Study group intermission

Yeah, I've been studying property and torts for over three hours. There is no end in sight. Thank god we're taking a break now. It gave me the chance to bang furiously at a keyboard, venting all sorts of Rule Against Perpetuity frustration. Seriously, how do you determine which is the validating life?

Anyway, earlier this week Yahoo sports put out lists of both the best and worst sportscasters. Two different authors each penned their own list, one handling the best, the other handling the worst of the profession. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they didn’t communicate with each other all that much when building these lists. Why? Because eleven people ended up on both lists. More than twenty percent of the best broadcasters are considered among the worst. How is that even possible?

I understand that compiling a list like this is pretty subjective, and if there were maybe two or three names in common I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. But eleven names is just absurd. And I’m pretty sure that the person who came up with the “best” list is to blame.
Looking at the common names, the first two to be addressed appear on the “worst” list only with conditions. Bob Costas after 2000 is one of the worst, as is John Madden when he’s worshipping Brett Favre. Otherwise, each is on the “best” list. This reasoning doesn’t bother me at all; I couldn’t agree more with that take on Madden.

Some names that appear on both lists are just baffling though. For the most part, I can’t understand why anyone would think that these people are good broadcasters. Topping the “worst” list is Billy Packer. And yeah, before he thankfully got fired this past spring, he was terrible, really just an angry old man, especially with how he would shit all over mid majors, like St. Joes in the Nelson and West year. He was an asshole, and didn’t add anything to a broadcast.

Chris Berman is second on the list of worst broadcasters, and he too is listed among the best as well. He’s sucked for years. Joe Morgan, number three on the worst list, has been beaten into the ground at this point. Dick Vitale makes both lists, leading me to conclude that the best list was written by a Duke fan, and the worst list was written by someone with a triple digit IQ.

Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, both show up on each list. Sometimes Tim McCarver doesn’t bother me, I feel like there’s occasionally a pro-Phillies undertone to him. But then he goes and says something absurd like a team is more likely to have a multi-run inning when there is a leadoff walk than a leadoff home run, and I just have to shake my head. As for Joe Buck, he pretty much just sucks the life and enthusiasm out of everything. He hates fun, wouldn’t have this job without his dad, and needs to fade into the oblivion of calling arena football and college softball. I can’t stand him. How anyone could put him on a best list is just mind blowing.

Jim Gray, Dick Enberg, and Dick Stockton round out the list of people who are considered both the best and the worst. I’ve thought that Jim Gray was an asshole ever since he confronted Pete Rose, and nothing is going to change that. I’m completely ambivalent towards both Enberg and Stockton.

I just don’t understand how these people ended up being on both lists. How is there a middle ground here? Like, I understand that when Joe Morgan is talking about the mechanics of hitting he is bearable. But at any other point he makes me like baseball a little bit less. Seriously, Yahoo did just a flat out terrible job.

Zombie Attack?

I don’t know what’s going on in Austin, Texas, but for the sake of humanity I need to get to the bottom of it. First, the facts: people in Austin have changed some traffic signs to say things like “Zombies in area! Run” and “zombies ahead.” Austin officials have dismissed this as just the actions of vandals and hackers, people playing a joke on commuters. But what if there is more to this than mere immaturity?

What if Austin is experiencing the very beginning of a zombie outbreak? People tried to warn us about this, and most likely ended up having their brains eaten by zombies. They probably gave up their lives to save countless others during morning rush hour in Austin.

These people, vandals and hackers, as the government is calling them, are heroes. Their self-sacrifice has bought us time. We need to be ready to fight off hordes of zombies that will doubtless reduce Texas (and hopefully Oklahoma) to something of an undead breeding ground; Texas citizens will be the first to be turned, and their numbers will swell as Mexicans continue pouring over the border. Once Mexico puts up a fence to keep American zombies out, and they will, these zombies will move north. And we need to be ready for this. I urge everyone to start preparing for this: stock up on canned goods, sharpen your machetes, and if possible, prepare an island hideaway. Construction companies and the city of Austin are trying to keep this under wraps. It may be too late for Texas, but there is still hope for the rest of the country. We just need to get ready.

