Like the new layout? I do. It’s called Jillij. I found it on the Wordpress Theme Viewer. There are a lot of neat themes listed, but most of them are two-column layouts, and I really don’t care for the two-column layout on a blog. This is one case where I agree with Russ. His blog uses a nice, clean, single-column layout and I think it’s perfect. I just wanted a bit more color than what Russ uses.

I particularly like the iPod look to it. Very cool, since it’s my favorite device right now.

So now the NFL comes out and says they admit no wrongdoing. Why is it so hard to say, “We go it wrong”? Why do people have so much trouble admitting fault?

All I hope is that if Seattle meets the Giants in the post-season, they crush ‘em. Don’t let the zebras have a say, because clearly they, and the NFL league officials, can’t make up their mind.

So the NFL admitted today that they got two touchdowns wrong in the Giants-Seahawks game. For us Seahawks fans this is nothing new. After all, the zebras robbed our ‘Hawks of a playoff spot in 1998 when they mistook Vinny Testaverde’s white helmet for the football. His glaring dome crossed the goal line, but the ball never did, and with that touchdown Seattle’s post-season hopes were dashed.

It’s good that Seattle won the game this time around - now we don’t have to feel like we were robbed. But it is still supremely disappointing. This was a game between two NFC heavyweights; a convincing win Sunday against the Giants and Seattle might have finally gained some respect. The phantom touchdowns represented 14 points - the final score should have been 21-6, not 24-21 after overtime.

Because of the referees errors, the game ends up looking a lot closer than it was, and we end up with rediculous comments like this from ESPN’s Power Rankings:

Getting the win over the Giants was big, although we’re not sure how much it actually says about how good the Seahawks are.

Not sure how much it actually says? They just beat a team with a Manning at quarterback, two relentless defensive ends, Tiki Barber, Jeremy Shockey, Plaxio Burress, and a pack of zebras that gave the Giants two free touchdowns, and ESPN isn’t sure how good the Seahawks are? Just goes to show that the East Coast Bias/West Coast Ignorance is in full effect. It seems like Steve Young is the only guy at ESPN who has actually been paying attention to the real Seahawks, because he was the only guy Sunday morning to mention that fact that this team has been winning games that they historically lose.

Look at the difference between this year’s Seahawks team and last year’s Seahawks team and you’ll see a tale of two completely different teams. Last season the Hawks had colossial collapses at home against Dallas and the Rams, the latter going on to sweep the ‘Hawks three times, including knocking them out of the playoffs. Seattle also choked on the road to the Cardinals (25-17), the Bills (38-9) and the Jets (37-14). Check out those scores to teams with .500 or worse records: Seattle took beatings to those teams.

Contrast that with this year’s squad, which has notched wins over the Falcons (the media darlings of the NFL), Dallas (a legitimate NFC threat) and the Giants (again, legitimate NFC threat). Seattle’s two losses? A 26-14 loss on opening day, on the road, to Jacksonville, and then an overtime loss to the Redskins which is a win if reliable Josh Brown gets a kick through the uprights.

Do you see any 38-9 or 37-14 whackings on this year’s schedule? Has Seattle lost any games to inferior opponents? No. All they’ve done is take care of business against tough competition, and then they exorcised their demons against the Rams by sweeping them. Teams with losing records, teams with winning records, and playoff calibur teams - all Seattle has done is win.

And ESPN and other “experts” arent’ sure if Seattle is for real.

Whatever.

There are very few disadvantages to living in the countryside. For every minor annoyance one can think of (like the inability of pizza restaurants to deliver) there are several major bonuses (like not having to listen to neighborhood dogs barking 24/7, or watching helplessly as they crap all over my lawn). But there is one disadvantage that never occured to me before Carrie and I moved into our remote house a few years ago: hunters begging for permission to shoot creatures on my land.

I shouldn’t call them hunters though, because what they’re doing isn’t hunting. They’re shooting. They’re driving around looking for game to shoot from the road. That’s not hunting. That’s shooting. They might as well be shooting traffic signs or pop cans, because they would be applying the same amount of hunting skills: none.

Of course, I have a pretty strong opinion about this because I grew up a bowhunter. Bowhunters don’t shoot, they hunt - they have to hunt if they want to kill anything. And hunting isn’t simply a matter of wandering around until something comes within range to shoot. If that were ‘hunting’ we bowhunters would never shoot anything.

No, hunting is much more than shooting. It’s an art form all it’s own. It requires a deep and intimate understanding of the animal, it’s behavior, it’s habitat, the terrain, the effects of weather, scent, wind, and concealment. I’ve probably left something out, but you get the point - hunting isn’t as simply as cracking open a Bud Light and driving the backroads. To truly hunt requires a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. Ingore any one of them and you’re going to come up short. Pay attention to all of those things though, and you’ll find yourself doing more than shooting - you’ll find yourself hunting, and gaining a huge admiration and respect for nature at the same time. Shooters don’t respect nature, they just seek to blow holes in it.

