It wasn't the press or bullets that killed the beast. Oh, no. 'Twas old-fashioned nepotism.

I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day, including that I’m not Dan Hawkins.

Hawkins is what professional journalists call the “embattled” or “beleaguered” head coach of the University of Colorado Buffaloes football team. But I’m just going to call him a chump, and join the legions of football fans who are calling for his resignation or firing.

Hawkins was hired in 2006 to lead CU’s football team, which is traditionally a Division 1 Big 12 Conference powerhouse. Under the terms of his five-year contract, he reportedly receives $900,000 a year in salary plus $1.5 million in incentives. Under his leadership, however, the team racked up losing records in each of the last four seasons, going 2-10, 6-7, 5-7 and, so far this year, 3-8. Tomorrow, the team plays its final game of the season against Big Red, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. They may win, too. But if I was a betting man, I’d say they won’t be able to pull it off, partly the Cornhuskers are difficult to defeat under the best of circumstances, but mostly because Hawkins has consistently demonstrated he doesn’t have the skills or vision needed to build a winning team at this level of competition.

To be fair, many people believe Hawkins was thrust into a difficult job without enough top-level coaching experience. Although he compiled a 39-12-1 record in five seasons between 1993 and 1997 with the Willamette Bearcats, it’s a Division 3 school, and his performance there hardly counts. His record was more impressive at Division 1-A contender Boise State, where he led the team to a 53-11 record in the five years spanning 2001 to 2005.

But coaching 1-A football doesn’t compare to coaching in the Big 12, either. The gap between the two divisions is much wider than it might look from the outside—similar to the chasm between coaching college football and coaching in the NFL, or coaching a pee wee team and a high school team in youth sports. Hawkins was promoted too quickly. It’s usually better for a coach to gain experience by working with a mentor and working his way up through the ranks, first as an assistant coach on a top team, later as a head coach.

To make matters worse, Hawkins took over a program with image problems that negatively affected his ability to recruit top talent and build a championship team. The previous coach, Gary Barnett, was ousted after spending his time at CU mired in controversy, including a scandal that allegedly involved luring recruits to the team with prostitutes and alcohol. There’s nothing like womanizing and boozing to bury an athletic program in a hurry; most sporting parents, for all their flaws, including a mad desire to see their sons succeed at sports, still tend to value morality over winning, and will flee from any hint of taint in an athletic program.

Sporting dads can't seem to resist the temptation to over-play and over-promote their sons. And that's why father-son pairings shouldn't be allowed in high-level sports.

But Hawkins’ biggest mistake revolved around his decision to build the Buffaloes’ football program around his son, Cody Hawkins. When Hawkins was the head coach at Boise State, he offered Cody a scholarship to play from him there. Not surprisingly, his son accepted. And when Hawkins took the head coaching job at CU, he once again took care of his offspring, offering him another scholarship to play under him at Colorado.

Cody, a junior, started at quarterback in Colorado’s first five games this season before being benched in favor of sophomore Tyler Hansen in the third quarter of the Buffaloes’ disastrous and embarrassing 38-14 loss at Texas on Oct. 10. By that time, he’d led his team to five consecutive losses, throwing for 1,277 yards, 10 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also incited a firestorm of controversy that threatens to bury the family’s career at CU.

Whether he likes it or not, Hawkins made a classic coaching mistake by bringing Cody to the team to play quarterback. Although Cody is a fine athlete and good student, he’s widely considered too small and unskilled to be a Big 12 quarterback. Even if he wasn’t, however, it’s the mere appearance of favoritism that bothers people; by building the team around Cody over the last few years, Hawkins appears to be more interested in promoting his own son than he does in giving the Buffaloes its best chance to win. He admitted as much in a recent press conference, telling reporters that he regrets his decision to recruit Cody to the team, and saying “it was probably selfish on my part.”

Again, to be fair to Hawkins, he’s not the only coach in history to make the mistake of building a team around his own son. Studies show that about 72 percent of kids drop out of organized sports by the time they’re 13 years old. One of the biggest reasons they cite for quitting is what they perceive as insurmountable favoritism—coaches who unfairly favor their sons and sons’ friends over equally talented players. So coaches fall prey to this problem all the time, but it’s usually in youth sports, not high-level sports, such as college or professional sports.

And that’s why I think Hawkins is a chump, and why I believe CU ought to fire him after Friday’s game against the Huskers, regardless of the outcome. CU Athletic Director Mike Bohn is said to be reviewing Hawkins’ performance, and like many fans, I believe he should replace the coach. But don’t get me wrong: It’s not personal, and it’s not about winning or losing. It’s about playing fair, considering the larger issues at stake and doing the right thing for the sake of the team, its fans and the sport.

This actor doesn't have the flu, but he plays a flu patient on my blog.

