End of Year Thoughts

Another year is ending and it's time for me to give my thoughts (I'm good at that):

• Marriage rules. I love my wife more now than the day we were married. Having someone to share life with makes things so much more pleasant and fulfilling. And I'm lucky as hell to have found someone who shares so much with me.


• President Bush needs to go. I'm a big Dean supporter, but I'll take just about ANYONE over him as long as the new president isn't a holier-than-thou conservative christian like our current moron. I've never hated a political figure as much in my life. This guy not only needs to be defeated, he needs to be indicted.


• I love ARMA. Being a member of such a great martial arts society has given me something that is hard to explain - but suffice to say I enjoy being part of a community that accepts everyone from every walk of life, as long as they're training and learning and trying to add to the whole. I've never met a group like this before and I probably never will.


• The Columbus Crew are still my favorite soccer team, but they need help. The Brian Dunseth/Mark Williams move was a fiasco, injuries plagued us, and coaching was substandard without Oscar Pisano in there to charge things up. Also, the staff needs to be more forthcoming with information. TheCrew.com is a joke when we're the last spot on earth to release stories about our own team.
  

That's about it. I'll try to post more regularly.

No More Church For Me

Been months since I did anything with this blog, but I'm adding to it today.

According to an AP article, the Vatican has just started a campaign AGAINST gay marriage. Pardon me for the language, but who the hell do they think they are? How can a body made up of people who have NO idea what marriage really means make choices for the rest of us who actually CAN and DO get married?

Marriage is a bond between two people who love each other and want to support each other for the rest of their lives. How is THAT a sin? Who cares if they're straight or gay? The day I got married was the happiest of my life. Who is the Vatican, whose ruling body can't get married at all, to say that someone can't enjoy that same happiness because of some stupid rule?

Suffice to say, I will never step into a Catholic Church again (barring a funeral or some stuff). I'm done with them. This is the one that pushed me over the edge.

Clara Peller

Don't ask why I've been thinking about this at all... but I never really understood why that whole "Where's the Beef" ad campaign for Wendy's was funny.

Crew 3:0 Deportivo Arabe Unido

Oh... this was fun.

Whenever I see a diving crap team come into Crew Stadium I want to throttle them - diving and such histrionics are everything that is wrong with soccer. So to watch the Crew run roughshod over such a team (two goals by Edson Buddle with assists by Brian McBride and a goal off a flubbed DAU free kick by Kyle Martino) was pure bliss for me.

DAU had a one-goal aggregate lead going into this game based on a similar game in Panama and were obviously coming out to bunker in and not let anyone score. So... you'd think that when the Crew tied it up, they'd stop bunkering, wouldn't you?

Nope. This team was an embarrassment to the country of Panama. The fact that we lost down there should be (and was, according to Buddle) embarrassing to the Crew, because Deportivo Arabe Unido was simply a bad team. They had some good players, and it's a shame they play the way they did, because they could have been really good. But instead they flopped around like a salmon on the shore of the Columbia River, waiting to be eaten by a bear. And that bear was Columbus.

I'm Velveeta. Somehow I figured.

Every once in a while I run into a website that's just plain fun. And this one hit the buzzer.

Ahh, you are "Velveta Shells and Cheese". You are expensive, no
denying this, but its the price you pay for quality. You
don't even require other food supplies. Water and a pan
is all you need to get by. That silver bag your cheese
comes in looks like something out of the 23rd century, but
it's cool! And those crevices in the shells hold the cheese
so well... You Rock!

Take the What Kind of Macaroni and Cheese Are You? Quiz
Created by LJ User RobProv222

CONCACAF Champions Cup

The Crew plays this Sunday in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, against Deportivo Arabe Unido of Panama. This competition is the premier Club competition in North America and for the first time the Crew gets to play in it, on the basis of their winning the 2002 U.S. Open Cup.

The first leg is in Panama, but the next leg, on March 23rd, is right here - IN COLUMBUS, OHIO! Crew fans - MAKE SURE YOU COME OUT FOR THIS GAME! This is the biggest competition that America's Hardest Working Team has ever been involved in. Judging by the number of folks who showed up to the U.S. Open Cup Final at Crew Stadium, there isn't a heck of a lot of knowledge about such competitions and how important they are. This was obvious when the Crew won its first title ever and only about 6000 folks showed up to watch. It was a good loud crowd, of course, but it also showed how many fair-weather Crew fans there are. It was cold that night but both teams played their hearts out and it was a great result for a deserving team.

This international competition needs to be well-attended. The Revolution, another team involved in the competition, has basically forfeited the first round by opting to play both their home and away legs at their Costa Rican opponents stadium. That's asinine, of course, but if MLS teams don't see that there's a financial benefit to playing these games at home, then they're not going to do it. And international competition is what soccer is all about.

Good Advice For the Modern Workplace

When Terrorists Attack!!!

Here's a list of stuff to watch out for when we're under terrorist attack after Bush sends us to a useless war that his father should have finished the first time.

From the "Too Good To Be True" Column...

