9/30/09: Guess who doesn't get stood up by six foot tall girls with their shit together? this guy, thumbs and all. thx deven, real mature. She made a few jokes about things that I apparently could only understand if I knew french, but besides that and maybe me bringing up politics too soon it was awesome to share a meal with with someone who gets the bees knees checkmark.
Rob asked me to break Standard for the upcoming 5k and im pretty sure I did. And then I went ahead and broke legacy for fun. Then I got really excited about back to backing and 10king. Then I realized I can't play without jeopardizing Rome. Not playing magic in order to play more magic is like getting married for the sex.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
kinda didn't keep my promise
9/28/09: Since when do I not have good ideas about what to be for Halloween? I came up with alot of terrible ideas today in my desperation. I still want to just put some Smarties candies on my pants and be a smarty-pants. Need to remember not to be Zombie Michael Jackson. Zombie Pswaze would be a lady killer if only I could pull it off.
The problem with the full court press is intimately tied up with the over-arching problem with basketball itself. It is an impossible game to officiate because what and what is not a foul is not very well defined. Technically, almost every time two players touch each other one of them should be called for a foul. In practice, the game is too fast for this to actually happen not to mention how boring a game would be. M. Gladwell is of course kind of right, all teams should press, and should especially trap ball handlers immediately after they cross the half court line. The main reason for this for teams of actual basketball players (as opposed to using 11 year old girls as your example) is not because of turnovers but instead because of time. Even if you are just being mildly annoying, have 10 seconds to find a good shot is going to result in much lower percentage shots than have 16 seconds. Unfortunately for coaches, top players just aren't going to want to go play for a program that presses, because basketball players are primadonnas and because they don't see pro teams doing it. And athletes is exactly what you need to defend the entire court. You need more of them than anyone else because you need to substitute. Its the best way to play, but its just an impossible thing to orchestrate, and free baskets are the inverse of turnovers. Just like in the article, the bottom line comes down to how aggressive the refs are letting you be. Pressing should certainly be option number one, because you can also go back to half court defense.
Three dates this week. Trying to get excited. For some reason, I'm not.
okcupid has learned to only recommend me the prettiest girls in the whole world. Not sure how this happened because it never really asks anyone to rate anyone in a way where this could be a thing. But at first it sent me a bunch of undatable people, and now everyone is nice to look at.
Thursday is really the only day for TV. Its pretty unfortunate, because by the time things are up on Hulu, its the weekend and there is stuff to do anyways.
The problem with the full court press is intimately tied up with the over-arching problem with basketball itself. It is an impossible game to officiate because what and what is not a foul is not very well defined. Technically, almost every time two players touch each other one of them should be called for a foul. In practice, the game is too fast for this to actually happen not to mention how boring a game would be. M. Gladwell is of course kind of right, all teams should press, and should especially trap ball handlers immediately after they cross the half court line. The main reason for this for teams of actual basketball players (as opposed to using 11 year old girls as your example) is not because of turnovers but instead because of time. Even if you are just being mildly annoying, have 10 seconds to find a good shot is going to result in much lower percentage shots than have 16 seconds. Unfortunately for coaches, top players just aren't going to want to go play for a program that presses, because basketball players are primadonnas and because they don't see pro teams doing it. And athletes is exactly what you need to defend the entire court. You need more of them than anyone else because you need to substitute. Its the best way to play, but its just an impossible thing to orchestrate, and free baskets are the inverse of turnovers. Just like in the article, the bottom line comes down to how aggressive the refs are letting you be. Pressing should certainly be option number one, because you can also go back to half court defense.
Three dates this week. Trying to get excited. For some reason, I'm not.
okcupid has learned to only recommend me the prettiest girls in the whole world. Not sure how this happened because it never really asks anyone to rate anyone in a way where this could be a thing. But at first it sent me a bunch of undatable people, and now everyone is nice to look at.
Thursday is really the only day for TV. Its pretty unfortunate, because by the time things are up on Hulu, its the weekend and there is stuff to do anyways.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Go figure... I am awesome at relationships that...
...last for 3 minutes. Plenty of practice.
10/28/09: Speeding dating is pretty useless. You know you when you are at a party and you are hitting it off with someone and then your ride is leaving and just comes in and sweeps you away? Its like that. Over and over. Or maybe it is like fake meeting someone in line for the bathroom at a crowded noisy party. It doesn't matter how much you connect, when they walk out of that bathroom door, you don't have anything to say, you just sidestep around them. The context is too weird.
