Marijuana Slows Science's Ability To Figure Out Marijuana

Scientists in New Zealand

So an international team* in New Zealand spent twenty years not playing rugby. I didn't know this was possible. Instead, they worked all that time to prove what Matt Foley told us in 1993: pot makes you stupid. Sure, the Kiwi's are far too kind to say it that way. But why hold back? Most stoners have already forgotten the point of the study, or the definition of "study." Not one of them knows where the fuck New Zealand is.

I'm not upset at these fine folks for telling me something I already knew, nor do I mind them being paid for it. Much of academia works the exact same way.

"This study took an amazing scientific effort. We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users."

What "amazing scientific effort" did it take? Have kid put square peg in square hole, bang out some multiplication tables, show horse at the beginning and the end and ask them to trace how the horse got there. Oh, make sure they don't think the horse is an alligator. Done. Did it take effort to make them sit still? Absolutely not. You can give them pudding or you can threaten them with torture. Obviously the pudding is more expensive but it's your call, moneybags. Then you wait a few years. No scientific effort there. You're just waiting. Yesterday I waited in line at Publix.

Things the cashier didn't say when I finally made it to checkout:

1. Afternoon, you fucking scientist you!
2. Did you put the squash in the bag all by yourself? AND waited in line? What effort!

LOOK AT ALL THE SCIENTISTS!

"Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today."

Of course they did! What else were they doing but being complete fuck ups, according to you? They'd have stuck with anything to get away from the can of Pringles and another showing of Lethal Weapon 4. What's weird to me is that the scientists did in fact take into account the use of alcohol and other drugs. But when charged with pinpointing the reason for a drop in IQ points:

"It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Fairly. They're fairly confident it wasn't the ecstasy or cocaine or heroine or fifths of tequila. After twenty years, enough time to make even my dumbass abandon some empty bullshit like "fairly," Egon Spengler and company took a bong rip and said, "meh, seems like it, right?"

"If you eat this I get published."

I haven't smoked pot in years. I did not quit in an effort to take some moral high ground or because I was worried about my health. Nope. I just got bored with it. Every time I got high I became quiet and paranoid and weird and that's terribly boring. Know what else I did in my much younger days? OTHER DRUGS. These days if I'm slow to answer a question or I'm stumped about a topic of discussion I'll often refer to myself as an idiot. My friends, because they're lovely people will say, "no you're not!"

"Not what?" I say, "Stop being weird."

Do I blame blunts? A little. Do I believe those raves I attended actually helped matters? No. LSD never helped anyone pass a test. Sadly, I live in Tallahassee, Florida and I will never receive a paycheck for any of this information. If I lived in New Zealand? Legend!


* Do they wear the Ukrainian Olympic outfits? Because that would be one snazzy team of scientists!

Donte Stallworth cut from the Patriots for being too tall.

Your 2012 Patriots

Not really. But it seems that way. Belichick likes his wide receivers to be small. Actually, he likes all of his skill players to be small. New England's backfield consists of Tom Brady and an endless stream of hobbits. Remember when Brady had Randy Moss and set a ton of records and lost only one game? Granted, it was the Super Bowl. But we've seen what Brady can do when given viable options. 

Sure, the Pats just gave Hernandez a contract extension, and he's a BEAST. They also still have Gronkowski, assuming he can stop funneling coeds long enough to run a post route. But these two are both tight ends. The receiving corps remains three Matt Lauer's and coal miner's kid who played left field for a traveling whiffle ball team in junior college. 

Look, I hate the Pats. I'd like nothing more than to see Brady treated like the fat fish at the beginning of The Shawshank Redemption. But one of my best friends is a die hard New England fan so I have to watch every game. I'd at least like to be entertained. But no. Belichick insists on employing an endless stream of tighty whitey's for sprint draws and 3-yard crossing patterns designed to suck happiness from my eyeballs. Poor Dante is the latest casualty. Too tall and too athletic and far too effective. Stretch the field? Maybe a deep ball? Not on Bill's watch!

FOOTBALLSTARTSINAWEEK

Roll Tide fools!

Inside Info

At 22 this was dope as a motherfucker.

