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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Corporate America Hates Sports

Does it make me old-fashioned to say that I’m tired of the corporate circus that surrounds big sporting events today?

I’m old enough to remember the days when games like the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game were all about the game itself. Back when I was a kid, you got the game and some commercials and that was it. Back then, there were no marketing executives trying to convince me that I really cared to see Jordin Sparks butcher her own song. Silly me, I thought I was tuning in to see an athletic competition.

I’m really tired of all of the extras that dare to turn these events into all-in-one entertainment extravaganzas. I can’t imagine that anyone is tuning in just to see someone blow through three or four songs during a halftime show, when they could get the DVD and watch an actual, fully realized performance. And people who are there to watch the game don’t care who’s performing in what, because they were going to watch the game anyway. You’re not expanding your audience, you’re just giving the actual sports fans a longer piss break.

Are they trying to create a family experience with all of this, something the whole family can watch together? I’d say no, because for one, the big sporting events always start around 9, which is when responsible parents are sending their kids to bed. But let’s say that they were letting them watch the entire game, despite the fact that these kids have school the next day.

The only one who’s really watching the game is Dad and maybe Son, if there is one, but these damn mini-concerts keep getting in the way. Mom doesn’t really care, and neither does Daughter, because they stopped showing musical acts that play on MTV because America is prejudiced against nipples. So the men aren’t happy, because Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are getting in the way of the football analysis, and the women aren’t happy, because, let’s face it…it’s Tom Petty. He’s not exactly a sex symbol. Not even in his own house.

I don’t know how it was with white people, but black households decided that they weren’t watching the Super Bowl halftime show the second it was announced. My girlfriend and I spent the entire halftime show making a list of other acts that we would have rather seen. Guns N’ Roses would have been 100 times more exciting, just because of the hope that Slash might go after Axl with his guitar.

I think back to the nameless college football halftime show from a few years ago when Ashlee Simpson performed and shockingly, everyone booed. I didn’t watch it, because I don’t watch college football (on the grounds that it isn’t a real sport) and I don’t watch Ashlee Simpson (on the grounds that she isn’t a real singer), but I remember wondering “How did they not see this coming?”

Ashlee Simpson’s fanbase is comprised of people who haven’t developed things like discernible taste (required to know that Ashlee Simpson isn’t talented) or attention span (required to watch a football game) and, by all accounts, was giving a horrible performance. College football fans are some of the most passionate, yet rude and belligerent fans outside of Philadelphia. And none of them like Ashlee Simpson. Now, any marketing student, even the ones sleeping the back of the classroom, can see that there is no crossover appeal here. At some point, someone should have pointed out that this was a bad idea and having her continue to sing just ran the risk of her getting hit with a foreign object. There weren’t any Ashlee Simpson fans anywhere watching that game and there weren’t any college football fans anywhere that even thought to themselves, “Man, I can’t wait to hear Ashlee Simpson sing.”

But these are the things that happen when you let marketing people have some control over your product. First, your stadium winds up with a ridiculous name (like Minute Maid Field) and second, your game winds up with a bad halftime show. Marketing execs really believe that ratings will go up if “interchangeable-pop-star-of-the-week” makes an appearance at a sporting event. This just isn’t the case, because the best you can hope for is an even swap of the audience. The sports fans are going to the bathroom and the tasteless kids who like this “music” are going to sit and watch. The only time this has ever worked out in the marketing department’s favor is when Prince performed, and only because he did songs from “Purple Rain.” If he had done songs from “The Rainbow Children,” I guarantee you there would have been a full-scale, South Park riot.

So why do they continue to do this, even though all they’re doing is filling the world with sadness? Sure, it’s for the money, but mostly because marketing execs don’t think in real world terms. They use corporate buzzwords when they think, so for future reference, if anyone you know ever uses the word “synergy” in a sentence, you know they’re about to do something stupid next, like try to convince you that the best thing to do at a biker rally is hold a live wrestling pay-per-view. Your only recourse is to whack them in head with something before they can complete their thoughts on how you’re stealing free TV every time you don’t watch the commercials.

Who benefits? They do, I guess. It certainly isn’t the viewer. There has never been a time in human history where a person has been forced to sit through a Destiny’s Child performance and felt like a winner at the end, except for that time that Michelle tripped over her own two feet and fell flat on her face. And yet, that’s what we got, over and over, at the 2003 All-Star Game. Because, according to the marketing department, that’s what we all really wanted. Not a showcase of the NBA’s biggest stars and the last All-Star Game that Michael Jordan would ever playing, but Beyonce warbling over some beat that even the most desperate rapper wouldn’t freestyle over. God Bless Corporate America.

