Playoffs? Who needs playoffs

The American style of sports league always culminates into some kind of playoff, knock-out system. Everybody is always working to get to one game, be it the Super Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Grand Final; or maybe a final series, like the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup finals.

And it's all well and good. Attendance, viewership, the quality of the games is usually high (you are pitting the two best teams together). And yet I cannot stress enough how fantastic a climactic finish to a normal European league can be. Teams involved in championships play in different venues at the same time, but everyone has their ears on what happens in other stadia.

• Dutch eredivisie national championship 2006-2007: Before the day's matches AZ Alkmaar, Ajax and PSV are all level on points, but AZ has the clearly better goal differential. AZ loses unexpectedly away from small-time club Excelsior; Ajax beats Willem II 2-0, but PSV beats Vitesse 5-1, and achieves a better goal differential (50 over 49) to win the Dutch eredivisie.
  
• German Bundesliga national championship 2000-2001: Bayern Munchen held a three point advantage over Schalke 04 before the last game, and just needed a tie against Hamburg to win the Bundesliga title. Schalke however beat Unterhaching 5-2 and heard Bayern losing 0-1 to Hamburg, leaving Schalke virtual champions. There was however still stoppage time to play and a last gasp free kick gave Bayern the necessary goal to edge out a draw and win the Bundesliga.
• Spanish La Liga Primera Division 1993-1994: Deportivo La Coruna led Barcelona by two points by the final day of competition, but Barca had the better goal differential. Coruna played Valencia but couldn't score the goal that would give them the title. Barcelona beat Sevilla 5-2, and were virtual champions, until Valancia conceded a penalty kick in the last minutes of their game. Djukic took the penalty, hoping to score and give Deportivo their first title in history, but missed.
  

Careless Whisper

Another example that television really screws up our youths (or in this case, me)...

There's this unwritten rule in television shows that the hero figure is either

• a loudmouth, gung-ho, loner-type action hero; lack of respect towards authority comes as a bonus
• a brooding, mysterious dark stranger; no affiliation to anyone
  

And both, coming face to face with their adversary of the week, start spouting their threats... in a tone that I can best describe as whispering.

Now, in all my career so far no one has ever looked, seemed, or sounded menacing or intimidating or even charismatic enough, by whispering to everyone else. Everybody always has to shout.

Thanks to television, my description of a hero is forever tainted. An admirable person in fiction is someone who doesn't need to speak loudly. In real life, the people we most admire are the ones who speak most clearly. Not necessarily loudly, but definitely not whispering.

Do NOT read if you are depressed

"Respect is never given; Respect can be lost; Respect must be earned."
(Yes, tell that to a sociopath, or someone at the edge of his sanity.)

"If you see light at the end of the tunnel, it is usually a freight train."
(funny signature - not so much for a desperate)

Virginia Tech

I really cannot stress enough that the tragedy at Virginia Tech was shocking... and I do share my condolences to the people personally affected.

Yet there are plenty of cynic aftershocks I have to mention:

• true statement by woman at supermarket counter, seeing the shooter's face in the newspaper: "hee kijk, das die klootzak die al die mensen in Amerika heeft doodgeschoten. Het is maar goed dat ie zichzelf heeft afgeknald, anders had ik het wel gedaan..." (I don't think it's hard to imagine how this guy got so crazy; also kind of convenient that the guy shot himself in the face... did anyone actually see the body?)
• true statement on the radio: the opponents of free gun sales in the United States use this tragedy as a strong argument for their cause... but so do the supporters. In fact, the supporters actually say that had there been MORE free gun sales, the people who got shot this week actually had the chance to defend themselves... (*sigh...* c'mon guys...)
• the victims roles were nicely distributed. You've got the man who had the heroic sacrifice, the innocent, the beautiful girl... but strangefully, I didn't see people who were supposedly the ones that irked this guy so much, the charlatans, the arrogant assholes... where were they?
  
• what little time will pass until we see the first scenes of riots against Koreans? The over-under is at one week.
  

Yeah, that could happen

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Tales from the front

The war is on between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for supremacy over your video game budget. With all three consoles on the Dutch market for a month and a half now, it's time for some observations from the front:

• Sony is doing badly. You've got stacks and stack and stacks of big huge PlayStation3 boxes in every electronics store in the country. It's huge and it's heavy... and so is the price tag. Seriously, 600 euros!? I would have believed 400 euro. I don't pay 500+ euros for a DVD player/recorder, so why would I pay that money for a PS3? Seriously overpriced. And that's why the boxes are still there... or is that Sony's marketing strategy? Use electronic stores as your own personal advertisement boards?
  
• In contrast the Nintendo Wii is NOWHERE to be found. We are now about five months into the release and I have NEVER seen a stray Wii in the wild. As soon as somebody finds one, it's gone. The Wii is like urban myth. You hear about people who have one, but no one can tell you where to find another.
• And now Microsoft is getting egg on its face because of the Dutch consumer market. Apparently DVDs and game discs in the XBox 360 get scratched, even after a small amount of time. Microsoft has now been featured in at least two nationally televised consumer programmes, Kassa and Radar (coincidentally, both from our local communist station VARA). Microsoft might finally get some backlash, after a year of moderate success in the market.
  

Maybe I better skip this video game generation...

Time spent at work

Contractually I'm obliged to work 40 hours a week, save holidays. I also have 26 free days. In 2006 this amounts to a grand total of 2.069 hours I am paid to work for.

Now, I've been keeping track how much time I spend at work. I note when I arrive at the office and am ready to actually do my work, and note when I leave. Generally I'm accurate to about five minutes in this. Of course this time also includes non-productive things like coffee rounds, smoking breaks, and lunch, so I'll take into account an extra hour per day.

I summed up the numbers and I spent the grand total of 2.122 hours at work in the calendar year 2006. This amounts to seven working days of difference across the whole year. Four can be attributed to me taking up less vacation than I have allocated (23 instead of 26). That leaves three days I am at work more than contractually agreed.

Considering some of my colleagues work nights (at least according to their e-mail sending times) I'm actually not that bad. At least, if you happen to think half a week of unpaid work is not bad.

Difference in style

Sometimes you'll see a commercial coming by about joining the air force, or the army or the navy. The emphasis I see here is on helping people in far away countries if need be, growing as a person and toughening up.

The army's commercials in the US are a little bit different. For one, they look like the trailer of Blackhawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and Starship Troopers. Very Hollywood. Also they emphasize (quite heavily I might add) being a patriot, much more than over here.

I guess marketing departments in the armed forces do quite some checking on demographics before they do this. I just don't really know if you actually get the recruits you want fighting your wars using the US commercial.

You know you're too old

Now I know I'm officially too old for clubbing.

Jumpstyle. Who got the bright idea for this?

Professional Suicide

After a couple of years in the business I am glad to say I've managed to survive many of the growing pains one would get in professional life. Actually becoming somewhat successful in doing so. It also never ceases to amaze me how others remain blissfully clueless.

Now here's a guy who has the mad skillz, but not the chops to make it in the business. Delusional, single-minded, severely non-empathic... those would be terms to describe him. He is also figuratively a roller coaster ride. And apparently someone who is capable of committing professional suicide, without even knowing it.

Usually young inexperienced guys you would shield away from harm, but I have to say... when someone really, really gets on your nerves, all bets are off.

I'm not proud of this, but I really feel like letting this guy go.