Your Ultimate Super Bowl XLI Pick

Why you should pick the Chicago Bears:

Do you really want to be in a group (other than, say, income bracket) with the Director of the CIA, Bill O'Reilly, Larry King, noted predictologist Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the guy who created Dilbert, Dick Vitale, Jack Valenti, Jim Christ Caviezel, Adam West, Vanilla Ice, Carrot Top, Terl, and Jim Cramer?

Of course, there is one very good reason not to pick the Bears.

One can hope, I suppose

I think Yahoo! News is getting a little invasive, don't you?

Overheard in Funkytown

As I waited for an elevator outside a composition classroom:

• Teacher: "Remember the salad analogy for the essay. The essay is a salad, and the works cited page is the croutons.

As I walked through the effing cold to my car:

• Nimrod: "I thought I did great on it, but she gave me a 65."
  

All Your Super Bowl X x IV + I Predictions

Good news: I've collaborated with noted predictologist Pat Robertson to figure out all the possible outcomes of Super Bowl VVVVVVVVI. Not all of these will come true, but at least one will.

• In a dull game with a few YouTubeable highlights, Chicago's defense and special teams do their work. Rex Grossman goes 12-35, 117 yds, 1 TD, 0 INT. Because he merely "manages the game well," voters have no choice but to give the game MVP to the other white guy on the team they know of, Brian Urlacher (5 tackles, 1/2 sack, 1 tipped pass).
• Standing at midfield for the coin toss, a glint off the commemorative coin catches Peyton Manning's eye, causing his entire life to flash before him. He heads to the sideline and tells Tony Dungy his life has been a waste, a shambles, as he's pursued fame and fortune through advertising and football. "It's all been meaningless," he says. Dungy replies, "So if you're quitting the life, what'll you do?" Manning: That's what I've been sitting here contemplating. First, I'm gonna deliver some balls to Eli. Then, basically, I'm gonna walk the earth." Dungy: "What do you mean, 'walk the earth?'" Manning: "You know, like Ricky Williams." The next day, Manning delivers flowers to Jim Sorgi in the hospital and says, "Dude, I'm so sorry. I really fucked up."
• Realizing partying like it's 1999 and driving little red corvettes are no longer cool, Prince decides to perform "Sexy M.F." in assless pants. Just before he takes the stage, though, Roger Goodell fires a flaming arrow into Prince's chest. Prince explodes. Plan B, Electric Light Orchestra (ELO?! ELO!!) takes the stage.
  
• While the referee reviews a Bears fumble, a depressed Toby Keith walks out onto the field with a microphone. "I'm confused," he says. "I'm a Ford truck man, and I've got an American flag on my guitar. But Johnny Cougar Mellencamp and Chevy say this is their country. I can't take it anymore." He then commits seppuku on the 50-yard-line. Terrell Owens runs onto the field, screaming, "He stole my act!" The crowd cheers.
• The commercials suck, mainly because too many ads try for the D-I-Y YouTube look. Entertainment bloggers around the country feel superior, then masturbate to Coldwater Creek catalogs.
  
• Hillary Clinton reveals herself to be the Whore of Babylon. (Pat Robertson's vision.)
• Bill Simmons repeatedly hurls various remote controls at his television and screams, "We would have won this game!" (Note to Bill Simmons: the Patriots are not the new Yankees, Patriot fans are now the equivalent of Yankee fans. There's a big difference. We will now return to your regularly scheduled viewing of whatever's on MTV right now.)
• The Colts win, and there is a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
  

Turn down that racket!

If you're wondering what that screeching sound is, it's me backsliding on THE PLEDGE. (No, not that one, the other one.) In the last few days, I've gotten no writing done, not even any arts and crafts. I have good reasons for the lack of writing time (lots of copyediting, snow, some overdue work to catch up on), but they border on being excuses. Tomorrow, though, my reign of terror resumes. Beware, English language, I'm coming after you.

In other news, since C-Wang and the WB comment that they learn more about me when I post about music, I'm going to post more about music. Starting now:

That Song

You know that song, the one you feel like the world's greatest when you listen to? The one you immediately listen to again? Of course, something distracts you the second time through, but that isn't the point--some songs seem like they shouldn't end. That's no new observation here, obviously, but I thought I'd list a few of the songs that do it for me (no mp3s, though. Sorry). In no particular order, except maybe alphabetical for a while:

• Aimee Mann, "Choice in the Matter": I could've listed any number of Aimee Mann songs, including almost everything on the Magnolia soundtrack and on Bachelor #2, but "Choice in the Matter" gets me every time. It's a fairly regular rock song until about two-thirds of the way through, when "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" changes it in this incredible way. (Note: if you want to buy a Mann CD, don't buy "Ultimate Collection"; she had nothing to do with it and disapproves.
• Blur, "Beetlebum": I had a friend who was a huge Oasis fan; he constantly bitched about how people would criticize Oasis for sounding too much like the Beatles but not criticize Blur for the same thing. Apparently, "Beetlebum" borrows pretty heavily from one of the songs on Yellow Submarine ("All Together Now," I think). He'd cite that, and I'd think, "Um, but it's called Beetlebum." Anyway, this tells you nothing about the song, but it's great.
  
• Elvis Costello. I can't even single out a song. Too, too many great ones. Just go buy the reissues.
• Frank Black, "Los Angeles": Shifts from rock to slow pathos. This song was actually my way into learning about the Pixies, so it's also got a nice nostalgia kick for me.
• Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy": Well, of course. Plus, it's really short, which always helps you want to listen to a song again.
• The Jackson Five, "I Want You Back": Whatever happened to that cute little Michael? Anyway, towards the end of the song, he sings the hell out of "All I want, all I neeeeeed!, "almost as if Pappa Joe is in the recording booth threatening to beat the shit out of him.
• Johnny Cash, "Hurt": I don't cry at movies or listening to songs, but this remake of the Nine Inch Nails song brings me to the edge. I actually can't listen to this song twice in a row, but after I listen to it, I have to sit in silence sometimes. On a related note, after he died, my friend Jake emailed that Cash's death hit him a lot harder than the deaths of his grandparents, who he'd loved.
• Weezer, "My Name is Jonas": Sometimes it's hard to take them seriously (especially with all the Weezer-freaks out there), but this song gets me the same way the Frank Black song does.

That's all for now. Add your own in the comments, or fill your own blog with songs you love.

Less Artsy, More Fartsy

I mentioned in a post the other day that part of the work I'm doing on my novel requires some arts and crafts stuff involving posterboard. Well, I spent about 45 minutes yesterday doing the arts and crafts.

See, my novel spans over thirty years; several of those years I wasn't alive for (my oldest brother wasn't even alive for a couple of them), and a few I was alive for I don't remember so well. So I took two pieces of posterboard and cut them into three horizontal strips each. Now I've got a timeline of six pieces of poster with six years on each. Now I can list what happens when in the novel and what might be historically relevant (certain issues of Playboy, for example).

I doubt my own work here has any interest for anyone, but it's worth noting that there's precedent: William Faulkner did something similar for his novel A Fable. And now that I've just jinxed my novel by comparing it to Faulkner, I'm going to go commit harikari.

Nuts to you, Wanda

My meme virginity has been stolen from me by none other than Wanda Ball, in fine fettle as usual. So now I have to list five little-known facts about me. Two notes, though:

1. I'm using "little-known" loosely, thank you very much.
2. I'm not passing this on to other people. I don't hand people no lines, and I keep my hands to myself.

So here we go, five little-known facts about me.

1. In spite of myself, I like that Kelly Clarkson "Since U Been Gone" song.
   
2. But I refuse to download said song on general principle.
3. When I was five or six, I bit my best friend on the stomach.
4. In high school, I dyed my hair a lot. As a senior, I had a half-black afro; in my senior picture, it extends beyond the frame.
5. I refuse to watch Lost on general principle.
   

This is funny

If you occasionally appreciate New Yorker cartoons and stories of rejection, this link is for you.

Forwarding a challenge

JPG over at JPG Writes has issued a challenge to novel writers: no matter how strapped for time you are, no matter how many excuses you can make, write one page per day. He calculates this at 20-30 minutes; I don't know how I'd calculate it, other than to say I've been keeping up, and it varies. (I have a minor addiction to a computer game called "Spider Solitaire.")

I've signed on and, with the exception of yesterday, I've been writing each day, accomplishing at least the minimum. Booyah.

Still, I have a question: I'm close to a point where the project will need research, planning/plotting, and arts and crafts (long story, involving cut-up posterboard; I'll explain in another post) rather than writing. So how do I calculate what I do? Should I follow the half-hour per day rule?