Once More, With Feeling...Don't Fire Mike Woodson!

Things seem to finally be coming together for Billy Knight’s Atlanta Hawks. Josh Smith and Marvin Williams have finally progressed to the point where they would have been coming out of college as seniors. Joe Johnson is the rock that the franchise rests upon. Al Horford and Acie Law are draft picks that weren’t complete wastes of time. And now, Billy Knight might have finally managed to get this team going in the really right direction by trading for Mike Bibby.

But that doesn’t mean that Billy Knight is a genius or even that deserving of credit. I’m pretty sure that somewhere, the law of averages says that even a monkey can screw up enough times and still manage to get it right. Just look at George Bush’s foreign policy.

See, even throughout the deadly exploding slapstick known as “Operation: Comedy of Errors,” we’re beginning to see positive results. The surge is working, even though it’s actually about six years later than his generals initially requested. Things are seemingly calming down over in Iraq and just through sheer persistence (and the fact that the enemy is willing to lessen their own numbers by blowing themselves up), the U.S. Military is probably going to prove the old axiom that you can’t kill them all utterly wrong.

At this point, you might be wondering to yourself, “Is he really comparing the Skirmish in Iraq to basketball?” If you’re looking at the fact that there were eventually lucky idiots at the helm in both situations, then I sure am.

Billy Knight came to Atlanta and immediately began dismantling the losing squad that was here, something he’s immensely good at. “Bargain Closeout” Billy Knight got rid of everyone that was here, and got to work drafting high school players and early draft entries based on “potential.” Then, he started just defying the smarts that God gave retards and passed up Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Brandon Roy to draft Marvin and Shelden Williams (no relation).

He brought in Antoine Walker, Stephen Jackson, and Al Harrington. He traded away Boris Diaw, who blossomed somewhere else. He’s managed to cement his place as one of the worst GMs in the NBA today, and yet no one’s demanding he be fired or keying his car or anything like that. Why?

Because he’s letting Mike Woodson take the fall for all of this.

Mike Woodson has coached the team that Billy Knight has put together and done it without complaint. His coaching has actually made the ragtag group of journeymen and small forwards better than they were before he got here. Under his watch, Josh Smith “Is In Foul Trouble” and Marvin Williams are exactly where they would have been had they gone to college for four years. He’s gotten this team to play defense. Their wins have increased every year since he’s been here. And yet, the Atlanta sportswriters’ community (whom no one has ever accused of being knowledgeable) thinks that Woodson is the problem.

Let’s be real here, when your team is undersized in the frontcourt and has no real floor general, and the guy making the trades is forever distracted by buzzwords like “potential” or “freakish wingspan,” your coach could be Phil K. Riley-Wooden and still lose 60% of their games. A lesser coach would have set a record for being the first coach to have a negative win total when you consider everything Mike Woodson’s been saddled with.

And now that Mike Bibby is here, everyone believes that this team no longer has any excuses. That Mike Woodson is on the hot seat. That all is right with this roster filled with redundant players who just got out of puberty five minutes ago. The truth is, even that will take a period of adjustment. After all, Mike Bibby is something that the Hawks haven’t had since Mookie Blaylock: A real point guard. Thing is, if Knight had drafted Chris Paul to begin with, he wouldn’t have had to trade for Bibby.

Even though Knight has shot Mike Woodson in both feet every time Draft Day comes around, if Woodson can’t get this team to the playoffs this season, he’ll likely be fired. Knight will have bought himself another few years to screw up, and Mark Bradley of the AJC still will have no idea what he’s talking about.

But this team has managed to get positive results despite the string of blown moves by its commander-in-chief, who will come out of this smelling like a rose. Unfortunately, for Mike Woodson, he’s about to be judged based on whether or not he could succeed despite his incompetent leadership.

Sounds just like Dubya to me.

Legal Abortions: The Lesser Evil

The Human Life Amendment (H.R. 536) is being proposed as an amendment to the Georgia Constitution, which would define a life at the point of conception as a person. The passing of this amendment would automatically make Roe vs. Wade irrelevant, making abortion illegal, at least in Georgia.

Basically, if you live in Georgia, get your abortions while you can, because something this vague has an excellent chance of passing, even though it grants protection to what's essentially a virus or a symbiote, something completely incapable of independent life. But that's not the real issue here.

The anti-abortionists will have finally found a way to win, but what will that victory mean? At first glance, it just seems like abortion would just be illegal. All those "planned parenthood" clinics all over the country that are killing babies on the government's dime would have to cut all that noise out. But would that be the end of abortion in America?

