Chris posts again

I wanted to share some thoughts with everyone after my extended blogging hiatus. For starters I never wanted to stop writing, I feel a bit like a balloon that is so full or air that it either needs to let a little out or pop at any minute. I just had to stop blogging because if I was going to write it was going to be about sports, and if I wrote about sports I would be going on public record many, many times bragging about how good I thought my various football teams were, and if I did that then every self respecting sports fan knows I would be jinxing what I was considering the greatest start to a football season of my lifetime.

Let's think back to a week ago my friends...(Sorry, I've been watching too much politics and I've inadvertantly picked up several McCainism's in my everyday life. I've even started to catch on to the things I do everyday that might classify me as a Maverick. Taking a swig straight from the milk jug...Maverick! Sliding right behind a car that just pulled out to take a prime spot at the supermarket...Maverick!!) The Giants, BYU and Penn State were all undefeated and everytime I watched the TV, radio, newspaper, internet, podcasts ( I have a little bit of a football addication. I'm sure I consume between 3-6 hours of football related media on a weekday with much more on saturday. Some would say I need to re-prioritize my life and I would then tell some to JUST BACK OFF, I'M FINE!!! ) Needless to say it was a a month of perfect football bliss where I walked around with a bright inner smile and made a conscious attempt to not talk up my teams too much. Saying things like ," We're alright" or "there's a lot of season left, let's not go too far." When inside I'm thinking "We're going to win the national title." or " My team would likely smoke your team by 30 points if they played right now, I'm not even kidding." That's something you do when you're team is good, you try not to talk them up too much and do everything you can not to jinx them, like going on a brag-a-thon or writing a post that makes it seem like you're too confident.

Then this week happened. The Giants got blown out of the building by a sub-par Browns team that played like the '89 49ers. BYU didn't even act like it belonged on the field against TCU, and Penn State had a first half scare against Michigan that caused me to have some minor heart trouble before blowing them away in the second half. Needless to say, I don't have to worry about jinxing my season anymore, So I figured I could get back to writing and doing things I otherwise enjoy. (Quick note on the PSU vs. Michigan game. I actually watched this game on TiVo delay because Carrie and I went to the St. Louis Temple on Saturday. We already scheduled this trip in advance of knowing when the game would be on, but considering how terribly the football week was already going for me I figured there was no stronger anti-jinx action I could take to help PSU than to pretend football didn't matter for a saturday and go to the temple. I'm not sure if this is the type of attitude that causes me to lose all the blessings I gain from the trip or just proves I am mildly insane. The point is, on the way home I asked Carrie to look up the score on her phone and when she told me it was 17 - 7 Michigan in the middle of the 2nd I went into a state of shock. Carrie then spent the rest of the 4 hour ride updating me play by play as it was updated on her phone. I have a sweet wife and I would like publicly thank her for getting me through that tough time.)


Anyway, Since the unwritten laws of jinx offically allow me to write again here are a couple of things I've been thinking about lately.

1. Facebook - Some of you already know I started a Facebook account a couple weeks ago. This makes me one of the last 15 people my age to have one, but I figured better late then never. Anyway, totally different experience then I thought it would be. I figured it would be a nice little waste of 30 minutes on a day when I was feeling particularly under the weather. It's actually been like attending a huge reunion of almost everyone from your life and only having to talk to the people you actually want to talk to. I'm quite hooked.

2. Politics - You know, being a Republican right now is like being a fan of Nebraska football. Follow me on this one, about a decade or so we had a great thing going, great tradition , an old fashoned scheme we played to perfection, titles, everything you could want. Then we saw ourselves slipping a bit so we brought in new leadership to blow the whole thing up and start going about things a new way. The new way causes us to lose our identity, and now our leadership is so poor and our record is so bad we basically need to start over from nothing all while watching folks we used to beat easily destroy us. Confused yet? Me Too. the point is I am a conservative and the republicans have not governed like conservatives. When I think of What Bush has accomplished in the last 8 years, this is what comes to my mind. The Tax Cuts, The war in Iraq, Creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, The Wall Street Bailout. I only support 2 of those 5 things, and that's just not good enough. Republicans need to regroup, find new, promising, conservative leaders, and try to get back into the game in a couple of years.

In the meantime, I hope what republicans are left take a page out of the democratic playbook and whine, moan, complain, and generally make a pest of themselves for at least the next 2 - 4 years while the party reloads. That's how the Democrats treated the republican majority and that's how they need to be treated. What makes me more more mad than anything else it is the double standard in Washington. A corrupt Republican is quickly swept out of office, a corrupt democrat is put into party leadership. We should print calendars, articles, T-shirts and do everything we can to let everyone know how incompetant we think Barack Obama is ( and make no mistake, he is less qualified than Sarah Palin, He's just more ethnic so we look past it) Let's see how they like dealing with opposition that has not interest in doing anything constructive but being a pain in the rear. It will be a sad two years for public discourse but a fun one for those of us looking to have stupid fun at the democratic party's expense.