Tagged.

So, I got “tagged” by eTrish .

Thanks.

So now I am required to (attempt to) do the following. Okay, I’m game. Here are the rules to the game:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you. (2) Post the rules on your blog. (3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. (4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs. (5) Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Okay. Now, it’s my turn.

! and 2: Done.

4: Ain’t happening. I only know two people on WordPress, and they’ve already played the game. I don’t know if any of my other friends blog. It’s a pity; I thought I was a lot more popular. Sigh.

3: This I can slamdunk. I mean, come on! Just seven weird things?

Amateurs.

1) I occasionally like to put peanuts in my (bottled) Diet Coke or Coke Zero. It’s like having a sugar free Snickers bar: peanuts, caramel. Okay, no chocolate; nothing’s perfect. By the way, that’s three product endorsements. Do I get any fat cash contracts? HECK no!

2) I love stuffed animals. Always have. I have several, mainly otters, which I collect. I am 47. I am heterosexual. Yes, really.

3) I have conversations in my car with people who aren’t there…and usually they are reruns of conversations from twenty years ago. In my car, however, I win the arguments.

4) Sometimes, in bed, I will entwine the blanket between my fingers, to feel the cool textures of the blanket between them. Wonder what Freud would say about that? On second thought, no, I don’t.

5) I never fell in love at first sight. First touch, on the other hand….

6) When I look at the stars at night, I try to see the ones I know I’ll never be able to see. It’s nice to look into emptiness, and know, even in the dark part of the sky, there is light.

7) If my football team is losing, I’ll change hats. If they don’t start winning after that, I take the hat off. If they lose anyway, I cry. Childish? I’m an Alabama fan. I wear a houndstooth hat on occasion. I was in college when Bear Bryant was still coaching. Don’t you know the U.S. Constitution protects both freedom of religion and freedom of expression? Deal with it.

So there we are. I will perhaps try to tag others as I get to know more people in the ‘blogosphere.

Strange things are happening.

If anything can teach you that human expectations are a comedy of errors, it is this year’s college football season.

The teams everyone expected to win have lost. The teams that triumphed over the teams that everyone expected to win, have lost.

I thought to opine on how my own Alabama Crimson Tide had been humiliated by a second-tier team Saturday. After a few tries at it, though, I thought better of it. There is more chaos in the world today than football can exhibit. Why should I limit my writing to the merely perplexing, when I can tackle the completely inexplicable?

Consider that after six years of the “War on Terror”, our leaders have managed to keep us from being attacked on our own soil…while tying up most of our military resources in what at best is a Pyrrhic victory in Iraq. And now there are rumblings of war with Iran and worry over the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

Consider that after months of a premature Presidential campaign, we have seen candidates cozening the canny hayseeds of Iowa, with even Rudy Giuliani kissing pigs. This morning on the George Stephanopolous show I even heard intelligent, reasoning human beings saying Ron Paul, the finest political mind of the 1920s, may actually have a chance in Iowa. Is this the process to find the person to solve the major crises of our time: the War on Terror, the Health Care Crisis, Global Warming … Paris Hilton’s pregnancy?

Why do I spend so much time worrying about my college football team? Maybe because I’d rather see twenty-year-olds lose football games they shouldn’t, than watch twenty-year-olds lose lives they shouldn’t, in a country that, if it weren’t for chaos, they shouldn’t be in. Maybe because I like to hope that next year, my team will win the games they’re supposed to. I hope that next year the kids who may be winning this war we’re in, will get to come home from overseas and win their own football games.

I doubt it, but…stranger things have happened.