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So, it's football season now. Tradition dictates that at a tailgate party, it's customary to serve food native to the region of the visiting team. Just for sheer amusement and since I have no life, I went ahead and compiled a list of food items corresponding to football teams, and now, I want to share it with you.

• Buffalo Bills — Buffalo Wings
• Miami Dolphins — Ropa Vieja
• New England Patriots — New-England Clam Chowder
• New York Jets — Calzone
• Baltimore Ravens — Crabs
• Cincinnati Bengals — Goetta
• Cleveland Browns — Kielbasa
• Pittsburgh Steelers — Chipped Chopped Ham
• Houston Texans — Chili Con Carne
• Indianapolis Colts — Pork Tenderloin Sandwich
• Jacksonville Jaguars — Orange… something! Orange Anything!¹
• Tennessee Titans — Wet Ribs
• Denver Broncos — We're kind of the home team, remember?²
• Kansas City Chiefs — Kansas-City-style Barbecue Plate
• Oakland Raiders — Children
• San Diego Chargers — French Fries (scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one)
• Dallas Cowboys — Steak or something else beefy
• New York Giants — Reuben Sandwich³
• Philadelphia Eagles — Philly Cheese Steak
• Washington Redskins — Senate Bean Soup
• Chicago Bears — Chicago-style Pizza
• Detroit Lions — Coney-Island Hot Dog
• Green Bay Packers — Bratwurst and Cheese
• Minnesota Vikings — Lutefisk
• Atlanta Falcons — Pecan Pie
• Carolina Panthers — Catfish Stew
• New Orleans Saints — Red Beans and Rice, Fried Catfish, Jambalaya…⁴
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers — Key Lime Pie
• Arizona Cardinals — Arizona Iced Tea?⁵
• Saint Louis Rams — Toasted Ravioli
• San Francisco '49ers — San-Francisco Burrito
• Seattle Seahawks — Smoked Salmon

1. I didn't put too much thought into this one. I mean, how long are they going to stay in Jacksonville?
2. I suppose that if you need some food item just to make the list complete, go with beer: we make a ton of that. Then again, so does Saint Louis and Green Bay. Bison Burgers would be on the list if it weren't for the fact that so many Colorado people have a problem with eating Ralphie.
3. Really, when it comes to the New-York teams, you can switch them.
4. I could go on!
5. Why does Arizona even have a football team anyway?

Today was the autumnal equinox.¹ If fancy Latin terms don't mean anything to you, it was the first day of autumn.

This is the first time in years that I'll be in Colorado for the better part of the autumn. Already, I can feel the change in the seasons. It's like the great machine of the earth has switched gears and is now operating under different settings. The trees just suddenly know at this exact time to begin shedding the leaves that have been the means of their livelihoods since the spring in a dazzling array of colourful arrangements. The very air itself seems to simply change its consistency to the degree that you're aware beyond any uncertainty of the season.

I used to be a fan of certain specific seasons. For the longest time, it was spring. Then, it was summer. Just now, it was winter. There is an old English proverb: “Variety is the spice of life.” As much as I enjoy any particular season, it would probably start to get old after a while. That's why God invented temperate zones.

The spring has that calm warmth to it. The summer has those beautiful moments where you can walk around the block in one-hundred degree heat after sitting in a freezing office with the air conditioning blasting. The autumn has that feel in the air of wonderfulness and a good upcoming season for the Broncos. Finally, the winter just has the richness of its festivities… and the frigid cold that requires the women to dress up in their cute scarves and coats.

1. Or vernal equinox if you're in the southern hemisphere.

Why do I feel like I'm living two lives?

I don't feel that it's because I'm actually living differently. It's almost like people see me completely differently. From one perspective, I'm some uptight Evangelical where, from another angle, I'm some super-hippie, environmentalist flower child.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not a fan of George Bush, nor am I a fan of Obama nor McCain. Just hear me out.

I'm seeing a bunch of advertisements equating John McCain with Bush. They're pretty much saying that voting for McCain is the same as voting for Bush, and do we really need four more years of Bush?

Okay, these past eight years have, well, they've been the best years of my life. If you're asking me if I need four more years of that, I'm sorry, but is that the best that you can come up with? Are your four years that you're planning somehow gong to be so freakin' incredible that my already good life is miraculously going to get better?

Still, Bush is an idiot. Whatever happened to the holy and sacred concept called the balanced budget that the Republicans used to so fanatically cling to? Still, do you have some better plan to reduce spending to achieve that balanced budget?

Seeing how both sides of this political election are idiots, does it really matter who I vote for?

The greatest player in the history of the Denver Broncos would be…

…Jason Elam.

Why? Well, let's see: besides the fact that he holds the record for longest field goal in the NFL,¹ has scored more points for the Broncos than any other player has² and the best extra point streak and ratio, it really just comes down to the fact that when the Broncos reach those last ten yards to the end zone, they can't actually get it into the end zone.

Hence, the field goal. Hence, the awesomeness that is… I mean… was Jason Elam.

1. Okay, he shares the record. Still, no one in the NFL has hit one longer than he has.
2. Really, he's just scored more points than any person for any single team.

So, I read in the Rocky Mountain News yesterday about some town in Georgia that purchased the town's only strip club for the sole purpose of shutting it down. An admirable move, but I couldn't help but think about that episode of The Simpsons where a mob marches toward the burlesque house in order to tear it down… and most of the same people in the mob were the same people who frequented the burlesque house.

Even though the town might have closed down the strip club, does it really change the fact that the people in this town who kept the club in business are still perverted deviants?

I had a bad day today.

Pretty much, I just found out something really bad that happened to a friend of mine. The really strange part is that if the same thing happened to me, I doubt that I would barely lose an hour of sleep over it.¹ This is perhaps one of the strangest feelings that I've known. I don't know whether to feel bad, happy or normal.

On a side note, it's my half birthday today. This isn't exactly the way that I had hoped to celebrate it though.

1. Of course, I don't sleep well anyway, so I need every precious second of sleep that I can get.

Question: what would you consider the more ferocious animal: the ram or the buffalo?

This should be an easy answer. What do buffalo do besides sit on the plains and just get shot at with the injun's bow or the whiteman's gun so that it can get served on a delicious burger at Ted's? The buffalo is an endangered species for a reason: the buffalo has proven that its ability to thrive in the world is so severely limited that the only meaningful purpose for the buffalo in this world is to serve as an easy lunch for redskins and rich people willing to shell out a few extra dollars when they eat at Larimer's Square.

The ram: now this ferocious beast, as a byproduct of taking its colossal sized horns and colliding them into the head of another ram for no particular reason at all, will produce a fantastic sonance that can be heard for miles away.

So, if you were going to pick a mascot for your college and wanted one that would put the fear of a bat out of hell into the opposing team, how dumb would you have to be to pick the buffalos over the rams?

…and this is a college that prides itself on producing astronauts.