It’s been a hell of a strange week-before-kickoff this year, and to be honest, it’s been difficult to get as fired up as usual here at the ole Bender household.

Gustav may not have turned out to be "the mother of all storms" (thankfully) but it sure was (and is) the mother of all distractions.

Visiting evacuees, nonstop WDSU hurricane coverage (thanks DirecTV), the GOP convention, a total lack of Sportstalk this week on WWL and Times-Picayune print coverage, all on top of what was already a busy week to begin with, have put quite the kibbosh on the crescendo of excitement and general-purpose mojo typical of the week before kickoff, even for an expat such as myself whose Gus-based ass pain has been comparatively negligible.

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Announcing moosedenied’s first ever contest — See what I was going for there with the pic and its relevance to Thursday night’s opponent, and you win an assortment of valuable prizes.

"The greater the stretch, the more amusing the pun" is what I always say. Well, I don’t always say that. Sometimes I say "Gimme a balloon." Sometimes I say it loud… "HEY ASSHOLE, GIMME A BALLOON!!!"

At any rate, preseason finally comes to a merciful end tomorrow night as de facto head coach Nick Saban Cam Cameron Tony Sparano Bill Parcells leads quarterback Jay Fiedler Brian Griese Sage Rosenfels AJ Feeley Gus Frerotte Daunte Culpepper Joey Harrington Cleo Lemon Trent Green John Beck Chad Henne Chad Pennington and crew to the Superdome for one final round of pointless pushing and shoving against Our Heroes And Jason David.

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"Name three people burned less than Jason David." Hiyoooooo!

Well I’ll be damned if we didn’t finally learn something significant from a preseason game. Of course, it was something we pretty much already knew. There is absolutely, positively no legitimate reason for Jason David to ever take the field again for the New Orleans Saints. Ever. Under any circumstances. Ever. Ever.

Sure the Bangles were without the top seventeen wideouts on their depth chart. Hell, they had Susanna Hoffs out there running curl routes for crying out loud. So what? You and I both know that Suz would have put it on our pal JD to the tune of 8 for 174 and 3 touchdowns. She’d have probably walked like an Egyptian from the 10 yard line on in, and I think we all had just about enough of that back in ‘86.

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¿Quién es más macho?

It’s been a banner week down at the ole Bender household, which is why I’m about to once again participate in perhaps the oldest and most popular blogging ritual known to mankind: apologizing for not blogging as frequently as might be expected, and blaming it on real life.

Fortunately for me, this week of blistering ass pain has resulted in a stunning sudden streamlining of my daily workflow, which will free up a significant amount of time to engage in further internet-based jackassery henceforth. Score! I should have done this a long time ago. I’d spare you the gory details, but instead, I won’t.

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You know what must be done.

You have the power to end this.

Do it already. Just do it.

I miss the Oilers. A lot. During my formative years, it was the annual Saints/Oilers preseason game that, for me, signified the official return of football season. The Oilers game made it real.

Even better, there was always a pretty decent chance the Saints would actually win the damn thing. At the time, it didn’t matter to me just how inconsequential pulling out a preseason win on a Guido Merkens pass to Toussaint L’Overture Tyler with 3 minutes left was. Screw that, Saints win baby! I enjoyed Saints/Oilers preseason games to the point where I actually started liking the Oilers in general. There were so many links between the two franchises. Bum. Earl. Archie. Krazy George. Haywood Jeffires, bitches!

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Today, we shamelessly rip borrow a gimmick theme from those magnificent bastards at KSK. Who ya got?

¿Quién es más macho?