The economy is in shambles, we're stuck in Iraq, inflation and gas prices seek to ruin us all. But White America slept just a little better last night knowing that O.J. Simpson has been convicted on all counts in his armed robbery trial. His defense was pulped by the prosecution and the Juice will be getting pasteurized. Yes, I've got a million bad orange juice puns.
There was no other way that this was going to end and we all knew it before the ESPN ticker had gotten the words to the other side of the screen. "The Passion of the Christ" had a less telegraphed ending. Gravity is more unpredictable. White folks had never let that 1994 acquittal go and there wasn't a white person in America who didn't believe that O.J. didn't belong behind bars, so the writing was on the wall once we saw that all-white jury. O.J. shouldn't be allowed to run free after making a mockery of the justice system. That right is solely the province of white people. So the storyline going into the courtroom was pretty much the same one that the WWF had written for the Ric Flair's rematch with "Macho Man" Randy Savage: "You did it once. Now, let's see you do it again!" If Vince McMahon had been the judge, the verdict wouldn't have been more obvious.
The sad part is that O.J. was stupid enough to allow himself to be put in this situation again. Doesn't matter than one of his accusers would testify that O.J. was set up. Like Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson forgot he was black in America, so he thought that he could walk around like everything was sweet and because he beat a murder rap, everything else was no big deal. He got off from the big one: Killing two white people. He probably tried shooting himself just to see if the bullets would bounce off.
He seemed to have forgotten how mad white people were and continue to be when it comes to the O.J. trial. I argued with a girl last year who wasn't even old enough to remember it and she firmly believed that he should be burning in Hell right now. They all say that it doesn't matter of O.J. is black; it's all about justice. Then, they defend the cops that shot Shawn Bell or think that the Jena 6 were getting what they deserved.
O.J., listen to me: White people don't like to see black people get equal treatment in this country. I don't care what they say: When they get off, the whole thing was simply a misunderstanding that needed investigating to uncover the facts. When your black ass gets off, it's a miscarriage of justice.
Playing golf all day as part of your solemn vow to "find the real killers" is one thing. I guess you wanted to make sure that country clubs across America were safe as part of your plans to keep America safe. Sure, it was funny watching white people's heads explode, but they couldn't really do anything so you should have just quit while you were ahead. Actually trying to commit more crimes is just plain stupid, because you're not Nino Brown and even if you were, he's still going to jail for tax evasion, despite paying all of the money back.
So enjoy the life in prison that they're clearly going to stick you with, Orenthal. You're not getting out, because after 14 years of trying, they've finally gotten you where they want you. And let this be a lesson to other black people who think they're going to get off from crimes. If Michael Vick wasn't the wake-up call to you, then this verdict should be. I thought that "Never Forget" was the slogan attached to 9/11, but it seems that they were really talking about O.J. Simpson.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Six Stages of Employee Discontent
- Surprise: You can’t believe that these people hired you! Lucky for you the stories from your old bosses never made it into your background check. Either that, or this company is really desperate for people right now. Either way, you’re just glad to be working. Sure, it’s not the greatest job and you might be able to make a dollar or two more somewhere else, but it’s okay, because you don’t plan on being here very long. Your resume is all over the place, you’re almost finished writing your book, “War in the Stars,” and your patents for the battery-powered vibrating condom are all ready to be filed. You’re on the verge of taking the world by the tail, or however that stupid saying goes.
- Denial: Eight months into it and you’re still working there. What the hell happened? All your plans to change jobs fell through and you’ve had to put up with the most ridiculous people and rule changes. Remember the meeting where they said you’d get written up for not separating your garbage? Even though the company seemed really cool and laid back when you got there, things have really started to test your patience. Like the gossip queen or the nosy girl or the gay guy who wants to suck you off every time you’re in the bathroom together. Yeah, you let him do it that once, but he’s really tight with the gossip queen and you’re afraid he could blackmail you. You’ve got to get of here. But for some reason, you keep taking everything that’s heaped upon you. Why? You’re not going anywhere and the company knows it. You still think you’re leaving, though. Your book and your patents are going to pay off. You just know it. And that’s why this one is called “denial.”
- Despair: “You know, God, if you strike me down right now, I promise I won’t be upset at all.” Those are the kinds of thoughts you’re beginning to have even before you open your eyes in the morning, because you hate going to work so much. “I think that 5 years in jail for bank robbery is an acceptable risk.” You also think that today could be the day you punch out the girl in the next cube who thinks she can sing. Your mind has begun wandering in this way because it’s starting to sink in that you’re going to be stuck working here for a while. After all, it turns out that you’re vibrating condom technology is neither safe nor enjoyable. And every publisher in your city says that your book is nothing more than a very uncreative retelling of “Star Wars,” but that movie is 31 years old. Who knew that they would notice? It seems like all of your plans are beginning to fall apart.
- Bargaining: Everyone seems to be leaving and getting new jobs that pay better with less stress. Everyone except you, that is. This is the stage where you start begging everyone you know to pass along your resume. This is the stage where you ask everyone to “hook me up!” And if you’re desperate enough, this is the stage where you start to consider the sale of some of your morals in exchange for job leads. You’ll catch yourself saying things like, “In my mouth? Alright, but only if you get me on where you work,” or “I’ll let you put it in my ass for three minutes if you just pass my resume along, Roger.” Yes, you want to leave so bad that suddenly having to take a shot in the ass is no longer a deal-breaker. Ultimately, these things never work, because the fun jobs where they have parties every Friday and ride to work on rainbow clouds are looking for better qualified people than you.
- Defeat: In this stage, you’re not brave enough to quit, but you’re actively trying to get fired. If you worked at Burger King, it’s the stage where you start getting extremely honest with the customers. You might tell one of them, “I’m gonna spit in your Whopper because your belt and shoes don’t match.” If you worked in a clothing store, you might tell the fatty browsing in the petite section that she hasn’t run enough laps to even accidently glance at size 4 jeans yet. You might tell her she so big that she’s not even allowed to buy them for someone else. And really, what do you have to lose? You hate your job. You’re at the point where you’ll sit in the parking lot and stare at the building before you come inside. Don’t act like you’ve never done it. But what else can you do? It’s a Bush economy and jobs aren’t really out there like they once were.
- Acceptance: This is the stage where you get used to the idea that you’re stuck working this job because you didn’t listen to your mother and go to class instead of having that ninth shot of vodka off of that girl’s stomach. You feel no need in getting better at your job than you already are, yet you don’t worry about getting fired, because you’re working just hard enough to keep the red Staples box off of your desk. You no longer feel highs, nor lows, you believe that having a phone at your desk makes you somewhat important, and your proudest achievements include your streak of consecutive days coming to work drunk without arousing suspicion. Instead of filling your days with regrets about how you probably should have made that girl go home so you could put in that last ditch effort to write your senior thesis the night before it was due, your mind now tries to come up with reasons why you’re better off here than working for a successful company that pays well. You now defend the company decisions, explaining to your co-workers that we don’t need to have Christmas off. You’ve now become the kind of employee that everyone hates. Enjoy spending the next 30 years of your life stubbornly clinging to this unchanging, tedious, hourly wage job.
The Art and Zen of Naming Wrestlers
Paul Heyman made Albert relevant simply by changing his name to “A-Train.” Before that, he was just Albert: A wrestler so boring, he couldn’t draw heat if you threw gasoline and matches at him while he was sleeping inside of a jet engine. But all Heyman did was change his name, give him a better entrance, and the possibilities became endless. Everything else about him was exactly the same, but he SOUNDED more interesting. Who wouldn’t want to watch a wrestler named “A-Train?” It’s like the difference between a wrestler named
It’s the reason why they stopped calling Triple H, “Hunter Hearst Helmsley.” And it’s the reason why some wrestlers simply won’t stand a chance with the names they’re saddled with. I know; it’s not Vince’s fault that the angels delivered Gene Snitsky’s unborn soul to parents who would actually name him “Gene Snitsky.” But it is Vince’s fault that he looked at this guy and said, “Look, the fact that your ancestors were cursed by phonetics back in the old country shouldn’t stand in the way of my ability to exploit you. Let’s call you something else.” Snitsky’s not a bad wrestler, just a poorly named one. And some things just can’t be overcome.
So knowing this, it baffles the mind why The E insists on calling former NWA World Champion Ron “The Truth” Killings by the ridiculous “R-Truth.” I guess Vince took it personal that Killings found some success outside of his watch and not when he was called the equally ridiculous “K-Kwik” or “K-Krush.” This also baffles me because John Cena and Batista use their extremely bland real names when they could have kept on being “Prototype” and “Leviathan.”
What causes the need for these name changes? Why was “Wildcat” Chris Harris changed to “Braden Walker?” Why was Monty Brown changed to “Marcus Cor Von?” Are their names changed just because they came from TNA? Because in my mind, letting viewers know that Harris was a champion somewhere else or that Monty Brown has won the Super Bowl before might add some credibility to their debuting wrestlers. Otherwise, fans will notice how out of shape they look.
Not only that, what causes them to give wrestlers really bad names? Why make it harder for Kenny “Dykstra” or “Dolph Ziegler” than it has to be? The second I hear a guy come out named “Dolph Ziegler,” I’m instantly reminded why I stopped watching this crap: It’s really stupid. The guy could be Shawn Michaels mixed with Eddie Guerrero and Jesus, but when I hear “Dolph Ziegler,” I automatically think, “This guy never had a chance.
It would be one thing if they were changing these guys’ names to something that sounds good, but they’re giving them names that sound like they should be looking up at the lights at the end of the match. If you’re in charge of coming up with names for people and the best you can do is say, “I’m gonna name this guy after my favorite baseball player and send him out there,” we need to hook up after I get done writing this, because I know you give the bomb head.
Could you imagine if Ric Flair was sent out as “Ricky Fleihr,” because no one had the imagination to actually call him “Ric Flair,” or if it was “Mikey Higginbottom” who debuted alongside Marty Jannetty instead of “Shawn Michaels?” What about “Terry Gene Bollea?” “Sid Eudy?” Or even “Mick Foley?” Of course you can’t imagine it, because even if this fantasy, you know the guy wouldn’t have stuck around long enough for you to remember who he was. If “Larry Pfohl” had shown up in the NWA, I would have been too busy tripping over the strange combination of consonants to notice his lack of wrestling ability.
Point being, it’s all about sounding like a star when you name a wrestler. “Shawn Michaels” sounds like he should be famous for something, be it pro wrestling or drilling your favorite female porn stars. “Mike Higginbottom” sounds lke he works at a used car lot. No offense, Shawn.
Of course, just because a guy has a snappy sounding name doesn’t mean he’s automatically going to be successful, because David Flair went down in flames. But it helps for his name to make him sound like he’s not a loser to someone who hasn’t seen you yet. And just because WCW got lucky with “GOLDBERG” doesn’t mean that sticking with “LASHLEY” was the right move.
Everyone’s can’t be blessed with an ass-kicker’s name, like “Brock Lesnar,” so for every wrestler whose name really is “Garrison” or “Gregory,” The E should help them out by not making them face the world with those names, when they could be calling them “Lance” or “Hurricane.” But even in trying to help these guys’ careers by giving an eye-catching name, The E should still try to steer clear of making the wrestler in question wish he had used his real name instead.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Who asked you anyway, Matt Damon?
Matt Damon was in the news this week because he was pointing out certain problems that he has with the Sarah Palin nomination. Even though the video doesn't show it, I know he was asked about it before he started talking about it, because unless you're famous for talking ad nauseum, like Kevin Smith, you generally aren't just going to volunteer your personal thoughts on politics. And he didn't call a press conference to say to the world, "Sarah Palin's nomination is like a bad Disney movie. And her feet smell." No, nothing like that. He was asked a question and he answered it.
So now, Fox News and MSNBC are mad at Matty Damon and rightfully so, because who is Matty Damon to get on TV and answer questions asked of him about things outside the realm of key grips and personal assistants to the associate producer? Matty Damon is JUST AN ACTOR, not a pundit or a politician, so what could he possibly know about politics? What could he possibly bring to the civilized discourse that we have here in the right-wing media? Why, I think that all actors should just do their damn jobs and keep making movies! They all just need to keep the vaseline on their teeth and read from the script, because the only meaningful things that actors have ever said was prepared for them by a scriptwriter!
Something needs to be done about this and we need to follow the lead of the conservative media at Fox News and MSNBC in discounting the uninformed opinions of these celebrities. So next time an actor is on TV, talking about something that doesn't have to do with his next movie, we need to take action against them. Let's not coddle them by hearing them out, like CNN does. We need to rise up against these celebrities that believe that they have thoughts and opinions that need to be listened to or considered based on their own merit. What has Fred Thompson, Charlton Heston, Ben Stein, or Arnold Schwarzeneggar ever said that we needed to hear, anyway?
I'll tell you what they didn't say: "I am a talented actor." Not one a one of them.
The conversative media kills me because, even though he's bringing up valid points about Sarah Palin (he wants to know if she's going to start banning books as Vice-President, which she has apparently tried to do before), because he's not on their side, NOW he's just an actor. But when Charlton Heston wants to become spokesman of the NRA, he's a respected voice in the community. When Ben Stein wants creationism taught in schools, we need to consider his words in fairness. You can't pick and choose, Fox News and MSNBC, because if that's the case, Ronald Reagan was a C-level actor who should have never been heard from. If Ronald Reagan can get a glowing testimonial about how he dismantled the Soviet Union and punched down the Berlin Wall, despite his osteoporosis, in every history book in America, then I guess Kathy Griffin should be starting her Presidential Campaign from the D-List sometime soon.
Having Matt Damon or even Kathy Griffin comment on politics can't damage the political discourse anymore than Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly already have, and they blatantly try to destroy it on a day-to-day basis. At least Matt Damon will just speak his piece and go do whatever it is that Matt Damon does all day. Bill O'Reilly won't go away, no matter how badly I pray that a freight train will get lost and find its way through his studio during a live broadcast. Matt Damon's comments were clearly well thought out and it's not like he just got on TV and embarrassed himself, like the time Bill O'Reilly acted surprised that the black restaurant he had been to wasn't owned and run by poo-flinging monkeys.
