perfidy

"Yes, You Can Surf In Cleveland", I was informed in an article from today's New York Times, forwarded by my friend Bill.

In December, as temperatures dip into the 20s, Cleveland surfers have Lake Erie almost entirely to themselves.

No shit? ([wik] technically, not an appropriate exclamation on my part - see below)

I didn't initially know how to take this article - it could have come out of the Onion, for crying out loud. The only difference, of course, is that, emanating from the NY Times, it's all true.

“Surfing Lake Erie is basically disgusting,” said Bill Weeber, known as Mongo, 44.

Almost everything in Lake Erie is basically disgusting, but it's all made palatable by the fact that today's Lake Erie is like bottled water compared to what it used to be. Also, I wonder if Mr. Weeber got his nickname from Mongo the Retard, in Blazing Saddles, but that's really a side issue.

“I was so excited I could barely sleep last night,” said Mr. Ditzenberger, 35, who quit his job as a lawyer in August to spend more time surfing and to film a documentary about Cleveland’s surf community.

Being a lawyer must really suck, if one could quit doing it in favor of filming a documentary about Cleveland surfing. Or "Cleveland's surf community", whatever the hell that is.

To reach the lake, surfers drag their boards across snowdrifts and beaches littered with used condoms and syringes, Mr. Ditzenberger said. The most popular surf spot is Edgewater State Park. It is nicknamed Sewer Pipe because, after heavy rains, a nearby water treatment plant regularly discharges untreated waste into Lake Erie.

Used condoms and syringes? That's the Cleveland beachfront I remember. Intentionally surfing through untreated sewage? Even the couple of mildly moronic Clevelanders with whom I went to college weren't that goofy. And the many more normal Clevelanders of my acquaintance would think this story's focus as silly as I do.

“Everybody surfs in California, which waters down the experience,” said Mr. Rooney, who grew up surfing in Orange County, Calif., before moving to Cleveland three years ago to work in his family’s real estate business. “Being here takes me back to that feeling of discovery that the founding fathers of surfing experienced.”

Yeah, dude, surfing in Orange County, I'd bet it was really hard to find bowling-ball sized ice chunks, condoms, syringes, poo, and pee to surf through.

The founding fathers of surfing would be so proud.

Oh, and in case you can't make yourself click on the NYT link, because you don't want to register at the site, here's the picture that accompanied the article:

To their credit, they do look like surfing ninjas. And no syringes, condoms, or bodily waste appears to have gotten stuck to them, at least not at the time the picture was taken.

[wik] Someone needs to contact the guys who do those Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" radio spots, eh?

Based on all I've heard about just how gosh-darned good the SEC is, I shouldn't have been shocked to see an article at The Brushback entitled "Buckeyes Forfeit Championship To Avoid Facing Mighty SEC"

“We’ve never seen a team like Florida before,” said Tressel. “We have not had a taste of SEC football at all. The best team we’ve played this year is Michigan, and those guys are from the Big 10, which is like the SEC Jr. Florida, on other hand, has played Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, and Georgia. Read that list again. You think we could have handled all those teams? Not likely. And I don’t even want to think what an SEC defense would do to our poor little Troy Smith. Bye bye Heisman, hello full body cast. No thanks. We’ll skip the game and live to suck another day.”

Luckily, I think that all possible weird-ass angles on the BCS, the SEC, OSU, and other pertinent TLAs have now been covered. Therefore, it's time to (at least temporarily) abjure further jock-related posts. We now return you to "Giant Robot posts, dick jokes and [other] goofiness"

"Michigan Got Screwed"

One must be careful what one wishes for.

First, USC loses to UCLA, which seemed impossible, though a friend of mine from Los Angeles tried to get me to bet him on the matter. I'm glad that I declined, in retrospect.

I never saw that coming, but such is the power of traditional rivalries.

Then Florida, which I didn't expect to win the SEC, against Arkansas or anyone else, did so. During the game, Gary Danielson tried to lay out the detailed rationale for Florida being ranked higher than Michigan in the BCS. I saw it, gave it a good deal of thought, and decided it was all bullshit. Why? Because Florida played the game sloppily and incompetently, and really should have lost it. That, plus I've gotten tired of listening to SEC apologists talking about just how gosh-darned tough that conference is. Style points, my ass.

