Top 10 lists: Books, Movies and Such (part 1)

It's a bit difficult to put together just off the top of me head. (And top of the morning to ya, lad.)
But I figure I'll give it a shot:

Music: Not in any particular order.

U2's Joshua Tree is an all-time favorite. I like in particular 'Running to Stand Still' and the lyrics:

Sweet the sin

Bitter the taste in my mouth

I see seven towers

But I only see one way out

You got to cry without weeping

Talk without speaking

Scream without raising your voice

You know I took the poison from the poison stream

Then I floated out of here

Singing ha la la la di day - ha la la la di day

Live Throwing Copper and 'White, Discussion' and the lyrics:

the coin flips again and again, and again, and again

as our sanity walks away

all this discussion though politically correct

is dead beyond destruction

though it leaves me quite erect

Big Head Todd & the Monsters 'Sister Sweetly' and from 'Bittersweet' the lyrics:

I know we don't talk about it.

We don't tell each other

All the little things that we need.

We work our way around each other

As we tremble and we bleed...As we tremble and we bleed.

The Clash 'London Calling' and 'London Calling' lyrics:

London calling to the imitation zone

Forget it, brother, you can go at it alone

London calling upon the zombies of death

Quit holding out - and draw another breath

London calling - and I don't wanna shout

But while we were talking I saw you running out

London calling, see we ain't got no HIGH

Except for that one with the yellowy eyes

Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II and 'Heartbreaker' lyrics:

Well, it's been ten years and maybe more since I first set eyes on you.

The best years of my life gone by, here I am alone and blue.

Some people cry and some people die by the wicked ways of love;

But I'll just keep on rollin' along with the grace of the Lord above.

The Eagles 'Hotel California':

Mirrors on the ceiling

The pink champagne on ice

And she said:'We are all just prisoners hereof our own device'

And in the master's chambers

They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can't kill the beast

Genesis self-titled 'Genesis' and 'Home by the Sea':

Images of sorrow, pictures of delight

Things that go to make up a life

Endless days of summer, longer nights of doom

Waiting for the morning light

Scenes of unimportance, photos in a frame

Things that go to make up a life

The Dave Matthews Band and 'Under the Table and Dreaming' and the song 'Dancing Nancies' lyrics:

I am who I am who I am, now, who am I?

Requesting some enlightenment

Could I have been anyone other than me?

The Outfield's Play Deep and 'Your Love' lyrics:

As you leave me please would you close the door

and forget what I told you

Just 'cause you're right - that don't mean I'm wrong

Another shoulder to cry upon

I just wanna use your love tonight

I don't wanna lose your love tonight

Yeah, I just wanna use your love tonight

I don't wanna lose your love tonight

Lose your love

Lose your love

Lose your love...

And Finally...Kenny Rogers 'The Gambler' and title track :

So when he'd finished speakin,

he turned back towards the window,

Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.

And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.

But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

If I had $1,000,000: A poor man's guide to money

Well, maybe I should be Brian Wilson first, lying in bed. But really, what would an ordinary person (like me) do with $1,000,000 tax-free dollars?

• $150,000 goes to the S&P 500 for a long-term investment. The stock market long-term is usually a 10-12% Return on Investment yearly. I think that's pretty good.


• $150,000 in mid-term CDs.


• $200,000 in some depressed Real Estate market that I figure can be turned around. I would look South or West in the United States. Move to my temporary home (looking for a good 'out time' always) but turning it into a modern home with state-of-the-art bells and whistles. Always conscious of the appearance, the neighborhood, etc.


• $40,000 on furnishings in my newly acquired loft/ranch/whatever it happens to be, but make it a cross between a business style home and bachelor pad. Yes, this doesn't sell it, but I plan to live there for at least 2-3 years.


• $100,000 to my immediate family. That should get them out of debt and buy some normal things. Over time, I don't expect them to spend it wisely, so another $50,000 will be available.


