Which Korea is Best Korea?

There has been a great deal of news coverage lately with the talking heads discussing which Korea is best Korea. If you haven’t heard, relations between North and South Korea have reached a boiling point. A couple weeks ago, A South Korean naval ship was sunk off the coast of North Korea. After looking at all the evidence, the South Koreans determined that it was a North Korean torpedo that sunk the ship, claiming some 60 lives in the process. Also, if you haven’t already heard, the North and South Koreans are not exactly BFF. They have been involved in a war that never really ended for the past 40 or so years. Now, since I have a Masters in Pan-Asian Studies, I feel qualified to give you a brief description of how the North and South got to where they are today.

After the sinking, South Korea unfriended North Korea on facebook. They also set their relationship status to “complicated”, a common way for tweens to indicate that their relationship's are on the rocks. The North responded to this by hacking the South’s yahoo email address and forwarding a message of hate to all of the South’s contacts. The reports of this message are still fuzzy, but initial reports say it was along the lines of calling the South a bunch of “doody-heads” and insinuating promiscuity about their mothers.

The South responded to this act of aggression by tweeting about the North’s leader’s propensity to be “ronery, so very, very ronery”. North Korea was reportedly too busy following Justin Bieber updates to see the message, however. Kim Jong Il, aka the Illa of Manilla, threatened to use his WWI era technology to level Seoul, South Korea, if it sees any aggression on from the South. This is where we stand right now. The situation appears to be long past name calling and fart jokes. The UN reportedly was on the verge of writing up a strongly worded letter to the North. The letter apparently included the words "or else" and "we're really serious this time".

It is unlikely that the South would execute an attack any time in the near future, however, as Star Craft 2 is only weeks away from being released. As the entire economy of the South plunges to do lack of productivity, the North may have an ideal time to execute an attack plan of its own. North Koreans, as you know, have very little electricity and therefore are unable to play silly RPG games for hours on end. The release of Starcraft may very well prevent an all out war between the Koreas.

Tensions remain at an all time high as the world waits to see how this conflict will be resolved. One thing is for sure, this business will get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it. (Lets play guess the quote). At any rate, officials urge everyone who had vacation plans in North Korea to seriously rethink how they got to that point in their lives with one official even saying “I didn’t think North Korea was even a real country”. Stay with me here for updates on this developing situation. I will pass along any and all trivial news about what we are now calling “The Great Saber Rattling Event of 2010 that happens to involved two countries that hate each other.” The world watches and waits.

Astros update

Ok, since not much else is going on right now, I felt like this would be a great opportunity to talk about the Astros as we near the end of the first quarter of the season. As it stands today, the Astros currently have a 13-24 record fresh off being swept by the Giants (A team who had just come off a large losing streak of its own). Sadly, many, if not all, of the predictions I made at the beginning of the season have come true.

The Astros currently hold the 2nd worst record in baseball, trailing the historically miserable Baltimore Orioles by only 1 game. The team batting average is hovering around .230. The usual offensive power of Berkman and Lee is nowhere to be found as both of them are hitting near .200. Kaz Matsui, one of the worst signings of the organization in the past 2 decades, is struggling to keep his batting average above .100. The offense simply isn’t here this year. And this isn’t like years past where the offense was bad. The ‘stros are literally losing games 2-1 and 1-0.

And that brings up the sole prediction I made this year that turned out to be wrong. The pitching has been nothing short of phenomenal. Roy Oswalt has an ERA of 2.62 and a 2-5 record to show for it. It has got to be demoralizing as a pitching knowing that if you give up 2 runs there is a really good chance of you losing the game. Knowing that you have to be nothing short of perfect every single time you trot out there cannot be healthy for your state of mind. And it isn’t just Oswalt, Myers and Wandy are also having good, solid outings with little to show in the win column for their efforts.

Sadly, I believe this kind of performance is necessary for management to wake up and make some hard decisions. As much as I hate to say it, we need to start looking into gutting the team. And I mean REALLY gutting. Oswalt said he would be willing to relinquish his no trade clause in exchange for going to a contender, and I cant really blame him. Berkman too says he would be willing to part ways with the club if it meant going with a team that looks like it is headed in the right direction. Along with Lee and Matsui, those 4 guys comprise the majority of the Astros budget.

I would really like to see the Astros building a team around the young talent on the club. I think they need to lock up Pence and Bourn long term now while they are still young. After that, they need to get back to the way they build the World Series team, by getting young talent from the draft and farm clubs. They need to stop signing overpaid, overweight (cheap shot), old players that are past their prime. Sadly, we gave up so much of our farm clubs to acquire big name hot shots like Carlos Beltran back in 2004. Since then they have just been going through the motions it seems, trying to buy championships instead of developing them.

