A Thought For The Weekend.

Over the course of the last year or so I have really started to take my bike riding a bit more serious. I don't have any plans to race or anything of that ilk, but I am spending a good amount of time on top of a bicycle lately. It has gotten to the point that I don't like riding my road bike when I am out with friends, because I think it's over kill. I mean lets not kid ourselves, Memphis is a very flat town. You don't really have to have a ton of gears to get around.

These thoughts and various other motivations* are leading me down a path to get a second bike. Now I am certain the new bike will be a single speed. there is no doubt about that at all. However the only question left is whether or not it will be a fixed gear. I have friends on both sides of this, but everyday I lean more and more towards a single speed. I don't really see the point in fix gears. I mean there cool, but I don't really see them as all that practical. If I was to get into doing tricks and such mayhaps, but I don't really see that happening either.

Is there something I am missing as to why fix gear bikes are so cool? Is it because you can run them without traditional brakes thus creating a much cleaner looking headset? If so I get that, but I just don't think it's worth it. I dunno maybe I am over thinking this whole thing.


*Frankly I just love pretty bikes. What Can I say.

One Question

All I really want to know is one thing. Who called whom?

Inspiration

What inspires us is such an odd little thing. I can never completely figure out my own motivations let alone my friends. For me it tends to be the smallest things. The biggest events of my life rarely tend to inspire much in way of thought or action on my part. I tend to expeirnce them as if they are happening to someone else. It is usually some incredibly small and banial detail that I notice that causes me to really want to do something.

All of this is a long way of saying that the band Damezumari are just fucking brilliant and doing the exact kind of music that I think we need more of. The music is honest, self aware, rocking, pretty, slow, complex, simple, and oh so many more adjectives and adverbs that I don't have at the tips of my fingers.

The only thing that I know for sure is that, I must step up my playing.

Taxes and the like

I have been wondering about something lately. It seems more and more people who I know are for the tax on soda. Usually they say something rather mean about the people who drink it and how they are just fat and lazy and should be taxed. Here's the thing though, almost everyone one of these people were outraged when the state of TN increased the so called "Sin Tax" a few years ago. Exactly why is it ok for us to tax people more heavily for drinking soda then it is for us to get taxed because we like to abuse our livers? My gut says it's because we object to the term "Sin Tax". However I think we should simply object to all takes on unprepared food and drink. The government should not tell me what I should and should not eat, and the food police simply need to calm down. Here's an idea, let's see the government float the idea that we should add a tax on sushi because of the negative environmental effects all the fishing boats are having on the environment. Oh right...that's fucking dumb that's right.

An Open Letter to Cycling.TV and Roku

Dear Roku and Cycling.tv if I have been monitoring your product for the last few months, and I have come to the conclusion that what your offering is exactly what people have been wanting forever. In short you have the ability to offer ala carte TV viewing. This is brilliant. Why clutter your house with tons of movies, most of which you will only watch once or twice, when you can simply stream them on demand from the internet. This is truly brilliant. You then went a step further and offered your services to MLB. I have been an MLB.tv subscriber for the past 4 years. I love the product and I think it gets better ever year. My only complaint has been that I am stuck watching the game on my computer instead of my TV. You came along and fixed that problem.

Now here is what I think you need to do next. You need to go after Cycling.tv. and possible hockey (I leave the hockey to someone else). See bicycle racing is a wildly popular sport, but has terrible coverage here in a America. If you want to see anything other then the Tour De France or perhaps a thirty minute recap of a race you have to get Cycling.tv. Now Cycling.tv is a great product, but it suffers the same problem as MLB.tv. Unless I am willing to get a TV tuner card, or do some other such gyrations, I am forced to watch on my computer.

The merger of your two products makes far to much since. The cycling community is generally speaking a somewhat affluent group of individuals with disposable income. This is your exact demographic.

You could even partner with Cycling.tv to create interactive content that goes with the races. People could have their training regime become part of the race watching experience. There are endless possibilities here.

thanks for your time

Pyrrhic Victorys

One of my all time passions is the classics. Not classical literature mind you, but the study of the two great classical civilizations (Rome and Greece). My all time favorite story/historical account from this time is Thucydides. The way my boy Alcibiades comes off in the story is just straight up pimp. If you ever see me out sometime I can recount the story.

However, we are not here to talk about my favorite story or even my second, or really even my third. No we are here to talk about the war Carthaginian War. If me memory serves* we get the phrase Pyrrhic Victory from that war. I have often believed that there is no such thing as a Victory where you still lose. I tend to look at winning and losing as binary situations. They are states that can not exist at the exact same time. Now sure you can lose and still do something that feels awesome, but at the end of the day you still lost.

Well this weekend I witnessed a few things that made me wonder about this concept. My college football team lost, but they didn't lose nearly as bad as expected. Is that really a win? I don't think so, but I some how felt more ok that we didn't get blown out by fifty.

Then my pro-football team went out and pissed away another victory because we apperently forgot how to do the thing we are best at, but on the bright side our second year running back had a carrier game.

And now...we have this...one of the most beautiful shot shows I have ever seen, wins an Emmy right after it's canceled. Fuck the world is all I can say.**




*To lazy to do the research to confirm this morning

**Odds are this video will get pulled. When that happens I'll find another.

Giving Up To Soon

Often times in life I find we give up to soon on people. I am far more guilty of this then most people we know. When the phrase "Oh ye oh little faith..." is uttered, they are talking about me. I am a skeptic at best and a complete disbeliever at worst.*

For years now I have been told that Clay Buchholz would end up being a stud pitcher. I read some of the scouting reports. I listened as writers I respect crowed over his stats and his bad luck. I saw as he was clearly just trying to be to fine and strike everyone out. I watched with joy as he no hit the Baltimore Orioles.** I watched with abject horror as he walked batter after batter after batter. I gazed at the screen with sheer terror as he threw 100 pitches by seemingly the third inning. I lived the emotional roller coaster ride of this young mans carer first hand.

