one march post, or, it's raining again.

At points in my life I've felt like I've said everything I ever needed to say.  Nothing is worse for a writer than forcing out ideas or phrases that seem to be contrived or regurgitations of things one has heard or, abysmally, said.

  

This is a block.

I'm going to, at least directly, leave society alone on this one.

Instead, I will discuss our potential (possible) status as divine creatures.

I have been reminded in recent days that science is the devil.  As much as I find this idea ridiculous, and thus appealing, I have a hard time offering it any sort of treatment.  I'll do it anyway.

Way before there were scientists, there were mathematicians, attempting to put a universal abstract logical language to the workings of the physical world.  This toil was largely without a rigorous method of practical testing and derived more credibility from the intuitive and internal sense it made rather than what it could accomplish.  It was lifting theoretical loads, not actual ones. (this reminds me of the South Park episode where the boys create a homoerotic video featuring Butters and earn 10 million theoretical dollars for the people of Canada.)

Of course, this is not strictly true.  Geometry has been essential to construction for centuries and thus achieved practical relevance.  Clearly (?) the Egyptians used mathematics to do what they did in terms of building monuments of living death for their human gods.  I point to the late 18th and early 19th century in Western Europe as a time where math led to discoveries about the elements that make up our environment and to mechanical achievements that set off an industrial revolution which is finally catching up with us in terms of consequences.

If I don't try to get back on topic now, I never will.

Our understanding of the universe is pitiful.  We can explain and name the details of the things that are currently happening but we can't answer any fundamental questions.  In terms of knowing the history of an action, we can only scrape the most recent surface.  Origins elude us.  Deductive reasoning is an achievement that we give great respect to because so rarely do we accomplish it in a grand or meaningful way.  

I can think of one time, one individual who did it well, and his piece of reasoning provides the most powerful challenge to our conceit that we are divine and special and above all else earthly and natural.

Charles Darwin provided a completely reasonable explanation for how human beings could have come about, starting from a simple life form, after a whole lot of time.  This is why many have cursed his name and many others have praised it.  He spent his last years with his family breeding pigeons and isolating himself from the scientific community.  It must have taken some kind of guts to release his theory knowing what it would do to all who read it.

Are our genes really the most significant part of us, or even, more significant than us as whole organisms or a society of organisms?  Are they the entirety of what drives us to do the things that we do?  

The question that has been posed strongly in the past is: does the end justify the means?  I think a better way to phrase that question is, are the means required to achieve an end more significant than the end?  It has been postulated that the journey is more significant than either its origin or its final destination.  This is appealing to me and might pose an answer to my new question.

Last night, I saw a concert at an art installation exploring the war in Iraq.  It was, I would say, a rock band consisting of a drummer, a cello player, and a guitar player/vocalist who was a young Iraqi woman.  She was beautiful, as were her words, which were inspired by Persian poetry of all stripes.  This poetry was rooted in the earth - the most visceral experiences of being alive.  Intoxication:  both on drugs and on love for others.  A celebration of the phenomenon of waking up every day and celebrating the rhythms that are instilled in our perceptions.  The constant rising and setting of the sun.  The beating of the heart.  Finally the transiency of each of us and the possibility that we are not finished when our current consciousness closes.  Love as a binding force that is more mysterious than any other and whose implications will be understood only after we understand all that our five senses detect.

A friend of mine from the past nicknamed me "Mr. Science" because of my constant preoccupation with facts and logic and my skepticism, or even contempt, for things apparently inexplicable or imperceptible at the time.  This contempt and skepticism no longer seems to me appropriate.

Non-human animals can communicate.  But it seems as though their communications are all related to the collection of food, warnings of predators, or mating.  I suppose this is a way of sharing perceptions and consciousness but I think it is different and less complex than our own.  We ask each other questions, not related to these immediate and important concerns, but purely for the purpose of sharing experiences.  I think there is a desire to connect that is entirely divorced from the compulsion to mate or survive.  This is close to godliness.

