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Thursday, January 07, 2010 On The Road With Mark 'Odd Job' Jaffe: Dec 22-23, 2009  "Truck-worthy Friend Trio"It's been a few weeks coming but I've finally finished going through the photos I took on my journey before Christmas accompanying Mark Jaffe on a two-day excursion of truck driving and food delivery (documented live here).  "Mark Jaffe, Roadmaster, And His Chariot" It was a fascinating, exhausting trip, which I will share in greater detail soon, but for the time being here's a photo slideshow I've put together. You can view it below or in larger, fullscreen glory here (recommended). Alternatively, if you don't like slideshows you can view the whole group of 55 photos here. Labels: case studies, mark jaffe, photography, quicksnaps, travel, Truckbloggin posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/07/2010 02:39:00 AM 0 comments Saturday, January 02, 2010 YEZZIR: Throat Gulp Edition
Labels: case studies, curiosities, lolgore, quicksnaps posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/02/2010 03:58:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, December 15, 2009 I Was Really Hoping It Would Just Be Reset To '00000', I Guess  Labels: case studies, curiosities posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/15/2009 02:10:00 PM 0 comments Wednesday, December 09, 2009 What Happens Next?  JeffreyBeaumont: gonna pass that 10k last.fm barrier soon JeffreyBeaumont: 99348 jaychampionvinyl: holy jesus jaychampionvinyl: what awaits you jaychampionvinyl: on the other side? jaychampionvinyl: the King of Music jaychampionvinyl: will call you jaychampionvinyl: and kiss your forehead Labels: BEAUMONT, case studies, curiosities posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/09/2009 01:52:00 PM 0 comments Monday, December 07, 2009 A New Day Upon Us: Slang Editorial, Version 3.0 Friends: 2009 is nearly over and, 609 posts later$$$, I'm still here, blogging away. It's been a long time coming, but as any of you reading this via the old-fashioned website method (vs. a post-guts-only RSS feeder like Google Reader) can see, after ten months of Slang v. II, I'm pleased to present the next and newest incarnation: Slang Editorial v. 3. Thanks goes to The Royal Scourge for the design, which I think does a fantastic job distilling 2009 Slang Editorial to a bare essence. What the fuck I would do in life without friends like these, I just don't know. Since we're about to start looking forward, I thought it might be fun to take a last quick look back on what was... A Brief History of Slang Editorial Slang Beta The original Slang was a simple Blogger template at the address slangeditorial.blogspot.com, begun in May 2004 during senior year finals week by Alex Hot Doorknobs himself as a place for him and JonKK to dash off musings on rap music, the Yankees and basketball. 9 posts and four months later, and the rest of the team--Ezruh, StepfatherFactory and myself--were invited on-board and things started taking off###. I wish I had some snapshots of this era of Slang because I have absolutely no memory of what it looked like. Slang v. 1:  About 18 months and 217 posts later, in March 2006 we decided to get all fancy and buy our own domain at SlangEditorial.net. Ezruh did a nice spiffy site design--including the cute and fun 'tapes n tapes banner' above--and we launched on March 18, 2006, bringing us into the future (and further away from Blogger). This was sadly the tail end of the golden first wave of Slang Editorial, as nearly all of us began posting far more sporadically or even not at all. Ezruh continued writing a few times a month, but gone were the days of Slang as group forum. Slang output slowly trickled to a halt, and, after a brief attempt by me to start things up again in Fall '07, a unknowingly final*** post went up on December 18 and the lights more or less went out on Slang for good after a measly 97 posts.  Hyperliving:  As many of you know, I got back into the blog game at the beginning of 2008 as I decided to embark upon my Hyperliving weekly activity project at Hyperliving.blogspot.com. Learn more about that project here. Hyperliving was a great success both on the personal development/goal accomplishment and the me writing regularly fronts, but I aborted the project in July and more or less stopped writing. I tried once again to get going with Slang in October 2008, but after 12 posts I was done again by the end of November. As 2009 rolled around and I began to want to go back to writing, I decided to pick Hyperliving up again in February and try it as a monthly activity. As a ceremonial way to bring me back home to the heart of where I ultimately wanted to be, I made the first month's goal to write every day and start posting again here at SlangEditorial.net. Happily to say, I had little trouble "getting back in the swing of things", as I wrote 40 posts in February and felt good doing it@@@. But most significantly, I was finally able to achieve a goal I'd set for myself four and a half years earlier and had never quite reached--really writing nearly every day of the week, even if only in the form of short blurbs here and there. I don't know how or why it took me so long but I'm just happy I've finally gotten here. Slang v. 2:  With the new writing and the fact that Slang was now fully a J. Beaumont solo effort (plus executive ghostmastering from Jayson Greene), I decided that it would make sense to revise the site to reflect both the fact that Slang was getting a fresh start and to incorporate that this start was coming out of the development of Hyperliving. I dumped on the text "Slang Editorial V II" (which, gah, sans "." after the V led many to think I had written the Roman numeral for seven rather than "version 2") and added the Hyperliving brick wall to replace the formerly orange Slang background, and boom, I had myself something new and old at the same time. Slang v. 3: Slang v. 2 was definitely a step in the right direction, and a very necessary change, but finally this fall, after proving to myself for sure that I was in it to win it in the Slang game, I decided I was ready for a fresh start and contacted my good friend The Royal Scourge about helping me come up with something new. We chatted briefly about what I wanted and what to look for and Mike kicked some things around for a bit, but now, finally... Here we are. And feeling good for the road ahead. ------------ I have no idea how long I'll keep doing this stuff, honestly. There have now been 923 posts published on Slang Editorial, and at some point in the next few months I look forward to hitting 1000. I will always have a desire to tell stories and to create because it's who I am, but for the time being I blog because I can make the time and I have the brain power. I think I've got a while left though, and I look forward to seeing where 2010 and beyond takes me. And Alex, Jon, Steppie, Ezruh: I salute you. NOTES: $$$ - Seriously, this is my 609th published post on SlangEditorial.net in 2009! ### - Honestly, I can't really believe the first post I ever wrote was about Tim Fucking Westwood. *** - A final, TERRIBLE post. @@@ - Including, perhaps most notably, providing Mark Jaffe with the inspiration to coin them term "deprarious", which is without question my word of 2009. Labels: BEAUMONT, case studies, VICTORY posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/07/2009 01:46:00 AM 1 comments 1
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Friday, December 04, 2009 REBLOG: Symbologists I don't typically do straight reblogs but sometimes KJ just makes me lose my shit. This piece of amazingness comes from her great blog Debauched Sloth and I recommend highly that you all check it out and add to your Google Reader as soon as you are able if you haven't yet. Sent to you by Jeffrey via Google Reader: Und so weiter... JeffreyBeaumont: that's amazing KJ: She Hate Me and i decided all your children will be born with mathematical symbol tattoos ShrimpCracker: can they find photos of babies ShrimpCracker: and photoshop symbols onto them ShrimpCracker: and make a fake Jeffrey Beaumont Xmas card ShrimpCracker: hahahhaha JeffreyBeaumont: i will have to inquire about that ShrimpCracker: its amazing just thinking about it Labels: art, BEAUMONT, Beaumont Nerderati, case studies, curiosities, IMs, lolgore posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/04/2009 05:37:00 PM 1 comments 1
