Saturday, April 28, 2007

Sunday Morning Baseball Review w/Beat Takeshi

It's easy to categorize and know the teams of Japan as the sportscasters and George Stephanopoulii and George Wills of Japan know them. It's wicked easy:


Central League

Chunichi Dragons - Chunichi = Center + Sun = Middle Kingdom + Kingdom of the Sun = China (as pertains to Japan)

Hanshin Tigers = Han + God = Han + Crossing = Korea/China + God/Crossing = Korean affairs

Hiroshima Toyo Carp = Porch island = Japan domestic contemplative pro-change Zen

Tokyo Yakult Swallows = Big city, = Kanto Area issues (Tokyo is located on Japan's biggest piece of flat land, the Kanto Plain; in this it's like Los Angeles, which is located on a large piece of hospitable land in the harsh desert of the Southwest of the US) = one is surprised to see people on tour buses gawking at the buildings in Tokyo..

Yokohama BayStars = Interracial; watching movies in Japan or America; travel

Yomiuri Giants = Stricly for Asians.....please obtain a library card.....it is free for American citizens... = One eats for cheap in Tokyo if one is a geek and spends all day in the library, as I did while I was there...they have cafeterias and if one is actually doing the reading, one gets a big plate of cafeteria-grade curry for $2...


Pacific League

Chiba Lotte Marines = 1000 leaves = I lived in Chiba; it's next to Tokyo, it has beaches that Tokyo poeople go to maybe 2 hours from the city; = Lotte, a Korean candy megacompany = Take it easy after work = Cheryl Crow likes to film at the beach = funny

Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks = Clean Nets = Internet = Softbank = High Tech Jidai = High Tech Dynasty (in case you wanted to know what dynasty it is nowadays)

Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters = rural interests, northern interests = North Sea roads = we would like to see the south

Orix Buffaloes Osaka = Osaka and Kobe = Kansai Area = Kansai issues (as opposed to Kanto issues - see Tokyo Yakult Swallows for comparison)

Seibu Lions Tokorozawa = Western Army = Tibetan Army, which down through the ages has traditionally allied itself w/the Mongolians = Central Asian issues incl Manchuko, the future of ice hockey in northeast Asia = Russian food, Mongolian barbecue, Beijing food

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles = East + North + Raku heaven = Euro/Northeast Asian issues = The growth in technology due to having to build shelters in frigid climates = diplomacy

-------------

Sawamura Award Winners (w/NCAA English translation):

2001 - Matsuzaka was a Seibu Lion; what's the deal w/Free Tibet, should all those protesters learn Chinese?; I seem to think that Martin Luther King Jr and Chuck D have the best possible command of the English language...it's all about getting it done....dude... === "UVM vs UCLA in the first round..I'm just not sure...Everyone would like to see Vermont progress, and it's not in the cards...next...."

2003 - Igawa Kei was a Hanshin Tiger, how much fun is it to date a Korean Valley Girl? Well, you should take it seriously or it won't be very funny..."I don't feel like being all happy" is a theme I definitely remember... === "The Kansas Jayhawks have made a serious statement today, and Missouri is out of this tournament"

2002 - Koji Uehara was a Giant - "Uehara = Top Plain", "Koji = Mr Taiwan" - ...Taiwan, huh? Well, you don't have to mention it twice, my ass is at the library. === "Well, UMass is facing Princeton, it's not really a gimme,...."

Do you like the BayStars? Or is it the Giants - Maybe you want both.

Nice Day and NYPD Blue



Realistically, it's hard to dig it all too happily...Echo and the Bunnymen....Heaven Up Here...a gem of a line

Well. After losing the first draft of this due to Windows shutting down spontaneously, I rewrite.

Why do people like Daisuke Matsuzaka? Why is it so easy to get 'up' for the games? Read on..

Kei Igawa is pretty good. The Yankess now have 2/5 definite tough days in the rotations. As far as Daisuke Matsuzaka is concerned, think if Curt Schilling and Tom Glavine were pitching in Japan; there is no way one wouldn't call that rivalry an even proposition; both are so good. Same for Igawa and Matsuzaka.

