The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

We were supposed to move today according to the guy we bought the apartment from, but we didn't. We didn't move yet because the guy is still there. He told us they would be out today earlier in the week, but he's not.

Our plan was to paint everything tomorrow and move everything in on Friday, but that plan has been put into jeopardy. We are probably going to end up painting all night tomorrow since they won't be gone until the afternoon and we've already scheduled the movers to come on Friday.

Wack and a half.

I'm pretty interested in watching the USA basketball team play in he quarter finals tomorrow against Spain. The only problem is that they play at 2:30pm Athens time. Here in New York, that's 7:30 in the morning.

If I want to watch the game I have to get up at 7:30am. If I don't get up, then I don't get to watch the game because NBC isn't going to tape delay it. I'll probably be up anyway to watch it, but I'm not going to set my alarm or anything. A couple of their games were at 10pm in Greece, which is 3pm here, and that's much better on my viewing schedule.

And what about people who have real jobs an aren't off for the summer? I would think that some of them are interested in seeing the games also, but they can't. I understand that they play the games when they play them, but all the other coverage in prime time is tape delayed. Isn't there enough interest out there to put those games on at a more reasonable time?

Last Wednesday I bought a new apartment. Usually when you buy a new place to live, you move into it. I, however, have yet to move into my new apartment. The reason I have yet to move is because the guy I bought the apartment from, and his entire family, are still living in it.

They were supposed to be out of the apartment by today. Apparently it's pretty standard to allow a few days after a closing to move so that everyone who needs to move can be coordinated. I didn't have a problem with that. He is, as mentioned before, however, still there. He has a whole lot of shit and he's packing or something.

So as I write I'm in my old apartment, which I no longer own, waiting for this character to leave so I can go in and paint, move all my shit in, and live there.

On top of that I called the cable company today to switch my service over and the informed me that they cannot even schedule an appointment to set up the cable and internet until after the old residents have cancelled their service, which they have yet to do because they are still living in the house. I know for certain that they will be gone by the end of the week, which is when I tried to schedule the cable guy to come, but the cable company guy literally cannot schedule an appointment until the cable is actually cancelled. The cable is already scheduled to be cancelled, but that isn't good enough.

Fucking monopolies on things like cable make the customer service downright deplorable. When I first moved in here it took them two fucking weeks to come and install the cable because they couldn't find the house. The addresses in Queens are listed according to the street you live on. Unless you're a moron, which everyone who I've spoken to at the cable company seems to be, you can find houses in Queens. They can somehow feed 500 channels into my house and allow me to use the In Demand service, but they can't find my house on the street when I give them the address. This is getting to be ri-goddamn-diculous.

The USA basketball team is clearly not suited for the international game. They are much more talented than all of the other teams, but the slight rule differences make it harder for them to compete.

Every other team plays zone against them because they don't have an outside shooter. In the rare occasions where they get through the zone and drive the basket the other team doesn't try to defend the shots, but instead tries to draw a charge, which they've done effectively through today's game. There is no interior circle that delineates a charge from a blocking foul, so a player can drive all the way to the basket and still charge a guy on his way up.

The referees call the bitchiest fouls in the world. They call hands in the back on a post up move. Every time a player drives the basket they call a foul. Generally about half the time there is no foul, at least relative to the NBA game, when a player drives, but they call it anyway. The international game is also set up to penalize the players who make aggressive plays. If you go for a steal, drive the basket, play close defense, go up hard for a rebound, or anything with energy involved, they call a foul. The fact that there are only 2 referees in the game also has an adverse effect on the USA team.

The selection committee has really done a poor job selecting this team. Even though all of those guys declined to play, they could have put a team together that would have been much more cohesive. They need to have at least 2 three point shooters. You can't go wrong with Iverson or Duncan, and they've both played well. Lamar Odom is a lot better than I thought he was. Marbury was the best PG available after Kidd and Bibby declined. Except for these guys, though, the team is really built poorly.

The team needs a Reggie Miller/Brent Barry/Voshon Leonard type of player. Someone with high energy who can hit shots. The current team has lots of wasted energy in guys who try to drive through the zone every time and don't know what to do when that doesn't work because they can't consistently hit shots.

