Amen, and Stay Tuned

Rod's been put out, and he was put out about it. Last Thursday, the Illini tribal council voted him off the island, 59-0.

I watched the spectacle of Rod addressing the assembly live on an internet feed. Then I read the transcript of the address. While the transcript showed the speech to be weak, unfocused and inarticulate, the written word was only a fraction as bad as the live version. This lad should have had someone speak for him, or at least worked from an outline or notes.

Watching Rod bumble and stumble for the better part of an hour was reminiscent of watching a kid who has only skimmed Cliff's Notes give a book report. I had to remind myself that the guy is a crook in order to keep from feeling sorry for his ineptitude as he pled his case.

Citizen Rod's address to the lawmakers was nothing short of amazing. He first attempted to reach out and lock in on some imagined common bond between his miscreant actions and the ways of his jury, creating a situation akin to an accused bank robber trying to connect with the judge by suggesting they both had jobs to do.

Fish ain't bitin', pal.

Rod circled back into pointless redundancy several times, as if reintroducing his argument, then launched into story telling mode, apparently with the intention of drawing the whole scenario into clarity. Unfortunately, there was no punchline, and Ol' Roddy drifted back to an approach that was a verbal rendering of wink 'n nod, slap my hands but then hug me 'cause I had good intentions.

A recurring phrase was " twice elected by the people". I am proud to point out that the thievin' SOB did not ever receive a vote from anyone in my household.

In the end, Rod did what Rod does: he ripped us off just a little more. He ran out of blather and then he grabbed the state airplane to go back to Chicago before he was fired and would have to travel on his own dime and not on a private airplane. Living the high life to the very last, Rod was, as We the People picked up the tab, as always.

The magnitude of Rod's misdeeds and runaway ego is still to revealed. The price will be staggering. Just taking the creep's name off the Illinois Tollway signs--and why is his name up there in the first place?-- is going to run nearly $500,000, and that is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. The state of the state is pretty dismal, fiscally speaking, with debts somewhere in the $5 million to $6 million range. Guess who's going to be ponying up for that tab?

The price Rod will pay is likewise yet to be revealed. There is still a list of federal charges that must be answered. That trial will provide more courthouse excitement than we've had since OJ. Here is where the irony will be incredibly sweet, should events go as expected.

You see, former Illinois Chief Crook George Ryan was probably going to get sprung from the big house by his pals, Dick Durbin and Jim Thompson, until Roddy boy stepped in the big pile of crapola. When Pat Fitz pulled the plug on Roddy's yard sale of the Senate seat, the nation focused a glaring spotlight on Illinois, home of it's newly minted and hope inspiring president, and Illinois, in turn, focused on Springfield and the whole rat pack. You can't cut loose the old crook when the new crook has doubled down on the size of the crimes. The incumbent governor's flagrant abuse of the public trust derailed the Poor Old George Movement, as Illinois rallied to win the Most Corrupt Government Outside the Third World championship. Rod's rap killed Ryan's chance to get out.

So, if the trial goes quickly and as expected, Rod's future prison roommate could be his predecessor in office, and won't that be a most amazing twist on the tale of the grifters of Illinois.

Oh, yes, Governor Pat Quinn, please don't make a bigger mess of things before Governor Madigan arrives.

PS: Rod takes the BS Tour to the Letterman show tonite. Ugh!

Groundhog Day

It says on http://www.groundhog.org/ that today will be the 123rd trek to Gobbler's Knob for Phil's Official Prognostication. The website is all encompassing: there's a map of Punxsutawney (it is about a hundred miles northeast of Pittsburgh), the schedule of events (Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Groundhogs is at 10:00 a.m) and, of course, that the gates open at 3:00 a.m. This may be directed toward the tailgate crowd. I am unsure as I have never been to Groundhog World, or whatever is inside the gates that open at 3:00. a.m.



Groundhog Day evolved from Candlemas Day. In the interest of harmony on the planet, it is in my best interest to say little about Candlemas Day. Inquiring minds want to know? Go to http://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterepiphany3.html and read as much as you can handle.

As small town festivals go, Groundhog Day has a lot of legs. There will be TV coverage across the universe, the talking heads will giggle as they try to remember if the groundhog seeing his shadow means six more weeks of winter, six less weeks of winter, six weeks until the bacchanal of St. Patrick's Day, or six weeks to the apocalypse.

John Madden will appear and sample deep fried gopher, roasted gopher, broasted gopher, toasted gopher and sasquatch gopher jerky. In keeping with the economic pall that is upon us, the National Zoo will rename their critter Gopher Broke. TNT will show 24 consecutive hours of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Now, what you've all been waiting for, Quiz Time!
The groundhog is also known as
a. the woodchuck
b. the land beaver
c. the whistlepig
d. all of the above.

The correct answer appears at the end of today's post.

"D", as in "D end".

Super Bowl : Wanna Bet?

The biggest wagering day of the year is this Sunday, the Super Bowl. People who don't give a hoot about pro football will be gathering to party and tuning in to watch celebrated commercials, a highly touted halftime show ( Janet Jackson, need I say more?), and a little football.

This year's game features the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals. Stifle the yawn, please, and break out the bankroll. There is plenty to get excited about. There are prop bets, and lots of 'em. Bodog has over 200 prop bets--200!

First, you can bet on the over and under for the National Anthem. We lost last year, going with the under. I knew we were cooked when it started with a long "oh whoa oh whoa saaaaaay, can you seeeeeeeee...". It's Jennifer Hudson singing this year, and the over and under is 1:54. I'm going with over.

Halftime entertainment is Bruce Springsteen. It's 2:1 that his first song is Born to Run, Glory Days is 4:1, and I'm On Fire is 12:1. Born in the USA is the chalky chalk at 21:20. I can hear the opening notes already...

