It looks like I'm going to have to take up drinking.

Scientists have recently proven in a longitudinal study that non-drinkers are prone to a shorter lifespan than drinkers, heavy or otherwise. Alone, that might not mean much to me. However, when I combine it with other factors, things start to look bleak:

• I'm a bachelor, but being hitched makes you live longer.
• I like dogs, but cat people live longer.
• I'm a loner, but Facebook friends live longer.
• I consider volunteerism to be a disease, but charitable volunteers live longer.
• I'm agnostic, but zealots live longer.

On the upside, I don't smoke. So I should probably expect a fiery end because the universe is made of irony.

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Going into today's game, Tennessee and Georgia were tied for worst in the SEC East. Fortunately for UGA, Tennessee seemed shell-shocked after their denied defeat of LSU last week. (Tennessee thought that they had won that game only to surrender the game to LSU on an Illegal Participation penalty.) Things did not go significantly better for Tennessee this week against a UGA team desperate for a win.

Even the normally affable, temporary Uga-substitute mascot Russ turned his back on the distraught Tennessee mascots (both Smokeys and their Davy Crockett-inspired "volunteer" flag-bearer) late in the 41-14 Georgia rout.

The normally rambunctious Volunteer fans were unusually subdued during the debacle. I'm not going to lie; that was very satisfying. But the best part was that the UT band only played "Rocky Top" 7 times during the game, establishing what must be a new all-time low.

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It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

I watched the Rosaire Big Bear show at the Coweta County Fair the other night. I hadn't really planned on watching trained animals down the midway from a 5-legged goat and the world's tallest horse, but my mother was insistent. Standing slightly away from the crowd with 1/3 of a funnel cake remaining, I watched as a mature Grizzly named Harley became increasingly restless as he successfully chewed his way out of a muzzle. It dawned on me that to that bear, I must look like a delightful after-dinner snack coated in a delicious dust of powdered-sugar. But as the bear trainer said, I didn't have to outrun the bear, just the person next to me.

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Victoria was taken aback on a recent walk through the cemetery when she noticed this Confederate flag and marker for Dr. North. "Dr. North working for the South? Preposterous!" Ah, poodles. Will they never cease being amazed by the peculiar foibles of humanity?

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When it comes to eating out, I'm not very adventurous. I like what I like, and I hate to waste money on surprises. So my family was understandably shocked when I ordered something other than my usual at a Mexican restaurant the other night. They had just finished their jesting at my expense when the waiter returned to the table and informed me that the kitchen was out of my order. Taking this as a sign of Cosmic Significance, I promptly changed my order to my usual.

"See," I said. "The universe is siding with me. Always order the regular."

My brother's head collapsed to the table. "The universe is siding with you? We're all doomed! That's like discovering that Doctor Doom was the good guy all along!"

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I was under the impression that someone was still producing new Henry comic strips. But when I looked it up, it turns out that no one has been making Henry strips since 2005, and the reprints I've been reading were probably drawn by Jack Liney prior to 1979! So the terrible comic strips taking up space in my local newspaper are probably older than I am!

Henry strips are essentially a one-panel gag mercilessly stre-e-e-etched across three columns. All they do is teach children that handicapped kids -- especially the mute and prematurely bald -- are deserving of all the scorn that they can muster.

How can defunct comic strips still in print be this bad? Why are they still printing them? Who, other than the blind, enjoys them? If we have to be subjected to reprints, can't we get old Calvin and Hobbes or Pogo strips instead? Even Mark Trail was better than this!

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I know that most of you are sick and tired of hearing about UGA's terrible football season. But I'm not done talking about it because I just read this:

"The model that we would establish in the future would have seven home games every year. If you look at the models of other schools that have played for the (BCS) championship lately, there's always one tough nonconference game."

The article is ostensibly about UGA dropping a pair of games against Oregon in the 2015-1016 seasons. I agree with McGarity's reasoning for dropping the series, scheduled by his lying, womanizing predecessor. He argues that the time-consuming cross-country travel is perhaps inappropriate for college athletics, even if he does come across as someone with a typically substandard UGA-caliber education:

"We think we're going a long way this week [to Boulder, Colorado], try Eugene, [Oregon]. That's even further."

I'm pleased to hear that McGarity passed geography, even if he did fail grammar. Sounds like it's not just the students who could use a little more time in the classroom, McGarity.

Yes, the UGA program is in trouble. The players can't put together 4 quarters of consistent play, partially in thanks to the coaches' inability to create a practical gameplan. [Bobo!] The team wilts from opposition and collapses under pressure. The "student-athletes" are incredibly spoiled and undisciplined -- the tenth UGA player this season was arrested earlier this week for an under-aged DUI! And the solution to this problem as proposed by our newest AD, ostensibly hired by UGA President Michael Adams for his strength of character, is "let's play more easy teams"?

In that case, I've got something to say, too: Fuck you.

If I wanted to cheer for a team who scheduled weak opponents for boringly lopsided cupcake home games as a flimsy excuse to sell tickets for an extra game that no one cares about, I'd pull for scum like Alabama or Florida. If your solution to our character problems is to sacrifice some smaller and financially poorer school in order to artificially inflate our players' and boosters' egos, I want no part of it.

There are still plenty of schools who aren't willing to sell their souls in order to scrounge up a few meaningless football wins. And if this foolish babble is indicative of UGA's new Athletic Director's direction, one of those schools will be the proud benefactor of this fan's fanaticism.

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If every football game starts with a 50% chance of a team winning, there is an 88% chance that at least one of three games will end in a win. So you can probably tell what sort of weekend I had based on the following football weekend in review:

Friday: The Newnan Cougars lost their third game in a row. This is especially disappointing considering that they started the season with the longest ongoing winning streak in the state, and until Friday night hadn't lost a home game to a regional opponent in nearly 5 years. Oh, well. All streaks have to end sometime.

Saturday: Speaking of blown streaks, the Georgia Bulldogs lost for the first time in 36 years to Mississippi State, 24-12. UGA really couldn't have looked much worse, as the team seemed determined to lose the game. The team is now 1-3 and has yet to play rivals Tennessee, Auburn, Florida, and Georgia Tech, all of whom will waste no opportunity to kick a dead dawg. At this point in the season, there is no excuse for the players looking so unready for football game. Mark Richt has lost control of this team, and all of the seats in the football program should now be considered hot. (Ever the loyalist, I point out that this is perhaps not all Richt's fault: our Athletic Director was caught drunk driving while cheating on his wife in the off-season. If you want to talk about top-down bad examples, there you go. [And I find that I am mentally unable to prevent myself from typing, once again, that I hate Mike Bobo. Maybe it's a disease. Boboism: an inability to control your own actions, including putting together a competent offensive gameplan.])

Sunday: The Miami Dolphins fall to the New York Jets for the first time in 4 games. If this had been any other two teams, I probably would have called this a good game. But it wasn't. It was depressing. This was the Dolphins' first loss of the season, and the team falls into a three way tie with the Patriots and Jets. (The Bills, as usual, suck.) The NFL has a long season, and I'm not going to make a mountain of this molehill. But I would have liked to win such a close game. Especially against the Jets.

Good grief.

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