Mmm, that's good bloggin'
Good to hear that TMQ will return at some point. Easterbrooke seems to be taking this whole thing pretty hard, which I guess you've got to expect.

Novak and Broder on Meet the Press this Sunday!

I'm going to try to keep the Redskins talk brief, before I become a single-issue blogger. The Skins are apparently having trouble getting Wuerfel and are now faced with only two quarterbacks (one who might be dead before the season's over and one who has never thrown a pass in an NFL game) as well as a third on their practice squad who may have to get promoted to the actual roster soon (Gilbran something from Indiana)...Here's an interesting nugget from California. San Fransico Mayor Willie Brown left rival city supervisor in charge for a day and teh guy appointed people to government positions and had them secretly sworn in. You'd think this was crazy, but seeing as it is in California it doesn't really seem that odd...In case anyone's interested, Google is going public and will be having an IPO in the near future. Seems like a good stock to get into, and I suggest we all pool our resources and invest...

Peace & Love,
Tony

TMQ Update
Gregg Easterbrook addresses the TMQ situation at Football Outsiders, a pretty interesting site in its own right. Easterbrook says TMQ will be back soon somewhere.

Marc

Dead-Skins Part Deux

THIS IS THE 100TH BLOG ENTRY

I know I've ranted about this before, but I can't help myself. The Redskins seem to be going out of their way to piss me off. Now Spurrier says that he's going to get back to his style of football. Long pass plays and plenty of them. Attn Steve Spurrier: YOU DO NOT HAVE AN OFFENSIVE LINE. Ramsey is going to be murdered, Wuerful will be brought in as a number three, but will be the starting quarterback (due to Tim Hasselback's lack of experience) probably before Thanksgiving. I am really in a state of shock. Spurrier said that he's going to play his game plan and if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. He's not going to focus on establishing a ground game. You know, they call it coneventional wisdom for a reason. This team needs to be about more than Steve Spurrier's ego. The most important thing has to be winning and not testing the Spurrier philosophy on the NFL. The Redskins used to be a quality franchise. We've won three Super Bowls. Let him experiement in Seattle. Once again, like always, I'm so sick of this shit.

BJ Rudell, who was an organizer in the Southwest part of New Hampshire for Bill Bradley and whom Liz and I worked with while we were there, has written and published a book, Only in New Hampshire. Liz and I, as well as Holly and a girl named Sarah are all featured prominenetly in the book. Now my antics will be saved for posterity.

Peace & Love,
Tony

BREAKING NEWS
Gregg Easterbrook has been sacked from his gig at TMQ. He said some rather bizzare things about Disney related executives in a New Republic Blog, and has since been released of his duties at ESPN.com. I think He basically accused them of not being good Jews for supporting Tarrentino's new violent movie.
Tony

MPRC
I Have another meeting with MPRC next week. Hooray. I am one of their strongest candidates and they want me to see the day to day operations. Holy fucking shit.

Draper

Dead-Skins
I can't believe it. My mother was right. Kinda. She said that the Redskins would get another quarterback after Ramsey went down on Sunday, and they did just that. In order to shake up the team and get them out of this funk, they've cut Rob Johnson and signed Tim Hasselback. Let me repeat that. THEY CUT ROB JOHNSON. That's the answer? Are you fucking kidding me? There are a variety of things wrong with this course of action, but the most glaring being: How in the fuck is that suppossed to help? Further, Johnson has NFL experience and has actually been a starting quarterback in this league. Hasselback, brother of Seattle Hasselbeck, has never thrown a pass in a regulation NFL game. NEVER. Truth be told, I think it's the first step in Spurrier's plan to resign Danny Wuerfle. Spurier made it clear when Wuerfle was cut that he would consider resigning him if the need arose during the season. This is a bad football team, with bad owners, bad coaches and players with shitty attitudes. On Sunday they looked like they'd never seen each other before. I hope this is Spurrier's last season, cause i don't know how much more of this I can take. It's not that he's losing. I can deal with that. (Gibbs went 8-8 his first year, eventually won 3 Super Bowls; Schottenheimer also went 8-8 his first year). It's that Spurrier and Snyder make every wrong decision available to them. They've taken a franchise that belongs in the pantheon of professional football and made them look like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The Democrats are up to thier nutty tricks again. Because the field is so cluttered and the calender is so compressed, three candidates are employing a strategy that forgoes New Hampshire and Iowa and focuses on primaries on February 3 in Arizona, Oklahoma, South Carolina and maybe a couple of other places. They seem to think that this cycle is somehow outside of history. No candidate has ever been successful by employing this not-so-new-ask-Al-Gore-circa-1988 strategy.

