Personal Dork Assistant

Not Surprising

Because the Dennis Miller experiment went so well on Monday Night Football, the ESPN/ABC brass decided that what the ESPN Sunday-morning football show needed was a right-wing talk-show host to discuss the finer points of the (turn on deep voice here) National Football League. Talking about Philly's 0-2 start after two straight NFC Championship appearances, Rush delivered his particular brand of insight right on cue:

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL,'' Limbaugh said. "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well... McNabb got a lot of the credit for the performance of the team that he really didn't deserve."

Now, any moron who's watched ESPN's own highlight shows for the last few years would've seen McNabb singlehandedly win games for the Eagles with lousy receivers and no running game. I suppose one expects Rush to say ignorantly racist bullshit (for which the Philly columnists rightfully called him out), but it's disappointing to see Steve Young go along with it.

At some point, I think Koy Detmer looks like a better option because he will go in there, drop back, and throw the ball correctly. [McNabb] certainly hasn't matured like Steve McNair has matured.

For fuck's sake, Koy Detmer? Maybe there's a case for A. J. Feeley, who's young and was a clutch 4-1 as a third-string starter last year. The Detmers aren't ever going to be anything more than professional clipboard holders, period. And it wasn't as if Steve Young instantly learned the West Coast Offense either. Good thing I never get up early enough on the west coast to catch the pre-game shows anyway.

Of course, McNabb and the Eagles went out and throttled the Buffalo Bills that day. Although the beating wasn't as bad as the whoopin' the Vikings laid down on the Niners. The San Diego TV station changed over from Vikings-Niners to Eagles-Bills at halftime even though Philly was leading 13-0. Turned out their lack of faith was justified, but that was still some dissin'.

Test

BlogStreet

This is fucked up

Alright, I'm sure the Taiwanese businessmen are whoring it up pretty good in Guangdong, too, but at least they're doing it for a good cause, as opposed to these Japanese tourists.

The Chinese media and Internet chatrooms have been crackling with anger over reports of the September 16-18 sex marathon which reportedly involved 380 male Japanese tourists and 500 prostitutes at a five-star hotel.

No bukkake (I'd insert a link except I'm scare to Google for it) jokes, please.

500 'hos wouldn't even be that big a deal if it didn't happen on 9-18.

The incident has ignited a wave of nationalistic and anti-Japanese sentiment, with many people convinced the orgy was timed to humiliate China on September 18, the anniversary of the start of Japan's occupation of northeast China in 1931.

Just when the Japanese occupation was in the news, too, with the Japanese courts awarding compensation to victims of leftover Japanese chemical weapons.

Farmers' Market Highlights

Hit the La Jolla Farmers Market on a cloudy Sunday morning. Been there enough times so that I could hit the usual suspects before the early football game starts. Get some frozen tamales from the tamales lady. A tamale costs 8x more than a frozen burrito from Ralphs, but it does taste 190387120 times better, even without lard. Got some pluots and white nectarines from one stall, grapes from the usual guy, and tomatoes from across the aisle. Fruits are so much better at the farmers markets. The extra ripening allowed by direct pick-and-sell makes a huge difference in the sugar/flavor level. Except for the Fuji apples. The Washington Fujis at 99 Ranch are just so big and perfect (still think that they're probably fruit meant to go to Japan where they're obsessive about this sort of thing). The Gala-Fuji hybrids we got at El Cerrito were great, though. The Gala adds a little extra tang to the sweet crunchiness of the Fuji. I'm not as impressed by the veggies, although the Japanese cucumbers I got last time were really good and not found at the usual places.

Picked up some viennoiseries from the patisserie stall to give them a try. Two bucks for a croissant (and more for the pain au chocolat) is a little steep, though, even if a tall, willowy French lady was running the booth with her cute kids. The fruit tarts did look amazing, but they probably cost even more, and I wanted to see how they do the basics first. Expenses aside, you just can't beat a chocolate croissant and a big milky cup of coffee on a Sunday morning.

