Everyone has an NCAA bracket. It's like underwear. So few people come back home without it.
The problem is that the regular season of NCAA basketball might as well be sponsored by Xanax. It used to be wonderful and then players started leaving after one year of (not) attending college in order to turn pro. (See how many of your friends can name last year's Kansas starting five.)
In any case, the whole point of your NCAA bracket is to gain some superiority in your workplace of painful mediocrity.
So, because the Tournament starts tomorrow and because I care about you and decry the people you work with, please allow me to give you a hint: EA's "NCAA Basketball 2009" simulation.
Perhaps you may not be aware, but EA's "Madden 2009" simulation for the Superbowl was astoundingly accurate. (An example: it predicted the Steelers' Santonio Holmes would have 8 catches for 131 yards. He had 9 catches for, well, 131 yards.)
In case you don't want to pore over every part of the EA simulation, I can tell you that it has Louisville, Memphis, Pitt and North Carolina in its Final Four. With Louisville winning the whole thing.
Alright, perhaps you shouldn't totally rely on EA. You may also need a little luck along the way- last year's EA simulation only got 27 (out of 32) of the first-round games right. But I have a feeling, you know. Just a feeling.
Please allow me to recuse myself from this Tournament as I obsessively played ESPN's NBA Virtual GM in 2002, to the degree that it affected my very being. So I have promised those closest to me to steer clear of virtual joy.
After the Bigfoot saga, here are some monsters that are far more real and whose creation will make you feel that humanity does have some goodness after all.
Please welcome the life-affirming and thought-provoking story of Ken Walters.
Mr. Walters was an engineer who suffered massive spinal and internal damage when a truck driver lost control and pinned him to a wall. He lost his job, was confined to a wheelchair and sank into a depression that lasted 19 years.
Just to add a little relish to his good fortune, he also had two heart attacks. Fortunately, he then suffered a brain hemorrhage.
I know how that sounds.
But Mr. Walters' remarkable resilience in surviving such mind-numbing misfortune turned into a mind-altering second life.
(Credit:
CC Picadilly Wilson)
Strokes are weird things. And this particular stroke rewired Mr. Walters' brain, giving him a flair for art that didn't seem to exist at any previous time in his life.
"I hated it in school. I was never really the arty type, more hands on. But I have to say wherever this new found love for art has come from, it's certainly changed my life forever," he told London's Daily Mail.
The stroke itself caused Mr. Walters to slur his words and begin drooling over the phone. Yet he wasn't in any pain. He was merely very agitated. Clearly he didn't realize that these were merely the beginnings of artistic angst.
"My doctor told me following a stroke your brain usually rewires itself to avoid the damaged bits and often leads to discovering hidden talents," he said.
Yet it's one thing to discover a talent. It's another to make a living out of it. The initial doodlings that his new inner-self insisted on creating made Mr. Walters experiment with digital art.
He became rather good rather quickly. To the point at which whatever was left of his engineer persona helped him not only create inspired digital art but also artistic software. He began to sell his digital art online.
One day, his work, which consists of creating mythical creatures of strange and wonderful dimensions, was spotted by EA. The company decided he was so good that they commissioned him to create 100 dinosaur characters for Spore, the new game that's supposed to help your brain.
If this story does not restore your faith in the utter random, crazy madness of life, then you are a gorilla suit and you live in a freezer.
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