On a related note, I'd like to further the challenge for poet friends who may be skidding ever-closer to comprehensive exams: five-to-ten lines of iambic pentameter per day. (Please note: the novel challenge also applies to story writers.)

Don't forget the veggie bratwursts!

A Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to you all! I hope you're all celebrating safely today, making sure to adult-supervise the kids with fireworks.

Two stories, one mine, one someone else's, about how far and not-so-far we've come in the years since the Civil Rights Movement. Story the first: I study/teach/work at an urban campus, the Funkytown Institute for Increasing One's Future Monetary Value. The neighborhoods surrounding the campus are largely African-American; many of the campus' food and convenience services are staffed by African-Americans. However, only 11% of the student body is African-American.

Ask students, though, as I did one day to my class of twenty (with two African-American students). The lowest guess I got, from one of the African-American students, was 25% black. The highest, from a white student, was 50%.

Story the second: go read it.

Glenn Greenwald nails it

The post is long, but if you'd like some sense of how right-wing blogs "work," here you go.

The Unbearable Whiteness of, um, Whoopi?

Funkytown has a troubled racial history, to say the least (including race riots within the past ten years), so the following is a little odd. One of the local radio stations for people who don't actually like music (a mix of Bell Biv Devoe, Bon Jovi, Kid Rock, and Jojo) has a billboard advertising their morning talk show, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. "Wake Up with Whoopi," the billboard declares, with a photo of a relaxed, grinning Whoopi and two rows of faces, roughly ten or so listeners.

Here's what's weird: every face is white. So I guess Whoopi Goldberg is supposed to be the non-threatening non-white of the month here. She must be very pleased.

Castle-builders and bricklayers

Since I've pounced when the New York Times Book Review has gone astray, I should probably now praise it since it's done right. (NB: I usually like the NYTBR, but I think it needs the occasional spanking.) Not only do they place a hilarious, scathing review of Michael Crichton's new anti-science novel next to a positive, thoughtful review of Freeman Dyson's new collection of essays, The Scientist as Rebel, but George Johnson's review of Dyson also implies what's wrong with religious attacks on science as dogmatic and anti-god:

• "It's jarring at first to hear the Scientist as Rebel describing himself as a conservative. But that's Dyson: as resistant to categorization as the universe his colleagues are trying to mathematicize. 'In the history of science,' he [Dyson] writes, 'there is always a tension between revolutionaries and conservatives, between those who build grand castles in the air and those who prefer to lay one brick at a time on solid ground.'"

Dyson's description of the history of science may seem oversimplified as it's quoted (NB2: Note Harder: I haven't read the piece Johnson quotes), but it does acknowledge that scientific fields are fraught with debate and modes of thought that conflict. Why does that matter? Because there's such scientific concurrence about evolution and global warming. And lest some claim that Dyson, a long-time teacher at Princeton, is simply a brainwashed and brainwashing academic, note that he never received a Ph.D., yet worked closely with Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga as they developed the work that would earn them the Nobel Prize in 1965, and has been a lucid, articulate, thoughtful writer on science throughout his life.

Also, and more importantly, Dyson believes in god (here I disagree with him), and his faith is thoughtful. In a lecture, Dyson said, "Both as a scientist and as a religious person, I am accustomed to living with uncertainty." I wish more policy-makers and fervent believers would come to understand Dyson's uncertainty and his intelligence about science and religion.

Hey douchebag! Theory and Practice Edition

What they said.

Your weekend atheism fix

David Letterman on Pat Robertson

Letterman nails it:

Pat Robertson: "God waterboarded me"

VIRGINIA BEACH (AP)--On the heels of his prediction that a terrorist attack late this year would lead to a "mass killing," "religious" "broadcaster" Pat Robertson recanted, claiming that God tortured him and threatened his life if he did not make the prediction.

Flanked by his family, an emotional Robertson said, "There I was, crocheting a "Jesus Saves" pillow for the Jew family down the street, when a couple of archangels in black hoods burst into the house." Robertson proceeded to tell a harrowing story of his blindfolded travels to a foreign country. "The food was delicious," he said, "but I couldn't understand a word they said."

And in his most shocking claim, Robertson said he was unmasked, and there stood the Lord Almighty himself, who proceeded to waterboard him. "He wanted me to say all manner of ridiculous, frightening things about a major attack against the U.S. He wanted me to say it was nuclear."

God declined comment for this article.

I want the person of '07 to be ME!

Now that Time declared YOU the person of '06, I want to throw my hat in the ring for '07. That's right, ME, Crazy Little Thing, president, Crazye Little Thinge Enterprises, Ltd. So vote for me. Start calling Time today, before that magazine's unplanned obsolescence drags it down into the muck and they declare Joe Klein their house liberal. Wait, that happened already? Shit.

***

Speaking of Your reign as '06's person of the year, I'd like to note that 2006 was the year of the needless YouTube story. Suddenly, a video's being posted became cause for a newspaper to fill space so their trod-upon reporters would not have to do any, you know, reporting. Don't believe me? Go plug "YouTube" into LexisNexis and get back to me.

***

Speaking of patting myself on the back, in '06, I established this here blog, and I got over 20K page views. That rounds to about 62 visitors a day (the blog started on Feb. 11), though I should note I had big boosts certain days from, among others, Deadspin, Sports Illustrated, Crooks and Liars, Michael Bérubé, Chicky Wang, The Big Lead, Awful Announcing, and assorted others. So thanks. I will give you all big kisses. My goal for this year is to be linked by Gawker, Michelle Malkin, and Time, once it realizes I'm the person of this year.

***

Tomorrow (Jan. 3) is my birfday. Celebrate appropriately.

***

Lastly, at Chicky Wang's arm-twisting suggestion, I'm going to share with you what I'm listening to on ye olde mp3e playere. But instead of mentioning all the cool stuff, I'm going to try and justify the most potentially embarrassing songs I've got on there.

Lily Allen, "Smile": I usually don't listen to britpop, but her name kept coming up on music sites like Idolator and Pitchfork, so I caved in and listened. It's a solid dance tune, and witty to boot. I highly recommend it.

J.C. Chasez, "Until Yesterday": If you're scratching your head trying to figure out where you know that name from, he's one of the putatively straight, non-Timberlake alumni of N*$%@#Sync. Again, I listened on Idolator's recommendation. The lyrics suck, but it's good for working out. Also, you have to appreciate any song with the balls to include the rare lyrics, "If you play with fire then you'll get burned." Truly original.

The Beach Boys, Various Songs: Is it cool to like them yet, or is my appreciation of them a sign that I should just throw in the towel and start wearing Dockers?

Green Day, Various Songs of Recent Vintage: I'm sorry, but these guys are too fucking earnest to be taken seriously, so if you don't think they're embarrassing to have on an mp3 player, you're wrong. And if you do, well, every once in a while, I like to feel earnest.

Liz Phair, "Everything to Me": Unfortunately, this isn't from the "Exile in Guyville" era, it's from the more recent, much-maligned pop era. Yes, I like hooky songs, okay?

LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out": Does not hold up after all these years. But it did lead to my submitting a potential List to McSweeney's, only to have it rejected. Maybe I'll post it here someday.

Oasis, Various Songs: Basically the Beatles, but with the worst of Lennon's earnestness. But "Fuckin' in the Bushes" is a particularly good opening song when I'm at the gym.

Weezer, "We Are All on Drugs": I know this song sucks. I just can't help it.

A wholehearted endorsement

Back when I posted my complaint about the New York Times Book Review Best Books of 2006, my friend Jake emailed to say he agreed. Then he added, "I would add one thing to your list of complaints: where the hell was The Road on that list? Don't know if you read it or liked it, but I fucking loved that book. Scared the hell out of me, but, god, I loved it."

I hadn't read Cormac McCarthy's The Road yet, but I have now. I couldn't agree with Jake more. It's an incredible novel. I think its flaws are minor (though there are some interesting and troubling gender issues worth discussing), but the novel is so moving, so well crafted, so horrifying, I can't believe there wasn't a place for it in the NYTBR list. I keep thinking about the novel, not only for its emotional potency (that's my fancy way of saying it scared the hell out of me, too), but for how brilliantly put together it is. It's one of those novels where you close the book once you're done and say out loud, "Wow."

So put down that book on your comps list and go read The Road.

Happy Holidays, Bill Simmons!

As we veer closer to the new year and the end of the NFL Regular Season, I'd like us all to take note of a special event that's coming up: the final nail in the coffin of Bill Simmons' credibility. You see, this season, he's decided to compete against his wife in picking NFL games. With one week to go, she's four games up on him. I can't claim that he can retain his dignity by winning by one game, but that would be something, I suppose.

Still, she's pretty routinely kicked his ass at picking games despite the fact that she knows little about football. Also, each week, she's had a sidebar column that demonstrates hubby Bill's biggest weakness as a writer: he can't condense. He just types and types and types; he doesn't know how to hit it and quit (R.I.P., James Brown). So keep a close eye on NFL games this Sunday. Both Simmons' picks will go up on the Worldwide Leader's site on Friday. And next week, he'll be claiming (again) that this has been the weirdest gambling season ever. For the rest of us, it'll be the happiest.

NBA fans, what's wrong with this statement?

From NBA Kommissar David Stern: "We believe that the heat of the moment allows certain overstepping of traditional bounds."

Quiz time: This statement was used by Stern regarding:

• a. the league's crackdown on players complaining to officials about calls? You know, the one where players get technicals for looking at refs wrong?
• or b. Isiah Thomas' insanity after the brawl at MSG?

If you answered "b," you are correct. Now, for the lightning round. Is Stern's above quote deeply ironic in terms of

• a. the league's crackdown on players complaining to officials about calls? You know, the one where players get technicals for looking at refs wrong?
• b. Isiah Thomas' insanity after the brawl at MSG?
• or c. all of the above?
  

Some easy thoughts about difficult poetry

My Funkytown acquaintance Kristi Maxwell writes over at her blog, "Thinking: We should banish the terms "difficult" and "difficulty" from our discussions of poetry." Though I like the idea of banishing certain terms from poetry discussions, I wonder who takes care of this. Where are the thuggish poets to do this? Will the Poetry Society of America send over John Ashbery to confuse us and Yusef Komunyakaa to make us cry? Will the Academy of American Poets take conference fees from us and brick us in, cask-of-amontillado-like, behind Norton anthologies? Will Billy Collins come tickle us until we wet ourselves and cry uncle? Or will some devious character place the collected poems of Robert Lowell and James Merrill precariously on some top shelf to topple onto us and trap us in some awkward position so we can only count down the moments until our last breath?

Seriously, though, I think I agree with Kristi, at least in principle. Calling certain poetry "difficult" is like calling certain children "difficult": why won't you just behave and do as I'd like you to? What's with all the noise and seeming nonsense? "Difficult" is simply a term that obscures the real discussion--what is this poem doing or trying to do? (I imagine this term is particularly annoying in workshop.)

At the same time, though, "difficult" can be useful. The syntax in Paradise Lost, for example, is difficult to access, especially because we have to read complex sentences with line breaks. Plus, we like our sentences short and obvious these days. But that difficulty is a good (and important) thing in Paradise Lost. The syntactic difficulty seems like a fruitful thing to talk about. Also, I think "difficulty" can be a good starting point. So what do you mean, difficult? Is the poem illogical? Or does it rely on another kind of logic? Say, the logic of sound. Or does it follow wordplay and rhyme with little apparent attention to the immediately comprehensible?

And if we get right down to it, any poem worth reading is "difficult" in some way. (Sweeping generalization alert!) Good poems require a high level of attentiveness, even if (as in the case of, say, Frost) they seem narratively simple to understand. Another way of saying this: what is the aesthetic of the non-difficult poem?

But these are just some starting thoughts, and I'm not a poet or scholar of poetry. Someone more coherent and intelligible take over from here.

Update, 12/15, 9:31 am. In the comments, Kristi says what I meant to say, only more clearly--when people use the word "difficult," they're referring to the surface of the poem. So thanks to Kristi, "more coherent and intelligible" than me as I predicted.

My wife is going to be pissed

BREAKING NEWS: Soy makes you gay!

(Via Crooks and Liars, via Right Wing Watch, via dolorosa)

As a (mostly) vegetarian, I'm in real trouble. Praise be for the wisdom of the ever-sane World Net Daily. According to Jim Rutz, who seems a little crazy (or at the very least, needs a proofreader), soy is "a devil food" that leads to increased homosexuality by stimulating your "'female side,' physically and mentally"; "commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality"; might "explain the dramatic increase in obesity today"; and "may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children."

If you'd like to read all the scientific evidence that proves just how dangerous soy is, well, you won't get it from Jim. He provides no links, though he does claim that there's research and scientific evidence for all his claims. Plus, he reassures me with his opening: "Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food." Whew.

Of course, I'm scared here because I don't want to find that my "testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen." (Geez, I think Rutz must have gone to Harvard Medical School.) But this explains that, despite the fact that I've always hated musicals, I've recently realized Singin' in the Rain is one of my favorite movies. Plus, I have no qualms about carrying a rainbow umbrella when I walk the dog in the rain. Also, my beard (not to mention my wife, my other beard) must be cover as a heterosexual. What am I to do?

Oh, wait, I'm largely in the clear: "If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate." Again, whew.

As it turns out, fermented soy (including soy sauce and tempeh) is okay, but tofu will increase your gayness, you baby-hating so-and-so.

Don't let the fact that he's a religious nutball and has no background in science or medicine keep you away. Avoid the soy.

Aargh

You know, I just get so peeved at the New York Times Book Review. I can't help it, I suppose. In this past Sunday's edition, they listed their "10 Best Books of 2006": five works of fiction, five works on nonfiction. (They are so kind as to include poetry on their 100 Notable Books of the Year.) Here's what bugs me:

• Of the ten books, all were published by major presses. Oh, and of the publishers included, several are owned under the same subsidiaries (Penguin Group, Random House), and one (Henry Holt) also publishes the imprint Times Books, a joint venture with the New York Times. God Bless 'em.
  
• Of the ten writers, seven have contributed their writing to the Times within the past year.
• Several received multiple reviews by the Times (including Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land, which received not only two reviews, but also an odd piece by Charles McGrath about riding through New Jersey with Ford).
• The NYTBR devotes its cover to the list but only one page and capsule reviews for the books.
• And speaking of the cover, it's a vending machine with the books in it. I suppose next year they'll have an iPod with the books listed as songs.

The books aren't ranked, but the usual problems of "Best Books" lists are apparent, in addition to the problems I listed above. Why not ask prominent writers to contribute essays about this year's books that they loved or that intrigued them. I'd be interested in, say, Marisha Pessl (one of the Times fawnees, both on the list and in their coverage of the book throughout the year; oh, and she sometimes writes for them, too) tying together disparate books, fiction and nonfiction, that she read, or dealing with a novel that she can't stop thinking about.

Besides, any "Best Books" list that doesn't include Grisham is just plain shallow. I mean, come on--do Times reviewers not travel in airports?

Anything to help a grad student out

Go here.

Holiday Vandalism Challenge!

Of all the kitschy shit people are putting on their lawns this holiday season, I think the one that disturbs me the most is the white skeletal deer that lights up. There are several varieties, as I learned on my most recent walk with the dog, but the one I see most commonly is a pair that features one deer with its head down as if sniffing the ground, the other with its head tilted upward as if sniffing the air. Naturally, their heads rotate.

I mention this because last year, a family down the street from my parents had the pair of deer with rotating heads. Some enterprising vandal arranged the deer so that the one with its head in the air appeared to be mounting the one with its nose to the ground. Remember, heads rotating. Somehow, the owners of the display failed to notice for about a week. Tragically, though my mom drove by it twice a day and kept telling herself to get a picture, she failed to do so.

That brings us to the first ever Crazy Little Thing Called Blog Holiday Vandalism Challenge!©®™ If you can provide me with a photo (better yet, with video) of the wonder that must be two lit deer engaging in amorous holiday cheer, I'll post it to this here blog and you'll win some sort of as-yet undecided prize. (Please note: I am not endorsing vandalism; what I describe above is probably illegal, and you should probably not do it. Or at least not get caught. I'm simply endorsing comic/journalistic recording of said vandalism.)

Royale, avec fromage

So I saw the new Bond flick, Casino Royale, this weekend. Pretty good, all in all. Daniel Craig's a great actor, and my wife made her requisite loud gasps at surprising moments. But here's what bugs me: in a movie series known for its gadgets and mechanical trickeration, how could you have an agent say, "It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days"? Honestly, aren't spies using software a little more sophisticated than Photoshop? I mean, they aren't just pranksters.