I’ve been thinking about how I’d like to die, and I’ve decided it should be soon and sudden.

No, I don’t have a death wish.

But I do have a bad cold. Or maybe the dreaded H1N1, which sounds more like a fun sports car than a deadly flu. (“Hey, have you seen Ferrari’s new H1N1? Does zero to 60 in less than 6 seconds.”) Regardless of what I’ve got, I’m a big, whimpering baby, and I think it might be best for everybody concerned if I pass on to the great by-and-by as soon as possible. A speeding bus would do the trick, or perhaps an iron safe falling from a tall building. One second I’ll be unhappily blowing gallons of snot out of my nose and coughing up ruptured alveoli, and the next second—bang!—I’ll be gleefully fishing forever in the fields of ambrosia.

I know that sounds like an overreaction, but I really don’t like being sick. I don’t handle aches and pains well. I moan a lot, sleep a lot (I’m sleeping as I write this, in fact), and I can’t concentrate on anything, not even television. In short, I’m useless except to the unwelcome bacteria and viruses that are attempting a hostile takeover of my body.

Some people take sickness in stride. Mrs. TooManyMornings, for example, can throw up all night then get up in the morning to make the kids breakfast, throw up some more, pack them off to school, throw up some more, pay our bills, throw up some more and then go back to bed to sleep it off. Once, in fact, she greatly impressed all of our friends by contracting a particularly foul intestinal bug and throwing up several times a day for weeks before finally throwing in the moistened towelette and going to the doctor to beg for antibiotics powerful enough to kill it.

I’m not nearly that strong or determined. If I feel even the teensiest bit queasy, I have to lie on my back with a cold compress across my forehead for about 30 minutes, then move to the couch or a chair for another hour or so until I’m sure I’m not about to vomit. The entire time, I whimper like a wounded rabbit, convinced I’m about to die, and I make sure anybody and everybody within earshot knows that I’m convinced I’m about to die. Sometimes I’m not even sick; I’m just suggestible, and all it takes is the faintest whiff of puke to send my digestive system packing. Or unpacking, in this case.

To make matters worse, ralphing frightens me more than almost anything, including the possibility that Sarah Palin might run for president in 2012 and yet the world won’t end in cataclysm as some people believe the Mayan calendar predicts. My mom tells me that when I was a little kid, I once got urpy and ran around the basement tossing my cookies on every available surface because I was too panicked to get to the toilet. I don’t do that anymore—maturity has some benefits—but I will spend hours desperately fighting the urge to barf, even though I know it often feels better to cleanse the system and move on. There’s something about the act of upchucking that feels unnatural and wrong—like pre-mixed peanut butter and jelly, eating your own boogers and talking to insurance agents.

This is what I hope for when I'm sick.

Surprisingly, there are people who actually enjoy being sick. Many of them suffer from a psychological disorder called Münchausen’s Syndrome. It was named for Baron Von Münchausen, a 17^th-century nobleman who boasted of riding cannonballs, flying to the moon, and sailing on an ocean of milk to discover an island of cheese. These sorts of stories are sometimes affectionately referred to as tall tales. But in the Baron’s case, they were considered crazy-assed lies because he seemed to earnestly believe they were true. Münchausen sufferers tell tall tales of another kind by deliberately making themselves ill in order to get attention from doctors. This, ironically, means they are sick and in need of treatment, just not in the way they expected.

I would never be able to feign Münchausen’s Syndrome because I hate hospitals as much as I hate being sick. The sight of needles makes me faint. The smell of antiseptic makes me faint. Having blood drawn makes me faint. That food-like stuff they serve in the cafeteria makes me faint. Even seeing nurses makes me faint, although I admit that has less to do with feeling ill and more to do with the erotic effects of their tight-fitting uniforms and stiletto heels on my impressionable and, perhaps, twisted imagination.

There are a few upsides to being sick, of course—everything in life has an upside, even the flu. Toast, for example, tastes like manna from heaven once you’re well enough to eat. Blankets, once merely practical bed coverings, transform into snufflely friends that envelope you with their warmth while you curl up on the couch. And it’s always nice to be able to avoid the humdrum activities of work by taking a sick day or two, especially if you’re well enough to catch up on your daytime television watching, finish a good book or build a mahogany hutch for your dining room (sorry, boss, but I promised my wife I’d get it done in time for the holidays).

Still, all-in-all, I’d much rather be well than sick.

Or dead.

Which reminds me: I wonder what time the downtown express bus goes past my house?

This is the finger Galileo used to flip off the Pope in 1633 after the Inquisition convicted him of heresy for saying the Earth orbits the sun.

Flipping the bird is a time-honored form of hostile expression, as anybody from New York City to Los Angeles can attest.

In the late 1990s, for example, former President George W. Bush created a stir while he was still governor of Texas by giving reporters a “one-fingered victory salute” with cameras rolling. And earlier this month, Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams was fined $250,000 for flipping off the Buffalo Bills’ sideline after his team crushed the Bills 41-17.

