Wow, Do We Suck

I read something depressing in the hometown newspaper the other day.

My high school (Huntington North) beat local rival high school Homestead in football.

How is that depressing, you ask? It was the first time they had beaten Homestead since 1988.

For reference, I didn't even start high school until 1990. For further reference, none of the kids who play for my high school team were even born the last time HNHS defeated HHS on the gridiron.

Wow.

The kids were, of course, jubilant. I don't know if they actually realize that nearly a score had passed since there were similar jubilant kids on the field after playing Homestead. And you know what the really pathetic thing is? Homestead's not even the best high school in the area when it comes to football! I mean, sure, they're good, but they're not Snider or Bishop Luers or Bishop Dwenger. Couple that with the fact that Huntington North is one of the biggest schools in the area, and, well, you've got yourself a one-way ticket to Patheticstown.

19 freaking years. I hadn't realized. Christ, Indiana was preparing to defend a national title in basketball the last time the Vikings emerged victorious over the Spartans. The thing is, I don't even remember the last time Huntington North beat Homestead. Back then, all I cared about was basketball and Aleisha Crago's ass (and not necessarily in that order...). Wow. Compound this information with the fact that my cousin Scott went to Homestead and Homestead was in our sectional (used to be regional before realignment), so you can see that football expectations back at the old alma mater were never too high.

Nineteen freaking years. Incidentally, 19 years ago in August, the first night game was played at Wrigley Field. I watched both games (the first game on August 8th, was rained out and it was against the Phillies, I think) on tv. I had plenty of free time because, well, no one really cared about football in my home town and there was plenty of other things to watch.

Like Aleisha Crago's ass.

Shut Up, Already!!!

I have another beef with the idiots on the sports talk radio station(s) down here (mmmm...beef...). Well, I have several, but this one has finally irked me to the point that I must rant to the interwebs and the ebays and the blagosphere.

Remember me bitching about Chris Clark here? In there I mentioned that Clark would soon be joined by local ACC shill David Glenn. While I haven't heard that one trick pony talk about how ESPN was beating down the ACC's door for that coveted Thursday night football game (please...) yet, his other oft-repeated, ad nauseum phrase has finally got me to the breaking point. It used to merely irritate me, but now I'm ready to beat someone in the head with a shillelagh (remember, I did go to Notre Dame and scored "Irish" on the European quiz).

Now, I appreciate someone trying to make an extra buck. Honest. Hell, I'm all about trying to make an extra buck or two for my damned self. This David Glenn guy, in addition to being a lawyer and having his own radio show, also does commercials for a jewelry store called Diamonds Direct. I guess they're local, I don't really give two squirts, I'll never shop there. What has me irked is David Glenn's constant reference to his wife in the commercials he does for the joint. It'd be one thing if he just said "My wife has a ring from there, it's pretty". No, instead he includes this epithet for her, not just on the commercial (and it's every commercial, mind), but any time he mentions her when he's on his show, or a spot on another show, or just sitting in for someone else. Always, whenever he opens his mouth, out roll the words "The lovely and talented Maria".

Okay, fine. You love your wife. Bully for you. And, you find your wife attractive and talented. I don't even want to think about what her talents are. I'm sure they involve brass poles. But, Christ, say it once, maybe twice...in your lifetime. There comes a point where even the cutesy crap you try to pull to gain points with your wife become as annoying as an itchy rectum. For this guy, it's about five seconds after opening your mouth.

I wonder if that's what he yells out while they make love. Never mind. I don't really wonder that. In fact, I'm thinking of going all Oedipus on myself now for thinking that. *shudder*

I think, however, that I'm going to start doing the same for my wife. She reads this blog, so why not try to score some points with her? Maybe it'll pay off in the sack. Who knows? Maybe she'll make me a cake for when I get home. Mmmm...cake. Or maybe she'll kick me in the nuts. That's a chance I'll have to take. But, from now on, my wife shall heretofore be known as "The buxom and comely Boudica." I've provided a link so that you can read up on Boudica and, perhaps, understand why I chose that name (in the interest of interweb anonymity, I thought I'd provide the buxom and comely Boudica a little bit of privacy).