• $30,000-50,000 on the most fuel efficient vehicle I can purchase on the market. Alternative fuels ready and gets 50-65 Highway MPG or more. Plenty of latest things, but I'm not into 15-in subwoofers or anything. Just good technology....


• $20,000 on high-tech gadgetry. Blackberry, laptop, home system, high-end printer, productivity software I can't ferret from Download.com or other free/cheap areas of the Internet. I'd try to get a Consulting business started with a few techies I've met over the years. Since there are so many avenues for making money - and plenty of competition too - I'd have to sit down with 5-6 of these guys and figure it out. I can only do the low-end, low-margin stuff: writing business plans, resumes, sensitivity analysis, Pro forma statements, labor standards, some 2-D AutoCad designing and maybe some minor stuff. But a real business that is tied to the Internet explosion and produces a great product or service, that's where the money is. An additional $30,000 would be set aside for investment into technology initially.


• $10,000 on a new clothing and accessories. Look, I haven't been clothes shopping since I don't know when, so this is small compared to the amount I see people waste on getting uncomfortable shoes and baggy crap that makes you look stupid.


• $200,000 left. Charity is an option. More investment in certain stocks. More into a real business venture. But really, this is was my previously earned income currently for 3-4 years. (Now I make what your paperboy does...) So, this is for living day to day while I get my new company or ideas off the ground. Since I've wanted to be a writer, this may also go into getting a few books published and keep me from pissing it all away.

So that's it. Money doesn't quite go as far as it use to.

TimeLine: From the Baseball Project

Using Powerpoint, I made this little image related to my project. It's a bit sloppy looking here, but it should impart some information. Hopefully it spells out some of what has happen in baseball history. The Presidents are guideposts to chapters I wrote. Either they were in office at the start of the period or more closely tied to the era that existed...Just my opinion.

Just Another Day: Musings from An Ethical Wallaby by me

I started out my paper route at 2AM listening to a talk series on Ethics as it applies to human rights and legal ramifications. As this Australian/Canadian author, Margaret Somerville, titled the first in her series An Ethical Wallaby – a ‘wallaby’ is a ‘walk about for enlightenment’ – it certainly caught some of my attention amidst throwing papers in boxes or in driveways.

With Scooter Libby getting his prison sentence commuted, the idea of ethics involving the highest office in the land comes to mind. When is it just to pardon or commute a sentence handed down by a judge after a jury of your peers found you guilty? Certainly this smacks of political favoritism – especially so close to Bush's front door – but why doesn’t it happen more often, in clearer instances of miscarriages of justice? Isn’t a pardon/commutation supposed to be reserved for those we are assured after the case was decided were innocent of the crime they were accused of? The fine Scooter will pay is small ($250,000) in relative terms to his income and probation will likely will not be a burden to him – likely a phone call, at best, from a disinterested parole officer.

Beyond that recent political intrigue, I was thinking back to college. Yes, those grand times when I did not do outstanding work or make any headway in putting behind the past.

I graduated with a 2.07 GPA and missed tons of classes, more than I attended in some semesters, while not getting to know my classmates in my major. For some reason, I found people in other majors more appealing to know. Liberal Arts, Management, English, Elementary Education, Philosophy and Poly Sci were all more enjoyable to talk with than a bunch of Engineer brainiacs.

Life was pretty Greek at Purdue. 25% or more were in those organizations. I was a GDI – and not ashamed of it – but I did not join any other organizations, aside from a semester of Pre-Law Society. Course, that did not go far…until later on in my life...

Somehow, I lost interest in learning and being after high school. Classes, socializing (unless just bullshitting) and giving back did not seem relevant. Sure, I knew it could be important, but then again, many of those flaky, superficial Greeks made situations very unimportant out to be the raison d'être to all of their (and their “brothers and sisters”) worldly ills.

My situational ethics later on would include people shown little sympathy today: Mexican Americans. I worked in a Kroger perishable warehouse as an Industrial Engineer for nearly two years. One of my major responsibilities was the setting of fair labor standards based on MSD (A Time Standard Method) using a labor system developed by Gagnon (Red Prairie.)

This system worked in concert with a fairly complex WMS (Warehouse Mgmt. Sys.) and Kronos (Time tracking system.) With that said, it did not work well at all when I got there. (Soon another Purdue Engineer and I were fixing this situation…at least from a technical aspect.) We also used an incentive program, up to 25% of an employees’ take home pay, to get workers to produce at the desired level, according to safe practices, OSHA standards and various other procedures.

However, this did not take place usually. And it was often a case of supervisors ignoring dangerous problems or chastising the wrong people, Mexicans most often, because many were illegal.

So, I did my own informal, if realistic study of people. I took the entire workforce and broke them into 4 classes: white, Mexicans that speak passable English, Mexicans unable to speak English well, and African Americans. I did not do this to support any report; nor to generalize for the sake of justification to a superior, but to know if there were any tendencies.

From memory, the breakdown out of 380 employees was:
35% white
19% Passable English
28% Non-English
15% African American
3% Other
Once trained (90 days selecting cases) the best performers were:
1. Mexican Passable – 117%
2. Mexican Non Passable – 109%
3. Other – 105%
4. African Americans – 101%
5. Whites – 98%

No one knew I did this. But it does reflect many who are here illegally are working much harder for the American Dream than our current legal population does. Upton Sinclair’s 'The Jungle' is alive, to a much lesser degree, as we hear about our non-English speakers getting screwed a great deal. Human Rights go out the door where the goal is to make a buck - even in 21st century.

I once tried to stop a Spanish-speaking supervisor from chewing out a Mexican illegal. He thought I could not understand Spanish – I did not have to know that much to know what he was saying was wrong – but for that interference the Operations Manager was none too pleased. He didn’t quite snap; but he wanted to, on me. (But he knew I had a point too.)

The point of this meandering diatribe is we are not all born to Ethics. Maybe I should have been more aware of what my future would be, if I had taken the time to involve myself in good causes, student organizations and cared about my major, then concrete Ethics might have took sooner. (To little too late if you've read other posts of mine.)

But then again, if I had Scooter Libby’s pull, the ideas of ethics and treatment of information vital to America’s safety, could be pardoned away by an Op. Manager not in charge of his mental faculties.

Baseball: Mid 2007 Predictions for the playoffs

No, I'm not Sara Freder, so I won't grant you insight into your future by using talismans and crystal balls for $39.99, but I figure I can look at the halfway point of a baseball season and figure who will represent both leagues in the playoffs.

Boston. It would be tough for them to lose this division, even with the Yankees in it. With a double digit lead, and the Yankees lacking a real pitching ace, it would take a collapse like 1978 for these Bo Sox to fall short. Unlikely with Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Dice-K, Beckett and a host of others battle tested and not at all afraid of the vaunted Yankee mystique.

Cleveland. At 49-32, this team has done a lot with lackluster work by Travis Hafner. But with CC Sabathia, Victor Martinez and Grady Sizemore doing their jobs well, the team has a .352 OBP, 3rd in all of baseball behind Boston and the NY Yankees. This is a primary sabermetric tool to scoring runs and Cleveland will continue to do that. On the other side of the ledger, with Sabathia only walking a couple of handfuls of people, the Indians have allowed the fewest walks in MLB. While only in the middle of the pack in ERA, the Tribe should stay in 1st or 2nd in the AL Central.

Detroit. The Tigers are at it again. They are 4th in OBP, right behind Cleveland. They lead all of MLB in SLG% and thus also lead the MLB in putting runs on the board. However, many of their players are above their lifetime heads. Placido Polanco is a good little hitter, .302 lifetime. Not much power, but he's struggled to put together 150 games in a season. He's on pace for that. Does he continue to hit .330? Magglio Ordonez is another .300 hitter that is pounding it at .370. Will that continue? Realistically, those two will drop off 30-40 points and the Lion share of the scoring will have to come from Gary Sheffield and Pudge Rodriguez and Carlos Guillen.

Pitching is faltering, even with Justin Verlander no-no just recently. Their bullpen is shaky at best, with 39-year old Todd Jones still getting saves with a 5.85 ERA. Jones does not strikeout batters and that's a problem for a closer. The Tigers have been looking for answers as their number of pitchers used reflects. Eventually, these two aspects - less offense and shaky pitching - will put them in second in the AL East.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. 6th in OBP, 5th in Runs Scored and 1st in AL West. They still get mileage out of Vlad whose 31, looks older, and has been at it for a decade or more. He is a 1st ballot HOF if he does it for 5 more years. With pesky, versatile Chone Figgins, the Angels just do it well with Mike Scioscia running the show. They have better pitching, with Lackey, Escobar and Santana eating up innings as starters and likely the best bullpen, or at least a top 5 bullpen in baseball with a 25 year old K-Rod and Scot Shields as the forces.

The Angels have two problems: Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. The AL West is a marathon usually and Oaktown is 8.5 games behind. Seattle too is only 4 games out, but managerial shakeup with Hargrove gone means likely the Mariners will not contend. The Angels are not a uber team; so, Oakland's manuevers could get them their. But realistically, the A's have not got much out of 3rd baseman Eric Chavez, SS Bobby Crosby and C Jason Kendall. Those parts are producing miserably and even with another Big 3 in Haren, Blanton and Gaudin, the A's are unlikely to surpass the Angels.

AL Playoffs: Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Los Angeles.
AL Championship: Boston vs. Detroit.
AL WS: Boston.

National League

Chicago. Yes, yes, holy mackeral, the Cubs are going to play in the post season. They have the pieces (sans a durable right fielder) in the batting order: Soriano, Lee, Ramirez, Theriot, DeRosa, and Floyd can produce runs. Zambrano, Lilly, Marquis and Hill can hold their own most nights in the National League - 5th in the NL in ERA and 2nd overall in Strikeouts of opponents.

Lou Piniella has done everything he could to manipulate this into a winning ballclub. In a weak division, Milwaukee is just not good enough. Aside from Ben Sheets and Prince Fielder, I don't get a warm fuzzy with their players on the field. The Cubs have more experience in playoff runs with Soriano, Lee, DeRosa actually going on to play in the World Series.

New York. The city liked so much they gave them 2 teams. The Mets are star laden bunch. Coming up short last year to the mediocre WS-winning Cardinals had to put them on edge. Unfortunately, the Altanta Braves are only 4.0 games back. What gives? They have a 3.65 ERA which is 3rd in all of baseball. They have enough offense to win? Bullpen has been terrible. Aside from little lefty Billy Wagner and Pedro Feliciano, they have Mota (5.29), Sele (5.26), Shoeneweis (5.46) and Heilman (4.19) that have blown up a few games.

Mets will win - with Pedro Martinez on the mend for August/September push - but not by double digits.

NL West. It's a good question: who will win this mess?

San Diego: 27th in OBP. 22nd in SLG%. 1st in ERA (3.03 ) by a half-run over everyone else.
LA Dodgers: 11th in OBP. 23rd in SLG%. 5th in ERA (3.73).
Arizona D-backs: 25th in OBP. 19th in SLG%. 8th in ERA (3.92).

Pitching wins championships. San Diego has veterans in Maddux, Wells and Hoffman to go with Jake Peavy. Their lineup is mediocre at best, they play decent defense and their home park is best suited for 3-2, 2-1 ballgames with a good bullpen which they have.

NL Playoffs: Chicago, New York, San Diego and LA Dodgers.
NL Championships: New York and Chicago.
NL Series: Chicago. (Biased ain't I?)

Boston v. Chicago: Boston in 6. Cubs still sans a World Series title....