Northbound

The story is about T.O. complaining (nothing new here) but look at the picture.  Holy octopus.

Dowm to 419 this week, which pretty much defies common sense – I was expecting a gain of some sort.  I don’t understand it, but there you go.  The NFL is that way, too – you lose games you think you would never lose, and win games you’d think you’d never win.  I expect to exercise every day this week and then report a gain.  You never know.

For the record, I don’t fault T.O. for trying.  I don’t doubt that he tries.  I don’t doubt that he plays hard, and that he trains hard, and I understand that he is very good at what he does.  I am not one of the people who wrote JJT in the DMN:

That’s why it’s hard to figure out why so many of you seem shocked at T.O.’s hustle in the Cowboys’ 27-16 win over Green Bay the other day.
Based on e-mails I received, a few of you were incredulous that T.O. sprinted nearly 55 yards down the sideline shielding Felix Jones from defenders on the rookie’s 60-yard touchdown run.

Well, he did the same thing last season on Patrick Crayton’s 59-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown against St. Louis. And he did it in 1998 on Garrison Hearst’s 96-yard touchdown run in overtime against the Jets.

Okay, fine.  And I don’t ever remember seeing T.O. out there dogging it.  What I do know is that he loves him some T.O., and that spills over into him running his mouth, which I don’t think anybody needs.

And if I put as much effort into trying to lose weight as T.O. does on playing defense, I might be better off.  But I’m a lot better at running my mouth than I am at almost anything else.

It’s just Tuesday?  Holy guacamole.  (Mmm… guacamole.)

The less said the better about last night (Ruth’s Chris, ribeye, medium well, no steak sauce, yummy).  Today, oh, the sad notes of repentance – just a little bit of pizza from Covello’s.  Schlepping downstairs in a minute to get some diet Mountain Dew – did I mention that I got our soda machine to start carrying it?  I am SO pleased with myself.

This is a KBO week, and I’m not the only one having one – Lane Kiffin is as well:

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Lane Kiffin went over the injury report and the aftermath of the Oakland Raiders‘ latest loss before the questions predictably turned to his shaky job status amid more reports that his firing as coach would be imminent.

 

“This seems to be a common question here every day,” Kiffin said Monday. “I’m going to kind of put it this way: Until I am told by Al Davis that I’m not the head coach here anymore, we’re going to keep plugging away the same way we have been. So I have not been told by Al Davis that I am not the head coach. Until he tells me directly, we’ll keep plugging away.”

That’s the spirit, young Coach Kiffin.  KBO.

NYT:

Young people today can’t repay their college loans; they can’t afford apartment rents, let alone mortgages; their Social Security is being sucked up by their elders; and H.I.V. left them out of the sexual revolution: what was once free love is now a viral minefield. It’s a plight lamented in books like “Generation Debt” and even in ads for Freecreditreport.com that showcase debt-crippled lads gamely doing menial work as they warn others about the dangers of letting bills pile up. (“They monitor your credit and send you e-mail alerts/So you don’t end up selling fish to tourists in T-shirts.”)

Oh, boo-hoo. 

Okay, I mean, nobody has to tell me what it’s like out there.  I feel your pain, Generation Y slackers.  I came out of law school in a crummy economy fourteen years ago, and got a low-paying job in my hometown because it enabled me to live at home.  I had credit card debts and student loans up to my eyebrows.  I wasn’t able to have anything like a real vacation until I was almost too old to enjoy it.  And now I’m debt-free (other than a mind-killing mortgage) with a little money in the bank and the occasional tropical vacation.

Work hard, save your money, pay off your debts as best you can, don’t do anything stupid or reckless.  Things will get better.

There should have been a gain this week.  No doubt in my mind.  There should have been a huge gain; I should have ballooned up.  All sorts of food eaten this week, for all sorts of reasons.  There was — well, a moment of celebration that I can’t tell you about yet because it isn’t official, and I want to, you know, surprise everyone.  I can tell you that the celebration involved coconut shrimp, because that doesn’t tell you anything. 

(No, it’s not that, has nothing to do with that.  I’ll talk about that when I’m good and ready, thank you.  This is separate – a coconut shrimp celebration as opposed to a champagne-type celebration.)