I spent yesterday tearing through my apartment and throwing away what I no longer use/need. Sometimes it's obvious: I shouldn't have 27 shakers from different Alabama football games when I know damn well I'll attend 100 more. Sometimes it's a matter of memory: how can I throw away the hoodie an old roommate and sorority girl #3 got busy on? I mean, dude's dad bought me that hoodie. It's from Wisconsin, says so right on the front. Shows I've traveled! The insignia I mean, not the stain. There are always memories attached to our old threads or Darth Vader PEZ dispensers or white plastic brontosauruses, or busted seashells, or concert tickets, or souvenir shark fetuses, or EVERY FUCKING LIQUOR BOTTLE EVER!*

I feel like a lot of the stories that go along with these items are fairly universal. And often there's no "inside info" rendering one's value in their own memories any greater than someone else's. These things say something about where we've been or how we've lived or who we were/are. At the end of the day their value is a matter of opinion---I believe the story is funny or I still hold this experience as unbelievable or sweet Jesus's last pork chop the poor guy must've washed that hoodie sixteen times before finally bringing it back to you like a dog who knew the secret place where he'd just taken a shit and is now just waiting on you to find it. 

But ESPN subscribes to the cockbrained belief that opinion counts as inside info. At least once a day I click on a link by a writer no one has ever fucking heard of, or better yet, a talking head from a television show who has incredible difficulty with the English language and yet has now decided to write, and after one inane paragraph there's an ellipsis followed by an "IN-" tag. For a monthly payment I can read what Clarence Sportsdiddler thinks about a third-string tackle on the Raiders. THE FUCKING RAIDERS! People still write articles about the Raiders? NFL films doesn't even cover the Raiders. The Raiders are like the last time I saw Jennifer Anniston in a movie and thought, "Holy hell! Still with this one?" The Raiders are a cousin you thought was still in prison. But when you discover they're not in prison they don't even try to convince you've they've changed. Nope. They simply outline their next illegal scheme you know will fucking fail. 

Just this morning there's an article titled "2012 NFL Sleepers." For those of you not familiar to the listing of possible "sleepers" it works like this: find a space on the floor, position yourself in what those who have time for such activities refer to as "downward dog," and talk exclusively out of your fucking ass. There's no science to it. There's no research. You don't even have to watch, or to have ever watched, any football. You could literally look at a list of names and think, "shit, I once knew a cat named Jenkins. That's it! Fucking Jenkins, baby! That's my sleeper!"

What? I've always irrationally supported the Browns.**

Another article says, "2012 NFL Running Backs Ready For A Big Year." Has there ever in the history of sport been an athlete who worked all offseason readying themselves to be terrible? "I realize I have world class speed, traps like bike ramps, and triceps that look like the Black Stallion's goddamn horseshoes. But think, man! How awesome would it be if I just all of a sudden sucked? Like really sucked. What if I just took the ball and threw it backwards, or took a handoff, stuck it up my jersey, and ran to the sidelines to sing Private Dancer to the Special Teams coach?" Every player is ready for a big year, you choad nugget! You don't have any "inside" info! You got drunk last night at Applebee's and Lulu took her wooden leg off so she could fit in your Kia and give you a hickey the size of Texas. And in that time you thought, "Ronnie Brown! I loved him in the Outback Bowl! This is the year!" And when Lulu barfed on your copy of 50 Shades of Grey you saw it as a sign. Fuck you. 

You're not Oz. You have a press pass and saw Ryan Moates naked once. Mark Sanchez retweeted your girlfriend. That's it. That's all. I need you to interview people and give me stats. If I want intelligent analysis I'll go to Grantland and keep my fingers crossed that Simmons is on vacation. 

I hate ESPN, but it's the only game in town. And just like my sky blue Ekco sweater vest, it's time for them to ditch this "IN-" garbage. You're not in. You're just the only game in town. Enjoy your monopoly you selfish bastards. 




* Is this still a thing? Do kids still save bottles? Oh shit, do they still put candles in them because the wax looks cool when it dries over Jack Daniels? I never did this, mind you, ESPECIALLY while The Wall was playing.

** That? That's just Big Lick Dick. He's my 2012 sleeper.

Syllabus Day!

Putting my shit on lock. Ready yourselves, kids.

C. Thomas Howell told you Pussy Riot was coming

I've been reading an awful lot about the imprisonment of Pussy Riot lately.* It's all over my Facebook and Twitter feeds. "Russia is awful!" "Down with tyranny!" "The world should do something!" I imagine the first headline read something like, "Feminist Punk Band Arrested in Russia," and you thought, "Fuck was Bikini Kill reuniting in Russia for?" Probably just left your Whole Foods cart right in the middle of the aisle because the world matters to you THAT MUCH! 

