the only college football preview that matters
(to me)
((part two))


man.

today's news makes it a little harder to write what i had in mind today, that being a completely biased take on the college football season (or, at least, alabama's football season) to come written by a completely biased alabama football fan.

wait a minute. no, it doesn't.

mark ingram missing a game (or two or three) sucks. let's not dance around it. it sucks uncomfortably hard. one of the most intimidating aspects of alabama's team this year was their overwhelming depth, depth that is possibly more impressive this year than it was last year when they won it all. four and five star recruits back up four and five star starters. outside of the secondary, there isn't a spot on the roster that shouldn't be able to overcome an injury to a starter. that includes overcoming an injury to the reigning best player in college football. as you'll hear ad naseum over the next couple of days, trent richardson may, in fact, be "better" than mark ingram, whatever that means. ingram has won a heisman, so anyone suggesting that bama isn't going to miss a beat without him has got to be completely out of their minds. fortunately for the tide, they can miss a beat or ten against san jose st. and still live to tell about it. boy, had an equivalent injury happened before the clemson game two years ago or last year against va. tech, i would have been really, really worried. not so much right now. ingram's injury does add an unexpected storyline to the season, though, one where the only real headline of significance would be if alabama lost before the sec championship game. we have another headline now, a nauseating headline that makes what seemed to be an offensive juggernaut a little less juggernaut-ish. we can't get too caught up in the ingram stuff now. if we do, we'll miss the forest for the trees, or, rather, we'd miss the forest for the redwood wearing a crimson, number 22 jersey.

college football preview, commence!!!

san jose st. - how many times will ingram be shown on the sidelines during this ppv broadcast? i'll put the over/under at 10. any takers? the best news of my week was hearing that the game will be shown on espn3, meaning i'll be able to catch some of it at the store saturday night. the atmosphere will be insane. i wish i could be there for the announcements of the starters alone. goodness. it will be fantastic. everything leading up to the opening kickoff will be special because it will be the last of the celebration, the last opportunity to look back and remember how special 2009 was. there will also be a game played. it shouldn't be close for much longer than a quarter. should the game go according to plan, the commentators will be speculating by the second half whether or not ingram will be back for...

penn st. - all i can think about when it comes to the penn st. game is the unnerving interview espn ran with joe paterno during the big 10 media days. it was unsettling and unfortunate. gameday will most likely be in tuscaloosa for this game. i wonder if they'll run that interview again. penn st. will be competitive. i will be massively surprised if the game is still in question in the 4th quarter. bama, 2-0.

duke - AT duke. already scheduled for a 2:30 national television spotlight. duke has got to be extremely excited about this game, considering ingram will probably be making a token appearance to make sure he's game ready for the following week. there was a time, three years ago, that i would worry about alabama sleepwalking through this game. no worries here. 3-0.

arkansas - the first sec road test of the year against a lot of people's heisman contender, ryan mallet. mallet's receivers let him down during the first half in tuscaloosa last year. really, the only thing arkansas performed efficiently all game was the block that ended hightower's season. dont'a hightower likely remembers that game. my money is on dont'a announcing his butkus candidacy here with a pair of sacks and an interception. ingram and richardson go for 100 yards each for the first time this season and alabama feels dominant. 4-0.

florida - hmm. this game is the one i can't wait for. barring injuries, it should be the first nailbiter of the year. i don't believe in the rhetoric coming out of gainesville about how much better a "true" quarterback than tebow brantley will be. if he brings his team to alabama and wins, i'll eat crow and own my shortsightedness. i am not, on august 31st., worried about this in the least. ingram goes for 150 and 2 td's and people lament for the last time that he may have had a shot to heisman repeat "if he didn't miss those first two (or three) games. 5-0, but close into the fourth.

