Buy This Car Or We'll Kill Your Children

The magic that is a Chevy Blazer

I settled in last night to watch the Oscars primarily because I wanted to see what Chris Rock would do (Sean Penn: chill out man, you are becoming wicked pompous. You and your actor colleagues are fragile millionaire talking meat sticks. Want socially important work? Run a homeless shelter). It was the usual farago of silly people talking about emphemeral celluloid treats for a mostly white intelligensia (Rock's visit to a multiplex where we learnt that "White Chicks" was many peoples' favorite film of 2004 underscored the point) and good fun for all that, not least because of the unexplained off-screen bangs and crashes that accompanied many of the award introductions (that's the last time the Academy signs a deal with the Union of Klutzy Stagehands, Local 43). And of course, I was looking forward to the commercials.

The sexist cliche is that the Oscar commercials serve the same role in women's lives as Superbowl ads do for men (most women I know were into the game on Superbowl Sunday- maybe its a New England thing- and the ads seem to be endlessly disected by everyone regardless of gender) and so there were lots of JC Penney, make-up, and "your house/clothes/yoni smells terrible" spots. Every year however there has to be one exceptionally sleazy and grotesque ad and this year the winner is... General Motors.

GM didn't advertize any particular line or model of car but rather ran testimonial ads featuring kids and teenagers talking about being in car accidents. In each case it was heavily hinted that a GM car provided your family the best chance to survive a crash and that if you love your family you had best rush out and buy one of their vehicles. A case could be made that the message (air bags, seatbelts, on-star=good) was reasonable but the delivery was heavy handed if it wasn't for news like this:

Safety alert as GM recalls cars
"The world's biggest carmaker General Motors is recalling nearly 200,000 vehicles in the US on safety grounds, according to federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the largest recall involves 155,465 pickups, vans and sports utility vehicles.

This is because of possible malfunctions with the braking systems. The affected vehicles in the product recall are from the 2004 and 2005 model years, GM said.

Those vehicles with potential faults are the Chevrolet Avalanche, Express, Kodiak, Silverade and Suburban; the GMC Savana, Sierra and Yukon." (The rest is here)

As CNN pointed out in a related story: "GM, the world's largest auto manufacturer, recalled more than 10 million vehicles in 2004, in a year that saw a record number of recalls across the industry."

If you drive a GM product, at least you'll be able to press the on-star button to summon help as you spin out of control after your shoddy brakes fail. Just remember to press it before the "smart airbag" smacks you in the face.

The End Of Blue

The last half-decent cast line up

I'll admit NYPD Blue jumped the shark a long while ago but I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the dysfunctional denizens of the 15th Precinct and even now still squander an hour of my Tuesdays to watch the ugliest male and prettiest female cops in New York "reach out" to each other and go through whole shifts without smiling once. After recovering heroin addict and Deadwood creator David Milch left the show the effort seemed to go out of the scripts but the show still managed to be less two dimensional than any of the CSI franchise and less pompous than any of the Law and Order variants.

Sadly, in the search for a replacement show ABC abdicated its responsibility for interesting serious drama (a decline that set in when The Practice decided to become inane) and will be filing NYPD Blue's slot with Blind Justice. Incredibly, this is another Steve Bochco series, although I fear it will be more Cop Rock than Hill Street Blues. As ABC describes the show:

"The lead character, New York Detective Jim Dunbar, was blinded in a shootout when his partner failed to cover him. He could have retired with a full pension after his injury, but instead fought to remain on the job, determined to prove he still has what it takes and be an asset. Now, following his reinstatement, he is assigned to a new precinct where he intends to take on cases with the help of his guide dog, Hank."

In one of the promos I saw, Dunbar (played by pererenial nearly-man Ron Eldard, who may have done his best work in the quirky Bakersfield PD) vehermently asserts his right to be a cop, citing his Gulf War service and outstanding pre-blindness police career. This would have been fine, even moving, if the lines weren't delivered in the style of General Hospital.

I think I'll give it a shot for the first week, if only to see if it is "so-bad-its-good" shows, and report back. Watch this space.

