Incertus

Pick 'em Thursday: Blogging Burnout Edition

2009-12-03T08:04:00.002-05:00

I'm coming up on six years of blogging next January, and I'm not sure there will be a seventh--the world of the internets has changed on me, and my life has changed too--I don't have the time or the energy to follow or get worked up about politics the way I have in the past, and I'm way more likely to just tweet links than write a whole post like I used to.

Of course, I could just need a little break from it and I'll come back with a vengeance afterward. I doubt that I'll shutter the site or take it down--Google owes me a little ad money, after all--and I like having access to all the ridiculousness I've written over the years. Or maybe I'll rebrand it--you never know.

Last week, I went 8-8 here, 9-7 on the Facebook pick 'em, since I changed my Pittsburgh pick to Baltimore there. Not a good week. But the Saints won in convincing fashion, and that makes everything good. Winners in caps.

NY Jets at BUFFALO Which Jets team will show up? Which Bills team? This could be a blowout either way or a tight game at the end. Buffalo has been playing a little better than the Jets have lately, and they're at home.

Tampa Bay at CAROLINA So, we get to see Carolina's backup quarterback finally. Wonder who they'll draft in the first round next year?

NEW ENGLAND at Miami When Indianapolis beat the Patriots after Belichick's controversial 4th and 2 call, the word (from me and others) was that the Jets would feel their wrath the following week. And they did, to a point--the Jets kept it respectable until late. So the assumption will be that the Pats will try to pour it on against the Dolphins after their dismantling by the Saints Monday night, and I suspect they'll try. The Fins are two games back in the division and need this game to have a shot at the playoffs--and the fact that I can say "playoffs" here is pretty amazing given how the season has gone for them--but I don't think it will happen this week.

Detroit at CINCINNATI Should be a piece of cake, but Cincinnati has already laid one egg against a team they should have handled easily. Watch out.

Houston at JACKSONVILLE These two teams have been the bane of my picking existence this season, so I figure this week, I'll get a tie out of them.

Oakland at PITTSBURGH Roethlisberger is probably for this game, but I'd pick them even if Dixon was starting again.

PHILADELPHIA at Atlanta Starting QB, RB, and 3 WRs out or questionable for Atlanta this week. Philadelphia is erratic, but this shouldn't be too tough for them.

St. Louis at CHICAGO The Bears have to win this game if Lovie Smith is going to keep his job. They might have to win out, but at the very least, they have to win this one.

Tennessee at INDIANAPOLIS I think this is the week Vince Young falls off the fun train.

DENVER at Kansas City Denver has beaten the teams they're supposed to all season long. I know they don't do well traditionally at Arrowhead stadium, but I think they do okay this week.

NEW ORLEANS at Washington I think this game might be closer than many expect. It should be a blowout, but the Saints have had tough games from lower-tier teams all season long, and they're coming off a really emotional Monday night win. I wouldn't be surprised to see this as a slow-out-of-the-gate, come-back-hard win.

SAN DIEGO at Cleveland San Diego is currently the three seed in the AFC. I expect they'll be number two by the time the playoffs start. And no one, it seems, is talking about them as a potential Superbowl team. That's a mistake.

SAN FRANCISCO at Seattle This is the crappy Sunday game of the week. Tonight's game is just as crappy, but it's on the NFL Network, which means almost no one will watch it.

DALLAS at NY Giants Dallas continues in its quest for the 3 seed in the NFC, and the honor of losing in the playoffs yet again.

MINNESOTA at Arizona Kurt Warner is probably back, which makes this the battle of near-retired, future Hall of Fame quarterbacks. The Vikings are the better team, though the Cardinals are certainly capable of beating anyone.

Baltimore at GREEN BAY It took the vaunted Baltimore defense overtime to beat a Pittsburgh team led by a third-string QB making his first start. I think the Packers romp here.

Pick 'em Thanksgiving edition

2009-11-25T18:20:00.002-05:00

I told Amy this morning, after I saw her status giving thanks for secular holidays, that if we started an online petition to put Jesus back into Thanksgiving, we'd get hundreds of thousands of signatures. Anyone down?

Had a good run last week--went 12-4. I expect I'll follow that up with a wretched one here. Winners in caps.

GREEN BAY at Detroit Detroit always plays on Thanksgiving. They won on Sunday in spectacular fashion. Unfortunately, that was against a team even worse than them, and it took a miracle finish to beat them. Plus, Matthew Stafford is likely out with a shoulder injury, and... wait. Why the hell am I going into this level of detail for this crappy of a game?

Oakland at DALLAS Oakland has won three games this season, but two of them have been against Philadelphia and Cincinnati. Any chance they pull another upset? This is Dallas, but it's not December yet, when Dallas typically collapses.

NY GIANTS at Denver I have to pick the Giants here, even though if they win, every football pundit in ~~the world~~ on tv will talk about how awesome Eli is and how New York just knows how to win and how they're getting hot at the right time. It'll be cliché-mania. But Denver hasn't played well lately, and with a combo of a dinged up QB and a backup who was so bad that the injured starter finished the game, I don't see them doing much to stop the Giants.

Cleveland at CINCINNATI This is the equivalent of last week's Patriots-Jets game, only Cleveland isn't as good as the Jets, and the Bengals might be even more mad than the Pats. This could get ugly.

Washington at PHILADELPHIA On paper, Philly should win this game nine times out of ten. But both teams have been erratic this season, so much so that if Washington won by ten I wouldn't be surprised.

MIAMI at Buffalo Miami proved me wrong last week against Carolina. I think they're going to make a run at the playoffs this year, though I think they'll come up just short. Watch out for them next season though.

INDIANAPOLIS at Houston I'm picking Indy until there's a reason not to.

CAROLINA at New York Jets This should be the battle of two running games, and I think Carolina's is just a hair better. This ought to be an entertaining game to watch.

Seattle at ST. LOUIS How bad do I think Seattle is? St. Louis's quarterback is out and I'm still picking them. And if the NFL puts this in any markets other than St. Louis or Seattle, viewers ought to take pictures of their middle fingers and send them to the league office.

Tampa Bay at ATLANTA I must admit that I've enjoyed seeing Atlanta play badly the last few weeks, even though I've picked them more often than not. This week they should win, which would revive their flagging hopes for a playoff spot.

JACKSONVILLE at San Francisco The Jags are better than I thought, and the Niners are worse. You do the math.

Kansas City at SAN DIEGO I hope the Chiefs savored that win last week.

Chicago at MINNESOTA I would love to be wrong, not because I like Chicago, but because I'd like the Saints to have a little breathing room in the race for home field in the playoffs. Yeah, I'm looking ahead a little.

ARIZONA at Tennessee Two things. A lot was made of Warner's decision to pull himself early in last week's game after he got his bell run because he didn't feel perfect. I think the fact that his team was leading 21-3 had a bit to do with that. If the game had been close, Warner would have probably stayed in. Second, Tennessee is hot, but Arizona has been a road team this season, and I think they keep that up.

PITTSBURGH at Baltimore Big Ben also got his bell rung last week, but their backup, Charlie Batch, broke his wrist. I'm saying that I really think this game is a tossup, and it all depends on how badly Roethlisberger got kicked in the head last week. Baltimore's defense has just fallen off the cliff.

New England at NEW ORLEANS I have some papers to grade during this holiday break, but they will either be done by game time Monday, or they will be done afterward. If I were one of my students, I'd probably want my paper graded beforehand, just in case things didn't go well, but I'm a little on the risk-averse side. But if things go well, and the papers haven't been finished, well, the leftovers might look a little better is all I'm saying. If the Saints lose, well, there's always a grade-forgiveness policy. :-)

Performance Art?

2009-11-24T17:20:00.003-05:00

Okay, this may come as a surprise to some readers, but I'm actually excited by non-traditional groups co-opting and adopting hip-hop and rap as a musical form to express themselves, even if the message they're sending is, well, if not antithetical to what hip-hop and rap originated, is at least oblique to its purposes. So it's not in the spirit of mockery of the form or the attempt that I post the following video.

Christian Side Hug from The Fathers House on Vimeo.

It would be easy for me to mock the message here as well--that there's something immoral about face-to-face hugging because of the proximity of the naughty bits when that goes on--and so I will, though gently. That's low-hanging fruit, though.