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Sunday, November 15, 2009 Incidental Conflationaries  Am I the only one who repeatedly accords Gore Verbinski all kinds of unnecessary accreditation because I keep confusing him with Gore Vidal? Labels: case studies, GORE, lolgore posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/15/2009 10:41:00 PM 0 comments Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Always Running  I am getting tired of running. Once again today I found myself literally running from the F train platform at Rockefeller Center to my office, as I was for the Nth time a few minutes late for a meeting I've already been warned to be on time for. If I possess one pathological behaviour not inherited from my father, it's being late. It seems that no matter what, I am always and insistently late for whatever it is I'm supposed to do next. Often it's just by a matter of minutes but the lateness is scaled proportionally based on circumstance--so that if it is only a few minutes, then those minutes were probably crucial; if not, the my tardiness will be longer to reach some longer level of crucial failure. The worst thing about being late is that most of the time it could be generally prevented if I just got my shit together. Today I am going to be late to a staff meeting at work because the L train was delayed 10 minutes, but truly had I gotten to work early this wouldn't have been an issue. I believe my problem is threefold: 1) A willful desire to add (unnecessary) riskiness and challenges to my life 2) ADHD makes it challenging to unfocus from the last thing i'm doing and move on to the next 3) Greed of wanting to continue enjoying whatever it is i'm engaged in I do want to overcome my battle with punctuality, but it's not easy overcoming 27 years of rooted behavior. Labels: BEAUMONT, case studies, deprarious posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/28/2009 12:11:00 PM 0 comments Friday, October 23, 2009 Once A Year  I have been working at this job in various capacities for four and a half years, and one of its many majorly disappointing aspects is the fact that it is located in the heart of No-Food Death To The Living Land, aka Central NYC Midtown. There is so little quality food in this neighborhood that anyone with a tongue for flavor but a small wallet must scour the nookiest nooks to find even semi-solid values (thank god for midtownlunch.com). As a result of this total shitshow on non-food possibility, I more or less subsist by eating Halal food or mediocre Global Kitchen pizza. Every once in a while though I get a craving for Chinese food and I cave in and go to a take-out place conveniently located directly across the street, Yips. Sadly, every single time it is a terrible mistake. Don't buy into the semi-positive Midtown Lunch testimony--Yips is absolutely horrible. There is nothing at all good about Yips, other than the fact that it's relatively cheap. Their food, ALL of which is astonishingly greasy, is definitely in a top 5 category of least satisfying Chinese food i've ever eaten. I have had the misfortune of going to Yips exactly six times, and each time I have finished my meal swearing to myself that I will never EVER go there again, no matter how alluring cheap Chinese food may seem. And yet, every eight or so months enough time has passed since the last time and I'll start talking myself down, slowly... until finally I'm outside and finding myself walking in. "It's not as bad as I'm remembering it," I say. "You have a tendency to exaggerate," I remind myself (which is true). But then I go in, order, and eat, and every time.... gah. Terrible. Some people never learn. Labels: case studies, curiosities, food, quicksnaps posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/23/2009 06:00:00 PM 0 comments Monday, October 19, 2009 Looking Back And Whatnot  For those of you who ever wondered.... JeffreyBeaumont: why the fuck did kanye give all those beats to common JeffreyBeaumont:at the time it seemed cool but not crazy JeffreyBeaumont:but given kanye's ascension since then it seems pretty nuts jaychampionvinyl: because Common 1) is also from Chicago, 2) used to be legitimately awesome, 3) was friends with the producer who mentored Kanye (No ID), and pre-love fuzzy vibes makeover, was exactly the kind of thoughtful, reflective, yet still boastful and funny sort of rapper Kanye wanted to be JeffreyBeaumont:haa POW jaychampionvinyl: it only seems like a crazy/terrible idea in retrospect, now that he has become rap's Sting JeffreyBeaumont: dum dah-duh Labels: case studies, IMs, Jayson Greene In Spirit, quickthoughts, rap posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/19/2009 03:45:00 PM 0 comments Wednesday, October 07, 2009 Two Bold Statements I'm Increasingly More Ready To Go To The Mat For 1) That the mid 90s works of The Brian Jonestown Massacre are astonishingly good and the strangest meeting of original and familiar I can remember encountering 2) That the pairing of tomato and cheese is the greatest combination of two flavors in the world LISTEN: The Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Vacuum Boots" from Take It From The Man LOOK:  Note: I obviously did not take this photo. Labels: case studies, quickthoughts, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/07/2009 12:42:00 AM 2 comments 2
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Doing It The Hard Way, Always  On the topic of fairly random and unhelpful statistical lumpings, one such category would be absolutely meaningless "_____ greatest by a player who bats righty, throws lefty." Why? Basically NO ONE bats righty and throws lefty. Like, really, NO ONE. You would think out of only six possible batting/throwing combos (right/left/switch batting x right/left throwing) there would be a decent dispersion of players in all categories, and there is... in the other five. But of the righty swingers lefty throwers category there has really just only been a strange small handful -- literally 25. Steve Treder of The Hardball Times earlier this year did us the service of evaluating and ranking all twenty-five of them, which you can read here. A glimpse through the names yields but five that present any note to me: 5) Brian Hunter (the stocky first-baseman, not the light-hitting CF speedster Brian Hunter holds a bit of note to me as he was responsible for sharing first-base duties in the early 90s Braves Dynasty with Sid Bream (whoa, that name doesn't even sound real anymore) before Fred McGriff was brought on-board in July 1993 and my entire world exploded. As the Braves have been my favorite team for the past twenty seasons, all of their various men have meant something to me at one point or another and Hunter is no different. However, at his peak--which lasted about two seasons--he was a decent platooon player, but no more 4) Jason Lane A recent supporting player on the Houston Astrosin the earlier part of this decade. I am familiar with his exploits. 3) Cody Lane A recent supporting player for the Florida Marlins. I am not familiar with his exploits but I have heard his name mentioned before. 