how my favorite celtic fixed things wtih my parents

Recently, I had a birthday. Although it was a bit anticlimactic, part of that reason is that my parents' generous offer to help pay for a car or bike purchase arrived in what I thought was just a card of some sort. Thus, I knew what the biggest birthday present of my life was before it even arrived. Unfortunately, this gift also led to some disagreement between myself and my mother regarding what sort of automobile I might wish to drive. See, of late, I have developed an abiding interest in doing something about my longstanding interest in forming a boy band. As such, it has come to my attention that the perfect car for me to own is a 2001 Mercedes-Benz SLK with about 60k miles on it. For any of you who didn't know, Mercedes is still a very legitimate name for your daughter and actually earns you no yuppie points, as the car was named for someone's daughter in the first place. If you are disappointed by this news, just remember that in general, last names and place names will earn you plenty of points. The SLK also seems to be a perfect answer to Bill Simmons' question about which modern vehicle is invariably driven by beautiful women and guys you want to beat up. I don't beat anyone up and I want to be in a boyband, so clearly this is the car for me.

I'm sure you may already have intuited that my mother did not agree that the SLK was the car for me. What you may not have known is that even my tactful failure to disclose the actual make and model of the $18k convertible I liked did not prevent a remark about how that was definitely not the sort of money my parents were willing to help provide. This also led to the inevitable comparisons to the 442 my parents owned when they were first married. I know a couple of things about this car: it was a convertible, my mother regrets the fact that it was ever purchased, it didn't last long, and a number of my parents' best 8-track tapes were stolen out of it while they were skiing. Those facts have led me to the following conclusions: convertibles are more versatile than many might guess, considering my parents were able to successfully drive a convertible american muscle car to and from a ski slope in the 70s; a hard top convertible like the SLK is a good idea, being more difficult to burglarize; and the people in this cautionary tale (my parents) were not bankrupted or (certainly in my father's case) permanently scarred by the experience of owning the vehicle in question.

Additional analysis has shown me why purchasing the used German vehicle in question would be not only more harmless than parental warnings have suggested, but could actually be beneficial to my social life. A lifetime of careful research into the history of certain individuals who raised me has shown that, while one of them may be ashamed of the other's having talked her into the purchase of a 442 in the early years of their marriage, she somewhat fondly remembers his ownership of a GTO during their college years. In fact, only with my in-depth historical knowledge of the situation was I able to dredge up this paradox. The same woman who once went out with a campus hero known to possess a GTO, only to find he was driving his mother's station wagon that year, resented this man's purchase of a 442 once they were married. Coupled with the following information - I am not married or in a relationship - this fact leads me to an important conclusion. I should totally buy the SLK, since not only will it further my professional goals, it will make other men jealous and will only lead to positive reminiscences from the woman I (theoretically at least date for a while at some point). Unfortunately, I did not have the time nor resources to come up with these life-altering conclusions during my phone conversation, which meant that my favorite celtic would still have to save my (soy-based) bacon.

correlation not causation

mjd signs a big contract. that doesn't have to mean he'll start declining rapidly does it? i guess i definitely don't want to draft him 2 years from now, but then i haven't wanted to draft him since...his rookie year when i got him off waivers. i sat him a couple times in favor of colston, and quickly learned to get them both in the lineup weekly. yeah, i won that league.

yes, once you (re?)pay for stuff you get it wirelessly

now that several media outlets have discussed the kindle 2, i have to take a moment to jot down my initial thoughts. at first i thought 'horrible price for something that makes me look like a nerd and really is only good for reading books...which cost extra.' then i thought 'isn't this what people would have said about the ipod?' i was so wrong to doubt myself like that.

the original ipod was a monumental achievement. the kindle is a rio - a trailblazer, not a masterpiece. when i first heard about mp3 players, i thought the idea seemed cool, but i didn't feel any need to buy one. i'd used macamp already and thought mp3 technology was cool, but the rio couldn't hold any more music than my cd player. the ipod changed that, and not just the capacity angle. i wasn't dying to get my hands on a nomad either. when the mp3 category really arrived, it was clear; i wanted an ipod from the moment it was announced.

a secondary issue is simply the cost of the media. it's easy to say 'an ipod can hold all these songs but they'd cost me a ton of money at the itunes store,' but the ipod allowed you to get all your music off your cds and into your pocket. if the kindle, at its current price point, allowed you to somehow just have all the books you already owned transferred to kindle format, it becomes a far more compelling product. let's say even just the books you'd purchased in the past 20 years. or 15 years even, the point is, i've seen one person use a kindle in public and i was snickering in my head about it. an expensive product that requires further expenditure to use is basically half baked if that's the reaction it provokes in others. the kindle's distribution model is nice, but it's a media company's dream, not a consumer's. it's a fancy new toy that will encourage some people to pay up again for content they already own in the old format.

just wondering

i'm tired, i'm still wearing a tie, and i just finished some cake. i really like cake.

march mfa challenge

new game this year. in order to qualify, you must:

be a college of some type

have a team in the men's and/or women's ncaa tournament

have either:

a. accepted me to your mfa program

b. failed to reject me thus far


elimination comes when either:

1. your men's and women's teams are both eliminated (or were never in the tourney)

2. i receive notification that you rejected me

current participants:

maryland
virginia commonwealth
ohio state
tennessee
(list is preliminary, and may include erroneous entries)

any questions?

buried under the dunes

i opened the refrigerator last night and found dozens of empty eggshells. the eggshells were piled in loose pyramids, monuments to chickens i'd never met and dishes someone else had cooked. for a moment i stood there, not thinking of the energy pouring from the chilled shelves or the whirring of the machine. i just thought of my own life, unready to be cracked open and poured into a skillet.

ten millionth

since there are so many articles about arod, i'm going to pretend to write about him and go off on a total tangent instead. i've never owned him, and clearly this isn't the year to try...unless you think you can nab a great replacement late. seems like it's always harder to get awesome guys now than it is later in the year. i played in that super competitive league last year, starting right after the all-star break, and managed to pick up huff right as he heated up. thing is, no one else grabbed him. closers were the ones getting taken on rumor alone, which makes sense as saves are a rare commodity. biggest mistake i made was to assume grabbing a set number of closers (3 i think) in the draft was enough. i soon loaded up on as many part-timers as i could, but made the mistake of judging rumors too much in some cases. it's stupid that i had feliciano on my team at one point but didn't bother with jensen lewis right when he got his first save...because i certainly thought about it.

with all the excitement about drafts right now, it's easy to overlook one thing. while it's crucial that you start your season in a strong position, there's always the chance that injuries you never could have forseen will take your team down. thus, the following question. are certain players definitely more durable than others? i wonder if any of us know enough to answer this. if it's just a matter of their having had a clean record of health, then chances are randomness catches up to them and that we cannot truly count on them as rock solid healthy guys. if, however, the issue is one of willingness to play through and perform despite pain, then guys who can do this have to be considered worthy of a level of extra consideration. most likely certain players fall into each of those categories, and knowing who they are may be impossible. thus, to even the advanced fantasy player, a decisive element of luck plays into the game. this is most true in head to head leagues, where yearlong dominance will not help you should you lose key players in august or september.