This is filed under Comedy because some of it is comedic. The rest is either tragic or teeth-grindingly irritating, depending on your mindset at a given point in time.
Following the loss of Cotton Kitty in October 2013 due to terminal renal failure, we decided, after some mourning and reflection, to get two sibling kittens to add to our other two cats, Snickers and Luna.
We have begun the process of checking out adoption sites and channels. We got a lead today on a possible litter of female kittens ready in 2-3 weeks in the Metroplex, so Mary rang the adoption organization to find out more about the kittens.
I was listening in in the kitchen, but I immediately understood that the person on the other end of the phone (female) was conducting a classic Q&A session to answer her question "are these people suitable to adopt MY animals". I have been through this process more than once in the UK.
The conversation soon took a negative turn as Mary told the woman that, yes, We Allow Our Cats Outdoors. This elicited a gasp of horror. Why, Mary was told, the entire outdoors was filled with predators - dogs, coyotes, even hawks!
However, what really tipped the scales even further against us was when Mary told the woman that we lived in Duncanville. This elicited a further audible gasp of horror, after which the woman launched into a further monologue about the slavering, lethal predator population of South Dallas, including a rundown of all the various and horrifying ways in which hapless cats could be dispatched if they so much as stepped outside of our house. The woman in question lives in Plano.
Listening from the kitchen, it was clear that this was not a conversation, Mary was now listening to a paranoid person lecturing us about the Terrible Predator Universe, by implication also itemizing our cat-keeping negligence sins.
To my total lack of surprise, we were ruled out summarily as possible adoptees for her kittens.
I can recognize North Metroplex condescension when I hear it, and I certainly recognized it from this woman. It is not the first time our revelation that we live in Duncanville has been greeted with raised eyebrows followed by some variation on "you poor people". It seems that for many people living North of 635, the entire Metroplex area to the South, with the possible exception of some upper-crust enclaves such as Highland Park and Turtle Creek, is a primitive sinkhole of ethnic minority squalor. I recognize this broad-brush stereotyping on the basis of location pathology only too well, having grown up in public housing in the UK, and being subjected to similar condescension when growing up in my home town. I didn't much care for it then, and I still don't care for it today, although I am now mature enough to find it mostly amusing instead of annoying.
The whole business of demanding that cats be kept indoors is one that I find highly vexing. Cats are outdoor hunting animals, of desert origin. They are wily, resourceful and smart; even in their domesticated form, cats are perfectly capable of surviving in the wild as is evidenced by the rise of feral cat colonies in towns and cities. Many cats do not respond well to being kept indoors 24x7, they develop behavioral issues. The practice of declawing cats is almost non-existent in Europe, where most cats are indoor-outdoor cats, but it is shockingly common here in the USA, where some people have come to regard cats as a moving fashion accessory, expected to look decorative and make the house more like a model for the cover of Southern Living. As for actually behaving like cats, Hell No. Whatever next? They might go outdoors and bring in a mouse or a lizard!
If we lived 100 miles out in the country, with coyotes in the area, we would be (at the least) keeping the cats indoors at night. We visited the Earthship colony in Taos a few years back, and the Earthship owners all keep their cats indoors after dark for that reason. This seems sensible. However, in an area where we have little vehicle traffic, little evidence of predators, and only small dog owners in the subdivision, we feel comfortable about allowing our cats outdoors.
More amusingly, Mary had to listen to a lecture on predation from a woman living in (of all places) Plano, an area of the Metroplex that mostly comprises manufactured sub-divisions, with all original traces of nature bulldozed to be replaced by order and ecology sourced from Home Depot and Lowes. Any self-respecting predator landing in Plano would be heading out into the countryside at a rate of knots, rather like the armadillo I saw wandering across a field in Flower Mound a few years ago. He/she was definitely heading for the Red River that day...
So...we will let the paranoid lady in Plano find other homes for her kittens, and I am sure she can regale her friends with more tales of unsuitable silly people from the Primitive South. We will find kittens that will live with us and love their surroundings. Cotton was the happiest cat I lived with, and most of that was down to his access to the yard and house in Duncanville.