Anyway, there was coconut shrimp.  There were chicken flautas.  There were two days of bachelorhood.  There were cheese triangles.  There was a big pot of fondue, with chicken fingers and Italian sausage, to honor the Green Bay Packers before their loss (ha ha HA HA HA) to the Dallas Cowboys, who are 3-0, and riding high in their accustomed place atop the National Football League.

And I knew this would happen (pretty much, anyway).  I needed a road trip and I got one, all the way up to Hartford, Connecticut for the Baylor-UConn game (about which MUCH more later, far more than you ever wanted to know). 

So what did I do?  I basically countered the eating with a massive project – moving all the big furniture in our storage space into our basement.  Rented a cargo van, the whole works.  Lifted bookcases and dressers and stools and lots of assorted boxes out of the storage space (getting sweaty and mosquito-bit) and schlepped them into our garage, and then manhandled (well, most of them) downstairs.  One hell of a cardio and weight workout, and I highly recommend it for anyone who thinks they are at risk of living a long and productive life and wants to do something about it.

So I lost two pounds this week, down to 422.

On cheese triangles.

Yeah.

And the Cowboys won, but I think they ruined their season.  Fourth quarter, coming up on the two-minute warning, Cowboys ball, up by two scores.  And instead of, you know, running the ball and taking time off the clock, there’s Tony Romo heaving the ball deep in the end zone to T.O.

What?  Why?

Look, here’s what happened.  The Packers basically told the Cowboys, look, you can beat us, but you’ll have to beat us without T.O., because we’re taking him out of the game.  We saw what he did to the Eagles, and we don’t want any part of it, so you’re going to have to beat us with Miles Austin and Felix Jones and a banged-up Jason Witten, got it?  And the Cowboys said, “Fine,” and that’s exactly what they did, and good for them.

And that meant that T.O. only got two catches for not that many yards.  On national television.  And that meant that T.O. was not going to be happy, and that he’d be mouthing off on the sidelines the way he does.  Madden and Michaels (who seem to be wrong about lots of things lately) were saying in the game how much T.O. had matured, which got a horselaugh from me sitting on the couch.  Because he hasn’t matured, not one bit, and after Romo couldn’t get him the ball on the end zone, the NBC crews kept showing T.O., over and over again, running his mouth, during a desperate Packers offensive series that was only made possible because of the way he’d been running his mouth before. 

Yo.  T.O., please shut the hell up.  If you’re consistently drawing double-coverage and helping Austin and Patrick “Catch The Damned Ball Next Time” Crayton get open, you’re doing your job and helping your team win, and that is actually more important than catching a touchdown on national TV and making a fool of yourself with some idiot celebration.  It really is.

If I were Wade Phillips, I would hire George Teague tomorrow and name him Assistant Coach in Charge of Keeping T.O. From Running His Mouth, and every time he made a peep on the sidelines, I’d tell George to beat the whey out of him.  Bam!  That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

UPDATE:  Miles Austin backs me up:

The Green Bay Packers had a plan to stop Terrell Owens — and did it ever work.

Unfortunately for them, just about everyone else on the Dallas Cowboys‘ offense had a big night in a 27-16 victory at Lambeau Field on Sunday. Even unheralded backup receiver Miles Austin got into the act with two big catches.

Austin said all the attention the Packers paid to Owens opened things for everyone else.

“Him having two catches, 17 yards doesn’t explain what he did,” Austin said. “He’s attracting double coverage, triple coverage all the time. So for him to do that, it’s almost bigger than him making the play.”

2nd UPDATE:  I should note here that the third-down pass to T.O. was with 2:04 left on the clock.  The Cowboys weren’t going to run any time off the clock as the two-minute warning would have sounded – it wouldn’t have mattered if they had run a screen pass to Emmitt Smith or a fake-reverse to Deion Sanders or even let Robert Newhouse run up the middle for a yard, the clock was still going to stop at two minutes.  So if you’re going to throw to T.O. in the end zone to try to keep him happy, that’s when you do it.  But if the Cowboysy had run the ball and gotten a couple of yards, that means that the fourth-down play might have gotten a first down, and that means game over, kneel down.  It maybe didn’t hurt anything to throw the ball to T.O., but it surely didn’t help and it wouldn’t have been as much fun as having Assistant Coach George Teague flatten T.O. and stop him from yapping.

