Flotsam, Jetsam and a Lack of Focus

POLS 325 started a couple of weeks ago and, like any new course, is taking over my workaday life. My blogging focus is absolutely shot and the blog is going to hell. My apologies to my seven readers a day. You deserve more loyalty. So this is the whirlwind of blurry events and the emotions that accompanied them.

Iraq vets return homeless

According to the Associated Press we now have homeless vets for this war. That dickless bastard Bush is all game for venerating the masculinity of military men when it means he gets to dress up, land on an aircraft carrier and proclaim “Mission accomplished” as if he personally risked his life to invade Iraq. But the poor bastards who have to fight this war are coming back from multiple tours with PTSD, missing limbs and now, are winding up homeless. Yes, I understand that the problem of homeless veterans antedates the administration of Bush the Younger. But the cold reality of this war is that we do not have anything near the troop level to create a stable state in Iraq. Without more men, I just can’t see us creating a stable state in Iraq. I don’t imagine Bush’s courage for strutting on aircraft carriers will extend to instituting a draft.

The blood of our military is being spilled on a foreign adventure on which we should not have embarked and that we do not have the commitment to win. After Vietnam, I thought we’d learned our lesson about engaging in futile adventures for the gratification of ideologues and corporations. But those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it and we are a people who dislike history. My prediction is that, as was the case in Vietnam, several administrations will change without a change in policy and we will wind up pulling out without achieving our objective. How sad to see that we have learned absolutely nothing and that the soldiers whose lives are risked in this adventure can look forward to homelessness as well as losing life and limb.

Stevie Y retired

Steve Yzerman, beloved captain of the Detroit Red Wings, retired last week. It’s the end of an era. He represented everything that makes hockey a great sport. Two decades ago, when Steve Yzerman started playing, the Wings were a joke. Now they’re a dynasty. Yzerman provided the strongest type of leadership: peerless example. There are all sorts of trophies I could mention and stats I could site. But I think the one that matters the most is that he holds the team’s record for assists (1,063), the seventh highest in league history. Yzerman put the team before everything else and the Detroit Red Wings became a great team because of it. We will never see his like again.

As of earlier this year, I can now claim a single degree of separation from Stevie Y as Dinur got to meet him:

Pundits disagree on the Packers future karma

Cliff Christl says the Pack is going to suck. He could care less about the state of our offensive line and is hung up on whether Ahman Green will be any good, because Najeh Davenport and Samkon Gado apparently have no potential. What I love about Christl is that he admits that he doesn’t even really like pro-football and only watches it because he’s paid to. I prefer the cautiously optimistic analysis of PackerReport.com’s Tyler Dunne, who basically says that the big question mark is the offensive line and, if it gets together, Green, Davenport and Gado could make for a formidable running game. Granted, my intelligence strategy is sadly much the same as that of the Bush administration: I believe only the analysts who agree with my position. But I have never claimed any particular rationality in the realm of sports fandom. Fuck Cliff Christl. GO PACK!!!!

Kirk and I have been trading football related e-mails

Shocking news, eh? What with the start of football season and all (by the by, if any of my buddies are reading this and would like in on our fantasy football league, let me know. Dinur has already joined). Kirk recently sent me an e-mail with an article from his favorite fantasy football site, the coldhardfootballfacts.com, detailing the sex habits of bachelor NFL QBs. Back when I thought I was straight, I thought that Joe Namath was the ideal quarterback personality, both on and off the field. It is said that on his deathbed, Vince Lombardi called out in a fevered nightmare, “You aren’t bigger than football Joe Namath!”

Well, I’m queer now, so my ideal of a football playing stud has changed somewhat, so I wrote back a completely gratuitous letter completely charged with queer innuendo. Kirk is the only straight boy I know who can take this humor. Sadly, most other queers don’t like football, so the whole Vikings angle is lost on them.

Dear Kirk,

I need to start plugging and chugging stats. I'm never going to be worthy competition while I have no decent analysis of the total football situation.

My view of football players has changed somewhat over the past few years. I still like Joe Namath's attitude toward sex and drugs, but he's way too interested in chicks for my taste. I definitely think we need more hardcore queer players. Unlike the straight chumps we see now (the Minnesota Vikings come to mind) queers know how to stage-manage an orgy. You don't read about queers sexually assaulting the attendants at a bathhouse and, indeed, the attendants at a bathhouse don't get shocked when guys whip it out and get to work. When queers want to have an orgy on a boat (we call them "gay cruises") the attendants are well paid, know what to expect and don't complain. Indeed, because we are used to having orgies, we don't go wild and rape Gopher the Yeoman-Purser on the shuffleboard deck. After all, there are PLENTY of other guys who'd like to be fucked on the shuffleboard deck, many of them who'd love to playact being raped, if that's what you're into. Plus, on a gay cruise, there's always plenty of liquor and great food for between fucks because QUEERS PLAN.

The Vikings, apparently, don't even have the good sense to tip off the boat's owners and staff as to what they want to do on the boat. I mean, with that sort of stage management, is it any wonder that they all got fined? It's a miracle that they managed to beat us twice last year. I might be okay with it if the Packers were having great locker room sex (and sent me a video, or better, hired me to be their full-service towel boy). But the only thing that sucks about the Packers is their uptight obsession with family values.

And, of course, last year's offensive line. That sucked too, and not in that fun queer sorta way.

Your pal,

Talal

Other news

My buddy Fares from back at Georgetown flies in this week. I’m really pumped. I haven’t seen him since Christmas of ’97!