south carolina - this game scares me a little. it'll be the week after the huge emotional payoff of the florida game. marcus lattimore will have established himself as the rookie of the year in the sec and spurrier will use last year's game (the game that won ingram the heisman) as motivation to stop the run. introducing, julio jones!!! can you believe i was able to go six games without mentioning jesus, himself. think about this for a second. forever etched in stone will be the fact (THE FACT) that it was julio's coming to the capstone that set the stage for the potential five year dynasty that is the current era of alabama football. he was hurt last year. he was leaped over by a teammate in production and value to the team during a stretch of 8-9 games where he was not at 100 percent. he is now healthy. his quarterback has taken off the training wheels. i guaran-damn-tee you this. there will be two epic julio jones performances this year. i predict we see the first one on this night in a tight game. 6-0.

ole miss - a dangerous homecoming game, but this is the game i see alabama hitting their stride. jeremiah masoli will wish he stole a computer or something and got suspended (from his second team) prior to this game after the beating he and his team will take. not close. 7-0 (edit: doesn't look like masoli's going to be eligible. even not-closer.)

tennessee - i won't predict a laugher here, but i do think it could be a long, long year for young coach dooley. his best running back isn't on the team anymore. ut is rebuilding. rebuilding teams do not beat this year's alabama football team. 8-0, going away.

lsu - if jordan jefferson takes any sort of significant step towards becoming a real quarterback this year, this game could be tight. even les miles can figure out ways to get russell shepherd the ball. russell shepherd scares me. julio could be taken out of this game, or he could announce that he's a lot surer a nfl prospect than the cornerback that blanketed him last year in patrick peterson. flip of a coin on that mano-a-mano, but i think alabama wins this game by two touchdowns. 9-0

mississippi st. - ingram and richardson do their thing. mississippi st. thinks they are turning a corner 'til they get blown away by 28 points. 10-0.

georgia st. - bill curry brings star jackson back to t-town in a game that neither of the two will ever forget. alabama will win by 50, but this is a very cool game with very cool storylines. 11-0.

auburn. - oh, auburn. what will your record be coming into the iron bowl? 8-3? maybe 9-2? better??? who knows. according to a couple espn "experts", the 2010 iron bowl could have a trip to atlanta added to the already high, emotional stakes. auburn, i expect to be better, but i don't know how much i expect. i am not sold on cam newton...yet. i am not sold that auburn won't really miss ben tate. i am sold on michael dyer. but, if the season plays out the way i have it doing so above, this game will mean much, much more to alabama and they'll be at home. if alabama has stumbled once, twice or more coming into this game, this could be the game that puts gene chizik on the real map and not just the one they sell in alabama gas stations. also, keep in mind this will likely be julio (tear) and mcelroy (he's not terribly exciting, but he did quarterback a national championship team. he's the new jay barker.) and ingram's (yesterday's injury to ingram set that in stone for him) last home game. i don't see them losing their last home game. 12-0.

am i a homer? sure. biased? completely. off-base? probably not. alabama hasn't lost ONE of it's last TWENTY-FOUR regular season games. this team is deeper and more talented than the last two. are they better? who knows. that'll play out, beginning saturday night. i think they could be, though, and, if i think that, it makes sense to project them winning all twelve again this season.

if we make it to atlanta again, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

in years past, i kept my ear much closer to the national ground than i have the last two years. alabama's story and their runs through the sec have more than enough to keep my attention.

i can tell you that i hate, hate, HATE va. tech, and yet i'll still be rooting for them on labor day against boise st.

i can tell you that i will root for EVERY sec team to win their out of conference games to shut up everybody that's been talking about other leagues "catching up".

i can tell you that mark ingram WILL NOT win the heisman again, but trent WILL next year.

and i can tell you that i love being right (see last item). god help us all if i am right with the above predictions. god help us all.

roll saban.

sonuva.

the end of the world
(part nine)
((without love))
(((hannah and caroline and me)))
((((part thirty-seven))))
(((((caroline turns three)))))


"is breathing just the ticking of an unwanted clock counting down the time it takes for you to comprehend the sheer magnitude of every single precious breath you've ever wasted?"





"time flies by."

or does it?

"it doesn't seem possible."

spoken by someone that lives a long way away.

