Your Divided We Fall Quizo Update

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed the show from Pat Burrell yesterday, since it’s pretty likely his time as a Phillie is rapidly nearing its end. They’re sure as hell not going to pay him no 15 million bucks next year, and unless he’s willing to return for a lot less money he’ll be plying his slow-footed trade elsewhere come 2009. The Phillies re-signing The Bat certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility – the numbers I most commonly hear bandied about are that the Phillies would be happy in the 5-7 million range – but I wouldn’t exactly ratchet my hopes all the way up.

For some inexplicable reason I have been a large fan of Pat the Bat ever since he arrived in Philadelphia. No one is quite sure why, although it might have been because I finally found a Phillies starter I could beat in a footrace. It certainly wasn’t for his, er, shall we say, extracurricular activities, which anyone who has been to a bar in the tri-state area the last 10 years can tell you a detailed story about. It’s interesting to note that since his engagement and marriage the Bat’s form has gotten much more consistent. Since the Bat had spent his previous years prosecuting… how to put this… an extremely exhaustive search for his one-and-only it makes perfect sense that his newfound contentment should provide such a soothing influence.

I, for one, am pleased by the fact that Pat the Bat has actually expressed a desire to stay in Philadelphia. I hope he does. They might replace him with someone who has actual speed, and that would make me sad.

Prior to the series I had predicted Phillies in 4 – I’m always right, in case you hadn’t heard – and I like the Phillies over the Dodgers and ManRam in 6. Beyond that, I shall not speculate.

While the Pat the Bat show and the attendant series-clinching goodness was going on, however, there was some OTHER sports stuff that involved a word just a single vowel away from “clinching” going down at the Linc. My thoughts on that debacle are documented elsewhere on the tubes (I’ll point you to it if you’re really interested), but suffice it to say that prospects are not looking good on the American football side of things. However, when one considers that Chelsea beat a very talented Aston Villa squad yesterday and the Phillies moved on to the NLCS, the Eagles’ buffoonery aside yesterday still has to count as a positive sporting day.

Moving on.

Last week while the House and Senate dithered over which version of the atrocious bank bailout bill to pass, this little exchange went on amongst the countries of the EU:

EU: The US banking crisis is going to spread over here! Sacre bleu! We must do something!

Ireland: Okay, we’re going to fully guarantee all deposits in our banks. That way our citizenry won’t run on them and cause a massive depression. Jesus fucking Christ are we sick of depressions in this country.

Greece: Hey, that’s not a bad idea. We’re gonna do that too!

Germany: What? What? You cannot do such a thing! This plan will destroy European banking! Nein! Achtung! Guten morgen!

Ireland: Okay, have you READ a history book? We really don’t handle hard times very well. We have this bad habit of “everyone dying” when this sort of shit goes on, and the United States isn’t exactly the “cheap starving refugee labor” market that it used to be.

Germany: You cannot! Ich bin ein Berliner! Mein lamen!

France: Perhaps if all the great nations of Europe got together and talked about this we could figure out a way to fix le market terrible!

Germany: Ja!

Italy: Si!

UK: I say, capital idea.

Spain: Hello? Hellloooo? Is anyone home? Hellllllooooooooooooooooooooo? (no answer) Fucking France.

France: So, how shall we prevent les disaster economique?

Germany: Well, we’re going to… er… (mumbles) have our federal government fully guarantee all bank deposits.

Ireland: I’m sorry, what was that?

Germany: Hm? What? We didn’t say anything.

Spain: (pounding on door) HELLO?! WE’RE STANDING RIGHT OUTSIDE, WILL YOU PLEASE LET US IN? HELLLLOOOOOOOOO?! (muttering) Fucking France.

It’s like a soap, only if Erica Kane had nuclear weapons. (And I spoke more German.)

Two more things to note before we go: one, Quizo attendance the last few weeks has moved past “just short of disastrous” into “actually disastrous.” I don’t know what the story is there, but we need to get some more bodies back on a regular basis and pronto. On a similar note, Alias Pseudonym Undercover is once again going for their third win in a row tonight, so please show up and stop them. It is a statistically-proven fact that the more teams there are the less likely it is that one specific team will win, or something. I don’t actually really know a single goddamn thing about statistics, but it sure sounds plausible.

JLK

Your Misunderestimated Quizo Update

Before we get to the meat of this week’s little diatribe, let me say upfront that Quizo attendance the last 2-3 weeks (since the tournament) has been just short of alarmingly bad. I understand we probably had a little post-tournament letdown and that last Monday was the tax deadline, but come on, people – let’s see a little enthusiasm for trivia, here. We’re definitely at the bottom of the curve these last weeks and we need to get back on the upslope.

This weeks transmittal is late because, as I mentioned, time has conspired against me. To some this may sound whiny and bitchy, and to those people I say, “shut the hell up.” This weekend was a classic example of me pulling myself in too many different directions at once and paying the price for it Sunday night (which, with my lack of access to GMail at work, is when I normally write the actual e-mail these days).

