So while I've been away, the MLB season has been under way as well as the AFL season.
My fantrasy teams are sitting in the middle of the paack as we speak.
In act the Yankees are just 2 games above .500 so I guess it's been that kind of start.
St. Derek of the pinstripes has been on fire and that's a consolation.
Jeter went 3 for 5 to boost his average to .391, and his two-run homer in the first inning off Scott Kazmir gave Mike Mussina all the runs he would need. Mussina improved to 3-1, working into the seventh inning and allowing a run and four hits, without a walk.Go Jetes! My life would be empty without your exploits. :)
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Meanwhile, Jeter has fashioned an April that could be his best ever.
His best so far was in 1999, when he hit .378 on his way to a career-high .349 average. Jeter drove the ball to right field twice last night, a sure sign the mechanics of his swing are in order. But he offered few insights into why he has started so well.
"I have no idea," he said. "I'm just trying to swing at good pitches. I don't really worry about stats too much. My job is to get on base for the other guys."
While he is doing that, Jeter is also driving in runs. He has 18 runs batted in so far, second on the team to Jason Giambi, who has 20, including 3 last night.
Because it's been a while I have so many thoughts to jot down so I think I'll go from the smallest things.
Things I Have Discovered About AFL Fantasy Football
I'm playing in a league with Guys who know their footy but don't know fantasy sports. I, of course know nothing significant about AFL but I do have a track record of playing Fanatsy games, so I joined up with a view to learning a few things.
First of all, Star-and-Scrubs doesn't quite work in a tight salary cap situation.
We've played 4 rounds so far and I have to report that stars are a lot less reliable in AFL than they are in baseball. Which means that when ever they miss a game for whatever woosy reason they might have, it impacts on the weekly bottom line heavily. The truth is, you have to spread your cash across players who are much better than scrubs, which means you have to know a bit more about the game as a whole.
Secondly, having only 20 trades for the entire season means that thee roster is a lot more inflexible than in Fantasy baseball, and this is already impacting hard on the Stars-and-Scrubs strategy. Here are some examples:
- Warren Tredrea finally played a game this weekend yet unitl now, he has cost me $300k+ for 3 weeks of zero points.
- Ben Cousins mysteriously did not play this round. Neither did Mark Williams or Fraser Gehrig. If all those guys are out for the rest of the season (hypothetically) then my squad is a lame duck because I've used up 8 of my 20 swaps.
- The scrubs don't play. Most of them have names and never get on the paddock. It's not worth having their names but you have to have somebody filling the rosterspot so you end up grabbing another player who never ever plays.
My team is now coming 8th out of 16 squads. It really is a work in progress.
Things I Have Noticed On My Recent Trip
The situation regarding Takeshima between Japan and South Korea is a worry. I hate to say it but the Koreans aren't saying anything that would stand up to scrutiny under an international court of law, but they're insisting with hand on sword hilt, rattling their sabres as hard as they can. They're nuts - just like the North Koreans, and that ain't so good.
"To Koreans, Dokdo is a symbol of the complete restoration of our sovereignty," the President said in a televised national address. "We will react strongly and sternly against any physical provocation. This is a matter that can never be given up or compromised at any cost or sacrifice."No offense to Korea, but this is pretty damn crappy. Needlesss to say the US are "concerned" about this situation. They ought to be. Roh's administration has been taking a pretty odd posture for months.
Mr Roh described as "intolerable" the longstanding Japanese claim to the Dokdos, which the Japanese call Takeshima, but he also complained bitterly of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's "unrepentant and hurtful" visits to Yasukuni shrine war memorial and promised to "deal strongly" with Japanese school textbooks that glossed over the brutal annexation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.
"It is not merely our land," Mr Roh said of the island group South Korea regards as the first part of its territory to be annexed by the Japanese in 1905. "It has a special historical meaning."
Mr Koizumi responded calmly, calling again for Mr Roh to resume the six-monthly summit leadership meetings he halted after the Prime Minister's most recent Yasukuni visit in October.
However, Japanese officials concede there is little chance of a Japan-South Korea summit before Mr Koizumi retires in September. They are more concerned that Mr Roh's fiery speech could provoke outbreaks of anti-Japanese activity in South Korea, where popular feeling has been running high since October. Foreign diplomats in Seoul say antagonism towards Japanese visitors, even at business meetings, is running at a disturbing pitch.
One diplomat suggested the President's hardline speech was compelled by the view pushed by his political opponents that Saturday night's truce negotiated between the two foreign ministries was, in effect, a backdown by the South Koreans.
After Mr Roh's suggestion last week that the time had passed for "quiet diplomacy" with Japan, the next step is likely to be a tough assertion of South Korea's exclusive economic zone claim where it overlaps the Japanese EEZ claim in the Sea of Japan, which Koreans call East Sea.
Administration officials told Korean journalists that South Korea's presence and activities around the Dokdos and in the disputed EEZ waters immediately to the east would be visibly increased. They suggested Seoul could also expand its EEZ claim further into the waters claimed by Japanese.
