Celtics Power Forwards and the rest of the playoffs

Two down...

Well, I know I said that I thought the Celtics had a chance in the playoffs, even if KG doesn't return. But judging from the results of the first two games against the 7-seed Chicago Bulls, and with the recent season-ending injury to backup PF Leon Powe, I must change my opinion on the matter. The Celtics lost game 1 to Chicago by 2 points. They won the second game by two points. Both games were AT HOME. The next two games will take place in Chicago. If Chicago can "play with us" (and beat us) on our home court, who knows what they are capable of on their turf. The injury to Leon Powe is a devastating loss. We are down to three big men (Kendrick Perkins, Mikki Moore, and Glen Davis), only one of whom is a power forward (Davis). Big Baby has played well and has been scoring at the best rate of his career recently. This is good for Davis, but without Powe and Garnett, the Celtics are at a loss as a team. Scalabrine is also out indefinitely, and who knows if he will play. People used to joke about Scalabrine's impact on the team, but this year, before getting three concussions he was a great contributor to our success. Without Powe, the Celtics have less depth, less toughness, less size, and less defense. I love the Celtics, but I don't think they can do it this year. The injuries are too detrimental to the team. Why do I always make an ass out of myself on these entries by posting something absolutely ridiculously optimistic and never clarifying them when things don't work out? Well that ends now. The Celtics are fucked. Game over, man.

KG or no KG

It's playoff time baby!

Currently, the Boston Celtics are without Kevin Garnett. There have been reports that he may not play at all during the playoffs. Though nothing has been confirmed by KG himself, it is implied that barring some miraculous comeback, KG will not return for any games this postseason. Throughout the week, Doc Rivers has been talking about KG and reporting various stories, including the "shut-down" scenario, as well as that "he will definitely play Saturday", and that he would play the last few games of the season, which did not happen.

In any case, the Boston Celtics are the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Unanimous concensus around the sports world seems to think the Celtics are hopeless without Garnett. People think we can beat Chicago, and maybe Orlando (maybe not though) but definitely not Cleveland, the #1 seed. We were defeated handily by the Cavs during the last week of the season.

Still, as a Boston fan who has been following the team and seen players like Leon Powe and Glen Davis perform ably in KG's place, I don't think it's fair to count the Celtics out just yet. I mean come on! These guys have done a great job filling in for Garnett and they have been with the team for the past several years. They are maturing as players and have developed their respective games greatly this season - Powe as an inside presence, and Davis as a jump shooter from the elbow or so. Both are able rebounders.

I don't deny that Garnett is an integral part of the team and a major reason we won the championship last year. But we've got two future hall-of-famers in our starting lineup even without him, in Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, as well as a great inside force in Perkins and the NBA's most improved point guard, Rajon Rondo, who is quickly maturing into an all-star. Not to mention sparks off the bench in guards Marbury and House, as well as a hard working, rebounding and jumpshooting presence in Mikki Moore. Tony Allen played well the other day, scoring 15 points, and he is an energy player off the bench.

What I'm saying is that although we are not the same team without Garnett, the Boston Celtics are a very good team and can certainly play with and beat teams without him. The Cavaliers are the biggest obstacle, obviously. LeBron James is a phenomenal player, and his team has gotten much better this year because of him. Still, I think we can play with this team and if we win the series (although it will be close, and it will be tough without home court advantage) we will be able to beat the Lakers more easily than the Cavs. So don't give up on Boston just yet! We're fresh off a championship and are looking to repeat, KG or no KG.

P.S. The Boston Bruins have also made the playoffs and are a #1 seed in the East. I am not a huge hockey fan, and I prefer basketball, but I still like to watch and was a bigger fan in the past. The Bruins have won their first game and this has been their best season in a long time. I am rooting for them and hope they can win the Stanley Cup this year!

Nick Adenhart

Nick Adenhart (1986-2009)

Around midnight last night, rookie Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart was killed in an auto accident in Fullerton, CA, along with 2 passengers. A third is in critical condition. They were struck by a drunk driver while Adenhart drove his Mitsubishi Eclipse. Nick was 22 years old.

It saddens me deeply to see a major league player with so much potential die in such a tragic and unnecessary way. He had such a bright future and died just hours after pitching 6 shutout innings in the big leagues. His career didn't get off to a great start, as he was injured coming out of high school. But he worked hard and improved and rehabbed to get to where he is now, rising the last 4 years from one minor league level to the next. And he just pitched the best game of his career. It is not fair. I'm a Red Sox fan and I'm deeply upset by this. I can't even begin to imagine how the Los Angeles Angels organization, his teammates, and his family must feel. It is a terrible loss for all of baseball. I watched a one minute long montage of his performance from last night and his stuff was great. He was throwing curveballs and making batters look foolish chasing them. What his career would have been like we will never know, but I'm sure if he had the opportunity it would have been great. Everything I read about him was admirable. He was a worker who cared about his team more than himself and never wanted to let the team down. He was a quiet but strong individual who overcame the adversity of a bad injury to get to the major leagues. I can't even describe how upsetting this is with words.

