Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Unrequited Love


A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.
From Anacreon, vii. Gold., Abraham Cowley

The world is filled with folly and sin,
And Love must cling, where it can, I say:
For Beauty is easy enough to win;
But one isn't loved every day.
Changes., Edward, Earl of Lytton Bulwer-Lytton Robert

Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain.
Idylls of the King: Lancelot and Elaine. Line 1000., Alfred Tennyson Tennyson

Poems gathered from this site.

Here is a guide for those who suffer from Unrequited Love. I for one, have looked into the 'unrequited love' subject before. Unfortunately, there has never been a lot of information on the subject. Perhaps most of the souls who are mired in the throes of unrequited love tend to kill themselves before they write stuff down. I'm just kidding. Maybe.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Fantasy Baseball Champion: Me

Last week, I won my fantasy baseball league. This despite having no prior experience in any kind of fantasy league, and without keeping any track of baseball since the strike in the mid 1990s. What can I say? I'm good, and I learn fast!

Seahawks vs Rams - breakdown

Since the Seahawks was one of my Super Bowl picks, I was curious. It took five weeks, but I finally get a chance to see them play in a televised game. I was both impressed and disappointed with their play.

The impressiveness of the 1st half:
Basically the Seahawks dominated offensively and defensively. The Seahawks' balanced run-pass offense tore the St. Louis defense to shreds. The young defense kept St. Louis off balance with various blitzes, fake blitzes, and zone blitzes. The only knocks on Seattle in the 1st half was the long run they gave up, and a few dropped balls. After one half, Seattle was up 24 - 7 over St. Louis.

The disappointment of the 2nd half:
Okay, where's the killer instict? If you got a team down, you have to put them away! Seattle didn't, and payed the price. The playcalling inexplicably turned conservative. Between the consevative playcalling (run, run, run) and the dropped balls (inconvenient in the 1st half, drive killers in the 2nd half), Seattle failed to score more than 3 points in the 2nd half. Seattle's defense stopped blitzing. Why? To the Rams credit, they ran the ball a lot in the 2nd half to keep the Seahawks' defense off balance. But you see this all the time in the NFL. You blitz, the opponent's QB struggles. You stop blitzing, and the opponent's QB gets into a rhythym and plays well. Then you finally blitz again, and it's too late because Bulger knows you're blitzing and confidently throws a perfect pass for a touchdown in overtime. Rams win 33 - 27 in overtime.

I think in this game you can see both the good and the bad of the Seahawks. They are obviously talented enough to compete with anybody. But they seem to lack a killer instinct, and they make mistakes that cost them in the close games (ie dropped balls). I'm not jumping off the Seahawk bandwagon yet, since only the Eagles are clearly better in the NFC. But if they are to make a run in the playoffs, they need to iron out these mistakes. If you're up 10 points late in the 4th quarter, you cannot be beaten over the top like they were in the game (especially since you didn't blitz). The coach's time management late in the game was questionable (passing the ball, when running it for 3 downs would have milked the clock down to 30 seconds in the last drive). These need to improve. We'll see if they can.

Lost in the land of RPGs

Lately, as in the past month or so, I've felt rather down. I don't know. I'm just tired all the time. My energy level is low. For some reason, I haven't felt much like talking to anybody either. So what do I do in this situation? I play role playing games. I like to immerse myself in another world. I like to build up skills from scratch. Holed up in my solitary tower, I like to efficiently control a world that I can impact to a meaningful degree. Yep, somebody needs to check me into RPGamers Anonymous. For those of you who haven't seen me lately, I apologize. I think I'm starting to snap out of my self-imposed reverie, so maybe I'll see you around.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Why don't I gamble?

Even though I live in the gambling capital of the US, the answer is simple, really. I'm too good at math. On the radio I heard a commercial for a parlay in town. Basically bet $5 and possibly win $1,000,000. The catch: you have to win all 20 games (NFL, no less). I did a quick calculation. The odds are roughly 1 in 1,000,000 that someone will win 20 out of 20 games. In other words, that $5 bet should win $5,000,000 back to come close to breaking even. That's a 20% payback rate, and I didn't even count the fact that ties lose. Geez, what a ripoff!