Isn't It Ironic?!?

I'm sitting here watching 60 minutes interview a crusader who is trying to get people to live within their means, and stop using credit cards (among other ways of spending too much). The show fades out to a commercial. What's the first commercial? A Mastercard commercial starring Peyton Manning!

Pro Football 9/30/07

I can't get excited today. Maybe I used up all of this week's excitement yesterday with college ball. However the year is still going screwy...

The Chargers are 1-3 and Tomlinson can't get going.

The Saints are 0-3 and look awful.

The Rams are 0-4 and look awful...Jackson can't get going and is hurt.

The Packers are 4-0 and the Lions are 3-1.

I simply don't know what to think in fantasy football anymore, you might as well flip a coin.....

It's the Economy, Stupid.....

Here is a series of posts from a site I frequent called IRC Images. The image they were posted under had nothing to do with the economy. (It was a tank crashed unto its turret):


Jason>
at the rate of inflation with the USD, $5,000,000 is about what we'll be paying for a happy meal shortly.

kirbdog>
Jason: You're kidding right? inflation is incredibly low right now......unless you live in Zimbabwe

Jason>
kirbdog, the dollar has fallen about 25% in the last 3 years. The canadian dollar is now worth more than the USD. With our outstanding debts reaching new highs and the treasury needing the ceiling lifted, it doesn't look like it's going to get any better.


kirbdog>
1) That's not inflation. 2) So what? all it means is that it's more expensive to buy things from other countries, and cheaper for other countries to buy things here. That's a good thing


357MAG>
NO ^ considering that america doesnt make anything anymore it actually does matter because you seem to have the right concept but the wrong meaning - 1) its more expensive for america to import goods 2) who is going to buy anything from here when its cheaper to 'cut out the middle man'?


Killawife>
"Inflation is a persistent rise in the general price level, as measured against a standard level of purchasing power" Exactly what Jason said. And its a really really bad thing considering that everything the US buys from other countries will force them to dig deeper in their pockets. And that extra money doesnt grow on trees.


kirbdog>
Tell you what. take an economics course, and then come back and explain the difference between the terms exchange rate, and inflation, because they are not the same thing, and not necessarily even linked.


kirbdog>
Currently, the dollar is near its worst exchange rate in 50 years, but inflation is at historical lows.


357MAG>
ok, ok inflation smation.... for now - you proved that u didnt take econ. above by stating what you did - that the monetary situation here is 'good' for us, so why try and tell someone else that they dont know what they're talking about when you clearly dont have a fuckin clue yourself? no offence by the way, jason is probably right in the end of it all, because even in econ. 101 it becomes clear that even the smallest change of spending in an area of the 'micro' markets can affect everything dramatically in the 'macro' markets.
kirbdog>


anything that decreases imports, and increases exports is good for us
357MAG>


right - so what does the US export?? other than some crops...etc. cause everything here is IMPORTED


kirbdog>
http://www.commerce.gov/opa/press/Secretary_Gutierrez/2007_R­eleases/May/10_Fact_Sheet_March_2007_Exports.pdf
kirbdog>
Why is there a reflexive need to take any economic news and attempt to use it to show how bad the US economy is?


kirbdog>
Besides the fact that there is a Republican administation I mean....


357MAG>
excellent report: $180billion difference between import/export... that aint good my friend. even the democrats couldnt help there


kirbdog>
357mag...pay attention...better, not perfect. And exports are rising at double the rate that imports are.



I am kirbdog above. Now this bugged me for several reasons.



First, it was an obvious attempt to take a piece of economic news, and use it to show how bad the economy is. I just don't get it. Our economy is performing better than almost everyone else in the world, and definitely better than any major economy. (We simply can't tell about China...but their economy is certainly growing fast) Our economy is doing great! If a Democratic administration was in office the news would be full of stories about how great everything is.



Second is the obvious ignorance shown. These guys couldn't tell the difference between the exchange rate and inflation, or the effect (or lack of effect) one has on the other. Yet they felt expert enough to interpret a piece of data to bad talk the US economy.



Third, When I provided a link explaining the improvement in our trade deficit, one guy actually went to the site linked, but merely cherry-picked the current trade deficit to again try and run down the economy, and either failed to realize or ignored the fact that the site was talking about how quickly the trade deficit was bing narrowed, and the record pace that exports were increasing. It also explained that much of the trade deficit was due to rising gas prices. He also apparently failed to realize how low the trade deficit is when compared to recent history.



The site I linked to is a report released by the US Commerce Department. It explains:

• US exports were up 9.8% in the first quarter of this year over the first quarter of last year.


