Yup, it’s Tuesday, which mean the Buffalo News (which, being a major metropolitan newspaper, really should be able to afford a website that actually loads more than 60% of the time) runs Jerry Sullivan’s football column. Today, he wants to fire Bills head coach Gregg Williams.

Now, I actually (somewhat) agree with that sentiment. I don’t think the team is playing on a level commensurate with its talent, and that — plus the lack of discipline evident after eight games — seems to me to reflect mostly on the coaching staff. I don’t think Williams has worked out, and I now doubt the Bills can make the playoffs. Assuming that at least ten wins are needed to make the postseason (unless one happens to play in the AFC North, a division which can be taken with an 8-8 record), the Bills would have to go 6-2 the rest of the way to make it in. I don’t see that happening, not with games left against good teams like Dallas, Indianapolis, New England (as much as it pains me to admit it), the Giants, and the Dolphins (who I still expect to swoon, but you never know). With two-and-a-half years under his belt, and with an upgrading of personnel each year, Williams has yet to really achieve.

But Jerry’s not content to can Williams when the current, lost year is over. Jerry wants him toasted right now. Firing a coach in mid-season should, to anyone familiar with football and its regimented, system-dependent nature, pretty much concede that the season is lost. But Jerry goes so far as to opine that such a move might not doom the Bills’ season, citing — of all things — the Florida Marlins. You see, the Marlins entered the 2003 season with Jeff Torborg as their manager, but they fired him about a month and a half into the season (when they were ten games under .500) and brought in Jack McKeon, who proceeded to steer them to the best record in baseball after that point and the eventual World Series championship. Yeah, that was inspirational and all, but come on, Jerry. Are you really suggesting that a baseball franchise firing its manager one-fourth of the way through a 162-game regular season is comparable to an NFL franchise unloading its head coach at the halfway point in a 16-game season?

(Yes, he’s really suggesting that.)

Jerry’s column is peppered with all manner of stupidities. Sure, Jerry, the University at Buffalo Bulls are the more respected football team in Buffalo right now. Sure, Jerry, the Bills are “the national joke”. Sure, Jerry, “Williams isn’t a lame duck, he’s a roast duck” is just the cleverest metaphor! And ultimately, Jerry doesn’t even answer the question of, What would be the point of canning the guy right now? If you’re only going to name an interim coach to play out the string — which Jerry tacitly concedes would probably be the case — how is that any less “giving up on the season” than just keeping Williams in place until the year’s over and the whole thing can be handled in a manner that wouldn’t be a mid-season distraction?

Jerry doesn’t have an answer for that, but then, the column isn’t about answers. It’s about Jerry going, “Look how just darn MAD I am! Wheeeee!”

Worst…columnist…ever.

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Via Atrios I found this rather stunning image of San Diego fire damage:

How did the flames manage to completely destroy nearly everything manmade, but leave the trees relatively unsinged, just fifty feet away? Was this due to the efforts of firefighters, or did it have more to do with the way the fires spread?

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Nefarious Neddie observed my expression of disdain for ESPN football commentator Joe Theismann the other day, and points out a Theismann gem I didn’t even know. After my expression of disbelief, Neddie instructed me to Google “Theismann Dumb Quotes”, wherein I discovered this wondrous collection of idiotic sports utterances. Amazing beyond belief.

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Matthew Yglesias points out a person whose NYC apartment search is likely to take quite some time. My suggestion for this person is: Move to Buffalo.

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Lynn Sislo has answers to a A-Z Quiz, which I figure I’ll answer in an attempt to further my goal of content-free blogging.

A: Actor. Harrison Ford, I suppose. Although his recent work has been lacking, in my opinion.

B: Boyhood Idols. Yeah, that would definitely be Harrison Ford.

C: Chore You Hate. Cleaning cat boxes. Ugh.

D: Dad’s Name. Harry.

E: Essential Video In Collection. The Star Wars films. All of them.

F: Favorite Actress. There are so many that I like…just dig through the archives for my “Move Over Britney!” series.

G: Gold or Silver. Silver.

H: Hometown. Pittsburgh by birth, Buffalo by emotional attachment.

I: Instruments Played. Trumpet well, piano not so well.

J: Job Title. Writer/Blogger/Unemployed Schlub.

K: Kids. One.

L: Living Arrangements. Two bedroom apartment in suburban complex.

M: Mom’s Name. Theresa.

N: Number People Slept With. I’m not answering this one.

O: Overnight Hospital Stays. None. Wife’s had two.

P: Phobia. Hmmm….I recoil fiercely if you even mimic pulling back a rubber band and aiming it at me.

Q: Quote You Like. “If it’s not baroque, don’t fix it!” (From Beauty and the Beast. More quotes in my sidebar.)

R: Religious Affiliation. None whatsoever. I’m pretty militant in my reluctance to endorse any religious doctrine at all, because I think nearly every religion has something true and transcendent to say about the human condition, and at the same time every religion has something idiotic and bogus to say about the human condition.

S: Siblings. One older sister.

T: Time You Wake Up. These days, sometime between 7:00 and 8:00. If I’m really exhausted, I might sleep until 9:00, and it’s not uncommon for me to wake up at 6:00 and just get out of bed under the assumption that it’s useless to try to sleep any more than that.