"we can't believe she's so grown up either."

even her parents aren't paying attention!

i am being snarky, obviously, but this "time flies by" sentiment, well, i just don't buy into it anymore. for, right or wrong, to use a very predictable sports metaphor, everything slowed down for me last summer.

i mean, really, that's life anyway. or experience. or time served. or whatever. once you do something long enough, you get better at it unless you are intentionally sabotaging your own efforts. you see where "the blitzes" are coming from. you can "audible" around the obstacles. life, just like sports, slows down and you are better at it.

along with that, you hope to become more appreciative of it, too.

"all in nature ends in tragedy and i was the first to finally fade away from my grandfather's memory..."

these types of things happen way the fuck too often. i saw a commercial yesterday that said a woman was diagnosed with breast cancer every THREE MINUTES. is that fucking right? jesus. every three minutes, someone, some human that we share this earth with's life and their mindview is completely turned on it's head. and that's just from breast cancer. that doesn't count kidney cancer, or any other (fuck you) cancer or heart disease or stroke or alzheimer's or name that nasty/messed up anomaly that can happen to the human body. we go tripping along the light fantastic until life smashes us in the face. we are left to reimagine our foundation or hope that the one we had before the beating was strong enough to hold, strong enough to rebuild on top of. sometimes, it is. sometimes, it's not.

it took a couple years for a caroline to give a shit about who i was and deem me cool enough to share her air. thus, this birthday was pretty special for me and her. not that i went out of my way to do anything especially memorable. i didn't dress up as a clown and melt her face with fear. i didn't bring an elephant to her party. she did seem genuinely excited to share things with me, though, and that is pretty majestic.

in my eyes, caroline is a really old three year old. time hasn't flown by. it's gone by just the way it should have. slow and agonizing at times. breathy and easy at times. borderline orgasmic when she and her sister are playing with each other on the floor or laughing together or giving her parents a small window into the future and what will certainly be adventure after adventure after pregnancy (hopefully, not) and adventure.

"so much misery. so much indifference. so much suffering...this world is nothing more than what we make of it..."

you know, i don't really know shit about anything. but i would argue that life only moves too fast when we are looking backwards. in the now, a second is always a second. 60 seconds make a minute. 60 minutes make an hour. then it takes 24 damn hours to make even one day. that's a long-ass time. if you let it be that.

this world, our lives are nothing more than what we make of it. effing cheesy, really.

but true. here is to a beautiful little girl that, along with her sister and mother and my friends make my life go by just fast/slow enough.

"...too bad this child looks nothing like her daddy, ...right?"

i am so sorry. but happy birthday anyway, caroline.

the end of the world
(part eight)
((the funeral procession))






"But I feel like I knew his pain...or mechanical failure while enduring the norm, some of us fracture, others simply deform and lose their elasticity never to return to the shape they were. I wonder which is worse."


whether you like it or not, propagandhi believes in the same sense of interconnectedness that any church-going, "christian" reader of this blog does. we o'kelleys probably call this sense the holy spirit.

the muslims (let's call them "the something racists") down the street from us believe in the holy spirit too, but in a different way than o'kelley christians. "the something racists" also believe that angels are lurking around, too, logging our every action, interceding on our behalf and pulling souls out of dead corpses and delivering them to the soul patrol somewhere over the rainbow. extrapolate these minor differences out and combine them with the controversy of the ground-zero mosque, and, well, we wouldn't want to have lunch with "the something racists", right? yeah, me either.

speaking of lunch, in the past fifty or so years, charlie down at the other end of the street and his hindu buddies have been talking about not eating the flesh of any other animal. well, i am pretty sure i have heard that the holy spirit loves hamburgers, so i am also pretty sure that charlie down at the other end of the street and his hindu buddies don't even believe in the holy spirit. i could be wrong, but i am probably right.

