Yesterday, after I suggested on Twitter that I was trick-or-treating to reach 5,000 followers, my old friend and lefty agitator Armando Llorens said he’d follow if I wrote about the Georgia-Florida football game tomorrow (Armando is a big Florida Gators fan).
So yeah, even though both teams are out of the Top 25 and are long shots to win their SEC division, and even though my football fandom is getting more tenuous every time I hear new information about head injuries, I will be hunkered down tomorrow afternoon with my wife to watch this very fierce, almost primitive rivalry. I’ve watched these teams play from St. Kitts, from a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, from a row house in Baltimore, and just last year, from a fake British pub in Half Moon Bay. The most famous moment (for Georgia fans, anyway) in the rivalry, the Buck Belue to Linsday Scott pass in 1980 that paved the way for the Dawgs’ most recent national championship, I missed entirely because I couldn’t stand to watch and instead took a restroom break. So yeah, Armando, I won’t miss this game, God willing.
Here are some remains of the day:
* A TSA officer is confirmed as dead, with six other people injured (not counting the shooter, who was himself shot and is in policy custody) in LAX shooting, which occurred just past the TSA security screening point. Surprise, surprise: the shooter was a 23-year-old man with an assault weapon.
* Leader of Pakistani Taliban apparently killed in drone strike.
* In the new issue of the Washington Monthly, Center for a New American Security’s Shawn Brimley reviews a disturbing new book about the steady migration of guerrilla warfare from remote areas to cities.
* At Ten Miles Square, the ever-fascinating Colin Woodward notes that U.S. geographical areas with the most violence–private or state-sponsored–are generally southern and Appalachian Tea Party hotbeds.
* Also at Ten Miles Square, Rachel Cohen interviews George Mason University professor Zach Schrag on institutional review boards and their inhibiting effect on valuable social science research.
And in non-political news:
* News you can use: 9-11 AM best time to call Customer Service lines, which I wish I’d known when I spent serious time on hold with my bank this afternoon.
Okay, let’s call it a day. Martin Longman will be in for Weekend Blogging. Sorry I didn’t post more songs about saints, but here’s one of the most enduring: Louis Armstrong’s version of “St. James Infirmary Blues.”
Selah.