Personally, I'd like to see Matt Damon's questions answered, because knowing if Vice-President Palin will ban books or if she believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old will go a long way towards me deciding whether or not I'm going to publicly respect her intelligence. Instead of trying to shoot holes in Matt Damon's credentials, why not just act like adults and say, "i disagree with his comments," and move on? Because if you want to go toe-to-toe on who deserves the right to speak, Rush Limbaugh's intellectual output includes mocking Michael J. Fox's bout with Parkinson's disease, while Matt Damon's includes not saying anything that fucking stupid.
So now, Fox News and MSNBC are mad at Matty Damon and rightfully so, because who is Matty Damon to get on TV and answer questions asked of him about things outside the realm of key grips and personal assistants to the associate producer? Matty Damon is JUST AN ACTOR, not a pundit or a politician, so what could he possibly know about politics? What could he possibly bring to the civilized discourse that we have here in the right-wing media? Why, I think that all actors should just do their damn jobs and keep making movies! They all just need to keep the vaseline on their teeth and read from the script, because the only meaningful things that actors have ever said was prepared for them by a scriptwriter!
Something needs to be done about this and we need to follow the lead of the conservative media at Fox News and MSNBC in discounting the uninformed opinions of these celebrities. So next time an actor is on TV, talking about something that doesn't have to do with his next movie, we need to take action against them. Let's not coddle them by hearing them out, like CNN does. We need to rise up against these celebrities that believe that they have thoughts and opinions that need to be listened to or considered based on their own merit. What has Fred Thompson, Charlton Heston, Ben Stein, or Arnold Schwarzeneggar ever said that we needed to hear, anyway?
I'll tell you what they didn't say: "I am a talented actor." Not one a one of them.
The conversative media kills me because, even though he's bringing up valid points about Sarah Palin (he wants to know if she's going to start banning books as Vice-President, which she has apparently tried to do before), because he's not on their side, NOW he's just an actor. But when Charlton Heston wants to become spokesman of the NRA, he's a respected voice in the community. When Ben Stein wants creationism taught in schools, we need to consider his words in fairness. You can't pick and choose, Fox News and MSNBC, because if that's the case, Ronald Reagan was a C-level actor who should have never been heard from. If Ronald Reagan can get a glowing testimonial about how he dismantled the Soviet Union and punched down the Berlin Wall, despite his osteoporosis, in every history book in America, then I guess Kathy Griffin should be starting her Presidential Campaign from the D-List sometime soon.
Having Matt Damon or even Kathy Griffin comment on politics can't damage the political discourse anymore than Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly already have, and they blatantly try to destroy it on a day-to-day basis. At least Matt Damon will just speak his piece and go do whatever it is that Matt Damon does all day. Bill O'Reilly won't go away, no matter how badly I pray that a freight train will get lost and find its way through his studio during a live broadcast. Matt Damon's comments were clearly well thought out and it's not like he just got on TV and embarrassed himself, like the time Bill O'Reilly acted surprised that the black restaurant he had been to wasn't owned and run by poo-flinging monkeys.
Personally, I'd like to see Matt Damon's questions answered, because knowing if Vice-President Palin will ban books or if she believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old will go a long way towards me deciding whether or not I'm going to publicly respect her intelligence. Instead of trying to shoot holes in Matt Damon's credentials, why not just act like adults and say, "i disagree with his comments," and move on? Because if you want to go toe-to-toe on who deserves the right to speak, Rush Limbaugh's intellectual output includes mocking Michael J. Fox's bout with Parkinson's disease, while Matt Damon's includes not saying anything that fucking stupid.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
In defense of....Kanye West?
The paparazzi are some of the scummiest people on the earth, and I feel comfortable saying that having never met one. I don't know anyone who has ever said a positive word about them other than other paparazzi, which is kind of like getting a good character reference from the Devil. They make a living bothering famous people and invading their privacy, which takes balls, but it takes even bigger balls to actually tell the public that the famous person in question was wrong for shooting at them, even though this asshole was standing in their bushes trying to snap pictures of them on the toilet. The paparazzi deserve no sympathy from anyone, at anytime, for anything.
Kanye West is a spoiled child. Even though he can legally drink and vote, he still thinks it's okay for him to throw temper tantrums when things don't go his way. He bitches when his videos don't win awards because he spent a million dollars on them. He bitches when MTV doesn't let him perform on the main stage at the VMAs. He bitches when he's told that he can't shoot because he doesn't have a permit, which in truth, was a prank, but he didn't know that when he ran off from the police with his film stock. All Kanye West does is bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, which isn't a good look at 31 years old. It's not even a good look in fourth grade. But much like the asinine fashion statement of wearing two Polo shirts on top of each other, he has made the ludicrous seem normal, even acceptable. I don't like Kanye West on a personal level and I've never even met him.
So who's side do you think I'll take when two of my least favorite entities on Earth run headlong into each other?
For the first time ever, I think Kanye West made the right move when he broke that fucker's camera and for the first time ever, I'm glad TMZ got something on film, because I wanted to personally witness this loon using his whiny-bitch powers for good instead of evil. Sure, Kanye West got arrested for this, but it was well worth it.
When you run up on someone in the airport, the last thing they want to do is get filmed. The last thing they want is to answer your stupid ass questions. Now, many celebrities will be nice and sign an autograph or take a picture with you, but they want nothing to do with the paparazzi even when they're in a good mood. So you can imagine how they'll treat the paparazzi when they're in one of the most stress inducing places on the planet.
No one wants to be at the airport. The common thread between every single person in the airport, no matter who they are, is that they want to leave. Preferably without anything exploding. Everyone except the paparazzi, because even though the video doesn't show it, I'm sure they said something to make Kanye flip out and try to make him look like he's crazy (which he is), because that's their job. They'll edit out their part in Kanye's meltdown and air it on their terrible fucking show, that shows how simple and not clever they are. And to the people who don't know about the paparazzi, Kanye will be a crazy black man (which he is). But to the rest of us who know better, Kanye West will be doing something that we all wish more celebrities would do: Shove those goddamn cameras up their asses. Even though he got arrested for it, for one day, Kanye West was my hero.
What the hell am I saying?
The video of Kanye West defending America's freedoms can be found here. That's it. Kanye needs to drive his car into an orphanage or something, so I can stop being on his side. Fuck up again, Kanye!
Kanye West is a spoiled child. Even though he can legally drink and vote, he still thinks it's okay for him to throw temper tantrums when things don't go his way. He bitches when his videos don't win awards because he spent a million dollars on them. He bitches when MTV doesn't let him perform on the main stage at the VMAs. He bitches when he's told that he can't shoot because he doesn't have a permit, which in truth, was a prank, but he didn't know that when he ran off from the police with his film stock. All Kanye West does is bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, which isn't a good look at 31 years old. It's not even a good look in fourth grade. But much like the asinine fashion statement of wearing two Polo shirts on top of each other, he has made the ludicrous seem normal, even acceptable. I don't like Kanye West on a personal level and I've never even met him.
So who's side do you think I'll take when two of my least favorite entities on Earth run headlong into each other?
For the first time ever, I think Kanye West made the right move when he broke that fucker's camera and for the first time ever, I'm glad TMZ got something on film, because I wanted to personally witness this loon using his whiny-bitch powers for good instead of evil. Sure, Kanye West got arrested for this, but it was well worth it.
When you run up on someone in the airport, the last thing they want to do is get filmed. The last thing they want is to answer your stupid ass questions. Now, many celebrities will be nice and sign an autograph or take a picture with you, but they want nothing to do with the paparazzi even when they're in a good mood. So you can imagine how they'll treat the paparazzi when they're in one of the most stress inducing places on the planet.
No one wants to be at the airport. The common thread between every single person in the airport, no matter who they are, is that they want to leave. Preferably without anything exploding. Everyone except the paparazzi, because even though the video doesn't show it, I'm sure they said something to make Kanye flip out and try to make him look like he's crazy (which he is), because that's their job. They'll edit out their part in Kanye's meltdown and air it on their terrible fucking show, that shows how simple and not clever they are. And to the people who don't know about the paparazzi, Kanye will be a crazy black man (which he is). But to the rest of us who know better, Kanye West will be doing something that we all wish more celebrities would do: Shove those goddamn cameras up their asses. Even though he got arrested for it, for one day, Kanye West was my hero.
What the hell am I saying?
The video of Kanye West defending America's freedoms can be found here. That's it. Kanye needs to drive his car into an orphanage or something, so I can stop being on his side. Fuck up again, Kanye!
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Why TNA Continues to Fail
The Jarretts' TNA Wrestling promotion has been on Spike TV since 2005. It is arguably the centerpiece of the SpikeTV lineup, as wrestling shows tend to be when there's nothing else worth mentioning on the network. Despite the promotion's growing popularity, it can't seem to really get over the hump as far as ratings are concerned. Now, I can't say much about the actual product, but I can say a quite a bit about the retarded network they're on. From what I do know about TNA's actual show, there's no reason why they shouldn't consistently pull down higher ratings than they do. So why is TNA still pulling 1.0's, despite having a roster of extremely popular wrestlers?
Impact airs on Thursday Nights.
Sure, let's put our minor-league wrestling show on the most stacked night of the week. Listen, if I was a TV executive, I wouldn't put a show on Thursday nights even if it had the backing of a real network. That's the night that's only for the best of the best, so please don't think that people are gonna stop watching "ER" to watch a show that's three steps away from the indys. It's not 1999 anymore and people aren't dying for more wrestling. The reason why it worked for Smackdown is because A:) Everyone knew the WWF. B:) Wrestling was peaking at the time. C:) They had the backing of a major network (in comparison to SpikeTV, UPN was major). D:) Stone Cold and The Rock. Point being, Thursday is a brutal night. Hell, WCW Thunder was wholly owned by the company that ran the network it was on, and it only lasted a year and some change on Thursdays.
SpikeTV won't promote the show outside of Impact.
This one is the killer, and this one is the reason why Spike had an open slot for wrestling to begin with. When Raw came to TNN back in 2000, it was by far the highest rated show on cable. It was pulling 6's and 7's in a format that's doing well to get 4's. And from the minute it went to TNN, the ratings dropped by two points and stayed there. Now, sure, by the time they left TNN, the show was complete crap, but at the time, it was still hot. WWF Superstars were still seen everywhere and the Monday Night Wars were still going on. Wrestling was still must-see-TV. So what happened to those two ratings points? Less people had TNN than USA, sure, but those who did barely knew that Raw was even on TNN.
I don't know where TNN learned how to promote, but clearly it wasn't from people who ran good networks, because the only time a commercial for Raw was ever seen by these eyes was DURING Raw, which is really, really retarded. Why are you going to promote the show that they're already watching? If this had been NBC, you would have seen commercials during every show they had, which is what they do for shows they expect to be big. They call that "promotion," back in the old country. For instance, how many times a day do you see a commercial for "My Own Worst Enemy?" I'll bet that everyone knows that Christian Slater has a show coming out.
But TNN didn't do that for Raw, TNN didn't do that for ECW before it, and SpikeTV isn't doing that for Impact. When Raw was peaking on USA, you saw commercials for it everywhere and you saw their wrestlers everywhere. TNA Wrestlers aren't even featured outside their own show. Hell, even Sci-Fi saw the wisdom in having CM Punk on that ghost show. Is it helping? I don't know, because, fuck fake ECW. But at least they're trying.
Thing is, if the biggest promotion on the planet was losing viewers, with their biggest stars, DURING THEIR PEAK, on this network, what chance does an fledgling promotion like TNA have?
Spike TV is listed at the end of everyone's channel run.
This might not be true, but i know everywhere I've seen SpikeTV, it's always channel 78 or something like that, which basically assures that no one will EVER see it while channel surfing. I don't know about anyone else, but my finger gets tired somewhere around ESPN (46, 47). I know that everything after that is Lifetime, Oxygen, and crap like that, so I skip straight to Comedy Central (68) and then back to the beginning. I honestly keep forgetting that I even have SpikeTV.
Bottom line, I don't think TNA will ever succeed on SpikeTV, because they just don't care. Clearly, through its evolution from The Nashville Network to The National Network (the fuck does that even mean?) to SpikeTV, they've still got the same good ol' boy, small time mentality that has kept them a second rate network all along. TNA isn't the only thing suffering over there. "Blade" was getting some positive reviews, and it still got cancelled. I only knew about "Afro Samurai," because I saw it in "Wizard," and that show stars Samuel L. Jackson. Most people will watch anything that man is in ("Shaft," by God. "Shaft."), yet no one watches that show.
So moving TNA to Monday nights won't help, because no one's going to know that they're on Monday nights. They've already got some of the biggest names in the business and that's not helping. They're branching out, touring, got video games on the way...what more can TNA do? The only thing that hasn't changed is the way SpikeTV does things. So if TNA wants to finally become one of the big boys, they're going to have to get off of Thursday nights on a network not named SpikeTV. You'll see how right I am when Smackdown starts outperforming Impact on MyNetwork TV.
Impact airs on Thursday Nights.
Sure, let's put our minor-league wrestling show on the most stacked night of the week. Listen, if I was a TV executive, I wouldn't put a show on Thursday nights even if it had the backing of a real network. That's the night that's only for the best of the best, so please don't think that people are gonna stop watching "ER" to watch a show that's three steps away from the indys. It's not 1999 anymore and people aren't dying for more wrestling. The reason why it worked for Smackdown is because A:) Everyone knew the WWF. B:) Wrestling was peaking at the time. C:) They had the backing of a major network (in comparison to SpikeTV, UPN was major). D:) Stone Cold and The Rock. Point being, Thursday is a brutal night. Hell, WCW Thunder was wholly owned by the company that ran the network it was on, and it only lasted a year and some change on Thursdays.
SpikeTV won't promote the show outside of Impact.
