The Empty Office

1. This has been a special week. At least twice I've been able to pull of the subway double, when I'm not required to touch anything in the train during either my morning or evening commute. Of this is because the trains are empty and only saps like me have to go in, but still it's a nice feeling walking out of the station in the evening knowing I never had to take my hands out of my pockets.
2. One reason I enjoy #1 is that I don't like to wash my hands any more than necessary in the winter. Hands get dried up bad enough in cold weather, so I don't need constant wet-dry exchanges to add to the problem. Another reason this has been a special week is work. It's been me and about 6 other people every day this week, so I haven't encountered much traffic in the restrooms. Which of course means that I am free to use my own discretion with hand-washing after. Which of course means that usually I won't do it.* I think an impossibly perfect day would be combining the subway double with not having to wash my hands at work at any time. This would be herculean, because I drink lots of water during the day and urinate at least 4-5 times at work every day. It should be noted now that I do feel obliged to wash my hands at work from time to time. I stock the pantries every morning and my conscience does require that I wash up before touching other people's cups, straws, juice bottles, etc. But again, this week has been different and I've only had to do mild restocking twice. Both times occurred first thing in the morning and since I haven't been strap-hanging, I haven't had to wash my hands before doing it. The emptiness of the office hasn't forced me to go back to the pantries later in the day.
3. The last awesome thing about the office being empty is that I'm free to just let fly with the farts. Normally, I restrict my cheese-cutting to a couple infrequently-used locations on our floor, a small supply closet and the freight elevator area. I will never--as long as I can control it--drop ass in the hallways. Never except for this week. Quite the little moment of freedom to let one go as I please.


* I've covered this before, but I've had a longstanding curiosity with automatic hand-washing after peeing. Especially in the winter, my genital region is always cleaner than my hands. The joke I used to use is that I ought to be washing my balls after peeing cause they came into contact with my hands. It was brought to my attention some time ago by a person who'd heard my opinions that the comedian Patton Oswalt did a bit pretty much exactly like what I said. On a similar note, Paul Scheer's character used the word "sucktard" on an episode of "The League" this fall. I should absolutely be receiving royalties checks.

It

So the big new news around this blog that has actually prevented me from writing as often over the last couple months is that in about six more months, I'm going to become a father. Yeah. And I thought hearing myself referred to as a "husband" sounded jarring.
We've known about this development since late October, but keeping with societal expectations, we waited until a couple weeks ago to start telling other people. So for almost two months I've carried around this huge bit of personal news that I was unable to share in any format with almost anyone (our parents and siblings excepted). This was awkward for me. Not so much socially--actually conversing live with other people--but via email responses and especially sitting here typing in this space. There have been many times when I've read something preposterous (and I've read a lot about babies/pregnancies already) or something crazy occurred to me, that I have really wanted to share it on the blog, what seems to be the natural place for such things.
Now that all is in the open, I find myself leaning toward another impulse: restraint. Having a baby is not only a slightly more personal event than most, but it's also something with which most of my friends and acquaintences have little to no direct relationship with, so turning now to regular baby-prep talk would seem irresponsibly self-involved. Also, the long history of parents or parents-to-be behaving in an embarrassingly haughty and superior manner tends to make me a little more afraid of seeming anything like that. Sure, this new life will necessarily become the most important thing in my life, but I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to become a club that I metaphorically beat everyone around me over the head with. For me it is of supreme importance; for others it is merely another facet of who I am when they see me.
It's another huge barrier being placed between my private and public lives. First it was general maturity and self-recognition, then a big one was marriage and devoting a much larger piece of myself to a single person instead of a community, and now this. There is nothing wrong with having a clear distinction between public and private selves. Some people can live long lives without them, but for most it's perfectly instinctual. As long as we are always honest, we are who we are, no matter where we are or who we are with. It's just the natural discipline to keep our business separate that changes. We don't talk about our fantasy football teams or our pass-out drunk stories with our mothers. We don't talk about our fathers' health problems with our seldom-seen college friends. And we don't usually talk about the jewelry we buy for our wives with our daily friends. These details can occasionally be interested across barriers, but more often than not they aren't. Striking a healthy balance among these things is an interesting life change for someone like me.
Back to the topic at hand: I don't figure to start talking about babies or kids very often in conversation unless prompted to do so first. But this blog I will handle differently. I'll let it come out naturally. Invariably, I will use it as a main topic, but just as clearly I will stop myself and make sure it's interesting or relevant to anything first.
This brings me to a thought about just what this blog's purpose is, both for me and for you. A couple years ago I think I wrote mostly for a faceless audience and consciously tried to entertain. This of course fed both my ego and my artistic side. I still try to do this from time to time but more lately--as my "life" has seemed to finally start in earnest--there has been a kind of desire for posterity from me, as though I only want to get it all down so I have a record of it. This type of content can still be interesting, but in a totally different way than simple entertainment. I guess the goal of everything remains the same: to try to show what it is like to be me, what it's like to live my life and, most importantly, simply what it is like to see the world from my perspective. A lot of people have been 29 and married and white and male and expecting a child, but I never have. So we'll see.