But the most famous angry middle finger of all may belong to astronomer Galileo Galilei, who flipped off the Pope in 1633 after the Inquisition convicted him of heresy for teaching that the Earth revolves around the sun. “Talka to da hand, you blinda bastard,” he shouted to Pope Uban VIII in Italian as he was dragged out of court, his extended middle finger waving wildly in the air.

The Inquisition’s axe men immediately removed Galileo’s ill-mannered right hand from his body and preserved it in a pickle jar. The astronomer spent the final nine years of his life under house arrest, forced to stare daily at the defiant appendage, which was kept locked in an iron cage above the credenza his dining room. When he died in 1642, his hand was discreetly buried along with his body.

But Galileo wasn’t fully disgraced, and 95 years after his death, a group of admiring scientists and historians removed a tooth and vertebrae along with the offending thumb, index and middle fingers from the astronomer’s remains as part of ceremony honoring his achievements. Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, a science historian who cut away the parts and wrote about the ceremony, “confessed he hada found it vera hard to resista da temptation to take away da skull which had housed such extraordinary genius,” said Paolo Galluzzi, director of Florence’s History of Science museum, speaking through a translator.

The index finger and the vertebrae have been conserved since 1737 in a mummified state in museums in Florence and Padua, Italy. But the other relics were purchased and passed down through the generations from collector to collector—until 1905, when the middle finger, thumb and tooth were lost under mysterious circumstances.

Recently, though, the fabled tooth, index finger and finger of opposition were located by Dan Brown, author of the best-selling books, Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. By frantically following a twisting trail of seemingly unrelated ciphers and symbols found in secret texts written by Freemasons and the Illuminati, the author miraculously tracked them to their most recent owners. They were being stored in a dusty, unmarked 17^th-century wooden box and were within seconds of being sold at auction and potentially lost forever.

At a press conference several weeks later, a triumphant Brown loaned Galileo’s stiffened digit and other remains to the Florence museum of science history on condition they be kept on permanent display for future generations of atheists, agnostics and recovering Catholics. He also wants them to be available to Christians still bitter over the Church’s treatment of Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant church.

Galileo proved the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. The Catholic Church admitted he was right 400 years later.

“I’m not saying I oppose the Catholic Church’s stubborn refusal to keep pace with modern science so much as I’m trying to say that I admire Galileo’s willingness to stand up for what he knew to be true about the world and solar system,” Brown said. “I believe all my books show the utmost respect for the Catholic Church despite its clandestine nature, power-mad political tactics and apparent inability to step into the now.”

The relics will be exhibited starting in early 2010, when the museum will re-open after renovations and change its name to the Galileo Museum of Oppositional Science & Defiance. The finger—now a global icon of rebellion—is mounted on a marble base and encased in a crystal jar.

Galileo, born in Pisa in 1564, is considered one of the fathers of modern science due to his studies in physics, mathematics and astronomy. He led great advances in developing the telescope, which he admitted he used “both to observa da heavens and to undertake a closa examination of da heavenly Italian women as dey undress in my neighborhood’s high-rise apartments.”

But the Church’s stance has since softened.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for the Church’s treatment of Galileo, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the original Church tribunal that judged his work. In 2008, a mere 400 years after the astronomer’s earliest telescopic observations, the Vatican proposed to erect a statue of Galileo within its walls and praised his contributions to astronomy.

Galileo’s body now lies in Florence’s Santa Croce church. It’s opposite the tomb of Michelangelo, the Italian Renaissance artist who’s most famous for his homoerotic statues and paintings of key Biblical figures such David or the old guy who appears to be longingly reaching out touch fingers with the naked young guy in that colorful fresco on the ceiling of the Sissy’s Chapel at the Vatican. But at least it’s not their middle fingers—the Church dosn’t need any more controversy.

Sunday, Nov. 15

Dear Diary,

My life sucks.

Monday, Nov. 16

Dear Diary,

My life still sucks (MLSS).

Tuesday, Nov. 17

Dear Diary,

MLSS.

Wednesday, Nov. 18

Dear Diary,

Today, a pretty woman smiled at me. For a moment, I thought my life didn’t suck quite as much. Then I remembered she’s my insurance agent. She just wanted me to sign the documents so she can get her commission. MLSS.

Thursday, Nov. 19

MLSS.

Friday, Nov. 19

MLSS. But, TGIF!

Saturday, Nov. 20

Nothing’s on TV. I’m bored. MLSS.

Germans handle lousy software like Vista the same way they handle everything—with a big party and lots of beer.

I’m still testing Microsoft’s new computer operating system, Windows 7, but anybody who’s used Vista, the company’s clunky and crash-prone software, probably agrees that its programmers should be fired.