The short answer is "no." The long answer is "Man, hell no."

How naive do you have to be to think that the law or a court case being overturned would get rid of abortion? The law can't even get rid of bootleg movies. Remember the Prohibition? All that did was make people rich and get Irish Catholics elected President.

All that's going to happen, should abortion ever be outlawed, is that black market sales of abortions will skyrocket. That's all. Everyone that really wants one will get one, like hookers. It doesn't matter what the churches or pro-lifers want. This is America, the land of supply and demand. If you want it, it can be had. Someone will always be willing to cut a baby out of you, albeit for a higher price, if it's illegal. Sterilization and continued health, not guaranteed.

Pro-lifers should just let this one go, because all it's going to do is make things worse. Much like the choice that the Catholic Church had to make with the fight against AIDS vs. the fight against protection against AIDS, sometimes you gotta pick the lesser of two evils. Yeah, you might get rid of legal abortions, but you just opened the floodgates for very illegal ones. I know pro-lifers have good intentions, but aside from being extremely annoying and judgmental people, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And in this case, so is the road to bacterial infection.



Sure, in a perfect world, there would be no need for abortions. But we don't live in that world, because people won't stop humping each other. In this flawed world of ours, we have to have realistic solutions to the problems that we face, like attacking terrorists with bombs instead of flowers or canceling reality TV shows instead of watching them.



Attacking abortion isn't solving the problem. It's just a symptom of a greater problem, the root of which is unprotected sex, something almost impossible to solve because people seem to really hate condoms. And while we might not always agree when our 17-year-old daughter says, "I want an abortion," if they were to do it, would you prefer that they went to a place that's all legal and clean, or go behind your back and hit up Dr. Craig, the Back Alley Practitioner?



Really, you'd be impressed to see what Dr. Craig can do with a minimum of actual training and a lack of time, due to the planned police raid at his "office."



Whether abortion is right or wrong can be argued from here to eternity, and I don't have the time or energy to do that. But until we actually decide the rightness or wrongness of it, let's at least agree to keep it where we can see it and regulate it. Making it illegal won't necessarily make it all better.



Except for Dr. Craig. Business has been kind of slow lately.

How to Fleece the Stupid (or Shaq Got Traded Where?)

Steve Kerr is off to a fine start as Phoenix Suns' General Manager.

The training wheels come off as he makes his first big trade and likely sends that Phoenix bike careening headlong into that San Antonio oncoming traffic. The Suns are reportedly trading the disgruntled Shawn Marion and the completely ineffective, yet overpaid Marcus Banks for Shaquille O'Neal, apparently so Steve Kerr can experience crushing defeat, after all those years of winning championships in Chicago and San Antonio. Steve Kerr is going to cripple the league's most explosive offense by adding a 35 year old center that has trouble just staying healthy these days, let alone running up and down the floor.

Of course, this gives Shawn Marion what he wants, which is a chance to prove that he can be the man, which he'll get every opportunity to do after Dwyane Wade gets hit with double teams and is forced to give the ball up. I say that to say that Wade is the man in Miami and will stay the man in Miami, unless Wade has a heroin habit that we don't know about yet. Dwyane Wade made one of the greatest players of all time HIS sidekick. What chance does Shawn Marion think he'll have of breaking out?

Months ago, I predicted that Marion would leave Phoenix and become the answer to "Whatever happened to...?" question. I set the over/under at 2 seasons.

Phoenix will have an extra $20 million in cap space to play with in two years, when Shaq's deal is up, and they get rid of a scowling face in the locker room, one with freakishly long arms, could jump out of the gym, and could defend four positions. I don't know what Shaq is getting, except the chance to actually hinder a team for once in his career. When asked for comment, Shaq quickly ended a phone conversation where his last words were, "Make sure no one can identify the body. She'll be home alone tomorrow night." I wonder what that was about.

In between short moments of actually doing what I was supposed to be doing at work, I thought about why this deal would actually be made. I can't say that Miami is really benefitting, because outside of Shaq and Udonis Haslem, everyone on their roster is a forward. I guess 6'2" Marcus Banks will break up the monotony. They still don't have a second dependable scorer, because unless I missed the part where Shawn Marion developed a game that didn't revolve around catching lobs from Steve Nash, they still don't have one. They still don't have any reliable outside shooting, but I guess having Marcus Banks is better than having Ricky Davis or an empty pair of sneakers out there. On a side note, the sneakers have a higher shooting percentage than Davis.