Of course, next time it’s me and the cheese triangles, and George Teague comes to flatten me when I try to eat them, well, it’s not like I don’t deserve it.

A little short fiction, if you don’t mind.  Won’t be writing anything this weekend; schlepping up to Hartford for the Baylor-UConn game – back on Sunday.

 
Contest Rules for “Aluminum Ticket” Promotion

1. The “Aluminum Ticket” promotion is sponsored by Dixie States Aluminum Fabrication, Inc. (hereinafter “Dixie States”). Dixie States is the sole owner of the “Aluminum Ticket” service mark. Any teleplays, whimsical childrens’ novels, iconic Seventies movies or soulless Hollywood remakes based on this promotion are the sole intellectual property of Dixie States.
2. Dixie States will print and distribute five “Aluminum Tickets,” which will be packaged with select items manufactured by Dixie States, including, but not limited to, Aluma-Style Brand Window Shades, Aluma-Sturdy Patio Furniture, and Aluma-Freedom Orthotic Joint Replacements. In the event that the five holders of the “Aluminum Tickets” (hereinafter “Lucky Winners”) do not claim their prize within one year, Dixie States will hold a second-chance drawing to select the names of additional Lucky Winners. Forms for the second-chance drawing will be printed in an upcoming issue of Aluma-Man Battles The Recylco-Bots, a comic book currently available at your local aluminum retailer or wholesaler. 
3. The five Lucky Winners will be invited to an exclusive tour of the Dixie States aluminum foundry and manufacturing center in Ocala, Florida. All Lucky Winners are responsible for their own transportation to and from Ocala. Any Lucky Winners from the United Kingdom are invited to learn the proper way to pronounce and spell “aluminum” before arrival.
4. All Lucky Winners must be accompanied by one parent or guardian. This is an absolute requirement, mostly because Brian in Accounting got caught in the sack with his kid’s sixteen-year-old babysitter and is now on the state sexual offender registry. No one accompanying a Lucky Winner will have his or her parenting or guardianship skills openly mocked during the tour.
5. The tour will be led by Paul Burrows, Senior Vice President in charge of marketing for Dixie States. He will not be wearing a top hat, tailcoat, or carry a cane during the tour. He usually wears a navy Dixie States polo and khakis. He did, however, play Miles Gloriosus in the Ocala Community Playhouse production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum last year, and won’t shut up about it, so be warned.
6. Dixie States prides itself on being a fun and enjoyable place to work. But it is a workplace, not a wonderland of fantastic delights and enchanted candy and wonderful adventures. Lucky Winners overheard making statements such as “this is stupid,” or “this is so incredibly lame,” or “why can’t I wait in the car and play Game Boy” will be escorted from the premises and be given a brochure about alternative, non-aluminum-related recreational opportunities in the Central Florida area.
7. Dixie States is one of the few aluminum fabrication plants in the Southeast to have its own on-premises foundry. Aluminum ingots are placed in a large cauldron, melted in a blast furnace, and then poured into a mold. This process looks very much like a waterfall, although, technically, there isn’t any water, just molten aluminum. Any Lucky Winner who jumps into the aluminum waterfall will not have a fun-filled adventure being sucked into a tube. They will die, horribly, of massive third-degree burns.
8. Like many American manufacturing companies, Dixie States imports many workers from distant, far-off lands. And, as at many corporate tours, Lucky Winners may hear these workers sing didactic folk songs with serious moral implications. In our Ocala factory, these workers are generally known as “Nicaraguans”, and the songs that they sing are known as “narcocorridas.” Any Lucky Winners hearing narcocorridas should understand that the songs are not directed towards them personally, unless they should happen to be actively involved in cross-border drug smuggling. Lucky Winners are further advised that most of our Nicaraguan workers have cable, know what an Oompa-Loompa is, and don’t appreciate being called names.
9. The Dixie States facility does not feature high-tech chewing gum fabrication facilities, rooms full of trained squirrels, or teleportation research chambers. Any Lucky winners wanting a fizzy drink at any time will be directed to the Diet Pepsi machine in the employee lounge. Dixie States apologizes in advance to any Lucky Winner who wants diet Canada Dry ginger ale, as our soft drink distributor can’t seem to find any for sale in Central Florida, and won’t replace it with anything other than Mug Root Beer, which not everybody likes.
10. At the conclusion of the tour, any surviving Lucky Winners will be treated to lunch in our employee cafeteria. They will not be invited to help run the factory in the future, or be promised an ownership share as a reward for their good character. Dixie States is owned by a consortium of Singaporean investors who are just looking for an excuse to shut down the factory and ship it all overseas, and this is just the kind of thing that could get us all fired, which is exactly what’s wrong with the globalization of the American manufacturing sector, not that anyone ever asks me what I think about it.

