UConn James

Wow. NFL.com is running ~ 15 minutes behind. It just showed him picked.

Not according to what I'm seeing on DraftTracker....

I don't really mind who, just... since our OCsaid we would be returning to an offense that incorporates a FB, it would be nice to get a guy who has spent some time at the position. We've farted around with tweeners and TE/HB/FB/Backup-waterboy for a few years now and the run game has suffered when we really needed it; to wit, getting stuffed more times than I care to remember last year on 3rd/4th and short. Let's face it. Buffalo is not a pass-first franchise, especially late in the season when the weather takes hold and yards matter most. Schmidt is a guy who lost yardage 5 times in his college career, and makes guys flinch. Having him plow the road for Marshawn like he did in the Nickel-and-Dime O at WV is historical Bills style football. OTOH, Hillis is a guy who can block, catch and run and I wouldn't be dissatisfied with him. Likewise, we could take another guy the scouts are keen on. Or, if they don't believe they'll be drafted, we need to get on the phone to entice the guy we want to sign with us as UDFA. I don't really care how, but we need someone who has played extensively at the position, knows it, understands the lanes, and who, through carrying or delivering bigtime hits, we can rely on to get us a couple of yards or even a couple of inches when we utterly need it. That last point is something we've lacked since Carwell Gardner or Sam Gash.

And then, they just drafted this guy, according to NFL.com DraftTracker: Maybe this will start a run in the league on supershort WRs.

McGee McKelvin Greer Corner They signed one in FA Fox, who saw ST time late in the season AY won't be a #4. Dude missed time early on and never caught up.

Sounds like the Youboty experiment is over.

Schmidt, or more likely in how Buffalo has tried to involve the FB in the passing game as well, Hillis. It's just tough to gauge where FBs might be taken; but with a rededication to the position and just one guy signed off the street, we need to bring in another, at this point, fresh legs from the draft b/c RBs take a beating in the NFL (statistically, their careers last half of the duration of other positions). Could we wait 'til the comp pick in the 4th? Donald Thomas, G, from my alma mater. Rucker, TE, Missouri Spieker or Justice at C

That's like wondering why Hollywood stars take so long walking down the red carpet. It's time in the limelight where you have the whole world interested in your team.

Yeah. Lots of feelings that are a mixture of anger, fear, constriction, betrayal, .... "Needing to get out" is a thing that I've noticed in almost every vet I know --- many from my family, worked in a construction crew owned by a Nam vet who hired many vets; the person is in a certain place, and if something goes the slightest bit wrong, or it might be an emotional trigger from a combat experience or it might be for no reason at all, they just need(!) to be somewhere else, in another place that is not this spot right now! Kind of like a 'move or die' mentality. I can't explain it any better than that. I remember helping him move out. At times it was like bipolar. We pulled out of the driveway with the UHaul and some c--t on her cellphone cut us off --- he leaned on the horn for (no exaggeration) 2 minutes, flipped her off and said "I'll !@#$ing kill you, B word!" That was a kind of day, for sure. Like I said, it has gotten better with the counseling at the VA and getting back into routine. But he says a lot of the guys aren't getting adequate help. Lot of guys getting into fights, doing drugs, drinking heavily, and some who are just f--ked in the head. On the way to move into his new place, we saw a kid a few times in the back and forth walking at furious pace down the street, in brown PT T-shirt and fatigue pants, unshaven, talking to himself. And the shi--y thing is these people can easily fall through the cracks until they !@#$ up bigtime; but it's impossible to reach them or get them help unless they want help. I'm not sure money is even in the top 5 when it comes to what causes the kind of things happening to returning vets. Sure, money is nice to have and it can alleviate some conditional needs; money can buy contentment, but it can't buy happiness and it can't buy mental health. Granted it can factor in to some of the situations of divorce that can lend toward mental health problems, but connecting money to mental health is tenuous at best.