This would be better than the Ron Eldard version, I suspect

Do You Expect Me To Talk? No Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Pay For Emotional Distress

I saw this nugget today and was just overwhelmed by its sheer goofyness. This whole story reads like an British tabloid primer on litigious Noo Yawkers, or a field guide to stereotypical American urban psychosis. Besides, I can't get the image of aFinding Forrester era Connery all liquored up and pounding on the walls shouting "You're the man now, dog!" in his thick brogue.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Neighbour sues actor Sean Connery
Sir Sean Connery is being sued for $30m (£15.7m) by a New York neighbour who claimed the actor played loud music and permitted an infestation of rats.
Dr Burton Sultan said the actor, 74, lived in a Manhattan apartment owned by Sir Sean's son Stephane.

He alleged Sir Sean often played loud music and allowed workers to create noise, fumes and dripping water.

A spokeswoman for the actor said Connery was "rarely" in New York and called the claim "ridiculous".

When The Only Snow Will Be Snow Peas.

Yet another northeaster. It takes the gloss off a public holiday somewhat to always have in the back of my mind that I'm going to have to spend a chunk of tomorrow morning digging out of my driveway and then digging into my office but I'll say this for the snow: it makes Maine look awfully pretty. Maybe its the image formed early in my mind by Ethan Frome and Stephen King but New England always looks its best to me when there is fresh snow on the ground. The landscape is not as harsh as the tundra of Minnesota, the vast isolation of Alaska, or the fanged malevolence of the Rockies. In short, its less Siberian or Tibetan and more Barvarian in these parts, making happy linkages in my memory between falling snow and hot chocolate with a little booze in it, or snow and tasty sausages.

When spring arrives it's pretty enough around here, but I have a genetic bias towards the ripening grain, sandy beaches, and bright white light of my native Eastern England. Maine suffers by comparison if only because spring and summer paradoxically means less light as the deciduous trees add their broad leaves to the skyline blocking conifers. Besides, the vegetation, granite hills, lakes, loons, and biting flies of backwoods Maine make the place look and feel positively prehistoric. Every time I head off to try and drown some worms in the futile pursuit of pickerel I half expect to see a brontosaurus lumber by.

This spring however I have something new to look forward to. Jen, a former colleague of mine who left to have a baby and farm with her partner Jason has set up a CSA program. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and essentially serves as a Sam's Club for hippies. Alright, so that's a touch snarky but really, you don't want me to go into an in-depth explanation. Ultimately, along with a bunch of other folks we pay Jen and Jason $250 up front; they get to buy seed, pay their mortgage, and so on with cash not credit (the killer of many a farm); and we get fresh produce once a week all spring, summer, and fall.

At first I was a little leery of the idea; I loved it in theory but didn't fancy sinking my money into a venture that could collapse with an overly wet spring. However, Mrs. Weasel talked me into it, and now I'm fully sold and can't wait for our first greenhouse spinach and a summer of figuring how to safely mail excess zuccini to Walter Mondale down in Brooklyn. We are going to save a ton on groceries, I don't have to ponder pulling up more of our landlady's shrubs to plant more tomatoes, we will know where our food comes from, and help a friend. Can't be bad. Now if only I could catch some fish to go with it.

So should Mondale and missus venture north, the 50 State Baseball Convoy roll through, or should I venture south to the concrete jungle with the orange slalom gate display let me know in advance what you want in your salad and I'm sure it can be arranged.

The Joy of A Good Conspiracy

My personal conspiracy, I'm starting right now: Nixon had Elvis killed on the toilet in revenge for the King failing to "TCB" properly in the Watergate Hotel. Deep Throat? Priscilla Presley and Tricia Nixon alternated in the role.

I normally shy away from reading stories about conspiracy theories. It was only the quality of the writing that enabled me to finish the copy of Them by Jon Ronson (lent to me by Mondale, and reviewed by my friend and quasi-mentor Richard via the link above). I don't usually talk about any post Wall Street Oliver Stone movie without cursing. I hate MTVs The Real World because they so obviously and lazily set out to manipulate the viewer (is that a conspiracy? It's bloody annoying, I do know that). I take great joy in running forwarded emails of terrible tsunami pictures taken from a small boat or George Bush IQ forwards throughSnopes just to see how terribly gulible my friends are.