As for Draper's poem quandry, my best advice to you is to either become an 11 year old cripple with a heartsong of gold, or get in your time machine, go back to the 1880s and speak with someone who actually gives a fuck about poetry.

Peace and Love,
Tony

pomes, hon
How do I go about getting out a book of verse? I have a collection well over 100, 'bout half for public consumption. Find this out. Waste time at work. Enable my words.

Draper

Bad News for Derailers Fans
I've checked their website and it looks like they don't play outside of Texas until next April, and that show is in North Carolina. I guess i'm just going to have to be satisfied with soft candelight, earphones and pleasuring myself until I get a chance to hear them live. OR, we could all take a trip to Texas!...This Sunday I will make my triumphant return to the Drap-a-torium for football. I borrowed my brothers John Madden cookbook in order to prepare an approripate feast, but all the recipes seem complicated, so they may have to wait until the Super Bowl...
A Canadian Thanksgiving Haiku
President J.K. Polk
54, 40 or fight
Ham would be ham.

Viva la Butt-ass!
Tony

You Can't Have A Police State Without State Police
Heads-up to Shawn Sprague: I was merging onto Route 10 South last week and got pulled over for "unsafe lane change" and following too closely. Officer Friendly explained that he gave me two tickets so that I "would have something to bargain with". Thanks.

Marc

Start Your Tomorrow Today
Hey Draper, here's a job for you. It's not psychology, but it involves statistics and SPSS.

Marc

Spinning Plates update...
past the 50, 000 word mark.

We're into parents and pain and sorrow and all the good stuff in books.

It's all there...harumph

A taste:

Both my parents, well, it was never good with them and their brains. They have been forever sabotaged by that one illness that is like a vice, squeezing and warping reality forever. They have schizophrenia. It's ok. Really, I am just glad that I don't. But, it made for life as a son, it made it fucking weird. Never believing, never taking the side of blood. I knew, had to betray too many times my parents. They do not exist on the same plane as the rest of us. It has probably a lot to do with my detachment from the rest of the world. I don't know. Maybe that is just an excuse, a cop out. Oh my folks are nuts so I get a free pass. I don't know.

No, I do. That is all bullshit. No one ever wants to think about the horrible things that are so close to oneself. I ask nor accept any sympathy for having to grow to learn, to know from too early an age that my parents can not be trusted for much at all. It is an odd sensation though to listen to them, to hear the sad delusion spilling out, and to not be able to say ok, sure, I'm on your side.

The last time my mom was committed it was because of me. I had it done. I was in the ninth grade. I had my mom locked up in some sub standard state facility, to get better. Whatever the fuck that means. Usually, just more chemicals. You don't get over being crazy. You live with it, until you die. Then, it doesn't matter any fucking way.

It is a death sentence. But one much more cruel than cancer or AIDS, or any other fucking thing where you know you will die, sooner rather than later. Because in those moments of clarity, rare though they may be, when the meds are actually working, you can sit back and realize that no matter how functional you might be, you will never be the same as before, before that blade came down, before the synapses starting misfiring. All you have is that delusion world that you spend most of your time, and if lucky, family, and maybe friends. And to have your own son cast you to the wind. Well. You know.

So maybe I am guilty. Maybe I feel bad about the distance I keep from my parents. Or, or maybe I mad at them for corrupting me, for causing me to lead my life down this lonely path, this path where I hide from people for fear of learning that it may all turn out bad. Because the most important, the very first relationships with other people in this life were with people who are fucking insane.

Or maybe, none of this shit is true. Maybe, I'm just scared of ending up like them. Fifty years old and permanent cripples. Maybe I am terrified, maybe. My mind, my ability to think and live and work, and create, and be who I am dangles on a thread, a thread clinging to this unlikely 50/50 split of genes from two very smart crazy people. Maybe I am thankful, eternally, stupidly thankful that in the great ping pong ball mashup that is human genetics, that I have dodged the bullet.

Maybe I am sick to my inside to think that I could bring someone into this world that would be afflicted just like my parents. And if I cast them away, what would stop me from doing the same to my own progeny. I am sick to think that's even a possibility. Maybe, I just want to be alone, to stay alone forever, because that is safer than risking it. Safer to suffer alone than to bring another hopeful soul into this world only to have the curtains drawn at the dawn of their most hopeful time.
Maybe I am just tired and have been in the car too long.

