Friday, April 22, 2005

Rich Harden is kicking some serious ass right now. Go A's!

About two or three years ago, my friend Jason had moved to Oakland and we began following the A's more closely. Since I live in Oakland, and am also a Green Bay Packer fan, making the leap to root for the Green and Gold in Oakland was a no brainer. There's a lot to like: Underdog, small market team with a low payroll, yet they consistently do well year in and year out thanks to Billy Beane's smart management. I'm not going to claim to be a baseball expert, so I'm not going to chime in with a lot of stats, but the sense I get is this: Trading Mulder and Hudson in this past offseason is looking better and better each inning Harden pitches. They themselves say he's got better stuff than they do. But the big plus is the help we've gotten in the bullpen. Last year at about this time, our starters were doing their job, only to have someone in the bullpen blow the game.

This year, the pitching is good all around, except Zito's had a few stinky innings that have decided the outcome of the game. Our hitting could be better. Once Chavy breaks out of his slump and someone else steps up, that will hopefully change. Swisher looks promising. I'm not so certain that we need to keep putting Kielty in there.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

I guess I should have looked sooner, but David Byrne's Journal (don't call it a blog!) is quite an engaging read. And I guess I should take heed of the "don't call it a blog" advice. I've been writing Journals since 1990 on paper, but the past year or two have seen my writings split between places like this and actual paper. Oftentimes it's the mundane, but every once in a while I hit a nerve. I'm often too lazy to compose my thoughts, certainly on a sustained basis like Mr. Byrne. But it's a little unfair. I'm caught in a debt/work trap and have to spend most of my day doing work I don't want to be doing, and I'm a little drained for the creativity part. That will change in a couple of years, once the plan my wife and I have put in place finally gets rolling.

Construction of the in-law unit has been delayed again, this time due to a problem with the foundation. So...we wait. While followers of Lyndon Larouche move in the upstairs unit in our current apartment and make noise until 3 or 4 in the morning. And we wait.

David Byrne and Talking Heads changed my life. I was living in Berlin, Wisconsin, vaguely dreaming of playing/writing music, but those dreams hadn't coalesced in terms of the direction I wanted to GO. "I Zimbra" changed that in an instant, one evening some time in 1985. It would take me a while before things clicked for me in my own attempts, ten years in fact.

The first result was a crude, haphazard four and eight track recording called "Handsome Western States," and our group name: Beulah. All that has come and gone by now, and here I sit, cubicled, waiting for the next move.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my musical journey, probably more of a comedy than anything, but there is a hearty section on Beulah that most people will probably want to read it for, and I'm trying to get the tone right. It's difficult. Writing about my earlier life in bands is easy, because mostly I can put it off as comic farce, a Spinal Tappian (to give it an academic flair) odyssey of gigs in hospital parking lots, junior high dances, and the like. I formed my first rock band in a church. Not many people can probably claim that...at least any that have gone beyond the bedroom or a few local clubs.

Anyway, more to come. I'll probably be launching my own website soon, and this page will disappear. I will then come out and identify myself in earnest, and stop writing cryptically and quasi anonymously. Then again, I'm pretty much anonymous anyway. And bored out of my fucking mind as of late.

I have an exciting trumpet session trip to Seattle this weekend, though. I'll post when I return.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Excuse the ignorance of details, but something's going on here. Why would someone flat out say that the market was "extremely overbought?"

I don't suppose politics have anything to do with it? There is no collusion in the Energy industry. The market does what the market does, right? There are no implications in knowing that the White House and both houses in Congress are GOP controlled, with oil men entrenched in all branches, correct? Demand going up 2% in the U.S. is enough to double gas prices? "Tightening supply?" Please elaborate what that means. "Increased restrictions?" Are you trying to blame this on clean air laws? Where are the numbers? I'll bet they don't add up.

It's said that psychology is the driving force behind economics. If that's so, then the U.S. Government is driving that psychology, as it relates to Energy in general and oil/gas in particular, in an upward direction. Market experts are saying one thing, but official U.S. sources are saying another. We couldn't trust Bush/Cheney with Iraq, why should we trust them on this? Excuse me if this explanation seems simplistic.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

The NYT published an article yesterday, Trading Places: Real Estate instead of Dot-Coms, that affirms what my wife and I, and also my brother and father, have been talking about for a while now. But I'll take it a step further than the measured tones of the author: this baby's gonna burst!

For about a year and a half, we were involved in a situation where we felt like the people buying the house we're renting were speculating. They kept sending messages, along with the broker who sealed the deal, that the owners were going to move in. But somehow we had gotten wind that it was a 1031, exchange of property, so we read the rules and knew the owners weren't going to sell their house in Hercules to move into Oakland. So we stayed put and then they tried all kinds of other loopholes to try and circumvent the Rent Control rules. Long story short, we stayed, fought them in the Rent board, won, of sorts. At least, their exorbitant rent increase did not go through...though the rent board met them halfway. Meanwhile, the lady upstairs moved out in November and they had not found a renter for the place until now.

The loophole they claimed in the beginning was "debt service costs." We also found out they'd had a bankruptcy. Now, I don't know about you, but buying a home in Northern California and then claiming debt service cost after a bankruptcy sounds like speculation to me. As the article states, in San Jose, the cost of a home is 25 percent more than what it would cost to rent it in a year.If I'm reading right...

So...we shall see.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Rats:

Crude Oil prices spiking suddenly, as final vote approaches for ANWR. I smell a rat. It's not as if global temperatures have spiked in China and the US in the past month. It's still winter in many places, folks. Oh, and what of Ted Stevens saying he has been clinically depressed because we're not drilling there? Pathetic.

The Roman Catholic Church putting in its two cents about Schiavo: to the effect of "no human being has the right to decide whether or not one lives or dies." Huh? Then why was she hooked up to a feeding tube in the first place? That's the logic of their statement.

Privatization of Social Security, and how it would increase the deficit and National Debt. Yet another example of the GOP long term strategy: starve the Treasury now to force the next generation's hand in rolling back the New Deal...and place the economic power into fewer and fewer hands.

The bill restricting Chapter 7 Bankruptcies. Mean what you say by restricting Corporations to do the same.

Mike Tice scalping tickets. I've been saying for years that this man is a dumbass. But maybe it should be good news for Packer fans.

Raves:

Trumer Pils. Best Pilsener I've had, and the best new beer in a good long while.

UW Milwaukee and UW Madison in the Sweet 16.

Brett Favre returns for at least another year. Good for the NFL, bad for the Vikings, Bears and Lions.

Poll taken stating that 70% of Americans disagree that Congress and the President have any business intervening in the Schiavo case.

Polls showing that the majority of Americans are against the President's plans to privatize Social Security.

Howard Dean as DNC chair. This bodes well for the Party in the future. He too has read Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant," as of now the best roadmap Dems have for the near term.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

I'm starting to think the blog phenomenon could end up being something featured on VH1's "I love the 00's." Remember 2004, when people were blogging? Maybe it's me.

How It’s Going, in three Haikus

What I miss these days is a lightness of being Things now seem heavy — jumping from crisis to crisis, duties to cross off on some checklist ...