This one is the killer, and this one is the reason why Spike had an open slot for wrestling to begin with. When Raw came to TNN back in 2000, it was by far the highest rated show on cable. It was pulling 6's and 7's in a format that's doing well to get 4's. And from the minute it went to TNN, the ratings dropped by two points and stayed there. Now, sure, by the time they left TNN, the show was complete crap, but at the time, it was still hot. WWF Superstars were still seen everywhere and the Monday Night Wars were still going on. Wrestling was still must-see-TV. So what happened to those two ratings points? Less people had TNN than USA, sure, but those who did barely knew that Raw was even on TNN.
I don't know where TNN learned how to promote, but clearly it wasn't from people who ran good networks, because the only time a commercial for Raw was ever seen by these eyes was DURING Raw, which is really, really retarded. Why are you going to promote the show that they're already watching? If this had been NBC, you would have seen commercials during every show they had, which is what they do for shows they expect to be big. They call that "promotion," back in the old country. For instance, how many times a day do you see a commercial for "My Own Worst Enemy?" I'll bet that everyone knows that Christian Slater has a show coming out.
But TNN didn't do that for Raw, TNN didn't do that for ECW before it, and SpikeTV isn't doing that for Impact. When Raw was peaking on USA, you saw commercials for it everywhere and you saw their wrestlers everywhere. TNA Wrestlers aren't even featured outside their own show. Hell, even Sci-Fi saw the wisdom in having CM Punk on that ghost show. Is it helping? I don't know, because, fuck fake ECW. But at least they're trying.
Thing is, if the biggest promotion on the planet was losing viewers, with their biggest stars, DURING THEIR PEAK, on this network, what chance does an fledgling promotion like TNA have?
Spike TV is listed at the end of everyone's channel run.
This might not be true, but i know everywhere I've seen SpikeTV, it's always channel 78 or something like that, which basically assures that no one will EVER see it while channel surfing. I don't know about anyone else, but my finger gets tired somewhere around ESPN (46, 47). I know that everything after that is Lifetime, Oxygen, and crap like that, so I skip straight to Comedy Central (68) and then back to the beginning. I honestly keep forgetting that I even have SpikeTV.
Bottom line, I don't think TNA will ever succeed on SpikeTV, because they just don't care. Clearly, through its evolution from The Nashville Network to The National Network (the fuck does that even mean?) to SpikeTV, they've still got the same good ol' boy, small time mentality that has kept them a second rate network all along. TNA isn't the only thing suffering over there. "Blade" was getting some positive reviews, and it still got cancelled. I only knew about "Afro Samurai," because I saw it in "Wizard," and that show stars Samuel L. Jackson. Most people will watch anything that man is in ("Shaft," by God. "Shaft."), yet no one watches that show.
So moving TNA to Monday nights won't help, because no one's going to know that they're on Monday nights. They've already got some of the biggest names in the business and that's not helping. They're branching out, touring, got video games on the way...what more can TNA do? The only thing that hasn't changed is the way SpikeTV does things. So if TNA wants to finally become one of the big boys, they're going to have to get off of Thursday nights on a network not named SpikeTV. You'll see how right I am when Smackdown starts outperforming Impact on MyNetwork TV.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Modern Parenting Kills Human Civilization
I was sitting in traffic the other morning, waiting for the school bus in the opposite lane to finish picking up these kids and get the hell out of the way. The bus was picking them up in front of their house. Finally, after an eternity of waiting for these simple ass kids to find a seat, the lights shut off and the bus started rolling again...for about 10 feet, before the lights came back on and picked up the kids who lived DIRECTLY NEXT DOOR.
Now, I'm not expert on kids, other than having been a child before and having known lots of people who are or have been children, so I can say that these kids, be they six or even as low as four, could have handled walking to the neighbor's house so they could reduce the number of bus stops from "absolutely unnecessary" to one. I don't know what kind of world these kids' parents think we live in, but I'm pretty sure that there's not a mine field or a botched drug deal happening in between their houses that they don't know about. If there was, I'd like to think that these kids would have been smart enough not to go over there.
See, it's bad enough that kids are getting picked up in front of their houses at all. Sure, this was a busy street, so I'll cut them some slack, but why can't all the kids on that side of the street meet in front of one kid's house? At the very least, these kids will learn a little respect for speeding cars. Now, if they learn this lesson, that's good. They'll have put the intelligence of American children back where it was 20 years ago. If they don't learn this messon, they're probably Rain Man and need those special drugs to keep them from acting out in public. You should know which one you have on your hands one or two times into this experience.
Since I was once a kid who's never been hit by a car, I think that makes me qualified to speak on the subject of what kids can and can't handle. When I was six years old, I was crossing five lane highways, so I don't understand why these kids couldn't be trusted to walk an extra 20 feet by themselves. If anything, letting kids experience a little danger is a good deterrent to the other kids. If they see one kid get hit by an 18-wheeler or mauled by a pitbull, they all fall in line. You won't even have to wait for the nightmares to stop before your problems with them playing chicken in the street or trying to take food from the neighbor's Doberman are solved. In my case, it only took one look at Bobby Joe's half-eaten rib cage before I learned that no one should own a dog hand-crafted by Satan himself and one look at the hole in O.J. Simpkins' leg where his bone broke through killed the discussion on whether or not I'd be following him off the roof.
Kids are a lot like dogs, in that dogs experience what's safe and what isn't safe by smelling it. Kids have a similar method, except they eat it or get hit by hit. If they throw it up or it leaves a pop knot on their head, they know not to try it again. And today's overly sensitive parents are taking these valuable teaching tools away from their kids. Time was, when a boy reached a certain age, his father would leave him in the woods just as the bears were waking up from hibernation. The distraught mother understood that if the boy lived, he would be a man when he hobbled back to the homestead. It's the same thing we should be doing with our kids now, except instead of facing down a bear, we should be forcing our kids to walk to the damn neighbor's house to catch the bus instead of making the bus hold up traffic for 15 minutes because you can't bear to watch your kid walk an extra 20 feet without having a nervous breakdown.
I really don't see how holding your kid's hand through everything that can possibly happen is going to help their development. Letting them walk down the street usassisted will do wonders for their realization that they're not indestructible. In their mind, they might be indestructible, but testing their theories on that subject suddenly isn't high on their list of priorities. The second degree burns on their palms will be a not-so-subtle reminder that playing in front of the oven isn't a good idea. From letting them play too close to the ant hill in the back yard to the possibility that they were almost kidnapped, these are the things that shape a kid and keep them from doing even stupider things when they get older, like stapling their nuts to their legs for money.
Of course, I'm not saying that all kids should fend for themselves as soon as they could walk, because that can only lead to an Time Magazine piece on the epidemic of kids killed by sticking forks into the electrical socket. The kids can't be blamed for that because it's not common knowledge ammonia burns, fresh out of the womb. Kids do need guidance from their parents, but these is such a thing as smothering your child. They need to learn to solve problems on their own and the only way to do that is by screwing up. Screwing up (or skinning my knees down to the white meat) is what ended a potentially disasterous skateboarding career before I could do some real damage to myself. If my parents were like today's parents, I would still believe that a fat black kid could compete at the X Games without having a YouTube-level incident. But thanks to my parents being at work when I tried skating, my unbroken ankles and I will never know if that's true.
Essentially, hurting myself brought my dreams that I could do anything crashing back down to earth, leaving the skin from my knees on that fresh asphalt. I spent the next eight years playing Nintendo.
Just imagine if birds believed in modern parenting techniques. Instead of throwing their kids out of the nest, whether they've picked up this flying business or not, birds would have to start driving bird cars, because they were too afraid that their kids wouldn't learn to fly before they hit the ground. See, the bird's method of teaching is a little harsh, but it has to be done: Learn on the way down or die trying. The bird is one of nature's stupidest animals and it's got parenting figured out. Their theories on pre-chewed food keep their kids from losing sleep over all those punk sanitation concerns. We don't need to go that far, but we should look at substituting "letting our kids walk to the bus stop" for "pushing our kids out of a three story window," and we're right back to cementing our claim to be on top of the food chain. As it stands right now, we're in danger of overtaking the goldfish on the list of animals with the least amount of balls.
Now, I'm not expert on kids, other than having been a child before and having known lots of people who are or have been children, so I can say that these kids, be they six or even as low as four, could have handled walking to the neighbor's house so they could reduce the number of bus stops from "absolutely unnecessary" to one. I don't know what kind of world these kids' parents think we live in, but I'm pretty sure that there's not a mine field or a botched drug deal happening in between their houses that they don't know about. If there was, I'd like to think that these kids would have been smart enough not to go over there.
See, it's bad enough that kids are getting picked up in front of their houses at all. Sure, this was a busy street, so I'll cut them some slack, but why can't all the kids on that side of the street meet in front of one kid's house? At the very least, these kids will learn a little respect for speeding cars. Now, if they learn this lesson, that's good. They'll have put the intelligence of American children back where it was 20 years ago. If they don't learn this messon, they're probably Rain Man and need those special drugs to keep them from acting out in public. You should know which one you have on your hands one or two times into this experience.
Since I was once a kid who's never been hit by a car, I think that makes me qualified to speak on the subject of what kids can and can't handle. When I was six years old, I was crossing five lane highways, so I don't understand why these kids couldn't be trusted to walk an extra 20 feet by themselves. If anything, letting kids experience a little danger is a good deterrent to the other kids. If they see one kid get hit by an 18-wheeler or mauled by a pitbull, they all fall in line. You won't even have to wait for the nightmares to stop before your problems with them playing chicken in the street or trying to take food from the neighbor's Doberman are solved. In my case, it only took one look at Bobby Joe's half-eaten rib cage before I learned that no one should own a dog hand-crafted by Satan himself and one look at the hole in O.J. Simpkins' leg where his bone broke through killed the discussion on whether or not I'd be following him off the roof.
Kids are a lot like dogs, in that dogs experience what's safe and what isn't safe by smelling it. Kids have a similar method, except they eat it or get hit by hit. If they throw it up or it leaves a pop knot on their head, they know not to try it again. And today's overly sensitive parents are taking these valuable teaching tools away from their kids. Time was, when a boy reached a certain age, his father would leave him in the woods just as the bears were waking up from hibernation. The distraught mother understood that if the boy lived, he would be a man when he hobbled back to the homestead. It's the same thing we should be doing with our kids now, except instead of facing down a bear, we should be forcing our kids to walk to the damn neighbor's house to catch the bus instead of making the bus hold up traffic for 15 minutes because you can't bear to watch your kid walk an extra 20 feet without having a nervous breakdown.
I really don't see how holding your kid's hand through everything that can possibly happen is going to help their development. Letting them walk down the street usassisted will do wonders for their realization that they're not indestructible. In their mind, they might be indestructible, but testing their theories on that subject suddenly isn't high on their list of priorities. The second degree burns on their palms will be a not-so-subtle reminder that playing in front of the oven isn't a good idea. From letting them play too close to the ant hill in the back yard to the possibility that they were almost kidnapped, these are the things that shape a kid and keep them from doing even stupider things when they get older, like stapling their nuts to their legs for money.
Of course, I'm not saying that all kids should fend for themselves as soon as they could walk, because that can only lead to an Time Magazine piece on the epidemic of kids killed by sticking forks into the electrical socket. The kids can't be blamed for that because it's not common knowledge ammonia burns, fresh out of the womb. Kids do need guidance from their parents, but these is such a thing as smothering your child. They need to learn to solve problems on their own and the only way to do that is by screwing up. Screwing up (or skinning my knees down to the white meat) is what ended a potentially disasterous skateboarding career before I could do some real damage to myself. If my parents were like today's parents, I would still believe that a fat black kid could compete at the X Games without having a YouTube-level incident. But thanks to my parents being at work when I tried skating, my unbroken ankles and I will never know if that's true.
Essentially, hurting myself brought my dreams that I could do anything crashing back down to earth, leaving the skin from my knees on that fresh asphalt. I spent the next eight years playing Nintendo.
Just imagine if birds believed in modern parenting techniques. Instead of throwing their kids out of the nest, whether they've picked up this flying business or not, birds would have to start driving bird cars, because they were too afraid that their kids wouldn't learn to fly before they hit the ground. See, the bird's method of teaching is a little harsh, but it has to be done: Learn on the way down or die trying. The bird is one of nature's stupidest animals and it's got parenting figured out. Their theories on pre-chewed food keep their kids from losing sleep over all those punk sanitation concerns. We don't need to go that far, but we should look at substituting "letting our kids walk to the bus stop" for "pushing our kids out of a three story window," and we're right back to cementing our claim to be on top of the food chain. As it stands right now, we're in danger of overtaking the goldfish on the list of animals with the least amount of balls.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Idiocy Embargo of Clayton County
If I tell you I want you to do a list of nine things or I'm gonna break your legs, logic would dictate that you get all nine things done and probably seven more things that aren't even on the list. But the Clayton County school board thinks that they can do three things, half-ass it on five, and flat out ignore the first and easiest one. It shouldn't even be a surprise that they lost their accreditation today. And for all their big talk, they actually failed eight out of nine mandates set by SACS, including firing themselves, which even a retard can manage without supervision.
Look, if someone told me that my job as a school board member was so bad that the district was going to lose its accreditation if I didn't quit, I'd have to finish cleaning out my desk from the parking lot because I'd be out the door so fast. That's pretty embarrassing, but clearly this wasn't the career choice that God had in mind for me. There's nothing wrong with telling the world, "Hey, I'm really fucking this up." What if Noah was building the Ark wrong but wouldn't quit, then made everybody get on whatever haphazard deathtrap his drunken little hands could conjure up? Fortunately for civilization, God spake unto Noah, "Dude, stop. I'll show you how to build it."
And there were people trying to show the Clayton County school board how to build their boat, too. They were called "the parents of the Clayton County students," who were screaming at the board to come out into the parking lot so they could be shown properly. The board resisted, though, and at the end of the day, their floating washtub of mismanagement capsized in a sea of...Hell, I don't know...justice? It really isn't that great of a metaphor. The point is, they screwed everything up and finally got fired. I guess they figured their work was done. And by "work," I mean, "hand-crafted tasks of destruction."
