johnzo

Today is the first anniversary of the Quebec City mosque attack.

Of course it's a border collie. I took my little brother to a sheepdog trial once and one of the shepherds let him play fetch with a border collie -- but only for a couple minutes because apparently border collies can get "fetch neurosis" where they get addicted to fetching and will do it over and over and over and over without end and they will freak out if they can't fetch.

Flashback to my favorite post on Durant: Always been a fan of keyhole-pass DL-overpowering Durant, but how much of that guy is left now? Hope last year's struggles were due to a crap team and not due to him losing his stuff.

On the subject of men being shitty: https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/1/19/16897722/sexual-abuse-usa-gymnastics-larry-nassar-explained The USA gymnastics thing is ******* horrifying. One team doctor abused more than 100 women and everyone else involved pulled a Briles and looked the other way. Dr. Nassar is going away for the rest of his life, but the judge is making him listen to everyone's victim statements during the sentencing. Good. I'd like all the enablers to be in there listening as well, except that they've already heard most of the stories, so maybe there would be no point.

tho I think when you're as stacked at receiver as the Riders were last year, just hurling it is not a bad decision. Be interesting to see what he could do without all that talent downfield.

It's the Grey Cup. You can start Allen or Glenn. Who you gonna start? Maybe Allen and Glenn had similar careers in that they both played forever and they were both the guy who got the call from the team that finished last in the annual QB shuffle. But Allen was a stopgap who could actually win Grey Cups and that alone puts him above Glenn in the all-time QB rankings. Then you consider that Allen's ceiling was a couple miles above Glenn's, that he was clutch as hell, and that he had a way more diverse skillset, and there's really no comparing them aside from that longevity. That said, I do think Glenn's resilience and longevity is a hell of an achievement and I wouldn't mind seeing him in the Hall. But leaving him out wouldn't be a crime. Leaving Allen out of the Hall would be.

There is a process to pass budget bills with a simple 51-vote majority in the Senate. It's called budget reconciliation. The Republicans could completely bypass the Dems on this and pass a budget or a CR with zero Democratic votes. They can't / won't do this for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that they don't have fifty Republican votes in the senate for the current CR. Funding the government with short-term continuing resolutions makes the government less able to function -- Lindsay Graham and others in the Senate voted against it because they believe that the unpredictability of funding damages the military, which needs to plan in cycles longer than four weeks. In the past, we've seen CRs as a result of divided government; the two sides can't get it together to agree on a real budget, so instead of letting the government shut down they just pass a CR that says that the funding stays the same for some short period of time. However, this time, we are seeing a CR from a unified government. Why can't the Republicans get it together to pass a real annual budget like they did in the days of yore? Another thing to note is that the gov't programs tied to the CR -- DACA and CHIP -- are widely popular in the United States and could easily be passed with large bipartisan majorities if they were brought individually in "clean" bills, and would very likely be signed by Trump. But the Republicans, who control the entire government, won't do that. Thus, the CR brinksmanship.

yup, the Deon Beasley pick ended Printers' career. The Stan Mikawos TD has to be the biggest moment of the 1984 season. That was a Grey Cup winning play that also victimized Public Enemy #1 Dieter Brock. Karma is a *****, Ralph. Beating BC on the road the week before was a big deal, but BC started their backup QB in that game instead of regular Bomber assassin Roy DeWalt. We could never beat DeWalt. I agree with the placement of Milt's Miracle -- amazing play by an all-time Bomber but just a regular season win. Doesn't compare to the big playoff moments.

oh, yeah, when I was in Ottawa playing men's league football, one of our guys worked with Stephan Jones and he came out to a game of ours. I had a pick six in that game and when I went to the bench Stephan high-fived me. Pretty awesome.

