Are my eyes really blue?

I actually skipped the Sugar Bowl, almost in its entirety. Thank goodness for people coming into town to visit - dinner, drinks and a bout of emergency shoe and USB hub shopping (really!) made it possible for me to miss the game almost completely.

Good thing, too, because to all accounts, Alabama shat the bed in truly epic fashion. This is going to make the SEC look very, very bad, even before throwing fuel on the fire of all the nimrods who think Utah and Boise State deserve BCS bids in perpetuity. You can bet there are going to be serious recriminations now, especially vis-a-vis a) whether Andre Smith's offense was truly suspension-worthy if it didn't entail NCAA risk and b) why the spread-option is Nick Saban's Kryptonite this year. Number one in the country, followed by a two-game swoon in two of the three (or four it you're me) biggest games of the year is not the kind of thing that people will let lie.

But hey - Vandy, son. Just mathed it up and realized that the Dores have 18 of 22 starters returning from the team that beat BC. Add that to an SEC East without Stafford, Moreno or Tebow, the complete collapse of South Carolina, and the spectacle of Hello Kiffy trying to coach in the SEC - you have to think that 6 or 7 wins should be repeatable next year. SHOULD be. Any Vanderbilt supporter will tell you, though - no guarantee is good enough and there's no swoon too deep for the Dores to take.

Anyone who thinks Utah deserves a piece of some mythical national championship needs to sign a pledge, in writing, to never ever ever bitch about another league's non-conference scheduling ever again. If Utah deserves a title, then strength of schedule means nothing, and no team should receive any scorn whatsoever for maximizing the number of automatic wins in their schedule.

if anybody has a beef, it's USC, whose 11-1 run through the Pac-10 suddenly looks a hell of a lot better given the Pac-10's beatdown of all comers in this year's bowl derby. And at the very least - given Oregon and Ole Miss - the people arguing that the Big 12 plays defense and that their offenses are JUST! THAT! AMAZING! plainly need to do some rethinking. I mean, Texas Tech gave up in a half what Vandy gave up the entire game (and the 'Dores won, to boot)...

I think your four team playoff was set pretty well before we started: Florida, Oklahoma, USC, Utah. Nobody else has a case. The ACC and Big East are barely better than the MWC, and let's not even get started on the Big Ten. Once again, if you seriously want to settle this on the field, you don't have to go deeper than four. (Bama and Texas have a beef? Shoulda won your conference.)

Honestly, at this point, if the 1990 rules are still in effect?

ROSE: USC-PSU
SUGAR: Florida-Texas
FIESTA: Oklahoma-Utah
ORANGE: Alabama-VaTech
COTTON: Cincy-Texas Tech

If everything works out like you'd expect, USC, Florida and Utah are all clamoring that they deserve a piece of the title...and fat fucking shocker, that's EXACTLY what we have now.

Blow it up. Blow it all up. No playoff, no BCS, nothing. Go back to the way things were in 1990 and not one single thing will be any worse off.

You know you're not in government sub-contracting anymore when you walk in and there's already a big smokin'-fast Dell under your desk, pre-configured so your AD account will let you in.

You REALLY know you're not in government sub-contracting when you're told you will be issued a phone, and your options are the iPhone 3G or the Blackberry Bold.

And government sub-contracting is a wee tiny speck on the distant past horizon when, almost as an afterthought, they ask whether you want a MacBook Pro or a MacBook for a laptop, and the MacBook is not the correct answer, apparently.

If this job goes awry, it won't be for lack of material resources, and you can put that on a float in the Rose Parade.

Well, I'm just now getting around to watching my former boss's boss's boss do the MWSF keynote this year. Listening to the early returns, though, it should be fairly obvious why Himself skipped this one: there's literally nothing new to report. New versions of iLife and iWork, and the new MacBook paradigm comes to the Pro 17" model, and iTunes changes its model ever so slightly...

Om's people are right about iTunes, I think - tiered pricing where the top tier is only $1.29 isn't that big a deal when the same 30 cents is coming off other tracks. Internet pricing tends to be a race to the bottom - after all, once you adjust for infrastructure costs and rights, there's not really much else you can do for a value-add and the main competition has to be on price. And if people get used to the idea that everything but the latest hottest American Idol dreck should be 69 cents rather than 99...well, could be a problem.

