Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

Farewell, pigskin messiah.

Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder, who took over a downtrodden program in 1989 and orchestrated one of the greatest turnarounds in college football history, has told his team he will retire at the end of this football season, ESPN confirmed Monday night....

Snyder, 66, will best be remembered for taking over a moribund program and leading it to the cusp of a national title. The Wildcats were 1-10 in his first season but improved to 5-6 in 1990 and 7-4 in 1991 before falling back to 5-6 again in 1992. But then came the string of 11 straight seasons to end with a bowl game.

Perhaps three seasons too late, but very few people have had the effect on this community that this man has -- revitalizing the football team has had a pretty profound effect on the local economy, with plenty of businesses attributing their boom to the resurging football team. And no, they've not been anywhere near spectacular lately, but they're still ninety times better than they used to be.

Also, of all the people to stab in Clay County, why Marvin Macy?

Authorities were searching Monday for three men who may have been involved in the stabbing of a 66-year-old rural Clay County man after he reportedly confronted them about poaching a deer on his land.

Marvin Macy was in serious condition Monday at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita with knife wounds to his abdomen and face.

He's a hell of a nice guy; went to school with his kids, Tammy and Terry (rest in peace, old chum). This is inexplicable and infuriating and mildly worrisome.

Night Stalker cancelled, somehow shorter than the series that spawned it. Gee, a new show not faring well against The Apprentice and CSI. Whodathunkit?

This morning: first snow of the season. Yay. Good day for it, really.

Anybody care enough to keep reloading the Collegian and see if they ever update it for today? Not I. Seeing the lackadasical and half-assed approach they take (not to mention that the insipid level of the content is swiftly reaching critical mass) just breaks my heart. If only I'd known, I could've done a quarter-assed job of it back in my day. It almost makes me want to go downstairs and yell at someone. But that's a whole flight of stairs.

Have you ever wondered, while getting your teeth cleaned, what it'd feel like if the dental hygenist whipped the scythe-like pointy-steel fish-hook-like instrument right into your tender lip-flesh?

Here's the answer: NOT GOOD. I'm just lucky there's not going to be a picture in the morning paper of her standing next to me, suspended by my lip from a scale. "Caught: the elusive freshwater technician! Weighs in at over 150 pounds, plus sweater, leather coat!"

I was offered an "Oops, sorry" for it, then nothing else. And I did have to break the cleaning at one point just so I could brush the blood from my lip. Overall I don't know if it's partially the hangover from a miserable weekend (despite the pigskin awesomeness that was the Chefs and Bolts) but today has, on all possible levels, sucked badly, even apart from my dental hygenist playing "catch, bill and release."

To celebrate my escape, I bought Sixlets, Chewy Spree, three boxes of Nerds and a handful of Laffy Taffy. I'm feeling just a little grumpy and curmudgeonly, and sadly, I don't think the sugar's helping.

Got porn? You probably do. Actually, how can you not?

Also, the brain trust on the Kansas Board of Education takes another bold step back into the Dark Ages: They hired Bob Corkins of Lawrence, a conservative activist with no educational background who lobbied against school funding, to be education commissioner at a salary of $140,000 plus benefits.

Moderates on the board protested the hiring, saying Corkins’ experience as the sole employee of two conservative think tanks was not suited to leading a $3 billion public school system of more than 400,000 students.

And his ticket to improving Kansas schools? Competition. *headdesk* How are kids ever going to adjust to the lives many people have planned for them unless we begin showing them now who really runs the country?

That does it. The birds are going to be home-schooled. No riding the teeny-tiny school bus for them.

It's good to know accusations of festering cronyism isn't doing anything to change the current administration. Your new Supreme Court nominee: White House counsel and, before that, White House staff secretary and chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission. Time spent as judge: nil.

Bush announced his choice in a televised Oval Office event saying, "For
the past five years Harriet Miers has served in critical roles in our
nation's government."

Outstanding. Rationale enough for a lifetime appointment to the highest judicial post in the land, then. Unless there's something else at work. I almost hope for the sinister here. Anything less is just stupid.

If it were me, I'd rather have seen redmonster nominated instead.

Steve Dahl serves up recipe with foul taste

"To that end, I have sent away for five pounds of Chocolate Babies to act as 'floaters' in the new drink I'll be inventing this week: The Floating Corpse. ... I'm thinking Creme de Cacao, Kahlua, some rum, maybe a little cream and a floating Chocolate Baby."

Thousands of people died. He wasn't one of them. That's sad.

The men of the hour appear to be Ray Nagin and Anderson Cooper. ( Why? Because they're awesome. )

It's the "Things we Hate" meme! Is there a song, film or book that you thought was terrible, but to your continuing amazement everybody else seems to love? Show them how foolish and deluded they are by listing it here! - tyrell via marysiak ( Hate lurks below. )

Over nearly two years, the Daily Egyptian told the story of a precocious little girl whose mother was dead and whose father was fighting in Iraq.

Members of the newspaper staff befriended the girl known as Kodee Kennings and she was given an occasional column in the DE. The column, at times funny and at times heart-rending, talked about her father in the military, her fears about monsters under her bed and her life with her guardian, Colleen Hastings.

None of it was true.

The Daily Egyptian and its readers were taken in by a bizarre, elaborate hoax.

There was no Kodee Kennings. There was no Colleen Hastings. And there was no father named Dan Kennings in Iraq.

Edit: Another take on the whole mess.