and then there's whatshisname. we call him whatshisname because that's what his mother calls him. or so he tells me that's what she calls him. whatshisname doesn't live on our street, but he's standing at the end of it at the bus stop every morning. whatshisname talks to his dog and swears that his dog told him that what we think of as the holy spirit is really just jerry garcia and the dog is sure that jerry garcia has been communicating with all of us from purgatory since that fateful august day in 1995. the o'kelleys see the jerry garcia as holy spirit argument as borderline brilliant mixed with a fairly apropos public service announcement to not take too much acid (in moderation, of course).

based solely on my experiences with propagandhi, in the o'kelley house, kicking with joe "the something racist", hanging with charlie or trying to avoid whatshisname, it seems like there are a lot of ideas out there for that weird-ass sense of interconnectedness.

obviously, if we chose to be rational about it, we could embrace our "neighbors" and love them the best way we know how.

that, of course, would be retarded.

what we'd rather do is embrace, not our "neighbors", but the crazy. embrace the crazy that is breaking up people into groups based on everything from age to color to college football favorite team to what i eat to what they drink to what music you listen to what words that are coming out of my mouth to how much money they make to how bad those homeless guys smell to if you like apricots to fucking whatever other delineating factor you and jerry garcia can come up with.

embrace that crazy and get upset at something that you can't put your finger on. you may call what you are upset at "kevin o'kelley" and his filthy mouth. but, you aren't mad at me.

you are mad at something else, but you either can't put your finger on it or you refuse to.

and here is where o'kelley "christians" are different. i'll look at the back of the box with you. i don't know what ails this world and this world's people and this world's churches, but i'll work with you to try and figure it out...together.

we are all interconnected.

"i feel like i knew his pain."

of course we do. we all feel the same pain.

celebrate the connections. or embrace the crazy.

your call.

the end of the world
(intermission)

effective advocacy 101

everyone knows that the first rule of effective advocacy is to not insult people. this rule is especially important in terms of advocating on behalf of animals, mostly due to the fact that meat-eaters tend to cry and whine like a bunch of fuckin' shitty babies when you pull down the diapers of their revolting lifestyle. haha, just kidding. calm down babies.

no, for example though, you wouldn't want to use terms like "moronic", "self-absorbed", "chickenshit" or "disgusting slob" when describing self-professed "radicals" who insist on killing defenseless animals for food while a perfectly good supply of pimps, stockbrokers, crooked cops, politicians and habs fans (editor's note: he's canadian, therefore you can probably disregard his opinions as, well, canadian) - among other sociopathic sources of protein - range freely throughout our communities on a daily basis. no, you wouldn't want to say something like that. that would be considered 'counter-productive'.

you also wouldn't want to walk up and down the back lanes of you kentucky fried city slicing the throats of your neighbors' pets only to dismiss the community's subsequent outrage as "childish sentimentality", "infantile anthropomorphism" or "cultural imperialism". that would be considered 'anti-social'.

and you really, really, really, reeaaalllly wouldn't want to set fire to a slaughterhouse or a fur store or a whaling-vessel or an under-construction hog-barn because...well, i can't actually think of a good reason why you shouldn't do that (besides life in prison). but you get the point. it's all about effective advocacy.

so here i am! at your service! ready and willing to ensure that people who already know better aren't made to feel guilty about their stupid, selfish, unimaginably cruel choices! besides, haven't you heard? vegetarians are 'classist'. at least that's what all the white college kids are saying when they fly home for thanksgiving dinner! haha, asswipes. you'll be the first ones i eat when i finally snap. you fuckin' posers. whoops! where was i? oh yeah, effective advocacy...

but seriously folks, every social movement has its peanut gallery. in fact, i believe every serious social movement needs its peanut gallery, and when it comes to the movement against the egomaniacal cruelty humans perpetually visit upon animals, you can sign me up for season tickets and a very big fuckin' bag of the blessed arachis hypogaea (ed: peanuts) to go along with my top-hat and monocle.

