Nurse the Hate: Interesting Times and the NFL Divisional Round

We have been cursed to live in "interesting times" as the Chinese say.  Our impeached President, a B-list reality TV star, almost plunged us into war because of an impetuous decision he made as he waddled off a golf course last week when he decided to blow up an Iranian "bad guy".  Most people seem to agree that the Iranian guy was a creep, but the timing seemed illogical.  The oddly suntanned fat guy that is in charge of the United States appears to operate on the principle of "Go!  Ready!  Set!" which is pretty scary.  He doesn't seem to have a depth of understanding of anything but TV.  That doesn't appear to be a big issue for most people though.  The good news for The Orange Man is that most people that like guns and Jesus but don't like brown people were very excited by this "tough" action.  I have found that people that don't have to participate in wars are the ones generally most in favor of the idea of fighting.  There must be a correlation between the number of kooky Far Right memes people send out and low level of travel and interaction with people that are different than themselves.  It's hard to be in favor of killing people when you've met them and discover they are surprisingly like you.

The angry Orange Man and the equally angry Iranian Religious Kooks got down to brass tacks the way Real Men do nowadays.  They lobbed insults at each other on Twitter.  Afterwards the Iranian guys probably had tea and high fived each other.  The Orange Man had a soda and watched himself on TV.  The Iranian kooks took their revenge by shooting some missiles into the dust in Iraq.  Then came more angry tweets on both sides.  This freaked all the rest of us out so much so that some trigger happy Iranian military guard blew an airliner out of the sky filled with Canadian and Iranian students.  In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea to catch a flight out of Tehran a few hours after Tehran shot missiles into the dust in Iraq.

All was not lost though.  Blowing up the Iranian creep played well to the Orange Man's "base" that wait for his somewhat confusing actions to be explained by his favorite pretzel twisting logic cable TV hosts.  They like that the Orange Man is "tough".  It's a shame those bone spurs kept him out of "The Shit" in Vietnam.  Man, he would have taught Charlie a thing or two.  It looks like things settled down.  The Iranian guys felt good about shooting the missiles and retreated back for more tea and plots on how to blow up the real American stuff they wanted to blow up now.  The Orange Man played some more golf.

Meanwhile Australia is on fire.  Not "some buildings in Australia are on fire", but "the continent of Australia is on fire".  The fire is big enough that you can see it from space.  Unfortunately for the Australians, their head of state rejects the idea that climate change is responsible.  It takes a certain amount of discipline to stick to your guns and say nothing is wrong when your entire continent is on fire.  I don't know what is wrong with me, but if I see some Australian's home burn to the ground I am unfazed.  If you show me a kangaroo hopping away madly in flames or a koala sitting in a burned down forest, I'm sick with grief.  Those koalas get me every time.

With the undeniable environmental crisis in front of our eyes, the Orange Man and his friends took away required environmental studies before launching major projects.  They sort of slipped that through while everyone else was worried about the Orange Man's other craziness.  This is great for those long suffering fellas in the energy business as they can now just build a pipeline though a forest and not even have to consider what terrible damage they would do to our common land.   It's part of the "Go!  Ready!  Set!" mindset that is going to be remembered from this age.  The Orange Man and guys like him are like Quint in "Jaws".  Quint saw the engine overheating, and when it was brought to his attention he slammed the throttle down to show he was not going to be told what to do.  He would rather self destruct than take advice.  "Quint" is running most of the large nations.  We are all Brody on the boat, along for the ride and not knowing how to swim.  Good luck to you all.

My head was swimming with all these headlines as I scanned the newspaper in the coffee shop.  Neil Peart died?  Even the coffee shop barista opted to leave his protective shield of hip indie cred to mourn the loss with the fitting tribute of a posted photo on his social media accounts with the phrase "this one hurts".  It was the most emotion he had shown publicly since Ric Ocasek of The Cars passed, a time of apparent paralyzing grief.  It took a full 24 hours to once again be dismissive of customer's choices in film, music and restaurants as the coffee shop alternated between "Candy-O" and "Shake It Up".  There was no choice now but to find piece of mind in my safe space, NFL gambling.  I opened up the sports section to see the latest lines as "By-Tor and The Snow Dog" rumbled out of the speakers...  

Let's talk about this 49ers/Vikings game.  The Vikings are really good.  It was a bit under the radar as the team tends to play well when they aren't on national TV.  Here's an odd stat for you.  Viking QB Kirt Cousins covers the spread 70% of the time when he starts at 1pm EST.  If he played all his games at 1pm, he would be the best starting QB versus the spread in NFL history.  Unfortunately Cousins also plays games at other times.  In these games he covers 30%, the worst starting QB in league history.  Cousins has a love of routine, to the point of it being on OCD behavior.  Sunday at 1p is when he likes to play.  It's when he is comfortable.  This game?  Saturday at 430p.  Uh oh.

Normally I would just jump on the 49ers and count my money.  Here's the thing.  The 49ers have slowly denigrated defensively as the season progressed.  The Public remembers their early monster wins.  I remember them giving up 46 to the Saints, 31 to the Rams, and 29 to the Falcons down the stretch.  This is also Jimmy G's first playoff game, a QB I'm not sold on, as well as Coach Kyle Shanahan.  Vikings coach Mike Zimmer?  Best spread coverage coach in the NFL.  This is a 7 point line San Francisco has to cover against a really good team.  They haven't covered 5 points since late November.  Hmmm...  Time to go to The Teaser!

I am going to take Minnesota +13.  I think the Vikings win this game outright at 1pm on a Sunday.  Saturday at 430p I just need them to keep it relatively close.  I went back and forth with who to pair this up with in that I think Baltimore and Kansas City are going to win easily.  I decided on Kansas City as if the Vikings can't hold up their end, I want separate action on the later game.  Minnesota +13/Kansas City -3.5.  I am going to take Baltimore -9.5 as they apparently cover any spread they are given.  They are 10-1 in their last 11 against the spread.  A well rested Ravens should beat a Titan team that is surprised to be there.  I was tempted to do a Kansas City/Baltimore/Green Bay parlay, but that just seems stupid.