No euphoria here over the Cowboys win; it wasn’t convincing, it wasn’t dominating, it wasn’t much of anything.  (Exciting, yes, thrilling, yes, but marred by too many errors and defensive letdowns.) And it didn’t prove anything other than Romo is a better crunch-time quarterback right now than McNabb.

Lost three pounds last week, down to 424, which is stellar.  Went to the gym on Sunday before the game and did exercise bike and lots of weightlifting.  Compliance with my eating program has been spotty (a visit to Five Guys, for one) but steady overall.

I have largely kept my mouth shut about the campaign, and the coverage thereof, because I want to focus on me me wonderful me.  I figure that John McCain and Gov. Palin can defend themselves, and if they can’t, who needs them.

But, I mean, great googly moogly, the Washington Post has this:

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 — Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Okay, you say, so what.  Typical political exhortation to our troops overseas.  Sic ‘em Bears.  But the Washington Post says, in the very next paragraph:

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

Wait, wait, wait. That is absolutely, completely not what she said. At all. And anyone who thinks that a politician seeing off troops going overseas in 2008 is sending them to topple the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein is being intentionally misleading in a head-spinning way. Saddam Hussein’s body lies a’moulderin’ in the grave, don’t you know. It is clearly obvious — the WP admits as much in the next sentence, sorta — that Gov. Palin meant that the brigade would be going after al-Qaeda terrorists (among other enemies).  You’d have to be an idiot to think otherwise.

And the headline reads:

Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska

I mean, seriously, you’d have to be an idiot to believe that’s what she said.  I guess the Washington Post thinks that’s what we are.

UPDATE:  The lovable William Kristol read the same article and reached the same conclusion - and notes that the WP has changed its story, slightly:

Kornblut’s interpretation of what Palin said is either stupid or malicious. Palin is evidently saying that American soldiers are going to Iraq to defend innocent Iraqis from al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that is related to al Qaeda, which did plan and carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. It makes no sense for Kornblut to claim that Palin is arguing here that Saddam Hussein’s regime carried out 9/11—obviously Palin isn’t saying that our soldiers are now going over to Iraq to fight Saddam’s regime. Palin isn’t linking Saddam to 9/11. She’s linking al Qaeda in Iraq to al Qaeda.

People can debate how intimate that connection is, and how much of the fight in Iraq is now against al Qaeda in Iraq–but it’s simply the case that Palin is not saying what Kornblut says she is, and that the Washington Post is, right now, leading its paper with a clear distortion of what Palin said.

Boo-ya.

Let’s break down yesterday:

• Hot chocolate.  Basically, someone else was going to the sub shop to get coffee, and wanted to get me something, and I don’t drink coffee, not now, not ever, so I said “hot chocolate”.  It was good.  Three and a half points.
• We had a staff meeting yesterday, and that means people bring in food, and lots of it.  I had three tiny little turnovers and a couple of bites of kielbasa.  Lots and lots of points, for breakfast.
• Not much for lunch, just two slices of pizza (one Sicilian slice and one slice of tomato pie, Trenton style).  Worked late and was starving when I got home, so grabbed a Snickers bar.
• Again, not much for dinner – I’d planned to make chicken tikka masala, but that didn’t work for various reasons, so I microwaved a couple of burritos and watched UNC beat the holy stuffing out of the local Rutgers squad.  Was still hungry after that so finished off the last bag of chips in the house.

Moral – shouldn’t load up on lots of points for breakfast, as that’ll cause one to cut back and then eat less all day, resulting in hunger and bad choices.  Okay then.