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Yet another reader letter in the Gainesville Sun today referenced the “conservative-controlled media”.

The Gainesville Sun? Conservative? I hardly think so. I worked there for a number of years, and come election time we tended to cluster around the few televisions in partisan groups. (I was a Perot supporter; we didn’t have our own TV but the conservatives allowed us to share.)

The liberal crowd around the information udder was always much bigger (and more smug) than the conservative one.

Not convinced? Let’s take a quick look at today’s banner.

If GOP loses, what’s ahead?

• Congress up for grabs on Nov. 7
• White House’s agenda faltering

Who’s been talking about the GOP losing? This is a nice piece of work. Subtle. It brings up an unlikely eventuality and makes it a possibility in people’s minds.

This illustrates my point: this headline isn’t the product of a “conservative-controlled media”. If it were, it would probably give more useful information:

If GOP loses, what’s ahead?

• Lowest airfares to Canada
• How to build your own gas mask

On a totally unrelated topic: can an engine sing? I could swear I heard the Beemer this morning singing, in a thick Bavarian accent, something like, “I love cold weather, autobahn autobahn autobahn autobahn”.

From the snap in the air, I may wish I had remembered my gloves come quittin’ time, but this morning, I wanted to ride.

So there it is, for the world to see.

Leak’s arm was moving forward, having already given a pump-fake.

The ball had left his hand before anyone touched it.

But it wasn’t a pass. It was a fumble. So Say The SEC Officials.

So much for instant replay.

Well, our brilliant commissioners have done it again: they’ve decided to narrow Main Street (already clogged with traffic) from four lanes to two, ostensibly to bring more people downtown.

What I think they should do next is cut our taxes in half. By their logic, that should increase the amount of money they receive.

I’ve become most annoyed with the “scooters” that are clogging up the precious few spaces in the local motorcycle lot.

“Wait,” you say. “What’s the difference between a scooter and a motorcycle? They both have two wheels, a motor, and can be driven in local traffic.”

A valid point, and a distinction needs to be made.

If a vehicle is parked in the motorcycle lot, and I can pick it up and lever it nose-first into the concrete garbage can to make room for me, it’s apparently a scooter.

So I just got back from my first college football game since the new rules were implemented.

“New rules?” you ask. Yes, new rules that are designed to “speed up” the game. New rules that keep the clock running after a change of possession. New rules that start the clock on kickoff, not when the other team touches the ball.

Rules, in short, that are designed to ensure less actual football but leave plenty of time for ads.

Hey, I’m aware of the realities. Ads = revenue. You don’t get to the top of this heap with bargain-basement personnel. Great leaders, great staffers are few and far between, and they don’t come cheap.

But this is wrong in so many ways. If there’s really a need to speed things up, put a tranquilizer dart in the red-hat guy’s neck. Because while he’s on the field, there’s one tenth of a million people in the stands twiddling their thumbs, and the rest of the country’s checking for leftover pizza in the fridge.

But it gets even worse: this game was on freakin’ pay-per-view. How the hell did we get suckered into paying to see ads?

Take a step back and think about this question:

How many commercials would it take to motivate nearly 100,000 screaming, rabid fans to lay down a handful or two of Alexander Hamiltons in order to spend days driving, fighting gridlock traffic, searching for a place to park, trudging up several flights of stairs in oppressive humidity, and cheering themselves hoarse for a couple of hours, fighting back tears of joy the whole time?

How many insurance ads would get that kind of turnout?

How about ads for cars or banks or drinks or bug sprays or groceries or–well, anything else?

You get the picture.

Football– the game– is the filet mignon in this T-bone. Ads are the gristle. We put up with ’em because we have to, but they’re not the reason we’re here.

Television had better wake up to this reality before advertisers suck *all* the life out of the game.

Because when the T-bone has too much gristle and not enough meat, there’s always leftover pizza in the fridge.

So I was getting two more tires put on my car, which left me with some time on my hands. “Face Off” played on the waiting room television.

(My $DIETY, I’d no idea that movie was so awful. How many ways can you try to glamorize a bullet coming out of a gun?)

Given the choice of watching the movie or watching the traffic go by, I opted for the cars. That’s when I noticed that I was looking at one of the intersections in Gainesville with the “white lights”, the ones that ostensibly turn on when someone runs the red light.

Guess what? They don’t work. They don’t work at *all*. They came on randomly when the light turned red.

Often they came on when a motorist had legitimately proceeded into the intersection on yellow. Other times they came on after someone made a legal right turn on red. In some cases there was no one even at the intersection in that direction, and hadn’t been for ten, maybe fifteen seconds.

But you *know* these things are going to be used as evidence in court cases.

At some point you have to think that maybe our elected officials have become less concerned about our safety in the traffic system and more concerned about finding new ways to hand out tickets to get revenue.

Lately in the paper there’s been a series on what a tacky, ugly place to live Gainesville is, and how much better they do things in Savannah, Georgia.

I did some cursory research and found that Gainesville has ample bus, airplane, even moving van services, that all head up Savannah way.

My suggestion is that anyone who likes Savannah that much better than Gainesville should feel free to move there at once– don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, and see if you can convince a meddling, ingrateful newspaper editor or two to join you.