Historical Archive of Alpha-Geek.com (Entries Labelled "right")

Damn

Incomplete. It's always incomplete.

Chicago

Go Bears!

(Picture via)

Time: 6:15
Game Clock: T-20 minutes
Beers In: 0
Significant Game Happening: Still awaiting kickoff

Current Thinkings: Pensive.

Time: 6:28
Game Clock: 14:50
Beers In: 0
Significant Game Happening: Devin Hester returns opening kickoff for a touchdown.

Current Thinkings: Holy Shit! Still pensive, though.

Time: 6:47
Game Clock: 6:50 left in the 1st
Beers In: 1
Significant Game Happening: Peyton's pass to a wide open Reggie Wayne for an easy 6

Current Thinkings: Pensive.

Also, how the fuck does our Cover 2 (with our safeties 20 yards off the ball at the snap) miss a Reggie Wayne down the middle?

Time: 6:56
Game Clock: 4:50 left in the first
Score: 14-6
Beers In: 1
Significant Game Happening: Teams exchange fumbles resulting in a big T. Jones run to the 5 with a Bears TD soon after

Current Thinkings: Still pensive.

Time: 7:05
Game Clock: 2:30 left in the 1st
Score: 14-6
Beers In: 1
Significant Game Happening: Another Bears fumble

Current Thinkings: Fuck!

Time: 7:22
Game Clock: 11:40 left in the 2nd
Score: 14-9
Beers In: 2
Significant Game Happening: Bears D holds Indy to 3 in the red zone

Current Thinkings: Pensive.

Time: 7:42
Game Clock: 3:57 left in the 2nd
Score: 14-16
Beers In: 2
Significant Game Happening: Bears can't sustain offense

Current Thinkings: Can someone plant Manning into the Earth, please? Just once. Big hit. Make him eat dirt.

Time: 7:50
Game Clock: 2:00 warning before halftime
Score: 14-16
Beers In: 2
Significant Game Happening: Peyton driving.

Current Thinkings: Wishing the announcers would stop talking about Peyton "getting into the rhythm"

Wait. Wait! Colts fumble! Bears recovered!

Wait... wait... Bears fumble. Colts recovered.

What the fuck... twice now in the game... back to back fumbles...

Time: 8:00
Game Clock: halftime
Score: 14-16
Beers In: 3

Current Thinkings: More running game in the 2nd half, please, thanks.

Time: 8:12
Game Clock: halftime
Score: 14-16
Beers In: 3

Current Thinkings: The halftime shows have been and always will be retarded, uninteresting, and have nothing to do with the game (or "entertainment").

Seriously, would anyone be pissed if they were done away with?

Time: 8:33
Game Clock: 9:19 left in the 3rd
Score: 14-16
Beers In: 4
Significant Game Happening: Peyton driving

Current Thinkings: Can we get a stop on 3rd down?

Time: 8:48
Game Clock: 5:38 left in the 3rd
Score: 14-19
Beers In: 4
Significant Game Happening: 2nd and 1, two sacks, now we have 4th and 19

Current Thinkings: Full of sorrow

Time: 9:05
Game Clock: 1:14 left in the 3rd
Score: 17-22
Beers In: 4
Significant Game Happening: Bears FG

Current Thinkings: We need (NEED) a defensive stop.

Time: 9:30
Game Clock: 9:55 left in the game
Score: 17-29
Beers In: 5
Significant Game Happening: Grossman's 2nd INT

Current Thinkings: Despair

Time: 9:45
Game Clock: 5:55 left
Score: 17-29
Beers In: 5
Significant Game Happening: It's 4th and 9 at mid-field.

Current Thinkings: Pensive. This is the last chance.

...

Didn't convert.

Game over.

Unlikely College Football Scenario

Okay, in the unlikely scenario that Michigan is the undefeated team at the end of the year, and there are a bunch of 1 loss teams, one of which is to play in the BCS, and the list looks something like:

OSU
Texas
Louisville
Florida
Auburn
USC
Notre Dame
California
WV

So that would be the list of the one loss teams in this scenario. Okay, so out of that list, if OSU isn't the one chosen because Florida is picked or something, I'm going on a crusade. I don't care if the AP and Coaches polls are anonymous; I'll find them out. Then I'm buying one of those huge OSU towels, and I'm tracking each of the voters down, buying a membership to their gym of choice, waiting for them in the locker room; then, *SNAP!*.

I've been working on my technique, too. That shit will fucking hurt. I bet they'll regret picking a 1-loss Florida over a 1-loss OSU, then. I'm gonna knot the end of the towel, too, and wet it. Man, there's gonna be a lot of welts going around. I'm a welt-generating machine.

Our Grandfathers

We're all big babies

My grandfather wasn't nagged. Once he turned 21, he was a man, and a grown-up, and nobody battered him round the clock with opportunities he was missing, miseries he didn't know he had, aspirations ditto, inadequacies doubly so.

Nobody told him about being good in bed, grooming tips, what his car said about him, what he should have to eat, how much he should drink, what his house said about him, how Benares brassware was so over, where he should go on holiday, what this season's must-have product would be, how his suits should look.

He knew some of these things, and didn't care about the others because nobody was drawing them to his attention. He knew what his suits should look like: trousers, waistcoat, jacket, all made out of the same material.

