Mubarak: I will give up the presidency …

… when you take it from my cold, dead hands!

Mubarak to Egyptians:

Drop Dead.

(OK, President Ford never really said that.)

Ode to Excess, part deux

Hundreds With Tickets but No Seats:

… Sections of temporary bleachers erected inside Cowboys Stadium were not completed in time for the game, leaving about 1,250 people holding tickets for seats declared unusable.

The N.F.L. said that about 850 of those ticket holders were relocated to other seats in the stadium. But long after the game started, hundreds were still outside, in line at the ticket window, awaiting a resolution that few imagined could satisfy them.

Those sent away to watch the game elsewhere, or invited to watch the game on televisions inside a club at the stadium, were promised refunds by the N.F.L. worth three times the face value of their tickets, which were mostly $800 or $900 apiece. But most of those affected had paid far more for their tickets, and had spent small fortunes on travel and lodging.

… “I’ve just lost eight grand,” said Bradley Geier, a Dallas lawyer, who said he spent $9,700 for two tickets that had a face value of $900 each.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for these people; no one likes being cheated. Then again, they paid thousands of dollars for a ticket worth $800-900, so it’s not like they didn’t have a lot of money to throw around. None of these people will go hungry due to the poor planning.

How can people justify spending so much for a sporting event? I wonder about people like this, and those who spend, say, $10,000 for a watch. You can get a dang nice watch for $500. Or for way, way less. I have a Fossil watch that cost $50. It’s a nice watch; keeps time pretty good. I have to reset it only once in a while. There are very few people in the world who need to know the exact time down to the microsecond.

But aha: $50 gets you a watch. It doesn’t get you status.

Apologies to Egypt

In following the news coming out of Egypt I’ve been appalled at how little I know about that country. I like to think I’m a well-informed person, but I’m clearly not when it comes to international news. Geez, it’s hard enough to keep up with local and national affairs. Staying informed is almost a full-time job.

Tired of all the Super Bowl hype on sports radio, I’ve been listening to more NPR. And this morning On the Media had a discussion on how selective and skewed past and current western media coverage of Egypt has been. So even if I did follow international news more closely it’s not like I would get the whole story.

rrgirl commented in Ode to Excess:

I’m thinking more today about “Downton Abbey” withdrawal than the Super Bowl. yeah, we might watch some ads, or I might just play Scrabble on the iPad.
I hear you about ice dams. I’ve dealt with them at home and work. we’re more proactive at home, but at work there is nothing budgeted for preventative maintenance, so things get left until the conditions are severe enough to trigger an insurance claim. there’s no overtime for my measly salary, and the weekend scramble with contractors just is what it is. today is a day of rest since the drains are working again. we start early tomorrow to get the mess cleaned up before mold takes hold inside. I know how to put it back together again and we’ll do a good job – for me it’s more about preserving a fine old building, though there are “valuable professionals” for whom inconvenience must be minimized. the head-banging thing is, it’s preventable if you can sell prevention to the bean counters.
the Egypt news has me on the edge of my seat. I keep hearing echoes of the 70’s and I don’t mean disco music. I don’t see a Reagan in that bunch of hopefuls. I’ll give them credit for keeping quiet.

I’m not a fan of either team, but am partial to Green Bay. The whole Vince Lombardi mystique got to me when I was a kid; I even read Jerry Kramer’s “Instant Replay.” So I’ll be watching the game more closely than in the recent past. I had to think hard to remember who played in last year’s game.

Luckily my ice dam woes are happening on the back porch roof, so thank God no damage to the house proper. Knock on wood. I got a roof rake the other day and have to say it is one of the most fun implements I have gotten in a long time. The day was warm and sunny and dragging snow off the roof was good exercise. This is the first time I’ve had ice dam problems. The previous owners built the porch, and why they made the pitch of the roof so low is beyond me. It’s not a flat roof, but it is nearly so. I gave serious thought to crawling up there and shoveling the snow off, but the possibility of falling off the roof and breaking something scared me away from that plan.

The scenes from Egypt have made me think about the Berlin Wall. I can almost hear Reagan saying “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Ode to Excess

A good article on the overkill that is the Super Bowl: From sordid to stupid, Super Bowl excess often can be unbearable.

It’s quintessentially American, is what I’m told. Big and loud and full of itself. We still know how to have a good time. Nothing wrong with that. Better, though, to observe from afar, than advocate the madness by taking part in it.