No, it's this line which really deserves the attention: "I'm a rough rider, filled up with Christ's love." If you don't know what a rough rider is, slang-wise, and if you don't feel like guessing, then you can get the down and dirty here. And it is exceedingly down and dirty.

But this isn't the first time that an evangelical group has had this sort of mixup. Remember "Two Million for Marriage" or 2M4M? Or, though only tangentially connected, the teabagger movement? Urban Dictionary isn't an obscure website, and it doesn't take a particularly dirty-minded person to come up with at least the suggestion that "rough riders" might be a euphemism for something a little salacious.

So I wonder, might these "accidents" actually be intentional? Could there be a group of moles working on the inside to make these folks look even more ridiculous than usual? Or could it just be that they're so sheltered, that they so limit contact with anyone not of their group that they really don't know what's going on in the outer world?

It's probably the latter, if it's either. The proliferation of christian schools and the evangelical university system has made it possible for fundamentalists to keep their children almost completely separated from the rest of the world--I say almost because any truly determined kid can find ways around his or her parents' limitations. And with that separation comes a lack of contact with slang and sexual euphemism, which can make for some truly hilarious communication blunders at times.

There was some talk when I was growing up of the Witnesses establishing their own school system, and members openly wondered why we didn't do it, since it would remove kids from the temptations of the secular world. The response I remember was that as adults, we would have to live in the world, so school served as a good training ground to build up our resistance to temptation. It probably worked as often as it failed, maybe a little less, and I've wondered in the now 14 years since I left the church if they've started to reconsider. I hope not. But I would be interested in what they make of the Christian Side Hug.

Some Hope

2009-11-24T16:17:00.003-05:00

Ole Miss probably isn't the first place you think of when you hear the words "racial harmony." After all, it's in Mississippi, and the school's mascot is a delightful southern gentleman who looks a bit like Colonel Sanders, and which is named the Rebel. It's a celebration of white southern masculinity and all the racist garbage that notion entails. And yet, recently, the school's student student council voted to ban the chant "the South will rise again" from one of the school's fight songs, and when some in the student body refused to comply, the chancellor banned the band from playing the song, thus crimping the styles of young white supremacists on and off the campus

But here's the cool thing about this story. This past weekend, the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan showed up at the campus to protest what they called an attack on their "Christian, southern heritage and culture" and to prevent the student body president--who is black--from fulfilling his desire to "shape Ole Miss into yet another liberal sodomite college."

Now, you might figure that if the Klan is going to pull a supportive crowd anywhere, Mississippi might be a pretty good place to bet on. Not quite. From Deadspin:

The KKK's hour-long protest against tolerance and common sense lasted about 10 minutes before the hooded wonders were booed off Mississippi's campus.

As noted earlier, the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were peeved that their state university has banned the song "From Dixie With Love" because they actually believe the South will somehow rise again. (Mississippi: 50th in education eight years running!) So ten dudes in hoods stood on the steps of Fulton Chapel before the LSU game on Saturday and shouted things like "white power"—only no one could hear them because they were outnumbered by 250 people booing and calling them idiots and cowards.

This is not to say that the feelings expressed by the Klan had no purchase on the Ole Miss campus--the fact that the chancellor felt the need to ban the playing of "From Dixie With Love" because students wouldn't stop the chanting is proof enough that there were some sympathetic ears for the Klan's position. But it is good that such open, obnoxious, toxic racism has become so socially poisonous that it can't even garner public support for the singing of a traditional fight song. It's a tiny step in the large scale of race relations, but it's still a step.

Pick 'em sweet Jeebus I'm tired

2009-11-19T18:29:00.002-05:00

Long day on no sleep, no real desire to blog, and a mountain of grading awaiting. I can worry about that stuff tomorrow. Tonight it's football picks, and then possibly an early night. Though knowing me, I'll be up until 2:00 screwing around with something stupid. Had a decent week last week going 10-5. Let's see if it starts a trend.

Miami at CAROLINA This already looked like a tale of two teams going in opposite directions, but with Ronnie Brown out for the rest of the year, it really looks rough for the Dolphins. Forget the Wildcat as an effective option now--a big part of the reason it worked is because there was no single person to key on. Defenses had to account for both Williams and Brown, and now--Pat White? Don't think so. This game should be close, but I think the Panthers are playing better ball now and have fewer issues to deal with.

INDIANAPOLIS at Baltimore The Colts could be in for a letdown after the big game last week with New England, but Baltimore's defense is, well, not what it used to be. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Ravens won, but I don't think it's likely.

Cleveland at DETROIT Ugh.

Buffalo at JACKSONVILLE I don't trust the Jags, but I never pick a team that's just dumped its head coach and has made it clear that the interim guy is purely interim. There's little reason for the players to buy into a system that they know won't last.

Seattle at MINNESOTA I guess the Seahawks have a slugger's chance, but I don't see them winning this game.

NEW ORLEANS at Tampa Trap game? Given that the Saints take on the Patriots the following week, sure. But I think the Saints got their scare last week with the Rams, and the Bucs aren't sporting a former Pro-Bowl quarterback and maybe the best running back playing this year. This shouldn't be close.

Washington at DALLAS The cliché "throw away the records" comes into play here, but there's no reason this game should be close.

San Francisco at GREEN BAY Who the hell knows?

PITTSBURGH at Kansas City This should get ugly, which means, of course, that KC will win on a lsat second field goal.

Atlanta at NY GIANTS Both of these teams are reeling, and the winner will get a leg up in the move toward a wild card. The Giants still have a shot at the NFC East, while the Falcons are pretty much out of the NFC South race, but both teams need a win desperately. This could be a really good game.

ARIZONA at St. Louis Last year, I'd never have picked the Cardinals because they were horrible on the road, but this year, the Cards are road warriors. It helps that they're playing the Rams, who looked pretty good against the Saints, but the Saints defense was down 4 starters and is an okay unit at best.

NY Jets at NEW ENGLAND Everyone is saying that the Patriots will be taking out some anger on the Jets. In this case, everyone is probably right.

SAN DIEGO at Denver I hope it's a close game. I also hope I don't have to watch it.

CINCINNATI at Oakland Last year, this would have been the crummy game of the week. This year, it's still a crummy game, but only because it should be a blowout.

PHILADELPHIA at Chicago The Eagles are the up-and-downest team I've ever seen, but the Bears stink out loud it seems.

Tennessee at HOUSTON The Texans have gotten better and better as the season goes on, and if I had to guess, I think they'll be the 5 or 6 seed in the AFC, though the difference between 1 and 6 is closer than most will think come the playoffs. Vince Young comes back to earth this week.

The Golden Rule

2009-11-12T20:03:00.003-05:00

My title is not referencing the Biblical version--treat others as you would be treated. Rather, it's the more cynical version--who's got the gold, makes the rules--and the group trying to enforce that version is the Catholic Church. Fresh off their victory in the battle over women's reproductive systems, the Catholic Church in Washington DC is now getting their gay hate on again, threatening to stop contracting with the city over administrating some of their charitable works. Professor Patrick J. Deneen of Georgetown University was asked if the city should just call the Church's bluff and find other non-profits to provide the same services. Deneen responded this way:

There may be other providers, but in many instances the grants from the District are only partial grants - the Church "leverages" those grants (including some $10 million in additional funds, much provided by donations by parishioners). There is also a network of volunteers who have longstanding commitments to the relief of the sufferings of the poor and needy. The idea that these funds - but more, these services and the religious commitment and motivation that underlies them - can be easily replaced is at best an optimistic view, at worst a dangerous wager.

In other words, nice charitable system you got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.

And this proves two points to my mind. The first is that, contrary to what libertarians say, you can't count on private charity to step in where government will not, unless you're willing to play by the charity's rules--and in many cases, the rules of churches which run those charities. We've seen this in numerous instances overseas--churches going in to disaster areas and offering relief to people who convert and neglecting the rest. Never saw how that was a sound strategy for long term conversion, but whatever.

The second is that there is no upside to government partnering with churches to provide any sort of social services, because you can't count on them to be an honest partner. The Catholic Church here, whether it knows it or not, is making a far better case for a strict separation of church and state than any secular body ever could. And they're doing it using old-fashioned extortion. Jesus would be proud, I think.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Are there similar arrangements in states where same-sex marriage is legal? Does Massachusetts have the same religious exemption DC does, or is it stronger, more akin to what New Hampshire has? And will the dioceses in those states support their DC counterparts? I think we could see some major backlash between this and the abortion move in the House of Representatives.