Lots of people are suffering acute jaw-drop as the Cowboys, leading 26-3 at halftime, managed to lose to the Green Bay Packers. You know, the team with a returning wandering backup as their current quarterback.
I watched the entire game. I am going to preface my comments by the usual caveat that I have never played football or coached football. It is therefore possible that I am talking out of my posterior.
I have seen numerous NFL games where teams that lead by a country mile at half time come out and attempt to "squat" on the lead. They play to protect the lead, not to increase the margin of victory. The problem with that approach is what happens when the opposition starts scoring points.
This is exactly the issue that the Cowboys encountered. From being unable to even get first downs, the Packers began to not only assemble drives, but every time they started a drive, they ended it with a touchdown. In no time at all, the Cowboys lead had all but disappeared.
The Cowboys, for reasons that I have not heard explained, came out for the second half of the game looking like they had thrown their entire game playbook in the trash bin on the way to the locker room. At one point in the first half, DeMarco Murray was averaging over 10 yards a carry. The Packers defense looked totally unable to stop the run. Yet, within a few plays, it became clear that the Cowboys second half tactics revolved almost exclusively around throwing the ball.
One characteristic of running the ball is that unless the ball carrier fumbles, every play uses up clock time. When a team is mostly throwing the ball, incompletions, penalties etc. stop the clock. The cowboys began to misfire on drives, getting bogged down and being forced to punt. All of the time, they were not using up enough clock. They were giving the Packers more than enough time to catch up. The Packers got into a groove, gained confidence, and began to score points like clockwork. Suddenly it looked like Aaron Rodgers was under center. Remember that the Cowboys defense is one of the worst in the league right now. It was noticeable that DeMarcus Ware, one of the great pass rushers of the last decade in the NFL, essentially disappeared in the second half. There was a guy wearing #94 on the field, but he was invisible once the ball was snapped.
We then moved deep into the fourth quarter. At this point, the Cowboys suffered another one of their Game IQ failures. They continued to throw the ball, although by now the Packers, realizing that the Cowboys' running game had been taken off the table, were now organizing their defense around a combination of rushing Tony Romo and defending against the pass.
Then it got way way worse. The Cowboys had kept all of their timeouts deep into the fourth quarter, a smart move. Their lead had diminished, but they still had a lead. Surely the Boys would start to grind out running plays, which would force the Packers to use their timeouts, and then they would be able to force the Packers into desperation plays.
Instead, the Cowboys continued to throw the ball, but really badly. Worse still, plays began to break down. On one play Clay Matthews lined up totally unmatched by any Cowboys defender. For some reason that I cannot fathom, not only did nobody on the Cowboys offense notice, including Tony Romo, who should have seen Matthews salivating as he measured off the distance to the helmet of #9, but even the Cowboys sideline did not see the mismatch, because if they had, they would surely have called a timeout. Romo's pass on the play, heaved quickly to avoid the Matthews steamroller, was seemingly intercepted, only to be overruled and declared an incompletion. One would think that this close call would serve as a warning, but Nope, the Cowboys still continued to throw the ball. The inevitable happened, Romo threw an interception as a ball intended for Miles Austin was thrown behind him and picked off.
The Packers drove down the field, mostly running the ball in the red zone (ahem!) and finally took the lead, but failed with a 2 point conversion, which would have left the Cowboys needing a field goal to send the game to overtime. Now the Cowboys were facing the task of driving down to score a field goal to win the game. They had 1.31 left, and one timeout, with a field goal kicker who was 5 for 5 on the day and good from over 50 yards. This looked feasible. They should not have been in this hole, but this was a doable way to win the game.
The drive began with an "out route" throw to Cole Beasley that gained good yards. Then, Tony Romo apparently checked out of a play intended for Dez Bryant and tried a short slant to Cole Beasley (again). This was not a good throw, it was intercepted by Green Bay. Game Over.
The execution was flawed at the end, no question. What was more inexcusable was the lack of football IQ that saw the Cowboys abandon everything that worked for them in the first half for a game plan that saw them throwing the ball most of the time. Their failure to continue to score points in the second half left Green Bay able to begin to dominate the time of possession, gain confidence and score on every drive.
