Craig's Blog : Rant

Why I don't love baseball

craigg75 — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:14:00 GMT

Remember the Boston Red Sox 2 years ago? They overcame great odds to beat the Yankees while being down 3 games to none and went on to beat the favored St. Louis Cardinals in the world series and break their curse? Wonderful story. Their players were heroes to the Boston fans. One the more noticeable players was a guy named Johnny Ramon. Scruffy looking guy with long hair and a beard. His look kind of typified the Red Sox, bunch of scruffy players that overcame the odds.

It was reported today the Yankees stole him from the Red Sox and signed him to a deal the Red Sox couldn't afford to match. I have no problems with somebody pursuing more money, that's how our economy works. I also know that baseball has a great imbalance when it comes to how money is spent by teams, there are only a handful of teams that have the best tv markets and end up owning all the good players. I've accepted that teams like the Cincinnati Reds will never be a powerhouse again, they may get lucky and win one world series once every 20 or 30 years but thats it. But what irks me is the lack of loyalty the players have to the fans. So Damon is going from making $10m a year to now $14m a year. That's way too much money for one person. We know that and he knows it too. Instead of sticking with Boston and playing out his career there and possibly becoming a legend in the city and reenergizing baseball, he's off to the big apple. You know what, screw you Johnny Damon. I hope you suck in NY and the Yankees end up in 2nd place again. You are the reason I don't give a shit about baseball anymore.

Scooter needs to die

craigg75 — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 01:49:00 GMT

You know it's one thing for FOX to add the idiotic diamond cam to their playoff coverage of the baseball playoffs. But now they have added Scooter. Scooter is an animated baseball that explains to the audience in an overexuberant way what a curve ball is or what a breaking pitch is. How come networks feel they must cater to the lowest common denominator? In this case it would be 5 year olds. Not that there is anything wrong with 5 year olds but I'm just getting sick and tired of the world conforming itself to them. Either we are censoring ourselves to “protect the children” or making sure little Johnny doesn't get any germs. You know this country has a child fetish. They are obsessed with their children and in the process are creating a generation of germaphobic, narrow minded, selfish people.

Maybe FOX has the right idea. Baseball is a very boring sport, it needs to be livened up. But dudes, find a better way to do it. Hire somebody like Terry Bradshaw that has some personality than the bores you found. I've had more fun listening to fricken golf announcers.

The Lone Rider on the Storm

craigg75 — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:12:00 GMT

Raise your hand, who is sick to death of those Cadillac commercials that play the Led Zeppelin songs. I for one hate them. Face it, Cadillacs are for senior citizens or fat capitalist with small dicks. Adding a very cool classic rock song that was listened to by a very cool generation who drove VW Beetles and muscle cars to a car commercial that the Led Zep generation spoke out against is just wrong. Now they are hitting up the Doors for their treasure trove of tunes to make Cadillac look hip. Finally somehow has stood up against their onslaught of denigration. The drummer from the Doors refuses to sign off on the deal saying their music has integrity and was never about making money. Here's a link on the story - http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/05/doors_drummer_wont_a.html It's a breathe of fresh air to see that some artists refuse to be whores to the Madison Avenue pimps.

Survival 101

craigg75 — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:29:00 GMT

I just got done reading Lucifer's Hammer, a story about what would happen if a comet were to slam into the Earth. Kind of a depressing tale about how people would resort to savagery fairly quickly and the few that would try and maintain some order. So now this disaster in New Orleans makes think about a few things. Reading the book I kept thinking well it'd take a pretty big disaster to remove civilization. In the back of my head I kept wondering, would people really resort to savagery like in the book? I know food and water were scarce and people will kill to live but still. I look at New Orleans and really wonder. You've got a bunch of loonies out there taking shots at doctors and cops. You got your looters too. I keep hearing stories of beatings, rapes and chaos in some areas of the city where people are bunched together. They interviewed some people driving out of N.O. with guns in their cars saying they were ready to shoot their way out it was that bad. That's amazing and disgusting to me that in a few days in a mini-disaster that people would fall back so quickly. Not all people but enough to create fear and chaos. And where were the troops to come in and clear out those hospitals right away, get people off their roofs and overpasses? I know that some of them were a bunch of welfare bums wanting big daddy to come feed them and whined and moaned for the tv cameras but still there were several legimate cases where older people were dying and children put in harm's way because there was no immediate action. What happened? Do we always have to have a meeting before we do anything in this country? I also heard that the flooding of N.O. was in the top 3 worst disaster scenarios on the FEMA chart. Where were their contigency plans? Where was the president during this time? Why wasn't he down there acting like a leader, hell at least get a photo-op. Sounds like all he did was fly over it and organize private funding. Private funding?! What's that all about? I understand that in the long term it should be decided who is going to pay for the rebuilding but in the short term money should be no object. Get that city evacuated pronto. Bush proved to me again that he couldn't lead a boy scout troop out of the woods.

Seeing the flood of refugees makes me wonder about survival skills. I can't help but think that people are really tied to the infrastructure. When it fails, they die. Chris has often commented that survival skills should be taught as a part of general education. Case in point. How fragile is our population? I'm thinking we're a weak lot, push overs. I as a citizen of this country look on and have lost some confidence in the strength of this nation's people. We can talk the talk but I haven't seen a lot of walking. In any case I'm trying to take the Christian approach of love thy neighbor. Even though the refugees are unable to save themselves they are still people who need help and we should make every effort to get them to dry land at least. At the very least enroll them in Survival 101 afterwards.

