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Just got back from my first bike ride of the season. It got all the way up into the high 60's here in Connecticut today, and I had a half day at work, so I got back home, aired up the tires, and set out for a moderately intense (for me) 15-mile ride. Took me an hour on the nose. Only thing that marred the experience was a brisk headwind on the south bound stretches. (Frankly, sometimes I think I'd rather ride in the rain than into a headwind. I hate headwinds.) Other than that, it was a picture perfect romp through rolling green hills studded with farms and the occasional golf course. So the cycling season has officially begun in ToastWorld. I'm going to need to log a lot of miles this summer to get to where I want to be in terms of weight and aerobic fitness. Martial arts twice a week has kept me from turning into a balloon over the winter, but it's not enough by itself to get me where I want to be. That'll require ample helpings of cycling and hiking. And on a completely unrelated note -- no, seriously, no relation whatsoever -- I just cracked open my first Corona of the season... Listening to NPR in the shower just now, and here's Bush discussing Canadian PM Stephen Harper's position on the softwood lumber dispute: "I appreciate his steely resolve on this matter." Yes, he really did say "steely". Dude, just because he's a "conservative" doesn't mean you have to project your dorky-ass faux-tough-guy image onto him, OK? Man. In other news, can I just say how much I love taking a shower that first morning after a hair cut? You know, you've let it grow out really long, to the point where it was taking forever to get the shampoo and/or conditioner into it, and then - haircut! - and it's like, zip! Fully saturated in just seconds. Awesomely refreshing experience. In comments on my Scalia post the other day, Chemist suggested that Scalia had not given the Finger, but had instead used an equivalent Sicilian gesture which many may be familiar with, the Brushing of the Chin. Turns out he was correct. Via Atrios, here's the scoop from the Boston Herald: Despite Scalia's insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper "got the story right." "The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,' " punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said. The Italian phrase means "(expletive) you." So, indeed, "justice" Scalia was reaching back deep into his Sicilian heritage to tell us what we could go do with ourselves. The only practical difference in outcome, of course, is that now I have to go find out what the Sicilian word for "douchebag" is... | Tags: Scalia, feminine hygiene I made a point of swearing off reading and/or commenting on Richard Cohen's columns some time ago. The man's work is so vapid and childish that dismantling his "arguments" is just too easy a matter to be bothered with. I can stretch my intellectual capacities far more effectively by doing a Sudoku puzzle on the "easy" setting. Furthermore, his studied pose as Washington's Last Reasonable Liberal is just unbelievably grating. I mean, really: How many more months can the Post let this guy draw a paycheck for affecting the same simpering "Can't we all get along?" attitude and tut-tutting "the Left" for their unfairness to president Bush? Isn't that schtick a little tired at this point? And yet... Oh, dammitall. When I brought up the front page of the Post this morning and saw the headline "Bush Wanted War" over Cohen's byline, I just... I had to look, OK? I had to know. I had to find out just what had finally tipped Cohen off to one of the Great Obvious Truths of our time. Now, if at this point you want to surf on, I'll forgive you because, be warned, this could give you a serious migraine. Ready? Here we go: It is my firm belief that if, say, a few dozen people simultaneously did an Internet search for the words "Bush lied," computers all over the country would crash and the energy grid would buckle, producing a rolling blackout that would begin somewhere around Terre Haute, Ind., and end in Barnstable, Mass. So common is the statement "Bush lied" that it seems sometimes that I am the only blue-state person who does not think it is true. Then, last week, the indomitable Helen Thomas changed all that with a single question. She asked George Bush why he wanted "to go to war" from the moment he "stepped into the White House," and the president said, "You know, I didn't want war." With that, the last blue-state skeptic folded. So... ? Bush said "You know, I didn't want war", and, like magic, the scales fell from Cohen's eyes? I don't get it. Bush has expressed this exact same sentiment thousands of times, and it has always been a lie. The evidence for Bush's obsession with invading Iraq -- evidence that Cohen, amazingly, goes on to cite in his column as if he's just now being exposed to it, including stories from Richard Clarke's and Bob Woodward's respective books, both of which are on the deep discount shelves at this point -- has been out there seemingly forever. For some reason, though, this time, when Bush repeated this particular lie, Cohen suddenly saw through him? Perhaps this was the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. Yes, that's it. Cohen must have been brainwashed to ignore and excuse Bush's mendacity until he lied using exactly the right sequence of words. So phrases like "never wanted to go to war", "only used war as a last resort", and "nobody wants war, least of all me" flowed through Cohen's consciousness unmolested, but the precise phrase "You know, I didn't want war" triggered him to a state of wakefulness, restoring some measure of whatever bullshit-detecting abilities he possessed prior to being trained as a journalistic sleeper agent and sent underground. Yeah. That's the ticket. In truth, of course, we all know there's nothing different about what Bush is saying today from what he was saying yesterday, the day before that, the month before that, and the year before that. Bush has been lying to our faces since before he took the oath of office about all manner of things, but with regard to Iraq in particular, his lies have been cut-and-dry and easy to spot. Remember, this is the guy who keeps blurting out "Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in!" at all sorts of inopportune moments. It's particularly despicable and cowardly, then, for Cohen to play the "skeptic" card. He and others like him -- and we see them emerge now with some regularity -- would have us believe that they bravely stood apart from all the wild-eyed Bush Haters, dispassionately observing events, and only when the evidence of Bush's malfeasance truly rose to the level where it overwhelmed them did they, regretfully, conclude that something was amiss. The truth is that we Bush Haters -- and I'll call myself one proudly -- saw what was happening all along. We saw through the lies and manipulation from Day One and stood aghast at the immorality of our "leaders" and the somnambulance of the guardians of truth in the press. We were awake with passion trying to defend our country from the lunatics who were driving it over a cliff while the Richard Cohens of the world were dreaming pleasant dreams and gazing, glassy-eyed, down their noses at us. So now, three years into the violent catastrophe of the Iraq war and five years into this disastrous presidency, Richard Cohen, the self-styled "last blue-state skeptic" has come around? Sorry, jackass, but this bandwagon's full. | Tags: Richard Cohen, Bush, Iraq, lies NPR's Morning Edition just ran a great story on Ned Lamont's primary challenge to Joe Lieberman. Click through and give it a listen. It'll give you a rush of Nedrenaline for sure. During the segment, they had a few snippets of Lieberman defending himself. In one, he says: "I've taken a position that I understand is controversial with many people in the Democratic Party on Iraq. I've done it not for reasons of increasing my political popularity - I knew it would not in the Democratic Party - but I'm doing it because I think it's right." Whether he knows it or not, Lieberman's attempt to fashion himself as a noble Man of Principle is a defense against a straw man. I am unaware of anyone on the left who believes that Lieberman's position on Iraq is the result of political calculation (in contrast to, say, Hillary Clinton, who almost certainly came by her hawkishness after a pow wow with several consultants). No, to be fair to the senator, I believe him when he says that his position on Iraq is one of principle. I believe him when he says that he continues to support the Iraq war because he thinks it was the right thing to do. And that's the problem: Invading Iraq wasn't the right thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do. That Lieberman hasn't budged an inch after three years of this nightmare demonstrates not that he is a noble man of principle, but rather that he is staggeringly obtuse. Most Dems who supported the war have at least come around a little bit. They've at least had some second thoughts which they've voiced in public. Not our Joe. He's hard-core. He's as stubborn as Bush in his determination to continue with this god-awful mess. That's why he has to go. Not the only reason, mind you, but the overriding reason. I've got a million beefs with Lieberman, but even if I didn't, even if I agreed with him on every other issue and he was a progressive and he stood up to the monsters in the GOP, this utter fucking cluelessness on Iraq would dictate that I vote against him. Iraq is one of the worst blunders in our nation's history. Any politician who still stands 100% behind that blunder needs to go, and that's that. | Tags: Lieberman, Iraq, wrong Well, I haven't had a cry like that in a while. Got some bad news to share and I might as well get it out of the way as I'm in the process of numbing myself. Tracy went in for her follow-up bloodwork this morning. The lab called her back a few hours ago. She's not pregnant. False positive on Friday, it appears. The nurse described it as a "chemical pregnancy", which from what I could glean means that Tracy's body had responded sufficiently to an implantation attempt to fake out the test, but things really didn't take. Said piece of news is fucking with my head pretty badly at the moment. Honestly, I was far more equipped to deal with a "No" on Friday than a "Yes" then and a "No" a few days later. That's fucked up. Really, really fucked up. As much as I tried to hedge and keep my expectations low... well, let's just say you can do a lot of thinking about the future in four days. | Tags: IVF Via Shakes, an interesting piece in Time Magazine analyzing the upcoming 2006 elections (emphasis mine): Iraq is driving nearly all the big indicators the wrong way for Republicans. In a TIME poll conducted last week, Bush's job approval rating was mired at 39%; 3 in 5 Americans said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and when those surveyed were given the choice between a generic Republican and a generic Democrat for Congress, the nameless Democrat won, 50% to 41%. The signs suggest an anti-Republican wave is building, says nonpartisan electoral handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, whose Rothenberg Political Report is closely followed in Washington. "The only question is how high, how big, how much force it will have. I think it will be considerable." Now, I'm no Laird Hamilton, but I picked up a few things about body surfing back on the epic Spring Break trip my frat brothers and I took back in 1990. Here's the thing: If you want a wave to carry you someplace, it's not enough to just sit there and wait for it. You have to do something too. You have to get your own momentum moving in front of it just as it comes to you. If you do that, it will pick you up and take you for a ride. If you just sit there, it'll roll under you and keep going. So what's it going to be, Dems? Do you have the strength, the timing, and the presence of mind to catch the "anti-Republican wave"? Or are you just going to do your usual dead-man's float and let this roll on by? | Tags: Democrats, 2006 Elections, surfing Put on your waders, people, because the swamp of right-wing lies which we are forced to venture into daily is about to get a lot deeper. Three years of expert analysis have not given the Bush administration or its defenders one iota of support for their illegal war. As hard as they've tried to keep spinning yarns about the Iraqi "threat", the fabric of lies about WMD's and Al-Quaeda ties has disintegrated in their hands, and as the threads have fallen away, so has Bush's public support. And yet, even as the facts and the experts deserted them, the White House and their loyal GOP backers knew they had one place left to turn to. A place where creative lying is the currency of the realm. A place where scheming ambition and industriousness abound in quantities sufficient to shake the pillars of Reality itself. Yes, that's right: They're turning to the right-wing blogosphere. Ripped from the front page of the New York Times (and with apologies to Keith Olbermann) here it is, today's Worst Idea in the World: WASHINGTON, March 27 -- American intelligence agencies and presidential commissions long ago concluded that Saddam Hussein had no unconventional weapons and no substantive ties to Al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion. But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government. Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops. Less than two weeks into the project, and with only 600 out of possibly a million documents and video and audio files posted, some conservative bloggers are already asserting that the material undermines the official view. On his blog last week, Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama, quoted a document reporting a supposed scheme to put anthrax into American leaflets dropped in Iraq and declared: "Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!" Wow! All those congressional commissions? All those presidentially hand-picked inspection teams on the ground in Iraq? What a waste of time and money! Ray Robison found the smoking gun in just two weeks. Do you feel your gorge beginning to rise yet? What stunning hypocrisy. In a time when the White House classifies everything from Dick Cheney's lunch menu to the members of his special energy committee, Republicans decide that it's OK to make public a warehouse worth of sensitive Iraqi intelligence documents. And why? So that right-wing bloggers can second guess the experts. So that the Assrockets of the world can feverishly flip through a million pages of cryptic, faded memos, most of which are in Arabic, and, prodded by their masters' desires, convince the world to see what the right wants it to see: A False Reality where Saddam spent his workdays plotting nuclear Armageddon and his weekends socializing with Osama. Count on this: The storylines are about to get more twisted than ever. Into the swamp we go! | Tags: Iraq, right-wing bloggers, lies With the recent shuffling of the Supreme Court, the title of Nuttiest Justice is back up for grabs. The title of Biggest Douchebag on the Bench, however, is all locked up. Tony "No Principles" Scalia just won that award in a walk: BOSTON, March 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics. A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state. "You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian." The 20-year veteran of the high court was caught making the gesture by a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston's newspaper. "Don't publish that," Scalia told the photographer, the Herald said. Flipping off reporters in a church. I wonder how that will sell to the "Values" crowd. And how about old Tony? He's on a tear. I mean, this went down less than a day after the crotchety cocksucker said that Gitmo detainees basically had no rights and dismissed those who would question him as "crazy". Quite the news cycle he's having. But anyhow, back to Fingergate. Did you note the nice touch he used in explaining himself? "That's Sicilian" Cute, huh? I think that's Tony's way of signalling to us that he's a tough guy. You know, from the neighborhood and shit. Me? I don't go in much for macho posturing, but since church-state separation is something that I care very deeply about, maybe I should respond to "justice" Scalia in words he can understand: You flip that fockin' finga in my face and I'll fockin' break it off, capiche? In all seriousness, though, this is what we've come to: A reporter asks a question about legitimate constitutional concerns that American citizens might have, and a sitting Supreme Court justice responds by giving him the finger. What the fuck has happened to my country? | Tags: Scalia, church/state separation, the finger I usually try to save up all of my anti-religious-fundamentalist bile for our right-wing Christians here at home, but I've got to make an exception in this case. This freakshow in Afghanistan is just beyond the fucking pale: More than a thousand protesters took to the streets in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Monday morning. They demanded that Mr Rahman be tried and executed for converting to Christianity. Can you believe that shit? They're protesting because they want to kill a guy for believing in a different friggin' myth than they do. How are these people any different from the mobs who showed up for witch burnings four or five centuries ago? They're not, that's how. They're barbarians. And these are commoners! Lay people! I knew that a fair number of Islamic clergymen in the Middle East were bat-shit insane, but for everyday people to take to the streets like this, absolutely intent on taking a man's life because he stopped believing in their god and started believing in a different one? That's so revolting, so primitive, so fucking evil that it borders on sub-human behavior. I'm sorry. I really am just unbelievably disgusted about this. | Tags: Islamists, barbarians Just heard this on NPR's Morning Edition: Joe Lieberman believes that Bush's NSA wiretapping program was "outside the law". What the fuck kind of phrase is that? Senator, to say that what Bush did is merely "outside" the law is to suggest that the legislature never contemplated such acts. They did. In fact, Bush's activities are precisely what the FISA law was meant to proscribe. What Bush did was not "outside" the law. It was illegal. | Tags: Lieberman, weasel, NSA 05:25 PM: Ah well. Connecticut loses in overtime. What are you gonna do? Kind of a bittersweet way to go out. Had they lost to Albany, Kentucky, or even Washington, I could have pointed to all their fuckups and berated them for not playing to their potential. Instead, they played a clean, well-executed game and lost to a team that simply played a little bit better. Have to give it up to George Mason, too. If they're an eleven seed then I'm a fuckin' born-again Christian. That team is playing as well or better than anyone in the tournament. I wish them the best of luck next week. 04:58 PM: These fucking cocksuckers just will not miss a shot. 04:48 PM: Oh shit. Oh fucking shit. This fucking goddamned team is going to give me a heart attack. Jesus christ. GMU's Skinn misses the front end of a one-and-one, up two with 5.5 left. UConn rebounds, and Denham Brown drives the length of the floor and puts in a reverse layup at the fucking BUZZER to tie it up and send the game to OT. And all I can say is WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE GUYS??? Can't they just WIN a fucking game straight up like a normal team? Without all the goddamned drama? 04:45 PM: Huge series of plays right there. Two consecutive blocks by UConn followed by a Marcus Williams steal. Thirty seconds left. GMU just hit one of two free throws to go up by two. Ah SHIT!!!! Foul on UConn going after a loose ball. GMU makes them both. Four point lead with 17 seconds left. 04:40 PM: Wow. That might be a defining sequence right there. First, GMU actually misses their first shot in, like, an hour, and then Boone goes up for the rebound and inadvertently tips it in to give them two. Then, on the other end, they call palming on Marcus Williams for a turnover. That's right. Palming. With a trip to the Final Four on the line. Assholes. 04:25 PM: What a brutal run. I can't remember the last George Mason possession where UConn actually got a stop. Two-point lead for GMU right now. Both teams continue to play great basketball, but if the Huskies are going to win they'll need to out-will the Patriots, and I just don't feel that happening right now. 04:05 PM: (sigh) I was really hoping the Huskies would pick up from the end of the first half, extend this to a nice double-digit lead, and give me just one game wherein I could experience relaxation and confidence. Instead, George Mason is tightening things up. climbing back to within four. Oh, FUCK. Make that one. 8-0 run by the Patriots.