Pick 'em Friday Thursday and more shameless self-promotion

2009-11-12T08:42:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again, when the NFL decides it is so determined to make its own cable channel successful that they put a weekly game on a channel no one carries. Brilliant marketing strategy. Fortunately, for this week at least, it's a suckfest of a game, so no one will really miss it. But it means I have to put my own picks up a day earlier, thus taking away what I would normally blog about on Friday. Damned NFL.

The shameless self-promotion: I'm this week's reader over at Linebreak and my poem at Redheaded Stepchild has the second most hits of any from this issue. Number one is the first poem--I'm near the bottom, which tells me that I rock. Or something. I like pretty much everything about that journal, by the way--the hit counter next to your poem, the philosophy that they only want to publish poems that other journals have rejected, the name of the journal, the site itself, which is clean and easy to navigate. It's a good example of what an online journal needs--it has personality, and isn't ashamed of its online-only status.

On to this week's picks. I still haven't had a week below .500 yet, but I continue to creep ever closer. Last week was 7-6--I had a brutal evening, as the only late game I got right was the Seattle win. I thought that as the season progressed, I'd get better, but the reverse has been true--steady decline, much like the amount of hair on my head. Winners are in caps.

Chicago at SAN FRANCISCO We should call this the "team which will hang in the wild card race until week 16 needing seven things to go right to get into the playoffs" bowl, because seriously, this game sucks. It's not the suckiest game on the schedule, but it's a tease because these are teams that are somewhere between mediocre and unlucky. If either one gets into the playoffs, it's probably a road game against the NFC East champion where they get smeared all over the stadium. The Niners are at home and I used to live there, so I choose them.

NEW ORLEANS at St. Louis This is the first of what should be two walkovers for the Saints--they have Tampa next week. I will still be terrified while watching it, assuming I can get it to stream on my backup computer, since my Powerbook probably won't be back from the shop yet and it won't be on tv down here. Maybe it's for the better, since my papers seem determined not to grade themselves.

Detroit at MINNESOTA This should also be a walkover, even if Favre isn't playing possum about his 40 year old hamstring.

ATLANTA at Carolina The Falcons are just a better team. Yeah, the Panthers have played better of late, and it's a division game so the records don't mean as much, but Atlanta is just the better team. Man that hurt to type.

Buffalo at TENNESSEE Believe it or not, this isn't the suckiest game of the week either, though it's close. It would be closer except that the Titans have rediscovered their running game. That could disappear again, so I'm not saying this is a lock, but these teams seem to me to be on different trajectories right now.

CINCINNATI at Pittsburgh Flip a coin here. That's what I did.

Tampa Bay at MIAMI The Fins are a team on the edge of being good--they're competitive most weeks, but they can't close out games yet. Henne is the real deal, with some experience. Tampa is where the Fins were two years ago. Hope they stay there.

Jacksonville at NEW YORK JETS Everything I wrote about Chicago-San Francisco could apply here--two marginal teams, both flawed in enormous ways, but with enough talent at key positions to make things interesting going at each other. Jets are at home, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the Jaguars take it.

DENVER at Washington The Broncos have taken it on the chin for the last two weeks, but that was against good teams. Washington is not a good team.

Kansas City at OAKLAND This, my friends is the suckiest game of the week, the unmovable force versus the inert object. And yet this is the game that will be on late down here in south Florida, since Fox has the Fins game at 1:00. No one outside of the Missouri/Kansas border and northern California should be subjected to this. It's cruel.

Seattle at ARIZONA Arizona's at home, which means I should pick against them, as they're 1-3 at home this year. But this is Seattle they're playing, which means what would be an otherwise easy call now blows chunks. Ugh.

Philadelphia at SAN DIEGO If the Chargers keep playing like they have been the last couple of weeks, they'll challenge Denver the rest of the way. But this is a Norv Turner team, which means logic and sense have nothing to do with the discussion.

DALLAS at Green Bay This shouldn't be close--Green Bay is not nearly as good as everyone (myself included) thought they were at the beginning of the season, and Dallas isn't as bad as I thought they were after the Giants game. So the Packers will win by 24.

New England at INDIANAPOLIS I hope this game isn't close. I hope Indy wins it by 20. Probably won't happen.

BALTIMORE at Cleveland I wonder what it feels like in Baltimore right now, to have your once-feared defense be exposed as aging and yet have a good enough offense to still keep you in games. The Saints were like that near the end of the Mora era, but the Dome Patrol, good as it was, never had the rep that the Ravens have carried for the last ten years it seems. The Ravens are looking like the odd team out in the AFC North this year, but they're not going to let Cleveland be part of the reason for that.

I Love the Cloud

2009-11-09T23:20:00.002-05:00

I learned a long long time ago to always back up my data--I still have disks from my last PC, which I got rid of in 2003, though I have no idea why I still carry them around. Habit, I assume. I'm so conscious of it that I upgraded my Powerbook's operating system when Time Machine became available, simply because it made backing up data so much easier.

Which is why I didn't freak when I woke up Saturday morning and my Powerbook was nonresponsive. Gray screen of death. Blinking file folder with a question mark on it. Happy 41st birthday to me indeed. It's in the shop now being outfitted with a new hard drive in large part because I can't afford a new computer right now, but I'm pleased that my data is safe on my Time Machine.

Or rather, I assume it is, since I've never done a system restore using it. I'm hopeful and confident, but I won't be completely sure until I actually have it up on the screen.

But since I'm paranoid, I also keep a lot of stuff in the cloud. My poems and reviews are almost exclusively on Google Docs now, and my gradebooks as well, which is important, because even if the data on my Time Machine is safe, it's not accessible right now, and the end of the semester approacheth at a fast pace. Put simply, I'd be boned if I weren't in the cloud right now, because at least some of my students have tossed quizzes they've gotten back, not to mention essays and midterms. I'd have to reconstruct an entire semester worth of grades, which would add a triple load of suck onto an already tiring semester. I had to do that once--about 4 years ago when I dropped my laptop, the one I'm typing on now while my newer one is in the shop. Cloud computing is awesome.

Pick 'em Friday and Shameless Self-Promotion

2009-11-06T09:02:00.002-05:00

You'd think that with the meager amount of blogging I've been doing of late that I'd relish the chance for two separate blog posts, but no--I'm going to combine these two. First with the promotion: new poems in Measure (complete with author's photo and .mp3 of me reading the thing) and the Waccamaw Journal.

On to the picks--I went 8-5 last week, and the longer this season goes on, the more I'm convinced that my early success was just a fluke. I might as well flip coins for some of these games, I'm convinced. Here's how I think they'll go this week. Winners in all caps.

Washington at ATLANTA When the Falcons lost to the Saints last week, it was the first time in over a year that they'd lost two games in a row. I don't see much chance of them losing three in a row, even wth Washington coming off a bye week.

Kansas City at JACKSONVILLE I'm picking the Jaguars but with absolutely no confidence. They're the kind of team that makes picking games hard, because they're consistently inconsistent. They could win or lose this game by 30 and I wouldn't be surprised either way.

GREEN BAY at Tampa Bay I suppose Josh Freeman could have the luck of the rookie starter and Tampa could steal this game--Green Bay isn't as good as a lot of the preseason folks thought they would be, after all--but I think it's more likely Freeman will get pounded pretty hard.

Houston at INDIANAPOLIS The Colts, like the Saints, are almost certain to lose a game this season, and Houston is a better team than the one which drove me out of my game-picking mind early this season, but I still like the Colts in this game.

Arizona at CHICAGO Two deeply flawed, slightly better than average teams. Chicago's at home, so I'll pick them.

Baltimore at CINCINNATI When the Ravens beat the Broncos last week, the pundits were all talking about how the Ravens were desperate for a win and so played better. I've never bought into that notion--desperate teams play poorly and give up big plays because they're taking stupid risks. Baltimore was just the better team that day. Cincy is at home and they match up better with the weaknesses in the Baltimore defense. The over in this game might be 70.

Miami at NEW ENGLAND This is my "would love to be wrong" pick. New England is getting how, and Miami is young and improving. I wouldn't be surprised to see Miami win--they're certainly good enough to compete-but New England at home is a tough game in any circumstance.