Now...I'll just sit back and wait for that cake to appear.

Sale on Nitrogen, This Weekend Only!!!

I'm a chemist. And, as a chemist, I know things. I know things like all matter has mass. I know that an atom is the smallest bit of a substance you can have and still retain the properties of that substance. I know things like which elements are electronegative, and what a pi-bond is, and the octet rule.

I also, thanks to extensive work done by guys like Boyle, Charles, and Guy-Lussac, that gasses behave a certain way.

You can imagine my...confusion...last night when I was listening to/watching the news whilst working on editing my book, and an officer from the Garner police was talking about filling the tires on his cars with nitrogen, because, you see, nitrogen is not affected by changes in temperature.

Uh. Hmmm.

Officer, I'd like to introduce you to my friend, the Ideal Gas Law.

Ideal Gas Law, officer dumbass.

Now, it should be said that we here at the sprawling A Crown of Thistles home office have nothing but respect for the boys in blue. My uncle was a cop, my aunt is a county dispatcher, my cousin was a jailor, my other cousin is also a dispatcher, and I believe my uncle served as a dispatcher, as well, after retiring from the force. So, you can see, my family likes cops. Sure, sometimes they can be dickish, but for the most part, they're there to help.

It's just a frustrating thing when you hear someone touting the benefits of some new piece of technology, and yet, they are off base.

For the Garner police officer (and anyone else who hasn't spent their life dedicated to this thing), the Ideal Gas law is pV=nRT, which basically states that the pressure (p) and volume (V) of a certain amount of gas (n) is related to the temperature (T). That basically says that, as you heat a gas, it expands. If the vessel is closed, the pressure goes up, too. So, nitrogen, being a gas, would adhere to this.

Another thing the good officer failed to realize is that in every breath he takes, 70% of it is nitrogen. When he exhales, 70% of that is nitrogen. When he inhales, the air is cool. When he exhales, the air is warm. What this means is that nitrogen does, in fact, get affected by changes in heat.

Now, the Garner police department is using nitrogen to fill up the tires on their cruisers in an attempt to lower gas consumption. It's supposed to increase your gas mileage by up to ten miles per gallon. I'm guessing that there is no neat trick to having nitrogen, as opposed to regular air, in your tires. My best guess is that, since it's pure nitrogen, you're not getting partial pressures of all the mixtures of gasses that comprise "air". One thing about the Ideal Gas Law is that you're assuming the gas is pure, which "air" is not. It's a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, water vapor (I haven't yet seen a dessicator line on an air pump at the gas station), and a host of other gasses that comprise the last 1.3% or whatever it is.

There is another law that would cover this mixture is the Law of Partial Pressures, which basically states that the ratio of the gasses inside a vessel exerts a ratio of the pressure on the vessel, so nitrogen would exert 70% of the pressure inside of your tire if it is filled with air. Now, each of the other gasses on the inside of your tire would adhere to the Ideal Gas Law separately, and therein might lie the problem. Different gasses expand and contract different volumes when heated at the same temperature (that's basically what the n is for in the Ideal Gas Law). Also, I think the big key is that 23% of the air inside your tire is oxygen.

Oxygen is a nasty, nasty gas if you don't know how to use it. Your body basically has to repair itself constantly from oxygen's nastiness. Singlet oxygen (and Dr. Creary forgive me if I've switched the two) is the more reactive form of oxygen, which can do deleterious things to the inside of your tire. Also, water vapor on the insides of tires is probably not a good thing (and as I mentioned earlier, I've yet to see a gas station attendant changing the drierite on the air pump outside his station) and can cause some issues. Nitrogen, however, is damned inert and happy to remain as such.