2) Ryan Ludwick A legitimately good player who had an excellent past two seasons for St. Louis before this year's relative mediocrity (though he has been coming on stronger as the year comes to a close). And of course, our top dog: 1) Rickey Henderson Literally the only player on this list to have a great or arguably even good career, The Rickey is The Man when it comes to Bats Lefty, Throws Righty. Once again, Rickey, like with everything else he's done, stands alone. Of course, this entire topic is of slightly greater note to one Jeffrey Beaumont, because ... drum roll... like all of these men, he too bats righty, and throws lefty. Which probably makes me the twenty-ninth greatest Bats Righty, Throws Lefty ballplayer ever (hey, I could throw 74 mph when I was in 9th grade). Seriously though, this is not something I choose--and according to Treder, of all the six possiblities is the least physically advantageous combination I could have been (Still, thanks, Dad!). And doesn't this description more or less define my entire existence: So here we've got athletes displaying enough ambidextrousness to bat one way and throw the other. Yet not only do they eschew the switch-hitting option (which admittedly is far easier to do in theory than in practice), these guys find themselves in the least advantageous circumstance both offensively and defensively. One hopes it came about through some manner of unusual and immutable brain wiring, because to the extent that deliberate decision-making might have been involved, these guys got it double-wrong. It's so perfectly deprarious I couldn't have dreamt it better myself. Me and Rickey, down by the schoolyard. Labels: baseball, BEAUMONT, case studies, curiosities, deprarious, lolgore posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/30/2009 06:49:00 PM 0 comments Sportswriters: Fuck Killing Edition  Oh yes. No matter how much the popular absorption of statistical analysis increases and improves the quality of a history of typically shoddy sportswriting, these guys will always find ways to kill my fuck. From Jerry Crasnick's weekly "Starting 9" column today on ESPN.com, he says in the section on Orioles second-baseman Brian Roberts that: An optimist might counter that Roberts is laying the foundation for a Hall of Fame run. He just recorded his third season with 100 runs, 70 walks, 50 doubles and 25 stolen bases. Tris Speaker, Kiki Cuyler, Craig Biggio and Bobby Abreu are the only other players to manage that combination, and they all did it once. For the love of God, this is how inexplicable reputations about sportsfigures develop. Well-known sportswriter bears witness to three minutes of sunshine from an otherwise humdrum B+er, and due to a need for copy casually tosses off a RIDICULOUS notion that a dude like Roberts even has a sniff at the HoF... and sure enough, in nine years there's a diehard contingent of Roberts fans writing on blogs and shitty local newspapers about how "the mom's basement stathead jerks" are barring a deserving guy like Roberts from entering of his pre-destined resting place. Sounds familiar.... oh yeah, it happened for fifteen years with Jim Rice, and now he's finally elected. (And truthfully, Jim Rice was five times the player that Brian Roberts has ever been.) And seriously--"100 runs, 70 walks, 50 doubles and 25 stolen bases"? Are you kidding me? What kind of nonsense nonstat is this? This entire article is a smorgasbord of barely to not-at-all meaningful number-correlations: -the fifth player in history to post a 20-homer, 50-double season before age 24 -the first Cleveland right fielder to surpass 20 stolen bases since Von Hayes swiped 32 in 1982 -the first Mets player ever to lead the National League in batting average at home (and also keep in mind that the player in question is hitting .250 on the road) -the first Padre to drive in 100 runs or more three straight years -the second third baseman to hit 40 homers and steal 25 bases in a season. -the fourth pair of Milwaukee teammates to score 100 runs each in a season Yep, all of these "stats" present various levels of fake-real nothingness. Thanks, Jerry Crasnick for inserting a bit of nonsense into our day. Though I think he left out the fact that Jerry Hairston, Jr. is "Number four all-time in leadoff homeruns by of a left-handed A/B blood type." However, to his credit, I can't remember the last time anyone referenced Von Hayes, so that was good for a laugh. Jayson Stark is usually the ESPN writer responsible for pumping out time-wasting nonsense like this fluff, but with him it's different because he's always telling (bad) jokes and you expect that he'll say little to nothing with a pretense of seriousness. Crasnick though usually plays it pretty straight-and-narrow (in a typically unstatistical fashion), so this column comes off as more of a desperate "Please. Stop." And unlike Stark, Crasnick seems to imply that he's found some value in this gibberish, under the aegis of the heading, "Players who've thrived for losing teams". Ack. All bad. But the Roberts mention especially: fuck man, please. TERRIBLE. Really not ok, even as trade among the mongers of hyperbole. Labels: baseball, case studies, fucktactics, lolgore, MOM'S BASEMENT, statistics posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/30/2009 02:24:00 PM 2 comments 2
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Monday, September 28, 2009 The Occasional Work Victory  It's nice to balance the frequent office FAIL with at least an occasional VICTORY or two. Including my discovery last week that our office is in possession of an almost never used Nikon Coolscan V film/slide scanner. This no-longer-made-but-completely-invaluable 35mm film scanning tool is prohibitively expensive but also of such significantly superior scanning quality that it's made me feel like buying a cheapish flatbed would be a waste of my time. Having just begun more heavily shooting and developing film, the costs of having labs do scans for me (coupled with the generally poor quality of their scans) has made me wary and self-conscious about my shooting--but now I can fire away knowing that I can do it all myself. Holla rare office secret surprise. It's of course a shame it took me four and a half years of working here before I discovered this, but my wallet says, "Better late than never!" Labels: case studies, deprarious, quicksnaps, VICTORY posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/28/2009 07:48:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, September 22, 2009 200 by 3x / Bob Gibson and 1968  Alex sent me the email below today after reading Joe Poz's recent article on "200/200/200 seasons" and I thought I'd respond publicly since, well, the answers are pretty crazy and hard to believe. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Alex wrote: "– Bob Gibson, 1968 The answer is that it wasn't just the Cardinals hitting like "blind midgets", but actually all of baseball. Going back to the beginning of the "Live Ball Era" in 1920, the season of 1968 is by a very long shot the most offensively depressed season ever. The entire 1960s saw the pendulum swing heavily toward pitching, but 1968 was the apex of this imbalance. So much so to the degree that Gibson's 1.12 ERA, while obviously amazing, isn't actually as impressive as Greg Maddux's 94 and 95 seasons, or Pedro Martinez's 99/00 seasons. Don't get me wrong, Gibson had a historically great year, but it was one that looked MUCH better due to the strange non-offensive performance of the league. See here to see "adjusted ERA+" to see contextual comparisons. Some relevant stats on the total insanity that was 1968 in baseball: --How did Gibson lose nine games despite having a 1.12 ERA? His Cardinals, the World Series runner-up, hit an atrocious .249 / .298 / .346 for a .644 OPS. --But amazingly, as bad as that Cardinals line seemed, they were actually above league average (and fourth in the league in runs scored)...the NL league average line in 1968 was: .243 / .300 / .341 .... no joke. A measly .641 LEAGUE AVERAGE OPS. (Keep in mind the DH didn't exist back then so me mentioning the NL here means nothing.) --NL league average ERA was 2.99 (!!!!!!!!) --EIGHT pitchers posted sub 2.00 ERAs including Gibson, with an astonishing five in the AL. --Three pitchers (Gibson, Luis Tiant, and Dave McNally) posted equally astonishing sub 0.90 WHIPs --Only SIX hitters in all of MLB hit above .300, including only ONE in