I don't see how Marion is benefitting, other than getting out of Phoenix, which is what he believes he wanted. But in two weeks, he'll be sitting on the bench wondering exactly when he smoked all the crack that made him think that leaving Nash was a good idea.

Phoenix isn't benefitting, because they just lost a key component to their offensive game plan. If this was Shaq 2000, I'd suggest bringing in some investigators, because there was some theivery that went down. Or at least some regret, because there would have had to been some embarrassing pictures involved. But that's not what they got. They got the 2008 model. This model is still pretty funny, but this one backfires when you start it up and the bumper falls off if you stop the car too fast. I don't see how the Suns are a better team with Shaq and not Marion, but then again, if I could see how this would work, I'd either have a much better paying job or an LSD habit.

So I guess the winner here is Shaq, because he's going to keep his streak of teams with records at .500 or better going, thanks to a mathematical impossibility (there's only 34 games left). He doesn't really have to work that hard, because all their positions are already filled. He's in the same division as L.A., which already has something of a rivalry with the Suns, and with Kobe still a Laker, I'm sure David Stern already has the promotion machine lined up, with advice from Don King.

Of course, purple's not really a slimming color. Just ask Charles Barkley. Even still, Shaq wins. And chubby chasers who are also basketball fans.

The Taste of New England Crow Chowder

Okay, so it really didn't take an extra team on the field for the Patriots to be beaten. Okay, so maybe I was exaggerating just a little bit. So the Invincible Boston Juggernaut wasn't completely unbeatable. As a result, I went in to work today, not wanting to talk about the game to anyone.

But why am I so defensive? I don't even like the Patriots. I mean, Rodney Harrison and Asante Samuel are cool, and if the Falcons had an offensive line half as good as theirs, Michael Vick wouldn't have taken that bump on the head that made him think he was a criminal mastermind. I could watch Randy Moss, Wes Welker, and Donte Stallworth until Cross Colours come back in style, but I flat-out despise Tom Brady, to the point where I could actually be considered a "hater." And there I was, rooting for the Patriots to blow teams out all season long. The Evil Empire.

This Patriots loss, however, is going to go down as the single biggest upset in professional sports. Bigger than Buster Douglas, bigger than Broadway Joe. Let's face it, the season, in the eyes of many, was decided in September (or in my case, before the ink dried on Randy Moss's contract). For Boston fans, the Red Sox winning the World Series was a nice surprise and the Celtics success has been icing on the cake, but the Patriots winning the Super Bowl this year was supposed to be sure thing, a foregone conclusion, kinda like "Cavemen" getting cancelled or when fat people enter a buffet. The Patriots losing this game was like watching six fat people at the buffet, but they're all on a diet. Just a horrible, horrible letdown.

It really doesn't hurt though, because I've never liked the Patriots in the first place. I've spent many an hour defending my stance that Tom Brady is not the bee's knees. I've wasted lots of time that I could have spent talking to girls or being productive claiming that Brady is merely a very good quarterback who benefits from a very balanced system. If anything, this loss gives my argument a little traction. This is the kind of loss that I've envisioned for five years for this team, and it came at the time when I was actually on their side, no matter how many ulcers it caused me. I couldn't wait for the game to be over so I could get back to hating Brady, like God intended. I had mentally written a column about it all two weeks ago.

As for the Giants, they played an awesome game. Their victory is like the ending to a movie or something. Starting with Michael Strahan's holdout, Tiki Barber's retirement and subsequent bashing of Eli Manning, the 0-2 start (with the defense giving up, like 80 points), Plaxico Burress's ankle kissing its health good-bye, the controversial decision to actually play the Pats in the last week (not knowing that it would inspire the Giants to beat that same team a month later), setting an NFL record with 11 straight road wins, everyone overwhelmingly picking against them in each round of the playoffs and ending the season with an emotional interview from Plaxico. It was more unreal than the ending to "Teen Wolf," and that movie involved an imaginary monster who played basketball.

The most interesting thing here is Tiki Barber's reaction to everything. I think he's just better of just changing his name to "Ronde," or better yet, "Shaun Alexander," because no one watches Seahawks games, anyway. No one will know the difference except for the obvious improvements in rushing yards.

But here was a guy who was supposed to set the broadcasting world on fire. Here was a guy who was supposed to have modeling and acting deals falling from the sky. Here's a guy who couldn't wait to get away from football and the Giants and start working the talk show circuit, even though he's never exhibited any real charisma or insight into anything, including football. And so, he spent the entire 2007-08 season playing quietly at the retarded kids' table on NBC's "Football Night in America," watching the team that he abandoned (and constantly insulted) exceed all expectations and win the Super Bowl, fighting back in the inevitable onslaught of history called the New England Patriots.