and while it may be true that i take great pleasure in ridiculing morons rad dudes who eat animal corpses and their reproductive secretions, it's important for me to be clear that veganism isn't about purity or superiority. it's simply about extending moral consideration to other inhabitants of a complex planet in a morally-ambivalent universe where, despite the statistical improbability of it all, we earthlings (humans and non-human) appear to be the only instance of sentient life that is or ever has been.

that's some heavy shit.

and seriously, if we as a society can't even bother to treat a simple, unassuming, stunningly gentle and demonstrably sentient creature like a cow or a deer with a modicum of decency, how the fuck do we ever expect to be able to treat each other - infinitely more complex, wildly divergent and often exasperating individual human beings - with anything even remotely resembling civility? it just aint' gonna happen.

so, with that in mind, and in the spirit of the first rule of effective advocacy, i leave you with this short list of potentially transformative resources, created by better and more effective advocates for animals than myself. and see? i didn't even have to insult you to make my point after all. fuck are you ugly.

read:

making a killing: the political economy of animal rights by bob torres
dead meat by sue coe
animal liberation by peter singer
the sexual politics of meat by carol j. adams


thank you and good day.

jesus h. chris
propagandhi

the end of the world
(part seven)
((potemkin city limits))


"francis didn't a give fuck about the rollbacks, over-production, reduced demand. never gave a much thought to disputed contracts...fourth quarter earning expectations, expedited their demise...when the screaming began, francis shut his eyes and felt the hand of the humanity brush over him..."

"Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?" - trainspotting

it's the age old story of the modern man. get up. go to work. come home. hug the kids. kiss the wife. watch something mindless on television. lay in bed. look at the ceiling. wonder why you feel so unhappy. fall asleep watching the fan blades turn, turn, turn. wake up. it's 2 am. wonder why your neck hurts. shake your arm awake. fall asleep. alarm goes off. rinse. repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat. work for the weekend. get there. it goes too fast. your team wins. your team loses. doesn't matter. go to church. sing a song. leave wondering what "all of this" really is. it's monday again...

this is probably my second favorite song on the record. it's got everything i want in a ripping punk song. breakneck pace. thoughtful message. just enough catchiness to bring me back for more over and over again.

if you've worked a day in your life and have ever felt like you have been placed or placed yourself into a structure or system you have absolutely no power to change, you can relate.
 
for too many of us, our legacy is written for us before we were even born. our parents have made our decisions for us. we'll go to school. we'll get a job. we'll have a family. we won't break rules. we'll live by and through someone else's moral contract. we didn't have a say. when we dare speak out against the understood order, we are pushed back into place. 
 
keep working dammit. 
 
stop looking around you. there is NOTHING FOR YOU TO SEE HERE. 
 
keep having children. 
 
you can't be friends with this person. what will people say? 
 
don't question that person. they're 80. they are wise and must be right. 
 
haven't you read the bible? god fucking said so, bro! you can't question the almighty. sweet jesus. what the fuck do you think "made in his image" means anyway? that you get to think for yourself??? fucking retard. 
 
francis, in this song, is everyman. there is a point in his life where "the storylines... bridge the chasms between cognition and belief" and "for five months he ran free" and he feels "...his mother's loving eyes upon him" and "he made it farther than she did", but "a quarter mile before the city limits", "they finally captured him". 
 
at the end of it all, a tombstone statue is erected in our honor and we are laid to rest. if we are lucky, one pithy statement is etched on our statue to define our entire life's legacy for those that stumble upon us. we have served our purpose as a cog in someone else's machine. 
 
"turn around, i'm gone."
 
fuck. 
 
that.

28 days later
(we'll have football to talk about)


for now, we have football talk to talk about. and what else would we talk about than the preseason coaches poll being released today.

for the first time since 1978, alabama begins a season at number one. it should always be this way. not alabama being ranked number one, but the previous season's champ beginning the next on top of the mountain. regardless of how many key members of that team you lost, until some other team proves otherwise, this team is still king.

as we get closer to the season, there will, of course, be much more to discuss, dismiss and dismantle about the upcoming college football season.

today, we have this.

55 of 59 votes, and let's be honest. the other four coaches are just being contrarian. i would love to hear their arguments against voting alabama one. what would it be? they lost an awful lot on defense. they are replacing all of those losses with more "talent" than last year. continue. ...

...

they lost their kicker and punter.

...

...

 there really aren't many holes, are there? the offense that was pretty powerful last year comes back stacked and more experienced. and, oh yeah, julio is healthy at the moment. he wasn't most of last year. think about for a second. also, depending on how the chips fall, this alabama backfield could be remembered as one of the best in college history. already, they are every bit as dangerous as the cadillac/ronnie brown duo from a few years back. julio will be better. maze will be better. i am getting ahead of myself. it's not time to get excited just yet. it's time to close the celebration of the 2009/10 season and begin the process of being an alabama fan for the 2010/11 season.

i was two when expectations were last this high. it will be fascinating to see how saban plays with this deck of cards as compared to his rag-tag group of cory reamers and javy arenas' and like overachievers. will the success of last year bring with it complacency. or swagger.

what if this year's team is (shiver) better?

jesus. i need to calm down and go watch the braves.

we'll start counting down and breaking down soon.

very soon...

the end of the world
(part six)
((human(e) meat - the flensing of sandor katz))


"'cuz i believe that one can only relate with another living creature by completely destroying it"

(the following resumes a series last seen around these parts fourteen months ago)

listening to propagandhi on the way home this afternoon reminded me that i left this little series dangling last year around the time i got my, you know, "news". seriously, fuck cancer. moving on...

if you've never heard of sandor katz, you're life is no worse off because of it. here is his wiki page. not much too it, right? the fact that he's a culinary author holds no interest to me. his only mark on my life will be that he inspired the best band in the world to write this righteous song.

while the song riffs and finds humor in the idea of "being one with the food you eat", there is also a deeper message to be found.

i am the worst at this. i'll go ahead and admit it. internally or out loud, how many of us are guilty of tearing down our neighbor to feel better about ourselves? this blog stands guilty as the vast majority of its posts are doing just that. i throw the word "hate" around like it's candy. i talk about things and people being "terrible" and "worthless" and accuse fellow humans of being bad to worse than bad people, pastors and workers. me acknowledging my guilt doesn't make we want to stop tearing others down. it just, say it with me, IS WHAT IT IS.

removed from the comfortable walls of HACAM, though, i am usually more sensible. and patient. and kind. when someone offers a, in my opinion, terrible idea, i don't call them stupid to their face. i usually nod my head, try to process where their opinion is coming from and relate to them on some common ground. it's only several days later when i find myself in front of my computer will i completely obliterate the idea with some subtle sleight of hand via wordplay that infers one thing when it usually is poking somewhere else. even then, though, by the time those days have passed, i usually don't care about the stupid idea any more and write about the (horrible) girls or the (terrible) braves or (worthless) alabama football. most stuff thrown up against the wall that is me doesn't stick. and if it does, i'll be damned if i show you that it affected me.

our society (that term is big and vague enough, right?) rules at "relating to" other "living creatures by completely destroying" them, doesn't it?

lebron "sucks" 'cuz he didn't stay in cleveland, so we offer our loyalties to the more innocent kevin durant, who, as far as we know, hasn't spurned anybody yet.

marcel dareus is "stupid" because he couldn't resist whatever temptations were luring him to some party in miami in the offseason, leading to his hurting himself and his team while suspended indefinitely.

yunel escobar is "cocky" because his flair and his game doesn't really mesh with the redneck and white nucleus (think about it...huddy, chipper, mccann, lowe, wagner) of that braves ball team.

obama, god love him, can do no right at this point. the boondocks has done a wonderfully deft job of insightfully satirizing how the hope and change of his platform is now being held against him, his opposition casually lobbing "what have you done for me lately" grenades at him from the sidelines or rival newsdesks.

"i believe that one can only relate with another living creature by completely destroying it."

"be careful what kind of world you wish for. someday, it may come knocking on your door."