SB 43: told ya

Yeah, yeah, I know - I said Steelers by five, not four. Close enough.

Some other points:

1) Larry Fitzgerald is one hell of a receiver;

2) So is Santonio Holmes.

3) The refereeing was, to say the least, unsuitably iffy, and not just for the fact that James Harrison didn't get ejected for his schoolyard boxing match.

4) Dick LeBeau did not screw the pooch, really; the Cardinals are just a better offensive team than most peeps get them credit for despite their lack of a running attack. Translation: Kurt Warner is a quarterback who can survive in an offense that can't run the ball, which is something only John Elway could pull off in his early years with the Broncos. Not that either of them won a Lombardi trophy doing that, of course.

5) So Faith Hill and Jennifer Hudson lip-synched. Who cares? 

6) Some of the ads were funny. They still didn't make me want to buy most of that crap.

7) I'm getting the uncomfortable feeling that halftime shows are coming perilously close to a 15-minute live commercial for Freedom Rock. You'll know that Metallica are dead when they play a Super Bowl.

8) I nearly spelled that  as "Super BowEl" in the last sentence. After 8-plus hours of ridiculous hoopla passing for dramatic buildup, maybe that's the point.

Post-SB 43 observation on the Bears

If Jerry Angelo refuses to draft at least one promising wideout in the first two rounds of the draft, it'll cement his position as a lunkhead as good at what he does as Matt Millen was in Detroit concerning anything but receivers.

Huh?

As can be seen on Ye Olde Boobe Tube, Blago continues his nationwide clown act.

(For what? He's lost his job, and it's not like he can taint a jury pool from any state other than Illinois...)

Phelps (as in Michael)

Oh, the aroma of the stupidity wafting off this non-issue is appalling.

Ed Brayton gets it right on Dispatches from the Culture Wars, so much so that I have to quote it here:

The fact is that millions and millions of Americans smoke pot and a vanishingly small percentage of them have any significant problems caused by doing so. No matter how many times the lie is repeated, it is not a "gateway" to using something worse, nor does it destroy your life. And the more we lie to children about it, the more likely we make it that they will ignore legitimate warnings we might give them.

BTW, please keep in mind that I don't partake of the stuff myself; I'm just bringing up the point that most heads are probably so baked that the last thing they'd contemplate is driving off in a car from where they got high - unlike most alcohol-related DUI cases and bars.

Ah, the wonders of religious bigotry disguised as piety...

Boy, am I getting sick of this crap.

Johann Hari gets appropriately snarky on the subject of rewriting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a Saudi-inspired stroke of the pen in The Independent, while Bjarte Forshaug reports on a similar problem in Norway via the JREF web site. And just so you know that I'm not giving anybody outside the traditional post-Judaic monotheistic religions short shrift, here's a lovely article from The Telegraph that proves that fundamentalist nutballs are pretty much the scum of the earth regardless of where they come from and what they believe.  

(A bit of a caveat, here: if, in fact, you are a religious person reading this, do not consider this an attack on your faith; when I said "fundamentalist nutballs", I meant "fundamentalist nutballs"; I don't consider all devout individuals part of that description. Far from it.)

Cultural Advocacy (one of a series)

What was it in the local California water supply that gave Frank and The Captain these strange powers over musical notes, anyway...?

Could've been the same stuff that gave Masamune Shirow his powers over artwork.

Or the stuff that made Chrome one of the most appealing avant-rock bands in the bay area back in the 70's or 80's outside of the Residents?