This death spiral of overextension actually started last week with the first exam in my Calculus class.

Now understand this is the first test/exam/inquiry of any kind I have taken in approximately… [checks calendar]… 9 years and the first one I have taken where I was not actually, physically drunk while writing said test/exam/inquiry in 13 years. I recall the last math exam I took where not only was I so completely and thoroughly drunk throughout the entire semester that I had almost zero knowledge of the subject material at the final - I now find myself wondering, in fact, why I bothered taking the exam in the first place – but I was blitzed enough while taking it that aside from actually answering (incorrectly) one question, the remainder of my examination on vector calculus consisted of several coarsely-wrought essays on various topics. At this great remove the only ones I can REMEMBER writing were about why the X-Files was great, why Metallica’s new album (new at the time) sucked and how they were total sellouts, and why OS/2 was a terrible operating system (which, similarly, was an issue at the time). For some of the shorter problems I just wrote random Simpsons trivia. I am not making this up. These were my answers on a Vector Calculus exam. This is what happens when you drink as much as I did back then.

Back to the present, for this first, actual test last week I was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to take this test – indeed, this whole school thing in general – and kick it in the junk. So I studied my ass off. I did problems left and right. I found a website that actually generates calculus exams – which is pretty neat – and did practice test after practice test after practice test set at the highest level of difficulty and complexity the site’s options would allow. I calculated limits until my fingers bled, a la Bryan Adams but not as cool (or Canadian, thankfully). At one point I was sure I had mathematically discovered a way to raise the dead. I studied the first three chapters of my textbook and the material therein until the sheer force of my calculus-bent will could destroy entire city blocks. I became the Jean Grey of introductory Calculus, able to wipe out entire galaxies with but a thought. I became as unto a god. Nay, I WAS a god.

Then I sat for the exam to find it was precisely six questions, five of which were about 1/1,000,000,000th as hard as the practice questions I’d been doing all week, and one of which was something I had inexplicably never seen before and thus had no idea how to solve. I finished the test in 12 minutes and got an 85.

Walking back to my car – where I had overpaid the parking meter by something like two hours – it briefly occurred to me that my time-and-effort-studying-to-test-difficulty ratio was slightly out of whack before my brain melted under the stress I had put it through for the previous seven days like a crayon in the back of a station wagon.

The stress of studying for the Exam to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Being when studying for “Hey, kids! Calculus!” was all that was really necessary left me in a sort of psychological lurch all weekend. My thoughts became reduced to the 21-st century equivalent of caveman grunts. At work on Friday all I could think was “weather nice. Get home. Galactica.” I picked up an Xbox 360 on the way home from work on Friday and I’m not entirely sure why. I honestly have no memory of deciding to get one, but there it sits on top of my DVD player anyway. It’s very nice. My Gamertag is Kozemp (duh!). Feel free to hit me up.

On Saturday I made the further mistake of going to the driving range and (in what is becoming something of a disturbing trend) hitting golf balls for the second time in 15 years and adding physical misery to my wretched intellectual state. Important safety tip: stretch before hitting golf balls. Also, if it has been many years SINCE hitting golf balls, going through an entire large bucket at once will make your hands, arms, elbows, shoulders, neck, back, knees and ankles feel as though they have been replaced with burning hot fireplace implements. Fucking OW.

After getting home from that, the entire rest of the weekend my thought process consisted of nothing beyond, “food. Water. Tylenol. Call of Duty 4. Supernatural. Sleep.” Occasionally I would swivel my chair to empty my ashtray. I’m amazed I remembered to watch my downloaded episode of Doctor Who. Seriously, I couldn’t bring myself (in a physical or emotional sense) to rouse myself out of that chair for almost two straight days. At 11:30-something last night while I was in the middle of another online FIFA match I realized that a) I had to go to bed soon, and b) I hadn’t written the Quizo e-mail yet. I went to bed hoping that I would be vaguely human enough in the morning to figure out a remedy for that. And here we are. I’m feeling much better now, thanks.

All things considered, though, there are worse things than overstudying, hitting golf balls with friends in the best weather in the history of the world, and having a leisurely weekend watching TV and playing video games (even if I didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter at the time). I could be a Democratic superdelegate, cause that’s looking like it’s going to be the worst job in the entire WORLD pretty soon. Hell, I’ve got it easy…

JLK

Your "Has Anyone Seen My Lighter?" Quizo Update

No, seriously, I just sat down to write the e-mail and it's nowhere to be found. What the deuce.

So how was everyone's weekend? Aside from temperatures 20+ degrees above normal - global warming, bah, what's that - I hope everyone had a good time.

I was at a wedding on Friday which was primarily notable for the actual wedding itself - I am not making this up - lasting less than three minutes. I'm serious. It was at one of those riverside mansion places up in Bensalem. We're sitting in folding chairs out on the lawn (like you do), there's the whole little collapsible-arch-thingy for the ceremony, a guy is off to the side playing vaguely classical-type music off a Powerbook - you know, a wedding. The Pachelbel Canon starts playing and the bride/groom/assorted hangers-on start walking up the aisle.

