We’re running late with the SabanWatch, but in the meantime, here’s some bitching

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Dear NFL: Fuck You. The NFL’s rules on broadcasting games — such as this afternoon’s much ballyhooed contest between the remaining undefeated teams in the league — mean that any market with an un-sold-out local-team game can’t see any other games on TV at the same time, supposedly to encourage in-person attendance. Yes, this means even in Houston, with the Texans on the road.

There are a number of problems with this. On any given Sunday, there are games expected to be interesting — like Colts v. Pats — and games unlikely to be worth two squirts of piss, both in terms of competition and in terms of the later season, like, say, Texans v. Raiders. The NFL doesn’t care what we want to watch, though; they want to control the feeds and force us, if we want to watch football at 3:00 today, to watch the crappy game instead of the one everyone will be talking about tomorrow.

Again: Fuck you, NFL.

It’s really yet another example of old business models trying to force their way through a new world. It’s not gonna happen. The more ways of communication we have, the more ways people like the NFL have to figure out how to block to preserve these chickenshit restrictions. Here’s a clue: give people what they want to buy, and stop doing things like this to piss them off.

This kind of crap is another in the long list of reasons we never, ever go to live games. It’s a shitty experience compared to watching at home, and encourages these absurd rules. Fuck that.

The Chron, believe it or not, has a good piece on it.

Wurstfest Results

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So, here we are, all done. Results pleased pretty much everybody, but are inexact because it wasn’t a “chip” race, so if you weren’t at the starting line to begin with your official time is off by as much as a minute or two:

  • Eric: 43/44 and change (under his goal of 9s!);
  • Lindsey: 1:02 or so;
  • Chief Heathen: 1:03 or 1:04 or so, only a bit behind Lindsey;
  • Mrs Heathen: 1:20, with lots more running than walking

We will now commence drinking beer and eating meat.

The Prohibitionists are Coming

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Reason runs down the threat to liberty that has grown out of Candy Lightner’s MADD. Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980, but now finds their obsession with any alcohol consumption to border on mania. She’s right.

As it happens, pushing the legal limit lower and lower isn’t driven by data at all; it’s more about Carrie Nation redux. Click through for more. Lowering the limit from .1 to .08 did NOTHING statistically meaningful to traffic fatalities, though we’re sure it certainly DID add significant cash to country and city coffers.

Well, that was fun: SabanWatch Week 9

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Perhaps it’s a bit disingenuous to call it SabanWatch this week, since the Tide didn’t play (nor did LSU), so the value is unchanged (2.6875), but there’s still much to discuss.

Two upsets really please us: Mississippi State over previously-golden 14th-ranked Kentucky, and of course the “shocking” loss by USC to Oregon. Both really warm our hearts, but for different reasons.

MSU is perennially a stepchild in Mississippi and SEC football (Ole Miss gets all the love, to say nothing of USM), but Sly Croom has been quietly building a program in Starkville, apparently. The Bulldogs improve to 5-4, 2-3 in the SEC — but those two wins were over Auburn and Kentucky, and are probably enough to keep his job. Especially if he beats those rich bastards from Oxford (who, it should be noted, are having only slightly more success than Notre Dame this year).

With USC, we just love to see them lose. This win for the Ducks actually puts them in the title hunt

Some comeuppance happened this time around, too, though the one we hoped for (Cal over ASU) didn’t happen. ASU is still perfect, but perfect’s easy with a schedule like theirs up to this point. Coming up, though, they’ve got Oregon, UCLA, and USC, and we wouldn’t bet on ’em bagging all of those.

In the Disapointment column, we mark down Urban Meyer’s boys. Ranked 7 spots over Georgia, they still couldn’t close the deal. The Dawgs bottled up Tim Tebow and dominated the game from start to finish, finally whipping the Gators 42 to 30. It’s not a good week to be Coach Meyer, we’re betting, if you can’t bag a long-running rivalry the year after your take the brass ring. Ouch.

