Thanksgiving thinking

Today's Thanksgiving and for me it's a quiet one, particularly compared to last year. I haven't spent much time on any of the blogs lately, so I might as well take advantage of the peace and quiet to make a few notes.

This morning I got a phone call from a buddy I haven't talked to in months. He lives in Baytown, and we don't get together much these days. He was my closest friend from grades 7 through 12, so I enjoyed the chance to chat a few minutes. We exchanged thoughts about the dreadful season the Texas A&M football team has experienced, and bet a Coke on the outcome of tonight's game in Austin. For the hell of it, I took Texas minus 35, strictly because I know the horns have the ability to drop that kind of asswhipping on the Aggies and after consecutive upset losses, the motivation as well.

For roughly forty years, I lived for football season. My interest in the sport began in 1967, the first of my two senior years in college. After graduation I became a Dallas Cowboys fan, since I just couldn't seem to get enough football to satisfy my needs by following only the Southwest Conference. Year after year, I rose or fell each weekend with the Aggies and the Cowboys. If both won, I was on top of the world and if both lost, I'd stay depressed for two days. My passion was such that I began following all of college and professional football, so that I could compare my favorite teams to those they were competing against. I bought every football magazine I could get my hands on and expanded my interest to include high school recruiting and the NFL draft.

Here's the thing about football: A man can only maintain a passion for the game if he has a particular rooting interest in at least one team, and rooting interests are by definition contingent on a team's ability to be competitive week in, week out. The descent of the Aggies and Cowboys into extended periods of subpar performance caused me to lose most of my enthusiasm. The season's nearly over and I've yet to watch a single college or pro football game from beginning to end. It seems like there's a void in my life; for most of the fall I filled the space with politics and election news. Now I don't have that either. Even Wasilla Wondermom dropped out of sight - she was always good for a paragraph or two.

At any rate, A&M lost to Baylor and is officially the sorriest team in the Big 12 South. The new coaching staff hasn't done anything to inspire confidence the situation will improve. I need a new team to root for, which would probably be Southern Cal if their games were regularly televised in Texas.

I haven't been to the movies in a year. The last time I was in a theater was the day after Thanksgiving in 2007, when I saw the excellent No Country For Old Men.

I'm thinking about taking Mrs. bee to see the new movie Australia with Nicole Kidman. It looks like the kind of picture she'd enjoy, with elements to hold my interest as well. These days, I usually watch movies on DVD or cable television. Last night in fact, I watched a movie that deserves a guarded recommendation. It's Reservation Road, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo. This is a movie that didn't create a splash when it was released last year, and seems to have been dismissed by most of the reviewers. I probably wouldn't succeed as a movie critic because I thought it was very good, if not excellent. The plot concerns the death of a child in a hit-and-run accident and how that affects members of two families. This is a sober, serious film, hence the restricted recommendation. Reservation Road earns an eight on a scale of one to ten.

Added 10:38 pm, Thanksgiving night

Final score: Texas 49 Aggies 9. I had a hunch that taking the teasips and laying the 35 points was a safe call, given the way TAMU has been stinking up the joint all year. Cellar dwellers. TAMU's football program started to skid out of control in 1999 and has basically been sliding deeper into a hole for a decade. Will it ever end ? Fuck if I know.

Numbers don't lie

Gallup poll reported today shows Barry (Mutt) Obama with a 70 percent favorable rating, and 25 percent unfavorable. The same poll shows W with a 27 percent favorable and 66 unfavorable rating. The obvious conclusion one would draw is that the people who are still hot for Bush probably have a low opinion of Barry. There has to be some correlation. The results also tell us the approximate dimensions of the hopelessly-ignorant-and-fucked-up class in America. Remember the numbers the next time you're walking around the mall: one out of every four people you see is probably a totally hopeless fuckup.

Put a muzzle on her...

Ann Coulter on Sean Hannity's radio show: Obama would be a lot better off if the Republicans controlled both the House and Senate - he's going to have so much trouble dealing with the liberals in Congress...

Does that skank believe that I've already forgotten 1994, when the last Democratic president was matched with Repub majorities in Congress ? Yeah, that's just what Obama needs: four years of dealing with a Congress whose absolute top priority is impeaching his ass. Yeah, that's just what we need.

For some reason, it does my heart good to see Republicans pissing blood.

Kicking back a little

Politics started tying me in knots in 1994 when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and the rest of the GOP scum took over the House and Senate, and immediately used their majority status to launch an endless series of investigations designed to result in Clinton's impeachment. The fact that Clinton did dumbass things to facilitate the process made it worse.

As if things weren't bad enough, the 2000 election happened and a waste of oxygen that anyone could predict would be among the worst presidents ever got elected by one Clarence Thomas vote in the Supreme Court. The Kerry debacle in 2004 compounded the problem and added four more years to America's sentence.

Election 2008 started out looking like more of the same, with Hillary and Barack the frontrunners for the title Next Unelectable Democrat. Then McCain dragged Trig's mom and Joe the Plumber into the mix and the dumbing-down continued. It's amazing that after fourteen years of this shit, I have any sanity left at all.

After last night's election results, I feel like a weight's been lifted from my shoulders. The Repubs have been returned to political minority status at the federal level, although they're still running the show in my red state. Barry may be a great president or he may fail, but he's still an improvement over what we've had since January 2001. The commentariat is already starting to drone about all the things that might go wrong. As for me, I'm taking a deep breath, kicking off my shoes, and relaxing awhile.