Also, my running joke is that if you put me in a room with 15 ladies and ask me to pick one, obv I pick the LARPer. (yeah, i know, i know) But.... it might work out because you know what isn't useless? Winning grand prizes. Yes. The matchmaking gods granted me a whopping 25 dollar gift certificate to go on a date, awkwardly in the same place as speed dating, with said larp girl.
(aside: before speed dating I told Dan Goat that it was my goal for every girl to pick me as the guy they wanted to go on a date with so that I would win the prize no matter who I picked. Now that I won I have this egotistical fantasy that every girl did in fact pick me. Because there was one girl that was much much prettier than the others. Pretty sure every boy picked her, Dan Goat said he did. So shouldn't she have won? So now maybe I am regretting going for a safety school when I should have shot for an Ivy. I sure hope larp girl never reads this because its pretty shallow. end aside)
Also going on a potentially heartbreaking date this week with what is basically the middle eastern version of dream girl. Way prettier than me, super smart and kind, hot shot degree, real job, her shit together. You know, the kind of girl that wouldn't by rule be out of my league if I had grown up after college but kinda no lie is totally beyond my reach as things are. Maybe I can fake it til I make it or at least make her laugh/ give her a nice time.
Speaking of dream girl, and I only do it in this space because people get really mad about it and I think it is pretty funny that you think I would actually be able to be happier if I could let it go, I have come to the conclusion is that that the internet is the fully stocked fridge of diets. Its pretty terrible that it can be painful for new pictures to be put up on facebook. It makes no sense, and it touchs a place that should be off limits. The amount of connections it takes to get from a photo on social network site to feelings of opportunities loss as metaphor for death is pretty silly.
I have a nest of baby birds somewhere in my basement, or somewhere in my walls. I hear them chirping but can't find them. This is going to make my brother soooooooooooooooooo mad and he is going to get super grumpy and start doing a half-assed job to clean in his rage and yell at me the whole time about how I don't care about life and I should because there are just some things that aren't right.
Still haven't bought a plane ticket for Austin. It's in two weeks and there is no way that I am going to skip it. I just can't get up for it. I don't have a deck, or cards, or any ideas. I don't have a team, and none of my friends are qued. Its pretty lame actually. Where did all the great parts of my life go? I don't play music any more really. The friends I used to party with really aren't into it anymore. Magic cards is gradually feeling like something I used to care about when I was younger. Before this week I had zero girl prospects and to be fair, I kinda still do until I get excited about someone. Its pretty sad that sports is the best thing going.
How much is a normal amount to be self-conscious about your body? what if you are a boy? What if you can still run pretty fast? Who am I impressing anyway? Do i really think more people (as in more than zero) would see me naked if I was marginally more of a specimen? The funny thing is that part of my problem with this is that I don't really have an option about giving up and joining a bridge team. People don't do that anymore. I am trying to find examples of people that do something more than stay at home with wifey and watch cable. Its kind of like trying to find examples of someone who has a job that I want.
Sorry about this post. No more downers for a while, I promise. Lots of good things on the internets lately and I have some ideas. I want to say a little something about that Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker about underdogs and the full court press.
10/28/09: Speeding dating is pretty useless. You know you when you are at a party and you are hitting it off with someone and then your ride is leaving and just comes in and sweeps you away? Its like that. Over and over. Or maybe it is like fake meeting someone in line for the bathroom at a crowded noisy party. It doesn't matter how much you connect, when they walk out of that bathroom door, you don't have anything to say, you just sidestep around them. The context is too weird.
Also, my running joke is that if you put me in a room with 15 ladies and ask me to pick one, obv I pick the LARPer. (yeah, i know, i know) But.... it might work out because you know what isn't useless? Winning grand prizes. Yes. The matchmaking gods granted me a whopping 25 dollar gift certificate to go on a date, awkwardly in the same place as speed dating, with said larp girl.
