squidbag

Politics and Sports

There is an ongoing argument, that I believe I first encountered in Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, that runs something along the lines of this: organized sports (and, as I recall, this goes from the high school level on up) are a jingoist distraction designed to keep the general public from paying attention to things that really matter, keeping them hyped up in imaginary conflicts, and indeed, turning them against one another in yet another American societal division, so they don't turn on the national government.  Intellectually, of course, I know that this is, to some degree, true.  From the lofty perch of my mid-thirties, however, I have begun the process of ceasing to give a fuck.  For a couple of reasons that I strongly suspect I have in common with the great mob of the unwashed electorate.

First off, and most importantly, I like sports.  Not like some people, where I become obsessed and take it to extremes, but I always enjoy the sports, even when playing something I'm bad at (increasingly true) or when watching a game.  There are sports I cannot abide - golf (unless it's miniature), baseball (unless I'm actually at the park), and NASCAR(...) are the big three - and watching people lose their minds has killed the joy of college football for me, too.  I watch, but only as a reflexive act, and only when I can engage with something else simultaneously.  I love the NFL and NHL, and discovered soccer over the Summer.  I usually catch the NBA quarterfinals forward, if I can.  I can still watch boxing sometimes, and there's other stuff out there I can enjoy.  So, I watch American football because I love to shout at the announcers (I give Al Michaels a pass) and because I keep up with what's going on enough to really engage with whoever's winning or losing.  Additionally, there is still an element of doubt involved, that excitement of not knowing how a thing is going to turn out.  Uncertainty.  Thrilling.

Not so, the lumbering American political creature.  More and more, as I become disenchanted with the people around me, do I see this as a self-defeating system where people with money and influence, helped and chosen by a moneyed oligarchy, stand up and yell loud until a heaving mass votes for someone who is usually at either end of a spectrum that starts with dangerous ideologue and ends with opportunistic megalomaniac.  The last candidate I gave hope to has been rendered ineffective at the one thing I deemed most important: crushing our national inability to have a real discussion.  People with agendas on one side shout, and people on the other side with agendas shout shit back, and there may not be a single idea exchanged.  Like shooting without taking territory.  What's the fucking point?  If you expect to maintain your own thoughts, it's best not to listen at all.  Now that we're ankle-deep in the spreading foam of our mindless jaw-pumping yammering, one begins to think that the prescription may be for something a little stronger than representative democracy, especially when fear is fed by misinformation and the largest mass of people responds to their self-interest more often than anything else.  You vote, you know what's going to happen whether A or B gets into office, and then - you wait to vote again.  How participatory.  How exciting.  Most people vote against someone, not for someone, and that's fifth grade lunch table clique disgusting.  Local elections are better, but often not much better.  Depends a lot upon where you are.

At the end of the day, paying enough attention to what's going on in the world outside of sports, within the system we jokingly still call "politics," like it reflects the will of the people, to deserve an opinion will bring you nothing but exhaustion and misery, while your second-string quarterback dominating Jacksonville can actually be gut-bustingly funny, if you're paying attention to that instead.  You have to keep trying, but it's really more rewarding not to.

So, root, root, root for the home team.  No one wins.  It's a shame.

Weekly Observationals

I have no particular theme from which to work at the moment, just an amalgamated collection of disparate thoughts on various subjects - but I decided that I'd be damned if I'd let common sense stop me from throwing them all into one post.  First, the pop culture thing that made me the happiest this week? The trailer for this movie that I told all of you about.  And, creator Warren Ellis' thoughts about it.

Looks wonderful, eh?  Much better than talking to fuckwits.

When you are dealing with a fuckwit, I have found - only this week - that it is somewhat counter-productive to begin the conversation with, "Hey, fuckwit."  You'd think this would be a real time saver, since it gets so much punchy information across, factual and emotional, both of an explicit and implicit nature, but it isn't.  The addressed fuckwit, as it turns out, is possessed of all kinds of fuckwitted opinions he feels obliged to spew out at you about his alleged fuckwit status, which is confirmed, of course, by the litany of onerous and fuckwitted remarks you must endure, but this cacophonous bowel movement of noise after your truthful and helpful overture causes the entire conversational symphony to drag, and instead of a Mozart argument, you find yourself in a limping Salieri slog, and you have to knock your way through it just to get to the meat of why it is that some fuckwit ought not to be bollicking against your porch furniture with a weed hacker at 7:30 in the morning on a Thursday.  You can still get your point across, get results and master the situation - but you must be ready for the time-wastery of the noisy fuckwit with whom you are forced to deal.