A journalist who has already covered a Super Bowl (or II or III or XLIV) might now prefer to observe it from afar, but it would be really cool to see one in person. Boyfriend-Dearest would love to attend a Super Bowl, but only if his beloved Vikings are in the game.

While a week-long pre-game is annoying, it’s been a nice diversion for me this year. Between household problems (damned ice dams!) and family woes (water is thicker than blood in certain cases) it’s good to be able to take a time-out and get lost in the inanity that is sports. It’s also a distraction from hard news: Egypt, high unemployment, etc.

I was wondering the other day why I hadn’t heard or read anything from the GOP re Egypt. I thought I might have missed something, but I guess I haven’t: On Egypt, Republican Hopefuls Remain Mostly Silent.

The Whole World is Watching

I’m riveted by what’s going on in Egypt. Democracy is being born right before my eyes! But it’s also sobering to consider what comes afterwards, if/when President Mubarak steps down or is overthrown. Will conservative or radical Islamists come to power? I remember when the Marcos regime ended in the Philippines. I was listening to a live radio report as Benigno Aquino returned to Manila and was gunned down at the airport. The Philippines are better off without Marcos, as Nicaragua is better off without Somoza, but the transition periods to new forms of government were very rocky.

And while America is often criticized for meddling with the internal affairs of other nations, there’s an Egyptian chorus calling on President Obama to tell Mubarak to step down. And while I don’t feel sorry for him, Mubarak has been a good little foot-soldier for America all these years — making nice with Israel, maintaining a secular (i.e., not Islamic) government, etc. — and now we are telling him to get out.

What’s more confusing and confounding: politics or religion?

I found this quote which might answer an earlier query:

Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?

    – Pierre Troubetzkoy

Who Knew?

Following the news in Egypt, I had no idea things there were so bad over there: the economy, the lack of freedom, Hosni Mubarak’s iron fist. I feel like the typical uninformed, ego-centric Ugly American. I need to pay more attention to international news. I used to listen to BBC World Radio before bedtime every night, but got out of the habit. It was a good source of news; they cover a lot of stuff that never makes it onto the US networks.

Mubarak? Another classic case of “He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard.” OK, so he made peace with Israel. He’s milked that long enough. Time to cut our losses, I think. And he’d better not end up here, lest we get into another Shah of Iran situation.

Hoping for a peaceful resolution, a la Czechoslovakia and not a replay of Hungary 1956.

I went to school with an Egyptian guy and later worked with a couple from Cairo. I’ve lost touch with all of them, but have been thinking about them a lot lately and hope they are all right.

Is Cairo Burning?

I’ve been following the news from Egypt all day. It made me think of an old movie.

Does He hear me?

rrgirl commented in But do they really mean it?:

I took the selections to be favorites, too but also selected to reinforce their respective agendas. not that it’s a bad thing to reach for a spiritual reference for guidance, but like the Westboro folks, there sure seems to be a biblical basis for just about any point of view. I like the 1Corinthians 13 verses, they are often read at weddings as the “Love Chapter.” I was taught that the word “love” could be translated as “charity.” doesn’t that put an interesting spin on the text?
my upbringing was mainstream Protestant with a wide streak of evangelism. it always bothered me to hear missionaries talk about the need to “save” the untold masses. what about the people who never got the message? I couldn’t blame them and they certainly didn’t deserve the eternal damnation that was supposed to be their fates…oh that’s just one of the logical fallacies that drove me away from the community of believers. at some point I accepted myself as faithless, and I’m OK with that.

Does God hear non-believers? I’m a not-sure-er, not a card-carrying non-believer. I’m simply not sure if God exists. I think about it off-and-on. I confess that my understanding of Christianity is pretty weak. I prefer to see God as all-loving, not a fire-and-brimstone/send a plague of locusts kind of guy. The Westboro people are clearly in the plague camp.

A couple of good things happened to me recently and I immediately said “Thank you, God” like maybe He had something to do with it. Maybe he did — who knows? Then I started to wonder if God heard me, since I don’t have both feet planted in His religion.

I think one can be “faithless” to Christianity and still be “faithful.” I mean, there are a lot of good people in the world who aren’t Christian. To me, “Christian” doesn’t automatically equal “good” — and neither does it automatically equal “bad,” as one of my radically atheistic friends believes. (His complete disdain for anything and everything spiritual has strained our friendship.) And “faithful” doesn’t have to mean adherence to a religion. One can be faithful to living a good life, being a good person, doing good works.

Sometimes it feels like life really isn’t that hard. but we make it hard. Maybe we think too much. Maybe God wanted to make it interesting for us by giving us free will.

I was taught that the word “love” could be translated as “charity.” doesn’t that put an interesting spin on the text?

Wow, it sure does.

Warm and Fuzzy

People would cut Jay Cutler some slack if he was a warm and fuzzy guy, but he’s not. He’s an easy guy to hate.

Sounds kind of like KO.

Cutler also hasn’t had the kind of success that wins over haters and skeptics. But Winning Is Not Redemption:

You know those national debt counters, the neon things on the sides of buildings that display a huge number that’s rising really quickly? We would like to see a Ben Roethlisberger redemption counter, representing every time the word “redemption” is mentioned in the same sentence as the Pittsburgh quarterback, and watch a huge number quickly rise. The bulbs may even short out.

The count got rolling long before the Steelers made the Super Bowl, but now the N.F.L. is running a high-grade redemption fever. If you need an example — and you really shouldn’t — Terence Moore of Fanhouse.com rolls one out today. But let us pause for a moment to remember what “redeeming” actually is: atoning or making up for some mistake or wrongdoing. How exactly is winning football games making up for mistreating women (to use the mildest possible term for whatever Roethlisberger wrought on his accusers)? It’s redemption only in the sports world, where athletic success magically papers over all manner of sin. Now, if Roethlisberger were to take his playoff winnings and use it to make the lives of abused women better, or to help teach young athletes to avoid his loutish ways, that would be redemption.

A far better candidate for redemption is Chicago quarterback Jay Cutler. His mistake is still hotly debated. San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers offered some sympathy, but said Cutler could have kept playing (Rivers played an entire playoff game with a torn anterior cruciate ligament). But even if you agree with SI.com’s Paul Daugherty that this reflects football’s Cro-Magnon culture and needs to change, Cutler could still make up for the fact that he stunk (31.8 quarterback rating equals awful) before he was hurt in that game, and for being such an unlikable sort that made it easy for critics to pile on, writes Neil Hayes in The Chicago Sun-Times. He could start by not looking like a bored 14-year-old on the sideline, but Ray Ratto of CBSSports.com argues that he won’t dig his way all the way out until he wins a Super Bowl.

If KO’s ratings had been better I wonder if Comcast-NBC Universal would have kept him around.

Maybe, maybe not. Sounds like he’d been napalming more rivers: Olbermann Split Came After Years of Tension

It’s a Guy Thing

Jay Cutler has been getting a ton of grief for not “being a man” and toughing out his knee injury during yesterday’s Packers-Bears game. From what I’ve read he’s a bit of a round peg and the NFL is nothing but square holes. He also sounds aloof, plus he forced a trade to escape Denver — maybe he is a bit of a diva. It’s obvious that many players, ex-players, and journalists don’t like him. They jumped him the first chance they got. After leaving yesterday’s game they said he was soft. Soft! The greatest offense known to Man Law.

What strikes me as ironic is how few NFL players and sports media types criticized Ben Roethlisberger and Michael Vick for their recent detours from responsible behavior. Some did, to their credit. But it made me kind of sick that so many of Roethlisberger’s and Vick’s teammates stood up for them and vouched for their good character. The boys just made “mistakes” and gosh-oh-golly, doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance? Besides, they sure as heck aren’t soft!

So, being a borderline sex offender (Roethlisberger) or a dog killer (Vick) rate understanding and sympathy, but sustaining an injury and not being able to take the field (Cutler) deserve derision.

Whew! It’s really hard to figure out the XY Universe.

And speaking of chromosomes, the Jets’ Antonio Cromartie is really good at spreading his around:

Cromartie has fathered nine children with eight women living in six states, and has been named in at least five paternity suits in the past two years. According to court records, Cromartie failed to appear in court on two separate occasions in reference to moving violations and his driver license status. In March 2010, the Jets provided Cromartie with a $500,000 advance so Cromartie could make outstanding child support payments.”

I’ve never heard a professional athlete call-out another player for this type of behavior. Well, as long as a guy’s not soft, then all is right in GuyVille.

In addition to disciplining players for helmet-to-helmet hits, committing felonies, forcing women bathroom stalls, etc. maybe Roger Goodell could also get his boys to keep their pants zipped, or at least keep up with their child support payments.