Carolina at NEW ORLEANS Carolina has some sort of insane winning streak in the Superdome, and they played well against the Cardinals last week. The Saints should win handily, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. Note to Stuart Scott of ESPN: after the Monday night game, you said Saints fans were chanting "who dey say they gonna beat them Saints?" "Who dey" is the chant of the illiterate Cincinnati Bengals fans. Illiterate Saints fans chant "who dat."*

Detroit at SEATTLE No matter who wins, football loses.

Tennessee at SAN FRANCISCO "A tale of two quarterbacks" is how this will probably be pitched to the seventeen people who watch the game.

San Diego at NY GIANTS This will also be a "tale of two quarterbacks" storyline, but more people will watch it because one of the QBs is named Manning.

Dallas at PHILADELPHIA Three weeks ago, I'd never have believed these two teams would be tied at the top of the NFC East. Dallas has gotten healthy of late on some weak competition, and Philly is at home, so I'm going with them.

Pittsburgh at DENVER Should be a good game in general. Denver's at home.

* Can you imagine the grammatical train wreck if the Saints and Bengals met in the Superbowl? I can see chant-offs, t-shirts, fisticuffs. Hmmmm.

On Hating the Yankees

2009-11-05T07:46:00.004-05:00

Last night, my friend from grad school Paul, a midwesterner who lived and worked in New York before taking his MFA and also a Yankees fan, tweeted the following: "will quietly accept that my team is reviled... and winning." I responded with "that's because Haterade is so delicious," and I think there's some truth to that, but I also think that there's more to it.

But I have to start by saying that I don't hate the Yankees--I don't feel much of anything for them, honestly. I don't carry the same passion for baseball that I do for football, and maybe even for NBA basketball. I expect a large part of that is disillusionment. Corporate baseball, which has been the model for most of my adult life, seems bent on two goals--soaking cities for all the revenue they can get, and...okay, one goal. Football has this goal as well, but their league model is a bit more socialistic on the revenue-sharing and player salary sides, so there's not as much disparity in free agent signings between small and large market teams.

If you're a baseball fan, you probably recognize where this is going, at least in part. Yankees hate is based, for many, on the notion that the Yankees, by virtue of their position as the primary team in the nation's largest city and television market, can always buy the best players and so will always factor in the championship discussion, even in the years when they don't win it. And that hate, especially if you're a small market team or if your local ownership group refuses to spend even the money it makes from revenue sharing on quality players (like the Florida Marlins, for example), has a legitimate basis, because here's your local team, sucking up valuable tax dollars (and they never generate as much as they take in--sorry) who, if they're going to win it all, has to put together a magical season to do it, while the Yankees can simply flash a bankroll and get stars to show up.

The funny part, of course, is that this is the first time since 2000 that the Yankees have won it all using that method. Other teams have done it as well--the Red Sox are no slouch in the spending department--but it's the Yankees who are reviled for it.

It's the fact that the Yankees are always in the discussion that engenders the hate--there's no similar hate for the Giants, Jets, Knicks, Islanders, Rangers or Mets, in large part because they all scuffle, some for longer periods than others--but the Yankees never do. There's this feeling that the Yankees never have to pay the full price for making a bad decision because they can always buy someone else's good eye for talent.

If only they'd go through a down period for a couple of years, we think--and by down year, we don't mean barely missing the playoffs. We mean losing 95 games. We mean being down by 15 at the All-Star break. We mean having one selection to the All-Star team, and that person getting the nod because there has to be a Yankees player on the team. If only--and this is the important part, I think--there could be a period where the discussion wasn't about them.

Because sports fans love a redemption story. We're suckers for the melodrama that sports can provide that fiction can't. There's no magic in a Yankees championship run because they're expected to be there every year.

But there's one other factor at play here--the sports media. And that was really driven home to me in 2000, which is where Paul comes back into this story. We were grad students, office-mates, first-year MFAs in northwest Arkansas, both adjusting to a new place. In my case, I was living in the largest city I'd been in since I was an infant--and that's saying something since Fayetteville was 60,000 people at the time--while Paul had moved in from New York (I believe)--a bit of culture shock for both of us, though undoubtedly more for him. As the baseball season drew to a close, Paul got more and more excited about the prospect of a subway series, and when I watched Baseball Tonight or SportsCenter, the talk was very much the same--Mets-Yankees all the time, and oh how amazing a Subway Series would be, et cetera.

I remember the day Paul told me how excited he was about the Series that year, and I think I shocked him with my reply. I said that baseball season was over, that New York had won. Admittedly, I was giving him a bit of the needle, because I knew he was a huge Yankees fan, but I really did believe that, because I didn't care about the differences between Yankees and Mets fans. It didn't matter to me.

And here's the really awesome thing about it--it didn't matter to the rest of the country either. Sportscasters were dumbfounded by the fact that tv ratings everywhere outside of New York were some of the lowest ever. It didn't matter to us--New York had won. For news media, New York is the goal--it's where you get to the top of your profession--so from that perspective, it makes perfect sense to be excited about a Subway Series. For the rest of us, meh.

The funny thing is that eventually, the Yankees will scuffle again. They have three certain future Hall-of-Famers on their roster right now in Rivera, Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, but those players are aging and will fall off, and there's no guarantee that they will be replaced with equal talent. My advice? Rebuild for a couple of years. Let the sheen wear off some. Stay down long enough for the rest of the country to see your return as a comeback story. We're sports fans. We're suckers for that stuff.

RedState, Come On Down!

2009-11-04T10:41:00.003-05:00

Let me be among the first to welcome you to the Sunshine State, where hopefully you will interfere just as effectively in next year's Senate race as you did in the NY-23 Congressional race.

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

I'm serious here--I want you to do to Charlie Crist what you did to Dede Scozzafava, and worse. I want you to crush him, to destroy him, to go scorched earth on him. I want you to try to make Marco Rubio the second coming of Jesus/Reagan/Glenn Beck, and pitch him as such. Let the Florida voters hear--in the general election campaign, of course--just what Rubio stands for. Have him be loud and proud and conservative as all hell. I'll even give you a place to stay while you're down here stumping in Broward County* on your mission to give the Democrats back the seat Mel Martinez won in 2004 when Democrats pulled something similar by submarining Janet Reno in the primary.

And a few months later, I'll be celebrating the election of Kendrick Meek to the US Senate. Come on down, y'all.

* I won't. But I can point you in the direction of a nice bridge or two to camp under.

Pick 'em Friday

2009-10-30T09:35:00.003-04:00

Morning, everyone. The coffee's brewed, the cats are fed, and the pumpkins we carved last week are puddles of goo on the back porch, so I know what I'll be doing this afternoon. I was 9-4 last week, which puts me at 71-32 for the season. That's a little above average for this sort of thing, but not superior, which means I won't be heading to Vegas to make my living any time soon. Anyway, here are this weeks picks, winners in caps. Maybe I'll have one of those magical weeks where everything goes right. I'll buy a lottery ticket just in case.

Cleveland at CHICAGO Chicago reminds me of the Saints last year--solid enough to beat the teams they're supposed to beat, but not quite sure enough of themselves as a team with a passing game to win against good teams. Cleveland is not a good team.

DENVER at Baltimore At some point, Denver will lose a game, and when they do, I'll stop picking them to win every week--I've picked against them twice now and they've proven me wrong. I'll go with them as winners until I have reason otherwise.

St. Louis at DETROIT Who cares?

San Francisco at INDIANAPOLIS The Alex Smith/Michael Crabtree era begins in earnest in San Francisco. The Niners almost pulled off an impressive comeback last week, but I think the Colts will handle them.

Seattle at DALLAS Dallas may be the least convincing 4-2 team I've seen this year, and I really think it's a case of the Cowboys not living up to the impossible hype thrown at them because of the new stadium ~~Ozymandias~~ Jerry Jones built in honor of his ego. The Cowboys should win this game pretty easily.

HOUSTON at Buffalo This is not a pick that shows confidence in Houston--it's a pick that shows no confidence in Buffalo.

MIAMI at New York Jets If you only looked at last week's scores, you'd think the Jets are going to win this in a walk, and they still might, but the Fins played the Saints tighter than the score said, while the Jets beat the snot out of the Raiders. The Fins are probably still a year away from true contention, but their second-half schedule sets up nicely for a run, and it starts with this game.