(I think it's poignantly telling that even my spell checker knows Mozart, but does not know Salieri.  I think someone could make a little dramatic production, or perhaps even a film about that relationship.)

Speaking of fuckwits, what about that Lawrence Taylor?  He fucked up my Wednesday a little.  Notwithstanding the loss of the USA to clock-sucking Ghana, this week in soccer was a joy to me, someone who has only recently learned to appreciate the sport, and who indeed once wrote this.  Big ups to Mer for getting me to watch the World Cup this time around, so that I could vicariously experience the extreme highs and lows of watching the US team.  The highs, of course, came on Wednesday, with the 91 minute goal of Landon Donovan against Nigeria, and all of the positivity that came gushing out of ESPN from the game and subsequent talking heads, as I watched with my kids, who were also doing a cooking project.  Sort of.  As ESPN rejoined its normal schedule, however, we went from the ecstasy of human achievement on the pitch to Thug American-Style Football, and the indictment of Hall-of-Famer Taylor on charges of "one count of third-degree rape, one count of a criminal sexual act, two counts of sexual abuse, one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of patronizing a prostitute."  There's a comparison study for your ass.  Thanks, ESPN, for making me quickly change the fucking channel.

I'm trying to re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and enjoying it a lot less than the first time around.  I can only assume that this means I am becoming less and less enlightened as I grow older?  Partly, it bothers me because it seems so desperate on the part of the author, who is writing about something he'd really like to achieve, without having achieved it himself.  His prose is still elegantly blunt, though.

Facebook is weirding me out a little bit more this week than last.  Jesus seems to have a couple of his own webpages, FB itself doesn't seem to have any idea what I'm actually interested in, and there's some rampant ignorance coming out of the noiseholes of people with whom I'm digital "friends."  Blocking their status updates seems pansiated compared to a complete unfriending, but I'm calling it a 1st step for now.  We'll see.

Finally, I'm toying with volunteering at either the Chicago or Atlanta Comic Cons this year, and would need basically EVERYTHING to make it happen - I need child care possibly for as many as three days, places to stay in those cities, and maybe even to rent a vehicle I don't have to work on once a week.  Anybody want to help a brother out, just raise up your hands.  I need the data to make a decision.

A Unifying Force

I was supposed to be going over to Kroger's for sausage, celery & low sodium chicken stock.  You can tell it's the holidays - we're making food we don't normally make.  Casseroles.  Everyone secretly loves a casserole, if only because you can take it back out of the fridge a dozen times and slowly eat away at it.  Anyway, Kroger.  I hit the doors of the store and right angled around the Starbucks kiosk-blot when I heard the cheering crowd white noise coming from the big flatscreens in the little cafe area they put in when they removed the photo finishing counter at the end of '07.  I glanced up at the screens to see 1:43 left in the fourth quarter, Titans and Dolphins tied at 24.

So I stopped.  Dead in my tracks, hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt, all in black with my hat pulled down to touch the top of my glasses.  Next to me was a petite woman in her 40s, done up still from church, a little too much make-up, nice smell.  Behind her were a couple of the guys from the meat counter, white coats and logos.  Seated at the tables were a homeless guy in a rotting Michelin-man-type winter coat, a skinny Korean kid with a Mario Brothers hat and girl pants, and a matronly black woman with a bright red Christmas sweater on and two pre-teen boys in tow.  Others gathered - a tall white guy in a banker's tie and black London Fog coat, a teenage girl with a "visitor" sticker on her tan coat, and a huge black guy with a scarred nose and his iPod headphones still in.  The point is, it's a melting pot all walks of life kind of thing going on.

And we cheered together.  In overtime, the Titans intercepted and Rob Bironas kicked a 46 yard FG FTW 27-24, and a collective gasp went up and then changed into scattered claps and cheers, some verbal exclamations.  The Titans won after ditching an 18 point lead, then pushing into OT, and keeping us as fans on the edge.  It has been a difficult season to be a Titan fan, but when it works, it works well, and today it brought people together in the grocery store, closer than they would normally tolerate, with a singular interest.  There were some handshakes, joking and nervous laughter as we all broke up to the image of the players hugging each other on the field, and the experience was over.

