The Franchise

A corrupt football team fights to become the sport’s dominant franchise
The Texas Pistols never should have been. The league had no business awarding a team to dying Park City, but it only took a little pressure—financial and otherwise—to bring the expansion franchise to town. At first, they’re worthless, playing in an empty stadium for slack-jawed fans, but the owners have a plan. Five years to financial security. Five years to complete domination of the sport. Five years to the Super Bowl. And it starts with Taylor Rusk.

But Rusk, the finest college quarterback of his generation, is no fool, and he realizes quickly that all is not honest in Park City. He doesn’t want to stop the corruption; he wants a piece of it, and for a price he will lead his new team to glory. In Texas, football is life. But in Park City, it can mean death, too.

A hug is a form of physical intimacy, not necessarily sexual, that usually involves closing or holding the arms around another person or group of persons. The hug is one of the most common human signs of love and affection, along with kissing. Unlike some other forms of physical intimacy, it is practiced publicly and privately without stigma in many countries, religions and cultures, within families, and also across age and gender lines. Sometimes, hugs are a romantic exchange. Hugs may also be exchanged as a sign of support and comfort. A hug can be a demonstration of affection and emotional warmth, sometimes arising out of joy or happiness at meeting someone. Hugs are mostly short and used to show many levels of affection. It is not particular to human beings alone, as there are many species of animals that engage in similar exchanges of warmth. Hugging has been proven to have health benefits. One study has shown that hugs increase levels of oxytocin, and reduce blood pressure. There are different variations of hugs. Prolonged hugging in a cozy, comfortable position is called cuddling. Spooning is a cuddling position, a kind of hugging when both the hugger and the hugged persons face the same direction, i.e., the front of one person is in contact with the back of the second one. The person whose front is in contact with the other's back is referred to as the "Big Spoon" and the person whose back is in contact with the other's front in referred to as the "Little Spoon". "Big Spoon" is a position held predominantly by males, whilst "Little Spoon" is typically the female, or smaller partner. There is also the term snuggling, also known as "kanoodling", coined by the modern psychologist Alexander Althoff, that refers a more intimate form of cuddling, with the two bodies almost intertwined, i.e. one's leg in between the other's. In May 2009, the New York Times reported that "the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days" in the United States. A number of schools in the United States have issued bans on hugs, which in some cases have resulted in student-led protests against these bans. Despite hugging being widespread across human culture, several cultures - such as the Himba in Namibia - do not embrace as a sign of affection or love. The Other End of the Leash notes that dogs tend to enjoy being hugged less than humans and other primates do, since canines interpret putting a limb over another animal as a dominance signal.

© 2010 Cynthia E. Wood As part of their 75th Anniversary Celebration, SFMoMA is giving away free posters as part of one of the exhibitions. (It's an untitled piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres.) Anyway, you can see people all over the museum walking around with these large rolls of paper. I guess someone decided they didn't want their free art after all, and [t]here it sat in a puddle of water out in the new sculpture garden on the top floor. I wonder how many of the free posters find a similar fate. Free is free, and free seems very enticing, and sometimes free really is awesome (like free First Tuesdays at SFMoMA!)... But so often free is simply not valued. (At the very least the wanker could have found a trashcan --or better yet a recycling bin-- to put it in. Why do people act like such wankers?)