• Our biggest gain in exports was to China, a huge and growing market


• We have had 17 straight quarters of export growth since the fourth quarter of 2002

Now why haven't we been hearing about this? Who has been in office since the fourth quarter of 2002?

Maybe the stupid ones are the people who are supposed to be covering economics?

Update 10/1/07 5:45 PM: I've just found out that the Dow Jones has hit another new high, and that the other markets are near their all time highs. I'm all a-twitter waiting to see how the left will explain how this is so bad for our economy. Of course the MSM will probably just ignore it.

College Football 9/29/07

10:30 AM: Notre Dame down 23-0 to Purdue at halftime, and it could easily be much, much worse. Tulane is beating LSU 9-7 with 1:40 to go in the first half. Illinois is beating Penn State 21-17, about to go into halftime. Michigan is losing to Northwestern 7-13 at the half. This has been a crazy year in college football. (pro football too for that matter)

Update 10:45 AM: LSU got a field goal at the end of the half...10-9.

Update 3:00 PM: OK....Notre Dame had the best half of football they've played so far this year in the second half, and made it almost respectable, losing 33-19. Still, Notre Dame is now 0-5 for the first time ever, and it looks like they could have a quarterback controversey.

LSU came back to spank Tulane 34-9. Michigan also came back to win 28-16 over Northwestern.

However, Illinois upset Penn State 27-20 and Colorado beat Oklahoma 27-24; so two top 5 teams lost this week. (Oklahoma and WVU)

Georgia Tech is currently beating Clemson 10-3; Cal and Oregon are tied up at 17-17; Maryland is up 20-17 over Rutgers and Kansas State is up 27-21 over Texas.

Update 4:05 PM: Wow..what a crappy way for Oregon to lose the football game. Well maybe it's poetic justice, that Cal field goal looked good to me. Cal over Oregon 31-24. Texas gets pasted by Kansas State 41-21, so # 7 and #11 both lose. Lots of movement in the BCS rankings this week. How high does USF go?

Update 4:34 PM: Maryland beats Rutgers 34-24. Wisconsin escapes Michigan State 37-34, #10 loses and #9 has a close call.

Update 9:45 PM: I just got back from watching the USC game at a sports bar. Very sloppy game, and the refs made some awful calls. It seemed like every Washington pass play resulted in either a personal foul or pass interference. Let's check out some results:

#1 USC - win
#2 LSU - win
#3 Oklahoma - loss to unranked Colorado.
#4 Florida - loss to unranked Auburn.
#5 West Virginia - loss to #18 South Florida
(That's three losses in the top 5!, Two to unranked teams.)
#6 Cal - won
#7 Texas - loss To unranked Kansas State.
#8 Ohio State - win
#9 Wisconsin - win
#10 Rutgers - loss to unranked Maryland.
(That's five losses in the top ten, four to unranked teams.)
#11 Oregon - loss to #6 California. (Easily the "best" loss of the week)
#12 Boston College - win
#13 Clemson - loss to unranked Georgia Tech.
(That's seven losses in the top 13, five to unranked teams.)
#14 Kentucky - win
#15 Georgia - win
#16 South carolina - win
#17 - Virginia Tech - win
#18 South Florida - win
#19 Hawaii - win
#20 Missouri - bye
#21 Penn State - loss to unranked Illinois.
#22 Alabama - loss to unranked Florida State
#23 Arizona State - win
#24 Cinncinati - win
#25 Nebraska - win
That's 9 losses of the 24 teams in the top 25 that played, seven to unranked teams. Upset Saturday indeed.

College Football 9/28/07

South Florida has just defeated WVU for the second year in a row, and the second huge upset this season. Man it must be great to be on that team this year.

Life

A new detective show on NBC. Interesting premise. I like the cut-aways that were filmed in a documentary style.

He is a detective wrongly convicted, served 12 years, got a large cash settlement and is back on the job. He enjoys pulling over and harassing his ex-wife's new husband.

She is a detective with a history..apparently of drugs, maybe booze. Also a thing for one night stands and a disfunctional relationship with her Dad, who was also apparently a cop.

Adam Arkin is his accountant (and also a former convict), and lives over his garage. Then there's his (attractive) lawyer.....lots of sexual tension there.

I can already tell that there is going to be a re-occurring "man out of time" thing going on.

I think I'm going to like this one.........

Kitchen Nightmares 9/26/07

Wow...I didn't think it was possible...but Chef Ramsey has found an even worse restaurant this week...Dillion's Restaurant....and the kicker is, it's very close by one of his own restaurants in Manhatten. This place can't make up its mind as to whether it is an Indian restaurant or an American style restaurant. And that is the least of its problems. Most of the cooks apparently don't speak English, and can't cook American style food, there is rotten food in the kitchen and the basement is full of rats and cockroaches.

The General Manager Martin is a total incompetent. Chef Ramsey actually closes down the restaurant with customers in the dining room.

He changes the menu, the dining room, the signage and even the name of the restaurant. It's now called Purnima. But he still is dead set on getting rid of the General Manager Martin, and for some reason the owner appears to want to keep him. Chef Ramsey manages to browbeat the manager into quitting.

This is the perfect show for Chef Ramsey, as it lets him really work himself into a rage and attack people. Also, it's completely fresh, and not a copy of another show, like Hell's Kitchen was a copy of Top Chef. The cherry on top is that he is actually finding dining disasters and hopefully fixing them.

Update 11:00 PM: According to the comments, Hell's Kitchen (UK) came before Top Chef. So he didn't poorly copy someone else's show, someone copied his show and did a better job.......

The Journeyman 9/24/07

Hmmm...looks interesting...too soon to tell for sure.....so far it seems to be a variant of the Scott Bakula series Quantum Leap..only instead of a science experiment gone wrong, the cause of the jumps is unknown....

Heroes 9/24/07

The season premire! I like the fact that there was limited commercials, but talk about your heavy-handed and blatent product placement! They actually had one of the characters (Claire) be given a Nissan Rogue by her father!

Too early to tell about the new season though......

USC V Washington State 9/22/07

I went to the USC game today. My friend Germaine asked me to help chaperone a field trip, and I got a free ticket to the game (general admission).

This is the first game I've gone to live since I went to USC from 1983 to 1987. Man things are different. We had tailgate parties back then, but nothing like this. It was nuts...every flat surface on campus or in Exposition Park had as tent set up on it. I'm firmly convinced that at least half the people at the tailgate parties didn't even go to the game.

There was a few new buildings on campus, and at least one road had been replaced with a building or two and some grass. I saw the new Galen center...for some reason I thought it was actually on campus over by Heritage Hall, instead of across Figueroa.

We got to the Coliseum and found our seats behind and to the home side of the periastyle end. There was a little bit of rain in the second quarter, but nothing too bad. At one point it was sunny and dry in one end of the stadium, and sprinkling fairly hard in the other end. This first picture is before the game while the teams are loosening up.




The next picture is USC running onto the field before the game.



This is the opening kick off.



Traveler after a USC score.



Part of the band came up into the stands to help encourage school spirit, even over in the cheap seats with us..



The team coming out for the second half.



and finally the torch lighting at the beginning of the fourth quarter.



USC wins..47-14! Fight On!



Update 9/26/07: I have attempted to fix the photos..the links weren't working anymore. I'll add one more below.... Germaine from the comments and myself chaperoning a dance a couple of years ago. I'm the short, handsome one.

Jim Croce

Jim Croce has been one of my favorite artists for as long as I can remember. I used to listen to an 8 track tape of the guy, and his greatest hits album, Photographs and Memories was the first CD I ever bought. (from a Virgin Records store in London no less) Sadly, he was killed in a plane crash on this day, in 1973. It turns out that his third album was released the very next day. His most famous song is probably Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown, but I have yet to hear a Jim Croce song I didn't enjoy. If you aren't familiar with his work, I particularly recommend Operator, and Time in a Bottle.

Here's Operator:

Kitchen Nightmares

I'm watching the new show starring Chef Gordon Ramsey (formerly of Hell's Kitchen) The first episode he's back east in a town called Babylon and a restaurant called Peter's Italian Restaurant. The restaurant is owned by a woman, but dominated by her complete asshole of a brother, Peter. (first of all, why is the restaurant named after him anyway?) The brother comps meals, steals from the till, and browbeats the staff. He spends money on himself that should be spent on the restaurant. He acts like a bad B actor in a bad Hollywood movie about the mob. If it was anybody but Ramsey I'd suspect that it was all fake.

The kitchen was a shambles, and Peter apparently owes money to everyone in the state, and when they come to collect from him, he turns into a cliche goon. Instead of serving the food, he eats it.....and then yells at the staff because the food didn't get out on time.

The best way to fix that restaurant would be to shoot the stupid bastard. I mean seriously, he was such a stereotype it was ridiculous. I can't imagine what is going through his head, and frankly his parents head as they watch this. He's a complete spoiled leech.

It ends with a supposed turn around from Peter that lasted about 5 minutes. I'd be interested in seeing what things are like there tonight........

A Damn Good Week Of Football

UCLA gets crushed, Notre Dame gets embarassed, USC dominates to stay #1. Then I win all six of my fantasy football match ups.

It doesn't get any better than this.

Update 5:30 AM 9/18/07: Dagnabit. ESPN re-calculated the points overnight, and I ended up in a tie in one match, that I lost by bench points. 5 - 1 in fantasy match ups. (It was the league I most want to win also)

Monday Night Football 9/17/07

OK...I'm officially proclaiming this to be the worst announcing team ever for Monday Night Football.

Mike Tirico is simply average. Whoever decided to trade Al Michaels to NBC, (yep that's right, they traded Michaels to NBC for a cartoon character and the right to broadcast the Ryder Cup.) should be fired. With a decent crew Tirico might have been OK, but he can't drag Jaworski and Kornheiser up to mediocrity by himself.

Ron Jaworski was a pretty good QB, and a run of the mill studio analyst, but he doesn't have enough personality for the MNF booth. Again a top flight announcer like Michaels would be able to cover this up. Tirico is not up to the task.

Tony Kornheiser. I have friends who swear this guy is great on Pardon The Interruption. I'll have to take their word for it. I'm not impressed. I'll take Dennis Miller over this guy any day. Is he trying be funny? He spent the 2006 season trying to make Theisman look stupid. He's not worthy to carry Joe's jock. Jaworski will apparently be this year's victim. God, I'd rather listen to Maguire than this guy.

This crew almost makes the three Mikes look like Emmy winners. I almost long for the days of Cosell, Gifford and Meredith.

Come back Michaels...and bring Madden with you.

Update 8:10 PM: Ok...Barkley was more entertaining than Jaws and Kornheiser combined. But if he had whined about Reid and McNabb being underappreciated and disrespected one more time I would have thrown something at the screen.

Feist

OK...I am far from being an Apple geek. In fact I love to make fun of them. I actually wrote a joke last week:

Q. How do you know Steve Jobs has been in your refrigeratior?

A. Suddenly the refrigerator costs $200 more, it shows movies, and it only accepts food from one supermarket.

It kills right?

That said, I have been obsessed with the song in Apple's new commercial. A little work, and I found it on Youtube. I give you Feist, and 1-2-3-4:

Hmmmm.....

Today is both Molly Shannon's (1964) and Amy Poehler's (1971) birthday. Last night NBC showed an episode of SNL with Amy in the cast and Molly as the guest host. Coincidence? You decide.

Take That With Ya!

I was just watching the FSU - Colorado game, and Colorado missed a field goal. On the way to a commercial, the director focused an an attractive lass in the stands (as the directors are often wont to do) and just before the fade out, she turns to the FSU fans and clearly flips them the bird! (she clearly was unaware she was on national TV) Way to go ESPN!

College Football 9/15/07

Well the Michigan - Notre Dame game is certainly ugly. Michigan 31-0 at halftime. At this point Demetrius Jones has to be second guessing himself. If he'd stayed on the team, he would probably be playing at this point. It really is possible that Notre Dame will go 0-12. And then to rub salt into the wound, Ty Willingham's Washington team is beating Ohio State University 7-3 at halftime.

I'm going to be at a poker game for most of the USC game, but I'm predicting that USC will win big, by at least 2 TDs.

Update 3:39 PM: Well, Michigan wins the game 38-0. I'm glad I didn't watch the second half. OSU is now dominating Washington 27-7 with about 2 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. In other news UCF is in the game against #6 Texas at the start of the 4th quarter...2nd and goal, and only down by 6.

Update 3:47 PM: UCF goes for it on 4th and goal and scores. UCF is up 24-23 over Texas.

Update 4:34 PM: Texas wins, 35-32. UCF was in this game the whole way. Go SC..beat the Huskers!

Update 5:25 PM: USC stops Nebraska on their first drive, and then goes 96 yards on their first drive for the score. The fullback rumbles for 50 yds on the first play from the 4 yard line.

Update 8:50 PM: I lost in the second round of the poker tournament. (it was a head to head tournament) I went card dead. I turn on the tube, and USC is up 49-17. This should shut everyone up. By the way, two Trojan teams did end up beating Big-12 teams today.

Update 9:10 PM: Nebraska scores a couple of garbage time TDs, and brings the final score to 49-31. Hopefully the voters actually watched the game, and don't let the final score fool them.

Happy Birthday Coach!

Today is Coach Pete Carroll's 56th birthday...Go Trojans! Beat the Cornhuskers!

