Blayne Sucks

What a week! I’ve found several cool things online that I’d like to mention. Personally, I don’t think that I’m really all that much of a nerd, but so be it. All you can be is honest. Besides, is it really all that bad to be a nerd? I didn’t think so.

So now we know who deep throat is. I am personally really disappointed. If you were to ask me prior to this revelation I would have said it was likely someone like William Rehnquist, who was a member of the White House counsel at the time. This would have made sense. He was technically a lawyer who would have violated attorney-client privilige and Nixon had appointed him to the Supreme Court, so he would be turning his back on someone who really thought he was important and cool. It would have been obvious why people were compelled to hide his identity. He’s the chief justice for crying out loud! However, it turns out that it was in reality it was W. Mark Felt, who was the second most powerful man in the FBI.

So why is this all that disappointing? Well, trivially, there’s the name recognition factor. Who the heck is W. Mark Felt? I really didn’t know. It turns out that he was a leading cadidate for “Deep Throat” in many people’s opinions for years. He had a real reason to be upset at Nixon. He was passed over for the top spot in the FBI when Nixon appointed someone from outside the department, so he could have done it out of spite.

However, here’s the real reason why this is hideously disappointing to me: W. Mark Felt was the number two guy at the FBI for crying out loud! Talk about being in exactly the right position to actually handle the situation the way the system was designed to handle it with exactly the right information needed to take care of things. Why on earth would you shirk your responsibility to the FBI and to the American people and NOT use that information the way your job requires you to use it? Talk about cowardly. Instead he ran to the press and leaked classified information in an ongoing investigation that he was running! Wow. This is our heroic “Deep Throat”?

If it was Rehnquist, I would be far more willing to forgive his violations of his responsibilities because this was a huge risk to the honor, validity and integrity of the United States political system. Rehnquist was in no position to stop the cover up and expose the truth. W. Mark Felt was literally the guy that was supposed to be doing the stopping and the exposing via the government position that he held and he wasn’t doing it! Now we’re supposed to shake his hand and thank him for ignoring his responsibility?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why he decided to reveal this now. He’s 91 years old and looking into the great beyond, so perhaps he’s personally motivated to come clean. However, his children, who urged him to reveal the truth, are just in this for their 15 minutes of fame. His daughter said that she’s hoping she’ll be able to make enough money to pay off the debts she’s incurred for education expenses. How sick is it that someone is going to be able to make money for avoiding their Watergate-related job 30 years after the fact? Anyhow, I’m pretty disappointed.

The Pacers lost. I have to say it was quite a moving basketball game. Reggie looked like he could have played another 2 or 3 years, but as he said in one of his many post-game interviews, we should look at how he played in all the games of the series to see if he should continue his career. I grew up watching him play. It’s sad to see him end his career without winning a championship, but it was really nice to see him play the way he did.

Honestly, there’s more to playing the game than winning a championship. There are third stringers with half his talent that manage to get rings on the championship team every year. I don’t want to downplay their contributions to their teams, but it does show that winning a championship doesn’t directly relate to what an individual brings to a team.

Reggie meant so much to the team and to the community because he gave everything he could on and off the court. He stayed in Indiana when someone burned down his house. He holds a charity bowling event at Cooper’s Stardust Bowl every year. He has been loyal in an environment where disloyalty is encouraged. He could have easily left as a free agent for a team where he might have a better shot at a championship. Certainly the Pacers have been a great team over the years, but what team wouldn’t want an absolutely clutch shooting guard?

Reggie stayed though, and they came so close. Reggie’s Pacers were arguably the toughest team that Jordan’s Bulls played against late in Jordan’s career. They lead the league in wins and got to the NBA finals. They came as close as you can come to a championship team without winning. It’s a shame that people are going to hold that over his head.

I recently saw the last Star Wars movie. Twice. I saw it on opening night at the Alamo Drafthouse and then the next day with some guys from work at a more traditional theater. I’m a fan of this one. I really didn’t like the first two prequels, but this one showed me that the series could have been a lot better. I would have smashed the first movie and about half of the second one into one movie. I would have then expanded the second movie to cover more of the Clone Wars and show Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting together. Then, I would have left the third one pretty much as it is. Episode III is really good, even if the first two needed some revision.

Now you have to wonder what’s next. I would like to see about where Yoda came from. In Episode III, Palpatine talks about a Darth Plagius who was able to create life with the force. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the only life he was able to create was a little green turd named Yoda? I would also like to see what happened with Luke. How does he form the Jedi counsel again? What new Sith lord comes to replace Palpatine and Vader?

It’s West Wing week on Bravo! They claim to be showing West Wing reruns all day and night, but they don’t have one one right now. Either way though, I’m hopeful for tomorrow since it seems like they are doing West Wing episodes all day long. This could mean that every lunch from here to the end of the week I’ll be able to run back and watch the West Wing!

