It has been a few days since my last post because of a vacation during which I did not have access to a computer. Some sports stuff to start with.

Michigan football managed to beat Northern Illinois in the 2005 season opener despite horrible defense, a problem that has persisted since 1998.

I am not allowed to say this in certain places but I will say it here...Michigan defensive coordinator Jim Hermann is a totally worthless sack of crap who should have been croaked a long time ago. I am also less and less happy with head coach Lloyd Carr, who seems too stuck in the mud too much of the time. He may be a nice guy but with the talent Michigan has they should not be losing as many games as they do.

And speaking of coaches who need to resign or be fired, why have neither of these things happened to Bill Lame-beer yet?

The Miami of Florida Convictcanes and Florida State Criminoles played their annual game, another of those (like Michigan State-Notre Dame and Southern Cal-UCLA) where I wish that both teams could lose because I cannot stand either. I think the Criminoles won the latest Battle of the Florida Scumbag Teams.

Some more postmodern musings...I was in Grand Haven, Michigan on the aforementioned vacation and saw a manifestation of something I remember from the theory I have read. This regards the tendency of places that once were sites of production (like factories) becoming sites of consumerism (shopping malls). In downtown Grand Haven they have a shopping mall that once was the Story and Clark piano factory. The fading painted signature of the piano company can still be barely read on the bricks on the outside of the building. There are many old photos of the inside and outside of the factory on the walls of the now-shopping mall, including one that I believe must be from sometime in the 1950s. I came to this conclusion from the background of the photo which shows what appears to be a makeshift baseball scoreboard with New York and Brooklyn as the teams. Which, from my knowledge of sports history, I know was a fairly regular World Series matchup (New York Yankees vs. then-Brooklyn Dodgers) in the 50s.

I figure the factory workers were listening to a World Series game (or maybe even watching it on TV?) and keeping track of the score.