Mr Roh also hinted during his address that South Korea would press ahead with its bid to win international recognition for Korean names of seabed features in the area, to replace Japanese nomenclature.
South Korean officials had agreed on Saturday night to put the naming issue aside for the time being, in return for Japan cancelling an oceanographic survey of the disputed waters.
South Korean coast guard patrol boats had been stationed to stop the two Japanese survey vessels entering the area, risking a physical confrontation before Saturday night's agreement.
Seoul officials are now suggesting South Korea will go ahead with its nomenclature claim to the International Hydrographic Organisation in June.
The disputed area is a rich fishing ground, but in the past five years, Korean survey work has delineated huge reserves of gas hydrates, semi-frozen natural gas, which the South Koreans estimate at 600 million tonnes.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Tomohiko Taniguchi last night reiterated Japan's claim to the Dokdo group.
"It has been Japan's consistent position that both in light of historical facts and international law, Takeshima is clearly an integral part of Japan," he said.
I Bought A Guitar
After 10 years of deliberating on a semi-acousstic electric guitar, I finally bought one on the road in Tokyo. It's a Duesenberg Starplayer TV. It looks just like this one:
So what exactly about this guitar convinced me, after ALL the guitars I've seen? Let me count the ways:
a) The configuration:
- Semi acoustic With Bigsby arm. I've been looking for something like this.
- Humbucker pick up by the bridge, but single coil at the neck. Now that's unique. Mostly it's a pair of one or the other.
- Scale length is 66.7mm which is the same as Fenders. ie, it's longer than the Gibsons.
- jumbo frets.
- The pick up selector switch is near the volume knob, just like with a Telecaster. This increases the operability off the guitar just that much.
b) The tone:
- The humbucker is a solid rock'n'roll pick up. It has grunt. Metallic grunt.
- The single coil is fat. It'ssfatter than the Lace Sensors on my Stratocaster.
c) The build and finish:
Ladies & Gents, It's German Engineering. It looks like it comes off the set of Metropolis. If Freder Fredesen played an Electric Guitar, he'd have played a Duesenberg Starplayer! The tuning heads are rock solid, but smooth as butter. The action is a delight, all the way up to the 22nd fret. The Bigsby arm has a gentle attack and release. The tone sustains like a Nigel Tufnel joke. For AUD$2k, its an excellent buy.
It's a much nicer guitar than a Gibson 335 or a stock standard Gibson Les Paul. Clearly it was designed by someobdy who hated all the things I hated about Gibson guitars but wanted to bring the Gibson tone across to a Fender-player-friendly format. (More of that in a moment)
d) Availability
You just don't see these in Australia.
Even in Japan, they're not a big seller. The guy in the shop said he'd never heard the guitar until I asked to play it. Well, I played it all right and it was very compelling.
"Gee, that's a fat sounding single coil," he said. "and that humbucker is a monster. "
After runnign thru some Stevie Ray Vaughn stuff, he says, "Gee, you should be able to charge for your playing."
The guy in the shop was flattering the hell out of me and my playing so I said "you can stop with the flattery kid. You've made your sale."
"You Say You Hate Gibsons?"
No, I just hate the cult of brand names.
You go to any music shop worth its salt in Japan and you see a barrage of Gibsons and Fenders. Many of the Fenders are made in Japan and the prices aren't prohibitive. All of them are good guitars. The Gibsons on the other hand are another story. They charge like wounded bulls for the glory of the brand name; the shops sell these things with $3.5k - $4k price tags without batting an eye-lid.
The problem is, it's only a bloody electric guitar. We're not talking about a very sophisticated piece of engineering here. They're insisting the craftsmanship invested in each instrument is worth the bundle, but $4k?. In Australia it's worse. A brand new Gibson Les Paul Custom fetches up to $7k.
You have to ask your self, "really?"
Now, I like guitars, but not enough to spend that much on them. The market on the other hand seems to just accept this. Otherwise you wouldn't see so many shops with walls and walls of Gibsons. Like, huh?
They're not exactly perfect. Here's a quick-fire list:
- Most of them only have 3 positions; a Fender Strat has 5 plus the tremolo arm.
- The pick-up selector switch is in an awkward place if you like swapping pick ups mid-song.
- The solid bodies are frickin' heavy pieces of lumber. Robert Fripp sits on a stool to play his Les Paul Custom. And even he retro-fitted a tremolo onto his guitar.
- The scale length is shorter.
- The frets are smaller.
- The necks are glued on.
On the other hand, they do sustain better, it's true, thanks to the glued-on necks.
As a player, I'd never turn down the opportunity to play on a Gibson, because they do have their uses. As good a guitar my Fender Stratocaster is, there are some sounds it simply cannot produce. I'm just not into the blind worship of brand name. Seriously, I'd pit my new Duesenberg against any Gibson - and it was less than half the price.
I feel sorry for people who feel compelled "to get that sound" by paying through their noses. It's immoral, how they market those guitars.
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