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| It's Not Me, It's Him, Right... |
| The random musings of Riverview High School's second-most famous non-football-coach alumnus, Mike Burger... (No longer most famous, not at least until I get on Oprah. (I'll get the log started) |
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30 June 2004 If you happen to be up at 3:00 AM EDT on the 25th of August... Somebody I actually know will be competing in the Olympics! Su Williams, who I got to know in Colorado, has made the U.S. Olympic Triathlon Team (scroll to the bottom). If you want to help defray her costs, since it's not one of those glamor sports, go here. And if anyone from NBC is watching, she has stories. |
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29 June 2004 Kelvin 761... Seven years ago our fathers conceived Liberty. Now we are engaged, so conceived and so dedicated. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. The world will long remember what we say here, but it can forget what they did here. It is for us to be dedicated to the last full measure of devotion, that we resolve that these dead shall not perish from the earth. -- Abraham Lincoln, slightly out of context (for full text, including a translation into Polish, go here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gadd/4403.html) Always remember who said it, who interpreted it, and what agendas may be at play. And most importantly, think for yourself. To the older couple in the grocery store last night, the time between 5 PM and 6 PM is for quick, Supermarket Sweep style shopping. This is not the time to just stand in front of a display of frozen meals and debate their merits. You had all day to do this. And, for those who have asked, Eastroturf (mentioned below) is the fake grass in an Easter basket. Not to be confused with Mardi Grass, which is the artificial turf at the New Orleans Superdome. |
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24 June 2004 Words... I know to some people I'm going to sound like a prude, but there's a word that's been bothering me. My main problem with the word is that it has now become a positive word, rather than the gutter where it belongs. The word is pimp, and mainly because of "pimp my ride." The word is supposed to mean someone who subjugates women for money, yet it's apparently OK now. I even see a billboard for an auto detail company on my way home from work -- "Let us pimp your ride." If I were to start an ad campaign that said "Let us predator your sex life", I would be hounded down and killed. Why should pimp be any different? On a more positive note, do any you use words that are only used in either your friend circle or your family. In our family, some of these were sniglets, such as Eastroturf and furnident. My mother coined the word 'fistuling' for trying to use the car brakes while in the passenger seat. If you have any, send them in. |
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15 June 2004 Los Pistones... Are You Entitled has been updated with the Pistons, Patriots and Lightning wins. And, now that's it's over, you know what bugged me even more than Jimmy Kimmel? Pronounciations. It is deh-TROIT, not DEE-troit. Founded by the French, occupied by the British and populated by emancipated African-Americans, and immigrant Germans, Poles and Arabs, only we know properly how to mispronounce our city name and our street names. To prep you for October and the Ryder Cup, it is GRAND BLANK, not Grahn Blahnc. Crap, I promised I would never do anything controversial here... As you may have heard, ESPN columnist and book author Ralph Wiley passed away. Although it is a life tragically cut short, there is something I've always wanted to get off my chest for fifteen years about him. I found him very difficult to read, watch or believe, since everything in the world was always black vs. white, which can only take you so far. At the time he was at his most arrogant was he was adamant that any evidence about body typing cannot be believed when discussing the difference between the black and white athlete. Not that I believe the total belief that it is all science -- socialization, environment and desire has a lot to do with it. The basic argument that was proposed in the late 80s is that the average black has more Type II muscle fibers than the average white. Type II fibers are most helpful in raw athletic prowress. This cannot be denied. In the same way, the average male has more Type II fibers than the average female. There are many women who are better athletes then men. There are many Caucasians who are better athletes then Africans. However, when you get to an incredibly high stage as professional sports, the margin between the super-super-elite and the super-elite becomes much more magnified. Our best data point for this argument would be to measure the purest of athletic contests -- track and field. The best male time in the 100 meters is 9.78, the best female time is 10.49. For the marathon, the best time for a male is 2:04:55, the best time for a female is 2:15:25. But this doesn't mean that every man is a better athlete than every woman. I've never run a 10.49 100 meters, hell, I don't think I ever broke 25. And as for the marathon, I have come at best 24.5 miles short of finishing one. So, if athletic success can be compared between men and women, which have some differences, why can't it also be used to compare race? There are raced-based diseases, although much of this can be traced to geography (e.g.: people with a higher chance of developing sickle cell anemia also have a much higher chance of fighting off malaria). This is not to say one gender is better than the other, nor is it to say that one race is better than