Watching the team score 0-2 runs a game is getting old fast. I’ve been noticing fewer and fewer people at the home games. I can only hope that the team doesn’t descend into darkness for the next 16 years like the Pirates who haven’t had a winning season in nearly 20 years. Hopefully this “rebuilding year” will actually be a year with rebuilding. I’m not holding my breath…

Historical tweets

You probably read recently about an effort that is underway to archive and categorize the entirety of the twitterverse in the freaking Library of Congress. That’s right, the place where some of the most important documents in this country’s history reside will now also contain your melodrama about the time you couldn’t decide on what pair of pants to wear out of the house on laundry day. For a little bit of perspective on what this all will mean to future alien civilizations, I’ve gone back in time, along with twitter, and compiled some of the more interesting tweets from the past. Enjoy.

February 22, 1732: @GWashMeATon writes: Woke up this morning and the cherry tree was gone….I must have been SO wasted! BEST. NIGHT. EVAR.

July 12, 1750: @TheRealFranklin writes: Either I am really baked or I just invented electricity. LOL either way, I’m flying a kite in a lightning storm!

July 12, 1750: @ThomasEdisonGramp writes: Suck it, @TheRealFranklin!

July 4, 1776: @JeffersonROX: LOL, shit is getting real around here. Just signed a declaration of independance and told @KingGeorge to EABOD!!!!!1!

July 5, 1776: @NewUSCitizen writes: RT: @FreedomRULEZ We are now our own country! Bring on the reality TV and bacon double cheeseburgers!!!!!!!!

July 5, 1776: @WetBlanket writes: TV hasn’t been invented yet @NewUSCitizen, HURRRRR.

July 6, 1776: @JonHandontheCawk writes: Check out mah blog about our new country yall: http://newcountry.mayflowerblogs.com. It's teh BEES KNEES!

April 10 1782: @MalfunctioningEddy writes: I’m going crazy and slashing prices on my entire inventory of wagons. Hit the Oregon Trail in style by coming out to see us today!

August 31, 1803: @LewisAndClark writes: Spirits are high as we begin our expedition. Here’s hoping I brought enough pairs of pants LOL.

So there you have it, Tweets from the past. I do realize that I missed some tweets from some rather important historical events. But in my defense, I was out getting hammered with Jefferson and Franklin for the better part of my trip back in time. Boy did the food suck back then….no burritos or pizza rolls or anything.

I was a little leery at first of the idea to archive all that is Twitter. However, after my journey to the past, I can see now why this will not only be a great way to see what life was like back in the day to future generations, it will also help us to remember all the lolz we had in our own time. We will also be forced to look back and wonder why Justin Bieber was the top trending topic for a full 2 years…..

Ok, maybe it isn’t such a good idea after all.

Turbo Census

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This was my poor attempt at an April fools joke, btw.

Time for some baseball!

So, here we are a little over a week away from Major League Baseball Opening Day 2010. The Astros are finishing up spring training and have played remarkably well in my opinion. Now we all know that spring training games are about as useful in predicting how the actual season will go about as well as blind monkeys throwing darts at dartboards the size of a nickel, but nevertheless, the Astros have looked good. With that in mind, let’s break down this upcoming season and attempt to figure out how everything will pan out this year for the ‘stros.

Before we talk about what the Astros have going into this upcoming season, we have to take a look back at what we lost this past offseason. The most glaring discrepancy in the lineup is the loss of Miguel Tejada. Tejada was a free agent in the offseason and decided to go back to the Orioles organization with whom he had spent the better part of his major league career. Tejada was the Astros best hitter in the 2009 season. His team leading .313 batting average will be a major loss to a team that struggled hard to score runs last season. And while he only had 86 RBI’s last season, keep in mind that people actually have to be on base and generally in scoring position in order to score on a hit.

Another loss, the size of which could be debated longer than I am willing to spend on the topic, is the closer Jose Valverde. Valverde was unable to come even close to his national league leading 44 saves he achieved in 2008. Again though, this is more due to the fact that the Astros were rarely ever in a save situation at the end of ball games. His ERA of 2.33 was certainly not shabby and his arm will almost certainly be missed this year as the Astros did not go out on the open market and pick up another closer.

The refusal to go out on the free agent market and pick up veteran players at the positions of shortstop and closer mean that this will most likely be another down year (or “rebuilding year” for you optimists out there) even in the best scenario. It appears right now as if rookie Tommy Manzella will be the Astros’ opening day shortstop and rookie Brandon Lyon will be tasked with the duties of closer. Both of them seem to be having pretty decent spring trainings. Will they be able to fill the gaps left by two veteran powerhouses? That will have to remain to be seen.