All the vendors have bunches of herbs for sale, but they seemed to have standardized on a buck per bunch, for a few basil sprigs. In Berkeley, for two bucks we got a huge handful of entire basil plants, complete with roots, so we could keep them alive in water. Decided to just get a planted pot of basil instead for $3.25, and another pot of parsley while I was at it. Useful since I only ever use a few leaves at a time anyway, and I hated to throw away half a bunch every time I bought herbs at the supermarket.

Was weaving my way out through all the extraneous artsy-crafty stalls when one of the random organic farm booths caught my eye. The lady had little trays of newly-cut chamomile flowers for sale. A few flower buds makes a nice mug of fragrant tea, with that extra hint of freshness that can't come out of a tea bag. It keeps, too, as it'll dry naturally, at least that was what the lady said.

Newer <> Better

Hit Roberto's for some slightly-later-than-usual dinner fare. Love how all the grease settles to the bottom of the carnitas burrito when I hold it upright. Hey, I had a salad for lunch. Anyway, they still have the two video game machines and a jukebox, but they replaced the classic Galaga machine with some stupid Extreme Street Luge game. Too bad. They prepare the food faster than I can finish a game (only a quarter!), anyway, although I'm bad enough that it's closer than it ought to be.

Big Step

The iTunes Music Store added a ton of albums this week, including music from Rounder Records, the first independent label on iTMS, far as I can tell. No Alison Krauss yet, but iTMS isn't designed for music you care enough to buy on CD, anyway. Now if they add SubPop that'll pretty much cover it for me. More important than new labels is a version of iTunes for Windows, which is rumored for October, but Apple rumors just aren't as reliable as they used to be.

Joining the party a day late, as is their wont, Dell introduced an MP3 player and a downloadable music service. Well, it'll be cheap, anyway.

In the No Shit department...

Caltrans tallied up the worst commutes in the Bay Area, and the winner is:

The morning slog along westbound Interstate 80 — from Hercules to the Bay Bridge toll plaza — remains the Bay Area's worst commute

It wouldn't even be that bad if it were just the morning slog. Nowadays it's a slog any time of the day, even on weekends, from Berkeley to the Maze. Made me late for my dentist appointment last time I was home. Simply didn't expect a traffic jam on a Saturday afternoon.

Multi-Tasker

Forgot to take the bread out of the freezer yesterday. Turn on the receiver for some Sunday Morning Unplugged (basically a ripoff of KFOG's Sunday Morning Unplugged) and plopped the (individually plastic-wrapped) bread on top of the vent holes. By the time I rinsed out the French press and made coffee, the bread is thoroughly defrosted, toasty even. Just in time to switch on the early football games. Good thing bread doesn't have much heat capacity.

Mirrodin Pre-Release Notes

9:30
Geez, could they have hidden the geeks more if they tried? The tournament was in a ballroom on the lower level in the very corner of the Convention Center. We're sharing the center with conventions of Honda dealers and Mexican ministers, who were taking up the primary rooms. They're doing the tournament in flights of 25. The line is still long enough, I might not even make the second flight.

10:10
Second flight? Ha! Got into Flight 7 and had enough time to go halfway across the Convention Center for a coffee and muffin before deck-build started. Finished the food just as they started handing out the goods. It's a strange environment since the set is half Artifacts, so color choice comes down to the bombs. Had to leave a Terror and two Consuming Spirits (formerly known as Drain Life) out since black had no creature help and I couldn't commit enough swamps.

11:00
Knew I had a good chance of breaking my Round 1 losing streak as soon as I sat down and saw a 60-card sealed deck across from me. Although I'm not exactly the perfect model of efficiency, playing 41 cards with 18 land. He got his Terror both games, but I drew two Deconstructs in game 1 and my bomb rare Glissa Sunseeker in game 2. Artifact kill is better than creature kill in this format, and arty-kill don't come better than Glissa in this set.