The only reason why anyone on that board wouldn't step down is because they had something to gain. One of the board members (I couldn't be bothered to learn her name because, well...fuck her) claimed that she was doing the best she could and if she was fired, only the kids would suffer. One, I hate when people try to politicize "the children." Don't act like you're doing this for "the children." You probably don't even know "the children," and if you were really concerned about them, you would have stepped down before you finished reading the list of mandates, seeing as how you leaving your job is first on the list. Two, I don't know how much more suffering "the children" could have done seeing as how this year's seniors have essentially wasted their last 12 years of schooling thanks to you and yours not being able to follow simple instructions. "Go the hell home." What's hard about that?
Really, I'm surprised that no one has run up on them in the streets. I've been all through Clayton County. It makes DeKalb County look like a nice place to live. All the rappers are shooting their videos there now for the authenticity. How are these board members still alive? Because they clearly don't care about "the children" who still live in Clayton County. Their education isn't worth a shot glass full of watered-down piss because nine supposed adults couldn't put 52,000 kids ahead of their own interests. Hell, there's no point in going to school now, so they might as well find the people who made their education worthless.
And all this does is open the door for Republicans to start screaming about school vouchers for private schools. That's their fucking solution to everything. "Free shit sucks," they say. "Pay for everything. It's the only way you'll appreciate it. Why, when my great-grandfather came here from Eatdirtistan, he had to save up to buy the bootstraps that he would pull himself up with. He bought his boots without them because he wouldn't accept anything for free." That's the free market for you, I guess. It's probably why Republican Governor Sonny Perdue had absolutely nothing to say about this until the last minute, because he's a capitalist to the very end, even in the face of reason.
Look, if someone told me that my job as a school board member was so bad that the district was going to lose its accreditation if I didn't quit, I'd have to finish cleaning out my desk from the parking lot because I'd be out the door so fast. That's pretty embarrassing, but clearly this wasn't the career choice that God had in mind for me. There's nothing wrong with telling the world, "Hey, I'm really fucking this up." What if Noah was building the Ark wrong but wouldn't quit, then made everybody get on whatever haphazard deathtrap his drunken little hands could conjure up? Fortunately for civilization, God spake unto Noah, "Dude, stop. I'll show you how to build it."
And there were people trying to show the Clayton County school board how to build their boat, too. They were called "the parents of the Clayton County students," who were screaming at the board to come out into the parking lot so they could be shown properly. The board resisted, though, and at the end of the day, their floating washtub of mismanagement capsized in a sea of...Hell, I don't know...justice? It really isn't that great of a metaphor. The point is, they screwed everything up and finally got fired. I guess they figured their work was done. And by "work," I mean, "hand-crafted tasks of destruction."
The only reason why anyone on that board wouldn't step down is because they had something to gain. One of the board members (I couldn't be bothered to learn her name because, well...fuck her) claimed that she was doing the best she could and if she was fired, only the kids would suffer. One, I hate when people try to politicize "the children." Don't act like you're doing this for "the children." You probably don't even know "the children," and if you were really concerned about them, you would have stepped down before you finished reading the list of mandates, seeing as how you leaving your job is first on the list. Two, I don't know how much more suffering "the children" could have done seeing as how this year's seniors have essentially wasted their last 12 years of schooling thanks to you and yours not being able to follow simple instructions. "Go the hell home." What's hard about that?
Really, I'm surprised that no one has run up on them in the streets. I've been all through Clayton County. It makes DeKalb County look like a nice place to live. All the rappers are shooting their videos there now for the authenticity. How are these board members still alive? Because they clearly don't care about "the children" who still live in Clayton County. Their education isn't worth a shot glass full of watered-down piss because nine supposed adults couldn't put 52,000 kids ahead of their own interests. Hell, there's no point in going to school now, so they might as well find the people who made their education worthless.
And all this does is open the door for Republicans to start screaming about school vouchers for private schools. That's their fucking solution to everything. "Free shit sucks," they say. "Pay for everything. It's the only way you'll appreciate it. Why, when my great-grandfather came here from Eatdirtistan, he had to save up to buy the bootstraps that he would pull himself up with. He bought his boots without them because he wouldn't accept anything for free." That's the free market for you, I guess. It's probably why Republican Governor Sonny Perdue had absolutely nothing to say about this until the last minute, because he's a capitalist to the very end, even in the face of reason.
Tony Majestic vs. Russia
I'd be lying if I said I said I was an expert on Russia, because outside of "Goldeneye," "Strider," and Ronald Reagan being given entirely too much credit in the fall of the Soviet Union, I don't really know much. I do still wonder how they invented the technology to turn the Russian Parliament into a giant dragon when they can't run a nuclear power plant, though.
I do know quite a bit about the United States, and that's a good thing considering I've lived here about 86% of my life. I think it would be pretty embarrassing if I'd been here that long but couldn't tell you that President John F. Kennedy was the first man on the moon during the Great Spider-Alien Invasion of 1941.
And knowing what I do about the U.S., I can say that the notion of this country manipulating the events of foreign nations doesn't even shock me. After all, the U.S. Government is good for getting foreign leaders to die in horrific accidents involving lots of bullets if they're not too America-friendly. But for Russian Prime Minister/Real President/Mob Boss Vladimir Putin to accuse the U.S. of orchestrating the conflict between Russia and Georgia is completely illogical. If they were going to orchestrate anything, I'm sure it would involve a lot more of the "light, sweet, crude oil" that Russia is sitting on.
Kills me how they make crude oil sound delicious. It sounds like they're talking about a new pie crust. Try BP's new "rich and fluffy crude oil."
Anyway, the U.S. doesn't orchestrate. We flat out kill folks or sell you weapons so you can kill folks. Either way, we're a little more direct in our clearing out the competition. If we believed in subtlety, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. It's not like our intelligence agencies didn't know where his house was. He's a dictator, so it probably looked like Thugnificent's house. We could have taken him out on his toilet and no one would have ever known, except for everyone who saw the cruise missle fly in. That's why we went in there like a bunch of cowboys, because subtlety wasn't going to send the right message. The message apparently being, "We're the swinging dicks around here, Iran."
So, with all due respect, Mr. Putin, you sound like a lunatic, and if it wasn't for the fact that we know that you're more like Tony Soprano than an actual President, you might actually have some credibility behind you. I know that our current President said you were a good dude, but I don't think that's an endorsement that holds much weight. He can't even tell someone that his favorite cake tastes good without us being critical, let alone judge another man's character. Which leads us right back to my initial statement: You sound like a lunatic.
You've always seemed to have this mob boss vibe around you anyway. All of the other neighboring countries are afraid that you might fire off on them at any given time and it's with good reason that we're setting up our missile defense system right on your border. You could be a really good guy, but being scary suits you so much more. Besides, you're Russian. For those of us who remember the 70s and 80s, that's always going to be synonymous with "the enemy."
My biggest fear when I was a kid was the Russians firing nuclear weapons at us and starting a war and I thought Yakov Smirnoff was merely an attempt to soften our perceptions of Russians so we'd lower our defenses. Well, it didn't work, comrade. And neither did your attempts to destroy Hollywood through the franchise-killing works of Dolph Lundgren. Nice try, Nikita.
But the Soviet Union eventually broke up and started getting pissy with all of its old republics for wanting to do their own thing. And that's what happened in Georgia. It said, "Hey, let's be like America." But there were some people in Georgia who said, "I dunno, dude, we might get gangs and rap music and border control problems. I think we should ride this 'Russia' thing out." And the Russians, from what I understand, were like "Hey, South Ossetia, here's some guns and passports. Tell Georgia to stop hating so you can ride out with us." Georgia went into South Ossetia to stop the separatists and Russia used that as an excuse to go into Georgia, because technically, the South Ossetians are Russian citizens (which is why they were given passports), even though South Ossetia is a part of Georgia. All of the this grief over a breakaway region about the size of Biloxi.
Now, no one made Russia get involved in Georgia's mess, except Vladimir Putin because even though he's the #2 guy, in reality, he'd kick Medvedev's ass and get Medvedev's mother to join in. I don't see how there's room for us to get involved in that. I guess we were whispering, "Yeah, Georgia, you can totally take on Russia. And you need to show that pimp hand to South Ossetia and Abhkazia." Now, how do we benefit from watching a nation the size of OUR Georgia take on essentially the rest of the United States by itself? It wasn't a slow news week or anything, because Aquaman was invading the surface world through the guise of Olympic competition.
This is why no one listens to Russia, especially when they're clearly making up stuff so punk countries like France will stop being upset with them. Not that America isn't above this sort of thing, it's that...dude, Russia's the one saying it. It'd be kind of like if Bush put his balls out in front of the world and said that it's unacceptable to invade other nations in the 21st Century. And he's way too intelligent to say something that fucking stupid.
I do know quite a bit about the United States, and that's a good thing considering I've lived here about 86% of my life. I think it would be pretty embarrassing if I'd been here that long but couldn't tell you that President John F. Kennedy was the first man on the moon during the Great Spider-Alien Invasion of 1941.
And knowing what I do about the U.S., I can say that the notion of this country manipulating the events of foreign nations doesn't even shock me. After all, the U.S. Government is good for getting foreign leaders to die in horrific accidents involving lots of bullets if they're not too America-friendly. But for Russian Prime Minister/Real President/Mob Boss Vladimir Putin to accuse the U.S. of orchestrating the conflict between Russia and Georgia is completely illogical. If they were going to orchestrate anything, I'm sure it would involve a lot more of the "light, sweet, crude oil" that Russia is sitting on.
Kills me how they make crude oil sound delicious. It sounds like they're talking about a new pie crust. Try BP's new "rich and fluffy crude oil."
Anyway, the U.S. doesn't orchestrate. We flat out kill folks or sell you weapons so you can kill folks. Either way, we're a little more direct in our clearing out the competition. If we believed in subtlety, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. It's not like our intelligence agencies didn't know where his house was. He's a dictator, so it probably looked like Thugnificent's house. We could have taken him out on his toilet and no one would have ever known, except for everyone who saw the cruise missle fly in. That's why we went in there like a bunch of cowboys, because subtlety wasn't going to send the right message. The message apparently being, "We're the swinging dicks around here, Iran."
So, with all due respect, Mr. Putin, you sound like a lunatic, and if it wasn't for the fact that we know that you're more like Tony Soprano than an actual President, you might actually have some credibility behind you. I know that our current President said you were a good dude, but I don't think that's an endorsement that holds much weight. He can't even tell someone that his favorite cake tastes good without us being critical, let alone judge another man's character. Which leads us right back to my initial statement: You sound like a lunatic.
You've always seemed to have this mob boss vibe around you anyway. All of the other neighboring countries are afraid that you might fire off on them at any given time and it's with good reason that we're setting up our missile defense system right on your border. You could be a really good guy, but being scary suits you so much more. Besides, you're Russian. For those of us who remember the 70s and 80s, that's always going to be synonymous with "the enemy."
My biggest fear when I was a kid was the Russians firing nuclear weapons at us and starting a war and I thought Yakov Smirnoff was merely an attempt to soften our perceptions of Russians so we'd lower our defenses. Well, it didn't work, comrade. And neither did your attempts to destroy Hollywood through the franchise-killing works of Dolph Lundgren. Nice try, Nikita.
But the Soviet Union eventually broke up and started getting pissy with all of its old republics for wanting to do their own thing. And that's what happened in Georgia. It said, "Hey, let's be like America." But there were some people in Georgia who said, "I dunno, dude, we might get gangs and rap music and border control problems. I think we should ride this 'Russia' thing out." And the Russians, from what I understand, were like "Hey, South Ossetia, here's some guns and passports. Tell Georgia to stop hating so you can ride out with us." Georgia went into South Ossetia to stop the separatists and Russia used that as an excuse to go into Georgia, because technically, the South Ossetians are Russian citizens (which is why they were given passports), even though South Ossetia is a part of Georgia. All of the this grief over a breakaway region about the size of Biloxi.
Now, no one made Russia get involved in Georgia's mess, except Vladimir Putin because even though he's the #2 guy, in reality, he'd kick Medvedev's ass and get Medvedev's mother to join in. I don't see how there's room for us to get involved in that. I guess we were whispering, "Yeah, Georgia, you can totally take on Russia. And you need to show that pimp hand to South Ossetia and Abhkazia." Now, how do we benefit from watching a nation the size of OUR Georgia take on essentially the rest of the United States by itself? It wasn't a slow news week or anything, because Aquaman was invading the surface world through the guise of Olympic competition.
This is why no one listens to Russia, especially when they're clearly making up stuff so punk countries like France will stop being upset with them. Not that America isn't above this sort of thing, it's that...dude, Russia's the one saying it. It'd be kind of like if Bush put his balls out in front of the world and said that it's unacceptable to invade other nations in the 21st Century. And he's way too intelligent to say something that fucking stupid.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The One Where I Talk About Capitalism and Socialism
I don't know about you, but I hate paying for shit. Gas, food, clothes (admittedly, i probably don't spend enough on clothes), you name it, I hate paying for it. That was the best part about being in elementary school; I thought everything was free, and to a degree it was. Sure, tax dollars paid for my books but that's like saying that the Education Fairy brought it. It was just a given that the stuff was gonna be there, water stains, torn pages, outdated facts, and all.
But those givens are well on their way out the door if things keep going the way they're going. School funding is getting cut every day, usually in favor of things like the troops who are defending our freedoms, more roads, keeping other countries swimming in their champagne pools. Eventually, school funding is going to reach a point where they can only afford to teach from books that still have Jimmy Carter listed as the last President, sitting outside of an abandoned warehouse, where they have to whisper so the wolves can't find them.
The only way out at that point is going to be for the free market to step in and bail out American schools. Yes, that free market. The free market that so many Americans swear by that should be completely unleashed to solve all of our problems. The free market that is going to abolish AIDS and cancer. The free market that is going to render the Federal Government obsolete. The free market where absolutely nothing is free, except for maybe ketchup packets at Burger King.