My brother was diagnosed with PTSD after coming back from Afghanistan last year, his third tour in the GWOT after also serving in Bosnia, etc. There were marital problems before he even got back.... We tried to reach out to his now-ex-wife during the deployment and rarely got a response and it turned out she'd been cheating --- the third-oldest story in the book. She complained that he didn't call her enough and othersuch bullsh-- like that (he was stuck eating goat in villages where no one had ever seen an American before... some people really don't ing get it!), trying to rationalize her selfishness (which was only confirmed by her --- out of the blue --- withdrawing his entire savings account balance "to protect herself" and further in the divorce negotiations). You can talk all you want about $, but the most weighing thing on the men and women serving 'over there' is leaving their lives in limbo back here and not being able to do much of a damn thing about it. It's a hell of a thing to come back and be a stranger in your own home. Combine that with all the things he had to do like shooting people who didn't pull their cars over for convoys, drawing O+ on every piece of your clothing, that mental state you get in when you can imagine what your own death might be like, including days when he, as an E-8 volunteered for Humvee gunner duty, actually hoped to die.... This sh-- stays with you. You don't just shake it off. Same damn thing actually happened to a guy in his unit. At the funeral the wife and kids cried, etc. but the quotes from them in the newspapers just seemed off-color, like 'Oh well. These things happen.' I remember myself thinking it very odd at the time and then got the full story when my brother returned home that this KIA was tantamount to suicide. People back here, even in the families of the soldiers, have NO CLUE. A 20-year non-comm who'd somehow never been deployed before asked him what to expect... Ninety percent of the guys in his unit have been divorced w/in a year of returning from a deployment, many of whom have small children and are getting utterly shafted in divorces. 11 out of 15 of the kids in his old platoon failed a drug test last month. It's unbelievable the human toll that's being levied. I have taken to just listening to what he has to say. Speaking, writing about what he went through that got him to where he is now is probably the best therapy there is. So I listen. He stayed here off-and-on for about 2 months while he was closing on a new house. He broke a halogen lamp during one flashback nightmare, would often shout in his sleep (at 4 a.m., mind you... when he did manage any sleep), and he's making gross mistakes in his personal life --- drinking, trying to reclaim/replace what he had with his wife including the same kind of dog (which he was not ready to take care of) and dating someone who was her spitting image, then moving to her place, moving out, then back in, then back out, then back in, then back out. I try not to judge and to just be there for him. At times it's like watching the seconds before a car accident, and you want to scream out to prevent it but they just won't hear you. Things now seem to be getting back on track, tho, but it's a daily struggle.

Holy sh--! I'm having hearing problems associated w/ an ear infection so I had a devil of a time following, but for all those who wanted answers, we got a pretty big one tonight re: the 'monster' (and evidently, more to come). Ben can summon it by going into the secret chamber w/in the secret chamber. Anyone see what that was on the door? Looked like wood carvings but didn't have time to see. But also, is this the room Ben referred to as the 'Magic Box' where anything you want can appear? Also, come to find out that this is all like a gentlemen's game of Risk, as this ep went to lengths to show us, or maybe a reverse-Highlander is a better comparison. A select group of men battle it out for control over this one or more spots on the globe. They can manipulate, kill, cajole all of these "pawns" to get what they want, but the strict rule is that they cannot hurt/kill each other, or up until tonight, their family. Kind of an old-fashioned ideal they're working with. So, now, Ben is tentatively viewed as the "good guy" in all this.... then again, from his smirk in walking away from Sayid, I don't doubt that he ordered Nadia to be killed to get Sayid to want to join him. The first 6 eps this season have been the set-up and now we're getting the delivery. Awesome.

First, to say something about the "spoiler" above.... how much of a spoiler is it when both of those things have appeared in the preview ABC has shown a million times in the past few weeks? As such, I think it's now fair game to be commented on. If you want to remain a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed bullsh--) despite the free and open showing by the producers from the preview, I will yellow-font for the totally Lost-pure. Secondly, I wanted to share some overall thoughts I've been milling about. Thinking specifically of the psychic who claimed to have found a couple in Los Angeles who could safely adopt Claire's baby before he gave her the 815 tickets. I'm heading in the direction that by the couple, he meant Jack and Kate. Think about it, specifically how things went with the Oceanic Six.... with some drama arising from Jack adamantly refusing to see Aaron in the flashforwards whose resolution being Jack's acceptance of his role will be a wrap-up element in the series (by no means suggesting it's the penultimate one). And think about it further, Jack is Aaron's half-uncle... can't connect it any better than that in a show whose bread and butter is the connections b/w the characters. Speaking about connections, also have been thinking about Juliet, and how she physically got to the island wrt the Desmond fatal time-confusion-w/o-a-constant episode. Her constant was Ethan, who she saw in the hallway at her sister's apartment in Miami --- a deliberate recognition that the Others planted so she wouldn't have those problems. And maybe this has been discussed or is accepted knowledge by now (I don't remember what was in the previous thread erased in the Great Stadium Wall Crash of '08) that it's only the Lostaways' and other inhabitants' previous connections back in the real world that kept them alive on the plane. The flashbacks are reveals of the connections that kept them alive. As I've written earlier, the Desmond-centric episodes are probably the most important clues to understanding how the island functions --- its MO in converging these people and discarding the rest. By that sense, could one call the island a murderer?

