Badminton

I watched a little bit of the finals of the International Badminton Federation World Championships from the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim on television last night. It was broadcast on the local Asian television station, KSCI in Los Angeles. What a strange and wonderful sport! Badmintion is huge throughout the world, especially in Asia, but here it's considered to be little more than something you play with your cousins at the family picnic.

On Thursday night, Tony Gunawan and Howard Bach became the first American men's doubles team to advance to the quarterfinals of the IBF championship. They then defeated fourth-seeded Luluk Hadiyanto and Yulianto Alven of Indonesia on Saturday to advance to the men's doubles final tonight. Bach was born in Vietnam and moved to Orange County, California five years ago. He works part-time at Home Depot in Orange, CA. Gunawan won an Olympic gold medal in 2000 playing for Indonesia with his partner Sigit Budiarto. Gunawan married his teammate from the Indonesian national team, Eti Tantra, and moved to a one-bedroom apartment in Orange County last year. Gunawan is not a U.S. citizen but was allowed to compete for the U.S. after a waiver was granted by the IBF. He recently passed the interview to receive a green card to allow permanent resident status.

Are all the future American badminton players going to continue to come from Indonesia and Vietnam? Where are the future badminton John McEnroes and Andre Aggasis?

On Friday night, the Thai mixed doubles team of Sudket Prapakamol and Saralee Thungthongkam lost to Jun Zhang and Lin Gao of China. I just threw that in because I love those names.

Anyway, I'm now an international badminton fan. Hopefully, ESPN or Fox will start carrying some badminton tournaments in the near future. It's an interesting sport that demands speed and quickness. You gotta love a sport that uses a shuttlecock and manages to say it with a straight face.

I'm right -- No I'm right -- No I'm right

In the recent past, I've gotten into some pretty heated exchanges with people over the internet. A lot of these exchanges have to do with politics and/or religion, some are about sports and/or entertainment, and some have even been about switchblades, for crying out loud. Sometimes I fall asleep obsessing about these exchanges and wake up plotting my next tirade. Sometimes I use carefully worded and researched tomes to make my point, and sometimes I just let loose a knee-jerk barrage. Ultimately, though, I end up feeling pretty silly.

What a colossal waste of time and effort!

Blogs and internet forums are wonderful places for empty arguments without the threat of actually hearing something that might change your mind. There's no real give-and-take. You don't have to consider anyone else's position. You don't even have to look him in the eye or be in the same room. You can always find plenty of sources on the internet that will support your point of view and link to them as proof of the validity of your opinion.

Is anyone's opposing viewpoint going to cause me to reexamine my own opinions? Probably not. Is my viewpoint going to cause anyone else to reexamine his opinions? Nope. I just hope I'm not as self-righteous and self-absorbed and inflexible and arrogant as some of the people with whom I've had these exchanges. And I hope that they fall asleep obsessing about it, too, and wake up the next morning thinking about what they should've said and what they're going to say next. I'm going to make a real effort to stop doing this to myself and not get into another heated argument with anyone on the internet, trying to convince them that they're wrong and I'm right. Instead, maybe I'll go ride my bike or read a real book or take some pictures or go for a swim or tell my wife I love her.

Obsessive arguing on line is like trying to convince my dog that it doesn't really feel good when he licks and scratches himself down there.

UPDATE: Okay. One last time I just had to tell off one switchblade asshole who's been a pain in my ass for a long time. I had to make nice with him before because we both moderated the same switchblade forum. Now I'm done with him, too. I feel better. Honest.

The Library

I love the library. I love the idea of the library. Most of the books I read come from the library. I used to buy a lot of books, but I ended up giving most of them away or getting practically nothing for them at the used book store (I also love the used book store). There's a new library being built here in Santa Monica, and it'll be finished soon. The old library was a pretty amazing place, and the new one is supposed to be huge and even more wonderful. The Downtown Central Library in Los Angeles is seven stories tall (I think) and is the Taj Majal of public libraries. I keep saying I'm going to visit it some day, but downtown LA isn' t my favorite place, so I haven't gone yet.

In my experience, libraries often attract some strange people. I guess a free place to sit all day and read and use the bathrooms is a pretty attractive thing to some of the denizens of the city. Nevertheless, to me that's part of the library's charm.

From time to time, I've been a student of the Kennedy assassination, and I've read most of the standard books on the subject from the library. I have a good friend who's a pretty serious student of the JFK assassination, and he buys all the books. He likes to call me up, depending on if he's bought a new JFK assasination book recently, to discuss assassination theories, and every so often I'll include a JFK assasination book when I check books out of the library just to refresh my memory and keep up with him. Apparently, there will always be another JFK assassination book, and my buddy will probably buy it and want to discuss it with me.

One of my favorite authors is a guy who writes under the pseudonym of KC Constantine. He's written a series of police procedurals which are actually character studies and subtle social commentaries, and I look forward every time there's a new one out. When a new Constantine book is in the stores, it'll soon be at the library. He writes the best dialogue I've ever read, and his characters talk like real people talk and have problems that real people have. Anyway, in the KC Constantine book called Bottom Liner Blues, one of the characters is a mean old Russian immigrant author whom I suspect is a stand-in for Constantine himself. This character has an interesting position on libraries. He believes that libraries flagrantly violate the U.S. Constitution and should be banned. Article 1, Section 8, paragraph 8 of the Constitution states "The Congress shall have the power to....promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The fifth amendment states "No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." His reasoning is that libraries are tax-supported institutions that make his copyrighted material available to the public for free, thus taking his property for public use without just compensation. I suspect that Constantine had one too many people tell him that they're devoted fans and have read all of his books, and that they get them from the library (like me). I never thought of it that way, and I suppose he has a point. I've bought four or five of Constantine's books over the years, but I have to confess that I get the majority of them from the library. But if I had to buy them, I probably wouldn't read them.

