Wednesday, May 24, 2006

raptors win the nba draft lottery...

...and no one will trade for that pick. I called a few friends after getting the news last night, and after the euphoria of winning the lottery subsided, the reality of the draft rules set in.

As with every story, there is another side to the coin. This time the Raptors win the lottery the one year there isn't a consensus number one and the first year after the NBA institutes it's age restriction on draft eligible players (from 18 to 19). After the Raptors (and Grizzlies) were awarded franchises, the NBA had a new rule not allowing the crappy expansion teams to pick higher than fifth (I'm not sure of the exact number, but the rule I remember), I called that the Orlando rule, after the Magic scored Shaq and C-Webber in back-to-back drafts.

Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 4688185

Friday, May 19, 2006

what is up, doc?

Good day everybody in the internet. I have spent some time recently in the outernet and boy, do I have some news for you. So sit back, relax, grab your popcorn, as a courtesy to other readers please turn off your cell phones, and enjoy the show.

How about them B.J.'s? No, I'm not talking about having another person slob on your knob, and no, I'm not talking about the relief pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, I'm talking about the Blue Jay's themselves. The team that no longer has the word "Blue" on their uniform or hats, and for some reason have been trying to shorten their name down to just "The Jays". Soon they will do away with the "ays" part and be known as the "J's". Then, when long names are cool again, they will again transform their name into "A primary colour followed by the tenth letter of the alphabet." Which might make for some weird uniforms, but they'll be hip, because people will be all about reading, which they will be able to do again in their automatically piloted flying cars or buses. It's funny, we already have airbuses (read: planes) and in fact, we do already have flying cars: they go by a more popular name of "small planes". The future is here people, flying cars, robots that clean after us, and small market teams from Raleigh-Durham, Buffalo, Edmonton and Anaheim being the top 4 teams in the NHL.

Yes, it's time for my predictions for the Stanley Cup Finals. Here they are.

Carolina versus Buffalo. - I don't know.

Edmonton versus Anaheim.
- I really don't know.

You can take those picks to the bank. I have no idea what is going to happen and even if I did, I wouldn't dream of just sharing such valuable information with you. Old man Biff was right, get a sports almanac, steal the Delorean Time Machine, go back in time and visit your younger self and give him that Almanac and sit back as you slowly but surely take over the internet gambling sites, porn sites and then the world! Ha ha! Take that Doc! Not Halladay, but the other Doc, McFly's uncle or something. I forget, did Doc ever come back from the old west? I don't remember what exactly happened, I do remember that movie raising some philosophical questions from myself, and in doing so, making me consult what Stephen Hawking thought of time travel. Lo and behold, Chapter 10 of a Brief History of Time, Hawking mentions the movie when talking about the alternate histories hypothesis (near the bottom of the page).

But I digress. About the Stanley Cup playoffs. Even though the Oilers ruined my chance of turning little money into lots (by eliminating San Jose), I am cheering for them. Not because they're Canadian, I don't buy into nationalistic cheering for professional sports teams. But because they play hockey like I would like to play hockey if I cloned myself 20 times, learned how to skate, and made a hockey team of me and my skating clones. It's also because of their goalie. Between Cam Ward, Ryan Miller, Ilya Bryzgalov and Dwayne Roloson, I'm choosing Rolie the Goalie. The sip from the cup is sweeter the longer the journey to it.

There once was a man named Rolie,
He was an Oiler, their best goalie.

Anagram of the day. Rolie-Oiler. Think about it.

Friday, May 05, 2006

the show must go on

Moving is quite the adventure. I'm back in Toronto. And enough about that. Ok, now I'm done with the personal stuff and on to the bizness at hand.

Since most of my predictions for winners of round one in the NHL playoffs were wrong, and since the NHL reseeds after each round I decided to start my predictions now. I still have 5 of my 11 players in the playoff pool going, and 3 of them are on San Jose. Go Sharks.

Here are my second round predictions.

EAST

Buffalo vs. Ottawa
I hate Ottawa. I can't believe that I was at a bar where some ottawa peons defended what chris 'turtle' neil did against Dingman. The Ottawa fans considered neil's actions as 'smart hockey'. I dunno, neil doesn't strike me as the type that could beat me in a chess match. He's also ugly. And he smells. But he's really smart at picking fights and then cowering in fear to get an opposing player a two-minute penalty. What a freakin genius. Sun Tzu has nothing on chris neil, neil should write a book, call it the art of wuss.

Buffalo in 7

New Jersey vs. Carolina


Hey, Carolina. Remember when you had two games against the Lightning at the end of the season and you couldn't score on a 5 on 3 powerplay in overtime and then St. Louis busted up the ice and scored to give Tampa the win and eliminate Toronto from the playoff race? Well, Brodeur is no Tortorella bitch in net, so good luck.

Probably the best coaching match of the playoffs, winner of this series probably will represent the East in the Cup Final.

New Jersey in 6

WEST

Edmonton vs. San Jose


Top seed in the West is 5th. I can't ever recall the underdogs winning every single first round match up in any sport. My friend Mike is quite an astute gambler, and he told me before the playoffs started that he thought the West was so up in the air that I should take the underdogs if the odds are good. I wonder how much money he made following his own advice.

Edmonton has Horcoff's-hearty-heart-heart, but San Jose has Thornton's-Harty-Hart-Hart. Will he be the first ever athlete to be traded mid season and win the most valuable player award for that season? Lets hope so. People may say that Jagr did more with less, but how many other people on the Rangers are nominated for awards and how many Sharks are nominated for awards? By my count (not including the scoring awards), it's 3-2 for the Rangers in categories that reflect more on the team's success rate. blah blah blah...

San Jose in 5

Colorado vs. Anaheim


Hot teams are hot teams. Anaheim is hot, Colorado is not. Anaheim is playing a brand of team hockey that I have not seen executed since the Devils cup runneth teams of yesteryear, when blogs were journals, penalties were infractions, winters were cold, hair was not-grey, belly was flat, chicks were smile-at-me, legs were fast, lungs were pink, liver was not-damaged, pods were about peas, Go-Bots were on the rise, K.I.T. was Michael Knight's best friend, the chick on the show was hot too, there were more lap-dances than lap-tops, porn was hard to come by if you were a kid, it was safe to eat the gum that came with hockey cards, food wasn't dissected by its content of protein/carb/fat/transfat/suger/you're gonna get hit by a crappy driver soon so just go to Burger King and pig out and running jokes were shorter.

Anaheim in 5


On another note, I used to live by myself, and now have roommates. This cartoon was found recently, and it really, really, hit the nail on the head. This is how I would spend about 75% of my non-sleeping time.