Anyway, there's nothing revolutionary today. There's nothing, really, that wasn't there in some form previously. Normally we're used to getting game-changers at MWSF - the Mac mini and iPod shuffle in 2005, the surprise Intel launch in 2006, the iPhone reveal in 2007, the MacBook Air last year. Nothing this year is a radical change or a new product category or the sort of thing that takes all the air out of CES. And at this point in Apple's history, where we're preparing for a post-Steve world, you don't waste the big man on this kind of stuff. Sure, he got up there at many a MacWorld past and made chicken salad out of much more fragrant feces than were offered today, but that was Back Then - before Apple was the top music retailer, the overwhelming owner of the digital music industry and the maker of the #1 selling mobile phone in the country. In 2009, a couple of software updates and a slight hardware stretch aren't that big a deal, and Steve only does big deals.

Phil Schiller was always amusing as Steve's sidekick - especially for those who knew what an absolutely relentless hardass he was in real live, whether it was rooting on the Red Sox or cracking the whip in Product Marketing. But let's face it - there's a reason you've never seen Robin: The Movie. He's not terrible - let's face it, he kicks the shit out of Gil Amelio or the kinds of drudgery during the Spindler nightmare. But he's not Steve, and he will get grilled for it.

Oh yeah - at a beer bash a couple of years ago, we went at it mouthing off about the Sharks vs the Predators. A couple of hours later, one of my co-workers said "I can't believe you had the sack to talk like that to Phil Schiller." At which point I blasphemed at the top of my lungs and demanded to know when exactly they planned to tell me who that was and now my expletive badge wasn't going to work in the morning. As it turns out, it did - but only because Vokoun stopped only 40 of 43 and the Preds lost. I hope he gave all his defensemen a wood shampoo when they got back to Nash Vegas. But yeah, if you're curious why I'm not into hockey, it's because deep down, I feel it could still turn out to be a career-limiting move.

Okay, I admit that "Bridge of Sighs" is probably a little too poetic. But it is an elevated overpass walkway between two buildings, it is floor to ceiling glass, it is in an academic setting, and look, if you were surrounded on either side by redwoods and morning fog you'd probably get all poetic 'n shit.

So that's not a bad way to improve your outlook first thing on getting to work. Of course, the best way to improve your Outlook is to rip it out at the roots and install the Zimbra client instead. =)

Hopefully, that's an end to all the "Big" 12 caterwauling about what a great conference they are, how their offenses are the best in the world, how they really do play defense but it just doesn't look that way because they are JUST! THAT! AWESOME! - well, three of their top four teams have just gotten the beatdown in bowls, and the fourth struggled and needed a last-second TD to beat the second-place team from a Known Not Good conference, and none of them blew the roof off scoring, and - more to the point - none of them could stop anybody. Yes, Virginia, the Big 12 has overrated offenses and plays less defense than the WAC.

And please, please, please lay off Ohio State. The Sooners have now shit the bed in five straight BCS bowls, including THREE title tilts, and will be known as Chokelahoma in perpetuity, or until such time as they can actually avoid taking the beatdown on national TV. That's not bluster, or message board yammering, that's MATH.

Your final rankings:

1) Florida. Look, Ole Miss - much as it pains me to say it - is just a good team, better than Oregon State (see below). They beat the top team in the country in each of their last two games, and convincingly. I know they're the damn Gators, but what can you do. They didn't back into it, they didn't stumble into it, they just went out and took it.

2) USC, with a bullet. The Pac-10 was a lot better than we thought, and as a result, USC is better than we thought, and if you saw the Rose Bowl, or the Ohio State matchup - those weren't games, they were autopsies. I still think there's a certain measure of hype there, and the soft underbelly of the Pac-10 was softer than one can imagine (Washington and WSU, anyone?) but with the departures at Florida and Georgia, you have to think that USC will be the consensus preseason #1.