Rating: 6.5 03:35 PM: That was an outstanding stretch of basketball. That 15-5 run by the Huskies to end the half was the best basketball I've seen them play since the regular season. 43-34 lead at the half. Well done. 03:10 PM: UConn leads 21-18 with 7:31 left in the first half. Impressions: The Huskies are playing good, solid all-around basketball right now. They look settled down. They're running their offense well, and they're getting to a lot of big rebounds. They have "only" four turnovers so far, which is an improvement over Friday night's performance. George Mason, on the other hand, is staying in this primarily with good perimeter shooting. They're clearly outclassed inside, but they seem to realize that, and they're not forcing it, instead only slashing to the basket when they've got a clear path. Oh, and another thing? Good game so far. Enjoyable to watch. What a concept. 02:55 PM: I simply cannot understand how the phrase "giving a guy a blow" has hung around for all these years as basketball colloquialism for taking a player out of a game for a short rest. Seriously. How can announcers keep saying that? And they never chuckle or anything. 02:50 PM: During the introductions, it was disclosed that Rudy Gay's major is "undecided". How appropriate, considering that most games he can't seem to decide if he wants to be a star or not. 02:45 PM: Well, OK then! I have had a productive early afternoon and I am feeling good. I cleaned all the dirt and detritus out of our garage, vacuumed up some of the leaves around our "decorative grass" out front, finally found a place to hang up our ladder, which has been leaning against the back of the house since before we moved in last year, patched a bunch of holes in our electrical service cable, put together the firewood holder we bought back in December, and put the screen back in the kitchen window that I took out last, oh, August. Very productive day. And now it's time to watch some Connecticut basketball. Tags: NCAA Tournament Via Creature at State Of The Day, I see this snippet from a recent article in Time Magazine: Administration officials say they fear that losing even one house of Congress would mean subpoenas and investigations--a taste of the medicine House Republicans gave Bill Clinton. A "taste of the medicine"? Sure, I suppose it's true that the Democrats would be using the same medicine that the GOP did back then. The difference, or so I would hope, would be that they'd take the trouble to read the label and use it as directed. Let's look at that medicine the framers prescribed for our republic more than two centuries ago. I believe the generic name of this drug is "Congressional Oversight": Active Ingredients: Investigations, hearings, subpoena power. Uses: Restores balance of power between branches of government; Improves accountability; Clears blocked inquiries; Relieves minor cases of executive tyranny. Warnings: Not intended for use on personal indiscretions unrelated to the duties of office. Do Not Use: If you have been diagnosed with excessive partisanship, petty vindictiveness, or indifference to the public good. Side Effects: May cause media scrutiny when administered by Republicans to Democrats; May cause public drowsiness when administered by Democrats to Republicans. See what I'm saying? Just imagine all the trouble we could have avoided a decade ago if the GOP had simply done what every diligent user of pharmaceuticals knows enough to do and read the label on the medicine they were doling out. | Tags: GOP, Clinton, pharmaceuticals Know how sometimes you flush the toilet, and everything swirls around and gets sucked down and disappears like it's supposed to, but just as you turn to walk away you see a turd pop back up from under the lip? Sometimes it will just sit there on the bottom, harmlessly. But sometimes it will float back up towards the surface, in an almost menacing fashion. Well, one of the great GOP turds of all time, someone I'd assumed had been safely whisked away to the treatment plant by now, is back. Former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato just popped back under the lip, and he appears to be floating towards the surface. Al D'Amato was a sort of beta-release version of the corrupt, unprincipled, vicious Republican thugs that rule the land today. He still had a few "bugs" -- support for gays in the military, for one -- but his corruption feature set was advanced and robust for the time. Further, he was a pioneer of sorts in the areas of crassness and classlessness: Mr. D'Amato .. has a well-deserved reputation .. not only for carrying a grudge, but also for intemperate remarks that defined him as a swashbuckling political figure. He has deprecated Representative Jerrold Nadler, who peaked at 338 pounds, as "Congressman Waddler"; referred to his challenger for the Senate, Charles E. Schumer, with a Yiddish vulgarism; and used broken English to mock Lance A. Ito, the judge in O. J. Simpson's criminal trial. "Swashbuckling" is an interesting choice of words here. When I think swashbuckling, I think of, say, Aragorn. D'Amato, on the other hand, is right out of the Wormtongue mold. In any case, next time you hear some right-wing hypocrite decrying the incivility of our political discourse, remind them of Al D'Amato. In some respects, I actually have a sort of nostalgic anti-fondness for old Al. He was, after all, probably the first major-league GOP douchebag that I would encounter (so to speak) on my political journey. It was back in 1991, if memory serves, shortly after I'd really started to get interested in politics. I was spending a summer interning at the New York State Environmental Protection Bureau. New York's attorney general at the time, Robert Abrams, was running against D'Amato for his Senate seat. Abrams was a good guy, a liberal, strongly committed to taking on corporate and government corruption. That commitment, of course, is partly what lead him to run against D'Amato, whose reputation as "Senator Pothole" was built on a legacy of shady back-room deals. D'Amato ran a real gutter fight of a campaign, as I recall, and Abrams lost. It was my first official Big Disappointment in politics. Obviously, as a progressive, I've gone on to have many more. D'Amato, on the other hand, went on to bigger and more repulsive things, becoming a key early player in the GOP's anti-Clinton witchhunt. I remember watching the news and staring in disbelief at the site of Al D'Amato chairing the Senate Whitewater committee. Because, you know, there was a guy you wanted holding an ethics investigation. D'Amato finally went down to defeat at the hands of Chuck Schumer in 1998. That was the flush I'd hoped would send him away for good. Not so lucky. What's brought him back? It appears he wants to "rescue" the New York GOP. In particular, it seems that the prospect of William Weld running for governor of New York was too much for him to bear. Which is funny, really, what with Weld being one of the few marginally-sane Republicans left on the planet. Frankly? I think D'Amato's return could well end up helping not the NY GOP, but the Democrats. What could be better to highlight current Republican scumbaggery, after all, than this visit from a ghost of GOP scumbaggery past? So welcome back, Al. Float around for a while. Let your stench serve its purpose. Next time, we'll just hold the handle down longer. | Tags: New York, GOP, Al D'Amato 09:35 PM: UCLA wins, 50-45. Buh-bye, coach Crapilari. And that is it for today. I am out. 09:27 PM: Five point lead with a minute and a half left. You know, if Memphis suddenly went on a tear and won this, then the Memphis Tigers would meet the LSU Tigers in the Final Four. I wonder if that matchup would be as intense as last night's Huskies vs. Huskies game? You think teams play extra hard in situations like that? Like they're fighting to establish who really owns that particular team name? I know I would. I'd be rip shit. I'd be like "You're not the fuckin' Huskies, we are." 09:17 PM: Six point UCLA lead with three minutes and change left. This has not been what I'd call exciting basketball. I'm just sticking around to root against Memphis so that I can watch Calipari walk off the floor frustrated. You know, Calipari hasn't been to the Final Four in ten years. Poor guy. And, in that time, his former arch-nemesis, Jim Calhoun, has won two national titles. I wonder if Calipari ever thinks about that. I sure hope he does. 08:47 PM: UCLA's Ryan Hollins has John Lackey lip. Very unattractive feature. 08:10 PM: UCLA up seven at the half over Memphis. Excellent. And, man, John Calipari looks like shit. He's all pasty and washed out and oily looking. Tracy's watching him get interviewed on his way to the locker room and she's like "Why is he gray?" And, um, she was talking about his skin, not his hair. Anyhow, he's screwed now. I gave him a 20-second treatment with the Fuckface Pincers. 07:48 PM: Of course, if I were a Republican, I'd be saying that CBS Sportsline's scoreboard is biased, that there really were a ton of overtime games, but the data had been changed to make them all look like they ended in regulation, and, most of all, that I was still right. 07:45 PM: Prompted by the Maq's disagreement with my earlier assertion regarding the total of OT games in this year's tournament, I went back and counted. I was incorrect. Prior to last night, there had only been a single OT game, way back on the first day of games. Then there were two last night and one earlier today. I fell into the trap of over-weighting recent experiential data. 07:32 PM: They just showed Bill Walton in the stands at the Memphis vs. UCLA game, right? I swear, I thought it was Bill Parcells. Took about a minute before Tracy and I realized we were talking about different Bills. She asked me "Where's he from?" And I'm like "Uh, New York. New Jersey. He coaches in Dallas now. Not sure what he's doing in Oakland at this game." Furrowed brow. "Honey, I think that was Bill Walton." Rewind the DVR. Oh my. "Uh, you're right. Well, that certainly makes a lot more sense." 07:05 PM: And LSU blows Texas out by 10 in overtime. Didn't see that coming. Good outcome. 06:39 PM: Ho hum. Another overtime game. You know, I haven't heard any announcer mention this yet, but this tournament has to have set the record for number of overtime games. 06:30 PM: That was an insane sequence. Big Baby hits a fade-away to put LSU up by three. Texas drives down, penetrates, gets off a shot. Blocked by Thomas. They kick it back out to the perimeter, and just as one of their guys is about to put up a three, Thomas blocks it from behind. Ball goes into the backcourt, looks like LSU is going to recover -- there's around 40 seconds left in the game at this point -- but they lose it, two guys fall down while scrambling for it. Texas grabs it and they knock down an NBA three to give us another tie. 06:18 PM: In a tournament of tight games, this LSU vs. Texas matchup is the tightest I've seen so far. These two teams can't get away from each other. Every time I look at the screen they're tied. Well, except for right now. LSU leads 45-43. I'm rooting for LSU for three reasons: 1.) They beat Duke. 2.) Their star player is nicknamed "Big Baby". And 3.) I'm pretty sure Texas is from, you know, Texas. 06:00 PM: I hope no one else in the Atlanta area needs any makeup tonight, because the LSU cheerleaders are using it all. 05:22 PM: My wife is cute pretty much at all times. But when she's sitting quietly and looking all serious as she does research for her fantasy baseball team? Wicked cute. 05:00 PM: Friends. Romans. Basketball Fans. Lend me your tournament thoughts. Tags: NCAA Tournament Back in 2000 when the King of Smarm, Connecticut's own Joe Lieberman, was out on the vice-presidential campaign trail, he had a habit of making remarks that were exclusionary and condescending towards non-believers. There was, of course, the one about how "We as a nation must re-dedicate ourselves to God and God's purpose." Then there was the George Washington quote he dug up to the effect that one could not be moral without being religious. These weren't slips, mind you. This was a big part of Lieberman's schtick. Bread and Butter stump speech stuff. In a letter to the Hartford Courant at the time, I remarked that the reason Lieberman could get away with this was because atheists were the last group in America that it was completely socially acceptable to be bigoted against. A few friends and family members accused me of hyperbole on that one and, yeah, OK, maybe I was too quick to grab sole possession of the mantle of martyrdom for myself and my fellow godless citizens. Or maybe not. Yesterday, Kevin Drum linked to this survey on American attitudes towards atheists which, uh, kinda backs up the thrust of my argument: From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry. "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years," says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study's lead researcher. So there you go. Of course, if you're a non-believer, you might be wondering just why your countrymen and women think so lowly of you. My guess is this: Our very existence is a nagging reminder that the comfortable superstition they embrace might -- just might -- be an enormous, steaming heap of bullshit. I mean, a big part of religion, a big reason people invest so much in it, is to keep their fear of death at bay. Most human beings simply cannot deal with the notion that this is it and that when they die everything they are goes bye-bye. Religion soothes that ache. It calms the racing pulse and settles the anxiety. Religion says "There there, now. Yes, you'll die at some point, but then you'll go to a happy place forever! Everything will be peachy." Comforting. Calming. And there's the atheist standing off to the side, arms crossed, a slight smirk on his face. What does he think he's looking at, anyhow? Oh, and speaking of comfort, another thing religion offers is ready-made moral certainties. Off-the-shelf answers to the great moral questions that trouble us. Easy clean up and none of that pesky thinking for yourself to deal with. The people who find that attractive -- people like, say, Joe Lieberman -- probably have a hard time wrapping their head around the notion that perhaps morality is, after all, a human construct, not a godly one. So they look askance at the atheist, who is still smirking, dammit, and who must be immoral because how could he be otherwise without God to give him the answers I mean come on. That's my theory. I think those two things explain why we get under peoples' skin so much. Any. How. So Kevin links to this study which pretty much justifies any persecution complexes we atheists might be nursing, and then what does he do? He downplays it. First he tries to expand atheism to include a much bigger chunk of the population: That 3% number is tricky, though. The real number seems to be in the range of 3-9%, and if you count "nonreligious" as the same thing it's more like 15%. What's more, if I had to guess, I'd bet the number is more like 20-25% if you include people who vaguely claim to believe in God but neither attend church nor do anything else that even remotely suggests they take their