Is it just me, or is everybody making too much USC's football team? Sure they are good, but talking about their place among the top teams in collegiate history BEFORE the final game? This phenomenon never bods well for the affected team, I seem to recall a similar situation with Oklahoma in '03, Miami in '02, the LA Lakers in '04, and the St. Louis Rams in '01. All lost shortly after being named among the best teams to ever play their respective games prior to winning the big one.
I'm not saying they'll lose, but absolutely no one is talking about Texas right now. Sports at ever level, and collegiate football in particular, is based on emotion and drive, and the chip on the Longhorns' collective shoulder is probably enough to block out the sun and will only get bigger over the next week.
So before we proclaim the Trojans as the lords of all creation, let us remember that Matt Leinart is an opportunist with an easy job, Reggie Bush isn't the 2nd coming of Walter Peyton, and Pete Carol is an NFL reject who utterly failed when forced to compete with such unrefined stiffs as the foundation of the 3-time Super Bowl winning New England Patriots. Calm the fudge down and enjoy meritorious football for its own sake and enjoy the game, you'll all look stupid afterwards anyway.
I got up late, spent the entire day in my skivvies, and accomplished nothing but a few seasons of Madden, some serious junkfood snacking, and enjoying the fruits of a lazy Christmas.
And I got paid for the whole thing.
I heart holiday pay
I was dreaming last night that I was running in a cross country race where all the runners were drinking beer. There were 26 laps in the race and when I woke up with 2 laps to go, I was in 2nd place.
I have absolutely no idea what this means.
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.
I am under no such illusion that 2,005 years ago today Jesus was born. For one, December 25th was chosen to usurp a pagan holiday in the days of old and two; the modern calendar is actually off by 3-7 years in relation to Jesus' birth. But today is as good of a day as any to celebrate the birth of the most influential person to ever walk the earth. Belief or not, faith or none, you've got to respect the power of that idea.
I laughed so hard I think I dribbled a little bit in my pants.
It's all about the Hamilton's Baby!
I’m sitting at work; casually ease dropping on the one-sided phone conversation about reserving some tables for a lunch meeting tomorrow someone else is having in the office, when I hear him mention the desire for Turkish coffee. I’ve never heard of Turkish coffee before, except for the fact that last night, I had a dream about overhearing a restaurant order for Turkish coffee.
What are the odds that I would dream about the exact sequence of events that would occur to me less than 24 hours later, including seemingly mundane details so specifically unknown to me? The resemblances between my dream my shortly lived reality are to uncanny to write off and mere coincidence, especially when this sort of random dream induced foresight has occurred to me in the past. It’s never anything along the lines of conscious fortune telling, but random dream sequences that come to fruition in my real life.
Because this is too consistently coincidental to write off, I have come to one of four conclusions. Either the omnipotent forces that be are having some fun with me while I sleep, the brain has untested potential for anticipation, ‘The Matrix’ was a documentary, or I’m just freaking out and the concept of free will isn’t a cruelly farce being played on me.
When the historians look back on the demise of american civilization, all signs will point to one thing: MTV's Next. We are all dumber for having been exposed to it.
You all should be proud of me; I ran a productive and only slightly awkward teleconference meeting composed entirely of people I have never met. Thus combining two of the things I hate the most in this world: people and the phone.
Okay, enough with the musings of an obviously cynical young man about the meaning of life. From now until Christmas, I’m only posting shallow thoughts and funny sundries to amuse the masses. It won’t all be happy, but even the thinnest among you should understand me. To start it off…
What’s the deal with everybody respecting that new movie “The Producers”? I thought we had turned our collective back on remake movies. Is there some exception about movies adapted from plays adapted from movies? And what is up with the award show respect? There is a reason they don’t hand out an Oscar for ‘Best screenplay based on a screenplay.’
And there is also a unwritten rule against remaking a movie until its architect is gone. There also should be a definite reason for a remake. There should be unrealized potential for something. The only possible improvement I could see is Will Ferrell as crazy German guy, because the more absurd the character, the better he is at it.
Fa-shizzle my Nizzles, it’s the Tee-Oh-Single-Gizzle and his kindly list of weekly hotness, known only as...
TOG's Semi-Official Weekly List
The Over-hyped:
Jokes about gay cowboys eating pudding
People
Intelligent Design
"Degrading Treatment"
Got the Upside:
Men of Old
Days of Yore
Post-Graduate Education
Capitalism
I would say my worst trait as a human being is my inability to tolerate those whom I find truly annoying. I’m not talking about complete strangers or close friends, it’s mostly casual acquaintances with whom I am forced to share an extended period of time. Speech impediments and exaggeration without effect, and misstating facts and figures that I personal know to be untrue seem to be the big items on my hit list of ruing.
If you blatantly, maliciously, and unapologetically lie to me, but I don’t know it at the time, I will likely treat you better than if you tell two or three small fibs that I know to be false.
I’m also grossly annoyed with rampant profanity in inappropriate settings, both public and private. I’m not offended at the language, I’m annoyed that they were too stupid or arrogant to understand when you can safely drop the f-bomb and when you may be overheard by a bus load of nuns and a preschool class. It offends the inner orator in me to hear the dilution of quality curse words by such amateur overuse.
Bringing in JC and his tap-dancing, hobbled walking ability, or skill with the pogo-stick into the conversation at the mere onset of slight amazement just isn’t warranted.
Using a single curse word in place of a rhymed verse in iambic tetrameter on one’s mother, the various grotesqueries that could be inferred about one’s sexual preference, or the exploration of the nether regions of one’s sacred vessel with everyday objects just shows a lack of intellect, dialect, and an irreverence for the capacity of verbal communication to leave permanent emotional damage.