You could have bet on how many planes will be in the pre-game flyover. I couldn't find this prop as the week proceeded. A count of 2 or fewer is 6:1 (when has there every been a 2 plane flyover? This is for if the Stealth comes alone), 6 or more is 2:1. The game's in Tampa, so the planes will probably come from Pensacola, and my guess is 5, which is the chalk at 5:4.

There's bets on whether each of the QB's will throw a TD or and INT first, who will score the first TD for each team, how many rushing yards will the backs accumulate, how many yards will their first run get and more. Troy Polomalu, the displaced Hawaiian who plays for Pittsburgh, is prominent in props as a defender and as a scoring threat.

Oh, yeah, there's a football game. The Steelers are favored by 7, if you want the boring stuff.

A SAD Rerun

This is a first in this space--a rerun. Since we are about to hit Super Bowl weekend, be forewarned that Cabin Fever Season is officially upon us. While the days have begun to get longer, it's still kind of Siberian out there, and it's getting old, fast. If you're getting edgy...

It can be SAD…Seasonal Affective Disorder.The shorter days and lack of sunlight that come with northern winters can bring on feelings of depression, lethargy and fatigue.

SAD is a type of depression.The Mayo clinic lists these symptoms for winter depression/SAD:
§ Depression
§ Hopelessness
§ Anxiety
§ Loss of energy
§ Social withdrawal
§ Oversleeping
§ Loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed
§ Appetite changes, especially a craving for foods high in carbohydrates
§ Weight gain
§ Difficulty concentrating and processing information

You need to be aware that if you have some of this going on, this may be SAD, unless you are a Cub fan, in which case you get this way every autumn anyway.

The likely causes of SAD have been identified as:

• Your circadian rhythm. I thought that this had something to do with those bugs that come every 17 years, but that’s something else. The circadian rhythm is a process that regulates your body’s internal clock, letting you know when to sleep and wake up.


• Melatonin and Seratonin: during the longer nights your body creates more melatonin. It’s a sleep related hormone that is linked to depression. If that’s not bad enough, reduced sunlight means your body creates less seratonin and away you may go, down the depression rabbit hole again.
  These will also be characters in my upcoming novel. Mel and Sarah Tonin.

People under 20 aren’t affected as much, another zinger from Mother Nature for an aging population. Women are affected more than men. Hooo-rah, guys. Men have more severe symptoms than women. Out of luck, fellas.

So, if you’re tracking bad here, you may need to seek treatment. It appears that you can do a lot to combat this problem in its early stages by simply getting up off your ass and getting a little exercise, starting to socialize a bit, and/or setting aside some time to get a little sun when it’s out there.

Since I am re-running SAD advice, I think it may also help your frozen moods to rerun a favorite ditty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6P6VRn3gsw

Share!

Blimey!

I am not Anglophobic. I think the Brits have some funny stuff (that would exclude 99% of Monty Python, the lone exception being where the knight gets his limbs chopped off), that is, stuff worth making fun of (preposition alert!), but I find America's former landlords to generally be fine folks. OK, I threw in the orthodontia joke the other day, Paul McCartney should be put in a home, and I think that the whole royalty thing is pretty comical, but there's no malice intended.

The problem I have is with American television producers shoving British flavoured announcers at us, and with myself, for when I hear an English accent I usually interpret it as a qualification of authority and/or knowledge.

It simply is not so.

Take auto racing as an example. I turned on the 24 Hours of Daytona on Saturday afternoon, and there was a regular old American talking head, blathering away about the challenges of 24 hours of racing, and transferring the talking head responsibility to other regular old American talking head racing guy/gal announcers ("Let's go to Ellie in the pits, who has some information about a lugnut controversy, Ellie?"), and they did interviews and wasted time and did what racing announcers do during the pre-race, that being killing time between commercials and pestering the racers before they get into the cars.

So, since the 24 Hours of Daytona is a 24 hour race (that's why they call it the "24 Hours of Daytona"), I dropped back in on the racing coverage on Saturday evening as I channel surfed, and there, at the Great American Speedway, at the opening event of the year, was a pair of English accents talking me through the evening activities. I immediately perked up my ears to properly receive the pearls of wisdom that I inferred were about to come my way.

These two English announcer guys were less than stellar, less than entertaining, less than...aw, hell, they were dumb as a box of doorknobs. Because they had English accents, I had assumed I would be getting superior intellectual broadcasting. Turns out that they were less informative than the good old boys who do the B-list midseason races. These guys sucked, but with an accent.

Same deal with golf. Why do we need an English accented announcer to tell us that one of the Florida-based millionaires of the PGA has struck a poor shot on an Arizona golf course as we watch in awe (or in danger of falling asleep) across America?

What is it about that English accent that makes us confer validity unto its owner? Further, if you listen to what they say, instead of the flavour with which they say it, you will realize that you are frequently getting less than banal input.

There's other examples. Simon on American Idol, if he didn't have that English spin on his venom, I'm guessing he'd have long since gotten 100% of his smarmy ass kicked for that mean spirited, uppity attitude he's always sporting. Take old war movies, why were the English accents acceptable to portray Germans, Americans, Englishmen, Russians, pretty much every ethnicity at one time or another? They just did.

We need to prevent Anglo-announcer proliferation across other lines. For example, remove the Hawk's voice ringing up a strike out victim with the signature "He gone!", and insert a breathy, tea and crumpet flavored "I say, another unsuccessful effort".

Don't like it.

Or take John Madden out and insert Nigel Announcerchap. Instead of the on-the-edge outpouring of energy and emotion that is Madden, we'd receive a proper account of the disagreement out on the pitch. Don't like it, hurts my head to imagine it.

England and the USA, two peoples, separated by a common language.

As it should be. He gone.