Monday, August 18, 2008

Now That's More Like It. Let the Games Begin.

Now I’m ready. It takes me a while to warm up to it, but now I’m here. Every year in February, as the NFL season comes to a close, I look forward to things like baseball spring training, NCAA March Madness, 40 games in 40 nights of NBA Playoffs, new season of Shot at Love with Tila Tequilla...so I get my sports and entertainment fix after the NFL season comes to a close. By the time the Superbowl is over each year, I’m ready for a break from football.

The NFL times their off-season perfectly. By the time September rolls around, I’ve watched enough Hard Knocks, seen enough of Trey and the fellas, and played enough Madden, that football begins to sweat out of my pores. By June of this year, I became a bit worried because I noticed myself impartial to watching football. I wasn’t ready. In July, the mere thought of grinding out a season week in and week out watching the Colts wasn't tickling my typically highly-football-stimulated fancy. I was a little nervous. Maybe the NFL had worn out its welcome with me and my passionate loyalty.

But then today I read this and immediately felt the fire re-ignite inside of my belly. So now I'm ready. Let the games begin, boys! To read that Tom Brady is injured and Bill Belichick is still an ass to anyone who doesn't employ him gave me the shot in the arm I needed. Last year, Belichick was caught cheating during games, and after being fined $500,000, he later personally apologized at an owners' meeting in the offseason because he knew that the rest of the league was beginning to think he was a bastard just like the fans had thought all season long.

The thing I can't stand about Belichick is that he never tells the whole story. Why did you cheat and spy on other teams? "well I just misinterpreted the rule and the league-wide memo that was sent to me days before I was caught...just a misunderstanding and I've moved past it." That's it, and that's all we got from him. After he apologized to the owners in the NFL, I thought that he might change his arrogant ways. Nope.

He's notorious for "mocking" the league or reporters when it comes to injury reports. He has listed Brady on the injury report every week as "probable" for three years now. Brady's never once missed a game in that time span. And heaven forbid a reporter ask as to why Belichick is doing this!! He'll mock them for asking and arrogantly wave them off like their questions are ridiculous.

This most recent foot injury kept Brady out of last week's pre-season game. Whether the injury is legit or not remains to be seen. And given Belichick's history with fudging the reports, it's not ridiculous to assume that the media might have questions if this is a real injury that actually kept the guy who has been on the injury report for three years out of a game. So someone asked: If this was a regular season game, would Brady have played?

Instead of answering the question, Belichick in all of his Narcissistic glory responds, "well it's not a regular season game."

NO $@*#! SHERLOCK! THAT WASN'T THE @#$*^!$# QUESTION!

Then someone had the gull to ask his majesty if keeping the injured Brady out was precautionary (another way of asking the first question) - and Belichick said he wouldn't characterize it...thanks for the insight, try not to stab yourself with scissors as you're cutting the sleeves off of your stupid sweatshirt, you banshee.

Two things fire me up in sports more than anything - Belichick and Tom Brady. But ultimately, I'd probably either like or at least not-hate Brady if he had never played for Belichick...so it all comes back to my hatred for this cheating coach that thinks more of himself than anyone else ever could.

So it's August 18. Season starts in two weeks. Brady's kind of hurt and Belichick is in full bastard-form. The only question left to ask is - are you ready? I am.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Guns Don’t Kill People, Failed Dress Code Policies Do

Remember how I said that I can’t seem to unsubscribe from CNN’s daily Top 10 emails? Well MSNBC recently joined in on the onslaught – sending me anywhere up to 35 emails per day containing “breaking news” that hit my inbox like the waves of a never-ending annoying ocean.

It’s questionable whether I ever signed up to receive CNN’s emails. I visit www.cnn.com on a daily basis, so I could see how I could get tangled up in all the up-to-the-minute-news-goodness; making my finger become a loose cannon as I start clicking on things that sign me up to receive emails 20 times a day.

But MSNBC??? I haven’t been to their website since it was the default homepage on my two-year old dell laptop I use for work. To give you an idea of how many emails I receive per day – I’m writing this at 2:33pm EST on Friday afternoon and I already have 14 emails from MSNBC for the day. (As I was typing this paragraph, I received number 15)

Now most would say that I’m receiving Spam or Spyware…and I’m pretty sure they’d be right. But I’m no fool, I see the letters “MSNBC” and I know what that stands for… “trustworthy” and “this is real stuff.” So I can’t help but click on it. Weird… there’s no breaking news at all! All of these emails sent me to a bunch of dead links. Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!


(Note: Sure enough – as soon as I clicked on the link, my computer started vacuuming demons into it – ultimately leading to my wallpaper (permanently) disappearing and a sign reading: Warning, you have 687 (not an exaggeration) viruses on your computer. Good Times.)