This is where it gets weird.

The wedding party gets up to the arch-thingy, the priest guy says "dearly beloved..." and at this point a helicopter starts flying directly overhead. The mansion we're at is maybe 800 feet from the junction of 95 and Woodhaven Road, so I'm guessing it's a traffic copter. I can barely make out the proceedings - I catch an "I do" here and there - and almost before you can finish buttoning your jacket from standing up when the bride passes they're walking back down the aisle. Done! Married! It's taken you longer to read about it then it did for the actual wedding to occur.

I turned to the guy standing next to me and said, "you've gotta be fucking kidding me."

I wasn't timing it myself but I am informed by reliable sources that the entire ceremony, from dearly beloved to walking back down the aisle clocked in at about two minutes and forty five seconds. After I got past the initial shock I said, "this is the greatest wedding ever."

Of course, it did not go all super-nice, as at the after-party after the regular party I had to say to the groom, "yeah, before you go on your honeymoon, I need you to make sure that your Dad doesn't think I'm a giant drug addict." Now you have to understand that for many years now the groom's parents have, to put it charitably, scared the living shit out of me. They are very intense people; I am fairly certain that if his mother concentrated very hard her gaze could actually shatter plate glass. Before the ceremony I ran into his father at the men's room sinks and, trying my best to both be pleasant and seem brave (they can smell fear) I said, "so how we doing?"

He said, "eh, pretty good. Can't wait until I can get a drink, though."

"Well," I said, "some of us are luckier than others on that score."

For the first time I can remember in the last seven years he looked at me as though he did not want to eat my liver and said, "that's right, you don't - how long now?"

In a rather catastrophic example of totally blowing the coverage, I said, "eight years since I stopped drinking. But, you know, I still do massive amounts of cocaine to keep myself limber."

The liver-eating look came back, and I thought "FUCK!" very loudly.

Saturday night, of course, was the Springsteen show, and I don't think anything needs to be said about that.

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...

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Oh, come ON, you didn't really think THAT was going to happen, did you?

Going to a Bruce Springsteen concert is something of an odd experience if you aren't used to it. It's a bit like being in the chorus of a musical. Everybody knows every song in its entirety, but you only have to sing certain parts at certain times. You have choreography to remember, which is slightly different than what the leads are doing. Everybody knows who the real star of the show is, but damn if you don't still feel like you're an important part of it. And he played Thundercrack! FUCKING THUNDERCRACK! OH MY GOD HE PLAYED FUCKING THUNDERCRACK!

I am going to restrain myself at this point because if I don't I could go on for literally thousands of words about the amazing transcendent awesomeness that is a Springsteen concert. If you are not an especially religious person - and "not especially religious" is a pretty accurate way of describing how I roll with such things - a live Springsteen show is as close are you will ever get to pure, unadulterated joy. It is, truly, awesome. As they said on the Office, if you don't realize that it's awesome, well, you just need awesome lessons.

For a taste, most of the concert can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=cgb77&p=r

And, finally, I am publicly calling out Cum From Behind and The Darg Whores, both of whom have been notably absent the last few weeks.

JLK

Your On Location Quizo Update

I went to the shore this weekend - in fact I am still here, sending this from the confines of the lovely Ocean County Library - since I figured that if the temperature was going to drop to Hoth-like extremes, all things considered I'd rather freeze my ass off at the shore.

Spending a solo long weekend down here - that is, without freeloading friends or the rest of my family around - leads to a strange behavior pattern where I stay up until ungodly hours watching movies on TV that either a) I have seen many, many times before, or b) I would never watch under any other circumstances, including as an alternative to being tortured in a secret CIA prison in Uzbekistan. The general thought process goes: "oh, this movie sucks/is one I've seen a hundred times. Let's do something else. It IS 3:30 in the morning, I could just go to sleep.[pause] [pause] Ah, fuck it, the ashtray's right here, I don't feel like getting up. Ooh, The Bone Collector is on."

This is why, for instance, I watched Training Day in its entirety TWICE in the past three days (a film up until now I had seen probably about eleven times) and why I was weeping like a little girl in the very wee hours of Saturday night at the end of A Walk To Remember. Just thinking about it is starting to make me tear up, and the library people frown on crying on the computers.

Moving on to slightly-less-embarassing revelations...

I got word from the Darg Whores, who (if you didn't know) get to choose the speed round tonight after their historic third win in a row last week. So, yeah, blame them. I'm sure you will. While their choice was not as ridiculous as some things put forward by certain parties as possible winning selections (like, oh, say, "shoe designers") I'm sure there will be more than the usual share of groaning when the sheets go out this week.

Of course, if you people had tried a little harder the last three weeks we wouldn't have this problem, now, would we?

JLK