UConn James

The number I read in an article on it yesterday was ~$30B. Which, when you think about it in how finances are bandied about by our govt, isn't all that much. But, removed from the abstract that is Washington DC, it's a lot of effin' money. And then, it's done every year. All for sh-- like a teapot museum, $1M for research into weaponizing mosquitos, etc.

No need to apologize, the snarking was deserved. The St. Pauli Girl said so too. In the clearness of sobriety, I'll agree that the changing of the gametimes do create quite a burden on fans from out of town. If it's originally a 1 p.m. game and gets changed to 8:15 p.m., that puts the kibosh on someone being able to get to work on Monday morning, not to mention lodging and plane tickets --- 12 days is kind of short notice for either changing accomodations or selling the tickets. Another case of the NFL getting more and more geared toward the white-collar fan and not thinking about people who actually have to budget their time and money. An extension of the ethos behind the CBA. I guess they rationalize that the plebians are just watching on teevee anyway --- but, for those of us who do, it will be good.

This was something I was wonderin g about too. Has received ZERO attention from the media, even in the dolrums. How hard is it to ask Russ Brandon (I would assume it's he who's handling this, as Marv is all football) what's going on? Teams have to inform the league of a change a year in advance. I wonder whether the previous admin did that (TD wanted to use them the rest of the season after week 1, which may make it too late to do a switch this season). The yoke jerseys are TD's era, and I think we all want to just put that behind us. The throwbacks are sharp and harken back to some of the better days of Bills football. For those of us who have taken to "rooting for the laundry" rather than players that come and go in FA, it'd be nice to have good-looking laundry.

That'll teach me not to post while drinking.... Mea culpa.

Maybe they'll hire George Costanza as Assistant to the Traveling Secretary. I'm sure they have people who take care of that, and many teams charter their flights and book hotels. Might be a logistical problem but it's the NFL and I'd think they'll come up with some kind of strategem. Not exactly a 'Bob and Sons' enterprise, don't you know....

You know, why does everyone have this defeatist thing with him being gone? Are we only going to be allowed to field 10 players on offense next season? He took less money to play for a team that has just as many questions as the Bills. The stink of it, tho, is how Moulds said during his visit that he was looking forward to working out with the QB and WRs in the offseason.... Maybe if he'd done that last year, he wouldn't have been on a different page as Losman and Evans who really did connect. You only get out what you put in. Many of his recent problems have been of his own making. So, blue skies and green lights, Eric! All the more reason to simply "root for the laundry." Lastly, I refuse to take seriously the opinions of people who actually call him 'EMO.' Greg Johnson, is that you?

Yes, lots to chew on is right.... So, in another show I used to watch, called "due South" a ghost character was introduced, more or less to provide a surrogate to the main character's internal thoughts. Not sure what role Dave played (did anyone catch the Cheech and Chong "Dave's not here, man" reference early in? The actor (he's a comedian, right?) played that really well. Line of the night: "Way to go for the high-percentage shot!" when the guy placed the ball on the floor. ) . But it did allow us to see that Hurley internalized his problem through eating more food. This played out in the island/Dharma dropping more food when Hurley went destructo on his Dharma stash. And it follows a logical string that the (sub?)concious Hurley might be expected to follow. The island is composed of a bunch of stuff from the hospital, most notably the numbers. Therefore, Hurley's subconsiou is saying, 'If I kill myself, it'll all reset.' It's kind of a last refuge of someone who's got psychological problems and yet is cognizant of the possibility that all that's around him is a delusion/dream. So, while Dave is imaginary and it is evidence that Hurley was/is a little nutso, it can also be viewed as a reaction to the stuff happening around him. The ending was a Whoa moment, but had been hinted at when Hurley said he thought he remembered her from somewhere.. So.... is Libby pretending to be a psychologist on the island?... Did she get out of the ward and become one (I have heard of this happening, tho the timeframe is rather short, I believe, from when Hurley was in the hospital to when the plane crashed --- maybe 2 years?). Is she stalking Hurley? Was the hospital run by the Hanso or Dharma people? How's that for 'You better not screw with Hurley.' Did Sawyer not look very pathetic when faced with the prospect that he couldn't control everything? As for the 5 minutes they devoted to the Henry Gale story.... What I suspected from the start was true. Said that Mr. Friendly/Zeke was a virtual nobody in the Other's group. And that the code is a pschological experiment joke just to see how long someone will push the buttons. The map on the door last week seemed to suggest that (specifically the part about CVIII being inoperative) Wonder if we'll see Desmond again to get any more input.