I heard recently however that David Corn, the editor of The Nation was alleged to be in the CIA. Sure enough, as I sat down to breakfast this morning the following article from TomPaine.com jumped out of my inbox:
TomPaine.com - Our Spook Speaks
What followed was a brilliant debunking of Corn's personalized conspiracy story and of many of the frankly offensive ones about 9/11, and its well worth a read. Here's how it starts:

David Corn has been called a CIA operative and a member of a conspiracy to cover up the truth about 9/11. The reason? He's questioned the arguments (and sanity) of those 9/11 "alternative explanation" adherents—the ones claiming the U.S. government carried out the attack. But Corn's not alone in his conspiracy-against-the-conspiracy leanings, an investigative piece in Popular Mechanics found. Here, the cartoonish and convoluted story...TomPaine

Well He Did Say He Was A Uniter, Not A Divider

Looks like there's going to be a two-for-one sale at the Pentagon:
BBC NEWS Breaking News| Middle East | Iran, Syria 'form common front'

I need to learn more about Syria- it's my deepest regional blind spot. Besides, I like the name "Aleppo". Sounds like a Marx brother.

Geek Love

God bless Mrs. Weasel. When all around were swapping teddy bears and candy (don't need the former, eat too much of the latter already) on St Hallmark's Day yesterday she presented me with an orang utan card and a copy of Empires of the Sand by Efriam and Inari Karsh. I won't bore you all with a long digression into how this fascinating book eschews both the traditional schools of mid-eastern historical thought (orientalism from the west and European cynical opportunism from the east) in examining the slow break up of the Ottoman Empire, nor how it suggests ways to tie up some loose ends that have been bothering me since H203 "The Emergence of The Arab States" in college. I will however suggest a trip to your local bookstore or library to ferret it out; it is a brisk read and accessible even to those without my sad and once obscure obsessions. Not as deeply romantic as Maestra's Valentine's Day (congratulations, M!) but very special and a display of deep understanding none the less.

For the record, I went with handmade seashell chocolates from our fabulous and local Rockport Chocolates, a copy of Soap Opera Digest and a (blush) love letter.

Grammy Crackers

The "Tribute To Southern Rock" backing musicians spot Nelly backstage at the Grammys

A few thoughts on the Grammys:

I did not watch them all the way through as I hoped to avoid this year's variation on "College Students Can Download Sting's Back Catalog Faster Than Their Parents Can Program Their VCRs" speech by Ron Silver lookylikey Neil Portnow.

Kanye West virtually guaranteed his exclusion from the kingdom of heaven with his incredibly pompous and bad mime troupe enacted confession-death-resurection performance of "Jesus Walks"*. I kept hoping that Mavis Staples was going to reach out and slap him for being disrespectful towards gospel music as an art form.

(*"Why schlep?" says Moses "At my age, I'm all for taxis. And with those holes in your feet Jesus, walking? Oy!")

Green Day did a good job of sucking it up and being the world's most industry-friendly "punks" so that they could blast out their brilliant 2 min 30 second hymn of subversion American Idiot on the network of safe, apple pie, respect all forms of government shows like JAG and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Based on the number of "Grammys awarded earlier" that scrolled across the screen, the Grammys must be like an iceberg, 9/10ths under water and the 1/10th that we can see topped with a crappy caberet coreographed by Jack from Will and Grace.

Proving beyond all doubt that the recording industry is populated by yellow toothed lecherous old pervs, behold the sight of warbling Lolita Joss Stone attempting to pay tribute to Janis Joplin. Then behold the marvelous sight and sound of Melissa Etheridge opening up a can of "Step Aside, Junior; this is how its done" on Stone. I never much cared for the Bryan Adams of the Lilith Fair set before last night, but Etheridge won me over.

What was that tsunami performance? 10 points for intent, 0 points for execution. Scott Weiland seemed to be trying to do a bad Bowie impersonation, Stevie Wonder started off in a register far too low for his voice and never recovered, Norah Jones looked like she had shit herself, and Brian Wilson looked and sang like one of those homeless chaps you can't help but cross the road to avoid. One first though: Bono looked embarassed. I have never seen that before in any situation, not even during U2's assless chaps and blanket jacket period round Joshua Tree.

