Month: May 2011

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The Central Terminal


The Central Terminal, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Here is Buffalo’s Central Terminal, a gorgeous old monolith of a building that stands, unused and (somewhat) neglected, on Buffalo’s East Side. The trains don’t run there anymore, and the building fell into much disrepair over the decades it stood there; but in recent years, it’s been the focus of a volunteer restoration effort that has done a lot of great work there.

When there was a brief push for high speed rail as part of the stimulus package a few years ago, folks wondered if maybe the Central Terminal could serve as Buffalo’s HSR terminal, but apparently this is not possible. Oh well.

Long live the Central Terminal!

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Sunday Stealing (Thursday Edition)

I’m looking for something to post, so here’s a quiz from Sunday Stealing.

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?

I can’t imagine The Wife “betraying” me in any way more serious than, oh, eating the last piece of leftover pizza for lunch when I’d been looking forward to having it for dinner. My reaction to this would be to pout a bit.

2. If you can have a dream to come true, what would it be?

For George Lucas to come to me with his story notes for Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII and IX and tell me, “I’d like you to write the scripts.”

3. What is the one thing most hated by you?

Broccoli. Foul, vile weed!

4. What would you do with a billion dollars?

After setting aside enough to take care of my family for the rest of our natural lifetimes, I’d give big chunks of cash to various institutions in the Buffalo Niagara region. Or something like that.

5. Could you fall in love with your best friend?

I did that already. Married her, too! Yay, me! (This is getting sappy. I’m already regretting this quiz.)

6. Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?

Loving someone. Being loved is pretty cool, too.

7. How long do you intend to wait for someone you really love?

Twenty minutes. Then I’m out of here!

8. If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?

Use my political or financial power to coerce his superiors to send him off to someplace dark and distant, at which time I would take her to my bed. Or something like that. (If I had no political or financial power with which to coerce his removal from the scene, I suppose I could kill the unlucky SOB. Or, more likely, just glower at him every time I see him, the stupid jerk with his receding hairline and complete lack of a chin….)

9. If you’d like to act (movies, stage) with someone, who would it be?

I’d like to be that guy in the tavern who says portentous things and is called “Old-timer”. If I have an onscreen death, I’d like it to be bloody and in slow-motion.

10. What do you expect of your loved one?

Put up with my annoying tendencies, cook me dinner regularly (but not always — I like to cook too), watch at least some of the things I like a lot with me, either wear overalls with me or just accept that I wear them, go with me to bookstores and let me go with her to craft stores, give me the occasional pie in the face. You know, the usual stuff.

11. How would you see yourself in ten years time?

I’d probably use a mirror. [rimshot]

12. What’s your fear?

Learning that I am related by blood to Tom Brady.

13. Would you rather be single and rich or married, but poor?

This question sucks.

14. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

On a work day: Glare at the alarm clock and say “shit”. On a weekend: Look around, go back to sleep.

15. Do you ever hold back in a relationship?

Nope. I’m a “full speed ahead” kind of guy.

16. If you fell in love with two people simultaneously, how would you pick?

I would require each to engage in a series of challenges to prove who loves me the most. The challenges would be increasingly absurd and odd and, eventually, demented and life-threatening.

17. Would you forgive and forget no matter how horrible a thing that special someone has done?

Sure. (Except for December 2, 1998, when The Wife ate for her lunch the piece of pizza I’d been saving for dinner. I will be avenged! Avenged, I say!)

18. What are your three most important expectations in love?

Understanding, laughter, food. Not necessarily in that order.

(Some of these answers may not have been serious answers…but the quiz was pretty gonzo, so I feel no guilt about this.)

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Something for Thursday

For some unknown reason, The Daughter has been listening to this song a lot the last week or two. I wish I knew why…but the damn thing is stuck in my head, and I figure the best way to get it out of my head is to get it stuck in yours. So…oy…here’s Tiny Tim.

No, I do not apologize. Suffering is best when shared!

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Drafting

Random thoughts on the NFL Draft and the Buffalo Bills’ participation thereof:

:: I was terrified that the Bills were going to take Cam Newton, if he was still there when they came up with the third pick. Luckily, the Carolina Panthers took him first. Newton is a fantastic athlete with tremendous physical gifts and he had a stellar final year of college ball, but that year pretty much constitutes his entire body of work, for the most part, and one-year-wonders have not borne out well in the past. Instead the Bills took Marcell Dareus, whom everyone agrees is awesome.

