A month's worth of blogging

So it's been almost a month since my last blog. Which is what happens when you're working 60 hours a week and trying to edit a book so that it's ready to send to agents/publishers. Anyway, here's a quick-hits version on stuff I might have blogged about if I had the time/motivation:

1. Be careful about eating at sub shops around 3:30
The only reason I'm blogging today is that I'm staying home to recover from a nasty bout of food poisoning that I think I can trace back to a Bo Diddley's sub I had Saturday afternoon. My theory is that they used ingredients that had been sitting out since lunch time. That was the most miserable night I've had in awhile.

2. The Saints and Drew Brees are good
Watching the pre-Super Bowl hype (in between frequent trips to the bathroom) on Sunday I was annoyed by how much hot air was spent debating whether Drew Brees needed to win a championship to be considered an "elite quarterback." First of all, it's completely subjective and just semantics anyway. That being said, how can you look at that guy's numbers and not say he's an elite quarterback? Football is a team game and one guy can never carry an entire team to a championship no matter how good he is. Dan Marino ring a bell? I'm glad the Saints won just so the talking heads can put that time-filler argument to rest.

3. The Saints and Drew Brees are not good enough to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward
All the post-game hyperbole about "how much this means to the city of New Orleans" also became ridiculous. I'm glad Saints fans had something to go nuts over and New Orleans got a brief economic boost from people partying, but it's still just a football game. It in no way erases Hurricane Katrina or heals the wounds of losing homes and loved ones. It's football, not manna from heaven.

4. Brett Favre proved me wrong
The old guy hung in there a whole season and was just plain great. Sure his interception at the end of the NFC championship was mind-bogglingly dumb, but he had far fewer of those this season than I expected. You can't blame him for that loss. The O-line let him get popped around like Heidi Montag's nose and Adrian Peterson looked like he was trying to hold wet soap every time he carried the ball. Here's hoping Favre comes back for one more try, although if he doesn't Donovan McNabb would be a nice consolation prize.

5. ACLs are a fool-proof argument against intelligent design
Somebody has to figure out a way to buttress our athletes weak anterior cruciate ligaments. In the span of a few weeks, the KU women's basketball team lost its best all-around player, Danielle McCray, and top young playmaker, Angel Goodrich, to ACL tears. What could have been a breakthrough season now looks very shaky. These injuries are way too common.

6. Why don't we stop giving terrorists too much credit?
As Jon Stewart wisely pointed out, it has been six years since the "shoe bomber" and the best plan Al-Qaeda could come up with in that time is "send another guy on a plane, but this time put the explosives in his underwear." These guys are not criminal masterminds. Yet we're spending $500 billion a year mostly to fight the few thousand of them that are out there. Some perspective might be in order here. What if we put that money toward cancer research instead? How many more lives could we save? Personally I'm much more concerned about dying of cancer than dying at the hands of a terrorist. And while we're on the subject, why is there any outcry about trying terrorists as criminals in U.S. courts rather than as "enemy combatants" in military tribunals? "Enemy combatants" sounds suspiciously like "soldiers" to me, which is exactly how these Al-Qaeda fanatics would like to think of themselves. I'd prefer to call them criminals and lump them in with other murderous thugs. That's all they are. They are not bogeymen, they are not "masterminds" they are just common, murderous thugs and if we start treating them that way maybe they will find it a bit more difficult to recruit new members. Marginalize them rather than glorify them. If it was good enough for Timothy McVeigh, it's good enough for foreign terrorists too.

7. The Timberwolves are almost worth watching now
Four wins in a row is not going to turn their season around at this point, but it's certainly a start. Al Jefferson is looking like his old self, Ryan Hollins is becoming better than anyone ever thought he would and Corey Brewer is showing that he's a legitimate NBA starter, even without a reliable jumper. I would like to see Jonny Flynn assert himself more, though.