The fast-growing phenomenon is the creation of 27-year-old Russian software developer, Dmitry Chestnykh, who, ironically, speaks English as a second language. So I entered the word “Irony” 30 times and got the deceased, weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft.

The Huffington Post had this to say about the writing analyzer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/17/i-write-like-website-goes_n_650037.html

It uses keyword recognition to track down your inner author. I spent about 20 minutes analyzing several of my stories. According to “I Write Like,” I write like:

• Stephen King (at least 20 times)
• David Foster Wallace (18 times)
• Kurt Vonegut (12 times)
• Ernest Hemingway (a lot)
• Mario Puzo (4 times)
• Chuck Palachniuk (twice)
• William Gibson (say what?)

I pasted in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For the Devil.” I got Ian Fleming.

The Beatles “A Day In the Life” conjured up Raymond Chandler.

Cory Doctorow came up after typing a series of repetitive profanity.

Okay, I spent more than 20 minutes doing this. I spent far too much time. But it is addictive. One hit leads to another and soon you want to analyze everything from Michael Jackson songs to the ingredients on the back of a Pop Tart box. It went on and on. Check it out: http://iwl.me
By the way, I just analyzed this blog post and it is written like Cory Doctorow. You’ll get Cory Doctorow about every 8 tries. Everyone writes like him, I guess. Perhaps his blog: http://boingboing.net is running in the background of our brainwaves as we write other stuff and it comes out about every eighth time. (this single paragraph was analyzed as writing like Cory Doctorow, so there, it’s the eighth paragraph in this post. Point proven.)

Thanks, Jeff (who also writes like Cory Doctorow). Damn. Is Dmitry Chestnykh the president of Doctorow’s fan club?

The recipes in these books are less Emeril than Aunt Emma. From making your own preserves to butchering your own meat to homemade everything, just like great-grandma used to do, these books tell the how’s and why’s of the forgotten skills of cooking. By the way, that’s one of the new book titles out there, “The Forgotten Skills of Cooking. The Time-Honored Ways Are Best: Over 700 Recipes Show You Why.” That’s a mouthful on the cover alone. It was enough words to get a review in the New York Times.

This $40 how-to-and-why textbook from Darina Allen tells how to kill and dress a chicken or made sausage – both skills I skills I practiced during my youth in Alabama, but not from overt chef-ery; we just needed to eat.

In this month’s issue of Oxford American, John T. Edge wrote about Southern community cookbooks.  He focuses on a particular tome called “When People Were Nice and Things Were Pretty – A Culinary History of Merigold, A Mississippi Delta Town.” Damn, another title that would gorge a tribe of hungry librarians.

In the Merigold book, Paula Deen calls cooking a chicken impaled on a beer can: “Beer in the rear.” Edge says the book skews a little white and doesn’t really acknowledge the contribution of African Americans and Native Americans in Southern Cuisine. And in my opinion, there would be no Southern Cuisine without those two groups.

Mr. Edge goes on to say that Africans brought us deep frying, honed the art of sweet potatoes and I’m pretty sure that greens and everything else I like to eat was not concocted by white women slaving in their kitchens, but by black women literally slaving in white people’s kitchens.

After reading about antique cooking methods, eating in the South is pretty simple: take away Soul Food and all you have left is empty cast iron skillets.

Now comes Floyd Landis, a past teammate and friend who alleges all of the above and more – and admits to doing it all himself as well. The difference between those same old yearly allegations and the ones Landis is hurling now is the heat that accompanies legal attention by the FDA’s criminal division. Landis is cooperating with the Feds in an investigation headed by Jeff Novitzy who ran the BALCO case.

Novitzy has chased athletes like Marion Jones, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Steroid allegations stuck to Bonds and Clemens. Jones went to jail for bank fraud. Novitzy, playing the role of a Elliot Ness, wants to know if controlled substances were paid for by the $10 million or so doled out to the United States Postal Service sponsorship of Armstrong’s cycling team (which was owned by Armstrong and Tailwind Sports).

In a text message to a friend, Landis said flat out: “Big Tex is going to jail.” I would think it is safe to say that Armstrong has un-friended Landis on Facebook.

Stories like this are why I love sports. It provides so much more than the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Sports combines more back-stabbing high drama, comedy, thievery, cheating, sex scandals, drug dealing, injuries and murder than anything on prime time, or DVD or in movie theaters. It gives us heroes and villains, saints and assholes, all practicing good, evil and every smelly, sordid nasty bit in between. Sports shows us at our best as human beings and at our worst as scum of the earth, all at the same time and sometimes in the same game. And, there’s $10 hotdogs, $9 beer and big screens as big at my house.