Igawa is "Well + River". As Japan has so much rain and as both words are extremely simple, I am thinking that it means "A really nice day." "Kei" is "a celebration", so this name is sort of like a celebration that's good enough to top off a really nice day. Like apres ski or after a day at the beach. It's not "Matsuzaka Daisuke" or "Nomo Hideo"; it's more like "Don Ho" or "Fun Bobby". Maybe something like "Kennedy", as opposed to "Eastwood".

I have been reading about the Sawamura Award, which is the Cy Young Award of Japan. It's a good name for the award. "Sawa" is "water + train station" and "mura" is "village". So, I didn't become an investment banker, because the train didn't stop near my village or town. Instead I became a major league pitcher. The same thing applies in reverse to New England college hockey, players just get whisked off to Wall Street because it's right there, while more players in Minnesota and North Dakota go on to the NHL. Statistically it should be a similar number given the parity in the Frozen Four between the ECAC and the Big 10 et cetera. But it's not.

Daisuke is a good word, it sounds like "Dai" meaning "very" and "suki" meaning "to like" , it's pronounced of course with a near-silent "u", it sounds like the English "Ski". Do you like hamburgers? Daisuke! (I love them) ... Do you like Hawaii? Hawaii daisuke! (I love Hawaii.)

Two "u"'s (uu or u with the line over it) is a solid "u" sound, like "school"; one "u" is almost silent, like "Daisuke".

Red Sox ski? Red Sox Daiski!!

Matsuzaka is a cool name. Pine tree = Matsu and "steep grade" = zaka. I was walking once near the Emperor's Place in Tokyo, kind of a boring walk n the way to somewhere else, like walking past a state house, and the gradient of the slope leading down from the sidewalk was like 50 meters @ 80 degrees - it was unbelievably steep, like nothing I've ever seen here, like a warning not to walk around there, especially late at night on beer.

I also think of civil engineering when I read the "zaka" word, like all the grades created along the sides of the interstates covered with trees or landscaping. Pine trees are the symbol of truth, and I think "Pine trees don't care if it is steep or not" is the answer, like "If you have a grip on the facts, the social trends, the people involved, then you can pretty much be a good cop or trial lawyer along the lines of NYPD Blue, where everything is so complicated; almost every show has a case like this.

Sifowicz: So your mom's boyfriend called you a punk and stole your XBox?

Suspect: Twice. You don't understand...I'm in basketball and science fair, I can't be there watching my stuff all the time...

Sifowicz: No, I talked to your mom about her friend, she confided, he was bothering her too, talking about going to the Poconos with a bag of crack he found,...

Suspect: [cringe]

Sifowicz: Don't cry, I think I can work something out with the DA.

MATSUZAKA!


I should stop here, but there's more.

Kaz Matsui and Hideki Matsui have the "Pine tree of truth" added to "the well" (same as the "I" of Igawa); "the well" is just a tic-tac-toe, so "Matsui" is just Law and Order or maybe CSI; police work on tv like a relieve of boredom for the masses, every case, all the lines so formulaic, the confusion is predictable, the anger so identical show to show, turning it out 3 times a week. Some people prefer it to NYPD Blue. Yankees fans and Mets fans, mostly.

On Blue, David Milch, Stephen Bochco and Jack Clark (ex-Brooklyn detective) were dying every week, it was so important. It's not difficult to tell the difference.

Tea for Two

Last night's Yankee Stadium debut of Matsuzaka was abolutely surreal. I am more or less aware of trends of Asian thought, including various baseball and business comic books and anime (w/o actually having read the comic books for any length of time); it was such a big deal. "He's in Yankee Stadium!" on and on, into the night. I am surprised he didn't just leave the game halfway through the 5th inning by claiming "emotional euphoric exhilarated fatigue"; it was so grand. Mega. I am surprised he wasn't overcome, it was such a good experience for his fans back home. It was windowopening.

Just like there are English words we use for hitters and pitchers and teams, there are now Asian words that start to figure. For instance, Mr Rodriguez, the Yankee record-setter, is, plain and simple, into the --- "ti", that is.



提出

提高

提供

提倡


More on this later as I get smarter. For instance, if one takes the top half of the word, one gets:



Notice how looks like Pat from "It's Pat" on Saturday Night Live.

Words have meaning, especially if the opposing player doesn't even know they are in play. A Rod is high on life.

