Deep

Shit I thought this years A's team had a ton of depth. And really, we do. But seriously, the rays are just fuckin swimming in talent. I mean they lose Iwamura and they just think, "well may as well stick aybar there, well zobrist could probably handle 2nd...wait we have brignac just rotting away in the minors maybe him." and while this is happening the 2nd baseman who was at the very end of their depth charts at 2nd base, adam kennedy, is pretty much far and away our best hitter right now. wat the fuck man, why cant we be the rays already.

Grandmother died

On my father's side. Really weird, I'll just out and say it, I never really got along with her. She always annoyed me. I was probably her worst grandchild. Never called her, barely talked to her, kind of rejected her side of the family. She was always nice to me though, thats what grandparents do i guess, i was her only grandson too, she always reminded me of that. My dad sounds pretty bad, talked to him on the phone. His words show he is tryin to stay composed, but you can hear in his voice how shaken he is. I just got dropped back off at school today, kinda coincidental, sister an mother were actually driving down to LA to see my grandmother so they dropped me off along the way. Now my dad will follow down sometime in the next few days an will pick me up. what does one do at a funeral. i remember my grandpas, it was horrid. since my mom is the oldest in her family i had to sit in the very front with her. me an my sister didnt know what to do, everyone, family and friends (there was a ton, in excess of 100 easily id say) payed their respects, and then gave an apology to me or shook my hand. I didnt want that, to be honest i didnt feel half as bad as those people. they were crying, their pain was so clearly visible, for me it was just grandpa, a relative, sure, but again not someone i was ever really close too. it was the most awkward moment of my life, me an kayo just kinda laughed, we didnt really know what else to do. hopefully this wont be like this. one, dad is the youngest in his family, an two, it wont be a buddhist ceremony, though i don know how other funerals are done. i wonder if this will effect me more later. i feel kind of sad rite now but its been really sudden. with grandpa there was a kind of quick fall into illness and a slow progression downwards after that. this time, yea she was old and havin problems, but nothing really that made me even consider her life in danger. really, this looks to be a different kind of week.

4 hours later...

and 7 pages neatly stapled together, I am done. and wow, is this a piece of crap i have put together. like, if there is an assignment that will get me kicked out, it is this one. i think i missed the boat that bad. for the record, if u fail one assignment in this class you fail the class. bullshit, i know, no one said syntax is easy i guess. but yea, gonna be one hell of a weekend, tryna relax while knowing someone is grading this paper, with my academic fate in their hands pretty much. well, worst that happens is i fail, ucla drops me, an i come back here to finish my career..............ok im gonna go cry myself to sleep now.

How wrong I was

My syntax homework is only two sections. I finished the first section yesterday in about twenty minutes, I glanced at the rest and figured it was cake, professor did mention this assignment was a bit easier than normal. I've been puttin it off all day today, figurin, eh, I'll just power through it at some point. Oh the naivety. Syntax, no matter how much I hope, pretty much is never simple. This homework seems to deal heavily with s-selections or theta-roles or whatever you wanna call em, point being, I suck with these things. Can never figure out how many are assigned, can never figured out what exactly is being assigned, can never figure out what they actually do once they finally have been assigned. Also, I hate the word "it." Like seriously, why the fuck do we have such a useless word. wtf is it anyway , placeholder seems retarded. it also complicates the shit out of my homeworks, thats no doubt the root of this frustration. you know what just made me chuckle, in the last few sentences every time I used "it" it(!) could be read either as the normal meaningless expletive it(!) happens to be, or as the actual word "it" that I am discussing. anyway, next week...next week I won't leave the whole assignment to the last few days. Do I mean that? No, but maybe it'll happen.

Garza tomorrow...

We got swept by the tigers, now we at least will come out even against the rays. sometimes I hate baseball. Tomorrow Garza goes against the A's. I'm sad I can't watch. If it hasn't been clear, Garza is my favorite ray, hes pretty much my favorite non-A's ballplayer outside of ichiro and joe fuckin blanton...yea i still like zito too. But anyway, I mean come whats not to like, hes great to watch cause of his ridiculous stuff, hes fuckin crazy in the head, and his bio photos never fail to crack me up. o well, i cant really complain, did get to see him at the colesium. jesus christ garza had a 6.24 k/9 last year. doesnt look like walks are a huge issue with him either. hows someone with such great velocity and an awesome curveball get blanton level results. decent groundball rates, limits homers well too. dude matt garza is basically fuckin joe blanton, i would never have guessed. i guess the difference is upside, garza, as mentioned, has crazy stuff, you gotta imagine he'll strike a few more guys out...