This week’s “Why Can’t They Both Lose” award goes to the Fulmer v Spurrier contest that ended in OT with the unranked Vols squeaking by Spurrier’s Cocks. Whups!

Oh, and South Florida Who? Much was said about how unfair their drop in the polls after their single loss was, especially compared to the treatment powerhouse programs like LSU get — except LSU has kept winning, and now the Bulls are down two in a row. The rest of their slate is unremarkable, and they deserve kudos for bagging Auburn and West Virginia, but title team? We don’t think so.

The rankings are of course out by now: BCS has it Buckeyes, BC, LSU, and so does the AP. We still don’t believe in BC despite their record, but time will tell.

(Yes, we know: No Irish snark this week. They had a bye, but next weekend should be fun: it’s Navy’s big chance.)

And We Won’t Miss It One Bit

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Longtime Heathen know that we’re crazy about Macs here at Heathen Central, but it wasn’t always so. Up until about 1998 or 1999, we were Wintel people, but trying to live on a Windows laptop on the road was absolutely miserable. Sleep never worked right. It crashed constantly. Finally, realizing we did Office docs for a living, and that MS Office is the same on Macs and PCs, we took the plunge on a 500Mhz G3 Powerbook, and haven’t looked back.

Back then, Macs still ran the great-great-great-grandson of the original Mac OS — all greys and lines with that Chicago font everywhere — and they weren’t all that much stabler than PCs for most things; however, the mobile platform was one place where they had the advantage, and it was huge. Done? Just close it. Need it back? Just open. And, unlike Win98, OS 9 didn’t eat itself every few months. We were happier, but not genuinely happy.

Or, rather, we weren’t until Apple made the jump to OS X. In one of the bravest moves in the history of consumer computing platforms, they more or less scrapped the long-in-the-tooth operating system and started over with a kernel based on the FreeBSD open source platform. For the first time, Macs were, essentially, running Unix. And for the first time, a Unix-like OS was a completely reasonable choice for you, your brother, your mother, or even your grandmother, so well had Apple hidden the complexities. Unlike in OS 9, though, those complexities were available for the savvy user, and consequently that’s when we became true Mac partisans. This new OS was capable of running old-style Mac programs using an emulation layer called Classic, but Apple made it pretty clear this was a temporary state, and that all new work should be done for OS X.

If Apple hadn’t made this move, we’d have long since gone to full-time Linux — and, we suspect, Apple wouldn’t be the roaring success they are today (they’ve now got a market cap larger than IBM).

Because of our unconventional Mac history, then, we’re not really invested in the old style Mac paradigm; we don’t miss any Classic programs, and haven’t even bothered to enable it on our last several machines. It’s a dead issue for us.

Well, now it’s really a dead issue for everyone, or at least everyone who runs Leopard. New Macs haven’t been able to run Classic at all for a while (PowerPCs can; Intel machines can’t), but the Leopard upgrade is the final nail. Leopard has the Classic hooks removed. Mac Luddites, it’s time to join the future.

Runnin’ with the Devil, or at least Lindsey

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Today: the combo-route that is Rice + Hermann Park; Linds reports that we covered 5.92 in just over an hour, which is a new personal best in terms of both distance and speed. Mrs Horne ran the whole way; I did intervals of 4:30 running and 1:30 fast-walking. Mr Horne was way ahead, and Mrs Heathen did her 3 mile loop in a personal best 43 minutes.

We’re feeling pretty good about the Wurstfest run next Saturday now. I’ll be in Seattle most of the week, and I’ll be lucky to get in an easy run on Tuesday (3 miles or so, max), but that should set the stage for a good experience in the hill country next week.

Dept. of Recurring Actors

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We pay more attention to cast than most people, we guess, since we’re constantly hitting Wikipedia and IMDB on the living-room laptops when we find ourselves wonder “Hey! Who is that guy?”