3) Utah. I know, I know, but look: it wasn't a championship schedule, but they did beat everyone put in front of them, and looked plenty convincing against Alabama (their offensive line issues notwithstanding). I don't think they'd beat either of the teams above them, but I bet they would hang just fine. Getting the first legitimately convincing BCS win for a non-BCS-conf team deserves something.

And therein lies the rub: the bowls mean that you get a whole month to wargame your final opponents. A month to scheme and watch tape and find the holes. There's a reason that #2 almost always beats #1 in these title games, or that a middling team can suddenly look like a million bucks against their bowl opponents: prep time is everything. If, in 1992, Alabama had played Miami the week after beating Florida (barely) in the first SEC title game, they probably would have gotten their clocks cleaned. Instead, Brother Oliver had three weeks to solve the 'Canes, and the resulting beatdown was one for the ages. (I own the DVD.)

BTW, the Heisman curse is real, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

No shit folks - the Pre is Palm's last best hope to survive. It is the first thing in years worth criticizing from the company that made the PDA a reality, and it actually does some interesting things. The UI is certainly attractive, and the presence of real multitouch will let it play right away. Whereas the iPhone had the whole Apple digital-media ecosystem as a selling point, though, and the G1 had both Google and the promise of a broader platform (and conceivable multiple carriers), the Pre's party piece is its Webkit-based system where all applications are basically local web apps, which should offer developers a tremendously low barrier to entry.

(An aside: the iPhone and the first two legitimate competitors all use Webkit as the basis of their browser. As soon as I have the Bold in hand, I'll have a look and see what the mobile web looks like without it. Not sanguine about the prospects.)

Problem is, though, they tied up with Sprint.

A phone is only as good as its network. It's understandable why Apple went with AT&T - they didn't really have a choice from a technical perspective as the former Cingular had the only dual-band national GSM network. It's plausible why the G1 started on T-Mobile - they needed something to replace the aging Sidekick line as their tentpole device, and again, GSM. If you make your device GSM, you can pretty much sell it anywhere in the world right off the jump other than South Korea. If you make it CDMA, though, you'd better be HUGE in Seoul and North America because that's as far as it'll go.

Sprint is, to put it nicely, limited. It's a PCS carrier, which means 1900Mhz coverage only, and it is proverbial for its coverage issues and the general inefficacy of its customer service. Too, CDMA devices are known for having less batter life than their GSM equivalents. Put it all together and it's tough not to wonder if the network is going to be the weak link in the chain, and unlike the iPhone, there's no way to unlock it and pop a SIM in there.

Still, this is Palm's best opportunity. The iPhone is still the best-selling phone in America, but the presence of competitors means the time is ripe for somebody to pop out a compelling challenge, and Sprint seems committed to selling the hell out of it. Now, all they have to do is bring it in at a reasonable price point (and it's becoming clear that anything over $299 is untenable in this segment, and under $199 would be much better) and maybe they'll have a chance.

...while I still can.

* So I have the new Vandy jacket, which fills both the Graduate School and the Outdoor Performance Clothes notches in my Stuff White People Like sweepstakes. It's the first piece of all-new outerwear I've bought in four years - after drowning in jackets for about 15 years, it's a fairly impressive drought. (In fairness, my wife unexpectedly bought me a simple black thing for my birthday last year which is quite stylish and consequently something it never would have occurred to me to buy myself.) Vandy III is a bit on the big side, but that's not a bad idea for strategic layering purposes, and it's a hell of a lot lighter than the leather stuff.

* Plus, since the Vandy women beat UT for the first time since 2002, I'm cised to wear it all week.

* I'm starting to believe that it's actually a true fact that the sole measure of value to modern conservatism is whether it pisses off people who aren't conservative. I mean, they actually sent that bald douche from Ohio to be a war correspondent? Seriously? It has become absolutely impossible to take conservatism seriously, with the obvious exception of the very talented crew at TAC.

* Even Pat Buchanan finds a nut once in a while - his shtick hasn't really budged since he was WHCD, and it's generally kind of eye-rolling not-again stuff, but his appreciation of the late Sammy Baugh was as fine a piece of sportswriting as you may see all year, and has the added benefit of coming from someone who actually grew up watching the Redskins in the Baugh era. In the pre-television NFL, not many people can say that.