Asian words can be quite hypnotizing. In order to effectively trail off into another subject, one normally writes some (science) fiction about what one is looking at:

- I think he's proposing that we use the sun's light to get our work done during the day.

- As communism is to Earth, so sunspots are to the Sun.

- I think he wants to present his batting statistics to Starship Federation.

- I think he's squeezing lemon juice out of the sun.

Tell me when to stop. Don't you have some work to do?

Tell me who is who!

J.D. Drew, outfielder of the Boston Red Sox, signed in 2007; or J.D. Jones, first mayor of Gaborone, Botswana, elected in 1966? Image from Wikipedia:Gaborone.

Chicagoland General Area


I am thinking that the "Chicago Sound" in music is a new step for me. It isn't comedy, but if you're high on life, "Naked Raygun" is to "Britney Spears" as "Saturday Night Live" is to "Desperate Housewives".

And if you've had too much of funk reggae and you're thinking that you're outcast from "Outkast", "The Eternals" have a similar Alka Seltzer effect. Especially if one's team is facing Donovan McNabb in 2007. Fred Armisen drummed with some of the Eternals before moving on to Blue Man Group and comedy; his judge character from whats-her-name's will hearing reminds me of an internet story about an Ohio judge from a few years ago; more Alka Seltzer for the people.

There's always a multitude of bands from San Francisco, a plethora of bands from LA, a juggernaut label in Seattle or Washington DC, a load of music from Boston, a vast wasteland in London and New York. Good Chicago bands are hard to come by; one must live up to the standards of "The Blues".

"Big Black" from Chicago is an example; in the late 1980s, one was faced with unlimited amounts of hard core, and Big Black just provided a capstone for those who were vulnerable to drowning in the sound, it went so far beyond the hardoore norm, and became an industry standard in doing so.

One can always tell if one has something special, if the music is very hard and very melodic; it indicates that some people in the band had dads or moms who owned some Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, viz Gang Green, J Church, Fugazi, The Jam.

Sports fans know that Chicago is the Hub of the Midwest. Why worry about the White Sox in the AL and the Bears in the NFC? Why not add the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, the Detroit Lions w/their new quarterback, the Vikes, the Pack, the Colts, The Ohio State; hell, limn the midwest from Denver to Buffalo to Edmonton to Corpus Christi and you've got the solar plexus of the American sound right there in Chicago.

One Alka Seltzer band seemingly not from Chicago is Trans Am. I think these guys' parents also had a lot of Rush albums lying around the house.

On "Heavy International's "Stage a Coup", The Eternals make an antithetical political statement, singing in a soothing lullaby: "Stage a...I want to stage a coup....stage a...and bring it back to you." Such difficult subject matter!

38 Pitches

Well, my Wikipedia deletion challenge had a satisfying conclusion. Turned out the guy running the deletion was riding someone else's deletion and he (the new guy) was ok. I'm glad he took it over, it was easy to get a lot out, a lot of Wikidiscussion, and the articles in question are more or less semiprotected now.

____________

Curt Schilling's blog, 38 Pitches, http://38pitches.com is pretty good writing. I thought I would write a list of 38 red fluids that could have substituted for his blood, vis a vis the Cooperstown One Million Dollar ALS Charity Challenge.

Maybe Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Tom Brady, Alice Cooper, Ernie Els and a bunch more could play some golf for the cause.

Hemoglobin (pictured) works something like a squeezebox, from what I read, alternately either accepting or releasing some oxygen molecules, that bind to iron molecules somewhere inside that square ring molecule format. When the blood stain, in this case, breaks down, the hemoglobin decays and one is left w/ some iron molecules that combine w/oxygen in the air, forming a characteristic dark brown rust stain or bloodstain.

List:

Ketchup
Spaghetti Sauce
Pizza Sauce
Tomato Juice
V-8
Hot sauce
Dutch Boy Paint
Cutex Nail Polish
Lipstick
Red food coloring
Red Wine
Someone else's blood
Red ochre
Melted red popsicle
BBQ sauce
Cinnabar
Killian's Irish Red
Melted red plastic
Pomegranate juice
Hawaiian Punch
Blood orange juice
Red grapefruit juice
Plum juice
Plum wine
Strawberry juice
Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine
Cranberry juice
Cranapple
Crangrape
Cranorange
Cranberry Cocktail
Red seaweed extract
Red clam sauce
Clamato
Manhattan clam chowder
Tomato soup
Red Dye No. 2
Iron oxide

Actually, technically, more or less, it sort of is iron oxide, at least quantumphotodynamically so; it depends on the quasiparticle array involved in the reflected light. Click Wikipedia: Hemoglobin#Degradation of hemoglobin in vertebrate animals Go ahead and check out "quasiparticle", too; I think its either the plasmitrons or the plasmons. Or something. Why are red things red? Go figure.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

If you can't write, write a Wikipedia article...