I do not think that Jason Garrett intended to throw Tony Romo under the bus in the press conference. I believe that he was simply explaining how that final play unfolded. However, given the way the game ended, he should have realized that this would be interpreted as him hanging Tony Romo out to dry. In reality, while Romo threw the interception that ended the game, the Packers should not even have been within shouting distance of the Cowboys at that point. The real failure revolved around the decision to move to a passing attack, which I cannot understand. If the Packers come out in the second half having adjusted to stop the run, you will soon find out, then you can make your own adjustments. Instead, it looks like the Cowboys assumed that the Packers would adjust to stop the run, so they pre-empted them by switching to a passing attack. However, it might have been an idea to see whether the run game would still work...
Football IQ failures are killing the Cowboys in late-season games. I do not know where the fault lies, but it may be the case that the entire coaching staff is deficient in game IQ. If that is the case, Jerry Jones's vote of confidence is probably not worth the paper it's not written on.

...courtesy of The Fogbow, ladeez n' gentlemen, please pray silence for....Rise Up For America, who have restored the Real Government...

Link: http://americanloons.blogspot.com/

While attempting to decide which "WTF?" website was worthy of exposure on this blog for Thanksgiving Week, I came across a website that attempts to catalog "WTF?" practitioners. Step forward, American Loons. It looks like a valuable catalog of wackaloons.

From the Patriotic Zone....American Preppers

Go get another bucket of popcorn, this one will run and run...
After removing Josh Freeman from his position as their starting quarterback just under 2 weeks ago, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are demonstrating that implementing that decision was about the only clear action they had worked out. Since then, events have spun out of control.
Both sides, by all accounts, have been behaving badly. Freeman has been sulking, skipping meetings, refusing to talk to the Tampa-area media, but talking to the national media. He is behaving very much like a jilted lover, and has made it clear that he wants to be traded by the Bucs.
The challenge is that it is almost impossible to trade him. He is in the last year of his contract, and as a vested veteran, under the CBA he is entitled to take the entire base salary for the year as termination pay if he is cut by the Bucs. So, whether he stays or is cut, the Bucs are on the hook for $6+million in salary from now until the end of the season.
If the Bucs cut him now, they still owe him all of the 2013 salary. They will not get any draft compensation if they do that.
If the Bucs keep him until the end of the season when his contract expires, they will still owe the same salary money, but they will get a compensatory draft pick for him for 2014.
In order to trade him, the Bucs have to persuade another team to take on his contract. No team is going to take on a liability of $6m+ in salary for a player who becomes a free agent at the end of the season. There are also less than 4 weeks left until the trade deadline, and no obvious quarterback distress stories around the NFL.
So...in order to trade him, the Bucs will have to persuade him to rework his contract to create a contract that another team would be prepared to assume. Most likely that would involve Freeman agreeing to a new multi-year deal with a lot of signing bonus money (to equal or exceed the money he will earn under the current contract) with low base salaries in all years of the deal.
The challenge is finding a team needing quarterback help who is willing to take on that kind of arrangement. Freeman's recent pouting and lack of co-operation will not have helped, since it creates a perception of immaturity. Right now, other teams will be more inclined to see if the Bucs release Freeman, at which point he will become a free agent, and any team can sign him to a low-cost contract.
The issues between the Bucs and Freeman have the potential to expand to encompass the whole of the NFL. Leakage of news about Freeman's participation in the NFL drug testing program (which should not have even been revealed to the Bucs under CBA rules) further muddies the water, and makes it more likely that the NFLPA will get involved sooner or later. If that happens, then the commissioner himself might get pulled into the mess if the NFLPA files a grievance. If that happens, he will not be happy with the Bucs, nor will the other owners.
In short, this is a mess, and, with a second year head coach who is battling other issues with the team's poor record, one that the Bucs need to get out of quickly.