NEW YORK GIANTS at Philadelphia Put me down as one who thinks Eli Manning is a tremendously overrated quarterback. He's a league-average QB who has a great name, plays in the biggest market around, and who got hot at the right time a couple of years ago. But he's no Payton. He's not even a Donovan McNabb. But the Giants are a better team right now, and that will be enough this week.

JACKSONVILLE at Tennessee Vince Young is in at QB for the Titans, which I thought should have happened a couple of weeks ago when it became clear they weren't going to do anything this season. I don't think much will change for the team, though Jacksonville is just inconsistent enough that a Tennessee win here wouldn't be a huge upset.

Oakland at SAN DIEGO The line on this game is something like 16.5 points. I've never seen a line that big for division rivals who are only a game and a half apart in the standings.

Carolina at ARIZONA Can't work up the energy to snark at either team.

MINNESOTA at Green Bay At least this part of the Brett Favre storyline will end once this game is over, because it's unlikely that the two teams will meet again in the playoffs.

Atlanta at NEW ORLEANS I'm doing my best to remain subdued here, but it's killing me that this game is on Monday, because I don't want to wait for it. I'm going to have to grade my ass off to be done in time for kickoff, but it will happen.

Trevor Keezer, Idiot

2009-10-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

What else to say, really, about a person who claims to have been fired for wearing a pin which said "One nation under God" on his Home Depot work apron? Let's see how this really played out, shall we?

Earlier this month, he began bringing a Bible to read during his lunch break at the store in the rural town of Okeechobee, about 140 miles north of Miami. That's when he says The Home Depot management told him he would have to remove the button.

Keezer refused, and he was fired on Oct. 23, he said.

"It feels kind of like a punishment, like I was punished for just loving my country," Keezer said.

Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like Keezer is being treated unfairly. What's that?

A Home Depot spokesman said Keezer was fired because he violated the company's dress code.

Oh, so he isn't. He decided that his right to wear a particular pin superseded the store policy which said "only company-provided pins and badges can be worn on our aprons."

It gets better.

Fishel said Keezer was offered a company-approved pin that said, "United We Stand," but he declined.

Oh, so Keezer had a chance to keep his job, and was even given another pin to choose from, but decided not to take it. I don't call that being fired; I call that quitting. If my employers decide it's a condition of my employment that I wear a necktie (please don't ever do this to me, okay?) every day, then I can either wear a necktie or I can lose my job. That's the way it works.

Here's the payoff line, though. "Keezer said he was working at the store to earn money for college." Might want to work on those critical thinking skills while you're hunting for another job. And don't expect much out of that lawsuit either. A blanket policy like Home Depot's is pretty hard to touch.

My MFA Place: Fayetteville

2009-10-28T10:14:00.006-04:00

Guest blogger Amy here, writing to weigh in on the recent ascent of Seth Abramson's impressive and long-labored MFA rankings to the P&W throne: if you hadn't heard, Seth Abramson, poet and blogger, recently had his MFA rankings (which have been up and available and thoroughly explained on his website for years) adopted by Poets & Writers, a magazine, organization, and all around powerhouse of influence and resource among writers.

This has of course resulted in some blowback, in part because (as Brian so succinctly put it in his Poetic Lives Online) those rankings were not in danger of becoming "gospel" when they were on Abramson's site, but now that they wear the P&W imprimatur, few will question them, or how they were devised. And frankly, if you think those "Top 10 Most Rockinest Hairdo's of the 80's" shows on VH-1 are subjective, you haven't tried ranking locations where groups of artists gather, some as teachers, some as students, and try to get along, financially, personally, artistically, and in every other way. And while I'd love to see Andy Dick hurl out a few one-liners about Giffel's Auditorium in Old Main (it's Arkansas - are these people expecting an audience with the Queen?), this is also a very niche interest - essentially of interest to exactly one group: writers who go to MFA programs.

I went to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, as did Brian (it's where we met), which Poets & Writers (nee Abramson) ranks at 36. I think that's too low, so I've taken the liberty of moving us up a little.

Just a few things I want to point out:

1. Apparently UArk is more selective than Iowa. Eat that beeches.

2. Apparently UArk also funds better than two of the top three. Stick that one in your pants and smoke it.

3. Not having a Non-fiction program isn't that unusual (see #s 2 and 3), but UArk does have the Programs in Translation, which, IMHO, makes the whole creative writing program worthy of a bump. I wasn't in that program, but as an MFA student I had access to classes with John DuVal, which were some of the best classes I took at Arkansas - or in my life, really, and yes that is a high bar to clear. Students who go today have access to classes with Geoff Brock, too. Hullo, awesome!

4. UArk is listed at #36, but in every measure scores higher than this: 31, 25, 24, 18, 17.... er, 45. Okay, whoops, in ONE measure UArk scores lower: the Fiction program. Gee I wonder why that could be. Gee I sure do. I mean I know I went there for fiction and everything and spent half my time taking classes in poetry and translation not to mention lit classes with the PhD faculty so that my teachers would stop making comments on my boobs and actually remember my name and stuff, but I really can't imagine why UArk is listed lower for fiction than for everything else. I wonder if that means that they should conclude that the fiction side is holding them down, and maybe self-examine and self-analyze and try to determine if the way they do things might in fact not be the best way of doing things? Maybe?

Naaah.

I've said my piece.

Cartoon Femininity

2009-10-25T08:36:00.002-04:00

The news hit a few weeks ago--Marge Simpson would be on the cover of the November issue of Playboy. And she is, well, on some of them, anyway--Alina Puscau is on the rest, though Marge gets the centerfold section in all of them. Some commentators have wondered about the choice, from both sides. Why would The Simpsons, which satirizes the patriarchal world Playboy celebrates, put Marge in this situation? Why would Playboy think this a good marketing strategy toward twenty-somethings who haven't found The Simpson family edgy, well, ever?

Sarah Churchwell, writing in The Guardian attempts to answer the first question.

If The Simpsons occasionally lampoons feminism, however, it much more frequently satirises the objectification of women for commercial purposes: in one episode Marge and Lisa watch a television ad in which a man at a petrol station is approached by three scantily dressed sexy young women, strutting to pop music; one of them leans over to reveal a cross dangling in her cleavage, and a voiceover intones: "The Catholic church. We've made a few … changes."

Playboy is trying to claim the same thing in promising to reveal the devil in Marge Simpson. But Marge has been showing her devilish side for years. When she shut down the Maison Derrière, she warned Belle, its proprietor, that she was about to learn that "the two most dangerous words in the English language are 'Marge Simpson". And, actually, in 2004 Marge was featured on the cover of Maxim – in a negligee, on all fours, scrubbing the floor – so it's hard to conclude that she's letting the sisterhood particularly down by appearing in Playboy.

If Marge has always been a figure for sending up cultural questions about women's roles, then one could argue there is nowhere more appropriate for her to end up than on the cover of Playboy, the magazine that emerged in the very era – the American 1950s – that The Simpsons was born to burlesque. Playboy represented the flipside of that fantasy of domestic stability: instead, the magazine offered a sentimental fantasy of sanitised promiscuity. And of course Hefner has long been nothing if not a cartoon himself, a smirking parody of the vacuous consumption and mindless sexualisation he promulgated.

This, of course, is only a small snippet--the whole thing is worth reading. I don't have an answer for the second question I posted above, and neither does Churchwell. The notion that a Marge Simpson cover is going to pull in twenty-something readers is, well, ridiculous. It seems like a scene out of Mad Men where a bunch of middle-aged white men are trying to figure out what will sell to housewives, only with young adults as the pitchees this time. "The Simpsons--that's still edgy, right? The kids love edgy!" And Playboy has done this a lot recently, with "spreads" of women characters from video games and the like--although those made sense for the Playboy aesthetic, given their absurd dimensions and featureless faces. Whatever the reason, if the idea was to pull in twenty-somethings, it was a bad idea--maybe forty-somethings would be intrigued by it enough to buy a copy, but I'd be surprised if they see much of a bump at all.

Pick 'em Friday Saturday

2009-10-24T09:09:00.003-04:00

I'm a day late on these, y'all. Sorry about that, but this weekend's already been more hectic than most, and the really busy part is yet to come. 8-6 last week, which means I'm continuing to slip as the season progresses. You'd think that as the teams sort themselves out, I'd get better at this. Maybe I ought to try to coin flip method instead. Here are my picks for this week, winners in all caps.