I can't think anymore.  I have worn myself out.  However, I feel that I have achieved my continual goal of digging deeper into our shared experience and forcing myself to think about things that make me uncomfortable.  

To ensure that I post again soon, in an attempt to justify my claim, I put forward the idea that the most important innovation human beings have ever achieved is the question.

complex

Meeting others' expectations.

Everyone has a desire to express their own feelings, to behave as they feel moved to, to make their own decisions.  This, I suppose, could be called freedom.

However, when a person cares about the feelings of others or even wishes to get along among others, freedom must constantly be compromised.  This is no novel statement - it is the basis of the social contract and indeed of society in general.  We must make sacrifices for the good of the group.  Those who do not are punished for their selfishness.

I think there is a deep and fundamental irony in a nation that is so thoroughly influenced by its code of laws, persecutes criminals so aggressively, yet values freedom above all else.  People aren't free to cross the street wherever they want to or to smoke indoors or to walk around naked in public, (to give three out of a million possible examples) yet we champion ourselves as being the freest nation in the world.  Where I take exception to laws is where they restrict us beyond any reasonable demonstration of the potential harm of the targeted behavior.  Laws are necessary but at a point they become cumbersome and service powerful minorities rather than the society at large.

But this is all too grand for what I intend to discuss.  Relationships between one person and another or one and a small group are much more interesting to me than the relationship between a person and society at large.

Immediately in discussing interpersonal relationships I come across a tension.

I can say, and feel pretty convinced of my accuracy, that the more we care about someone, the further we go out of our way (in terms of restricting our will) to help them to be comfortable and happy.

However, at the same time, I find that often we compromise our freedom most around those people who we have just met and barely know, so as to avoid them making harsh judgments of us or forming a poor first impression.

So who are we more concerned with pleasing?

I think it is clear that while we will hold back significantly in respect of people we do not know very well and are interested in forming a potential relationship with, truly large sacrifices in freedom occur only with those we hold closest.   

For example, in a social situation with friends and a new person, I will find myself holding my tongue about issues I would normally speak passionately about among just friends.  I will be self-conscious and attempt to portray myself as a fairly middle of the road, temperate individual.

However, with someone I truly care about, I may be willing to make a compromise as deep as where I choose to live or may even give up something that I am truly attached to in order to please them.  These are two entirely different levels of self-denial.  New friends may cause me to "act" differently in a very superficial sort of way but people I love have the ability to influence decisions that will truly affect my life in the long run.

I have given much thought to this issue before.  A conclusion I came to once is that the only way to be truly free is to free oneself from all social ties and live as a gypsy, a hobo, a person who answers to no one and to no group.  

Quickly, I determined that shutting oneself off from all other people eliminates many potential feelings and options of things to do, opportunities, and negates freedom rather than promoting it.

So, how do we live amongst others and still take advantage of freedom - to be our true selves without being neglectful of others' feelings, needs, and rights?  

Every decision to act or not to act deserves a consideration of the facts accompanying the situation.  This is pragmatism.  Say I'm with a group of people, conversing, listening to music, when I suddenly have the urge to sing along loudly to the music.  I am moved by the beauty and the passion of the music and I want to express that, I want to join along with the artist, to share in that moment the pleasure they are experiencing by expressing themselves in that way.  But I consider that this would be rude and would decrease everyone else's enjoyment both of the conversation that is occurring and, possibly, of the music that is being played.  

Am I less myself if I choose to restrain my desire to sing and merely continue to sit quietly or to converse on whatever subject the other people are discussing?  Or, does my decision not to burst out singing speak more of my true self than my desire to sing in that situation does?

