Your NFL picks

In honor of the upcoming NFL conference championships, let's do a little poll. Let's also pretend blog polls have instant runoff voting--so each person should vote for first and second choices.

To aid in your decision-making, here are some pics courtesy of various people on the world wide web:

Brady


Culpepper


Favre


Jackson


E Manning


P Manning


Romo

Thanks to the budget ladies, particularly the dancer and the Packer fan, for launching a lengthy conversation on this topic today.

Shout out: to these people

(credit to BHR for finding this little gem)

Research

I'm officially undecided, and it's fast becoming time to decide. It pretty much boils down to this versus this. Within the context of things like this and this. Either one who says things like this, or one who says things like this. Which is a link-filled way of saying that research has gotten me nowhere.

I sucked at geometry

Please bear with me. I'm going to draw a parallel where there really is none.

While driving home from work listening to pre-NH poll closing babble on how Iowa was a referendum on change vs. experience, it occurred to me that Hillary Rodham Clinton must feel like she just can't win. Dreamy Bill asked her to fix health care within months of his election, which she tried pretty valiantly to do, but then she got yanked for not having enough Washington experience to do it right. So she went out and got a bunch of Washington experience, and then got yanked in Iowa for it.

While trying not to hit the big scary post in the garage listening to a Writers Guild guy walk the line between calling Jon Stewart a scab and sticking it to Big Media, it occurred to me that the very thing writers are striking about--the proliferation of TV content on DVD and the internet (for which they apparently don't get paid directly)--is what is preventing a popular backlash against the media corporations. So TV stations aren't airing new shows? Well, I'll just pop in the Gilmore Girls first season and fire up My So-Called Life reruns on ABC.com. Problem solved, strike be damned.

That was the parallel. Careful, if you blink you miss it.

Yes, this is me.

I have finally recovered from graduate school...

...and started reading for pleasure again. It took me a good, solid year after graduation to not feel like vomiting when I picked up a book.

To celebrate I jumped on the bandwagon that is Shelfari. I am trying to recall books that caught my attention at various points in my life, and add descriptions of why they did so. Oh, and I haven't worked out the whole making book-nerd friends part yet, so bear with me on that.

Les anes et les elephants

Most pre-, mid-, and post-election commentary is crap. Not that I know any better, but I don't get paid to sit around and think about elections all day.

In contrast to all the crap, I found this commentary by David Brooks to be a very plausible and well-reasoned discussion of the Iowa results. (This is the NYT version; I read the Strib reprint which for no apparent reason has a different title.)

Because you gave me such crap...

...about my poor blogging performance (you know who you are), I'm going to post 3 times today. So there.

This post is about my soccer team. We didn't lose our first game!

Go Tigers!