another (not that it matters anyway), but if "the question" (why the preponderance of the black athlete) is put forward, all possible explanations must be explored and not discounted because it doesn't jive with your view of the world. I will not deny that there is racism in the world, just like there is still racism in sports. Look at baseball, blacks are underrepresented on the mound and behind the plate, because those are considered "thinking positions." Most First Nations people in hockey are brawlers, mainly because they don't have the chances to work on other skills. Ask Mr. Limbaugh about Donovan McNabb. And remember, the use of body typing is only a comparison for raw athleticism. Social effects still are a big part of any aspect of success in professional sports. Basketball is played very heavily in urban areas. The NHL is dominated by areas with very small African-ancestor populations (Canada-2.2%, the European nations all less than 1%). I don't believe The Bell Curve or phrenology, but I'm also not naïve to believe there is not some scientific factor. And, frankly, I wish we lived in a world where no one cared about this kind of stuff. The world cannot be explained 100% scientifically, but it can't be explained 100% sociologically, either. Thank you for your time on this and allowing me this one transgression. The guy always bugged the hell out of me. |
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11 June 2004 Fame is a bitch... http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=B6n4tk6rxtkr0 |
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4 June 2004 The death of academic competitions... As I prepare to fly to Houston this weekend for the NAQT High School Nationals to be with a bunch of kids who get it ("it's just a game") and a subset who don't ("this is the most important thing in my life"), I reflect back to yesterday's spelling bee. The last ten words used (in order from the last one) were: autochthonous, gaminerie, schwarmerei, arete, scheherazadian, parrhesia, sophrosyne, tralatitious, ophelimity and sumpsimius. I consider myself a very good wordsmith, probably in the top 2% of the country, I play a lot of Scrabble and I ask myself, I don't know these words. My usual test is my $3 dictionary I picked up at a hardware store some 15 years ago. If it's not in there, it's probably too obscure a word and I'll never have to use it. Out of the ten, only the winning word was in there. We have gotten to the point with these competitions that 99.9% of the nation's kids can't compete, because they innately know that the intense effort needed to exceed at the game far outweighs the fun of the competition. Dear God, we had a kid fainting this year, then immediately spelling his word as soon as he got up. Twenty years ago, the winning words included narcolepsy, incisor, Purim, luge, milieu and chihuahua. Not words you use everyday, but words that you need to know. It has far exceeded that point. Academic games should never be about memorizing, it should reward accumulated knowledge without the necessity of extra time preparing to play a game. On another note, so long Hollywood Squares, may you come back real soon. You've been on the air 23 of the last 38 years. Not a bad accomplishment. |
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24 May 2004 That's not funny... VH1, you have taken a golden goose and killed it. Not only have you killed it, you also threw it back on to the street and ran over it a few times. I'm talking about the 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever show. Obviously deciding they need to milk the snark machine for all its worth, they do the I Love the 80's Trick to what they consider the worst songs of all time. Apparently, all-time started in 1984, since there is not a pre-1984 song on their list. Secondly, the "comedians" they bring out to add the snark are barely known to their own relatives, and provide precious little snark. Of the dozens of people they trotted out, I recognized two. Third, it's hosted by George Lopez. George Lopez? When did he all of a sudden become the "go to" guy for music specials. He also hosted the little seen Motown at 45 special on ABC earlier this month, because 45 is such an important anniversary (I think's it cadmium). If you were going for the ABC thing, Damon Wayans would have been a better choice. If you were looking for someone who actually has a connection to Motown, you could have trotted out Lionel Richie or a lesser Jackson. When does the WB pass them? It's NCAA Softball time again, as Michigan has just won their regional that I believe started in March and has had constant delays because of the monsoons we've had here this week. Pumps had to be brought in to get the water out of the outfield. One game started at 12:20 AM. They almost got it done yesterday, but they stopped again (although strangely enough, my rec league game went on as scheduled, a 4-3 AMG victory). Although you've probably already been handed a bracket by a coworker for your company's pool, here's the setup, two groups of four playing double-elimination with those winners meeting in a one game final:
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20 May 2004 Carnage everywhere... Congratulations to David Bykowski, the tenative winner of The Alison LaPlaca Open. A huzzah also goes out to Mark Coen, who also picked ten shows but lost the tiebreaker. The reason why I say the victory is tenative is because many of the cancelled shows still have episodes to burn off, and if anyone of them burn off in September, they will be considered cancelled for 2004-05. Also, two shows, Oliver Beene and The Drew Carey Show are actively burning off episodes but their actual end date is still up in the air. mil·li·hel·en (mil-uh-HELL-en), n. A unit of measurement equal to the amount of faces necessary to launch one ship. |
