Stop...Hammer Time

It's official. The legendary, landmark, amazing, perfect health care legislation that we have all heard so much about has been passed. Or, depending on how you look at it, the totalitarian, horrible, awful, worst thing that could ever happen to the United States health care legislation that we have all heard so little about has been passed. Seriously, who actually knows what's in it? It's longer than all of my textbooks, and you don't see me reading them for fun now do you. I stumbled upon this website that has a somewhat negative view of the bill (law now I guess), but its in a nice concise list form, which you all know that I absolutely love. Here's the link. I know it's out of date and doesn't really say much. I just thought it was funny that it keeps talking about ACORN (too soon?).

So here's what I think. Not very much. I honestly do not have the time to waste reading ponderous government documents that are inordinately long and verbose. I barely even have time to write a slightly below average blog each (almost) week. But, here's an argument against socializing health care. Who knows if it's even relevant, it's possible that it has nothing to do with anything. The problem with a Communist system is that there are no incentives for personal excellence. I know this is the point behind it, that everyone is equal, but seriously why should you be equal with a janitor if you went to school for 20+ years to be some kind of fancypants lawyer or something? Kind of what's happening here. Doctors are going to lose respect and reputability if everything has to go through the government. Salaries will go down. The idea of going through school for so many years that you could have a kid and put him through college in the time it takes to become a full fledged doctor will become less and less appealing. Next thing you know, the only doctors in the country will be John T. Ihavenothingbettertodowithmylife and Billy Q. Iamafraidtoleavecollege. I don't know about you, but writing those names down on emergency contact lists would be a bit too difficult for me. I once again make the disclaimer that that passage may in fact be completely useless and unrelated to everything ever.

See, I promised non-sports news this week. Now on to March Madness. You knew it was coming. First round was crazy. There were ups, downs, upsets, Syracuse not getting upset, and complete and utter heartbreak on the part of someone in my pool. I hope this person (henceforth known as bracket guy) does not mind my using their misery in this post. And if they do, I hope a big hug will suffice as repayment. So here's what happened (all times are estimates and may indeed be in the wrong order).
Thursday:
4:10 PM- Vanderbilt (4) scraps and fights its way back into a game that Murray State (13) had controlled the entire time. Vandy takes a 1 point lead with about 4 seconds to play. Murray makes a covered fadeaway from 18 feet away. Murray wins, bracket guy picked Vandy.
9:20 PM- Marquette, having opened up the second half on a 17-3 run, squanders a 15 point lead and drops into a tie with 2 minutes left. Nobody scores until Washington makes a shot with 1 second left. Game Washington. Bracket guy picked Marquette.
9:25 PM- UNLV sticks with Northern Iowa, winning for a lot of the time and nailing a 3 with 40 seconds left to tie the game. Northern Iowa responds with a 30 footer with 7 seconds to go, no sweat. Victory to Northern Iowa. Bracket guy had UNLV.
Friday
12:20 AM- Trailing most of the second half, Texas makes a miraculous comeback and forces overtime against Wake Forest. They go up 8-0 at the start of OT and Wake seems like they're waiting for their players to age a few more years before they score a basket. Wake comes back, assisted by 2-6 free throw shooting by Texas. Wake makes a fadeaway from the same spot Murray did earlier in the round. Wake takes it. Bracket guy went with Texas.

So the moral of the story: don't complain about how screwed your bracket is until you've lost 4 games on last second shots not just in the same round, but in the same day. Meanwhile, I hit 13 of 16 on the first day and took a mental snapshot of my 99.5 percentile bracket on espn.com. The next day I proceeded to go 10-16 and was ousted from first place in my pool.

Round 2. Storyline: Syracuse vs. Gonzaga. Syracuse still has not gotten Arinze Onuaku back from injury, and analysts say the Zags are "playing their best basketball of the season." Cuse could go the same way as Kansas and Nova did the day before. It didn't help that Rick Jackson, our only remaining big man, got 3 fouls pretty much before the opening tip. Oh wait, we have Da-shawn-tay Riley, almost didn't see him there because he's 7 feet tall and weighs about 45 pounds. And doesn't do very much. But he did have 0 rebounds in the game to go along with his 0 points, so thats a strong showing. In all fairness, the 1 assist he had was pretty sick. But that's beside the point.

Wes Johnson finally is back to being the best player ever (besides KJ of course). He could not miss a shot. He shot the way teams normally shoot against Cuse. And Andy. Too much to say about that guy. He does it all, and when he's hot, he's hot. Between the two of them, they scored 55 points. Compare it to Gonzaga's entire team. They got 65. Throw in Scoop's 13 points and we have 3 guys who outscored the other team by themselves. 87-65 final score, after the first 15 minutes it was never even a game. No lie, this is the second best I have ever seen Cuse play, the first being the time we beat Nova 95-77. Then again, I may be biased because I waited for 14 hours at the Dome for that one to start and my memory might be a little hazy, what with all of the sleep deprivation and hallucinations and whatnot.

I will leave you with this happy thought. After the bloodbath that was the first weekend of March Madness, I am left with only 4 of my Final Four teams alive. Ha! That's all of them! Count 'em- Ohio State, Kentucky, Baylor, Kansas State (just kidding...SYRACUSE!). We are looking primed for a national championship run. So, in conclusion, stay dry, stay awesome, and for goodness sake watch out for bad raspberries when you're picking out a batch to chow down on.