Could you imagine a school that was completely run by the free market? Yeah, all of the books and desks in the school would be new (The LeBron James Social Studies Book, 2008 Edition...collect them all!), but they'd have ads for the latest Hannah Montana concert in between the math problems. Channel One would become the continuous commercial that we always believed it was. Vending machines would be in individual classrooms, where they could be easily accessed before nap time. They'd probably bring recess back, so the kids could work up a hearty appetite before their McDonald's lunches, but all of the good stuff on the playground would have pay turnstiles on it, installed by MARTA to simulate the real-life experience of a morning commute.
This is what I fear the free market would bring us and this is why the free market isn't trusted to run anything necessary. It couldn't even control itself to run a deregulated cable industry, let alone a healthcare industry where people have to choose between paying their rent or getting their latest cancer treatment. A healthcare industry where Medicare supplements are needed because Medicare just isn't enough. A healthcare industry where people only ride in ambulances when they're too bloody or too unconscious because a 12 block ride costs $700. Way to instill faith in America, free market. You probably found a cure of AIDS the week after it came out, but you won't let it out because you can't keep it from entirely killing the virus. It works a little TOO well.
The entire focus of the free market is to separate you from your money. Goal number one: To make a profit. Goal number two: To come up with more ways to get their hand back in your pocket. Goal number three: To leverage those properties in synergistic ways to increase market share. Goal number four: To invent more corporate buzzwords, like "urban" or "sports entertainment." That's the whole list and "To look out for your best interests" is nowhere on it. If that was the case, they probably would have never invented daylights or the diamond-encrusted two-way pager.
And none of this is to say that i think socialism is the answer, but I do think there are some benefits to some of its ideas, and being a rich nation like we are, we can afford to do socialism the right way. After all, the free market doesn't have all of the answers, because in all those years, it never occurred to them to come up with child labor laws or vacation days. I'm not saying that everyone should throw their money into the pot and split it evenly, but I am saying that instead of letting our homeless sleep in a refrigerator box, we could at least let them sleep in a dorm shower or the back row at the movie theater. Or maybe we could let people live in their storage units. Come on, have a heart.
Instead of socialism OR capitalism, why can't we just agree on a happy medium? They both have their benefits, but a pure form of either one will not work. Pure socialism just leads to swollen-headed Republicans claiming that Reagan single-handedly destroyed the Soviet Union and pure capitalism just leads to the Bush Administration and oil prices jumping from $15 a barrel to $130 in just seven years. Neither is perfect, but socialism can continue to give us, for better or worse, our public school education and capitalism can continue to give us, for better or worse, the five-dollar DVD bin at Wal-Mart and $160 dollar Nikes.
But those givens are well on their way out the door if things keep going the way they're going. School funding is getting cut every day, usually in favor of things like the troops who are defending our freedoms, more roads, keeping other countries swimming in their champagne pools. Eventually, school funding is going to reach a point where they can only afford to teach from books that still have Jimmy Carter listed as the last President, sitting outside of an abandoned warehouse, where they have to whisper so the wolves can't find them.
The only way out at that point is going to be for the free market to step in and bail out American schools. Yes, that free market. The free market that so many Americans swear by that should be completely unleashed to solve all of our problems. The free market that is going to abolish AIDS and cancer. The free market that is going to render the Federal Government obsolete. The free market where absolutely nothing is free, except for maybe ketchup packets at Burger King.
Could you imagine a school that was completely run by the free market? Yeah, all of the books and desks in the school would be new (The LeBron James Social Studies Book, 2008 Edition...collect them all!), but they'd have ads for the latest Hannah Montana concert in between the math problems. Channel One would become the continuous commercial that we always believed it was. Vending machines would be in individual classrooms, where they could be easily accessed before nap time. They'd probably bring recess back, so the kids could work up a hearty appetite before their McDonald's lunches, but all of the good stuff on the playground would have pay turnstiles on it, installed by MARTA to simulate the real-life experience of a morning commute.
This is what I fear the free market would bring us and this is why the free market isn't trusted to run anything necessary. It couldn't even control itself to run a deregulated cable industry, let alone a healthcare industry where people have to choose between paying their rent or getting their latest cancer treatment. A healthcare industry where Medicare supplements are needed because Medicare just isn't enough. A healthcare industry where people only ride in ambulances when they're too bloody or too unconscious because a 12 block ride costs $700. Way to instill faith in America, free market. You probably found a cure of AIDS the week after it came out, but you won't let it out because you can't keep it from entirely killing the virus. It works a little TOO well.
The entire focus of the free market is to separate you from your money. Goal number one: To make a profit. Goal number two: To come up with more ways to get their hand back in your pocket. Goal number three: To leverage those properties in synergistic ways to increase market share. Goal number four: To invent more corporate buzzwords, like "urban" or "sports entertainment." That's the whole list and "To look out for your best interests" is nowhere on it. If that was the case, they probably would have never invented daylights or the diamond-encrusted two-way pager.
And none of this is to say that i think socialism is the answer, but I do think there are some benefits to some of its ideas, and being a rich nation like we are, we can afford to do socialism the right way. After all, the free market doesn't have all of the answers, because in all those years, it never occurred to them to come up with child labor laws or vacation days. I'm not saying that everyone should throw their money into the pot and split it evenly, but I am saying that instead of letting our homeless sleep in a refrigerator box, we could at least let them sleep in a dorm shower or the back row at the movie theater. Or maybe we could let people live in their storage units. Come on, have a heart.
Instead of socialism OR capitalism, why can't we just agree on a happy medium? They both have their benefits, but a pure form of either one will not work. Pure socialism just leads to swollen-headed Republicans claiming that Reagan single-handedly destroyed the Soviet Union and pure capitalism just leads to the Bush Administration and oil prices jumping from $15 a barrel to $130 in just seven years. Neither is perfect, but socialism can continue to give us, for better or worse, our public school education and capitalism can continue to give us, for better or worse, the five-dollar DVD bin at Wal-Mart and $160 dollar Nikes.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
On behalf of comic book fans everywhere...
“Why do people try to impress comic book fans with their non-knowledge of comic books? Since when did it become okay to try to impress the people whose stereotype includes not smelling well, living in their mother’s basement, and never, ever, getting any? These are not the people you should seek to impress, unless you’re one of the goth kids or anyone in the chess club. If you’re looking to impress someone whose ass you can kick without putting down the Big Mac you’re using to distract them, you’re in worse shape than I thought. Comic book fans are the kind of people who can easily waste three hours arguing about whether or not Wonder Woman is really bulletproof instead of venturing into the outside world to breathe air that doesn’t contain dust mites. Don’t ask me how I know that.
Look, I’m not going to be impressed with you if you’ve got 10 “Superman” #75’s bagged and stored in your closet. Seriously, I don’t care. Do you really think comic book readers sit around and compare notes on what they have in their collections? Well…sometimes. But most likely, we’ll discuss the mistakes we’ve made in our buying habits. No one but a comic book fan could understand my shame in proclaiming that I bought six “Savage Dragon” #1s because I wanted to make sure I had all of the different colored logos. They know what I’m talking about because they probably did it, too.
So unless you’re giving them to us for free, none of us care about your “collection of first editions, bagged and boxed,” because chances are, they’re something you bought in the early 90s, when everyone got sucked into buying comic books that they thought were going to be worth a fortune in 30 years. So allow me to burst that bubble, too: Anything you bought in between 1992 and 1996 is practically worthless. Millions of copies of that stuff was printed to satiate people like you, who thought they’d stumbled upon a gold mine. The comic book industry almost imploded as a result and Rob Liefeld became a star in the process. Thanks a bunch for bringing that upon us. No, comic book fans don’t care, so stop telling them. We’d rather know if you’ve actually read the story inside or who you think would win between Deathstroke and Captain America.
One more thing: Stop calling them “first editions.” You’re just giving yourself away.”
Look, I’m not going to be impressed with you if you’ve got 10 “Superman” #75’s bagged and stored in your closet. Seriously, I don’t care. Do you really think comic book readers sit around and compare notes on what they have in their collections? Well…sometimes. But most likely, we’ll discuss the mistakes we’ve made in our buying habits. No one but a comic book fan could understand my shame in proclaiming that I bought six “Savage Dragon” #1s because I wanted to make sure I had all of the different colored logos. They know what I’m talking about because they probably did it, too.
So unless you’re giving them to us for free, none of us care about your “collection of first editions, bagged and boxed,” because chances are, they’re something you bought in the early 90s, when everyone got sucked into buying comic books that they thought were going to be worth a fortune in 30 years. So allow me to burst that bubble, too: Anything you bought in between 1992 and 1996 is practically worthless. Millions of copies of that stuff was printed to satiate people like you, who thought they’d stumbled upon a gold mine. The comic book industry almost imploded as a result and Rob Liefeld became a star in the process. Thanks a bunch for bringing that upon us. No, comic book fans don’t care, so stop telling them. We’d rather know if you’ve actually read the story inside or who you think would win between Deathstroke and Captain America.
One more thing: Stop calling them “first editions.” You’re just giving yourself away.”
When I'm Supposed to be Working
These are just some of the things that go through my mind when I’m supposed to be working. I mean, I’m grateful to have a paying job, but how much passion can one really have for the financial end of providing medical equipment? If I were to quantify the amount of passion that I have for my job, I’d actually have to owe passion to all of the rest of the people who do have passion for their jobs. Seriously, I don’t care about medical equipment. So when I’m sitting in my cubicle, keying CMNs or pretending to be knowledgeable about Medicare guidelines, what follows could be what I’m really thinking about. I wonder how Pediatric Specialists would feel if they knew what they’d really been paying me for.
“I think that having masculine and feminine letters at the end of names is a little superfluous, seeing as how actually being a man or a woman should unravel the gender mystery. And it’s not like having an “O” at the end of your name makes you more of a man. When was the last time you met a man named ‘Armando’ and didn’t automatically think he was gay? With a name like that, you might as well call yourself ‘Sugarbooty, the King of Balls In My Face’ and beat the rush of thrusting crotches that are going to come at you every time you find yourself in the gay part of town.”
“If your ideas about the measure of man are defined by whether or not he has any money, then you’re destined to go through life disappointed in the men that you meet. Most men out there aren’t rich or even financially comfortable. We have trouble paying our bills just like you do. Chances are, the man you’re with right now has eaten dog food or pawned his Playstation once or twice when his check came up short. Most of us can’t afford to pretend being ballers, which is why so many of us wear cubic zirconium and hollow chains. He’s pretending to have money just like you’re pretending to be able to fill out a D-cup without adding tissue. So ladies, never judge a man based on his bank statement or how much he’s willing to spend on you, because most of us are a drunken weekend in Vegas away from being put out on the street. Allowing a man’s financial state to guide your decisions regarding him is kind of like buying a car based on how many walls it can drive through before it explodes. It’s an impressive statistic, but that’s still a really stupid reason to buy a car.”
“Why do people keep naming their sons ‘Damian?’ It’s almost like these parents watched ‘The Omen’ and thought, ‘Well, MY Damian isn’t going to try and kill me,’ seven years before he’s chasing them out of the upstairs bedroom from behind the wheel of the family van. There’s no chance that your kid won’t have an anger management problem when you name him after the son of the Devil. The only person I ever met named Damian who wasn’t crazy had a stuttering problem, so if those are the choices you want to roll the dice with, good luck surviving his terrible twos. Hopefully, you’ll realize your mistake before he throws a toaster in the shower with you because you made him drink water instead of Kool-Aid. And don’t think that changing the spelling of the name is going to keep the forces of evil from invading the fleshbag you call your son. The Prince of Darkness cannot be fooled by your grammatical flourishes.”
“I was listening to music for non-retards when I heard that there was finally a song that proclaims ‘You are not the father!’ At last, the widely ignored ‘nigger’ segment of our society has been fully represented, because ‘Fry That Chicken’ didn’t fully probe the depths of niggerdom. Not since someone decided to make a song called ‘My Baby Daddy’ in an effort to make White America rethink letting us out of the back of the bus have I been so embarrassed. The previous generation didn’t get attacked with dogs and fire hoses so our generation could tear down the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement with ‘that baby don’t look like me.’ We could at least pretend like we have some dignity about us. I haven’t heard the song, because I don’t listen to radio stations that perpetuate the Coon Movement of the Early 21st Century (V103), but having been told about it by someone who did, I suddenly felt that men like Brother Martin and Brother Malcolm were wasted on people like us. And what bothered me the most was that the lady who told me about the song said that she thought of me as soon as she heard it. Did she know that I wasn’t going to be happy about it or was she secretly calling me a nigger to my face?”
“How many of us have ever seen a crackhead up close? I’m just asking because we all talk about crackheads like hanging out with one is an everyday experience. I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly spoken with a crackhead and if I had to put a number to it, I’d say I’ve seen as many crackheads as I’ve seen winged zombie armies. Yet we all claim to know the signs of crackish behavior, even though to try know what a crackhead looks like, it’s necessary to have actually spoken with one. Calling the homeless guy who’s laid out in the street during your lunch hour a crackhead is really just speculation until he offers to suck your dick with his ashy and blistered lips. I know that some of us know a person that we suspect is on something, because it’s not normal for a person to clean the tile behind the toilet with a toothbrush, but that doesn’t mean they’re crackheads. That’s clearly a meth addict.
But how do I really know that? I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who’s even seen crystal meth. But I do remember that commercial they used to show back in the 90s, where the girl is obsessively cleaning her bathroom because the met won’t let her stop. And between that and my theories that Springfield, OH is the city that crystal meth destroyed, I don’t really have any hard evidence about any of the effects that crystal meth or any other drug has. If it wasn’t for HBO specials telling me that drugs inevitably make you cast your heterosexual leanings aside in exchange for another rock, I wouldn’t know much about drugs at all, to be honest.”
“To people who still insist on telling wrestling fans that wrestling is fake: Seriously, you’re the one who looks pathetic and sad. Everyone knows the truth about wrestling. Everyone’s known for at least a decade, at the very least. Or were you the only person who didn’t see “Pro Wrestling’s Secrets Exposed,” “Beyond the Mat,” or four seasons of “Tough Enough?” And here you are, spreading old news like you made a major discovery. That’s real top notch reporting, there, Lois Lane. Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you spread the word about the Berlin Wall, too?”