UPDATE - The Bucaneers finally concluded that the Josh Freeman saga was too much for them to handle at this time, and released Freeman, who has now signed with the Minnesota Vikings. So, they ended up with the worst possible outcome - the release, without any draft pick compensation, of their #1 quarterback to whom they will still (most probably) owe close to $6m in termination pay, with no offset from his salary with his new team. The events also call into question the whole coaching and front office dynamic within the team. Since Jon Gruden (who, like Barry Switzer at the Cowboys, basically inherited another coach's team, the Bucs appear to be heading down a road that is familiar for under-achieving franchises - a revolving door of coaches who last (at most) three seasons. This is not a recipe for sustained excellence in the NFL.

Currently, it seems to be established that McLaren Mercedes do not have either of their current drivers under contract for 2014 and beyond.
Jenson Button's existing contract runs until the end of the 2014 season, but there was an option in the contract on McLaren's behalf for 2014 that they had to exercise by August 31st. They have apparently not exercised it, so technically Button is currently not under contract for 2014. Sergio Perez is also rumored to be not yet under contract for 2014. He supposedly signed a multi-year deal when he joined McLaren for this season, so it is possible that there was also an option in his contract that has not been exercised.
McLaren has two young drivers, Stoffel VanDorne and Kevin Magnussen, who have been doing well in the lower formulae. Martin Whitmarsh previously stated that McLaren are looking to find an F1 drive for Magnussen in 2014. Normally a team with McLaren's resources would achieve that by renting a seat in a lesser team for Magnussen, much the same way that Red Bull bought a seat for Daniel Ricciardo at HRT in 2011 to give him racing experience. However, the price of seats in backmarker teams looks to be high in 2014, due to the increased engine supply costs for the new 1.6 litre turbo powerplants.
There is now a wild card in the driver market in the form of Felipe Massa, who will leave Ferrari at the end of the season.
McLaren do not have a title sponsor announced for next season, with Vodafone due to leave the team at the end of the year. They will also have a lot less income from the F1 prize money fund this season due to their poor performance. Their relationship with Honda commences in 2015. Normally Honda brings substantial "captive" business relationships that could restrict McLaren's commercial opportunities. Any new title sponsor would be a multi-year relationship, so the sponsor would need to be acceptable to Honda.
Sergio Perez may have Mexican backing, but it remains to be seen whether that backing will result in any Mexican sponsors wholly or partially replacing Vodafone. Button does not have any personal sponsors, but he is popular and well-known in Japan, and it is safe to assume that Honda wants him in the team from 2015 onwards.
It is unusual for a top-line team like McLaren to have two drivers unconfirmed at this stage of the season. My tentative conclusion is that there are some big-money negotiations going on concerning future sponsorship, and the team is not going to confirm either of their current drivers until those negotiations have concluded. It is also possible that they want to cut Button's salary for 2014, if their sponsorship revenues are impacted by the departure of Vodafone.
At the end of the day, it is all about money. As recent events at Lotus have shown, even some successful teams are short of liquid funds, and next season will be even more challenging for some teams, due to the increase in engine supply costs, at a time when high value sponsorship deals are difficult to come by. It would not surprise me if McLaren is also juggling money and cash flow for next season, which is very much a transition year for them, as they gear up for a renewed partnership with Honda from 2015 onwards. Drivers, as large units of cost, are just another variable to be juggled. The recent move of Kimi Raikkonen to Ferrari has shown that driver changes can occur almost out of left field, if large sums of money are involved.

Via a combination of inertia, and a certain amount of blase conviction that bad medical stuff happens to The Other Guy, I had managed to get all the way to my 58th year without having my colon inspected in any way shape or form.
Now...I do have a pretty bullet-proof gastro-intestinal tract- it is decades since I had food poisoning, I never get physically sick and I have never had any sustained digestive tract issues. However, ageing and loss of immune system efficacy are realities. There is also the historical reality that Mary's father died of colon cancer at age 53; by the time he was diagnosed with the disease, it was too far advanced for him to be cured.