Now, the kicker that really astounded me wasn't even the cop claiming that nitrogen is not affected by the changes in temperature. No, at the end of the report, the reporter told of a garage that will fill your car's tires with nitrogen...for $50!!! I'm not sure if that's per tire or the whole deal. But, fifty freaking dollars for nitrogen, the most abundant gas on earth? Well, hell, that's like paying $5 a bottle for water, the most abundant...substance...on...earth... Oh wait.

I need to come up with a good idea for people to throw money at me. Maybe I should start touting how helium in your tires will make your car lighter and therefore more fuel-efficient.

Hey wait...that just might work. I'll talk to you later. I think I just heard the unmistakable sounds of suckers being born this past minute.

So, Read Any Good Books Lately?

All apologies for my extended absence from these marvelous interwebs. I hadn't really thought of updating, to be honest, and for that, I'm ashamed. Woefully shamed. If I had a hat, it'd be in my hand, crumpled, nervously being mashed in between my hands as I sought your forgiveness.

When three separate people asked me if I was going to update, well, I figured I should probably get off my lazy ass (or, better, to plunk it down in front of the computer) and start typing. Since I happen to be sleeping with one of those three and the second of those three yearns for my stimulating discourse to get him through the late nights while dealing with his new baby (feel free to leave congratulatory notes in the comments section...address them to Joe. He'll be crushed if you don't congratulate him...even if you're that pervert who keeps coming here after googling "belly button torture sex", leave him a note), I felt it was imperative that I put some of my thoughts on the screen for your reading pleasures.

With that in mind, I struggled with the subject material. I can't just puke words onto the screen and expect people to come back. Even that guy who keeps coming here after googling "belly button torture sex". There was so much to talk about, and yet very little of it is at all interesting. I could talk about how I've been raised to commander of Omega Squad on travian. I could talk about how my daughter likes Dirty Jobs just a little too much. I could talk about how my little boy wants to grow up and play basketball. I could bitch about the idiots on the talk radio some more. I could talk about Michael Vick, Phil Rizzuto, Karl Rove or how much I suck at large-scale purification (synthetically, however, I'm cranking out over 90% yields, but the Companion machine is pwning my ass when it comes time to clean up my molecules).

Instead, I thought I'd bust out a lame pick-up line, because that's the kind of guy I am. After all, I am trying to publish a book or three, and this blog was born of my love of writing and has since spiraled down into one never-ending dick joke.

Anyway...I've been rereading my latest opus. I'm a few chapters in, and I've realized that proofreading sucks. I know how the story ends, I come across a character and I'm like "he's dead, she's a bitch, this guy is a total polesmoker, too bad he has to die..." My hardest part is that I want to skim over words and such as if I'm reading a paper about Buchwald couplings or something, and I keep having to read and reread parts of the book because I skim over them and then I'm paranoid I missing something glaringly obvious, like a mispelling or some grammatical error And that's just not good eats.

I've also been finishing up a few other reads for leisure. Like, I just finished Tad Williams' "Shadowplay" and I'm almost done with Bill Bryson's "I'm a Stranger Here Myself", which isn't nearly as funny as some of his other books, mostly because he's writing for a British audience without the British wit. Speaking of British wit, I watched Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Wererabbit last night. Effing brilliant. We've had it since Christmas, but I just now talked the kids into watching it with me. "It's got bunnies in it!" was the clincher there (feel free to use that without royalties owed in case you want/need to talk your kids into watching it).

To be honest, this whole sudden interest in reading was sparked by my friend (she's not ex-that yet) over at Ex-Everything with the list of things she's read in 2007. It's impressive, and I admire someone who still loves to read that much (duh...), and so I pondered all this earlier in the evening whilst sitting on the best pondering place in my house: the crapper (while reading that Bill Bryson book). I decided (after deciding once again that, with two young children, there is no such thing as privacy) that I've had a varied diet of books that I've read this year. It's not an extensive list, but it is a break from my normal diet of steady fantasy (which I broke up late last year, deciding that I was fantasy-ing myself out between video games, books, writing...not to mention Betsy Hagar).

