Tea Leaves

The middle of March means that March Madness is upon us. Therefore I’m going to talk to you about a film that is about the NBA. This might seem strange to you. But it makes sense to me. With the exception of a few years following Duke after I was at the school when they repeated in 1992, I’ve never been much for NCAA Basketball. As a singular event full of spectacle and drama, there isn’t much that can beat the NCAA tournament. But that doesn’t mean the basketball is that good. People will call me nuts, but what bothers me about the college game is that, well, the players are not that good yet.
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I feel I have to come clean about this. The recent incredible snowfall in Pittsburgh is my fault. I present the following facts in evidence. Fact: The last storm like this to hit Pittsburgh happened in 1994. Fact: That year I had rented a condo that had inside parking. I was very happy to have inside parking during that storm. Fact: Since then I’ve lived in house that lacked inside parking. Fact: During that time Pittsburgh has been mostly free of huge snowfall. Fact: This year we’ve done renovations on the house which include a new garage. So, just before this huge storm, I had inside parking again.

So, in light of all of this, let me just apologize. Hopefully this won’t happen again next year too. It would be a pain to take the garage down.

Of course by “football” I mean American football and by “sport” I mostly mean “American Sport”. I certainly do not mean “rest of the world” football, which Americans call soccer. If your favorite sport is soccer than we can just agree now that you will hate me and I will feel sorry for you. With the Super Bowl once again upon us I have been ruminating about why football in general, and the NFL in particular, is clearly the best sport in the country. I thought I stole this idea from Chuck Klosterman, who wrote an excellent essay about football in his recent book Eating the Dinosaur. It turns out that his essay did not say what I thought it did, but it did tickle me to ruminate about this subject for a while. So why, exactly, is football better?
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Long time readers of the site will be familiar with my problem with bags. At times I have an almost pathological need to shop for them. So it was a mixed blessing when I was told by the powers that be that I would be “allowed” to look for a new computer bag. I had become, for no reason, unhappy with my backpack. A year and a half ago, the pack was perfect, but no longer. Bag shopping is a bit different now than even a few years ago because almost every vendor is now on the Intertubes. It’s possible, in a few short evenings, to study a huge cross section of the available hardware. Here is what you learn.
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I hate people who are more talented than me. Well, hate probably isn’t the right word. The way I should put this is that in my life I am constantly confronted by people who are more talented than me and this brings out the darker side of my personality. For example, if you watched Apple’s launch event for the iPad, you will notice that about 42 minutes in, they bring up a guy named Steve Sprang to demo an application called Brushes. Brushes lets you paint pictures on your iPhone, and has been used to create, among other things, covers for the New Yorker. I used to work with Steve, and he’s always been smarter than me.
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Alert reader Brendan, noting that I was talking about buying ammo on Twitter, asks, “What’s the best generally available shot load (i.e. on shelves at Walmart) for the coming zombiepocalypse?”

The most popular size shotgun shell is surely still the 12 gauge. 12 gauge, 2 3/4 inch shells should fit most shotguns that you are likely to find lying around in deserted office buildings after the zombie plague begins. The most common shotshell type probably has fairly small shot, #7 or #7 1/2 (larger numbers mean smaller balls, smaller numbers mean larger balls). These aren’t really ideal for taking out human zombies, but should be adequate to dispose of the huge numbers of zombie dogs that are likely to be roving the streets, searching for brains (Key unanswered questions: do zombie dogs want to eat human brains, or canine brains?) They are, however, cheap and plentiful. You’ll want the largest shot you can find, or better yet slugshells. For survivors with a lighter build, such as your ex-wife, younger teenagers, or that annoying girl who cries all the time and is constantly saying “We’re all going to die!” you probably want to stick with a 20 gauge – the gun itself is likely to be lighter. 16 gauge ammo is hard to find except at speciality shops, and anything smaller than 20 gauge is probably not worth using.

The truth is, though, for use against formerly-human zombies, I think the shotgun is probably not the weapon of choice, despite its historical popularity in fending off zombie attacks. The fact of the matter is that in order to disable or kill the zombie, you’ll need to be at almost point-blank range. Since, as everyone knows, zombies travel in groups, if you’re at point blank range with the zombies you are likely to be overwhelmed, typically just as your fellow survivors are shouting at you to get the engine of the car started or to reach the safe room with the barred door. Although I personally have no experience with this sort of anti-zombie combat, I would think that a rifle with high penetration would be much more likely to let you kill the zombie by destroying its brains via a headshot, and furthermore might let you do it at a safe range. I don’t know enough about rifles to make an informed recommendation on this point.

I hope this helps, and may you and your family make it to safety.

The Zero Punctuation videos are without a doubt some of the best writing about video games on the Internet. The pieces are snarky, hilarious, and well produced. Most importantly, they are not tied down to the tired old “game review” format where the game is poured into a metaphorical centrifuge and spun around to produce 5 numbers between 6.5 and 9.6 which the reader can then use as a quick reference guide while at the Gamestop. Here, finally, are video game reviews that are actually interesting to experience. So of course the video game people hate them. Why? Because he’s not “objective.”
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Stricken by a mean stomach flu, I spent Sunday sprawled on the couch watching football. What I was hoping would be an enjoyable diversion while I was sick on the couch turned into a horrible psychological buzz-kill. First, the Cincinnati Bengals beat up the locally beloved Steelers, sweeping the season series for the first time in more than ten years. Then the Cowboys and the Packers played a mostly uninspired game, with the Cowboys being much more uninspired than the Packers. Finally, my beloved Pats were going up against the Colts in the late game. But more on that later. First, I have to talk about why I spend time watching some games that I have no reason to care about.
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I read a 700 page book about the NBA last week, and paradoxically it left me without the cranial capacity to write anything full length. So instead I have these thoughts that are not completely cooked yet.
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I like bookstores. Actually, it’s more general than that. I like libraries too. I like sitting next to bookshelves and just peering at them, memorizing everything that’s there. I like spending hours just browsing the stacks, running my finger down the spines of the books, pausing every once in a while to pick one out and leaf through its pages. In high school and college, I used to have entire sections of the school or university library memorized. I could find any book that I had found once before just by going to the right set of shelves and walking to the right spot. I can still visualize some of those shelves in my head, although the contents are by now long gone. I like to do the same thing in my favorite bookstores.

I like hanging around books. It’s not a good time to be me.
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