Some 'sweeping' statements

I was going to do a two-part entry on what was going on in my life these days, but then I realized two things:

1) My life is boring. Two big long essays about my life are enough to put anyone to sleep. Including myself.
2) The Red Sox just swept the Orioles, improving to 5-1 and taking an early commanding lead in the AL East. This requires my immediate attention. So without further ado, here are my impressions of the Sox' opening week.

-Coco Crisp isn't really what I expected. I was hoping to see a prototypical Red Sox leadoff man, a guy walks his ass off and slugs a homer every now and then, rather than the typical leadoff guy who hits singles and steals bases. Coco has yet to go deep in a Red Sox uniform, and his total of just two walks is pretty lousy for a player on the Red Sox, who value on-base guys above all else. But he went 8 for 24, so I can't be too disappointed.

-In fact, I hate to admit it but I'm kinda excited about him being hurt. (It's just a day-to-day finger injury, so I don't feel too bad about that.) I really like Adam Stern, especially after his WBC performance, and I'm happy for him now that he'll get some consistent playing time in Coco's absence. We'll see... it may even be his big break.

-I really, really, really, REALLY miss Doug Mirabelli. For most teams, backup catchers aren't that important, since even catchers only need a day off every week or two, but for the Sox, Tim Wakefield needs a catcher who can handle a knuckleball. And I can't stand Josh Bard. It's not just that he's 1 for 7 so far -- it's also that he's a career .237 hitter who can't walk and has minimal power and no speed. Offensively, he's just plain horrendous. And it's not as though we really have any long-term plan to cure this problem -- we traded Kelly Shoppach for Bard, and it's gonna be tough to teach Varitek to catch a knuckler at this point.

Knuckleballers age extremely well (Charlie Hough retired at 46, and Phil Niekro was 48, for two examples), and Wake's only (yes, that's right, I said only) 39. I'm starting to worry that if Bard continues to stink up the catcher's box at Fenway and Stern continues to be a solid performer in Coco's absence, then we'll begin to realize just how bad the Andy Marte trade was. It doesn't help that Throw-In #2, also known as David Riske, got roughed up in the only appearance he's made so far, against the Rangers. Oh, and by the way, Guillermo Mota hasn't allowed a run in four and a third innings of work so far. Ugh.

-I am absolutely overjoyed with the contract extension that David Ortiz just signed. $52 million over four years? Are you kidding me? Barry Bonds gets $23M a year, Derek Jeter gets 23, and even Carlos Delgado gets 18. The Red Sox just secured one of the best hitters in the game for a measly 13 million a year. Incredible.

-If I hear Dan Shaughnessy make one more Jonathan Papelbon and Keith Foulke/Tom Brady and Drew Bledsoe comparison, I think I'm probably going to go insane. Tom Brady is a quarterback who carried the Patriots to all of their three Super Bowl titles; Jonathan Papelbon, as much as I love him, is a relief pitcher who pitches one inning a game.

Really, I absolutely adore Papelbon. But the fact of the matter is, he, Foulke and Mike Timlin are all going to get tons of innings, and whether they do it in the seventh, eighth or ninth isn't that big a deal. For the record, Papelbon is the better pitcher (Francona said it himself -- he's pitching better than anyone in baseball right now), but I'm not sure it matters too much when they're all getting their innings in. The whole "closer controversy" is an interesting story, I guess, but it's getting blown way out of proportion.

-Honestly, are the Sox ever going to lose again? The week starts off with the vastly-overrated Blue Jays, who have put A.J. Burnett on the disabled list, and just gave Roy Halladay the ball for Sunday's loss to the Devil Rays. That means that Beckett, Clement, and Schilling match up with Gustavo Chacin, Ted Lilly and Josh Towers. Give me a break. It's especially nice to look forward to these games now that all three of our starters have wins under their belts, since there were doubts surrounding all three before the season started.

After the Jays, we get Seattle, followed by Tampa Bay. It may be 10 games in 10 days, but it's 10 ridiculously easy games. I'm looking forward to them.

EDIT:
P.S. This is the most amazing photograph ever taken.

On school, and the rest of life

Okay, so I'm kind of an idiot. I told myself I'd wait to write here again until after I had settled my school situation for next year (classes, housing, etc, etc, etc). That way I'd be able to tie up all the loose ends I left after my last entry, and somehow my life would begin to magically make sense to me again.

I failed to realize that that would mean a month with no blogging, which is way more than I like to give myself. Seriously, I do try to keep this thing up to date, and there were several times over the past 33 days when I said to myself something along the lines of "Hmmm, I'm kinda bored now, should I go write something? Nah... I told myself I'd wait."

Well, I'm back. Better late than never.

As for the past month, it's been a good one. Housing worked out well -- I got a huge double room in a really nice dorm. It's in the far corner of the top floor, but it's still nice. I'm enjoying classes a lot, and I feel as though I'm getting a lot out of them. My grades so far could be better, but I'm doing everything I can to bring those up (going to extra review sessions, reading and rereading study guide books, and, uhh... trying really, REALLY hard to pay attention in astronomy, but it's not easy).

As for my future academically, my registration for next semester happens to be about an hour from now. I worked out a schedule for the semester about a month ago, and I thought I was good to go until about 9 o'clock last night. That's when I realized that my entire future was horribly misguided.

Okay, not really. But until last night, I had been planning on double-majoring in English and economics. Then, a friend pointed out to me that it was stupid of me to go for economics rather than quantitative economics, which is viewed as a much tougher major, earns students a lot more respect, and generally tends to make its students go on to be rich, successful, fat and happy. The only major difference between the two fields (okay, wow, that was the worst pun ever... I apologize) is the three extra math courses that QE majors have to take. I looked over my AP scores, and... sure enough, I would be stupid not to go into QE. My Calc AB score got me out of one requirement, and my BC score got me out of another. Basically the only difference between the two majors was one linear algebra course.

So... allow me to introduce myself. My name is Evans Clinchy, and I am an English and quantitative economics double major.

Or so I believe.

So anyway, I scrapped my entire plan for my schedule last night. I switched microecon and macroecon to quantitative microecon and macroecon. I switched my English courses (I kept Non-Fiction Writing, which is taught by my favorite professor, but moved into Continuity of American Literature for a second one). And for my fifth class, I would really, really, really like to schedule some sort of fine arts credit.