The Aruban mini-series continues...

craigg75 — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:29:00 GMT

This blog is turning into rant central I know. But I gotta unload here. About this girl, Natalee, who got abducted in Aruba. Exactly why does this story deserve so much attention? Please remind me. I'm sorry that this happened to her and I can't imagine the hell her family is going through. But you know what, this kind of shit goes on every day in every country. Not just to pretty white girls from Texas on vacation. Does this really count as news or as another attempt by the media to turn a story into the latest crapola mini-series that we are subjected to hour after hour, day after day, week after week? I'm afraid the sheep in this country can no longer figure out what is real anymore. I noticed that amazon has a trust fund bracelet for Natalee. What!?! How about a trust fund for every kid that's missing? or every person? in any country? This country is losing it. Either that or this whole story is a big ruse so that the media people and csi types can meet up for some prime vacation. Have you ever wondered if the news is manipulated to accomplish something sinister? I heard a comparison between Richard Nixon and George Bush. Nixon attempted to seal all news leaks within his administration. He was overzealous (or paranoid) about this and paid a big price. Bush is the opposite, let the leaks happen. In the meantime he encourages the media to trump up the non-stories then with his left hand he makes sure the people with any sense consider the media as nonsense and having no credibility. He's free then to do whatever he likes, who's gonna listen to the court jesters?

For more ranting see this kuroshin article.

Facists are running our schools

craigg75 — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:47:00 GMT

Another rant folks. I came across this story via a woman's blog who has an 8 year old son who got suspended from school for changing the pledge of allegiance to me more Star Trek centric. Very cool on the 8 year olds part, very uncool on the Nazi principal who sent the kid home and made him write the correct pledge 50 times. What a crock a shit. What should have been done is the principal should be made to write out “I am educator, I will create an environment that allows children to be creative. I understand that imagination is a powerful tool for a young mind that needs to encouraged. I will no longer indoctrinate my views on to the students of this school and I humbly apologize for my mistake” 50 times and then be forced to wear a tshirt that bears the kid's version of the pledge of allegiance for an entire day.

Supreme robbery

craigg75 — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:42:00 GMT

Last week the Supreme Court handed down a decision that allows goverments to claim eminent domain rights over any property if the tax revenue from the proposed development of the property exceeds the current tax revenue. Now if that doesn't smack of giving legal rights to King George taking anything he wants then I don't know what does. Isn't this one of the reason why we wanted independence because the goverment of England did not respect landowners rights? This is dangerous waters that we are now treading in folks, your property rights have just been forfitted in the name of taxes. The court case centered around several older homes in the northeast that were built along the ocean coast. The county goverment there wanted to claim eminent domain so they could have Pfizer pharmaceutical build a plant there and allow a home builder to build a row of mansions. The goverment won and now these people have to vacate their homes and go live someplace else that won't cost the goverment money in “tax losses”. This is totally wrong. The goverment, whether local, state or federal, exists for the people and by the people, it is not a third party operation. If the goverment feels it can better support itself by forcing people to relocate it needs to stop and rethink why it needs to make more money. If it can't pay it's bills it needs to remove it's overhead, cut back on non-essential services and ask itself, meaning the people, should it collect more taxes to continue at the current level of service. A proper response to this decision is for people to organize and go to these homes about to be bulldozed and stand there in the thousands and hold up signs to the world news cameras saying “Don't tread on me”. Civil disobedience is necessary in this case or we are looking at a slow decline for this country. Liberty be damned, profit motive rules this country. The sad thing is that it wasn't the conservative judges who voted for this, it was the liberal ones. In any case we are all sheep, we bitch and moan but in the end we always take up the tailpipe. Lately we've been reamed so many times we're use to it. And that's what they've wanting all along...

Weather

craigg75 — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 17:02:00 GMT

What is it with local news station and their holy men, their seers or more widely known as - weathermen. Watch the local news and they slowly feed you out a bit of weather news here and there always with the promise.. stay tuned and we'll show the radar, tommorow's forecast, next week's outlook, pollen count, etc. Meanwhile you put up with these talking heads regurgitating “unnewsworthy” items off the teleprompter. Local “news”, now that's a whole blog in itself. I'll leave that one for later. But to keep their viewing audience, who obviously are only interested in the only real local news which is the weather, they tease them with “more weather coming up”. Total bullshit. I refuse to watch local news because of this. And to boot they treat these weathermen as some kind of dieties, like we be lost souls without their knowledge. I got news for you, most of these turds who call themselves metrologists are your future anchormen. This is just a step on the ladder for them. All weather data is gathered from the AMS and the station's local radar image. It's then formatted into colorful displays and animated talk to help sell the weather spot. I dare any local news station to not have a weather spot but instead before the commercial break and for 5 seconds after the break, display these 3 images - local radar image, national radar and the 5 day forecast. Anyone can read a radar map, red means bad, yellow means soccer practice may get cancelled and green means close the kitchen window. Duh!? You don't need a pretty boy with a bunch of meterology titles which can be purchased anywhere (did you know anyone can be member of the American Metrological Society?) to tell us this. I also challenge local news to deliver balanced news. For every murder, fire, car accident, include something positive like a local hero story, interview the family of someone who just recovered from a successful heart operation, interview the lottery winners, play a clip from the most popular local song or movie. Shit there's so much more they could do to make the local news something people would enjoy watching and feel more apart of the city instead of waiting for the fricking weather.