Havasimy

Bydaway, the dumbest argument I've heard on the subject of college football and the BCS is that the old way was best because the annual arguing over who was the best football team made it unique and was a good thing. Now there's nothing wrong with the argument that there doesn't need to be a champion or there's nothing wrong with having two or more legitimate champions. Those points of view, I think, have merit. But saying that because a system causes arguments makes it a good system is just dumb. What next, thinking that both mlb leagues should keep their DH rules just so people can keep arguing over whether the DH is a good idea?

By the way, for those who know me and know how to get in touch with me, it looks like I'll have an extra ticket for the steelers game on December 21st against the Chargers. If anyone wants to make me an offer, let me know. I'd also be willing to sell both of my tickets.

Going back to elections for a second, last month I voted in a different district than I grew up for the first time ever. So after voting using the punch card ballot since I was eighteen, I used a voting machine with lever for the first time. The lever machine was, to me, slightly more confusing than the punch card ballot, which I never had a problem with. The only problem I had with the voting machine was that, after leaving the polling place, I realized that I hadn't voted for the referendums that were supposed to be on the ballot statewide. I don't recall even seeing a place to vote for them. Of the two, I prefer the punch card ballot. As for computer voting systyems, I won't trust any until the system is proven to be tamper-proof, which might be near to impossible considering how many computer hackers are waiting to prove themself on hack-proof or tamper-proof systems.

So far, I have my christmas shopping done for one person. One down, everyone else on my list to go. My list basically can be seperated into two groups. Those that I have no idea what to buy them and those I know so well, I can easily find something for them. I usually wait until the last minute for the latter group because as soon as I find something for them, I stumble onto an even better gift for them.

The big news in politics is that Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean. I haven't decided who I'm voting for yet, but I found a little humor in that it's a big deal that the person I didn't want as the Democratic nominee last time is endorsing a candidate who, so far, I don't want to be the Democratic nominee this time. Frankly, I doubt Howard Dean will be able to win the election if he gets the nomination. Most people on the left will vote Democrat and most people on the right will vote Republican, which leaves the middle of the road to be important to who gets elected. Bill Clinton was good at getting the middle vote, which especially wasn't hard against Bob Dole. Al Gore never seemed to even try to court the middle. Personally, Gore lost my vote in 2000 with his performance at the first debate. And, from what I've seen, Dean is too far to the left for me. I'm still undecided, though, so maybe that all will change. I hope so. It'd be nice to have a candidate convince me to vote for him rather than the usual "lesser of two or more evils".

One thing I worry about in the 2004 election is that it'll be like the 2000 elections. The primaries in PA are late, so in 2000 Bush and Gore had both locked up the nomination a full month before the PA primary. This means I was stuck with two candidates that I had no say in choosing.

What I really want for a presidential candidate is someone who doesn't want to be president. Think about it. It is a job which requires millions of dollar to be spent for a job which pays in the low six figures. The president's background is exposed and scrutinized. The same goes for every single member of his families. Even if there's nothing in his background that is bad, people will make stuff up and he has to prove that things that didn't really happen didn't really happen. He is attacked non-stopped verbally and needs around the clock security. The job is filled with no-win decisions. You have to be crazy to want to be president. I want someone to step up and say he (or she) doesn't want to be president but is running because he (or she) wants what's best for the country and the other candidates are not it.

But that will never happen. So I will settle for someone who is willing to go against his own party and side with the other if that is what is best. That doesn't happen often because in the end, it's the party that gets the candidate elected and it's tough to bite the hand that feeds. For now, I'm going to be following the various candidates and hopefully, come November, I won't be looking up who the Libertarian candidate is.

Nothing much has really been happening since my last chance to blog. Tiff and I went to see Bad Santa. It was a good funny movie. It's a christmas comedy for adults. It's a dark comedy. It has it's laugh out loud moments, like any scene in the trailer, but it also has a more low-key comedy running through it. It doesn't end like you would think it would end. I was disappointed on how little John Ritter was in it. His character was fine, but underused. I didn't think Bernie Mac was used as much as I expected. This isn't his best work. It's a good movie if you don't want to be deal with any obnoxiously sweet christmas specials that abound each December.

I just sent my resume, through monster.com, to a company that had a brand new listing for a job. I got it bounced back. Apparently, the email address for the lady who put the opening on monster "does not exist". This is especially annoying because I was qualified for the job, I live close to the company, and I spent time writing a cover letter rather than just submitting my resume without a cover letter.

I got the new cinnamon flavored Crest toothpaste this week. When you spit it out after brushing, it kinda looks like blood. I'm surprised that Crest hasn't taken advantage of this fact to market it towards kids. Considering for halloween Tiff and I gave out "Blood Suckers", lollipops with a red "blood" liquid in the center, the spitting blood angle is not that farfetched.

The lady who got trampled at wal-mart has sued Wal-mart nine times because of injury in the stores. Makes you wonder, even if her getting trampled was an accident, which the previous law suits makes it seem suspicious, would you go back to a store that you've been hurt at nine times before?

So far, I've had a few leads on jobs, but no interviews just yet. I doubt I'll have employment this year. I'm hoping to get a interview and then start after New Years. I'm finally not sick, so I might be able to pull it off.

I saw the movie "Love, Actually" last week. I honestly wasn't expecting too much, but I really liked it. As romantic comedies go, it could turn out to be one of my favorites. Maybe because it didn't concentrate on just the Love-at-first-type love. It does have that, in the plot line involving Hugh Grant as the prime minister of England, but it also has long-time-married love, love between a father and son, a child's puppy love, love-despite-a-language-difference love, lust-love, and the love-that-can-never-happen love, just to name a few (or name most of them, actually). There's more than a few storyline here, some could be done with completely, but are entertaining, so I'm glad they were kept. Those are the small plotlines of two stand-in for porn stars who meet on a adult film set and the englishmen who has no luck getting women in his own country and is convinced he'll have alot better luck with American women. The latter is especially great for it's amazing cameos.
Speaking of cameos, Billy Bob Thorton plays the U.S. President as a perfect mix of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (I'm not kidding. If you can't imagine this, see the movie). His hitting on the girl Hugh Grant has a crush on puts that whole plotline in motion and it goes back into standard romantic comedy auto-pilot once he leaves.
The Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman plotline is the slowest, but it makes sense since it's about love at many years of marriage. Rickman's character is a boss who is being pursued by his very aggressive secretary.
The best scenes in the movie are when the old rock star who has been through to much and is too old to not tell the truth is on screen. His scenes, as well as the scene where the love-that-can-never-happen plotline is resolved, were my favorite scenes.
The movie was kinda long, for a comedy, but I wouldn't have removed any of the scenes, so the length isn't a issue.

Does anybody know if Leonardo Decaprio has a connection to Pitt? In the current issue of a major magazine, there's a photograph of him at a party wearing a ballcap with the current Pitt emblem. I'm not a huge fan of him or anything, but if he's a Pitt fan, then it would make him less annoying.

As Bill mentioned on his blog, he and I went to the Steelers game last sunday. I had great seats in the club section. Our seats were in the first row of the section, so we had a railing instead of another row of seats in front of us, which is really nice. The Steelers scored to take the lead with less than a minute less. Usually, that's a good thing, but two things happened. First, like Bill documented, he said how quiet the loud crowd would get if the kickoff was ran back for a touchdown. Second, before the kickoff, the young couple sitting next to me left. You never leave a close game before it's over. That's when the improbably stuff happens. Anyway, the game was still good up until the last 40 seconds or so. I don't think I could have sat through another rout. Well, I could have, but I'd have drank alot more.