Dealing with Reality

Well, I sit here on a Sunday with another fall in shambles before it even gets started. The intent of this post isn’t to break down the details of yesterday’s gut punch 41-34 loss by my alma mater Mississippi State to Auburn. I’ll leave the analysis of the coaching, officiating, and players to the washed up coaches in the employ of ESPN and the message board lunatics. No, this is just the means of catharsis I am employing to handle the annual realization that Mississippi State football is forever doomed. As my wife said this morning after assessing the somber look on my face, “I just don’t think Mississippi State is ever going to be the program you want it to be.” To which I calmly responded with something along the lines of…



That’s a tough pill to swallow just one day removed from watching the wheels come off your team’s season for another year, even tougher when it all went down at Auburn. As a quick aside, they wasted no time in retiring Cam Newton’s number and slapping his smiling face up in the end zone of their stadium. It’s a nice reminder of the unseemly side of college football, which has come bubbling up to the surface in recent months. Watching your quarterback rifle a line drive pass into double coverage, then watching that pass bounce off a defender’s helmet into the arms of another Auburn defender who returns it for a touchdown, then looking up and seeing Cam Newton smiling back at you from the far end zone is just more than any person should have to confront.

Still, there’s something to be said for staring reality squarely in the face, though it is certainly not the only approach to overcoming disappointment. Shortly after my wife summed up the sad truth that Mississippi State football is mediocrity defined (at best), I found myself aimlessly wandering past the television in our living room. The great Joel Osteen was on, with his giant grin and strangely coiffured hair. Joel Osteen is clearly no fan of a beleaguered football program, unless his coping powers are considerably stronger than mine. He stood in front of the strange gold globe that serves as his backdrop and said “Think yourself happy, think yourself peaceful.”

Perhaps that IS the ticket, Joel. I’m happy and peaceful. I don’t need my fall to be defined by the anticipation of momentous football games with all the angst and emotion they entail. No sir, I can find peace and happiness as I did this fine Sunday afternoon, picking up endless piles of dog poo in my back yard and meticulously edging the dying grass in my front yard while trying not to break my wrist when the edger veers a bit too close to the driveway and sends sparks flying and a jolt through my wrist.

And I’m just scratching the surface of the many avenues other than college football available to me (and you, should you find yourself in similar straits two weeks into the season). Perhaps I'll look into scrapbooking or cooking classes. Or maybe I'll just have someone blindside me in the face with the Yellow Pages.

Overdue Post

It has been a rough week on the productivity front. The combination of the end of daylight savings time last weekend and the continually developing Cam Newton saga conspired to produce a lack of productivity noteworthy even by my standards. My workdays were spent refreshing Mississippi State, Auburn, and Alabama message boards in hopes of catching word of a new development on the recruiting of Cam Newton. For those of you who don’t frequent college football message boards, pat yourself on the back and do not under any circumstances change that. They are primarily the refuge of the unintelligent, the delusional, and the uncouth. And yet there I was, hitting F5 every five minutes, and trying to follow links to Twitter posts reporting whether Cam Newton did or did not attend the Auburn pep rally last night (he did not). Depressing.

Cam Newton, derailing Mississippi State's season and my work week

On the heels of accomplishing very little at work I would pack up for the day, full of ambition and ready to tackle some evening projects, including getting a new blog post or two up. Then I would set one foot outside into the pitch blackness that has descended on us since the end of daylight savings time and that was out the window. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was time for bed, even though every clock in the house claimed that it was no later than 7pm.

Meanwhile, my readership here at the old blog has likely been cut in half in my absence, meaning that I’ve gone from two relatives checking in to one and from 16 Europeans whose Google image searches for pictures of either Brigitte Nielsen or Justin Bieber erroneously lead them here down to eight. And then I arrive at home tonight only to find my spotty Comcast Internet service down once again. Damn you fates! It seemed that the universe was hell bent on preventing a new post. But then the clouds parted. Not only did I regain access to the Internet, but I found it full of crazy, quirky news.

And so I’m back! Back to make sure you know that sometimes when you make the late night run to the porn shop, you not only solve your evening entertainment quandary but score a lottery ticket worth $129 million. It isn’t surprising to learn that only one guy out of the group that pooled their resources to purchase the ticket was willing to reveal his identity. It was surprising, however, to see that he said the following:

"The only thing I can assume is that the Lord trusted us to do certain things with the money that He bestowed upon us," he (Mike Greer) said. "That's the only thing that I can gather."

Yes, Mike, I believe you are correct. The Lord, who does indeed work in mysterious ways, saw fit to guide money into the hands of you and your friends, trusting that you would use that money to buy porn and lottery tickets. Makes sense.

And that’s not the end of it. Next I ran into some news on my favorite industry, the airlines. Apparently Nepal Airlines, when faced with an issue with one of its planes, sacrificed two goats to address the issue. Fantastic.

“Hey, looks like one of the engines is down. Should we pull the plane back in for repairs?”

“Nah, boss says we’re running late. Just knock off a couple of goats and let’s get out of here.”

Is that a separate line item on Nepal Airlines’ income statement? I wonder if they have analysts that crank out spreadsheets evaluating whether to focus on plane repairs or additional goat sacrifice.

Happy 4th of July!

Just a quick note that I'll be out of pocket for the next several days. Hope everyone has a great Independence Day. One quick depressing thing to pass on. I didn't watch the first episode of the new season of The Real World in New Orleans, so I just found out this morning via a Mississippi State message board that a fine student from MSU is one of the cast members this year. She's, uhhh, not great.