Okay...

So the seasons of both the NFL and NCAA are over, and I gotta tell you they were so close to being absolutely perfect. I mean, my college team, Alabama, won it's 13th national title, while my pro team, the Indianapolis Colts, made it all the way to the Super Bowl, before losing, tonight, to the New Orleans Saints. I was mad--really mad. Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad that the Saints won, I actually kinda like them, and I'm glad for their city, but I am mad that the Colts didn't win, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I've got a long time to wait till the next game of football happens, and I'm left with a bitter taste on my tongue after the Colt's loss. But I've got next season to look forward to on both fronts--The Colts are keeping most of their weapons, and perhaps getting new ones. Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie are getting better every day, and next year I suspect that they'll come on even stronger, not to mention Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne, two of my favorites. These are all weapons Peyton Manning can use to carve up opposing defenses. And looking at the way Joseph Addai ran the ball against the Saints, I suspect that maybe they won't be last in the league rushing next year. Meanwhile Alabama is keeping a lot of it's weapons as well, including Heisman winner Mark Ingram and the other back in the Crimson Tide's one-two punch, Trent Richardson, who I expect to have a phenomenal year next year. Quarterback Greg McElroy will be back, and wideout Julio Jones. The defense, though, I fear will suffer. They'll lose CB Javier Arenas and MLB Rolando McClain, two of the best, not to mention Nosetackle Terrence "Mount" Cody, as well as others. But I'm confident--After all, Nick Saben is a great recruiter, and we got the number three overall class, following only Texas and Florida.

Soon to come I'll delve more into football, because I'll need to compensate for my lack of it, and also I'll talk a bit about my writing, and what it is, exactly, that I'm doing with myself. Maybe I'll talk a little about my new workout regiment, but maybe not. It's been a good year, and I guess it would have been too much for both Alabama and Indy to win the big one, but hey, we got close. Next year I'll be watching the Colts (of course), the Jets, Giants, Vikings, Steelers and, as a wildcard for me this year, I'll be paying special attention to Tennessee--I'm hoping Vince Young will be able to turn it all around like he almost did this year, and with Chris Johnson, who was a two-thousand yard back this year, I think they've got enough weapons to be really good--especially if they can get some more weapons on offense. Not sure when I'll be back. I suspect no one will care.

Wow

I haven't written anything here in a while. I guess that's because I don't have 21st century challenge anymore, but I don't see why that means I have to stop writing into the void.

So what's been going on with me? Well, I've been writing a lot and watching a lot of football. That's pretty much all. I've discovered recently that pro football can be almost as much fun to watch as college football is, at least to me, and this is very exciting. It means I get to watch football all weekend, now, and on Monday night to boot.

But I was raised an Alabama fan, and I don't think I'll ever grow out of that. I'll always love the Crimson Tide, no matter where I live. But it's nice to watch other games, too. Before this season I would never have watched a football game other than Alabama, but now I can't seem to control myself. And with this last weeks games, who can blame me? I mean, Washington, who went 0-12 last season, beat #3 ranked USC and booted them from the top five with a last second field goal. Meanwhile the Tide moves up to the number 3 spot and gets ready to face it's first SEC foe, Arkansas, who looked good but lost to #23 Georgia on Saturday night. Oregon beat Utah, who crushed Alabama in the bowl where they met at the end of last year, and #1 Florida kept Tennessee from singing "Rocky Top" after all, though they didn't crush them as badly as some might have thought. And Virginia Tech, which Alabama struggled with in the season opener came back from behind with some very impressive plays in the last 2 minutes. Overall this week has been very exciting, as even more games than these became close till the last minutes.

Meanwhile, in the pro football universe, the Jets and the Giants both won, so New York and George R. R. Martin are happy. The Steelers lost but the Colts beat out Miami in the last five minutes, having possession of the ball for less than fifteen minutes through the whole game. I'm liking the Manning Brothers a lot, as usual, and I'm glad the Jets with their rookie quarterback were able to beat the Patriots, who I hate.

I'm feeling good about Alabama's chances, too. We have a good group of returning players as well as some new names which are attracting attention, like Richardson and McElroy. We're 3-0, now, but that could change any time. I'll try to maintain my composure til next week.

Oh, and about my writing--I've started something new, something I hope will be good. Well, actually my focus these days is just on finishing the thing, rather than it being good, but we'll see. I'll let you know how it turns out, as well as update you on what it's actually about in another post.

A Slightly Off-Topic Post...

So my good friend Clay and I have started an internet Literary Magazine which is, at this point, still in the creation process, but I would love for more people to get involved. It's called Scarlet Words, and though it is technically for a class assignment, we have high hopes for its future beyond that. So if you're interested shoot me an email. If you have facebook there is a group there for it, and we'd love to have people submit their fiction and poetry. I know this has nothing to do with the 21st century... or does it? It actually ties directly into my final project idea--the changing ways of the publishing industry. Now I won't say that we are part of the publishing industry here (yet), but you see this sort of thing more and more lately. People get published online nowadays instead of in books. This is not a universal truth, but if you had asked someone what an internet literary magazine was ten years ago they woulda called you crazy. I would have, but I was seven. Anyway, come on and get involved! By the way, my partner in crime would kill me if I didn't use the word luminaries in here somewhere... so... be a luminary and submit...? I tried.

Pirates!

So I have always had a fascination with pirates, but recently there have been a bunch of them giving my lifelong love a bad name. I mean, seriously, I thought all pirates were supposed to be the romanticized version, the gritty, good guys that act like bad guys kinda thing. But now there are pirates keeping people hostage and taking cruise ships and they aren't making it fun or disney-ish at all. Needless to say I'm upset. Now I know this is really no joking matter, people have died and it's bad and everything, but what ever happened to the days when pirates, who were, in their time, terrifying, were light hearted and joyous?

This post is mostly a joke, but I think there's a point in here somewhere. Pirates were never lighthearted and joyous, so why did we start to think of them like that? When did pirates stop being scary and start being awesome? This is a serious question. As Americans I think we like to take things that are tough and scary and idealize them. We value strength and, though I don't think we like to admit it, villainy, in a way. When did that start? Hmm?

But pirates are still awesome.

Final Project

So from the very start of this class I've been interested in the change in the publishing industry that is taking place all around us. I'm worried about what it will mean for writers like me. If I ever publish a book, will I not be able to hold it in my hands? sign it for people at some mall in New Jersey? It seems weird, I know, but I'm actually worried about these things. Even from a readers perspective, I'm interested. Will I have to curl up with a laptop or, at best, a Kindal if I want to read? I don't know if I can handle that, honestly. I want to have a dog eared copy of my favorite book. And I want to have another, perfect copy of that same book. I may be a weird person but America is full of weird people, and I don't think I'm the only person that feels this way. Now a whole nother problem to get into is publishing itself, and how hard it will be to get published in the future. Will the advancement of technology make it nearly impossible to get published? Will it make it so easy that everyone can get published? Will anyone care? Or maybe it will stay exactly the same, just in a new medium. Regardless of what happens in the future, this is a subject I am very interested in. I want to expand upon it and do some research. The SciFi writer Michael A. Stackpole has a podcast on the subject called the Secrets, about publishing industry and the best tips and tools to use in order to get new writers published. It's quite a good podcast, even if he rarely if ever updates, and he talks about these problems a lot. It is really what got me interested in all this in the first place.

Medicare Scare!

So this is a post in response to our work with the Bill family. And yes, the scare I'm referring to was actually not about medicare but rather social security, but hey, I'm not gonna pass up on a rhyming title. But anyway the point is that I was genuinely worried about the country I live in for a few hours when our research (falsely) uncovered the information that social security stops at 85. I dunno about you, but I plan on living a lot longer than that. The reasoning behind this was that the calculator on the website stopped at a certain birth date--you apparently cannot apply for social security if you are over 85. This is less terrifying than it simply cutting of at that age, though. This only means that if you haven't already registered then you can't anymore, but if you're 85 and you don't already have social security, then chances are you're already dead. I also want to address the fear of social security not being around anymore when I get to be that ripe old age. First of all let me say that I'm not usually this forward looking, and it's making me feel kinda weird. But the information I heard last week about social security put some of my worries to rest. It also made entirely new ones, though, but you can't win everything. I'm glad that social security will still exist when I need it, but I'm worried now that our country is way too far in debt to know what to do with itself. I keep wondering to myself if there's anything I can do to help, but of course there isn't, other than paying my taxes and being an upstanding citizen. The amount of money that is being lost and gained and moved around and made up is beyond my comprehension. I can hardly imagine having ten thousand dollars, not to mention ten billion. So I think I'm a little out of my league here. I'm still kinda worried about all of it, but I'm also worried about final exams, which are closer at hand. I'm worried about what college I go to, what job I'll get. Social security can wait.

Shopping for a New Computer

So I've started saving up for a new comupter, which I plan to purchase over the summer. And as I begin shopping, I begin thinking about the state of technology today, and how far it has come since yesterday. I mean, I remember well the days of dial-up internet and how amazing it was. I spent hours on the computer then, but maybe that's just because you had to if you wanted to get anything done. But hey, I spend hours on the computer now, just a few years later, and now I've got cable internet, exponentially faster than that old dial-up stuff, and still I get frustrated with my computer because it's not "good enough." This makes me wonder, where will we stop? Will we keep advancing the technology? How much farthur can we possibly go? And what will all this mean for our daily lives? It's pretty crazy, when you start to think about it. I mean I can't even wrap my mind around it.

But when I went shopping, I saw a lot of numbers. Not mentioning the big number, which was the price, there were numbers for memory and RAM and all this stuff and suddenly I'm not so sure how computers work anymore. If you had asked me a few days ago if I was good with computers I probably would have said yes. Now I'm not so sure. I'm nervous going into this because I'm not sure what to look for, and I'm not sure what's good as far as these numbers are concerned. This problem is easily fixed, though. I can just bring one of my friends with me, someone who is a lot more tech savy than I am. But still, this whole thing is intimidating. It's exciting at the same time, though, because I'm ready to have that laptop. I guess we'll see how it turns out. I'll keep you posted (is that a pun? I think it is. I mean, I'm laughing.)