First post

My Myspace apparently got deleted today, and whether or not it gets resurrected, it's smarter for me to just start moving back to the real internet. This is a start, and there will likely be a Real Website somewhere later down the line.

This space will take over all the functions that I used to actually use that other site for, plus some other stuff, but without all the spam and other crap that I had to go through. All prior relevant content will be reposted here in chronological order; this includes show and foreign-country reports, but not album reviews, which will appear on that Real Website sometime in the future.

Content is going to be wide-ranging, because I can't stop scribbling about stuff: I go to foreign countries as a part of my job, so I write about what I encounter there. I listen to heavy metal and go to metal shows, so I write album and show reviews. I play and run RPGs, so I write about dumb gaming anecdotes and principles in game design. And I spend my remaining time in a variety of pursuits, so I also occasionally write new Chinese-derived recipes, stuff about foreign language study or about stuff I've been reading lately. I also come from the Northeast and lived for a while in Europe, so rantings about the Red Sox and/or European football should be expected.

Today's irrational ranting is, indeed, on that very topic. The groups for Eurocup 2008 have been announced, and for some extremely dumb reason Kazakhstan is in UEFA. This is dumb, because according to the giant map I have on the wall of my office showing where I've been to, it is east to see that even if you draw a scooping corner through Kazakhstan connecting the Caucasus and the Urals, the great majority of the country, its capital, and nearly all its centers of population, are all clearly on the Asian side of that line. This country nearly touches Mongolia, for crying out loud, and it wants to play soccer with Europe.

Now, there are a fair bunch of Asian countries in UEFA. Turkey is in UEFA, but it does have that little bit on the European side of the Bosporus. Israel is also in UEFA, but they're also in Eurovision and a large portion of their population would still be living in Europe if the Russians and then Germans hadn't decided to be particularly dickish to them over the last two centuries. Most of the former Soviet republics are in UEFA, but everyone else as far east as Kazakhstan is doing just fine with playing (and losing) in Asia. As dumb as it sounds, though, it's their choice, and their funeral; they're just going to get whupped anyways, so it doesn't really matter whether it's by Italy and Portugal or by Japan and Australia.