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10 May 2004 Faint praise indeed... You may have heard that comedian Alan King died over the weekend. He was one of those comedians who would have not worked today, since his main bread and butter were variety shows and talk show appearances that included give-and-take with the host, not a separate stand-up routine. However, my one main memory of him was from the early days of Comedy Central, when they pretty much had nothing. One of the things they did was repeat this rather painful one-on-one interview show with Alan King as host interviewing other comedians to see what made them tick. At the time, Penn Jillette of "Penn and Teller" was the voice-over guy for all of their promos. He promoed the show thusly: "Coming up next: Inside the Comedy Mind with Alan King. That's why it's only a half-hour show." Now that Desktop 2K4 is up and running, a retrospective:
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7 May 2004 Le hard drive? What the hell is le hard drive... I'm trying to put a new computer together. It's not going well. But, nothing says "Mother's Day" more than a Wireless USB adapter (courtesy newegg.com):  |
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3 May 2004 Is there a serial killer in your neighborhood, find out at 11... Today's rant is about local news and local broadcasting in general. There used to be a time that local news was on an hour a day, a half-hour at six and a half-hour at eleven. And a majority of it was just some guy reading headlines and maybe a slight exposition. If you were lucky, you may have had some day old film or stock footage enhancing the report. Then they did the sports, with the sports guy strangely reading the concept of "scores" to the viewer. And, at the end, almost as an afterthought, a brief synopsis of the weather, usually read by some eye candy that was an overachiever in geography. No multipart sweep stunts, no superfulous live shots, no happy banter. Of course, this has all changed. In the Detroit market, it has the "benefit" that despite being a top-10 market, it is only a three-horse race for news. The NBC affilliate has 4 hours and 35 minutes of daily locally-produced news, the ABC affilliate has 5 hours and 35 minutes of daily locally-produced news and the FOX has 9 hours a day. The CBS station tried news a few years ago, but their measly 35 minutes of news just couldn't compete, so it was dropped. No big loss, however, since there is as much news content in it's replacement (Everybody Loves Raymond reruns) than the actual news. Since these stations have all this time to fill, and the amount of news has actually decreased since the one hour days (since local news doesn't do world news), the definition of news is stretched to the limit:
Since the early 90's, however, with the conglomeration of station groups and the increasing strong-arm tactics of the networks, local stations pretty much have no right to make any programming decisions. If local stations could occasionally program their own stuff without the fear of having their affilliation yanked, stuff like "The Intern" could appear in prime time, replacing an airing of Happy Family. Or, a strong syndicated series (like how Star Trek: The Next Generation served this purpose in the late 80s) could be used as preemptive leverage against a bad network show. However, stations are now pretty much hamstrung to do any local programming during their newscasts, which kills the whole concept of "news". Local news today is nothing more than a wank-off of who has the best live shots or who has Triple-Doppler-Weather-Fabricator-4000 or the next dumb I-team investigation (Dihyrogen Monoxide: The Deadly Killer). I believe we've come to the time that the network system has ran its course. Everything should be syndicated. This would pretty much give stations local control back, shows that were added just as network filler or as a favor to a producer (i.e.: Veronica's Closet) would never see the time of day, shows would at least get a reasonable run (no more FOX-like four-episode shows) and news would be news, since they would no longer have to use it as the sole profit center of the station, since they would have a vested interest in the success of their prime time lineup. |
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26 Apr 2004 Short but funny... New Trip Report!! |
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12 Apr 2004 Naming your business... I realize this is about two months too late, but the light bulb finally went off in my head. Remember the hullabaloo over reclassifying fast-food jobs as manufacturing? Yet, I believe the industry has already spoken. There's The Old Spaghetti Factory, The Cheesecake Factory, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Pizza Factory and New England Soup Factory. MLB standings, just the last 10 games of 2003 + 2004: NYY 11-7, BOS 10-7, TOR 8-8, TBD 7-10, BAL 6-11 DET 10-6, MIN 10-6, CWS 9-7, KCR 8-8, CLE 5-12 OAK 9-7, ANA 9-7, TEX 7-9, SEA 7-9 FLO 12-4, ATL 10-6, MON 8-8, NYM 6-10, PHI 4-12 SLC 11-6, CHC 9-7, CIN 8-8, HOU 7-9, PIT 7-9, MIL 7-10 SFG 10-6, LAD 8-8, ARI 7-9, COL 7-9, SDP 7-9 When do the playoff tickets come out? As you may know, I was in Boston for the Frozen Four last weekend. Which can only mean one thing. Trip Report!! |
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29 Mar 2004 You want a fun rainy day activity... You hope that the fine people at Nielsen Research send you a survey. The eight of us sure had fun with ours. |
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22 Mar 2004 Unsolicited advice to people who don't read this...