Yet more things I want for Ex-mass

• An acceptance letter.
• Any Regina Spektor cd, but especially "Begin to Hope." (By the way, go watch her video for "Fidelity" if you haven't already.)
• The end of sweatshop labor, or at least a drastic reduction.
• Fewer fast-moving cold fronts with winds that wake me up in the middle of the night.
• Something good on dvd, I don't know what.
• A re-release of Superman Returns on dvd with the right goddamn ending. (Long story--watched the movie last night; the studio clearly demanded a different ending. And the studio got it.)

All I want for Christmas

(and my birthday, which falls shortly after Christmas)

• The tea stains off my two front teeth.
• Elvis Costello cd's, including "My Aim is True," "Get Happy!" "Imperial Bedroom," "Trust," and "The Delivery Man."
• [REDACTED]
• The final Harry Potter book to come out so I can gloat when most of my predictions about it are true.
• Good mental health.
• A scarf.
• [REDACTED]
• Whatever the best Jay-Z cd is.
• All the white evangelicals to realize how inherently racist it is to wish for a return to America's glory days of the pre-1950s.
• For said evangelicals to realize how inherently silly it is to believe that God guides American history and that He/She/It speaks directly to them.
• A good Hold Steady cd.
• The ability to eat the apples I buy and not forget about them, letting them rot into softness next to the stove.
• Nothing pony-related. (Take heed, bro and sister-in-law.)
• An academy award for Borat.
• More email, less junk email.
• [REDACTED]

Updated

• A new pair of jeans.
• Less back pain.
• Really stylish hair, but just for about a month.
• Underwear. Well, only from my wife.
• Functional government.
• [REDACTED]
• Funnier running jokes.
• A new laptop.
• A working knowledge of a foreign language.
• Cable television without the addiction to bad television.
• Funkytown's football team to make it to the NFL playoffs. (This would be funnier if they weren't an NFL team.)
• Bill Maher to realize that a comedian wearing a suit is still merely a comedian.
• For said comedian to realize that his one-liners aren't that great, that few comedians use one-liners anymore, that smirking when you reach the one-liner doesn't make it funny.
• To ease up a bit on people like Bill Maher and direct my energy elsewhere. Like Deadspin.
• Coffee, without the shakes.

Updated again

• A one-credit course for all incoming undergraduates on how to use the fucking bathroom, including the normalcy of using a urinal, the good reasons not to pee on the seat, and how to flush.
  

Hey Douchebag! "Hitchens Hearts Borat" Edition

(Warning: Borat spoilers ahead)

If Christopher Hitchens were to dine with a Southern, Christian family that lived on Secession Drive, how long do you think he’d last before being asked to leave? I ask because Hitchens has written an odd, scattershot essay about Borat for Slate. That means it’s time for another installment of “Hey Douchebag!”

Ever the contrarian (or reactionary, I can’t decide which), Hitchens doesn’t like Borat. But it’s where Hitchens begins that signals just how off his piece is: he makes a lot of hay about a bad summary of the movie in a review in The New Statesman (subscriber only). He begins with the bad table-of-contents listing (not likely to have been written by the reviewer), “Sacha Baron Cohen’s exposure of crass Americana.” Like any headline, that one does an injustice to both the movie and the review. Neither the film nor Ryan Gilbey, the reviewer in question, is interested solely in “crass Americana.” Hitchens, of course, cannot deny the volume or variety of American crassness in the movie (the homophobe who tells Borat to shave his mustache because he looks like a Muslim and terrorist; the frat boys who extol bad behavior with women, then go on to support slavery; the Pentacostals who speak in tongues and “save” Borat; the incredibly long line of people waiting with books, magazines, and life-sized reproductions of Pamela Anderson’s character in Barb Wire, who all want their memorabilia signed by her). Given how troubling the acknowledgement of so much crassness would be to his thesis, he ignores it.

Gilbey’s offending paragraph is, as Hitchens points out, inaccurate, especially in Gilbey’s odd (though not entirely inaccurate) use of the word “compliance” to describe how storeowners respond to Borat. But instead of acknowledging that Borat receives at times compliance and at times resistance (though it’s actually no surprise that a gun owner wouldn’t sell a “Kazakh” a gun with a camera trained on him), Hitchens focuses on “the discovery that Americans are almost pedantic in their hospitality and politesse.” He then catalogs the good manners of those who come into contact with Borat and acknowledges the normalcy of those who threaten Borat on the subway. But here’s what Hitchens (and many other reviewers) have missed: Borat isn’t just satirizing the “attitude of painfully maintained open-mindedness and multiculturalism that is really being unmasked and satirized by our man from the 'stan” (Hitchens) or “crass Americana”: he’s also (and maybe most importantly) exposing how Americans use decorum and politesse to obscure their narrowmindedness (and worse).

Let’s take the example of the formal dinner Borat attends in Birmingham, which Hitchens returns to as a prime example of the pedantic hospitality and politesse of Americans. We’re introduced to the diners by way of a street sign, the above-mentioned Secession Drive. On this street that stands as a stark reminder of the South’s enduring legacy of the Civil War, they tolerate his behavior admirably. (It’s worth noting they knew they were on camera and signed waivers.) But they speak to him and of him in the most condescending way. When Borat compliments a woman on her “erotic physique,” the pastor in the group says with the slow nod of patronizing, “That’s correct. That’s a very good observation.” And when Borat is out of the room, a woman speaks of how easy it would be to “Americanize” Borat. Hitchens summarizes that moment as when they “agree what a nice young American he might make,” a summary that elides just how patronizing that moment is.

Borat’s vulgarity and crassness escalates in each scene not to elicit the vulgarity and crassness of some Americans (though he succeeds in that), it escalates to show how we mask our crassness. That’s why scenes such as “The Running of the Jew” matter so much as counterpoint—many Americans imagine that we’ve moved well beyond crass racism, jingoism, and prejudice. The counterpoint of Borat’s crassness with the disturbing (and sometimes easily pierced) masks of Americans is what the movie is really all about.

That, and the opportunity to hear a fat man yell, “Eat my asshole!”

NFL Officiating Officially Sucks

In an era when any play in a football game has at least four camera angles, bad officiating simply should not have a role in deciding games. A few weeks ago against Tampa Bay, Cincinnati got screwed on a phantom roughing the passer call on Robert Geathers, and today, on Cincinnati's last-chance drive against Baltimore, officials failed to call an obvious 4th down pass interference that would have kept the drive alive. Would Cincinnati have won today's game? Not necessarily, but they should be 5-3 (the Tampa game) and could be 6-2 if they'd had a shot on their last drive. The cameras were in the right place to see, but not the officials.

*****

A plea to sportswriters everywhere:

Stop using the phrase "perfect storm." Any time a couple of circumstances lead to an outcome, a sportswriter (or, in the case of Randy Cross, an announcer) will call it a "perfect storm." And each time they do, I get the sense that they're using it because they think it makes them sound smart. But now it's become a sports cliche. Go ahead, use Google to see how often ESPN's writers use it, or Sports Illustrated's, or the writers aggregated through Yahoo Sports.

*****

I love the Sports Gal

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Bill Simmons has long since lost his edge, but at least his football picks are worth reading for his wife's brief columns. She's funny, and unlike her hubby, she doesn't labor the jokes she makes, she just makes them and moves on. Also, she's out-picking him so far this NFL season. I'm rooting for her.

It is futile to resist

Olive wants you to call for change.













If you don't, she'll take away your frisbee.

Play a role, any role

Help win the election

Why the mother-loving internet exists

Positively literal

Usage pet peeve: people who use "literally" to modify something figurative. For example, from a marketing book I recently read: "People are literally bombarded with advertisements in their mailbox every day." Unless the writer is describing Iraq, I don't think that's a literal bombardment.

But in reading a book about Abraham Lincoln's depression, Lincoln's Melancholy, I came across the following description of the raucous reception Lincoln received one week before the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago:

"The crowd went wild. Delegates and onlookers threw hats, books, and canes into the air. The wigwam shook so much that its canvas exterior became detached from the wood beams. 'The roof was literally cheered off the building,' declared an early account of the maelstrom."

Now the pleasure of a sentence like the one from the early account is diminished because people don't care enough to know the distinction between literal and figurative. Nuts.

Teachers, my gift to you

Those of you who've ever taught understand the frustration of a student who's done little work, trying to scrape by on some misguided notion of "charm" and the slack standards of public school (NB: the slack standards of public school made my hellish teenage years slightly smoother than they would have been otherwise), coming to you and complaining about his or her grade. "But I deserve [to pass] [an A] [a B] etc."

Well, teachers, here's the balm for your scabbed hearts, a phrase you can use in the office to complain. Or if you're the brutal sort, you can use it with your students. My gift to you: revisionist bitchery. Use it wisely, use it often, use it well.