As for my own book, the Boar War. I should be done with it this weekend. So far, I haven't had to redo much. I realize a couple of things I'll have to smooth out through the course of the story, but that's to be expected. Plus, I need to work on killing people for effect, not just for the sake of killing them. It's a little more difficult in a single-shot stand-alone book, but it can be done.

I promise that I won't take three weeks or whatever to update again. I have some ideas for stuff I need to get done ere September 1st rolls around.

Also, if you want some good, mindless, pretty violence, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness gets the Matt Jenks stamp of approval. I went into sensory deprivation after wrapping up The Boar War and played that for about four or five hours. It was fantastic.

UM, excuse me?

About a year and a half ago, all of the radio stations down here decided to switch formats. Drastically. We no longer have a new rock/alternative, we have "everything that rocks" (which includes 10 songs an hour between these three artists: Ozzy, Led Zepplin, Metallica, Aerosmith, Red Hot Chili Peppers). We no longer have classic rock, we have country. We no longer have light alternative, we have light classic rock (which features continuous repeats of Bohemian Rhapsody, that song about Gollum and the Evil Orcs ("you gotta understand...these guys were on a lot of stuff!"), Aerosmith and Red Hot Chili Peppers). We no longer have modern hits, we have something that features Whoopi Goldburg in the mornings. *shudder*

You get the idea. I gave up listening to the music stations about the same time and now I shuffle between the two "local" sports radio stations (one is mostly local, the other is a mouthpiece for ESPN, and all original non-Durham Bulls broadcasts end at 7pm) and the talk radio station, although that one gets limited play because I'm tired of listening to Shawn Hannity tell me that this is the most important election in the history of America. Again. For the third election running. *yawn*

Well, the problem with listening to the local sports stations is that they're populated by idiots. Now, it used to be tolerable because one station had a morning show that was informative, funny, and decent to listen to. The drive home featured this guy named Adam Gold who I don't really agree with most of the time, but he reads Harry Potter and I could see myself having a beer with him and having some decent debates. However, once the Imus thing happened, the radio stations had to shuffle things around and now Adam Gold and one of the guys from the morning show moved to now having a morning show together. The only reason I listen to it now is because Mike & Mike in the Morning are on the other show, and, well, I can only listen to so much of Mike Greenberg before I want to piss my pants and lose all faith in humanity. I imagine listening to Lindsay Lohan on a drunken, coke-induced bender fighting a rabid jaguar would be more interesting, informative and less painful on the ears than extended exposure to Mike Greenberg.

Okay, I digress. The real reason I'm on this rant is because the new evening guy is this dumbass named Chris Clark (who used to host a noon-time show featuring other local sports junkies which was enjoyable, largely because Chris Clark didn't speak too much). I've called this guy out over the internet before (remember, the lowest form of humanity is people who call into radio shows, in my humble opinion), most notably when he boldly proclaimed "there's no way Indiana's going to beat Wisconsin". Dumbass. So, you can see the level of moron we're dealing with here. A farting hippopotomus would offer more intelligent insight into the world of sports than Chris Clark (incidentally, Chris Clark is being joined by ACC-guru David Glenn tomorrow night so that we can listen to this one-trick pony continue to trot out there the advantages to football expansion in the ACC from a monetary standpoint because ESPN was beating down the ACC's door to broadcast games on Thursday nights when nobody watches...a perfect fit for a conference that has no football teams).

So, yesterday, Chris Clark was talking about holdouts in pro football camps. He made a good point that the NFL should adopt something like the NBA: you get paid according to where you were drafted, such that pick number one makes more money than pick number two who makes more money than pick number three and so on (Brady Quinn might want to remember that 22 comes way down the line). This was all well and good until Clark continued to talk. He then said (to paraphrase), "I know some positions in football are more difficult than others. A running back, for instance, is easy. Here's the ball, find the hole. A linebacker is easy. Here's our blitzes, get the quarterback."