Or shot.

In America’s current corporate culture, however, these keyboard terrorists probably signed employment contracts guaranteeing them promotions, pay raises and fat bonus checks—not unlike the insurance and banking executives who only seemed to get richer over the last 16 months as America slid into the worst recession since the 1930s.

Which got me wondering: What if Microsoft was headquartered in another country? How would the creators of Vista be treated there? Here’s my best guess:

China: The programmers would be arrested, tried and run over by tanks in Tiananmen Square—despite fervent protests from Amnesty International and former President Bill Clinton, who are liberal, artsy-fartsy types who use Apple computers and don’t understand the severity of the Vista problem. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is married to former model Carla Bruni. Do you think he cares one wit about bad computer operating systems like Vista? Me neither.

Russia: Police would remove the programmers from their homes under cover of darkness and transport them to the former headquarters of the KGB in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square for questioning. Within a few weeks, Soviet officials would release a statement informing the public that the programmers had contracted serious colds and died from complications of pneumonia despite doctors’ noble efforts to save them. Then they’d be buried in elaborate mausoleums following an extravagant, nationally televised state ceremony. Anybody else associated with the software, such as the sales reps and marketing staff, would happily agree to quit their white-collar jobs and transfer to the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Memorial Oil Fields in western Siberia to “work as manual laborers for the continued glory and prosperity of the Motherland.”

Japan: The programmers would quickly realize their mistake and choose to die with honor by disemboweling themselves using razor-sharp swords in an ancient Samurai ritual known as Seppuku, or hara-kiri.  Seppuku is appropriate in this case because it’s part of a code instituted to prevent captured Samurai from falling into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment and to give dishonored soldiers an honorable way to avoid public shame.

Iran: After his computer locked up and had to be rebooted for the 300^th time while researching The Great Satan, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would declare the lead programmers infidels and impose a rare fatwa, or death sentence, on their heads. The American and British governments would help the programmers escape into hiding, setting off years of terrorist bombings worldwide. But there would be some justice: All other Iranians involved with the software would get their eyes gouged out and hands cut off. 

If we're not going to shoot the people responsible for Microsoft's Vista software, we should at least force them to drive Fiat 500s.

Germany: Initially, the programmers would be severely spanked and urinated on at the Medieval Torture Museum in Rüdesheim on the Rhine River. But later, during OktoberFest, everything would be forgiven over brats and beers served by busty fräuleins and hunky studs wearing lederhosen.

England: The programmers would be forced into early retirement on the coastline in rural Devonshire, where they’d quietly finish out their days by strolling the Heathland at Woodbury Common with their dogs, reading the daily newspaper in a local café every morning and drinking hot tea. To appease the angry public, however, Prime Minister Gordan Brown would issue the following statement: “We are all deeply, deeply disappointed that Her Majesty’s programmers underperformed their duties when it came to creating Windows Vista, which is a regrettably poor operating system. It’s simply not cricket, and we trust the British people will be cheered indeed to hear that we are endeavoring to correct this unfortunate setback as expediently as possible. In meantime, we hope you will maintain a stiff upper lip, and God Save the Queen.”

France: To prevent riots in Paris, pint-sized President Nicolas Sarkozy would briefly stop fawning over his smoking-hot wife, former model Carla Bruni, to make a public statement. Standing on an overturned orange crate near the Arc de Triomphe, he would deliver a stern speech blasting Microsoft’s offices as “an antechamber of the morgue.” Then he would underscore his commitment to revive the nation’s work ethic and revitalize the French economy by slashing the programmers’ annual vacation benefits from 12 weeks to six weeks and forcing them to eat American Wonder bread and processed cheese for one full year. 

Norwegians are the wealthiest people on earth, and don't give a shit about computer operating systems. They work about six months a year, and spend the other half the year with their families on cruise ships instead.

Italy: A passionate argument would break out between the programmers and the public. Shouting would quickly degenerate into the throwing of rotten tomatoes, but once the threat of actual physical violence became real, Pope Benedict XVI would issue an order for peace. Then everybody would cork a bottle or two of red, sit down to enjoy some pasta Bolognese while listening to classic Enrico Caruso records, and end the day laughing and hugging. The programmer’s only lasting punishment: They’d be forced to continue driving the Fiat 500, which is slightly bigger than a breadbox and has been described as looking like “an angry bowling ball.”

Norway: The Norwegians wouldn’t give a damn. Why? Because the average Norwegian only works about six months a year, and yet is a millionaire who enjoys the highest standard of living in the world. As a result, the Norwegians are basically unflappable, happy people who frolic about in their fjords eating smoked salmon and drinking akevitt and don’t really give a shit about computer operating systems. They view the rest of the world as pathetic losers, and their motto says it all: “We’re Vikings—Don’t Even Think About Fucking With Us.”