12:00
Had some time to sleeve up my deck since I'm playing with some good rares, including a foil Living Hive. Got matched up with someone competent this time. First game he gets out Empyrial Plate, which was brutally unfair in Weatherlight sealed as the enchantment Empyrial Armor. Making it into a reusable, colorless artifact for the less mana hardly seems fair, especially when he equipped his flier with it. Held on as long as I could, waiting for one of my six outs versus the Plate. I'd calculate the odds of not drawing one in five turns, but that would just make me mad.

Game 2 didn't start any better as I mulliganed down to 5 (one spell, then all spells) and played first. But I got an awesomely smooth ramp-up and he stalled on three lands for too long. Stole one there, but then I promptly gave it back with the all-forest game when I had two white weenies in hand. Oh well.

1:00
Looks like another 50-card wonder deck. At the 1-1 table? I'll take it. Took a page out of my round-2 opponent's playbook and threw in a few Islands so I could take to the air with two Cobalt Golems in a format with few fliers. Worked perfectly in game 1 as I dropped an Island, played the Golem, equipped it with a Loxodon Warhammer, and smashed him from above as he played Spellbombs instead of bomb spells. Game 2 he mulliganed, then stalled on two land. Oops.

2:15
Well, at least the guy was playing 40 cards. Hammer-wielding Cobalt Golems won the day both games. One single unblockable creature can do huge damage thanks to Equipment. Of course there are those draws with all equipment but no creatures, but even that's a ton better than having a handful of Creature Enchantments. At least you can cast Equipment ahead of time and not lose early tempo.

3:30
Finally get to the top table and don't see too many familiar faces. In game 1 we kill each other's stuff until I built up enough land to drop the Living Hive and stomp him with it. He mulliganed in game 2, but I only had two Forests and not enough business. The game lasted a long time, but he dominated the board with two pingers that I had no way to kill. It was my turn to kill every artifact he put on the board in game 3. Got the hammer early, the Cobalt Golem midgame, and the money Island just as he stabilized on the ground. Golem to the air finished it off.

4:15
Just manage to squeeze into the last-chance flight 9. Picked up my prize for the last tournament while I was at it. 12 packs for finishing 4-1, so the tournament pretty much paid for itself.

5:15
Oh well, can't open huge all the time. Built a sprawling four-colored mess (splashing for Shatter!) made possible by two Chromatic Spheres and a Solemn Simulacrum (hey, pulled another good rare). More Island-Golem flying goodness plus two plain-blue fliers. Only played two pieces of Equipment even though I had lots, but I couldn't leave the Icy Manipulator on the bench. Did leave the Chrome Mox in the sideboard, even though it's suppose to be a chase rare, by its name alone if nothing else. The Imprint requirement means that it's useless for splashing colors, unlike the Mox Diamond, even though you give up a card for the Imprinting like the Diamond's Land-discard.

6:30
Finish up my deck just in time to shuffle up and play. First game, he kills my flier, then we stall on the ground until he busts out the mighty Pentavus. He could make a (flying 1/1) token, block, then move it back onto the Pentavus before it gets killed, and if he had the mana to spare (which he did), he could reseparate the token to attack in the air on his turn. Finally found a red mana source to Shatter mama-Pentavus, but that still left me with a swarm of flying tokens that I couldn't stop in time.

Second game I drop the flying kitty right on cue again, but he answers with a Soul Foundry Imprinted with a Fangren Hunter, i.e. he can pump out 4/4 Tramplers for 5 mana each turn. Yikes. A Welding Jar cancelled out my Shatter. I had a head start on the damage race with two fliers, but I wasn't going to be able to chump-block a crowd of Trampling Beasts. Had the clutch answer though in Solar Tide, which let me Wrath his beefy tokens and gave me just enough time to finish him off. The Icy was key, too, forcing him to waste more turns making tokens before I reset with the Tide.

Only had 10 minutes left for game 3. He had three Mountains in the opening hand and that was all the land he got. I had the perfect mana-curve creature ramp-up and rolled him as he discarded green fatties. He was pissed, which was understandable considering he lost to colorscrew when he had multiple colorless bombs. I was glad to steal one, though.

6:40
Traded two Revised Wrathes for two Decrees of Annihilation and a foil Mountain. I think I ripped myself off, but it beats getting gipped with the dealer prices, I guess.