And this is precisely what irks me about the bozos who show up at my house on a Sunday morning, with me in my jammies watching NFL pre-game shows: they aren’t really asking for permission to ‘hunt’ on my land, they’re asking for permission to ’shoot’ on my land. There’s a big difference.

Two such bozos showed up to our house the day after Thanksgiving. They saw our pheasants across the road, near a tree next to one of our barns. I call them ‘our’ pheasants because they live on the land around our house - we see them every day and they are like pets to us. They are the ideal non-pet pets. They are always around, like a pet, and we become attached to them like pets, but we don’t have to feed them or clean up after them. They’re the best of both worlds.

And some road-rangers wanted to leap out of their truck and ‘hunt’ them. Yes, they actually asked, “Hey, we saw some pheasants over by that barn and we were wondering if we could go hunt them.”

Hunt them? Do you even know what hunting is? Are you aware that hunting from the road is not really hunting? Are you aware that I see those pheasants every single day and I don’t really want some redneck jerk like you coming around and shooting my beautiful birds? Do you honestly think I would let you shoot anything on my property when you just now showed up to my house asking permission?

That’s the other thing that irritates the hell out of me about road hunters: they think it’s perfectly acceptable to ask permission after they see game on your land. That is not how I was brought up in my family of bowhunters. I was taught hunting. And part of hunting is scouting - going out before the season starts, figuring out where I wanted to hunt and then asking permission from the landowner before the first day of the season. You don’t ask permission the same day you go out hunting, and you sure as heck don’t ask permission after you see game! It’s like asking a woman to marry you after you see her bank account. Not cool.

So, I sent them away - politely of course, although in my heart I wanted to go off on a rant right then and there, and completely lambaist them. This sort of thing happens at least a half-dozen times each fall, and every time it makes me want to throw the Deliverance DVD in, since you can plainly see our TV from the front porch steps. Queue that puppy up to Ned Beatty’s scene, and then put some gnarly, stained false teeth in before I answer the door in my backwoods coveralls and low-IQ drawl… Maybe word will get around to the other ‘hunters’ and they’ll quit asking, eh?

Yesterday, Carrie and I were in Spokane for a medical consult, and we stopped by the Northtown Mall to do some Christmas shopping. There were some bathrooms right inside JC Penny, so we stopped to use them, and it was there that I ran into the most absurd engineering decision I can recall in quite some time.

The sinks in the JC Penny bathrooms have push-button-faucets: two buttons, one for hot and one for cold. The way they work is like so: in order for water to come out of the faucet, you have to hold down the corresponding hot/cold push-button. Some engineer determined this was the best way to prevent water-waste, since water won’t come out of the faucet if you release the push-button.

Now, unless you’re a monkey with a tail that you can use as a fifth appendage, or some sort of creature from a fantasy novel with four arms, you should immediately see the problem here: you’re trying to wash your hands, and yet you have to use those same hands to hold down push-buttons so water will exit the faucet. And one side is hot, and one side is cold. If you want to have warm water, you need to press both buttons at the same time, which doesn’t leave your hands very free to actually be washed.

But wait: I’m supposed to be washing my hands, not holding down buttons. How does this work? Who’s genius idea was this anyway?

So now the difficulty is, how do I wash my hands with this stupid device? Well, washing both hands at the same time is out of the question, so I’ll have to wash them one at a time. Great, start by pressing down the right button. Hmm… Cold water on my left hand. Get both hands soapy. Press down the right button again to wash my left hand. Now the right button is soapy, but at least my left hand is clean. Ok, press the left button so I can wash my right hand. Crap that’s hot!

Now I’m standing there with a wet, scalded right hand. I want cold water on it, so I get to play Twister with the sink: press the right-hand-side cold-water button with my left hand crossing over the sink. Crap, the button is all soapy, so now my clean left hand is too. But at least my scalded right hand is cooling off…

By the time I was done with the Twister-Faucet I wondered if there wasn’t some sadistic ass with a hidden camera behind the mirror in the bathroom, waiting to take the recording of me and countless other victims to some stupid Candid Camera show where they would poke fun at our expense, a safe distance away from me and a hand grenade.

But in the end, I determined this was just another example of engineering gone bad. After all, not all engineers are created equal, and not all of them are very smart. If they were, Dilbert would never have been invented as a cartoon.

Still, that knowledge didn’t quite satiate my desire for human bloodshed, and thus I decided to curse the fool who invented that sink, wherever they are. To them, I pass along this curse:

Dear Idiot Engineer of the Push-Down-Faucet,

Wherever you are in the universe, I hope you are cursed with many devices that require all sorts of idiotic and illogical contortions from your person. I hope that if you work in the computer industry, that the left side of your keyboard only works when you hold down the right side CTRL button, and I hope the right side of your keyboard only works when you hold down the left side ALT button. I hope your electric garage door only opens when you are outside of your vehicle, and I hope it immediately begins to close the second you get back in to your car. I hope your TV only stays on if you hold down the POWER button on your remote, and shuts off the second you release it. I hope the lights in your house only work if you touch them with your hands, and I hope your hands burn like toast in an oven. And most of all, I hope your toilet only flushes if you put your head inside it.