Are my eyes really blue?

* 30-point win today for Vandy men, holding Auburn to the lowest output of any Commodore opponent since the shot clock came into effect in college ball.  If that kind of defense stands up the rest of the way, we may pull out of this slide after all.

* By way of celebration, I got my slice of Big Sur at Pizza My Heart with two servings from the Coca Cola Freestyle machine.  Most soda I’ve had all year.

* I have come to realize that I can watch time-lapse photography of particulate matter pretty much anywhere, any time. This U-Verse Showcase channel is showing clouds and fog and mist off a pond and I cannot turn away.  I might need to check that pizza for weed next time.

* It’s 67 degrees and sunny today.  Spring is here!

* I think I have finally ironed out the last bits of trouble migrating away from my MacBook Pro and changing the setup to Mac mini for home and MacBook Air for work (and using ARD and Screen Sharing to get at my upstairs computer).  I’m a little surprised that with everything installed and configured, I still have 196 GB of free space – guess that’s the side benefit of not having my iTunes content on this machine.  What’s going to be really interesting is whether the combination of this machine, the iPhone and the Kindle are enough to obviate the need for even an iPad 3.

* I had something to blog about that had nothing to do with technology, politics or Vanderbilt sports, and now I’ve clean forgotten what it was.  However I am sure it will rate a full post when I get back to remembering it.

Four years ago, I looked dubiously at the brand new MacBook Air and declared it ideal for the CxO wanting to look slick in the first class lounge, and said  that Apple was trying to create “an entirely new market segment for mid-life crisis computers.”

Today I took over a 13″ MacBook Air, one generation from new, and was delighted to get it.

The revised form factor helped, obviously – two USB ports and no flap to wrangle with – but the use of current processors and solid state drives helped make the leap possible, as did the battery changes. Now, the 13″ Air is arguably Apple’s de facto Macintosh, the machine they have in mind when designing the likes of Lion.

Me, I’m just happy to slice a quarter of the weight out of my daily commute bag, possibly with more to come yet.

Eight votes. Eight lousy votes. That’s all that separates Willard “Multiple-Choice Mitt” Romney, the presumptive nominee-in-waiting, the guy who’s been running for a half-decade or so, from a former Senator who was an afterthought for most of the last year and who polled somewhere in the low single-digits until Christmas.

Santorum, on paper, can’t be the guy. Not enough money, not enough organization, and a track record that strongly suggests he’s running in favor of a pre-Vatican II Catholic theocracy, plus a Google problem (courtesy of Dan Savage) that is going to be embarrassing to talk about for most of the national press. But elections aren’t run on paper. With the functional elimination (de facto if not de jure) of Bachmann and Perry, the roster of surviving candidates has been winnowed to four, and the GOP establishment – much as they might be ambivalent about Romney – have already declared that Newt Gingrich is persona non grata. Which won’t keep him from sticking around chucking bombs for a while, because that’s all Newt knows how to do and he won’t be able to resist the media spotlight until it turns elsewhere. Put it this way: Newt won’t ever decide to quit. Somebody will have to force-quit him.

More interesting to me is that Ron Paul finished third. I would have bet sure that he would win or as close as makes no difference, and the drumbeat of revelation about his old leanings in the 80s and 90s might have had some impact, but it’s still a poorer finish than I anticipated. He does have his loyalists and they aren’t going anywhere, but he has yet to ever make a substantive splash outside his pre-existing circle. He apparently polls well with the kids, though, which is just one more sign that we’re headed for a generational showdown in the GOP between the aging Teabagger right and a younger cohort which honestly isn’t that bothered about the gays and the demon weed and a political message that’s been largely stuck in the same groove since well before they were born.

Everyone seems to think this is bad for Mitt Romney, because a winnowed field means that the “Anybody-But-Mitt” forces can line up behind one guy. But the problem is the same as it’s always been, which is that there’s no one guy out there. Trust me, Mitt polled worse in Iowa this year than he did in 2008, and if there were a known-good viable alternative, that person would have trounced Romney last night. The mass of the GOP faithful is not going to drop into line behind Santorum, Paul or Gingrich – they’ve had a year to do that. It’s not going to happen, because if it were, it would have already. Harold Hill isn’t going to march in and rally everybody and form a boys’ band and have the whole town marching behind his baton.

And if you think this whole post wasn’t just an excuse to wedge in some awkward The Music Man shtick, well, welcome to 2012. Broadway musical comedy is probably the best genre for this season. Well, either that or post-apocalyptic doom drama.

Winter fog this morning, heavier than it’s been in months.  It was down to the building tops as late as 10 AM – I haven’t been back out since, but I doubt it’s sunny at all.  Just cool-to-cold gray mist in all directions.