Wat just happened

FUCK. i had this long ass post advocating trading for chin-lung hu, mostly involving yun chi chen and me chuckling at chinese names and ballplayers in general. then i got curious an checked my gmail, which somehow annihlated my blogger session, the two are connected somehow i gues. poop. well long story short, do i think he could solve our SS problem? no. do i think hed be a really amusing player that would require nothing to acquire? hell yea. his track record is solid, suposedly plays good D, and the dodgers seem to fuckin hate him. they gonna need outfield help when pierre realizes that he sucks again...if only we still had matt murton. just offer em one of the many players we refuse to use, send denorfia or somthin. bottom line, ocab fuckin pisses me off, and crosby doesnt help things out. i may be the last fan chin-lung hu has in this world, but really, it cant be that bad of a dice roll to take rite?

Me buy this

Remember how I speculated about getting a psp, and how dissidia would probably break my last line of defense when it comes to buying one. consider one bought. My one gripe is that is awfully late in the summer, though on the positive, it is post birthday for me, so cash restraint shouldnt be a problem. between that, the remake of disgaea 2 for psp, and other games i fully intend to purchase once i own the system, the grade forcast for my first quarter at LA is looking pretty fuckin bleak.

wtf

houston wtf. big baby wtf. brett cecil wtf. cute pigs wtf. SYNTAX II WTF. seriously, french passivisation...wtf? I got a midterm in japanese i havent even started studying for yet, thanks to this stupid french syntax bullshit. tonight, i will not be allowed to sleep, fuck that shit.

Damn Yao

Well there goes that series. Yao was suckin the last two games, but hes still by far the rockets best player. Without mutumbo it wasnt lookin up, without Yao its pretty much hopeless. Too bad, the series was an absolute joy to watch. Rockets really do play some good defense, and watching a great offensive team like the lakers play against it was a lot of fun. Who am I kidding, I just like watching Kobe pull out every fucking trick known to man in his quest to ridicule shane battier, its pretty fuckin entertaining. Last game was kind of dissapointing to me, I thought adelman played Lowry too much, especially in the 4th. I like Lowry, hes a great backup to have, but they needed brookes in to put some points up. If they not gonna play brookes then they really gotta work on gettin Yao the ball in the post, pretty much never happened. Yea so iono now, may as well get back on the laker bandwagon. Not much of a fan of either the mavs or nuggets, though I guess dallas isnt so bad, jason kidd is alrite. don really like anyone in the east, or really what i mean is i dont like cleveland. Hard to dislike lebron, but his team isnt very likable. then again the lakers arnt the most likable team either, the suposedly high character guy fisher showed his true face. odom seems cool, u just kind of pity bynum, but after that they all are really kinda easily hatable.

on a completely different note, adam kennedy? seriously? whatever, doesnt really cost anything, will fill in nicely while ellis is down (see: 162 games), but i mean is he really an upgrade over pennington/petite/patterson? honestly, i doubt it. i mean, hes basically an older pennigton/petite, decent glove, nice contact skills, no fucking power. really, why the hell do we hate patterson so much? just play his ass! yea he might not defend well, but his bat actually has some upside, might as well let him find it. i really just do not understand this team this year. at least we finally dfa'd fuckin copeland, thats a waste of a roster spot. hopefully davis goes next. davis is a good bench player to have, but when your fucking idiot manager insists on starting him over travis buck, its time to make the decision for him. still early in the season, we very much in this race. if duch can come back healthy and buck just plays regularly, we might actually have a chance here. I mean look at us, we hanging around with a AAA rotation and replacement level players running wild all over the roster, if we can finally do something right for once we got the division locked.

Roommate Rant

So I thought having crazy roommate removed from here would be awesome. And hell, it has been awesome. But its getting shitty again, thanks to the other roommate. What I hated most, well iono about most but a lot, about the crazy guy was that he would tell me everything. Like fuck, I don't give a shit about some random conversation you had with some idiot stranger today, go tell your mother about it or something. But hes gone, and I thought I was free of this constant prattle. Turns out I was wrong. My other roommate now, for whatever reason, wont shut the fuck up. Hes insanely annoying. Hes like an awkward douchebag. Like he doesnt know how to interact with people, but for some reason he feels fine around me, and it turns out hes just a self centered ass. Its been goin on basically since crazy was removed, an my temper is getting really really short. Yesterday for example, he comes back from the dining hall with like 5 oranges or so. An he says, "I brought back 5 oranges."......................"ok" I respond. and he says to me, "you never bring back fruit do you." I don't, I happen to hate hording food in my room, it attracts mice/insects/pests and whatnot. So anyway I respond, "no, no I dont." but he persists! "well why dont you?" in this scathing, condescending voice. And at this point im done, I snap back "why the fuck do you care? its my fucking decision what and when I eat things. how do my eating habits affect you in any way imaginable?" and he pauses, then has the balls to respond with "you should bring back fruit," in the same asshole tone. So then I really flip out, no I dont get violent, but i tell him to take his fucking oranges to the corner and go fuck himself. probably a little too far. he seemed kind of hurt. tried to make some feeble comeback a few minutes later, he really sucks at using profanity, i repsonded quickly and he finally shutup after that. just now though he walks in the room. stands there in the doorway. "i went to the beach, among other places." *silence* he just stands there. finally i roll my eyes an reply, "...good." seriously iono wtf this is. im not friendly to these people, im in no way friends with them, if anything i fuckin hate them, yet tehy feel the fucking need to tell me every fucking detail about their lives. i really really really really really really really really really fucking hate this place. god i hope LA has better people than this.

