As a Sox fan who doesn't jab hot needles in my eyes when the team loses, I surely do love being lumped in with the "Jeter has AIDS" crowd. I do admit to gleefully forwarding or linking to snarkily captioned pictures of A-Rod slapping the ball out of Arroyo's hand. I've never claimed to be more knowledgeable or passionate than anyone except Dodgers fans. Hey, all you Cubs fans are dumb enough to interfere with a fly ball when a World Series berth is on the line. All you Giants fans think steroids are good for the game. All you A's fans are... Athletic supporters. Ba-dum-bum.

Every team has asshole fans. Due to unwelcome media attention and the inevitable bandwagon effect, our asshole fans are more visible than yours.

Daunte Culpepper on one leg -- literally, hopping -- is better than Charlie Batch.

Culpepper's legs looked fine. Sadly, however, he's still got the same eyes and brain that he had last year -- that is, eyes that are unable to read coverages and a brain that makes bad decisions. When you've got those as a QB, even Willie Parker's legs won't help you much.

It may be unchivalrous to pooh-pooh the prognostications after the game, but was anyone surprised by Daunte's interceptions?

It's become somewhat en vogue to play Peyton Bashing lately...I don't know why.

- He comes into every year with high expectations and craps his pants in the playoffs.

- He blames his group of low-round-pick linemen for said pants-crapping.

- He does those ridiculous chicken dance moves at the line of scrimmage, which even his family makes fun of.

- He makes grumpy faces that rival Jon Gruden's, especially when he is scolding whichever one of his teammates let him down.

- He clocked the Lions for six TDs on the way to breaking Marino's record, and then rang up fuckall in Foxboro in the AFC Championship Game.

Oh, and a new item to add to the list, after the endless promos that ran during game tonight:

- Apparently the first Sunday Night Football game of the year is actually just a very special episode of a sitcom based on the lives of the Manning family.

Once I overheard someone at a restaurant say to three her dinner companions, "So two of us are Christian, you're Jewish, and you're Catholic." It seemed like a friendly discussion of religion, so I don't think there was any insult intended anywhere. But when did "Christian" become a code word for Evangelical Protestant? When I grew up, I was given to understand that Christians were people who believed in the divinity of Jesus, all that Son of God and resurrection stuff, and that Protestant and Catholic were subsets of that. Being a Catholic myself, I had to stifle the impulse to grab the ignorant woman by the throat and shake her, screaming, "My church is the old firm, you twit! Your splinter sect is Mormonism without the desert angels and the polygamy!" Because, see, that would have been un-Christian.

Ah, King, how I have missed your incitements to sporting jihad. The soccer fans were always game to take the bait. Are there cricket fans out there waiting in the wings to tell us what a bunch of provincial jingoist pricks we are to not be fans of cricket?

"Sure I was a whiny arrogant dick in my letter, but if you people fail to see what a great and centered guy I am despite what I wrote to Cary, you all are a bunch of idiots."

Priceless response from the author, if that is in fact him. Maybe a fresh wave of derision will invite another response, bursting with even more delicious irony.

One of the best things about having a brother almost eight years older than you are is you get exposed to a lot of great things that wouldn't ordinarily make its way into your daily life. So I consider my early affection for Bloom County to be one of the greatest gifts my older brother gave me. "Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things" was the first book I ever bought with my own (okay, allowance) money. I can still recall the warm, happy, giggling pleasure of curling up on a chair with a Bloom County book, even if it was one I'd already read through a dozen times. Berkeley Breathed has had as much influence on my politics and my sense of humor as anyone else in this world. Salon, you've made my week.

When I finished reading the LW's question I was really scratching my brain for there to be some way, some loophole, legal or moral, to drop a dime on the con man co-worker. I've worked with guys like that in the past, and have been burned by untrustworthy people. There's nothing I would applaud more than the burning of a perfidious co-worker. Instead, as I read Cary's response, I became convinced of the rightness of keeping confidentiality, as loathsome as it may be.

Nice response, Mr. Tennis.

I'm friends with a handful of the Harmonix folks, so I'm not un-biased, but I think Lange does a disservice to Harmonix by the way he hand-waves aside their progression. I am sure GH3 and the 80s compilation will be great fun and I'll certainly buy them when they come out. But the fact that the true developers of the game have moved on to a more cutting-edge and ambitious project, Rock Band, while they let the publishers take over the continuation of the Guitar Hero franchise ought to clue people in to which "line" of these musical games will be more interesting to watch.

I should have realized long ago. Feinstein is the fifth column in the Democratic Party. She's got to go.