My opinion (on Danielson's opinion, that is) hasn't changed - as much as I'd yawn at a rematch of Ohio State and Michigan in the BCS Championship game, I haven't seen anything in the past two weeks that convinces me Michigan's any worse than the second best team in all of college football. They'd kill Florida in a head-to-head matchup, I'm certain. As a result, it's no logical stretch to think the national title game is going to be a laugher, with OSU sure to be favored by at least two touchdowns.

I'm ambivalent about that, not because I like close games - I don't particularly care how close the final score ends up being. But if a hue and cry begins, on January 9, 2007, for a national playoff system to determine the best football team in NCAA Division I, I'll understand completely. And, for what it's worth, I hope Michigan makes mince-meat of USC, ending up the season rated just where they should be: a solid #2.

And, no, that's not a poo joke.

[wik] Although, honestly, it could be.

And, in typical Onion fashion, of course it is. I guess. But when I read the article available at the link below, it occurred to me that it could as just as easily have appeared in the "straight" press, and if it were, it might pass as a normal news story. You know, one of those that you read and nod your head in agreement? Odd, that.

[wik] I just noticed the "tweak" they'd obviously added as a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" to keep us from taking it seriously (other than the fact it was posted in the Onion) - the game wasn't played on a Sunday. Sneaky Onion bastards!

[alsø wik] As previously discussed, I hope USC wins out convincingly, or better yet, loses twice while Florida beats Florida State by 150 points or more, because I really don't care to see a rematch between UM & OSU in Tempe. Since OSU's going to win anyway, how about Boise St, the only other ranked, undefeated team? Yes, you're right - that's going too far. 

A classic, best game of the year, if you ask me. My Ohio State Buckeyes pulled out a three-point victory, winning 42-39.

Yawn. Everybody who gives a crap already knows that. No news there.

Here's the follow-up, guaranteed to keep the rubes all atwitter at least until the next Pick-4 Ohio Lottery drawing:

Go figure. Donald Sensing would likely be displeased.

[wik] Oh, and back to the game - How good a game was it? Michigan's still rated #2 in the AP poll, and is just barely #3 in the BCS. Just as they should be.

[alsø wik] Dang. I completely misread the grotesquely detailed, yet ultimately quite understandable ESPN rankings. Michigan IS still #2 in the BCS, as well as the AP, but the droids at Harris & USAToday have them #3. The only way to avoid a replay of OSU-Michigan, it seems, is for USC to win out against Notre Dame & UCLA. If they do, great, and if they don't, well OSU will have to beat Michigan again. Which they will.

It's not listed in the article as the biggest determinant of success, but it seems to play a large part, and it's a concise, if not particularly easy-to-follow suggestion:

Be an immigrant

The article's actual title is "Immigrants Have Founded 1 in 4 Public Venture-Backed Companies in the U.S. Since 1990", but mine's shorter, pithier, and more memorable. I guess that means that unless the Democrats are successful at undoing the pretend-planning that's been done on the southern border fence, we're going to see a dearth of new venture-backed startups. And yes, that's called "leaping to a possibly unintended conclusion".
 

Even though it was inevitable, you still never want to see an article containing a statement like this:

"Let the robot holocaust commence: robots think we taste like bacon..."

I comfort myself that the article in question was posted at a site whose provenance is best described as "marginal" (i.e. "one step above Wikipedia"), but I pass it along, just in case.

From a WSJ dispatch delivered to my inbox 5 scant minutes ago:

Big Pharma Catches a Chill

Fears that Democrats will tackle drug pricing caused shares of pharmaceutical companies to slide, even as analysts cautioned that Democratic control of the House is unlikely to bring much immediate change for the industry.

My initial thought was "Good". My next thought, really just an amplified version of the first, was "Fuck 'em". But defining "'em" isn't necessarily as easily done as you might think.