Keep all lists of topics by country - Why discriminate between countries? At certain stages in one's study, these lists are invaluable. Perhaps User:_______ has simply not had the opportunity to use these lists to do his or her studies, as I and many others have. They are really useful, and if one tries to use categories to peruse a group of topics, one must constantly shift between pages of categories; it is a very unwieldy process. As far as the "much more comprehensive list(s) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Watchlist" is concerned, it is so comprehensive as to be incomprehensible. And, in looking over the list in fine print at the top of the page, it seems that the countries are predominantly non-European......It makes no sense at all to delete these lists, I am sure if they are left in place they will grow....Why do deletion people always attack the things that other people use to get their work done? They must be the same people who go through other people's desks during the lunch hour or after everyone has left work. It is quite illogical; I am tempted to say "Keep your hands to yourself." --McTrixie/Mr Accountable 23:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Anacin, Excedrin, Bayer, et cetera


As part of its continually evolving function of protecting itself, Wikipedia has altered the legal environment surrounding the use of logos, meaning that my 500 (African, Russian, Caribbean, Mideast) corporate logos may be temporarily deleted from the Wikipedia. I just don't have the time or inclination to join their legal team, to which it would be tantamount, to get involved. When the dust settles I suppose there would be a way to replace the logos on the articles; they make learning fun. At least the information itself is still firmly in place.


The Wikipedia is a strange animal. At the top, there are sanguine visionaries. 2 to the 15th! is the motto, referring to the number of years before the black holes start to evaporate - this Wiki will be here throughout our human future.

And at the bottom....well, at the bottom end of the feeding scale, the Wikipedia is nothing more than a chewtoy for pseudo-academics. Anyone can edit, and anyone does. The heart of the Wikipedia, of course, is the thousands of articles relating to anime and manga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anime_and_manga_characters Category:Anime and manga characters. For some reason it is easy to write about anime and it is difficult to write about companies in the Sudan.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Radio Free Europe

4:07 AM Sunday >> Monday

I dozed so solidly during most of Boston's historic 4-homers-in-a-row victory over New York, I was up at 2:39 and really had nothing at all to do. Nothing at all to do, except work. There is always a lot of mixed reggae on Sunday night-Monday morning in southern New England.



At any rate, I went ahead and completed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Ceramic_Industries and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Phosphate_Mines. Jordan Ceramic is a good company, and Jordan Phosphate Mines is a prime example of the post-Americanized world; in this case, the company seems to have an overseas base in West Los Angeles, maybe UCLA.

5:03 AM



I have continued. Looking for "The Jordan Worsted Mills" on the internet, I found a company report authored by the Ahli bank first. So I wrote the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Ahli_Bank. This is a great bank, I wish I could write a really long article. It has a lot more of the "Unified Arab Los Angeles Aesthetic" (UALAA) or "Unified Middle Eastern Los Angeles Aesthetic" (UMELAA); note the color of the logo, a color one sees everywhere in Los Angeles and presumably Amman; it is the color of landscaping. Note the cool, solid design and easy attitude of the logos. The Koreans contributed the bead seat to LA car culture; two Iranian men contributed the cardboard sun protector. Writing Ahli Bank and Jordan Phospate Mines has put me in the mind of waking up at 4 on Monday morning to buy coffee and the paper and go to work to talk on the phone back to the home office.

12:43
What a freakin' relief. My 75 downloads from eMusic arrived today, like Christmas once a month, I quickly pulled down stuff I had been thinking about getting, Varukers, a 4th Naked Raygun, Nomeansno, found some Afro Punk, bought the Lyres. And then, conscientiously reading through the written material (punk is very homework-intensive) I decided to look at the DC scene and found a Rush to the AC DC of Fugazi. Another headache I hadn't realized that I was suffering from. That city's culture is kind of important, so finding this "Trans Am" was a great move.