He knew about grooming: you shaved. He knew what he should eat: breakfast, lunch, dinner. He probably had no idea that good-in-bed even existed, or that furniture did anything except furnish, or that where he went on holiday was of any significance, or that his car said anything about him at all, except 'Oh, here comes Dr Bywater, I recognise his car.'

But the Big Babies have no such autonomy, and are harangued to death; nor have they learned the adult trick of simply ignoring the fishwife-and-huckster voices. Instead, Baby tries to comply.

Believing it when he is told that he is unhappy, he then believes the cure the same fishwives and hucksters proceed to offer.

The house, the furniture, the car, the exotic holidays, the new wines to try, the squid and worms and foreign muck cooked in jam with the gravy underneath the meat, the peculiar vegetables like weeds or tumours, best thrown away; the uncomfortable places to go, the uncomfortable ways to get to them ('Travel the Amazon on anaconda-back'), the uncomfortable and dismaying sex ('Do we have to do buggery?'), the uncomfortable and dismaying life, funded on credit, built on debt, Carol Vorderman smiling as the bailiffs home in and the Official Receiver prepares for another day's official receiving.

And it is all a world of make-believe, a set of status symbols notable only for symbolising someone else's status.

In my experience, if you are a person who emphasizes utility over "Platonic form-esque status-ery," you are considered an eccentric oddity.

"What? Your furniture doesn't match? You didn't orchestrate your furniture lanscape with the help of a feng shui engineer at Trendy McExpensiveAndArtsy?"

I had an acquaintance who took a job peddling medical equipment to doctors (or something like that), and her employer offered to subsidize the purchase of a new car for her just so she would be driving a BMW or equally status-y automobile because apparently her employer assumed the medical clientele would be more apt to take a liking to persons who drove nicer, flashier cars. My friends all nodded in normalcy and offered advice to her on what car to buy.

This is what has become normal?

Two Tight End Set

So my Superbowl Prediction isn't looking too strong right now. But that wasn't the only NFL prediction I made in that post. The two tight end set hasn't exactly been on the tips of every sportscasters' tongues like I had thought, but it is slowly becoming more prominent. In this weeks NFL Report, they cover the increased use of 2-TE formations. And the Football Outsiders, in their Too Deep Zone series, discusses the strategic nuances of running with multiple tight ends.

Penn & Teller's Bullshit Show

Recently, I heard about a new show from Penn & Teller called Bullshit.

A quick search on Google Video for "penn teller bullshit" netted some results.

They're damn funny. It's like Mythbusters but dedicated not to "myths" but to life's idiosyncrancies (if you want to call them that).

My favorites thus far are the Organic vs. Non-Organic Foods and the one on Feng Sui and Bottled Water.

Real NFL Analysis

Second only to NFL Primetime, my favorite football show (besides the games, of course) is NFL Matchup where "Jaws" breaks down NFL plays into Xs and Os and reveals the complexity going on in each down of a game. It's like crack for me. If they had it on 24 hours a day during the week, I would lose my job.

If you are like me and this kind of geeky, in depth football analysis is your thing, I highly recommend firing up your news readers and subscribing to Football Outsiders. I've been reading them since the start of the last season, and they are good. Not only are their statistics interesting, but they have articles breaking down NFL plays. It's like Jaws in print. See the latest Too Deep Zone to know what I am talking about here.

It's football crack. It's football analysis for overly-analytical geeks like me.

Superbowl Prediction: New England Vs. Dallas

Before the season starts, I want to get my prediction down in writing. The superbowl will be the Dallas Cowboys against the New England Patroits. Bill Parcells versus Bill Belichick. Master versus apprentice.

The reason being: the two tight end set. The two tight-end set is the next "cover 2"; the next "west coast offense"; the next "run-n-shoot" — it will be the "football" phrase coming out of all of the commentators' mouths. And it will be widely copied before the year is out.

Dallas, with their first pick of the 2nd round, drafted Anthony Fasano, the TE out of Notre Dame. He'll be playing alongside Jason Witten, the starter.

New England already has Ben Watson and Daniel Graham, but they also picked up two tight ends in the draft, David Thomas out of Texas in the 3rd and Garrett Mills out of Tulsa in the 4th.

So.. you heard it here first: "the two tight end set" and "Parcells v. Belichick."

And Simmons also hinted to the two tight end set in his NFL preview:

To Tom Brady, who has the same look on his face that Uma Thurman had after she left the hospital in "Kill Bill." I don't think he's cracked a smile since the Denver game: No more magazine covers, very few interviews, very few public appearances … just a lot of lifting, throwing and scowling for nine straight months. The man is possessed. You have to believe me. And wait until you see how they perfected the two-tight end gimmick.

Quotable Miata

Some quotes from Jalopnik's Miata review:

Handling: *****
... The DSC-off, snap-on oversteer is something all serious pistonheads must experience before life crushes them, and they become minvan owners. (Spin, you sure we can't do six stars?)

Trunk: **
... Beer kegs ride shotgun and wreck the leather.

The "Wave"

I've long known about the Motorcycle Wave. The Miata has The Miata Wave. And I recently learned that Wranglers also have a wave.

This all seemed to tie nicely with Forbes recent article Most Satisfying Cars 2006 where they talked about a culture that can form around a product/brand.

I began to wonder what other vehicular segments had "waves." Or more generally, what other products/brands had developed a community with well-documented idiosyncratic customs?

Booze Belt

Could anyone think of a better invention than the Booze Belt. Eat your utility-belt-heart out, Batman. The Bandolier makes an excellent accessory for your sidekick.