So, when I changed to a new PCP this Spring, one of his challenges (a bit smart-assish of him, I did think at the time) was "what is the chance of you having a colonoscopy this year", the unspoken implication being that I somehow lacked the cojones to agree to one. Upon sensing my general lack of excitement at the prospect, he effectively bounced me off Inertia First Base by writing a referral to a Dr Paul Hackett.
So, a couple of weeks later, I paid a courtesy visit to Dr Hackett, who, it turns out, is a motorbike racer when not inspecting and/or repairing human gastro-intestinal plumbing. So we talked about Silverstone racing circuit, and in between that subject, he showed me how I would be violated under controlled conditions to have my colon inspected in detail, with a camera endoscope setting off from my anus, going up across and down, all the way to the end of my small intestine. It still sounded a tad non-thrilling, but So Be It.
So, after two postponements, with Mary having had her colonoscopy weeks and weeks ago, I reached the Really Fun Part. This of course, entails the removal of used food from one's gastro-intestinal tract. Since nobody has yet invented or popularized a Colon Flusher (enemas being only useful for the last few inches or so), this happens from the top end, via the ingestion of substances that piss off the gastro-intestinal plumbing so much that it expels all liquids and solids contained therein.
The substance cocktail that I was prescribed goes by the odd-sounding name of Movi-Prep. This sounds like a starter dish at my local cinema multiplex...
Movi-Prep is a collection of substances (mostly sodium salts) that are mixed with water to create a drink that one ingests in two separate sittings, one 24 hours in advance, and the second 6 hours in advance. These salts annoy one's GI tract to the point where everything moves on out at a fair clip.
Movi-Prep is not a relaxing coffee-type drink, to be enjoyed on the sofa while stroking the cats. The manufacturers attempt to make it sort of palatable by adding a lemon flavoring and sweeteners (mostly aspartame) to it, but that merely makes it sickly sweet and cloying. The only way to drink this stuff is to chug it down. Sipping it is a bad idea. The other challenge is that each sitting of Movi Prep is 4 glasses full, to be taken at 15 minute intervals. After the second glass, drinking it down starts to become seriously tedious. Part of it is the taste and texture, part of it is that you get kind of full drinking the stuff down in an hour or less.
However, it does work, although in my case it took over an hour before (as I like to say) the contents began settling in transit, and great movements began occurring. Within a couple of hours, I rediscovered the joys of peeing from one's anus. And so this continued through the evening, as I regularly journeyed to the restroom.
The next morning, I started the process all over again, with the glasses full become steadily less appealing and more tedious. Once again, after an hour or so, I was once again cheerfully peeing from my anus, my GI tract now becoming seriously devoid of contents, which in turn triggered a series of rumblings that at times sounded like the sort of sounds heard from not-quite-dormant volcanoes in the Pacific Ring Of Fire.
The GI clinic then threw a curveball by calling me in early, presumably somebody had wimped out or added too much vodka to their Movi-Prep.
So we set off for the clinic, role reversal, Mary as my driver. The usual process then unfolded as I was asked to sign many forms all covered in Stuff The Lawyers Make Us Write. However, they must be losing their touch because not one form contained the infamous Main Street prescription drug All-Purpose-Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Clause ("may cause vomiting, convulsions and death"). However, since there is more chance of a perforated colon (which at every least leads to the creation of an abdominal zip as a collection of medics open one up to repair it), I merely signed the documents, in the standard rote-ish way, and moved to the next step - the obligatory determination of whether I existed.
They ascertained the presence of respiration, a body temperature somewhat above room temperature, and compelling evidence of the circulation of a red substance through my body due to the presence of a pump in my upper torso. That, plus my general ability to move my body and blather in a foreign accent, led them to conclude that I was alive, and they could move to the next step.
The next step was the final Great Movement (there's always something left to expel with Movi-Prep) and then the donning of the hospital gown, which, complete with booties and hairnet, makes one feel like a shuffling old lady from working-class England. I duly shuffled over to my bed, whereupon the medical vultures descended upon me, invading my venous system to plug in the tubing down which they clearly planned to pour quantities of state-altering substances. A totally cheerful anesthesiologist introduced himself and assured me that Dr. Hackett thought highly of me. I wondered if he would still hold that thought while staring at the wonderful topology of my transverse colon...
In no time at all it seemed like I was hooked up to the anesthesiologist's chemical laboratory, wi-fi, the national grid, and possibly the local water and sewerage systems. If I was going to suffer any unusual event, it would be the most-monitored event of my life.
After some paperwork scribbling from the nurses, they swiftly accelerated me out of the prep area backwards into The Room. I could tell it was The Room, because of the presence of a large LCD television screen on the wall. Yes, this was the viewing room for the 2013 Graham Shevlin Slow-Motion Colon Tour. However, the view on the screen was that of a wall and some expensive-looking equipment; clearly the endoscope was not yet anywhere near my posterior.
I wondered whether they had a satellite uplink to beam this event up for posterity ("And now we are going live to Duncanville Texas via satellite link to see whether Graham Shevlin really is full of shit...Carol, can you tell us what this picture is showing?").
I was asked to position myself on my left side (which is just as well, since I do not snore on that side). The nurses carefully uncrossed my legs, thus ensuring that resistance would be futile, even when I was asleep. Clearly, they knew how to handle monitored and trussed human subjects at this clinic.
The anethesiologist, determining that I was merely a tad nervous (hah! imagine that!), injected me with a substance to slow my heart rate; I determined that I could slow my heart rate merely by breathing better, since being monitored to hell and back with tubes and wires and then repositioned on one's side does lead to breathing stress. Then the immensely cheerful Dr. Hackett appeared, greeting me from the opposite side of my body. From my prone position, I was unable to see whether he immediately went back to rubbing his own hands in glee...
At this point, they did something very cunning, because I then woke up, back in recovery, lying on my back. The bastards had knocked me out with no warning whatsoever, none of that "count to 10 Mr Shevlin" nonsense. (I always thought that charade was a betting pool for the nurses in theater. "OK, how many seconds will he count to before he blacks out? Guesses on this board please. Winner buys the drinks at the Spleen and Pancreas bar tonight...")
So that was that. Deprived of a longer nap, I lay there and tried to wake up properly...then the sneaky anesthesiologist re-appeared. He is one of those guys that you can imagine being happy and smiling even if you have been partially dismantled in a road accident and are about to undergo a squillion hours of surgery ("Hi there Mr. Shevlin, as you have probably noticed, you are kind of injured...I am not sure where we're going to re-attach these limbs but we'll do the best we can can...have fun, we certainly will...sign this consent form with your nose and we'll get cracking").
He then revealed that they had given me Propofol, which is a fine substance, but, as some of you may have read, was also the substance that appeared, when poorly administered, to have assisted in the untimely demise of Michael Jackson. However, it is quite clearly highly useful when used correctly. I felt like I had merely had a good nap. No odd feeling of being disoriented when I woke up, and I could remember stuff, unlike the last time I was knocked out, when I had no short-term memory for 25 minutes after waking up. That previous loss of memory was probably due to being adminstered Versed, which is known to cause amnesia.
The immeasurably cheerful Dr. Hackett then appeared to shake my hand again, and wave a sheaf of video stills in front of me, all of them showing images of what looked like a deranged variant of the London sewerage system, albeit with curved and artistically intricate pipework.
Time for the Polyp Score....Ladeez n'Gentlemen, the score for Mr. Shevlin is...
1.
Sampled to determine its severity. If good, no visit for 5 years. if not so good, visit in 2 years. Results in 2 weeks. Some diverticuloses also found. This is not uncommon. Apparently processed food is hard on the lower colon, hence the appearance of diverticulosis. The less diverticulosis there is, the less chance of one developing diverticulitis, which can be nasty.
And that, folks, was that. The procedure itself was a total non-event compared to the 24 preceding hours of glorious GI evacuation fun. I divested myself of my hospital scrubs, and marched out to go home and actually ingest some solid food.
I shall continue my motor racing conversation with Dr. Hackett in 2 weeks. We might also discuss polyps and diverticulosis along the way..one never knows.
UPDATE - I held a brief conversation about polyps with Dr. Hackett today. The polyp was hyperplastic with no chance of it becoming adenomatous (which is a precursor to developing cancer). Therefore...I do not need another colonoscopy for 5 years, unless I have any colon-related issues in the meantime. Mary was similarly clear, her polyps were also hyperplastic. The diverticuloses were minor, merely folds in the colon instead of full-blown pockets, and are expected if one is more than 50 years of age.
So, we then discussed MotoGP for a while...

So the day arrived for NFL teams to drop their active rosters to 53 players, and Tim Tebow was not retained by the New England Patriots.
As a 4 year player who has played around a season of games, Tebow was not eligible for the Patriots' practice squad, so the Patriots either had to keep him on the active roster or release him. The general consensus was that he had shown insufficient progress to give the Patriots a sound rationale to keep him on the roster as a third quarterback. Like many NFL teams, the Patriots tend to only carry two quarterbacks in the regular season.
Tebow survived the first round of cuts last Tuesday to 75 players, so it would be safe to assume that his overall roster ranking was less than #75, but greater than #53. Where in that range he would fit we will never know.
The question is now; what next for Tim Tebow? He passed through waivers today without anybody claiming him, so he is now a free agent. Since he had a minimum money 2 year contract with the Patriots, any team claiming him would not be committing to spending any more money than they would be spending if they hired him after he clears waivers, but the failure of any team to submit a waiver clam is not a good sign.
Right now, there are a number of experienced quarterbacks looking for work following the last roster contraction, all of whom would probably be considered ahead of Tim Tebow. The ranks of the suddenly unemployed include Brady Quinn, Vince Young, David Carr, Trent Edwards, John Skelton and Seneca Wallace, all of whom have significant experience as starting QBs in the league.
It is not likely that Tebow would be hired ahead of these guys. He is still a project. The challenge is that NFL rules do not allow him to be managed like a project. Any team hiring him has to put him on the active roster, using up a valuable roster spot. This is not likely to happen.
Right now, the only possible scenario for Tebow this season that could see him on an NFL team is injury to one of the Patriots quarterbacks (although it would not surprise me if the Patriots, who use a pocket passer offensive scheme) hired one of the aforementioned experienced QBs ahead of bringing Tim Tebow back.
The only other option is the CFL. There are precedents for NFL quarterbacks making it in Canada. Both Doug Flutie and Warren Moon went to the CFL after being cast out of the NFL, built their careers there, and then moved back to the NFL. However, if Tim Tebow wants to move to the CFL, he has bigger challenges than making it in the NFL. The CFL plays on a wider field, with a deeper end zone and different line-up rules, with only three downs. This makes accurate throwing beyond essential for a CFL quarterback. Based on his pre-season play this year in the NFL, Tim Tebow would have an uphill struggle to make a CFL team, simply because his deep throwing accuracy is still poor.
Right now, the odds are against Tim Tebow continuing as a professional football player.
UPDATE - Over the weekend the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets both shored up their precarious quarterback situations by hiring Seneca Wallace and Brady Quinn respectively. The Packers were being mentioned as a possible destination for Tebow. Not any more. The Buffalo Bills seem to be happy to roll with two new quarterbacks also.
UPDATE 2 - It is interesting that neither Bill Belichick or Robert Kraft would shut the door on Tim Tebow ever returning to the Patriots, when asked about that possibility yesterday. It is also worth noting that there is no quarterback on the Patriots' practice squad, and Tom Brady and Ryan Mallett are no mobile quarterbacks. The Patriots could sign Tebow back to the active roster at any time if they need a mobile read-option scout team quarterback for game planning.
A lot of players are signed to teams after week 1, to avoid clubs having to guarantee their salaries if they are vested veterans. Right now, it makes little sense for any team to sign Tim Tebow, unless they have a current quarterback availability crisis. We need to watch and assess the outcome of the Week 1 games. Circumstances could change next week.

A recent phenomenon in the USA has been the proliferation of law firms and other more shadowy organizations who specialize in forms of legal bullying based on the interpretation of copyright, defamation and libel law.