Eveland

Yea, Eveland demotion kinda ticks me off. Giese? Seriously? Not gonna make a big deal over it tho, our pitching has gotten fucked recently, and Eveland did make that lame relief appearance, so a demotion to get back on schedule/work on some shit in the minors for a few weeks may be good. Eveland has sucked, the problem is that Giese is gonna suck worse. Again tho, don really care, will probably only be one start, then insert gallagher I assume. Hopefully in a few weeks gio/eveland come up and replace fucking outman already. god hopefully both come up, outman to the pen and cahill to the goddamn minors. I give anderson a pass for now with his little blister issue. I still dont understand copeland. just hand his ass back, we already dont play buck, i don wanna waste more ab's on another fuckin 5th outfielder. A's have made some really strange moves this year, hopefully it all will make sense in hindsight.

Greinke

Zack Greinke wtf. I knew the dude was really good but at this point its just stupid, what is that like 3 or 4 comeplete games on the season already? I know this is at least his second shutout. thats kinda of whats impressing me, he's getting way deep into ballgames, yet striking out a billion guys. I think the no walking people kind of helps with that. probably the no hitting part doesnt hurt either. too bad the royals are a completely wretched team. seriously that offense is painful. i guess the pitching is alrite, but that is mostly due to the fact that they have greinke. kind of hard not to like some dude on the royals named zack greinke, too much underdog/cool name factors goin on. hah his next start will be against the angels, tally another shutout for mr greinke.

So Zito

He's put together a string of not-so-bad starts. Yea, I've made a point to watch a bit of em. An its been a bit strange to see. Hes got this leg kick now, kinda hoffman-esque. Iono when that started, maybe for a while, but it looks weird. Regardless, the last few starts it seemed like he had found some of that lost velocity. Maybe not 88-90 like old times but still uper 80s. Today not so much. Velocity was pretty miserable, on the tv gun at least, but his offspeed stuff was fantastic. Like really fantastic, curve was sharp, change had great movement, even saw a few good sliders, think those were to Hawpe. That said, I'm still wary when people proclaim him "back." Still just a handful of starts, and the first few of the season were pretty damn miserable. The lowerd walk rate is encouraging put he still isnt missing any bats. As much as I like the guy, I just cant get myself to believe that zito continue this small run of success, let alone get back to where he was with the A's. hey, I'll be watching tho, even if he isn't striking anyone out, his stuff does look a load better. If he can get up to "Barry Zito, shitty innings eater" instead of "Barry Zito, play him out of obligation to insane contract," I'll consider that a success considering he looked absolutely finished the last few seasons.

Nothin I can do about it

Today was not a good day. Pretty much nothing went how I was hoping. All of it my fault really. I tried. Failed too. So the dream continues. The problem is I don't really know if it does. Do I apply for a transfer next year again? I dunno. I'll make that decision when the time comes. In a way it kind of scares me, giving up on Berkeley that is. It's the reason I've worked my ass off this year.

Somehow I knew before I checked. Around 1130, no even before that, like around 6 today I just started to feel really depressed. I just felt like it was impossible, like I've been fooling myself these last few weeks, allowing myself to think I had a shot. The rejection is really quite kind, tells me it was a hard decision an that they are sure I will get into a favorable university elsewhere. I did, very favorable, but not the one I had my sights on.

Puts you in your place though doesnt it? Some people are just better. I can see that, I cant compare to these people, no matter how desperately I want to. And believe me I do want to, I cant give up that competitiveness in me. Maybe that makes me immature, I dont know. It doesnt feel as bad this time, if only because I'm riding some success to mitigate the pain here. Still feel hollow though. Bah, as if I have time for this. Still have miles to go on my syntax midterm. Surprisingly, my motivation hasnt deserted me. Testament to how my interest in linguistics has really grown I think. We'll see next year though, at the very least, I'll be out of santa cruz.