Gambling Underground

From time to time spanning the college basketball landscape you catch a special night, as crappy teams channeling their inner Jimmy Chitwood give the world a gem.  Only because I'm a degenerate gambler do I run a college basketball fantasy league for money, but thanks to that I got to focus in on one for the ages.  With two fantasy players going head to head in the Utah Valley - Chicago State game last night an epic show was put on.  Chicago State's David Holston went for 41 helping his team to 4 OTs, before Utah Valley's Ryan Toolson hit the game winner with 2.3 left.  Toolson threw in 63 fucking points.  On the same night in the same fantasy matchup his opponent's SG hit a game winner of his own to put the icing on a 33 point performance as Cal State Fullerton won 64-63.  Someday I want to make a tee-shirt simply with the names of random players like these, and final scores of epic gambling moments.  

Donovan "already looking for a profession I'm better at" McNabb

So McNabb is a commentator for Super Bowl week. I guess he just really wanted to be near another Super Bowl without all that puke-inducing anxiety.

Back to work

Sorry I haven't been posting, but as alluded to by Gimpy I was busy wasting time during my first weekend of this week (which happened on Tuesday and Wednesday thanks to the wonder of snow and the absence of anything resembling a snow plow in the Lou). However, I was forced back to work today (the humanity!) and had to relay one of the greatest things I have ever seen on Wikipedia.

One of my students told me to google something called a Hypercane. He didn't know how to spell it, he didn't really know what it was. All he could say was I saw something about it on the Discovery channel and you have to see it.

Here's essentially what it is: simultaneously the last thing you ever want to witness first hand and the coolest fuckin' thing you have ever seen.

As the name suggests, it's a gigantic hurricane, in theory at least. It would result from the superheating of the ocean (it would have to be 122 degrees Fahrenheit or 59 degrees hotter than the highest recorded ocean temp ever recorded). This could really only happen from a massive meteor of asteroid crashing into the ocean (in fact, there's a theory that it was hypercanes that resulted from an asteroid that really did in the dinosaurs).

I know precious little about the science of hurricanes, but here are the basic specs on a theoretical hypercane (all of which make me want to curl up in the fetal position and suck on my thumb):

-Wind speeds of over 500 mph (the strongest recorded reading is 195 mph)

-"A tremendous lifespan"

-One hypercane could likely be the size of North America

-It would create storm surges washing immeasureable gallons of water onto the shore from the ocean, absolutely drowning the coastline

-It would decimate the ozone layer resulting in lethal levels of UV rays reaching the Earth's surface

-And just in case one Hypercane doesn't do it for you...the oceans would stay hot for weeks allowing for many more hypercanes to form!

Now, to be fair, this is only some people's belief. Other scientists think those ocean conditions would merely create a storm 10 miles in diameter. The only problem is that that storm would be much more like a tornado, and the biggest tornado ever seen is only 2.5 miles wide. Gulp.

So, that was pretty pointless, but writing about the end of the world can't be all bad...

Lunch break thoughts

I don’t know what’s wrong with the internet, but it’s a lot less interesting today than it is on most days. Drudge is on some crusade against STD prevention, probably because he has herpes (I think this qualifies as breaking a news story. Suck it, Matt), the Democrats are passing around a petition trying to get Rush Limbaugh to admit to being an asshole, or something like that, the Flyers lost last night and I don’t want to hear about the Superbowl, so sports are out, and no one has published anything about dinosaurs. And of course this happens on the day where I have like an hour and a half between classes, and no assignment to read.

Right now insanity is swirling around me; I’m surrounded by some of the weirdest conversations imaginable: the composition of fruit roll ups, jumping out of moving cars (evidently today is a bad day to be driving without a license), the timelessness of the Macarena, which Word automatically capitalizes, and the merits of being an idiot savant.

There’s a ton of snow and ice and slush on the ground, public and parochial schools in the city are closed, and I’m sitting in a classroom. Even schools in fucking St. Louis are closed. (Fuck you, Dick) I’m really struggling to understand why I have to be here today. Hell, we have a guest speaker coming in anyway, and he’s going to be talking about arbitration. Unless he brings up Ryan Howard in the first couple sentences, my attention span will be tested.

Henrik Zetterberg signed a 12 year, 72 million dollar contract extension today. He could have gotten a hell of a lot more money if he had waited until the summer, but he’s pretty much guaranteed a handful of Stanley Cups before he retires. But he’s already got a bunch, so it’s doubtful they’re worth the $25 million dollars he probably left on the table. That’s like 125 flights on Virgin Galactic, he’s missing out.