U: Unique Habit. I’m not sure exactly what this means – – unique as in, I’m the only one in the world who does it? Or that I’m the only one I know who does it? Anyway, aside from people online, I don’t know any film music collectors personally.

V: Vegetable You Refuse To Eat. Broccoli. President Bush the Elder’s revelation that he also detests broccoli nearly had me changing my political affiliation. Luckily for me, there was all that policy stuff that allowed me to remain a Democrat with good conscience.

W: Worst Habit. My sweet-tooth knows no bounds.

X: X-rays Taken. Once when I broke my collarbone in seventh grade, and routine ones during dental visits. (The first dental hygienist who attempted to do this with me discovered my incredibly powerful gag reflex when she made no attempt to describe what she was doing with that little piece of X-ray film they stick in your mouth and simply starting sticking her fingers in my mouth. Heh.)

Y: Yummy Food You Make. Pastitsio (a Greek forerunner of Lasagna). I even posted a recipe for it here a few months back; sometime I’ll look for the link.

Z: Zodiac Sign. Given my strong belief that astrology is a lot of hooey and that people who believe in it are boobs, I probably shouldn’t know my sign. Sadly, I do. It’s Libra.

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For some strange reason, I’m getting a lot of search engine hits recently from people looking for study guides and such for the film Dead Poets Society. I’m hoping against hope that teachers are assigning this movie under a “Here’s how to make a bad movie about poetry” teaching plan, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, I maintain a link to the article in question in the sidebar, if anyone really wants to know why the movie bugs me. Look under “Notable Dispatches”.

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John Scalzi is shocked! shocked! to learn that his cat drinks from the toilet. Well, not all cats do this, but this right now may be the only time in my life when I haven’t lived with a cat who drinks from the toilet. It’s not universal, but it’s not uncommon, either. Cats like cold water, which is what attracts them to toilet water: it’s always cold, by virtue of being insulated by as much as two inches of porcelain. If you think your cats aren’t quite drinking enough water, especially in summer months, try putting ice in their water dish when you fill it. This has often worked for our cats.

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I wasn’t going to babble more about the Bills’ blowout loss last night, but I notice now that since I wrote the post last night in which I mentioned Buffalo News columnist Jerry Sullivan’s constant harping that the Bills do not have an elite defense, he went and wrote his entire column in this morning’s paper on the non-elite defense.

Now, I’m not about to claim that the Bills played a good game last night on defense, because they didn’t. Their pass-rush, which I’m complaining about on a weekly basis, was abyssmal last night, failing to apply pressure to Trent Green even when they sent seven men across the line. They gave up 38 points and 375 yards, they had no sacks and they created no turnovers. That’s bad. But Sullivan seems to want to put the entire blame on the defensive unit. As he writes:

But you can’t blame the offense for this one. The Bills moved the ball well at times. Travis Henry ran for 124 yards on 22 carries. He might actually have scored a TD if Gilbride had the sense to run on second-and-goal from the 2. Henry ran for 87 yards after halftime. Too bad the game was already decided.

The Bills had to follow a simple blueprint to win. Run and stop the run. They ran OK. The only thing they stopped was any talk that Buffalo has one of the NFL’s top defenses.

I can’t blame the offense for this one? Really? The offense that scored three points in the entire game, with the team’s other two points coming on a blocked punt in the end zone for a safety? The offense that, despite averaging 5.1 yards per carry against a team that everyone knew was susceptible to the run, only ran 26 times? The offense that only handed off to its Pro-Bowl running back, Travis Henry, nine times in the first half? The offense that turned the ball over seven times, with three of the resulting Kansas City drives resulting in points scored? The offense that went pass-wacky at all the wrong times, just as it has so often in this season? I can’t blame that offense for this game, Jerry? Please.

This game as a total-team effort. The Bills blew this game in all phases. Let’s not pretend it was a defensive melt-down, because it wasn’t.

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Today I reached 25,000 total hits, and yesterday, October officially became my best traffic month yet, and there are five more days to go (including today). This also means that three of the last five months have been record-setting months here at Byzantium’s Shores, and I’ve done it the old-fashioned way, with not an Instalanche in sight. (Well, I did have a couple of Den Bestelanches in June. But not an Instalanche.)

Yippee and Huzzah!

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The current word count is just over 67,000, which in terms of a mass-market paperback is roughly between 140 and 180 pages. The story is moving into the second act, and the problem now is that I have a lot of balls in the air here; I have to keep stopping and reminding myself of things like, “You haven’t shown this character in four chapters, and we really need to know what he’s up to before the next big battle scene because, you know, he sets that up.”

I don’t revise as I go, unless it’s to go back and stick something in to foreshadow something that’s going on right now — the old rule being that if you have a gun going off in the third act, you’d better have that gun on the mantelpiece in the first act. (The greatest example of that rule in action I’ve ever encountered is the film The Shawshank Redemption, in which director Frank Darabont has every major plot device right out in the open in the film’s first half-hour, and you don’t even realize it until the end.) I haven’t had to do as much of this lately, but in the early going of this particular book I had to a lot of “plot retrofitting”. You might think that outlines might solve this problem, but I don’t use outlines. Outlines are for the weak. Heh!

(Of course, it could well be that outlines are essential and that writers who don’t use them are the kinds of whackos who ride motorcycles without helmets after drinking nine beers in thirty minutes….but we won’t plumb those depths right now.)

Anyhoo, onward and upward!

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