Except that I put it here.

Strange Fucking Newsday

It's a Tuesday, and those can often be written off as nothing days.  They're not, though.  Not really.  My kid has flag football practice tomorrow, there was a school picnic today, and we've got a couple of big orders that need to get completed this week.  School is in full swing, day four is tomorrow, and there's already too much damned homework coming home.  My daughter made me a painting in green today, and there are birds in it.  One of the kids in her class got sick with a "fever in his mouth."  I've already run out of Car Talk podcasts on my iPod, and it looks like we're getting a new guy at the office.  On top of all that, it was a really fucking strange newsday today.  Did you notice?

Robert Novak died.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.  I like to the think that the brain cancer that got him was just rapid mutant cell growth brought on by his having tortured his brain into shapes that come unnaturally to most humans in the process of taking up every ridiculous conservative, "Prince of Darkness" stand during his years on "Crossfire," the show that made debate look stupid.  I hope it hurt.  I hope it hurt because I firmly believe that Bob Novak was a headline-grabbing shithead in his old age who committed treason during "wartime," natch, against a US asset abroad by exposing Valerie Plame.  He ruined another person's life - realistically, several lives - and that shouldn't come without consequences.  I think he did it to prove that he was still an "insider," still had credibility in a 24-hour newscycle.  Fuck Bob Novak, as much a hypocrite as the politicians he hounded for column inches and fame.  Media whore.

Stop.  It's Hammer Time again.  Tom DeLay's gonna be on "Dancing with the Stars."  (Not a good day to be a conservative, apparently.)  As Bill Hicks once asked, "Is life too fucking weird or what?"  I don't know if he can dance, and his selection for this show affects me not at all - it's the same feeling I got checking out my groceries tonight; The fucking Bachelor or Bachelorette is on the cover of one of those People-like magazines, and I think to myself, "Who cares?"  Obviously the readership of that rag, but why?  I mean, Jon and Kate are freakish attention hounds with too many kids like they're salmon or bunnies or something, and Brangelia have movies coming out and they're attractive.  But the magazine that leads with a news story about the non-event that is a reality TV hook unfolding?  Ridiculous.  Like Tom DeLay in dancing shoes. Or big Hammer pants.  I hope they make him do The Hustle or the Funky Chicken.  You should see this, though.

Brett "I retire all the time" Favre has decided to play some football again, apparently.  After an unremarkable (by standards he set) season with the Jets last year, he has now officially defected over the purple borderline to the Vikings.  In Minnesota.  Disgusting level of betrayal, really.  Cheeseheads only hate one team more than the Vikings, and that's Da Bears.  The Lions aren't worth the effort to hate; you just fall asleep in front of them on Thanksgiving.  I am ready for Brett to either make up his damn mind and play the game, or really retire, and stop doing farewells that no longer matter or have any credence.  Shit, it's not like we'd get the chance to miss him: He's going to be a talking suit at the semi-circular table during NFL pre-game and halftime anyway.

And then there's this kindly old Georgia couple killed by the wild dog pack.  Avoiding the obvious "formerly trained by Mike Vick" jokes, what the fuck?  Wild dog packs eating people are one of those signs of the apocalypse, and Akira Kurosawa would agree with me.  What's up, Lexington Animal Control?  I mean, yeah, sure - NOW they're rounding up all the dogs in the pack - supposedly - and offing them all without any kind of doggie trials or anything - too much, too late, fuckers.  This is after they killed two nice old animal lovers - the irony is the sole reason it's made so many headlines - and failed to eat the Jehovah's Witnesses who showed up on the scene later.  Everything about this story is disturbing, especially the love story - it kind of reads like if the Notebook was remixed with Cujo.

Now, it's after eleven, which is ridiculous, and I have a lot of email to sort.  Lunches are made and kids are finally at rest.  The Spear of Destiny has been returned to a safe place.  We're down three cupcakes, and I know people who want updates from me that I haven't provided.  Have a good Wednesday.