It's awful that these brave women are being locked up for "hooliganism" (or as we call it: Saturday). But to all of those young Americans who ran home to grieve and post those first articles they saw: WE TOLD YOU SO! 

Did you think we were watching Rocky IV and Red Dawn for our health? No! We were watching those documentaries to prepare ourselves!** You think C. Thomas Howell was tagging Russian tanks with "Wolverines" just to keep his arm warm for Side Out? No! He was doing what Patrick "The Patriot" Swayze told him to do because AMERICA MOTHERFUCKERS! 

Russia is terrible. You thought it was all good because Tom Hanks worked for the Russian Fed Ex before he got stranded on that island. Well, Tom Hanks is loved by the Russians for some reason and I think we know why---Tom Hanks hates women.*** Yes, even gymnasts.  Here you've been mislead to believe that all Russians are tiny, manageable gymnasts. Not true! Not true at all! You ever been scissor-locked by an expert in the floor exercise, or pinned to the ground by Yuri, the beefy rings swinger? Me neither! But can you imagine? 

I hear stories all the time about people waking up from their falling dreams, or nightmares about demons, or about being chased by sharks, or being eaten by Meryl Streep.**** Well I have nightmares too, and they all involve Ivan Drago. He killed Apollo Creed! Does that mean nothing to you? Apollo Creed LOVED feminist punk rock! You think he wanted to come out to James Brown? Of course not. But the capitalist machine with its patriarchal gears made him do it and then his head wasn't in the game and HE DIED! Get your head in the game, youngsters. Russia is an evil place where this man lives, clubbing seals and playing ice polo on the backs of polar bears. It's terrifying! 

Wake up!




* I've read absolutely nothing substantial on the Pussy Riot situation except this. Which is really insightful and I think everyone should read. 

** Well, if they weren't documentaries they were based on true accounts. From someone. Probably deep in the woods of Michigan. 

*** Again, none of this can be substantiated by actual evidence. But don't act like you've never thought about it in these terms!

**** My dreams from the last four nights. 

Aged piece of leather found in Straits of Florida

Look out! The ancient ones need inspiring again! Cue Diana Nyad, an energetic old mutant determined to swim from Cuba to Florida. Nyad says she got the idea on a trip to Cuba from her home in Florida in the 1950's when she was 8 years old. So she's a Corleone? Apparently she's tried the swim three times before, but was forced to abandon the trek due to jellyfish or currents or waves. I mean, THE OCEAN, amiright? "There's no stopping her now,' the crew said on her blog." And how! You know Gram. Once she's set on Piccadilly no other soft serve cube steak will do!

Nyad isn't using a shark cage to deter the animals who live and feed there. Of course not! That would be too humane! She's giving them the appearance of all-clear. Then if they get too close, WHAM, a forcefield of electricity blasts them from snout to tail fin. Imagine you're sitting at the dinner table, completely famished, when a platter of chicken alfredo floats by. You go to grab it, because it's your fucking dinner table and all, then WHAM, you're shot backwards into the ceramic orca figurines your granddaughter brought back from Sea World. Here you are in the floor surrounded by sheetrock and busted orca fins; starved and traumatized.

Now you know how every shark in the Florida strait feels this morning. Did this have to happen? Listen, both of my own grandmothers have passed on. Were they still around and dreaming up asinine aquatic activities like, I don't know, swimming from Cuba to the Golden Girls house, I'd take them to a swimming pool: One friend stands on the edge of the deep end dressed like Castro. I stand on the steps of the shallows in a Tommy Bahama shirt shucking oysters and making "Tha U" with my fingers, while one of my girlfriend's booty claps beside me. FLORIDA! And I'd cheer them on, "C'mon, grandma! Almost here!" Shit man, they could make the trip 5 or 6 times. How inspiring!

What about historical awareness? Think of the numbers that made this exact same voyage. Not to impress fellow Matlock fans, but for political asylum.

What if someone else wants to make the swim? Now they're behind Nyad, who'll probably come to a dead stop where she's not supposed to because she could SWEAR Florida used to be RIGHT HERE! Can she even see over the waves?

Am I on the sandbar? 

From the Godmother herself: "When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late, I can still live my dreams.'"

No. NO NO NO NO NO! What novel are you going to write, Ethel? "Everyone has a novel in them." No they do not. Everyone has friends who bullshit them because they love them and want them to stop staying in their house every day watching Donahue episodes on VHS. Take a walk. Start a dodgeball league at the home. Try a sit-up. See a movie. Call your kid. Don't write about that time your poodle almost choked on a butter bean and it made you feel just like Elizabeth Taylor.

What fucking farm in Africa? Do you mean Africa? As in, "I heard shit was bad in Africa. Someone should help them out"? Slow your roll, Lennie Small. You can't just go barreling onto farms because a bug bit your wrinkled ass. Hell, the immunizations would probably kill you. Why won't you just drive through Oklahoma and call it a day? Fucking farms everywhere in Oklahoma! Africa? Shit on a biscuit. If that Columbo marathon doesn't start soon we're gonna lose Grandpa.

Adopt a child, she says. Nyad's 67. Let me tell you something, Miss Daisy, I'm adopted. I feel incredibly lucky to have the most loving parents imaginable. Talk to them everyday. We're thick as thieves. Know what they didn't do? Wait til they were dining with death to adopt a kid. You know how little chance you have of even seeing them graduate high school? Plus, the mind deteriorates as one ages. Old folks do weird things, like try to swim from Cuba to Florida. You want your kid to have mom or dad sane for about 10/15 years? What then? What a self-serving fucking idea this is. "Know what's better than bridge, Frank? A fucking toddler. After all, we eat the same food!"

I love an inspirational story, but this is useless. Indeed, the human body can take a lot, even as it ages. Noted. I might even be inspired if you did it without protection. But you're doing it with a full crew, an electric fence around you, and for a FOURTH TIME. Is that the inspirational part? That you can try as many times as you want provided you don't have other shit to do? Well good luck, Aquawoman, I've other shit to do.

Starving

Slow news day. And it's Saturday. And since it's so close to football season, I just can't be angry. But I can be hawngry.

Florida Update: Still Scary

So this exists: 

no cameras, dude

And it exists because this exist: 

Where there are not only prehistoric looking bugs that attack you, but also outdoor activities: 

I realize I'm from Alabama, but sweet Sam Elliott's eyebrows, Florida, you're terrifying. I can deal with your leathery locals and your awful public education and your absolute refusal to see a meat and three as a profitable lunch option (fucking idiots) and your 80's sports teams relevance and their still tacky uniforms. I really love your beaches, and Miami Vice, and the adorable claim that you're "diff'rent from you other southerners." 

But you are not safe, my friend. Not by a long shot. Wolf spiders and black widows and recluses and gators and snakes that are native and other snakes that you bought at an exotic pet store then released into the wild and now they're all breeding and making SUPER ULTRA MEGA MEGA SNAKES! Not to mention hurricanes and tornados and thunderstorms that often feel like hurricanes and tornados and now this bug. 

THIS BUG THAT CHASED ME INSIDE WITH ITS MANDIBLES OF RAGE.  

NBC is getting its Costas all over America

Remember NBC? It's where we were all really American for a couple of weeks during the Olympics. You were there. I saw you at the bar and you said, "Who's winning?" And since I couldn't have comprehended the rules if NASA was sitting at my fucking table I told you I didn't know. Par for the course (golf reference! NBC LOVES GOLF!), considering Americans don't know a whole hell of a lot. 

But we know one thing: NBC was once relevant and awesome and must see t.v.: Cosby, Cheers, Night Court, 227, Miami Vice, A Different World, Family Ties, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues, and E.R., at least until Clooney bounced. Even with all of these gems NBC's greatest accomplishment was that iconic slice of Americana---Saturday Night's Main Event. 

It was the 80's, and a couple years in the 90's, and it was wrasslin', and it was cage matches and scaffold matches, and open steroid use, and outrageous managers, and Koko B. Ware, and Fuck. The. World. It was the best. Total spectacle. 

Saturday Night's Main Event didn't happen every Saturday. Sometimes it was once a month. Sometimes three months would pass until another aired. Once, there were two in one month and I thought my 10 year old brain would explode into Capri Sun pouches and dirty playing cards. A glorious time, truly. 

Twenty years and a treasure trove of bad decisions later (Notre Dame football, anyone?) NBC is peddling a new sports network. They're calling it NBCSN. The SN stands for ShitNoodle. Just kidding. It's SailorNookie. What will NBCSN give us? How about Major League Soccer? Intrigued? Well hold on to your binky! They'll also cover motor racing*, cycling, boxing**, horse racing***, and hunting and fishing****. Still not blown away? There's also a sports talk show hosted by Bob Costas! Get the towel, Betty! I seem to have  made a mess!

The one good part of NBCSN is their coverage of the NHL, which thanks to my friends from the Northeast, I've grown to love. Hockey is badass. Don't worry, loyal NBC viewers, they're still covering Notre Dame football. Only now their couching it in the phrase "college football." IT'S NOT. It's Notre Dame playing the Service Academies where all the players on both squads weigh 95 lbs and then they'll play USC and ten people will show up because their kids play for Notre Dame or USC and USC will monkey-stomp the living shit out of Touchdown Jesus and NBC's announcers will say, "This USC team is FOR REAL!" No, they're not. They just beat the dormitory from Cider House Rules. Fuck you, Notre Dame. 

I'm all for someone challenging ESPN. But not Costas and the Private School Peonies. In fact, hockey deserves better. I'm looking at you, CBS. Could there be a tougher network than the one responsible for SEC football and the NHL? You couldn't even watch commercials on that channel without getting two black eyes. Make it happen. Don't get Costas all over the ice. PLEASE. 

*Motor racing? Motors on what? Motorcycles? Motorized Costas dolls? 

**Just stop with boxing. Suspend it until it's cleaned up. Did you watch the Olympics? Boxing is dirtier than a Raiders fan at HOOTERS. 

***Maybe the Prince and Princess will show up, just like the Olympics! Then we can talk about what designer she's wearing! Then Ralph Lauren will ride in with a broadsword and behead children of the lower classes!

****Unless you're hunting Costas and using meat from his torso as shark bait NO ONE WILL CARE. 

Nice Work, Australia

Warning Label

I'm a smoker. Not proud of it. Not ashamed of it, either. I just am. Like people are L.A.R.P.ers or listen to Katy Perry or love the Cowboys. 

Just like those people I'd really like to quit. Smoking. I have tried to quit a time or six. Usually my smoking is replaced with something--I exercise more, or try to write something each time I get the urge to light up, or I picture someone from Arkansas. So far nothing has worked. But this might. It's called "plain-packaging," and it's a graphic warning of tobacco's long-term effects. Turns out when Australians aren't using other Australians to chum the water for great white sharks, they're passing cool legislation. Who knew? 

Granted, I wasn't turned on to cigarettes because of any label or magazine ad or television commercial or movie star. Nope. I was at the bottom of a Wild Irish Rose bottle in high school and thought, "nothing can be worse than this." Of course I was wrong. But I liked the taste of a cigarette, the ritual of it. At no time did I see a pack of cigarettes and say, "those look harmless" or "what gorgeous packaging!" 

Don't think I mean to defend Big Tobacco. Tobacco companies and their supporters are full of shit. "It'll mean more non-plain packaged smokes on the black market," they say, "more children will be smoking!" Horsedicks. If they could drop a CAMEL down every pregnant woman's throat just to get that fetal demographic they'd do it. I'd be much happier if cigarettes just didn't exist. Same goes for cockroaches, Tim Burton, country clubs, Miller 64, True Blood, and the Dallas Cowboys. 

Another badass Australian thing.

Do I want to see a suffering infant on my pack of Ultra Lights? Of course not. I don't want to see a car crinkled to an unrecognizable heap on my bourbon label either. But them's the facts, right? That's why I think this kind of legislation would work. FOR EVERYTHING. 

1. NFL---Instead of the shield, lay the letters on a backdrop of brain scans revealing multiple concussions.

2. Junk food---Don't give me a smooth talking cheetah in sunglasses. How about 80's Roseanne Barr?

3. Ralph Lauren---Mitt Romney*

4. Gun shops---Just a digital sign with an up to the minute death tally. 

5. Australian flag---Dude jumping into a shark's mouth.

Not that all of these would work. I would still watch NFL football. And truth be told, you'd have a better chance getting me to quit if you cover a pack of cigarettes in an Auburn University logo. Don't worry about Australia. There isn't enough money on the planet to get me there. 

"In a report last year, the CDC found in a 14-nation study that graphic health warnings on cigarette packages have led a 'substantial' number of smokers to consider quitting."

Good enough for me, world! Imagine what we could do with guns, or vodka, or Tony Romo! 


* I realize Ralph Lauren isn't technically bad for you. But c'mon.

Gone With The Windbag

So good to be back!

Great Gabe Kaplan's mustache, that was a long hiatus! I finally saw Seattle, attended Iron Maiden Day, wrote two papers and an annotated bibliography, taught six weeks of freshman comp., finished coursework, and turned 35.

What did I not do? Let's see...

For starters, I didn't shoot a water moccasin and hang it up in a tree to make it rain. I don't "believe snakes hold mystical powers" or that "they will charm you if you look into their eyes." Why? Because this isn't Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and I haven't been smoking PCP behind the Arby's.

Maybe it's because mom never fed me Coca Cola from a baby bottle. But apparently that was someone's experience, and his name is Rick Bragg, and he authored this drivel. And since I'm from the South (Tuscaloosa, AL, stand up!), and since I love college football, I suppose I'm implicated in the universal "We" Mr. Bragg insists on using.

Well fuck you very much.

See, it's this type of tired, fetishized bullshit that forces me to listen to the same southern jokes at the same lame ass academic parties I attend on occasion.

"You're from Alabama? 'Y'all', amiright?"

Rick Bragg

Sure, ass-hat, you're right. I have a master's degree and just finished coursework in a PhD program because I ran around hanging snakes and chanting "y'all" with my voodoo beads wrapped around a white-tale deer dick passed down from my daddy. If you're not careful I'll turn your Volvo into a stock car! Why? On fucking instinct, brother! Can't help myself. Hellfire man, all I have to do is hear the word CAR and I start jonesin' for Daytona so hard my left eye shuts and I piss myself.

Bragg's stories have already been told a thousand times. Old southern men talking about the good ol' days of SEC football? Check. Old southern white men still upset about the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War? A big ol' racist check. College football fandom, the most cliched side of it, made to define an entire region? Well, face palm, and then check.

"The point is, we talk real slow down here, so it may take a while to get to it, that we believe some things regardless of science and sometimes common sense."

You mean dipshits? You're talking about dipshits. They have those everywhere. I've been a dipshit before. One of my best friends thought it was "bold faced liar." See? Dipshit. He's from Boston.

You say Nick Saban smiling after his second national title in three years "scared" you, "as if Billy Graham had done a handstand."

Congratulations. You've squeezed halfwit ritual, catfish, and Billy Graham into an article about the South. It's a wonder ESPN didn't just have you recite it from bourbon-soaked memory under a swamp cypress with a straw hat on and a grass blade between your teeth. Oh wait! Fuck me, you even mention hay and cotton!

"Those young men drew on a long history of not being afraid, of the hottest days or endless rows of cotton or a million bales of hay." So the football team was made up of a bunch of farmers who dropped their pitchforks and picked up helmets? You're confusing myths.

"In the winter of 1993, in an attic apartment in Cambridge, Mass., I watched Alabama beat the trash-talkin' Hurricanes--I mean beat them like they stole somethin'."

What Bragg saw in the 1993 Sugar Bowl.

Why is "stole somethin'" in italics? You already dropped the "g" from "talking." Why attribute "stole somethin'" to some southern ghost? THAT was too much? And why attribute all this old shit to me? To some "We" you presume to speak for?

I watched the same game in 1993 sitting on the floor of my family's living room. Lots of southerners were there. No one had a snake or fed their baby Coke or played the banjo or sang about God and cotton. My grandmother was there, too. "It makes a difference," she said, because she always said that. It worked as a non-sequitur, a post-script, a preface. Regardless, it was always the crux of her message.

And that's my message to you. It makes a difference.

My "we" wants to find the positive aspects of our home, not be a cliche. We want to be different from the people who give it a hayseed name, not that hick gleefully reflecting on a time when the team consisted of whites only because they were the only ones allowed to play. We revel in rivalry Saturdays. It's the end of the week and we drink before noon and we believe in the restorative power of hate. But we are far more than an ESPN 30 for 30 that gives carte blanche to six kooks from Jasper for an hour and calls it a day.

We are not the same, you and I.

What you've done, Gump, is disregard southern football fans who weren't born from a bag of pork rinds or don't dislike a team just because they're north of the Mason-Dixon (we despise ALL opponents) or don't adhere to the belief that "God prefers our teams." We love college football. We grew up with it, or graduated from there, or moved there and thought it was strange at first but now we love it. Do we follow it religiously? Sure. Shit. That term always gets thrown around when describing the southern football fan. Never Bowie fans or squash players or vegans. "My, you follow that carrot juice religiously! You're CRAZY!"

No. Because of rubes like Bragg every Saturday is a Sunday and every football stadium down south is a fucking church and that's not rib sauce on my fingers it's Jesus syrup! Well okay, Bubba, I follow it religiously.

Know what else people follow religiously? Religion. I'll let you decide which is more logical. Scientifically speaking, of course.