Such as it is ...

Well, one half of the equation worked out, but that means the equation failed, of course.
I had New England and S.F. picked to go to the Super Bowl (in my mind, not for bets) and, after a dramatic, tense three quarters of play, S.F. finally wrestled the lead from Atlanta and managed to hang on to beat the Falcons, 28-24. That young man Kaeperneck (sp???) did a quietly masterful job of finding the open receivers - and for once, he threw passes to more than one receiver.
New England, however, couldn't handle the tidal force that the Ravens brought to Foxborough yesterday.
Too much pressure, too much hustle, and too much passion for the Patriots to overcome! It appeared to me that the Patriots just couldn't find a fourth and/or fifth gear when they needed it, and the Ravens were firing on all cylindars and sailing through all six gears without a hitch! Of the two, the 49ers/Falcons game was the best.
I think the 49ers will roll over the Ravens, despite their obvious sense of destiny (perhaps the team is finding some reservoir of "juice" for their much-vaunted linebacker Ray Lewis. who has said this will be his swan song, that he's handing up his cleats, pads and helmet and getting on with the quiet life of a FOX sportscaster.
Such is life. It's weird that Tom Brady couldn't rally his troops to put out that special, magical, last ounce of effort that playoff games inevitably take to win. But I'll leave the analysis to the guys who get paid to analyze that stuff.
Yawn.

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AGain with the ridiculous referee calls!!!

Unbelievable!!! The worst calls ever - again!!! These SCAB refs for the NFL SUCK!!!
Two calls by the inept, myopic, zebras gave the Seahawks more than 40 free yards. First it was a phantom personal foul (roughing the passer). The defensive player was CLEARLY already in the act of tackling when the ball was released - by a QB that had been flushed from the pocket, no less.
Then, and this is the one that makes me want to puke, a drunken, zone-blind ref calls pass interference on the defender when the it was so OBVIOUSLY the offensive player who mauled the defensive player - who never touched the offensive pass receiver. That one was worth 32 yards. And all this in what might have been the final drive.
What the hell is the NFL doing???
This is a BAD JOKE!!!
Fans should turn off the game, stay home on gameday, and write the owners to tell them to quit ruining the game of professional football, just for the sake of their corrupt, slimy egos.

2012-13 NFL referees are a bad joke!

OK, this has become ludicrous, to say the least. I don't trust any NFL scores this season because the "SCAB" (read "inept") referees are tilting the game to one team or the other by at least 7 points.
Tonight, I witnessed the worst, most blatant example of awful refereeing by the bunch of unqualified substitute (SCAB) refs the league owners have put on the field.
The rivalry between the Patriots and the Ravens is legendary within the ranks of the NFL loyalists, but tonight that rivalry became a laughable series of "ghost" penalties, blown-calls that should have been obvious, and just plain spineless calls in a game that should have been a benchmark for both teams. But, well, thanks to the greed of the owners, who want the qualified, long-standing, experienced referees to suck eggs and take pay cuts, rather than reward them with (wait for it ...) benefits (the nerve of those guys!), those NFL referees are sitting out the season.
If any of the coaches and/or players have any "huevos," they will decide to sit out the rest of the season until the real refs are returned to the game.
Hell, the coaches aren't poor, and their families won't go hungry if they waste a season! Nor will most of the players. I would think that those folks, most of all, would be truly angry and frustrated with the state of affairs in the NFL. But, no, I guess the owners have them all by the short hairs, too. Therefore, they'll meekly accept their paychecks and swallow their rancor when an obviously bad call loses the game for their team.
With more games like tonight's debacle, where the outcome tilted, not on the solid play of well-coached players, but rather on the dim-witted, ham-handed calls of a group of unqualified "refs." I use the quotes because, in truth, they aren't NFL referees, and they should not be allowed on the field.
They're no better than any fan who has followed the league for, say, five years, and who knows four or five game rules and the basics of the game's concepts.
Sadly, tonight the Ravens won for the first time during the regular season against their nemesis, the Patriots. Well, I've got news for you, Ravens. You actually lost the game! And in your hearts, if you're honest, you know it's true!
If the game had been called by professional NFL refs, called fairly and with an eye toward THE RULES, the score would have been quite different!
So congratulations for your phony, ref-adjusted win, one that was handed to you by at least three dim-witted calls by referees who had no idea what they were doing, where they were, or how to deal with an NFL crowd and a TV audience.
Be sure you put something EXTRA in those ref's Christmas stockings, Ravens. They did you a solid!
Those refs were clearly intimidated (most of the time they stood looking to one another for support, or for an explanation of what to do. And if they happened to see an infraction, they sometimes called it, and sometimes didn't. There was no rhyme or reason that I could see, other than intimidation and a deep, abiding recognition that they had no business being on the field.
But they seemed much more comfortable calling imaginary infractions.
Perhaps the lesson is, let the refs play the game the way they'd like to believe it, and let the players just beat themselves to death for all our entertainment.
I'm sick of hearing the sports analysts mumble platitudes about how "they're trying their best," or "they're doing the best they can."
Big deal!
Most of us, I think, do the best we can, but we don't get paid princely fees for messing up a project just because "we did our best."
The aging high school and college refs that the NFL owners pulled in to handle the 2012-13 NFL season are court jesters, at best. At worst, they're denigrating and ruining the game!
Fans should feel insulted by the ineptitude with which this bunch of sad sacks handle pro football competition! After all, those tickets weren't cheap!
But I guess the owners don't give a damn, since the fans haven't rankled or made much noise about the issue. IF the the fans allow it go on, then the fans deserve every bad call, every blown call, and every "ghost" foul the stooges in stripes deliver, whether it helps or hurts their home team! Integrity and truth be damned!
Them's profits ahead, matey! Aargh!