6:50
Talk about stealing a round. I was paired down against a first-round loser who never showed. Yay free wins. Good thing opponent match win percentage (i.e. tiebreakers) doesn't matter today. Gave me plenty of time to catch up on writing, anyway.

7:30
Did some more trading to pick up some Onslaught multi-fetchlands for some of my extra multilands. Hate to trade down, but the release of a new large set always gives me hope for playing Type 2 again, since the card pool is at its lowest point in the cycle.

Talk and play a casual game with a dude with mad stuff, as in sealed boxes of Beta in the bank, etc. Fun to see a guy playing unsleeved black-bordered multilands, and wreck me with the Sorceress Queen-Drop of Honey-Rukh Egg combo. He finished me off when he found a Desert Twister for my Worship. Been ages since I played a casual game of Magic with non-power decks and everything.

8:20
Talk about karmic balance. Got a free win last round, this round I was the free win. Missed the round with all my other activities. Oh well.

8:50
Get back on the saddle after some furious shuffling action. Seemed to work as my fliers absolutely crush him both games. Good thing he didn't get his Platinum Angel, a literal game-winner (the card says: You can't lose the game and your opponents cannot win the game), to which I only had two outs (Shatter and Solar Tide). Hey I'm in the money again. Sweet.

10:00
My final opponent was a really nice guy who just graduated from UCSD, playing in his first sealed deck tournament, complete with oversized deck. First game he equips up a Leonine Den-Guard which completely dominated the board. Second game, I mulligan a hand with one land even though I had a couple of 2-cost guys, when of course the next card I drew would've been the second land. Keep the mulliganed six-card hand, still with only one land, and stall for one turn on one land, then spent a couple more turns at two land. Couldn't catch up after that, especially when he dropped the Empyrial Plate, armored up the Goblin pinger-dude that could ping for its power, and started doing seven points of direct damage to the dome each turn for R and Tap. Good thing I'm a mature adult now, because that was some bad beats. Matches like this happen when you play sealed deck, though.

10:35
The winning contestants in Flight 9 are the last stragglers remaining in the ballroom, waiting for the last match to finish so we can get our prizes and go home. The one good player in the flight was in a big creature stall in game 3. His opponent had a flier that was going to take him down, but he managed to do 14 damage and pull out the deciding game with a clutch Grab The Reins, which allowed him to take the opponent's biggest blocker, sac it for damage, and break through with an unblocked Atog, sacrificing a bunch of Equipment to pump it to lethal levels as everyone cheered for the end more than for the slick win. After another five hours of Magic, I got another three packs of Mirrodin with my dubious 3-2. Still, 7-3 for the day is almost statistically significantly over .500, which should be good for a ratings point or three. The next set of Pro Tour Qualifiers is actually Mirrodin sealed deck. Might give that a shot, even if I have zero Rochester Draft experience, should I make top-8.

Was glad to get out of there after a long day. Drove through In-n-Out for a celebratory Double-Double on the way home, after subsisting on a muffin and a Clif Bar for the day. Mirrodin looks like it's going to be a great Limited-set. Lots of strategy and math in combat, consistent mana-draws thanks to the predominance of artifacts, and not too many unfair game-deciding cards. Lots of rares with strange abilities, most of which will suck, but a couple will become deck centerpieces and go for big bucks. Too bad I'm not smart enough to figure out which cards they might be.

World's Worst Ideas, #21895701

Sat around home watching TV with dad for a month and realized that my Chinese listening skills are getting pretty poor. Couldn't quite resolve speech into words fast enough without reading the subtitles. So I started Tivo-ing the Chinese news broadcasts on the International Channel. The Taiwan and mainland news are back-to-back, so it's fun to see the same news from both sides. The courageous Coast Guard that chased down devious smugglers become armed aggressors harrasing innocent fishermen in the next half hour.