The End of an Idiot

In the recent panoply of media-reported deaths, none thrills me as much as the demise by goring of young Spaniard Daniel Jimeno Romero, who was gored to death by a bull during the fourth day of the annual parade of fuckwits known as the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.  Truly, I wish I could feel sorry for his family, or lament at the loss this is anytime a young life, with so much potential and years ahead of him, is snuffed out - but really, I keep thinking what a lucky thing this is for the global gene pool, and how Daniel just must not have had anything in his life worth living for, since stepping out in front of a bull is just about the stupidest fucking thing you can ever do.  One has to sincerely hope that Sr. Romero is buried in a bull pasture, and that his marker, which will spawn the best magic mushrooms in the world from its platen of bullshit, is inscribed, "Como grande ahora es su chile, Danielito?"

Big ups to the Pamplona Bulls this week, though, for breaking a 14-year losing streak and popping their first kill in a while.  The franchise has been on a good run all week, some solid lung hits and ankle fractures - injuring some Scots and other Spaniards, one Texan (though not the one you're hoping for) and one Frenchman, which is especially impressive, due to their skill at running away.  It'd be much more impressive if they weren't all being run through the streets only as a prelude to their eventual deaths in the ring at the hands of skinny pricks with pointy sticks.  One bull was quoted as saying, "Snort, snort, snuffle...moo.  MOO!"  After that, there was a lot of cud chewing.

For past thoughts on the yearly goring of morons, see this.

Miasma

Ups and fucking downs.  I've had worse collections of days.  I've had better ones, too, but this particular set needs to be gotten down somewhere and this is as good a place as any.  At this point, I don't remember much from last Monday, other than to tell you that I was glad the Steelers had won the Super Bowl, and that my chili tasted better than perhaps it ever has.  So - that was a high point, yeah?  The only thing I can say for certain is that I was tired enough that I came home and did a layout job for a family friend and went to bed with no TV or reading.  That's tired.

Tuesday: While at work on a fairly busy day, one of my employees stabs another at about 3pm with an X-Acto knife in the hand causing an open wound (you could see tendons and stuff) requiring four stitches.  This happened while both parties were fucking around instead of working, and led to a huge loss in productivity and arguments about insurance with measly pricks named Chip.  After ending my day like this, I come home to find that my wife's school had multiple fights which required police intervention and ultimately, arrests.  During a phone call with my mom, my daughter throws up all over me.  While trying to wrangle her vomit, clothing and self into something like a bath, a glass is broken which later cuts my son's foot.  I am up until 2 AM dealing with sick child.  The foot bleeds a little, but is largely unharmed.

Wednesday: Continued fallout from stabbing incident mars morning, conversations ensue.  Another employee injures himself in the leg with an improperly stored blade.  Work progresses at a dead run as I must leave at one so C can attend an afternoon meeting.  I spend my afternoon reading books, pouring drinks, and changing diapers.  While Abby watches TV, I gather the sickbed laundry, do dishes, and tidy up.  I pick up Max and eat the world's worst chicken sandwich at Ruby Tuesday's, while simultaneously recieving comment from waitstaff about having "the best behaved children ever."

Thursday:  Note from Max's teacher upsets morning.  A progress report in his backpack seems to indicate a major slippage in work and application since January's report card.  It suggests all kinds of things which upset me and C.  I draft a quick but concerned note back to the teacher and send all on their way.  I destroy two co-workers at lunchtime trivia after pouring my heart out to them about what I expect will be a troublesome weekend.  Evening contains failed attempts to procure costume items and bad food at Davis-Kidd bistro.  I swing by and pick up a stack of old comics from the Guys, (also chatting about the various potentials of the coming weekend) which contains many randomly nostalgic items, including my old transistor radio.  That night I am up sick with the vomiting from 2:30 in the morning until 4.

Friday: I am locked out of my apartment by my two-year-old.  She closes and locks the door while my keys are hanging inside.  After 20 minutes, I give up on doing this the right way (waiting for the security guy with keys) and pop my lock with a slotted screwdriver in seconds.  We go in and find keys, and I take my son who is dressed as Harry Potter to school, where he must be signed in because he is late.  I walk him to class where his teacher, clad as Laura Ingalls, tells me that she had another child in mind when she wrote the upsetting note, and that I should disregard it.  (I should perhaps mention here that Max's school is in the midst of Read-A-Thon, where kids read as much as they can and get points and raise money for the school.  The costumes were a part of that ongoing event.)  I get to work late to find the empty threat of a lawsuit in my email.  This is quickly dealt with (20 minutes spent on a carefully crafted response) and the rest of the morning passes without incident.