Every game they've played so far has been s struggle and that's mainly because of the zone defense. Their weaknesses are so obvious and very easy to exploit. Bronze medal at best.

...is clearly the trampoline. They had coverage today on the prime time broadcast of the Olympic trampoline event and it is the most fun event to watch by far. The contestants fly up in the air, do mad tricks, and then bounce back up to do more tricks.

Also there's a bit of a Nascar element because if they hit their jmps wrong then they go flying off the trampoline and into the mat. A couple of the women in the competition, including the gold medal favorite, took an incorrect leap and ended up off the trampoline. One wrong leap and your Olympic dream is ruined.

This is sort of a kitschy event, like curling, but is also really fun to watch in addition. Very cool.

Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, signed a contract extension today. This more or less guarantees that Selig will be the commissioner until 2009.

A bunch of interesting things have happened in baseball while Selig has been the commissioner, including the strike of 1995, interleague play, the wild card playoff, the avoided strike of 2002, the luxury tax, and revenue sharing.

I guess the owners see things improving from their perspective. After all, more people seem to be interested, people go to the games in most cities, owners feel more competitive with revenue sharing, and such.

The thing is, out of all the major sports, baseball owners get bitched the most by their union. Once this hockey strike happens this season, baseball will be the only sport without a salary cap, which is ludicrous. I happen to be a Yankee fan, but even I can recognize the need for a salary cap in baseball. There are only really 5 competitive teams each year, and while a lot of teams are happy being in the wild card race, they really don't have a shot in the playoffs. Salaries are too far out of control, and the teams who can afford to pay those salaries can also afford to pay the luxury tax.

Another area where the owners are getting bitched is drug testing. There was some sort of clause in the new collective bargaining agreement that called for drug testing, but it basically lets any player who's suspected of drug use not take the test. Only certain numbers of players can be tested and only teams get to choose who is tested, or something like that. I don't remember exactly and I'm not going to look it up right now, but it essentially ensures that Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi will never be tested for steroids, or any other drug for that matter.

Selig has made some progress as commissioner, but the owners need to screw their heads on a little bit tighter. The only owner who benefits from him being in power is George Steinbrenner, because Selig will never stand up to the union. Until that happens, look for the Yankees, Cardinals, Dodgers, Braves, and Angels to win every World Series.

I don't know a whole lot about stock trading and what not, aside from buy low and sell high, but the biggest news to come out of the market in a while is today's Google IPO. It opened at around $85 this morning and peaked at about $105 at some point in the day.

I'm pretty surprised that Google has remained a private company for so long. There was a lot of pressure both from their shareholders and from the investing public for them to hit the market and they held out for pretty much as long as they could.

Google seems to be one of the best run internet companies out there. I've worked for a few of them and none of those were spectacularly well run. I don't believe that clowns didn't see that internet bubble bursting, but I guess they didn't. Oh well, the internet companies that remain are the ones that at least seem to be doing it right. Among them are Google, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL (to a certain extent), and eBay. I'll bet there are more that don't immediately come to mind as well.

I do miss that Pets.com sock puppet, though.

Me and Kathy are moving. We're currently in a 2 bedroom apartment and we're moving to a 3 bedroom apartment about three blocks from where we live now. Incidentally, I know that "me and Kathy" is terrifically bad grammar, but that's how it came out.

Anyhow, we live in a co-op, which means you get to purchase them, and we're moving to another co-op, and we had both closings today. By both I mean the one we're selling and the one we're buying. We don't get to actually move until next week, but we technically own a new home as of today. Give it up for home ownership.

It's a pain in the ass to pack up a house for moving, lest you were wondering.

I really enjoy watching the Olympics on TV. I guess that's good since the coverage is literally on 24 hours a day.

Any time I want to I can watch synchronized diving, badminton, equestrian events, table tennis, boxing, swimming, men's gymnastics, track and field, or any of the myriad events that go on in the games.

