abiding the obligatory hawk talk chatter...

...abounding in Olympia's dirty downtown emanating from the wide mouths of super bowl XL fans flocking to feather their annual nests with fosters cans and cigarette butts seeping into the sewers and Sound. i pray for those poor northwest souls doomed to die in detroit, bound to be mugged, raped, tormented in the strange foreign land that must be detroit, michigan on this february day we hold higher than the gods in this great land. but i comprehend the home-town fever at the same time as I openly hold the utmost disdain for its followers. I came from the losing land of Mariner baseball and understand that this is the largest bioregion (especially if you include alaska) with the fewest professional sports teams in the nation. that gives us a lot of energy and money and beer to pour out in honor of this event, our boys making it big, another excuse to get drunk and forget about the rest of this hungry world, another chance to cram a couple cheeseburgers down our swollen gullets in tribute to a pathological digital deity we have financed to pull the wool over our eyes and the grease into our guts and forced entertainment to invade education.

i started this blog about one year ago, one of the first posts being a rant about paul mccartney's performance at last year's debacle. it's nice to have a year's worth of blogging under one's belt. now let's buckle down, whip out the binocs and watch the game through the window of the 4th Ave Tav across the street. yeah! football drools! go hawks!

interesting little tidbit here:

By Steve Keating

DETROIT (Reuters) - A winter blast failed to cool off Super Bowl festivities on Sunday when partying shifted into high gear ahead of the NFL championship game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks.

While a blizzard swept across northern Michigan on Super Bowl eve, the host city managed to avoid the brunt of the storm that left behind an inch of snow and some colder temperatures.

Steelers fans badly outnumbered Seahawks supporters as they flooded into the Greektown entertainment district surrounding Ford Field drinking beer and waving their black and gold Terrible Towels.

The thousands of fans, however, were bracing for long lines in whipping winds and brittle cold as they waited to pass through tight security checks that included metal detectors and body searches.

Five hours before kickoff, a queue nearly a half kilometre long snaked its way through the city streets as fans began the process of filing into the stadium.

Only those with tickets, some being scalped for as much as $4,000 (2,270 pounds), were being allowed within a security zone that extended well beyond Ford Field.

More than 10,000 security personnel from dozens of agencies, including the Detroit police, Michigan state police, FBI and secret service will be in place for the game which is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 pm EST (11:30 pm British time).

During the game fighter jets will enforce a 50km no fly zone around Ford Field and the Coast Guard will continue to patrol the Detroit River that separates the U.S. from Canada.

Despite the increased security, the Super Bowl festivities were rocked by a series of murders over the weekend.

A man was stabbed to death early Sunday morning just a few hundred meters from the Motown Winter Blast while a woman was fatally shot on Saturday outside a bar in the same area where many of the festivities were being staged.

Thanks Reuters!