Finally, what better way to celebrate America than with a Southern Fried Rock tribute? And who doesn't love Sweet Home Alabama, a song that condemns Neil Young for attacking lynching and celebrates the segregationist Governor George Wallace? Hey, who knows, maybe at the Oscars this year we will get a tribute to Birth of a Nation! Maybe the World Music Awards can have a celebration of Afrikaaner trekking songs! This whole Confederacy/rebel crap needs to be slapped down whenever it rears its uneducated and stupid head, and that includes niche musicians who haven't changed their clothes since 1974. Christopher Hitchens summed it up beautifully after visiting a Civil War reenactment where everybody wanted to dress up as George Pickett but nobody wanted to be Joshua Chamberlain (despite the fact he was a better soldier and he won). Hitchens wrote that it was odd to be surrounded by so many men in gray who only saw in black and white. Is it too late for a campaign of de-confederatization? Maybe, but at least we can tell Lynrd Skynrd and their ilk to piss off.

Old Enough To Know Better

The rugby club I play for on and off, the Central Maine Stripers (I cannot believe I play for a team named after a fish) have recently revamped their website and somehow the team photo comes from a game I actually showed up for (I'm on the back row, third from the right in a fetching side-on pose).

This makes me yearn for spring and to resolve to work on match fitness. This year I'm going to play as if I was 18 again, I will I will.....

History Friday

What a day! A plethora of History Friday stories to report. Let's skip the appetizers and head straight to the buffet:

1990: Nelson Mandela Freed From Jail
My favorite Mandela story from this time is that when the South African government first approached him to negotiate his freedom in order to lessen anti-apartheid pressure from the outside world, Mandela told them "You do not have the power to release me". What was conceived as a public relations move by FW De Klerk was transformed into the end of the apartheid government and the birth of a democratic South Africa.

1956: Cambridge Spies Surface in Moscow.
I miss the Cold War sometimes.

1979: Victory for Khomeini as army steps aside
The Ayatollah took Terehan, and so began the slide into this:Rafsanjani: U.S. Can't Stop Iran's Atomic Ambitions.

1975: Mrs Thatcher becomes leader of Britain's Conservative Party.
And a nation was handbagged.

1945: Yalta Conference Ends
The last of the old fashioned global carve ups.

Happy birthday to Thomas Edison, Burt Reynolds, Leslie Neilsen, Jennifer Aniston, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett the genuis behind the Monster Mash.

Clear Blue Water

As Howard Dean seemingly moves towards victory in the race for chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, there have been a barrage of depressing but not surprising warnings of doom from the right wing of the Democratic Party.

Dean will kill us in the south! They yell, forgetting that in truth LBJ killed them in the south by taking principled stand on civil rights in the sixties. Dean will lose the values debate! They wail, forgetting that aping the twisted ideas of the American Taliban of the Christian Right is not a drive for the moral highground but an abdication of humane principles. Dean is a liberal! they shout; well, he's getting there, I reply.

Back when I worked for a young, arrogant, and ultimately successful broadcasting company I remember old industry hands dismissing our approach to radio out of hand, claiming that we were doing everything wrong (that is, differently), we were too radical, we were asking too much of our listeners, and we were doomed to fail. When we hauled in ratings and ultimately a fat payoff when the company was sold to one of the broadcasting monsters, they refused to change their tune. What this taught me is that a) the Peter principle is still in effect; b) entrenched interests rarely reflect best decision making practice; and c) those with tenure do not have any more inherent right to insight than the thinking neophyte. I think this answers both why parroting the Democratic strategy of triangulation is wrong and why I feel compentent to comment on this subject.

In his book What's The Matter With Kansas? Thomas Frank argues that attempts to move towards the center when a right wing Republican party holds the electoral cards is a dumb move as a) you are not moving to the center but rather into the waters of the right; b) you will always come off worse on hot button culture issues unless you leapfrog over the GOP to the far, far right; and c) you will not syphon off moderate upper-middle class Republicans as the GOP will always bend that little bit further to accomodate their pocket books while the Democrats only end up alienating their base. I agree with these ideas and think that the elevation of Dean could offer activists a chance to wrest the wheel away from the cautious and annoying middle lane drivers and take the party back into the realm of social and environmental justice. In short, with effort we could see some grown up policy proposals and a new direction for a new century.