* Speaking of sportswriting, I don't know what ESPN was thinking, but I accidentally clicked on a Rick Reilly column and was immediately reminded why print sportswriting has all gone to hell. Same thing, over and over, beating a dead horse. Just like me. Except I don't kill trees to do it and I don't pretend that what I write is any more important than just some dork on the Internet. The kind of ill-founded logic, saccharine dreck, and general white Boomer foolishness that Reilly brings to the table is pretty much the reason I cancelled my subscription to Sports Illustrated ten years ago. Seriously, all you need is Deadspin and EDSBS and you'll be just fine.

* NewNewNewJob continues apace. I think it's going well, although I may have more metrics on that shortly, but I'll tell you this: I don't dread getting up in the morning anymore aside from the obvious OMG IT'S EARLY issue. And even then, I made it out the door today by 7:27 AM of my own free will. And less than 20 minutes later, was walking down the platform at my work train stop. Being able to commute entirely by public transit PWNS and don't you forget it. I could actually have a drink after work with my colleagues if I felt like it. In fact I may be having a drink DURING work later this week, as the department holiday party is Wednesday afternoon.

* The weather is April-ish here. No, really. The high in San Jose today was 77. This is wrong on many levels.

* I am told, via reliable sources, that Washington DC is already basically un-navigable. One of my former co-workers (whose WVU education means that his children are basically being raised by a baboon) missed ten straight lights at the same intersection in a traffic jam today, parked in the nearest deck and walked a half mile to work. I'd love to see history, but I'm not about to wait in line for it.

* If I still lived in DC, though, you bet your ass I'd be out to see Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder et al on Sunday.

* My Buddy Vince Sez, "You know I will always support weed over blow. Unless the blow is free of course."

Finis.

This is what happens when the head of your party in the legislature knows his ass from a hole in the ground and how to wheel and deal.

Tennessee politics isn't as baroque as Alabama or Texas or California, but it's never not entertaining. =)

So Steve Jobs is taking half the year off. I won't speculate on who knew what and when, just that for the sake of his loved ones I hope he pulls through this without to much drama.

Now what are the day to day implications?

For starters, AAPL will take a bath until investors can be convinced that Cupertino is not going to undergo a nuclear meltdown in the absence of Himself. But if you look at the executive team, I would comfortably put them up against anyone else in the industry. You have Phil Schiller, who when he's not being the sidekick is in fact as ruthlessly effective a marketing wizard as exists in the Valley. You have Jonny Ive CBE, whose industrial design over the past decade-plus has been the heart and soul of the turnaround - everything from the original Bondi Blue iMac to the iPhone has come off his drawing board. You have Ron Johnson, who goes largely unsung in the business media but who is the mastermind of Apple Retail, and that should speak for itself. And then leading the charge is Tim Cook, who was acting chief during the cancer scare four years ago and who has, in the intervening years, taken on much more of the day-to-day operations than anyone would expect. For a long time, Apple has been preparing for Cook to take the controls, and he is as ready as anyone could be.

And after a few months, when Apple hasn't collapsed into a smoking crater, I think the stock will be just fine.

One more note: we used to refer to Jobs as "Himself" out of fear that he would magically appear, Beetlejuice-like, if his name were spoken. Since Tim Cook is an Auburn man, he will be referred to in these pages as "Hisself." I hope to God his record is better than Gene Chizik's.

If this had happened with a Democratic President and Secretary of State, the gasbags would be losing their S all over talk radio and Fox News. The Prime Minister of a country that wouldn't exist without the blind support of the United States is going to get up there and start crowing about how he's got George's pecker in his pocket? All the shit we take, all the trouble we get all over the world - and they're going to punk out the President like that?

Obama better take some time on day one to get on the phone and warn some folks that South Side rules are now in effect for this kind of thing. The next words I hear from Ehud Olmert better be whatever is the Hebrew for "Not in the face!"

I know the about-to-be-President is on the other side of this from me, and he's WRONG, and I will tell you why: you could put off the digital TV switchover for FIFTY YEARS and at the end of it you would still have people complaining that they're not ready to make the move yet. I have heard something about this literally at every commercial break on channel 11 here in the Bay Area for well over a year now. A media that drops the ball on nearly every news item of significance has covered the upcoming digital transition as if it were man landing on the planet Mars in a spaceship made out of diamonds and breasts.

