Who I back in 2008

As a rule, I hate career politicians, and tend to vote for people who want to be representatives of their people, and who will hopefully represent my desires and wishes and stand the same way as I do on certain issues. Now, all of this doesn't matter, really, because politicians are swayed by lobbyists and big corporations, and that's who most politicians care most about, other than themselves. Until GWB came along, I would have said that it doesn't matter what beliefs the president has, it matters what companies back him and can push his buttons. Since Dub, I've seen where the country can go in the hands of a truly paranoid, colossally idiotic, self centered, deranged, maladjusted dingbat.

For 2008, we've got quite the crappy crop of candidates for the big two. Here's what I've got against each of the candidates:

Republican:

• Rudy Giuliani - Way too stuck on 9/11. Way too focused on NYC. I don't think he'd have a national viewpoint. Also very much a "what can get me the most votes" kind of guy, while hiding his true intentions. In short, I just don't trust him. But he's the closest the Republicans get to getting my vote, which is not very close at all.
  
• John McCain - Wants to send more troops to Iraq. Like that's going to help. I used to like him, but he's too much of a warmonger.
  
• Ron Paul - Immigration issues are what sinks him for me. He's big into the US being "independent" from the rest of the world. In a world economy, when you're as big of a consumer as the US, you HAVE to be part of the world economy, or you're sunk. Also anti-abortion big time.
• Mitt Romney - Anti-woman, Anti-gay, Anti-immigrant, and is a bishop in the LDS church. Basically, he'd make being poor illegal. And his wife can't drive worth shit.
  
• Sam Brownbeck - Anti-abortion, anti-gay, and is for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex unions. What's the matter Sam, is Jim the construction worker giving you tightpants syndrome?
  
• Mike Huckabee - Anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-war.
  
• Duncan Hunter -Pro-war, anti-abortion, to the point of constitutional amemdments. Same goes for gay rights, or lack thereof.
• Tom Tancredo - Pro-war, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, big time. Actually wants to build that stupid fucking fence.
  
• Fred Thompson - Pro-war, anti-abortion, anti-gay.
  

Democrats:

• Barack Obama - Probably as close as I'll get to liking someone in the big 2. He's not for same-sex marriage, and I'm not behind his immigration 100%, and I don't like the fact that he still thinks Social Security works as it stands today, but overall, he's not too bad.
• Hillary Clinton - Ultimate snake in the grass politician. Will absolutely say whatever gets her the most votes. Could give a crap about people, or their views, and is in it for the fame and money. The type of person that when asked "What do you believe in?", says "Well, what do you believe in?" Slimeball extraordinaire. And that has nothing to do with her being a woman.
  
• Joe Biden - I like his proposal for splitting up Iraq and not forcing three groups to co-exist. Not so sure about his Social Security stances. Seems to be pandering to the babyboomers.
  
• Chris Dodd - I honestly don't know enough about him to say what I don't like about him. He seems to be saying the right things, at least.
• John Edwards - Religious nut.
• Mike Gravel - Still thinks we can do something in Iraq other than getting the F out of there. Is big on "Agressive Diplomacy". Whatever that is, it doesn't sound good to me.
  
• Dennis Kucinich - Thinks Social Security is not in crisis. Um. Right.
  
• Bill Richardson - Again, I like most of what he says, and I don't know what about him I don't like, but I know I heard something at some point.
  

So there you have it. According to Vote Match I most closely match with Hillary, but that's just counting the majors, and is still only 50%. Here's my VoteMatch score:

Your Score You scored the following on the PoliticsMatch questions:
Personal Score	88%
Economic Score	11%

Where You Fit In

Where your Personal score meets your Economic score on the grid below is your political philosophy. Based on the above score, you are a Hard-Core Liberal .

Bruins start/predictions

So I got to see the Bruins for the first time in 2007, eschewing the Red Sox game on TV for watching opening night against the Stars. The first period looked good, they looked a lot more focused and controlled than last year. It wasn't until the second period that discipline broke down, and they really reminded me of last year. Manny Fernandez looked capable as another good goalie, and might be a true #1, but I'd say he's only a step or two better than Tim Thomas. Will the Bruins be better this year? I'd say yes, and I think the announcers would agree with me. They seemed to have the "They'll be better, but not good" vibe, which I could see, and there was some talk about getting to the playoffs, but both they and I were skeptical about that prospect. The biggest change that I liked was the addition of Mike Milbury to the crew of analysts. He was a great player, and coach, and knows what it takes to get the Bs to the playoffs. He's been there, he's seen the great players, and he's not afraid to say what he thinks about this current team.