Tonight we hit something funny. Geeking out, watching Bionic Woman, we long-ago noticed that Jaime’s handler/minder/repair tech appeared on Friday Night Lights as Herc, Jason Street’s rehab wheelchair rugby buddy. What we didn’t know, though, is that a much earlier role for him was a minor appearance on Buffy, as the nasty brother to Tara Maclay in the “Family” episode back in 2000; we had to check the YouTube clip a couple times before we were convinced. He rather disappears into a role.

Guy’s name is Kevin Rankin, and his debut was, oddly enough, in another film we love: The Apostle, and he guested on Six Feet Under several times as well.

Innumeracy is an ugly, ugly thing

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Check this out: Some nutbird creationist asserts:

scientists have computed that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10^262 years. Take thins pieces of paper and write “1” and then zeros after them – you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could write that number.

We’ll pause for a moment for the sheer gravity of this stupidity to sink in. Now proceed to one of the finest Internet smackdowns ever.

Nutbirds on the Right, Again

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We find ourselves here, looking at someone the Family Security Matters organization thinks is dangerous. The pic is funny, but the list — FSM’s top 10 most dangerous organizations in America — is hilarious. Their site is slow, so here’s the rundown:

  1. Media Matters, because reprinting what the Right says is somehow wrong;
  2. Universities and colleges, apparently because booklearnin’ is dangerous;
  3. MoveOn.org, a clear communist cabal;
  4. The League of the South; actually, this one makes sense — LoS is pretty freakin’ scary;
  5. Center for American Progress, whom they decry as “smearing and misleading;”
  6. Shockingly, Dobson’s Family Research Council, a group Heathen also oppose;
  7. The ACLU, natch, on account of their dangerous promotion of liberty;
  8. CodePINK, a grassroots peace-and-justice outfit;
  9. The Muslim Student Association, ’cause all them ragheads is DANGEROUS;
  10. ThinkProgress, smeared here along with MediaMatters, MoveOn, CodePink, the ACLU, etc., for consistently pointing out just how naked the right is.

Enjoy.

Finally.

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Genarlow Wilson, previously serving a 10-year sentence for having consensual oral sex with another teenager, has been ordered released by the Georgia Supreme Court. He’s served 2 years already.

The “crime” occurred when Wilson was 17; his partner was 15. The law under which he was charged was one against child molestation; some prosecutor’s ass needs to be in a sling for even bringing that bullshit to trial. (His partner didn’t cry rape, and has maintained the sex was consensual the whole time.)

Dem Russians Dem Russians

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Check out this clip from the Christianist anti-commie schlockfest that is If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? The film, a product of the feverishly paranoid mind of New Albany, Mississippi preacher Estus Pirkle (what a name! Call Pynchon!), paints a bizarre picture of the dangers facing America from Godless Communism. If you thought the work of Ed Wood was bad, well, this stuff makes Plan 9 look like the Godfather.

It Keeps You Running (New Category)

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Some of the Heathen have been a-running since August, and not because anyone’s chasing us. The stated goal is the completion of the Wurstfest Five Miler a week from Saturday (where, it is said, they hand you sausage and beer upon completion; that’s our kind of race), but the real point is banishing the mid-30s expansion that’s happened to all of our waistlines (shut up, Lindsey). I’ve run before, and even once did a 5K in under 30, but it’s been a long time, and at the start of this I was easily in the worst shape of my life.

Even so, in the last week or so, I’ve noticed a drastic drop in the “suck” of running, and some actual improvements in time and performance, so I’m ready to start talking about it in public to reinforce the social conditioning aspects of this process.

Last Friday we did the loop off White Oak, which is about 2.1 miles; since it’s short, we did it twice. I was pleased to discover my current alternating pace (run 4, walk 2) kept me more or less up with Lindsey, at least until I hit some sort of wall around 2 miles in. The final damage was something over 4 miles in something under an hour, even with my wall-hitting halfway through. The previous acknowledged time was the Memorial Loop at about a 12-minute pace, even with walking 1/3 of the time, so it was within tolerances especially factoring in the weird “hills” they have at White Oak.

