"Hello my friends, Hello. I just called to say Hello" (Neil Diamond)

Well, Im sure that everyone is shocked that I took a long break from blogging.  After all, I am one of the best people you will ever meet when it comes to staying dedicated to finishing a task and keeping in touch with my friends.  However, I am back and rededicated to my work so expect several posts in the near future.  I will probably be writing more sports blogs for fun and also for practice.  I am trying to get a guest writing job for a local paper working for free, and want to practice my writing.  Therefore, for those particular articles, if you feel up to it, I would appreciate some feedback on the pros and cons of my articles.  Also, my buddy Josh and I are seriously considering doing a public access sports talk show on television.  We have begun the preliminary steps towards doing the show, and I really hope we are able to do it.  The show will likely focus on the less publicized sports such as boxing, tennis, and probably even the hawks because they don't get media attention even in Atlanta.  Again I will use my blog to practice presenting a good argument, not just drunken frat yelling contests.  I'm really excited about these prospective opportunities coming up.  I am pretty bored right now in my life as I am in a stage where things have been taken out of my hand.  I am not taking any active steps towards my future in medicine, as I have pretty much done what I can, and am just playing the waiting game.  Hopefully this blog will continue to be a creative outlet for me to focus on, and I will stay dedicated to it.  Now that I have rambled on about how I will be talking about sports, my first blog is actually one of my mini rants on things that piss me off.

Working in a doctors office, there are a variety of things that patients do that piss me off and I want to mention them in case any of ya'll out there do them.  The first of these is being rude to the front office.  It happens all the time, and the irony of it is that often times these are the patients who are the most personable to the providers themselves (I have had the unique experience of spending many hours in both the front office and with the providers in the room, so my experiences are pretty accurate here).  Now from a psychological perspective I guess I understand it.  Going to see the doctor is a submissive act in a sense.  It is humbling to have a finger shoved up your ass once a year, or your vagina swabbed with a fancy form of a cue tip.  Consequently, one may subconsciously want to belittle someone else, and in a doctors office this usually ends up being the front office.  You argue over filling out the paperwork when you have an insurance change, then roll your eyes and take the clipboard with a huff. If the doctor is running late, you yell at the staff as if it is our fault the physician is slow, checking repeatedly to see where your chart is in line and thus insinuating that we are somehow keeping it from reaching the front (by the way, I have never once seen a patient tell a doctor to his face "that he/she was slow and they will change their provider if it keeps up", but I have had that screamed at me in the middle of the waiting room on several occasions).  If any of you know anyone who behaves this way at the office please deliver this message to them: "GET OVER YOURSELF! You are not special nor are you entitled to different treatment than any other john or jane doe that walks though the door. We follow rules, they are not made by us, and we cannot change them because you ask us to.  Bitching to me will not change them."  On the "you are not special note" this brings up another annoyance of mine in the office.  You are not the doctors favorite patient ever and thus are not entitled to special treatment.  Doctors are not that different from strippers in this sense.  Of course they will act like you are the greatest person in the world when they see you, that is what they are paid to do, that is good business.  However, you aren't getting to see the doctor free in a room at the office anymore often then you are getting a free lap dances at the club.  You aren't special, you are a client, and clients pay for specialized skills.

EDIT: Of course nothing I said in the above passage applies to Kyle.  He is special, and I have no doubt that if he tried he would get free lap dances.

Alright keep checking the blog frequently and I will keep updating it.

I LIKE FAIRIES

Ok, before anyone gets scared (or excited) this is not a blog about me coming out of the closet. And to be honest, I don't actually like fairies, I just thought it was a catchy title. However, I do like hobbits, witches, warlocks, dwarfs, elves, muggles, gods, demons, orcs, gremlins, and of course gizzies. Yes, I am a fantasy literature whore. As a self aware man, my love of fantasy comes as a bit of a surprise even to myself, as I would otherwise consider myself a pretty manly man. Give me some highstakes gambling, a bucket of beer, with a flatscreen showing the Dawgs game to the right and a stripper pole to the left and I am a pretty happy gizzy. While these are great pleasures and make for an awesome time, so too does an hour of reading about the land of Mordor or Voldemort's soul being split into several horcruxes. I discovered just how deep my inner dork runs the other night as a was re-reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (yes re-reading). As I came across a passage which was written in elvish, I actually thought to myself, "man it would be cool to know the elvish language." What? Who? Did I just think that? Thankfully, I am still in control enough of my inner dork that I buried that thought down deep inside and didn't actually try to learn the language (by the way, I give Trost permission to slap me as hard as he wants if I ever utter a syllable of elvish). Another thing that is strange, is that the other main form of literature I read is scientific. My last six books in order are: The Fellowship of the Ring (currently reading), The Selfish Gene (a manual on the use of genetics in explaining evolution), Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows, The Elegant Universe (a theory which uses vibrating strings to bridge the gap between quantum mechanics and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity), Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and The Blind Watchmaker (another book on evolution). An interesting alternation of books. I theorized for awhile that maybe I loved fantasy books because I needed a break from the difficult reading found in my scientific pursuits, and I liked that explanation because I seemed less like a puss. It's bullshit though. I would read them no matter what. I simply love it.