Anyway, back to the Bs team. They lost that Dallas game 4-1, and then went out to Phoenix, and beat up on the Coyotes 3-1, like they should have. Now, the Stars and the Coyotes are vastly different teams, and Dallas played like a team that had 107 points last year, and the Coyotes played like a team that had 67 points. The Bruins? They played like they had 76 points last year, unfortunately. So, even though the season is young, I think that they're going to be better than last year, but not by much. I'm saying right now its going to be about a 500 season, with 40 wins, 34 losses, and 8 OT losses. That gives them 88 points, and probably out of the playoffs again, but still, an improvement.

Can this team get better? Sure. If they spend the money, invest in a young team, and let them grow together, with the crucial addition of veteran guys that want to teach, and want to take this team to the next level. That's what happened in the late 80s, and that's what should happen again. Most importantly, they need a good D. Zdeno Chara is a good defenseman, but I don't see him being a captain, even though he has that C on his chest, and I don't see him leading this team deep into the playoffs.

Brain dredgings

I hate it when I have dreams that I can't explain, but I hate it more when my brain dredges up something that I not only can't explain, but that I've never even heard of before. Last night, I had the following dream. It doesn't make sense, but then when do dreams ever make sense?

I was in a garage of some sort, or factory or something like that. I distinctly remember a thick industrial oily smell, that iron and petroleum tang that hangs in the back of your nose and throat. The place was cold, but not unbearably so. I was a mechanic, I think, and by the costuming, it was in the late 40s, early 50s, if I had to guess. Not sure where I was, but I know that my co-worker, Frank, was British.
The dream opened as we were sitting down to lunch, which I can't remember what it was, other than I had a hot drink with it, coffee I think. We talked about the daily current events, of which I can not remember any, and ate happily. After we finished eating, Frank went over to a shelf, and got out a board game. It was called Conflict, and played a little like Stratego. We played a game, and then we went back to work, but only for a little while, when we noticed it had started to snow. Frank commented that his wife was going to be cross with him if he was late, and that we better get finished with the work we were doing, so we could both go home a little early. We were working on a truck, Frank was working on the engine, and I was busy rebuilding the transmission. I distinctly remember my hands cramping up because of the cold, and asking Frank to put more coal in the stove.
Well, a few hours went by, and a few inches of snow accumulated on the ground. By the time we were ready to go, it was getting dark, and the snow was coming down fiercely. Frank and I agreed that we were stuck there for the night, and that it would be easier to just stay than to traverse the roads that might not get plowed at all that night.
After calling our wives, we played more Conflict(apparently, we loved this game and had a great rivalry) and we had fun just hanging out for the rest of the evening. There were cots in the closet of the break room, I guess for those times when you have a long job and have to stay overnight, or bad weather like we were experiencing. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a huge crash, and when we went to look, a tree had fallen in the storm, a maple I believe, and crashed through the corrugated iron roof and on to the truck that we had been repairing that day. Frank and I looked at it with old flashlights, and decided that there wasn't much we could do about it just then, and that we should try to get more sleep until morning.
Morning came, and Frank and I went out to assess the damage. The snow had stopped falling, and it was that blindingly bright, crisp kind of morning that can only come after a snow storm. The roof had absorbed most of the impact of the tree falling, and the truck seemed more or less okay, other than the container part of it being caved in a bit. Still, we thought we could hammer that out a lot easier than we could fix the cab, if the tree had gone through that. The roof was another matter. We didn't own the place, but we were our own bosses, so I guess that means we rented out the facility.
Frank called the owner of the building, Tom, and told him about the damage, and then proceeded to look very troubled. After getting off the phone with Tom, Frank turned to me and told me that Tom said it was our problem, that acts of god weren't covered in our rental agreement, and that we'd have to fix it ourselves. We agreed that not much could be done that day except for getting rid of the tree, and Frank decided he'd go home and get his chainsaw while I tried to pick up as many of the branches as I could. As I started trudging around the snow, the dream faded and I woke up.

Now, that dream seems pretty normal, but that's just it. It's perfectly normal, and congruous, and made sense internally to itself and to me. The oddest part about it was the clarity, and the things that I just can't explain away, like the following:

• I don't drink coffee, but I LOVED it in the dream. This is not a big deal, I know a lot of coffee drinkers, and I like the smell of it, and I had a cup of tea last night.
  
• I have never seen a transmission taken apart, but I clearly saw the transmission, and knew how to take it apart and clean it and put it back together again in the dream. I can't describe it now, other than there being lots of oily gears and pins and what not.
  
