle Against The Yankees. To be sure, the celebrated Red Sox — Yankees axis is definitely a case of "my Goliath can beat up your Goliath," and frequently boils down to a situation where the two teams engage in an intense skirmish to see which one gets to go to the postseason as division champion and which one has to settle for being the wild card.

But this isn’t the case this year. This year, both Red Sox (#4 salary in baseball) and Yankees (#1) are fighting just to stay alive in a division dominated by an unexpected powerhouse from the cheap seats (Tampa Bay, #29), while at the same time dealing with a strong wild card threat from a Minnesota (#25) team supposedly in a rebuilding year. There is a very real possibility that this year’s ALDS won’t contain either the Yankees or the Red Sox, both Goliaths having been slain by some of the lowest-payroll Davids in the majors.

In fact, you have to go down the payroll chart to #5 (Chicago White Sox) before you find a team that’s leading its division — and it’s just barely holding on to a half-game lead over aforementioned Minnesota. Numbers 6 (Los Angeles Angels) and 8 (Chicago Cubs) are doing very well, to be sure, but #3 (Detroit) is barely .500, while #7 (Los Angeles Dodgers) and #9 (Seattle) are hovering at "a bit below .500" and "on track for a hundred losses," respectively.

What’s the bottom 10 look like? Two division leaders: #29 (Tampa Bay) and #23 (Arizona). Two teams in very close contention: Minnesota and #30 (Florida), trailing by .5 and 1.5, respectively.#22 (Texas) isn’t terrible, though impossibly far behind the sure-we’ll-get-120-wins Angels, and #28 (Oakland) had a good first half and then gave up and sold all of its players. Everybody else is pretty bad, but, hey, let’s not forget that the worst team in all of baseball — the dreadful Seattle Mariners — is in the top ten by payroll.

So I’m just not seeing this grand corrolation between payroll and success. The Yankees, at the top of the chart, have a few players who cost more individually than the entire Florda Marlins payroll. And the Yankees are beating the Marlins by, oh, two games or so. And losing by 5.5 to the next team up the money ladder. Sure, money’s definitely one tool that a team has available to it. But if there’s one thing that the Yankees’ zero championships so far this century should tell us, it’s that it does not trump all else.

(Payroll figures from espn.com)


August 2nd, 2008 Posted by | Baseball | 2 comments