Those cowards and DINOs who claim that a turn to the left would condemn the Democrats to years in the electoral wilderness seem to forget that the goal of politics should not be power for its own sake but rather power for the sake of core principles. Otherwise you'll end up like Bill Clinton, who literally made a human sacrifice to become president, ordering the execution of the mentally retarded Ricky Ray Rector to burnish a "tough on crime" image. How that Southern sociopath sleeps at night I'll never know (maybe it's in My Life: I haven't started it yet although I did note that there are almost as many photos of Socks and Buddy as there are of Hilary).

Writing about the idea of living "as if" (the approach used by Vaclav Havel in communist Czechoslovakia: he decided to live life "as if" totalitarianism had fallen and he lived in a free country) in his book Letters To A Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens offers up defenses against naysayers and triangulators that will hearten and embolden even the most timid of us who want to swim against the tide of received wisdom. He quotes the Cambridge University sage F.M. Conford on the perils of not rocking the boat, and I thought I'd share a few extracts:

There is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing...

The Principle of the Wedge is that you should not act justly now for fear of raising expectations that you may act more justly in the future...a little reflection will make it evident that the Wedge argument implies the admission that the persons who use it cannot prove that the action is not just...

The Principle of the Dangerous Precedent is that you should not do any admittedly right action for fear that you, or your equally timid successors, should not have the courage to do right in some future case which is essentially different but superficially resembles the present one. (This means) every public action that is not customary either is wrong, or if it is right is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time.

Another argument is that "the time is not ripe." The principle of Unripe Time is that people should not do at the present moment what they think right, because the moment at which they think it right has not arrived.

Sort of explains why Kerry bested Dean in Iowa in his role as a safe pair of hands, Bush beat Kerry in November as a "wartime President", and why questions about the direction of our war in Iraq can be silenced with admonitions to "support our troops".

We tried it the triangulators way for 13 years. In that time the Republicans have gone from a form of Reganism lite to red-in-tooth-and claw ideological Gingrichism while the Democrats have gone from the Presidency, Senate, and House to nothing. Perhaps we should heed Conford and realize that the time is now ripe.

Conservatism is never having to recognize a paradox

(I was going to delete this post as I don't think I got a complete grip on the handle; I don't make my arguments with sufficient force or clarity and yet at the same time am over simplistic and lay myself open to easy sniping. Still, I'm going to let it stand as in my defense I knocked this out while the dogs wrestled distractingly in the background and an appointment with Mrs Weasel, the DVD player, and Wings of Desire gained on me rapidly.)

I just got through listening to Lynn Cheney (the Tin Man's wife) talk about her new kid's book about famous anti-occupation insurgent George Washington and his decision to take his army across the Delaware to attack the British (actually German Hessian mercenaries, but lets not quibble) during the Revolutionary War.

The interview wandered into the area of ideological battles over the teaching of history and as is common among many "March of Time" simpletons on the right Mrs. Cheney advocated teaching through the prism of American Exceptionalism; the idea that America was and is endowed by God with singular powers and abilities. As Listmaker noted in an unrelated but precient comment below, its a land where men are 'super'. While most people in the world will concede that the USA is indeed blessed by geography*, geology**, and population*** if it has been given a divine mandate it has spectacularly failed to live up to it.

Personally, I feel that Christian Conservatives (the most slavish adherents to American Exceptionalism in its most literal sense) have backed themselves into a paradox by embracing this conceit. If God is infinite, compassionate, and infallible, then he would have known about American Exceptionalism from the onset of time. What are we to make of, say, the Greek, Chinese, Roman, Persian, Ottoman, Portuguese, Spanish, and British Empires; world-dominating geopolitical entities who were equally the match of the modern United States in economic reach, power projection, arts and letters, technical innovation, and cultural effect? Those who would argue that the United States is the most powerful country ever to exist are correct in the Newtonian but not in the Socratic sense. Stealth bombers may make our enemies tremble in their beds but in their day so did trimerene war galleys.