A Sport as We Know It

I have been meaning to write about football injuries for a long time now. No, this is not about concussions, though the recent increase in interest toward concussions--both from the public and within the sport--is a very good step in the right direction. It's incredibly obvious that repeated blows to the head, which are of course common in football, will shorten and handicap a human being's life. I don't need to explain why that is a huge concern.
Actually what has interested me for a while is sudden traumatic injuries. Paralysis, severe ligament damage, broken bones of all variety, and the body generally being made to move in ways it wasn't meant to move.
Background: I don't like watching people get hurt. MMA is displeasing to me, for example. When an athlete hyperextends a joint and they show the replays on TV I will always look away.
In a violent sport such as football, serious injuries are unavoidable. The participants and the audience accept this. But lines can be crossed. Football players have become more and more efficient implements of violence, and faster moving bodies produce more dangerous collisions. The whole sport is seemingly on an unstoppable path toward true self-destruction. I mean, literally, someone is going to get killed, on the field, during a game, in front of millions of TV viewers. I can't possibly be the only person who realizes how inevitable this is? Secondarily, I can't possibly be the only person who thinks this is wrong?
Watch a clip of an old football game sometime. Even as recent as the 1970s will do. Don't watch the game, but the players. They were so much smaller and moved so much slower and collided with each other so much gentler (relative term). People still got hurt, and sometimes seriously, but the imminent mortal danger that I'm talking about wasn't there. A guy like "Mean" Joe Greene was famous for being a big and nasty guy. He was 6'4" and weighed 269 pounds. Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers current quarterback, is 6'5" and weighs 241. Football is a game played today by entirely different kinds of athletes.
To illustrate this point in another way, watch a lightweight boxing match sometime. Then watch a heavyweight contest. Different worlds. It's hard for the lightweights to knock each other out, even though they are both so small, because they're just not strong enough. But if you matched a heavyweight versus a lightweight, the heavyweight would seriously struggle to beat the little guy, even though his power advantage is massive. Why? Because he's probably not fast enough to land a solid punch on the more nimble lightweight. Today's football players are like an unholy mixture of the two boxers: both big and strong enough to inflict damage, and also fast enough to compound that force.
I guess a lot of this is obvious. The reason I decided it was a pressing concern has nothing to do with it, though. The clearest risk in football today is the failure of helmets to stay on heads. It used to be you rarely saw a player's helmet pop off on the field, and when you did, it was more of a blooper, something to laugh at. Hey, look at that player without his helmet, haha. Now, through either poor design or--most likely--poor attention to actually buckling them on properly, helmets seem to come loose on every other play. Of course players are taught to be tough and to finish plays, too. I think you can see what I'm getting at. Someone is going to die on the field, perhaps soon. Someone's head is going to get split open, literally. Hey players: there is no glory is getting your head split open. It doesn't make you tough, it makes you dead.
So the combination of helmets coming loose and players--through evolution, constant weightlifting, and of course steroids--morphing into deadly instruments themselves, will surely lead to what will be called tragedy. I guess the question is: who will care? Will the games go on? Will changes be made, instantly or over time? Will TV productions change at all? There is definitely a gladiator effect in play with today's NFL, from both the players' and fans' aspects. An important thing is to understand, as a fan, how you feel about this complicity. Are you ok having your players die on the field? If not, would you support mandatory increases in time missed after injuries (such as with the ongoing concussion debate), or even changes in the rules? If you are conscientious about this issue at all, then you would have to be fully in support of anything that increases safety. So, while I'm at it, let's see if I can come up with anything.
(disclaimer--these might be terrible ideas.)
Possible solutions to the NFL's upcoming death problem:
1. Fewer players. Perhaps 9-on-9 instead of 11-on-11. Fewer players means less hitting and more space. Naturally offense would increase substantially, but that's something we'd have to deal with.
2. Bigger fields. This is just a corollary to #1. The only downside here is that with more space, some players might actually have more room to build up speed and then actually hit harder.
3. Mandatory weight limits. A radical idea, sure, but maybe no lineman could be more than 310 pounds, no linebacker more than 260, and no running back more than 235. The relationship between size and speed and violence is a geometric one, so that a reduction of any would have a potentially large impact, pun intended.
4. Full-scale steroid and hormone testing. Obviously.
5. Increased pad protection. This would not only help protect players from hits, but it would also slow them down and make their hits less dangerous. This is my favorite solution so far. In the absence of #3, this would have a similar if less drastic effect.
6. Bigger penalties and bigger fines. This is my least favorite solution because it bastardizes not just the game but the players themselves. (Oddly, this is the solution that is closest to the NFL's current approach. Go figure.) But you could make unnecessary hits penalized up to 50 yards or more, and fines could be raised almost limitlessly, until the players finally got it.

The unfortunate reality of some of these improvements is that it would reduce competitiveness. But maybe that itself is a larger issue. Maybe the NFL, in so long dancing with the devil that is violence, has let itself go too far, so that the only way to save itself is to turn itself into something different. I mean, maybe they have crossed the point of no return with regards to player safety.

(Now, a personal note. I am a fan of the Steelers. They have been a franchise famous for tough football and aggressive often violent defenses. During the 1970s, they also apperently helped proliferate the use of steroids to exacerbate the violence problem. Maybe my favorite Steeler of all time is Troy Polamalu, a man who's freakish athleticism and reckless play renders him bascially incapable of staying healthy. A human body just isn't equipped to handle his level of physical ability. Finally, probably my most admired Steeler of my lifetime is Hines Ward, a man often called the dirtiest player in the league because of his deliberately violent hits, and a man who has been brutalized himself more times than I can count. Of course one of the reasons people, including myself, love him is that he bounces right up from these nasty hits with a smile on his face every time, as though he enjoys the violence. I am sure he does enjoy it. But how is he any different from a Roman gladiator and how are we any different from the bloodthirsty fans? Hines Ward's life after the age of 60, if he makes it that far, will be pathetic. Sure, it is the path he has chosen, but what does it mean to have helped and supported him along that path?)

UPDATE: If you agree with any of this, you ought to check out Part II of ESPN.com's Malcolm Gladwell-Bill Simmons email exchange. Or at least one little section of it, as it's very long. Amazingly, it was published the very same day as my blog post here and more amazingly it contains some very similar arguing points (one of them even mentions weight limits, for crying out loud). You'll just have to trust me as a non-plagiarist. I guess it's a good thing though: this stuff is a more present concern to more people, so the chance is just slightly higher that positive changes are possible.

Why Not Just Carry a Boombox, Asshole?

Here's something that bothers me. People--like the girl this morning--riding on the subways (it could be any confined space, really) wearing headphones with their music turned up so loud that it distracts nearby people. I'm not talking about merely being able to hear the noise, or even being able to make out the tune, I'm talking about so loud that it's distracting, like they put the ear nodes in backwards or something.
I despise very loud music so being in the proximity of one of these ultra-loud headphone people grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard. It's not just the noise, either, since I have gotten good over the years and tuning out music. It bothers me more that the people between the headphones really think it's necessary to play their music that loud. Can they be so socially oblivious to not know that the loud scratchy treble-fest that emanates out from their headphones is annoying? I think that some people are that oblivious, which is itself quite enough to elicit some deserved scorn. The worst ones, though, know exactly how loud their garbage is to the rest of the world, and do it anyway. Psychologically, I'd like there to be a study done on what motivates these people. Surely for some they think it's cool. For others, it's attention-seeking. No matter the reason, a person who consciously will play his headphones that loud and knows the consequence is a person that I hate. And hate is not something that should be spread around indiscriminately, so I really would like to understand what the fuck is wrong with these people. (Then, once these specimens are effectively cataloged, they can be properly sequestered. That's what science is for, right? Not helping the misfits but keeping them away from the blessed few?)

Fear

It's in the title of the blog, after all. Even if the title is just vague pastiche, I still might as well slip a little in.

I never had any intention of writing anything about Tiger Woods. I try to stay as far away from celebrity crap as possible, after all. Something does not become interesting to me merely because it happens to a famous person, and very rarely are the things that happen to famous people in any way relevant to my own existence.(1) But this Tiger story just won't go away. It's become almost fascinating, even to me.
Of course, I'm not going to get into any of that stuff, because even if gossip trash becomes fascinating to me, my take on gossip trash will never be interesting to anyone else and I will never ever subject people to it.
So then what am I doing here writing now? Fear--I am acknowledging fear and how Tiger Woods scares me.
First, I will commit the sin of making an assumption about a famous person that I actually have no idea about. For illustrative purposes, though, let's go with it. Tiger Woods seemed like he had his shit together, so much so that if you find out that in fact, he did not at all have his shit together, you'd wonder how can anyone have his shit together? If this seeming paragon of austerity can be exposed in such a comprehensive way, how can a mere mortal expect to succeed in life?
That's being a bit heavy-handed, but my point is that you can't take things for granted in this world. I am not a philanderer. Just the idea of cheating gives me the willies. I think I have extremely strong self-control, stronger than anyone I know actually. I can say with complete confidence that I will always be completely faithful to my wife and my future family.
But. How can I really be so sure? Humans are human, after all. Mistakes are made, and if you crack open that door even a little, it's not hard to slowly let it slide open completely.
That is the lesson I take from this Tiger scandal: fear. Fear of what anyone, including myself, is capable of. I need to be mindful of that and to always be prepared to answer to anyone. It's almost like being a role model for yourself.


1. Weird, I know, but I don't do drugs, don't fly in planes more than a handful of times a year, don't have my picture taken anonymously, don't spend much time on beaches more exotic than Rockaway, don't dress well, don't have a publicist or an assistant, don't wear big sunglasses, and don't go to clubs or indulge in bottle service. Also I don't have grudges or fueds and don't have a dysfunctional family. Oh, and I'm not bisexual, as far as I know, because I've never been in an orgy or even in the same room with other people having sex.

Magic Victims

I was watching something about the Madoff scandal last night (yeah, I don't really know why either). It reminded me about how angry I used to get when the scandal first broke and all those news pieces came out with such pitiful stories of all the people who lost so many millions of dollars.
First, am not a completely arbitrary cynic. I appreciate that any loss of money by any person is unfortunate, even if we are talking about a billionaire losing one million dollars. It's an extreme example, but for him, it's a tiny amount, though it's still a loss. That said, the key for this man is not to focus on the million lost but the $999,000,000 that he still has. The million is not important. The 0.1% loss is.(1) This is the first extremely important to remember when hearing about all the huge monetary losses in this scandal. A large chunk of the "losers" were very very wealthy to begin with.
Second, and most frustrating to me, is the issue of dividend payments and annual returns.
Madoff began his scheme most likely in the late 1980s. At that time, the Dow Jones was at about 2,000. A year ago, when he was jailed, it was over 8,000, but just about a year before that it was at 14,000. The point here is that over these 20 years, the stock market as a whole increased between 400-700%. For a fund that was "successful" enough to lure as many big fish as Madoff's you would have to assume he was claiming better-than-average returns and thus beating the simple Dow numbers.
So, now, who wants to play with Excel?(2) Actually, first we need to make a few assumptions. The first I will make is that our initial investment into Madoff's fund is $1,000,000, mostly because it's a round number. Secondly, for illustrative purposes, I'll assume this investment is made in 1989. That is in the fund's youth and also allows us to have a full clean 20 years of investing. Next I assigned a 10% annual rate of return and a 5% annual dividend payment. I'm no CPA so all I did was google and find that these are roughly standard amounts. In fact, after thinking about it for a second, I added another column for 15% annual returns, due to the market success over the period.(3)
In cell D4 I inputted 1,000,000. In cell D5 (representing year 1990 here) I inputted "=(D4*1.15)-(D4*0.05)." This covers the 15% increase less the 5% dividend payout. Our $1,000,000 becomes $1,100,000, a nice increase, plus the $50,000 we pocket in the dividend. You play this out for twenty years and the total account balance goes over $6 million. But remember that because this is a ponzi scheme that number is meaningless because there were no actual trades to increase the fund value, so the effective total of the balance in 2008 is not $6 million but actually $0.
In a lot of the reports about huge losses but the Madoff victims, the numbers cited were either this $6 million or if they were trying to be more simply truthful, the initial $1 million, plus any inflation adjustments, if they were being especially diligent.(4)
In addition to this D column of my spreadsheet, I also have another column which sums the dividend payments only. After 20 years, this amount totals $2,863,749.97.(5) Yes, really. This is how rich people get richer. A mere $1 million almost tripled, and that's just the dividend payments. Most importantly, pertaining to the Madoff "victims," this $2.8 million is real money that was given to them. This is some of the money that those rich people--sorry, "victims"--lived on. If you can follow the basics of a ponzi scheme, you also realize that this money was stolen. Old Bernie and his wife weren't the only ones getting fat off the poor souls who invested in his fund, many many of the actual investors were profiting as well. If you want to be fair about it all, you'd have to go and find the earliest investors and repossess their precious luxury items too.
Even for those folks who weren't early investors, any returns or payments they were receiving were fraudulent. They were living a lie. Sure, they were lied to, but they went right along with it because anyone likes a free buck. The only true victims were those people who only joined the scheme shortly before he was shut down (though I imagine for them the paper trail would be easier to follow and they might have a much better chance in court to recoup their losses).
It's a simple statement, but one that bears repeating for people dealing in the market: you can't make assumptions. You can't lose money you never actually had.
If you walk down the sidewalk every day and find a twenty dollar bill in the same spot and pick it up and use it every day, then whatever you buy with that money is a tangible benefit to having found it. But then what if you find out that some foolish person had purposefully left that twenty there every day for someone else to pick up. Obviously this person should not leave his money out on the sidewalk like that, but still if you pick it up it isn't yours. Perhaps you haven't officially "stolen" the money, but ethically you have deceived and manipulated someone and benefited at his expense. I'm not sure how you could be innocent in this case, let alone have the audacity to call yourself a victim when the fool stops leaving his twenty on the sidewalk.(6)



1. For comparison's sake, if you are a middle-class schmo who invests $10,000 in the stock market and you lose 0.1% of it, then you would have lost $10. Sure, it's a loss, but come on, now. We're not calling this a tragedy.
2. For work, I've been dabbling more and more with excel sheets, and curiously I've got to say I enjoy it a little. Figuring out how to best write a simple function to capture what I'm looking for tickles my efficiency bone. And using copy-paste over and over and watching the numbers fill themselves in is oddly satisfying. Of course--disclaimer--I am a complete novice, and only really know how to use the SUM and AVERAGE functions.
3. A 10% return increases our intial million by 250% over the 20 years, while a 15% return increases it by 600%. The latter here would be the more likely for an exclusive and successful fund such as was this one.
4. Even this is not so simple as I'm making it, because you could technically argue that in addition to the real million dollars lost, there is also an opportunity loss, since if they weren't investing with a crook like Madoff they could have been doing so legitimately and actually made money. In this case, the loss amount would be somewhere between $1 million and $6 million. I personally think that's a bit unfair because anyone can claim "losses" this way. Just because you aren't winning doesn't have to mean you are losing. There a tons of investors who don't make large returns or even any returns; these people can't complain about "unfair losses" any more than a traditional gambler can.
5. I have another two columns that track what happens if the person, instead of pocketing the whole dividend, keeps only 25% of it and reinvests the rest. This is perhaps closer to the truth for the financially savvy investors, but I'd hardly say it was the norm. You've seen the interviews with lots of these people. They don't often strike me as responsible about their wealth. For your curiosity, the dividend re-investors make only $1,139,392.96 in dividends over twenty years (still higher than their initial investment), but their total fund balance is an enormous $12.2 million. While I'm at it, lowering the annual return estimate to 10% would change the total balance to $2.56 million without dividend reinvestment and $5.0 million with reinvestment. The total dividend profits would be $1.65 without reinvestment and $0.62 with reinvestment at this 10% return level.
6. Again, this is a simple analogy. To be more fitting, the person picking up the twenty would have to also be leaving something like $18 on another sidewalk and have another person "steal" that from him. The point is, whether or not you know at the time that you are stealing from someone else, that doesn't change the fact that someone is being stolen from. And that outrage is hardly an appropriate response when the too-good-to-be-true stealing ends. Shame is closer to it.

Self-Preservation

Some son of a bitch fruit seller is trying to gain my acquaintance, and I'm not at all happy about it.
There is this pretty standard guy with a pretty standard sidewalk fruit cart who sets up on Boerum between Joralemon and Livingston, right in the path I take to the train every morning. I have a fairly rigid fruit-buying regimen: I get all of it either at the corner grocery store (which is excellent, by the way, corner of Court and Pacific) or at a sidewalk cart near my workplace. It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to stop at a place on the way to the train and have to hold the fruit during the whole trip, so I've never given a thought to actually buying fruit from this guy in Downtown Brooklyn. I made the mistake of making eye contact with him a couple times within a week, though, and the guy must have realized that I walk by his cart every day at the same time and figured he might have a potentially steady customer. That is all fine by me, but he's taken to saying "good morning" to me most days now. The first time it took me off guard but my social instincts prompted a return greeting. The second time he said it I was in a stream of people and was able to act like I wasn't paying attention. The third time was this morning, when I was walking alone, staring ahead, conscious of his prescence, and simply ignored him. I'm going to continue with this action until he gets the idea. I don't begrudge him trying to warm up to a person in order to increase his sales. That's his job. But I also don't like being guilted into buying fruit. Me and this guy, we are not friends. I don't want to be friends and neither does he. I carry on in accordance with this fact; he does not. And so it must be.
This situation is not dissimilar to another one I've found myself in several times in my life, that of the unintended uninvited romantic interest. Clearly, I'm an attractive figure for people. Perhaps not as clearly, I'm very rarely interested in others. Most often what I've done when a potential paramour begins to make her true intentions known (almost never overtly) is simply to ignore that person, or at least ignore her more than would be natural given whatever level of social acquaintance we had before the development of the crush. This might be a touch immature, but it is effective. And, because the person isn't viewing you or the situation in an unbiased manner, she won't be offended by the ignorance, so her image of you won't be tarnished by what are really kinda rude actions by you. Assuming you are disciplined and patient (two skills I possess), it's just a matter of time until the nuisance disappears and things carry on with you no worse for wear.
It's about controlling the borders of the land of you. Some people have bigger fences than others.

Gary Patterson's False God

I don't usually get off on nitpicking idiot statements, but this story really hits on a few of my interests and drives me nuts at the same time. Here then are my comments interspersed with the story:

On a day when Gary Patterson received a contract extension through 2016, the TCU coach stated that the Horned Frogs can win a national championship despite not being in a BCS conference.

Mr Patterson, you have done a nice job with your team this year, but the ridiculous things you're going to say in this article pathetically prove that you have no business receiving a 7-year contract extension.

And he thinks they can do so without a playoff system.

No, you can't. You're like a black person voting for George Wallace.

Patterson, whose contract included salary increases for his assistants, maintains that he's in favor of the bowl games and not a playoff system.

"Is it easier to win one game for a championship? Or to have to win four?" Patterson asked. "If you have a playoff, you practice and get on a plane and play. And if you lose, it's over. If you go to a bowl game, you're there seven days and the kids can enjoy a place and get rewarded."

Let's set aside the stupid comment about his players enjoying themselves at a bowl game since that's irrelevant and he knows it. He pretty clearly is admitting here that his teams will never be good enough to win a title through a playoff system because it would require them winning multiple games against top competition. He knows that it's far more likely for his team to catch lightning in a bottle and upset one elite team than it is win four in a row. This proves he understands probability. Good for him. I can't get past the fact that he knows his teams aren't good enough to be considered legitimate national champions and that he feels it's ok to continue the current system because it leaves the door open for a non-legit champ to sneak in.

Patterson noted that there's still a chance his 12-0 team -- TCU's first undefeated squad since 1938 -- could play for a national title this season. For that to happen, No. 4 TCU would need Nebraska to upset No. 3 Texas in the Big 12 Championship on Saturday at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Then, the Horned Frogs would need the BCS formula to work in its favor.

Good luck with that, Gary. But hey, that's the way you want it. Go ahead delude yourself.

"We had a vision nine years ago of reaching a BCS bowl and going to a national championship," said Patterson, who is 85-27 after completing his ninth season. "A lot of people laughed and shook their heads and said, 'Well, that's nice.' We're now crossing that threshold.

"We feel like we're very blessed. I do not feel like our work is done. We still have a mountain to climb, a championship to win."

Patterson, who has led TCU to five 11-win seasons in the last seven years, believes that playing for a national title is as much about reputation as anything.

Of course. Which is exactly why a system that was created by the big schools for the big schools will never benefit a non-reputable program like Texas Christian University.

"You have to show that you can play with everybody consistently," he said. "You have to establish you can do it every year."

Last season, TCU finished No. 7 in the Associated Press and USA Today polls, the highest-ranked two-loss team in the nation. If the Frogs win a BCS bowl this season, they could begin 2010 in the top 5.

Gary wouldn't have a clue about this because he's an idiot, but that would be unprecedented, by far. The highest preseason ranking for any non-BCS school in the BCS era (since 1998) is 14th. TCU could begin 2010 in the top 5, sure. I could swim across the Atlantic Ocean in 45 minutes, too.

That means fewer teams to leapfrog on the way to a possible BCS national championship berth. TCU started this season 17th in both polls.

Told you so.

Patterson said even though TCU is not in a BCS conference, the program is gaining national respect and is proving it can play in the big games.

"Ninety percent of the teams [in the BCS] don't have an opportunity to win a national championship," Patterson said. "It's the same 10 teams. We've now gone to a BCS over 80 percent of the Big 12, 80 percent of the SEC, 80 percent of the Big 10. We've achieved something that all those other teams talk about because they are part of a conference that can get there. We've now jumped over a hurdle by going to a BCS game."

Gary, first, you're talking gibberish so who knows what you're actually saying; second, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Since 1998, there have been 94 slots open for teams in BCS games. 90 of those have been filled by BCS teams. There have been 22 berths into national title games, and of course all 22 of them have gone to BCS teams.

Those 90 berths from BCS teams have come from a total of 37 different schools. 37 schools out of the 65 total BCS schools. That's 57%. 11 different schools playing for a title, out of 65. That's 17%.

The three non-BCS schools that have taken the four total non-BCS team berths (TCU this year will be the fourth non-BCS and 41st overall school) come from a pool of 52 non-BCS schools. That's 6%. And 0 title game berths is 0%.

Patterson quickly said the BCS bowl wasn't official, as bowl pairings will be announced Sunday.

"We're going into houses and everyone knows about TCU," Patterson said. "The only thing that was held over our heads was we couldn't play in a BCS game or play for a national championship."

Patterson believes strongly that isn't the case anymore.

Ol Gary is saying that he prefers a system that has never ever given a team such as his even a chance to win a title. He's using blind faith that this system is different now, even though you could find zero evidence this is true and even less of a motivation from those who control the system to change it. I think this is similar to Ralph Nader saying he loves the two-party US political system because it gives him, a third-party candidate, the best chance at winning an election.

If, however, the system itself were something like a 16-team playoff, which is what Gary uses as the opposing view to his dear simple 1 vs 2 BCS title game, then teams like TCU would have far more access (I know, anything counts as "far more" than zero, but we're playing Gary's game here). In the BCS era, 12 times a non-BCS school has finished in the top 16 of the final BCS standings, which is presumably what would be used to populate a playoff. An unaffiliated committee might actually have granted even more spots. But that's at least 12 chances for the little guys. 12 opportunities to "play for a national championship," which is the whole point of what Gary is saying here.

Go Skin

Yesterday afternoon I was hanging up our office holiday(1) decorations and I was thinking about clothing. I was wearing a sweater yesterday on top of a buttoned t-shirt,(2) and since I was going to be working with pine needle-covered items I naturally removed the sweater before starting. Naturally, as in I didn't even think about as I was doing it. In fact, none of this occurred to me at all until I was finished and washing my hands and I noticed those tell-tale red dots on the insides of my forearms. You see, if I had been wearing the sweater, then those dots wouldn't be there, but then I probably would have numerous nicks and pulls in the fabric, which would be almost unfixable. Instead, I had very small spots on my skin that would disappear within hours.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but what I'm getting at here is that our skin is plenty strong and durable on its own, much moreso in fact that the clothes we spend so much money to cover it.
One thing I learned over time as a runner is that if it is raining and the temperature is remotely warm (anything approaching 70 degrees), you are much better off running shirtless because your skin is far better at dealing with water than any textile. This is only worth mentioning because for most people their approach is just the opposite: to put on more layers of clothes when it rains.
Our skin is pretty impressive on its own. Protection from cold is really the only biological reason to ever wear clothes.(3)(4) Remember that as you're standing in a mall looking at all the ridiculous price tags this season.


1. I put up a fake pine tree and decorated it with lights and ornaments. I also put up pine-roping things and draped them in the elevator lobby. These are "Christmas" decorations. There is no reason to act otherwise. I don't really mind respecting others by using the "holiday" designation when referring to the season in general, but I do get a little pissed when someone says we are not supposed to call things what they are when what they are is "Christmas." Next time I hear someone call something a "menorah," I will correct them and say, no, that is in fact a "holiday candle."
2. At this point in my life I know both that wearing button-up t-shirts is scorned and that I will never ever stop doing it. Try to think about the many times in your life that you've been happy to have a sleeve buttoned tight around your wrists. Anytime I wear a fully-sleeved shirt, I will always just unbutton the wrist and roll up the sleeves anyway. Give me comfort.
3. Shame or embarrassment are not a biological reasons.
4. Socks and shoes being the only exception.