Can There Only Be One with None? No, the Lesser Bowls Could Get One. 10 Games at Noon

    Last year Indiana went 16-0. Majestic, triumphant, amazing. Some years there is not an undefeated college champion. Before and since the inception of the College Football Playoff. Occasionally there is a smaller Division I school that goes undefeated bu their record did not merit enough respect or gravitas to command the top bowl contenders at the end. That could happen, but with the current 12 team tournament should not. Weaker, smaller programs that are without blemish in the loss column should get their chance.

    Hawai'i is done, despite one magazine's prognostications of the Rainbow Warriors being there at the end. Newly ensconced Stanford ended that pipe dream. And Stanford upended by cross coastal power Miami last night. Teams are going down left and right. (Did I mention Colorado in my BYU opponents travails? Must check.)

    Of the final twelve, perhaps one can make it through unscathed like last year's Hoosiers. Could be Ohio State. Oregon. Indiana. Notre Dame. Oklahoma. Who else? What other team can catch fire? Miami? Ole Miss? Texas? Could be six or seven others. Brigham Young? Hello! HELLO! Or Texas Tech, but they are not as good as last year. Michigan or Penn State with surprises? Georgia, or even Alabama rises again? Yech...

    Who knows. I may have already named them. I should have. But, will one of the above be undefeated at the end? We shall see.

    Lots of small opponents at noon. Bryant verus Army. Maybe half are small timers. Could be an upset somewhere...

The Identity of Shakespeare and Marlowe Puts Everything into Question

        According to Rodney Bolt, a well-researched scholar who claims that the Bard was the son of a cobbler, not the son of whatever William Shakespeare's father was, Marlowe, the real writer and genius perpetuated ad nausem through Harold Bloom of Yale and thousands and millions of others, was a spy for an English boss named Walsingham.

    Walsingham had spies collecting intelligence about the Catholics, of which they were accused of overtaking good Protestant lifestyles and religious systems of the British Isles. This in the late 1500s. France and Spain of the Roman Catholic ilk were at war on different levels with the Brits. Take for example, Ireland. Why so Catholic?

    Meanwhile, apparently, Copernicus and ever-present scientists were shaking up beliefs across the Western world, ever expanding, colonial as they were. Doubt and knoweldge through empirical means brought ruin upon all religions, traditional or otherwise. Hindus, Muslims, local religions practiced across the continents, Buddhists. What of the Eastern Orthodox of the eastern climes?

    Maybe this Kit, Christopher Marlowe of Cambridge University, the one who wrote all the sonnets, was not of religion and belieft at all, as he was paid by Walsingham to do, but perhaps he was a pure, secular, atheistic writer who espoused no traditional belief whatsoever. His characters and causes were merely questioning everything, like Hamlet or any other character of the plays that he composed. Comedies, dramas, histories. Wars and intrigues, power plays and conspiracies. Murders and mysteries.

    Of this stuff we are made. Shakespeare or Marlowe, the Pope of Rome or the secular scientist of Wurms or Hamburg.

    Questions, doubts, wrestling and quelling tides of concerns and answers to the true meanings.

    Meanwhile, power and money were wrested forth across the lands and upon the waters. Languages shaped the movements: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German. Dutch, too. Do not underestimate the Dutch. The Scandinavians less. But they existed.

    Yet the tribes across the earth and islands, not to mention the ground Siamese and Vietnamese and Japanese and on throughout Asia. Some less influenced by Christianity, even less by Islam and Judaism.

    Shintos of Japan and whateve the native religions of the Korean peninsula.

    The Western Hemisphere had thousands, or at least hundreds, from the Cree and Ojibwa to the Inuit to the California tribe and on throughout the southern-most places. Across the oceans to other archipelagoes and Africa and Australia. Each way you went, more and more peoples and diversity and their own belief systems and pracices.

    While the plays and words of Shakespeare or Marlow kept growing, using slavery, too.

    Money and power, art and ideas. What was Pope's name? William? Henry? Alexander! Scholars like him, such as he promulgated the ideas and words that flowed into us.

    2026.

    Based now on Internet data storage and Artifical Intelligence and rocket science and fuels and satellite links, nuclear, solar, and all types of modern energy and power.

    Knowledge is power.

    So is truth.

 Arabic Fluency, Testing, Comprehension

    It feels like it has been many years since I alighted on the studies. I was learning the letters, the words, (some of the words). But there are always more, and many times they seem incomprehensible. They get manipulated and the brain does not compute, like math story problems or scientific formulas or chemistty or physics. Sometimes concepts of signal technology or computer code.

    Rocket science and Arabic. Can be mutually frustrating.

