DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> DC Viking: January 2007

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Cats can sense evil


Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link of the cat-washer in action at some kind of pet product trade show.

It's not a new clip, but it reminded me of the funniest cat story I know. Don't worry, this isn't one of those shmaltzy, heart-warming pet stories. In fact, I'm pretty sure thinking that this story is funny makes me a bad person.

My girlfriend has a down comforter with a cover on it. This cover has an opening that is easy for a cat to get into, but difficult for it to relocate once inside. I liken it to a man falling through the ice and not being able to find the hole he punched.

One bright, summer day I came strolling into my girlfriend’s bedroom. There appeared to be a cat under the comforter on the bed. It was moving slowly back and forth under the covers, as if it were looking for something under the blanket (turned out to be the exit).

Now, this cat is utterly terrified of me. My girlfriend is in school 4 hours away, so I'm at her place about once a month. Whenever this cat sees me in the house, his eyes get really big and he makes a mad dash for his hiding spot, sliding all over the place on the hardwood floors and smashing into shit as he goes. Don't see him for the rest of my stay. It's good stuff.

ANYWAY, the scairdycat is under the covers. I make some comment to the cat, calling it a dumb animal or something of the like, and he realizes that his arch enemy is in the room with him. I'm in the room, and he's trapped in a giant shopping bag, only someone has tied one end closed. Realizing the danger he is in he starts moving back and forth faster and faster to try and find the exit. Naturally, this strikes me as funny. I begin to laugh. Now that cat knows he's in real trouble. Not only is he trapped, but judging by the laughter this trap has been set by me, his nemesis.

He panics. Forgetting that the bag he is trapped in is on a bed and not the floor, he accelerates clear off the edge of the bed. The comforter slides a foot or so as he leaps clear of the mattress before it pulls him swinging back into the side of the bed with a satisfying thump. At this point, I lose it. I'm officially cackling and the cat starts going bananas, swinging from the side of the bed in the comforter cover. This is when is occurs to me that cats have claws. There is a deranged cat out of its mind in terror swinging around in the brand new cover to my girlfriend’s comforter. Fuck. So I run (still laughing) to the side of the bed to try and push the cat up onto the mattress, so it will stop shredding the cover. As soon as I put my hands underneath the cat it shoots up the side of the bed, across the mattress, and flies off into space on the other side of the bed. This is followed shortly thereafter by another thump and more hysterics on my part.

The cat hears this laughter and utters this long, low, rolling meow. If you could take the saddest loon call you've ever heard, the sound a coyote howling at the moon on the loneliest of desert nights, and mix it with the noise Lassie would make if Timmy were trapped under a bus and couldn't get his mom to understand, you would be close to the sound this cat made as it dangled helplessly from the side of the bed. Loosely translated the meow said this. "So you have defeated me, my old enemy. My will is broken. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more for ever." And he stopped moving. Completely gave up. Just sat there in a ball at the bottom of this partially shredded cover.

When my girlfriend finally came down the stairs to identify the sound of all the commotion, I was no longer laughing. I was lying on the ground about a foot from the motionless cat which was still hanging in the comforter. I was making that soundless, breathless non-noise that is all you can muster when something has completely shattered the comedy space-time continuum.

I'm not allowed to "play" with that cat anymore.

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

State of the Union Haiku

The State of our State?
LBJ, Nixon might know,
Twenty-Eight is low

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Monday, January 22, 2007

The Tom Brady Myth

Let me first say that I think Tom Brady is a great quarterback. You don’t win three Super Bowls by luck. If I were going to make a list of the 5 greatest quarterbacks to play football during my lifetime it would include Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Tom Brady, John Elway, and Brett Favre. I have no issue with sports writers and fans giving Brady the praise he has earned and truly deserves. What I do take issue with is the tendency to assign him the laurels of greatness even after he has played a mediocre, or downright bad game.

I was thinking about this as Brady was preparing to take the field in the closing minutes of the classic game played last night between the Colts and Patriots. He appeared calm and ready on the sideline, taking warm-up throws in anticipation of yet another miraculous win. He looked like he knew that the Patriots were going to pull it out and I thought to myself, “He doesn’t have it this time.”

Throughout these playoffs, Tom Brady has been less than great. His combined stat line for this post-season was:

70 completions out of 119 attempts, 5 touchdowns with 4 interceptions, and a quarterback efficiency rating of 76.5.

If he would have put up those efficiency numbers during the regular season, he would have been the 19th rated quarterback in the NFL behind Jon Kitna and Eli Manning, and in front of Matt Hasslebeck and Mike Vick. While passable, those aren’t the kind of numbers that deserve praise. His previous two post season passer ratings were 92.2 and 109.4. I may have a poor understanding of how these ratings are calculated, but a drop of 20 odd points would seem to indicate to me a player having a subpar playoff run.

The Patriots won their game against the Chargers last week because they got all the bounces and their defense made plays when they had to, not because Tom Brady was a cool and calm leader. He threw a crucial interception that would have been crushing if Troy Brown hadn’t stripped the ball from the defender and given the Pats new life. Yet at the end of the day announcers and sportswriters were tripping all over themselves like Reggie Wayne, rushing to declare that Tom Brady had once again come through when it mattered. They conveniently forgot that his mistakes throughout the first three and one half quarters put the Patriots in the position of needing heroics in the first place.

Brady made a throw that was nearly identical to the Troy Brown fumbleruski to end the Patriots hopes last night. It was a forced pass over the middle that was intercepted not because the pass itself was thrown poorly, but because he made an error in judgment by throwing it at all. As with the infamous Chargers pick, Brady threw the ball into the congested middle of the field, completely misreading the coverage.

Brady is nearly deified by the sporting press in all things he does, and this shouldn’t surprise me. Many sports writers like the easy story. It takes fewer words to say, “Tom Brady won,” than it does to explain the true dynamics of what occurred on the field and why. But this slant takes enjoyment out of the game. In addition to being intellectually dishonest, this approach to sports reporting robs the game of drama and depth. So instead of the sometimes dull, sometimes transcendent true story of the game viewers are instead treated to pre-packaged montage segments with voiceover by Bob Costas. When reporters keep it simple and honest, the game can create all the necessary drama.

Last night Peyton Manning, a great quarterback that has played some poor games against the Patriots in high pressure situations, played a strong game and came through at the end of the night. If reporters took the same approach with Manning as they do with Brady in downplaying poor performances, the game would not have had nearly the dramatic impact. Then I would have to watch another segment about how the hero of the game, Peyton Manning, overcame a troubled upbringing by his NFL quarterback father to win the big game and make millions of dollars looking like a dork in MasterCard commercials.

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