Now, he could turn out to be a bust, just like Mike Williams did back in 2002 when the Bills took him with the fourth pick overall. While that pick is often cited whenever the discussion of recent Bills draft disasters comes up, I’ve never really blamed them for that one; Williams was seen at the time as an elite prospect who was dead certain to go to someone in the top five. That it was the Bills sucks, but those things happen. You hope they don’t, but they do.

My great dream for this draft was that Newton would drop to the Bills’ spot, and then the Bills would trade down and pick up a pile of extra picks to someone else who wanted him. Obviously that didn’t happen, and all reports are that the Bills actually loved Newton, so if he had dropped to them, they would have taken him. So, I’m actually thrilled with the Dareus pick. I hope he can help the Bills by generating pass rush, either on his own or by disrupting opposing offensive lines sufficiently that other guys can get to the quarterbacks.

Boiling it down: for the first time that I can remember, I don’t feel like I have to talk myself into liking the Bills’ first pick in the draft.

:: They kept drafting defense, taking a cornerback in the second round (a guy who is apparently really big for a CB and can play safety) and a highly-regarded linebacker in the third. I love the focus on defense, which is the big reason the Bills went 4-12 last year; the D couldn’t get off the field, which basically meant that most weeks the Bills needed to win a shoot-out if they wanted to win. Now, the D is obviously not going to automatically be good or even great; the rookies will need their time to grow and learn. But this draft really feels like a draft that bodes well for the future.

:: While most commentators I’ve read give the Bills good marks for their draft this year, there’s a small but vocal minority that rips them for “ignoring” the quarterback position. Well, they have a guy in Ryan Fitzpatrick who is (a) still young and (b) coming off what was a pretty good year. There’s no reason to panic over finding a “franchise quarterback”. Frankly, after seeing the Bills invest four 1st round picks, one 2nd, and one 3rd on “quarterbacks of the future” in the last sixteen years, I’m ready to watch them wait year after year until they feel they’re in a position to grab a guy they’re convinced is the guy. (The QBs? Todd Collins, 2nd round, 1995; Rob Johnson, acquired by trading a 1st rounder to Jacksonville, 1998; Drew Bledsoe, acquired by trading a 1st rounder to New England, 2002; JP Losman, 1st round in 2004 using a pick acquired by trading the 1st rounder in 2005; Trent Edwards, 3rd round, 2006.)

Some of the same commentators rip the Bills for not drafting a tight end. Look, I’m as frustrated as anyone by the Bills’ complete lack of tight end production ever since Pete Metzelaars retired (don’t try telling me that Jay Riemersma was a good tight end), but the fact is that you just can’t fill every hole your team has in the Draft when your team has as many holes as the Bills do. Maybe Shawn Nelson finally shows what he can do this year (if he can truly do anything). But a good tight end — an actual pass-catching tight end, and not some damned blocker like they always get — needs to be here, sooner or later. Especially if they pull the trigger on a “quarterback of the future” soon, because a good pass-catching tight end can really help out a young quarterback.

:: The Patriots are the greatest geniuses in the history of the NFL Draft, ever ever ever, for all time. This is just simply given. I think it’s funny that they drafted Ryan Mallett, though; every Pats fan I’ve ever spoken to thanks God that Drew Bledsoe, the tall strong-armed QB who couldn’t run to save his life, got hurt so that St. Tom the Overrated could become their starter. And now they’ve got Mallett as his potential back-up (and maybe guy for the future). Mallett is a tall, strong-armed QB who can’t run to save his life. The adjective I’ve seen used the most to describe Mallett is “Bledsoesque”. Ouch!

But then, I don’t think Mallett is meant to really be a potential QB of the future for New England, anyway. I continue to think that St. Tom’s physical decline is closer than most people realize, but my conspiracy theory is this. It seems that every year, the Pats go into the Draft with two picks in the 1st Round, and they always use one of those to trade down for extra picks and another 1st in the next year’s Draft. I think that Bill Belichick is waiting for a year to come when he knows he needs to draft St. Tom the Overrated’s successor, at which point he’ll use both of the 1st-rounders in his pocket to trade up and grab a guy. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.