And that’s fine.  In fact, it’s great.  The fog is a blanket, a shield, something that makes it easy to bundle up and cocoon and get away from it all.  Sometimes, you just need distraction and you’re better off without too much brightness.

I’ll be interested to see how things go this year – I do intend to keep up the shutdown nights, since I more or less succeeded with it in 2011.  Odds are that Tuesday and Thursday will probably be nights to go to the YMCA and work out and run, although that may have to wait for next week to start in earnest.

No soda yet today, impressively enough – I have found and consumed water once my morning coffee ran out.  Next step: get up in enough time to make the coffee in the morning.  May have to run out for that new cup sooner than I thought if I’m going to transport the stuff.

I think that’s it for resolution updates for January 3, except to say that I’m trying to figure out when to go to Trials or O’Flaherty’s again.  Trying to make that a thing and failing has been a January tradition for quite some time now, but I think the 5-time would be good.  When I was thinking about why I have this vision of an empty street at night with dim light coming out of the window of one place, I’m pretty sure I was remembering being outside Trials and not realizing what I was remembering.  So maybe Sunday night, or the Sunday night after, or…sometime.

1) Seriously curtail the soda intake.  Suck it up and learn to drink water, with as few adulterants as possible.  At the very least, stop getting through literally quarts of Coke Zero per day.  Little bottle of peppermint oil at work, Arnold Palmer in the In N Out drive-thru, Penguin machine at home with bitters instead of syrups.  Whatever it takes.

2) Exercise.  The Y.  Weights and running. Take the stairs in all 4 major supported buildings, all the time.  Once the bag and the 6 PM sky are both lightened, start walking home from Caltrain.

3) Try to expand my blogging beyond politics, portable electronics and Vanderbilt athletics.  I’m sure I must have opinions on something else…right?

December 31, 2004:

The legend of Jeff Tedford is dead.  It perished in flames over San Diego, punctured by a one-dimensional passing attack from a fourth-place team, and fell in the former Jack Murphy Stadium as flat as the listless Golden Bear team he led into the Holiday Bowl this Thursday past.

With a Cal receiving corps in shambles, Tedford attempted to go to the air as he had in September and October, where the Bears featured America’s finest receivers on Saturdays.  But Chase Lyman has a shredded ACL, Geoff McArthur has a broken leg, and Burl Toler can barely walk, and while Jonathan Makkonen made yeoman’s work of his last outing, he cannot disguise the steps he has lost since the season began.  Nevertheless, despite the presence of J.J. Arrington in his backfield, Tedford insisted on trying to throw the ball to a patchwork of unsteady receivers.  Aaron Rodgers, shaky since November, was ill served by this decision.  While NFL glory may yet await him, he can no longer be considered the nation’s premier quarterback.  Against Texas Tech, he was not even the best quarterback in the stadium.

The only choice should have been to pound the ball up the middle, establish control of the line of scrimmage, and try to dictate the pace of the game.  Instead, Cal handed the ball time and again to the Red Raiders, whose offense features at best four plays: a slant inside, a ten yard out pattern, and a deep ball to the post, punctuated by a weak little fullback dive that fools no one.  Yet they executed those plays over and over and over, leaving Cal to wonder what might have been.

Nothing that happened here reduced the fact that Cal has a strong season, or that they were wrongly snubbed by the BCS.  But with a complete absence of fire, and with no apparent motivation of any kind, they fell on their face tonight, leaving the Cal faithful with nine months worth of embarassment and disappointment.  It is a sickening end to what should have been a triumphant season, and it is now up to Jeff Tedford to give an accounting of why he picked tonight to deposit a one-point-five million dollar flop on the grass of San Diego…

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, Jeff Tedford couldn’t motivate a synagogue to fight Nazis.  If there were any doubt about that, last night’s Holiday Bowl loss to the Texas Longhorns – featuring four turnovers and offensive line pass blocking that suggests the guards and tackles were replaced with Girl Scouts – should settle the argument once and for all.

Next year: eight wins, victory over at least one of the LA schools, and the Axe. Otherwise, he goes.  Jeff Tedford has already demonstrated he is no longer fit for purpose as head coach of the Golden Bears, and is only spared this year on account of the bizarre circumstances of the season.  But next year’s order is simple: win or you’re gone. Cal can flop without paying two million dollars a year for the privilege.

So Ben Nelson is packing it in.  After years of sabotaging the Democrats from the inside, and voting with Teabaggers over and over to “protect his viability for re-election,” the Senator from Nebraska has elected to get out of town.

Good.

