I’m also a Brett Favre fan.

I recently got into a highly opinionated discussion about how I feel about Favre’s shenaningans in the past few weeks. After being chastized for my seeming lack of loyalty to a man who has led my team (yes, I own a piece) for the past 15+ years, here is how I laid it out:

What Favre is guilty of has nothing to do with money.

What Favre is guilty of is narcissism and a lack of understanding of the realities of the NFL.

He has has the luxury of being a good enough player that he hasn’t had to confront the ugly reality of the do-or-die-or-you’re-done mentality that 99.9% of the rank and file of the NFL understand. You either step up and contribute or you don’t, and you’re done.

He doesn’t understand the ramifications of his past decisions. He doesn’t understand that at some point, when you say you’re done, we have to believe you.

Brett Favre isn’t the Green Bay Packers.

He is the anchor of a beautiful era of the team; a beautiful era of the NFL. It will NEVER EVER be repeated. Mark my words…. in our lifetimes, no one will touch the most-starts record. Others will fall, but the iron man that he is/was will never be repeated.

However, he is not the Green Bay Packers. Others are now, and want to continue to show respect and fight for a legacy, to win in the name of a silly green and gold G, but to do so nonetheless.

He is not respecting that, and in so doing is tarnishing what could have been an epic legacy.

That man could literally have walked into downtown Green Bay (or Madison or Milwaukee or a hundred other cities in Wisconsin) and charged $100 for people to hold out their hands and accept his shit. Seriously, no doubt this is true.

Instead, he chose to badmouth the team he was so intertwined with in public.

I love the guy and he will always be a part of a beautiful legacy.

But this was not done in a good way.

At this point, let him play for whoever. Fucking Vikings, whatever. It’s his history he’s choosing.

On the flip side, I can imagine what it must be like to be completely, totally devoted to the idea of playing football and suddenly coming face to face with being a spectator, and watching John Madden ramble on about sweat stains while he sits and watches instead of playing. The man was born and bred to play the game; let him play until his bones are dust.

I’ll fucking root for him, even if he’s a Viking, a Bear, or a Lion. Maybe a Cowboy. But as soon as he is playing against the Green Bay Packers, I’ll be rooting for them to sack his old man ass.

Edit: Jets it is!

Highlights of 2007, his last as a Packer.

I certainly never signed up for any RNC email lists, especially not on this account. This is the only politician from whom I’ve ever received spam.

John McCain: Reform - Prosperity - Peace - V1AG4A - Enlarge your Penis!

Eat a bag of dicks, John.

I’m not a musical fan, nor really a big fan of Joss Whedon (mostly liked Firefly, never liked Buffy), but this is genius.

Their site is actually down today - Act One (of Three) came out and their streaming server checked out due to load, but it is available through iTunes now, and I don’t regret ponying up the $4 for a season pass to all  (the first is 13:48 long).

When their site is back, it’s apparently available there to stream for free.

There is already a fan site with all sorts of information.

Some of these poor sods have been holed up there for more than six years. And while I’m certain that some of them are evil motherfuckers, I think we all know that there are very, very likely some that were probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer." - William Blackstone

BBC News:

Foreign suspects held in Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

It overturned by five to four a ruling that upheld a 2006 law that took away the rights of suspects to seek full judicial review of their detention.

So in a world in which justice and peace seem farther and farther removed from us in the United States of GeorgeBushIca, it’s nice to see a little light of hope shine through. All is not (yet) lost.

* god in the poetic sense, not the God of intervention as told in the Bible, Torah, and Koran… because only the former actually exists.

I see the foot of a frog, but the ultrasound tech and doctor’s Rorschach Tests say that there is, in fact, a penis amongst the blurry blobs.

At any rate, they’ve convinced us that we’re having a boy!

More pics of our blob

I’ve said for years that I would buy a PS3 or Xbox360 based on which played GTA:IV best. I went PS3 in a close heat (I already have a PSP, so I figured any coolness from pairing them would be icing on the cake… and I’ve always liked the Playstation controller form factor.)

So I’m sitting here trying to load my save for my second session of playtime ever… and it’s sitting there "LOADING - JAMAICAN HEAT". No HD access, just sitting there. If I quit, it crashes the PS3. Loading again gets me to the same place. Tried nuking my most recent save data. No joy. I guess the next step is to whack all the rest of my GTA data.

This is the second bug I’ve run into. This is worse, as the first time, I just couldn’t get a lapdance from a stripper who all of a sudden froze and went totally catatonic. Weird.

So far, not impressed, Rockstar.

Oh yeah, and no skippable intros on loading? Fuck you, Rockstar. [Edit - this is not the case. The intro screens do seem to be mandatory, bit it’s loading up the game while they show - I can now see HD activity. Previously running into the hang bug, there was no HD activity, so I assumed it was an unskippable intro instead of a loading screen]

Next Day:

Once I deleted all save game data, I was back…. however, when I loaded again, it fails again. The fix, I found too late, it to unplug ethernet. It seems this is a mutiplayer issue - probably the GTA servers are overloaded. Grr.

They took out side/rear look with the trigger buttons. Now you have to use L3 to look behind, and the right analog stick in general to look around. You can hit O to go into "cinema mode" and then when you release it, the view is centered forward. Being able to quickly center the view is important, but really L3 for rear look is a big annoyance. You have to either take your thumb off the wheel, or the brake/gas, in order to look behind. Grr.

It doesn’t look that great on my old school standard def rear projector TV, as well… so until I get HDTV (not bloody likely any time soon), the graphics really aren’t that much better than I recall in San Andreas.

So far, is it good? Yes. Still wonderful to have a world of GTA in front of me. It is much more realistic than any before.

I realized how different it was the first time I ran headlong into a guard rail at top speed. The car crunched to a stop as my body sailed clear through the windshield. Fucking cool.

After a Weekend:

All complaining aside, it’s really, really good.

GPS is nice - click a waypoint on the map and you’re directed there via a route on your minimap. If you’re in a high-end car, you’re like to hear "Turn left in… 100 yards… BING".

They did a good job modeling the strippers in action at the club.

The weapons system is improved. Hit L2 to duck into cover, then you can target enemies and pop out to shoot when they’re exposed.

The realism of the cars is much improved.

It’s quite clearly the best GTA ever made. The few flaws are more than made up for by the overwhelming goodness.

Susanna is due in October! We just had our 12 week ultrasound this morning; all looks good.

We were surprised at how much the little bugger looks human now, and how he was moving around quite a bit (his movements reminded us of Elaine’s spastic dancing).

Here are our pics of the little guy (Suz is convinced it’s a boy).

Yay! =) =) =)

Josh, the bartender, is always one of the favorites to win, but I understand he was unseated last year by one of the regulars, "Big". Alas (for Big), his entrant, the only one to ever do a sub 2 second run, didn’t hold up this year, and Josh regained his crown.

The final was between Josh’s two tread sander and one from his brother… I think. I didn’t get all the details, and was involved in too much drinking for a Sunday afternoon for all of the details to be clear.

I did shoot a little video.

Last season, Melinda, a professional backup singer before Idol, was the picture of consistency. Every night she belted out a perfect song, and I personally think she should have won. However, every night you’d usually see someone else put on a performance that was an equal or near equal of hers… but the person who did so was different every night.

This year, we’ve seen the same thing from David Archuleta, a cute, humble little kid who just oozes natural charisma. Every song I’ve seen him perform has been astoundingly good… and in most cases, better than the original version. However, in contrast to last season, this guy’s got no real competition. No one else is coming close. He’s been the clear best on every night.

Here’s his latest performance of John Lennon’s Imagine. I don’t like the fact that he didn’t sing the first couple of verses, and instead started on the "no possessions" third verse instead of the "no heaven/hell" first verse and "no countries/religion" second verse.

However, it’s a great tactical move - no need to piss off the religious folks out there.

And he sang it beautifully.

One of the hosts here, Matt Dillahunty, calmly and reasonably has a long discussion with a caller who is trying to make the point that atheism is a state of faith. He really clearly lays it all out… the difference between belief and knowledge, the different "types" of atheism.

And the call also engages in reasoned discourse. Both are polite… until the very end when the theist caller gets a little frustrated.