Bloggin'

I respect bloggers.

I respect their patience, their generosity, their fearlessness, and in many cases their real skills. Great way to practise writing, great time to be a writer.

I just can't get the mental space for it at the moment. I've spent the last three months working through a whole bunch of nonsense in my head, nothing I can share. But I think I'm finally coming out the other side now.

All along I was just trying to 'be philosophical' about some issues that disturbed me. In reality, I found that philosophies based on my own wacky ideas just didn't hold enough meaning to combat the unrelenting impenetrability of the outside world.

I tried to 'get perspective', but you're always looking from the same place if you're just doing the same things each day.

I knew that time would inevitably heal all wounds (or wound me, if necessary), but time seems to be different on the inside. Six months flew by in the real world, but hardly a day in my mind.

I think I'm over it now. This feels good, although I feel like I'm rebuilding a life left vacant, a little derelict - which is strange. Lots has happened, and I was there, but ghostly. Distracted. Trialled by fire, maybe. Or other wanky nonsense.

Interestingly, I figure the last six months would've made pretty interesting blogging. Better than this, anyway.

Is blogging as therapeudic as it looks? At least I know writing is.

Day 16 - Fox still game

Good article from John Czarnecki over at FOXSports. He throws in this doozey:

"Seattle was penalized seven times for 70 yards, and three major calls in the game gave Pittsburgh a touchdown, took one away from Seattle and negated a major pass completion that would have given the Seahawsk a first down inside the Pittsburgh five-yard line. Technically, those calls added up to a potential 17-point swing in a 21-10 Pittsburgh win."

Which is, of course, a polite way of saying the refereeing determined the winner. Which, of course, it did.

He adds:

"The league's competition committee will meet this week in Indianapolis to briefly discuss some ways to review officiating overall. But the league is limited in what they can really do. I mean, they're not about to fire all of these officials and start all over."

Dude, we don't want to fire them, we want to firing squad them.

Two weeks on ...

I just posted this over at that Sea PI fourm I mentioned previously ...

I'm not over it, and I'm not getting over it. But, sadly, I'm becoming resigned to the fact there's not going to be any consequences for the criminals in this fiasco.

Len Pasquarelli's comment about the CBA ends any optimism I might've had about a fair inquest:

"The NFL is, after all, a deadline league. Historically, very little has been achieved until the 11th hour and until a shotgun is figuratively pointed at someone's head."

Do you reckon anyone is holding a shotgun at the NFL's head regarding the Super Bowl officiating? Seriously, not even Paul Allen money is going to budge this rock at the moment.

I think the most we can do now is support any journalists who refer to it. Send them thank-you emails, share their links with other fans, maybe even give them ideas for stories (like that great T-Man protest at Sea PI).

And keep the debate alive come September. EVERY football fan knows it could've been their team on the day. It just happened to be the Seahawks.

Maybe one day this will all add up to a shotgun-sized protest. Maybe.

Day Nine - Trolls

Trolls. I can't remember what I was going to say about them. I HATE them, obviously. In case you don't know, trolls are people who enter online forums and try to ruin them. A swarm of Steeler trolls have invaded most Seattle websites, picking fights and generally being obnoxious. Lowlife. Bastard children of referees.

Dr. Z is a columnist at Sports Illustrated. His latest column provides yet another assessment of the Super Bowl. I like this bit from his introduction:

"... my take on it at the time was that there were a few calls that were cheap, but no major felonies, except for the low-block foul on Matt Hasselbeck after an interception.

"I was wrong."

(Sorry - used without permission, but with much love and enthusiasm)

Day seven - Pro Bowl

It's now a week since the Super Bowl Sham. Like every previous morning, I woke up today with visions of the match still buzzing around my head.

Today's Pro Bowl, the NFL all-star match in Hawaii, officially ends the 2005 NFL season. Seven Seahawks played in the match, which I think was a team record. Matt Hasselbeck, Seattle's QB, led the go-ahead drive in the last quarter - as he would've in the Super Bowl, if allowed by the referees.

No articles today, but I want to share the thoughts of a special Seahawks fan with you. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Seahawks Forum is a spiritual home for many of us, and our shamanic elder is BD. He can be crass and grumpy, every inch the ex-cop, but he's the most grounded and sincere of all of us.

That's why this affects me so much:

"I just don't think I can be a fan of the NFL any longer. It's just such a joke. It's not about football, it's about money. Now, Sunday's debacle wasn't the first time that light bulb has gone on over my head, but I think it was, for me, a light I can't pretend is off any longer. It's on and it's blinding and the gigantic cockroach that is the NFL with it's bling bling nose piercing and cheesy gold tooth plastered smile, greedily counting it's soiled dollars in the corner, has no place to hide. I don't think it even thinks about hiding. I think in its arrogance it believes it can do whatever it wants and we'll just keep on loving it no matter what, accepting it with all of its puss pocketed flaws."

Hope you don't mind me extracting this paragraph, BD.

There's plenty more after the link, every word of which is worth reading. For me, BD defines the reason for fighting, why we shouldn't just get philosophical and 'get over it'. We've see the abyss of corruption ... we've been humiliated by the impossibly rich ... we've had the light bulb go on, and stay on.

Tomorrow: trolls.

Day six

New article at CBS News regarding the NFL's post-Superbowl silence. I sent the writer a thank-you email.

Not for long

Oh boy. Where to start.

Macrocosm: do I believe that big corporations do as they please, and are quite content to screw over the little guy when it suits them? Of course.

Microcosm (and it's a pretty big microcosm): do I believe that the NFL instructed their referees to ensure a Pittsburgh victory in Superbowl XL? Of course.

This puts me in a bind. I don't really want to become obsessive about corruption in American sport, especially when there's so many more important things to worry about (don't get me started on the rights of a cartoonist to satirise whatever s/he feels like).

So ... do I roll over and change channels like they want? Or do I start my own holy crusade?

No issue.

You can start with this recent article from Foxsports. And here's another new one from Yahoo Sports.

Some earlier Superbowl articles were even more irate, like this one from a different Foxsports writer. Skip Bayless, a guy who dissed the Seahawks all season, also weighed in.

There's more. There's plenty more. And there's plenty more fighting to be done.

Do I want to dedicate so much time to this? No. But, if you're familiar with Bonfire of the Vanities, you might realise I have no choice.

Where was I?

Re. previous post: getting there, but it would be easier if people stopped mentioning it.

Then there's ...

I'm currently struggling to come to terms with the fact that this was happening last week about five minutes away from where I live. "Struggling" = woke up at 5:30am thinking about it, and couldn't get back to sleep. The aching ... och.

Song of the Month continued.

Back in September I listed my favourite songs from each month of the year to that point. Because I care even if you can't, here's how the rest of the year played out.

October - Glósóli, Sigur Rós
From their new album Takk ..., which is brilliant and amazing and their best album yet.

November - Taste You, Melissa Auf Der Maur
This is from her 2004 album, which I only just bought (on special at JB, the only way to buy CDs). Awesomely sexy ... almost unbearablely so.

December - Jo-Jo's Jacket, Stephen Malkmus
Somehow, despite being a huge Malkmus fan, I'd never bought his first solo album. I found it cheap just prior to seeing him live on the 16th, and wow - stupid me. It's great, and this is the best of the best.

Life okay after all.

W.C. fields

I keep hoping I'll wake up in a world where Wolf Creek doesn't exist. It keeps not happening.

Back to the drawing board.