Good call, Tiki. You're a true wealth of knowledge.

Really, I wonder what it's like being Tiki Barber today. I mean, I'm sure he'll be alright, what with his adventures tag-teaming women with his brother, free Escalades, and diamond-encrusted dinosaur-egg breakfasts, but even still, this has got to sting. In one fell swoop, his entire retirement and broadcasting career was reduced to being the tell-all interview with an actor who just left a hit show to pursue an ill-fated movie career and the show got better in his absence. Congrats, Tiki. You are football's version of David Caruso on an old episode of Access Hollywood.

On another day, I would have been rooting for this team, because it's hard not to be proud of them, having seen what they had to deal with all season. And through it all, they beat that which was unbeaten, in addition to three other teams that were all supposed to be better. Even though I picked against you (four times, you bastards), congratulations to the New York Giants.

Still...it would have been nice to see an undefeated team. Oh, well. They'll all be back next year. It's not like they won't try it again.

A Teddy Bear Named Mohammed

A British teacher in the Sudan has been arrested for letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear "Mohammed." The sentence for this crime can be 40 lashes, a year in prison, or a fine. This comes on the heels of a Saudi woman who was sentenced to six months in jail for allowed herself to be gang raped. After all, how dare this woman carry her well-covered vagina into a car with a man who wasn't a relative?

Muslims....can you see at all why the rest of us don't want to live under your Islamic Sharia law?

If I can get 40 lashes for mistakenly calling an inanimate object "Mohammed," or jail time for not being able to make other people control their own sexual urges, then I'll just ride this "Capitalistic White Devil Society" thing out. What other laws do you guys have over there that the less insane parts of the world haven't even considered yet? Is peeing on the seat punishable by castration? Is the punishment for drinking out of the carton having your house burned down?

At least America has laws that I can understand, like how you're not supposed to shoot people or stop at red lights. For lazy people like myself who require laws that don't make studying religious texts a pre-requisite, the land of the Great White Satan is the place to be. I can even understand why the Japanese once (and sometimes still do) prefer death to dishonor. I mean, I'd never do it because whatever happened, I'm sure I'd get over it, but if they want to jam a sword in their stomachs, more power to them. But getting offended at me for accidentally showing the bottoms of my shoes is ridiculous.

Apparently, the first commandment for Muslims is "Thou shalt overreact to all things non-threatening."

Allah loves us so much that he'd send the Prophet Mohammed (peace be unto him, because I don't want him using his otherworldly powers to destroy me) to saddle us with a legal system that doesn't allow for anything enjoyable, reasonable, logical, or sensible. It's like the Bible times 1000. It was named "Sharia" to take the edge off of it, because "Sharia" sounds like it might have sunshine and flowers in it. The first name they used was "The Anti-Common Sense Laws of Bloody Destructor Pain."

The charge for the "Satan's Insidious Teddy Bear Plot of 2007" relates to "insulting religion and inciting hatred." They're so right about that, because nothing makes me want to put a brick through the nearest skull than a plush stuffed animal.

It can soothe a child after their current nightmares, right before inciting the riot that sets off their next round of nightmares. Yea verily, the teddy bear is a versatile creation.

Maybe I just don't understand, because I'm an unbeliever, a heathen, AND an infidel. Perhaps something is lost in the translation between those who believe in God so much that they'd imprison a recently raped woman and my evil, hate-filled, Hell-bound brain. I just can't imagine that a God who claims to love us all would want me punished for naming inanimate objects "Mohammed," but is okay with exploding lunatics killing people in his name.

I think I'm going to start naming some of my things "Mohammed" to see how quickly I get struck down or my apartment gets burned down by easily offended Muslims in their quest for justice. When I get home, the first thing I'm going to do is turn on the Mohammed and watch some Mohammed. Then I'll look in the Mohammed to see if I have any Mohammed to drink, right before I turn on my X-Mohammed and play some Mohammed games.

Should I die in the next 24 hours, you'll know that this experiment didn't go well.

If any Muslims out there happen to read the above paragraph, please let me know how offended you were on a scale of 1 to Mohammed. If the rating is anything greater than negative one trillion, then it is further proof to me that somewhere in the Qur'an is a passage that says that you're not allowed to know that I'm joking. Clearly, there isn't one in there that tells you when your leaders are being stupid.

What did Nick Saban do this time?