Also wrote "Salam International Trading and Transportation", it needs a little work.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Annuaires Afrique


This is the greatest company. If one can't find something online in Africa - it happens - it's probably in this online phonebook.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Televised Baseball

I don't receive NESN, but I'm hoping the Red Sox get 3 or 4 more Japanese players to blanket Matsuzaka and to give the organization some more flavor. Ajinomoto flavor. I hope I'm anticipating the organization here. The boss could get some players who really want to play in the United States and get them some spots in Pawtucket if there's no room. There's probably not a lot of room. One-year contracts are simple, aren't they? Heck, who's the next Johjima? Could be playing at McCoy all summer. It seems easy to me, to deal with potential homesickness and all. I don't see the risk.

Strength of baseball character based on the desire to play in the US. Great. Have fun. Play ball. Ya gotta find the one who really wants it, this I know.

I had the chance to teach English in Tokyo and I took it. It turned out good for me. It's a two-way street, and a stint in NE might turn out to be just as important for some young Japanese player(s). 4 or 5 players in Boston and AAA - it's not distorting the demographics, not reading the ESPN Asia pages, not w/one year contracts. This thing is just going to get bigger, and a club needs all the practice it can get as early as they can get it, in knowing the management of it. Bill Gates' team in Seattle is really hitting the cut on this, and New York is so full of money, Mets and Yanks just attracts management talent.

Plus there is the small matter of $51 mm or $93 mm or whatever it is, seven years I think it is.

Let's bundle up! Local motion, you know.

...And maybe Toyota will build a factory in Lakeville or Freetown. That's what I really think. A nice low key Japanese resort place would be another place to start, nothing jarring, the culture in Nantucket is virtually the same as in Hawaii. The water in summer on the Cape and South Coast is warmer than the water in Southern California, in the summer. It's so convenient to 128/495, and to New York. Money money money, brah. Print those checks, Maui stylee.

Or maybe skiing; the Japanese Alps are very Burlington and Vail in their nature; perhaps "New Karuizawa" belongs in Vermont or New Hampshire or Maine.

Boston Beer might build in Freetown. Why can't Sapporo?

Turn off that TV and do your homework!


Or, in this case, the radio. It is 9:55 AM and there is nothing on now I want to watch; maybe there is an episode of King of the Hill at noon or something like that.

Today I have written http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Jordan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Potash, derived from reading the articles "Amman Stock Exchange" and its principal index, the "ASE Unweighted Index". I am sitting here listening of course to sports talk that is trending with the Virginia Tech events and the concomitant NBC media exposure. It gives me to reflect on the positive nature of being involved in building the economy and the knowlege base of the Mideast by creating the articles. Ignorance is very bad, and integration is very good. Today is also notable for the advent of (based on the Yanks broadcast from Providence's The Score sports radio, on the Pawsox' nights off): "An A-Bomb! From A-Rod! .... I'm an A-Hole!" That announcer is a little dumb for going on and on like that. If A hits "112 Home Runs" this year, as he is "currently mathematically projected to do", just how much will he, the announcer, contribute to Japan's already acerbic, overpowering economic attitude? What does he care?, which I think is the point of the criticism of his tagline here.



It is very interesting how Arab Potash is woven into the narrative of the article "Dead Sea". Articles with anything to do with Israel and Palestine and the conflict are treated very very carefully by the people who take care of the articles. Everytime I use the word "Palestine" in an article, as in "Cairo Amman Bank operates 4 branches in Palestine", a few minutes passes before "Palestine" is edited to "Palestine National Authority". It is complicated at this point how the nomenclature is structured. I would never dream of getting up into the discussion, as I do at other topics, it is so damn serious at this point in world history.

11:27 AM

Arab Potash has a good set of subsidiaries. Writing about the subsidiaries and making coffee and fixing my Kor cinema blog entry brings me to the completion of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Pharmaceutical_Manufacturing. What a nice company.