I choose the latter.  I think that a desire not to act out of the consideration of others represents an exercise in freedom.  It is an expression of the strength we have to control our impulses and make compromises that will maximize the happiness among a group of people, whatever the size.  Not acting is as much an expression of oneself as acting.  We all have desires that feel real, visceral, fundamental to us.  But controlling them successfully is even more meaningful to the definition of who we are.  When we choose the well being and happiness of others over our own we are making ourselves into loving and caring individuals.  Every time we restrain an impulse considering how exercising that impulse might negatively affect others we grow - we overcome our animal instincts, we reach to a higher goal of harmony.  

When we live in harmony with others we experience true freedom.  

I apologize for the delay since my last post.

teeth

Let me begin by saying that people are compulsive about their grooming habits.

I met someone in college that would brush (pronoun) teeth the way that some people smoke cigarettes.  If there was a quiet moment, or a moment of transition, it would be used as an excuse to brush.

My grandfather had about seven toothbrushes that he would cycle through, I assume a different one for each day, and I also assume so that they would stay cleaner and last longer.  It's also possible that each of them had a different function... some for lighter jobs and other for having lots of stuff in your teeth.  As far as I know, the man never used a computer, but he seemed to stay on top of toothbrush technology advances.  Let me correct that.  He read books on DOS at the very beginning of "PCs" and had a pretty comprehensive understanding of how those directories and commands worked (truly astounding for someone who never really sat at a terminal).

But I digress.

Women spend significant amounts of time on their hair and subject it to all kinds of stress.

I could write a lot about this and still not be covering the topic adequately (from a lack of knowledge) but I'll just focus on one thing.  And that is dyeing.

I've always been pretty satisfied with my hair color.  I mean, I can only think of a couple of times (read - 2) where it even occurred to me to change the color of it at all, and when I talked to my girl friends about it they strongly and immediately dissuaded me from doing so.  Odd.  Anyway.

Again, I could go into the subject of dying at some depth and still not do it justice, so again I will focus on just one effect that seems to be regularly sought (and, arguably, achieved) - blond hair.

How many girls with blonde hair out there actually have blonde hair without chemical intervention?  I don't think about this that often and certainly don't go out of my way to look at hair to try to determine it on a case by case basis.  However, conservatively, I think it would be fair to postulate that less than 20% of girls with apparently blonde hair actually grow blond hair.  I don't get it.  OK, command decision, I'm going to actually try to take this one on, heads up.  *deep breath*

I'm fairly certain that fair hair and skin (F) are recessive traits, or, at least less likely to express themselves than dark pigmentation (D) in a cross between D and F.  So, that means that the F phenotype is not only rare but is getting rarer.  This is self-evident and reveals my absurdly huge cultural bias.  I wonder what percentage of people in the world have legitimate blond hair.  I doubt that information is available to me.

...

OK, this is humbling but double-convinces me I've hit on an interesting topic.  On the wikipedia article for "blond" there are 11 adjectives listed for different types of blond hair.  Blond hair represents about 2% of the world population's hair color, according again to wikipedia, which I take as a font of all knowledge.  I'm just going to leave red hair alone in this discussion.  Not too many people dye their hair red anyway so it's not as interesting to me.  Goodness.  I've (again) opened a can of worms far too large for me.  Check out the article for yourself.  I'm not even going to try to speculate as to how blond hair developed or what other traits might accompany it.  I'm going to merely focus on how blond hair is perceived aesthetically.  Even this is too big.  But I'm pot-committed at this point.

Blond hair is clearly something that European/American cultures consider beautiful and cultures without naturally occurring blond hair have found fascinating and even other-worldly.  Understandably so.  Rare is often taken as beautiful.  When I try to come up with examples of beauty that everyone recognizes I always go with sunsets.  I'm not sure that every sunset is beautiful, but once in a while the setting sun dramatically changes it's color from the bright yellow/white we are used to and fills a huge portion of the sky, coloring everything it touches and striking awe and humility.

