I was feeling a little nostalgic the other day for the days not knowing any better than to make mix CDs with more than one song by a given artist (not counting mixes of just one artist)...so I came up with an idea: 90-minute, four-way splits...in other words, an equal number of songs (or at least time) by each of four selected artists, arranged for optimal flow...here's what I have so far: Radiohead/Thrice/Tool/The Beatles (my four favorite bands) 1. Radiohead - Planet Telex 2. Thrice - Daedalus 3. Tool - H./Useful Idiot 4. The Beatles - A Day In the Life 5. Radiohead - Paranoid Android 6. The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps 7. Radiohead - Exit Music (For a Film) 8. Tool - Pushit 9. Thrice - The Melting Point of Wax 10. The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby 11. The Beatles - Happiness Is a Warm Gun 12. Thrice - For Miles 13. Radiohead - The National Anthem 14. Tool - The Patient 15. Thrice - The Earth Will Shake 16. Tool - Right In Two The Bouncing Souls/Foo Fighters/Jimmy Eat World/T...

Well, I took a week off last week just so I could have a little rest from the "grind" so to speak. Since I didn't pick any games last week, not much point going all the way to two weeks ago to rehash that week's entry, so let's jump straight into the headlines from this past week... HEADLINES -108 points in an SEC game? I've never seen anything like that in my life. I knew Arkansas's defense was porous--specifically in the secondary--and that their offense was spectacular but that was just ridiculous. I will say this for Arkansas: Bobby Petrino deserves a ton of credit for his offense being able to put up 43 on a talented Auburn D with the most talented passer in the nation sidelined. One of the most impressive feats for an offensive-minded coach is when the starting QB goes down and the offense doesn't miss a beat. Not only does it speak to the effectiveness of the offensive scheme but also directly to the level of preparation in every QB o...

Well, I took a week off this week because A. it was sort of an unspectacular week of games and B. I didn't feel like it, so in addition to the top 25, I'll do my Heisman ballot and BCS predictions in this post... 1. Auburn Why They Should Be #1: It's almost a toss-up between the top three teams in the country. Bottom line is, Auburn has the best resumé in the country right now. Two terrific comeback wins over South Carolina and Clemson, an impressive shootout win over Arkansas, and the Mississippi State win on the road suddenly looks a lot more impressive. Cameron Newton has officially supplanted Denard Robinson as the most exciting player to watch in college football as well as the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy. Why the Ranking Should Be Lower: The defense has struggled immensely in pass defense and is ranked 63rd in the country in scoring defense which is an outright abomination at Auburn, especially considering the talent they have on defense this (and every) ...

I should be doing this shit for a living...this is what last week looked like for me... -The Good: Oh, lordy, where do I begin. WELL. I was pretty much the only one in the country that realized Virginia Tech is still significantly better than North Carolina State. I was also pretty much the only one in the country that knew Florida wouldn't even come close against Alabama (the trendy phrase on ESPN last weekend was "Florida will keep it closer than a lot of people might think"). I nailed my Upset of the Week, picking Michigan State over Wisconsin--pretty much the only one who picked that one too. I also picked Iowa and Oklahoma but those were easy. Plus I nailed the Tulane/Rutgers spread (Rutgers was favored by 17.5 and LOST). -The So-So: Pretty much the only thing that belongs in this category is the fact that I picked Oregon over Stanford but I only picked them to win by 3 points. Not great considering they won by 21...but sort of misleading considering Stanford...

How did we end up here? When did we, as a society, become more interested in being right than in being virtuous? When did dividing, differentiating, and categorizing everyone we meet become a priority? The easy answer would be roughly 2010 years ago but I don't think that's accurate. Civilization began creating division and the "Us v. Them" mentality long before that with ancient nations and empires. But I'm not concerned with history lessons about where the roots of these values were laid because the truth of the matter is that, no matter how long ago a tree was planted or how deep its roots lay, it's not necessary to pull up those roots to kill the tree--cutting it down will suffice. Self-righteousness seems to be among the core values of American society (and, certainly, it's a core value in many societies, if not all, but we live in America and nowhere is it more overt than here). Empathy and compassion always seem to take a back seat to "I...

Hobbitcore's Top 25 (based on equal consideration of teams' resumes and how good I think they actually are...also stole collegefootballnews.com's gimmick of "Why the Ranking Should Be Higher"/"Why the Ranking Should Be Lower") 1. Alabama Why the Ranking Should Be Lower: They did just blow away the Gators but they had a couple turnovers practically gift-wrapped. Still, it probably shouldn't. The secondary has grown up before our eyes after showing weakness against Ryan Mallett in the first half and they won't face another quarterback within a stone's throw of being that good the rest of the year unless Boise State gets the nod for the BCS title game. 2. Oregon Why the Ranking Should Be Higher: Granted, Autzen Stadium is hostility defined but this team took a 21-3 deficit against one of the best offenses in the country and parlayed it into a 52-31 dismantling. For those of your scoring at home, the Ducks outscored the Cardinal 49-10 in the...

Well, last week was kind of a mixed bag... The Good: -Picking Miami to blow Pitt away -Picking LSU to win close -Boise State pick -The Miami/Pitt, Purdue/Toledo, and UNC/Rutgers spreads The So-So: -Thinking Arkansas would be overmatched against Bama -Thinking Notre Dame would keep it close with Stanford The Bad: -Picking South Carolina over Auburn -The Houston/Tulane and Iowa/Ball State spreads We have a metric ton of really good games this week. I can't pick them all because there are just too many. But first, HEADLINES... -Of course you know I'm gonna start with Miami. Especially since I saw this coming a mile away. I saw this coming as soon as Utah beat Pitt (not because Utah beat Pitt but the way they did it) and I saw it coming after Miami lost to Ohio State. Pittsburgh just plain isn't very good. The defense has its soft spots but the offense is totally inept. Of course it helped that Miami has one of the smartest, most athletic defenses in the country. And yo...

-Can we officially shut the fuck up about Jake Locker now? I don't care if he was playing the Pittsburgh Steelers, 4-20 for 71 yards, a TD, and 2 INTs is unacceptable. If you take away a 45 yard TD strike to Jermaine Kearse, he was 3-19 for 26 yards and 2 INTs. He's got lots of talent and I'm sure he's a perfectly decent kid but the idea that Locker is the ultimate prospect in this year's NFL Draft is inexplicable. His Heisman campaign is obviously deader than dead at this point and I see no reason that he won't be the next Tim Couch. -Here's a random one: Kansas is down 31-10 to Southern Miss...they score a touchdown with 5:17 left in the game...and go for two?! Uh...what? Who did the math on that one? What possible scenario are they planning for? Are they planning cut the deficit to 13 instead of 14 in hopes that, in the event that they have to settle for two field goals at some point, they can still tie the game (with the addition of another touch...

When I was a senior in high school, I was already an avid attendee of what were purposefully referred to by myself and my peers as "local shows" (the idea, ostensibly, being to separate what we were doing from the overblown idea of the "rock concert"--which may be valid or may not be). Most of these shows I attended on my own and for the sole purpose of seeing live music that I enjoyed. However, something changed during my senior year. Little by little I started meeting more and more of an overwhelmingly wonderful group of friends (there were roughly 20 or 30 of them) who attended many of the same shows I was attending at the time. The quality and quantity of memories I made with these people cannot be overstated but those are different stories for another time. For the sake of this particular piece, there's only one of them who is really of importance. Let's call him Iggy. Iggy was one of my best friends in the group--for a time, he was unquestiona...

The first thing I'd like to say is that I can't even begin to express my gratitude for those who have felt so moved by what I've written in here (even if it's just the one entry) that they felt compelled to spread awareness of it through any channels available to them. This is undoubtedly my first experience with the opportunity to be writing to an audience which is both ridiculously exciting and mildly terrifying. The point is that due to the recent influx of readership and in light of the specificity of said readership, I will be doing two things: 1. I will be updating this blog once a week (every Monday) and 2. I will be attempting to at least loosely skew the content of the blog toward matters at least loosely related to Unitarian Universalism. It's the least I can do to gratify whatever audience I have been lucky enough to be gifted with and have gathered for me. So. Here's something I wrote down in a moleskine during today's service that I thought ...

Well, the dust has settled from "Monster Saturday"...let's review shall we... -I'll start, of course, with Miami. Firstly, Jacory Harris. This was supposed to be the year where he put it all together and stopped making stupid mistakes, becoming the quarterback that all Hurricanes fans had hoped and expected him to become. Now, Ohio State's defense deserves a lot of credit. Not every defense in the country would have converted some of these mistakes into turnovers and OSU's impeccably coached D is one of the best at it. However, with this game, the hope of Jacory becoming the QB we all thought he could be has taken a huge hit. It seems likely now that he will never fulfill his potential and while he deserves some of the blame, most of it rests squarely on the shoulders of Mark Whipple. For starters, Whipple is the Canes' QB coach and appears to have failed in that capacity. Making stupid mistakes is a red flag that signifies poor coaching. Not only...

OK...here's where the fun begins. Now we've all had a little taste of what to expect out of most of the teams in the country (well, sort of) and this week things start getting REAL interesting. First things first, storylines from last week: -I'll start with one of my favorite things to talk about: anything and everything negative about the Florida Gators. I make no secret of my hatred for the Gators. However, you could make the argument that this fact actually better qualifies me to comment on the state of affairs in The Swamp. Much in the same way that college football fans have a tendency to know the most about their favorite teams because they actively follow them, I know a lot about the Gators because I do, in fact, follow them, for the sole purpose of rooting against them and excessively scrutinizing them. However, while being a fan of a team often makes one biased in their favor--sometimes unrealistically--hating a team has the opposite effect of making you one ...