the AL--Carl Yasztremski, who lead the AL with a .301 average... no one else even hit above .290!!! --Yaz was also the only player in ALL OF BASEBALL with a .400+ OBP --Not a single player scored 100 runs. Not one. And only seven scored even 90. This was the only non-strike NL season since 1920 with no player scoring 100 runs. --As an incidental curiosity, Denny McLain of the AL won 31 games--the last time a pitcher has done so in either league. I don't believe, however that there's much to draw on this. And perhaps the saddest footnote of all of 1968: an aging but not done 36 year old Mickey Mantle played his last season after posting a line of .237 / .385 / .398 (a .783 OPS, the worst of his career), which led many to declare that the The Mick was too washed up to succeed anymore. But this was a travesty as poor Mantle's numbers were simply a product of a league were offense was impossible. As bad as his numbers look, he actually had a 142 OPS+--meaning that his OPS was in fact 42% better than than the average AL player. To put things in perspective, a 142 OPS+ is better than many All-Stars will ever do in the entire careers (ie, Joe Carter, Carlos Lee, and better than every Derek Jeter season but one). Yes, it was Mantle's worst year since his rookie season, but he was still a productive player, and it's sad that the last four years of his career coincided with the greatest leaguewide drop in offense of nearly any point in baseball history. Basically, things reached a peak point of "so crazy" in 1968 that, for the first time in a long-time, baseball re-wrote the balance of pitching and hitting by making two crucial rules changes: the pitcher's mound was dropped five inches, and the strike zone was shrunken to the area from the armpits to the top of the batter's knees. Almost immediately, things began to go back toward a "normal" historical mean and by the mid 70s the game was back where it had been in the 50s and before, staying that way until 1993 when roids-driven offense took a new shape and 1994 when it completely exploded. Labels: baseball, case studies, statistics posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/22/2009 06:35:00 PM 0 comments Monday, September 14, 2009 Ichiro, Thievery, Etc.  Amidst all the Ichiro Suzuki hit talk, I just remembered how in 2006 the man stole 43 bases and was only caught stealing TWICE; and then, nearly as impressively, stole 45 last year with only 4 caught stealing. The only other man that I can think of who has been so prolific yet also efficient is, curiously, Carlos Beltran (in 2003 and 2004 was he 41/4 and 42/3, plus a 31/1 in 2001), who at 88% success rate I think may be the most successful ever*** (weird, right?). Ichiro is "only" at 81.2% success rate (bogged down by a strange sophomore year of 31/15) but has been far more prolific of a thiever than Beltran and so I'm wont to give him the extra due. Sadly i cant figure out how to search this on baseball reference but I would guess that historically Ichiro is way up there (behind Tim Raines's 84% but an inch ahead of The Rickey's 80.7% and Vince Coleman's 80.9%)--but I'd love for someone to create some kind of "proficiency ratio" that pumped out a ratings number taking into account both efficiency and quantity (obviously getting more points for quantity). Does such a stat exist already? I'm probably overlooking it... Anyhow, Ichiro, I salute you. NOTES: *** -- I will have to check to confirm this later, but I'm guessing that Carlos Beltran is probably a) the only player with 250+ steals who has never had a single season of double-digit caught stealings, and b) that he also has the highest "steals per season" of any player of this type as well. Again, it's awesome to be Rickey or Tim, but a lot of credit should go to a man who knows how to pick his spots better than any other (including, as i've said, Ichiro). Labels: baseball, case studies, statistics posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/14/2009 06:36:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, September 01, 2009 Andy Pettite, Hall of Famer?  Rickey says Andy Pettite ain't no Hall of Famer. In light of last night's two hitter, my friend Jon asked me today what I thought on Andy Pettite's candidacy as a Hall of Famer: If he pitches one more good season after this one, is Andy Pettite a serious Hall candidate? I agree 100% that he's a serious candidate, and that he'll get serious consideration. However: the knock against Pettite, and the reason I'd never vote for him if i could, is because not even for a single seasons ever was he ever one of the top three pitchers in MLB, or one of the top five, or, honestly, top 10. None of this is a knock against the man, but: Andy Pettite was a very good pitcher with a lengthy career who had the luxury of all playing on what was--by far--the winningest team in all of baseball***, in the biggest market in the USA, for the most loved and storied franchise in baseball history. He really only had two great seasons, 1997 and 2005, and the rest of the time he was just a little better than average. In 1996, the year he finished #2 in Cy voting--a year which had arguably the WORST Cy Young qualifiers in the AL of any year in baseball history--he only got to #2 as a leading Yankee and by default of no better competition... and still Pat Hentgen was demonstrably better. Pettite is a dude who will definitely get some support for all of the reasons I've listed above, and for the reason as Jon points out that he's bizarrely been credited in the post-steroids cloud for good behavior (which is odd given him actually admitting to having used them), but ultimately he's like a weaker Catfish Hunter with a longer career. And I therefore don't think he's a Hall of Famer. And to answer Jon's last question, Mike Mussina is a MUCH better candidate than Pettite. In fact, Mussina is in so many ways the Burt Blyleven of the 90s/00s--a great pitcher who, through a combination of bad luck, bad markets, and good competition, missed out on the acclaim of his peers throughout his entire career. As Yankees fans, it's easy to forget that he was ever an Oriole, but in fact almost all of his best years were in Baltimore, as he didn't join the Yanks until he was 32. And that's the sad thing, because unlike Blyleven, Mussina did get to have a stretch on a great team in a big market, but it was already past the best years of his career. From 1992-2001, Mussina was one of the five best starters in the AL every year except 93 and 96, and in each of those years in the top 10 in baseball overall (occasionally in the top 3). He was no Martinez, Clemens, Maddux or Johnson, but as much as I don't want to admit it, he was probably as good as good as Tom Glavine and definitely John Smoltz (whose own candidacy I still question, honestly). And he won 270 games. I'm not 100% sold on Mussina for the hall. I'm close, but I still think hemight be in the Tommy John / Jim Kaat category of pitchers who pitched very well for a very long time but were never really GREAT. I wish he had a single "blow me away" year, and he doesn't--versus, say, hated ex-yank Kevin Brown, who though he was a douche and was injured a lot, had six GREAT seasons, including two of which where he was robbed of the Cy Young ('96 and '98, by fave Braves both, natch). I'm not sure if Brown is a HoFer either, though I think probably he could be, but if he isn't it's for the brevity and not the quality. Yeah ok. Done. No on Pettite. - Jon responded: I agree, except I'm not sure I think that players necessarily need to be the top two or three in the league at a given moment of time to make the Hall. At various points in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bret Saberhagen, Frank Viola and Jack McDowell were all among the best pitchers in baseball. They all won Cy Youngs, and had a string of three to five elite seasons. Obviously, they're straw-man examples whose careers were cut short for various reasons, and you're not saying that either one deserves it. But my broader question is, if someone is among the top three pitchers in the majors for six seasons, and someone else is among the top 10-15 pitchers for 15 seasons, is the first one more worth of Hall consideration. Or do you need a combination of eliteness and logevity? You absolutely need a combination of eliteness and longevity... skimping can be had on the longevity but it requires the eliteness to be even greater. Nearly all the pitchers in the Hall now These are interesting examples: Frank Viola was great only for three years and, in fact, Jack McDowell is like a more overrated version of Andy Pettite but with a shorter career (and should have never won a Cy Young--poor Kevin Appier, the most unheralded pitcher of the 90s). Saberhagen, however, had Hall of Fame talent (in '85 and '89 he was by far the best in baseball and in 94 was #2 after Maddux) but had a strange career undone by injury and bad circumstance. Definitely not a Hall of Famer, at all, but that's beacuse he wasn't even close on the longevity. However, if I could have 1989 Saberhagen to pitch for me in a single game, I would take him over top-level Pettite, Viola, McDowell, Mussina or even Smoltz. Finally, an amazing tidbit on Saberhagen: his control was so unbelievable that in 1994 he issued only 13 walks in 177 innings, which is not only the 32nd best mark ever but one of only two recorded in the top 50 that took place after 1933 (vast majority are from pre-1920, when it was another game). Coupled with the fact that he also had 143 Ks (unlike Carlos Silva, the other top 50 entrant, who got by on control but had no heat and only 71Ks), Saberhagen recorded that year THE BEST strikeout/walk ratio in baseball history. Of anyone, ever. So, were it not for the strike and Greg Maddux having a historical 1.56 ERA in 1994, Saberhagen would have easily had three Cy Youngs. And then we'd be talking about how in the hell we could deny Hall entry to one of only eight men who've ever won three Cy Youngs (all other seven are or will be in the Hall). NOTES: *** - article on the subject here of winningest teams of the 2000s here at Baseball Analysts Labels: baseball, case studies, statistics, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/01/2009 11:16:00 AM 0 comments Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Three Notes on Pitching  Haven't had much baseball commentary in quite some time so here's a little something: the Last 10 Starts Gamelog of Houston Astros pitcher Wandy Rodriguez. After making serious strides last year toward becoming a high level major league pitcher, this year Rodriguez has catapulted into the stratosphere as one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. With a 2.82 ERA, Wandy currently ranks seventh in the national league; but, amazingly, that 2.82 would be a second-best 2.33 were it not for one terrible game two weeks ago where he gave up ten runs in four innings of work. Of course, "That's what they play the games for", yes, but as you see in the gamelog below, this bad outing is even more of an outlier, as Rodriguez astonishingly gave up only one or zero runs in all other nine starts during the block. Who knows if he'll be able to keep up this pace, but given that Wandy is also ninth in the NL in strikeouts, I'm calling that we'll be seeing more and more of him on atop the leaderboards in years to come. -------------------- Speaking of leaderboards though, this season has been nothing if not a banner year renaissance for the art of pitching (and, ahem, not hitting). You want fast proof? This year there are fourteen pitchers in the majors sporting ERAs under 3.00. Last year? Eight. And 2007? One (Jake Peavy, please stand up). Sure, ERA doesn't tell the whole story, but there's a huge difference between fourteen and one, and there are many other supplementary stats to fill in this story if you're interested. Amidst all this great pitching though is the less-discussed story that four of the five best pitchers in the majors are currently throwing for either St. Louis or San Francisco (and the fifth I already covered earlier). As you can see, all four men from STL and SFO are currently cleaning up, with Wainwright in particular coming on strongly now as the season winds down. I very much hope that the Braves somehow manage to inch in as the wild card this year, but it would be a great next possibility if somehow STL and SFO wind up facing each other (with John Smoltz and Randy Johnson to face off in a battle of Used-To-Be-Greats in Game 3 or 4). -------------------- And finally, one man who sadly you don't see appearing above is my bro Danny Haren, who came out of the gates banging in 2009, but once again has fallen back to earth after the All-Star break. I wish it weren't true, because I truly love this guy, but I called this shit back on May 3. As you see in the charts above, Haren has for the fourth straight season pitched spectacularly in the first half, and then slightly worse than league average in the second. Anything can happen in one season, or even two, but four straight years of a repeated outcome means that SOMETHING is going on. No idea what exactly, or whether or not it can be fixed or even adjusted, but I hope for Danny's sake that someone figures it out for him. ----- It's taken five months, but I'm happy to say i'm finally "Yay, baseball!!" Here's looking forward to an exciting conclusion of the season from here on out. cheers, Jeffrey Labels: baseball, case studies, statistics posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/26/2009 01:13:00 AM 0 comments Friday, August 07, 2009 Ms. Ryan Adams The above in-store interview with Mandy Moore at famed Amoeba Records strikes me as a little strange. I'd somehow forgotten that Moore married Ryan Adams recently, a fact which still seems odd to me. But far odder than that are the expressions on her face as she answers questions--she definitely seems like she's trying to be frank and relaxed, and I respect that... but whoa, it doesn't really look that way. The expressions on her face almost don't seem to line up with the words coming out of her mouth--her eyebrows in particular are constantly furrowed, her lips pursed, and her eyes narrowed. The appearance of such mannered posturing belies the sound of honesty in her voice and makes her come off as wooden at best or empty/fraudulent at worst. I also am unable to watch her in this video--especially when she mentions in reference to the Amoeba store that "most of the time i have to drag my husband out of the speed metal section downstairs"--and not also simultaneously "imagine" the interplay and dynamic between her and Adams. And while I've never thought of Ryan Adams as any great wit or tortured soul of human openness, I still didn't imagine he'd go for this kind of thing. Labels: case studies, lolgore, music, ryan adams, videos posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/07/2009 02:41:00 PM 1 comments 1
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009 "Growerage": Word/Grammar Uses Of Which I Am Not A Fan  After this unofficial inauguration by the godhead of exasperatingly senseless word drivel, "grower", what follows is the first entry of a new series whereby I reference briefly words or conventions of modern parlance that I find tiresome or even annoying. These entries will henceforth be known as "Growerage". Today's entry: "To bite" Neither, of course, to "bite into a tomato", nor "biting" as in "cutting/sarcastic", but to "rip off another person's style, especially with respect to music or fashion. From early hip-hop culture" (according to the most commonly sanctioned definition in the populace-approved Urban Dictionary). Tom Breihan, rap writer for Pitchfork and the Village Voice, is a lover of the term and one of its most egregious abusers (above quote was his, as also here and here, etc). Why don't I like it? 1) Too cute. I can visualize a writer grinning as he pounds it out on his keyboard, excitedly thinking to himself (usually men are the only ones who use this term), "Yeah THAT'S RIGHT!" There's also something about its usage that feels awkwardly forced and too un-selfaware, like, "Using this term proves both my credibility and wit to my audience of readers." 2) Literally speaking, the term is too much of a stretch for it to feel like a logical and natural shorthard for copying. Just as "moving his arm quickly" does not lead to "gets in fights", biting does not get me to stealing. ------ Yep, I'm a crotchety dick. I implore you to begin filling storage closests with diary entries on my own obnoxious writing choices. Labels: case studies, Growerage posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/05/2009 04:29:00 PM 0 comments Monday, July 27, 2009 Crash Into You  Not sure how familiar many of you are with author JG Ballard--arguably one of a handful of the most important and famous British writers of the post-WWII twentieth century--but my friend Katie passed on this fascinating article on the publishing of one of his books and it's definitely worth a read. In my experience for whatever reason there seems to be a curious gap on Ballard-awareness in the minds of Americans--usually when I mention his name I am greeted with only blank stares; and, to be fair, I had never heard of him before studying in England in 2003 and reading his work in one of my courses. Of course, when you mention his two most famous works, Empire of the Sun and Crash (the subject of the aforementioned article), those blank stares tend to turn into slow realizations, as both books were made into significant films by significant directors (Steven Spielberg and David Cronenberg, respectively) that received both widespread release and mainstream discussion. It is worth keeping in mind that even folks who've heard of or even seen these films have not read the actual books (and many people will tend to ask with trepiditation if by Crash I mean the other, gulp, 2004 schlockfest Crash). One of the offshoots of a lack of American awareness of Ballard is that over the years US publishers have struggled to understand how to properly market and sell the man, whose work is admittedly difficult to characterize and harder to generalize. In the beginning, much of what he wrote crossed into the territory of science fiction, and at other times he was incredibly surrealistic and experimental; at all times he was at least suggestively post-modernist, but he never really fit the true post-modernist archetypes like many of his contemporaneous experimental peers of the era. Ballard's work went all over the map, and it didn't help that his two most famous books included one that was semi-autobiographical and completely unlike anything else, and the other partially dismissed as obscene even in the increasingly free early 70s when it was written. This latter book, Crash, in particular posed a challenge as the desires of its subjects--one of whom "craves a union of blood, semen and engine coolant in a head-on collision with Elizabeth Taylor"--cross into boundaries that Americans rarely feel comfortable discussing with emotional detachment or analysis. The result: many many many different covers were printed to sell Crash, as author, publisher and audience differed in the attitude of what the book was about and how it should be sold to target readers. The two covers below include the conservative first cover on the left, which Ballard hated, and the fantastically expressive (and therefore UK-only) paperback cover, which Ballard loved best. I've often thought from time to time how books covers influence my decisions to buy and read books*** and strolling through this article gives you a great sense at the lengths taken to define a block of text into an immediately judgeable package. Two sample covers of Crash below--read the article to see the rest:  -------- And for those of you interested Ballard and his world, I would recommend that you poke through the crazy crowd-sourced love letter of a site that is Ballardian.com (where the above article comes from) and checking out the books Atrocity Exhibition, High Rise, and Cocaine Nights for a sampling of Ballard "deep cuts". NOTES: *** -- Confession: as a 13 year old, I purchased the Ween album Chocolate and Cheese from BMG Music Club exclusively because its hilariously suggestive cover made the newly pubescent Me feel crazed with excitement when looking at it. Incidentally I grew to enjoy the album and the band (though nothing else as much as C&C), but prior to purchasing I'd never heard a note of Ween or even read about them. Yep. Life Of Beaumont, defined brick-by-brick. Labels: books, case studies, heroes, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 7/27/2009 06:40:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, June 02, 2009 Like  As does Jeffrey Beaumont One thing I have recently come to enjoy more and more are the surrealist and almost exquisite corpse-like qualities of the Facebook "Like" function and the great possibilities it holds as a gateway into our souls. As it is, "Status Updates" on their own are something of a small art form: life poetry on an empirical, uberminimalist scale. The best ones are even shorter than Twitter feeds, bringing new meaning to the idea of the "one-liner". As stream-of-consciousness life narratives informed by varying wills to be "smart" and "look good", they say so much about our lives and our society. But the addition of the "Like" function adds a whole other dimension to these updates, as they provide an opportunity for an even simpler meta-commentary take on the lives of others. So simple and minimalist is the possibility for commentary that it doesn't even meet the reductionist bar of Boolean binary logic. That is, you aren't given a choice to "Like" or "Not Like" something; instead, you say you "Like" something, or you don't say anything: not yes or no, but yes or not yes. And of course, none of this would be as interesting as it is if it these update/like combos didn't generate some truly absurdist moments (ie, example above). It's almost like the perfect joke: crazy/awesome 2009 life notes mitigated by specifically under-explicated thumbs-ups. It's too much, and I fucking love it. Labels: case studies, junkjunk, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/02/2009 04:27:00 AM 1 comments 1
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Monday, June 01, 2009 WANTED: Life-Coordination Team I am fairly sure that if I were to hire a consultant to evaluate my life from a business perspective, he or she would recommend that my only hope for success would be to lay off the entire staff--save the creative director--and bring on a new team with, most importantly, a new Chief Operating Officer. (Clearly, dude running the show right now is adrift at sea and needs to be let go before he loses me in the Bermuda Triangle of lost souls.) Labels: BEAUMONT, case studies, empty promises, FAIL, fucktactics, junkjunk posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/01/2009 06:13:00 PM 1 comments 1