You might think that writing encyclopedia articles is easy work. It is not, and it is possible to get fatigued from maintaining the quality level. In my long experience (8800+ edits) it just doesn't pay to squeeze new articles out, no matter how likely a subject may be. There is a certain magic that one associates with going to the library or reading books, as a child or young person (or adult), and it is so worth it to pay attention to find details that really make an article a good experience, over and above the rather stringent finished-article standards that exist at the Wiki. I mean, it is true that anyone can write any article - that's how I got started - but one wants to have some institutional staying power, so that one's interests are realized. In this case, those interests include providing a wide range of material on subjects that are not covered yet, Mideast, African, Indian, Russian companies. Companies of all sorts, actually.

Well, I haven't turned the tv on yet, but I am learning a lot about JD Drew. Someone who I immediately noticed, during the Bosox' series w/Seattle, is Johjima the catcher. I have invested a lot of time in reading Asian reading material, and it has given me a certain ability, a sense, to know what is going on here, and I think he might turn out to be a bargain. At the end of Week 3 (out of 27) he is an batting average leader as a catcher, we'll have to see.

12:05
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_New_Cable: Jordan New Cable is a very nice company indeed, one would need to go to the company's site itself to really see it. Alas, I grow fatigued, and must rest. It is really the best thing to learn about technology and write as one goes. I am reminded of SNL's Chris Farley short movie, in which he and another SNL person install a big piece of equipment, talking about the technical details all the way. That's the stuff.


Saturday 10:01 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_Exchange_of_South_Africa are two missing pieces in the Wikipedia Finance and Wikipedia Africa divisions that were simple to accomplish. There is a lot of information at "JSE" that someone else wrote that covers the nuts and bolts of it, I suppose.


1:09 AM Saturday-Sunday
Sort of watching/not watching Saturday Night Live, I was able to complete http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rum_Aladdin&redirect=no w/o much trouble. Rum Aladdin is a metal shop and appliance assembly company. Another great Amman company. Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers were kind of funny on SNL, as usual; I watched Bjork's song, I used to be hypnotized by her work and now it just seems to be part of the Minnesota Twins/Minnesota Vikings sports organization, hq'd at KFAN in Minneapolis. That is a pretty good station, kind of modern and entertaining like WEEI in New England, better than network television at any rate. Do you want to hear Christopher Cross and the Doobie Brothers improvisatorially sung in the Bob Dylan voice in order to show Bob's extensive influence in 70s pop songwriting, influence that is masked by the normal sounding voices of the stars of that era? One is constantly reminded (by the on-air personalities) of the huge problem Minnesota has w/Wisconsin, and with the Green Bay Packers in particular. KFAN has the most serious coverage of college hockey, WEEI has a lot on its plate in the winter, with the Patriots, but still, one is amazed at how eastern schools (like BC and Maine) finish up in the Frozen Four every year, KFAN seems to offer so much support to North Dakota and the Great Lakes area schools. Go Pats, go Vikes.



Internet Radio is a boon, one can learn a lot about the Midwest, Singapore, Jamaica, et cetera.

In re: "Family Law", a subject which in and of itself deserves some prime time, the Bjork/Scarlet Johanssen SNL did not seem to be spinning the Baldwin events; it seemed to be building on the events. Before people accuse me of heresy and cleverness, I would advise them to take a film class in which one watches 5 1930s Hollywood movies per week; I wouldn't say it is boring, but I would say that one is given ample time to figure out just what these people are doing and where their money is going. In this case, I would say that there is a family law crisis going on in this country, and a controversial telephone call is serving to simply stir the pot.

Bjork performed w/ the Kongotronics band, I got the cd from eMusic a while ago, it is pretty good. They appear on her new album. Icelandic Party People Attitude (IPPA) is something one wants to get a lot of when one is young, I think. By the time one is 44, one has an ample sufficiency.


7:45 AM Sunday
As I searched for a spot to build a list for the Muscat Securities Market's MSM-30 stock index, I found an unposted article I had completed; I finished posting the article and made a few adjustments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Stock_Exchange is a good simple article that needs expansion in its History and Operations sections, and a Stock Index section and/or a link to a separate article describing its stock index or indices. It is not exactly what Wi would call a "stub", as it could probably only be successfully expanded by someone who actually knew about the subject; but it will definitely bear some expansion in the future.

8:49 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscat_Securities_Market now has a list for its stock index.