The only problem is that I really, really, really want to take Screenwriting I for drama credit (basically, you just get to write a movie and get a grade for it), but the class filled up when juniors signed up for classes yesterday. That pisses me off, because this is Tufts and our juniors are supposed to be going abroad, not stealing slots in the classes that I want. So I emailed the professor and begged to be considered for any spots that open up in the future. She emailed me back this morning inviting me to the first class and encouraging me to add the class as soon as someone drops it. Then she sends me a second email telling me that I'm the third person to ask her, so I won't get priority. Greeeeeeat.

So I start looking around for a backup, just in case. Can I get my second science credit out of the way? No... I want to take the next astronomy class, and that conflicts with English. Can I get my World Civilizations credit out of the way? No... I want to take Economies of the Middle East (it's a QE credit... two birds, one stone, you get the picture), and that's not offered this semester. Can I knock out a Spanish credit? No... I'm still looking for a way out of that. I don't really feel like taking Spanish ever again, to be honest.

So, since I had no other option (and because I hate myself), I began looking around for a third English class. And, lo and behold, I found one.

English 83. Un-American Activities: Popular Culture and the Left.
How leftist and liberal politics have shaped popular culture in the United States. Left's responses to characterizations of it as "un-American." Relations between politics and popular culture, from 1940s to present. Development of youth culture and its effects on radical politics. How class intersects with race, gender, and sexuality. Emphasis on film, theater, and television, with attention to relevant literary texts. Offered fall 2002 and alternate years thereafter.

"Fall 2002, Fall 2004, Fall 2006..." I began counting semesters on my fingers. Yep, it's offered this coming semester. Count me in.

So that's my schedule, and I'm about half an hour from finding out if it'll be official. Pray for me.

Confessions of an overworked sportswriter

Why must I insist on opening every single blog post with an explanation of why I don't write more blog posts? It's stupid and repetitive and boring. I really need to stop doing it.

Ehh, never mind. I can't think of anything better to start off with... maybe I'll just settle for being boring.

My excuse this time is that I have a ton of writing these days with actual deadlines attached to it, and that takes precedence for obvious reasons. It's been a rough month. Since the beginning of February, I've had to write four articles for my journalism class (another one's due Monday), three for the Observer (another one's due Monday), and six for the Daily (my next three are due Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday). It's been hellish, but it's been interesting. Some highlights include:

-An Observer piece on February 6. We decided to do a pro/con spread on Kobe Bryant -- I begged to do the con. It wasn't my best work, and in fact it was probably far from it. But I didn't know just how bad it was until... well, about four seconds after it went online. Some random guy at Berkeley read my article, and instantly posted a reader comment tearing it to shreds, saying that Kobe carries the Lakers, and he deserves to be respected for it. Now, his points made sense to me, and I was impressed with his argument, but I have to ask... how the hell did he find this random article in the Tufts Observer, of all places?

I started out with three guesses. First, he could have a Google alert set to send him articles about Kobe. Second, he could be a regular reader because he has a friend on the Observer. Or third, I could have a stalker situation on my hands.

As for the first idea, I think I can rule it out. Google gives you 7.14 million results for a "Kobe Bryant" search. Even if you search only news articles, you get almost ten thousand matches. There's no reason he'd read a random newsmagazine like the Observer. Then, about the second guess... I looked him up on Facebook. Not only do the two of us have no mutual friends, but he doesn't even know anyone at Tufts. So, it appears that I've arrived at the third option. He's chosen me, at random, to be the victim of a lifetime of stalking. That's kinda sketchy. Mr. Roland Peer, if you're reading this, which I assume you are because any good stalker would be, I just want to say: you're creeping me out.

-A Daily article on February 10. I got to meet Tony Masssarotti, one of the best sportswriters in the Boston area, and a Tufts alum (class of 1989). It was a really short article -- it was pretty much just a blurb we added to fill a bit of space on the back page -- but that didn't matter to me. He gave a great speech about the past, present and future of the Red Sox, and I got to talk to him afterward. Plus he signed my copy of his book, which is pretty cool.

-My Daily coverage of the NESCAC (that's the New England Small College Athletic Conference for those of you not in the know) basketball tournament. It's not exactly the ACC tourney, but it's a lot of fun, in different ways.

The article that I wrote was an overall wrap-up of the conference Final Four. That was kind of a royal pain, because it meant I had to cram the two biggest games of the year into one 750-word piece. But it turned out okay.

All three games took place in Amherst, which is a couple hours away. I didn't get to go to the Saturday games, in which Tufts beat Trinity and Amherst beat Bates, but thanks to the services of JumboCast and a few postgame phone calls to players and coaches after the game, I was caught up in a hurry. Then, the next morning, the stage was set for a rematch with the hated Amherst Lord Jeffs, in a battle for the NESCAC title. I was lucky enough to catch a ride there with the JumboCast crew, so I saw the final game live. After getting up at seven, hopping in the car at eight, and spending an hour or so helping the TV crew set up, I was in my seat in time for a noon tip-off.

Now, if you've never been to a D3 basketball game before, it's an experience that I'd definitely recommend. There's really nothing like it. How so, you ask? Let me put it this way. I met our starting center's mother. She spent 15 minutes or so before the game handing out homemade oatmeal cookies to everyone on the Tufts side of the bleachers, introducing herself to everyone in sight, and even offering to show them her good luck charm (a small stuffed elephant -- "it's actually Danny's," she explains in a thick, but charming, Boston accent). I met our point guard's little brother too; he was the kid sitting in front of me complaining about every single call the officials made throughout the game. And then there was our small forward's mom. She approached me after the game to say she read an article I had written weeks earlier, and she loved the picture we had taken of her son. She wanted me to order her prints of it.

Wow. Only in Division III.

Anyway, we lost the game, but it was still an incredible experience. We even ended up eating dinner after the game at the same Wendy's as the Tufts team. (A couple of them applauded when they saw us walk in the door... that was touching.)