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9 Mar 2004 If the funeral does not sell out before the final viewing, it will be blacked out... Val Pinchbeck, who was the scheduling guru for the NFL from the 1970s until just recently, passed away over the weekend when he was hit by a taxi. It may not mean much to you, but to me, he had my dream job. Two of my favorite cable channels are going off the deep end. Game Show Network is going to change into GSN, although their schedule doesn't change much (yet). In their infinite wisdom, they think there's a market for people to watch either Celebrity Mole reruns or other people playing blackjack and dodge ball. Godspeed. The other one hurts me a little more. It's the Biography Channel. It was one of those little things you only got if you had digital cable or high-end satellite. They would pretty much show old Biography programs from A&E. All day long. Perfect for me, I love those. But, it has now turned into A&E2. Oh sure, it's still called the Biography Channel, but it now shows reruns of L.A. Law, Murder She Wrote, NewsRadio, Night Court, Nero Wolfe and Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden. The L.A. Law to Night Court block is shown 3 times a day, so 9 hours off the top are no longer biographies. Next thing you'll tell me, ESPN will start to show dramatic programming. |
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27 Feb 2004 More where have I been... This time, the sports version Also, there has been requests for the blank county map. Enjoy, it's 376 KB. |
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22 Feb 2004 How hard can meat, bread and vegetables be... I went to Subway yesterday before the basketball game to get lunch. I was in a little bit of a time crunch. Unfortunately, the person in front of me was absolutely overwhelmed by the choices available at Subway. Which would have been OK, except he was ordering three sandwiches. And, the two people behind the counter weren't in much better shape than he was. That was about the closest I've ever came to going behind the counter and making my own food. Also, I noticed Subway now has a "Steak Fajita Wrap" and a "Chicken Fajita Wrap", all of the things you would find in a Steak Fajita or a Chicken Fajita but in a tortilla shell. I believe those are called "steak fajitas" and "chicken fajitas". I botched yet another Who Wants to Be a Millionaire attempt when I mentally mixed Marshall Plan and John Marshall in my head. In my current 0-7 streak, every question that has kicked me off the phone has been dates except the one über-hard geography question. My lifelong goal of getting everybody I know on Millionaire except myself is continuing unabated. I wonder if I'll see any Atkins-friendly pączki tomorrow? |
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13 Feb 2004 States are for Amateurs...  |
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6 Feb 2004 All this for only $39.95... I have decided to start a new business. My cadre of ivory-covered backscratchers is running dangerously low... The International Street Name Registry For only $39.95, I will personally name a street anywhere in the world for whoever you want. Just think about it, you're very own street. Or, name the street for that someone special in your life. The street name will be recorded in The International Street Name Registry in our vaults in Jura, Switzerland. You will receive:
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28 Jan 2004 A night of ten electoral regions and their stars The electoral process in the United States needs a serious overhaul. Not a landowner thing, nor a electoral college thing, it's just boring. Every fourth year, the media descends on Iowa and New Hampshire like their some sort of political trough. Pretty much ignored every other time, it's the primary/caucus season that turns some farmer or some guy who doesn't like paying sales tax on the national spotlight and gives C-SPAN hours and hours of the most boring television this side of Municipal Roundtable. It's time to shake things up. My idea. You need to add a little game show to this. After all, this is a contest. Second, no more Iowa and New Hampshire being first. This needs to be given to other places to have a chance. Thirdly, no Super Tuesday. The primaries will be divided into ten regions, roughly equal by their number of electoral votes and whose states are adjacent or at least close by. This will lessen the amount of air travel necessary by candidates and save our taxpayers money. Exactly 365 days before the election on Monday, 3 November 2003, a televised two hour-extravaganza hosted by Tom Bergeron and Dr. Madeline Albright would have been held to determine the primary/caucus region order. Each region would have been represented by someone "at the table" a la the NBA draft lottery, with 10 balls being pulled, the first one pulled being the last primary held, and so on. A map of the regions is shown below. 
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27 Jan 2004 Thank you FOX (and USA and WKBD)
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29 Dec 2003 New car -- Only $8! a pound (minimum one ton purchase) One of the first techniques you learn in Marketing 101 is try to make the price sound as small as possible. "For only a dollar a day you can help poor Consuela here" means you're paying $30 a month. Carpet that used to sell in square yards now sell in square feet. I once bought pop at a movie theater where the sizes were "mini-small-large". However, something has taken the cake (at least for me). I happened to glance at this ad in today's Detroit Free Press:
And now for a blast from the past. Remember this ditty from 11 August:
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