And, wait, how the fuck did Bob Melvin get fired already? Not even two full seasons after being declared Manager of the Year, Melvin is out on his ass because a shitty team is playing shitty. It’s totally unfair that the Diamondbacks fired Melvin this early; it’s only a month into the season! That didn’t give me enough time even to make a bet in this year’s first-manager-to-be-fired pool. I was leaning toward Cecil Cooper, especially after he insanely let injury-whore Mike Hampton throw more than a hundred pitches last night.
May 8th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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Manny Ramirez? Out 50 games for a positive drug test. Ohhhh snap!
Manny claims it was legitimately-prescribed medication for erectile dysfunction — which is the most hilarious excuse anybody’s come up with yet, and I’d expect no less from Manny — whereas cynics around the intertubes are tripping over themselves trying to be the least convinced that Manny wasn’t really taking every steroid known to man, and Jeff Passan is getting his overreaction on. I do admire the chutzpah of a man who calls for lifetime bans for failing isolated drug tests, while in the same article acknowledging that there are such things as false positives.
I do like Passan’s assertion that Manny should have been more careful, and it’s totally all his fault. Sounds good at first, but think about this a minute; should he be expected to be more careful? Let’s assume that Manny is telling the truth. No, no, I don’t care — for the purposes of this illustration, Manny couldn’t man up, and went to the doctor for help. The doctor — who knows what Manny does for a living — prescribed him medication. Manny reminded the doctor of MLB’s drug policy, and the doctor assured him that this drug was acceptable. Manny should have done something other than that? Honest to God, were I in that position, being prescribed a non-performance-enhancing drug (or, well, not that kind of performance, anyhow) that my doctor assures me isn’t in violation of the drug policy, I’m not sure I’d do anything other than believe my doctor. For fuck’s sake, I’m paying him to be right about this sort of thing, and ignoring your doctor’s advice can be a very good way to end up very dead. And yes, I know, people don’t die from boner shortage. But the principle is the same.
Now, dig. I’m not saying Manny isn’t lying — I have no idea. That’s kind of the point. I have no idea, and neither does MLB. That’s why irrevocable lifetime bans for first offenses is a bad idea. Mistakes do happen — drug tests come back positive when they shouldn’t, doctors who should know better mistakenly prescribe the wrong thing, so forth — and a "three strikes" policy allows people’s lives not to be completely ruined by that one fluke error, while at the same time not allowing people exactly a free pass for cheating just a little. No, I think MLB’s policy is the right one. 50 games is a stiff punishment — hardly a joke — but a reasonable one. We don’t need to start burning people at the first sign of evil magic.
May 8th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
2 comments
The second Witcher book is out.
I liked the first one, as you may recall, so I picked this one up, too. Turns out I liked this one too, though it was pretty surprisingly different. Where The Last Wish was a collection of short stories, Blood of Elves is a novel, and it’s the first part of a series of novels. Why they elected to start releasing the novels instead of continuing with the story collections (of which there are two more) I do not know, but that’s what they did. The book is still full of interesting characters and settings, presented in Sapkowski’s typical bemused vision of fantasy worlds, but this time the pace is a bit slower. It’s focused on the character of Ciri, who is Geralt’s ward. She wants to be a witcher, but is apparently destined for greater things. For most of the book, we watch her mature from a frightened child into a spirited young woman, while the world around becomes more tense and war approaches.
There are a few things to be said against Blood of Elves. First off, it’s the first book of a series, and it knows that perfectly well, so it’s lacking in any type of resolution; the end of the book doesn’t bring anything to a conclusion, but only to questions about what will happen in the future. It’s also the case that Sapkowski gets remarkably technical about odd things occasionally; if you don’t know anything about sword fighting, you could have a hard time following the fights. Even I, as a long-time dues-paying fantasy nerd, can have difficulty at times; the casual, non-sword-knowing reader may get totally stumped. There are also sections of political scheming that are generally engaging except for the tremendous infodumps about the political landscape of the area; this is a book that would be helped greatly by the inclusion of a map, since the readership would gain some idea of what and where these places and people actually are, rather than having them be a bunch of weird names. At least the names are free of apostrophes and excessive use of the letter Y — a veritable revelation in a fantasy novel.
Despite its flaws, Blood of Elves is a good read, and has enough merits to overpower them. There are plenty of touching moments, tense moments, and funny moments, and the ending, while not satisfying taken on its own, is definitely foreboding enough to hook you into the next book. October, I think it is.
May 8th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
… Because 3D Realms has gone out of business, completing the final act in the comedy of errors that was the game’s development. Apparently the company was suffering from a "lack of funding," which is the sort of thing that happens when your flagship title’s been in development for twelve years and appears to be a complete boondoggle. There’s some verbalisation going on over here about the development environment at 3D Realms, which apparently was pretty rough. There’s also a tremendous and totally worthless list of things that took less time than Duke Nukem Forever, which we’ve been seeing since about 1999 and which haven’t gotten any funnier since then.
I’ll come right out and say it: I’m a bit sad that it’s come to this, but I’m not at all surprised. If anything, I’m surprised that 3D Realms survived as long as it did without releasing any games that it didn’t pay somebody else to make. Still, I’d have liked if something came out after that twelve years of development time. Maybe just like a mission pack for Duke 3D disingenuously labeled as a whole new game. But at least it’s good to see that that list of signs of the end of the world has been stopped at six. So I guess it’s a victory for the forces of good after all!
May 8th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