As I write these words, Tufts is just now celebrating a win in the first round of the NCAA tournament (yes, D3 has one), and they're on the road against SUNY-Cortland at 8pm Saturday, fighting for a spot in the Sweet Sixteen. In all likelihood, that would put us right back in Amherst next weekend. I can see it now: three games against Amherst this year, with one loss knocking us out out of the regular-season title race, one ousting us from the NESCAC, and one sending us home in the NCAAs. Sorry to be pessimistic, but I can just feel it coming.

Okay... enough about all this writing stuff. Moving on...

Oscar night is this weekend! I'm becoming a big movie buff these days, so I'm finding myself a lot more psyched about the Oscars this year than in years past.

Now after the baseball and football playoffs I've seen in the past few months, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson about making predictions on this blog. I swear, I used to be good at predicting things. Somehow, having a blog jinxed everything, and now that my every word is put in writing, I come out looking like an idiot. Oh well. I haven't learned my lesson yet (especially because I was 6 for 6 on the major ones last year... I have way too much ego to give up on making my picks now). Here goes:

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz

Those four seem to be pretty standard among a lot of movie critics, and there's not a whole lot of debate. Supporting actor may be a tricky one, since Matt Dillon was amazing in Crash, plus George Clooney and Jake Gyllenhaal have gotten great reviews. (William Hurt doesn't have much going for him besides his exceptional Tufts education... he's probably running in a distant fifth.) But the Academy's probably going for Giamatti, especially since he deserves an apology for last year -- he should have won Best Actor for Sideways, and he somehow wasn't even nominated.

The two tricky ones are Best Picture and Best Director. As you may have noticed, the five directors are the same five directors who made the five films. The interesting question is whether the voters put all their eggs in one basket, or split their votes between two movies. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they take the latter route. How does this look?

Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain
Best Director: Paul Haggis

Brokeback and Crash are probably the top two movies on the ballots. Capote is up there too, but since Hoffman's likely to win Best Actor, the other two movies are probably going to be represented elsewhere in the Big Six. Brokeback is probably still the favorite to win the big one, although rumor has it Crash is gaining. I'm gonna say that Haggis, who's getting a lot of respect these days after winning an Oscar last year for Million Dollar Baby, gets the consolation prize.

In other news...

-I always knew Boston was a baseball town, but this is incredible. Since this is my first February in Boston since... what, 1989?... I had never learned before of the miracle that is Truck Day. Multiple friends of mine who are fellow Red Sox fans stopped me on the street on my way to class on February 13 to wish me a "Happy Truck Day." I was amazed. I mean, I've always considered myself somewhat of a hardcore fan, but that is something else. I'm supposed to celebrate the departure of a truck full of baseball equipment? Wow.

-My classes are beginning to get hard. My astronomy teacher is mindless and incompetent, so she spends hours on end teaching us to convert meters to lightyears (among other tasks that everyone in the class can accomplish in their sleep), but then she has her TAs write impossibly hard tests. I fear that I bombed the first one. Econ has a similar problem. Our professor can't add, and he constantly mixes up basic terms like "producer" and "consumer," but for some reason his tests are impossible. As for Western Political Thought, we haven't had any graded assignments yet, and that makes it really hard to know where I stand. I could be grasping the material just fine, or I could be completely and utterly lost. I hate being confused like this.

The only class that I'm really happy with is my journalism class. It's a great environment -- I'm surrounded by great writers, and we can all bounce ideas off of each other. I've been pretty happy with all the stuff I've written so far, and I've learned a lot in the process. It's possible that when the time comes to pick a major, I'll end up going with English. (I'd like to double-major in econ too, but let's first make sure I can pass the pre-req course.)

-The university-wide housing lottery is this coming week. We pick our rooms in order by a randomly-selected lottery number, and it turns out that the computer at the ResLife office loves me. Rising sophomores are given numbers between 1500 and 3000, and I got 2995. This meant that I toyed with the idea of applying for a nice apartment with a few friends, but in the end I don't think that's going to work out. After all, housing options for sophomores are only so plentiful. At the moment, I'm torn between taking a single room in one of the downhill apartment buildings, or living up the hill on the academic quad in either a quad suite or a double with one roommate. Thanks to that good old random number generator, seemingly everyone and their brother wants to room with me.

That's all I have the strength to write about for now. After the housing situation is cleared up, the statuettes are awarded, and perhaps a bit of spring baseball gets played, I'll have plenty more to sound off about. Until then... sayonara.

One semester down, seven to go...

Okay, I have once again fallen into that horrible state of laziness-induced blog aversion, and that is not good. Really, I'm sorry. My excuse is that writing has pretty much taken over my life already, and this blog seems to be the easiest outlet of mine to neglect. In 19 days back at school, by my count I've written four newspaper articles, two magazine articles, and two English essays. I don't feel like doing the math exactly, but I'm guessing it's about 500 words a day.

However, I feel obligated to inform the world at large about every last minute detail of my life, and there's no better way to do that than blogging. So without further ado...

I finally have my classes figured out for this semester. It was quite a struggle, but in the end everything worked out for the best. My little adventure began on the last day before classes, Wednesday the 18th. I bought four books for my music history class, The History of Punk Rock, and was really excited about how interesting they looked. Two hours later, I realized that my econ recitation section was scheduled for the exact same time. Seeing as how there's a chance I might end up majoring in economics, it was kinda obvious how that conflict had to be resolved. Drop number one.

The first day of classes is Thursday the 19th, and my day begins at 1:30 in Judicial Politics. The professor seems really dry, he seems to know more about lawyer jokes than law itself, and the entire class is one big PowerPoint show. Being the PowerPointophobe that I am, I begin to have my doubts about the class. I have a more important polisci course already on my schedule (Intro to Comparative Politics), so I figure that this class is pretty expendable. Drop number two.

Later that day, I have some free time in between classes, and I spend it browsing the Tufts website. I realize that Intro to Comparative Politics, my 6:00 class that evening, isn't really required for polisci majors, since you only need to take two of the four core classes to get a degree. So I go, with the mindset of "this class better be really good, because I don't really feel like taking it." And... the class wasn't that good, so I didn't feel like taking it. Again, I found the professor really dull -- she was the kind of person who would talk for ten minutes to give you the knowledge that most teachers could convey in thirty seconds. Drop number three.