We did some walking between then and yesterday to rest from the mileage increase, but when running time came last night, Mrs Heathen was feeling ill. I went alone in the neighborhood over a circuitous route through the Montrose (basically, a big loop of Taft to Peden to Park down to West Alabama, over to and around the Menil, down to Richmond, up Yoakum, over on Harold, and back home, but with some switchbacks I inserted to make the time come out roughly correct) that took about an hour; GoogleMaps reports it was 5.2 miles or so, which is a distinct improvement. Another shocker: I wasn’t miserable or nearly dead at the end, and found I was getting bored during the 2-minute walking breaks. Clearly, it’s time to adjust to 4:30 x 1:30 or so, which will have the pleasant effect of increasing my speed. The goal is to run for about an hour, but it’d be nice to get to the point where running for an hour goes farther than 5 miles.

Which brings me to the next point: route selection. Up to now, we’ve been doing 3-mile routes over at Memorial Park and my old up-and-back route on the Heights Boulevard. As we push distance, twice around the White Oak/Sawyer trail seems like a better idea, but is difficult for me mentally since I’m most likely to want to bail at a place on the track where it’s easy to do so (i.e., as I return to the start to being lap 2). Twice around Memorial is a good goal, but it’s dead boring to repeat, and would suffer the same temptation aspect as the White Oak trail. Fortunately, Fleet Feet has some maps that are useful.

The first is a rundown of an absurd 9.76 mile route that includes both Memorial Park and the Allen Parkway trail, but it includes the information that the AP route alone is 4.76 miles, crossing at Shepherd and Sabine. That’s a nice long loop with essentially no chance of cheating, which is nice.

The other is one I knew of before, but had forgotten. Rice’s outer track is 2.9 miles, but is close to another 2 mile loop over at Hermann Park (Marvin Taylor Loop, 1.98miles). They’re connected by a .73 mile jaunt from the main gate of Rice over to the Rose Garden, yielding about a 5.5 mile loop. The nice part about this route is that you could go with folks who prefer the shorter 3-mile course and still meet up at the same endpoint.

Of course, there are also planned runs, which are much better than running alone. The Wurstfest run is already on the calendar, but we feel like most any 5K/5 mile/10K runs are in our grasp. I’ve done the MFA run a few times, but they no longer do it for some reason. What other inner-loop runs exist in the sub-half-marathon range? Is there a decent calendar somewhere? The one at SignMeUpSports, well, sucks; surely there’s a better option.

Even factoring in the sucky available calendars, though, I did find these:

  • Rice 5K on 11/1, at 6pm on a Thursday. I’m out of town, but the rest of the crowd could consider it.
  • Chevron Jingle Bell, with 5 mile and 5K options, Sunday 12/9, 2pm. I suspect there’s no reason not to do that one.

More Assholery In Our Name

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The sad tale of Abdallah Higazy bears repeating. Here are the facts.

On 9/11, Higazy, an Egyptian citizen, was staying in a New York City hotel that (predictably) emptied out after the event. The hotel later found, in the closet of Higazy’s room, a radio meant for communication with flight crews and airline pilots.

The hotel alerted the Feds, who detained Higazy for questioning. Higazy denied any part in the events of the day, but was eventually coerced into confessing something to the contrary because the interrogators threatened to tell the Egyptian authorities he and his family were terrorists, and we all know that Cairo is not exactly a paragon of human rights. Faced with an impossible choice, Higazy confessed to something he didn’t do.

Comes now the good news (quoting from here):

So Higazy “confesses” and he’s processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. (Emph added) This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent! He next sued the hotel and the FBI agent for coercing his confession. The bottom line in the Court of Appeals: Higazy has a case and may recover damages for this injustice.