From the sounds of it, and with the effect that he's talking to people who have no future in any of the negotiations. Whether that something is if he's going to sell or move the franchise or if he wants a big input of public monies down the road, and then whether it happens next week or 10 years from now is anyone's guess. But he's officially put everyone on notice that something's up. It's an old tactic to hint at something before you really say it, so as not to surprise anyone and be the evil owner who moved in the middle of the night ('course, he still would be to most of us). This story of him saying that it's not looking well for the NFL in Buffalo is catalogued in our heads and in the newspapers' morgues.

Not making this out to be a BUSHBAD thread, it's simply a case of you never know who it's going to be. But damn, this one-after-the-other stuff really is disheartening. It may not be a big story by itself, but it certainly contributes to the overall negative image, and serves as a distraction for the affairs of state. This is truly sickening, and to the topic this thread is being created about, one would hope that this case might make some in Washington wake up to the fact that online predation and sexual abuse of minors is epidemic. State laws up the ying-yang, most of them not nearly tough enough and centered around the joke that is 'rehabilitation.' For every one guy who's caught in one of these sting operations, there's many that are successful. Link. Think this might spur Congress and the SC on the broader issue of online law? Back when I was in school I read a piece that none of the justices regularly used the Internet and argued that the high court is going to be making laws based on something they personally know very little about. The addition of Roberts and Alito has probably changed that a little more for the better. These are going to be the biggest issues in the next 10-15 years.

Don't subscribe to any party. I vote all over the ballot. Read where the people stand on the issues they have a chance of facing, which one I most closely agree with and if it's not more than ~75 percent, I write in "None of the Above." Should be a national campaign to have "None of the Above" included on ballots, and have it count.

Wasn't so much responding tongue-in-cheek to Coli, as to The Hammer's video conferences. Who does this guy think he's kidding? As for your second paragraph, there's lots of people who say that, but 99% never do anything about it.

You forgot the liberal veternarians, the liberal squirrels, the liberal pencil-sharpeners and the liberal conservatives. I'm not one, but where does this guy get off blaming 'the liberals' for his grift. Did they put the money in his accounts, or am I missing something? Nevermind that with all the record amounts of pork pushed through on his watch, he's a CINO.

http://prestoagitato.typepad.com/presto_ag...down_in_vi.html 651436[/snapback] You know, when two guys in my brother's unit died in Iraq (he is heading to Afghanistan shortly), the state's then-NG commander (Now retired, due to a sex scandal w/ a subordinate, among other things) and then-Gov. Rowland (R-Retired/Disgraced) couldn't give a sh-- less. Quote from a SSG who was at a send-off party: "They went up to the podium and talked as if they knew the kid, shed a few crocidile tears and got back in their limos. Back in the office, the guy was going on and on about how big a so-and-so the guy's crying mother was." Is it any wonder then, that during the color-guard, it took *45 minutes* to fold the flag on a day when it was 10 degrees outside? Oooo, yeah. Gotta get those folds perfect, you know. Done just to make them have to stand at attention the whole time, the pricks. Did this make it to the press? No. There's sh--heads all over. And Moran will get what's coming to him.

I thought you were going to write, "Helluva player, but... he's got a face only a mother can love. And even she used to make him wear a Richard Nixon mask when he went out in public."

Oooo. Nice usage of "re-sign"!

No, it's just that the Dems, with their Super-Duper-Callafragilistic-Majority in both houses of Congress can quash any move against them by the ethics committees.

I picked up Buckley's "Sketches For My Sweetheart the Drunk" last year. At first, I was really put off by some of the songs and was like, "What were you thinking, Jeff? And why did I plunk down 19 bucks for this?" But in listening to it more, I've come to really enjoy Goldshot Glitter, You and I and some of the other tracks (but I can definitely see how he wanted to erase it all and start over with his producer from the 'Grace' CD). I think what really gets me with any artist is if they've got the stones to do something different and to experiment. And that can include going back and revisiting some of the classics. I wish someone would try to cover some Buddy Holly tunes, but maybe that's asking too much. If it's storytellers you're looking for, look up Stan Rogers, "Fogarty's Cove." As for Krall, I went with her competition b/c of the curls. And ajzepp, as for a new computer, Micro$oft is releasing Vista next year; I'm still running '98SE and in kind of the same boat, but I'm just going to wait. 'Course, if you bag on another os....

Ray LaMontagne -- "Trouble"

With the inclusion of 'lazy and inept,' most people who post here on PPP daily say that for any public-sector employee, (and for a lot of private-sector employees as well). O' course, they write many of said musings on their company's time.

Wow. Someone put a lot of time into that. At the bottom, in green, it lists three sets of numbers, likely dates, i.e. 01.06.06 would be 6 January 2006, and it says "Complete lockdown in effect." Don't know how long exactly the Lostaways have been on the island, but if it crashed in October, it's gotta be close, no? Also, did anyone notice the jet that flew over the motel as Locke was in the parking lot? Was that an Oceanic plane? Kind of looked like it had the light blue belly.

...unless they're not.

On one of those Inside Edition or whatever shows before I turned the TV off after the news, they were saying the 'racial tensions' this has caused at highbrow Duke and in the surrounding poor Raleigh were escalating. They played a 911 tape where a girl calls in to say that (mimiced in her rat-a-tat voice: she and her "black girl friend" were driving by somewhere and heard the N-word shouted, and that she was just calling 911 to report this, and she was so angry about it and didn't know whether calling 911 was the proper thing to do in this situation but she was just sooooooo angry. Guess that hearing the N-word is now a 911-worthy, life-threatening event. Raleigh PD will be forming a Thought Police division soon, honey. Let's lock up all the people who use bad words.

Desmond kept the pantries well stocked, and the Others generally occupy the other side of the island, so it would stand to reason that he got the food drops. It's not that he didn't go outside (in fact, he was moving pretty well when he was running away); simply that he couldn't go outside for very long.

Tgreg, merci beaucoup for the rundown. I saw the part where Locke tells 'Henry' the numbers, and the curiosity about and memorization was a little too much to expect. Do the Others want or need the number sequence for their own uses? The countdown did run out, and nothing really happened. Unanswerable for now I know, but could Henry have used the computer to talk to Walt or whoever's at the other terminal? Did Henry type in a different number sequence? As I was reading your description, I was thinking the same thing about Locke's father being Frank Sawyer. The timing would be w/in reason given James Ford/Saywer's age; i.e. that 25-30 years ago, Frank Sawyer wouldn't've been a white-haired colostomy-bag carrier, and would have been dashing enough to lure in a naive woman.. And also, the shrimp guy James Ford shot in Australia looked to be older too, so that tells us he knew the guy was older. I'd say this is a solid theory. Something that's a little disappointing about Locke's backstories is that as they've gone deeper back, they skipped over how Locke was paralyzed. But that is, generally speaking, how this season has been going into deeper flashbacks, as last season's were mostly what happened w/in a few days/hours of the flight. From what I saw, and what I'm reading, the creativity of the plot and the really good dialogue shows that this was a Lindelof/Cuse script, and not one of the absolutely horrible writers from last week.