We Are So Going To Beat The Steelers By 10 Points

Even the vaunted Mastodon offense was no match for the ancestors
of the Seahawks defense, shown here in a photograph taken during
Super Bowl 1.3 Million BC.

Greg:

Look I feel I should let you know that this letter contains more than just my ravings about football. If you slog your way through the first three-or-so paragraphs, you'll be rewarded with an intellectual treat. I promise. However, if you do not read the aforementioned ravings, the intellectual treat you so hunger for will be invisible! It will vanish from the page! Such are my HTML skills! They go beyond the paranormal!

So, that said -

Yeah, you saw right. I freaked out and made a Super Bowl prediction. My advice? I know you're not a wagering man, but you should consider putting one whole American dollar on the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl. Whether you want to take the point spread I'm putting up is up to you. Currently they're scheduled to lose the game by 3.5 points.

Which brings me to my next question: Whuh the fuh? The Steelers are a sixth seed; the Hawks are a first seed. So why are the Steelers favored over the Hawks? I asked all my friends in Tijuana and they just said yo no se. A load of help they are! So I sparked up the TiVo, assiduously reviewed both the Steelers/Broncs AFC Championship game and the Hawks/Panthers NFC Championship game back to back - play by play, even - and I can't find one single reason why the Steelers should be favored other than the bookies would really like to keep their money this time around.

I'm not going to talk smack about the Steelers 't'all because they're a really good team and I expect it will be a hard-fought battle. But the Panthers were a good team and you saw what we did to them. I mean everybody was "Steve Smith" this and "Steve Smith" that. "Oh but the Panthers have Steve Smith, and he has wheels, man, and that John Waters moustache that is the source of all his power!!" The Hawks D held Mr. Smith 33 yards, which is in football stats is about like smothering him with a pillow. So now everybody's like "Big Ben Roethlisberger" this and "Hines Ward" that, quoting all these stats.

Which brings me to my next question: Has any one of these nimrods ever heard of model breakdown? (It's a math thing. Have they ever heard of math?) Stats don't play stats in football. People play people in football. It's not like I've got a math gland larger than Kurt Goedel, but I know enough to not be so foolish as to say that the team with the higher numbers wins.

However, there are some stats that I will quote in my decision in favor of the Hawks. Every team in the playoffs that had three or more turnovers lost - except the Seahawks. Every team that got into 3rd and very long yardage more than twice (like 3rd and 25) lost - except the Seahawks. Long story short: we don't get rattled and we absorb our mistakes. I think that is more telling of who will win that simply comparing stats.

What's also interesting to me is this guy they call the Freud of Football - Dr. John F. Murray (Ph.D. Psychology, U. Florida 1996) - who uses some kinda psychological index to predict who will win. He did his dissertation on the Gators. He favors the Seahawks. By 5 to 10, no less.

AND THEN HE TOTALLY CHANGED THE SUBJECT!! Hey, did you get that email from Tom, you know, our brother? Seargent Rock? The one with that article from that one guy about how agriculture was the biggest mistake mankind ever made? This guy's down on agriculture! Talk about uber-Luddite! What's this guy's credo? "If it ain't on the vine, it's none of mine!" Usually Tom sends us stuff about how we oughtta build a bomb shelter to save ourselves from the flesh-eating Republican zombies who will take over the Earth come Thursday next - but this! This was good stuff. And by "good stuff" I mean that it reflects my personal hunter-gatherer bias. As far as I can see, all we got from agriculture (besides not having to battle one-on-one against giant rabbits to secure our dinner), was obesity, tooth decay and intraspecial aggression. (Even Konrad Lorenz agrees with me on that last one. Go here to let him bore the shit out of you with his "short" autobiography.) Man, if I had more back hair, I would be so outta these jeans and down on the railroad tracks pickin' blackberries without a care in the world...except maybe that I live in Seattle and it's ass freezing cold right now. And there are no blackberries in the winter. But you get my drift.

Okay, so my final word on the subject is this: the Steelers - who represent the post-agricultural world, obviously - will lose, but not drastically. And the Seahawks, whose very totem and symbol represents the Tlinkit hunter-gatherers of the Pacific Northwest, will prevail.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

...And By "Very Narrowly" I Meant 20 Points

#33 Marquand Manuel prepares to ascend into heaven as two
Carolina sinners prostrate themselves before the The Lawd.
The Ubiquitous Zebraman gives an "amen".

Greg:

First of all, thank you for calling to let me know that you were watching the game. I'm concerned that you don't get enough football, and so your call was a great load off my mind.

So besides the obvious - obvious meaning the whacking we gave the Panthers on Sunday which led to the Seahawks Super Bowl berth - Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to be kicking me in the crack. This is in spite of the fact that the Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl, an event so seemingly unlikely (if you believe the press) that one would think Jesus H. Christ Himself would be appearing at halftime. (As it is, the Rolling Stones are appearing, who are only slightly younger and better known than JHC.) I tried to distract myself by scouting the tape of the Steelers/Broncos game (that I TiVo'd, wisely). But after discerning that the Hawks have not much to worry about from the Bloated Spawn of Andrew Carnegie, even that pastime lost its appeal. Yes, I said it. Even football isn't lighting a match inside the dungeon of my cranium. Damn this accursed Seattle wintersogged greyness! Everything has lost its tang, even complaining. I was even beginning to think that having my liver pecked out each day then grown anew each night to be pecked out again the following day might be a pleasant diversion.

So imagine my surprise when, just shortly after affixing a freakishly accurate homemade bakelite beak to my shnozz and baring my own midsection, I stumbled upon an Internet mystery that dispersed the clouds from the sky and rekindled my will to bitch about stuff. Here's the short version:

A guy named Tucker Darby from Newton, Iowa finds a painting of a crop circle that was left behind when a mysterious character named Benjamin Stove abandoned his family farm in 1988. It's a pretty nice piece of kitsch, he thinks, until he finds out on closer inspection that it was painted in 1915. (That places its provenance well before the 1970s, when entire fields of alien-worshipping nutters sprang up nationwide in response to the crop circle phenomena - FYI.) To help solve both mysteries, he creates a blog that details his search to find out exactly Who Is Benjamin Stove. No, I'm not going to tell you any more. Yes, you actually have to read it. Why? Because I'm lazy and depressed. All I can muster is the will to continue reading about this mystery. And even I started at the middle, so when you read it, please call me and tell me what happened at the beginning. I could do it myself, but I'm hopelessly pinned under a pile of ennui and can't get up.


Definitely not the work of Grant Wood.

Now it could be a true mystery, or it could be complete shite. If it is shite, my hat's off to this Tucker Darby fellow because it's pretty damn clever shite. I'd hate to find out that this was some ploy by Artisan Pictures to recoup the leeching they got from Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows. I want it to be true because it involves one of the Scariest Places On Earth - Iowa - and a nutjob of the first magnitude who is either at large as we speak, exsanguinated by the Chupacabra; or standing in the shadows, ready to pounce as soon as you stop reading this and turn out the lights. Good stuff. Go read it.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus