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A shattered cause, a might have been
Feb. 1st, 2006 11:59 pm
High today, here: 2. Dewpoint then: -2. High dewpoint: -2.
High today in TO: 3. Dewpoint then: -1. High dewpoint: -1.
Low today on the balcony: -2.9. High: 1.8. Currently: 1.8.
Last night I made the horrifying discovery that there's a quota for games played in the Yahoo fantasy hockey leagues, and at my current rate of rolling players through my lineup in my more competitive league, I would hit it about six weeks before the end of the season. I'll tell ya, it's one thing to lose; it's another thing to play badly; it's another thing to be playing the wrong game. And not only that, but to be putting so much time into playing the game counterproductively. This sort of crap never happened in our old rotisserie leagues. In those days I just spent hours and hours and hours adding up numbers wrong, and then hours and hours and hours adding them up again.
Eesh. I console myself with two things: first, all this time I've spent on Yahoo fantasy hockey I would've probably just spent playing freecell or pinball or something anyway. Second, the guy in second place is also in deep quota trouble, though not quite as deep as me. The two of us are waaaay the hell ahead of the pack. Here I'd thought everyone else just couldn't be bothered; turns out, actually, some of them, at least, have been playing properly, and we two are just idiots. It may still be possible that one or the other of us can win; I dunno.
Today, read the extensive Maclean's re-cap of the election campaign. Good God but what a massive screwup the Liberals ran. And this thing does make the divide between the Chretien people and the Martin people out to be a big part of it. The handgun ban, apparently, was a ploy to try to get the Conservatives--or some quoteable Conservative, somewhere--to say something stupid. What, exactly, I have no idea. But here's my favourite part--well, it's one of those deeply depressingly disturbing kinds of things: those ads the Conservatives were running at the beginning, the ads that looked like they were made by highschool students, the ads that made Harper look like a highschool student, the ads that prompted me to say the Conservatives were trying to lose, those ads, apparently, worked. They worked by making Harper look like a doofus. They worked, i.e., by the Chretien effect, or the Mel Lastman effect, or, if you swing that way, the Bush effect: people don't want to vote for someone too bright, too well put together. The article quotes someone saying that they're like good fundraising letters; have you ever seen a good fundraising letter? They're the hokiest, worst-written pieces of shit you ever saw, and that's why they work.
Which makes me wonder, again, what it is we're doing when we tell these kids that we're teaching them to write well so that they can write good business letters, if nothing else. Maybe, you know, it's better to write bad business letters, because that way you're non-threatening and people will like you better.
So, McKenna's not running, Tobin's not running, Manley's not running ... that makes your top three contenders, right now, Ignatieff, Stronach, and Rae (who I don't think has yet renewed his not-runningness). Now, wow, that's some group. I wonder who will be drafted as the official Anyone But Ignatieff candidate.
Both spaceships have been assembled. The one last night, for today, I didn't think that was happening. It was like one of those Jumble puzzles--you know, you don't know how long you're going to stare at the damn thing without getting it, and you stare and stare and stare and spell out all the combinations you can think of and you think you're never going to get it, never going to get it, never going to get it and there it is. Well, that's me, anyway. That's me and a lot of things.
High today in TO: 3. Dewpoint then: -1. High dewpoint: -1.
Low today on the balcony: -2.9. High: 1.8. Currently: 1.8.
Last night I made the horrifying discovery that there's a quota for games played in the Yahoo fantasy hockey leagues, and at my current rate of rolling players through my lineup in my more competitive league, I would hit it about six weeks before the end of the season. I'll tell ya, it's one thing to lose; it's another thing to play badly; it's another thing to be playing the wrong game. And not only that, but to be putting so much time into playing the game counterproductively. This sort of crap never happened in our old rotisserie leagues. In those days I just spent hours and hours and hours adding up numbers wrong, and then hours and hours and hours adding them up again.
Eesh. I console myself with two things: first, all this time I've spent on Yahoo fantasy hockey I would've probably just spent playing freecell or pinball or something anyway. Second, the guy in second place is also in deep quota trouble, though not quite as deep as me. The two of us are waaaay the hell ahead of the pack. Here I'd thought everyone else just couldn't be bothered; turns out, actually, some of them, at least, have been playing properly, and we two are just idiots. It may still be possible that one or the other of us can win; I dunno.
Today, read the extensive Maclean's re-cap of the election campaign. Good God but what a massive screwup the Liberals ran. And this thing does make the divide between the Chretien people and the Martin people out to be a big part of it. The handgun ban, apparently, was a ploy to try to get the Conservatives--or some quoteable Conservative, somewhere--to say something stupid. What, exactly, I have no idea. But here's my favourite part--well, it's one of those deeply depressingly disturbing kinds of things: those ads the Conservatives were running at the beginning, the ads that looked like they were made by highschool students, the ads that made Harper look like a highschool student, the ads that prompted me to say the Conservatives were trying to lose, those ads, apparently, worked. They worked by making Harper look like a doofus. They worked, i.e., by the Chretien effect, or the Mel Lastman effect, or, if you swing that way, the Bush effect: people don't want to vote for someone too bright, too well put together. The article quotes someone saying that they're like good fundraising letters; have you ever seen a good fundraising letter? They're the hokiest, worst-written pieces of shit you ever saw, and that's why they work.
Which makes me wonder, again, what it is we're doing when we tell these kids that we're teaching them to write well so that they can write good business letters, if nothing else. Maybe, you know, it's better to write bad business letters, because that way you're non-threatening and people will like you better.
So, McKenna's not running, Tobin's not running, Manley's not running ... that makes your top three contenders, right now, Ignatieff, Stronach, and Rae (who I don't think has yet renewed his not-runningness). Now, wow, that's some group. I wonder who will be drafted as the official Anyone But Ignatieff candidate.
Both spaceships have been assembled. The one last night, for today, I didn't think that was happening. It was like one of those Jumble puzzles--you know, you don't know how long you're going to stare at the damn thing without getting it, and you stare and stare and stare and spell out all the combinations you can think of and you think you're never going to get it, never going to get it, never going to get it and there it is. Well, that's me, anyway. That's me and a lot of things.