A wise reader could intuit that I don't own any pharmaceutical stocks. That wise reader would be wrong, as it turns out. I own shares in Pfizer. But my view of Pfizer or any other pharmaceutical stock is separate from my view of the the economic relationship between the citizens of the US and their drug pushers. There are good companies with bad stocks, and vice versa. I presently like Pfizer's stock, but may not continue to do so. I don't like the industry, however.

If, by some freak of useful government action in the 110th Congress, our legislative overlords were to attempt to remedy the fact that US citizens pay exorbitant prices for drugs, I'd be hugely in favor. Do I think the drug companies make too much money? Nope, not overall. Do I think they make too much money from US citizens? Yep.

Part of that is the fault of some combination of drug company marketing and a peculiarly American desire to do with drugs what others do without. But a meaningful part of the mismatch is an indirect subsidy levied on Americans to pay for rock-bottom prices granted to other countries' citizens. No, it's not done out of the goodness of the drug companies' hearts - they negotiate prices with virtually all of their customers. All, it seems, except those in the US. The fact that they don't generally have to negotiate much at all inside our borders frees them to enter into aggressively negotiated deals elsewhere without shedding too many tears.

If it takes an act of Congress to get the rest of the world to pay the market rate, then so be it. If this results in other countries' citizens paying more for their drugs, then tough shit (though I'm sure there's a drug for that!). And if that market rate, or market resistance to it, has some initial detrimental effect on the drug companies, so also be it. A large component of the differential between US health care spending (as a portion of GDP) and that of the rest of the world is comprised of us paying for their drugs.

I hope the "analysts" referred to in the Wall Street Journal article are wrong. Godspeed, Pharma-bashers. 

Well, that, plus I don't yet know what there is to say about the day's elections:

For what it's worth, all three alleged opinions are worth a chuckle.

Could be, based on an article in today's Philadelphia Daily News, entitled "STUDLY DO-WRONGS" (subtitled "Some horses are standing dud").

The question du jour seems to revolve around the mating proclivities of the winner of the 2002 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Now, since I sincerely, deeply, aggressively, and completely don't care about others' sexual proclivities, not even if the "other" in question is a supposedly well-known evangelist I've never heard of, it was initially looking difficult for me to give this story more than a passing glance.

The author enlightens about the mating habits of certain equine special interest groups, like so:

Curiously, War Emblem has been less than a star in the breeding shed. In fact, he has been a colossal dud. Shipped off to stand stud at Shadai Stallion Station in Japan, he has impregnated only a handful of the hundreds of mares who have been led to him. The problem has less to do with fertility than with libido, which is to say War Emblem has been decidedly disinterested in the fair sex. Given that homosexuality is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, some have wondered if War Emblem had an eye for the boys. That very question was asked by Outsports.com: "Is War Emblem Gay?"

Well, I don't know about you, but in the highly unlikely event I have some future question about the world of gay sports, outsports.com would now be my "go to" source. As an added plus, it's clear that they're not limited to serving the needs of the two-legged, as they clearly cover matters related to quadripeds, too. So I've learned something. In addition, I've learned that even in horses, it's apparently common to deem one sex "fairer" than the other. Noted.

Any good article has a hook, of course, and I found mine in this bit:

The bottom line is that horses are not unlike human beings when it comes to sexual behavior, which is to say that it is varied, capricious and given to an array of unforeseen obstacles. In light of the big money involved, it can be an utterly exasperating undertaking, especially if you happen to discover that instead of the second coming of Northern Dancer, the horse you have standing at stud shows up one day wearing an ascot and humming show tunes.

After seeing that line, I read the rest of the article, and even though it reached its zenith at the show tunes jab, I found it an interesting use of those couple of minutes of my life that I'll never see again. Irreverance, it seems, remains the preferred hook to get and keep my attention.

[wik] Speaking of both irreverence and gay evangelicals I've never heard of, this bit from Ace of Spades, entitled "Biggest Story Of The Century: Some Guy You Never Heard Of Is A Homo"

I don't expect to be given the choice, but if I am, I hope the list of options is at least a bit more varied than this:

• Hacked to death
• Brain aneurysm
• Old age

For the record, those are listed in increasing order of both preference and age of demise. Coincidence? You decide.