This pretty much says it all

Johnny Cash

An unexpected pleasure

I'm not a Fiona Apple fan, but she and Elvis Costello do an incredible job here of one of my favorite E.C. songs. Enjoy.

Somewhere, off in the distance, a blog barked

The first time I heard the term "flame war," it gurgled from the mouth of an anxious English teacher and fantasy geek. He wasn't sure whether he should post a response to another fantasy geek looking for the only kind of fight he could win, a curse-laden, unproofread discussion board screed about D&D or World of Warcraft. "I don't want to start a flame war," he said. I probably left to use the bathroom.

In case you were curious...

why atheists care about religion.

The regimen

Sorry about the slow posting the last few days. Between the sinus infection and my newfound work ethic, I haven't had much time for blogging.

But I'd like to list what I'm taking in the morning while I'm sick, just to give you a sense of how unhuman I feel right now:

1. Anti-depressant
2. Methylcobalamin, sublingual B-12 (dissolved under the tongue)
3. Generic Sudafed (not with pseudephedrin, but with the other ingredient)
4. Two teaspoons elderberry syrup
5. Homeopathic sinus/cold remedy, dissolved under the tongue (two pills)
6. Three asprin
7. Ricola

Ugh.

In a completely unrelated note, Sports Illustrated football "expert" Peter King was 7-7 in predicting the weekend's games. My congrats to him.

The Laughing Cure

Two anecdotes:

1. A few years ago, I went into the men's room at a Barnes & Noble. At the urinal was a bald man wearing a shirt my mom would describe as "loud," kicking her faint Southern accent into full Arkie (that's Arkansan) mode. As he's urinating, he farts loudly, then sighs. Why do I note this? He was my therapist at the time.
2. In my second or third therapy session of all time, I was describing my making out with a girl outside a bar the weekend prior. The therapist interrupts and asks, "Was there heavy petting?"
   

I'm telling these stories a) because they're funny (I think) and b) because they signal to me the major problem of therapy: it's with another human being, one who farts, wears ugly shirts, likes bad movies, laughs inappropriately, and uses phrases no one's used since Beaver Cleaver.

That's all. Go about your business.

Please be tender with the ouchy groin

"Peter King knows football," reads the ad at the top of the page. The subhead for the article declares, "Bucs, Panthers will do anything to avoid 0-2 start." Well, anything short of winning, it seems. That's right, Peter King's Weekend Pickoff NFL predictions provide me again with the joy that only bad predictions made by an expert can. To wit:

Atlanta 14, Tampa Bay 3
PK's Pick: Tampa Bay 16, Atlanta 13. King writes, "You know how Jon Gruden is. The sky is falling, the world is ending, the entire planet will grind to a halt if we don't win this week. That's what he's telling his team this week. And I'm naive enough -- particularly with John Abraham's ouchy groin either limiting him or sidelining him -- to buy it."

I'd like to note here that Michael Koenen, Atlanta's kicker, went 0-4 on field goals, so the game wasn't really as close as 14-3. Perhaps he has what King calls an "ouchy groin." After the game, King was found in the NBC men's room hitting his head against the hand dryer and repeating over and over again, "Why am I so naive?"

Buffalo 16, Miami 6
PK's Pick: Miami 16, Buffalo 14. According to King, "I like the Bills a lot more than I thought I would. But if you think they're going to win at Nick Saban's house, after Saban limp-wristed the replay flag in the fourth quarter during the Pittsburgh loss and after the Dolphins have had three extra days to prepare, you're crazy."

See, if you predict the future accurately, you're crazy. And Sunday night, King went to Saban's house, where he screamed about Saban's "limp-wristed play calling." Saban responded by punching King in the face and instructing Daunte Culpepper to throw a football at King. Fortunately for King, the ball slipped out of Culpepper's hand.

New Orleans 34, Green Bay 27
PK's Pick: Green Bay 17, New Orleans 12. Still angry about the Saints winning in Week One, King writes of this pick, "I don't know why, really. I guess because this game, quite literally, is the Packers' season. They're at Detroit, at Philly and at Miami for three of their next four, and starting 0-2 at home would end any hopes they have of salvaging Mike McCarthy's rookie year."

Yes, Peter King knows football. I don't know why, really.

New York Giants 30, Philadelphia 24
PK's Pick: Philadelphia 19, New York 17. King writes, "I loved hearing Tom Coughlin the other day. Everyone's anointing the Giants as a very good team (me among them). He came out and said: Hey, you gotta win to be a very good team. Winning. Pretty important factor."

To King's credit, had he picked Philly to win at halftime, I would have agreed. This game will probably lead to Bill Simmons recalibrating his "Levels of Losing"--not that Simmons would rehash an old column because he's out of ideas. Hey, why's it quiet in here all of a sudden? Anyway, notice that King says absolutely nothing about the game. You know, everyone's anointing King as a football expert. Correctly picking games. Pretty important factor.

Minnesota 16, Carolina 13
PK's Pick: Carolina 23, Minnesota 20. King: "I have a bad feeling about the Panthers right now. Really bad. Dan Morgan's fifth concussion, Maake Kemoeatu looking like a turnstile against the Falcons' run game, Travelle Wharton out for the year, necessitating Jordan Gross' move from right to left tackle. But John Fox will be Grudenesque this week. It's must-win time."

Why isn't King reading the first things he writes before making his pick? Again: "I have a bad feeling about the Panthers right now. Really bad." At least he was right about John Fox being Grudenesque.

San Fransisco 20, St. Louis 13
PK's Pick: St. Louis 20, San Fransisco 13. Man, he almost had that one perfect. King writes, "Talked to Scott Linehan the other day. What a cool cucumber. Raved about two of the best leaders he's seen in the league: La'Roi Glover and Corey Chavous. They might be pretty good."

What do cool cucumbers do? They rave. Chavous' stats? One tackle, assisted. Glover's? Zero tackles. Yes, they might be pretty good.

So all in all, King didn't pick so badly; just six losses (I'm writing this before the Pittsburgh/Jacksonville game is over, so there could be a seventh loss; it's an exciting 0-0 halftime tie as I write). But when he's off, man, he's way off. Seriously, though, seriously: he's got an ouchy groin.

Why I blog anonymously

or, Lee Siegel is so, so fetching.

Every Sunday I open The New York Times Magazine, I tell myself, "No, Crazy Little Thing, don't read "Questions for ________." You'll just get mad that they've chosen the idiot they've chosen this week for a shallow, boot-licking "interview." And it happened again this morning, when I turned to "Questions for Lee Siegel," which was right after a nice short piece by Michael Bérubé about "liberalism" in the university and why it's not a problem (though if you've ever been to MB's blog, you've read similar things before). By the way, all you need to know about Lee Siegel is that he's a self-indulgent cultural critic who got suspended from blogging for The New Republic because he anonymously attacked his critics in comments to his own posts.

So how bad was "Questions for Lee Siegel?" Bad. Bad bad. Me stripped of words and stuff to articumulate it. (More on this in a moment.) It all begins with the first clause of Deborah Solomon's first question: "As one of the country's most eloquent and acid-tongued cultural critics..." Ahem. I know it's spoken in an interview, but how about this eloquence from Siegel: "Seriously, the blogosphere strips argument of logic and rhetoric down to the naked emotion behind it."

Point #1: Nice generalization, sprezzatura. That generalization had the appearance of no effort. Point #2: While the rhetoric on blogs may be weak or poorly thought-out, it's still there. See, if it were just the "naked emotion behind it," it might look like this: kljma,.mkljw y;hqgjakl/nmfsad;ljasjdgahfsadaaaaaaaargh!

I will praise Deborah Solomon for the greatest question ever asked of Siegel: "What are you talking about?" But even asking that crucial question, she's still indulged him too much. Consider the following:

Did you feel that you were doing something ethically questionable when you posted, for instance, a comment by Sprezzatura that carried the headline “Siegel Is My Hero”?

Every man is a hero to his alias. No, it never occurred to me at the time that I was doing something wrong. There are other people who appear anonymously on Web sites; they do battle with their detractors. Anonymity is a universal convention of the blogosphere, and the wicked expedience is that you can speak without consequences. What was wrong about it is that I did it under the aegis of The New Republic, as a senior editor of the magazine.

But beyond the breach of your journalistic compact, don’t you think it’s intellectually lame to express one’s opinions anonymously?

I do indeed. Everyone seems to be fleeing from the responsibilities that come from being who you are. I think that is why the blogosphere is thriving. It allows people to develop a fantasy self.

*****
This brings me to my point: I blog anonymously (seriously, Crazy Little Thing is not my real name). A few points on this. I'm not a hero to my alias in any sense; anonymity is far from being a "universal collection"--see Daily Kos, Crooks & Liars, Think Progress, any number of the bloggers at Science Blogs, the above-linked Michael Bérubé, even Instapundit and Michelle Malkin; the error was not blogging anonymously "under the aegis of The New Republic," it was "the dishonesty and sockpuppetry"; and finally, thanks again for the overgeneralization of "everyone seems to be fleeing from the responsibilities." Eloquent, indeed.

So why do I blog anonymously?

1. I'm a grad student working toward a Ph.D., and I also teach undergraduates. What I write on the blog has little to do with my academic work, but given the discomfort many in academia seem to have with blogs, anonymity allows me a certain comfort to know irrelevant ramblings won't adversely affect me on the job market someday.
   
2. I'm also a fiction writer, but that work is also distinct from what I do on the blog. I don't want to use the blog as a stepping stone for publication, but as a conversation with a few friends and, sometimes, for a wider audience.
   
3. The blog can function as a kind of journal, which allows me to post more personal things with confidence and comfort.

But you know what? Sprezzagella has a point: if you choose to blog anonymously, you should acknowledge some responsibilities. Ultimately, if my blog cowl were removed and I could no longer growl, "I'm Blogman" without my real identity being known, I'd be okay with that. I've still maintained boundaries of decorum and respect. I don't libel or make personal attacks; and if I do veer into name-calling and immaturity, it's not under Siegel's incomprehensible saying, "I am too childlike to be immature," it's because I back it up with an argument invested with a pretty high level of logic and rhetoric, or at least as much as I can. (Unless I'm writing about sports. But that's different.) So I'll go on being "intellectually lame" for a while.

Hey douchebag!

Today, I'm beginning an occasional series I've wanted to begin for a while: Hey douchebag! My goal is to confront the problems with Slate magazine's contrarianism. They post any number of ridiculous things in the course of a week, and they need more watchdogs. Among their most telling efforts, see Christopher Hitchens' bizarre attack on Juan Cole. Of course, he chides Cole not for his published writing, but for a comment on a closed discussion board. Or see Jacob Weisberg's god-awful column claiming that Hillary Clinton's iPod demonstrates that she's a calculated politician and that Bush's iPod demonstrates that he's an uncalculating regular guy.

So why "Hey douchebag!" and not, say, "A reasonable dissent from the tone and style of Slate?" Because I'm aping their silly contrarianism, the penchant for startling headlines.

(Note: I regularly visit Slate, and I often enjoy what they produce. This is, in part, an effort to enjoy more of what they produce by curbing the badness in any small way I can.)

For the first installment, let's look at how Slate approaches science: with dilettante Gregg Easterbrook, who has no qualifications to write on science. Yet he tries to tell us that String Theory is junk, based on the fact that he's read one (count 'em, one) book. Now, Easterbrook, summarizing Smolin, might be right about string theory. In fact, other scienticians who've read the book take Smolin's argument seriously. And Smolin is a reputable scientist. (NB: I'm also not a scientician, and I'm happy to let actual scienticians do the research.)

However, let's bear in mind that Slate gives us the review of Smolin's book through the filter of a writer manifestly unqualified to write about science, a writer who clearly has other axes to grind. For example, here's Easterbrook's opening paragraph:

"The leading universities are dominated by hooded monks who speak in impenetrable mumbo-jumbo; insist on the existence of fantastic mystical forces, yet can produce no evidence of these forces; and enforce a rigid guild structure of beliefs in order to maintain their positions and status. The Middle Ages? No, the current situation in university physics departments. I just invented the part about the hoods."

So we know what Easterbrook begins with. All university physicists are trying to protect their narrow, myopic world. (By the way, Easterbrook only recently came around to "believing" in global warming, and he advocates teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. Just fyi.) Easterbrook again:

"If you worry that even in the 21^st century, intellectual fads have as much to do with university politics and careerism as with the search for abstract truth, The Trouble With Physics is a book you absolutely must read."

Yes, folks, that's right, let's base our approach to this book on overgeneralized biases about the state of the university. Because nothing helps out "the search for abstract truth" like overgeneralized biases.

"The physics establishment reacted adversely to Smolin's cosmic natural selection because the idea implies direction: Over time, existence progresses toward a condition more to the liking of beings such as us. In recent decades it has become essential at the top of academia to posit utter meaninglessness to all aspects of physics."

I'd like to note that Easterbrook cites absolutely no one who claims that science must look toward meaninglessness. I'm sure he can find plenty of scientists who note the difference between study of the physical world and study of the metaphysical world (i.e. science and religion). However, noting that separation and arguing for meaninglessness are not the same thing. Of course, then we get to Easterbrook's particular axe to grind:

"Today if a professor at Princeton claims there are 11 unobservable dimensions about which he can speak with great confidence despite an utter lack of supporting evidence, that professor is praised for incredible sophistication. If another person in the same place asserted there exists one unobservable dimension, the plane of the spirit, he would be hooted down as a superstitious crank."

Poor Gregg, unable to tout his religious ideas in a scientific forum. But let me be the first to say: whether or not Easterbrook is a superstitious crank, I don't know. But he's certainly a crank.

There'll be days like this, my marmoset

We're drunk on power and website hits today, going so far as to use the first-person plural (or as I once called it in an undergrad class, "the fourth person"). I'm also drunk on love. And some beer. Thanks to Deadspin, Awful Announcing, The Big Lead, and Javadog Sports, for linking to me over the past two days and sending my ego soaring. So send them all some love back and go visit them, if you don't already.

Am I right to be this pissed off?

In a pretty shallow essay over at Slate, Stephen Metcalf writes one sentence that pissed me off at first. Now I'm not sure if I should be pissed off, but I can't shake the feeling. In discussing Donald Antrim's memoir The Afterlife, Metcalf writes, "If Antrim's book is predictable--—and it is, taking us through all the standard cliches, including an episode of sexual abuse--—what accounts for its strange power?"

Now, if you include sexual abuse in a novel, it can be a narrative cliche. But in a memoir? A tragic event from someone's life is now a cliche? What the fuck?

(Sorry, by the way, for the lack of accents in "cliche" throughout the post. I can't figure out how to add them.)

My "deconversion" narrative

Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist is calling atheists and agnostics for their "deconversion narratives," so I thought this is as good a time as any to post mine. (In case you're curious, the conversion narrative plays an interesting role in Christianity, depending on who you ask. One site details Thomas Hooker's six steps to conversion (scroll down).

I grew up in what was essentially a non-religious household. Though my grandparents (who lived near but not with us) believed and went to church, we only began going when I was around nine, and then only because my older brother was curious about going. We attended a Methodist church led by the friendly Brother Steve, and my parents bought us King James Versions of the Bible. I still have mine, complete with my name and the date I received it written on the first page in thick calligraphy.

Mostly we hated church, though I enjoyed the day we got to dress in surplices and light the candles on the altar at the beginning of the service. The ritual was fun. And I still remember fondly our exit among the crowd, with Brother Steve waiting for us all at the entrance/exit with a firm handshake and a smile. Still, the enduring feelings (not memories exactly, but sensations) are of exhaustion--the difficulty of keeping still against the hard-backed pew and keeping my head erect, not lolling near my shoulders--and the oppressive ache of perfume.

Despite my feelings for church, I prayed. Not in any actual sense Christianity might condone, but in the hopeful, immature yearning of adolescent boys for heaven-sent girls. I remember one night, when I was twelve, running up to the hill near our apartment complex and sitting on the wet grass (I hated sitting in wet grass but endured it anyway), praying that the overweight girl with a crush on me would give up and that the girl at school I liked would come around.

So in the long run, I had little to sacrifice in terms of faith. My older brother, who's fierce in his intelligence and his opinions, helped me "see" the lack of evidence for God's existence. Eventually, I came to understand that faith is not a matter of evidence or the lack thereof; both faith and doubt rely on the same assumption: that something we cannot understand with our senses or scientific measures does or does not exist. I'm comfortable making the leap that no God exists.

And that's what's strange to me about my deconversion narrative. I don't remember the key moment I became an atheist; I only remember moments in the mellowing of my atheism. I used to be an aggressive atheist, starting arguments with believers for the sake of knowing I would win them; after all, no one could prove God existed. I remember hearing an agnostic say, "I can't be an atheist because it's the same leap. If life has taught me anything, it's that there's little I ever remain certain of."