I love the smell of blogging in the morning
I'll tell you this, I rooted for the Red Sox, but as I watched that game last night, watched Grady Little keep Pedro in to face Matsui when relief should have been brought in, it seemed like a movie whose ending you already knew. So, for now, Go Marlins...

Big problems in the Anglican Church. The British hierarchy are threatening a schism if the American church proceeds with its plans to consecrate that gay bishop from New Hampshire. Imagine, a schism in our day. Surely, these are great times...

Speaking of that quixotic state, a new poll conducted by former Democratic wunderkind Stanley Greenberg shows mixed feelings on the war in Iraq among Democratic voters in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina. According to the poll, voters want someone who supported the war in Iraq, but criticized President Bush's failure to precure international support. It wasn't clear in the article whether these numbers were from Democratic voters or likely Democratic voters, and that distinction will probably have an effect on these numbers.

AN excerpt from the article follows:

"Democrats surveyed in the three states also listed foreign policy and national security experience as the most important attribute they are looking for in selecting a nominee[Emphasis mine]. They rated that characteristic over such other choices as experience in Congress, being a decorated combat veteran, being a Washington outsider or having a blue-collar background." (Washington Post 10-17-03)

According to ESPN, the Giants have dropped their bid to host the 2008 Super Bowl and will rebid for 2009. That leaves Arizona, Washington and Tampa in the running. Although it would seem strange to host the Super Bowl in a cold climate, it has been done (See Super Bowl IV and any other Super Bowl at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans). I think it would probably be good for football and heck, it sounds like fun. It would certainly be better than playing in any kind of a dome. Weather is a part of football and to eliminate it as a factor in the biggest game of the year is stupid at best and sacrilege at worst.

A Big Dangerous Animal is in Trouble!

Enjoy,

Tony

A Midday Blog, What a Treat
Before I get into the real heavy shit, let me just say: "Kudos Mr. D"

Two links from the Post that i would like to draw your attention to. Congress is working out the detials of a means-testing provision for Medicare. If that could get through we may have cleared the biggest hurdle preventing means testing in Social Security. However, it seems Sen. Windbag (D-MA) has problems with the measure, and threatened a veto last June to prevent it's passing. (NOTE: These "facts" may be wrong, as i've only read the article once and did not fact check this blog.)

Also, with the Pope celebrating his silver anniversary and the scheduled beatification of Mother Theresa this Sunday, Rome is chock-a-block with activities. Check out this article on Mother Theresa-mania that's sweeping the city. Also, I reccommend the Hitchens book mentioned in the article, and have a copy if anybody's curious.

Well, that's all the blogging for now. Sleep tight kids.

Tony

What Donkeys and Cubs have in Common
The Democrats are starting to sort themselves out. With nine candidates in the race the money is spreading thin. According to the Post Kerry, Edwards and Gephardt all spent more than they raised last quarter. Lieberman just broke even, so expect him to be in the red next quarter. Dean and Clark seem to have a lot of cash locked up. President Bush, however, just raised something like $46 million dollars this quarter, and that's on top of anything he's already raised plus the fact that he's barely spent anything at all. Quite a monster, that Bush is. While we're on the subject of Bush, let me put something out there that i've said a couple of times. Poll numbers currently show Bush trailing a Democratic candidate (pay attention to the Newsweek poll). That number will go up after a Democratic candidate is named, because that candidate's negatives will drive up the president's numbers. Though he trails against an unnamed Democratic oppenent, he's already beating all the candidates one on one. And, may i remind you, he hasn't even fucking started yet. So, Bush-haters: Don't get too excited. Remeber, Reagan's approval numbers were faltering at about this time in 1983. The president has the money, machinery and party organization to win and win handily.

And finally, What the Fuck happened to those Cubs? I think I believe in witchcraft now, after having witnessed that.

Tony

How The Unions Killed Detroit; Or, What's Good For GM is NOT Good For America
Ford has lost $6 billion in the past two years. DaimlerChrysler lost $1.1 billion in the last quarter. GM now makes more money selling mortgages than selling cars. Meanwhile, the Japanese car companies (made in North America by non-union workers) are cleaning up.

So what is the answer? Detroit sez: Big Government! The Big Three have endorsed the prescription drug benefit as a means of reducing their own massive obligations to union retirees. I hope against hope that the next president will have the guts to let the Detroit dinosaurs die a natural death (this President doesn't).

Marc