That weekend, I see that a bunch of my friends are reading Descartes, Hobbes and Smith, and they're all raving about how cool their new Western Political Thought class is. I decide to give it a try, and I show up to a class on Tuesday the 24th. I immediately hand the professor an add form after class, and just like that, my four courses are set. And by "just like that," I of course mean "after a week of trying to find my advisor who wouldn't answer my emails and has never given me her phone number, and eventually bumping into her in a hallway and getting her to sign my form approximately 22 hours before the deadline to add classes." Anyway...

Western Political Thought is awesome. The professor may be clincically insane, but I love him for it. He is extremely loud and vulgar, but at the same time he really knows his stuff. Every lecture consists of him starting out with two huge chalkboards covered in notes, and over the course of the class circling, crossing out, and drawing various lines and squiggles across everything he's written. After a 75-minute class, his room looks like a three-year-old's been drawing on the walls, and yet somehow the guy has managed to make the words of an ancient philosopher make sense to an audience of 200 once-confused college students. It's hard to put the weirdness of this man into words without the aid of at least a camera. But trust me, he's crazy.

Principles of Economics started out interesting, but now I'm not so sure. The very first lecture of the semester began with the professor, an short, old Pakistani man with a slight lisp, simply walking up to the board and writing the word "happiness." He then spent the next hour drawing a diagram, branching out from the word happiness, that connected all of the economic terms that we would learn over the course of the semester into one giant web. His point was that mankind's search for happiness in life was all the product of a giant, complex series of economic processes. It seemed deep and philosophical and interesting, but then he spent the next class drawing a bunch of boring charts and graphs and making us take notes. Oh well... at least he was interesting for a day.

I don't regret taking the class -- I'm learning some really important concepts here -- but at the same time I wish he could have kept the interestingness factor as high as it was on that first day.

Astronomy is borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. I'm hoping it will start to get interesting later on, and I think my hopes are reasonable since the textbook is full of fascinating material, but for some reason our professor avoids the good stuff and only teaches us the mind-numbingly easy things that we already know. We spent 45 minutes learning exponents (ten squared is a hundred... really, I swear, it is... I've studied this stuff in college!) and then 45 more learning SI units for measurement. I wanted to fall asleep, but I couldn't, because there wasn't enough leg room where I was sitting in the auditorium so I wasn't comfortable. So I just sat there, slowly beginning to hate life.

Intermediate Journalism is going to be a great class. The professor is a former correspondent with the Globe, so he has some good experience, and he is going to give us in-depth instruction on all different kinds of newspaper and magazine writing, working on everything from news to features to op-ed pieces to columns. Starting next week, he's going to start each student on his/her own beat, meaning we'll all get a topic to focus on all semester. I'm thinking of covering the Massachusetts governor's race for the next few months, seeing as how the election's in November and there's a close race going on right now for the Democratic nomination.

Anyway, I spent the week before last working out all my scheduling issues, but this past week has been, for a few reasons, a lot more fun.

I spent Monday night going to a guest lecture entitled "Religion vs. Morality," by a guy I'd never heard of, named Andrew Bernstein. I was supposed to write about an on-campus event for my first journalism project, and I saw a poster for this talk that looked interesting, so I thought I'd write about it. I was expecting some sort of atheist activist who railed against the Christian right, and I thought it would be interesting. Instead, I ended up listening to a guy first talk about how religion was inherently flawed, but then somehow go on to explain that he had voted for Bush twice, and had no regrets. But then, he continued, and he revealed that he actually hated Bush too, just slightly less than he did Kerry or Gore. The man was half atheist, half neoconservative propagandist, and 100% insane. Among his claims:

-Buddhism wasn't a real religion
-Bush let Hurricane Katrina turn the U.S. into "a welfare state"
-The war in Iraq isn't a war -- if it had been, it would be over by now
-If he were elected president, he'd have been nuking Iran first thing in the morning on September 12th
-The Democratic Party could be more aptly described as the "Party of Treason"

I could go on, but it makes me sick.

Tuesday night was less aggravating and a lot more fun... I was in the front row at the Avalon for a Less Than Jake concert. I managed to get find my way to the front of the crowd, and was on the rail at the foot of the stage when LTJ came on. All of their songs, even the ones that seem kind of annoying on a CD, are amazingly fun to hear live. Almost a week later, I still have "The Science of Selling Yourself Short" stuck in my head. And at the end of the show, the bassist (Roger Manganelli, my new hero) threw his setlist and his pick into the crowd. I caught the former and my roommate grabbed the latter, and we now proudly have both on display in our room.

Wednesday night there was a guest lecture on campus from two Red Sox beat reporters, Chris Snow of the Globe and Sean McAdam of the Providence Journal. I didn't get to write the Daily article about the talk because technically I was one of the people organizing it (I say "technically" because I didn't really do much of anything), but if you want you can read the article anyway. Most of the stuff they talked about wasn't that interesting to me, because I've already read pretty much all their articles, but it was fun when they got a question about the behind-the-scenes aspects of their jobs. (For example, neither of them is that fond of Keith Foulke -- he's an obnoxious, spiteful guy who, in his own words, "doesn't like baseball all that much.")

So that's about all the interesting events of my life that I feel like sharing, so I suppose I'll go on to talking about issues in the world at large. Namely...

-Can someone explain to me what on earth John Kerry was thinking when he tried to block the Alito vote? He must have known the move didn't have a chance in hell of working, and as if voters didn't already think he was too liberal, he's only making that problem worse. It makes no sense to me.

-I'm really psyched about Crash getting six Oscar nominations. I was worried for a while that it was going to get shafted, but it ended up in the running for several big awards, including best picture. I wouldn't be surprised to see the movie coming up empty on five of the six, but if Paul Haggis doesn't win for best original screenplay, I will lose all faith in humanity.

-I'm just about ready to give up on making football predictions. I admit it... I suck. Gun to my head, if I have to pick a winner in the Super Bowl tomorrow night, I say Seahawks by three. But I'm always wrong. I hope the Steelers win -- it would be great for Bettis' legacy -- but I don't think it'll happen.

Last but not least, a bunch of different people have been sending me random articles about things, so I thought I'd share a few opinions on some things I've read online recently. Like these...