The stories fall into a general pattern. An internet user, often a blogger, writes a story about a subject or an experience with a person, corporation, professional or a tradesman, or downloads a file from some internet location. Within a short period of time, said person finds themselves subjected to a threatening-sounding letter from a law firm somewhere. The letter usually makes expansive claims of copyright infringement or defamation and libel, often so vague as to be difficult to even decipher. Invariably the letter demands that the recipient remove all traces of the story immediately, pay a sum of money etc. or else...and proceeds to create an image of punitive, unrelenting legal action about to crash down on the person's head. One can imagine a man in a Cockney accent muttering "nice little website you got there, be a real shame if something woz to happen to it..."
A significant amount of the legal noise being created by lawyers is based on publications on parody sites. As a number of court cases in the past have shown, parody sites enjoy a large measure of First Amendment protection. In additionh, the people or organizations being parodied usually meet the definition of "public figures", which raises the bar still further with respect to proving not only falsehood but also malice. However, that reality does not stop public figures suffering from Butthurt from attempting to use the law as a bludgeon to frighten parodists.
However, underlying reality is that defending a website or a blog posting or comment against a punitive barrage of threatened litigation is extremely expensive. The lawyers doing the threatening are using that reality as a cudgel to force the recipients of their threats to capitulate and remove their writings from public view. This is about the most obvious form of bullying imaginable.
Fortunately, an increasing percentage of story-tellers targeted in this way are, despite being frightened and scared by the barrage of portentious-sounding messages on headed notepaper, becoming more willing to resist the intimidation.
Ken White of Popehat, a certified First Amendment Badass lawyer if ever there was one, has developed what he terms The Popehat Signal (see example here) to try and rally help for bloggers and website storytellers threatened in this way.
The gold standard for copyright deception and legal thuggery is currently held by Prenda Law, an organization that is currently having to defend itself from angry judges and courts in several legal jurisdictions against allegations of deceit, chicanery and other malfeasance in the pursuit of copyright violation allegations. The story is too long and detailed to be discussed here, but this is a good summary of recent events, which should provide insight into how deep the pile of doo-doo is for that law firm right now.
Before Prenda Law began its activities in this area, the gold standard for copyright deception was held by a company named RightHaven, which aggressively attempted to enforce copyrights on newspaper articles, until it slowly became clear that it had no valid legal ownership of custodianship of those copyrights. After that revelation, the whole RightHaven business slowly unraveled until RightHaven was closed down via bankruptcy and asset seizure. It appears that Prenda Law either did not understand the history of RightHaven, or, like most people suffering from hubris, merely assumed that Bad Stuff is something that only happens to The Other Guy.
All manner of people who have suffered real or imagined butthurt are climbing aboard the defamation/copyright infringement bandwagon on a broader front, including medical professionals (and also including a fair number of quacks) who have suffered the appearance of bad reviews on online sites such as Yelp. Quite how these busy people think that expending energy on increasing the likelihood that people will see bad reviews of their services is a sound business tactic is a question that only they can answer.However, disappearing if things don't work out is always a valid option.
As this case makes clear, suing over a bad online review is not likely to yield a positive outcome, unless you are really keen to spend lots of money on lawyers, get your name all over the internet as a censorious nitwit, and get a lot more page views for your negative online reviews.
Ken has a simple rule that can be applied to many of the initial threatening letters - namely, that vagueness in legal threats is the hallmark of thuggery. Many of those initial letters from the lawyers make claims that are ludicrously over-broad, invalid or unsupportable by evidence. In short, the claims are ridiculous.
This makes ridicule an acceptable and effective form of response. Here is an example of the artful deployment of ridicule in a Pro Bono response by a law firm to a letter threatening action over a discussion of bank routing numbers. As the letter makes clear, in between a well-deserved ridiculing of the original letter, routing numbers are not copyrightable in any case, and Greg Thatcher's discussion certainly falls within the bounds of fair use.
UPDATE - As you can probably guess from reading the links, Ken's website does an excellent job of tracking some of the more egregious attempts by bullies to frighten and intimidate People Who Are Guilty Of Causing Them Butthurt.