Do Not Adjust Your Dial

As you no doubt have already noticed -- and I'm sure at least a few of you hit the back button, thinking you for sure typed in the wrong address -- but Silentio looks a little different. Short version: I was fiddling with Blogger today, and ended up not only changing the template (the only one this blog has ever known) but accidentally deleting it. As good a time as any for tidying up. Things are still in-process here. I've not yet decided what I want to add. Suggestions are welcome.

An interesting thing I long suspected but never knew for sure: over half of my blogging production was done in the first year of this site's existence. In the second month alone I crammed out 84 posts. To put that in perspective, I managed only a combined 90 posts during 2005 and 2006.

Ahead of His Time

John Ruskin, of course, didn't live to see the modern-day horror that is suburbia, but he described it better than most:

I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital -- upon those thing, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone -- upon those gloomy rows of formalized minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar -- not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow, for a desecreted landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground.

A Nauseating Display

This is a bit premature, maybe, what w/ the Bears down by only twelve with enough time to score twice, but I think I can go out on a limb here and say that this is one of the most embarassing offensive displays I've ever watched. Seriously, the Bears as a team & as a legion of fans would have been much better off if they'd lost to the Saints in the NFC Championship. People would've been disappointed, sure. But, this, this has been a debacle!

BTW ... cast your MVP vote for Rex Grossman at NFL.com before the game is over. Because surely he's done more for the Colts than anybody else!

Oh, and congrats to the Colts. In a few minutes you'll be the answer to the trivia question that baffles millions in a few months, "Who won the Superbowl last season?" Soak it up.

Update: Manning is the MVP??? Um. How about the Colts whole offensive line? More possibly, I suppose, what about Dominic Rhodes? Even more possibly, if Dungy hand't inexplicably yanked him in the third quarter, what about Joseph Addai? Seriously, this is yet further evidence to just skip the Superbowl from here on out.

Here I Come!

I have a pretty active imagination, but never so much as when I'm walking through town with my headphones on. I love setting the IPod to shuffle and seeing what the soundtrack to my stroll will be today. After all, all of life's moments need a soundtrack. From sleeping, to sex, to cooking, to fights with the wife. Today's was perfect: The Roots's "Here I Come." I couldn't find a streamable MP3 I could directly link to, but this video of their appearance on Letterman is kickass enough for you to get the idea.



If you can't get your strut on to that, you simply never will. And if you don't have a strut in my neighborhood, well, there's gonna be a problem.