Yes, there are end users consumers out there who somehow, some way, have not yet figured out that the magic talky box will stop working in the middle of February. The correct answer is screw 'em. The dogs bark, but the caravan proceeds. If you allow your technology to be dictated by the least among your user base, you will get HOSED.

So yeah, I officially have a difference with the administration. Looky there!

I was there, you know. January 20, 2001, right out there on the mall. Up close, dressed all in black, because I knew what to expect. Because I'm just that good. You wanna know why? Read on...

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!"

So for my new job, I have to carry a Blackberry Bold. It was that or a second iPhone, and not even I am enough of a buffoon to pack two iPhones everywhere I go. Plus, having the Bold will be helpful when it comes time to support Blackberry users, and it's always good to have a diversity of experience when one is a Computing Support Analyst. I've been packing the Bold for a couple of weeks now, and I have come to the conclusion that it resembles nothing so much as a SIGARMS P250, the state-of-the-art pistol that can be switched to any of four calibers with no tools but the replacement barrel and slide, can be made sub-compact or full size just by swapping frame components, has a reduced number of parts for increased reliability, and will put five shots through the same quarter-sized hole from twenty-five yards.

The problem is, if the Bold is the world's finest pistol, the iPhone is a lightsaber.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: yes, the Bold has MMS and speaker-independent voice dialing, and I presume cut-and-paste is in there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet and I'll tell you why: the interface is utterly non-intuitive. They include some setup assistants for things like Wi-Fi, which is good, because the settings are damn difficult to find otherwise. There are all sorts of ring profiles you can modify, with about 50 settings for all the possible things that can ring or vibrate, and set them depending on whether it's in the holster or not*, the camera takes video and has digital zoom and an LED that does for a sort-of flash, and the battery is removable, covered by a back panel in a naff sort of faux-leather which is reasonably grippy or at least non-slippery. And honestly, the screen is gorgeous.

Of course, it's a screen half the size of the iPhone's, because you also have a physical keyboard, with keys the size of a mustard seed** that will almost certainly send my thumbs into premature arthritis even worse than the iPhone. Say what you like about tactile feedback, but I don't find myself any more accurate with the Bold's physical keyboard than the iPhone's virtual one, and in many ways I'm worse on the Bold because I haven't figured out how to turn on text-complete or spell-check or whatever they offer to make up for the many, many times I fat-finger my typing.

Plus, while the "pearl"-type trackball is a genuine innovation, it basically demands that you use the thumb. And I'm not kidding - I am starting to have problems with the knuckles of my thumbs, from crooking them too much to use smartphones. The difference is, with a touch-driven UI like the iPhone's, I can hold the device in one hand and navigate around (if not type particularly well) with one finger on the other hand. The Bold, by contrast, has a physical design and control mechanism that basically demands the use of thumbs in all circumstances.

There's no nice way to say it, so I won't try to sugar it up: the Bold's default browser is shit. For some reason, it seems extraordinarily sluggish, even when in 3G coverage (and that's another thing: 3G is a massive battery suck, and largely superfluous for email, but there's no way to turn off 3G and just use EDGE. For a business device that's email-centric, this is a major shortcoming). And what's worse, the browsing experience - and this extends beyond the browser to things like the Facebook app as well - seems much more like a glossy, tarted-up version of the cellphone browsing experience of 2005-06, rather than the smartphone browsing experience of the iPhone or the G1 or (presumably) the forthcoming Palm Pre. The fact that everyone recommends I install Opera Mini - the same proxy browser I ran four years ago on a Motorola flip phone - is not encouraging.

Finally, and non-trivially, the battery only gets me through the day. So does the iPhone battery only get me through the day, but I can turn off the 3G and then use it for following all my RSS feeds, playing my podcasts, getting texts, and exactly as much mail and phone and Twitter-app use as the Bold. And the iPhone will charge off the USB line out of the PC, whereas if the Bold is getting power off its USB, it's sure not doing it fast enough to top up during the day.

