Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with Samurai swords

I will persevere tonight, no matter what it takes. Number of times post re-written from this point on as result of computer freeze: 1

It's been a long time, friends. Let's go over some of the happenings in the last month, shall we?

--- The Red Sox posted the largest bid for the Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka about three weeks ago ($51.1 million), which brings up a number of points (for those less sports inclined, they basically bought his rights for that amount because he played in Japan and wasn't a free agent, but his team "posted" him... so now they still have to sign him to a contract and pay him millions more. That bid goes to his Japanese team, who probably reacted like Publishers Clearing House showed up at the door...) anyways, the points:

1) That's an awful lot of money for the RIGHTS to a player. It actually makes me sick. $51.1 million? Can you imagine being the teams that bid $32 million and $38 million and lost out? The Yankees clearly went mad when they bid $25 million on another Japanese pitcher projected to be a #3 or 4 starter. But when you think about it, how cool would that be to say you were bought for $51 million? Like if Woods Hole bid $51 million to take me away from Lamont? I'd rather have the money, but that's an ego booster if I ever saw one.

2) The next day, the Boston Globe started a poll to nickname the guy. What is with having to have a nickname for everyone? And why can't we just let it happen naturally? If the guy is good, he'll pick up a nickname somewhere a year or two down the road, ok? Instead, the Globe started throwing around stupid things like "Dice-man" and "D-Mat" - which brings up another point of: let's stop with the first letter of your first name, two to three letters of your last name nickname. We've got A-Rod, J-Lo, K-Rod, even K-Fed for crying out loud. If D-Mat sticks, I'm going to legally change my name and in the coming weeks the Herald will print something like "Boston Globe burned down by arsonist N-Roll"

--- This reminds me of a funny story: I'm taking an intro chem class for free (basically) since I work for Columbia, and a few weeks back we spent a day talking about environmental chemistry. The TA's were teaching that day because our professor got whisked away to San Fran, which was actually quite pleasant, because they had a good sense of humor but were nearly as capable as the professor herself. Anyways, at one point they were talking about greenhouse gas sources like cars, industry, cow-plop and other organic matter and asked for other suggestion from the class... one person said forest fires, ok fine... one person said landfills, which is what they were going for (decomposition of organics)... then this one kid goes "Arson." If you aren't humored by my story at this point, let's just move on ---

3) Finally, one thing that always drives me crazy is the amount of advertising everywhere, and I find the way teams are now selling the naming rights to stadiums quite unfortunate. There should be some rational, reasonable limit to the advertising. Teams pick up probably $20 million a year in some cases, so how can you really blame them, but would you rather go to Jack Murphy Stadium, or Petco Park? Shea Stadium or CitiField? Mile High Stadium or Invesco Field? Same for college football bowl games. The Mieneke Car Care Bowl? The Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl? Soon we'll have the Orange Bowl presented by Apple Computers. That won't work because it would be like... oh nevermind.

--- On to other things. I watched a little more than half of the Da Vinci Code movie before it spazzed out. Is there anything worse than watching half of a movie you're enjoying? Especially a mystery? Especially when you just found out who "The Teacher" was? Going with the book is always better than the movie theory, I think I'll have to read the book because the movie was going along pretty well. Other things I don't like to stop in the middle of: board games, leaving a sporting event early, learning to play "One Jump Ahead" from Aladdin on the piano and learn the second half when I get the first half down. My mother can back me up on that last point.

--- I heard christmas music for the first time on the day BEFORE Thanksgiving. I hope that program director was fired. As many of you know I'm not particularly fond of christmas music, but I have identified two songs that I like: Carol of the Bells as performed by the Trans Siberian Orchestra, and the Little Drummer Boy. I always really liked that song for some reason.

--- Turns out MySpace is actually good for something. I was able to track down an old friend.

--- Drove by Framingham High School because the construction is about done, I think. It's still big and ugly, but different, which is kind of weird.

--- On movies: - The music in Kill Bill vol. 1 is fantastic. Did you know that the bald crazy 88 fighter in the first movie and Pai Mei in the second movie are played by the same person? That was almost as shocking as finding out Bigfoot from the Neil Diamond/Bigfoot SNL sketch was played by The Rock - Click was a good movie. I really feel that Adam Sandlers movies have matured so that they aren't just dumb and funny, but have better points or stories and are still very funny - Pride and Prejudice wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. That it had Keira Knightly probably didn't hurt - Cars was pretty good too

--- Rob brought something up in his blog that I was thinking about just the other day - the act of tipping at a restaurant. I usually calculate about 15% of the bill and give a little more. If the service is REALLY good, I'll be happy to give more. If it's really BAD, I really don't feel bad giving less. But here's the real point: why are we paying the waiter/waitress' wages on top of buying our meal? Shouldn't the restaurant be responsible for paying them? How do they get away with paying them only something like $2.50/hr and making the customer pay the wages? Plus, they only make an amount porportional what you order. There is little difference bringing me a grilled cheese or bringing me a filet mignon, am I wrong? Why should I pay so much more for you to bring me a filet mignon? When I'm president, I'm going to ban tipping and make the restaurants pay the servers normal wages. I am not belittling a server's job or trying to rip them off, simply shift where that money is coming from.

Ok, that will keep you busy for a while. And I made it to the end! Until next time.

12/8 additions:
- Silly me, I forgot one other christmas song. Elton John's "Step into Christmas"
- Rob, good point, it seems that it's more like hiding the wage into the tipping process instead of flat out putting it in the price. Which is effective, because if you added $3-5 onto everything, who would buy a $13 hamburger? But then, if I spend $4 on some meat at the grocery store, aren't I technically helping to pay the wages of those employees too?