[wik] Preference? "Peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather, not screaming and hollering like all the passengers on his bus"

And this might be one of those times. Or not. Minister Buckethead's call, completely. From the "What do you think?" feature in today's Onion email, "Door Open for NJ Gay Marriage", answer #1:

Inventory Control Specialist
“This will go a long way toward expanding the variety of punch lines about New Jersey.”

To be honest, I think Buckethead had the matter preemptively covered, with his last two items in the post linked above, but I'm pointing it out, just in case.

Social networking sites have been quite popular in the last several years, few more so than MySpace.

It turns out that, as in many other ventures, it's possible to get too much of a supposedly good thing. In Thursday's WSJ, there was an article entitled "MySpace, ByeSpace", exploring a trend away from MySpace and Facebook. In it, they report that a lady with several tons of "friends" on the site decided they might not be true friends:

After Ms. Thompson created a MySpace page two years ago, she found herself sifting through dozens of requests daily from would-be acquaintances seeking to link to her page. By early this year, she'd amassed 4,000 such "friends," most of them strangers. Many flooded her page with remarks like "omg" -- shorthand for "oh my god" -- "you're so beautiful." By June, Ms. Thompson, who resides in New London, Conn., was sick of the comments and posted a farewell ode before deleting her page...

No shock, really - sites that facilitate the social equivalent of pretend popularity whoring may provide entertainment, but they're surely not building social networks worthy of the name.

Social networking "spam", both from people trying to build their imaginary networks and from advertisers has become a real problem, we're told. And I don't doubt it for an instant. I was about to abandon the article as "dog bites man" news, until I came across the portion of the story dealing with James Kalyn, "a 30-year-old technical writer in Regina, Saskatchewan".

He kept receiving friend requests from half-naked female strangers through his MySpace page. Clicking on a request usually led to a profile that turned out to be an ad for a pornography site. At first, Mr. Kalyn was excited that "these hot girls allegedly wanted to be my friend." But after looking at a few profiles, he realized: "
If it's a picture of someone fairly attractive, they're probably not my friend in real life."

He's officially disqualified from being my friend in real life, solely for admitting to having thought random, half-naked women wanted "to be his friend". However, based on the sole criterion I could glean from his quote, I'm otherwise qualified to be one of his friends in real life. Which is a bit of a shame, both for me and for all his actual friends in real life.

What quest, I see you asking yourself?

The one designed to make sure that nobody ever takes a Libertarian candidate seriously, thanks for asking. In an article entitled "Loretta Nall campaigning on her cleavage", we're informed that:

Loretta Nall, the Libertarian Party’s write-in candidate for governor of Alabama, is campaigning on her cleavage and hoping that voters will eventually focus on her platform.

“It started out as a joke, but it blew up into something huge,” said Nall, a 32-year-old with dyed blond hair.

Sorry, dear - hate to burst your bubble, but it's still a joke.

I'm sympathetic to many of the ideas espoused by Libertarian candidates, insofar as I can separate the seemingly copious stupidity of some of the party's adherents from the ideas themselves. No fascist, I tend to think that people should be allowed to do many of the things that the laws of the various states presently prohibit. Many of those laws have only passing basis in maintaining an orderly society, and the Libertarians broadly support getting rid of such regulations.

However...

Here (from the linked article) are the things Nall stands for:

• Withdrawal of the Alabama National Guard from Iraq
• Tax credits for sending children to private school and home schooling
• Opting out of the No Child Left Behind Act
• Legalizing marijuana
• Not complying with the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act.

Well, all that, plus tits.

And of the items on her list, I only see one that's actually within the purview of a state governor, from Alabama or anywhere else in the US, to control.

So, loosely viewed, she's either pissing up a rope, or she thinks everyone's stupid enough to fall for her moronic platform. To my complete lack of surprise, I find that:

The Libertarian Party could not collect the 40,000 voter signatures needed to get her name on the ballot, and she has not reached the $25,000 threshold in contributions that would require her to file a campaign finance report.

