A Man's Best Friend

I'm a huge fantasy football freak, and in preparing for the multitude of drafts I have coming up this weekend (a number of my team's will be called "Vick's Pets" this year) I stumbled across this blurb over on the Fox Sports site:

Michael Vick (Atl - QB)
An NAACP leader said Vick should be allowed to return to the NFL, preferably the Atlanta Falcons, after serving his sentence for his role in a dogfighting operation.

Impact: White said the Falcons quarterback made a mistake and should be allowed to prove he has learned from that mistake. White said the Atlanta chapter supports Vick's decision to accept a plea bargain if it's in his best interest, but he questioned the credibility of Vick's co-defendants, saying an admission of guilt might be more about cutting losses than the truth.

Um... bullshit. And this is yet another reason why our society is so screwed up. Micheal Vick "made a mistake"? A mistake?!? Are you $!@*ing kidding me? A mistake is, oh... I don't know, not giving the correct change back, or grabbing the wrong tampons for your gal, or fumbling the football on the snap. This worthless scum bag KILLED multiple dogs - man's best friend mind you - by electrocution, strangling and drowning because they didn't "perform" up to the level expected in illegal dog fighting matches! That he gambled on. Across state lines. That's as cold blooded as it gets people! What he did was not - I repeat - NOT a mistake. It was an illegal, heartless, cold blooded, cowardly act that needs to be severally punished.

The ONLY reason he even admitted to any guilt was because his "homies" - his dawgs - rolled over on him and the Feds had overwhelming evidence against him. He lied to his mother, to his friends, to his team, and to the commissioner of the NFL when he denied, denied, denied that he had anything to do with this horrific and despicable act. The sack of flotsam should 1) have done unto him what he did to those dogs (since he too has not "performed" up to the level of a good QB since entering the NFL - because he SUCKS), and 2) be banned from the NFL for life.

Oh ya, the NAACP is teaching some really enlightened morales.

Honor, and not only holding people accountable for their actions but being human enough to accept responsibility for those actions... has long since vanished from the landscape. It's a damn shame. And it's going to be the very thing that dooms us all.

Speaking of Roads...

Let's ponder the genius of the construction company working on the I-25 COSMIX project here in Colorado Springs for a moment. This past Tuesday morning, amidst the very week (the very day for some) school starts back up... the boneheads in charge of the project decide it's a good idea to change the "flow" of southbound I-25 near Fillmore. With a twist.

First off, let me preface this by saying... what exactly are you all working on that has now taken over a month to fix a 2 foot wide strip of concrete running across the entire freeway? What is it that you DIDN'T do right the first time (as this is a new stretch of freeway) that you have to already fix?!?!?

But I digress...

We're all trucking along and - BAM! - brake lights appear, brakes squeal and car rear ends pop up a good quarter to half mile further back then normal. Turns out that the COSMIX Dunderheads changed lanes without bothering to warn anyone. No signs, no indications that anything had been changed. Now, it wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that these changes were obviously created and carried out by people fully engulfed in an LSD acid trip. This was without question the most abstract lane weaving I've ever seen in my life.

I know it's not just me because KILO (the rock station I listen to when I'm not listing to Bob & Tom on KKFM in the mornings) and the police were getting bombarded with phone calls from angry drivers, many of whom were either forced off the road and obliterated the big orange caution barrels or were so confused as to where to go that they ended up driving into a closed off lane which dead-ended in construction. Usually I'd harass the horrific drivers in this great state (more on this - and the FUBARed story in the Springs Gazette earlier this week- later), but not this time. This was square on the shoulders of the COSMIX Nimrods.

Funnier still was the cluster of orange vested COSMIX Ignoramuses standing around on the side of the freeway as cars piled on top of each other in what had to be a Larry, Moe and Curly moment. Shoulders shrugging, looking at each other like deers caught in headlights, all mopping around going, "Wasn't my fault. (Larry pulls Moe's hair) Who did this? (Moe boinks Larry in the eyes with his fingers) I don't know. (Curly smashes Larry's head with a piece of rebar)" Idiots.

Now on to the story from the Gazette I mentioned earlier, one entitled: Howdy, Newbies: Colorado welcomes Texans, Californians - But we're pretty sure we know what you're like.

Oh you do?

I could go on a major tirade about this, but frankly I'm all tiraded out at the moment. Read the article, then read the moronic comments from some of the more addle-brained "natives" of this great state just below the article.

I'm about sick of this whole "Welcome to Colorado, Now go Home" mentality. You know what we're like, eh? So you know we're like... smarter then you, right? THAT'S why you hate out-of-staters. That's fine. I can live with that. So step aside (or pull your car off onto the shoulder since you native Coloradans love to STOP on the ONRAMPS of freeways) so we can pull this state into the 21st Century.

ADDENDUM: Harsh? No more so then the lovely "Now go Home" mentality. My "smarter then you" comment obviously (to most with common sense, but then there seems to be an abject lack of common sense these days) does not pertain to ALL Colorado "natives." Making a blanket statement about any race, creed, job, people, religion, etc. is pure foolishness. And what is the basis for my comment? Unlike some people who never venture much beyond their front porch, I'm from California by way of Indiana and Arizona. I'm also a Plant Manager for an inter-state company. I had to get a satellite production facility off the ground here in the Springs from ground zero. The nincompoops I had to deal with in order to accomplish that task - MOST (not all) of them being Colorado "natives" - has more then once made me question their mental ability to get up in the morning, let alone actually perform their so called job. Thus I coined a phrase: "Coloradans are the nicest people on the planet, but they're as dumb as rocks." Being slandered ("Welcome to Colorado, Now go Home") doesn't feel too good... does it?

A New Road

Just stumbled across what could be a very good miniseries. Tin Man, A SciFi Original set to debut in December, is the re-imagining - a modern, updated retelling if you will - of the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz.

Before you scream in horror at the audacity of someone to attempt such a thing, let alone the SciFi Channel (which usually fills the airwaves with complete and utter crap)... take a look at this teaser.



Now go here, and take a look at a much longer clip. And yes, that is Richard Dreyfuss as the Wizard. I gotta say... it looks spectacular!

This brings up an interesting question though: should such a historical epic such as "The O.Z." be allowed to be "re-imagined" at all? What do you think?