belief seriously. Gah! No, no, no sir. I'll give you the 3-9 percent figure, fine. And let's just say for the hell of it that maybe half the passive non-believers ("nonreligious") can grab a ticket to ride that big, happy atheist bandwagon. I think that's a little sketchy since who knows what those folks would declare if you forced them to think hard on the matter and make a choice, but whatever. Maybe, with them, you get to, what, 12%? Great. But no way do you get to aggregate the Vaguely Believe in God crew with our numbers. Nuh-uh. That's the whole fuckin' point, man: We. Don't. Believe. From the atheistic point of view, the "spectrum" of religious belief -- from fervent fundamentalism all the way down to "Yeah, sure, I believe there's something. Whatever." -- is entirely beside the point. It's a binary proposition: You believe or you don't believe. You are willing to posit that there is something beyond this universe -- some "supernatural" realm -- or you are not. Check the "Believe" box or leave it blank. There's no third choice. For most people who self-identify as "atheists", the choice to leave that box blank was almost surely a conscious one, something they spent a good deal of time mulling. And it's a big deal. The way society views those who declare "I Do Not Believe In God" is substantially different from the way it views the milquetoasts who mumble "Yeah, sure, I guess I believe in God." Don't believe me? Try the politician test. Think it through. Recent experience aside, we know that candidates can slide by on the whole God thing, getting elected by just nodding and saying why, yes, certainly, God's important, next question. We also know that if a candidate even casually hinted that they did not believe, they'd be done. See? Big. Difference. Oddly, Kevin seems to see the "running for office" issue as some sort of inconsequential outlying phenomenon. He brushes it off thusly: As for trends toward increasing social tolerance, though, I'm not sure atheists really count as a "glaring exception." It's true that we generally can't get elected to high political office, but aside from that I suspect we don't suffer much serious social ostracism as long we don't insist on making obnoxious nuisances of ourselves. I never have, anyway, but maybe I've just been lucky. But but but but but... Wait, let me read that again: It's true that we generally can't get elected to high political office My birthright as an American, I believe, to have a reasonable shot at being elected to high office if I'm competent, qualified, and want to serve my country, but fuck it, I'll just flush that down the toilet since I'm not going to lie and say that I, too, am a member of the Cult of the Invisible Sky Being, and now let's just move on to: but aside from that I suspect we don't suffer much serious social ostracism as long we don't insist on making obnoxious nuisances of ourselves. As long as we... As long as we... As long as... Wow. Yeah, as long as we don't wear our lack of belief on our shirtsleeves or mention it too loudly or presume to criticize religion or, to borrow a phrase from Grover Norquist, go around peeing on the furniture or anything, yes, people pretty much leave us alone. Lucky thing for us that a person's metaphysical belief system is easier to hide than, say, their sexual preferences or skin color. "As long as we don't insist on making obnoxious nuisances of ourselves." Right. I think a more accurate phrase would be "As long as we don't actually mention that we're atheists". The fact that an atheist cannot be elected president is more important for what it reveals about America's attitudes toward the godless than for any practical impact it has on the hoardes of atheists who are jonesing to occupy the Oval Office. The question you have to ask, the question that Kevin doesn't deal with in the above dismissal, is why Americans won't vote for an atheist. And I've already told you the answer: Because a majority of our fellow citizens, to a greater or lesser degree, share the same bigoted belief that Joe Lieberman holds. The belief that you cannot be a moral person, a good person, unless you believe in God. | Tags: atheism I love dancing in the shower while listening to WTIC's Way Back Weekend. Young M.C.'s Bust A Move? Oh yeah. You have not witnessed move bustin' like I bring to the tub. Great Moments in Mistaken Lyrics: Culture Club's Church of the Poison Mind? I used to think he was singing "In the Church all the Boys Are In Line". Like, yeah, I bet they are. Weird Toast Fact: I enjoy hangovers. Barring the occasional headache, I tend to find them relaxing and more than a little trippy. | Tags: music 01:20 AM: I'm officially in the "Spooling Down" phase of this win. Still more than a little jittery. Make no mistake: Connecticut dodged not a bullet, but a mortar round tonight. They could have lost that game so many ways in regulation it's not funny. Instead, 'Shard willed them forward to overtime and they gutted it out. Still trying to figure out who and how. What gnaws at me is this: Three wins so far in the tourney, not one solid win. Not one feel-good win. Not against 16-seed Albany. Not against 8-seed Kentucky. Not against the other Huskies tonight. Every one has been a gut-wrenching, doubt-ridden experience. And yet on they go to the Elite Eight. The Elite Eight. Yeah, you read it right. Do you get an "Elite" feeling from this team? I don't. Man, it fucking kills me. Do you see the players out there? Do you see what they're capable of? You know, when they try. I love Jim Calhoun, but I need to ask: What's going on this year? Where's the passion that's a trademark of his teams? There's an interesting progression here. The '99 Huskies were like -- and I am horrified to say this -- the '04 Red Sox. A perennially strong program that usually choked early, they made a title run and shocked the world. The '04 Huskies were more like the World Series Champion Yankees. All business. Highly "professional" in their way. They just showed up every day and systematically dismantled teams. The '06 Huskies? I'm getting an '05 Yankees feel. Loads and loads of talent. They should have won every game this year. But they haven't. And many of their wins have felt half-assed. And I have this horrible feeling that the same ultimate fate is in store for them. Hope I'm wrong. That's all I can keep saying is that I hope I'm wrong. 01:00 AM: UConn wins. 98-92. 12:59 AM: Un. Fucking. Believable. Washington steals it after a missed UConn shot, then tries to pass, and UConn steals it back. I'm unconscious right now. I don't even know how I'm typing. What a FUCKING finish. WHAT A FUCKING TOURNAMENT. 12:56 AM: Two possession game. UConn up 4 points in overtime with 20-something seconds left (I think). I'm kind of going out of my mind right now, so not a lot of commentary. Bear with me. 12:41 AM: 'Shard hits a three at the buzzer to send the game to overtime. 'Shard. How does Washington leave 'Shard open? Dunno. Duncare. Just know my dogs are in this FUCKING tournament for at least five more minutes. And let's just say that, outside of Rip Hamilton, UConn has never had a more clutch shooter than Rashard Anderson. He is fucking money in the bank with interest. 12:34 AM: Almost over for Connecticut. Almost going home. Down six. HUGE three by Washington just now. There's a thread of life left, but that's it. One more mistake and it's off to Wouldacouldashouldistan. 12:29 AM: Tight. UConn down 3 with two minutes and change left. Couple of huge mistakes by UConn in the last thirty seconds. (Spurrier Lip Flap of Frustration) Damn. 12:18 AM: I find it interesting to watch how long it takes for "funny" commercials to lose their funny. They just showed the Bud Light "Magic Fridge" commercial that debuted during the Super Bowl. That was funny when I first saw it a month and a half ago. Now it's down to about 10% of its original funny. By contrast, the commercial with the guys in the office dancing to "Oooh Baby BABY"? That debuted half a year ago, I've seen it a hundred times, and it still makes me piss myself. How is it that some ad teams capture that magic? 12:06 AM: Tracy just nicknamed Hilton Armstrong "Goose". I can go with that. Look at the pace of this game. All of a sudden these teams are flying up and down the court the way they were in the first ten minutes. Would have been nice to see forty minutes of this. 12:04 AM: I hate the Possession Arrow. Lamest rule in college hoops by a long shot. 12:00 PM: Uh Oh. Midnight. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Washington. BIG shift in momentum. All of a sudden, the World-Beater Huskies are in the house, getting turnovers, making easy baskets. Tie game, and UConn appears to be waking up. 11:55 PM: Holy shit is this game turning ugly. Washington's Roy just got a personal and a T back-to-back, so he's got four. Both coaches are going apeshit. And you know what? I agree with the coaches. Generally, the officiating has gone Washington's way. But also generally, the officiating has been incredibly overbearing. They're just not letting the players play the game at all. Kind of disgusting. No, really disgusting, actually. 11:50 PM: OK, I've never seen anything like this. UConn has turned the ball over at least 6 times in a row. They're not even getting the opportunity to take shots, let alone make them. What a collapse. 11:37 PM: Six-nothing run by Washington to start the second half. I have an incredibly bad feeling about this game right now. Oh, and our "star" Rudy Gay has four points on the night. Nice. Double dribble against Washington. Travelling against UConn. Someone need to shove these refs whistles up their fucking asses so we can have a basketball game here. 11:27 PM: "The Masters: A Tradition Just Like Any Other" 11:12 PM: Halftime, and Washington leads by five. I am shocked it's only that many. Worst officiating in the tournament so far, stealing the crown away from the Bradley vs. Seton Hall game. 11:07 PM: Hilton Armstrong's neck is a foot long. Oh, and the officiating continues to stifle UConn. Just an amazing array of random offensive foul calls, bogus touch fouls, travelling, the whole nine yards. The men in the stripes are pulling out all the stops to put Connecticut in a hole here. Even the announcers are starting to pick up on it now. Just an amazing streak of calls against UConn. I can't believe Calhoun hasn't gotten thrown out yet. 10:57 PM: That palming call on Williams seals it. Penalty on Washington. Eight men on the floor. Jesus H. Christ. Someone wake me up when they decide to call an honest game here. 10:50 PM: Calhoun just got called for a T. Don't blame him. For the last 6-8 minutes the officiating has been egregiously awful, all in Washington's favor. 10:48 PM: One of the two bands was just playing Journey's Separate Ways during the break. Please don't let it have been ours. 10:32 PM: For the last three years, Tracy and I have had an ongoing debate: "Josh Boone: Black or White". I thought black because of, well, the cornrows and a sort of overall sense of his facial features. Tracy thought white because of his complexion. Anyhow, turns out he's a bit of each. And, tie game, 20-20. 10:20 PM: Wow. Five minutes in and the score is 14 all. At this pace, we'll be looking at a final score of 112-110. 10:18 PM: Question: Why do guys step out and give a player high-fives, hand slaps and whatnot for a missed free throw? 10:15 PM: They just did a graphic with the starting lineups. UConn is a lot taller up front than Washington. A. Lot. Thirty seconds in, and UConn already has their first block of the game. BTW, Bill Raftery announcing. I like him. Oh, look at that. 5-0 UConn lead. 10:10 PM: CBS just did a duet interview with John Calipari and the UCLA coach (didn't catch his name). So, at the end of it, the UCLA coach goes to give Calipari a fist bump, and Calipari reaches out and gives the guy's fist a limp-fingered grab and shakes it. What a doofus. What a lame-ass doofus. 9:50 PM: In other news, George Freakin' Mason (11) advances to the Elite Eight over the SHOCKERS (7) by a score of 63-55. From the highlights, it looks like it wasn't that close. So George Mason will play the Huskies on Sunday. One way or another. 9:40 PM: Ready? Here we go. Again. Frasier lands a hook shot for B.C. to take the lead by one. Another friggin' timeout. (Is there anything in sports more tedious than the end of a close basketball game?) Back. Whoa! Another block by B.C. 'Nova inbounds... goes for the layup... AND THEY CALL GOALTENDING on B.C.!!! WOW! And it was goaltending. Looks like B.C. totally got taken by surprise on the inbounds pass and the B.C. guy just fucked up. The basket counts. 'Nova leads by one with... they're figuring it out... 3 seconds left. And, of course, time out. Short one, though. Here we go. B.C. flies down the court, puts it up... air ball. 'Nova wins. The Big East advances. The ACC goes home. (Sorry kate.) 9:37 PM: One point lead for 'Nova in OT with under a minute left. Make it three. Thirty seconds left. B.C. gets a layup, then fouls 'Nova's Lowry. Odd choice with that much time left. Or maybe not. It's a one-and-one, and Lowry missed it. B.C. ball with nineteen seconds left. Timeout. 9:27 PM: Big shot for B.C.! Tie game with 28 seconds left. Man, this particular tournament has not lacked for excitement. Here we go. 'Nova burning all kinds of clock. Holding for a last minute shot... up... BLOCKED. Overtime. 9:24 PM: Tough whistle there against B.C. with that travelling call. Of course, Billy pACCker is apoplectic about it, which is, as always, highly amusing to listen to. Packer's such a tool, but I enjoy him anyhow. Always, always colorful. 9:18 PM: One point lead for 'Nova! Minute and 38 left to go. Major props to Villanova for clawing their way all the way back to the lead. Go Cats! 9:10 PM: Five minutes left, five point 'Nova deficit. That's within tolerances. That's my rule. If you're down more points than there are minutes left, it's a bad thing. If you're not, you're OK, all things are possible. Ooops. Only down two now, and heading to the line. One. Misses the second. Looks like we're headed for a photo finish though. 8:45 PM: So we're sitting there at dinner talking and the subject of the pool comes up. The pool that kate currently sits in first place in. That one. And I say to Tracy "Well, you know, if it can't be you or me winning it, I hope kate wins." (I said it lower-case, just like she prefers.) "Why?" Tracy says. "Well, because pretty much all my other friends who are in it are software engineers or shit like that. She works for a non-profit, you know?" To which Tracy says "Oh, you're sweet." Fast forward five minutes. I'm cursing at the TV over the bar. Tracy looks at me with the Why Are You Upset Face, then says "Who do you want in this?" "Oh, 'Nova. 'Nova all the fuckin' way." "But I thought you wanted kate to win. Doesn't she have B.C.?" "Yeah, well, kate's nice and all, but I hate those motherfucking traitors and I hate the shit-ass ACC conference that they left us for. So... there you go." 8:38 PM: First trimester fatigue? You tell me. All I know is that someone is out like a light on the other end of the couch. 8:25 PM: So during dinner, Tracy drops this knowledge: "One of the things that I heard happens during pregnancy is that your sense of smell becomes really strong." I just started crackin' up. I'm like, woman, if that's true, you are bummin' hard. 8:20 PM: We're back! And so's 'Nova! Nice of them to show up. Actually, I have to give them props for that run. They were down 22-9 at the six minute mark, now they're down a mere 28-24 at the half. Nice recovery, gentlemen. As for the George Mason game, WTF? 35-19 over the mighty SHOCKERS? C'mon. This isn't the SHOCKER squad that we've all come to know and be shocked by. What gives? 5:55 PM: Tracy and I are heading out for a little celebratory dinner, so I'll be missing the bulk of the two early games. Promise to be back in plenty of time for Huskies V. Huskies. In the meantime, please feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Tags: NCAA Tournament So today was the Big Day: Tracy went in for her pregnancy test and... it came back positive! Trying really, really hard to contain myself, but I am gripped by giddiness. We've got a loooong way to go. We're both aware of how many ways things can go wrong in the very early stages of a pregnancy. I've basically instituted a first-trimester moratorium during which family and friends are prohibited from buying us baby stuff. Something about the enumeration of chickens prior to their full maturation comes to mind. Still. Happy day in the Toast household. | Tags: IVF 6:40 AM: Damn you, Gonzaga. That was not the news I wanted to wake up to. Ah well. My bracket was already in the toilet. This just gave it that extra push to get under the lip and head out towards the sewage treatment plant. In other news, Duke still lost. 9:50 PM: Don't think I'll be staying up for the second set of games tonight. Early meeting tomorrow. Don't really care about the Texas game so much. In the other bracket, however, all I can say is GO ZAGS!!! 9:40 PM: Memphis takes care of business against Bradley, winning 80-64. So the loathsome John Calipari moves on to the Elite Eight. You know, I know I'm getting ahead of myself here, but... Calhoun versus Calipari in the Finals? How sweet would that be? Good versus Evil in a battle for the Ages. OK, OK, first the Huskies need to beat a few more teams, but still... 9:31 PM: Oh, this is orgasmic. Duke. Gone. In the Sweet Sixteen. That's just a... it's a weight off my chest. Every year's the same: First choice to win the tournament? UConn. Second choice to win the tournament? Anybody but Duke. And my second choice just advanced to the Elite Eight. Fucking schweeeet! Buh-bye now, Coach K. Buh-bye now, J.J. 9:27 PM: DAMN! This Thomas kid from LSU is playing out of his mind. A breakaway dunk on one end followed by a block on the other. LSU 57, Duke 54 with 25 seconds left. Oops. Make it LSU 58... Wait! They miss the second free throw but get the rebound and Duke immediately fouls. LSU 59! I DON'T BELIEVE THIS! LSU's Davis misses the second free throw and they get the rebound back again!!! This is just like what UConn did against Kentucky. How the hell do you give up rebounds of free throws in crucial end-game situations like this?! Davis ("Big Baby") misses the first. Makes the second. LSU up by SIX. Oh, this game's just about over. 9:15 PM: They just showed an LSU player on the bench with the worst cornrows ever. They splay out radially from a central point about two inches in back of his forehead. Makes it look like a giant anus on his head. Oh, LSU by 1 with a little under two minutes left. Fingers so fuckin' crossed. 9:10 PM: Wow. Sheldon Williams just fouled out. Only he didn't. Williams just fouled an LSU guy under the basket -- clearly fouled him, no argument -- and it would have been his fifth, but the ref paused, thought about it, and called it on some other guy instead. I don't think I've ever seen something that blatant. I was sitting here waiting for the call, thinking "What's taking so long?" And it was the ref searching for someone else to pin it on so Williams could stay in the game. Incredible. Oh well. Those are the calls you get if you're Duke. 8:39 PM: What I like to see: Duke trailing in the second half. What I like to hear: "J. J. Redick continues to struggle." 7:55 PM: Sweet Sixteen, baby! And the schedulers, in their infinite wisdom, has UConn going last, tomorrow night, so that even in the event of a loss I can maximize my enjoyment of the round. Thank you, faceless NCAA people. Tags: NCAA Tournament Memo to all the sports journalists who seem intent on beating baseball's "steroid controversy" to death: I. DON'T. FUCKING. CARE. OK? Can it. (Oh yeah: I especially don't care about Barry Bonds. I don't care about him a lot.) | Tags: steroids Salkowitz, on how Scientology is bringing America together: Liberals distrust Scientology because it's a weird authoritarian cult. Conservatives distrust Scientology because it's a weird authoritarian cult that isn't Christian. Conservatives are suspicious of anything embraced openly by Hollywood celebrities. Liberals are concerned about anything that has driven more than a few Hollywood celebrities visibly insane. Thanks, man. I needed a chuckle. | Tags: Scientology For thirty-something years now all of my dental hygienists have been bugging me to floss. I wouldn't do it. Too time-consuming. Too difficult. Too much of a pain in the ass. Finally, during my last checkup, my new hygienist got to me, talking about gingivitis and how it can lead to heart disease. I caved. I've been flossing every morning for, like, a month now. And you know what? I discovered the oddest thing. When you do it every day, it gets easier. Wow. I mean, who knew? | Tags: dental hygiene This morning on ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike show Sal Paolantonio emitted what might just be the dumbest statement I've ever heard a sports journalist make. And as anyone who reads, watches, or listens to sports journalists knows, that's really saying something. Discussing Terrell Owens' signing with the Dallas Cowboys over the weekend, Paolantonio had this to say about next season's matchup between the Cowboys and Eagles and what the attendant atmosphere would be like. This is, mind you, an exact quote: "It would be like Larry Bird coming back to Boston in a Sixers uniform." Yes, you read that right. Take a moment and allow your mind to properly boggle. See, the only way this analogy could work would be if:
Last I checked, however, none of those things were true. So, sorry Sal, but you're an idiot. | Tags: Terrell Owens, Larry Bird, analogies From the front page of the Washington Post: BUSH REMAINS UPBEAT ON OUTCOME FOR IRAQ On third anniversary of war, White House hails progress, but Iraqi prime minister warns country is edging toward "the point of no return." Putting aside the absurdity of the administration's typical reality-denying spin for a moment, I have to ask: Does a day go by that these guys don't "hail" something? The overuse of this term has to be one of the single most annoying quirks our beloved media routinely displays. Bush hails progress in Iraq. Bush hails elections in Afghanistan. Bush hails Alito. You'd think the guy was a fucking weather system, not a president. | Tags: Bush 7:25 PM I've got a rotisserie baseball draft to run off to, so I have to wrap things up before the buzzer sounds on the 'Nova/'Zona game. (Go 'Nova!) Pretty damned exciting tournament so far. Completely unpredictable. UConn's bracket in particular looks like someone tossed a stick of dynamite into it. Just crazy. All they've got to do to make it to the Final Four next weekend is get past Washington and then either George Mason or Wichita State. Be a shame if they can't fill that order. Thanks to everyone who stopped by. Hope to see you all back next Thursday night. And to my non-sports-watching readers, thanks for bearing with me. Regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly. 6:50 PM Wow. Georgetown is clocking Ohio State. 67-52 with just a minute left. If 'Nova can just put away Arizona -- they're up 6 but they've still got 14 minutes to go -- that will give the Big East 4 teams in the Sweet Sixteen. Not bad at all. That would make a very nice recovery from a terrible opening day.
This current offering is... odd. Weird. Strange. Puzzling. Family-wise, I'd classify it as a stout. It's dark, dark brown in color with a small head. A little light on the carbonation. Thick mouth feel. Now, the flavor. Right. There's a lot going on here, not all of it good. A little bit of caramel, a little bit of chocolate, a lot of smoke. Also a bit of... what? Some kind of fruit that makes you pucker. Not the way a lemon or lime does, but the way you pucker when you bite into a piece of fruit that's a little off. There's some hoppiness at the front end too. Nothing like the HI.P.A., mind you. These hops are standing off to the side, doing their own thing. Now, you see, I don't mind a complex flavor, as long as everything harmonizes well. If you're going to throw a lot at me, do it Bach style. Stick to a theme. The overall sensation I get from 373, however, could be likened to a Stravinski piece. It's a bit of a cacophony. It's like the "mixed drinks" I used to make at the frat where I'd grab one of every bottle and pour everything together at random. Yeah, that's it. That's what I'm tasting. Like they grabbed a ton of random ingredients and tossed them into a stout base to see what would happen. Not truly awful by any stretch, but not altogether pleasant either. Like I said: Weird. Oh well. Gotta let these guys flex their creative muscles. From the seeds of each random batch may come the next Number 9 or Blind Faith, after all. Rating: 4.0
4:48 PM Game over. Huskies 87, Wildcats 83. Holy shit that was tense. OK, I can relax and enjoy the rest of the games now. Phew. Looking like West Virginia is going to move on as well. That will give the Big East two teams in the Sweet Sixteen, with Villanova and G-Town still to go. 4:46 PM Two point lead. Eighteen seconds left. Marcus Williams is my fuckin' hero. Without him, our guys would already be packing for the airport right now. Oh please please please... 4:44 PM Two point lead. Fifty two seconds left. This Sparks kid is giving me a migraine. He must have read my comments about him the other night. 4:38 PM Five point lead. Two minutes left. Kentucky has blown three straight rebounds off of missed free throws, oddly enough, and that might be the only thing keeping them from the lead right now. This is some stressful shite, people. 4:25 PM Oh my fuckin' god. Three point game. I can't fuckin' believe this shit. Five minutes left. Meanwhile, UNC just lost to George Friggin' Mason, which means that it's officially Wipe Thine Ass With Thy Bracket time in Toastville. Oh just get me through this game. Come on, Huskies. Just hold on. 4:14 PM Seven point lead. You know what? I need a fucking timeout. 4:09 PM And yes, I'm just trying to distract myself from UConn's rapidly-evaporating lead. 4:08 PM Tracy had two excellent beer questions today. First, she's been drinking non-alcoholic beer because of all the IVF stuff, and today she asked "Why does fake beer cost $7 a six-pack?" To which I responded that I have no idea. Personally, I think they should give the shit away as a public service. Or public disservice. Whatever. Second, after seeing one of those Miller ads that implies Miller is a "grown-up" beer that people graduate to, she asked "Miller's a beer you move up to? Move up from what?" Um, Utica Club, maybe? Gennessee? 4:00 PM 11-point lead for UConn with 14 and change left. I'm nervous. I haven't felt this way about a UConn team in a long while, not since the mid nineties. This is one of those teams that just never makes me feel comfortable. They'd have to have a thirty-point lead for me to be able to relax. I just sit here thinking, OK, keep eating that clock. Please just get this over with. Because I never know when they're going to go to sleep. I never know when they're going to allow that 20-2 run. I just always feel like it's coming.
The body is a cloudy dark gold, medium-to-light in weight (well, light for an ale), and develops a fine head. But you know what? Fuck this. Let's get to the hops, shall we? Oh, allmighty Spaghetti Monster, the hops on this baby. Just astonishing. Here's the thing: Unlike the typical assault on your bitter sensors that occurs when a brewer tries to craft a kick-ass I.P.A. (take Victory's Hop Wallop for example), the hops in HI.P.A. go after you like a trained masseuse, wrapping pleasure around pain, artistry around intensity. You've got a hop/malt balance here that's around 80/20, and somehow it's not overwhelming. It's just crazy good. The malt isn't entirely buried, by the way. It's just a delicate flower in the background. Tracy describes it as "clover honey". I'll sign onto that, even though I'm not entirely sure what clover honey is. Well, the clover part. Anyhow, the overall effect is perfect. This is an I.P.A. lover's I.P.A. To the brewmasters at Magic Hat, I bow before your greatness. Rating: 10.0 3:15 PM: Damn. The Wildcats are tightening things up a bit here. I'd really like to see UConn take a double-digit lead into halftime, but the momentum all seems to be going Kentucky's way right now. Hmmmm. 3:00 PM: Wow. The Huskies came to play today. The difference when these guys decide they're interested in playing basketball is absolutely something to behold. It's criminal that they have this much talent and only use it when they're in the mood. And yes, it's hypocritical as hell of me to say that, since that's sort of how I live my entire life. But still... 2:52 PM: Commenter Rafe brings up the subject of Memphis coach John Calipari, and there goes another capillary in my eyeball. I fucking loathe John Calipari. I've hated that son of a bitch ever since his UMass days and all the shit he used to talk about Calhoun and UConn. Fucking toad. Jim Calhoun shits more class than Calipari has ever had or will ever have in his life. I only wish John Chaney had gotten his hands around Calipari's fucking neck in that press conference. Oh, I would have paid to see that shit go down. I'd have taken out a loan to pay to see that. 2:42 PM: The UConn Huskies are in the house. And I don't mean that in the colloquial sense of "they're kicking ass" or anything. I just mean they're, you know, present. They appear to have showed up to play basketball today. This is a good thing. 2:21 PM: Bullshit. My eyes are popping out of my head from the bullshit calls in this game. I am flabbergasted. Worst officiating in the tournament so far. Pitt's going home, and it isn't the Bradley Braves who are sending them there, it's this officiating crew. Grand theft basketball, right there. 30-11 was the final margin on trips to the line. 30 to fucking 11. Douchebags. I hope they all choke on their whistles. 2:20 PM: Terry from Survivor? Tracy just drove by his house. No sports car out front. No obvious signs that he won the million. No idea that my wife is stalking him. 2:15 PM: Know what? I'm sorry, but this Bradley-Pitt game is bullshit. 24 free throw attempts for Bradley to 10 for Pitt? Yeah, that sounds fair. Fuck. Fuckin' fuck. I've got Pitt going to the Final Fucking Four and they're 38.8 seconds away from losing to a fucking 13 seed. Bull. Feces.