She puts her cleavage behind her deeply held beliefs, however:

Early in her campaign, she talked about how her misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession in 2002 led her to start the U.S. Marijuana Party.

So there's that - she's a woman of her (misdemeanor) convictions. And she's an entertainer, it seems:

Then she entertained readers of her campaign Web site with lots of information about her personal life, including a discussion of why she doesn’t wear panties.

All due respect to the Libertarian Party, but next time somebody tells me, incorrectly, that my vote, two weeks hence, for Kinky Friedman as governor of Texas is wasted, I'll point them toward the story of Loretta Nall, and they'll know what a truly wasted vote would look like.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Phil Sheridan had this to say about Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, after he threw three interceptions in yesterday's loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers:

"You know it's a bad day when you vomit on national television, and it isn't your worst toss of the afternoon."

Maybe not second best, but probably in the top ten, just for fluid continuation of a theme, from the same article:

Eagles fans would hurl if they knew their team had been wounded, maybe mortally, by a 5-foot-9 guy who looks more like an extra from Lord of the Rings than a professional football player.

Who knew? In an opinion piece from today's WSJ, Kimberley Strassel writes:

In the Ohio governor's race, Ken Blackwell is trailing his Democratic competitor, Ted Strickland, by double digits. Save a last-minute miracle, Mr. Blackwell will lose the governor's mansion, and so end 16 years of GOP dominance.

In the Florida governor's race, Charlie Crist is leading his Democratic competitor, Jim Davis, by double digits. Save a last-minute misstep, Mr. Crist is set to give the state GOP a third term in the governor's mansion, overseeing a strong Republican legislative majority.

Their respective failure and success is not ideological: Messrs. Blackwell and Crist are both running on the same agenda of tax cuts, fiscal responsibility and broad government reform. This, instead, is a story of the state parties behind them. In Florida, Republicans have spent the past eight years keeping their promises to voters; in Ohio the GOP forgot what "promise" meant somewhere in the '90s. The tale of these two GOPs offers broader lessons for congressional Republicans, who are facing a rout this fall.

As my fellow Minister Ross pointed out just yesterday, it's important to hold politicians to their promises (after, of course, you've convinced yourself they're not morally lower than whale shit, and then voted for them). He spoke in terms of how the left side of the blogosphere should "declare its independence from the political order", and while I think he was being far too specific to one portion of this medium, it was, after all, his post, and thus his opinion. But his overall point was quite valid, even before I filtered it through my own worldview.

I am not intimate with Florida politics, though a proto-communist friend of mine claims that the state's a mess, with crumbling infrastructure and enough other woes that I'm curious why, oh why, he relocated to Tampa, having commuted to the area for quite some time (ironically, from Ohio) before deciding to move house. But if, as Ms. Strassel says, the Republicans are cruising to a victory there, I guess that some large proportion, a majority even, of the state's voters think things are fine.

And on the other side of the ledger, we have Ohio. I'm somewhat more current on my knowledge of that state's, uh, state. Ken Blackwell, aside from periodic flashes of near-zealotry that have no place in politics, has long seemed like a guy I could support if I were still an Ohio resident. Says Ms. Strassel:

"There hasn't been a bigger critic of the Taft administration than Ken Blackwell," says Ken Blackwell . . . again and again. Voters can't find it in themselves to make the distinction.

All true - Mr. Blackwell has been, rightly and deservedly, a complete pain in Bob Taft's ass. (And mine, now that I think about it, referring to himself in the third person. Who does he think he is, Bob Dole?) I can, however, understand the desire of the state's residents to "throw the bums out", as the stench of corruption, devil-may-care tax policy, and flat incompetence has gotten bad enough that I can almost smell it from South Texas.

More than once over the past several years, I've been reminded that Ohio was a good place to be from, and if a majority of the residents think the same, well I can't say as I blame them. I don't remember Ted Strickland as a scary guy at all, and he could hardly do worse for the state than the execrable Mr. Taft, who, along with the lachrymose George Voinovich, presided over tax increases of more than 70% since I left the state last century.

And there's the problem, as I think I intimated in a comment to Minister Ross' post - it sucks to have to wait so long to flush the toilet. And that goes quadruple at the Federal level, where our elected spastics can do some damage worthy of the moniker.