Natural processes are beautiful at least partially because they are difficult to predict and yet often lead to astounding order and recognizable patterns.  Living things are not only suitable for human cognition, they are the most relevant things that we can observe.  Living things have historically represented the biggest threats to our survival, sources of food and thus continued survival, and in the case of inter-species, social interaction including mating and procreation.  The amount of brain tissue that is dedicated to recognize faces alone is striking.

But why blond hair?  I'm leaning towards the idea that the fascination is cultural rather than instinctual.  Royalty in western European cultures has possessed the trait in unnatural proportions, and later, famous people (another version of royalty) have over-expressed it.  Romances written early in the history of the English and French languages have glorified it.  Blond hair is most highly expressed in Northern European countries (Norway, Holland, etc.) and when you move out of this area it drops off almost exponentially.  I think it's interesting that Americans find blond hair beautiful but are not fascinated by hardly any other aspects of these cultures.

I don't want to go into the whole Germanization and eugenics issue because it upsets me.  The whole idea that such a small part of the world's population was somehow superior is absurd and not worthy of serious treatment.  But it is an extreme example of this fascination.  

Blond hair does nothing for me and indeed I haven't dated or even hooked up with a person of blond hair - maybe one but my definition of blonde is pretty strict.  In my younger years I remember finding it appealing but somehow I have grown out of this.  I won't take my psychology as a further example or give it any further attention here.  For those who really know me maybe it could be meaningful. (a reaction to my prior tastes?)

Personally I think this fascination is fading in general.  It's rarity increases on a daily basis, but Americans have seen plenty of it, so it's not striking anymore.  I guess we can thank all the people who have attempted to imitate blond hair for this shift.  

One more thing.  I have known people with brown hair to get a lighter color during the summer or in general after prolonged and regular exposure to sunlight.  Color is determined by a mix of pigmentation in humans as it is plants.  Maybe in some way it is functionally advantageous.  Meh.

Gentlemen prefer blondes.  Ha.  A true gentleman would not discriminate between people based on something as trivial as their hair color.  An opinion.

I have a feeling I will return to this subject in some way.

restraint

I have a lot of problems with the "criminal justice" system that exists in this country.

It is a lumbering goliath that employs millions upon millions and "serves" many millions more... arguably the entire country indirectly.  As of 2006, there were 2.2 million people incarcerated in prisons and jails in the country, representing the highest number of any country and also the highest rate.  What has been hammered home to me in the last, well, few years, is how hilariously this number misrepresents how many people are REALLY in state custody.  If you throw in people on probation or parole the number goes up to 7 M... something like 2% of the population.

I work with kids who are in state custody - not in prison or jail, but in a residential treatment facility, a placement that is essentially confinement but which counts as a school.  All are on parole.  There are a lot of places like this, that force a structured and limited lifestyle on people either in response to crimes or merely to the inability of their families to care for and protect them.  There are a LOT of people in this country who, if left to their own devices, are deemed to represent a threat to themselves and/or to others.  And this deeming is not arbitrary or, I think, wrong.  Spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to house, observe, and... well... control one kid who has a very high likelihood (according to doctors utilizing our body of psychological learning) of offending sexually against other kids if released is, I would venture to say, a good expenditure on the part of the state - at least compared to a lot of the other things the state spends its money on.

In lockup, the staff is not attempting to rehabilitate inmates.  I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that.  They are not, and, really, cannot (because they are so heavily outnumbered), pay particularly close attention to the interactions that are going on between inmates and certainly cannot stop crimes from occurring in their facilities.  About the best they can hope for is to avoid full-scale riots and to keep murders very low.

This "good", the control and incarceration of past offenders, is something that is in demand.  The citizens of this country want their criminals locked up.  Violent crimes are viewed individually as tragedies - evoking sympathy for the victims and anger towards the offenders.  It is demanded that District Attorneys seek and judges hand out strict punishments and sentences.  It's not like this system is imprisoning so many people because it wants to.  It is merely selling a good.  People are buying it.  They are buying it by reading newspapers about and listening to news reports about crimes more thoroughly than on any other subject and by talking to their legislative representatives about how important it is to them that the rapists and murderers and arsonists be off the streets so that they can feel safe.