The Pacers play tomorrow night (tonight) in Detroit. It’s a critical game 5. Last time we managed to win a game 5 on the road, but then we blew the game 6 clincher at home. I think it will be a lot harder to manage a game 7 road win in Detroit than it was against Boston. This means of course that game 5 is a very nearly a must win. (As if a game 4 at home to go up 3-1 wasn’t…) Anyhow, I’m actually considering skipping my Bible Study for the game. How bad is that? Will God smite the Pacers if I choose to watch the game?

So I got tickets for the last of the new Star Wars movies almost a month ago and it just happens to directly conflict with game 6 in the Pacers – Pistons series. I’m going to go for the “record the game and hope no one tells me the score” philosophy since I can’t very well pass up seeing the Star Wars movie on opening night. I also found out today that this Friday afternoon my group at work is going to be going to the movie as a team building exercise. Between all the television, sports and movies this week, I can honestly say that I’m gearing up to be very American by Memorial Day.

It’s getting longer and longer between the times that I have a chance to blog something. Hopefully, I’ll be able to correct this. I haven’t necessarily been all that busy, but I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I suppose I should have used some of that time lying awake to blog.

The Pacers won! They are now up 2-1 in the series with another home game tomorrow. They are 6-0 all time in seven game series where they were leading 2-1. Hopefully, they’ll continue the streak. I thought they played very well last night.

Realistically, if they manage to get past Detroit I think they match up pretty well against Miami. They probably matchup better against Miami than they do against Detriot. Richard Hamilton can run with Reggie Miller better than anyone else in the league and the Pacers don’t really have a player that can match up with Prince. Miami doesn’t have anyone that can really run with Reggie and the only matchup problem they would have is Shaq, who hasn’t really been much of a factor so far in the playoffs. I also think that our bench is better than Miami’s bench, but they are both pretty good. Anyhow, I should stop now before I jinx it by looking too far ahead.

I recently re-discovered the band Stroke 9. This is one of those things that makes me so glad I got an iPod. It’s so much easier to not lose track of bands simply because you only have space for 20 CDs in your CD case. The Vertical Horizon and Stroke 9 concert at Butler University is still one of the best shows I’ve ever been to live and I can’t believe that it’s been so long since I listened to some of their stuff.

A recent Newsweek cover story was talking about how China would become a world power in the next century. It makes a lot of really good points, but I think it doesn’t really emphasize the importance of international trade as much as it should. I really believe that free trade prevents war. There’s a lot to be said for having a healthy economy and a happy populace world wide. Happy people usually don’t start wars. I would much rather see a billion plus happy people in China making cool things for everyone to use than a billion plus hungry people in China desperate for some way to feed themselves. Anyhow, it’s a good article.

Now having said all that there are certainly things that I don’t like about China, particularly some of their stances on human rights. Then again, there’s a lot I don’t like about America too. I know a lot of people think about free trade and don’t want to reward people that do things they disagree with. These are things that I would rather work out with a happy society that’s willing to listen than a desperate society that simply couldn’t care less.

Obviously, things like free trade and war are, uh, somewhat complex, but my point in all of this is that having another economic superpower in the world can be really beneficial for everyone.

When are we going to get the Wal-Mart of the medical profession? A place where you can go and get the most basic of products and services done for a modest price shouldn’t be impossible to create and maintain for the medical profession. However, it doesn’t exist most places. Why can’t I go to one place for a dental checkup, a physical and an allergy test? It’s frustrating to have to drive all over the place just to get three rather related and relatively basic services. Furthermore, why do we require 30 different forms and documents just to get these things done? Is America really that litigious that we have to have a backup, backup form to validate your parking in the dental offices’ parking lot?

As if my annoyance with the health industry wasn’t enough, the Pacers lost tonight. They were leading the series 3-2 with a home game tonight to wrap it up and yet they managed to find a way to lose. It actually looked like they were going to win after a really hard call to swallow down the stretch that gave Reggie a free throw to tie the game and ejected Paul Pierce. However, we still managed to lose. Now we have to go to Boston and play a game 7. I really hate Boston.

I have tickets to see the Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith on opening day. I should have got the tickets for the show that was Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 12:01 am. That would have been a kinda cool way to do things. Anyhow, I rarely go to the movies these days, but this is an exception. It’s more like a movie-event and it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of things.

I certainly hope this one is better than the previous two prequels. If I were to have done the first two prequels, I would have merged as much of them as possible and made the second movie more about the actual war of the clones and less about how the war started. It would have picked up the pace of the movies and perhaps restored more of the clarity of good and evil that the previous trilogy had.