I knew this kid back in high school who played basketball, football, and performed in track and field. A few months after a graduated from high school, during the summer, he was killed by gunshots outside a club in Brockton, MA. There are parallels here, though they are different events with different circumstances and at different levels. But one thing was surely the same. Two promising individuals were killed in an unfair way at such a young age and it was not their fault! I talked to Jose once and had a conversation about rap music. It didn't seem like much and probably didn't mean much to him, but I am quiet and usually don't talk to people. I am glad I got to talk to him and be his teammate. Jose was a special person. He was a track star - he was considered by many as the best player on the entire squad. He also was a great wide receiver on the football team and a big part of the reason we won the superbowl in the 2006-2007 season. He played on the basketball team but didn't get much time, and never got a chance to prove himself in his senior year. I miss Jose. The memory of his death always comes back to me and I think about him often.

I am confounded by the unfairness of it all. Who knows what he would have done? Who knows what Nick would have done? But I will never be a big sports star - I don't even play in college and I'm not athletic. To see people who had talent die in such a horrible unfair way bothers me to the point where I don't understand life anymore.

Needless to say, it is a stunning moment in the sports world which caught us all off guard. Baseball fans and sports fans around the world will agree that this is quite possibly the most tragic thing that can ever happen to an athlete. To finally make it to the big leagues, play well, and be forever removed from the face of the earth. Rest in Peace, Nick Adenhart. You will be sorely missed. It will take time for the Angels and all of Major League Baseball to recover from this. But we will never truly recover. There's no coming back from death.

Here is a link to a montage of Adenhart pitching against the Angels, with a voiceover talking about his death.

Here is a link to a longer video talking about how Adenhart got to where he was Wednesday, as well as news about the tragedy.

News Today

Top Story: LeBron switching careers.


With his team well on its way to a probable championship, LeBron James has decided that basketball is too easy for him. He will now sign a 10 year, $365 million contract with a New York team, but not the Knicks, the Yankees.




He will be joined by David Ortiz, the former Red Sox DH, who has agreed to a 1-year, $30 million contract. Papi will receive a $10 million bonus if he wins MVP AND the Yankees win the World Series, but only if they play and beat the Red Sox in the NLCS.

In unrelated news, Nomar Garciaparra is headed back to Boston to play for the Bruins.


Practicing Haruhiians were shocked to discover that Haruhi is in fact not God but Satan. The high school student made her announcement today to Japan on the big screen.

Snoop Dogg is off weed, cold turkey. No really.

Young Jeezy has joined Maroon Five as a bass guitar player. He renounces all statements that he sold coke or smoked weed.









...Merry Christmas, everyone. Jesus turns 13069 today.

Fuckin Laptop

The fuckin culprit.

Well for about two months my computer was out of commission because the hard drive was fried or something IDK no one ever really figured out what the problem was. Anyway I got the computer back but all my programs and files were deleted, and the computer was reconfigured with a "generic" setup which is inferior to what I originally had. If I set a background on my computer, it automatically turns back to the solid color black after about 20 minutes or so. The other day, I installed an optional update that has something to do with the display. Naturally, since then, the display has been fucked up all over the place. I go to anything involving multimedia and the screen starts flashing over and over. When I go to my Youtube channel, the screen is blank. I can't see my videos or anyone elses unless I like search for them. Which is fucking annoying. I would uninstall the update, which is listed under my updates, but does not appear when I go to the uninstall updates page. What the fuck. This laptop is fucking gay. It always gives me grief every time I use it, no matter what I do. I need to print something and the fucking printer driver will not install. It won't let me validate Windows. It won't let me install Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. If I do fix everything again, it is going to again require that I delete all my files. I might save them to a disc but what a pain in the ass! Can't I just have a computer that works? Oh and a car would be nice. Totaled mine back in December. Also have a new cell phone without ringtones which I'm sick of paying for just to end up buying a new phone.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

cartoons (?)

"To dream that you are watching cartoons, indicates that you are not taking life seriously."

lol thanks dream moods. I didn't dream about this though. I swear. Who dreams about watching cartoons?!

Character Profile Akina, Hydra

Akina is a character from UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie. She is one of my personal favorites. Though she is a peripheral character, her part in the story is quite interesting. Akina is a childhood friend of the main male character, Kazuto Tokino. She harbors feelings for Kazuto, but she never reveals them to him. Often, she confides in Hydra, who is well aware of Akina's feelings for Kazuto. She has an interesting relationship with Hydra, who, as Valkyrie did to Kazuto, crashed her spaceship into Akina's abode. Akina makes Hydra work at her shrine to pay her off for the damages caused by the spaceship, which appears to be lodged into the roof of Akina's shrine for the forseeable future. Akina also put a seal on Hydra, who is an adult in truth, but reverts to the body of a child while under control of the seal. Akina occasionally releases the seal in dangerous situations which call for it. Instead of attacking Akina when she does this, or fleeing town, Hydra does things such as swing a magical sword, shoot lasers out of her hands, put on lipstick and have big boobs. A certified badass in this form is Hydra.