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009 On My Continuingly Strange Relationship With Physical Possessions  Two delightfully deprarious Beaumont Life news bits to share from yesterday: 1) So after last week having a third light stolen off my bike (my fault, sure, but yeah awesome!!!), I had the real cake last night when, after getting to my bike at 7:40pm, I noticed that someone had stolen my motherfucking SEAT POST CLAMP. What is a seat post clamp even, you ask? Well it's this and the image above. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thankfully they hadn't actually stolen my seat since I am now in the habit of bringing both that and the front wheel into my office, but it never even occurred to me that someone might consider stealing a seemingly innocent $6 item like a seatpost clamp. Hell, I didn't even realize that mine could be removed from the bike! But beyond the general annoyingness of having to shell out $6 more on bike products, what it also meant was that I had to make yet ANOTHER trip from 50 St & 6 Av to 12 St & Av C to get to the only bike shop I know of open at 7:55pm on a weeknight, Continuum Cycles [they are awesome, FYI. I bought my bike there are you should love them if you can]. Thankfully I squeaked in as they were literally locking the door to the shop and got the requisite clamp so I could do a little sitting down on the rest of my journey. This shit is just getting to be straight fucking deprarious. If a bike is not safe in midtown Manhattan during a weekday in broad daylight, where the fuck might it be safe? Ahh yes, in my office where I'm not allowed to store it. But yeah, let's not forget about...  Our car, in better days 2) No joke, but I got a call from a police officer that, somehow, my mom's stolen car has been found and re-appeared in south Williamsburg sans stereo (have fun without the faceplate, fuckers). I haven't seen the car yet, but apparently it's still in drivable shape and is being held by a tow company to be returned to the insurance company who are now its owners. What the fuck, right? Life is fucking strange these days. Labels: BEAUMONT, case studies, curiosities, deprarious, disappointment, FAIL, junkjunk, memories posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/29/2009 11:38:00 AM 1 comments 1
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Saturday, April 11, 2009 Creating Spreadsheet-Style Tables in Blogger I don't know about you all, but as a numbers- and facts-loving man, I have spent years feeling frustrated over not knowing how to post spreadsheet-style tables in my blog entries. I have tried all sorts of methods and nothing has worked out in a fashion I find to be satisfactory--either strange looking, not always evenly lined up pages or ghetto-tech images. I've ultimately settled on the latter, as they at least look visually close to the table I'd like folks to see--however, anyone who cares about the numbers as much as I do should be frustrated by the fact that the fascinating numbers I've identified are uncopy-able, locked into the JPG like flies in resin. This has always left me with a very unscientific and unmath-like feeling, and therefore my hunger for real tables has stayed with me unabated. I'm pleased to report now though that I've finally figured out the past way to post honest-to-goodness real tables into Blogger (without having any kind of HTML knowledge), as discovered by some advice by this link here. In this post, the author identifies three ways of posting tables, listing the two ways I've just identified, but also adding a third by utilizing the Spreadsheets function in Google Docs--and lo and behold it works great! (See my last post for an example). The how-to description follows here: Creating Table in Google Spread Sheet I'm very geekily excited about what the future holds for me due to this new incredibly unimportant development. Labels: BEAUMONT, case studies, curiosities, junkjunk, late arrivals, statistics posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/11/2009 02:50:00 PM 0 comments Wednesday, April 01, 2009 More Foolz Gold: NIN Edition God, seriously, I love Trent more every day:  Key track: "Even Closer (f. Justin Timberlake and Maynard James Keenan)" Looks great!  Labels: case studies, fucktactics, junkjunk, lolgore, love, Nine Inch Nails posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/01/2009 03:59:00 PM 0 comments Monday, March 09, 2009 Insane/Amazing Ok, so I've began incorporating "deprarious" into my regular vocabulary as a word representing "depressing/hilarious". Thanks, Mark. But I've decided I also need a word now for "insane/amazing". I do not think "amazane" or "insazing" quite do the trick. Any thoughts? Labels: case studies, definitions, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 3/09/2009 11:14:00 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 03, 2009 Day 2: Rescue Dawn The waning Day 2 is coming to a close and Day 3 will begin in a few hours. So far ok. What's noteworthy right now though is that I just watched the recent Herzog film Rescue Dawn and it is truly great. The story of this character, Dieter Dengler, a Navy pilot who is shot down and captured in Vietnam in '65, is a totally insane one... but then on top of that, it was also a little crazy to spend two hours watching a story about starving soldiers. Those balls of rice. God.  Labels: case studies, CRAZY, Hyperliving, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 3/03/2009 02:21:00 AM 1 comments 1
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009 Don't You Ivah  This week I picked up a Calla album, Scavengers, on an accidentally tangential recommendation (I was told to check out Boduf Songs, which was described to me as being a "darker Iron & Wine" side-project of Calla's--it isn't), and I'm liking it. I've never listened to this group at all--I think for some reason I had them lumped in as mathrockers (am I thinking of Hella?)--and I think I may have been missing out. Dark-ish yet bright, and kind of quiet, there's something a little menacing and unsettling about them. I'm not sure yet if the tempo pulses enough to satisfy me longterm, but no doubt there's a mixworthy song or two for sure. I'll put some further introspection into it all, but I think a solid recommend already. Hear: Calla - "Love of Ivah," from Scavengers peace, jb Labels: case studies, mp3 posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 2/25/2009 08:43:00 PM 0 comments Sunday, November 30, 2008 Terrorists Have Been Waiting for Me (But I Was Not There to Greet Them)  I was just in India, but am back in America, alive and unharmed not a day too late. A massive photo re-cap, including all of the above and below, from my trip is available here at my Flickr page.    Yes yes, it was an amazing and crazy trip. Re-appraisal  Recently I have pulled David Bowie's 2002 album Heathen off the shelf and have given it some legitimate listens for the first time since it came out 6+ years ago. Upon listening in 2002, I recognized that I definitely seemed to be a "decent and respectable" album, but also one that added little to the canon of Bowie or merited much more of a listen. However, in revisting more carefully again now, I feel like i have to go back on that original opinion to state that it really is a strong album that somehow manages to say more about David Bowie than any of his other albums from '92 on, all of which were themed (usually musically) in a way so as to suggest an inherent statement.... but simplicity for once wins with Bowie on Heathen. At the time, much was made of Bowie's choice to include three covers on Heathen: a random track by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy (Ziggy's alleged namesake), the Pixies' "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You". The latter two choices are interesting to me because they draw an isoceles triangle of sorts in my brain between the three artists, as the Pixies also covered both "I've Been Waiting For You" and "Winterlong" by Young to use as album b-sides. All three of these covers are quite good and in fact the "Cactus" cover is the only song from Heathen that i have listened to since those first listens back in 2002 (it has popped up on either mixes i've made or received). As I go back, however, "Cactus" is now the song on the album i'm least interested in hearing, and beyond the many great originals on the album, I've settled in quite well with the Young cover. I hope to write more about Heathen at large, but here now are four versions of this song, including Neil's original, both Bowie and Pixies versions, as well as a live version by Dinosaur Jr. (far inferior to the other three but I felt like filling it out): "I've Been Waiting for You"--four versions cheers, JB Labels: case studies, mp3 posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/30/2008 10:25:00 PM 0 comments Friday, November 07, 2008 BURNING EXPLODING BREAKING LIVING  JeffreyBeaumont: i am trying to break myself open i think JeffreyBeaumont: sticking to The Heart Beats. mantra "never stop" jaychampvinyl: you are overheating jaychampvinyl: this always happens when you go into hyperdrive jaychampvinyl: you're burning the candle at both ends and in the middle and below jaychampvinyl: basically, you are tossing the candle on to the floor and torching it with a flame thrower jaychampvinyl: while laughing maniacally Labels: case studies, fucktactics, INSANITY posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/07/2008 02:42:00 PM 0 comments Thursday, October 23, 2008 1Across: "Crosswords ain't shit but ________ and tricks" Ahh Will Shortz, so precious you are!  