(aside: before speed dating I told Dan Goat that it was my goal for every girl to pick me as the guy they wanted to go on a date with so that I would win the prize no matter who I picked. Now that I won I have this egotistical fantasy that every girl did in fact pick me. Because there was one girl that was much much prettier than the others. Pretty sure every boy picked her, Dan Goat said he did. So shouldn't she have won? So now maybe I am regretting going for a safety school when I should have shot for an Ivy. I sure hope larp girl never reads this because its pretty shallow. end aside)
Also going on a potentially heartbreaking date this week with what is basically the middle eastern version of dream girl. Way prettier than me, super smart and kind, hot shot degree, real job, her shit together. You know, the kind of girl that wouldn't by rule be out of my league if I had grown up after college but kinda no lie is totally beyond my reach as things are. Maybe I can fake it til I make it or at least make her laugh/ give her a nice time.
Speaking of dream girl, and I only do it in this space because people get really mad about it and I think it is pretty funny that you think I would actually be able to be happier if I could let it go, I have come to the conclusion is that that the internet is the fully stocked fridge of diets. Its pretty terrible that it can be painful for new pictures to be put up on facebook. It makes no sense, and it touchs a place that should be off limits. The amount of connections it takes to get from a photo on social network site to feelings of opportunities loss as metaphor for death is pretty silly.
I have a nest of baby birds somewhere in my basement, or somewhere in my walls. I hear them chirping but can't find them. This is going to make my brother soooooooooooooooooo mad and he is going to get super grumpy and start doing a half-assed job to clean in his rage and yell at me the whole time about how I don't care about life and I should because there are just some things that aren't right.
Still haven't bought a plane ticket for Austin. It's in two weeks and there is no way that I am going to skip it. I just can't get up for it. I don't have a deck, or cards, or any ideas. I don't have a team, and none of my friends are qued. Its pretty lame actually. Where did all the great parts of my life go? I don't play music any more really. The friends I used to party with really aren't into it anymore. Magic cards is gradually feeling like something I used to care about when I was younger. Before this week I had zero girl prospects and to be fair, I kinda still do until I get excited about someone. Its pretty sad that sports is the best thing going.
How much is a normal amount to be self-conscious about your body? what if you are a boy? What if you can still run pretty fast? Who am I impressing anyway? Do i really think more people (as in more than zero) would see me naked if I was marginally more of a specimen? The funny thing is that part of my problem with this is that I don't really have an option about giving up and joining a bridge team. People don't do that anymore. I am trying to find examples of people that do something more than stay at home with wifey and watch cable. Its kind of like trying to find examples of someone who has a job that I want.
Sorry about this post. No more downers for a while, I promise. Lots of good things on the internets lately and I have some ideas. I want to say a little something about that Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker about underdogs and the full court press.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Can't spell question without quest
9/23/09: What could I say? Maybe this: the man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time; he is outside time; in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.
Reading more Milan Kundera lately and its has been good. But I don't understand how any girl could like him. He writes like such a dude, about dude things (existential dude things, but still) and totally abstracts the female into something gaudy and yet inaccessible. Plus, there is always this erotic talk about butt and assholes and such.
Side note that really should be the main point: I am the king of the semicolon and yet in all my genius I would never come up with the urge to write a sentence with multiples. Five? Are you fucking serious?
Some girl on Okcupid told me she reads my blog. Should this make me more or less willing to talk about dating? No sure, but speed dating is tomorrow and I pretty excited because it will either be awesome or hilarious and maybe I even convinced Steve Miller to come.
I recently found out about a thing on the internet where people lol to porn. There are websites where people just post the funniest intersections of sex and awkward. Hat tip to Deven for letting me in on this gem of internet culture.
Reading more Milan Kundera lately and its has been good. But I don't understand how any girl could like him. He writes like such a dude, about dude things (existential dude things, but still) and totally abstracts the female into something gaudy and yet inaccessible. Plus, there is always this erotic talk about butt and assholes and such.
Side note that really should be the main point: I am the king of the semicolon and yet in all my genius I would never come up with the urge to write a sentence with multiples. Five? Are you fucking serious?
Some girl on Okcupid told me she reads my blog. Should this make me more or less willing to talk about dating? No sure, but speed dating is tomorrow and I pretty excited because it will either be awesome or hilarious and maybe I even convinced Steve Miller to come.
I recently found out about a thing on the internet where people lol to porn. There are websites where people just post the funniest intersections of sex and awkward. Hat tip to Deven for letting me in on this gem of internet culture.
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