Diskage:
DVD • Brotherhood of the Wolf
CD-ROM • D2X
CD Player
• Audioslave - Audioslave
• Slayer - South of Heaven
• NIN - The Fragile
• NIN - Broken
• Tool - Undertow

Books Lying Open
• The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr

Soul-Devouring Worry
• Nothing in particular, for once.

When I Grow Up:
• Attending the Superbowl will involve less work.

Curse of the Day:
• May you underestimate your need for sleep.

Saturday seemed very short.  I was up until past dawn, but set my alarm to get up at 11, so I'd be tired Sat night (well, Sunday morning, technically).  I got up, but I wasn't happy about it, and my drowsiness, combined with the very hot day (hottest in months, high 80's and cloudless) made a semi-accidental afternoon nap pretty much unavoidable, once I went in to lie down and read a bit.  I don't know how long I drowsed, but it was dusk when I finally returned to a fully waking state, and as happens in my living room, once the sun isn't directly on the window, it cooled off pretty quickly.

I almost couldn't tell you where the next 9 hours went though.  Made some quesadillas, wrote a little, surfed, emailed, read some, updated a FAQ a bit for the D2 site... and here it is, 3am.  If I didn't have to go to work in the morning, I'd quite happily fry up some potatoes and peppers and gobble that with a soda and be up until dawn.  Tomorrow, perhaps.

Some news now.

Not that it's really news, but "the accumulated detritus of my surfing" doesn't have quite as nice a ring.

 

While there I looked around to see what else he had on the site.  Surprisingly, there is a full length pilot episode for a cartoon series called Constant Payne.  Weak name, but the cartoon is really quite cool.  It's set in a speculative future of sorts, where everyone seems to travel around in weird varieties of blimps.  The main character is a cute and precocious 13 y/o girl.  Her dad is sort of a comic book hero scientist inventor, who can kick ass, and her uncle, dad's brother, is a super villain.  You should check out the cartoon, I found it pretty entertaining, and the price is certainly right. Unfortunately this is all we'll ever see of it.

This is an animated pilot I created, wrote and produced for Nickelodeon. After the terror attacks of 9/11, Nick decided that they couldn't make an "action" show where the main character's mother was dead.

Chilling self censorship, if you ask me.

• I just saw this Dubya tax return today on Modern Humorist, and laughed up a small animal.  *cough* How did that get down there?  You may gain amusement from it as well.  Pity there's no .pdf version to print out and mail to the IRS.

• Article I enjoyed on The Onion.  Skeptic Pitied.

Also feeling pity for Schaffner is his former girlfriend Aimee Brand, a holistic and homeopathic healer who earns a living selling tonics and medicines diluted to one molecule per gallon in the belief that the water "remembers" the curative properties of the medication.

"Don't get me wrong—logic and reason have their place," Brand said. "But Craig fails to recognize the danger of going too far with medical common sense to the exclusion of alternative New Age remedies like chakra cleansing and energy-field realignment."

Not that I identify with the guy or anything...

The Australian Open turned into a bit of a joke this year, for a variety of reasons.

The women's final was another Williams vs. Williams affair, though since they play each other in every final in every tournament now, I don't suppose we can hold that against the Oz Open.  You can talk all you want about tennis being about finesse and skill and technique, and the Williams sisters have all of that. But it certainly doesn't hurt to be faster, stronger, and six inches taller than everyone you play.  Everyone but your sister, at least.

The Men's Final, however, was a joke, with Andre Agassi somehow ending up playing the 31st seed and predictably enough, crushed him like a cockroach beneath an anvil.  6-2, 6-2, 6-1.

Agassi sent back Schuettler's first serve back so hard that the German player could only push it long.

Agassi won the first eight points of the match. When Schuettler finally won a point to start the third game, he raised his hands in mock triumph.

Nice that he was really taking it seriously and trying his hardest, huh?

Adding amusement to things are Andre's comments that his wife, retired champion Steffi Graf, is probably going to come out of retirement to play mixed doubles with him at the French Open, now that he's won this tournament. Steffi retired three years ago as one of the greatest players ever. But still in shape and great or not, can she come back effectively, after being out for this long?

Well, given that Martina Navratilova retired eight years ago and came back to win the mixed doubles at the Australian Open, at the age of 46, I think we can give Steffi/Andre the benefit of the doubt.  Mixed doubles is a bit of a dog show, with guys you've never heard of playing with much higher ranked women, so pretty much any two decent players seem to be able to win at any time. You can see there's a lot of careful practice and synchronization between Martina and her partner.

Paes said he bumped into Navratilova at last year's U.S. Open when he was on the way to the referee's office to get help in finding a partner. They lost in the second round there.

"Now we're hooked up for the rest of the year,'' Navratilova said.

I went over the Oz Open slide show and harvested out a few of the more interesting images, and tacked on my usual captions.  Check them out here. 

I've not really paid any attention to the SuperBowl week hype, mostly since I have to work at it and I don't wanna, mostly since I have to get there like 6 hours before game time and I consider the 90 minutes early at most events to be a waste of time.  I don't wait well.  However, I suppose I must make some sort of prediction, since I have about other playoff games, and this is the last football for about 7 months.

Glancing at the ESPN.com "expert" predictions, most of them seem to be going with Tampa Bay by about 21-17 type scores.  Everyone figures Tampa can score in the low/mid 20's and that their great defense can hold the Raiders to low 20's or high teens.  Aside from the people picking Oakland to win, who also think Tampa will score around 21, but figure Oakland will get up to 28 or so.

Defense seems to be the key for Tampa, since everyone expects them to put up about 24, and whether they hold Oakland to 17 or give up 28 is the difference.  At least that's what the predictions are. 

The betting odds have Oakland a 4 point favorite, with the over/under at 44.  So basically that's 24-20 Oakland, as a predicted total score and odds.  Funny that the ESPN.com staff doesn't agree with the odds; 11 out of 17 of them pick Tampa.

I think I agree with them.  Oakland always seems to throw for about 330 yards, but almost all of it is dink and dunk stuff for short gains and maybe run some with it.  Tampa is the best defense in the league, the fastest linebackers and linemen, and I think they'll do enough crafty zone blitzing stuff to interfere with Oakland's usual fast pass stuff, and that their corners are good enough to not get beat deep. Plus Oakland's defense isn't very good; they let Tennessee score all kinds of points in the championship game, despite Tennessee having no good receivers or running game.  If there were no turnovers and the kicking game were even,  I'd say Tampa about 24-21.  However Oakland's kicker always seems to blow a gimme field goal from about 34 yards, and Tampa's defense always gets more turnovers than you expect, so I'll factor that into my straight prediction and come up with 31-17 Tampa.  Going over, and obviously covering the spread, since they're the underdogs.

And no, I don't bet, so this is entirely hypothetical, and yes I feel pressure to predict a bigger margin of victory than the usual pics.  No one ever goes out on a limb to predict a blow out in the playoffs, but so often that's what the games turn into, so I'm hedging towards that.  Okay, 34-20 Tampa.  With at least one defensive touchdown for them.

Oakland is all pass, and almost all finesse, and if they get beat up they are screwed.  They also can't kill much time on their drives, so if they're going 3 and out, or turning it over, their defense is going to be on the field all day and will wear down.  14-10 at the half, and then Tampa pulls away in the 3rd and 4th quarters as the law of averages catches up with Oakland.  I hope to be home by the time the game is over, and I will certainly be hot and sweaty, if the weather tomorrow is anything like it was today.  I'll probably be walking around the parking lot 3 hours before kick off selling ice cream or something.  Fun fun.  And hopefully profitable.

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