When was the last time you saw someone shave a logo into their chest hair, paint themselves a team color and act like an escapee from a mental institution, and pay $375 for a plastic seat to do it on national TV? You can see it every damned night. Sports started a long time ago in Greece and never ends. It’s 24-7, 8 days a week, with skimpily-dressed girls, feeble, rich owners, thick-necked pontificators and has-been commentators. These announcers invent more words and butcher the English language worse than I do. And we love every minute of it.

After reading about Lance Armstrong and these recent allegations, all I could think of was how I loved to ride my bike as a kid. I rode that cheap chunk of Sears metal 9 hours a day in the summer, rain or shine and until I froze to the handlebars in winter. I could jump ramps and do tricks and pop wheelies and snap a 360º on the front tire with my ass in the wind like a sail. I loved riding that bike. And no one paid me one nickel to do it. I did it for free. That’s where I was stupid.

If I could have gotten some blood transfusions and drugs to help me ride harder, faster and longer, perhaps I could have had twice the fun and become a millionaire. But at the end of the day, we’re talking about guys who ride bicycles, for god’s sake. Bicycles!

I’m not saying Lance Armstrong took drugs or sucked his own blood. I have no idea. He has been Superman for years and I would hate to think that he is really more like Iron Man instead – flying with a little help from his friends. But if you have to cheat to win a damned bicycle race, you best be getting into NASCAR and at least have 800 horsepower under the pedal to jack up your competition.

As a teenager, I was a fried chicken junkie. I could eat more chicken than any man alive, including Jim Morrison (check out The Doors “Back Door Man). I looked at the meat itself as a necessary evil. It was the wrinkled crust that twisted my tongue, shifted my gears and fortified my loins. Ophelia delivered.

Damn; she understand the delicate intricacies of fried chicken crust to the point where men would drive a hundred miles to touch their tongues to her goodies. She had a talent and a skill and a wicked obsession. What Colonel Saunders did with eleven herbs and spices, Ophelia did with far less.

I tried to get her to lay the secret on me but she just smiled and shook a crooked finger, saying, “Honey, if I give that up, I ain’t got nothing left in this world but a few gold teeth and a 1968 LTD.”

She worked alone in her kitchen and no health department official dared question her preparation techniques for fear she would cut them off. Her place was open when she felt like cooking and was filled with the rich, poor, famous and criminal.

Ophelia could do things to a chicken wing that would make Bill Clinton actually have sex with Hillary and convince George Bush to admit that Dick Cheney had his hand up his ass the whole time moving his lips like a puppet. I can’t even remember the side orders at Ophelia’s place, which wasn’t really a place at all, but a few tables under a bent grove of loblolly pines next to a ditch of a creek nudged beside a small wooden kitchen no bigger than a walk-in closet.

She served collards cooked in pork fat, yams swimming in cinnamon butter and cathead biscuits the size of a coffee saucer. I do remember her saying that mac ‘n cheese was for wimps, however, and if you ordered it, you could kiss her ass (she said that phrase with only her eyes). Unlike Burger King, if you wanted it your way, you would not get the damned thing. She served what she wanted and you, by god, loved it, or left. I never saw anyone leave except after their shirts and belts were tighter.

Ophelia is long dead now. A part of me died with her – a few inches of artery at a time. And I am not alone.

The headline hung there before my eyes like an aroma faintly familiar but just to the edge of explanation. I’d heard more than a few times that Lee Iacocca created the Mustang. He was the general manager of Ford at the time. As Ford’s chief engineer, Donald Frey and his team designed the Mustang prototype, unveiled in 1962 as a mid-engine, 2-seater. In April 1964, the Mustang drove into the nation’s showrooms.

His pony car – predicted to sell 80,000 in the first year, sold more than a million in two years. Such success was accomplished on a tiny budget out of sight from Henry Ford II, who bluntly told Frey he would be fired if the Mustang was not a hit. Ford’s warning came with more than a few unprintable words. Mr. Frey kept his job.

Henry Ford Number Two is remembered for introducing the Edsel and firing Lee Iacocca. Iacocca went on to save Chrysler and Mr. Frey went on to introduce radial tires, disc brakes, become the CEO of Bell & Howell and served on the board of the World Bank. In 1967, Time called him “Detroit’s sharpest idea man.”

We could use him today.