-This is one of the coolest things I've ever read. When the Rolling Stones want you to get traded, you just know it's destined to happen.

-This, however, is quite possibly the worst article in the history of journalism. Ninety percent of this article's readers probably had no idea how big the blogging fad had become among teenagers; in my opinion, this means that the authors' purpose should be to inform readers about this new trend in a balanced manner. Instead, you get a series of horror stories followed by a couple sentences' worth of lip service to the opposing viewpoint. Honestly, this is like writing about the airplane, opening with a detailed account of 9/11, and then mentioning the Wright brothers once in the conclusion. It's sad.

-This is a really well-written and well-reasoned discussion of our nation's next president. I'd highly recommend reading it -- my only complaint is that it's the same thing I was saying a year ago. But let's face it, this Eleanor Clift character isn't quite me... she's just a lowly Newsweek columnist.

-This is worth a chuckle, if nothing else. It's horribly written and only three paragraphs long, but I enjoyed the story.

-Okay, this isn't an article, but it is a link to the greatest product ever created.

-This isn't an article either, but it's downright hilarious. The only downside to seeing it is that it makes you wish the movie actually existed so you could see the whole thing. It would be a masterpiece, no doubt.

I'm sure there are more random tidbits of thought that I should be sharing with you right now, but alas, I can't think of them. And since it's extremely late and I need sleep, I think I'll end here. Tomorrow's a long day of studying econ, astronomy, and Adam Smith, followed by an evening of watching my football predictions not come true. (And then writing about it for the Observer.)

Life is just peachy.

Patriotic pontification

I'm looking back on a crazy weekend of playoff football games, and I just can't help but kick myself.

Of course I was wrong about the Giants having a glimmer of hope in the NFC playoffs! That should have been painfully obvious to me, even before the opening kickoff of Week 1. Yes, the Giants were among the best teams in all of football throughout 2005. And yes, Eli Manning melted down completely as soon as he caught a whiff of postseason play, and the team's offense proceeded to fall apart at the seams. But no, this was not at all unexpected... or at least, it shouldn't have been.

I could just explain my point by simply stating "well... he's a Manning," but no, I think it would be nobler of me to go a bit further than that. Eli is part of much more than a Manning family tradition of never accomplishing anything in January. He's part of a growing trend in playoff football. It's the simple fact that an inexperienced quarterback just can't cut it in a big game.

Look at the four losing teams from this past weekend. They were led by Eli (a measly 113 yards, no touchdowns, and three interceptions), Byron Leftwich (a relatively impressive 179 yards, no TDs, and one pick), Chris Simms (198 yards, two INTs, and yes, you guessed it, no touchdowns), and Carson Palmer (who threw just one pass before tearing his ACL). None of the four were above the age of 26, and none of them had a lick of postseason experience. And now, all four will be watching Super Bowl XL from the comfort of their own homes.

This is a growing trend, yes, but it's by no means a brand new one. Just look at Drew Brees last year, or one of several guys in the 2004 playoffs (do the names Marc Bulger, Matt Hasselbeck, or Quincy Carter ring a bell?). We can go even further back than that if you'd like. It took Peyton Manning six years to win his first playoff game (he's still just 3-5 in postseason play, but like I said, he's a Manning). Even legends like Marino and Elway couldn't win in the playoffs on their first tries.

The point I'm trying to make here is twofold. First, I'm saying that even exceptional quarterbacks (as Eli, Simms, and Leftwich all have the potential to be, and Palmer already is) are only human. It takes time for them to develop the temperament needed to win the big games. No one should have expected the Bucs, Jags, Bengals, or... sigh... Giants to go deep in this year's playoffs, but at the same time, no one should count them out a couple of years down the road.

And second, I'm saying...

Tom Brady is not "only human." Tom Brady is the exception to the rule. If there is anyone in all of pro sports who should be considered superhuman, it's him. Not only did he win his first playoff game, but he won his next nine to boot. He's the only quarterback in NFL history to win his first ten playoff games, and he shows no signs of slowing. Quite simply, the game has never seen anyone this good at performing under pressure. It probably hasn't seen anyone even close.

Yes, I'm sticking with the Pats as the favorites to win another title. I'd have to be crazy not to.

My life -- a month in review

Hmm... I think I've realized something.

Whenever I make a pledge to update the blog every two weeks, that pledge usually lasts... oh, about... two weeks.

So perhaps I should give up. Not on writing here altogether, but on expecting myself to maintain any kind of regular schedule. It just doesn't work for me... sometimes I feel like writing, and sometimes I don't. It's not something I can plan for. So, from now on, I pledge... to write whenever I feel like it. Mmmkay?

To make it up to all the complaining masses who haven't gotten to read anything here in the past 3+ weeks, I've decided to go all out for a special New Year's Eve edition. What follows is pretty much a description of everything that's happened to me in the past month. Enjoy.

I suppose our journey begins at the beginning of reading period, where I start my mad scramble to complete a massive amount of time-consuming, procrastinated-upon work.

Wednesday, December 7. I attend my last real classes of my first semester at college. A 4:00 lecture in poli-sci makes for good last-minute review on final paper material, and a 5:15 English class is good for unwinding, as I have pretty much nothing left to do but hand in the paper I had just finished the night before.

Thursday, December 8. Two more classes, neither of which counts as a "real class" if you ask me. One is a psych test, and the other is my baseball analysis class, which consisted of nothing but sitting through nine presentations (I had done mine the week before). No note-taking required for either, so it was a joyous day.

Friday, December 9. Speaking of joyousness. Friday marked the end of the semester for most people in the Tufts student body. By most, I mean those that have classes on Friday. Those poor suckers. For me, however, the only work I had left to do was finishing my basketball article for the Daily. Which, by the way, is really cool. The men's basketball team was the lead sports story on the last day of the semester, which means that anyone who looks at the Daily sports page over the following month and a half sees my article first. I feel special. Or lucky... whatever.

So anyway, long story short, the semester ends. Happiness spreads and good times ensue.

Saturday, December 10. I suddenly realize that with my flight home booked for the following Thursday, I have five days to write somewhere in the range of 25-30 pages, as well as study for a psych final. Plus I'd like to have a bit of time to say goodbye to people around the dorm, and my plan was to be done with everything by Wednesday so I could take the T into the city and crash at my grandparents' house the night before my flight. I had work to do.

So I start out by attacking my final poli-sci paper. And of course, all I manage to accomplish on Saturday is... well, understanding the question. For your reading pleasure, here it is...

"In Emile, Rousseau argues that 'the essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious, iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls. Distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great length in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them. A philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors.' Do you agree or disagree with this view, and why? In addition to Rousseau, your response should include references to Gellner and at least two other sources from the syllabus."

Parts of the question made sense to me, and others didn't, at first. I spent about an hour leafing through a dictionary making sure I understood every last word of the Rousseau quote, and then another hour reading other bits and pieces of Emile, trying to understand the context of that quote. Then, a third hour was spent walking across Somerville to pick up takeout Thai food for dinner, carrying Rousseau's Political Writings and Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism with me, one in each coat pocket, and reading as I walked. I went back to the dorm and started planning, and by about midnight, I had a rough outline of a ten-page paper, including what sources I would cite for each point in my argument. I wrote an introduction (we're talking about a page and a half of writing here... one-paragraph intros are for wusses), and then went to bed.

Sunday, December 11. About four more pages on Rousseau, and an intro to my baseball paper, followed by two loads of laundry, and the rereading of two psych chapters. Other highlights of that day included watching certain fanatical Redskins fans on my floor breaking down in tears while watching both New York and Dallas pull off thrilling victories, within minutes of each other. In addition, there was a midnight Risk showdown that turned out to be one of the most exciting five-hour periods of my life. (I don't care how pathetic that sounded -- Risk, as a six-player game, being played by six people who all know what they're doing, is an incredible amount of fun. The Australians always win, by the way.)

Monday, December 12. Sunday was as close to a day off as I got, what with the occasional football-watching (or should I call them football-watching-watching?) breaks, and the Risk game. Monday was nonstop writing, as I knocked out the rest of the Rousseau paper and the next eight pages of the baseball project.

Tuesday, December 13. All of a sudden, on Tuesday morning, it set in -- oh my god, I have a psych exam tomorrow. All writing was put on hold, and I reviewed my psych book (oh, how I hate it) for much longer than I care to remember.

Wednesday, December 14. I had stayed up way too late the night before, so I ended up sleeping until 11:53 Wednesday morning. Somehow, I found my way to psych a minute early, and was in my seat, brain crammed and #2 pencils in hand at 11:59, ready to take my final.

It started off with 40 insanely difficult questions, and followed those up with 20 insanely easy ones, leaving me very confused as to how the test went. In any event, I was out of there by 12:45, I had practically inhaled a turkey sandwich by 1, and I set out toward my next goal: finishing my baseball project in the next four hours.

Just barely, I succeeded, but not without having to deal with a printer malfunction and a buggy email inbox along the way. I sent in the baseball paper, and printed out the nationalism paper and walked it up to the political science building around 5:15. I went back to my room and took a minute to reflect: I had written 2,654 words on Rousseau's theory of nationalism and 4,204 about managers' use of relief pitchers. All in all, it's almost seven thousand words, in about three and a half days. (That doesn't include my final paper for English, my Daily article, or the abstract for the baseball paper... those were done a few days earlier.)

My point is, I kinda have an excuse for not writing anything in this blog until now. I was absolutely positively undeniably SICK of writing. I am only now beginning to overcome this sickness. Please bear with me.

Thursday, December 15. I was supposed to fly from Logan to Dulles at noon. The weather in DC was lousy, so I didn't. Instead, I went back to Tufts to say goodbye to people (or rather, to reiterate the goodbyes I had already said the day before), and spent some time in Boston doing Christmas shopping.

Friday, December 16. I actually did fly from Logan to Dulles at noon. I was overjoyed to be home, until I actually got there. At six o' clock, I walked in the door to realize that the power was out. Unable to take a shower, do my laundry, recharge my dead iPod, or... well, see where I was going, I wasn't too happy. But the night got better from there, as much-anticipated reunions were enjoyed, Thai food was consumed, and High Fidelity was watched (for, I believe, my fourth time in the past month, but it's an amazingly good movie). Good times.

Saturday, December 17. The power comes back on, and there is much rejoicing. I spend a lot of the day browsing through everything that was Tivoed in the four months I was gone, and then spent the night playing poker, which brought with it reunions with countless friends. I was expecting at least a moderately sentimental mood that night, but there was about five minutes of kindness followed by five hours of everyone being jerks to each other again. I don't think any of us have really changed all that much.

After watching both the Giants and Patriots cruise to victory in Week 15, I made a bold prediction for this year's football playoffs. It looked crazy to a lot of people, and I wouldn't be surprised if it missed by a mile, but on the off-chance that it turns out to be dead-on, I want the world to know that they heard it here first. It's gonna be a New York/New England Super Bowl in 2006. More on that later.

Sunday, December 18. I don't remember doing anything all that important. I'm sure I'm just having a brain lapse and there was something amazing happening that day, but for some reason, it's just not coming to me. So... moving on...

Monday, December 19. At last! Back to CHS. Monday was the panel discussion with the juniors about college -- or, as certain (born-again vegetarian) Texans liked to say, "William and Mary: The Panel." It wasn't quite as much fun as I expected it to be, especially because it gets fairly boring by the third time around, but it was still an interesting experience. There were a lot of us on the panel (at its peak, I think it was eleven or twelve students) and the periods were 45 minutes long. So we really only got to brush the surface, meaning we got to talk about all the same things that we discuss with every single person who ever asks us about how we're doing at college. At least that's how I felt.

Other highlights of the day included my first trip to Bodo's in FAR too long, a visit with the good old KTR staff, and disruptions of class directed at Cochran, Deane, Irani, Kishore, and Wainwright. So many teachers to annoy, and so little time, but such is life. (I didn't have time to drop by Hickerson's room, but I made it up to him by tailgating him for part of the drive home that afternoon.) There was also a science bowl practice that afternoon, which I visited, which helped to reaffirm my belief that I will never be anywhere near as smart as certain brainy little high school juniors.