“Instead of working, I spent a half-hour listing every Wrestlemania match that I could think of. If I wasn’t already at work, I’d say that I needed to get a job.”
“If you’re going to go through the trouble of naming your child “Zaire,” why not just keep the spelling the same instead of assuming that your bastardized “Zyyear” somehow improves on the name and makes it unique. As if there’s been a run on the name “Zaire” in the thousand or so years that the name has been in existence and your want your kid to stand out from the crowd. If that’s the case, then say hello to my little girl, “Kanuhda Igipte.”
“The next time you have a child and the best name you can come up with is “Xztashya (an actual name),” just go ahead and buy your kid some hand cuffs or stripper heels, because all hope is lost. You would have been better off just naming your kid “Nigger” so white people won’t be forced to make assumptions. So little Xztashya, enjoy your life on the pole and/or in jail, and understand that your father, Xzaiah (her father’s actual name), who decided to continue the tradition of ignorance that has consumed your entire family (because they allowed this “Xz” nonsense to continue), was to blame for your being cursed with the kind of name that can only look good on a Burger King name tag.”
“I wonder if Alicia Keys ever gets sick of hearing her own songs.”
“I remember when I was a kid and toothbrushes were just a stiff, plastic stick in one of the primary colors with bristles so rough, I’d swear that they were peeling the enamel off of my teeth. A toothbrush back then was so rough that my gums bled every time I brushed. The cavity creeps didn’t stand a chance against brushes that could clean your toilet. But those days are gone. Nowadays, toothbrushes are soft like lotion-filled fairy clouds, designed to give me a rubdown in my mouth. Yeah, they’re prettier and flexible and gentler, with two or three of my favorite cartoon characters on it, but when I use one, it feels like I’m just moving the plaque around on my teeth. It’s like I’m using a tooth-sponge.”
“I think that having masculine and feminine letters at the end of names is a little superfluous, seeing as how actually being a man or a woman should unravel the gender mystery. And it’s not like having an “O” at the end of your name makes you more of a man. When was the last time you met a man named ‘Armando’ and didn’t automatically think he was gay? With a name like that, you might as well call yourself ‘Sugarbooty, the King of Balls In My Face’ and beat the rush of thrusting crotches that are going to come at you every time you find yourself in the gay part of town.”
“If your ideas about the measure of man are defined by whether or not he has any money, then you’re destined to go through life disappointed in the men that you meet. Most men out there aren’t rich or even financially comfortable. We have trouble paying our bills just like you do. Chances are, the man you’re with right now has eaten dog food or pawned his Playstation once or twice when his check came up short. Most of us can’t afford to pretend being ballers, which is why so many of us wear cubic zirconium and hollow chains. He’s pretending to have money just like you’re pretending to be able to fill out a D-cup without adding tissue. So ladies, never judge a man based on his bank statement or how much he’s willing to spend on you, because most of us are a drunken weekend in Vegas away from being put out on the street. Allowing a man’s financial state to guide your decisions regarding him is kind of like buying a car based on how many walls it can drive through before it explodes. It’s an impressive statistic, but that’s still a really stupid reason to buy a car.”
“Why do people keep naming their sons ‘Damian?’ It’s almost like these parents watched ‘The Omen’ and thought, ‘Well, MY Damian isn’t going to try and kill me,’ seven years before he’s chasing them out of the upstairs bedroom from behind the wheel of the family van. There’s no chance that your kid won’t have an anger management problem when you name him after the son of the Devil. The only person I ever met named Damian who wasn’t crazy had a stuttering problem, so if those are the choices you want to roll the dice with, good luck surviving his terrible twos. Hopefully, you’ll realize your mistake before he throws a toaster in the shower with you because you made him drink water instead of Kool-Aid. And don’t think that changing the spelling of the name is going to keep the forces of evil from invading the fleshbag you call your son. The Prince of Darkness cannot be fooled by your grammatical flourishes.”
“I was listening to music for non-retards when I heard that there was finally a song that proclaims ‘You are not the father!’ At last, the widely ignored ‘nigger’ segment of our society has been fully represented, because ‘Fry That Chicken’ didn’t fully probe the depths of niggerdom. Not since someone decided to make a song called ‘My Baby Daddy’ in an effort to make White America rethink letting us out of the back of the bus have I been so embarrassed. The previous generation didn’t get attacked with dogs and fire hoses so our generation could tear down the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement with ‘that baby don’t look like me.’ We could at least pretend like we have some dignity about us. I haven’t heard the song, because I don’t listen to radio stations that perpetuate the Coon Movement of the Early 21st Century (V103), but having been told about it by someone who did, I suddenly felt that men like Brother Martin and Brother Malcolm were wasted on people like us. And what bothered me the most was that the lady who told me about the song said that she thought of me as soon as she heard it. Did she know that I wasn’t going to be happy about it or was she secretly calling me a nigger to my face?”
“How many of us have ever seen a crackhead up close? I’m just asking because we all talk about crackheads like hanging out with one is an everyday experience. I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly spoken with a crackhead and if I had to put a number to it, I’d say I’ve seen as many crackheads as I’ve seen winged zombie armies. Yet we all claim to know the signs of crackish behavior, even though to try know what a crackhead looks like, it’s necessary to have actually spoken with one. Calling the homeless guy who’s laid out in the street during your lunch hour a crackhead is really just speculation until he offers to suck your dick with his ashy and blistered lips. I know that some of us know a person that we suspect is on something, because it’s not normal for a person to clean the tile behind the toilet with a toothbrush, but that doesn’t mean they’re crackheads. That’s clearly a meth addict.
But how do I really know that? I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who’s even seen crystal meth. But I do remember that commercial they used to show back in the 90s, where the girl is obsessively cleaning her bathroom because the met won’t let her stop. And between that and my theories that Springfield, OH is the city that crystal meth destroyed, I don’t really have any hard evidence about any of the effects that crystal meth or any other drug has. If it wasn’t for HBO specials telling me that drugs inevitably make you cast your heterosexual leanings aside in exchange for another rock, I wouldn’t know much about drugs at all, to be honest.”
“To people who still insist on telling wrestling fans that wrestling is fake: Seriously, you’re the one who looks pathetic and sad. Everyone knows the truth about wrestling. Everyone’s known for at least a decade, at the very least. Or were you the only person who didn’t see “Pro Wrestling’s Secrets Exposed,” “Beyond the Mat,” or four seasons of “Tough Enough?” And here you are, spreading old news like you made a major discovery. That’s real top notch reporting, there, Lois Lane. Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you spread the word about the Berlin Wall, too?”
“Instead of working, I spent a half-hour listing every Wrestlemania match that I could think of. If I wasn’t already at work, I’d say that I needed to get a job.”
“If you’re going to go through the trouble of naming your child “Zaire,” why not just keep the spelling the same instead of assuming that your bastardized “Zyyear” somehow improves on the name and makes it unique. As if there’s been a run on the name “Zaire” in the thousand or so years that the name has been in existence and your want your kid to stand out from the crowd. If that’s the case, then say hello to my little girl, “Kanuhda Igipte.”
“The next time you have a child and the best name you can come up with is “Xztashya (an actual name),” just go ahead and buy your kid some hand cuffs or stripper heels, because all hope is lost. You would have been better off just naming your kid “Nigger” so white people won’t be forced to make assumptions. So little Xztashya, enjoy your life on the pole and/or in jail, and understand that your father, Xzaiah (her father’s actual name), who decided to continue the tradition of ignorance that has consumed your entire family (because they allowed this “Xz” nonsense to continue), was to blame for your being cursed with the kind of name that can only look good on a Burger King name tag.”
“I wonder if Alicia Keys ever gets sick of hearing her own songs.”
“I remember when I was a kid and toothbrushes were just a stiff, plastic stick in one of the primary colors with bristles so rough, I’d swear that they were peeling the enamel off of my teeth. A toothbrush back then was so rough that my gums bled every time I brushed. The cavity creeps didn’t stand a chance against brushes that could clean your toilet. But those days are gone. Nowadays, toothbrushes are soft like lotion-filled fairy clouds, designed to give me a rubdown in my mouth. Yeah, they’re prettier and flexible and gentler, with two or three of my favorite cartoon characters on it, but when I use one, it feels like I’m just moving the plaque around on my teeth. It’s like I’m using a tooth-sponge.”
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Hating
If you play some music for me and I say I didn’t like it, that’s not hating. I just didn’t like it.
If you’re a 300 pound woman trying to squeeze into some clothes that aren’t made for any woman over 140, and I don’t think you look the least bit cute, that’s not hating. That’s your inability to dress appropriate to your size.
If you do something stupid, and you and I both know how stupid it was, don’t call me a hater for pointing it out. You knew it was stupid when you did it.
Stupid people in 2008 have confused the meanings of the words “hating” and “disagreeing.” They’ve also confused “hating” and “constructive criticism,” “hating” and “I don’t like it,” and “hating” and any contrary opinion to anything. So in 2008, I’m a hater when I say “Even if I had it, I wouldn’t spend $1.3 million dollars on a 16-year-old’s birthday party.” My own girlfriend said this about me. She may or may not have been joking, but needless to say, we have vastly different views on parenting.
As I always understood it, “hating” is when one is irrationally obsessed with tearing down another person. They don’t have real reason for talking about the person, but they do it anyway. It’s like when women say things like “That bitch think she cute,” or when guys say things like “fuck nigga,” even though I have no idea what a “fuck nigga” is. To me, it just sounds like people are just randomly throwing together cusswords. Look for this trend to continue with “cunt damn” in 2009.
But hating has nothing to do with just being mean to people anymore. People have become so sensitive these days that any little thing you say is considered hating. I don’t like the “Mayfield Milk” logos all over your car, so I’m a hater? Have you even considered that your car just looks stupid? Why do you even care what I think? I’m not infringing on any freedoms of yours or anything like that, so why are you being so sensitive? Yes, you have the right to wear pink t-shirts or your jeans around your knees, but I also have the right to say that you look like a girl or that you shit on yourself. It’s a free country.
I don’t know when or where this phenomenon got started, but it’s probably just an offshoot of political correctness, which is defined by the Tony Majestic Imaginary Dictionary as “a societal mechanism instituted by guilty white liberals that requires that nothing negative is said about anyone, anywhere, ever.” When political correctness came on the scene, the world must have been high on something, because it seemed to have forgotten that no one who defines themselves as a “liberal” can kick anyone’s ass, anywhere, ever.
Whatever the reason, it took hold and suddenly, all forms of off-color comedy where shunned by everyone except angry white men, who seem to enjoy being bigots and racists. It’s why Andrew “Dice” Clay was living in a box on the side of the freeway and playing hole-in-the-wall clubs until VH1 gave him a reality show that asks the question, “Is there anything that washed-up actors won’t do for money?” Now, everything has to be family friendly and non-offensive and everyone has to pretend to be all-inclusive, even though they know they really want to say “Can’t they bathe all of the Indian people before they let them into the country?”
And so, even asking a valid question about the differences between us is considered politically incorrect, which sucks for you, because I’m still going to ask why the Mexicans can’t learn English before hopping the fence. Everyone’s so touchy about everything. Instead of just saying, “I don’t know” or “I don’t give a shit what you think, fuck nigga,” they say “you’re infringing on my civil liberties, and the courts should force you to make a public service announcement to make sure that no one ever says or does that again.” Well, excuse the hell out of me, because I thought my civil liberties included being able to stand next to people on the bus who didn’t smell so bad that it made me want to throw up.
The problem is that everyone is emotionally weak. People have taken things away from us, like the word “no,” or bullies or beating our kids, all of the things that teach us the proper way to react when someone says to us “I don’t like gay people.” You’re supposed to either agree or disagree, but in today’s world, you lobby to file legislation to insure that no one ever thinks about thinking those words again, issue pamphlets to educate people on the hurtfulness of those words, and force the offending mouth and brain to donate $10,000 to GLAAD. And let’s not forget the most insincere of public apologies, the kind that only prove that the speech writer owns a thesaurus and knows how to find the part that gives other ways to say “bad.”
None of these measures ever solves anything, because no one ever listens to groups like GLAAD. The only people who listen to GLAAD are other gay people, and they don’t need any convincing, because they’re already gay. Groups like these only serve to make everyone think that they’re special and deserve to be treated in a special manner, apart from everyone else. And I’d hate to be the one to break it to you, but there’s nothing special about you because you enjoy swallowing the next man’s dick. I know a ton of girls who enjoy doing the same thing. But by treating everyone this way, one, it takes away from people who are dealing with legitimate injustices and two, it allows people to never learn how to deal with real problems.
Now, I know that gay people do deal with some real things, but shouldering the burden of gay jokes shouldn’t be one of those things that federal dollars need to be spent on. The offensiveness of gay jokes isn’t quite the same thing as immigration reform. And really, if gay men (because lesbianism is pretty much accepted nowadays) want to do something to prevent gay jokes, they should stop making themselves targets of them. I can handle the fact that you want me to poke you in the shitter. I get that, and honestly, I don’t blame you. But that doesn’t mean you have to express this feeling to me while wearing permed hair and glitter makeup.
So when I reject you (and not because of the glitter, but because I’m not gay), how you handle that will let me know if you grew up in a world where GLAAD told you that I should be more accepting of your alternative lifestyle by letting you suck me off, at the very least. If you just say, “No problem,” and go look for someone else to pump you raw, then we’re cool. But if you sit in your room and obsess over the rejection for weeks before going into a building and shooting at everyone, I’ll know that you were brought up in a PC-world. I wonder how many dicks those Columbine kids sucked before putting those trenchcoats on?
And that’s the level of sensitivity that has infected the black community. As we know, black people don’t do things the same as everyone else. We put our own spin on it, before white people homogenize it and sell it to the rest of the world. That’s all that the word “hating” is: The black version of political correctness. We’re surrounded by overly sensitive black people whining and crying about being “hated on,” when someone should have told them that naming your kid “Moskinika” isn’t a good idea. Sad thing is, you can’t tell if that’s a real name or if I just made it up.
