One of our all time favorite “Bloom County” strips:
(Click to embiggen.)
Why are we linking to that? This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
“It’s the year of offensive stat-a-rama throughout the NFL.” And why is that? Could it have something to do with the strike, and defenses still not being up to par? Or rules changes that favor the offense in general, and quarterbacks specifically? No, TMQ believes it has something to do with the “proliferation of the shotgun spread” over the past decade, while defenses have moved away from “discipline” in favor of “personal flash”. We’re not sure about the whole shotgun spread thing, but given the number of poor attempts at tackling we’ve seen this season, we thing TMQ may be on to something about defenses.
TMQ thinks the Patriots are Satan’s representatives on Earth, and doesn’t like the current overtime format. “How about alternating possessions beginning at the 50, and no kicking plays allowed?” How about a straight 15 minute overtime period: whoever is ahead when time runs out wins?
Elizabeth J. has kind of weird hair, but she can scale up our Haber process anytime.
Sweet and sour plays: New Orleans – Detroit, Cincinnati – Houston, Denver – Pittsburgh.
Creep. Atlanta – Giants: the Falcons quit on a playoff game for the second year in a row. Why did the LSU football team need to block a major highway?
…after last summer’s lengthy, theatrical “deficit showdown” that ended with Democrats and Republicans making an extremely vague promise to cut the national debt by $1.2 trillion but not beginning ’til 2013, Washington will have immediately borrowed and spent another $2.1 trillion — almost twice as much borrowed and spent right now as the amount promised for unspecified savings years down the road.
Detroit – New Orleans: poor defense by the Lions, near perfect offense by the Saints.
“I ain’t getting on no space-bound machine that did not cost billions of dollars to develop and test.” Because, as we all know, the quality of any means of transportation is directly determined by the amount of money spent on research and development. TMQ may have a point about companies taking money now for future space travel, but his arguments against private space travel in general are weak.
Readers write: and make the same point we did about fingerless gloves. Also, The Ultimate Leader’s biography has been rediscovered, Sav Rocca wasn’t just unwanted in the NFL but also unwanted in Australian rules football, much of Ndamukong Suh’s “charitable” donation actually went to the athletic department of the University of Nebraska, and many of those celebrity charitable donations were actually to “foundations”, which may or may not do charitable things with the money, and may or may not serve as handy tax shelters.
Houston – Cincinnati: Texans pumped, Bengals flat. (“Lewis is 0-3 in the postseason, with his teams outscored 86-41.”)
Wacky disclaimer: real ingredients. Inadvertent whistles, plus the “neck area”. Wacky food: “Cheesecake Factory’s red velvet cheesecake has 1,540 calories and 59 grams of fat — about the same as an entire half-gallon tub of ice cream.” As we always point out every time Easterbrook runs one of these desert items, how many people order something like this and eat it all by themselves, as opposed to getting one of these and two, or three, or five forks? Split three ways, that’s about an extra 500 calories per person, which doesn’t exactly strike us as evil for an occasional indulgence. Seriously, we’d love to see a real observational study of dessert splitting in restaurants. That might actually give us some meaningful data about obesity.
Denver – Pittsburgh: (Speaking of Pittsburgh, if we were looking for a team to be Satan’s earthy incarnation…well, either Pittsburgh or Oakland.) It isn’t Tebow, it’s the offensive line.
As TMQ reminds his readers every year, “my compromise with my Baptist upbringing is to be pro-topless but anti-gambling.” As WCD reminds our readers every year, our compromise with our Christian upbringing is to be pro-full frontal nudity, pro-gambling, pro-autonomous robots selling Glocks and heroin (although to be honest, we would prefer that the robots sell 1911s instead of Glocks), and opposed to government intervention in personal moral decisions.
Single worst performance of the season so far: Detroit at New Orleans.
That’s all for this week, folks. Tune in next week and we’ll see if Houston can pull off another long shot win.