Labels: case studies, curiosities posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/23/2008 06:02:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, November 06, 2007 C0mputR Gggl blUuzzzzzzz & Otthaa Stuffff  As much as I treasure and cherish them, sometimes computers seem like they enjoy nothing more than to making me suffer and squirm. This is the problem inherent in early 21st century hyperliving--the technology which I love and and embrace is not yet fully prepared to love me back. 1st Case in point: Blogger logins. We--meaning I--all signed up for Blogger back in the day when it had its own separate set of logins and big daddy Google only crept so much in the sneaksneak creepcreep "Gotcha!" department. Those were good days when i was like, "Shit, GREAT deal for me--and Google can only help make it better!!" Wrong. Sadly, at some point a year or two ago, all of this changed and Google finally understood the potential they had been failing to capitalize on (and/or stopped having moral qualms about what it could mean) and began requesting that users move their blogger accounts over to a Google/Gmail account. Harmless, right? Cause, Hell, why not integrate? Cause wouldn't it actually be inteGREAT? Combine featuresets, preferences, streamline processes--seriously, what's to lose here? I wasn't totally on-board with all of this, but as techloving bastard I was certainly curious enough to find out if this was one more way I could make technology improve my life. Sadly, yes, I was wrong. So where's the yikes, Bill Sykes? Basically it all boils down to a few specific annoyances resultant from one looming philosophical concern, listed now in orders below arbitrarily chosen by I, Claudius. Philosophy: one of the boons of the internet (no caps, sorry) is that it offers not only anonymity but also the ability to maintain multiple identities. Alas, what I have slowly begun to realize, is that at some point in late 2005 Google decided that, as company with a burgeoning market cap approaching and even dwarfing the GDP of many countries in Africa, It's not so easy to monetize the shadows. Or, specifically, It's a lot easier to monetize identifiable people with bank accounts and social security numbers.  Is this Big Brother talk? Fuck, no, it really is not. Think about it: if I am logged into Gmail and I pop open Google Maps, I have access to my entire history of GMaps searches no matter what computer I am on--all right there at my fingertips... Which actually sounds REALLY useful, not creepy/bad. And it is, honestly. But... this is where shit gets tricky. Saved maps preferences is only the next step in an evolution that began with "The Start", inline Gmail advertising--I remember Doorknobs telling me about the early beta in May 2004 and how it was great but the only catch was that they would parse your emails and generate ads based upon keywords you type. At the time I was sufficiently disapproving so as to avoid jumping on the beg-for-beta-invite ship, but within a few months I came around. The Gmail services, like those of Google Maps, had me sold and I decided that their benefits outweighed the tradeoffs. And still now, I think they do, but these "benefits" aren't perfect and sometimes it's just too much. Let's go back to my initial Case Heading, the Blogger login, and examine one of the most annoying aspects that has become part of the "improved user experience." When I decided to link my Blogger account to my Gmail address, I chose not my "main" email, but instead an alternative, limited-use email. I did so, for one, because the altmail usage fit my act on Blogger more, but, also, because I try whenever possible to keep my "real email" out of the limelight so I can to retain some degree of that internet anonymity and alternative identity (AND NON-SPAMMAGE!) that I crave. But almost immediately upon changing over, I realized that I had committed a very irksome mistake: as browser cookies do not allow you to be logged-in to multiple gmail accounts at the same time, I therefore can no longer blog and email simultaneously (at least, not within the same browser). [crickets] Umm. Yeah. Seriously dudes!!! I know this admission means I'M flying my dorkflag colors way high, but what the fuck? This IS a big deal to a whiny bitch like myself stuck on a 4 year old 1ghz G4 that isn't so cool about running two browsers and AirT-streaming iTunes simultaneously. Seriously! And that's just the Right-now-this-sucks gripe, why I'm moaning to myself about how I need to justify buying a new Pro rather than get my very fucked teeth fixed. But philosophically speaking, my endpoint is that we are nearing a future where a single log-in, corresponding to a real "certified" identity, gets you in everywhere--and without it, nowhere. Right now such a time feels both close and far away, but I promise you that it is imminent. But on the other hand.... So, what else? Lots of things, dudes! SHA-BAAAM, and MORE: GhostDOLLZ, GoATZ, CHILD BANKINGS, A-Rod - GhostDOLLZ So Lil' Beau Sistarrz emails me today with her X-mas request: "Dear Santa Beau, All I want for Christmas is the $499.99 Ghostface Killah Doll with 14k gold jewelry, velvet robes, and constant disgruntled expression. I will be extremely good for the rest of my life and will never ask for anything more. Seriously, check the list, I'm under SO FUCKING NICE IT IS PAINFUL." I hope she right cause I'd hate for her to miss out on this pretty fucking princess:  - GOATTTZZ Also from Sistarrrz, while back, myotonic goats: Myotonic, as in "tonic muscle spasm or muscular rigidity" aka tha faintz. - Child Dollar Learnings Control! Engadget had my back on this one today, coming of course out of Japan: The Hello Kitty ATM Bank (for kids)!!!  The scoop:
And finally, - PAY-Rod Many have speculated over the past few years whether or not Alex Rodriguez is the greatest douchebag (not asshole, jerk, or prick, mind you, but douchebag) in all of pro sports. It turns out, after ESPN has reveals that he really did demand $350mil from the Yanks, that he is. My stomach is usually ok for the grossness of pro athletes but this is some queasy shit. I really really REALLY hope that, for once, this guy (as representing all top dollar sportfucks) doesn't get what he's asking for, that NO team out there is ready to pay him $35 million per season. Because, please, come on! Fucking nuts!! What's most crazy is that i just can't imagine any other team besides the Yankees even considering offering a 32 year old player $30 mil per year even, let alone $35mil-per for ten fucking years... and yet A-rod, for whatever reason, has spit in their faces. In Sunday's NYT, lawyer Jeffrey Gordon argues that this is all part of some bizarre negotiating tactics to keep the Yankees IN the game, but I can't buy that shit. ESPN's Rob Neyer (sorry, Insider only) and the always astute though also arrogant and occasionally insufferable sportseconomist / Sabernomicist JC Bradbury don't buy it, either. In any event, A-Rod is, in the immortal words of Noah's brother, "A DOUCHE." AMEN.  Next up, 801, "Nanci," more! Yours always and faithfully, J. G. Beaumont, Esq. Labels: case studies, fucktactics, junkjunk, yanks posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/06/2007 11:28:00 PM 1 comments 1
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GET BEHIND ME DEAD MAN
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