But when I tell you that your kid’s name sounds like they should be running from the cameras on “COPS,” that’s not hating. That’s my way of telling you that I think you made a poor choice of names. It’s your choice to name your kid whatever you want, but it’s my choice to tell you that your kid is likely to need therapy for all the pointing and laughing that the other kids are likely to inflict upon them. I hope little Moskinika deals with it better than you have, but since you’re so quick to call me a hater, I don’t really have a high expectation that she will.
If you’re a 300 pound woman trying to squeeze into some clothes that aren’t made for any woman over 140, and I don’t think you look the least bit cute, that’s not hating. That’s your inability to dress appropriate to your size.
If you do something stupid, and you and I both know how stupid it was, don’t call me a hater for pointing it out. You knew it was stupid when you did it.
Stupid people in 2008 have confused the meanings of the words “hating” and “disagreeing.” They’ve also confused “hating” and “constructive criticism,” “hating” and “I don’t like it,” and “hating” and any contrary opinion to anything. So in 2008, I’m a hater when I say “Even if I had it, I wouldn’t spend $1.3 million dollars on a 16-year-old’s birthday party.” My own girlfriend said this about me. She may or may not have been joking, but needless to say, we have vastly different views on parenting.
As I always understood it, “hating” is when one is irrationally obsessed with tearing down another person. They don’t have real reason for talking about the person, but they do it anyway. It’s like when women say things like “That bitch think she cute,” or when guys say things like “fuck nigga,” even though I have no idea what a “fuck nigga” is. To me, it just sounds like people are just randomly throwing together cusswords. Look for this trend to continue with “cunt damn” in 2009.
But hating has nothing to do with just being mean to people anymore. People have become so sensitive these days that any little thing you say is considered hating. I don’t like the “Mayfield Milk” logos all over your car, so I’m a hater? Have you even considered that your car just looks stupid? Why do you even care what I think? I’m not infringing on any freedoms of yours or anything like that, so why are you being so sensitive? Yes, you have the right to wear pink t-shirts or your jeans around your knees, but I also have the right to say that you look like a girl or that you shit on yourself. It’s a free country.
I don’t know when or where this phenomenon got started, but it’s probably just an offshoot of political correctness, which is defined by the Tony Majestic Imaginary Dictionary as “a societal mechanism instituted by guilty white liberals that requires that nothing negative is said about anyone, anywhere, ever.” When political correctness came on the scene, the world must have been high on something, because it seemed to have forgotten that no one who defines themselves as a “liberal” can kick anyone’s ass, anywhere, ever.
Whatever the reason, it took hold and suddenly, all forms of off-color comedy where shunned by everyone except angry white men, who seem to enjoy being bigots and racists. It’s why Andrew “Dice” Clay was living in a box on the side of the freeway and playing hole-in-the-wall clubs until VH1 gave him a reality show that asks the question, “Is there anything that washed-up actors won’t do for money?” Now, everything has to be family friendly and non-offensive and everyone has to pretend to be all-inclusive, even though they know they really want to say “Can’t they bathe all of the Indian people before they let them into the country?”
And so, even asking a valid question about the differences between us is considered politically incorrect, which sucks for you, because I’m still going to ask why the Mexicans can’t learn English before hopping the fence. Everyone’s so touchy about everything. Instead of just saying, “I don’t know” or “I don’t give a shit what you think, fuck nigga,” they say “you’re infringing on my civil liberties, and the courts should force you to make a public service announcement to make sure that no one ever says or does that again.” Well, excuse the hell out of me, because I thought my civil liberties included being able to stand next to people on the bus who didn’t smell so bad that it made me want to throw up.
The problem is that everyone is emotionally weak. People have taken things away from us, like the word “no,” or bullies or beating our kids, all of the things that teach us the proper way to react when someone says to us “I don’t like gay people.” You’re supposed to either agree or disagree, but in today’s world, you lobby to file legislation to insure that no one ever thinks about thinking those words again, issue pamphlets to educate people on the hurtfulness of those words, and force the offending mouth and brain to donate $10,000 to GLAAD. And let’s not forget the most insincere of public apologies, the kind that only prove that the speech writer owns a thesaurus and knows how to find the part that gives other ways to say “bad.”
None of these measures ever solves anything, because no one ever listens to groups like GLAAD. The only people who listen to GLAAD are other gay people, and they don’t need any convincing, because they’re already gay. Groups like these only serve to make everyone think that they’re special and deserve to be treated in a special manner, apart from everyone else. And I’d hate to be the one to break it to you, but there’s nothing special about you because you enjoy swallowing the next man’s dick. I know a ton of girls who enjoy doing the same thing. But by treating everyone this way, one, it takes away from people who are dealing with legitimate injustices and two, it allows people to never learn how to deal with real problems.
Now, I know that gay people do deal with some real things, but shouldering the burden of gay jokes shouldn’t be one of those things that federal dollars need to be spent on. The offensiveness of gay jokes isn’t quite the same thing as immigration reform. And really, if gay men (because lesbianism is pretty much accepted nowadays) want to do something to prevent gay jokes, they should stop making themselves targets of them. I can handle the fact that you want me to poke you in the shitter. I get that, and honestly, I don’t blame you. But that doesn’t mean you have to express this feeling to me while wearing permed hair and glitter makeup.
So when I reject you (and not because of the glitter, but because I’m not gay), how you handle that will let me know if you grew up in a world where GLAAD told you that I should be more accepting of your alternative lifestyle by letting you suck me off, at the very least. If you just say, “No problem,” and go look for someone else to pump you raw, then we’re cool. But if you sit in your room and obsess over the rejection for weeks before going into a building and shooting at everyone, I’ll know that you were brought up in a PC-world. I wonder how many dicks those Columbine kids sucked before putting those trenchcoats on?
And that’s the level of sensitivity that has infected the black community. As we know, black people don’t do things the same as everyone else. We put our own spin on it, before white people homogenize it and sell it to the rest of the world. That’s all that the word “hating” is: The black version of political correctness. We’re surrounded by overly sensitive black people whining and crying about being “hated on,” when someone should have told them that naming your kid “Moskinika” isn’t a good idea. Sad thing is, you can’t tell if that’s a real name or if I just made it up.
But when I tell you that your kid’s name sounds like they should be running from the cameras on “COPS,” that’s not hating. That’s my way of telling you that I think you made a poor choice of names. It’s your choice to name your kid whatever you want, but it’s my choice to tell you that your kid is likely to need therapy for all the pointing and laughing that the other kids are likely to inflict upon them. I hope little Moskinika deals with it better than you have, but since you’re so quick to call me a hater, I don’t really have a high expectation that she will.
The Tony Majestic Financial Report
I am insulted by what President Bush thinks about me. He thinks I’m just some money-wasting, greedy American who is forever following the trends that TV is forcing upon me.
President Bush believes that giving certain Americans an extra $400 to $800 dollars will stimulate the economy and fend off the impending recession, more than enforcing sound business practices or providing jobs would. It’s his belief that giving us this money will make us go out and buy stuff, even in the face of foreclosure or three-dollar gas.
I am truly insulted, sir. What kind of person do you think I am? What, do you think I’m gonna see a free check from Uncle Sam and go, “Whoo, Lawd! I’mma go cash this at the liquor sto’ right now, so I can get the whole bottle of Cristal at the club tonight!”
Just the idea that he believes that enough people would blow through some free money quickly enough to slightly stimulate the economy is crazy. I mean, I ain’t no financial expert (hell, I’ve never even balanced a checkbook), but I know enough about not having money to know that if $600 fell from the sky tomorrow, the last thing I’m gonna be thinking about is using it to make a down payment on a flatscreen TV.
But that’s what they’re banking on, that we will waste this money on disposable goods, that we are all just a bunch of broke, greedy souls who can’t wait to be separated from our money by Corporate America. Sure, that usually holds true when it comes to things like cell phones (i.e., the song that plays when you call someone…they’re paying two bucks a month for a song that they’ll never hear), or auto accessories (chrome rims…that spin), but I expect most people that qualify for this small government handout will use it to pay bills or try to save some of it. You know, they’ll be trying to dig themselves out of a hole that the government helped get a lot of them into.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bush. Thanks for thinking so little of us. We don’t even have the self control to hold on to a few hundred dollars without leaving it at Best Buy. The financial analysts out there are acting like we’re about to hit the lottery. It’s four hundred dollars (eight hundred at the most)! How much can you really buy with four hundred dollars? Seriously, I am insulted by this.
I’ll be even more insulted if I don’t get a check. I’m going to the mailbox right now to wait for mine. There’s a PS3 at Wal-Mart with my name on it.
President Bush believes that giving certain Americans an extra $400 to $800 dollars will stimulate the economy and fend off the impending recession, more than enforcing sound business practices or providing jobs would. It’s his belief that giving us this money will make us go out and buy stuff, even in the face of foreclosure or three-dollar gas.
I am truly insulted, sir. What kind of person do you think I am? What, do you think I’m gonna see a free check from Uncle Sam and go, “Whoo, Lawd! I’mma go cash this at the liquor sto’ right now, so I can get the whole bottle of Cristal at the club tonight!”
Just the idea that he believes that enough people would blow through some free money quickly enough to slightly stimulate the economy is crazy. I mean, I ain’t no financial expert (hell, I’ve never even balanced a checkbook), but I know enough about not having money to know that if $600 fell from the sky tomorrow, the last thing I’m gonna be thinking about is using it to make a down payment on a flatscreen TV.
But that’s what they’re banking on, that we will waste this money on disposable goods, that we are all just a bunch of broke, greedy souls who can’t wait to be separated from our money by Corporate America. Sure, that usually holds true when it comes to things like cell phones (i.e., the song that plays when you call someone…they’re paying two bucks a month for a song that they’ll never hear), or auto accessories (chrome rims…that spin), but I expect most people that qualify for this small government handout will use it to pay bills or try to save some of it. You know, they’ll be trying to dig themselves out of a hole that the government helped get a lot of them into.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bush. Thanks for thinking so little of us. We don’t even have the self control to hold on to a few hundred dollars without leaving it at Best Buy. The financial analysts out there are acting like we’re about to hit the lottery. It’s four hundred dollars (eight hundred at the most)! How much can you really buy with four hundred dollars? Seriously, I am insulted by this.
I’ll be even more insulted if I don’t get a check. I’m going to the mailbox right now to wait for mine. There’s a PS3 at Wal-Mart with my name on it.
How I Hated Brett Favre
I was living in Biloxi, MS when Brett Favre rose to prominence in Green Bay.
God, I hated him.
This was 1994 or so. I don’t remember the exact year, but I do remember that his time at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg was still fondly remembered. I remember that back then, he still hadn’t gotten his teeth cleaned, so his smile still looked like he was eating chocolate. I remember that he was almost always on the front page of the sports section in the Sun Herald. Biloxi is about an hour and a half away from New Orleans (at least, when I drive), so normally, everyone in the area was a Saints fan. We were so close that our Fox affiliate was based in New Orleans. My football memories during this time were tainted with a chorus of “Saints on Fox 38!” being sung by a zydeco band. But also during this time, everyone was talking about the Packers like Lambeau Field had been right next to the Grand Casino for the last 50 years.
It bothered me, because I couldn’t (and still can’t) stand bandwagon fans. Yes, I understood that he was from Kiln, which is about 60 miles north of Biloxi. I understood that he was the last worthwhile thing to happen to Hattiesburg that someone outside of Hattiesburg would know about (at least until that episode of “My Super Sweet 16). But the Packers, a team that’s at least 1000 miles away, were getting more love than the team that was right down I-10. Yeah, the Saints were still being called the “Ain’ts” and had no hope of reaching the playoffs. But what about team loyalty, or at least being loyal to the team that’s closest to your town? Jim Mora was giving Biloxi a free show every Sunday night by blowing up in front of the cameras and somehow, that wasn’t enough to hold Biloxi’s attention.
On top of that, people just wouldn’t shut up about Favre. I couldn’t escape from him. I’m the kind of person that tends to avoid following trends and rebels against whatever is the hot thing at the time. If everyone else likes it, I ignore it until it goes away and discover it on my own. It’s why I still haven’t listened to Alicia Keys’ latest CD. But I wasn’t allowed to do that with Favre. He was forced down my throat as the greatest thing since someone decided to put air inside of pigskin and throw it at people.
And to top all of that off, my girlfriend around that time had a friend across the street that was related to Brett Favre. They were distant cousins, but cousins nonetheless. They were closely related enough to where they shared facial features and she knew he was related to her, but distant enough that their names were spelled differently (Farve). Surprisingly, she was like me. She was sick of this guy.
I didn’t want to hate on the hometown boy, but it just became ridiculous down there. For one, he wasn’t even a hometown boy, like Ronald Dupree or Chris Jackson. He was from Kiln, MS, which is all the way over in the next county and really, isn’t even on the Coast. He didn’t go to Mississippi Gulf Coast CC or even Perkinston. He went to Southern Miss. He had no real ties to the Coast, and yet was embraced as the biggest start to ever come out of there. It just didn’t make any sense to me.
So when the Packers would play, I’d almost always root against them. Besides, that’s back when the Cowboys and 49ers were still good, so I’d support those teams, mainly because they were the only ones I really knew. Eventually, Favre overpowered my personal vendetta and the Packers won the Super Bowl. It was a sad day in the Martin household, or at least, in my bedroom. I doubt my parents really cared about my player-hatred.
After that, I would move on to Jackson State University, about two hours north of Hattiesburg (provided you’re obeying the speed limits). Up there, they didn’t care about Brett Favre. They had their own colleges in Jackson, like perennial powerhouses JSU, Belhaven, and Millsaps, whom you might remember from a famed ESPN clip where a football team lost a game after the opposing team scored a touchdown after about 30 laterals were thrown to get the ball in the endzone. That was Millsaps. It’s the only way Jackson colleges ever get on TV. Millsaps Fever! Catch it!
Also, we were close enough to Ole Miss and MS State to where they got most of the attention.