:: Jake Locker in the top ten. Not sure what to make of that.

:: Christian Ponder in the top twelve. Not sure what to make of that, either.

:: But I’m sure glad that quite a few teams will likely be out of the QB market at next year’s draft.

:: Boy, the Falcons better be right about that receiver they really wanted, because they traded away a lot to get him.

:: I have zero idea what the Seahawks were doing in this draft.

:: I wonder what the draft order in 2012 would be if the labor dispute ends up causing the cancellation of the entire season…would they just repeat the draft order from this year, or come up with some kind of lottery to determine the order?

:: One of Buffalo’s sportstalk guys was predicting that the NFL would go to a lottery for the top pick in the draft at some point in the near future. I hope this doesn’t happen. I’m not a big fan of lotteries and much prefer teams picking players in the order of how badly the teams sucked.

Welcome to Buffalo, rookies of 2011! The one of you that brings me the head of St. Tom the Overrated will be my favorite player for the duration of his stay on the Buffalo roster. That is all!

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X-Files Case Report: “Ghost in the Machine”

“The machine’s a monster, Scully! It’s already killed two people.”

Looking back on some of these early episodes, it’s surprising to me to see how derivative some of these shows were of other, earlier stories from movies and teevee. “Ghost in the Machine” gives us a computer run amok, a computer that’s been given so much authority and sensory input that it achieves sentience and acts in self-defense. Our main villain here is the COS, or “Central Operating System”, but while watching this episode, I kept thinking back to earlier computer villains: the Master Control Program (MCP) from Tron, HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the M5 from Star Trek‘s original series episode “The Ultimate Computer”.

This episode is pretty straightforward, then, and there’s really not even any ambiguity in the way it unfolds, so we’re not even watching the mystery unfold for ourselves as Mulder and Scully investigate things. We know, right from the teaser, that it’s the computer that’s doing it all, and the rest of the episode is mainly waiting for Mulder and Scully to get there, too.

It’s not a waste of an episode, by any means. The production values are typically excellent, although the episode does, by virtue of its subject matter, seem a lot more dated than some of the other episodes I’ve already watched. This was still the age of computers being gigantic machines in rooms, with lots of blinking lights for no reason; the word “Internet” isn’t mentioned at all. Mulder’s informant, Deep Throat, shows up to add some helpful paranoia about the government’s interest in a computer that can defend itself, which is really when the episode starts to become more than simply a boilerplate story of technology gone haywire.

The other notable aspect of the episode is the introduction (and fairly quick dispatching) of one of Mulder’s old partners, a guy who has fallen on hard times in the FBI – not unlike Mulder himself – but for different reasons. There’s an interesting dynamic between these two characters, and it’s a shame that the writers basically introduced this guy to provide a personal connection for Mulder’s involvement in the case later on when he gets killed off.

Sorry to make this entry so short, but I’m really hard-pressed to come up with anything much to say about this episode. It’s just kind of “there”.

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Two Headlines


Two Headlines, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I still have my copy of the Buffalo News from September 12, 2001. Now I have another to keep with it.

No, I’m not delusional enough to believe that Osama bin Laden’s death “ends” anything. It may mark a turning point in some ways against a particular enemy, but history is long, isn’t it? Yesterday’s events sprang from that awful day almost ten years ago, but bin Laden was out there before that; he was created, in a sense, by the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War.

And the first Gulf War came about, in part, because of American support of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s…and that came about because of British Imperialism…and that came about because…well, it all goes on. In a way, yesterday’s events can be traced back to Suleiman’s victory at the Horns of Hattin, and before that.

But at least Osama bin Laden exists now only in history. No, he won’t be forgotten. But he’s another name for the history books now.

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Well, that’s good news.

Stolen from Facebook:

Also, I had a few posts ready to go yesterday, either in OpenOffice or in my head…but then I was without Internet for the entire day. Ugh! I’m thinking that my next raise at work will go toward funding FIOS here at Casa Jaquandor.

Anyhow, I’ll actually have some fresh bloggage later on, probably tonight. (Gotta work and then go to the gym afterward.) But for now — thanks to the American soldiers who got bin Laden, and to ALL the American soldiers who have worked to make this moment possible for ten years and more.

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