If you know who Bill Nye is (and if you don’t, well, let’s just say I’m very disappointed in you), you know he’s a slightly goofy guy with caterpillar eyebrows who explains sciencey-type stuff in very simple and easy-to-understand terms. You should, then, find it not in the least but surprising that he was accused of “confusing” Fox Business Network viewers on the issue of Climate Change (or Global Warming, or whatever it is Fox viewers are denying it is these days). And Fux Biz News viewers were probably already confused enough, having tuned into their favorite teevee channel, only to see a black guy wearing James O’Keefe’s pimp outfit (sans hat). I mean, if you get your bidness news from Fux, it’s no wonder Bill Nye is way over your head. If these people were exposed to Michio Kaku (or, even better, Neil deGrasse Tyson; imagine that, a smart black guy), their heads would probably explode (which would be a worthy experiment, in my book).

Today is “football eve,” as we prepare for the coming of SU football season, which starts tomorrow at 8PM (Eastern) on that most vaunted of platforms, ESPN3. I, of course, cannot get that, because my ISP is Time Warner, while my teevee provider is Dish. And TWC don’t play that. Oh well, it’s on too late for me, anyway (though I have Friday off, and could, conceivably, actually go to the game if I wanted to spend money that could easily be spent elsewhere, and hang out alone not drinking $6 Bud Lights in plastic cups).

Anyhow, here is my pre-season deal: I will try not to talk about SU football (too much) when they win, and when they don’t win, we shall all just pretend it never happened. Unless they go on the road and beat USC in week 3 (Vernon, if you wanna make the trip down to LA, I’ll mail you an orange t-shirt; your other option is a trip to the Super Dome for the SU-Tulane game on 10/08), in which case I will feel compelled to mention it repeatedly (you’re probably safe there, though).

This is the most dangerous of seasons coming up, as expectations are high. My life has been filled with high expectations, followed by devastatingly depressing realities – and not just in terms of sports, either; the “day after” the 2004 election was pretty shitty, for instance, and then there’s been that whole Obama Administration thing (which may be worse).

At least the 2004 election disaster was over fairly quickly. The Obama Presidency has been an exercise in the 5 stages of grief, though I’m happy to report that I’m (mostly) out of the depression phase, and am more or less pretty solidly into acceptance, which, I suppose, means I’m prepared for a Clintonesque second term (I recall thinking that, surely, now that he wasn’t facing re-election, Clinton would just say “the hell with these Republicans” and do all the stuff he didn’t do in his first term).

No such illusions this time around. I’ll consider a second term (assuming there is one; the alternative is more than I’m willing to think about right now) a success if we just get through it without the Republicans strip-mining Yosemite.

Speaking of stupid (and Fux News), when you’ve been called out for being dumb by Sean Hannity, you know you’re dumb. Especially when (and I’m gonna hate myself for saying this) Hannity has a point. I mean, “corpseman?”

Just imagine the scorn and derision you’d eagerly unleash upon Dubya for saying “corpseman” (though, to be fair, Dubya has done more to turn corpsmen into corpsemen than any president since LBJ – or maybe Nixon).

Of course, I’m certainly glad nobody’s ever had tape running (tape, how quaint) when I’ve said something stupid (I distinctly recall pronouncing the ‘w’ in the word ‘sword’ publicly one time, and, trust me, I know better, and it haunts me to this day – even though it happened back in 8th grade).

It’s bad enough when I go back and read what I’ve written here later on in the day, and find typos, way too many commas (they’re the second-most affordable punctuation, though; I’m also quite fond of the semicolon), missing letters (if not entire words), run-on sentences (sometimes two or more run-on sentences connected by an “and” or a “but” or even just stuck inside parentheses or inside em (or en) dashes, which I’m generally too lazy to bother putting in the html code for — and then a lot of times I put multiple parentheses and or “-” inside of other parentheses and/or “-” and whattya supposed to do there – switch to braces and/or curly brackets or what – so that by the time you get out of the whole contraption, you can’t remember where you were going at the beginning of the sentence — and even “to” for “two” and “your” for “you’re.” Plus I never seem to be consistent with whether to put the “.” or the “,” before the close-quote or after (I learned it always goes inside, but sometimes it just looks funny), and then there’s the whole “?” inside the parentheses thing.

There’s no point in using a spellchecker, ‘cuz it doesn’t catch grammar errors or using the right word incorrectly, and if you believe a spellchecker would recognize “Michio Kaku” then you’re mucho cuckoo. That’s why I intentionally spell certain things incorrectly, so that you’ll wonder if I’m just being ironic (as opposed to moronic, though at times I’m unintentionally more ironic, which might be considered mor’onic).

And don’t think I forget for one minute that there’s a teacher-lady out there watching me, or that if I use a masculine pronoun for something, I won’t catch hell (can’t use “he” and I was chided by my 9th grade English teacher for using “it” and you really shouldn’t even use “she” because it has “he” in it, and you shouldn’t say “woman” because it has “man” in it, so you could say “woperson” except that’s got “son” in it, so you could go with “woperdaughter” I guess).

I mean, fercrissakes, I missed out on the whole “men get to dominate the world” thing (especially at my house, where all I get to “dominate” is the remote control). And even that’s a Pyrrhic victory, as I only get to dominate it as long as I do what I’m told (not that I’m actually looking to dominate anyone or anything; in fact, I’m more than happy to sit back and let somebody else take charge), and, no, it doesn’t help that my orders are always delivered in passive-aggressive fashion.

For instance,

“do we have anything good recorded“

translates to

“I don’t wanna watch Renovation Realities. Find something I want to watch, and do it now. And you better skip through the goddamn commercials, too, or there’ll be hell to pay“

Do you have to take away the pronouns, too? My god, please don’t take away the pronouns! They’re all I have left.

Even though I make excuses for myself (for one thing, I tend to copy and paste, re-order, and change stuff around, so that, for instance, what was once legitimately a “their” becomes a “they’re” or a word gets left out or whatever), and, anyway, I just don’t have time in the morning to edit and re-edit this stuff. So then I read it later in the day when I’m somewhat more awake, and feel like a goddamn moron ‘cuz I wrote “your never gonna believe this,” or something.

But, wait, what the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah, Syracuse (how unusual) and the crushing depression often associated with football season.

When I was a kid, the years between Larry Csonka/Floyd Little and Don McPherson/Marvin Harrison were mostly filled with “promising” 4-7 seasons followed by depressing 3-8 (or 2-9) ones (it wasn’t until the “he who shall not be named” era that we got into one-win territory). As for the NFL, the years after Joe Namath and Super Bowl III were filled with, well, not a lot. Todd wasn’t actually God. And Mark Gastineau was, well, he was as embarrassing as he was good at sacking the QB.

So, anyway, I not only learned how to deal with dashed expectations (one word: “beer”), but have come to expect them. Now, however, I no longer have beer to rely on. Well, not as much beer, at least. And this season just might require a whole lotta beer, if my youth is any indication.

At least the Akron Zips are off the schedule, so there will be no conflicts of interest with Kevin (not that Kevin’s around anymore; was it something I said?).

Well, it’s getting late, and today is my early day, so I’m not even going to bother proofreading this. You get what you get, and if I sound like a moron, well, consider it my attempt at solidarity with our President.

:fist:

So piss off, Hannity. Just because you’re so perfect doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be.