We might think that threatening familial torture would be the end of it, but we’d be wrong. The original ruling in the case, which detailed the fact that the FBI had illegally coerced his confession, appeared briefly online. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t online anymore — but a few hours later, it resurfaced, with the objectionable parts redacted on the grounds that they were classified.

Classified, my ass. Thank God some folks grabbed the original version of the opinion so people can know what’s really happening here; that toothpaste is out of the tube now, no matter how embarrassing it is to the Feds. Here’s the part the Court tried to suppress:

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”

Higazy later said, “I knew that I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger.” He explained that “[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family’s in danger. If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

(There’s more; follow the link above.)

So, to recap:

  1. FBI collars wrong guy;
  2. In absence of any but circumstantial evidence, FBI uses illegal coercion and threats of torture for the suspect’s family to extract a false confession;
  3. FBI gets slapped down over the whole thing in court;
  4. FBI and DoJ later try to redact the whole affair rather than man up and admit just how fucked up they are.

That’s ok. We’re sure things are much better now.

Not.

We took a screenshot so you won’t doubt us

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CNN:

Monkeys!

No, really.

Also, from the end of the article, there’s this. Can you find the potential problem?

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts — encouraging them to frequent public places.

Over the years, city authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs — a larger and fiercer kind of monkey — to scare or catch the macaques, but the problem persists.

Yeah, nothing can go wrong with that, right?

Week 8 Ranking Update

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Well, they’re out. As predicted, LSU improves to 3 in all the polls. Pretender USF drops to 10 in the BCS / 11 AP. Bizarrely, BCS picks Arizona State for the 4 spot; AP (somewhat) sensibly keeps them in 7th place and has the Sooners follow LSU. Oregon rounds out the top 5 in both lists.

New on this list this week, and thereby restoring all that is right in the world, is the fact that both Alabama teams are on it: Auburn at 22 (23 AP) and the Tide at 24 (22 AP; yes, the AP has Saban over Auburn). Amusingly, Rutgers brings up the ass end of the AP poll, an honor BCS reserves for Joe Pa. Phil Fulmer and his orange redneck brigade drop from both lists, God bless ’em, as do Texas Tech, Cincy, and KSU.

Interesting stats on the fly: The five remaining lossless squads in the AP (BCS list doesn’t include records, and we’re too lazy to transpose) are top-two OSU and BC (who had a bye this week), Arizona State (7), Kansas (12), and Hawaii (16) (total of 5). Of these, we only see OSU as a “real” contender. We’re mystified by BC’s continued presence, and the polls make clear how weak the schedules of the remainder are.

There are nine one-loss teams: LSU, Oklahoma, Oregon, and West Virginia at 3, 4, 5, and 6; VaTech and USC at 8 and 9; USF (11), Missouri (13), and Virginia (21).

There are now ten squads with two losses, but only one (Florida, 9) in the top 10. (UK, South Carolina, Texas, Cal, Mich, UGa, Alabama, Penn St, and Rutgers).

Auburn is the ONLY 3-loss team in the AP list, and at 23 is ranked above both Penn State and Rutgers.

SabanWatch Week 8: Holy Crap

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We can’t contain our glee about this one, so we’re leading with it: NickyLou smashed Tennessee with a convincing 41 to 17 victory. 27 first downs. 510 yards of offense. Enjoy the ride home, Fulmer, you goatfucking bastard. Rockytop’s weeping, and that makes us smile at Heathen Central. (Even ESPN is in on the snark; their “It was over when” comment is “when Nick Saban decided to move to Tuscaloosa.”)

The margin here, of course, does lovely things to our Nick Saban Points Per Million stats. From 62 total victory points last week we go to a whopping 86, which brings the PPM to 2.6875, an all-time high.