Some music goes beyond the sound that comes out of your speakers. From time to time, these sounds define a cultural or political movement. In a few cases, they become the soundtrack for a generation.

Neil Young wailing, “four dead in Ohio,” still conjures memories of a black and white photograph of a young girl on one knee, panic stricken, next to the face-down body of a student shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State.

“The Pusher,” written by Hoyt Axton, and growled by John Kay over a grinding Steppenwolf beat brings images of Easy Rider and a drug culture that slapped America’s conservatism right between their eyes and the sound machine. This is where my intentions went off the tracks.

I started out to write this piece about Steppenwolf. They cranked out several seminal songs in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (Magic Carpet Ride, Born To Be Wild). “The Pusher” sounds like a Steppenwolf song. No surprise there. But knowing Hoyt Axton wrote those words is an interesting contradiction. At least to me.

Growing up, I saw Hoyt Axton as sort of a folksy character like Glenn Campbell or Mac Davis. Then, when you see that he wrote “The Pusher,” it kind of twists in your head a little. I remember the notorious lyrics (“God damn the pusher man”) and I remember Hoyt Axton. I just can’t put the two memories together. John Kay’s voice, yes. Hoyt? No way.

Hoyt Axton wrote a lot of song you have heard for 50 years. He wrote “Joy To The World” (as in Three Dog Night’s “Jeremiah was a bullfrog…”) for god’s sake. He wrote “Heartbreak Hotel” for Elvis and “Greenback Dollar” for the Kingston Trio. He wrote songs covered by Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and John Denver. He wrote some pretty pop stuff. And then he wrote, “God damn the pusherman.” That is some first class contradiction with a true Southern bent. Got to like that.

Sabol is 67 now. He became famous by turning football into art (according to Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated his week). It is a great story if you haven’t read it in the Scorecard section.

Sabol put cameras at every angle, shot super slo-mo, put microphones on coaches, hired John Facenda to be “the voice of God,” and hired former music school teacher, Sam Spence, to create music that made the sport feel like a noble act of war.

Joe Namath jogging off the field pointing to the sky claiming a championship. Sabol shot it. Dick Butkus’s muddy hands. Sabol shot it. Steam coming from Ray Nitschke’s mouth. Sabol shot it. Franco Harris’s Immaculate Reception. Yep, Sabol.

Every famous moment we remember from the NFL is in our memories because Sabol put them there. ESPN may be in business because Sabol created the genre. So when you watch the Saints and the Colts and the Who on Sunday, think about Steve Sabol and NFL Films.

Then, for just a few moments, remember Tom Brookshire, who died last week at 78 from cancer. The former Philadelphia Eagle All-Pro became even more famous for his insights as he sat in a TV booth for hundreds of games with partner Pat Summerall telling us about this game we have come to treat like royalty. In case you are under 35 years old, John Madden replaced Brookshire in 1981. Some of us remember those days. But it is a game, after all. Sabol and Brookshire just made it seem a hell of a lot more important.

If the Food Network producers had cut her hair and put her in a Florida State shirt, Paula Dean could have coached the Seminoles to victory over West Virginia and no one would have been the wiser. Same with Paula Dean’s cooking show. Put Bowden in a smock with a wig and he could sauté up something tastier than an opposing team – like salt pork surprise with meatloaf pudding balls.

After mentioning my observation to several people, they all agreed that the two were the same person. Have you ever seen Bobby and Paula in the same room? No. And you never will.

I love college football. Always have. But there are parts of it that chew at me. This is one of them:

Now Rudy can hardly go into the backyard and eat rabbit poo without inquiring canine minds wanting to know. He can’t even travel to the Deep South without dogs down there standing in the yard and watching his every move. How these dogs and cats have come to admire Rudy was a mystery to me – until I clicked on the history on my browser.

Several years ago, I wrote in these pages about him calling me on my cell. He’s become a social media hound since then. Rudy set up a LinkedIn page where he has a resume and brags about his triumphs and has garnered almost a hundred recommendations. He has a Facebook fan page with 12,908 fans. He Twitters his adventures. So far: 34,652 followers. He’s doing Posterous and Ning and Delicious and Flickr. It is the strangest thing. I didn’t even know he could type. Not only can he type, he texts and has jacked up a ridiculous bill.

This is what he has been doing in my office while we were asleep. He has been building his social network. Guy Kawasaki and Steve Rubel may be giving him advice for all I know.

When animals get loose on the Internet, it will be – well, actually, it will probably be a better place.