Anyways – before I knew the emails were from an imposter MSNBC, I went to the real MSNBC site to unsubscribe from the emails they were, in fact, not sending me. And I read this very real story.

This dynamic duo of parents are suing their slain son’s school system because the school allowed the boy to wear makeup and feminine clothes – ultimately, the parents believe, leading to his murder on school grounds.

Their son was 15 years old and in 8th grade when he was shot…which means he a) wasn’t legally an adult or legally qualified to live by himself, b) could not sneak out of the house early so mom and dad wouldn’t see him, and drive to school in a car. He either got a ride from the parents or the bus, or he walked to school.

So in other words, the parents, whom I assume lived in the same building as their son, are suing the school for allowing their son to look the way he looked when they let him walk out of their house every morning. The school let a child bring a gun to school, but the victim’s parents are choosing to sue the school for not making their boy take off mom’s makeup.

According to MSNBC, the boy’s parents said faculty members “knew their son had ‘unique vulnerabilities’ and was subject to abuse because of his sexual orientation.” How does it not click with the parents when they think to themselves, “we KNOW that you people knew of his ‘unique vulnerabilities,’” that maybe they themselves knew that information also…and probably even first!

Look, it’s a terrible terrible thing to experience a tragedy such as this. And it’s even worse that it’s an apparent hate crime. And if it’s against dress code for boys to wear makeup and dresses to school, then boys should not be wearing makeup and dresses, and clearly this boy was breaking that policy. But I have to believe that it’s also against school policy for a kid to possess and fire a firearm on school grounds.

Someone should tell Larry King’s (not the crotchety CNN anchor) parents that their son didn’t die because he was dressing up like a girl. He died because bullets fatally entered his body. Someone should tell his parents that if they insist on believing his life ended because he dressed up in women’s clothes, then it’s because THEY allowed it to happen first.

So really, I’m thankful for the viruses that are currently lighting my computer on fire and helping it move at the speed of a paralyzed sloth. If it weren’t for these 687 viruses I downloaded from a fake news network story email, I never would have read the real breaking news alert that people are idiotic.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

...But God Doesn't Have Breasts...

I have unsubscribed to CNN”s “Top 10 news stories” email five times now. They refuse to take me off the list. So in reading the Top 10 for the day, I came across the “Number 3” story for August 7, 2008 – “Mega Preacher’s Wife Being Sued over Loss of Faith”…oh!? That sounds interesting, let me click on that!

I came to discover that CNN duped me. Being sued for “a loss of faith,” and being sued for “assault” at least seem to be different things. A few things before I step up on an orange crate and start hurling fruit…

First, is it assault for denying your personal religious faith? If so, who are you assaulting…God? Maybe the flight attendant is a metaphor for God…maybe Ms. Osteen was elbowing God in the left breast. Can you be sued for a personal, internal choice of faith? Are you losing your faith if you decide to “elbow someone in the left breast?” Can you even “lose” your faith? I guess what I’m getting at is….what does belief in God, gravity, oxygen or the sun have to do with assaulting a flight attendant? And no where in this article does it say that Ms. Osteen was being sued for her lack of faith like the headline would lead you to believe.

I’m confident I’m still allowed to believe in God if I’m caught beating down an unsuspecting flight attendant (male of course…of course I know I’m going to hell if I elbow a woman).

I don’t know who Victoria Osteen is, but apparently she’s famous in Texas Christian circles. Whoever she is, I’m sure I wouldn’t like her…for I don’t like anyone that would lay a finger on flight attendants, the angels of our skies. But even so, whether she’s famous or not, just because she KO’d another human being, and in turn, received word that she was being sued does not mean that A) she’s no longer a person of faith, and B) she’s being sued because of her lack of faith, CNN…shame shame. Keep in mind that this is the 3rd MOST POPULAR story of the day…so I know I’m not the only schmuck out there. This story is not news. If it is news, it’s certainly not the 3rd biggest news story in the world or America…the only reason it reached such a prominent status is because of the bogus headline.

Speaking of CNN, maybe the headline guy had to leave work early and didn’t read the story before crankin out some half-baked headlines – or maybe they were hurting for click-throughs on the site today...The real story here is how CNN completely mislead me into reading a stupid story that had nothing to do with anything I cared about. I would genuinely care if someone was really being sued because they had “lost their faith.” I don’t care if someone is being sued for assault. Assault – it makes sense to pay a consequence by the law and government. Backsledding – none of the law’s beeswax. I just wasted 30 minutes of my life on this stupid fake story, and then 10 minutes trying to come up with my very own fake headline. I’m so angry, I feel like assaulting someone…no time for that though, I need to go unsubscribe from CNN’s Top 10, and then go pray and catch my flight.