Being away from all of those fake Packers fans gave me the opportunity to see what everyone else had figured out years before me: That Brett Favre was a great football player. It also gave me the chance to learn the hard way that one should never bet against Brett Favre. I lost way too much money doing that.
Ironically enough, when I started betting on him, the Packers were stinking up the joint. Karmic justice at its finest.
Along the way, I watched him teach the top, fall off, almost get run out of town, turn a hater like me into a fan, and almost reach the pinnacle again. Not a lot of players in the NFL get the chance to do that. John Elway might be the only other one in my short football memory.
But aside from all of the records he broke and amazing games he played, the lasting memory that I will have of Brett Favre is of him throwing snowballs at his teammates in the middle of a playoff game. And maybe his brown teeth, but mostly the snowballs. I mean, here was one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever throw a spiral and he was wasting his Hall of Fame arm beaning his teammates in the back with poorly packed snowballs. His Mississippi upbringing was showing through.
Two months later, he shocked the world by walking away from the game after his team was a win away from going to the Super Bowl. Surely, they’d be in contention again next year. Why didn’t he walk away during the three years that the Packers weren’t worth the chalk that marked the yards on their historic field? Why now, when he had turned the football world on its ear by making the Packers a legitimate team again at the age of 37?
He just didn’t want to play anymore. That’s all there is to it. But he went out on his own terms, and as an athlete, that’s really all you can ask for. No one made him go and his body didn’t betray him. And while I’m sad he’s gone, I’m still happy for him. I’m happy that he walked into his retirement press conference and I’m happy that he found such joy in doing something that it made him cry to stop doing it. What more can you ask for in life?
I guess maybe a chance to start an NFL game. At least, that’s what you’re asking for if you’re Aaron Rodgers. Be careful what you wish for, kid. You’re about to get it.
God, I hated him.
This was 1994 or so. I don’t remember the exact year, but I do remember that his time at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg was still fondly remembered. I remember that back then, he still hadn’t gotten his teeth cleaned, so his smile still looked like he was eating chocolate. I remember that he was almost always on the front page of the sports section in the Sun Herald. Biloxi is about an hour and a half away from New Orleans (at least, when I drive), so normally, everyone in the area was a Saints fan. We were so close that our Fox affiliate was based in New Orleans. My football memories during this time were tainted with a chorus of “Saints on Fox 38!” being sung by a zydeco band. But also during this time, everyone was talking about the Packers like Lambeau Field had been right next to the Grand Casino for the last 50 years.
It bothered me, because I couldn’t (and still can’t) stand bandwagon fans. Yes, I understood that he was from Kiln, which is about 60 miles north of Biloxi. I understood that he was the last worthwhile thing to happen to Hattiesburg that someone outside of Hattiesburg would know about (at least until that episode of “My Super Sweet 16). But the Packers, a team that’s at least 1000 miles away, were getting more love than the team that was right down I-10. Yeah, the Saints were still being called the “Ain’ts” and had no hope of reaching the playoffs. But what about team loyalty, or at least being loyal to the team that’s closest to your town? Jim Mora was giving Biloxi a free show every Sunday night by blowing up in front of the cameras and somehow, that wasn’t enough to hold Biloxi’s attention.
On top of that, people just wouldn’t shut up about Favre. I couldn’t escape from him. I’m the kind of person that tends to avoid following trends and rebels against whatever is the hot thing at the time. If everyone else likes it, I ignore it until it goes away and discover it on my own. It’s why I still haven’t listened to Alicia Keys’ latest CD. But I wasn’t allowed to do that with Favre. He was forced down my throat as the greatest thing since someone decided to put air inside of pigskin and throw it at people.
And to top all of that off, my girlfriend around that time had a friend across the street that was related to Brett Favre. They were distant cousins, but cousins nonetheless. They were closely related enough to where they shared facial features and she knew he was related to her, but distant enough that their names were spelled differently (Farve). Surprisingly, she was like me. She was sick of this guy.
I didn’t want to hate on the hometown boy, but it just became ridiculous down there. For one, he wasn’t even a hometown boy, like Ronald Dupree or Chris Jackson. He was from Kiln, MS, which is all the way over in the next county and really, isn’t even on the Coast. He didn’t go to Mississippi Gulf Coast CC or even Perkinston. He went to Southern Miss. He had no real ties to the Coast, and yet was embraced as the biggest start to ever come out of there. It just didn’t make any sense to me.
So when the Packers would play, I’d almost always root against them. Besides, that’s back when the Cowboys and 49ers were still good, so I’d support those teams, mainly because they were the only ones I really knew. Eventually, Favre overpowered my personal vendetta and the Packers won the Super Bowl. It was a sad day in the Martin household, or at least, in my bedroom. I doubt my parents really cared about my player-hatred.
After that, I would move on to Jackson State University, about two hours north of Hattiesburg (provided you’re obeying the speed limits). Up there, they didn’t care about Brett Favre. They had their own colleges in Jackson, like perennial powerhouses JSU, Belhaven, and Millsaps, whom you might remember from a famed ESPN clip where a football team lost a game after the opposing team scored a touchdown after about 30 laterals were thrown to get the ball in the endzone. That was Millsaps. It’s the only way Jackson colleges ever get on TV. Millsaps Fever! Catch it!
Also, we were close enough to Ole Miss and MS State to where they got most of the attention.
Being away from all of those fake Packers fans gave me the opportunity to see what everyone else had figured out years before me: That Brett Favre was a great football player. It also gave me the chance to learn the hard way that one should never bet against Brett Favre. I lost way too much money doing that.
Ironically enough, when I started betting on him, the Packers were stinking up the joint. Karmic justice at its finest.
Along the way, I watched him teach the top, fall off, almost get run out of town, turn a hater like me into a fan, and almost reach the pinnacle again. Not a lot of players in the NFL get the chance to do that. John Elway might be the only other one in my short football memory.
But aside from all of the records he broke and amazing games he played, the lasting memory that I will have of Brett Favre is of him throwing snowballs at his teammates in the middle of a playoff game. And maybe his brown teeth, but mostly the snowballs. I mean, here was one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever throw a spiral and he was wasting his Hall of Fame arm beaning his teammates in the back with poorly packed snowballs. His Mississippi upbringing was showing through.
Two months later, he shocked the world by walking away from the game after his team was a win away from going to the Super Bowl. Surely, they’d be in contention again next year. Why didn’t he walk away during the three years that the Packers weren’t worth the chalk that marked the yards on their historic field? Why now, when he had turned the football world on its ear by making the Packers a legitimate team again at the age of 37?
He just didn’t want to play anymore. That’s all there is to it. But he went out on his own terms, and as an athlete, that’s really all you can ask for. No one made him go and his body didn’t betray him. And while I’m sad he’s gone, I’m still happy for him. I’m happy that he walked into his retirement press conference and I’m happy that he found such joy in doing something that it made him cry to stop doing it. What more can you ask for in life?
I guess maybe a chance to start an NFL game. At least, that’s what you’re asking for if you’re Aaron Rodgers. Be careful what you wish for, kid. You’re about to get it.
Do you want him to win or don't you?
Barack Obama gave a brilliant piece of oratory last night. I didn’t see it, but reading the transcripts on the internet the next day uplifted me, inspired me, and pissed me off, because I don’t have cable right now and I couldn’t watch it.
The speech was made in response to the furor that people had been engaging in regarding Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who was also a part of his campaign. He had recently made some comments that white people would call “inflammatory (which they did)” and black people would call “your regular Saturday morning at the barbershop (I think I just heard someone yell the word “cracker.”)” Wright was let go from Obama’s campaign as a result.
There have been some black people who are faulting Barack Obama’s decision to let his pastor of 20 years, go. This is the man who introduced Obama to his Christian faith, baptized him and his children and married him to his wife. To fire someone with whom you share such a deep and personal relationship, to some, is unthinkable. And there are many pastors who believe that Barack has unleashed some sort of unthinkable, unspeakable, evil upon the Black community.
And already, there are those who feel that Obama’s speech is a way for him to spin the damage done by Jeremiah Wright. There are those who feel like he was only saying what he had to. These people claim that there was no way that Barack could have attended this man’s church for 20 years and not known that he was a hate-monger. This is merely a ploy to save face in the aftermath of what could potentially end his run at the White House.
Barack Obama is on the verge of making history. He is closer to winning the Presidency than any non-white male has ever been. He is the first among us to have a realistic shot of becoming President. Did you really think that he’d risk throwing all of that away for Jeremiah Wright? What did you think he was going to say?
Let me state, first of all, that I believe that he believed every word of the speech he delivered. I don’t believe there was any deception or hidden agenda behind his words. I believe that, even though it was probably a prepared speech, it came from his heart and the world that he described in that speech is what he truly wants for America. I believe that should he become President, this is what he’ll work towards.
Having said all of that, it didn’t matter who was delivering the speech, I don’t think that any politician would have been well-served by getting behind the podium and saying, “Man, you ain’t neva’ lied!”
The fact is, there are two versions of America. There’s the America that Black people see and then there’s the America that everyone else sees, and to a certain degree, both of them are real and true. There’s a reason why a lot of Black people listen to such people as Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton or read books about the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. It’s something that Black people have known since we got off the boat. You heard Barack allude to it in his speech. It’s not that we’re all cracker-hating people. You have to go to the Arab world or most Indian reservations to find that nowadays. No, it’s just that the realities of the world that many of us have lived in don’t always match the vision that America has tried to sell to everyone else. Naturally, we respond better to a message that we believe is reflecting reality.
The problem with that message is, it only resonates with Black people. Doesn’t matter how true it is. Doesn’t matter how many cops you saw beat up your cousin or how many white women have followed you around the store, or how many times you were called the n-word in high school. As Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have learned, no white people are going to vote for you to govern them if you’re unapologetically going to put Black folks at the front of the line. And if you think white people are a hard sell, just ask the harmonious Barack Obama how hard it is to get Asians, Latinos, and East Indians on your side if you’re black.
My point is, you can’t get the White House talking about what you’re going to do for Black people. And you can’t get to the White House if you show you’re in favor of a message that White folks are gonna think is threatening. Black people are like, 12% of the population. There isn’t a single candidate that we can elect all by ourselves. If that was the case, then Dick Gregory might have had a chance. So for any Black candidate to have a realistic chance, they better have the message that Barack has had.
Again, none of this is to say that Barack is being disingenuous about his feelings on race, but it is to say that unless he wanted to watch his Presidential aspirations go down faster than three shots of Patron at the club, he had to distance himself from everything that his former pastor was saying. He can feel that way behind closed doors all he wants to (if he does), but as far as white folks are concerned, he doesn’t agree with anything that came out of his mouth. And Black people, if you really want him to be President, then you’ll just shut up and let him do it.
The speech was made in response to the furor that people had been engaging in regarding Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who was also a part of his campaign. He had recently made some comments that white people would call “inflammatory (which they did)” and black people would call “your regular Saturday morning at the barbershop (I think I just heard someone yell the word “cracker.”)” Wright was let go from Obama’s campaign as a result.
There have been some black people who are faulting Barack Obama’s decision to let his pastor of 20 years, go. This is the man who introduced Obama to his Christian faith, baptized him and his children and married him to his wife. To fire someone with whom you share such a deep and personal relationship, to some, is unthinkable. And there are many pastors who believe that Barack has unleashed some sort of unthinkable, unspeakable, evil upon the Black community.
And already, there are those who feel that Obama’s speech is a way for him to spin the damage done by Jeremiah Wright. There are those who feel like he was only saying what he had to. These people claim that there was no way that Barack could have attended this man’s church for 20 years and not known that he was a hate-monger. This is merely a ploy to save face in the aftermath of what could potentially end his run at the White House.
Barack Obama is on the verge of making history. He is closer to winning the Presidency than any non-white male has ever been. He is the first among us to have a realistic shot of becoming President. Did you really think that he’d risk throwing all of that away for Jeremiah Wright? What did you think he was going to say?
Let me state, first of all, that I believe that he believed every word of the speech he delivered. I don’t believe there was any deception or hidden agenda behind his words. I believe that, even though it was probably a prepared speech, it came from his heart and the world that he described in that speech is what he truly wants for America. I believe that should he become President, this is what he’ll work towards.
Having said all of that, it didn’t matter who was delivering the speech, I don’t think that any politician would have been well-served by getting behind the podium and saying, “Man, you ain’t neva’ lied!”
The fact is, there are two versions of America. There’s the America that Black people see and then there’s the America that everyone else sees, and to a certain degree, both of them are real and true. There’s a reason why a lot of Black people listen to such people as Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton or read books about the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. It’s something that Black people have known since we got off the boat. You heard Barack allude to it in his speech. It’s not that we’re all cracker-hating people. You have to go to the Arab world or most Indian reservations to find that nowadays. No, it’s just that the realities of the world that many of us have lived in don’t always match the vision that America has tried to sell to everyone else. Naturally, we respond better to a message that we believe is reflecting reality.
The problem with that message is, it only resonates with Black people. Doesn’t matter how true it is. Doesn’t matter how many cops you saw beat up your cousin or how many white women have followed you around the store, or how many times you were called the n-word in high school. As Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have learned, no white people are going to vote for you to govern them if you’re unapologetically going to put Black folks at the front of the line. And if you think white people are a hard sell, just ask the harmonious Barack Obama how hard it is to get Asians, Latinos, and East Indians on your side if you’re black.
My point is, you can’t get the White House talking about what you’re going to do for Black people. And you can’t get to the White House if you show you’re in favor of a message that White folks are gonna think is threatening. Black people are like, 12% of the population. There isn’t a single candidate that we can elect all by ourselves. If that was the case, then Dick Gregory might have had a chance. So for any Black candidate to have a realistic chance, they better have the message that Barack has had.
Again, none of this is to say that Barack is being disingenuous about his feelings on race, but it is to say that unless he wanted to watch his Presidential aspirations go down faster than three shots of Patron at the club, he had to distance himself from everything that his former pastor was saying. He can feel that way behind closed doors all he wants to (if he does), but as far as white folks are concerned, he doesn’t agree with anything that came out of his mouth. And Black people, if you really want him to be President, then you’ll just shut up and let him do it.
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