It's such a beautiful Sunday morning; watching This Week, the David Letterman Top Ten seemed so condemnatory, I didn't feel like being in that kind of mood so I just ignored it and moved on to Tim Russert on NBC. Once, on The Daily Show, in all faux seriousness, Jon Stewart once referred to Mr Russert as "Hot Buttered Russert" complete with a cool graphic. I prefer that species of comedy to the Top Ten method of humor, life isn't very difficult for the subject of the joke if the joke doesn't completely make sense. This Week's team then closed w/a hymn, Amazing Grace, very appropriate. What I really think is that this is no time for the Democrats to continue their storied self destruction; the presidency of Barack Obama is on the line now. Of course the Repas will use this crucial historical development to induce the Demos to rein in their abusive attitude. There is time enough for whaling on squares if and when Obama is re-elected in November 2012. Sorry to be so mildly critical, Mr Letterman, but "antithetical" is right there in my dictionary, between "antithesis" and "antitoxin". As in: "His criticism had an antithetical effect." If Mr Letterman had chosen to create a Top Ten list entitled: Top Ten Mildly Anaesthetic Misaphorisms and Mispronunciations by President George W Bush, "The Great Miscommunicator", which hignlighed the president's natural talent of popularity in soft-peddling impossible issues like "nucular war", then Bush would owe Letterman for helping to maximimize our national presidential profit margin while creating an easy look for his exit from office. Maybe it's too complicated.

Take the instance of the Grateful Dead song "Women are Smarter than Men". This song, which allows men to watch sports, go hunting and act as men, due to its mildly anaesthetizing effects on females, should illustrate the "Power of Mild, Sincere, Positive Antitheticality" (PMSPA). Isn't Mr Letterman familiar with the work of the Grateful Dead? Have we already lost the lessons learned in the 1960s? I would expect better from someone who is paid to sit around all day and think of what to say on TV.

Feh. This is one boring topic, I don't want to get involved, I seem to be trending away from "Global Paycheck Enablization" (GPE) to "American Insomniac Pop Culture" (AIPC). And "Acronyms R Us" (ARU).

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

White Noise, the movie

White Noise by Don DeLillo is one of my favorite books. It's pretty good, an interesting story. Maybe it would make a great movie. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Jack, an East coast bohemian-type college professor at a small liberal arts university with 3 marriages, is interviewed by a doctor at the disaster relief center:

Doctor: So, have you ever smoked?
Jack: No.
Doctor: And have you ever had alcoholic beverages?
Jack: No.
[the doctor passes on to the next person]

It is just so amazing what is going on in modern medicine. Thematically, it follows Seinfeld's approach to the medical profession in some ways. Of course, this White Noise movie would be experimental in nature, and the fans of the book who would be involved probably don't have the kind of money it takes to deal with a 2-hour film production. I am sure that the big studios don't necessarily want to have some artistes fooling around with their time and reputation like some crazy person trying to fix a car - remember that episode of Seinfeld, with George's neighbor?

This project will always be a Greenwich Village cinema grail. New York Times Book Review dynamite. A macadamia for the academia.

And what would the title allude to? A pillar of salt? Artificial heroin? The sound of the rain? Titanium dioxide? Safe to say that its a puzzle.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

24 - It's a magic number



In light of recent events at Virginia Tech, it is time to take a look at what guns are doing in our society. To wit:

I can't turn on heavy metal radio or sports radio w/o hearing about 24. Maybe Jack Bauer looks like:

Point Blank - Lee Marvin
The Long Goodbye - Elliott Gould
Body Heat - William Hurt
The Beguiled - Clint Eastwood
Chester Himes novels - Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones

Monday, April 16, 2007

I thought of it first....probably not...

...and even if I did, I would hope that it would be a fait accompli; I haven't been to the city in a while; I really wouldn't know.

I have over 200 corporate logos on my Inspiron, mostly from Africa, the Mideast and Russia, from the articles I have written. Nothing makes an article readable like a nice logo. What's to stop an amateur silkscreen artist in the city from making up a lot of batches of T-Shirts? Huh?

Here's more material to boot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems_of_Africa. One is amazed at just how much work has been done on the alphabet in Africa. True but unknown, I guess.

Link
Link
EABL
JSE
USE
Zambeef
NSE
TASE
Ale Yarok
AA
Link
МГТС
Link
Link