Aches and pains and plugged up drains

Regret is simply painful memories that pierce one's serenity.

May sound strange, or it may sound true, but it's what it is.

I regret my loss of fatherhood and raising my two children. I regret my loss of marriage and seeing the joy of growing old together become unreal.

I regret lies, and I regret unspoken falsehoods. I regret the pain that I've caused and the pain that I've lived, and the pain that life's weird scales weighed upon my shoulders.

I regret a thousand choices that led me down paths I wished I'd never seen, but which, nonetheless, I traveled to the bitter end.

Life, God, love, miracles, hope, magic, blood, perfume and shiny hair. All this and nothing matters at all. It's what you do, not what you wish.

For Want of Crowds

Looking into the vast emptyness that this universe encompasses, I feel so insignificant as to become meaningless in all but my own imagined importance of place. A billion suns whirl through the infinity that is our existence, outside time and space, endlessly spinning, falling, flying through the dark inky void that stretches beyond all comprehension.
Yet, here I sit, in a chair in a room beneath a roof under the sky that hovers over this planet, always falling, falling, falling while traveling forward around the always-falling Sun, always wondering, "where am I going?"
If you could see behind my eyes, do you think you'd understand my soul? If I could see behind your eyes, would I know you any better than I do right now?
And who is the silent watcher we speak to during our desperate hours alone in the dark, alone without peace, alone with ourselves?
It's sometimes nice to disappear into a crowd, to become just another face among many, just another smile uncertainly reaching across the gap. 

Limbaugh Rules the GOP – Mind, Body and Soul(less)

Rush Limbaugh, bloated narcissist that he is, is the de facto leader of the Grand Old Party. You know, the tyrannical fascist who revels in atavistic ramblinigs about the Constitution, and who wants to flush Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security retirement payments – ALL social programs that assist or, otherwise, benefit people who are not fortunate enough to have three homes in Europe and two in the United States. This wealthy, fat blowhard mutters something in the morning, and all Republican congressmen and women repeat his blather by the afternoon.
One could assume, quite realistically, that Limbaugh is the actual "power" behind the throne whenever a Republican is elected president, senator or congressional representative (excuse me while I wretch!).
So all you patriotic "old folks" who just love Rush's political viewpoints, please understand what he's in support of: No more Medicare or Medicaid payments for you (you leach); no more Social Security payments once you've reach retirement age – just work till you drop dead and quit bitching about it, you big baby! And no more safe food, safe drugs, safe highways, in fact, no more regulations at all! Anything that gets in the way of corporate profits is UN-AMERICAN! No more unions (little people shouldn't presume to know what's best for themselves or their families!); no more tort law (how dare you presume to claim damages if a doctor has a bad day and cuts of the wrong limb. Suck it up, punk!

Inside Job

Check out the film "Inside Job" if you want to see how snakes, trolls and thieves rule this government of ours. The film is an enlightening look at how the proponents of financial deregulation – people who today are still considered "giants" and "patriots" and "leaders" by ignorant, misinformed or willfully duplicitous people – pushed our economic system into a dark, evil territory, where lies, backstabbing and destruction were the coin of the realm. Chief among the trolls is Alan Greenspan, the soft-spoken, wrinkled and wizened head of the U.S. Treasury. But certainly he's not the only economic whore who sold his soul for the sake of a fantasy – perhaps one he truly believed! Nevertheless, he peddled the dream of free-wheeling capitalism as a holy pact between the nation's forefathers and today's patriotic billionaires. The fantasy, loosely stated, claims that the richer the rich get, the better off we all become. The holy grail of this enormous falsehood derives from the inflexible certitude that unfettered capitalism is the edict of God, and any other economic model is sent from Satan.
The despicable, doddering fool, Greenspan, clung to the "grail," even in light of facts that, long before it happened, predicted the collapse of our economic system. So he refused to even consider instituting regulations that might have reined in the vampires who were sucking the life's blood of the American people. He had been warned, several times, as it turns out. But he remained rooted in the lie.
And the literal "mountains of wealth" generated during the freewheeling '80s, '90s and first half of the new millennium's first decade, were not used to enrich fellow Americans. No, no, no! The gold, jewels and luxuries engorged the guts of human PIGS, for whom the idea of sharing wealth is a quaint but ridiculous notion. No, the vast oceans of cash were banked by a few elite, inside-the-loop CEOs, and by those who required payment for silence, or for educated, sophisticated manipulation of the public – investors who were robbed as surely as one is robbed at gunpoint – in order to keep the gravy boat chugging down the line.
Greenspan's willful blindness allowed the financial system to grow into the monster it has become, feeding on the bodies, blood and bones of anyone unfortunate enough to trust those economists and lawyers who created the system! So f*@# you, Greenspan! Hope you rot in hell!