The parable of the six yard punt

The soul of the prideful man is like the Oregon State punter in last night's MAACO Las Vegas Bowl who struggled to kick the ball despite his best efforts due to a gusty wind.   He sat on the sideline in the first quarter and watched as the fearful wind tangled the Allstate kick-catching banner in the goalposts and brusquely disabled ESPN's celebrated skycam.  Later in the 1st quarter, he stood on the sidelines as his BYU counterpart attempted to launch a punt into the oncoming wind only to see the ball start to boomerang back towards its origin before it even reached the apex of its abbreviated flight.  Granted a second chance by a silly OSU penalty, the Cougar punter wisely tuned his second effort to a lower trajectory and managed a 35 yard punt w/ a good 20 yard bounce.  The teams switched ends for the 2nd quarter and it came to pass that the Beavers offense stalled and it was their turn to punt.  The OSU punter took the snap and boomed a beautiful arching drive high into the Nevada night.  Sadly, this punt also reversed course due to the arid gusts and ended a mere six yards from the original line of scrimmage. 

This greatly saddened Dolberry because he had picked Oregon State in his annual bowl contest against tbKMD and APD and this set the Cougars up in very favorable field position.  Moreover, it struck Dolberry that the six yard punt was sort of a metaphor for life ... sometimes we can give our best effort and outside forces conspire to turn it into a laughingstock.

Later in the same quarter, the OSU punter was called into action again with his team pinned back near their own end zone.  Again, he drew his kicking leg back and forcefully advected the pigskin some 40 yards up into the air but only six yards further down the field.  This second six yard punt greatly enraged Dolberry because BYU was pulling away and I am already way behind in the bowl contest (w/ only ~ 78 bowls left to catchup).  There's metaphor and there's moronicy and the Beaver punter had crossed the line.

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Two Greek roots you never want to hear back to back ... "orth-" meaning straight and "odont-" meaning tooth.  The alliance of these two roots have conspired to set Dolberry back roughly $4.5 grand.  A Merry Christmas for the orthodontist indeed.

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The NY Times manages to aggravate Dolberry to my boiling point (roughly 137 deg F, same as bromine) every few weeks or so.  Maureen Dowd's pointless and ungrounded attack on John McCain's character was the most recent entry.  The piece-de-resistance is where she tsk-tsks him for "cutting the Times off completely" and treating the media w/ "the same outsize scorn that he once reserved for his Viet Cong captors".  In true turn the other cheek fashion, Dolberry won't hazard any wild opinions on Dowd's potential character flaws, but I do think it's sort of a natural reaction to be disinclined to deal much w/ an organization that wrote a total hit piece hinting at marital infidelity (one for which they later had to settle to avoid a libel suit).  Guess its self-congratulating analyses like these that sell papers or generate web clicks ... "McCain's a frothing old man ... ha I knew it".  Anyway, the NYT has been removed from my bookmark list in protest.  That'll show 'em.
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My favorite Christmas songs right now ... countdown:

5.  Happy is a Yuppie Word (Switchfoot):  Not technically a Christmas song, but the lyrics are never more appropriate than this time of year.  "Blessed is the man who's lost it all.  I want more than simple cash can buy."

4.  The Night Santa Went Crazy (Weird Al Yankovic):  Santa goes postal as a "yuletide Rambo".

3.  Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Weezer):  Standard Weezer guitar sound paired w/ best Xmas hymn.

2.  I Celebrate the Day (Relient K):  A modern classic.

1.  C'mon Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance (Sufjan Stevens):  The biblical Christmas story gets gradually drowned out by the modern Christmas meaning in competing overlapping melodies.