Okay, I lowered myself today to eating Kraft Microwave Instant Mac 'n' Cheese.

Folks, do yourself a favor and avoid this product. It's just not good. The macaroni cooks okay but the cheese is positively awful. It'd be better if they used some sort of Velveeta packet instead of the powder stuff.

Oh well, you don't know till you try.

Sidewalk Nazi Redux

Okay, I've come up with a solution to the sidewalk issue. When I'm walking my dog Brandy, if she takes a dump on the lawn of someone who HAS shoveled, it gets picked up. Otherwise, it's going to sit there as a badge of "I don't care about my neighborhood."

Seemed like a good answer at the time.

Mardi Gras Light

I made Jambalaya last night for the first time (well, the first time that it wasn't from a mix). Gotta say I did a fine fine job. My kudos to the About.com Guide for Southern Cooking. Awesome stuff. This weekend we're going to try to make beignets.

I suppose it was my way of celebrating Mardi Gras since I'm not in New Orleans or Galveston or anywhere like that. But one of these days I will be.

ARMA

I've recently joined a new group called ARMA - the Association for Rennaissance Martial Arts. They are a group that is looking to recreate the warrior skills of medieval and rennaissance Europe, with particular attention to swordsmanship. And so far they seem like one of the most interesting bunch of folks I've ever run into.

My major problem with most martial arts studios is that there isn't much room to experiment and develop - you go in, you learn a prescribed set of skills, and you're graded (Sort of like school, which I'm also not a big fan of). And many of them are so dogmatic in their approach that to ever question things is some sort of traitorous behavior.

But ARMA is trying to recreate skills that are long-gone. And they are doing this by consulting the existing historical manuals of fencing and combat - the actual works from those ages past. These Fechtbuecher or "fighting books" from the German, cover a wide variety of weapons and such. They are of varying quality, of course - some of that old medieval art is hard to decipher because they didn't have the same sort of anatomical study behind them as later art (such as that from the rennaissance) in many cases.

But the people in ARMA are a very diverse lot. There are some strict scholars, who have studied swords and written about them. There are professional law-enforcement and military personnel. There are life-long martial artists. And there are lots of just plain history buffs (like myself) who are fascinated by the entire idea of truly re-creating history. These folks are smart, athletic, and realize that there is a place for exercising both the mind and the body.

And most importantly, they're all learning together. If someone comes across something in a manual that makes you think a certain way and it's not what other folks in the group have learned or come to think, it's looked at seriously and taken into careful consideration. This is as opposed to ideas being quickly dismissed because of some pre-conceived dogma about the art, as I've seen in a the few asian martial arts I've taken.

I honestly can't think of a more productive way to exercise both mind and body than such a group. We're all learning together, and our learning is being translated directly into our martial arts. How cool is that?

Sidewalk Nazi

Well, now that I live in a house in an actual neighborhood and not an apartment, I have a few things to say on the subjects of sidewalks.

I was raised in a neighborhood where, after it snowed, you went out and shoveled the snow off the stretch of sidewalk that was in front of your house. It's that simple. If you have snow on your walks, the mailman and other pedestrians can't get through or might hurt themselves. It's also just you doing your bit of neighborhood duty.

But since I moved to Clintonville, I've noticed that not everyone feels this way. In fact, it appears to be completely fine to just not do it at all, and let people fall over and hurt themselves. Like my wife. My wife fell and hurt her tailbone a couple of weeks ago and she was in a lot of pain. In Michigan, she could legitimately have sued the person whose walk it was.

I don't know if that's how it is here or not... I'm new to this whole house thing. But I can't imagine that this sort of thing is permissable!

So folks... if your walks have snow on them, remove it. ALL OF IT. Not that one little sweep through with the snowblower or shovel to make that path that only tightrope walkers can make it through. Remove it ALL. Be considerate of those people around you and maybe they'll be considerate to you.

MLS Draft

It's long past time that I got back on track with this blog. So here we go.

Last Friday, I sat in front of my PC here at work and entered information onto the Matchnight.com database on the MLS SuperDraft. Three things happened as a result of this event, as far as I'm concerned.

1. Matchnight.com and MLSNet.com were both dragged to a near standstill by the people who were trying to access them to get draft information. Very frustrating and very encouraging at the same time.
   
2. The importance of the internet for American Soccer fans has been perfectly displayed by event Number Two.
   

One of the big criticisms I have of the Columbus Crew is that the website is generally the last to get informed about the big news happening in Crew-dom. Preference on story notification is given to the Columbus Dispatch and whatever TV stations have deigned the story at hand worthy to cover. Meanwhile, the internet, which most Crew fans use to get their information about the team, is treated as a low man on the totem pole. We get the information last - whenever the Crew decides they can get around to us.

And that's just wrong.

We need to be current about all Crew news before any other media outlet is, if at all possible. How does it look when the Dispatch is covering a story that we haven't posted yet because they haven't sent us the press release? Bad. And we've fielded complaints about that at many times. And we've told the Crew this many times. But for some reason, they just continually treat us as a second-rate source. And treating your own media outlet as a second-rate source is never good.