Safety is the good.  More money is spent on "safety" in this country than almost anything else.  I can't articulate all of the expenditures... this should really be a doctoral thesis in sociology or something that then leads to a lifetime's worth of research.  Cameras and recording equipment, the training of bomb-smelling dogs, police, military, weapons from the average gun to spy satellites and stealth bombers... we pay a lot to compensate for our fear of being violated by others.  

Which makes sense.  We have a lot to lose.  Those of us in this country who are free, particularly free and with money to spend on the things we want, live a lifestyle that very few human beings have had the opportunity to live.  Seeing nothing else makes us take it for granted and makes us sublimate and forget our fear, forget how much we as a nation pay for it.

It shouldn't be too hard to understand how people in other countries around the world would resent our lifestyle, resent all that we have, want to take it away from us and redistribute it.  I for one do not want that to happen.  I want my friends and family and self to be able to drive around in our cars and eat and drink what we want and wear what we want and say what we want.  If nothing else, I want to be able to sit at my expensive computer and type out what I think and have it be available for others to read and think about and talk about with their friends without being persecuted.  I am free and I value that above... anything else.  I want it for everyone but not everyone can have it.  Maybe this isn't just and lord knows it makes me feel guilty.  

This guilt, and this fear, is bought and paid for.  I am happy to keep paying.

This is disorganized.

one hour

This post is not a joke.  My goal is to hold as close to rhythmic perfection and rhyme detection as my Able Force permits me.  I commit these next sixty minutes to unleashing my arsenal of linguistic devices.  And last, to keep it prosaic, to make it narrative, crush questions as to whether I play in my words or whether I do it to get married, kids.  The whole trip.  Homes.  Killing myself by smoking bones, coughing it up drunk withdrawal.  Skunk sold cold moral.  No qualms about it.  I know, like me, some folks just quite don't know how to do without it.  Your shoes are shouting.  Caps as well.  No single book can contain the facts of hell.  Nor a sentence.  Intense repentance for centuries of questions.  So very many holy figures felled without a mention.  Honor's not every thing.  Cons and pros still end up the same, buried, things.  Not enrolled, without a soul, floating sans hope in a frozen coal fueled grid.  Raised a paddle to signify my bid.  I want you to have my kid.  Got a can of cashews used a knife blade to flip the lid.  Swiss army.  Useless like a word unread.  Spend several hours too many of my day with my head on my pillow in bed.  Weeping willow outside the window tries to tell stories gets blown down by a hurricane instead.  Slow reaction - fiber musta been unmyelinated.  Ridden with failure and yet the machine has yet to be annihilated.  Scrapped. Tied to a stretcher with straps, screaming bout things he didn't understand but knew to be true.  Food that we grew went rotten only ever sold cotton.  Where's the helping hand?  Says the outside community.  The lies and hypocrisy aren't even close to anything that's new to me.  We're screwed.  The bees are dying by the thousands.  And yet we in the know can't even give up a pound to brothers of other colors of skin?  I can't believe it.   But I roll nonetheless.  If I'm lucky I'll grow just a little bit more.  Dispersion of words causes no regrets cause I've got so very many left.  What's in store?  Dry cupboards?  Shipments in but in the basement yet unpacked?  Get me in the sack.  And I'll make an attempt at honesty.  Restrain my eyes from the rack kiss your lips when you climb onto me.  This whole thing sounds like a con to me.  But I know better.  All the others are nothing but blondes to me.  To use the term crudely.  Stereotypical depictions are holding back the mission, so that'll be my last.  Hope it was worth the point at the end.  I've only got a couple hundred dollars to spend.  So what's my options?  Or have I demolished them?  Hasn't it been almost three hundred years since slavery was abolished in this... country?  Human anatomy fused with plant matter.  Did some baking didn't bother to lick the cake batter.  I like pies better.  Mics too.  Here's a possible shock, I'm not even halfway through.  Take a sip of the tea really quickly.  That's how this got started, with tea leaves and green beans, both in strainers, threw away my retainer and so my lower teeth's crooked.  Like many mayors.  But who's the payer?  The check receiver, that's who.  A decade away from being tossed under the boot leaving only a handful of heads at the top.  Mandible spreads and sounds escape, creating hip-hop.  Shake buildings to their foundations - steel cages reverberate.  Feels like a waste of thirty minutes every time I masturbate.  How else could this time be spent?  Squandering gifts that could be nothing else but heaven sent?  Intent was to be honest but got too personal.  Need a three minute break - come back with luck be a bit more versatile.  

Orange clove scent, just what am I smelling?  Wonder on all the nights alone outside I spent screaming, yelling.  How could I swear at you?  You've got your truth to guard too.  We all do.  Restart button, another chance to get through.  Three lives at the first level.  Same at the second with some luck.  Only two by the third, not my fault, I got a button stuck.  Shutting up.  Is for gutless fish.  Why after these years hasn't a genie come along to grant my wish?  Only got one.  Able taking a big risk.  Best change names quickly, make it hard to keep up.  Whisperer in latin an elusive term.  Some folks have trouble when choosing among birds.  Bursting attacks keeping knives out my back.  Rifle under the mattress when he collapses in the shack.  Hanging food from trees for relative bear protection.  Hopefully not too proud to claim this to be killing a rhyme session.  Filling time extensions.  Eighteen til my next obligation.  Complications.  I don't see them.  Everything seems clear when I'm sitting still and breathing.  So little of this has to do with believing.  It's just a matter of knowledge.  Have it or don't.  Habits and hope.  Carrots and dope.  Rabbits weave rope.  Nimble-pawed beasts.  Pass the greasy, sweaty, creamy, earthy goat cheese.  It's had some time to age.  Garnished with parsley rosemary time and sage.  Later today I'll be finally blazed.  On fire.  Not tired.  For the first time in years.  No intent whatsoever to be seen as different from my peers.  Cause I'm not.  And that's your thought block.  Most rappers by now would be bragging size, length, thickness of cock.  And that's no shock.  That's what got you mated in the no clothes ages.  Let's rearrange this.  The mind's gained significance.  Refreshing watching films put forth by minimalists.  Can the average even spell this?  Scoop from a deep well.  And receive cold water.  Work hard for your land then get more when you sell your daughters.  Off.  I just dropped a cough.  Summary time approaches and still in word play I'm lost.  Let's simplify.  I hope no one really listens to the man who whispers.  His ego's done enough to discourage you to dismiss this.  This is the product of a listless mind and wandering fingertips.  Pondering if he's missed.  Though the distance really isn't that significant.  And he'd be glad to close it if given even the slightest hope of a kiss when the deed is accomplished.  With closed fists no energy escapes.  Nothing can be done to atone for a billion rapes.  Much mercy for those who picked the first grapes and forgot about them in a jar for a week or more.  Then foolishly took a sip, perhaps out of desperation only to discover the effects that have affected ages.  Relations.  It's such a simple request.  And perhaps the main reason the whisperer deigned to submit himself to this test.  This shit was repressed.

i have never predicted the future accurately

it was a defensive battle start to finish and the patriots lost.

i could not have been any more wrong.

congratulations to the new york giants - i have never seen such a hard fought game.

XLII: new england patriots v. new york giants

This is an open letter to those who don't take football seriously as a cultural experience.  Enjoy.

The Superbowl represents the culmination of a five month season where thirty-two teams in two leagues (NFC and AFC) and eight divisions play weekly games (sixteen games per team) for a chance at making the playoffs, where the best twelve compete for a chance at the Big Game - one team from each league.  Billions (!) of dollars are at stake in the functioning of these leagues, and the hopes and dreams of people both on the field and at home rest in the events following each snap of the ball from the center to the quarterback.

Other professional sports have rabid followings, yes, but the NFL is by far the most powerful and most watched single sports organization in the world.  Fans spend the entire day in the stadium parking lots drinking, cooking, celebrating and painting their bodies in preparation for a three and a half hour dance that is at once violent, graceful, and thrilling.  Working people, people without money to burn, spend hundreds of dollars to attend the spectacle - seeing a game can be the highlight of a year.  Keep in mind, football is played during the cold part of the year and most stadiums are open-air.  Fans sit in freezing cold weather for those three and a half hours and most are on their feet cheering throughout the game.  The stadiums fit upwards of a hundred thousand people, yet, for teams like the Patriots tickets are not easy to come by.  A lot of workplaces buy tickets before the season starts and raffle them off as a reward to employees.  

But I think most people who don't like/care about football at least kind of know how huge it is and are not convinced that makes it meaningful or worthy of their attention.

Let's talk about the teams.

The New York Giants won their last Superbowl in 1991 (Superbowl XXV).  This championship was won under the direction of Bill Parcells (who coached the Patriots to a Superbowl in 1996, where they were defeated by Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers).  They were last in a Superbowl in 2001 (XXXV) which they lost to the Baltimore Ravens.  They are one of the longest standing NFL teams, having joined the league in 1925.  The Giants of this year were 10 and 6, one of the two teams in their league to make the playoffs without winning their division (Wild Card teams).  To get to the Superbowl, they beat the Cowboys, who had beaten them twice in two meetings during the regular season and also defeated Brett Favre and the Packers, who with the Cowboys were the two favorites to win in the NFC this year.  They are led by a very tough defense (led by Michael Strahan, who has the record for most sacks in a season [a sack is when a player tackles the quarterback while he still has the ball]) that is great at getting to and hitting the other team's quarterback, two very talented young running backs, and Eli Manning, younger brother of Peyton Manning, who is playing in his first Superbowl. 

The Patriots have had a perfect season so far under head coach Bill Belichick.  They were 16-0 in regular season contests (first team to do so with a 16 game season) and have had little difficulty winning the two playoff games needed to get to this point.  The Patriots are a very complete team that likes to, and has historically always liked to, win with the passing game - depend on the arm of their quarterback.  This year that has worked particularly well because of the three new receivers the Patriots acquired, most notably, Randy Moss, who will certainly be a Hall of Fame player.  The defense is full of veteran players like Rodney Harrison, Richard Seymour, and Tedi Bruschi, and is very good at adapting to changes in the other team's offense.  Collectively, they've seen just about every situation the NFL has to offer.

The Patriots also have Tom Brady.  In New England, Tom Brady is practically worshipped.  When he came in during the 2001 season (an unknown backup, drafted relatively low from college for example compared to the man he replaced) to replace a (very badly) injured Drew Bledsoe, the Patriots seemed to never lose again.  Brady plays better under pressure than any quarterback...ever.  He has been in many situations where the game was drawing to an end and the team needed one more score to win.  He delivers every time.  With the new wide receivers the team has acquired this year, he has really blossomed, throwing the most touchdowns in one season of any quarterback in league history - while at the same time only being intercepted (the other team catching one of your passes) eight times in the 16 games - the lowest he has thrown in a season yet.  Tom Brady is a good looking guy who always has a smile for the cameras and is always respectful and humble, but damn it, if you are on the other team he must be a terrifying son of a bitch.

I don't have time to talk about Belichick.  Since he arrived in 2000 he has turned the Patriots into, probably, the best football team in history.  Brady was instrumental to this, no doubt, but Bill is the mind behind it all.  The way he plans for what every team they play is going to throw at them, the way he anticipates...I won't attempt to say why I think he is so good because I can't even comprehend how good he is.  He makes other coaches look like amateurs.  They are not in the same league that he is.

I hope it is clear from what I have written so far that the mechanics of a football game are incredibly complex and being a part of the machine takes brains - never mind how smart you have to be to run an offense or defense or an entire team.  Every one of the eleven players a team fields for a given play has to be in just the right place for it to turn into a gain of yards.  Every player is responsible for watching and attempting to physically manage several others.  I have tried to describe everything in the simplest terms thus far and if I tried to go into all the matchups, player v. player, that will be important in this game my post would be pages and pages long.  A lot of time people summarize by looking at the quarterback matchup, and so will I.

I've already spoken about Brady.  He literally intimidates the other team into making mistakes which he notices and exploits.  He is the youngest player ever to have won three championships and his record as a player is beyond reproach.

Eli Manning, however, is a good player with a lot to prove.  He was the first player selected from college in the 2004 draft from the University of Mississippi by the San Diego Chargers.  He was apparently very unhappy to be with San Diego and was traded the same day to New York.  Tom Brady prevented his brother Peyton from making it to the Superbowl with the Colts several times until last year when Peyton won the Big Game (good for him).  Peyton and Eli's father, Archie Manning, was a college football legend, also a quarterback for Ol Miss.  Apparently being a good quarterback is genetic thing, at least in this family.  Eli, playing for an NFC team, is fortunate to have not needed to get past Tom Brady to make it to the Superbowl.  His numbers in the NFL so far have not made him a standout but like Brady at the time of his first Superbowl he is growing and getting better - in the second half of this past season he played exceptionally well and was one of the main reasons the Giants were able to sneak into the playoffs.  

In playing offense, you basically have a simple decision with each play - whether you're going to run the football from the line of scrimmage (where the ball is set up) or whether you're going to try to pass it downfield to an open player.  The Patriots, as I mentioned, have been winning with the pass game.  The Giants this year are the type of team that is more inclined to run the ball a lot.  Both teams should stay true to this form in the Superbowl because the Patriots defense is most weak to running and the Giants' most weak to passing.  They say that championships are won with defense.  That's true, but I think this championship will be won with offense.

The Patriots and Giants played in the last game of the regular season and it was the closest game the Patriots played all year, they won by only three points - a field goal.  In playoff games, the Patriots have played a lot of teams that were of a similar calibre and who could compete with them, many times they have gotten behind and looked as though they were in trouble.

It is the pressure of these big games that makes them different from regular season games.  There are cameras everywhere, even more so than in regular games, millions of people are watching and the futures of the teams are at stake.  (what their draft picks and schedules will be next year most directly)  People's careers are often on the line in games like this.  Individual players and coaches have rich histories playing against each other and there are lots of grudges going on up and down the organizations.  The statistics are not what make the Patriots impressive to me, rather, it is their ability to play cleanly and effectively in the face of limitless distractions.  The Giants have to rise to the occasion.  I am not counting them out, that would be foolish.  But they are basically coming into the Patriots' environment even though the game is in Arizona.  If the game gets close, and Brady has a chance to close it out with a final minute score, will they be able to stop him?

Professional football players play as close to perfect football as there is.  But they are still human beings.  The Superbowl brings out emotions in everyone involved.  Being at the center of it all must be the most intense experience of a player's life.  I don't think anyone could ever get used to it, but Tom Brady is as used to it as any quarterback in the league could be.  I think the difference in this game will be that Eli Manning is not prepared for a situation where it gets close and tense - a situation that would have to arise for his team to win.  One little mistake can change the game entirely - even win or lose it.  I am betting that Eli Manning will make at least one big mistake and that will be all it takes for the Patriots to beat him and the Giants.

Not everyone's going to love football.  But there is so much that goes into it in terms of physical human effort, thought, attention, and emotion that it is worthy of the highest respect.

When people look down their noses at it, usually people who don't understand it at all, it makes me want to tackle them.

Patriots v. Giants.  Symbolic?