I'm not sure why it is I enjoy the Olympics so much, but ever since I was young I've always watched as much coverage as possible. I think the summer olympics has a bit more to offer in terms of variety and athleticism, but nothing beats curling in the winter games. They cover curling like it's a joke. Bob Costas has that mischievous grin on his face as he throws the coverage over to the alternate ice rink where the curling takes place.

Anyhow, go USA. Also you can't help but route for the Iraqi soccer team. The USA basketball team is definitely not going to win the gold this year. Look for Argentina to take it and for Serbia Montenegro to take silver. Let's hope the USA can medal.

I could not care less if Gov. McGreevy from NJ, my home state, is gay. I was commenting yesterday on how I thought it was somewhat ludicrous for him to resign just because he was gay. Also it's questionable as to whether he should resign just because he had an affair.

Now the real reason he is resigning is apparent. It's not because he's gay, per se, but because he put his lover in a job that he wasn't qualified for. This is just corruption and a waste of state funds and everything else and the like.

Similarly, if you are carrying on a sexual relationship with an underling, there is definitely a conflict of interest, and there is more than likely grounds for sexual harassment, which should be coming up shortly for McGreevy.

To paraphrase young Will Hunting, I don't care if he putts from the rough, but the corruption seems to be abounding from his administration, and while I solute him for finally going public with his homosexuality, it seems to be a smokescreen for the widespread corruption, even beyond his affair, in his administration.

I was watching The Daily Show last night and thy gave a report about a think tank group called Citizens for a Sound Economy who are working diligently to get Ralph Nader on the ballot.

This in itself is probably a silly thing to do, but their motivation is completely reprehensible. The CSE is a Republican group and the only reason they're collecting signatures for Nader is so that he can steal votes from John Kerry.

What dickwads.

Today Kathy and I have been married for two years. That's pretty exciting. I enjoy being married, so I guess it's good that there are milestones to celebrate in the life of marriages.

I was thinking today that I don't hear the term 'information superhighway' nearly enough any more. In the mid to late '90s all we used to hear about was this highway, and how we were gonna go to exciting new places. Chip Douglas aka The Cable Guy, waxed poetic about it in the famous film:

The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There's no end to the possibilities!

We need to bring back that term. I want to hear more about this information superhighway, and how I can benefit from it. You've steered your way through the rest stops and gotten off at the wrong exit and ended up here, somehow. How does that make your future a better place?

Here's a post about what would happen in the not altogether unlikely event that there is a tie in the electoral college. The polls at the moment suggest an outcome like this.

Unfortunately for Kerry, a tie would mean almost certain defeat in the Republican dominated Congress. Conceivably then, he could win the majority vote and lose the election, just like Gore. Even outside this scenario the possibility of Kerry winning the majority and losing the election are better than is most years.

Lest you think I'm not objective when it comes to the upcoming presidential campaign, I must say that no one is perfect, even John Kerry. While he will certainly receive my vote come November, he's not immune to saying and doing stupid things.

Bush is trying to portray him as a flip flopper, or someone who can't make up his mind. Kerry is not helping himself when he makes statements that support this idea. When he was asked if he were president during this last stretch of time if he would have gone to war with Iraq, Kerry said:

We definitely might have.

John, you can't stand strong on issues and say shit like that. This is how they're gonna get you, John. This statement has no depth, it's superficial, it doesn't mean anything. You might as well have said, "I love birdies".

I redesigned my other web site. This site is supposed to be more of a comment every day on minutiae sort of thing, whereas the other web site is about grander ideas and more static themes.

The other site looks a little like this one now, but it's not quite as fancy. I didn't design this site, someone more talented than me did. I did design the other site and write all the HTML and what not. Believe me, that's not bragging, it's just so you know why it's not super fancy.

Anyway, read the other site if you haven't yet.

Most of my posts so far have been about politics or baseball. There were a couple about some movies I've seen or plays or what not. I think about things other than politics and baseball, but for some reason I have yet to really blog about them.

I'm going to make a conscious effort to blog about things other than politics and baseball, though I can't make any promises. Once basketball season starts, then I'll have a lot to say about that.

Damn, am I this uncomplicated?

The blog looks different today, even though all the content is the same. The good thing about blogs like this is that everything is so easy to do. I just have to write what I want to write and then this blog site does the rest.

