Fuck Texas

Fuck announcers from Texas, fuck teams from Texas, fuck presidents from Texas.

Fuck rushing 4 and dropping 7, fuck the lack of balanced pass interference calls, fuck roughing the kicker in the 4th quarter, rough the passer in the 1st quarter and take out his kneee. Better yet, let him die.

I can't believe how flat the Cal Defense looked, nor can I believe that Tedford kept throwing to Jordan and Gray when he should have forced it to Makonnen and run Arrington and Lynch down their goddamn throats until well into the 3rd quarter.

Thank goodness Lynch and Jordan are only freshmen and that we have a JC transfer coming in at QB. Maybe we won't go 1-10 next year.

I suppose the only good to come of this night is that for the first time in my memory someone chanted "Overrrated" at Cal fans.

Countup

We are currently 850 days post-9/11. That's a lot of days to go without so much as a lead as to where Osama Bin Ladin currently resides. Maybe we are distracted in Iraq. The Pakistani Army is withdrawing according to the Toronto Star. Maybe they care as little as our administration does. Maybe it's the fact that we have made enemies of the Muslim world:

"Today we reflexively compare Muslim 'masses' to those oppressed under Soviet rule," the report adds. "This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies - except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends."

The above quote is excerpted from Tom Shanker's article in The New York Times about a report released last week by the Department of Defense. It came to the same conclusion I did a long time ago. We are in over our heads in a place we don't belong. Iraq has changed its rule 16 times since 1900.
It held elections twice. The rest have been wars of culture, money and power, not a quest for freedom and picket fences.

Maybe we should have listened to the original GW and avoided foreign entanglements. Save the WW II post because had we minded our own business the Kaiser would have taken Europe and there would not have been a Hitler. In comparison to what we wrought by interfering does the Germans taking over the European continent (again) sound so bad?

Compared to killing people does paying the market rate for oil, and developing more effective transit strategies really suck?

Reincarnation

If one will excuse the abundance of religion posts this week, please continue.

I believe in reincarnation. A lot of people wonder why I still eat meat. I figure that the way I am living I am a lot more likely to come back as a cockroach than a cow, so I'm pretty safe.

Primate Quagmire

Bush Monkey Picture Shown on Giant Billboard

Wed Dec 22,10:33 AM ET Oddly Enough - Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of President Bush (news - web sites) using monkeys to form his image that was banished from a New York art show last week amid charges of censorship was projected on a giant billboard in Manhattan on Tuesday.

"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir last week at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show.

Animal Magazine, a quarterly arts publication that had organized the month-long show, said anonymous donors had paid for the picture to be posted on a giant digital billboard over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, used by thousands of commuters traveling between Manhattan and New Jersey.

The original picture will be auctioned on eBay, with part of the proceeds donated to parents of U.S. soldiers wishing to supply their sons and daughters with body armor in Iraq (news - web sites).

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came under fire from soldiers in Kuwait earlier this month who complained that they had to use scrap metal to armor their vehicles.

"Many of my friends are over in Iraq," Savido said in a statement.

The painting offers a likeness of Bush but the image is made up of monkeys swimming in a marsh. It was originally priced at $3,500 in the show's catalog.

Organizers expect more than 400,000 drivers to see the billboard each day for the next month.

Chevy Chase:Comedian, Patriot

So apparently being an alumnus of Saturday Night Live, or an entertainer stifles one's right to free speech. All of a sudden Chevy Chase is wrong for speaking the truth. I haven't found a full transcript, but apparently people are up in arms over the fact that he reminded the US Population that George W. Bush is a dumb fuck, and a lying, uneducated fuck who is starting a jihad on our behalf.

I know Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, but maybe we can elect Chevy President. I mean he has played one on TV back in the 70's so he has more experience than Ronald Reagan. He knows a jihad when he sees one, and would probably be okay with being a one term executive since that would still be about 206 weeks longer than his talk show lasted.

In other news:

Just a stroller in the park

Bill Clinton was going through Central Park with his Secret Service team recently when a man pushing a stroller taunted: “You were an embarrassment to the office of commander in chief.”

The Daily News says Clinton stopped and told his heckler: “Oh, really? ... I'll admit I misled people about my personal life. And I have even apologized for it, but I never misled the people about policy and I certainly never misled the people about going to war.”

Then Clinton spent 45 minutes taking questions from an adoring crowd before telling his detractor: “I hope your children turn out to be as perfect as you are, sir.”

Bombing Churches

60 are dead from explosions at Mosques in Iraq. I know that many will lament the evil of bombing a holy place where people worship. I don't agree. The United States is running a war in which our President continually evokes God as a reason to fight, and a reason that we will win.

My god isn't in the business of war. He doesn't hold shares in Halliburton. He doesn't tell me who to vote for, and surely does not use public tax dollars to fund faith based initiatives in a country that separates church and state. Then again, I don't believe in religion.

Apparently, the gods of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims are in the war business. I propose that they only bomb places of worship. Leave all the innocent people who see religion as the ultimate fairy tale out of your wars.

Fairy tales like religion rely on the listener to suspend rational thought. They help children get to sleep at night in the same way that religion helps children and adults get to sleep at night. It is an intellectual crutch in one's search for meaning. Religion makes the bad things in life appear to be good medicine, and allows one to rationalize success as the reward for a life in the service of God. Most importantly, religions cause wars.

The last statement was made famous by a man that I and many others worship--John Lennon. Even the worship of John Lennon caused violence towards the object of the worship so it would seem that humans are not cut out for this whole worship thing and we should try to get off the sauce before it destroys us all.

Don't try to acquit yourself because your religion is better. All the religions have done it and they all believe they are right: Israel v. Palestine, Christians v. Catholics, Hindu v. Muslims, The Crusades (Christians v. Muslims), The Inquisition (Catholics v. Jews), Buddhist Monks v. Gasoline and a lighter.

So do yourself a favor and skip church, temple, the synagogue, or mosque this week. Then write your congressional representatives and let them know that if they really want to end war, they need to light up every church, mosque, synagogue, and temple within range next weekend. It is the religions that allow people the fervor and the suspension of reality necessary to believe in a war. End the religions and you will cripple the war machine.

Better yet turn the bombs and guns over to those of us that don't believe in Paradise, Nirvana, Heaven or Hell. We will kill or die only as a last resort. You can trust us to not turn the guns over to you when you get really upset over the fact that your neighbor believes that Jesus' mother is important and you don't, or that Muhammed should have spelled his name Mohammed, or that they think that Britney Spears is a slightly less terrible singer than Ashley Simpson. Let reason prevail.

Dr. Laura & The Bible

I found this on Mark Minasi's goofing off page while I was looking to him for an answer about DNS

Kinsey

He's back in the news The New York Times has a great article
about the film. If the censors haven't pulled it off the web yet.

What is it about sex that so frightens the conservatives?

Maybe it is that the Bush regime is mostly homosexuals and pedophiles like the Catholic church. That certainly would explain a lot. When you think of a sexually depraved man who needs to assault someone in order to exert his power over them on account of the inadequacy he sees when he looks between his legs, doesn't Dirty Dick Cheney's face look like the one that should be in the Dictionary?

How can you have family values when your values preclude you from publishing howto's about making families?

History

The winner gets to write it according to popular wisdom. I think that Machiavelli had it right when he wrote that we need to decimate our enemies so that they may not regroup and rise up against us with renewed vigor. That is a paraphrase, but gets the point of a whole lot of Italian across in only one sentence.

Sometimes one wishes that they could rewrite their own history. Avoid mistakes that they could see happening as situations deteriorated, buy Yahoo! at $12 per share, whatever. But your history is the one thing you truly own. For better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health. No marriage is truly like that. If a spouse cheats, then the other spouse is legally entitled to divorce them. If you cheat yourself, you have to live with it forever.

