DFW, Pratchett, Alton Brown, Stephenson, Lem, Fever Pitch. It's like you're orbiting my world, and every day I have to watch something very familiar and very high off basically rubbing it into my face.
I do take some consolation in the inferior choice of Mason & Dixon. The passage, mid-narrative, about dodo hunting in Mauritius should have qualified Gravity's Rainbow for the Pulitzer.
Brian, in the years I've been reading this blog you've done what pretty much no other football writer - besides those who, bless their souls, still stick to solid beat reporting and leave out the soapbox shit - has managed to do: convince me that the really important thing to you is being truthful. Yeah, sticking with the team, yeah, statistical analysis, yeah, inside sourcing, that's all nice. But truth? Not just truthiness, but the real stuff? I think that's why so many people still read mgoblog. Obviously things like play-by-play breakdown and the insane attention to recruiting are attractive qualities, but we are more often than not looking forward to withering, righteous fire from on high or the impermanent joys of self-deprecation, and, seriously, I suspect the bits where you say, point blank, "Well shit, there's probably no way I could have been more wrong, but, well, you know, at least there's puppies out there somewhere," or something similar... those are the bits that bring me back. Sometimes I try to approximate the number of hours it took me, in the course of a few days or weeks, to put up a post completely devoid of citations of any kind of evidence, and then I extrapolate and wonder what you do, just as you mentioned in this post, when a beautiful theory meets grisly facts. This blog often has the tone of an Economist piece: authoritative and infallible on subjects alarmingly broad - Muslim immigration to Europe, the bonifides of five star rankings - and bafflingly narrow - British laws regarding telephone surveillance, Donovan Warren - but, unlike Economist pieces, I don't take your tone to mean you're right no matter what, just that you happen to be right because the facts are on your side or at least have offered a mercenary fee for the next hour or so. I believe that at the heart of the matter lies a loyalty to Michigan, and that always includes a loyalty to being honest about Michigan. That's a priceless commodity, man, so I am glad you aimed some withering, righteous and, more importantly, Ghostbusters-referencin' fire from on high at those who ought to know better but don't.
This post, FTW.
I read mgoblog regularly because I'm hoping any day now Brian's inherent fatalism will click in and he'll switch over to USC. I've been reading for four years, and each day he doesn't is another day of depression at the thought of college football's best writer writing about stuff I don't care about.
Except I kinda do care, now. I can name half of Michigan's roster. I don't want to care, either.
So, basically, this is how it is: this is below Brian. Of course it is. This post is still excellent because I love watching intelligent people eviscerate less intelligent people. Brian dropped two (2) xkcds on this poor guy. Overkill? I don't care.
Think about it this way: the higher road involves this post not existing, which means we all get one less Brian-item to read. I'd rather him channel his ire into one brief ball of flame than dissipate that passion in a show of maturity. Please put maturity in sarcasm quotes, because it is not mature to deprive the world of a classically executed take down.
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