College Football 9/14/07 - Upset Special

It's been a hell of a season so far. Michigan is 0-2, Notre Dame is 0-2. Appalachin State has a huge victory over Michigan, South Florida beat Auburn, Air Force beat media darling TCU and is 3-0. As I write this Troy State is beating Oklahoma State 41-10 (and it could be much worse than that...Troy state had a couple of turnovers with 1st and goal, let time run out at the end of the 1st half inside the ten yard line, and missed an extra point...this was an old fashioned ass kicking) with about 3 minutes left in the 3rd quarter.

Update 9/14/07 9:00 PM: Troy State just got screwed by one of the worst calls I've seen so far this year. The Oklahoma State player caught a pass inside the ten, and clearly fumbled the ball....and the only other possible call was incomplete. But for some inexplicable reason, the refs called him down by contact. The replays clearly showed this was a blown call. In a bit of cosmic justice, the extra point was blocked after Oklahoma State scored two plays later. 41-16 Troy State 10:40 to go in the fourth.

Update 9/14/07 9:36 PM: Final score - Troy State 41-23

Leftist Irresponsibility

First they meddled with the military by trying to convince General Pace to led a coup d'etat against President Bush.

Now they are taking out full page ads in the NY Times (reportedly at a discount) calling General Petreaus a traitor and a liar.

Just how low will the Left go? And when will the Democratic Party call them to account?

Never Forget

Today is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States by Islamic terrorists. We must not, we cannot forget these attacks. Radical Islam declared war on us, and attacked us on our homeland.



It appears that we are soon going to try to cut and run from the war. What people seem to forget is that our choice is not whether or not to fight radical Islam, our enemies have made that choice for us. Our choice is where to fight them. I for one, would much rather fight them in Iraq than the United States.

Too Good To Be True?

Read the following posts and comment threads:

here

and then

here.

Now tell me, can this David K character be real? Surely he is performance art.

And my jokes, they killed right?

Get Fuzzy

And Now For Something Completely Different.......

On this day, in 1969, the Monty Python saga began, with the taping of the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Here's how it all began: (unfortunately the clip is very slow in loading...)

Keith Freakin' Olbermann?

What the hell was NBC thinking when they decided to have Keith "raving lefty madman" Olbermann be a regular feature on NFL football? Well, their half time advertisers just got screwed...Olbermann's current fans aren't exactly the football type.........Maybe they should have him do the chess championships instead........

Happy Birthday El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula

Or as we know her today, Los Angeles. On this day in 1781, forty-four Spanish (NOT Mexicans or Aztecs), founded the city. The city was part of Mexico for only 27 years, from 1821 to 1848.



LA is now the second biggest city in the country. Sometimes it hard to like her, but I still love her............

Holy Crap!

The National Weather Service has just issued a tornado warning for Los Angeles! The announcement just came over the emergency broadcast system.

I thought part of our deal was we had to put up with earthquakes and fires but were spared tornados and hurricanes!

I blame President Bush and global warming!

College Football

The 2007 college football season begins today. (Well technically it began last Thursday) USC is the overwhelming favorite. I predict undefeated and national champion. John Booty has a chance at the Heisman. But USC has a swarm at tailback and wide receiver....it'll be interesting to see who pulls out of the pack. The defense should be dominate again.

This week USC plays the Idaho Vandals. This won't even be close. USC is #1, Idaho is something like #110. The question will be how long do the starters play? Into the third?

Go Trojans! All the way to the Sugar Bowl!

Update: 11:25 AM: East Carolina University is giving Virginia Tech a tough game today. Va Tech is up only 10-7 with 1:18 to go in the third quarter. Appalachin State is up 31-20 on Michigan halfway through the third quarter. Appalachin State won what used to be the Division II (and has been renamed Division I ...the old Division I is now the BCS Division) championship last year.

Update II 1:00 PM: Appalachin State wins! 34-32 They beat #5 Michigan by kicking a 24 yard FG with 26 seconds left and then blocking a Michigan field goal from the 20 with 6 seconds left.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mom's birthday. She was born on September 1, 1946. She is the youngest of five children. She was Los Angeles born, but has lived all over the world. She lived in the Middle East while she was a girl, and then followed my dad around (usually to England) during his career in the military, only to settle down back in So Cal when my Dad retired.

My Mom didn't have it easy by any means. She had two babies by the time she was 21, and was living in a foriegn country, poor and married to the Air Force as well as my Dad. My life was infinitely easier than hers. I treasure the fact that both of my parents are relatively young (61 and 62 to my 42) because I consider them my friends as well as my parents. We are probably closer than most because we spent so much time as a nuclear family far away from the rst of our relatives.

She shares her exact birthday with Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees. I don't how she feels about that, or even if she is aware of it. But I'll dedicate this one to her anyway.