This is the kind of idiocy that is acceptable only in ACC country, especially North Carolina, where the best team in the state is Division IAA Appalachian State (and I am including the Panthers). Apparently, someone forgot to tell Chris Clark that the running back is a vital part of the offense, not only for advancing the ball on the ground, grinding out yardage, getting first downs and running touchdowns into the endzone. For one, the running back has to know the playbook almost as much as the quarterback, that way he knows where to run the ball so that he can pick up the A-hole, B-hole and C-hole, make his decision, and go. He has to know where the blocking schemes are going, not to mention know where his lead blockers are going. Running back is not an easy position. If it was, then any moron could do it, which is why guys like Walter Payton, Barry Sanders and Emmit Smith are a dime a dozen in the NFL.

Not only that, but the running back also feeds into the pass protection. He needs to know whom to pick up and when. He also needs to know his routes in short-yardage pass situations when he comes off his blocks and plays the role of the check-down man. He needs to know if he has to get down the field and block for receivers on swing passes, curl routes, and cross patterns. It's a little more than "find a hole and run through it."

I won't even get into how complicated a linebacker's job is, with stunts, coverage, motion men, blitzes, two tight-end sets, 3-4 vs 4-3...you get the idea. The only "easy" job on a football team is kicker and place holder, and the kicker has to plan for wind, weather, angle of incidence...Ask any linebacker who has had to face an offense like Navy's how damned easy the job is. Or ask Brian Urlacher how dumb linebackers are and how they don't have to think or plan on the field. I'm sure he won't fuck you gently with a chainsaw, Chris Clark.

This would be enough to prove this man's high level of dumbass, but then he said something later on that really pissed me off. Once again, it was born of ignorance. I'll quote this one:

"Hey, Stengel [producer's name], remember me on Friday telling you about how Notre Dame was trying to weasel out of their contract with Michigan? They just signed a 20-year extension."
Now, I'm not exactly unfamiliar with the anti-Notre Dame bias expressed in the media. Especially among the unenlightened, like this moron.

First, let's point out one thing that Clark forgot to mention: when Michigan threatened to let the contract run out, Notre Dame went out and got a verbal commitment to play Oklahoma in a home-and-home series. Not exactly like the home-and-homes that schools around North Carolina play (East Carolina, Navy, Wofford...). Now, of course, the point is moot, since ND and UM have agreed to extend the contract out through 2031.

Second, let's also put in the note of contention between the two schools. Michigan wanted Notre Dame to play two games in a row at the Big House in Ann Arbor so that they [UM] could avoid having to play Notre Dame and Ohio State on the road in the same season. Being that we're recovering from the Davieham era and are actually fairly good now and looking to be good on a consistent basis, I can see Michigan's point. Especially in the BCS era, you don't want to have to play two heavyweight teams on the road every other year (especially when those are two of your chiefest rivals!), because then you can pretty much write off competing for national championships in even-numbered years.

However, you can see why Notre Dame wouldn't want to do this, as this would cause our schedule to shift in such a way that we'd play Michigan AND Southern Cal on the road every year. Granted, everyone loves to rip Notre Dame's schedule, but youd think the haters would slow down if they saw Michigan AND USC on the road every year. Of course, they'd heap disdain and scorn when Michigan AND USC played at Notre Dame stadium in the same season. Much like Michigan, we don't exactly want to write off shots at national championships in odd-numbered years (though you would expect there to be a serious boost in the computers to playing two heavyweights on the road for your SOS).

So, you can clearly see that Notre Dame is not trying to "weasel out" of their contract with Michigan. Instead, we were unwilling to shift our schedule in order to make Michigan's easier at the same time we make our own harder. A little bit of digging would have shown this, but instead, Chris Clark decides that he's going to take the easy way out and insult Notre Dame. God knows that no one wants to actually do any learning to make an educated opinion in the world of sports talk radio (save for Adam Gold, who does seem to be a pretty smart fellow...despite being a Mets fan), and Chris Clark is the banner carrier for the continued ignorance of the trade. Way to go, Chris. You keep up that good work.