Beginning of the Week Post

So I'm incredibly bad at posting as often as I'd like. I post consistently, at least, in the beginning of the week before I get twenty emails asking for regrades for the most recent organic chemistry exam, deal with exams and generally have the life sucked out of me.

But for those first few days of the week, I'm a pita full of sunshine and analysis.

So let's see what we have here now.

In the magical land of California, more people over 40 are dying of overdoses, and that the amount of drug users who are over the age of 35 has risen to one third of all drug users, up from 12% in 1979. Clearly, less people are inclined to be ripped out of their minds when the Pirates arae winning the World Series. It's really the only rational explanation. But for those involved with the report who would rather stick with "facts", the upswing in older drug deaths is more caused by a larger percentage of boomers that got into drugs, then just didn't quit until it killed them. Heroin is the largest portion of the problem. The article indicates that the trend is not confined to the Magical Land, which is somewhat unsettling. As someone who has been affected by this kind of thing, I don't have much to say about it other than that I'm saddened by it.

Having mentioned the Pirates, I'd like to say that I'm looking forward to see how Jim Tracy is going to handle things. I personally would have liked to see how Macha would have handled things with the Pirates, but I guess if I'm still interested I could always just see how he handles the A's next season following the "Just Kidding" end of his contract with the Athletics. Still, though Pat's rightfully concerned about Tracy's take on productive outs, I'm somehow hoping we can pull something together in '06. Sadly, I won't be able to attend many games (as the Bucs tend to play less home games in Chicago than I'd like, play the Cubs 9 times at Wrigley and the Sox three times at USCF, all of which I can't attend without my advisor killing me, regardless of who my advisor ends up being), but such is life.

RJ claims to have purchased this from woot.com, and I'll take him down if he didn't.

I'd like to thank, while I'm in the "talk about people I know" section of today's entry, Ryan Paal for inexplicably posting on a post I made in mid-July ("12 Big Macs"). Thank you, Ryan, for still being utterly impossible to understand. One of the Ghost of Allegheny Present scared me, but only because he appeared to have an unhealthy fixation on video-game baseball and the West Wing.

In movie rentals, Crash was decent, if a bit improbable and forced. Michael Peña's performance is quite good.

In School news: I've gotten through my first two exams at NU, and I'm still here, so that's a good sign. Grading has never been more irritating, but that's what you've got to do, I guess.

Finally, the White Sox won the pennant, after the umpiring crew made everything very odd. Summary of the oddities of the ALCS: Game 2's dropped third strike call probably should have been an out for Pierzynski, but Josh Paul's at fault for not taking the half second's effort to tag him to make sure (as typically happens on a catch that's questionable) and rolling the ball back to the mound, especially when he didn't look back to see the ump's sign, and no verbal call was issued. It was a heads-up play by Pierzynski, and that's all. Game 4's catcher's interference (again, with Pierzynski) should have been called, but the time to argue about it wasn't on the way to first. If Finley complains after getting to first, at best the call is given and at worst another run scores and the inning isn't yet over. Game 5: First of all, fans need to learn not to interfere with balls in play. That isn't too hard a concept, is it? Again, Pierzynski's at the heart of a bad call, though this one was against the Sox, and is overturned. The difference here being that more than one ump saw it, conferred with the others and changed a very blatantly bad call. Could the Angels blame the umps for their losses? Sure, I guess, but they don't seem to be. Bad calls happen, this umpiring crew seemed to be more conspicuously bad than most, but the White Sox bullpen throwing seven pitches in the entire series has to count for something. Being in Chicago while this is going on is, at the very least interesting.

In that I'm getting close to understanding Ozzie Guillen, whose intereviews should be grounds for starting a completely separate language department.

I'll be around. I'm going to bed now.