Inverse.

As I mentioned, Hydra and Akina have an interesting relationship, which I have dubbed an Odd Friendship on TV Tropes. It's like an odd couple but with secondary characters. In the second season, through a freak accident (and religious rituals gone bad), Hydra and Akina gain the power to combine into a being known as Akidra. Both have the ability to talk while inhabiting the same body. In battle, Akina's spiritual powers and Hydra's magical and physical powers are augmented and combined. Akidra is particularly effective against Valkyrie Ghost, the main antagonist of the series, particularly season 2. Unfortunately, the two can only combine when they are mad at each other. Rika proposes this theory, and it turns out to be true. The first time, Hydra reads a page of Akina's diary to an audience of main characters. After that, Akina just breaks Akina's shit whenever they try to transform. I feel bad for Hydra at times. She got the raw end of that deal. In an interesting aside, the name Akidra was first used by Akina and Hydra as their band name when Akina forcibly entered them as a duo in a karaoke contest. True story!

In the third season, Valkyrie and Kazuto are about to get married and Akina's anguish and lament over not talking to him become increasingly apparent. Hydra tells her she missed her chance and to basically settle down. This reminded me of Pirates of the Carribbean, when Will told Jack that he should have told her he loved her. But in this case, things don't work out quite the same way. I feel I can relate to Akina in her unrequited love thing as that is pretty much the story of muh life.

Akina, in the English dub, is voiced by Cynthia Martinez. The first time I heard Cynthia was in the Puni Puni Poemy dub, in which she voiced the certifiably insane Poemy Watanabe, who always refers to herself as Kobayashi, the name of her Japanese voice actress. Cynthia is Spanish and her accent can be heard slightly in her work, a fairly unique trait among voice actors as well as her signature. In other shows I have seen, she has voiced Excel Kobayashi (the same Japanese voice actress as in Puni Puni Poemy) in Excel Saga, Runa Tokisaka in Nurse Witch Komugi, and Otome Akiyama in Pani Poni Dash. Cynthia plays a good range of characters, from the easily excited Poemy to the cold and calculating Runa, who acts cute to hide her true demeanor. Otome is short and constantly harassed by her classmate Suzume, who finds her cute and tries to keep her short by pushing a pressure point on her head. As her teacher reveals, this pressure point does not stunt growth; it induces diarrhea. :I Otome is dejected as a result and gets frustrated with Suzume. I've only seen the first half of the series and Otome is not a main character, so I don't know much else about her. Akina is a very dynamic character, sometimes calm, sometimes excited, sometimes giving bad karaoke performances. All in all, my favorie of her roles.

Hydra is voiced by Nancy Novotny. As Hydra, Nancy provides a scratchy voice which brings about her spunky personality. Other roles by Nancy that I have seen are as Yomi Mizuhara as Azumanga Daioh, which was her debut; the titular character in Madlax, and Ayame Akimo in Wandaba Style. I haven't seen all of any of those, but I've seen the most of Wandaba Style. Ayame is a quiet girl, a folk singer and a hippie who sees imaginary fairies as muscular green men who freak me out personally. I've seen about 1/3 of Azumanga Daioh, which is pretty popular I guess. Yomi is a smart, athletic girl who wears glasses and is friends with Tomo, a psychopath. She acts as Tomo's comedic foil, providing humorous deadpan remarks to Tomo's over-the-top antics. Madlax is one cool customer, from what I've seen, and is some sort of spy or something. Whatever she is, she's one of the best in the biz. I haven't seen the whole show, so I don't know what her connection is with a girl named Margaret.

Let's talk about Hydra! Hydra went to Earth to retrieve Princess Valkyrie, as with Valkyrie gone, Hydra (another Princess of Valhalla) would have to get married in her place. Obviously, Hydra doesn't want this and so she goes searching for the wayward princess. She employs powers- such as turning into a flying pink/orange unicorn and splitting into like 300 Hydras-which are never seen again after Akina traps her - to find Valkyrie, but is interrupted by Akina. In the end, Hydra ends up working at Akina's shrine as punishment for crashing her spaceship into it. Often, Hydra and Akina act as antagonists for Valkyrie and Kazuto, because the two both have issues with Valkyrie. Though it's really Akina who has the most problems with her. In season 3, Akina and Hydra are called upon to pretend to threaten Valkyrie and Kazuto in their quest for wedding-related gemstones. But Akina starts to let her emotions override logic, and she ends up almost causing them serious harm, for which Hydra chastises her. When Kazuto and Valkyrie complete their quest, Hydra tells Akina to speak up and sympathizes, somewhat with Akina, providing a welcoming ear and advising voice.