And finally, what's strangest to me is that I admire faith. I like the idea of it, that we could blindly place authority in something, that we could trust something. I admire the great things faith has led to, even in the face of the cruelties, prejudices, violences, it has led to.

So there's my deconversion narrative. And now I'll never be able to run for public office.

Watch this

This is utterly bizarre, mesmerizing and mundanely horrifying, if that makes sense. Go watch. (It doesn't need volume.)

This just in: Simmons begins reading US Weekly

NFL predictions always amuse me, in part because so few people are any good at them. For example, in Week One, Bill Simmons was 6-10. On it's own, not a big deal. But he got beat by his wife, who went 8-8.

Peter King, coffee-drinker and Kissing Suzy Kolber-lover extraordinnaire, went 9-7. But he does it with such verve, not only picking the winner, but also the final score, some stats, and the major play(s). But I don't think he ever gets called on his predictions, which is odd given how much time seems put into them. So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to show which games PK got wrong, then predict what he did after learning how wrong his pick was.

New Orleans 19, Cleveland 14

PK's pick: Cleveland 20, New Orleans 17. King writes, " It's not an ideal debut for Reggie Bush, losing his opener and getting pelted with milkbones at the same time, but I have a feeling he'd better get used to it -- at least the losing part."

Bush actually produces over 140 total yards. King commences to chant, "He's still overrated," as the Starbucks employees sweeping up call the regional manager for advice on getting him out of the place.

Baltimore 27, Tampa Bay 0

PK's pick: Tampa Bay 16, Baltimore 10. King writes, "Simeon Rice, meet Steve McNair. Three times. The Ravens had better learn how to protect McNair or he'll never last 16 games."

McNair gets sacked only once and leads the Ravens to victory and notches a 94.8 quarterback rating. King calls Jon Gruden and offers Mary Beth King's services for the rest of the season.

St. Louis 18, Denver 10

PK's pick: Denver 34, St. Louis 20. King writes, "Jake Plummer laughs at the people trying to give away his job. After a series of those chuckles, he strafes the Rams for 330 yards. Oh, and the Denver running-back job? Looks like Mike Bell's. He's one of the day's rushing leaders, with 132 yards."

Plummer turns the ball over four times and, um, strafes the Rams for 138 yards. He also gets sacked four times as Jay Cutler giggles mightily behind his clipboard. Also, Tatum Bell outrushes Mike Bell by 45 yards. After the game, King asks Bob Costas for a hug. Costas politely turns him down and stands on the other side of Chris Collinsworth from PK.

Seattle 9, Detroit 6

PK's pick: Detroit 24, Seattle 20. King writes, "After this game, no one at Ford Field boos president Matt Millen. They're too busy cheering new coach Rod Marinelli and his offensive genius, Mike Martz."

After the game, King consoles offensive genius Mike Martz by driving them both naked to Wendy's.

NY Jets 23, Tennessee 16

PK's pick: Tennessee 20, NY Jets 17. King writes, "Kerry Collins looks across the field and says: Where am I? Back in New York? With only two weeks of his nose in the playbook, Collins outduels old pal Chad Pennington and leads the Titans to two fourth-quarter touchdowns. The Cardiac Titans win their opener."

Pennington's line: 24/33, 319 yds, 2 TD, 0 INT. Game-winning drive in the fourth quarter. Collins' line: 17/38, 223 yds, 0 TD, 2 INT. Unfortunately, King had no way of knowing Tennessee had signed Collins just two weeks before the season started. After the game, he calls Dr. Z and leaves a long, rambling message about the virtues of lattes and the shortcomings of wine and Z sits in his easy chair smacking his forehead.

Jacksonville 24, Dallas 17

PK's pick: Dallas 21, Jacksonville 10. King writes, "After the game, Byron Leftwich shakes the cobwebs out after a seven-sack afternoon. "I never knew where they were coming from," he says. "Seems like two guys were coming free every time I dropped back to pass." That, friends, is the 2006 Dallas defense."

In reality, Leftwich gets sacked once. King drives to Leftwich's house and tries to tackle Leftwich as he walks from his driveway to the front door, but King misses and lands in the shrubs. That, friends, is Peter King.

*******
Update, 9/13, 2:00. Check the comments; apparently, I miscounted on Simmons and his wife. Even with the numbers in front of me, I screw up. At least King is just guessing.

Some thoughts about September 11

Whenever I look at a digital clock and the time reads 9:11, I shudder and feel a sudden depression. Then I'm annoyed with myself that five years on, I can't shake that response. Yet whenever I hear a politician refer to 9/11, I don't feel the same shudder, just anger at the way it's used as justification for bad decisions, for hollow and redundant remembrance.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my newspaper didn't come. I was getting ready for school (I had just started a Masters program in English then), and I needed some kind of noise as I ate breakfast and drank my coffee. So I turned on the Today Show around 8:30 and went around my apartment. I had finally sat down on my ratty, twenty-year-old couch to sip my coffee and drift mindlessly on pablum before heading to a class on modernism, when the show comes back from commerical to a shot of the first tower on fire with part of a jetliner sticking out.

Katie Couric was interviewing an NBC producer who lived near the towers by phone. As the second tower was hit, Couric was asking a question. She continued asking through the shot and through the producer's screams of "Oh my God!" for about five seconds. For that reason, to this day I cringe when I see or hear Couric.

I called my mom and told her to turn on the television. I went to class, where I was the only grad student in a class of 30. Before class, people were talking, sharing rumors (a bomb outside the State Department, hijacked planes all over the country), and I felt like even more of an outsider, unable to share in what they knew and didn't know.

After class I spent some time trying to log onto news sites; I informed a fellow grad student, Bill, of what had happened. Several times over the next few years, he reminded me that I was the one who made him aware of what was happening on September 11.

I tutored a foreign-exchange student in the Writing Lab, part of a new building designed to house all the university's tutoring and career help centers. I kept looking away from her essay to the 80s televisions on rolling stands in the distance, when through the crowd around the TVs I could get a glimpse of the towers falling. "Why are all those people watching the TVs?" she asked.

"People flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon this morning."

"Why would people do that?" she said, now unable to think about the essay that had been the cause of her day's anxiety until then.

"I don't know," I said.

I went home afterward and watched news coverage all day, glued to recurring shots of jumpers, of the tops of the towers surreally sliding earthward, taking the rest of the towers with them. Footage of concrete dust billowing, then blackening the street, then giving way to a gray haze. Tom Brokaw and the skyline of wind-blown smoke behind him.

I had bad, predictable dreams in the weeks afterward. I tried to write a September 11 story after declaring only awful ones would be written. I have nothing new to say, nothing new to feel about it, nothing new at all. So if you've kept reading, thanks.

Does Monsanto hate you?

Go watch this. Go read this. Beware Monsanto, beware milk.

The Path to Propaganda

If you haven't heard, on Sept. 10 & 11, ABC will run a film called The Path to 9/11 which is filled with bizarre inaccuracies. Not only will it try to capitalize off of 9/11, it will slander Bill Clinton. Go read more here.

What the hell?

So I checked my blog hit stats today to find that, since around 3:00 pm, over fifty people have come to my blog, most of them searching for something related to David Horowitz and his "blog" about his book. Anyone want to fill me in on why?

Sniffing the protein powder

So I went to the nearby GNC today to get methylcobalamin, a less-common source of B-12. The most common source is cyanocobalamin, but it's often more difficult for the body to process. You take methylcobalamin sublingually (let it dissolve under the tongue), so it bypasses the digestive system and gets metabolized quicker. Some uses are to slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease, decrease the risk of heart disease, and improve one's mood.

But I'm not here to discuss alternative medicines. The guy at the GNC store was nothing like the guys I've seen in other stores--not the big, beefy, neckless wonders who wear the store's shirt one size too small. No, he was a post-Avril Lavigne punk rocker, complete with a black t-shirt and black jeans, heavily gelled black hair, silly tattoos on his forearms, and gigantic earrings. I kept wanting to ask him if he was robbing the place, but instead I asked, "Where do you keep the B vitamins?"

And going to the GNC reminded me of a great story. Several years ago, when the first rumors that Mark McGwire was taking andro and creatine were going around, my friend Gary and I went to the local Smoothie King for smoothies. While we waited, we checked out the wall of supplements and found creatine. One of us, in our worst surfer-dude impression, said, "Dude, gimme some andro!" As if sparked to life, one of the Smoothie King employees came up and said, in a hushed voice, "You guys want some andro?" We laughed and said no.

After he walked off and disappeared into the back, I said, "Look at how skinny we are. I can't believe he thinks we use andro." Just then, another employee came up and said, "You guys want some andro?" We bolted when we got our smoothies and never went back.