Neither is John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Close!... But not quite.

No, silly. He ate crayons. Who amongst us was not so fascinated with that we didn't try a few nibbles?

Screw 'justification.' National security is self-help. Syria was up to something and their silence on this topic speaks volumes. Wait 10 years for the UN to issue a finger-wag while there's a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv or DC. PPP in 5... 4... 3...

W - Sept. 7 Seattle Seahawks 1 p.m. L - Sept. 14 at Jacksonville Jaguars 1 p.m. W - Sept. 21 Oakland Raiders 1 p.m. W - Sept. 28 at St. Louis Rams 4:05 p.m. W - Oct. 5 at Arizona Cardinals 4:15 p.m. Oct. 12 Bye L - Oct. 19 San Diego Chargers 1 p.m. W - Oct. 26 at Miami Dolphins 1 p.m. W - Nov. 2 New York Jets 1 p.m. L - Nov. 9 at New England Paytoilets* 1 p.m. L - Nov. 17 (Mon.) Cleveland Browns 8:30 p.m. W - Nov. 23 at Kansas City Chiefs 1 p.m. W - Nov. 30 San Francisco 49ers 1 p.m. L - Dec. 7 Miami Dolphins (at Toronto) 4:05 p.m. W - Dec. 14 at New York Jets 1 p.m. L - Dec. 21 at Denver Broncos 4:05 p.m. L - Dec. 28 New England Paytoilets* 1 p.m.

Evidently, at this stage in his life, Marv is big on 2-year agreements.

Yup. To those who don't think every detail of this sh-- is meticulously preplanned... just look at the formula Rosenass clients all follow, to great 'success.' If you're stuck in a franchise that won't give you more than the $30M you're already pulling in for playing a !@#$ game, all you have to do to counteract the previous impression that you were a 'nice guy' is break all the bonds you formed with teammates/coaches by throwing them under the bus, get in minor trouble with the law/civil case such that people begin to think you're an * when the facts come out, and then sh-- on the city. I don't normally wish ill on people, but if Rosenass impaled himself up the rear with a rusty spike and died a slow, painful death from the world's worst case of tetnus, I wouldn't shed a tear.

The ones so concerned with 'value' are the Monday Morning GMs on E$PN. They need to fill a lot of dead air, and what better way to do that than with righteous indignation? They're always right and they're never wrong. Ask them, they'll tell you. Whitner was a 'reach' even tho we needed a SS and our scouts really liked him and had inklings that he'd be gone w/in the next few picks. I don't get these a--holes who would have every team trade wily-nily to get 'their' guy at what is exactly the right spot, according to Mel friggin Kiper. There's precious few people who actually do something in/with their life; and most everyone else sits on their a-- and commentates.

I thought I remembered reading that the old AstroTurf was installed at a local high school for an athletic field.

To be entirely fair, tho the national, state and hell, even the local Republicans ditched on providing Schlesinger with even a modicum of support. Word was that Rove cut off funding for him via the RNC so as to give Lieberman a pass to be the right's de facto candidate. Heard neither hide nor hair from Jodi Rell during the campaign. And in my town, tho it's about 2-1 Democrat, the word in the Republican circles was to vote Lieberman for his war support. CT isn't nearly as blue as people think, I'm sure you know. Schlesinger was on there just to keep the party's place on the ballot --- and I think it was evident during the debates that he understood that he was 'taking one for the team.'

Probably, "Fo' shizzle in the hizzle!"

All the injuries he's had, it's a wonder he didn't hang 'em up a few years ago. There were weeks in his last Titan days when only the most recent injury was listed in the report e.g. 'shoulder' when it might have read 'shoulder, concussion, foot, hip, ribs.' He wouldn't practice all week, then would suit up on Sundays and play his guts out when he was the #1 target. Tough cookie. His exit from Tenn where they actually locked the doors to the practice facility when he showed up was shameful considering all he did for that franchise.

Not implausible, but I would be surprised if it happens. JMac is having a hard enough time attracting the 'conservative' vote w/o picking a former Dem VP-nominee. He's already getting the right-of-center vote. He'd be stupid if he doesn't run with either Romney (voted for him in the primary and it may sway me, even if I have to hold my nose while I fill in the bubble) or the Huckster (in which case, I will be voting for my dog as a write-in). If he wants Croakin' Joe, he can have 'im. Fuggin' guy has done diddly for this state except bend over and take 40 cents back on the dollar.

Are you sure about that?