RE: The Thrashing

I refuse to blame Ben Roethlisberger for Pittsburgh’s loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship. The Steelers were simply outplayed by a more experienced team. The feeling in Pittsburgh right now is not to blame Big Ben. It is simply sorrow for the end of a fantastic season.

If we take away the interceptions, which resulted in 17 points, the Steeler’s win. But wait. It’s not that simple. If we take away those interceptions, the Steelers now have to rely on the secondary to keep Tom Brady (perfect in the post season) from effectively running the 2-minute drill. I contend that if we remove those 17 points from the Pats, Tom Brady swings into rapid fire mode in the final 7 minutes. The Steelers secondary simply can’t stop that. This is the same reason I didn’t want to play the Colts and Peyton Manning. An effective secondary has always been Pittsburgh’s biggest weakness.

We were beaten by the arm of Tom Brady, poor coverage by our secondary, and dissection of our defense by a fantastic coaching staff, not by Ben Roethlisberger.

Learn To Laugh

Ed finally decides to take a vacation. He books himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeds to have the time of his life -  until the boat sank.

He found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies… Nothing. Only bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to him. In disbelief, he asks her, “Where did you come from?  How did you get here?”

“I rowed over from the other side of the island,” she says. “I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”

“Amazing,” he says. “You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you.”

“Oh, this?” replies the woman. “I made the rowboat out of raw material found on the island. I whittled the oars from gum tree branches; I wove the bottom from palm branches; and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”

“But … but … that’s impossible,” stutters Ed. “You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?”

“Oh, no problem,” replies the woman. “On the South side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware.” Ed is stunned.

“Let’s row over to my place,” she says.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As Ed looks onto shore, he nearly falls out of the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, he can only stare ahead, dumbstruck.

As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please. Would you like to have a drink?”

“No, no thank you,” he says, still dazed. “Can’t take any more coconut juice.”

“It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replies. “I built a still. How about a Pina Colada?”

Trying to hide his continued amazement, he accepts, and they sit down on her hand-woven couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom.”

No longer questioning anything, Ed goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow-ground edge are fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism. “WOW! This woman is amazing,” he muses, “what next?”

When he returns, she greets him wearing ‘nothing but vines’ strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her.

“Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for a really long time. I know you’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months. You know…”

She stares into his eyes. He can’t believe what he’s hearing!

“You mean …”, he swallows excitedly, “We can watch the Steelers game from here?”

A Tough Day in Pittsburgh

This image of Hines Ward sums up the feeling of the entire city.

Hines Ward cries and admits he felt that he 'let down' Jerome Bettis

We had a great season. No one can deny that. 14-0 for a rookie is no fluke. We got beat by a great team. I give huge amounts of respect to the Patriots for the class that they displayed. (Update: Now that I think about it, Branch was taunting the crowd all night. Big respect to everyone but him.)

We’ll be back next year. We can only hope that The Bus comes back to help us out.

Songs in Hell

Bill is reporting that if he was in hell and forced to listen to only one song he would choose “1,2,3,4″ by Gloria Estefan. He names a few others so I will also create a list of my own.

  • Can You Feel the Love Tonight? by Elton John: This song makes my ears bleed.
  • Cult of Personality by Living Colour: I’m so freaking sick of this song. AUUGH!
  • Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega: A last shot at riding the wave of Swing music that went horribly wrong.
  • Barbie Girl by Aqua: I feel like poking my eyes out just thinking about this.
  • How Bizarre by OMC: This represents everything that is soulless and wrong with corporate band creation.

I can guarantee this list will get longer based on the drivel that is currently being played on the radio.

Update & Retraction: I updated the title of the Living Colour song and offer my apologies to Mr. Glover. I will say however, that I dislike the song so much that I never bothered to learn the words or the title. ;)

Avoiding Spam Filters

I get a crapload of spam. My vaxcave account gets about 300 spam messages a day on average over the past few months. I’ve noticed that the 4 or 5 that don’t get caught by the spam filter have one thing in common. They all have paragraphs of text that could be misconstrued as genuine conversation between two human beings. I can see how a computer could make such a mistake, but some of these sentences are completely ridiculous. Here are some funny examples from Real Spam I’ve Received™:

  • “Those news announcers aren’t practicing shaving next to the police station right at this time.”
  • “plot Negroizations(?) stroke errant Floridians.”
  • “the me of brainstorms rise southward out of flatiron of slime”
  • “to catch alot instruments to all her statutory will healthiness enjoy”
  • “Why don’t you write anymore? Your mom misses you and is frightened that you may be hurt.”
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