Tuesday, December 20. Speaking of reaffirming beliefs about my own stupidity, Tuesday was my day to drop in on the pop quiz team. That was fun for a lot of reasons, but it didn't do much for my ego. I was hoping college would help me... gee, I dunno, know stuff... but apparently forty-four grand a year is going to waste.

Wednesday, December 21. My last night in town before heading back to Beantown, so of course, I spent it playing poker. I followed up the previous week's $85 score with a $30 loss... apparently humility was the theme to my week.

Thursday, December 22. The plan was to leave for Boston at 5AM, so I did what any rational-thinking human being would have done in my position, having returned home at midnight. I stayed up 'til five. I continued my reading of Steven Levitt's Freakonomics that I had put on hold weeks earlier, and I played a few seasons of my new favorite computer game, Baseball Mogul. (After three straight World Series titles with the 2005-07 Red Sox, I got kinda bored and went back to reading.)

I slept through most of the ride, so there's not much else to report about Thursday. Moving on...

Friday, December 23. Christmas shopping in Boston, which turned out to make for a fairly depressing afternoon. I took the T over to Fenway to do some shopping at the souvenir store, and what I found right in front of the entrance was appalling. It's like a train wreck -- you don't want to stare, but you can't look away. It was a clearance sale -- three racks full of $5 Sox jerseys. On about ninety percent of the jerseys, the name on the back read, of course, "Damon." There was the occasional "Renteria" or "Mueller" thrown in for variety, but it wasn't enough. My Christmas Eve Eve was ruined.

Saturday and Sunday, Christmas and its Eve (but not in that order). As usual, three of the best meals of my year are crammed into one glorious two-day period. On top of that, it was some good quality time with the family, and presents are always nice too. Despite the fact that Boston got rain instead of a white Christmas, and even though Kevin Millwood spent his holiday rejecting the Red Sox' contract offer, it was an awesome weekend.

I wasn't expecting any incredibly big presents this year, seeing as how I was pretty much set for life after getting my computer and my iPod last year. I was perfectly happy to be showered with literature and clothing this Christmas. I now have eight Sox shirts (only seven that I can wear though, since I haven't touched my Nomar jersey ever since he signed it), and enough books to last me until I'm out of college.

Anyway, this point in this post marks where my browser crashed in the middle of typing this entry. After screaming at my computer for a few minutes, I collected my thoughts and suddenly realized that this past week hasn't been that interesting anyway, so I probably shouldn't bother retyping the day-by-day report on my week.

I'll spare you that boredom, but here are a few highlights...

-I've been checking just about every five minutes to see if my semester grades are available (as of this writing, they aren't)
-I read Nolan Dalla's One of a Kind, a very good biography of Stu Ungar; I'd recommend it to the card players among my readers (and even for those who aren't, it's still interesting stuff)
-After a year of trial and error, I finally have the perfect amount of music on my iPod. Enough so that the 20GB capacity is full, and not so much that it overflows and doesn't have any room for my playlists. 5,060 songs to be exact.

While my week was fairly boring, things began looking up this past weekend. I had a blast playing pool and Apples to Apples at the Billses' on Friday, enjoyed a couple of fun gatherings with family friends Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday I had a play rehearsal at church (I get to be Satan, of course). I followed that up with another huge night at the poker table. Last night's game lasted until about three in the morning, when I happily cashed out $96. Thanks to squaring off with the notorious H.A.L. for about an hour after everyone else left, I'm starting to get the hang of heads-up Omaha. It's a lot more fun than I expected.

Anyway, I started this entry on Saturday afternoon, and it's now nearing the onset of Tuesday morning. I've learned my lesson about putting this off: the more I procrastinate, the longer I end up forcing myself to make the next entry. So, I'm considering taking back my statement from the beginning of this post. Perhaps bi-weekly blogging is a must.

I suppose I should close with my obligatory sports commentary:

-Really, seriously, I'm not kidding... I honestly believe the Patriots and Giants can win their respective conference championships. Yes, I am aware that the Pats have the worst record of all the AFC playoff teams, but I also know that for seven of their 16 games, they were not at full strength. Up until their bye in Week 7, they were missing Tedy Bruschi, and if you look at their lineup in yesterday's Dolphins game, they were barely even trying. They're a 7-2 football team when sees playing time, and they'll be at full strength this month, with a healthy Bruschi, Seymour, Dillon, and Tom Brady. Honestly, who else in the AFC stands a chance?

As for the Giants, they deserve a lot of credit for surviving, nay, winning, arguably the NFL's toughest division. I know Seattle is favored to cruise to the NFC title, but I'm not impressed by a year of beating up on the Rams, Cardinals, and Niners. I'll believe a Seahawks Super Bowl berth when I see it.

-As for baseball... we're not going to talk about the Yankees' center fielder. I'm trying not to think about him anymore, so please, no one provoke me. Likewise with the Rangers' staff ace, and to a lesser extent, the Dodgers'... whatever Nomar is to the Dodgers... first baseman, right fielder, middle reliever, batboy, what have you. Let's move on.

As for the Manny situation, I've always maintained that I'd rather keep him and wait him out than trade him, but if he must go, I'm happy that the Mets are still interested. The Tejada deal isn't going to happen -- the Orioles are asking for way too much in exchange for letting one of baseball's best hitters stay in their division -- but that's okay. I wasn't crazy about Tejada anyway. The Red Sox are overloaded with middle infielders. Tony Graffanino can play second next year, Mark Loretta can cover short, Alex Cora is a reliable backup for either one, and former Arizona State superstar Dustin Pedroia will be up from the minors before you know it.

Our outfield, however, consists of pretty much no one but Trot Nixon, and Adam Stern if we're that desperate. The Mets, while they're not expected to deal Beltran, do have both Mike Cameron and Lastings Milledge, and I'd rather trade for them than anyone else on the market today.

I may expand on these little nuggets of analysis in a later post, but right now, I'm tired of writing. That's all for now, but I'll write more over break, since I don't have much to do between now and January 17. Potential topics include...

-Further baseball talk, which I will probably avoid since no one who reads this really cares (with a couple of exceptions)
-A review of Freakonomics (a masterpiece, truly... I really should explain)
-My complaints about the psychology program at Tufts
-My thoughts on Tufts' strengths and weaknesses in general, after one semester
-Perhaps my opinions on online poker (I have a feeling there's a bit of demand for that)
-A bunch of other ideas that aren't coming to me right now, but will, I'm sure, five seconds after I hit the "Publish Post" button

That, I do believe, is all for now. It's been a good three days of writing, and I hope the end result has been a good 3,266 words.