I did my "invisible phone" gag at the bank, and no one said a word. 

I pick Abby up from school and pay the day care, and we head home into a swirl of packing.  The four of us leave sometime after six to drive to Birmingham, where we check into the Medical Center Inn for a night of relative rest.  I am now dealing with phase two of the sickness using Mucinex D, (which is available without ID and forms in Alabama, so I took the opportunity to start my own meth lab) Aleve, and Sudafed.  I fall asleep around 11:30 or so.

Saturday:  We awaken in our hotel room, the kids having arisen at 6:50.  Cartoons are watched, snacks are had, showers taken, coffee consumed.  After contacting my mother-in-law, a fun trip through the city of Birmingham is had as we become lost trying to find this charming bakery.  Once found, delicious pastries and cookies are consumed as a cavalcade of dogs passes by.  (Matt and Cayce - go here when in Birmingham!) 

We meet up with Carolyn and go see Vulcan, the second largest statue of its kind in the United States and a monument to Birmingham's rich manufacturing heritage.  We spent some time in the museum and rode the glass elevator up the eleven stories to the observation deck.  Vulcan is way cool, though the history of the statue is nearly cooler than the statue himself.  His ass is bare, though,which is amusing.  Also, I kept making the same joke: "How long have we been looking at this Vulcan statue?"  "Does it have to be so Vulcan high?"  Hilarious.  We parted ways with Carolyn then, and got some Gus's hot dogs.  If you ever get a chance to have a Gus's chili dog, I will say that his chili recipe is perfect for dogs - not a lot of extras, good flavor.

After Gus's in the car, we went to Birmingham's Civil Rights museum.  It is awesome, in the old-school sense of the word before it was corrupted by generations of ignorant children and admen.  In the pre-"hundred million hot dogs" sense.  I could have spent forever there.  From the origins of Birmingham as a city to the election of Mayor Arrington, the whole institute is a treat for all the senses, and a mind-numbing experience that makes point after point about racism and humanity's ridiculousness over and over again without becoming tiresome, but often being deliberately overwhelming.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would like to go back.  When it closed, we wandered the corner there where 16th Street Baptist Church is, and also Kelly Ingram park, with its monuments to civil rights leaders and milestones.  There, we met a crazy man.

He was the good kind of crazy, like Sun Ra, in his flip-flops and socks carrying a huge bag of 100 double-A batteries, and we paid him five bucks to listen to him run down the history of the area and rap about the park itself, the symbolism of the area, and the evils of too much Internet.  We left him and returned to our hotel, where gifts were given, and we managed to leave the dolls and Transformers flying around long enough to grab some BBQ.  The sausage was my favorite.  And the potato salad.  That night I "slept" restlessly next to Max after Carolyn went to her room and Abby resisted bedtime for a while.

Sunday we had breakfast and came back.  We are fully into February's Valentine week, which is always fun when you have kids and plans.  We are all of us tired today, and settling into sleepiness.  Next time, I'll try to get enough time on my hands to break these up into smaller entries.

Tryin' to Help the Kids

As my buddy Eric P of Deviant Synapse points out, you know where this is going. This is old news, and there's only a limited number of jokes you can make about a self-absorbed, self-important idiot manchild who heads out to the club with a loaded firearm stuffed into the waistband of his sweatpants. My fucking keys make my sweatpants ride south, but a gun would be secure.  Right.  However. This still makes me laugh out loud, and is therefore worth posting again.

Two things: I love the "you little bitch" line, and watch the gun carefully after he sets it on the wall and moves away.  There's muzzle flash.  A nice touch, that.

Bungee Bounce Shutout

Okay, since none of you inconsiderate bastards has any thoughts or suggestions for extending my holiday time (or at least my perception thereof), we'll move on to something far more important.  What you should know in terms of backstory here: Neither "Lloyd" or "Billy Joe" is a real name for either of the "contestants" involved in this Nashville Predators interperiod icebound diversion, and until the time of this video, "Billy Joe" was an undefeated shit-talker when it came to this particular enterprise.  I work with "Lloyd," who can be found here, and he swears on his gap that he was not wearing cleats or iron-lined sneakers or anything.  He also does not take performance-enhancing drugs, unless Mountain Dew counts.  I don't think you need to know any of that to find this hilarious, but I figured what the hell.