One of the bigger disappointments for me was the realization that Kaz Matsui is still with the team. I suppose my dreams had me believing that his contract with the Astros was up at the end of the 2009 season, but alas, I was wrong. Matsui is one of those professional baseball oddball players that really makes you wonder how they managed to get multi-million dollar deals for being a below average player. Matsui is a perennial inning killer on offense and only slightly better than average at the second base position. Undoubtedly, the Astros will continue to march him out there as a starter and bat him in the 1 or 2 hole which means the chances of scoring first this season will remain low. If popping out to the first baseman in foul territory with runners on second and third with no out was a sport, Matsui would be the MVP.

Ok, with that out of my system, let’s move on to the starting rotation. If I had to sum up the rotation in one word, it would be this: terrifying. Last year, Roy Oswalt had what you might call an off year. Wandy Rodriguez somehow managed to end up becoming the ace of the ballclub. How many of you thought you’d ever hear yourselves thinking that!? These two are quite frankly going to both have career years in order for the Astros to be competitive. That’s because after them, there is really nobody. Brett Myers (old and terrible), Bud Norris (rookie), and Felipe Paulino (utterly terrible) round out the starting rotation. This is one of the weakest pitching staffs that the team has had for years. The Astros used to be a team known for their pitching and now they are going to have trouble having a single 15 game winner.

Carlos Lee, Lance Berkman and Hunter Pence are really going to have to carry the team offensively this season. Michal Bourne having another career year wouldn’t hurt either. I feel slightly more confident with the offense this year even with the loss of Tejada. Hopefully this new coach will place Matsui low in the lineup where he has the least possible opportunity to do damage. Time will have to tell how well Manzella does at the big league level offensively. Having a strong bat at shortstop will be instrumental in getting the Astros back above .500 this season.

Ok, prediction time. The lack of any proven starters behind Wandy and Oswalt is clearly going to be a detriment to the team. The only wild card here will be Bud Norris who showed some real promise late last season. The lack of a veteran on the left side of the infield is still some cause for concern. I would really like the Astros to go out and look for some trading opportunities for a real third base man sometime this season. Quintero and Towles are both miserable offensively. The 7,8,9 hitters of (hopefully) Matsui, Towles/Quintero, and the pitcher will generally be automatic outs every time they come around in the lineup essentially giving the Astros 9 less outs per game.

With all that in mind, all might not be lost. While I don’t think this team has any realistic chance of making the playoffs, .500 or better might not be that far off. I think it will be fair to estimate that the 2010 Astros will finish with around a 75-87 record this year on the upper end of the scale and a 60-102 last place in the division season on the lower side. In all likely hood it will be somewhere in between those 2 outcomes. They are still no where near the level of talent they had back in 2005 when they went to the World Series. Either way, I am still so glad that it is finally baseball season once again!

I’d like to end this post by talking about the Pirates for just a little bit. You see, Pirates fans have watched their team have losing season after losing season for the better part of 20 years. Us Astros fans have nothing on the patience and loyalty of those fans in Pittsburg who have watched and waited so long for their team just to be mediocre and competitive. The current word on the street is that THIS is the year for them. This is the .500 year. So while I will always root for the Astros, I will also be secretly rooting for the Pirates to finally break this beast that has been on their back for so long. Good luck Pirates fans!

Going legit

I was going to write about the recent Olympic Games in this post but something much more important has come up. Besides, screw the Olympics anyway, they had their fun in the sun already. Moving along, I ran across this article earlier today. I’ll give you a minute or so to peruse over it.

Finished? Good.

What that article boils down to in a nutshell is this: I am now an official news organization. If you have read any of this blog over the past 2 years, you know about the hard hitting journalism that I bring to the table on a quazi weekly basis. And now, I am finally getting some recognition for my efforts. Since I am now officially a member of the press corps, I will be rubbing elbows with other hard hitters of the media world: Cooper Anderson, Shepherd Smith and most importantly, Erin Burnett.

Now that I am legit, I expect the book deals and drunken yacht parties to begin immediately. And the money, don’t forget about the money! I’ve already begun making my official m1kepwn blogger press pass.

Another important part of being a news organization is the staff. I will be hiring quite a few unpaid interns in the upcoming weeks that will assist me with remembering to post on this site as well as reminding their friends and family to come to this site and view ads. Ads are really all news organizations care about anyway. Oh, and did I mention the money?

The next big step for me is to make a catchy 3 letter acronym for this site. MNN, or M1KEPWN NEWS NETWORK, seems to be the most appropriate. MNN, The Least Trusted Name in News. Damn, I just realized that I am going to need some kind of dramatic theme music to play when someone visits here. This will be another job for the interns as I simply have no time for it now.

And finally, I plan on doing my IPO for MNN in the near future. I will be adding an investor relations link sometime later in the day for all you potential investors out there who want to be a part of this glorious news outlet and share in its profits. I hope to be listed on the NYSE in a matter of weeks. Al investors will be invited to the aforementioned drunken yacht parties and will be treated with copious amounts of Brothers Fried Chicken.

Hello, ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back to your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he got off his ass and onto the computer he could blog like me. Look again, the computer is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you become a legit news organization. I’m on a horse.

Mardi Gras

Ok so it has been another pretty long hiatus since my last post on this thing for a couple of reasons. 1: Super busy at work. 2. Vacation to New Orleans. And C: No new AdSense money goal. Lucky for you, the viewer, 2 of those things are really no longer an issue. The vacation is over and Christine and I once again have a goal of wasting the money we get from this thing on something awesome. Telling you what that awesomenss is will have to wait. With that in mind, here is a little recap of the time we had in New Orleans.

First off, the drive. We all convened on the wee hours of the Saturday morning before the trip. Knowing us, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me to see my car loaded up with 6 handles of liquor amongst all the other travel related stuff. Surprisingly, my trunk was big enough to hold all the travel gear for 5 people. I had thought that my car might not be big enough to gang bang 5 people into for a 6 hour trip, but luckily I was wrong as everyone seemed to be pretty comfortable for the whole ride. I had also made a badass classic rock cd that lasted the entire duration of the trip.

One quick side note. One of these days, I am going pitch a television show to FOX called: “WTF IS HEATHER TALKING ABOUT?”. It will be just me and Heather walking down the street with a film crew and having some random people talk to us and attempt to decipher what she is trying to say. I’m telling you, this idea is a comedy gold mine. Heather, you are hilarious!

Anyway, back to the story. As you can imagine, the city was quite packed for Mardi Gras. It literally seemed like every street to our hotel was blocked off. Needless to say we eventually got there and, of course, headed straight to the casino. Now for the record, I think I can honestly say that I enjoy going to New Orleans any other time of the year. I’m not saying that I didn’t have a good time this trip, I did. It’s just that it was impossible to get anywhere at all while the parade was going on. In fact, if I see zero more parades in my life it will be way too many.

We, of course, did all the normal stuff there is to do in New Orleans. Casino, Bourbon Street, Mother’s, and Pat O'Briens. There was also this pretty legit sushi place in the lobby of our hotel that hooked us up with free saki because, get this, they couldn’t sell it to us because they didn’t have a liquor license. Oh New Orleans, I love how the rules don’t apply to you.

Speaking of our hotel, due to the people to bed ratio being inadequate, we brought along an inflatable mattress to compensate. Now, I have never really had a good experience with air mattri. They are generally always pieces of junk that deflate within a couple hours of laying on them. However, the one we brought absolutely takes the cake. It was so crappy, in fact, the phrase “Somalia Bed” was quickly coined to use when talking about it. The only upside to brining the thing along was the use of its blower as a hair dryer when it was discovered the one that came with the room did not work. That was my idea, btw…

Another one of the bigger oddities of the trip was the sheer amount of Brother’s Fried Chicken that was consumed. There was this grocery store 2 blocks down from our hotel called Brother’s that made one hell of a fried chicken strip bucket and invariably someone would always headed down there around 2-3 in the morning and literally pick up buckets of it. Our hotel room was literally covered with these boxes of empty fried chicken by the time the trip was over. It was simply ridiculous.

Ok, now for the absolute strangest part of the trip. On our last full day there, Fat Tuesday, we got up bright and early (12PM) and headed to the iHop on Canal Street. After a short wait, we were seated and started ordering our food. QUICK TIP: Apparently unlimited fountain drink refill only applies to sodas….not apple juice. I had to learn that the hard way after getting my check and seeing an additional $7.50 tacked on for the 3 apple juices I got. WTF?! Anyway, so we look over about midway through our meal and take a look at the person at the check out counter. Instead of seeing say your average age person collection money and making change, there was a young girl who was most definitely no older than 9 years old. She was completely running the place. Ordering servers around, yelling out guest’s names whose tables were ready. EVERYTHING! We’re pretty sure she even fired a bus boy…. Just another example of how rules and regulations like child labor laws simply do not apply to this town!

So yes, as you can see, we all had a really good time on this trip. I glossed over some of the more crazy parts as they are probably not even internet appropriate. I sang horrible karaoke one night and completely lost my voice. I got violently ill after returning back to Houston and I am only now getting over it. New Orleans is simply a great place to have a great time. I love going there and I dare even say I like it more than going to Vegas. So yes, there you go. Great story huh?

Here is one more gem before I sign off:

Housekeeping: (knock, knock, knock) “what time are you guys checking out”?

Us: “We arranged late checkout, we’re leaving at noon.”

Housekeeping: “12 noon?”

Us: “……Yes…..12, noon” (as opposed to the other time of the day that is noon…)

I am going to try to write a recap of the winter Olympics soon before I forget about all the stuff that interested me. Hopefully it will not be another month before something gets posted up here again!