As if that weren’t enough, though, Spurrier’s 6th-ranked Cocks got stunned by never-ranked Vanderbilt, 17 – 6. This is Vandy’s first win over Spurrier in 15 tries, and the highest ranked opponent they’ve stopped in SEVENTY years (1937, and it was then-No. 6 LSU, 7 to 6). Wow. Just wow.

The Jackson office points out that this is 11 top-ten teams to lose to an unranked opponent this year. It’s nuts, we tell you.

Yesterday also had two other fine SEC contests: Florida schooling Kentucky, and title contender LSU quashing Auburn; in both cases, the right team won. Kentucky’s been lucky, but couldn’t really expect to slip by Urban Meyer’s defending champs no matter what the final score was. The LSU game was another story; the rivalry with Auburn is big, and the game can go either way in any year. This time around was no exception, and the contest wasn’t over until Matt Flynn found Demetrius Boyd in the end zone with a second to go. LSU keeps its title hopes alive, and Auburn drops to 5-3. Look for the Tigers to rise on this, especially after the overrated South Floridians fell to unranked Rutgers earlier in the week.

Finally, of course, we must note that Charlie and his Irish behaved predictably with USC, and extended their season of Fail in a 38 to zip loss. We watched part of this; it was ugly. Good thing he swapped the QB, right?

What the hell is wrong with Harry Reid?

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Reid, in violation of Senate rules, is saying he won’t honor Dodd’s hold on the telecom immunity bill.

WTF?

The link above is getting ongoing updates, so use it to stay on top of the story.

This whole thing is important because the bill amounts to a short-circuit of the judicial process. ATT has been sued over this, and is losing badly despite their army of lawyers. Their solution is to use a bought-and-paid-for congressional delegation to buy a retroactive immunity and render the judicial proceedings moot. That dog won’t hunt, or shouldn’t.

Pete Stark R000lz

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From the House debate on the SCHIP override:

First of all, I’m just amazed they can’t figure out, the Republicans are worried we can’t pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where ya gonna get that money? You going to tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement. This bill would provide healthcare for 10 million children and unlike the President’s own kids, these children can’t see a doctor or receive necessary care.

[…]

But President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up. In Iraq, in the United States and in Congress.

(Kos, Atrios)

The GOP are, of course, apoplectic at this statement. Largely because it’s true.

OH MY SWEET LORD YES

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All you people who keep using Evite — with its utterly useless emails completely free of information — please read this:

The main problem with Evite is the uninformative email. “You are invited to Heather’s Divorce Party,” says Evite, with a personal message from the host but no actual information. To make a decision as a guest, I have to click over to Evite; that cramps my style if I’m trying to be at all productive with my inbox. Plus it’s a pain when I’m en route to the party and need to double-check the address. If only I could just check my email on my phone, but no, all the info is trapped in Evite! The “send it to my phone” option is silly, as I probably won’t remember to do that until I’m already away from my computer.

The site is also annoying to use: I can only export the event to iCal, RSVPing takes me to a useless page instead of back to the event, and the site is full of ads and unrelated links. Evite is the MySpace of invitations.

That’s almost all fixed with Socializr and MyPunchbowl. Socializr sends a complete email with party time, location and information…

Seriously. NO more evite. Please.

Foxes and henhouses, AGAIN

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Bush has appointed an avowed opponent of birth control to head the family planning office inside DHS. Again.

The appointee, Susan Orr, comes from the far-right Family Research Council, which favors abstinence-only education and opposes using any tax dollars for contraception.

In 2001, she was quoted in the Washington Post favoring a Bush administration plan to drop a requirement that health insurance plans for federal employees cover a broad range of birth control.

“We’re quite pleased because fertility is not a disease,” she said at the time. “It’s not a medical necessity that you have it.”

(Washington Wire @ WaPo)

We’re late with this, but read it anyway

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On Sunday, Maureen Dowd let Stephen Colbert have a run at being an Op-Ed columnist, to great comedic effect. A bit:

So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.

And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.

[…]

Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.