Gloom, gloom, gloom, gloom, gloom, gloom, gloom!
It’s overcast and gray, it’s spitting cold rain on the way too lately salted sidewalks. I’ve got a twinge of a head cold and all I want to do is lie on my couch and play the Xbox. I can’t muster up enough will to vacuum the repeatedly tracked in rock salt. So I keep walking over it and thoroughly diffusing the salt concentration evenly throughout my not-so-clean apartment.
I can’t even bring myself to cook something decent, which I honest enjoy doing, to I subsist on frozen pizza, hamburger helper, and bowls of cereal at 2 in the afternoon.
Happy 6-Month Workiversary
Everything you’ll ever need to know about the upcoming week, conveniently boiled down to irrelevant quibbles...
TOG's Semi-Official Weekly List
The Over-hyped:
Oil
Unexpected Raises
Grammy Voters
HD-TV
Got the Upside:
Water
Wi-fi
Online Christmas Shopping
Podcasting without a pod
Green
By some freak accident of international scheduling, I find myself in possession of a rather hearty laptop that I don’t properly own, but do have legitimate use of. I’ve never owned a laptop in my life, entirely because I’ve never had a real need for mobility, and it just doesn’t make sense on the power/cost investment curve. They tend to be more problematic and less fixable that the generic beige boxes I’ve come to know and love. But now, I understand where you all are coming from. For whatever reason, utilizing a laptop just feels different. As I type this post, sitting on my bed, war-driving one of my neighbor’s wi-fi connection, it feels better to type. I feel more professional, more dignified, like I could be writing a novel for HarperCollins, or typing out a late breaking news story and blowing my editors deadlines at some junky alternative newspaper where I moonlight a free lance column about the absurdities of modern life.
I feel more conscious of the computer, and that I’m operating a sophisticated bucket of sand and solder that is making my lap increasingly warmer as the minutes of battery life slip by. Knowing more about computers than my gentle readers (with the exception of 1 or 2 of you) I naturally feel a degree of snobbery towards you and your utter lack of knowledge. The new toy hasn’t really made a dent in my ego, but I now know where you all were coming from, there is just something a little more psychologically manageable about having a single self-contained machine sitting in front of you, than an 8-part series of peripherals strung around your desk like a spider’s web of silicon magic.
I’m not conceding an inch of the great technology divide between your world and my understanding, but now I’m able to comprehend why you make the irrational choices that you most certainly do.
I’ve written so much in response to a NYT opinion piece by Gen. Wesley Clark that was mentioned in a previous comment section, that I’ve decided to put it all front and center in its very own post. Yeah, it’s political, but it’s probably entertainingly written so you might not fall asleep before you reach the end.
Here’s the thing about the general’s comments. It wasn’t some op-ed; it was a piece about how only military commanders should be allowed to take the country to war. By leaving the piece completely devoid of strategic thinking, he reduced the struggle to a debate on logistics. We should have more troops here, less troops there, and blah-blah airborne backed up my mobile units from the blah-blah-blah division. It might be useful advice to a 2-star general or a lieutenant-commander with sand in his boots, but to every other member of the mass of English-speaking humanity; it’s a piece about how smart he is, and how the American people made a mistake by not electing him president.
There are philosophical, strategic, and tactical arguments to be made. You run a war from the other side of the world by demonstrating steely philosophical resolve, developing keen strategic positions, and leaving the tactical to the people who actually know what the hell they are talking about.
I think it’s great that someone with an acute military mind is making suggestions to help the boys and girls in fatigues out a little. I just wish it wasn’t a back-handed list of propositions published in the New York Times. If his sole purpose was to help, he would have come in with suggestions though the back door. As a registered democrat, and an accomplished military mind, any suggestion he may say publicly that isn’t a direct presidential talking point carries with it, the political load of a partisan starting gun. By publicly offering a suggestion, the general removed any and all political cover, should the powers that be decide that he is correct. No political cover reduces the chances that any of his suggestions will ever be implemented, regardless of their merit. Not because the administration is blinded by an acute case of ‘with us or against us’ syndrome, but because this is politics, and that’s the way it goes.
Now with that said, there is nothing explicitly wrong with attempting to score political points through the power of suggestion, but I’ve never bought into the “obligation to put out your neighbor’s flaming house” morality. It’s not my kind of amorous pillar of virtue, but an instrument of Satan it makes you not.
Man did I get off topic.
There is no way for us to know the general’s motives, or whether or not his advice is even legit. Given everything I’ve read about the man, it probably is. I don’t fault him for attempting to pass off a narrow scope list of proposals as honest commentary and opinion, or for using apparent misdirection as a substitute for worthwhile criticism; I’m faulting those that actually fell for it.
If you are ever asked, if it's cold in Kansas in December at midnight in an windswept empty parking lot, you can tell them. If you are ever asked if walking into the north wind chills the hands enough to make a grown man fear the bathroom, you can tell them.
The answer is yes.
Everything you’ll ever need to know about the upcoming week, conveniently boiled down to irrelevant quibbles...
TOG's Semi-Official Weekly List
The Over-hyped:
Oil
Unexpected Raises
Grammy Voters
HD-TV
Got the Upside:
Water
Wi-fi
Online Christmas Shopping
Podcasting without a pod
Green
The follow softwares totally r0x0r every pair of my s0x0r5:
Mozilla 1.5
OpenOffice 2.0
Wing Commander: Privateer
WordPress 1.5.2
Notepad
MS Money 2006
Audacity 1.3
hrmm... 4 of the 7 are open source, what were the odds?