One more thing

In my post the other day about the Center for Internet Addiction, I forgot to mention their Internet Addiction Test. For each question, here are your possible answers.

1. Rarely
2. Occasionally
3. Frequently
4. Often
   
5. Always
6. Does not apply

Now I'm not a professional test writer (though I occasionally or rarely give quizzes), but don't Rarely and Occasionally seem too similar, as do Frequently and Often? So I'm going to vote that the website cannot help you. I'll grant that I haven't read their published paper (careful, it's a pdf) about the Internet Addiction Test, and be aware I'm not a scientician. Still, I'm often, or frequently, interested in how language is used to manipulate people.

The sweet taste of The Onion

Fresh off of questioning Adam Carolla's skill as a comic, I found that the good people at The Onion lay into him. See also their great article about a student writing an essay.

Whatever happened to Bill Simmons?

I'll begin by saying I like reading Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy. Among the other writers at ESPN.com's Page 2--the tin-earred, falsely drama of Scoop Jackson, the hyper-reaction of Skip Bayless, the schticky logorrhea of Gregg Easterbrook--Simmons is usually clear, direct, and funny. And, as he likes to point out, why complain about a free column?

That said, the quality of his columns has diminished over time. For example, see his tediously long, obvious comparison between Larry Bird and David Ortiz. What a shock that Bird, fondly known to Simmons as "Larry Legend" and "The Basketball Jesus," won out. Or notice the frequency of mailbag columns lately, the truest sign of Simmons mailing it in.

And the apt criticisms have increased. See the Bill Simmons column generator, Awful Announcing's regular analysis of Simmons' columns, or any reaction to the Sports Guy cartoon(scroll down).

So why has this happened? Why have a lot of Simmons' readers turned on him like Philly fans on Santa Claus? I've been thinking about this a lot, in part because I still check regularly for new columns. It's not like he's become a terrible writer; though he's not as sharp as he was, he's still often worth reading. So here's what I think has happened.

1. Simple attrition. He's not a journalist, he's a writer. I wouldn't even call him a sportswriter. He's a writer who happens to use sports as a general guiding focus. But he's been at his best when he rambles, when he veers away from sports to movies, the nature of his relationships with his male friends, etc. He doesn't write about sports so much as the places sports intersects with life.

Plus, he writes as a fan, particularly as a fan of the internet age. Reading Simmons' best columns is like reading one of those long, rambling emails from a friend who you only see a couple of times a year. Except he's obviously considered what ramblings work and what don't. That's why his Curious Guy segments aren't all that interesting--he asks questions like a fan without really challenging who he's writing with. Or the cartoon--the best word to describe the cartoon is, I think, execrable. Simmons is a good writer, but his timing in prose doesn't translate beyond prose. That's his strength and his limit.

At a certain point, of course, Simmons couldn't keep writing the same columns using the same strengths. He had to expand, which meant other kinds of experiments. So we get the good--his book, the columns about sports books (you know, the ones you read, not the ones where his picks aren't as good as he claims they should be)--but we also get the bad. And because he's writing for ESPN, the expectations are raised, and he has less opportunity to experiment on a smaller scale.

2. Age. He's grown up. You can date this to his move to the West Coast, if you'd like, though I think it's a little more complicated than that. He got married, had a daughter, bought what I assume is a big house, etc. Early on, Simmons posted several long columns per week, each one energetic. He posted each day of a week's trip to Vegas; he posted each day of a Super Bowl trip. Now the columns arrive less frequently; notice how often Simmons complains about his body.

So in the last few years we've seen some good ideas poorly executed. The intern contest, for one, which not only dragged on forever but ended with Simmons hiring a guy who always underperformed. Simmons' energy seemed split; writing both columns for ESPN and jokes for Kimmel seemed to drain him.

3. Speaking of the Kimmel show, Simmons seemed to lose perspective once he started writing for it. The show isn't that good. Strangely enough, Simmons regularly claims that Adam Carrolla is the funniest guy in any room he's in. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but I couldn't agree less.
____________________

All that said, I still enjoy reading the Sports Guy. He's claimed recently he doesn't want to write his column much longer, or doesn't expect to. So let's enjoy what we can while we can. I'll still look forward to the next big project (a book, I hope).

How to cure an internet addiction

While on vacation, I had little access to the internet and found myself much more productive. Now that I'm back, I'm back online a lot, wasting time and feeling annoyed with myself. But it turns out there's a solution: The Center for Internet Addiction. Sounds great. But it's a website, and I'd like to spend less time online. What's worse, the biggest links on the site are to the left: "Download and Listen to our newest Podcast," "Check out our new Recovery Blog," "Find valuable resources in our Referral Directory," "Email this page to a friend," and "Join our mailing list."

Now, not to be too cynical, since I'm assuming the site and group is valid (though I've done no looking into it), but it seems like the website is asking people to spend more time on the internet, not less. And I didn't even mention the downloads, the self-tests, and the scroll-down menus at the top of the page. I particularly like the self-tests; it gives the site an OKCupid! feel.

Here's some money. Now give me some money!

Good liberals that we are, the wife and I have gotten ourselves onto a number of mailing lists for various causes. Oxfam, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, NOW, the Democratic National Committee, any candidate who runs for office in Funkytown or our glorious state. (Somehow, my wife also got a Christmas card from President Bush, but we don't know how that happened. It's the only Republican mail we've ever received.)

Of course, most of these mailings are dunning letters printed on thick, clean white paper, along with personal mailing labels and a letter decrying the current state of things. Don't read this as too critical, mind you--I understand why they send these letters out, and at times we're happy to donate a little. But I've just gotten an odd one from UNICEF. It includes the following:

• The standard letter. The need is urgent, etc.
• 57 mailing labels with my wife's name and our address. They're cute. Some how flowers in pots, others have New-Englandy lighthouses. Interestingly enough, she loves gardening, and she was raised in New England.
• Here's the kicker: a shiny nickel. Yes, the non-profit group that needs our money sent us a nickel. It's a nice 1999 one, Jefferson's profile too noble for such a largely useless coin. Not only that (though that still kills me), it was glued to the cover sticker and showing through the clear plastic of the envelope with the address. They'd like me to return the nickel with my donation. Or my wife's. Maybe if they sent me a twenty.
  

Guess who's back, back again.

Crazy's back. Tell a friend.

Yes, I'm channelling my inner Eminem. My Svelte Shady, as it were. I've returned from my long hiatus to come back to semi-regular posting, refreshed and renewed. In my "Hiatus" post, I mentioned Kant, hummus, and depression as three of the reasons for my time off. So I guess I'll explain those.

• Immanuel Kant. A double-whammy. I taught this summer during the 3 1/2 week term, meeting for two hours every day, plus individual and group conferences (not to mention grading and time spent ignoring grading). I focused the research-and-writing class around ethics, so we read excerpts from Peter Singer's anthology, Ethics, including five pages of Kant. Incredibly, the class loved the experience of the difficult readings. It's the best class I've ever taught, and I got the most positive evaluations I've ever gotten. Plus, I've been reading Kant for comps. Good times all around.
• Hummus. I've been eating a lot of hummus, and I don't like leaving pita dust on the keyboard.
• Depression. Like a lot of people, I suffer from mild chronic depression. Every once in a while it spikes, as it did earlier this summer. I mention this not for pity or sympathy (though I've gotten two recent kind comments about it--thanks C-Wang and WB), but because depression is a common issue that's still a social stigma for a lot of people. By mentioning it here on my semi-anonymous blog, I hope to encourage people that, if you suffer from depression, you, too, can effectively mock athletes.
  

Update

For those of you who are curious (or sad), I'm now considering the blog on hiatus until late August, around the 23rd. In the meantime, go read Michael Bérubé and learn something. I'll explain the hiatus once I'm back. Needless to say, it involves Immanuel Kant, depression, and hummus.

A Blog Deferred

What happens to a blog deferred?

Does it dry up
like Ann Coulter in the sun?
Or fester like Israeli--
bombing runs?

Does it stink like rotting flesh?
Or crust and sugar over--
like an ignored death?

Maybe it just sags,
like a heavy load.

Or does it implode?

The reports of my demise...

are pretty accurate, really. I took a few days off from the blog, and that became almost a month. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I'm going to keep updating. It seems like a big time suck in a lot of ways, especially since I'm teaching a summer class and reading for comps. Maybe the spirit will move me in the next few days to pick back up, or a chorus of imploring readers will lift me from the anti-blogging doldrums.