Just heard that Mark “The Bird” Fidrych was found dead today, apparently accidental. Man, that really sucks. I still vividly remember sitting in the left field lower deck at The Corner watching him pitch in 1976 when I was a little kid. He was a class act, a true ballplayer back when real ballplayers only made $16,000 a year. I wish sports today was like sports back then.
R.I.P. Mark Fidrych
April 13th, 2009Stimulated yet?
January 25th, 2009So Obama wants to spend $1 trillion or more on an “economic stimulus”. Which makes no sense at all, since the government would have to BORROW the money to even issue it in the first place. HELLO…anyone in DC listening? All you folks who voted for Obama, why did you vote for someone who doesn’t understand where money comes from?
Here’s a better idea: the US gets about $1 trillion in revenue from the IRS every year. Not to mention the $250 billion that people and corporations spend every year in the US just trying to comply with the tax code and complete a return that isn’t going to get them audited.
How about just not having an income tax for a year? Or two? Just straight up give everyone their money back. Everyone gets a full refund, no questions asked. BOOM! There’s $1.25 trillion into the economy automatically, and the government doesn’t have to take on $1.25 trillion in debt.
It boggles my mind that people who are allegedly smart (Obama, any other politicians) would think going into ever more debt is the right way to fix things.
Unemployment
January 8th, 2009According to an article in today’s Detroit News, there are so many people in Michigan filing for unemployment or already on unemployment that the state has to hire more workers to handle the load.
Oh, the irony.
2008 Economic Freedom report
December 26th, 2008Pacific Research has released their annual economic freedom report in conjunction with Forbes magazine. I’m surprised Michigan was ranked #43 out of 50, I expected it to be lower.
The top 3, in other words the top 3 states where citizens have the most economic freedom, are: South Dakota (#1), Idaho (#2), and Colorado (#3).
Happy Holidays
December 26th, 2008Insert your specific religiously-appropriate seasonal greeting here.
What’s with vampires?
September 14th, 2008I am sooooo tired of vampire TV shows, vampire movies, and people trying to look and/or act like vampires. I just don’t understand the fascination with vampires that so many people seem to have. The whole thing is just really boring. They suck blood and live forever. We get it. Enough already!
Dance this mess around
September 11th, 2008So I was up working late because I’m swamped, and one of my favorite songs came up on my playlist: Dance This Mess Around by the B-52s.
In the song, they list out “all 16 dances” so just for grins I decided to write down the list. And to my great disappointment, I found out there’s only 8, not 16. Still a great song, though! For reference, here’s the list:
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1. Shu-ga-loo
2. Shy Tuna
3. Camel Walk
4. Hip-O-Crit
5. Coo-ca-choo
6. Aqua Velva
7. Dirty Dog
8. Escalator
Quad aces are the nuts, right? Um, no.
September 3rd, 2008Someday, I will be a professional poker player. In the meantime, I play a lot of poker, read a lot of poker books, and watch a lot of poker on TV. All in the name of learning to be a better poker player.
Last night, I was watching the first hour of the 2008 Main Event on ESPN-HD and saw probably the most amazing hand I will ever, ever, see. While the hand went down at the Main Event a couple months ago, I don’t keep up on poker news every day so didn’t hear about it until seeing it on TV last night.
Mid position raises to 850. The button calls. AcQd9s flops. Both players check. The turn is 10d. Mid bets 1600. Button calls. River is Ad. Mid bets 2500. Button raises to 8500. Mid re-raises all in. Button calls.
Mid player (Motu Mabuchi) shows AA for quad aces. An absolute monster hand. Quads are a monster, anywhere, anytime, even quad deuces. Quad aces is the mother monster of all hands. That’s gotta be good enough to take it down in the Main Event, right? 99.99999% of the time, yes. But not this time. The button shows KdJd for the royal flush, the best poker hand possible, the stone cold absolute nuts on any table, anywhere, 100.00000% of the time. Talk about a bad beat!!!
To all my John Turner brothers…
September 3rd, 2008So here’s the situation…I have a pretty common name. Not “John Smith” common, but with almost 5,000,000 hits, common enough. John Smith is about 36,000,000 hits, I’m 5 million, and my good friend’s name is only 16,000. So I’d say fairly common.
Anyway, waaaaaay back in the day when GMail was just an infant, I picked up the GMail ID johnturner. I figured I was pretty lucky to get it. This was 2004-ish. 4 years is a long time in Internet time…if we were talking geology and the age of the Earth, that would be like 500 million years ago.
Apparently, there are a bunch of John Turners out there in the world that think they also have the GMail ID johnturner. They don’t, because I have it, and I’m pretty diligent about a) changing my password regularly and b) making sure I pick a good password when I do it. I’m the only person using that email address. But I get several messages a day for OTHER John Turners. Email confirmations of orders, shipping confirmations, hotel reservation confirmations, airline confirmations, etc.
R.I.P., movie trailer guy
September 2nd, 2008Sad, sad news today. Don LaFontaine, king of the voiceover and famous for his movie trailer voiceovers that often started with the phrase “in a world…”, died today at age 68.
Here’s a YouTube clip featuring Don. He was so good one of his trailers could convince me to give a movie I wouldn’t normally watch the benefit of the doubt. He was truly a voice master and things will not be the same with him gone. Every time I hear or see a movie trailer without his voice, I am going to think “man, it’s just not the same” no matter how good the new guy is.
