Musings of a Dead Parrot

A friend sent this to me. I think he wrote it since I could not find a Google hit that seemed to match this piece. Very clever, Jude!

Well 'My Fair Lady' I was recently at 'My Best Friend's Wedding' and ran into 'My First Wife'. Her eyes threw daggers when she saw 'My Bosses Daughter'. Despite the look she was never 'My Other Woman' and played no part in 'My Divorce'.

Then I ran into 'My Cousin Vinnie'. I was surprised because he was there with 'My Wife and Kids' and 'My Dog Skip'. It was like 'My Life Without Me'. I was outraged, they were 'My Flesh and Blood', 'My Three Sons', and 'My Little Girl'. I was stunned, of 'My 5 Wives' she had been 'My Favorite Wife'. I called for 'My Bodyguard'. Unfortunately I remembered he had taken 'My Man Godfrey' over to 'My Beautiful Laundrette' to make a pick-up.

I couldn't believe this was 'My Life' or should I say 'My So-Called Life'? All I wanted now was to call 'My Super Ex-girlfriend', she was always 'My Girl', and go to 'My House in Umbria'. Unfortunately when I called her she said, "I can't 'My Boyfriends Back'". So I took 'My Best Friend's Wife'. I thought I was doing her a favor as 'My Best Friend is a Vampire'. Oh why do I listen to 'My Foolish Heart', I should have just taken 'My Secretary', yes 'My Gal Sal' could cheer me up. Or should I have gone alone and spent some time with 'My Friend Flicka' or 'My Pal Trigger'. You could trust horses. That's why 'My Heros Have Always Been Cowboys'.

I can't say this has been 'My Favorite Year' actually it was 'My Horrible Year'. Although I still have some things going for me are 'My Brilliant Career' and the loss of the inlaws. 'My Wife' always said "My Stepmother is an Alien". And believe me when I tell you she wasn't 'My Favorite Martian'!

Hand on 'My Breast', this would definitely be 'My Last Love'.

Less than seven years since Stanford football reached a pinnacle moment (Pac 10 champs and Rose Bowl qualifier) and less than five years since it reached another pinnacle moment (9-2 regular season record and a brief time in the top 10), Stanford has hit the bottom. It is arguably the worst team of the 119 in D1-A and it ranked below some D1-AA schools in the Sagarin calculations.

I certainly realize that Stanford has been a mediocre football team for the last 25+ years. Yes, there have been some wonderful seasons, great games and hundreds of talented fine players. I never thought I would see Stanford in a Rose Bowl in my lifetime and there we were on Jan 1st, 2000. The day we beat kal to clinch the Rose Bowl bid was one of the most euphoric sports experiences I have had.

But look at the record. Stanford has had only 8 winning seasons in the last 27 years. Total record - 138-162-5. Since Bill Walsh and Jack Christensen left and ended a run of 11 consecutive winning seasons in the late 60s and 70s, we have had consecutive winning seasons only twice - 1991-92 and 1995-96. We have had a stretch of five consecutive losing seasons (1981 - 85) and two stretches of four each (1987-90 and 2002-05). Only one coach has had more than one winning season.

My point is that the administration has struggled (mostly unsuccessfully) to find a football coach who can win consistently at Stanford. In the last 27 years, only one has done so and he is coaching in Seattle now (and he has such fond memories of his time on the Farm that his public comments never mention his former employer by name). Yes, the most successful Stanford football coach since Bill Walsh I was a young assistant who had never been a head coach at any level before he was hired - Tyrone Willigham. I am no apologist for his horse's-behind behavior at the end of his tenure, but the man knew how to coach a college football team. He definitely did what Paul Wiggin, Jack Elway, Walsh II, Buddy and Walt Harris (so far) could not do - prove that Stanford could consistently compete and win.

Stanford is an incredibly difficult place to coach football. We clearly struggle to get enough talent to compete (look at the number of the current frosh who received no or only one other D1 offer). Our coach needs to be someone who can get a team to achieve beyond its individual talents. That means being a motivator and a tactician who can out-scheme his colleague on the other sideline. I thought that WH might be that person based on a few games from last year, but my opinion is changing rapidly. I had friends in Pittsburgh who told me that we would regret hiring Harris. By the way, I am not one of those people who considers Chow to have been a better choice either. It could be that neither one was the coach to lead Stanford out of the hole it is in.

As fans, all we can do at this point is grit our teeth and tough out this season. But the administration and trustees need some hard discussions about the importance of football to the University and what they can do to turn around years of decline. I can only hope that they find the current results to be unacceptable.

A timely quote from one of the great figures of the 20th century:

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

In August, I went to visit my aunt and uncle in the Seattle area. They are among my favorite family members. Delightful and funny people who enjoy life. But Aunt Alex has diabetes that is slowly destroying her body. She just had her second heart surgery and they put in a fourth stent. I wanted to see her on my vacation just in case there are no more opportunities.

Uncle Larry and I are kindred spirits who love the outdoors. I wanted to explore Olympic National Park and he quickly agreed to join me when I said that I wanted to go hiking there. We took the ferry across Puget Sound and settled in Port Angeles on the park boundary to be ready to go to Hurricane Ridge the next morning. It provides a spectacular panorama of the Olympic peaks.

The next day we were about an hour on the the trail when we ran into a family of mountain goats - apparently a mother, father, teen and a kid. We watched them and expected them to move down the mountain. After all, they are *mountain* goats, not trail goats. Instead, the large male started to walk toward us. He was pretty big - I would estimate 150-200 pounds. Had two well-developed horns as well.

Uncle Larry said, "Run," so I did without regard to the fact that I was also running away from from my 67 year old uncle who had a 50 pound pack on his back. Fortunately, the goat was not running at either of us. After we were a distance away, we encountered several other hikers. We told them of our goat experience and cautioned them that they may meet the goats ahead if they proceeded in their original direction. As we were talking, someone pointed and said, "Here they come!" The goats were following us. We rushed off the trail into a grove of trees. The large male wandered over and stopped in front of us. In our group were a father and his two kids. The kids kept pointing and snapping photos. Dad looked rather anxious. It must have looked really funny - a crowd of people in a grove of trees surrounded by the Billy Goats Gruff. Soon the goats slowly wandered up the mountain on a small spur trail.

We stepped back into the open to share our "relief" at having survived. After a minute of light hearted talk and exchange of information so that we could get copies of the pictures, the goats came back. It was like Uncle Larry or I had a homing beacon. We dove back into the grove. Again the large male took the lead, perhaps in protection of the others or perhaps he enjoyed menacing hikers. This time, he slowly walked around us, looking us over. He never threatened us directly but we all wondered what he had in mind. This was tenser than before. He could have rushed any of us in about two strides.

After a few moments (and at the same langorous pace as before), the goats went on their way. Uncle Larry has been going out into the wilderness for over 40 years and had other wildlife experiences (he was even attacked by a marmot), but nothing like this before. He said though that the most humiliating part of the experience was the fact that the male called him an "old goat" as he walked away.

I certainly had other highlights from that trip. Visited a wildlife park where I saw grizzly bears for the first time. Went to a baseball game (another stadium visit to add to my collection). Especially enjoyed a walking tour of Dale Chihuly's glass works in and around the Tacoma Art Museum. Incredible! I also was able to visit a "hot room" and watch glass artists at work. It really was a nice trip.

Let's play a little word association game. I will list a string of words and terms. Think of what profession might use them.

Bizarre, upside-down, mirror-image, evil-twin, strange, charm.

What comes to mind? Psychology? Science fiction writing? Management consulting?

Try quantum physics. Maybe physicists are in the middle of a massive image makeover to make them seem cool. I seem to have the missed the episode of Queer Eye for the Physics Guy. But they definitely appear to be closer to cutting edge, counter culture than pocket-protector nerd.

For example, did you know that the name of the fundemental particle quark was taken from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake? That may be the most lucid idea to come from that barely penetrable novel. Quantum physicists have also identified three sets of quark pairs. The pairs are named top-bottom, up-down and strange-charmed. I picture two guys in short haircuts wearing starched lab coats and a shaggy stoner skateboard dude in a tie-dye shirt. "Strange? Charmed? I'm cool with that. Just be careful with my board, man." Nice personality for basic building blocks of all matter!

Then earlier this year, according to a NY Times article, "Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory reported what would seem to set a new standard for vacillation last week: a subatomic particle that reverses identity three trillion times a second, switching into its upside-down mirror-image evil-twin antimatter opposite and then back again." Behavior of politicians? Indecisive women? Men who can't commit? How can one expect constancy when flip-flopping is built into your basic matter? What a long, strange trip indeed.

Haldane's Law - "The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine; it is queerer than we CAN imagine."

I love this video. Seemingly very simple, but clever and innovative. I would not have guessed that a video on treadmills could hold my attention without women in leotards or workout shorts, but this one did.

The band is called Ok Go, the song is "Here It Goes Again" and the CD is "Oh No." I know this because I went out and bought it after listening to this and several other songs. Sometimes they sound like an early 80s new wave band. Good stuff. Rock on.

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