    I learned a few words in 1992, wanting to be conversant or fluent. Learning the letters did not come easy the first few months. But by the following year, a region beyond my native midwest, into the intermountains of North America, I was showing them to others. Their names transliterated, they could see how to spell Brian or Chris or Karen of Jill.

    I was doing the homework for the end of semester in 1993, my second Arabic class, and things seemed doable.

    A year later I was writing, or trying to write, words, phrases, sentences. But my poor teachers slogged through my scribbings and would question what is was I was composing.

    I had words in my brain, but many of them were misspelled and wrong. In 1994. I had some limited conversations in Arabic, even with a Palestinian, which excited me.

    Understanding could always be a problem.

    Years and years pass. Some things are forgotten, others confused and seemingly maligned.

    That is not the right word.

    I listend and sometimes talk, but the comprehension can be missing.

    In songs, for sure, but that happens in my native English and my better Spanish.

    Arabic gets hard, to test in like I have done over the years. Frustrating, like math formulas, word problems, chemistry concepts or chemical compositions. Formulas? Combinations?

    Arabic can be difficult and formulaic, and then hard to recognize. 

    With the sods and seens, the ayns and the aliphs. Plurals or measures of a verb, or even the prepositions get all tangle up and mangled.

    The brain of one does not compute as some do.

    The math gets twisted.

    We mess up in English, too. It gets pidgin and creole, I guess. But we push on.

    So Modern Standard Arabic is clearer, and then all the dialects make it more confusing. All the countries and the local expressions.

    Permutations of the same things, or sometimes completely different. Happens in Spanish, too.

    There we are.

 Do Without Love, Money, or Sex

    I was listening to the radio at an odd time, because of exigencies, and the radio station that I do not listen to very often, posed the question, if you had to do without one of the following, which would it be?

    Most people I heard chose sex. You have to have love and money. Right? Sex is sort of a luxury or a privilege.

    I guess. However, it created our children, and us.

    Some suppose that you get those things out of the way, and it is no longer necessary. Just a filler, maybe.

    I dunno. It seems like it's a thing.

BYU Oppenents: Three Have Played So Far, Kansas is the Fourth

    Utah Tech will play Brigham Young in football tomorrow night. They got pasted hard Week Zero versus Montana State last Saturday. That was August. The Cougars should have no problem. Just no injuries, please.

    The Texas Christian Horned Frogs laid some eggs in Dublin, Ireland, the very first game of the season. They lost to the ACC team North Carolina. Coached by second year man Bill Bellichek, the 70ish age guy who dates a woman in her mid-twenties. They pose with weird positions on the beach. Only in America? Maybe Italy, too. Forza Italia. I wanted the Big 12 to be better. Who needs the ACC? Well, it would be awsome if the Tigers of Clemson could take down the Tigers of of LSU. Manana.

    Who else? UCF dropped some nastiness on their opening opponen, I think it was Bethine Cookman, an HBCU. Poor guys. Central Florida will be the closest that the BYU Cougars will come to the East Coast this season. Unless there is some College Football Playoff magic later this year...

    Kansas is scraping by LIU, Long Island, as I type this.

    Go Cougs.

    Love the Y, repping it as we can.

    

IU Football Opponents: Two Have Played So Far- Wuh Oh, Rutgers!

    Rutgers and Minnesota played last night. And Illinois. 

    The Scarlet Knights are looking shaky. They got battered at home by the Mighty Minutemen of Massachusetts. Yikes, Batman. Should we call the ambulances now?

    They were down 27-7, tried to rally, and fell flat and pooped out. This was not what was anticipated. Long time coach Schiano has egg on his face. Will they recover by October? When my Hoosiers go to Piscataway? Yeesh. Between now and then the Knights have Boston College, University of Southern California (USC) and Howard before they get my Cignetti pounders. Lindy's had Rutgers at 98 and Massachusetts at 138, as in the last of all Division I schools.

    So, going forward this season, hopefully U Mass is truly better than 98, and Rutgers, too. One bad game does not a season make.

    Who else on IU's schedule has played? USC, aforementioned, and Minnesota yesterday. Not Illinois, who handled University of Alabama Birmingham last night. The Trojans opened at home last Saturday, Week 0, they call it, and beat San Jose State with little issues. However, I popped in and thought that the crowd was paltry. I was not the only one. People have been pillorying them for their scant attendance. IU will get them in November, very possibly a ranked match up.

    Minnesota zapped the Eastern Illinois Somethings (Panthers?) last night, 59-7. Not a great taste. The Gophers have a good coach, but Cignetti might be the best. Let's see how long his gravy train will run!

    Howard, the Bison, beat the Alabama A & M Bulldogs last weak 31-24. They have Rutgers this month, too.

    I wonder how many HBCUs Indiana has played in the past? IU should lay a whooping on them. September should not be very hard. Western Kentucky has offenses, but can they stop a top 6 team? Is IU that good, or better?

    More later.

Shakespeare Has Me Bamboozled. In More Ways than Before.

    Most of my life Shakespeare has been a thing. In literature, entertainment, culture, influence, classes, testing, grades, references, confusion, bewilderment of the English language, education, laughs, joys, pains, all the things. Sometimes I thought he was not so big of a thing, but I think he was.

    However, now I have reasons to think that Billy has been just a ruse. Enter Christopher Marlowe. 

    Yeah. Yea, me acquieseth beyond the pail. Whatever that means.

    Translation, please.

    Join the club.

    Harold Bloom died around 2016 or so, eminent scholar of Yale; I checked out around four books by him from the library. I think that I read each one! Not a complete insufferable blow hard like some college professors I have known, even in the flesh, Bloom railed on and on and anon about Shakespeare.

    The pure quintessence of genius! Oh, the beauty and the glory of the Bard!

    Ehhhhh... 

    In my years of Utah, there was always talk of the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. A whole festival of that guy of King James, or maybe Queen Elizabeth England. What merriments and delights! Or as my father would pronounce: Macbeth is so bloody.

    That must be good, right? Bloody impressive, it must needs be.

    I watched a modern version of Julius Caesar at the main arts hall at Brigham Young Provo, what was called the DFAC. Like we in the military call a cafeteria, n'est pa? The something arts center, where artists of stage and sound, and even animation, television, and film would unite in long hours of craft and ribaldry. Okay, less of the latter, it is a conservative religious school.

    I saw my fellow students dash with their derring-do of sword play, swashbuckling, and gallantry. Two arms! Oh, Maid Marian, thy brow and breast bequeath such magnanimity! And other such ejaculations of feathery verbiage.

    Alas.

    Shakespeare.

    Aye, the voracity of loquaciousness! I suggested The Comedy of Errors for my student teaching at Brown County High School in Indiana. I had enjoyed it in Provo, therefore its spirit carried on back with me to the Hoosier heartland. And thus it goes in rounds and cycles, circles and pyramidean pernambules. Full of sound and fury, signifying... Nada? No, not Hemingway! Shakespeare. Get hold of your masters, you fool and buffoon. Borderline jackanape.

    Around 2020, during the doldrums or the earth pains of the Corona virus Wuhan flu, I checked out an alleged historically accurate and factual tome all about Shakespeare. The historical context, the peoples, the places, the educations and all the intrigues of the real surroundings of Shakespeare. His world, so massive yet dainty. I almost finished it, but I had to leave the country so I turned it in. The library likes its property back, thank you very much. They forgave me the cost of another book that I lost during that time period.

    So, I was becoming more of a Shakespeare, or shall I say Shakespearean connoiseur. Or something albeit fancier, by the by.

    Or so me thought.

    Then, perhaps and perchance, I stumbled or alighted upon a different tome, a scholarly work, all about Christopher Marlow being the real bard, and old Willy Billy Nilly being nothing but a blooming newt and a dunce, who barely neerly evinced a mere one stanza to his name!

    Blast all the rot, I say! What and wot where and who? Or whom?

    A rose by any other name would stank as much!

    Who are we? Who are these so called scholars writing such anti-elegiac diatribes?

    Who can guess what that all means?

    Not I, sez I.

    Go figger.

    Are you feeling my dilemma here? Is this mysterious puzzled enigma wrapped in an indelicate smorgasbord pupusa-like falafelly enchilada baked half-broiled scone anything to be apprehended?

    Where does this leave us?

    Where are we now?

    Are the heavens and the gases of the ether spheres still the same?

    What, or what, have we become?

    Madder than an hatter, I cannot reconcile both letters and history. What is it to be?

    The jury is hung, the jury is out, the jury be hanged, let the jury decide once and for all, in all the times and epochs, for nothing at all.

    Sure, it does not bother me.

    Not. One. Bit. Not even a farthing. Or a doublet. Nor a shilling, e'en three pence.

    Give me your quid, right fast, I am running out of ole United Kingdome coins and currencies, blight me down and starch my everlasting hide for a buggy down pollywomp!

    But, well, where must I end this?

    At least we have huge money endowments at over-endowed elitespheres like the Ivy League and Oxford and Cambridge.

    Long live the polemic and its life draining and energy eviscerating polemicness! 

    Long live the queen, the (I mean a) real life Williams Shakespeare once preached to me in the folds of theatre and art back in 1994. 

    A real English gent, he was. He grew up there, at least maybe he should know.

    Goo night, my beloved and wretched audiences.

    Alas, New York, or York, Pennsylvania, I hardly knew thee well.