If other nations and empires even held the precursors of American greatness, there can by definition be no American Exceptionalism, thus God either is fallible or incompetent, and therefore cannot exist. Its either that or American Evangelical Protestants are not the chosen people, and I know more than one conservative fundamentalist would have to think long and hard before choosing between those two concepts.

Let us then move forward with a new standard, American Accidentalism; a sort of Jared Diamond advocated approach to viewing the currents of human fortunes.

*Except for those deserts, swamps, bug infested northern forests, barren, tundra, land so unsuitable for farming in blows away when you plow it, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, and mudslides.
**Not as blessed by geology as those Arabs though.
***Unless you ask Native Americans their opinion. Or the illegal immigrants, poor, and sick.

A Late Note On Superbowl Ads

The Mother Goose and Grimm comic strip on Sunday posited that the Superbowl halftime show would consist of Pat Boone welded into a suit of armor with duct tape over the mouth grille. From within, the faint sound of Pat humming the Teletubbies theme could be heard. Not far from the truth as it turned out, as the corporate Beatle Sir Paul McCartney-Brought-To-You-By-Ameriquest (that is now his given name) gave me yet another reason to be deeply suspicious of baby boomer beautiful people. During Macca the Shill's performance I wasn't surprised when I saw John Lithgow flitting through the shipped-in Benetton vetted crowd admonishing people not to dance.

Those irony free members of the Taliban-lite who comprise the commissioners of the FCC and the standards and practices teams at the networks are having a corrosive effect on American culture that will end up being much more damaging than any "wardrobe malfunction" or "Piss Christ" art shocker. Even the swamp dwellers at Fox decided that the championship match up between two teams of grown men playing a game around attempts to sell beer and chilli deserved greater moral protection than they offer on one of their 4pm talk shows. The whole stifling morass of moral medicority this year even extended to the usually sacrosanct club of folks who give the networks lots of money:

Digital Spy: NFL, Fox pulled Superbowl ad
Internet services company Go Daddy bought two ad spots during the Super Bowl, during which it planned to air an ad featuring a fake "broadcast censorship" Congressional hearing in which a female Go Daddy representative has trouble keeping her top on. The first airing of the ad went ahead as scheduled, but the second failed to appear...

Of course the most appropriate use of advertising dollars apparently is to dress up a bunch of photogenic actors as soldiers, have them walk through the airport to growing applause, and then let your corporate logo linger long enough so that people make the connection that drinking your beer is patriotic. Thank you Anheuser Busch for an advertisment as transparent as your beer. If you really want to say thanks, give the $2.5 million you spent (and the thousands it cost to shoot the commercial) for that slot to service charities and issue a press release. And why stage an airport scene? Many returning US troops come home via Bangor Airport up here in Maine. Every day Mainers (of all political persuasions) volunteer to meet the planes (whenever they come in), hand out care packages, and just smile and shake hands. Why not film that? Maybe the greeters and the soldiers aren't photogenic enough (especially those troops who are walking wounded) or maybe they are Miller drinkers. Christ, why don't you just lay on a keg or two at the airport so that these soldiers can tie one on and cut loose when they first reach American soil?

Still, I have to hand it to you A-B, you fooled a bunch of folks with your estatz patrio-suds, including this deluded America First loon from the letters page of the Arizona Republic:

Toast Busch and roast McCartney
Feb. 8, 2005

I'm so disappointed in the Super Bowl halftime show I can hardly stand it.
The Super Bowl is the most American thing we have going, and we had to import talent from "across the pond."
Granted, it was very flashy. But was there no American group who could have done the same thing? Was an American group even asked?
Also, I watched the Anheuser-Busch commercial, and I got all misty. That's an American company. - Dorothy K******, Mesa

I have no evidence for this, but I bet this woman is related to Donald Rumsfeld somehow.

One Wicked Good Dynasty, Ayuh.

Now that the Pats are a Dynasty, there will be some changes among personnel on the offensive line and scrimmage squads. Holding, Carrington, 10 yard penalty, repeat 1st down.

I'm still a little befuddled from my weekend in Boston and the Superbowl proper so my thoughts may not appear in any particular order, but what a wonderful Sunday night, eh? Aside from the genuine discomfort of the 'favorite' label shared by fans and players alike, in the end I think experience won out (look at the Eagles abysmal clock management in the last three minutes) and enabled the Pats to capitalize on Eagles errors when and where it counted.

