Edwin MacPhisto

Oh, and since everyone's complaining about a lack of good music, go find a copy of The Arcade Fire's Funeral. Best album I've heard in some time and recommended to anyone who likes great rock, indie rock, epic rock, and great fucking hooks. And finding good music isn't hard, either. Rag on them for being pretentious-ass motherfuckers, but Pitchfork is usually right on point with the score at least when they rate an album 8.5 or higher. Metacritic is another fantastic resource, compiling together all the reviews for the big releases as well as many smaller but notable groups. Very fun just to browse through. If you want to do it yourself, go to Barnes and Noble, or Borders, or Virgin, or any local CD store that lets you listen before you buy. Hit the new releases, just start listening to some stuff, and see what grabs you. Ain't rocket science.

I'm sure they'll check into Spurrier again, but the real guy to go after is Urban Meyer. It'll be tough to keep in Utah after this season.

Fucking ouch. Gator nation didn't even wait till the end of the year. To get axed so quickly means that Zook was on much thinner ice than anyone really thought even before the Mississippi State game.

The answer to Rando's terribly frightened question is an overwhelming "no." The mainstream is always full of mediocre music, but ultimately that doesn't matter at all. I think 2004 has been one of the best years for music in recent memory, and I'm not too concerned with how the mainstream perceives it. MTV is obviously in a sad state, but whatever. With few exceptions, the music that we think of as great has never sold as many copies as it's deserved. More importantly, it takes the mainstream time to catch up with the things it misses. Some of the most wonderful bands of the past certainly weren't mainstream in their heyday. I'm thinking most specifically of the Velvet Underground, who were never even close to mainstream success from 67-70, but are now widely regarded as one of the greatest bands in history. People will dig up the great stuff from our era and realize how great it is down the road. Music isn't anything close to a dying art, and thank god that we no longer have the Eagles or James Taylor tearing up the charts with some blase pap. Nor should anyone want to buy a new Fleetwood Mac or Rolling Stones album; they ran out of ideas years ago. The only person recording in the 70s that still does it absolutely right is Tom Waits, and he's never been huge. No problem for me.

I have a feeling he's just wearing a fucking hat. Possibly ironically. Additionally, the notion that "the curse" can become a huge psychological burden for a team of guys whose job is to play baseball and make millions of dollars doing so is pretty silly. If they go down 3 games to 2, it won't be the curse making them panic; it'll be the fact that they're not getting production out of their best hitters, or that Wakefield's knuckleball isn't dropping, or whatever the problem might be. Superstition is for tards.

Bumping this because I just saw the ad, and oh man, those are the most roly-poly wolves I've ever seen. I seriously want to hug them and feed them all cookies. This ad clearly should have been titled "Velociraptors."

My dad's ballot could beat up your dad's ballot.

Usually it only takes about three or four hours. So expect us to figure this one out next April. And I already have voted. Absentee ballots are great.

I get to listen to "Personal Jesus" while I'm doing drive-bys. Never in my wildest dreams.

Two great games going on now, if anyone's watching. NC State/Miami, with the Wolfpack up 3 and the Canes pulling off a brilliant fake punt just now. Direct snap to a runner, and the kicker jumps and turns backward, pretending that the snap went over his head. The whole line bit on it. Clever as hell. Then there's Arkansas and Georgia, and this Georgia looks somewhere between the team that lost to Tennessee and the one that killed LSU. Hogs up 14-10 as the third quarter gets underway.

FSU boggles me. I'm guessing they'll ultimately pull out a win this week, but come on. It's into the third quarter and they're down 14-3 to Wake Forest, with the offense doing nothing. Wake's good and tricky, but FSU is better than this. You almost get tagged by Syracuse, annihilate Virginia, and then have to play catch-up to Wake. If they do win, Wisconsin still deserves to move ahead of them and shore up the top 5. Nothing but consistency from the Badgers. My boys recover from last week's collapse against said Noles by walking over Duke 37-16. 223 yards rushing from Alvin Pearman, and another 43 receiving. I think he topped Duke's offense by himself.

Wow. Anglesault's fucking crazy. That's awesome.

And they did it! Unbelievable! Zook is officially toast, and the Gators are in bad shape. With three SEC losses and Georgia up next week, they'll be incredibly lucky to even get back to the Outback Bowl this year.

MSU touchdown on a 37-yard run! Unreal! If Florida can't score a touchdown in the last 30 seconds, this is without question the biggest upset of the year.

Justin Miller picks off Joel Statham, and Clemson wins 10-7. Both teams are now 3-4. This is ridiculous. Maryland comes to Virginia in two weeks. Since Clemson and Maryland, both preseason top-20 teams, have fallen apart, we're probably going to be playing Miami with a record of 7-1. And we're going to have played one team with a winning record. Absurd!

From just that snippet, I actually read it the exact opposite way. To me, this suggests that research would in fact be limited to only the costs of the actual labor/etc. I don't really see anything implying that any payment's going to go out except to the persons/groups responsible for each step of the process. I don't think anyone's getting a voucher for their blastocysts. Someone with more con-law knowledge than that accrued from a garrulous roommate is welcome to stamp certainty one way or another.

In Charlottesville, VA, the theaters are smart: half the population is college kids, so of course they're not going to offer a student ticket. $8 a ticket at night, for both the shitty dump theater with ripped seats and for the reasonably nice Regal theater downtown. No stadium seats, though, and they all have problems with sound on a few screens. Back home on the west coast of Florida, it's much better. The Regal Hollywood 20 is massive, gorgeous, and full of stadium-seating. $7.75 for an adult ticket...and $6 for students. Not bad at all.

Salon.com's politics are pretty durn obvious, but I give props for their culture pieces. Charles Taylor's one of the best movie reviewers working today.

Miami has to play at NC State and at Virginia, and then close the season against Virginia Tech. None of those are anything close to a cakewalk. I could see them losing any of those and expect them to drop at least 1, no question.

THURSDAY West Virginia FRIDAY Louisville Wyoming SATURDAY Wisconsin Iowa Georgia Bowling Green Notre Dame Louisiana Tech Michigan Oklahoma State Florida State Arizona State Oregon State Stanford Tennessee Texas North Texas Miami Boise State Tiebreaker #1: How many total points will be scored in the USF/Louisville game? 51 Tiebreaker #2: How many total yards (passing & rushing) will West Virginia's Rasheed Marshall have against Syracuse? 260

Said site used to have a brilliant story called "Hail Caesar," which was about a girl who falls in love with her dog. And his giant dog-penis. I can't find it anymore. Sad, really.

Telling you two children to grow up is enough, but there's always more. ESPN.com's served up a brief breakdown of how each BCS computer decides its rankings. Here they are, so that we can have a more specific glance at the minutiae sure to screw things up 8 or 9 times by season's end.

I only agree with half of the subtitle to this thread.

Shut the fuck up. GreatOne and Dama, together you ruin every freaking thread. Just stop taking each other's bait and let it go. I want an Auburn/Wisconsin national championship. Ass-beating, bone-crushing smash-mouth stuff with huge hits and crazy break-out moments.

You're typo monster in the last 30 minutes. Ha ha! Whoever the Big East sends to the BCS is going to get ripped. Yuck. And: That's correct. And they're what now, 5-2? Wins over Michigan, Stanford, Navy - not bad at all. Floating in the last few spots of the poll is fine by me with that sort of setup.