SAN FRANCISCO at Houston I've been burned by Houston so many times this season, I might stop picking their games altogether and just take the loss. At least then I'd feel a little less hosed.

INDIANAPOLIS at St. Louis Last week, I said of the Philadelphia-Oakland that picking some games was easy. See how that worked out? I don't think the same thing happens here.

Minnesota at PITTSBURGH I have no real reason for this pick, other than that the game is in Pittsburgh. The Vikings have been better than I expected, Brett Favre has played out of his head, and the Steelers are an up-and-down team. But I think the unbeaten streak for the Vikings ends here.

NEW ENGLAND at Tampa Bay Tom Brady threw for five touchdowns in one quarter last week--in the snow. It won't be snowing in Tampa, but the opposing defense blows chunks.

SAN DIEGO at Kansas City This game makes me a little nervous. San Diego is coming off a tough loss to Denver and travels to Kansas City on a short week. I keep hearing the Chargers are a talented team that always starts slow--I'm waiting to see some evidence of the former.

GREEN BAY at Cleveland The Packers are an okay team. The Browns stink out loud.

NY JETS at Oakland Is this the week the San-chize recovers from his recent bout of rookie-dom? Will the Raiders make it two in a row? Will anyone outside New York and Oakland even bother to watch?

Buffalo at CAROLINA If it weren't for the Jim Zorn story, Dick Jauron would be the leading candidate for the "who loses his job first" award. Carolina isn't miles better than the Bills, and certainly has dysfunction of its own, but the Bills look like they could implode any second.

Chicago at CINCINNATI Who the hell knows with these two teams? If Cincy shows up at home, they should win this game.

NEW ORLEANS at Miami This has all the makings of a trap game--New Orleans is coming off a big win over the Giants, and has a huge rivalry/division game on Monday night next week against the Falcons, and they're playing a Dolphins team which has a terrific running game and a strong-armed young (but inexperienced) quarterback and a serviceable defense. I still think the Saints will win this one pretty handily, but it wouldn't completely shock me if they lost it.

ATLANTA at Dallas Dallas has lost its two games by a total of 9 points to teams with a combined 11-1 record, which should indicate they're a pretty competitive team. But they've won their three games against teams with a combined three wins. Atlanta is stout. I don't think this one will be close.

Arizona at NEW YORK GIANTS The Giants are at home and looking to regain a little swagger after last week's game. Arizona is unpredictable. Giants at home.

PHILADELPHIA at Washington There shouldn't be any doubt about this game, but the Eagles dropped a turd on the field in Oakland, so now nobody is sure about them. I'm sure of this--Washington stinks, and the Eagles should win pretty easily. I'm also sure of this--if McNabb plays like he did last week, the howls for Kevin Kolb to take over will be heard on Mars.

That's it. Tune in to see just how wrong I am next week.

The Also-Rans

2009-10-22T08:54:00.002-04:00

I've never really been a fan (in the fanatic sense of the word) of a championship team at any level. I focus on teams because it's something completely different to be a fan of a particular player--I'm a fan of Tiger Woods, for example, and I was a fan of both Andre Agassi and John McEnroe in their primes. The individual performer is easier for me to relate to than the team.

Part of this comes, no doubt, from being exposed to hapless teams from a very early age. I went to my first baseball games when I was in first grade (I think). We got free tickets to see the Houston Astros, and I really don't remember much other than the scoreboard lighting up when someone--I don't even know which team, much less the player--hit a home run. The Astros weren't very good at the time--this was the mid-70's--and I never really developed an affinity for them because I was too young to understand the sport, especially since my parents weren't the kind to let me play little league.

My first team experience was the New Orleans Saints; I moved to Louisiana when I was seven, just before starting the second grade, and the Saints were bad--as they had been and as they would remain for many years afterward. They were also the only game in town, mostly, and the other games in town were also bad. The New Orleans Jazz were creeping slowly toward respectability, led by Pistol Pete Maravich (probably the least-known all-time-great basketball player in history), but they still lost more than they won. There was no baseball team, and New Orleans's contribution to college sports was Tulane University, not exactly a hotbed of excellence.

I felt an affinity for the Saints. They came into the league the year before I was born, and seemed as hapless on the field as I did on the playground before school and during recess. I was not an athletic child--glasses in kindergarten and asthma will do that to you--but I loved playing all the same, even though it meant trips to the optician and learning how to repair broken glasses with tape and paperclips. Steve Bartkowsi's Hail Mary against the Saints to complete an incredible comeback still stings thirty years later. I turned 12 the year the Saints went 1-15 one year after going 8-8, knocking on the door of what was their elusive first winning season. They beat the Jets. I remember being nervous before the Saints played the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were 0-26 at the time going back over two seasons, desperately hoping the Saints wouldn't be their first victim. I took no solace in the fact that the Bucs would win their next game, and would then make the playoffs the following year.

The story of Saints futility is a long one--thirty years before even having a winning season, and only 8 of 41 winning seasons total. Only three head coaches in the team's history have winning records: Jim Mora, who led the team to their first continued success; Jim Haslett, who led them to their first playoff victory; and Sean Payton, who has them currently at or near the top of most power rankings. Other teams have had really bad eras--the Cardinals had a really crappy couple of decades recently--but no team has ever defined futility over the long haul like the Saints.

So it's no surprise, given my love for the Saints, that when I started hunting for a baseball team to adopt (since we had no New Orleans team) that I would gravitate toward one which felt familiar. I shifted from team to team as a kid, mainly following players--the Dodgers of Steve Garvey and Ron Cey, the Cardinals of Willie McGee and Tommy Herr, George Brett's Royals (I still have the glove I got after Brett's .390 season)--but didn't really follow a team until I was an adult. I'm a Cubs fan.

When the Red Sox ended their run of World Series futility a few years ago, lots of commentators suggested that Boston fans would finally have to give up their fetishization of losing, because they had nothing to complain about. That's not going to happen--Sox fans will continue to internalize their status as losers until the Sox have won as many World Series as the hated Yankees, which will probably happen about the time the head of Richard Nixon wins the presidency of Earth.

Cubs fans are now alone in their celebration of mediocrity, at least in baseball. I don't celebrate it, though. I would love to see the Cubs win the Series, just as I am hoping against all hope that the Saints pull it off this year. And I wouldn't feel like a part of me is missing if that happens. I don't root for also-rans because I'm celebrating crappiness--I root for them because they're all I know how to root for. The Saints trained me to have hope just so it could be dashed. I don't know any other way to react as a fan.

Bill Donohue: Atheism's Best Friend

2009-10-20T17:16:00.002-04:00

Forget Richard Dawkins, forget PZ Myers, forget Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett or any of the other prominent atheists out there. The best proponent for atheism today is William Donohue, President of the Catholic League. He penned an amazing parody of conservative Catholic thought in the Washington Post today. Hilarious stuff. Check this stuff out.

Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, "Thou Shalt Not." But they continue with their death-style anyway.

It's brilliant the way he completely ignores the Catholic Church's long history of aiding and abetting the sexual misconduct of its own priesthood, both with children and with adults. Check out some more of it.

There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult. And when someone finally makes a film that makes Christians proud, he is run out of town. Were it not for Mel Gibson, there would have been no "Passion of the Christ."

Did you see how he skipped the whole anti-Semitic rampage Gibson went on, as well as how much stuff Gibson has in production at present, both as an actor and as a producer? Good thing this is parody. What else?

Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge. Indeed, practicing Catholics are no longer welcome in leadership roles in the Party

Yeah--well, there's Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House...and President Obama just put Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court...Joe Biden is Vice President...Pat Leahy is a major committee chair in the Senate...and Congressional Catholic Democrats outnumber Catholic Republicans 2 to 1. I'm starting to think he's serious.

The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

Oh, great way to close the deal with the parody, because you know, with all that breeding going on, there's no way atheism is growing, right? I mean, you never hear of the kid of religious parents turning away from religion and becoming a non-believer do you? Doesn't happen--you get born into a church, you stay there forever, I guess.

Except that he's serious about all this. Incredibly, completely wrong, but serious. He's the Christopher Hitchens of Catholicism as far as pompous dickholery goes, but without the (slightly) redeeming ability to write well.

Limbaugh pulls a Nixon

2009-10-17T10:14:00.002-04:00

The Wall Street Journal--no surprise--gave over some space to Rush Limbaugh so he could cry about how he's not a racist. Much of Limbaugh's defense in his piece is centered around the one quote falsely attributed to him that suggested that he had supported, in the abstract, slavery. He didn't say it, plain and simple. But he has said many other racially charged things in the past, from calling then Senator Obama a "halfrican" to comparing black athletes to gang members just for starters. But the second I saw the swerve Limbagh was trying to put on this story, I knew I'd seen something similar--from Rick Perlstein's great book Nixonland.

You didn't have to attack to attack. Better, much better, to give up something to the mark: make him feel he has one up on you. Let him pounce on your "mistake." That makes him look unduly aggressive. Then you sprang the trap, garnering the pity by making the enemy look like a self-righteous and hyper-intellectual enemy of common sense. You attacked jujitsu-style, positioning yourself as you attacked, inspiring a strange sort of protective love among voters whose wounded resentments grow alongside your performance of being wounded. Your enemies appear only to have died of their own hand. Which makes you stronger.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's close. Limbaugh is trying to spring the trap by arguing (correctly) that he didn't say the racist thing he was accused of saying and thus (incorrectly) all things that his enemies are saying are false. He's doing a bit of the "my accusers are shitbags" dance as well.

But the big thing he's doing--and with a moderate degree of success, it seems to me--is stoking resentment among his fans, and even among people who might not otherwise give Limbaugh a second's thought, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it. He's claiming the mantle of the common man; Rush Limbaugh, the highest paid radio host in the history of the world, so wealthy he broadcasts from his Palm Beach compound, so wealthy he can afford to be part of an NFL franchise ownership group, is playing the common man card. And doing it well, I might add.

Funny thing is that Limbaugh probably should be an NFL owner. He meets all the criteria--he hates higher taxes on the wealthy, he loves corporate welfare, he hates unions. How is he not qualified to own a team?

Limbaugh is doing one other smart thing here--he's not attacking the people who are responsible for denying him his dream. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn't force Dave Checketts to toss Limbaugh out of the ownership group. Neither did DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA leader. Neither did any of the players who said they wouldn't play for a team Limbaugh owned. Nope. The other owners, many of whom share Limbaugh's positions on taxes and unions and the like, didn't want him around. But he can't attack them, not if he's hoping, like Nixon, to be able to make a comeback, perhaps as part of another ownership group one day.

Pick 'em Friday

2009-10-16T15:27:00.002-04:00

9-5 last week. I knew I was too hot to start the season. One of these weeks it's going to go completely bad and I'll get like 3 games right. Maybe this will be the week. Winners in all caps.

Baltimore at MINNESOTA I've let Brett Favre get into my head, picking against him because I'm so tired of the football pundit adulation for him, and it has cost me a couple of times this season. So I'm picking him, okay? Plus, I'm starting to think that the Ravens defense isn't as fearsome as it once was.

Detroit at GREEN BAY Green Bay can't stop anyone. Neither can Detroit. Green Bay has a better offense, I think, which means this will be a 6-3 game.

KANSAS CITY at Washington So far, Washington has given Carolina and Detroit their first wins of the season, and barely eked out wins against Tampa and the Rams. They have another winless team here in KC, and I think that if Washington loses this one, they might not win another game this season.

Cleveland at PITTSBURGH The Cleveland winning streak stops at 1.

St. Louis at JACKSONVILLE Seattle stomped the snot out of the Jaguars last week. Good thing Jacksonville isn't playing Seattle again.

Houston at CINCINNATI I'm starting to believe. They're a freak play away from being unbeaten this season.

New York Giants at NEW ORLEANS I said I would pick the Saints every week, and I have hopes for this game. The Saints, I am convinced, can hang with anyone this year. They won't go unbeaten--that's too difficult a task for any team to pull off in a league with this much parity--but they can legitimately win any game they play this year, and I hope they win this one.

CAROLINA at Tampa BayThis should be an ugly game--not quite the turdiest game of the week, but it's not a good one.

Arizona at SEATTLE Looks like the NFC West is going to be competitive this year after all. Seattle surprised me last week. I hope they can keep it up.

PHILADELPHIA at Oakland Some games are easy to pick.

Tennessee at NEW ENGLAND I'd be lying if I said I thought Tennessee would be winless at this point in the season, but I also didn't think they were as good as their 13-3 record last year. There are a number of NFL pundits who aren't willing to write off the Titans yet--I don't know why.

Buffalo at NEW YORK JETS The Jets have to be happy to get home after two miserable games on the road at New Orleans and Miami. And Rex Ryan has to be wondering what the hell happened to his defense against the wildcat. They'll get healthy against the Bills, who lost last week despite holding the opposing quarterback to 2 completions on 17 attempts. Sanchez should do considerably better.

Chicago at ATLANTA If I could choose one game to be wrong on, it would be this one. I really don't have a feel for either team just yet; rather, I don't have a feel for how good Chicago is yet. I suspect they're not as good as their record, but I could easily be wrong.

Denver at SAN DIEGO This is my upset special for the week. It just feels like a trap game--Denver is coming off a huge win and going into the bye week; they've exceeded expectations and are riding high; and San Diego has started slow. It all adds up to an upset in my eyes.

Sigh

2009-10-15T17:45:00.002-04:00

This guy isn't a racist either, I guess.

HAMMOND, La. - A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

Figured as much.

This story hurts a little more because I lived in and around Hammond for about ten years. I got my B.A. there, got married and divorced there, completely changed my life there. Hammond is where I became politically aware, where I learned to tend bar, where I moved started writing poetry again. It's also where I became aware of just how ingrained and institutionalized racism is, and saw firsthand the ways the inhabitants of small southern towns negotiate racially charged situations, which is to say the ways African-Americans often shrug off insults most white people would get incensed about.

So it's not surprising to discover that a white man in Tangipahoa Parish feels perfectly fine with enforcing his idea of what is good on a biracial couple, because that's the way it's always been. That's what unquestioned privilege will do for you--it'll make you think that it's your place to deny a couple the legal right to get married because you're sure you know what's best for them and any kids they may decide to have. It's the arrogance of ignorance writ large across a community.

And it makes me sad because there's a lot about Hammond I really love. It's the place where I was reborn, where I went from being an unhappy Jehovah's Witness to a happy hedonist, where I rediscovered my love of poetry and discovered a love of politics and journalism, and where I saw my black friends and white friends eye each other with caution and suspicion, unconsciously at times, the white ones often unaware they were doing it at all. Hell, I was unaware I was doing it half the time or more.

I love Hammond because it's the place where I started my journey to become the person I am today, and it's times like these that I understand the closing line of Natasha Trethewey's "Pastoral." Trethewey is biracial, an example that someone like Bardwell would no doubt point to as confirmation of his theory that mixed-race couples don't last. Trethewey's poem puts her beside the Fugitive poets posing for a photograph, and the photographer tells everyone--Robert Penn Warren is the one fugitive named in the poem--to say "race" as they smile for the picture. She ends the poem this way:

My father's white, I tell them, and rural.
You don't hate the South? they ask. You don't hate it?

I don't, even though I hate much of what happens there.

Rush Limbaugh and the NFL

2009-10-15T09:13:00.004-04:00

So it looks like Rush Limbaugh won't be an NFL team owner after all, due in part to the outcry from players, the public, and even some other team owners. But before the NFL throws its shoulder out of joint patting itself on the back for having rebuffed Rush and his often racist rhetoric, let's remember that the NFL has a racism problem of its own.

This is the logo for the second most valuable team in the NFL right now, the one located in the nation's capital, and it's highly offensive. The term "redskin" is, for Native Americans, the equivalent of the n-word. This isn't like other team names that evoke Native Americans--Braves, Indians, Chiefs, Seminoles--though some Native American groups have often objected to those as well. This is a derogatory word, a throwback to a time when casual racism was, well, casual, and it's long past time that the NFL mandated a change in the team name.

There's not even an economic reason to fight the change--sales of new merchandise would be incredible as people moved to support the new name, and there would no doubt be a market in "vintage" merchandise as well. Sure, there would be some pushback--there always is when social change takes place--but the result would be a net good.

One group that could help make this happen is sports reporters, both in newspapers and on television. If they refused to use the word, if they only referred to the Washington team as Washington (which I do and have done for quite some time on this blog), the name would lose some of its current cachet, and changing it wouldn't be a big deal, especially if the reporters acknowledged why they were doing it.

Part of the reason for the lack of movement on this has no doubt to do with the lack of visibility that Native American groups suffer as a tiny minority. They're not a large part of the population, and their populations tend to be concentrated, so their already limited political power is diffused even more. But that's no excuse--if the NFL wouldn't have a team named the Wetbacks or the Spics or Gooks, it shouldn't have a team named the Redskins. It's offensive, and it's long past time that the team changed its name.

This is my story

2009-10-13T08:52:00.002-04:00

I'd have blogged about this yesterday if I'd had a spare breath to draw--as it is, I'll have to do a quick and dirty on it. Someone sent PZ Myers a scan of an image from The Watchtower which warns about potential dangers to your faith which may seem innocent at first. Number two on the list is "A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university." PZ is flip about it, as you might expect, and he has every reason to be so, since a large part of his argument against religion is that it can't stand up to rational argument. And he's right. I'm living proof.

I've written before about growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, purveyors of the magazine mentioned above--in fact, I'll have a book of poems coming out next year (barring severe budget cuts--fingers crossed! (yes, a superstitious move in a blog about rationality--how many more digressions can I make?)) that chronicle some of those experiences. But when I left the church, it was in large part due to the fact that I started attending college when I was 26.

I had the purest of motives--I was married and stuck in a dead end job and I'd gotten a repetitive-motion injury in my shoulder and elbow. I needed another career, and the Witnesses had mollified their stance on college education ever so slightly, so I jumped at the chance. I was a Chemistry major, and one of my first classes was Zoology, taught by the pre-med advisor, a short, squat Cajun man who didn't use the book. Instead, you showed up at the beginning of class to face a chalkboard full of terms--this was the outline for his lecture, and he tested on his lectures. He also gave us outside research for our exams--and the first subject was Australopithecus afarensis, aka Lucy. Mind you, I was a good Witness who thought he believed the Witness version of creation--a modified young earth view--(they believe the earth is ancient, but that humans are only 6000 years old) so this research took some processing.

At first, I used the standard creationist dodge--I'll write what I have to for the exam, but I believe the Bible. But it didn't work, because so many other contradictions started popping up, and when I told Elders in my congregation I was having problems reconciling this stuff, they told me to pray for more faith. They didn't try to refute what I was learning--they asked me to bathe in more ignorance.

This wasn't the only thing that caused me to leave the church--I was physically tired all the time from being a full-time student, a full-time worker, a dad and a Witness, and my marriage fell apart at the same time. This was the final straw more than the catalyst. But it gave me yet another reason to start questioning what I'd believed my entire life, and opened up a whole new set of possibilities for me. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time--all this new stuff to learn, but all tinged with uncertainty. It was a heady drug for someone who'd reveled in absolutes his whole life. I've never looked back.

Pick' em Friday

2009-10-09T00:42:00.003-04:00

10-4 last week after 3 straight weeks of 11-5. But the second I put a penny on a game, Jamarcus Russell will complete 70% of his passes and the Rams will score 80, you can bet on it. So I'm sticking with picking and that's it. Winners in all caps.

Oakland at NY GIANTS Eli Manning might not play. Eli Whitney could rise from the grave and beat this Raiders team, and Whitney died a hundred years before football was invented.

Washington at CAROLINA Washington is playing badly enough that Tampa nearly beat them last week. Tampa.

Cincinnati at BALTIMORE Let's see if Carson Palmer gets the same bullcrap roughing-the-passer calls that Tom Brady got last week. Somehow I doubt it.

DALLAS at Kansas City Dallas is not very good. Kansas City is really bad, but at least Rush Limbaugh isn't interested in buying them. Not very good > very bad.

Tampa Bay at PHILADELPHIA Donovan McNabb will be back this week, apparently. It's good to scrimmage before you have a real game when you're coming back from an injury.

PITTSBURGH at Detroit Detroit will win again this season. Just not this week.

Cleveland at BUFFALO Sucky game of the week, which means it will be on television down here, and nothing else will be.

MINNESOTA at St. Louis Side note: anyone who thinks black players will hesitate to sign with St. Louis in the future because Rush Limbaugh is part-owner is crazy. Maybe an elite player with options will think twice, but most players will grab the opportunity. There are only so many roster slots to go around in the NFL, and players have limited career opportunities.

Atlanta at SAN FRANCISCO My hatred for teh Atlanta Falcons dates back to November 12, 1978. I was ten years old, just getting into football and the Saints were my home team. Steve Effing Bartkowski led the Falcons to two scores in the last 2:23 to beat the Saints, with the last touchdown coming on a Hail Mary.

Years later, when the Saints had a brief run of excellence under Jim Mora, they were always in the shadow of the San Francisco 49ers, led by Joe Montana. I can take no sides here. This is my rooting for an earthquake to swallow both teams whole game.

Jacksonville at SEATTLE Someone's got to win this thing, I guess.

NEW ENGLAND at Denver I would dearly love to be wrong about this one, but I don't think I will be, especially if the refs continue to treat Tom Brady like Michael Jordan in a playoff game, throwing a flag anytime a defensive player breathes on him. I have to admit, there's a part of me that admires Brady's willingness to pull such a wimpy move asking for that flag on Suggs--he needed to keep the drive going. Too bad he had to sacrifice his dignity to do it. I'd be willing to bet that the next time those two teams face off, someone on the Ravens defense is going to earn a fifteen-yarder, get his money's worth.

Houston at ARIZONA Houston finally broke its streak of doing the opposite of what I projected last week. Let's see if they can start a new one. Maybe this very special Houston Texans bear will inspire them to, umm, greatness?

INDIANAPOLIS at Tennessee This shouldn't be a contest, no matter how desperate the Titans are to win.

NY Jets at MIAMI I don't really know why I'm picking the Fins here, but I am. Conventional wisdom says the Jets will be up for revenge for the end of last season, will be looking to redeem themselves for last week, and are the better team. But I've gone with conventional wisdom for most of these picks, so I'm taking a chance here. The Fins will win big enough to get all their fans' hopes up, and then will dash them on the rocks as the season progresses.

Now, back to the stack of papers that won't grade themselves no matter how much Tiger Woods Golf I play. They're really starting to bum me out.

Information Is Useless in a Vacuum

2009-10-08T16:55:00.002-04:00

Amy and I have been dieting--safely and along with a moderate increase in increase--in an attempt to lose some weight. I was pushing 275 in April, and that's not healthy for anyone who's only 5'10, no matter what your bone structure, and I'm currently at about 258-260. One of the tools we've been using it the Lose It! iPhone app, which is basically a calorie counter that credits you for exercise and tells you how many calories you should aim for daily in order to lose to a target weight over the long term. It also gives you numbers for maintaining your weight once you've gotten there.

I bring this up because of this piece from the Freakonomics blog about the NYC initiative to require the posting of calorie amounts for menu items in hopes of raising awareness about healthy eating. The early results are not encouraging for people who were hoping to get people to stop gorging.

We found that 27.7 percent [of people] who saw calorie labeling in New York said the information influenced their choices. ...However, we did not detect a change in calories purchased after the introduction of calorie labeling.

Dubner wonders if the nudge is too subtle, and if a something more pushy would be more effective. My guess, in large part because before I started this move to lose weight I had no idea how many calories I was taking in or how many was reasonable, is that people are looking at the options in a vacuum. The numbers aren't having an impact because there's no context for them. A 600 calorie burger doesn't seem so bad until you realize that it's between a third and a quarter of your recommended caloric intake for the day (in my case, if I want to lose a pound and a half a week), and that it'll take you an hour and a half of brisk walking to work it off. The people who came up with the idea are probably so in tune with what they consider a healthy caloric intake that the context is obvious for them--not so much for the rest of us.

The problem is that because bodies are so different from each other, there's no way to put up a table that gets this message across. I'm allowed more calories than Amy according to Lose It! because I've got 5-6 inches (and significantly more poundage) on her, but those numbers go down as I lose weight. Short of an interactive calorie system installed in restaurants, you're not going to be able to put across that kind of personalized information, and so the numbers will continue to exist in a vacuum. And most people won't put them to use.