The View from the CR

Over the weekend, I was talking by Internet phone (meaning it cuts off every 15 minutes and makes weird echoes in the conversation when it is working) to Jesse, whose blog can be found here.  Jesse is a teacher, husband and about-to-be-dad (like, this week) in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, so there's a lot of weird mutant jungle biology on his blog, along with his creative writing and observations about his unique experiences living in the developing world.

We were discussing what American news had filtered into Costa Rica over the weekend, and I thought I would pass this along because it's a marvelous gift of perspective.  Jesse was telling me that pretty much all Costa Ricans had heard about America was stuff about our election and the World Series.  The World Series coverage is apparently hilarious, because not only are CR sports commentators unfamiliar with the principals, ("The PHY-Lees?") but they lack a basic understanding of the game of baseball, which leads to a lot of dead air punctuated by statements of the completely obvious.  "The player hits the ball, and now he runs."  I can only imagine what their reaction was to postponing a game because of what they probably regard as "a little bit of rain."

In terms of our election, were they hearing stump speeches, promises, allegations, revelations or talking points?  Nope.  They got the one highlighted story about the Sarah Palin Stripper Look-A-Like contest out in Vegas.  So that's what they think about us, folks.  Democracy is afoot, but strippers and baseball grab the headlines.  That might be for the best, really.  The economy's for shit, but that naked chick who sort of kind of resembles Sarah Palin clone got ten grand.

So yeah - perspective.

First Weekend in October

What do you do with your three days off in a row?

I don't get three days in a row very often, so I fully intended to make seriously good use of them, and I believe I did.  I did all of our household's laundry, hit a comic book store, went to hear C sing in a choir, took in a high school homecoming football game, got free nachos, went to a cultural festival, played catch with my son, paid my cable bill, bought new books, made a huge Tex-Mex meal, picked up 25% off coupons, explored part of the city with which I am not familiar, spent lots of time with my kids, read a good chunk of the book I'm on, watched a bunch of cartoons, ate outside a couple of times, and generally packed a bunch of stuff into my weekend.  Highlights:

Abby likes construction equipment.  We spent a good ten minutes at one point parked in front of a building site, watching first a cement truck, and then a backhoe and dump truck.  She points excitedly and yells "big trucks!"  Abby also spent an entertaining few minutes today at lunch proclaiming herself to be a "ding-dong."  As in: "I'm a dinnnng-DONG.  Ding-dong."  Hilarity ensues, as Max nearly chokes on his sandwich.  Abby also makes friends wherever she goes, including getting free nachos from the nice laundromat lady who is from Chiapas and who also gave me free hangers and put on Spongebob for Abby.  Abby shared no nachos with me.

The alumni at the homecoming game took the cheerleaders - well, took them to school.  A fifty-five degree evening is cold to a scantily clad Nashville teenager, and so they were doing a lot of standing about and shivering, likely while texting.  When they finally got around to doing an actual cheer, the Alumni had had an ass full of their inactivity and decided to show them how it was done.  There's nothing funnier than a bleacher full of adults animatedly doing a cheer while a group of young girls exercises their emotional range from confused to pissed to embarrassed.

The game of catch gets harder and harder as the sun goes down.

Do not drink this product.  It is disgusting.  Spit-take disgusting.

If you warn a two-year-old not to drop something off of the second floor down into a first-floor lobby, the act will immediately occur, and it will not be purposeful when it does.  It will just spontaneously happen, like reverse using the Force.  The object will of course be, a plastic hammer.

Max picked up Understanding Comics in the bookstore and read a good chunk of it before bringing it over to me and asking if we could get it.  "Dad, this analyzes comics."  "I know.  We have that already."  "Cool.  I'm going to borrow it, but first, I'm going to go read Halloween books."  Ah, to be seven again.

Vanderbilt fans are so well-mannered that it is difficult to tell when they have won.  They beat Auburn by one point over the weekend, and the Borders we were leaving is literally in front of the stadium, nearly on campus, so we were packing the car and negotiating West End in post-game traffic, and had to ask passers by who won.

Tomorrow is another Monday.  My kids are in bed.  I should be, too.