("Toast, is that a small glass table holding that ball up?" "Fuck no. What you talkin' 'bout? I'm palmin' that thang.") 1:10 PM: Villanova's Allan Ray has Nick Van Exel eyes. It's no wonder he got poked in one of them. They stick out, like, an inch. BTW, if Allan Ray gets drafted and goes to the NBA (which he almost certainly will if he declares) and he's in a game against Seattle and he touches Ray Allen, do you think it will cause a ripple in the spacetime continuum? I believe it will. In fact, the minor spelling difference in their names might be all that's saving us from total annihilation. 1:06 PM: We have a chipmunk running around in our three-season porch at the moment. Tracy notes that he only has one ear. I immediately named him "Stephen" after Stephen Colbert. 1:05 PM: From Paul in comments: "My wife just noted that the scoreboard says 'Brad Pitt'." That's awesome. 12:25 PM: Pittsburgh is struggling mightily right now. Two points in the first eight minutes? What gives? BTW, this "Big Buckin' Chicken" commercial is truly awesome. And, hello, I'm back for Day Four. Yes, I am a trooper. Tags: NCAA Tournament Monster: Interesting enough story to begin with, but the lesbian angle seriously kicked it up a notch. Oh, and Christina Ricci's forehead is staggeringly vast. 10:30 PM: Tight finish here for UCLA (2). Up two over Alabama (10) with 15.5 left. I've got UCLA going to the Sweet Sixteen. OK, here we go... Miss by Alabama. Foul with .4 left. This is totally over. OK, then. Good night all. Tracy and I have a movie to watch. 10:15 PM: Gonzaga 90 - Indiana 80. LETS go BULL dogs!!!! (Clap! Clap! Clapclapclap!) 10:10 PM: Do you know how Tracy made her picks? She opened her mind to the universe. Unsure what this means? Well, after a ten minute conversation wherein I answered her question as to whether it was possible that all things that happen have already "happened", and wherein I disclosed to her my rudimentary understanding of relativity, and wherein I assumed she was angling towards some deeper truth of the singular and eternal nature of each of our existences, this is what I found: She was curious if the events of this year's tournament had "already happened" and that's how she got her "intuition" about them. I'm not making this up. 10:00 PM: Lookin' like the Gonzaga Bulldogs (3) are going to beat the Indiana Hoosiers (6). This tells me two things. First, my post from the other night really got under the skin of the 'Zaga guys. Nice to know I can still land a guilt trip. Second, the tar-black karma of the vile and evil Bobby Knight still hangs over Indiana like a shroud. 8:20 PM: Man, Syracuse is seriously getting their asses kicked in this second round game between LSU and Texas A&M. I don't think the Orange have a single point on the night. 8:15 PM: Nice win by Washington. And that sets up another historic Huskies Vs. Huskies matchup in the Sweet Sixteen, assuming UConn isn't too bored to actually show up tomorrow. Trivia: The last Dog on Dog action we saw was back in 1998, also in the third round. Rip Hamilton hit a third-chance fade-away shot in that game to send UConn to an Elite Eight matchup with North Carolina, in Greensboro, which they lost. 7:20 PM: B.C. (4), having caused kate enough angina for one weekend, has comfortably pulled away from Montana (12). Meanwhile, though, we've got a great 4-5 matchup going on right now between Illinois and the Other Huskies. The Illini are up 6 with about 6 minutes left. Liking the energy of this one. 6:40 PM: Can I say something? Of course I can, it's my fuckin' blog. I think it is creepy as all fuckin' get-out when guys get portrait tattoos of family members. Damon Stoudamire was the first player I saw do this. He's got a tat of his grandmother on one arm. Just now, they're showing Glen Davis of LSU, who has a tattoo of his mom on his right pec. I'm sorry, but that shit is just disturbing. 6:30 PM: Watching the Illinois game right now, and they pan to these two women in the stands, one black one white, both short and pudgy with scruffy hair and missing teeth. Freaky. 6:15 PM: Wow. The Wichita State SHOCKERS advance to the Sweet Sixteen, eliminating 2-seed Tennessee. I've got a feeling the Chemist is in a very select group of people who saw that coming. 5:40 PM: Florida (3) 82 over Wisconsin-Milwaukee (14) 60. Looks like the Gators are every bit as hot as people said they were. 4:45 PM: Late start today. Promised myself we'd go see Vendetta on opening weekend, so Tracy and I just got back from a matinee showing. Got to see a masked hero take a stand against a fascist right-wing government. Missed seeing Duke move on to the Sweet Sixteen. All in all, I think it was the right choice. Tags: NCAA Tournament V For Vendetta: An absolute masterpiece. A perfectly-paced, exquisitely-produced action/suspense movie. A complex hero for complex times. Oh, and the themes, the content, the message. Fucking WOW. This movie didn't just "touch" a nerve, it reached in, grabbed it, twisted and yanked on it until it screamed. I'm actually still wired from the experience. If five years of living in High Chancellor Bush's America have you feeling despondent, then you will surely find V a cathartic experience. And no matter who you are, if you don't love this movie, I will be angry with you. Oh, and one more thing: I think someone's going to have to get bumped from the Toast Top Five to make room. | Tags: V For Vendetta, movies 11:55 PM: As Day Two winds down, all I can say is, wow, I've never seen a tournament quite like this. So many low seeds playing so many high seeds so close. The biggest surprise? That there haven't been a lot more actual upsets than we've seen. It's like Angelos said yesterday: All these underdogs just keep blowing their leads. If it wasn't for that, half the high seeds would be gone already. Anyhow. Sure has been fun so far. See you all tomorrow. 11:22 PM: Tracy just pointed out this player on Kentucky who now has me transfixed. He's wearing #22. Short white guy. Short arms. Receding hair line. Tracy's right: I don't think I've ever seen anyone who looked more out of place on a basketball court. He looks like he belongs in an Office Max commercial, not playing in the NCAA tournament. 11:20 PM: There's a guy playing for UAB named Paul Delaney. The Phi Sigs in the audience will, like myself, find that amusing. 10:50 PM: I see Cock-Choke-Jayjoke is down 10 at the half. Know what's funny? The whole rest of the basketball-watching nation seems to have the same problem with Kansas that I have with Gonzaga. Year after year you all believe. Year after year, Kansas proves to be overrated and departs the tournament early. It'd be funny, were it not so sad. Oh wait a second. It actually is funny. 10:30 PM: I'm back! And, from the sound of it, had I been here watching the UConn game, it just might have been more stressful than my belt test. Fuckin' Spaghetti Monster. Down 12 to a 16-seed in the second half? Yeah, I think I'm glad I missed that. Ah, hell, I just got a shiny new green belt. On St. Patrick's Day, no less. Nothin's going to get me down right now. 6:40 PM: Allrighty then. Test time. You people have fun. I'll check in sometime later tonight. Oh yeah, and... GO HUSKIES!!! 5:20 PM: 'Nova wins. The Big East goes to .500. That's what I'm talkin' about. Out, damned stain. 5:00 PM: The Big East has two on the board now. Georgetown (7) edged Northern Iowa (10) by five, and West Virginia (6) is leading Southern Illinois (11) by 21 with about a minute left. One seed Villanova is still in a bit of a fight, leading Monmouth by nine points with about five minutes left. Surprising, sure, but despite the buzz the game is generating with the crowd, I don't think there's any chance of seeing that historic upset the basketball-watching world has been waiting for all these years. Still, like I said earlier, what's with the 16 seeds hanging around this year? 4:02 PM: Wow, I've got the sound on mute for a second, and they just ran a commercial for CSI: Miami, and David Caruso is even unintentionally funny when you can't hear his horrible, one-note "dramatic" acting voice. 4:00 PM: Oral Roberts (16) is just five points down to Memphis (1) with about two minutes left in the half. Is it just me, or does the whole field just feel tighter this year? And how can that be? There's no "parity" in college basketball. 3:35 PM: OK, I lodge the following complaint annually, so if this is a repeat for many of you, my apologies: I hate the phrase "too strong" that college basketball announcers use to describe certain missed shots. The positive overtones of the word "strong" in the context of athletic endeavor are just too overpowering to use it to describe something that amounts to a mistake. When a shot misses the basket, it's not because the guy shooting was "too strong", it's because he was "off target". 3:20 PM: Four and a half minutes into the 'Nova game. Score? Villanova 2 - Monmouth 1. Did somebody put a fucking hex on the Big East or something? Oh yeah, that's right. I did. Dammit, the Toast Curse is not supposed to have any power at the college level. 2:55 PM: Allright, LET'S GO HOYAS!!! Big East needs some wins, baby! 2:40 PM: Yup. A three seed goes down, and Northwestern State grabs the glass slipper. Thank you, CBS, for showing me the last 2.5 seconds of the tournament's biggest upset so far. I know how difficult it was for you to cut away from that gripping coverage of the Arizona and Wisconsin players shaking hands after Wisconsin got blown out by twenty points. 2:30 PM: Upset brewing here? Iowa (3) leads NW State (14) by one point with forty seconds left. 1:20 PM: Davidson (15) up 4 over Ohio State (2) at the half. That's certainly interesting. Pretty sure I saw Ohio State in a few peoples' Final Four brackets. Arizona (8) was smacking Wisconsin (9) around big time when I walked in a little while ago -- had 'em down by 24 points in the first half -- but the Badgers have stopped the bleeding and look like they've got an outside chance to get back in it. Not much else to note yet. But, OK, just for the Maq: Go BUCKNELL!!! 1:00 PM: Sorry I'm late. Just got back from lunch with the wife. Time to hit the couch now for Day Two. Tags: NCAA Tournament 12:10 PM: Just about time to call Day One of the Feast a wrap. Duke's got their game in hand, up 16 with a couple of minutes left. The other Huskies are up 9 at the half over Utah State. SDSU (11) has a one-point edge over Indiana (6) with three minutes left, but I'm afraid I'm too damned tired to see that one through. For what it's worth, GO SDSU! See you all tomorrow. 12:00 PM: Well, that's it. Syracuse (5) is about to get waxed by Texas A&M (12). Down 11 points with 47 seconds left. Marquette and Seton Hall I could let go, but Syracuse? You're killing me. Just killing me. UConn and Nova are going to have to make the Final Four to just to cleanse the disgraceful stain this opening day has seen befoul our conference. Ugh. 11:40 PM: This Applebee's commercial with the two guys doing the Gilligan's Island song? Fuckin' grating. It's so clearly designed to be cutesy and mildy amusing and inoffensive that I find it hideous and unamusing and offensive. 11:20 PM: Duke is really letting Southern hang around -- only up six with around 17 minutes left -- and Shuhsheffsky (or is it Krizwicki?) is losing it. Quite fun to watch. Know what else is funny? I'm watching this Duke squad, and I'm thinking back to the '99 Duke team that UConn beat for the Championship, and you know what? I think that Duke team's bench could hold their own with this year's model. 11:00 PM: I can't believe this. Syracuse (5) is trailing Texas A&M (12) by 9 points at the half. This is the same Syracuse team that rolled through the Big East Tournament last weekend like they were possessed. If they lose this fuckin' game, the rout of the Big East is officially on. And I will just be more shocked, more embarrassed, and more disappointed than you can know. I don't want us to be That Conference. You know, the one that gets twice as many at-large bids as they deserve, most of whom get sent home immediately? Don't want to be That Conference. 10:55 PM: Interesting. Duke's only up by 5 over Southern. (Update: 9 at the half.) Now, I point that out not because I think Duke's going to be the first one seed to lose to a sixteen. That's not going to happen. But Duke usually takes care of business in these games. Typically, when Duke's got a 1-16 or 2-15 matchup, they win by 40 points or more. Not looking that way tonight. I find this development heartening. Oh my. J.J. Redick clearly graduated summa cum-laude from the Coach K School of Acting. They just showed a slow motion clip of Reddick getting brushed across the face by a defender's hand. No reaction. No reaction. No reaction. Then, after a full two seconds have elapsed, he jerks his head around and winces like the guy got him in the eye. Oh, and now Redick just took a classic Duke "charge", which is to say that one of Southern's guys drove the lane and made momentary eye contact with Redick, the force of which blew Redick down onto the floor and sent him sliding into the stanchion. Some things just never change. 09:55 PM: Here's something that annoys me: Players of the Game. Why can't we just have one Player of the Game? You know, preferably they guy who had the biggest overall impact, usually for the winning team. Seems simple. But no, we have to have a Player of the Game from each team. Because everybody should have a chance to feel good about themselves. We're all "winners" on the inside. Yay! Fuckin' tools. And, seriously, how do you feel if you're the Player of the Game from the losing team? Personally, I'd find such an "honor" insulting and condescending. 09:40 PM: HAH! Gonzaga comes back to win it, 79-75. That was all my doing, baby. Adam Morrison had a laptop next to him on the bench. He read what I had to say, and he was ashamed. 09:30 PM: Quite a finish in Greensborough. George Washington, after trailing by as many as 19 earlier in the game, comes back to win 88-85 in overtime. That's the first time in over six years that I've experienced positive emotions associated with the initials "G.W.". 08:40 PM: We're back. What have we got going on? Marquette (7) went down to Alabama (10) in the first round, taking the Big East to 0-and-2 for the day. Way to go, Big East!!! Make a huge ass of me, why don't you? Next up, UCLA (2) laid the smack down on Belmont (15) with a 34-point beating, the biggest margin of the day so far. And, let's see, at the moment, NC Wilmington (9) has George Washington (8) down 5, LSU (4) has built a 7-point lead over Iona after trailing earlier, and, uh, hmmmm... something else? Oh. Yes. Gonzaga (3) trails Xavier (14) by 9 points. Dear old Gonzaga. You're going to fuck me again, aren't you? You've been lubing up all season and now you've got me right where you want me and you're gonna slam it to me yet again, you fucking sadistic fucks. Every year. Every year like clockwork. And like an abused spouse, I keep making excuses for you. I keep coming back. I figure, no, you won't do me like that again. Not this year. This year you're really going to the Final Four. This year you're not going to choke. Because, you see, I still remember. I still remember our first date, when you took my Huskies to the wire in 1999 in the Elite Eight. You were such the darlings of the tournament that year. And every year since then I've been waiting for you to capture the magic again. And every year since then you tease me, and then you fuck me over. And I just have to ask you: How do you live with yourselves? 05:40 PM: OK, I'm outta here. Gotta give Tracy her shot and then it's off to class. Looking like our biggest upset of the day will be Montana (12) over Nevada (5), assuming Montana holds their 10-point lead for the last 3+ minutes. And, honestly, I don't think 12-5's should count as upsets anymore. So there you go. Back around 8:00 PM. 05:30 PM: Know what's highly amusing? Looking out your window and seeing a frustrated squirrel sliding down a bird-feeder pole to which you've applied liberal quantities of vegetable oil. That's funny. No, that's fuckin' high comedy. Fucker. 05:25 PM: Tie game, Winthrop with possession, fifty-two seconds left. This is pretty amazing. (Elsewhere, Florida crushed Southern Alabama by 26 points, Montana still leads Nevada by a half dozen, and Alabama is up over Marquette by a point.) Timeout, Winthrop. Still tied. Twenty-two seconds remaining. I love the tournament. Weird sequence there. Tennessee misses, gets a long rebound -- like, backcourt long -- then drives for a last second shot and... calls a timeout with under five seconds left. WOW. BIG shot by that Lofton guy to put the Volunteers back up by a basket. Only .4 seconds left on the clock too. Shit, you gotta feel bad for Winthrop if they lose this on that shot. Aw, dude. That was incredible! Winthrop inbounds the ball the length of the court, one of their guys gets it right under the basket, and he misses a layup. Game over. Oh my. 04:55 PM: Winthrop (15) is up a bucket over Tennessee (2) with eight minutes left. I note this because I've been waiting for Winthrop to fade since about, oh, the 35-minute mark. But they're not fading. Could be quite the upset brewing. And, hell, I don't care because I have North Carolina coming out of this sub-region. Go Winthrop!!! 04:40 PM: Got the Sports Illustrated tournament edition today. They've got Duke beating UConn in the final. Which is bullshit. Duke might win the whole thing, but only if someone else takes UConn out first. No way they beat the Huskies in the championship game. UConn owns Duke. 04:10 PM: Score check. 2-seed Tennessee leads 15-seed Winthrop by a mere two points at the half. 3-seed Florida leads 14-seed Southern Alabama by 6, also at the half. And 12-seed Montana leads 5-seed Nevada by 6 with about 6 minutes to go in the first half. Uh oh. Always have at least one 12-over-5 upset. Always. Hope this one isn't it. 03:25 PM: They just had a commercial on for Verizon's Razor phone with V-Cast. The one where the annoying guy is taunting his cube neighbor with his phone, bragging about how cool he is because he can download videos and movie trailers and shit. Anyone out there been pining away for the ability to watch movie trailers on their phone's 1x1.5" screen? No? Me either. If watching crappy little video clips on your cell phone makes you "cool", well, I guess I'll just have to be square then. 03:15 PM: B.C. is really asserting themselves now. They've scored nine unanswered points in the second overtime period. Minute left now. Oh, my. The crowd just started the "OH-ver-RATE-ed" chant. I don't think that's called for. Final: B.C. 88, Pacific 76 in double OT. That was exciting. 03:05 PM: Twelve seconds left. B.C. goes inside, puts up a miss, but their guy gets fouled. Their shooter, Craig Smith, is 3 for 7 from the line for the day. Makes his first. Makes his second. Pacific flies down the floor but doesn't get a shot off. Going to double overtime. 02:55 PM: Could have our first official Big Upset in the works here. Pacific's Mike Webb just came out and drained back-to-back threes to take a six point lead in overtime over B.C. Oh, I should break in here to note that the Milwaukee-Wisconsin game went final a little while back, with them beating Oklahoma by eight. 11 over a 6. Middling upset. Called it. OK, back to the B.C. game. Eagles back within a basket. Under two minutes left in OT. Another three-pointer for Pacific. These guys are on fire. Then a three back for B.C. Forty seconds remaining. Awesome finish. Pacific with a miss, and now a timeout. 02:40 PM: Well then. Seton Hall ended up getting smoked by the SHOCKERS of Wichita State to the tune of twenty points. This guy Ogirri made half a dozen threes for Wichita State. Just a dominant performance. Meanwhile, B.C. is up 4 points over Pacific with under a minute left.. nope, 3 points.. nope, 2 points.. nope, 1 point. (Pacific got fouled on the three-point attempt and their guy made all three.) B.C. at the line now, and now they're back up by three. Pacific goes inside for a layup, cutting it to one, then fouls quickly. B.C. makes 'em both again. WHOA! Pacific just got a guy wide open and he drained a three to tie it. Just nine seconds left in regulation. This is a good one. Yikes, B.C. guy dribbles down the court, trips, and turns it over with 3.9 on the clock. And then Pacific does the same thing!!! Their guy dribble straight into a B.C. trap and falls down. WTF? Going to overtime. Wait, they just put .2 seconds back on. This is stupid. Fine, now we're going to overtime. 01:40 PM: Quick check of the scores. 11-seed Milwaukee-Wisconsin is up by a basket over 6-seed Oklahoma in the second half. That's one of my few upset picks this year, so I hope M-W holds on for the win. Elsewhere in the 12:50 PM: Worst thing about this year's tournament? Well, for me at least? I'm testing for my green belt tomorrow night, and I've got a more-or-less mandatory class tonight to review material for said test. Now, in and of itself, this isn't so bad. It's only 3-4 hours or so between the two things. But the kicker is that it means that all day today and all day tomorrow... I... can't... drink... BEER. Or, more precisely, I can't drink beer in the gargantuan quantities that this righteous sports extravaganza truly deserves. That's just wrong. (sigh) Man, lemme tell ya, when I get back from that test tomorrow night, clear the decks. 12:25 PM: Best thing about this year's tournament? NO STANFORD! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! I think this might be the first time since I started watching this thing 13 years ago that the always-overrated Stanford Cardinal 12:00 PM: Thursday, March 16th, high noon. What time is it? It's time for wall-to-wall ball, people. It's time for the most exciting event on the annual sports calendar, the first four days of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Welcome, friends and readers, to the Feast of Saint Naismith. I will be sporadically live-blogging this round-ball orgy right here, offering thoughts, rants, non-sequiturs, and the occasional string of incoherent cuss words. Feel free to drop in on the party at any time. Comment link will be at the top of the post for your convenience. Tags: NCAA Tournament Top story on the Washington Post this morning: Bush to Restate Terror Strategy I found that an interesting choice of words. "Restate". Think about it. When a company "restates" their earnings -- as seems to happen about every five minutes these days -- it means they're changing the information they reported before. There's also the implicit sense that, when you "restate" something, you're saying it differently for some reason, e.g. to clarify or modify some point you made. So perhaps, finally, we might see a change in course from this administration? Let's see (emphasis mine): President Bush plans to issue a new national security strategy today reaffirming his doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled experience in Iraq. Hmmmm. Nothing new there. Their big test case for pre-emptive war has been a colossal failure, but they're sticking with the policy anyhow. Shades of their commitment to building a "Star Wars" missile defense system, only with far more grisly repercussions. The long-overdue document, an articulation of U.S. strategic priorities that is required by law, lays out a robust view of America's power and an assertive view of its responsibility to bring change around the world. On topics including genocide, human trafficking and AIDS, the strategy describes itself as "idealistic about goals and realistic about means." Here we see that they're formalizing their post-hoc "Freedom" excuse for invading Iraq. Goody. A clear sign that the neocon inmates are still running the White House asylum. And that second sentence certainly reads rather oddly. Sounds to me like they're saying "You folks with humanitarian crises unrelated to terrorism? Yeah, um, we'll get back to you." The strategy expands on the original security framework developed by the Bush administration in September 2002, before the invasion of Iraq. That strategy shifted U.S. foreign policy away from decades of deterrence and containment toward a more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before they attack the United States. Another way of phrasing that would be "Away from success and towards failure". Or how about "Away from relative peace and towards a more aggressive pursuit of violence and chaos"? In his revised version, Bush offers no second thoughts about the preemption policy, saying it "remains the same" and defending it as necessary for a country in the "early years of a long struggle" akin to the Cold War. In a nod to critics in Europe, the document places a greater emphasis on working with allies and declares diplomacy to be "our strong preference" in tackling the threat of weapons of mass destruction. I'm not getting a whole lot of "refinement" or "expansion" or "clarification" here. What I'm getting instead is that familiar, sinking, More-Of-The-Same feeling I get whenever the administration announces something. Well, OK, you do have to love them adding that "greater emphasis on working with allies" bit. Makes you wish we still had some. "If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," the document continues. "When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize." Yep. That pretty much cinches it. We're not dealing with any of the more nuanced definitions of "restate" here, we're dealing with the Bushian meaning: To say, in precisely the same fucking manner, using precisely the same fucking justifications, precisely the same fucking things one said before. Oh, please, please, please let me have the mental fortitude to withstand three more years of this shit. One more paragraph that really stood out to me in this piece: The preemption doctrine generated fierce debate at the time, and many critics believe the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq fatally undermined an essential assumption of the strategy -- that intelligence about an enemy's capabilities and intentions can be sufficient to justify preventive war. Bwuh??? Did I sleep through something important? Here's what I remember for "debate" during the run-up to the Iraq war: The entirety of the GOP and most of the Democratic Party marching in robotic lockstep behind the White House while a handful of mewling Dems bleated things like "Aw, come on guys, we really should give the U.N. inspectors a little time, shouldn't we?" That, and the media screeching and banging the war drums 24-7. That was it. That was our "debate". And that debate was strictly about Iraq, it wasn't about the merits of pre-emptive war as a general policy. That's a debate we failed to have entirely. I remember - clearly - how shocking I found that at the time. Here we were racing headlong towards an unprovoked invasion of a country which had done nothing to us, and nobody on either side of the aisle was standing up to say how morally repugnant such an act was. Nobody in the media was pointing out our impending violation of that simple injunction we teach our young children: Don't hit first. Ever. Couldn't believe it then. Still can't believe it. And now it's been formalized as our nation's policy. The "Bush Doctrine". They should call it the "Bully Doctrine" instead. | Tags: Bush, pre-emptive war, moral idiocy King Kaufman at Salon breaks out a brilliant mini-rant today, contrasting the sports media's treatment of the U.S. World Baseball Classic team's failure with the failure two years ago of the U.S. Basketball team: Tell me if this sounds familiar. A team of U.S. All-Stars in a quintessentially American sport goes to an international competition and, despite its enormous, multimillion-dollar talent, turns in a lackluster showing. But there seems to be a big difference between the men's Olympic basketball team that bricked its way to a bronze medal in 2004 and the baseball team that has gone 3-2 and will be eliminated from the World Baseball Classic Wednesday night if Japan beats Korea and either gives up fewer than seven runs or scores more than seven. Where is the outrage? Where are the talk radio hosts jabbering endlessly about the Americans' lack of fundamentals, bad attitudes, laziness, preoccupation with bling? Americans are about to get bounced from an international tournament in their own sport -- and worse, at home -- and I haven't heard one word about the team's moral shortcomings. The basketball team's losses were proof of a breakdown in society. In baseball, hey, anything can happen in a short series. There is that. And what other striking difference is there in the makeup of the USA's 2004 basketball team and 2006 baseball team? Does anything jump out at you when you look at the team photos? Yeah. Me neither. Then again, I'm colorblind. I have nothing to add to that. No, wait, I do: Word. | Tags: WBC, baseball, NBA, basketball C'Mon, people. Tepid response on the TwoGlasses NCAA Pool. So far, kate, Angelos, and the Maq are the only people ready to throw down with Tracy and myself. Tellin' ya, the tournament's a lot more fun when you've got picks on the line. Only $10 to enter. E-mail me for details. The clock is ticking. The Nation's Greatest Sporting Event tips off in just 41 hours.... | Tags: NCAA basketball The latest news from Bush's lovely little war: Eighty seven people have been killed, execution-style, in Baghdad within the last day or so. Of course, I probably shouldn't highlight that story because, you know, it'll hurt the war effort and embolden the insurgents. Or some such shit. But oh well. Sue me. | Tags: Iraq
And, hey, speaking of babies, what a very special birthday indeed! It's not every woman who gets embryos for her birthday, you know. When we went in for the transfer procedure today and the nurse checked Tracy's date of birth, she got all giddy, saying it must mean something. The way I look at it? Certainly make a good story someday, assuming we get lucky. Hitch: Thought-provoking, if somewhat disturbing, documentary about a liberal journalist's downward spiral into dementia following the trauma of 9-11... Oh, wait, this wasn't the Hitchens bio. Sorry. (ahem) Cute, occasionally funny, unrelentingly formulaic Will Smith vehicle. Basically "Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back" times two, with a huge dose of Cyrano de Bergerac thrown in. A safe "date movie" for sure, but nothing to get excited about. | Tags: movies I've created a TwoGlasses NCAA Basketball pool here. Password is "hoops". I think you'll need to create a Sportsline ID to play if you don't already have one. They're free. Now, here's the deal: If you want to just play along for fun, that's cool. If, on the other hand, you're interested in maybe winning some money, e-mail me and I'll send you details. | Tags: NCAA basketball The 2006 NCAA Tournament brackets have been set, and my UConn Huskies did indeed land a number one seed, despite their first-round loss in the Big East Tournament. (In case you missed it, Syracuse won the Big East, so maybe UConn's loss was less about them and more about 'Cuse playing out of their minds.) UConn's bracket -- the "Washington D.C." region, and oh how I miss the old, simple, directional names -- doesn't look so bad. If it goes according to seed, they'd face Kentucky in the second round, Illinois in the Sweet Sixteen, and Tennessee in the Elite Eight (although I'd be surprised if three seed North Carolina didn't pull off the upset in that sub-region). The consensus around the sports pages seems to be that the Huskies are still considered the favorite to win it all. We'll see. Maybe it's just my sports-fan paranoia, but what I've seen from these guys this year -- the long lapses, the lack of intensity -- doesn't inspire easy confidence. | Tags: NCAA basketball, UConn Huskies Got a three-fer lined up for you today, my fellow beer enthusiasts, and I have to say I'm excited about it. I've got high hopes for these babies. This is going to be a fine afternoon. Ten hours of sleep last night. No hangover to deal with. The palate is cleansed and I am ready to drink some beer.
My immediate impression? Grimbergen Double is what I'd call an "approachable" Abbey Style ale. The alcohol is a relatively low 6.3% and doesn't present itself too much in the flavor, and the body is somewhat more conventional than most Abbey styles, with a bit more carbonation and a slightly less heavy feel. Put another way, this is an Abbey Ale you could give to your uncle who drinks Bud Light without completely freaking him out. This ale develops a nice foamy head as you pour it. Color is caramel with a bit of a reddish hue. The label describes a "chocolaty, toffee taste with a brandy-like finish." I would partially concur with that. Toffee is certainly there, but I don't get anything from this that I'd describe as chocolate. As for the "brandy-like" finish, there is the cloying sweetness of brandy -- actually I'd liken it more to Port wine -- but none of the alcohol undertones that would suggest. What I detect most strongly is a cherry flavor that lays a patch right down the center of your tongue. This is predominant enough that I'd almost guess they threw some cherries in for the second round of fermentation, but as they do not advertise this, I'll just have to write it off as an emergent property of some sort, a specter that beckons perhaps only to me. As the preceding would suggest, Grimbergen Double is all about the malt, as is usually the case with this style. Any hops which found their way into this recipe are completely subsumed by a robust, complex, and entirely pleasant sweetness. Highly recommended. Buy a six pack of this and break it out for dessert some night when you're having guests over. I guarantee you'll enjoy it. Rating: 7.5 Before I dive into this next beer, I want to have a word with the brewlabelers of the world. Those would be the people at the brewery whose job it is to apply labels to the bottles. Listen: STOP USING SO MUCH FUCKIN' GLUE. Goddamn it. What are you worried about? People walking through the store are gonna swipe labels off the bottles as they go by? Please. See, this is embarrassing. That label you see below? Not mine. Mine's in the trash because I couldn't get it off without destroying it, so I had to steal this one that someone posted online. And you can tell from the quality of it that they didn't have an easy time either. Knock it off, brewlabelers.
Observing our specimen in the glass, the body is dark, dark brown in color. The head delivered was medium and dissipated quickly. In the mouth, though, this brew creams up nicely. Not so much a foaming as a building of the body into a rich, smooth broth. The weight is on the heavy side, as you'd expect. Flavor? Well, refer to the preceding paragraph. Choc-co-late, people. Bittersweet and rich. Oddly, I'm not sure the bitterness comes from the hops. Could be from the chocolate malt. Just doesn't present itself where the hop action usually does. Long, sweet, cloying aftertaste here. (Luckily I've got some cheap whisky on hand to cleanse the palate.) This is an obvious niche beer, rather than something I'd recommend for general drinking. By all means, pick up a bottle for the experience. Amaze your friends. Definitely not a brew you'll be lining up and knocking down, however. Just a tad too overwhelming in the confectionery dimension. Rating: 6.0
Ommegang was already well on their way to being my favorite brewer before I uncorked a bottle of Three Philosophers. I mean, there was the eponymously named Ommegang Abbey Ale. Then I had their Hennepin ale down in NYC and was bowled over. So, as you can guess, I've been feverishly anticipating this newest (to me) offering. I am not disappointed. Where Grimbergen was an Abbey Ale for the guy on the street, Three Philosophers is a clinic on what a Belgian-style Ale is all about. Rich and deeply alcoholic (kinda like I aspire to be). The body is caramel colored, the head light and short-lived. Ahhhh, how to describe this brew. Wine-like, certainly. Heady. Sweet. The tip of your tongue lights up with flavor. A hint of fruit, a dash of sweets, a dollop of liquor. It's all there. Did I mention that this otherworldly concoction is 9.8% ABV? Yeah, I only say that because it's kicking my ass at the moment. Oh, good beer. Nice beer. Hops? Not to be found. At least not upon my inebriated palate. And yet, seeing as it's a quasi-barley-wine, I cannot complain. This beer does a good impression of Nectar. If they sell it in your neck of the woods, buy it. Rating: 8.5 | Tags: beer Driving home from karate the other night, and I pop in the mix CD I made for my 2001 West Coast trip (title: "The Coast Meets Toast") and Comin' of Age by Damn Yankees comes on. Great fuckin' song. Put it on there because I wanted every song on that mix to be an upbeat party song, and Comin' of Age was the song from the epic Spring Break trip me and my frat brothers took in 1990, so there you go. Anyhow, rockin' song, right, but I'm listening to it, and this verse just cracked my shit up: If looks could kill, I'd be dead on the floor Look at that. No, marvel at that. Four -- count 'em, four -- rock lyric cliches in one verse. "Looks could kill... dead", "All tied up", "Call a doctor", "I'm goin' crazy". In one verse. That's astonishing. Has that ever been done before? That's like batting for the cycle. That's like landing a quad in figure skating. That's classic. I bow my head in awe. | Tags: music, Damn Yankees, cliches Scene: A lab, somewhere in Farmington, Connecticut: "Hey, check out the tail on that guy. Rrrrrrrowrr!" "That's a happenin' flagellum, but don't you think his head is a little... pointy?" "Girl, he could have two pointy heads and with a tail like that, I'm still givin' it up." That's right, readers. At this very moment, my gametes and Tracy's gametes are gettin' it on, seeing if they can make a Love Connection. Yesterday, a little after 9:00 AM, Tracy went in to have her eggs harvested (all I can picture as I write this is a little farmer driving a tiny tractor across her abdomen) and I, uh, slipped down the hall to perform a sperm harvesting procedure (I wore my "Palm Pilot" t-shirt to commemorate the occasion). Today -- perhaps only moments from now -- we shall be notified if we have embryos. It's just another small step, really, along a road beset with possible detours and pitfalls, but we've got our fingers crossed. Five years ago, if you'd told me I'd be jonesing to have a kid this badly, I'd have laughed. My how things have changed. I can't look at my woman and entertain the possibility that we might not make a new human being together. It just feels so completely perfect, the idea of it. Like our lives have been pointing to this without our knowing it. And here we are. Steeled against disappointment. Hoping for the best. Might work, might not. One great thing about IVF -- and I say this because of all the discussion about abortion rights and whatnot recently -- is that you damned sure know if we can bring a kid into the world at the end of this, that child is going to be wanted. Big time. No doubt about it. You don't go through all this shit unless you're 100% committed to being a parent. Fuckin' needles, man. Gaaarrrrr. Needles. Thissssssssssssssssss long. (shiver) UPDATE: Just got the phone call. Six embryos! Six, motherfuckers! Six out of seven! How bad are we? Oh, you don't wanna know. No you don't. Don't even think you can talk shit about our gametes. Our gametes will fuck your shit up, yo. UPDATE: So I just gave Tracy her first Progesterone shot? Cakewalk. Her butt muscles greeted the shot with candy and flowers. Wow. Color me surprised and relieved. Meant to blog about this yesterday, but it was too depressing. This UConn team befuddles me. Number One team in the country and they lose in the first round of the Big East Tournament? Putting aside the NCAA bracket implications, they completely hosed what is traditionally one of my favorite weekends of the year. I love love love the Big East Tournament, because almost every damned year since I've been following UConn they're in it to the end. Oh, the drama. Oh, the excitement. Oh, not this year. Fuckers. Now, I have to put aside my disappointment for two minutes -- there, right over there on the side of the desk, putting it aside -- to give some props to Syracuse. These guys are on a mad tear right now. They've got that Team of Destiny thing going on. Came out of nowhere. Mediocre season, fell off everyone's radar, and then some idiots make the mistake of talking shit about Gerry McNamara and all of a sudden they're smoking teams left and right. You had to love Jimmy B going off in that press conference Wednesday night. "Ten games. We wouldn't have won ten fucking games without him." Soon as I saw that shit Thursday morning, I felt a chill wind blow across my Husky-loving soul. Sure enough, the Orange, running on emotional rocket fuel, practically ran the Huskies out of the Garden in the first half of their quarterfinal match. Connecticut staged a comeback, sure, but fuckin' McNamara hit his second buzzer beater in two days to send the game to overtime, and then the Orange gutted out the win. Oh, and they won last night too, putting them in the Big East title game and giving this once-on-the-bubble team a shot at the conference's automatic NCAA bid. All I can say is Go Orange. I'd love to see these guys make the dance. I really would. Anyhow, back to UConn. (Reaching over to pick disappointment back up.) I don't know what to say about this team. They can beat anyone in the country. Anyone. Their raw talent is through the fucking roof. But they just mail so many games in it's amazing. Every freakin' game they seem to allow a huge run. Can't tell you how many times I've woken up to read the sports page and see something like "the Huskies did allow [fill in team] to go on a 22-4 run over a six-minute span..." You can't pull that shit in the tournament. You just can't. Sorry for the cliche, but you need to play forty minutes of your best basketball every game in the tournament if you want to cut down the nets at the end. I just don't know if this team has that in them. They don't seem to care enough. And that's fucked up. That's not a Jim Calhoun team. I dunno. They'll probably draw a number one seed tomorrow, simply because -- as several friends pointed out -- it's hard to make the case that there are four clearly-better teams out there. But that won't make a damned bit of difference if they don't find some fire and find it right now. Could be a short and sad month of March here in Connecticut. Hope I'm wrong, but that's the vibe I'm getting. | Tags: UConn Huskies, Syracuse Orange, Big East Tournament Meant to blog about this yesterday, but it was too depressing. OK, I get it now. Shane's going to the Final Four. Seriously. I mean, they've been totally beating us over the head with his assholiness, and now they're teasing us by suggesting he might go home and then yanking that possibility away. That's it. Fuckface the Wonder Weasel is going to the Final Four. Put it in the books. You heard it here first. In other news, the game lost an astronaut this week. Which, normally, would be sad, but Dude... "Good with puzzles"? You're shitting me, right? I could have figured that out in my sleep, and you're a fucking astronaut and you couldn't get it done? That's just wrong. Best Line of the Week: Tracy and I are sitting on the couch getting all googly over Terry from Simsbury -- who is officially Our Hero -- when Tracy says "I bet he's a Red Sox fan though". I'm thinking "Nah, he's way too cool to be a Sox fan." Sure enough, twenty minutes later, the members of La Mina are debating who to send home, having been jacked once again by Team Asshole, and Terry turns to Young Dude Number One and says "Look, I love Dan, but I've got to put on my Joe Torre hat here". BAM!!! Terry: Fighter Pilot. Survivor Stud. Yankees Fan. I just hope that when he gets to the Final Four with Shane, one of the challenges is a Cage Match fight or something. That would be the bomb. | Tags: Survivor, Terry, astronauts, Yankees OK, so tonight's the season finale of the Greatest Show on Television. My buddy Paul forwarded me a news snippet saying that: "[E]verything you know about the 'Galactica' series is turned completely upside down. Writers pull an 'Alias'-style switch changing the entire dynamic of the show, and it's absolutely incredible." I should be excited, but I am afraid. I don't like it much when writers come up with contrived Big Twists. Like, if they try to say Adama is a Cylon, I will be rather upset. But... I must trust. I must be open, because, thus far, Sci-Fi's BSG team has never let me down. They are my Higher Television Power. I must trust in them. UPDATE: Gotta say, that didn't really do anything for me. As finales go, found it depressing and anticlimactic. | Tags: Battlestar Galactica
| Tags: Al Franken, The Truth So last night I'm driving home, and as I'm stopped at a light, I see that the vehicle in front of me has a bumper sticker on it that reads: "I'M NOT SPEEDING, I'M QUALIFYING!" Ha ha. That's pretty funny. Except that it's on a minivan. What's unfunnier still is that this is the second time in two weeks that I've encountered something like this. Last week I was driving back from work and I saw a window banner that read: "DRIVE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT." Now, that's a pretty popular saying on the tuner/street-racer scene. But, uh, again: Mmmmminivan. Something needs to be done to set these people straight. Into the breech I step, prepared, as always, to drop some knowledge. Dear Minivan Drivers of the Greater Simsbury, Connecticut Area, I am writing to inform you that the vehicles that you are driving are not performance vehicles and should not be treated or represented as such. Typical minivan straight-line acceleration is equivalent to that of a well-tuned touring bicycle. Cornering and handling are on par with a mall kiosk. These things may sound harsh, but facts are facts. You are driving a slow, unwieldy boat. And there is no shame in that. Well, OK, there is some shame in that, but what are you going to do? You need to cart the family around, am I right? We, your neighbors, understand. But please, do not front. It's bad enough our roads are full of kids who think their $2,000 rims make their $500 car go faster. I don't think I can handle an epidemic of boastful minivan drivers on top of that. Sincerely, Toast | Tags: minivans There are few things that infuriate me more than projection: The act of an adversary taking his or her flaws and failings and either insinuating or directly asserting that they are mine instead. Unfortunately for the state of my mental health, Bush, like the frothing flocks of winger sheep who worship him, is an old hand at this despicable tactic. Here's the Projector in Chief yesterday, discussing the rebuilding effort in New Orleans: "I fully understand -- and I hope our country understands -- the pain and agony that the people of New Orleans and Louisiana and the parishes surrounding New Orleans went through." You read that right. The man who dicked around on his ranch "clearing brush" while New Orleans drowned fully understands the pain and agony those people went through. As for "the country" -- you know, the rest of us who were freaking out, glued to our television sets, pouring money into the Red Cross' hotlines, wondering where the fuck the federal government was -- he hopes we understand. Well fuck you George, OK? Yeah, I got it -- we all got it -- way before you did, back when it would have actually made a difference. Pretty much everyone seemed to grasp what was going down except for you and your cronies. So don't you fucking stand there with your condescending little smirk and try to reverse roles on us now you incompetent little shit dick. Just shut the fuck up about "understanding" what happened in New Orleans last year. | Tags: Bush, Katrina, New Orleans, projection Last year, I ran across a magazine article which was a compendium of responses by various professional thinkers to the question "What do you believe although you cannot (yet) prove it?" There was a lot of food for thought in there, but somehow, I missed this entry from Ian McEwan, which I think is absolutely spot-on (via P.Z. Myers): What I believe but cannot prove is that no part of my consciousness will survive my death. I exclude the fact that I will linger, fadingly, in the thoughts of others, or that aspects of my consciousness will survive in writing, or in the positioning of a planted tree or a dent in my old car. I suspect that many contributors to Edge will take this premise as a given - true but not significant. However, it divides the world crucially, and much damage has been done to thought as well as to persons, by those who are certain that there is a life, a better, more important life, elsewhere. That this span is brief, that consciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the more precious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound. Over the years, my meanderings through the current literature on the neurology of consciousness have led me inexorably to the same conclusion Mr. McEwan states above. I find it at once horrifying and invigorating. No eternity waiting for me. No safety net. Maybe a neat light show - a neuronal finale of sorts - as the curtain falls and my spasming brain blows its final wad of energy, but then that's that. No more me. It certainly does have a way of focusing the mind on the here and now. Would that the overwhelming majority of the world that wastes so much of their fleeting existence fixated on the empty promise of a supernatural hereafter could get their heads out of their asses and embrace the reality of their present life. As McEwan alludes to above, such a recognition, widely shared, would surely make the world a better place in short order. | Tags: life, death, consciousness So the NSA Wiretap scandal walks out of our lives, and Bush walks away scot-free from what was and remains an impeachable offense. His worshippers cheer as we are dragged closer to fascism. The festering wound our leaders have ripped in the Middle East continues to boil with pus, still teetering on the brink of all-out sectarian civil war. Fear-mad supporters of the administration spit venom at the war's critics and hatred towards all Muslims in response. A building tsunami of state-level legislation restricting abortion rights starts to sweep Red State America. The Fetus Freaks crawl out from under their rocks and rejoice in the ascendancy of the American Taliban. And somewhere, a conservative pundit smugly chortles, remarking on how odd it is that studies show liberals aren't as happy as conservatives. | Tags: NSA, Iraq, abortion, right wing destroys world Downstairs, I have a pint bottle of Ommegang's Three Philosophers that I was dying to review this weekend. Know what? I can't do it. I can't disrespect a beer of that caliber by drinking it when I'm sick and stuffed up and not capable of fully appreciating it. Have to stick with the B-list this weekend.
Rating: 6.0
Rating: 6.5 | Tags: beer Butterfly Effect: OK, so who knew that one could find a movie starring Ashton Kutcher deeply affecting? Certainly not me, but there I was, shaking and bawling like a baby at the end of this. I kid thee not, this movie was like the anti-matter version of It's A Wonderful Life. It punched me right in my existential solar plexus. Blew straight past my fear of death and tapped into my much more profound fear of my not being and the world being OK with that. Fuckin' Kutcher. Don't pull that shit again, dude. | Tags: Butterfly Effect, Ashton Kutcher, Existential Angst snot flows left to right | Tags: haiku Browsing The New Republic, I spy a link to an interesting article. So I click on it and then begin to read. Several paragraphs in, I glance at the scrollbar on my browser and realize, hey, this is kinda long. I read another paragraph, then stop. I open another tab and call up Google News to see if anything important has happened in the world in the last fifteen minutes. Nothing. Back to that TNR article for a few more minutes. New tab. Check Atrios to see what's up. Oh, something good here. Read that. Getting that nagging feeling that I'm going to run out of interesting stuff. Wait, let's see if Sports Guy has anything new today. Aha! Finally finished his NBA rundown. OK, put that over here for later. Now, back to that TNR article. Blah blah blah. Damn, this is long. Good, but long. Wonder what's going on over at Shakes' place. Open a new tab, go there. Ooooh, look, interesting comment thread. Lots of comments. Keep those open to browse through later. Google News again. Wait, did anyone respond to that comment I left earlier over on Chemist's site? Nope. Start Sports Guy's article then. His stuff always feels fresh, keeps me interested. (Five minutes pass) Better refresh Atrios. OK, still nothing new there. Check Kevin Drum then. Hey, this looks like something... Wait, this links back to that TNR article I was reading. Maybe I should go finish that... Hello, my name is Toast, and I have Internet-Induced Attention Deficit Disorder. Does the above sequence of compulsive clicking, opening and scanning, reading in fits and starts, and jumping from window to window sound familiar to anyone else? Because that's how I surf the web. And sometimes, it worries me. I used to be able to read a cover story in TNR or Salon straight through without stopping. Can't do it anymore. Not unless I print it out and take it someplace far away from my computer, preferably not in the same building. I used to be able to sit on the couch and read a book for the better part of an afternoon. Not anymore. Not when my laptop is humming away nearby. Sure, I'll get through a half a chapter, but then I have to put the book down and do the rounds real quick -- Atrios, Drum, Shakes, Google News -- because... because... well, hell, something interesting might be happening. An event of significance may have occurred, and someone surely has written something about it which I must read. Right now. Also, there's that thing that happened yesterday that I bet people are still talking about. Don't want to miss that. Hell, maybe I'll make time to blog about it myself. And as I'm doing this -- half a dozen tabs open in Firefox, piling up items to read, some of them worthwhile, some not -- I always get that nagging doubt that I'm missing something, that somewhere someone's written the Most Interesting Thing and I'm. Not. Reading it. Is the technology of the internet causing this behavior? Does this hyperlinked, hyper-updated medium lead inevitably to spastic hyper-consumption? Or is the internet merely enabling a new expression of a pre-existing pathology I didn't know I had? We've all heard the term "internet addiction" bandied about at some point, usually only half seriously. More and more, however, as I scrounge frantically for my next "hit", I wonder if there's something to it. Worse, I worry that this fragmenting of my once prodigious capacity to attend to something persists after I get up from the computer. If so, how do I get my focus back? Are there meditative exercises that will quell the net-surfing demon within me? Maybe Big Pharma will come out with something for this. Maybe I need to take a vacation from the web. I don't know. Does anyone else feel this way? Or am I just crazy? | Tags: internet addiction, ADD It's been a while since I've had to give someone a sharp whack on the ass with the False Equivalency paddle, but Walter Shapiro at Salon dropped trou today and just begged for it with this little slice of perfect idiocy: There is indeed something about that sixth year when the trapdoor opens in the Oval Office and the abyss beckons. Just ask Bill Clinton, who around this time in 1998 was reminded of his encounters with a garrulous former intern named Monica. The details of that bygone episode are lost in the mists of late 20th century history, but at the time it seemed quite the crisis for the Starr-crossed president. So it is with George W. Bush as he spirals downward at a similar moment in his presidency. Despite Iraq, Katrina and even Cheney the Hunter, Bush's bedrock Republican support had been enough to prevent his approval rating from dipping below the symbolic 40 percent mark. But then Dubai hit -- and it became any port in a storm. Yes, isn't it odd how Bush and Clinton both ran into so much trouble in their sixth years in office? Must be some weird phenomenon related to the ebb and flow of politics, or perhaps mystical numerological forces are at work. Very strange. Of course, focusing on the fact that both men had issues to deal with in year six conveniently ignores the fact that their situations were TOTALLY FUCKING DIFFERENT. Bill Clinton: Persecuted by the GOP from the second he took office. Hounded by a series of completely fabricated scandals that the media stoked day and night. Investigated to the tune of $70 million dollars by three separate independent prosecutors for actions related to a decades-old failed land deal. Finally, in year six, the rat-fucking bastards entrap him into lying about a blowjob. Impeachment follows. George Bush: Embraced by a spineless opposition that wanted to appear gracious after the 2000 election and help heal the country. Adored by the lapdog, GOP-sympathizing press. Emboldened by 9-11 to pursue an insane, unconstitutional agenda of needless war abroad and police-state tactics at home. Time and again exposed in the clearest of terms as a liar and an incompetent. Commits a series of impeachable offenses while his party mates in Congress look the other way. Finally, in year six, the American people start to wake up of their own accord and see the man for what he is. Bill Clinton did nothing wrong and was crucified for it by a shameless bunch of maggots intent on bringing him down. George Bush, through his negligence and his malice, has brought his current troubles on himself. The only similarity between the two men is that things went south for them in year six. Focusing on such a superficial bit of nonsense while ignoring the vast differences between the two presidents and their two political contexts should be beneath any competent journalist. | Tags: Bush, Clinton, false equivalency Slate Magazine's John Dickerson is one gullible motherfucker. Here he is discussing the recently released videos that show Bush being briefed with specifics about the potential for catastrophe and loss of life several days before Katrina hit New Orleans: We see the president all the time in public settings, giving speeches, shaking hands, looking concerned. But this footage is fascinating because it is the first video I can recall of the president at work in private. It's our chance to see how the image of the president painted by his allies compares with the actual man. And the result is somewhat alarming. Based on what I'd been told by White House aides over the years, I expected to see the president asking piercing questions that punctured the fog of the moment and inspired bold action. Really? Seriously? That's what you expected? Tell me you're pulling my leg, please. You bought the whole Bush: Man of Action thing? Oh, Mr. Dickerson, you are something else. Next time you're in Connecticut, let me know. Some friends of mine and I would love to have you over for a poker game. I bet if, by some weird chance, you found yourself walking around the White House at night, you'd expect to open the door to George and Laura's bedroom and find a bespectacled president Bush up late studying a tome on Nicomachean ethics, right? Stacks of partially-read and yet-to-be-read volumes on philosophy and politics littering the floor? Perhaps a stray biology or physics journal? Because that's another one of the many yarns that Bush's marketers have tried to sell us in the past: That he's really quite the intellectual behind closed doors. Of course, that attempt to change the president's image was so transparently absurd that it lasted less than a week, but I bet you bought into it. Yes sir. I've always wondered about the strange persistence of the Bush Mythology. Bush: Man of Action. Bush: Thoughtful Leader. Bush: Nice Guy. All obviously untrue to anyone who has taken five minutes to investigate the man's past. All clearly recognizable as fakery to anyone who's lived through this man's reign of blundering incompetence without partisan blinders on. So why did the media keep pushing them? Were they secretly in league with the GOP? Were they just too lazy to construct a new storyline? Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe both. Or maybe something far worse is true: They kept pushing these myths because, like John Dickerson, they were actually gullible enough to believe them. I tremble at the prospects for our republic if that's the case. | Tags: Bush, John Dickerson, gullible Whole lotta talk right now that Vanderbilt QB Jay Cutler is going to be drafted before the Superman of the BCS Championship Game, Texas' Vince Young. The buzz seems to be that Young, who sat out the combine, is seen as too unconventional, too much of a wildcard, while Cutler is a "safe" pick. And rumor has it that one team in particular -- my New York Jets, who are sitting on the fourth pick -- are especially high on Cutler. Well, if they pass on Young, they're surely high on something. Let me tell you what I saw in that Championship game: Michael Vick with actual passing skills. Here's CBS Sportsline's Jason McIntyre, summing up the situation perfectly: If the Tennessee Titans -- or anyone -- pass on Young for Cutler, the general manager should be forced to watch Tim Couch highlights on a 24-hour loop, and then be forced to write on a board, "Jay Cutler will be the Sam Bowie to Vince Young's Michael Jordan" 100 times. (This analogy has a particularly painful sting for me, as it was my Blazers who passed on Jordan to take Bowie.) McIntyre is absolutely right. I'm sorry, I'd never heard of this Cutler guy before yesterday. Maybe he'll prove me wrong and turn out to be a good NFL quarterback. But what little I've read about him has my sensors screaming RICK MIRER! INCOMING!. (sigh) Come on, Jets. Let's start the new era by making the bold choice, the right choice, for a change. Vince Young is going to be a superstar. Don't let him be one for somebody else. | Tags: football, NFL Draft, New York Jets, Vince Young Finally -- Finally! -- La Mina wins an immunity challenge. They tried their best to give it away, spending an insane amount of time trying to build the "skull pyramid", but in the end, the lead they had built was too great for even them to squander. Wow. If they had lost a third straight immunity challenge I think I would have had an aneurysm. With Team Asshole (aka Casaya tribe) headed for tribal council, I could think of only one thing: Shane. Please make Shane go away. Please banish this intolerable jackass from my television. Please? Alas, it was not to be. In fact, amazingly, his name never even came up. The dynamics of this game never cease to confound me. Season after season, Survivor gives us at least one player who is such an enormous fucking jerk that you expect them to be gone immediately. You look at these people, you listen to them, and you know that you couldn't spend five minutes in a room with them without punching them in the face. And yet they stay around. In fact, often, they become the ring-leader, the power player who dictates which person will be sacrificed next. Why? Why are the other members of Casaya -- who are, admittedly, mostly jerks and morons themselves -- not seeing Shane as the cancer that he is? He's already fought with pretty much everyone there. He's gone out of his way to shit all over the women in the tribe. Why is he not back home, racing around his office like a weasel on crack, haranguing the unfortunate people in his life? I don't know. I do know that, instead of Shane, Casaya sent Bobby home last night. Figures, right? Bobby was physically strong and, while a little stand-offish, not a complete jerk. So, yeah, he had to go. Obviously. Meanwhile, Courtney the obnoxious yoga chick stays. Bruce the uptight karate instructor sticks around (shouldn't thirty years of martial arts have centered this dude's personality a bit more?). Cirie the Useless ("Leaves! I hate leaves!") gets a pass. And Shane. Still got Shane on the brain. Shane the pain. Shane the bane. Ah, well. Maybe he'll get the axe next week. (And ain't that the genius of Mark Burnett?) | Tags: Survivor George Bush: Compulsive liar. WASHINGTON - President Bush was warned about Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on New Orleans' levees before the storm hit, according to transcripts of emergency briefings that Bush received. The transcripts appear to contradict his assertions that no one anticipated the failure of levees that flooded the city. Transcripts of the briefings, first reported by The Associated Press and also obtained by Knight Ridder, show that Bush was told in stark detail about Katrina's potential deadly impact and that he heard a top hurricane expert express ''grave concerns'' about the ability of the levees to withstand what turned out to be a catastrophic hurricane. They also show that Bush asked no questions. Sorry. I meant callous, stupid, and incurious compulsive liar. Former FEMA Director Michael Brown said that before the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast, he and the nation's top hurricane scientist did all they could to convince Bush, the White House staff and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that the big one was about to happen. "'I don't know how he [Bush] couldn't understand how bad it was or bad it could be," Brown said in an interview with Knight Ridder. National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield worried about breached levees, and Brown talked about how the Superdome, which was destined to be the home for thousands of evacuees, was below sea level and at risk of flooding. He also talked about trouble evacuating prisons and hospitals -- all before Katrina hit. Ruh Roh. No more crony appointments for you, Brownie. Bush, in post-hurricane comments, insisted that his administration had no warning the levees were in danger. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," Bush said on Sept. 1. "They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And, as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded." Lookit that! You lyin' little monkey, you. Ah well, once again, it would appear that the answer to the question "Lying or incompetent?" is a resounding "Both!" But, worry not, Bushbots. I put the over/under on this story's shelf life at 6 days. Speaking of Bushbots, check out this dude "Bruce" commenting on the Chicago Tribune website (different article, same idea): Even by left-wing standards, the above is pretty feeble intellectually. Anyone who gets past the predictable leftist spin of the above article, and actually bothers to read what was said, can note that Mr. Mayfield is talking NOT of a BREACH (break) of the levees but of storm water pouring OVER ("topped") intact levees. These are two different things--thus, from what is quoted above, there is no contradiction. A student in one of my classes would get an "F" for thinking (or pretending to think) that the two are the same. But none of my students are reporters. Yah, Brooose. Us left wingsers is 2 stoopid to tell da diffrence between "breached" and "topped". U R so smart. Can I please come 2 ur class so's I can lurn to think like a 'winger? (Seriously, somebody lets this guy teach?) Of course, the people who drowned as Katrina flooded their city would probably love the opportunity to debate Bruce on the relative consequences of breaching versus topping, but they can't because they're fucking dead. They are dead in no small part because their government, despite having ample advance warning of the potential catastrophe that could befall their city, failed them. Perhaps Bruce and his fellow Bush apologists should take a 30-second break from parsing and spinning and covering their president's ass to ponder that. So to recap: Bush knew what was coming. Bush knew the full extent of what could happen. Bush pretended not to know after the fact. Bush lied. Again. | Tags: Bush Lied, New Orleans, levees Last night, Florida State beat Duke 79 to 74, denying the Blue Devils an undefeated ACC regular season. This news brought a humongous smile to my face, as I am invariably made happy by any event which brings Duke's suckitude to the forefront of the sports world's consciousness. That smile quickly vanished, however, when it was brought to my attention that the Florida State students in attendance rushed the court not once, but twice. They first mobbed the floor with 1.7 seconds left. Then, after they were dispersed and the game was allowed to conclude, they did it again. "YAY!" they screamed. "YAY! We're the ________! We're number _____! YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!" Those were just some of the shouts that were overheard after Florida State won the... game. As a Connecticut Huskies fan, I have had to endure two such performances this year. Each of the Huskies' two (2) losses came on the road this season, and each time the opposing team's fans rushed the court at the end, creating a revolting spectacle of bobbing flesh and waving appendages. Why? Well, because their team had just won the... the, you know... game. I loathe these unwarranted displays of triumphant glee, these mosh pits of mundane merriment. Verily, I do. Ho-diddly-fuckin'-HOH-BOY do I hate it when people over celebrate a regular-season victory. Let's get something straight: Unless your team just won a significant post-season victory, all you need to do is stand up, give them a hearty round of applause, and head for the fucking exits. K? Yes, Florida State fans, your team beat Duke. Yes, Marquette fans, your team beat UConn. Do you know what Final-Four-bound teams call such losses? Practice. Useful learning experiences. Do you know what UConn fans call it when our guys beat a nationally-ranked team? Just another day in Husky Nation. Cause for joy, but nothing to lose ones head over. When your team wins the title, that's when you have an orgy on the hardwood. Not before. | Tags: basketball, annoyances, Duke sucks Well, the bastards did it. The Carlyle Group has acquired part ownership of Dunkin Donuts. Talk about your horribly inappropriate corporate takeovers. That's like Sauron buying a chain of pipeweed stores. Yesterday morning, I sat down at the computer as I always do and blearily clicked over to the New York Times to see the morning headlines. (This typically occurs about thirty seconds before the infuriating rash of orange "Times Select" icons sends me running over to the Washington Post.) Anyhow, the neurons weren't quite all on the same page yet, and so when I saw this headline: "Rivals Try to Tie G.O.P. Senator to Lobby Furor" My first thought was "Hey, what's this? I wonder if Lamont's managed to dig up something on Lieberman." There was a pause then, followed by an audible whirring and clicking as my main processor came online and I remembered that, no, Lieberman is a Democratic senator. This story cannot be about him. I filed it away as an amusing brain fart. Somehow, it seemed less amusing and more prescient this morning when I saw this on the front page of the Hartford Courant: Party Backing Off Talk Of Joining Lieberman's Side It's been the subject of whispered conversations among top Republican officials for the past month. Now, U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, R-4th District, has let slip the secret: GOP officials have discussed cross-endorsing Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman this fall. In an interview Monday with the editorial board of The Advocate of Stamford, Shays said he intends to vote for Lieberman and is encouraging a Republican endorsement of the three-term senator. Ah, yes, that's our Joe. Darling of the right. Unfortunately, it would appear that the embarrasment caused by the premature revelation of these machinations has dissuaded the Connecticut GOP from following through with the plan. Frankly, I think such an endorsement would have proven devastating to Lieberman's support among Democrats. Hell, maybe that was the point of the leak. Maybe this was all an elaborate ruse designed to sow further discontent among Connecticut Dems. Anything's possible, I suppose. But the undeniable plausibility of the GOP endorsing Joe Lieberman should speak for itself. The man is no good to his party whatsoever. And you know what? I doubt I'm the only person whose brain has surreptitiously re-filed him as a Republican. Tracy and I were just listening to NPR's Morning Edition and there was a snippet on Bush's planned visit to India today. Tracy: "We should e-mail people in India and tell them to go out to wherever Bush is and hold up signs that say '34%'." Me: (Laughs) (Thinking: How would I know who to e-mail in India?) Tracy: "Or you could just call your credit card company. That's my woman. Always thinkin'. |
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3:45 PM: Halftime Beer Blogging!!! In honor of the Huskies, I went with 
6:00 PM: Post-game Beer Blogging!!! Sticking with the Hat, let's take a look at Batch 373, the newest in their "Mystery Beer" series. For those of you who are deprived of the singular pleasure of having Magic Hat available in your area, here's the deal: A couple of times a year, they add a mystery beer called "Batch ###" to their seasonal variety pack. They don't tell you anything about what type of beer it is, what style, what their intentions were. It's up to you to figure it out. It is a beer afficionado's dream.
5:15 PM: Chemist sends along the compare-and-contrast image at right. I swear, any resemblance is purely superficial. Well, OK, not really. I have been known to call upon my brotherhood for a futile gesture on occasion. And Bluto is in my Pantheon of Heroes.
3:40 PM: Halftime Beer Blogging!!! The beer you saw me holding earlier as I was driving the living room lane was none other than 
2:05 PM: Do not adjust your monitors. Yes, that is me, Toast, and as you can see, I am pulling out all the stops today. Many have wondered throughout this college basketball season at UConn's seeming malaise on the court. Why the lack of focus? Are they unmotivated? Poorly disciplined? Arrogant? Lazy? Well I, for one, don't believe the Huskies' problems stem from any of those things. No, the failure is my own. For not once this season have I busted out the magic Ricky Moore replica jersey. That's right. I just didn't think they needed it. Didn't think a team that went into the season ranked #3 in the country would have to rely on the cosmic alley-oop that zooms their way whenever I don the number of the greatest perimeter defender in the school's (and perhaps the NCAA's) history. Turns out I misjudged the situation. Turns out that, no matter how loaded with talent a team might be, they always need that Something More. Well here it is, boys. I've got your back. I'm ready for anything. I'm roaming the couch, and I'm a half step ahead of the bad luck that's been doggin' you (pun, of course, intended). I've got a hand in the face of your Bad Mojo, and today, it's not gonna get off a shot.
Just wanted to take a moment to wish my beautiful and excellent and awesome wife Tracy a Happy Birthday. You are the be all and the end all of my world, baby. Thank you for being mine.
First up is Grimbergen 
So, Young's DOUBLE CHOCOLATE Stout. Man, let me tell you, they are not kidding. The chocolate malt in this is the most aggressive I've ever encountered. Hershey's Dark all the way. Nice bitter edge to it. I mean, really, wow. I've had my share of beers with "chocolate" in the description, but the guys at Young's are not fucking around here.
At last, we come to our Grand Finale. The Quad. That's right, 
Not to say that the B-list doesn't have its charms. 
Next up on the agenda, 