Some day, if this entire "Internet" thing ever takes off, there might be a way to coherently, and in an adult manner, express an opinion between elections that someone will listen to.

At least that's my hope.

At least not in the "classic" sense, as if there even were such a thing as a "classic" blogging ethos. It's just a test of the Onion's "blog this" function, on a story I found funny, and I wanted to see if its cut-and-paste had as much of a diarrhea-like effect on the blog as those fucking Quizilla snippets do.

[wik] Nope, it doesn't. 

[alsø wik] But yet it also does, two decades and several migrations through various CMS platforms later. I believe I'll just leave this as it is. [-buckethead, writing on 22 Oct 2025]

From today's "What's News" column teaser-page (on-line; item didn't appear in today's Texas print edition):

The U.S. scrambled fighters over several cities after a small plane hit a 50-story residential building in New York, but it proved to be an accident. Two on board died, one of them Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, who is a pilot.

Ahem. "...who was a pilot." Or "...a former pilot, now taking a nap of indeterminate length."

[wik] Alternate possibility: "...a former pilot, who has now assumed ambient temperature."

[alsø wik] No, I have no idea why I'm in such a disrespectful mood today, but thanks for asking.

Well, the feces is hitting the fan-blades with even more alacrity at Gallaudet, the Harvard for the Deaf. Relative to deaf colleges, they bring to my mind Michael's view of "Jimmy", in The Ringer (sixth quote down).

According to today's Washington Post, "Student Rebellion Boils Over At Gallaudet". "Campus Shut Down; Arrests Threatened", &c.

They don't like the University's latest pick for president, the woman who's been provost for the past six years:

As faculty pressure tightened on incoming president Jane K. Fernandes to resign before she takes office in January, she repeated her refusal to do so. Students angrily confronted longtime President I. King Jordan, alumni flocked to the campus and a counter-protest movement grew during a day of upheaval.

This has been going on since May, and has periodically flared up in the news cycle.

Now, the football team, apparently irked that classes have been disrupted, has blockaded the gates to the campus. Complaints about Ms. Fernandes appear to circle around the fact that graduation rates have hovered around 40% during her tenure.

Asked for comment on that complaint, I'd hope she responded with something like "Well, graduation rates would be higher, but these students seem never to listen".

Complaints about university leadership coming from faculty impress me not-at-all, as I assume Gallaudet's faculty is statistically similar to many faculty members elsewhere, implying that they're functional morons with tunnel vision. I could be wrong on that, of course - maybe they're all geniuses, but I don't care enough to go try to disprove my hypothesis. At a minimum, I think we can agree, they're all employees of the university, and nobody offered them a vote. Rightly so, I'd add.

The protesting students, on the other hand, require no such quibble - college students tend to overblow their importance in the scheme of things. I know I did, and I'll assert that these are as well. Like the faculty, they, too, are absent from the table at the presidential selection process.

As such things go, it seems likely that the university will cave, putting expediency over principle. This will be a shame. On the bright side, it's probably been a fairly quiet protest, eh?

[wik] Update: In the Oct 13 WaPo, a story about Fernandes' meeting with the protesters:

...Fernandes said she would not step down -- even as the university's alumni association urged her to resign and declared that there is overwhelming support for her removal.

"She is not willing to come halfway," said protest leader Delia Lozana-Martinez, saying Fernandes wanted to talk to the students only about opening campus. "It disappoints and disgusts me. I don't think it was productive at all."

"She is not willing to come halfway"? Actually, her resignation would seem to be "all the way", and Ms. Lozana-Martinez is less right to be disappointed and disgusted than to be embarrassed for how inanely she thinks, speaks, or both. Turns out the protesters aren't just deaf, they appear to be dumb, too.

Razorbacks Spoil Auburn's Dreams of Perfect Season

Then-unranked Arkansas smoked then-#2 Auburn this past weekend.

As happens so often in life, the Onion provides a clue as to the reason.

If I wasn't a Big Ten follower and actually cared what happened in the SEC, this would have been comforting.