Long story short: I think that if you're somebody who needs to carry a Blackberry for work, the Bold is legitimately a world-beater and the best of breed for RIM's signature product. And I'm not alone - Stephen Fry, who owns and travels with seven iPhones, thinks the Bold is RIM's best device ever (handily pwning the disastrous Blackbery Storm). But the fact is, our team gets a choice between the Bold and the iPhone, and nobody who didn't already have an iPhone took the Bold.

Of course, I'll be carrying both for the foreseeable future. Or at least until the Pro Bowl when my turn as the hotline emergency response tech ends. Hazing is fun, isn't it?

* I don't care how cool you think he is, Barack Obama - and there's a zinger coming on his middle name, wait for it - still looks like a tool with that thing clipped to his belt. There is no way anyone can clip on a cellphone and not look like a paste-eater, and I say this as a man who once priced a shoulder holster for a Palm III.

** Our Lord gets a nickel.

So a whole bunch of people got irritable* about the new guy's middle name. All right, I can see that. Furthermore, to be honest, I think that in the interest of national unity and pacifying the sort of people who wouldn't vote for him in a million years anyway, Barack Hussein Obama should legally change his middle name.

To "F***-ing."

It sounds like something out of a Chris Rock movie - or a Wil Wheaton blog post - but you know damn well you'd laugh. Besides, as future Alabama governor Charles "I'll tattoo my name on your ass if you get me out of this" Barkley demonstrates, the most critical measure of a politician is how much they peg the Fun Meter.

* Originally this read "got sand in their twats," but it has been pointed out to me that to make such an association with these kinds of people would be to sully the good name of twat. Modified accordingly.

I seem to distinctly remember thinking, at the beginning of last year's Lunar New Year celebrations, "This is it! MY year! Let's go, baby!" If memory serves me right, not only is it my birth year, but "Rat" was the first nickname I was ever bestowed that wasn't a derivation of my name. (It goes back to the way my first girlfriend and her cronies used animals as codenames when passing notes...who knew I'd be mixed up in issues of message transmission security over twenty years on?) In any event, I think I can really look back now that I've been on the job for three weeks.

I'm still lost. I think somebody said that the first ninety days of a new job are basically just an extension of your interview, and God knows I'm following the age-old rule of new jobs: never turn down a lunch invite, a drink invite, or the opportunity to follow somebody around. Sponge up everything, and accept that it may take two or three tries before you get it from memory, and ask questions for Godsakes, something I took way too long to do in my other California jobs. And above all, don't assume that the day-to-day behavior of those around you is a reaction to or reflection on you - you don't even know these people yet, not really, so wait a while before you pass judgement.

But the stuff around the job itself - the ability to get around solely by train or shuttle, the opportunity to play my podcasts out on the way there and back rather than all day while I wait for something to do, the FREE COFFEE, the water that doesn't come with Superfund runoff, the array of dining opportunities (especially if I'm elsewhere on the job other than home base), the comfort of knowing that if I'm wiped out by a semi hauling hogs that my wife will bank more than $10,000 as compensation...but you know what really hits home? No overtime. No hourly timesheet. I have a job to do, no matter how long (or not!) it takes, and while that may bite me in the ass sooner rather than later, it's nice to feel like a bloody grown-up instead of back in the produce cooler clocking in and out.

So yeah, the big day-to-day thing that eats up almost half my waking life? No longer a source of misery. When I don't want to get out of bed in the morning now, it's not because I'm dreading what lies ahead. It's only me being exhausted and butt-lazy, which is fine. Come on, I'm from the South. You ever seen Hee Haw? When's the last time you saw anyone in Kornfield Kounty bustin' ass?

Add that to everything else that happened in 2008 - and let's be honest, anything that turned the page on 2007 would have been great - and yeah, the year of Rat. Glad it worked out. Now the trick is...keep going.

So let's see:

1) The first major economic package of a Democratic administration passes...with exactly zero Republican votes in the House.

2) Rush Limbaugh is out making typically erudite and reasoned observations.

3) Republican Congressmen fall about themselves to avoid offending El Rushbo.