Insomnially inspired ramblings

I know I wasn't planning on writing during the end of the semester, but it's 4 in the morning and I can't sleep. So... I thought I'd jump on the computer and randomly start complaining about the sad state of major league baseball's front offices. (If you care, please read and then scrutinize to death in the comments page. If you don't, skip to the last paragraph or so.)

Really, this entire offseason has been a total joke. It is absolutely unbelievable how much money is being wasted on overrated, overhyped players.

The world champion White Sox (I still can't believe I'm saying that) may be the standout idiots in a sea of brainless franchises this offseason. They'll be the ones throwing $43 million at Jim Thome for the next three years, praying that he forgets that he's 35, and returns to his prime (or, at the very least, stops hitting .207). They gave up possibly the best defensive player they had in Aaron Rowand, and they got a guy in return who gets paid six times more to play the DH role.

The Yankees were pretty stupid to drop $17 million on Kyle Farnsworth, but I can forgive them... for four reasons. One, they're the Yankees... what's another seventeen mil? Two, Brian Cashman's a hardworking guy. He doesn't have time to look at the man's career numbers; one season with a 2.19 ERA is good enough. Three, they were desperate... they didn't keep Flash, they missed out on Ryan and Wagner, and they needed someone to set up for Mo Rivera. And four...

It's not as though it was their idea to overpay for setup men coming off of overperforming contract years. It's the Cubs... oh, the poor, poor Cubs... who plan on paying their setup men $23 million through 2008. I have nothing against Scott Eyre and Bobby Howry. I'm sure they're both fine upstanding human beings. But neither name exactly makes me think "multimillionaire." Forgive me.

Then you have the Oakland A's. Billy Beane may be the holiest of holies in the baseball world, but I still have no clue of where he gets the idea that a $21 million contract for Esteban Loaiza fits into his "Moneyball" philosophy. Unless he's found some crazy new market inefficiency that makes it okay to break the bank on mediocre pitchers as they turn 34, the guy has just lost it.

And finally... it's the Big Three. The others were just mini-rants.

The Marlins... how can I put this... aren't even trying to have a competitive team. They claim to be rebuilding the franchise around Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera, but in the meantime, it leaves them with no chance of success in the short run. They can barely field a team of major leaguers. I believe middle reliver Ron Villone is the only player they have with more than five years of experience in major league baseball. Apparently, they just decided that since they couldn't outspend the Mets or Braves, it would be better to just give up on competing at all. As promising as guys like Gaby Hernandez and Hanley Ramirez are, firesales like this really make me mad. People talk about steroid users and compulsive gamblers when they discuss the almighty Integrity Of The Game -- what about teams ruining their leagues' competitive balance because they aren't willing to put money into building a real team?

The Blue Jays, on the other hand, are trying, but they're trying a bit too hard. I suppose it's just supply and demand -- the pitchers on the free agent market just aren't that good this year -- but really? Fifty-five million over five years for Average AJ? He has no control, a career ERA of 3.73, and a career losing record, despite the fact that the Marlins have always fielded a decent (and in 2003, championship-winning) team. He's also not that young. He'll be 29 when he throws his first pitch in 2006.

Then you have BJ Ryan.

In the words of The Hardball Times' Dave Studeman... "When was the last time a reliever signed a five-year contract? I'm not sure, but maybe ... never?"

Ryan definitely had a solid year, but any time you give a reliever (who's pushing 30, and only has two good seasons under his belt) a $47 million contract, it just smacks of desperation. And given the surplus of great relief pitching in this year's free agent class, I fail to see a reason for said desperation. And it makes me laugh when I realize that next year's $9.4 million is 30 times what Huston Street got in Oakland last year, 26 times what the Nats paid Chad Cordero, and 19 times what the Astros gave Brad Lidge. My point is that closers, as impressive as they can be, are easily replaceable. Throwing away tens of millions of dollars to pay an already semi-established one is fairly mindless.

Last but not least, you have the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Note: I tried to put a picture in this entry, but it kept coming out really huge and the text-wrapping looked kinda weird. So I gave up.)

Now, I could talk about Milton Bradley and Jeff Kent ruining the team's chemistry. I could talk about how you know your rotation sucks when Derek Lowe's your ace. But, of course, I'd rather talk about William Grady Little, the man who will have the honor of piecing together some semblance of a decent major league baseball team (I could have sworn Los Angeles used to have one).

Now, I suppose that firing Paul DePodesta was the first step toward abandoning this whole Moneyball craze. It just wasn't working for them, and they gave up on it. But honestly... does that mean that you have to go out and hire Grady? Either Lasorda's gone senile, or he's just too nice in his old age to tell Ned Colletti that he's an idiot.

It's one thing to abandon the over-reliance on statistics that the Dodgers are blaming for their recent failures. Now, in my opinion, even that is moronic, but LA went a step further. Grady Little isn't just an "old-school manager" who goes on instinct rather than following the numbers. Sure, the Dodgers would like to think that, but really, that's a bullshit euphemism for "stupid redneck who probably couldn't pass fourth-grade math." (Rumor has it that the man literally threw his front office's scouting reports in his trash can.)

I could probably write a book about Ramiro Mendoza and Byung-Hyun Kim being put into countless games in which they had no business pitching. Or about Jason Varitek hitting 25 homers and sharing the bottom of the lineup with the batting title-winning Billy Mueller. Or about Grady blowing the American League pennant by leaving Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the ALCS. But no one would want to read any of those, because they'd be so horribly biased and angry. So instead, let's leave it at this: we'll let the results do the talking. A year from now, let's see how those Dodgers are doing.

That's about all I have to say right now. I'm holding off on the story-of-my-life type entries until either this Thursday or next Thursday (or maybe sometime this weekend). I'm trying to find a good time, one when all the things I have to talk about are over and done with, so I actually have some sort of complete story to tell. Right now, my life is too much of a mess. Hopefully I can get that mess cleaned up at some point, but right now, I'm too sleepy.