One of the things they do for me is to provide lots of choices for the template of the blog. I like a few of them, so I decided to change to a different one this morning. I picked this one in particular because I like the block quotes it has.

I imagine I'll change the template from time to time since I don't really have anything better to do with my time.

Yesterday, George Bush made possibly the biggest blunder in his public speaking history. Usually, he just says retarded things, but yesterday he unleashed a doozy that was rife with meaning and Freudian melodrama.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Man, If I didn't already know he was a fool, I would be scared right now of how exactly he was thinking of harming us.

In this week's New York Magazine, Norman Mailer talks about George Bush and good strategies to get him out of office. One of his comments on Dubya summarizes exactly how I feel about Bush in better words than I've ever expressed it.

It could be that the most incisive personal crime committed by George Bush is that he probably never said to himself, “I don’t deserve to be president.” You just can’t trust a man who’s never been embarrassed by himself. The vanity of George W. stands out with every smirk. He literally cannot control that vanity. It seeps out of every movement of his lips, it squeezes through every tight-lipped grimace. Every grin is a study in smugsmanship.

Truer words have never been spoken.

The Boston Red Sox traded Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs yesterday and got Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera from the Twins and Expos, respectively. This was a hugely complicated deal, so I won't try to outline it, suffice it to say that th Red Sox were the catalyst of this deal.

The Sox needed desperately to shore up their defense. They look like the Bad News Bears from time to time on the field and Cabrera and Mientkiewicz are both solid defenders. I just can't believe how quickly the relationship between Nomar and Boston soured. I wish Jimmy Fallon hadn't left SNL because there would have been a great skit with Rachel Dratch and him either mourning his loss or dissing him or something.

Nomar was the next best thing to Larry Bird, Ted Williams, Cam Nealy, and Tom Brady in Boston. As soon as they were gonna get A-Rod, everyone forgot about him and was ready to sell him out. Even his own teammates were on ESPN talking about how they wanted A-Rod and they were ready for a future without Nomar (and without Manny Ramirez too, incidentally). How can you sell out a guy who hit .356 and .372 in consecutive seasons? That's unbelievable.

The Cubs are wild card favorites, all of a sudden. Between Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou, and Nomar, they've got some serious hurt in that lineup. If they can get Kerry Wood and Mark Prior healthy, they're gonna be unstoppable through September.

The Mets made two terrible trades at the trade deadline this year, even after I advised them not to.

They went through with that trade of Ty Wigginton and Matt Peterson for Kris Benson. Benson got shelled in his first start as a Met, though we'll give him a pass because his last three starts were against the Braves. On top of that they traded their best pitching prospect, Scott Kazmir, to the Devil Rays for Carlos Zambrano, a guy who's abou as good as Benson.

The Mets must be looking toward the future because their chances for this year are essentially zero after falling 8 games behind the Braves last night. If they sign both of these guys for the next 3 or 4 years then they will remain a middle of the road team, which is what they seem to be content to do.

I was watching the McLaughlin Group today, as I'm wont to do on Sundays, and there were some interesting points made.

First, my jaw almost dropped when Pat Buchanan, the most conservative guy who's ever been taken seriously, said that John Kerry is, "a man who any conservative could vote for with a clear conscience." I wonder if Buchanan is really just that fed up with Bush that he wants to throw votes to Kerry or what. It's clear that Buchanan doesn't like Bush, so who knows what his motives are. I wonder if that statement were recognized on a larger scale if it would help or hurt Kerry.

Pat Buchanan also gave John Kerry's speech an A on both substance and presentation. Tony Blankley, the resident Republican on the McGlaughlin Group gave Kerry an A on presentation and a B on substance. That's not bad at all. Everyone agreed that the convention was a huge success for the Democrats and for Kerry in particular.

Buchanan made a good point about John Edwards as well. What makes him popular is what could ultimately be his downfall. He's very likable,very flashy, easy to listen to, but he may just be a used car salesman. He's willing to tell you everything you want to hear in the next 60 seconds. It remains to be seen whether or not Edwards can back that shit up.