A little known fact about the sports writers’ community: Their secondary job is to be our moral compass. They are the guides who keep us out of the offensive abyss of depravity, the lighthouse on the shores of decency that keeps us from crashing into the rocks of immorality. I didn’t realize this until today, when they reminded us yet again of what we should and shouldn’t say, because after all, being able to analyze sporting events automatically qualifies you to be an expert on what passes for acceptable speech. I hear Ann Landers got her job after spending 10 years coaching women’s badminton.

University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban re-established his ties to the Prince of Darkness yet again, not for abandoning his job for more money, but for comparing football losses to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. It probably isn’t a connection that should be made, but because sports writers are the lemmings of the reporting world, I decided to reserve judgment until I heard the comments for myself.

And like always, a group of the world’s highest paid retards have overreacted. I could already see Bob Ryan spitting all over the camera in outrage.

Even when a spokesman at Alabama clarified what he meant (something that shouldn’t have to be done if one wasn’t actively seeking to find fault with people), the sports writers felt it wasn’t good enough and that Saban should have apologized to everyone. I think the sports writers need to explain this to everyone: “What exactly was so damn offensive?”

I heard what Saban said, and understood what he meant without having my hand held by the spokesperson, something that’s easy to do when your motivation isn’t to be the first person to condemn someone else. But for the people who don’t think that brainpower is a requirement to process information, allow me to clear all of this up.

Saban wasn’t comparing football to our national atrocities and he’s not disrespecting anyone by having them in the same sentence. If that were the case, I should be criticized every time I have “Atlanta Falcons” and “winners” in the same sentence. The fault isn’t with him, the fault is with all of his critics for claiming that he said something wrong and jumping down his throat just because they don’t like him.

If you listen to his words without passing judgment in advance you’ll see that he’s merely saying that in times of tragedy, advancements are made. That’s all. And in the context of college football, losing to some no-name school from the backwoods of Alabama is a tragedy when you’re playing for the Crimson Tide. Look at the effect that losing to Appalachian St. had on Michigan earlier this season. They don’t even have a mascot that sounds like a euphemism for “menstrual cycle.”

Evoking 9/11 was a way to illustrate an example of when advancements were made following tragedy and it was one that everyone would know. He could have used “The Battle of Pisswater” that followed the “Invasion of the Turd Miner Homestead,” but then no one would have known what he was talking about.

Clearly, Nick Saban’s only crime (and mine, apparently) is not knowing that the ban on mentioning or referring to anything that happened on September 11, 2001 is still in effect for anyone not named George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Rudolph Giuliani.

It really shouldn’t take the words of some hack blogger to explain things like logic and common sense to people whose job it is to sway public opinion, and yet, here I am, doing it again. This would be so much easier if I already worked at ESPN. It’s just a suggestion.

Barry Bonds' Indictment: Is it all worth it?

Minutes after Barry Bonds was indicted on federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges, ESPN had a statement from the President of the United States on this matter. Doesn’t matter what he said, but I know he didn’t respond to the Jena 6 situation that quickly. Shows where his priorities lie.

The equation for the Bush’s concern level would read:

Baseball > Black Americans’ Ongoing Struggle for Racial Equality.

But anyway...

Four years and millions of dollars were devoted to building a case against Barry Bonds. For that kind of persistence, one might think that Barry Bonds was a president-killing-child-rapist with ties to al-Qaeda. Or that he was plotting to overthrow the government and inject all of us with AIDS. Maybe he was caught putting crack and urine in the drinking water. But no, he’s being indicted for lying to the government and possibly paying his friend not to rat him out.

No, for real. I’m so sincere.

And should he be convicted, he could get up to 30 years in prison, for four counts of perjury (five years each) and one count of obstruction of justice (10 years). And what did Barry Bonds lie to a federal grand jury about? Did he lie about his involvement in the revelation of a secret agent’s true identity? Did he lie about our government’s reasons for invading a sovereign nation? Did he even cover up something that possibly involved bringing harm or death to another human being? No, he allegedly lied about whether or not he knew the stuff in the syringe in his butt was steroids. For all he knew, it could have been fruit juices or concentrated happiness.

And with that, one of America’s most hated human beings is going to go to trial. I say “one of” because O.J. Simpson still draws breath.

I’m actually curious to know what lies he allegedly told that are worth four counts of perjury. The only thing he was most likely asked about was whether or not he knowingly took steroids and how many lies can you really tell about that? Couldn’t they just whittle that down to one charge?

No, of course they couldn’t, because the government was bound and determined to get dangerous criminals like Barry Bonds into jail and off the streets where he could knowingly give someone incorrect directions to the grocery store or what time the results show for “Dancing With the Stars” is coming on.