Random Thoughts

• There Kyle, nothing about sports. And if you ever criticize me in my blog again, I will ban you. Of course, I actually have no way of banning you, but you can rest assured that it will be done in spirit.
• If you haven't seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall see it. It is hysterical
• Random props if anyone can tell me what J.R. Tolkien is best known for among historians

"Playoffs? Don't talk about Playoffs" (Jim Mora)

First off, I want to congratulate the Georgia Tech fans on a big victory today against my beloved dogs. I have some close friends who are avid Tech fans, and why i am sad about the loss, a small corner of my heart is actually happy for them. When a streak against one of your most bitter rivals gets to the point where your team has lost more than 5 times in a row, it is rough. The relief of such a victory is very special, and I hope they all celebrate as hard as I did following UGA's victory against the Gators in '04 (for comparison's sake that would involve a ridiculous amount of alcohol, a friend being urinated on (not by me), and 4 guys sharing a hot tub made for two . . . good luck). With regards to Georgia, I have a lot of thoughts, both positive and negative, which I will share in a later blog.

PLAYOFFS

I want to preface this next section by stating that I support the idea of a playoff in D1A (I refuse to call it FBS). However, I am furious about the media's recent use of the fictional playoff system as an infallible/ultimate cure for the flaws in college football. In countless analysis by supposed "experts" the common denominator has been a concluding statement which went something like this, "Of course if we had a playoff non of this would matter" or "We wouldn't be having this debate if we had a playoff." It has become so stylish to bash the BCS now that it ends up making some of these analysts become hypocrites and look like asses. The best example I can remember of this phenomena actually occurred last year in an article written by Gene Wojciechowski. Within the article, he blasted the notion that UGA, which was being considered for the national title game at the time and was playing as well as anyone at the end of the season, should ever be considered for the championship game as they didn't win their conference championship. This in and of itself I don't mind, although I disagree with it, but the next part of his article completely contradicted his previous claim. He then heralded the notion of a playoff system. Well guess what Gene, not one proposed playoff system would have excluded UGA from having an opportunity to play for the championship. You can't have your cake and eat it too. This type of journalism/analysis infuriates me, as they are only preaching the magic of the playoff system (because it is a popular idea) without ever even considering what they are saying.

Now back to this year. Non of the serious proposals for a playoff system would work out neatly this year. Lets break them down 1 by 1 with a best case/worst case scenarios.
John Saunder's +1 system: He suggests a system where you don't even seed the top 4 but play the bowl games as they exist, and then play one more game a week later with the two best teams. OK really? This system would still need polls and would still involve human components. It is really the same system in the disguise of a magical "playoff system" and consequently wouldn't be any neater than it already is this year.
RE-Seeded +1 system: Best case scenario this year: Alabama/FL winner (by decisive victory), Big12 south winner, USC (if they win PAC-10 with Oregon State loss). A good, clear top 3 but still leaves one spot for debate between the other two teams in the Big 12 south (funny the analysts would never tell you this), Penn State (Big 10 champ) plus undefeated Utah and Boise State (I'm excluding Ball State). Most people want a playoff so the underdog's (Utah and Boise) have a shot for the championship, this system will never get that for them. Worst case scenario: Bama loses a squeaker to Florida and Oregon State wins the Pac-10. Now you have UF and Big-12 south winner and two (essentially) at large bids for the top 4 BCS teams with the before mentioned Utah, Boise, Big 12 south losers, Penn State, and now USC and Alabama all fighting for those 2 spots. Let the debate begin on who would deserve those two spots
8 team playoff: You take the 6 champions from the BCS conferences and two at large teams. Best case scenario: UF/Bama winner (clear and decisive game), Penn state, USC (with O-state loss), Big 12 champ (if it is a team from the south), ACC champ, and Cincinnati with the two at large bids between the previous suspects. There will still be a debate on who gets in for the at large bids plus you have added two teams who this year have no business playing for the national title (acc champ and Cincinnati). Worst case scenario: See above +4 worst case scenario: same teams, two spots, except you have the added crappyness of having the ACC champ and Big East champ playing for the title. This is my personal suggestion for a playoff, but it is clearly still flawed. It would preserve the uniqueness and importance of the regular season, but there would still be a huge debate at the end of the season on who gets into the playoffs. Which will ultimately always leave someone unfulfilled. There are also suggestions of a 8 team playoff without conference winner automatic bids, but again you will still have a huge component of human polling in deciding the spots. Plus it would seriously start debates over conference strength because the conference champs would not have automatic bids.
16 team playoff: We are now bordering on the impossible to ever happen. In this scenario the regular season would have to be shortened, which will never happen because it would cost the schools too much money by having fewer home games. However, the main flaw with 16 teams is that it would greatly diminish the importance of the regular season which is so special in college football. While it would pretty much exclude the possibility of ever leaving a deserving team out, it would also include far too many teams which have not earned the right to play for the title. I mean until UGA lost today to Tech (and maybe still) they would have been included in this system despite embarrassing losses. I love them, but UGA would have had no business playing for a title they could theoretically win if they happened to be hot for the playoff games. This system would greatly change and in my opinion ruin college football. Any playoff system with more teams above this should never be considered.

So as you can see the magical playoff system is a little more complicated than the media would have you believe. Even in the best case scenarios, each suggested playoff system is flawed. When I think about college football, I am reminded of a quotation from Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams character Shawn is describing his wife to Matt Damon's character Will. To paraphrase it, he tells Will that what he loved most about his wife were the imperfections. This is similar to College Football. It is different and unique from other collegiate sports. The number of teams in D1A combined with the ability to only play one game a week makes it difficult to "decide it on the field."
The debates are great, and many of its most enthusiastic critics make a good bit of money because of how it is set up. Fans eagerly await the release of the polls, because they matter. Fans live and die with each game because they matter. In some sense, college football does a better job of determining who was the best team during the year than any other sport. If Duke loses to UNC twice during the regular season and during the ACC championship in basketball, but then beats them in the National Title Game, they would be national champs. Are they really national champs? That would/could never happen in college football as you have to be good all year not just in the last game to win. I am pro playoffs, but changing to a playoff system will not be a cure all for college football, and if we are not careful, could hurt a wonderful game.

The Nightman Cometh

Hello all and welcome to the Giz's blog. For those of ya'll that know me well, you know that I am not always the best at keeping in touch with people. I rarely respond to emails, I flat out ignore Kyle's g-chats, and usually never plan or do anything without someone else taking the first steps to initiate it. I am hoping that this blog will be a step towards amending some of these faults as I will be communicating with everyone through this blog. I plan on this blog being over a wide variety of topics which will include, but not be limited to, sports, music, television, drinking, how to properly scurry up a tree, and my general thoughts about life and things that are pissing me off. I will not edit my blog closely for gramatical errors as that would be far too much effort, so if that bothers you please get over it. If you enjoy the blog, please become a follower. Also, if you are interested in a serious discussion about hawks basketball, please read my friend Josh's blog at hawksbball.blogspot.com as he actually gives detailed analysis about the team. Otherwise, for my working friends, I hope this blog provides a nice distraction at work. Now for my first blog:



THE NIGHTMAN COMETH



A dark time is on the horizon in regards to my tv watching. My two favorite shows, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Entourage have recently ended their seasons. In addition to this, college football only has two weeks left in the season before the championship game. (For those interestes I will share my thoughts on college football in another massive blog I will probably post in the next few days) With the loss of these shows and the college football season, I really don't have anything that I eagerly anticipate watching on television. I do enjoy watching the NFL, the Falcons have been a present surprise this season, and I enjoy college basketball. However, none of these compare to my love of college football. Honestly, and this is only a mild exageration if it is one at all, I have only been outside on Saturdays because I was either tailgating or driving to someones house to watch a game. On Saturday's, I am basically a character from Twilight, the only difference is that if I were to tell a girl I wanted to suck her blood I am pretty sure I would get slapped. If I didn't get slapped, I think I would have found the only girl that even Wes would have to admit was too strange to hook up with (Shep would probably do it though).

While I understand that the loss of college football has to happen at the beginnning of december, I do not understand why my two favorite television shows both have to end in november. This current trend in television, in which series are only on for at most half the year, (but typically only 1/4 of the year) is really annoying. I miss the days where you could look forward to a show over the course of the year. Even though they had re-runs interspursed among the new episodes, I didn't mind that. Now, I have 9 months before I get too watch my two favorite shows on television again. It used to be only 3 months during the summer, which was much easier to bare. Not only that, but they don't realese the DVD's until right before the new season so thats no help either. This needs to change, and hopefully the readers of my blog will start an underground movement which will explode forth upon the world and make this injustice cease. END RANT



RANDOM THOUGHT

• For those of ya'll that both watch the show and know the person, does Dennis from Sunny not remind you of Woz. I think it is uncanny