4) The entire GOP gameplan - the whole thing - consists solely of voting no across the board and hoping for a monumental collapse in the midterm elections.

What the hell is this, 1993? Who's got my Blind Melon CDs?

Now, from a tactical standpoint, this isn't the worst idea. The GOP went full-obstruct in 1993-94 and wound up in charge of the House and Senate. The Dems went full-capitulate after September 11 and got their asses handed to them in '02. Message: cooperation doesn't pay. Like APSA recommended in 1950, like Gingrich tried to implement in the 104th, we are now living in the age of American Westminster. One party gets control of all the federal governmental engine, runs their program, and if the public doesn't like it, turns them out at the first opportunity.

However, there's no splitting hairs, no wiggle room, and most important, no incentive to compromise. Obama talked quite a game about bipartisanship, but if this is the way it's going to go - with a handful of concessions that ultimately shift no votes - then the proper thing to do is to wad it up, throw it out, go balls-to-the-wall with your program and let the voters decide whose vision they like better.

This is a dangerous time, though. Sixteen years ago, the House of Representatives had been forty years in Democratic control, talk radio was a new and invigorating force, and Newt - for all his freshman-with-ADD-in-his-first-PSCI-101-class ramblings - was actually trying something radically different in Congressional politics. And to cap it all off, the new President - who did have more votes than anyone else got in 1992, in fairness - could hardly count on mustering a popular majority in the electorate after polling 43% in the general election. And the economy, while bad enough that impressionable undergrads got a queasy feeling reading The Grapes Of Wrath, wasn't nearly as banged up as today, when somebody's perfectly good AAPL holdings have donked off half their value since the summer, not that I'm pissed or anything.

Plug in the constant stream of Reagan nostalgia, and we come to an uncomfortable realization: the GOP in 2009 = the Washington Redskins in 2004 when Joe Gibbs came back. The faithful are fired up, they want to believe, they want to see the counter-trey and 50 Gap and watch a big back plow the field behind a new generation of Hogs and finish up on the Mall clutching a Lombardi Trophy while the President slaps Mr Cooke on the back and then we all head to Duke Zeibert's to celebrate.

If memory serves me right, though, Joe went 5-11 that first year back. Duke's is still closed, the Skins finished last in the division, and Joe Gibbs is back in retirement. If I were a Republican, I would feel very very uneasy about building the offense for 2010 on radio-driven pitchfork populism and a string of no votes. Somebody is going to have to step up and offer some sort of shadow-government program, because the alternative is just hollering and waiting for Obama and his crew to drive off the road. Ask Hillary how well that worked out.

(I don't use the phrase "shadow government" by accident. Go read http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com as it contains some smart shit written by smart people.)

I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating: the Super Bowl does for football what St Patricks Day does for Irish pub patrons: drags in a whole bunch of riffraff who only give a crap once a year. And this is speaking as somebody who detests the NFL apart from the Redskins in almost every particular...but then, this is precisely why: they take something that should be a signature contest (like, say, a really big bowl game in the pre-BCS era), something that should rightfully sell itself, and then tart it up with all kinds of fluff and bread and circuses. Not to take a cheap shot, but if you have Meredith Viera and Al Roker broadcasting from your game, the football has ceased to be the point. If you're watching a sporting event for the advertising? Something has gone very, very wrong.

Here's a hint: if you drink green beer and think "26," "6" and "32" are something off Lost, stay home on the 17th. And if somebody has to explain to you what "1st and 10" means, you really shouldn't be watching the Super Bowl.

So I have this cousin. Specifically, he is my double second cousin - our grandfathers were brothers who married two sisters. He disputes the notion that he is smarter than me, and I dispute his disputation, largely because:

* He was smart enough to leave our home state for college,

* He was smart enough to go to a Division I institution of fine academic repute, and

* He was clever enough to find and marry HIS lovely blond Catholic girl from far away before the age of 30.

However, he moved back to our home state, while I moved to the Bay Area, so maybe he is onto something.

In any event, he asked for my perspective on going through the "gifted experience," so if you will indulge me, I'm going to speak about myself in a rather un-humble manner. Again. Sigh. Apologies in advance; content beyond the jump: