Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

I don”t often get into the “big issues” Americans are talking about, except when I see a good opportunity to mock and poke fun.

But the reaction to this “gay marriage” ruling up in Massachusetts has really pissed me off.

I could rant on about this for a long, long time. But this blog isn”t meant to be a heavy read. For the record, however, I will say this:

This “gay marriage” issue has nothing to do with religion. So all you Christians who see this as a threat to “the family” “the Judeo-Christian tradition” or any of that garbage just shut up. If your religion is against “gay marriages”, then don”t allow them to happen in your church. That is the only religious issue here.

What the Massachusetts ruling applies to is “civil marriage”, which is the set of rights and privileges a state determines married couples should enjoy which unmarried couples do not. These typically involve things such as inheritance rights, exemption from estate taxes, the ability to sue for wrongful death of your partner, etc. It”s basically the state”s certification that two people are one legal entity - in other words a “family.”

And when a state institutes these rights and privileges, then denies those rights and privileges to a committed couple because they happen to be of the same sex, it”s wrong. Yep, simple as that. It”s as wrong as denying black people the right to vote.

But the thing that really, really bothers me is that the anti-gay sentiment in the U.S. appear to be growing with each court ruling that favors the rights of homosexuals. CNN showed a poll to that effect this morning.

Interestingly, according to CNN, those polled were much more inclined to support allowing gay “civil unions” than “gay marriage.” It”s the same thing, people. The word “marriage” just freaks out your little Christian soul.

But now there is fear of a “anti-gay backlash” because of this ruling and the sodomy a few months back. And, sadly, that”s probably accurate. God help you if you offend the Christians.

To fight this backlash, it”s important that we in the “straight but not narrow” crowd not sit by quietly as the Christians work to keep the gays down.

So, leave the gays alone. They deserve the same rights as the rest of us. And if a gay couple wants the rights and privileges of a civil marriage, they are entitled to it.

If Saturday night”s game at Alabama was the “late-season letdown” game for LSU, I”ll take it. The offense started strong, sputtered, and then recovered, while the defense didn”t let up all night long.

We held Bama to just 65 rushing yards (actually above our average of 60) and, of course, 3 points (we still lead the nation in scoring defense).

I”d picked a win, but a close one. But a win”s a win here at CKHW.

Elsewhere, Georgia had no problem with Auburn, thanks in large part to Auburn forgetting that it”s a running team. I got that one right.

The Crocodiles had more trouble with South Carolina than they should, but they came through with the win for Zook (and me).

[interesting side note: with the Crocs winning now, and with their Florida State showdown looming, it"s very possible that if Georgia were to lose to Georgia Tech, the Crocs would be rated higher in the BCS, which - thanks to the B.S. tiebreaker rule change - would mean Tennessee goes to the SEC Championship]

The Vols had no trouble with MSU, as predicted.

Vandy, however, spoiled my perfect week, upsetting JLoad and the Cats. Seems Kentucky may have some motivation going into the Georgia game afterall …

Arkansas took care of non-SEC business against New Mex St.

So, 5 - 1 for the week, 66 - 19 for the season, and 9 - 1 on my Tigers.

My new Sirius satellite radio unit arrived yesterday. We get free equipment and a deal on the service through my employer. So after enjoying Sirius in our L.A. rental car, I figured it was a deal worth getting on board with.

There”s a lot to like about the Sirius lineup, including the First Wave stream (think GOOD “80s station), Left of Center (think GOOD college radio station) and ESPN Radio (think GOOD sports/talk station where the hosts talk more about sports than themselves). There”s also a lot that doesn”t much interest me (any of the current hit stuff, jazz, hispanic, etc.). But so far in my very brief life as a Sirius subscriber, my stream of choice is the Sirius Trucking Network.

STN is a stream created specifically for cross-country, 18-wheel truckers. I keep listening for commercials from truckstop hookers (haven”t heard that yet), but the morning show features great stuff like trucker-specific news (the New York port authority has a new program to move more freight on barges, which is not good for truckers, and Pennsylvania may raise the gas tax, which also is not good for truckers), trucker traffic (nationwide interstate construction updates) and trucker weather (same deal - weather affecting interstates). Cut that in with tracks from George Jones and the Allman Brothers and you”ve got yourself a Trucker Channel.

The Sirius unit I got is a portable Audiovox unit that has a built-in FM transmitter to pipe the signal to your car stereo without cables. On the unit”s box there”s some Sirius promo that says “More than 100 streams of digital music - and it”s all legal!” (Napster effect, I guess)

So I go out at lunch today to shop for a second base unit for the wife”s SUV (the receiver itself pops in and out of a base unit you keep in the car). Because I already use a cassette-deck thingy to connect my Sony Clie”s MP3 player to the stereo, I figure I”ll buy the cheaper base unit, which doesn”t have the FM receiver, and put the FM unit in the wife”s ride.

I hit Best Buy. They have the home base, but not the car base. HiFi Buys has the receiver, but no bases, HH Gregg has a Sirius display but no equipment I could find. Media Play sells DishNetwork stuff but not satellite radio. And then there”s Circuit City.

I get over to Circuit City and check out their Sirius display. There”s a sign and price tag on the shelf for the FM-transmitter unit (henceforth known as CK-1). However, the one box that”s on the shelf is the non-FM-transmitter unit (CK-2). My research suggests CK-1 sells for $49.99 and CK-2 sells for $29.99.

So I take the box up to the register and get the cashier to look up the price. $49.99. OK, maybe it”s the CK-1 in a CK-2 box or something. So I find the car audio guy, explain to him the difference between CK-1 and CK-2 and ask him to see if they stock both. So he looks up the price of CK-2, and sure enough it”s $49.99. So then he looks up CK-1, which comes up at $49.96.

OK … so the FM transmitter is worth -3 cents? Needless to say, I did not purchase anything at Circuit City. I figure when we”re out and about this weekend I”ll shop more for an appropriately-priced CK-2.

The week after 3 of the top-5 BCS teams lost found me paying a lot of attention - probably way too much - to the what-ifs and could-bes of the final weeks of the season. Is it better for us if Georgia loses to Auburn and we get Tennessee in the SEC Championship? … If Ohio State loses to Purdue and then beats Michigan, both of those teams get taken out of the BCS mix … What are the chances Oklahoma loses the Big XII Championship? …

But, alas, these are all secondary concerns. LSU has to beat Bama this weekend for any BCS eventualities to mean anything to us.

Nevermind that Alabama is 4-6 and LSU is 8-1. That means little here. Bama is playing well, has nothing to lose and has everything to gain by knocking us out of our No. 3 ranking and the BCS mix.

Bama”s offense is not unlike Auburn”s - they run better than they throw. Their 174 yards on the ground, 189 in the air and 27.6 points per game don”t mean a lot given the 7 periods of overtime they”ve played, but they don”t, in fact, suck on offense.

The Tide defense is respectable, having held Oklahoma to 20 points (nobody else has kept them under 30) early in the year, and coming off a shutout of the woeful Miss. State Bulldogs. They give up 112 yards rushing and 216 yards passing a game (also overtime-inflated).

So I think Alabama has enough talent to win this game. I”m sure they”re one of the best 4-6 team in the country.

The key to the game, then, is LSU”s ability to focus on Bama as the next obstacle toward an SEC Championship and not as a 4-6 team we play in the game before Ole Miss.

As I”ve said many, many times, LSU would traditionally blow it here. If we can manage not to blow it, that would (again) say a lot about Nick Saban.

I, for one, am nervous about this game. I hope the team is, too.

I”ll pick LSU to squeeze by an up-for-it Bama squad. LSU, 24 - 20

Elsewhere, the “big game” is Auburn at Georgia. Before the season, Auburn was the pick here; early on in the season Georgia was; then Auburn seemed like the better team, and now both are looking for some salvation. Auburn dropped the ball, so to speak, against Ole Miss last week, and Georgia”s still smarting from the annual “Florida beats Georgia” game of two weeks ago.

One of the big problems for Georgia two weeks ago was injuries. A week off helps that tremendously.

And Georgia still has a big prize - the SEC Championship Game if they can win out (thanks to a bullshit mid-season change of the tiebreaker rules) - to get them up for this game. Auburn needs a win to qualify for the Bluebonnet Bowl. Tommy T: “Let”s go, guys! Bluebonnet Bowl or Bust!!!”

So I like Georgia to win this one. Dawgs, 31 - 17

Florida at South Carolina - The Crocs against the Cocks. A win for Florida here makes their matchup against Florida State meaningful again. A win for South Carolina makes … not much of a difference. Crocodiles, 31 - 10

Mississippi State at Tennessee - Will the Vols be caught looking foward to their annual showdown with Vandy next week? No. Vols, 28 - 13

Kentucky at Vanderbilt - zzz. Cats, 49 - 14

New Mexico State at Arkansas - Why the hell are the Hogs playing some bad out-of-conference team this late in the season? Hogs, 27 - 10

Last night, the wife told me she received an email from Woodhill Will in response to her blog about our brunch at the Heaving Bowl. Will expressed his hatred (he is hardly alone there) for Good News Cafe, but he also called the Cap”n”s manhood into question because I had ordered a Diet Coke - rather than coffee - before noon.

First off … say it to my face, buddy. Don”t sneak off an email to the wife badmouthing my supposed offenses against the coffee culture.

I believe the wife explained my choice correctly - when we go out to brunch, my drink decision is driven by how many cups of coffee I”ve already had that day. Typically on the weekends I have three or four “cups” (16-ouncers, I guess) of coffee before we get moving. So if we”re out at bunch after 11 or so, I usually have had my fill of coffee, and I switch to the cold stuff.

My friend, I can pound coffee with the best of them. I”m a caffeine addict of major proportions. And because my consumption is driven more by the addiction than love for the taste of any particular beverage; the practical concerns of delivering my fix come first.

On the weekends, I enjoy a constant stream of coffee, Diet Coke and Venti Quad Iced Lattes. What I drink during the day is mostly determined by what”s available at the time.

During the work week, I have one or two - depending on how early I get up - cups of coffee at home, then I grab a Diet Coke from the fridge for the ride to work. I choose Diet Coke for the commute because I can toss the can when I”m done; I”m not good at getting travel mugs back to the house before critters begin living in them.

When I get to work, I have two cups of the Royal Crap we have in the breakroom during the morning - creamed up with the stash of mini-moos I buy at Publix and keep in my desk drawer. I drink my work coffee, by the way, out of the super-rocking, black LAPD Narcotics Group coffee mug I bought in a Vegas junk store a couple years ago. It”s got a big, Dragnet-style LAPD badge on it and all that. I love setting that thing down on the table during morning meetings.

I”m done with the coffee by 10:30 or so. When I have an 11:00 meeting, I grab a 20-ounce Diet Coke from the machine to hold me over until lunch. The big bags of dimes and nickels I put together before our move helps with my Diet Coke costs.

At lunch, I usually swing by Quik Trip to grab a 32-ouncer from the fountain, and I work on it until I get back to the office. If it”s still more than half-full, I bring it in with me. If not, it stays in the car.

I get another 20-ouncer for the afternoon, and depending on my meeting load I may get a third one later in the day (I drink constantly during meetings for some reason).

On the drive home I finish off the watered-down remnants of the QT drink (if it”s there), or sometimes I”ll stop on Howell Mill and fetch me a fresh beverage for the rest of the ride.

At home I usually have just one more Diet Coke during the evening, and sometimes the wife will brew a pot of Community. Oddly, I don”t seem to have built up any resistance to the effects of caffeine, as I can”t get to sleep if I drink coffee after 9 p.m.

On a typical work day, I consume somewhere between 4 and 6 quarts of caffeinated beverage. This, of course, is why I switched from Coke to Diet Coke and stopped sugaring my coffee.

Yes, I have a problem. But I will not stand for challenges to my coffee cred, Mr. Will.

No, I haven”t been avoiding writing this because I had a bad week; just been busy.

After a weekend where 5 of the 6 teams ranked ahead of LSU in the BCS played; and after 3 of those 5 teams lost, I”m a happy camper. LSU is ranked No. 3 in the country. Yippee for us. It means not much if we don”t win the next four games - Bama, Ole Miss, Arkansas and SEC East Champion - but it”s a nice feeling.

But a good weekend for an idle LSU did not mean a good weekend of football pickin” for the Cap”n …

I picked Auburn to beat Ole Miss, and I was one really, really, really poorly-timed dropped pass away from being right. Apart from one of the worst choke moments in the history of SEC football, that game really came down to Auburn not being able to convert on 3rd downs. Eli and company were pretty underwhelming on offense, and they allowed a poor-throwing Auburn to march down the field largely on pass plays on that last drive. So enjoy No. 1 in the SEC West, Col. Reb. You”re going down a week from Saturday. But I missed this pick.

I also missed the Tennessee win over Miami, but I doubt few people whose wardrobe ventures outside of the orange hues or who have more than 4 teeth picked the Vols here.

Arkansas rolled up South Carolina Thursday, as predicted.

Bama destroyed a really, really bad MSU team, as foreseen.

And Florida managed to beat Vandy. No surprise there.

So a poor week at 3 - 2 brings me to 61 - 18 for the season, and I hold at 8-1 on my Tigers.