Was all of this really necessary for a dishonest person? Look, no one’s saying that Barry Bonds didn’t do anything that he’s accused of doing. Certainly, I’m not defending his alleged *wink wink* steroid use and alleged lies told. What I’m saying is, was four years and millions of dollars to bring this man down really called for? He wasn’t the only one using steroids and he definitely wasn’t the only one lying to the government, but unless it was written in invisible ink, I don’t see Mark McGwire’s, Sammy Sosa’s, and Rafael Palmiero’s names anywhere on the indictment.

Do you know how many actual criminals the government could have brought down in four years? Imagine if this kind of persistence and focus had been applied to something that matters, like The War on Otherwise Innocuous Words or Lindsay Lohan’s War on Sobriety. In half that time, we’d be done waging war on concepts and Lindsay Lohan would be so drunk that she couldn’t even see anymore.

Seriously, it’s not like Bonds was giving away government secrets or was a threat to national security. He was covering his own ass about the level of horse piss in his veins, which ranks among things like “elected official lies about his love for cock in his mouth” or “Hypocrite Newt Gingrich has also cheated on his wife and lied about it” for importance in the court system. Everyone lies to the government. I lied once and told the government I lived somewhere where I didn’t so I could register my car in another state and not have to pass emissions. Should I spend four years of my life in jail for that? And should the government dedicate their lives to bringing me down?

Like I said, I’m not defending Bonds, but I am saying that all of this is overkill. How is this going to make the world safer for anyone? How is this even going to improve baseball? The man is 43 and about to retire, anyway. His records have already been set. He’s not selling steroids to anyone and everyone who wants to take steroids is already taking them. What is this really going to do? I guess since the home run record has already been broken and all of that money has already exchanged hands, it won’t hurt to go ahead and bring down the biggest name in baseball. Or is the timing of this only suspect to me?

I’m not even saying that he shouldn’t be in trouble, just that all of this effort isn’t worth the payoff. Putting Barry Bonds in jail isn’t going to even begin to clean up the drug problem in baseball. It’s not going to change anything. It’s like claiming that putting Mel Gibson in jail is the first step to ridding the world of alcoholism.

The Electrocution of the Ancients

The Chicago Police have shown us the way: It takes tasering to stop the rise of the octogenarians.

The police tasered an 82-year-old woman who held them up at hammer-point. With her immense strength, she could have easily punched holes in the drywall or accidentally busted out her TV. Chicago PD could take no chances with their safety when facing down this wrinkled whirlwind of fury.

And with that, they were tasering their way into the history books. This could have only been a bigger story if we could have actually watched it on YouTube. These guys have managed to blow past the “Don’t tase me, bro,” guy as the greatest potential for jokes involving unnecessary taser use.

They had to be wondering how funny it would be to shock the crap out of this woman, because one look into her cataracts and anyone could see that she wasn’t a threat to anyone, even with a hammer. She was more likely to break her own wrists from the shock of actually making contact with something.

Not only that, she was suffering from schizophrenia AND dementia. Chances are, she didn’t even know the cops were in the room. She was probably swinging at her hallucinations of the giant, singing lollipops that were fighting the Teletubbies.

But the cops couldn’t be too sure, because this clearly insane woman had the reflexes of a person nearly two to three hundred years older than she was and the dexterity of a person with only one broken hip. This highly trained police force was in mortal danger and could only rely on potentially hilarious technology to quell what could have been a bloody attack led by a person who, according to people on the scene, “constantly struggled with her juice box.”

There’s a lot of outrage surrounding this incident, as the police could have used a different tactic to disarm and subdue the toothless assassin. Of course, there was no way to know when she was going to need her diaper changed and willingly put the hammer down.

I probably shouldn’t be making jokes about this, because I remember just last year when the Atlanta SWAT Team, when fearing for their lives, shot the hell out of an old woman who thought the cops were burglars and bravely held off an entire squad with a six-shooter. Those cops couldn’t be bothered to see if she’d ever run out of bullets so they matched her force with over 120 rounds of machine gun fire. It sounds so ridiculous that it’s probably what I would have compared this situation in Chicago with if it didn’t actually happen.

Or maybe we’ve all missed the point. Maybe all these incidents are calculated tactics intended to lower crime, because either these cops have gone completely crazy or they haven’t quite figured out where the line is drawn for “excessive force.” And if these so-called trained professionals can’t see how sending 100,000 volts of electricity through a woman three times their age might be considered “excessive,” their gambit is working, because I’ll never give them any problems next time they tell me I ran that stop light.