I saw Patton Oswalt at a breakfast place here once. I did a double-take when I saw him and he gave me a look that said he was not interested in meeting a fan right now (totally cool by me, dude doesn't owe me anything and he was recently widowed) and so I just nodded and kept heading for the restroom without breaking stride. Right when I started playing drums, me and a couple guitarist work friends rented this piss-smelling practice room in the Rockbox, an ancient Seattle rehearsal warehouse a couple blocks from the Space Needle. All the big Seattle bands rehearsed at the Rockbox before they made it. My friend was really into the Foo Fighters and wanted to play Everlong, which was way too fast for me to play, but I was up for anything so I'd try and it would sound brutal, just awful, I could not keep up the steady fast hat beat of the tune. And we played it over and over again, because how else am I gonna get better? One day we're leaving the space and the old stoned door guy says "hey, were you the guys playing Everlong?" and I said yeah, and he said "yeah, Dave Grohl was here, standing outside your door listening for like ten minutes and he was nodding his head and digging it" And we were really bad, I cannot emphasize enough how shitty we sounded. So I'm horrified, and I beg the guy, please tell me you're pulling my leg. And finally I got him to admit that he was ******* with us, that Dave Grohl really wasn't there. So that's my best celebrity non-encounter. I was so relieved... Another time, I was hanging out with my friend's band in the Rockbox. The next door band was Candlebox. Everyone makes fun of Candlebox here because the perception is that they're lightweight outsiders who moved here to cash in on the grunge thing in 1994. My friend's bandmates are all metalheads so that day they were ******* around trying to play The Trooper and they can't get it right because it's insanely hard to play. Suddenly, Candlebox next door fires up an absolutely perfect and tight version of the Trooper. So my friend's band got owned by Candlebox. Embarrassing! I really miss Grapes. They had the best wings I've ever eaten, giant, crispy, and breaed. I could eat like two baskets of those things when I was in my twenties.

Can Durant even win games in August and September anymore?

I demand the Bombers cease all activity except for the resigning of core players! Those guys who are doing plumbing maintenance at IGF, they need to stand the **** down until we get Leggett back in the family.

always been a Durant fan but after watching him last year I really have to wonder how much game he has left.

yeah, the guy really nailed it. Thanks for listening MO!

thanks man! Yeah, it's largely a CF chord progression song so it definitely has that Walk on the Wildside feel. It's great to hear you guys say Lou Reed because that's where I was aiming. At some point this will definitely have live drums. at this early stage it's easier to just throw down something in the drum machine and concentrate on the singing. send along your own stuff any time, I'd love to give it a listen.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Odih-fP0kkbiZI3LOkEbmqsZtJETpOPk/view LMK if that doesn't work for you, Google Drive is sometimes flaky when it comes to audio. thanks for your interest Mark -- It's real plain, just vocals, and super vanilla drums and instrumentation at this point. (shamefully, I used a drum machine instead of playing the drums myself) The tune has a lot of growing up to do but it's been born alive! I'm going to PM it to Noeller every hour until he puts it on the radio.

MO, yeah,I know how that feels to be generally brutal Anyway, right now I'm listening to the first complete song I've ever composed and recorded. It's called You Suck. I'm proud of it tonight and will probably be horrified by it tomorrow.

Potentially a big deal: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/north-carolina-gerrymander.html A federal court says that North Carolina's congressional district boundaries violate the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court will be ruling on a similar case from Wisconsin soon.

That's where I grew up. I had four of those deep cold lakes, plus Superior, within a bike ride as a kid. My old man worked in forestry, so he knew all the secret logging roads that would lead to great camping and fishing on crown land. Spent a lot of my childhood bouncing around those old roads. Later on, my folks had a spot at Northern Lights Lake, southeast of Quetico and just north of the border. Last time I ever went dirt biking with my brothers was up there. Man, NWO is so beautiful. I gotta get a camping trip together with my old crew someday. We used to go to Cavern Lake and knock around the bat cave ... we'd keep our beer in a deep spot of the lake just off our campsite and make a game of diving for it. Somehow, we didn't die. Great thread J-Pop!

Maybe the Sheriff Joe senate run works out for the GOP establishment: he and fellow nutbag Kelli Ward split the crazy vote in the GOP primary and someone who can play well with others wins the GOP nomination.

Last Manziel update: http://3downnation.com/2018/01/08/johnny-manziels-agent-breaks-silence-loudest-possible-way His agent sez: ouch. he wants top-flight CFL starting QB money ... with zero CFL track record ... and then takes a sideways **** on Austin and the rest of the TiCat management. The note also says that Hamilton has allowed the Manziel camp to negotiate with one other team in the hopes of working out a trade for his rights. I am always wrong at predicting but I predict Johnny Football winds up in Montreal. Throwing a hail mary on a high-profile CFL newb like him is a classic Als move. I also predict that the mangled French at his press conference will be hilarious.

I like 2. On 1, tho -- a lot of fishing challenges are 4Q last-gasp things where they still make sense to go after even with the potential 10 yard penalty, so is the penalty doing enough to disincline the fishing coach?

I'm glad for the TiCats sake they got Masoli wrapped up before moving on Manziel.

I don't want to get too Art Bell on this... but what ******* species is Stephen Miller and why is he cheaping out on his human suit?

I think the onfield rules are fine. An occasional blown call is not nearly as bad as multiple fishing challenges in a quarter, especially the fourth quarter. Wouldn't mind seeing one less national starter with the NFL vacuuming up so much canuck talent these days, but I doubt the PA is interested in that.