Now, I should I have known better. I went through the exact same thing with Jon Lester. I know in my mind that sometimes it takes young pitchers a while to get it together. I know this at the core of my very being. I also know that more often then not young pitchers simply don't work out due to a myriad of reasons.

So what does this all have to do with Clay Buchholz? Well, I had given up on him. I knew he was in the minors destroying people, but I didn't care. I didn't think we needed him after all we had John Smoltz and Brady Penny.*** I thought how the team didn't need to put their faith in this roller coaster of a pitcher. Of course it turned out I was way wrong and the old adage about you can never have to much starting pitching turned out to be true. So all I can say is that I think I was wrong about Buchholz and that his last few games are finally starting to show that pitcher that I think everyone thinks he can be. I leave you with some of his numbers from his last few starts.

September 13th vs The Tampa Bay (Devil)Rays
7.0 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 5/3 K/BB, 12/8 GB/FB, he got a ND but pitched more then well enough to win.

September 8th vs The Baltimore Oriels
7.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 5/1 K/BB, 12/7 GB/FB, Took the win.

September 8th vs The Tampa Bay (Devil)Ray (on the road)
6.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3/1 K/BB, 10/11 GB/FB, Took the win

August 29th vs Toronto
8.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 9/2 K/BB, 11/7 GB/FB, Took the win.

Now these are not exactly the numbers of a number one starter (I'd like more strike outs), but if this is your third starter, you got a real chance to be good. Let's hope he can keep it going.



*Note: This isn't about religion. I promise.

**Yes they are a real team Doug


***That sound you hear is me slamming my head into my desk. Those guys were terrible with the Red Sox and now look like GODS in the N.L.

On Cell Phones

Maybe it's because I really like the idea of many business competing for our dollars, but this warms the cockles of my heart. Whatever the reason may be, this is a good thing.

Random Thought

Is Aaron Eckhart the new Matthew Modine?

I think I Might be better then Ice Cube

See, he thought today was a good day in the looking back sorta sense. He was reflecting on the day if you will. I am better then him because I already know today WILL be a good day.

How do I know this you ask? Why it's elementary my dear. On the way in to work I heard 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins and now I am listening to the song The Rising Tide by Sunny Day Real Estate. How can I lose?

Google Reader

Odds are I should use google reader since it would save me the time of writing blog posts about things that I enjoy, but well...yeah...see pretty much every other post on similar type things.*

With that said, check out this great entry by David Millar on cycling news about the crash during stage 4 of Vuelta.

Twitter

I have gone on record several times saying how I don't really have any interest in Twitter. I can see why some people do find some value in it, but it has simply never been for me. Now I have a few reasons for this that may or may not put me in the company of old men screaming for kids to get off of their lawn*, but it's a risk I am willing to take.

1) Most of the "famous" people who tweet that I have interest in re-post all of their tweets on their websites or write columns about the more interesting ones. I don't really see a reason to go out of my way to get content through yet another medium that I am possible going to get anyways.

2) I don't want to follow my friends on Twitter because I want to have something to talk to them about when I actually see them. Now I am aware that people don't tweet every single thought they have or event they have, but I would much rather just get the info from them while drinking a cold beverage. Also I have like maybe 4 topics I am willing to talk about or even know anything about.

3) When not at work I am just not that into using a computer. I enjoy feeling slightly detached from them as if my life does not have to completely revolve around them. Not saying being plugged in and connected is bad, but it just isn't for me.

Now, there are actually was something that made me think about all of these silly thoughts. It wasn't more proof of my secret desire to be Luddite. Far from it in fact. I was listening to a podcast featuring one of my favorite writers Jonah Keri. He and the shows host Dan Levy were talking about how Twitter can impact writers and various other public personalities. I will never make any bones about that. Twitter is a great way for one to reach out to their fans and to grow their audience. However what caught my attention is something that was said and then re-iterated in the blog below the cast.

Dan said, "I follow more than 1000 people. One of them is Casey. But I’m not reading his tweets. I can’t tell you the last time something he wrote even caught my attention in the stream."

Now the Casey he mentions is this guy. Whether or not what he is doing is valid or not is a whole other conversation. What I want to bring up is the idea of subscribing to that many people on Twitter if your not even going to see most of it? I mean at some point it's all just noise right? I don't get the benefit of any of it. What's the point in following all these people if you are never actually reading anything they say? I mean I am one of the biggest suckers for brand loyalty you are ever going to meet. I pretty much only buy Steve Madden shoes. I would kill for a Cervelo bike, but at the end of the day I make an effort to seek out these things. Maybe I am strange, but I would rather spend time going through a bunch of websites about this stuff that leads me to even more info. I dunno...maybe I am just an old man yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, but can't we find a better way?


*I mean I am sure that they just put down new Bermuda grass and lord knows it's hard for that stuff to grow.

Song of the Day

Today's song comes from Native Nod, Today Puberty, Tomorrow the World.

The Math Rock

For as much as I love the harsh sounds of bands like Reversal of Man, Celeste, Isis, Mihai Edrisch, Torches to Rome, and other bands of that ilk, my true passion has always been for the more math rock oriented bands.

I feel a huge part of this has always had to do with their ability to change tempos and time signatures on dime, but all the while holding a grove and hook that can move you. So with that said, might I suggest the band What Price Wonderland? They are fast becoming one of my favorites. Their songs are catchy without being overly poppy. The songs are rocking without being over the top hardcore. The vocals are urgent without being shrill. In short they combine all the best elements of math rock.