The good thing about having a free and competitive media market is that there's lots more sensational and wacky stuff in the Taiwan newscast. Apparently there's a matchmaking service in Taiwan now offering Ukrainian brides to schmucks who's willing to pony up 50K TWD to join, 500K TWD to get in touch with the ladies (must be tough to find translators), and then another 500K if you want to bring her over and get married. Taiwanese guys have been picking up brides off-island for a while, but mostly from the mainland and south-east Asia. Now, I love Slavic chicks in short skirts as much as anybody, but I just can't imagine any possible way that this works out. Most of the Russian women on dating sites will at least pretend to know English. I doubt very many are conversant in Mandarin, much less Taiwanese.

Bad Idea #N+1: The Pentium 4 "Extreme Edition"? I guess it's easier to sell "Extreme!" than talking up the big level-3 cache. At least it's not Capcom Hyper Street Fighter II X.

Moral of the Story

Borrowed GTO from the cousins (except for the next-to-last volume which I had to rent, but what's 50 cents). What I learned from the story:

All Japanese men are perverts, some are just more honest about it than others.

Not hard to see why GTO is a popular series (the live-action drama got some of the highest ratings ever in Japanese TV). There's plenty of cleavage and panties for the guys, of course, but the female characters aren't just wallflowers, and the main character is appealing to girls in that bad-boy-with-a-heart kind of way. School kids love it because it's a world where the teacher is cool and school is fun. The story makes the middle-aged, balding, salarymen to be the bad guys, but even they get a few chapters to show their side of the story.

Let's see, 86 cm divided by 2.54 equals... whoa. Those were some saucy ninth-graders. No, real life isn't like comic books. I stopped by uncle Wen-Yueh's house on the drive back to San Diego. Uncle was away on business in China, but that was okay since I don't have to be as formal (e.g. speak English with Abby). Abby's taking Geometry as an eighth-grader, which is impressive. She's also wearing out her LotR DVD. Finally have a way to remember how old she is, too, since she's a Snake like Sam, so she's exactly 12 years younger than him. Funny how memory devices can be so convoluted sometimes.

Are You Ready For Some?

I've complained about how Bill Simmons' Sports Guy columns have been deteriorating. Maybe what he really needed was a kick in the pants from football season. Of course, ripping the live, beating heart out of Boston sports fans is guaranteed comedy gold, but his NFL preview actually delivered some decent sports content for the first time in a long time, and the Top Gun references added a nice Hollywood touch (instead of beating us over the head with the fact that he's living in LA now.

Sports Guy was still second-best on Page 2, though, as homoerotic fly-boys just can't measure up to life with the real, live Philly cheerleaders (Philly fans cheer?).

Axis of Evil

Looks like mainland Chinese hackers have been attacking government computers in Taiwan. Of course, there's been so many computer worms and trojans going around that it could just be a coincidence. Or it could be evil Taiwanese government propaganda, because, you know, people who dare to pirate anime could be capable of anything.

Now please, don't flame me as a fan of mainland China's repressive regime. But the Taiwanese government doesn't exactly have the world's best track record, as I recall. I hear occasional notes about "problems" with civil rights, and then there's the whole pirated anime problem.

My god, they're reducing profitability at large Japanese corporations. Clearly, the world would be a better place if the island had a real government that would crush these evildoers with large tanks.

And let's not even get started about the crazy chink cunts.

PSA

Sichuan food is hot. Like, really hot. Picked out all the dried chilis and they stacked up higher than the food, and that still left the fresh jalapeños. Of course I had to be the big man and say "yes" when she asked if I ate hot food. Shoulda asked for the wimpy whitey menu. I did ask her for what's good, and it was, before it turned my tongue into charcoal.

The Process

I became sure that quality management processes are overrated when I saw moon cakes ads that trumpeted their ISO 9001 certification. All I want from my moon cake is filling (preferably red bean, lotus seed is okay, not so hot on plum) that's not too sweet, an evenly brown crust that's not too oily, and maybe a goose egg yolk in the middle if I'm feeling fancy. I sure as hell don't give a crap about the process involved. It's not as if red beans and lotus seeds are being raised and slaughtered in inhumane conditions or anything like that.