So to both of my readers, I highly recommend the library. Free books are your friends.

Oh yeah. Oswald didn't shoot anybody that day, Oswald was definitely a CIA operative, there's been a massive ongoing coverup involving the Secret Service and others, there were at least five shots fired at the president including at least two head shots, the autopsy was a sham, the autopsy photos and x-rays are faked, and the Zapruder film was tampered with and edited.

Stuff

Delta Airlines transports about 50,000 dead bodies per year, according to the Wall Street Journal, 5/17/2005.....
The average resident of Rome, Georgia drinks 1,000 Coca Colas per year, more than any other place on earth, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, 8/5/2001.....
At Yale University from 1964 to 1968, George W. Bush's grade average was 77. He got a 69 in astronomy and an 88 in history, philosophy, and anthropology, according to the Boston Globe, 6/7/2005.....
In John Kerry’s freshman year at Yale, he got a 61 in geology, and a 63 and 68 in two history classes. His highest grade was an 89 in a senior year Political Science course, according to the Boston Globe, 6/7/2005.....
After his capture in 1964, for almost 30 years, Ivan the Gorilla lived in a concrete cage at the B&I shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, where his job was to entertain customers. In 1994, Ivan was transported to the Atlanta Zoo, where he still lives, according to the Boston Globe, 10/22/1994.....
When Japanese corporation Maspro Denkoh decided to sell its collection of Impressionist paintings, it couldn't decide between Christie's and Sotheby's. Takashi Hashiyama, the corporation's president, decided that a game of rock-paper-scissors would be "'the best way to decide between two things which are equally good.'" Christie's and Sotheby's were instructed to write their choices on a sheet of paper. Christie's scissors beat Sotheby's paper, and Christie's went on to sell four works for $22.8 million dollars, according to The Chicago Sun-Times, 5/1/2005.....
President Franklin Pierce was driving his carriage back to the White House after visiting a friend's home one night in 1853 and hit a woman identified as Mrs. Nathan Lewis, who was uninjured. President Pierce was promptly arrested by Constable Stanley Edelin, but the charges were later dropped, according to The Washington Post, 2/18/1996.....
In their e-mails, French government employees are prohibited from using the word "e-mail." In July 2003, France advised all government employees that they should refer to e-mails as "courriels" rather than "e-mails" in an effort to stem the invasion of English words into the French language, according to Agence France Presse, 7/9/2003.

Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005

A bill was just introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, sponsored by five Democrats and one Republican, to amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana and allow cultivation of industrial hemp as a commercial product in the U.S. If this bill is passed, it would allow individual states exclusive authority to regulate growing and processing of industrial hemp. Anyone familiar with the potential uses and benefits of industrial hemp knows how important this is. Hemp has the potential to revolutionize textiles, feedstocks, and construction, as well as providing substantial reduction in pollution and less reliance on FOSSIL FUEL. The list goes on and on.

Hemp is not marijuana. Marijuana is grown for its unpollinated female flowers. Hemp is grown for its fibrous stems and stalks and the oil from seeds. Marijuana plants are bushy and leafy. Hemp plants are tall and straight with minimal leaves. Actually, widespread cultivation of industrial hemp is a marijuana grower's nightmare. If you're trying to grow high-grade sinsemilla and there's industrial hemp growing all over the place pollinating your female plants, you've got big problems.

Hemp cultivation could literally be a lifesaver to farmers in the U.S.

Shorter

I used to be 6 feet 4-1/2 inches tall. My pants were a 36-inch inseam. Recently I went shopping for a pair of pants, and the inseam that fit me best was 34 inches. I went home and measured myself, and I am now 6 feet 3 inches tall. What the hell happened? I liked being six-four. Six-three isn't as cool as six-four. I'm bummed.

The best five dollars I've spent recently was on a fake surveillance camera I mounted in my front window. It sure looks real, and it has a motion sensor that makes the thing go back and forth whenever someone walks past our door. It's funny to see how different people react when they see our "camera." Some people wave. Some people smile. A few people are absolutely outraged. One neighbor actually had a lawyer send us a letter accusing us of aiming a surveillance camera at her door, which is really funny because her apartment is directly above ours, and the camera points straight out, not straight up. We can't even see her door, so I'm puzzled as to how she thinks our camera is aimed at her. We've told most of the neighbors that it's fake, and they all get a kick out of it. We haven't told the upstairs neighbor.

Speaking of neighbors, our neighbors to the left are a Russian man married to a Filipina woman. The Russian man, Alex, is a very cool guy. Alex is really smart (he does the NY Times crossword every day), and he knows more about American jazz and blues than I do. He's sort of larger than life. He laughs big, he smokes big, he eats big, he drinks big, and he works hard. He used to be a house painter, and now he drives for a limo service. His wife is an amazing cook. She's one of those people who can just throw together a bunch of stuff from scratch, and it's the most delicious, unusual food you've ever tasted. Once in a while she brings something over for us, and it's always amazing. They have a 14-year-old daughter who is the sweetest, nicest, prettiest girl in town. They should be very proud.

One of the major athletic shoe stores here in town, maybe The Athlete's Foot or the Foot Locker, distributes free athletic shoes to the homeless. Transients come from miles around to get these shoes. It's not unusual to see people who are obviously out of their minds, shuffling down the street yelling to themselves, sleeping in the park, draped in stinking, ratty, filthy clothes, wearing brand-new Air Jordans or Adidas Promodels on their bare, dirt-encrusted feet. Maybe they all have sweet jump shots. I don't know.