• The fact that a snow storm came upon us without us really knowing about it was odd because I normally know what the weather is going to be like, and if it was today, we'd know about a big storm like this for days in advance. However, in the 1950s, there was little weather forecasting, and certainly not the computerized models that we see today. Looking around on the web, the late 1950s is really when weather forecasting started to take off with the help of computers. Still, in a small town, they would know that snow could be coming, but might not know how powerful a storm might be.
  
• The snow plowing in the 50s wasn't that great either, especially in small towns, so my not being surprised by being stranded was notably accurate for the time period.
  
• The biggest thing that struck me this morning was the game of Conflict. It stands out as the most vivid part of the dream, and I distinctly remember the box that I have pictured above, and remembered playing the game on a board that looked almost identical to the one for that game, and I very much remember there being skunks on the dice, which is also accurate. Now the weird part: I've never seen or heard of that game before. It was a game that was produced by Parker Brothers from 1940 to 1972, and again fits the time frame of the dream. When I woke up this morning, I asked my wife if Conflict was the British name for Stratego, because Frank was British and we were playing Conflict. Granted, the game itself doesn't play much like Stratego, but maybe that's the analogy that my brain came up with to explain it.

What does this all mean? Probably nothing. But it was just another in a long line of dreams/deja vu/whatever that seem to haunt me for days afterward.

Halo 3 mis-use

And I'm not talking about cheating, griefing, or team killing, or whatever. I'm talking about the mongoloids out there who waste a great game like Halo 3 and only play slayer, or if they're feeling adventurous and social, team slayer. Okay, you mouth breathing jock monkeys, its not 1994. There are other modes in the multiplayer than "kill everything that moves". Its not even clever "kill everything that moves", like rockets only, or only vehicles and pistols, or only sticky grenades. Its "I memorized this map, know where everyone spawns, and where all the weapons are. I will slaughter you to make myself feel better, with no other point kill everything that moves". Assbaskets. With the Forge, an unlimited number of variants can exist on the framework of several very solid modes, such as the standard Capture the Flag, Oddball, a great game of Tag, where the goal is to be "it" for the longest time possible, infection, where you try to spread a plague, Juggernaut and VIP, which are modes based on trying to kill one person, King of the Hill and Territories, where you control an area by having the most people in it, and even good old Assault, which is capture the flag, but one team is on offense, and the other is defense.

Oh, and don't bitch about a mode being "too confusing". How confusing is it to capture a damn area, and keep others from doing the same? Expand your friggin horizons. And please, please please, how about a little strategy when you do lower yourself to gaming on a team with a specific goal? People who answer "What's the plan?" with "Uh, capture the flag, since we're playing capture the flag." should be slapped.

Bruins 2007-2008 first post

I hate to admit it, but I'm a little bit excited by the Bruins this year. They've got the magic bear back on their jerseys, I think they got rid of the mustard bear head jerseys, they've got a goalie that doesn't look like the Dutch Paint Boy, and I think Phil Kessel and Patrice Bergeron will light things up this year, though I think they should move one of them to a wing, and let them play on the same line to start some chemistry. I know, they're going to suck, and apparently there are VERY few hockey fans in central Mass, and the Celtics and Patriots will relegate them to nearly no coverage, but I'm still a fan. Have you seen the new jerseys for the various teams? I'm liking that the Crapitals changed back to their old unis, and I like the Minnesota home jersey with the ring, but I'm not liking the Thrashers blue uniform, that's gonna give me a headache.

One more note about hockey: "Joe Thornton posted 114 points for the Sharks last season." That hurts. Especially when you calculate that the 3 nickles the Bruins got for their quarter were Marco Sturm, with 44 points and a -24 +/-, Brad Stuart 17 pts, -22 and Wayne Primeau, 15 pts, -15 +/-. That adds up to 76 points, and an average +/- of -21.(Thornton had a +24) Even if you added the guys the B's traded Sturm and Stuart for, Andrew Ference(15 pts) and Chuck Kobasew(19 pts) they STILL only add up to 110 points of production. What gets me is that the GM is claiming to pick up the two guys from Calgary to help out with "production and stability from young guys". Ference is older than Thornton, and like I said, neither of the new guys have produced much. So in the long run, I think that the B's are looking at having traded a quarter for 3 nickels, and then traded 2 of those nickels for 3 pennies each, leaving the "storied franchise" with 11 cents and a bucket of tears.

Wow, I just took a survey over at ESPN that let you rate things about the team like "Has loyalty to the players", "Has inexpensive parking", and "Franchise pays well to keep players". I gave the Bruins 1 out of 10 for most of the questions, especially the "Consistently wins more games than they lose" http://vp-nri.com/take?i=111318&h=0jIb3FiGAM9Mv-7q6JZ-VA