Former Pats quarterback and current diseased potato lookalike Steve Grogan breaks down the game on www.patsfans.com and makes several good points for all my sports nerds out there to learn and regurgitate all year at parties (its the best way to clear a path to the bean dip).
Grogan's Grade: Superbowl XXXIX
To quote the potato: "Normally when you win a World Championship you have to get an A, but I didn’t think they played their best football game against the Eagles. I thought they made a lot of mistakes, particularly with penalties. They looked so sluggish in the beginning of the game I just can’t give them an A. It says a lot when you don’t play your best game and still win a Super Bowl, and I think that really says a lot about these guys."

Steve added: "And don't let the Fridge hit you in the head. It hurts, and I think it killed both our post playing careers"(Actually I made that bit up, but thats what I think everytime I look at him).

Grogan also stars in a sadly cheap and scary ad for a local Maine jewelers-slash-sports cards shop (don't ask) where he unconvincingly claims that he finds all his jewelry-slash-sports cards needs every time he happens to be in Auburn, ME (come on Steve, no one goes to Auburn by choice).

For all this dynasty talk, New England fans should keep a sense of perspective. Patriots Dynasty: 2002-? Ming Dynasty: 1368-1644.

PS: stop calling competitions where only the US and maybe a couple of Canadian teams take part 'world championships'. Its hugely irritating and its why they hate us for our freedoms.


Forced steroid joke of the day: "Hey Coach! We found Bill Romanowski's stash of test beating baby urine!" Purists will of course point out that this photo is from the AFC Championship game in 2002 (note old pattern yellow Steelers seats), and that Romanowski did not play for BB, the Pats, Steelers, or Eagles. Tedy B still looks as freakish as ever though.

More Than A Feeling

Just a quick note to say that there will be no History Friday this week (autodictats weep now) as I'm off to Boston for a shave and delousing, followed by New England-centric Superbowl revelry.

Well Maybe This One "Hates Us For Our Freedom"

Ole Listmaker has fired his opening salvo in what I think will be an interesting debate among those of us on the left around the impact of the Iraqi elections, and rather good it is too as he gropes his way towards the maddening Holy Grail we all seek; a consitent non-contradictory position on Iraq that can be explained in 20 words or less. The Republicans have that (except for the consistent, non-cointradictory position bit).

Further to the subject, the elections seem to have gone fairly well (at least away from the Sunni triangle) not least I would argue because the UN rather than the US oversaw the timetable and the procedure. Mr Bush is keeping quiet about that, but once again when multilateralism is involved (quiet pressure in Ukraine and earlier in Georgia, Tsunami relief, East Timor, post-war Afghanistan- although I am still a little leery about that one- etc) things seem to go well. On the other hand, headlong solo charges shouting "Follow me!" have the same level of success they had at Antietam or the Somme.

But to the main topic of this post; an epic monologue from the man that is often (misleadingly) called the leader of Al Qadea in Iraq, Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be freaked out by how much he sounds like Jerry Falwell. Ladies (veiled please, infidel vixens) and gentlemen, here he is! The Mullah of mirth, the irony free Imam, the jesting Jihadi, "Giggles" Al-Zaqawi!!!!!!!!

Zarqawi and other Islamists to the Iraqi People: Elections and Democracy are Heresy
"Democracy is based on the principle of freedom of religion and belief. Under democracy, a man can believe anything he wants and choose any religion he wants and convert to any religion whenever he wants, even if this apostasy means abandoning the religion of Allah… This is a matter which is patently perverse and false and contradicts many specific [Muslim] legal texts, since according to Islam, if a Muslim apostatizes from Islam to heresy, he should be killed, as stated in the Hadith reported by Al-Bukhari and others: 'Whoever changes his religion, kill him.' It does not say 'leave him alone.'

"One may not make a [peace] treaty with an apostate, nor grant him safe passage or protection. According to Allah's religion, he has only one choice: 'Repent or be killed.'

This guy is a laugh riot! Oh and by the way, Mrs. Weasel and I got engaged on Saturday. Thought I'd slip that into an entry on religious fundamentalism to see if anyone reads to the bottom.