So you know what makes law school suck? I’ll start a day thinking that if I can get al my reading done early I’ll have time to work on outlines for finals. This is terrible. No one should ever be excited by the prospect of finishing work early to do more work. I feel like law school sucks the humanity out of people. But yeah, I’ll be working on an outline for torts tonight. Fuck.

Sportscenter really sucks. I mean, it was groundbreaking and all that years ago, but now they’re all about stories and shit like that. Brett Favre, TO, Radomski, Torre, all that crap, and I don’t care. Why can’t they show more highlights. They’ll show basketball, and like ten minutes of hockey, and if there’s a major they’ll throw in tennis or golf. But what about other cool stuff? Maybe show more soccer; Beckham scored for Milan, maybe they could show some Serie A. What about like Rugby, or lacrosse, or ping-pong? Chinese people are crazy at ping-pong, and I would like to see more of that. They could even get really weird, like have some Jai Alai footage. What about Eddie Feigner? Yeah, he’s dead now, but he could throw a softball triple digits, underhand. In his prime he struck out Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Willie McCovey, Harmon Killebrew, all of whom are hall of famers. Hell, he threw 238 perfect games. That’s insane. And I doubt he was ever mentioned on ESPN. But TO is getting a reality show. Fuck him.

Ahmadinejad is saying that the US must apologize to Iran. I know that Hillary Clinton won’t do it, but I’m pretty sure she would lock up presidential successor if she goes to a joint news conference with Ahmadinejad and says, “The United States would like to sincerely apologize to Iran… for you all being a bunch of dickheads.” Then we let Israel bomb the hell out of them, enabling the US to win the game of Middle Eastern tic-tac-toe that we’ve evidently been playing for the past eight years.

I’m pretty sure that the other day was the first time that I wrote “President Obama.” That’s cool and all, but I think I may be more excited for Bush’s post-Presidency years. I really hope that he can just be a cool guy. Now that he’s out of office, I want Bush to be the guy that headbutted David Tyree, dodged shoes, and threw a strike while wearing a bulletproof vest. I want him to say outrageous things, and just not care about it. Most of all, in light of Fred Wilpon losing a ton of money to Bernie Madoff, I really want Bush to buy the Mets. Not only would he be in a public spotlight, but he would probably deport Santana and Reyes, and Wright would somehow end up in Iraq. Someone needs to make this happen.

Class starts in eight minutes, and it’s looking like a lot of people are going to be skipping. I think there’s a pretty good chance that the guest speaker doesn’t show up, and because no one has done the reading for Friday the real teacher just lets us go. Actually, I know that there’s no way that happens, but it would be cool if it did. Probably going to have to roll out the pistratica to get through this class.

I really wish that someone would invent like an eye implant that lets you transmit what you’re seeing to someone else instantaneously. Like, I understand that there are camera phones and crap, but some of the really absurd things that I’ve seen would need to be passed along less obtrusively that they allow. I just think it would be cool, and practical.

Ugh, the speaker is here, I might as well post this and get ready for what is sure to be a riveting hour and a half.

We're gonna have to work on our communication

The RAF just locked up the 2009 award for ballsiest decision ever, and it’s only January. But seriously, what could possibly beat this? For the link-opposed, the story says that dating back to the 1980s RAF pilots have on several occasions have been given orders to shoot down UFOs. While you pick your jaw up, I’ll repeat that. RAF pilots have tried to shoot down UFOs.

So far, the RAF has been unsuccessful in its attempts. However, recent weapons developments have given some guy named Mr. Pope, who spent 21 years in the Ministry of Defense, hope that eventually humans will be able to blow those aliens sons of bitches out of the sky.

While the public stance of the MoD is that UFOs don’t pose any danger to the public, that’s obviously garbage. They’re aliens! They’re probably trying to kill us and steal our planet. Plus, if we shoot one down we can probably steal all the alien technology. I would go to outerspace in a rebuilt UFO, doesn’t matter to me. Anyway, in closing, I support the RAF’s efforts to shoot down UFOs; we should show them that we won’t go down easily before we fall into a situation like this: