I'm a Believer

I caught the end of the game today in the conference room while taking a "bathroom break" from work. It was such an amazing finish!! I jumped up and down like a fool when Childress hit the 3 and almost rolled on the floor when Robinson hit the game-winning 35-footer. His downtown bomb totally surprised me because Robinson isn't even a good perimeter shooter and yet that ball hit nothing but net. You gotta give it to "Pops" for saving the day. I don't know if we could have won in overtime with the momentum and confidence that Arizona was gaining near the end of the game. Hell, we might have even lost in the final seconds if Lottich and Robinson hadn't stolen the ball. Way to go, Stanford! This game was incredible!!

I'm hoping for that elusive national championship for Monty. His team certainly deserves it. Its mettle has been tested and it has come through time and again.

Quote of the day:

"I was flat on my back, Lottich was on top of me," said Robinson, who had only five points before his winning shot. "And a couple of other people were on top of me in places that were rather uncomfortable."

Anything but Bush

Article 1

"A duck hunting trip Vice President Dick Cheney took with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia last month has raised questions about a possible conflict of interest because Scalia was hearing a case involving Cheney at the time of the hunt.

The trip included a flight in a U.S. government jet, a ride in a police motorcade and lodging in a floating hunting camp owned by an oil-services tycoon who is a longtime Scalia friend ...

Congressional Democrats and newspaper editorials have called for Scalia to step down from the case, which has to do with whether Cheney must reveal who serves on his energy task force. Further complicating the question: The host of the hunting trip is a prominent member of the energy industry."

Let me get this straight: A Supreme Court justice went on an all-expense paid hunting trip with someone central to a case that he will be reviewing, and this trip was hosted by a "prominent member" of the industry under investigation. To add insult to injury, we the tax payers probably footed the bill for all the security details. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Do they think we are all retarded? Why don't they just give us the finger too while they are at it? I don't care if you are a liberal or conservative because everyone should be outraged regardless of his/her political beliefs.

Article 2

"President Bush appointed a conservative former judge and a moderate former Democratic senator Friday to head a special commission to "figure out why" inspectors haven't found the weapons that intelligence experts said Saddam Hussein was hiding in Iraq.

Bush told the panel to report back to him by the end of March 2005, well after the November elections and two years after U.S. troops invaded Iraq."

Shouldn't such a commission be assembled by someone that is NOT being suspected of manufacturing lies to go to war? There isn't even the slightest attempt to fake an appearance of propriety and impartiality on Bush's part. How can the media and the people let him get away with this?

A Correction

My last post unmistakably demonstrated my obvious inexperience with the more intimate areas of a woman's body. After all, how can one claim a nipple to be "an additional square inch of skin" when it is in fact circular? Therefore, what I meant to say was that a bare breast is just what we normally see on TV plus an additional 0.25 * pi square inch (assuming the radius of an average female nipple, including the areola, is 0.5 inch) skin.

Rants

Last night while watching the Super Bowl at a bar with Kabir, I turned away from the TV for a split second just before the end of the half-time show. By the time I heard the hollering from the other patrons, it was already too late. I had missed the scene. Since then I have been baffled by the amount of controversy that this little stunt has generated. What Janet Jackson exposed was not significantly more outrageous than these ladies have shown. We are talking about one freaking partially obscured nipple being flashed on screen for a millisecond here. Ms. Jackson didn't just fuck a donkey on stage for God's sake (although she did dance with one). Frankly, I don't understand this "Oh my god, I can't believe she just showed her breast!" reaction. I saw more breasts when I went to my sister's Lamaze class reunion party with her and her husband (don't ask), where a bunch of new moms were feeding their babies. A bare breast is just what we normally see on TV (I mean, what some people see) plus an additional square inch of skin. Get over it.

I find the recent foolishness going on in Georgia much more horrifying. Could the whole country have some kind of referendum on the statehood of Georgia to decide if they should be kicked out of the Union? They can just take Alabama and form their own God-fearing country. Could someone please remind me the rationale for preventing the South from seceding in the first place? I don't think we would have missed much, definitely not country music.

Also, what's going on in the NBA? I don't ever remember seeing this many games in a season ending with teams scoring in the 70's. Maybe all the college dropouts should have stayed in school longer and honed their skills before jumping to the NBA. I know I'm treading into Tolu territory here, but it really is annoying to watch the level of offensive ineptitude displayed by all these cocky mega millionaires.

In another sports-related rant, about a month ago while watching the national championship game between LSU and Oklahoma, I heard one of the announcers start to praise an LSU player. "What a great story this kid is," he gushed. I expected to hear the usual "boy overcomes congenital birth defect" or "orphan beats great odds after losing parents in horrible, tragic car accident" type of story. Nope. This guy's "story" was that for two years he couldn't gain academic eligibility to play for LSU and had to play at some junior college instead before finally getting the standardized scores and grades necessary to enroll at LSU, which is not exactly the paragon of higher education. The last time I checked, you only need an 820 on the SAT. You get 400 just for filling out your name!! How hard is that? I guess the moral of the "story" is that the guy is a moron but it doesn't matter because he won't need to know multisyllabic words or the circumference of a circle to chase down some other former partial academic qualifier in his future job.

Buggy Buggy Buggy

Microsoft has finally come out with a fix for the bug in IE that would allow someone to trick you into visiting a site that's different from what you see in the URL bar when click on that link. Definitely a critical update.