They’ll have a funny story to tell, though, because it’s a safe bet I’ll have already pissed on myself next time I see blue lights flashing behind me.

Ricky, Mercury, and Alex

Maybe they can trade him to the Knicks?

Ricky Williams has been reinstated by the NFL after an 18-month suspension as a result of his efforts to prove to the world that marijuana IS addictive, orgasmic, and quite delicious. The question on everyone’s mind is not the over/under for “Weeks before Ricky Williams fails another drug test,” but instead, “Should the Dolphins take him back?”

I say why the hell not? What’s the worst that can happen?

The Miami Dolphins are already paying celebrities to come to home games in a desperate attempt to trick star-watching fans in the area to wander into the stadium and maybe catch a glimpse of that guy from Survivor: Upper Antilles, or that drunk chick from the O.C., and in an ironic twist, this year’s Dolphins are in danger of going 0-16 in the same season that the Patriots are trying to surpass the 1972 Dolphins’ Undefeated Season (more on this in a second). Why not give the fans the hope of seeing an on-field train wreck?

What do they have to lose? They’re already a lock for the number 1 overall draft pick and it’s not like they have any other options at running back because Ronnie Brown is hurt, and I can’t be bothered to remember their back-up’s name. What, are they worried about messing up their team chemistry? Are they afraid that Ricky Williams will disrupt their precision offense? Maybe they just think he’ll sell weed to the rest of the team.

No matter what reason anyone could come up with for why the Dolphins shouldn’t take Ricky back, I can very easily just throw this out there: That only applies to teams that have something worth saving. The Dolphins are already in trouble for years to come, so they’re not exactly rolling the dice here. They’re not even flipping coins.

Mercury Morris’s Apparent Death Wish

There are very few things in life that are funnier than crazy old people, and one of them is probably crazy old people crapping on themselves. But if you don’t have any of those around, you can always look for crazy old people that used to be famous and are desperate for some face time. And that brings us, once again, to Mercury Morris of the undefeated 1972 Dolphins, who has started running off at the mouth about his block, when you should and shouldn’t call him, furniture moving, and something about the Titanic. Then, he started throwing crap at reporters.

Oh, that wacky Grandpa Mercury. When did you stop taking your pills?

The man is about 70 years old, but the way he’s talking, you’d think that should the Patriots go undefeated, the 1972 Dolphins will suit up and play the Pats in the Ultimate Lightning Bowl Wrapped in Barbed Wire. And for their sake, I hope that they don’t play the Patriots, because it can only give us the opportunity to see what it looks like to see old people explode in a cloud of their own bone fragments.

The Steinbrenners could have had me for 1% of that.

Last month, Alex Rodriguez asked the New York Yankees for a contract totaling $350 million. No word on how many years that contract would be for, but I can confirm that he did mean to say “$350 million.” That’s dollars, not rubles or Monopoly money.

He couldn’t have been serious about that amount, because no one whose head is on straight would take that offer, unless they’re dyslexic, in which case, the numbers they would actually see on the paper would read “$000,053,000 dollars.” The best player in baseball would be a bargain.

The amount that he was asking for is of Dr. Evil proportions, at which point, you might as well just start making up numbers, because no one’s signing him for that much money. Then again, no one could believe that Texas would sign him for $252 million, so why not take a shot at eleventeen bajillion dollars? $30,000 kazillion? After all, the next closest offer was for less than half that.

Whoo-wee, those are some great negotiating skills, Tom Hicks. How you’re not in the poorhouse is beyond me.

Anyway, the Yankees told him to go fuck himself. And after Alex Rodriguez saw that no other major league teams had money-printing machines in their clubhouses or owners that were incapable of breaking the laws of good business sense to sign him, he crawled back to the Yankees…and the Yankees apparently, are going to take him back and all of his post-season chokery. All of this for the bargain-basement price of $275 million dollars, in 10 yearly installments.

The Steinbrenners should be in the poorhouse alongside Tom Hicks.

Anyone who thinks that A-Rod has been debased or demoralized by coming back to the Yankees needs to look at the numbers again. They’re paying him MORE than they were the first time. Yeah, the Yankees really showed A-Rod. Boy, they sure got over on him.

Not only is he getting paid more over the life of the deal, the Yankees have to pay all of it this time. Remember, the Rangers were still paying part of his salary, and when he opted out on his contract, all of that went out of the window. So the Yankees payroll just went up again. Who’s getting the better end of this again? I mean, aside from the Texas Rangers.

He had no other takers and someone is still willing to break the bank to pay him. Professional sports management: A breeding ground for the retarded.