I’m not under any illusions that he’s going to be replaced with anything but the worst sort of Confederate redneck, given that Nebraska is basically Alabama with wheat.  But the fact of the matter is that in the US Senate, if you don’t have 60 votes, it doesn’t much matter whether you have 51 or 59.  The only thing Nelson has brought to the table for years is ideological cover for right-wingers who want to cry “bipartisan opposition!” for their scorched-earth campaign against the Obama administration.  So if you’re actively taking things off the table, you should pretty much get to miss dessert.

So long.  Fuck ‘im.  As long as we keep 51, we’ll be fine, because don’t think for a second that the GOP is going to keep the filibuster around once they hit a bare majority in the Senate.  We could have solved this already – and done a lot more for the country – if Harry Reid had any balls at all, but instead he allowed the Senate to be led around by the likes of Ben Nelson.

Makes you wish Nancy Pelosi was a Senator.

When we box up all the S we didn’t want and try to get money for it.  OK, I know that’s not what Boxing Day technically is, but bear with me, because I’m boxing up some Christmas songs to send back for good, hopefully.

I have no idea why, but I’m really tired of “Everybody’s Waiting For The Man With The Bag.”  Cheesy, hokey, and reminds me too much of those mother-!-ing Lexus “December To Remember” ads.  If anybody gets me a Lexus for Christmas, I’m returning that shit on the 26th.  You better be paying straight cash for that Lexus.  I don’t need a gift that comes with a monthly note.

I’m also done with “This Christmas,” which has that soulful 70s feel to it and seems specifically engineered to induce either proposal or raging guilt in all those guys who haven’t popped the question yet.  It also gets stuck on the trailer of every holiday rom-com on Earth (thanks for nothing Richard Curtis, now everybody who can get twenty actors in a room thinks they can remake Love Actually every year).

And then there’s “Here Comes Santa Claus,” a song which undertakes the uncomfortable task of trying to mash up the Santa Claus story with the actual Jesus bit of Christmas. Awk-ward.

Actually, let me here drop my Top Five Christmas Songs That Never Mention Christmas, Jesus, Santa Claus Or Even Bloody DECEMBER In The Course Of The Song:

5) “Winter Wonderland.”  Seriously, if they can pop the song out just fine when it snows in February, it’s not much of a Christmas song, is it?  And that was before all the Ricky Hatton fans started walking around the MGM Grand singing “There’s only one Ricky Hatton, there’s only one Ricky Hatton, a beautiful sight we’re happy tonight walking in a Hatton wonderland” right before he got his ass knocked out by Mayweather or whoever it was.

4) “Let It Snow.”  Similar.  Hell, it was written on a scorching August day in 1945 and released as a plea for colder weather, not anything Christmassy.  Nice tune but nothing ties it to the holiday except for the generic theme of “Ooh Winter Look.”

3) “Sleigh Ride.” I could go the rest of my life without hearing the Boston Pops version – IT DOESN’T EVEN HAVE LYRICS.  And the versions that do have lyrics reference that there’ll be a BIRTHDAY party, not even a Christmas party.  OK, the Debbie Gibson version gets a pass because of happy memories of Christmas at Vanderbilt and yelling “pass around the coffee and the SWEET POTATO PIE” but in all other respects, again, NOT a Christmas song.

2) “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”  Hoo boy.  This one has come in for quite a beating the last couple of years, and no wonder – on the face of it, the best you can say for it is that it’s kind of creepy, and at worst, the only way not to make it sound like something out of a terrible Lifetime movie is to gender-swap it (a la the She & Him version or last year’s Gap ad with Selma Blair and Rainn Wilson) or do some other twist (like the Glee version).  In any event, again – all it’s got going for it is snow and cold.  Yet it gets hammered to death this time of year.  But nothing more than…

1) “Jingle Bells.”  Yes, go through it, there is NOTHING IN JINGLE BELLS THAT REFERENCES CHRISTMAS.  It’s a song about having a fast horse and a fast sleigh and picking up girls.  And the author intended it to be a THANKSGIVING song.  The most Christmassy of Christmas songs growing up, and there’s not a lick of Christmas to it.

There.  Done.  Now that we’ve punted eight songs from the canon, let’s see if we can find five good ones next year that don’t get nearly enough run…

Too long since I was here last. Long enough that I’ve not checked in here on Foursquare ever. Nothing fancy in the order – fish and chips with a pint of Newcastle, just like four years ago. Dim lighting, red velvet furnishings (with wallpaper to match), it looks and feels and even smells like an upper class English pub built to purpose and then disassembled to relocate to Silicon Valley. Which is exactly what happened. Always sparsely populated whenever I’ve been here, quiet and secluded – a perfect getaway. Hopefully it doesn’t lose that character when the Apple Death Star rises across the street on the new campus.