The Trouble With Texas

I was going to post a response to the comments in my last post, but Aaron got so lengthy in his comments, and I love him for that, that I decided this needed to be a new post for cosmetic reasons.

Most importantly, Sandy Barbour resigned Tedford so she can stay as Athletic Director.

So, I studied Texas' "body of work" and found that they won by 2 points over Arkansas (5-6) and won by four points with 11 seconds remaining over Kansas (4-7) in a game that was only close on account of a questionable offensive pass interference call against Kansas. All of this was noted by ESPN's Pat Forde, but nobody else that I read.

I started this research in response to a columnist (Pete Fiutak of collegefootballnews.com whose work I admire greatly) who claimed both that he appreciated Tedford's class in not running up the score on Southern Miss, and that the BCS "worked" by picking Texas over Cal. He wrote back that "Texas has some far better wins on its resume than Cal does." so I researched further, and wrote back:

I guess I just don't believe in Texas Tech, or Texas A & M either. I mean if you lose to New Mexico and Baylor, respectively, it's kind of like Oregon losing to Indiana. The Oregon win didn't count as significant except that it wasn't a loss. As for struggling with Oregon, they do in essence have Cal's playbook since Tedford was their OC in his last position. Maybe New Mexico's coach used to work at Texas Tech, or perhaps the Big 12 is overrated, we'll find out December 30.

Upon further statistical review, Aaron Rodgers and J.J. Arrington do compare reasonably to a Big 12 team's tandem, but it's Oklahoma, not Texas. Texas is a one dimensional running team that I hope gets beaten in the Rose Bowl like they did in the Holiday Bowl last year after Mack Brown whined about not being included in the BCS. Texas ranks 104th in the nation in passing offense and their defense is almost as good as Cal's giving up 2 points more on average than do the Golden Bears.

Now all that Cal can do is shellack Texas Tech and show the nation that the Big 12 is not really that great, even in the South. Just because people can't talk about anything but football doesn't mean that they are any better at playing it.

The Trouble With Hope

Now do you folks see why I was so upset about the text messages like, "I smell Roses"?

Let alone some kid in the stands with a sign that read "Give Me Roses or Give Me Death". Kids these days sure seem to need to learn their lessons the hard way. This is still Cal football. If there is something obscure, unlikely, or even set out as an unattainable goal (I'm talking to you Utah) that will impact Cal football negatively, it will be so.

There are signs of change, like the run back for two points agains Southern Miss. Things like that used to go against us, but change is a long process. Longer than three years of Tedford's Excellent Adventure, longer than a season.

Unfortunately, there are still things like acts of an unjust and cruel god that postponed what should have been a non-event game against Southern Miss into one of the biggest spotlight games of the season on December 4. Was it even wise to reschedule instead of letting it go away?

If Cal had finished their season with a 41-6 shellacking of Stanfurd and remained idle with Texas last weekend, who could reasonably move Texas in the standings?

Of course who could reasonably move a team down in the standings for a win on the road?

I don't blame the voters. Voters are irrational humans subject to such abject lapses in judgement that they have made W a two term President.

How can we lose .03 in the computer standings for a win on the road?

That is what I want to know. Is it East Coast PC Bias?
Isn't this what giving control back to the humans was supposed to prevent?

No, it was a toxic level of hope. Hope is like a drug. For hope junkies, who regularly have hope, and have their hopes fulfilled, they can have a lot of hope without it being toxic. They can hire coaches at will. Eventually, the hope controls the junkie and makes them do rash things to get their next fix. They fire bowlbound coaches only to get turned down by the Next Big Coach, and are left grasping for anything to give them more hope. Don't let us become hope junkies, just take it one step at a time and we can avoid the 12 step programs.

As for the Rose Bowl, Go Big Blue!
Steer them Cryin 'Horns!