The Airing of Grievances

Swampicide

For those of you not in the know, the Swamp is an internet message board that's attached to a sports blog called The Sportsfrog, and it's tied in rather closely with this here blog. Myself, Chiles, and Newman have been there for years as well as founding father Frank and Cozmo. A few others may have had brief stints contributing here as well including Scottie, who actually made one post here under the name Jean-Claude Jean-Claude (something about boobies I believe). He's an interesting cat...enigmatic, brilliant, hilarious, maniacal, narcissistic, volatile...I could go on and on. He also loved the Swamp just as much as anyone.

Now as far as message boards go, the Swamp always had a different feel to it. Most of the posters are erudite and even the retarded ones pale in comparison to other message board retards (Schmoopie cringes). They pride themselves on that almost to the point of arrogance. The words "we don't appreciate your kind around here" were actually once typed to a new poster. I often take issue with that superiority complex but it's mostly an unspoken thing and fairly contained. It's a really cool message board and I've met a lot of really cool people from it and I'll leave it at that.

Anyway, here's your cliff's notes version of what happened to the Swamp. Scottie gets in a big argument with others over that dude Legarrette Blount and this scene. He decides he needs a break and disappears for a few months. Someone writes a post on the front page of the blog about how TMZ is changing the face of sports coverage because they scooped everyone on the Tiger story. Scottie adds a sarcastic blurb in parentheses to the post making the original poster look stupid. Dude starts a thread in the Swamp noting how pissed he is. It turns into 15 pages in a day with about 80% of the people ripping Scottie and the other 20% not really thinking it's a big deal or just not caring.

So later that night, I log onto the Swamp and it looks like this...

(Tap, Tap, Tap) Is This Thing On?

So you may have noticed, as far as "bloggers" go...we've been absolutely pathetic this year and even moreso these past couple months. I totally blame the Jews but Assman sent out an e-mail this morning reminding us that Festivus isn't far away and if we're gonna make that work, we're gonna need some folks checking back in here regularly again so for about a month, expect us to be awesome. We're talking like 6-7 posts a week, baby! That'll lead us up to our favorite holiday and hopefully a lot of our readers will get on board again and make it work. Then, we'll probably all get lazy and suck again but let's just run with this for now.

I really don't see a better way to lead us off here then with an old friend who's back with a vengeance...B to the F to the F, motherfuckers and she's GOING ROGUE, BABY!!! The greatest part about this book of course has nothing to do with the book itself as I'm sure it's nothing but 400 pages of lashing out and blaming everyone from the media to Vie Sikahema for her idiocy. Nope, Palin's got minions and they're crawling out of the woodworks to tell us what's wrong with this country by the hundreds! Good times? Try, the best times!

By the way, I can handle losing to the Bengals and Chiefs in consecutive weeks. I survived the 80s and being Cleveland's bitch for chrissakes. However, dude at :37 and 4:42 is really making me re-evaluate my fanhood.

Okay Look...

It was funny at one point. At least I thought it was funny and really that's all I care about. I think I carved a nice little niche with that whole "Vandelay goes to concerts that only chicks and homosexuals go to and has a good time and then blogs about it" schtick and if my self-deprecation can inspire a few laughs then I figured...why the hell not? I'm certainly past any point in my life where I'm trying to impress anyone (the curve ball is still fucking nasty though). Unfortunately, I think this is going to just about do it because I need to be beaten like a rented mule for what I've done and I'm pleading to a nation of Grievers to take care of business for me here.

Now, I don't want to beat around the bush and I certainly don't want to say the wrong thing or mislead you in any way. I need a good old fashioned ass-kicking. I can't do this anymore and there's really only one solution: unfathomable amounts of pain inflicted upon me for a long time. I don't necessarily want to die but I know the risks going in. Bring Chuck Norris if you must. Bring Clubber Lang! Bring the Gimp for all I care! Bring torture devices that will make Barry Manilow music seem like Jimi Hendrix while tripping on acid!

It's become clear that I don't have the will power to turn this around without assistance. I'm asking, begging, pleading...save me from myself, Grievers. I got nothing left. I got nowhere else to go!

Nowhere...

Else...

To go!

Oh...What The Hell

I'm gonna go ahead and start a new feature called "Things I would write on Facebook if I wasn't remotely concerned about alienating half the people I know." My Facebook home page quite often reads like the Benoit thread which in theory should make it a completely fulfilling experience but unlike that thread, I actually know these people and even consider many of them friends. According to FB, they're all my friends so this little relationship tends to make me cease pulling the trigger on what many people that lack an appropriate sense of humor would consider assholish comments. I don't really need people taking anything I type with anything more than a grain of salt so thankfully I have this blog and even more thankfully I'm not exactly "read my blog guy" so 99% of the people I know have no idea it exists. So for a goof, I'm just going to respond to them here in almost complete anonymity. If we're lucky maybe a Klompus or Assman will follow suit because let's face it, when it comes to being assholes, I'm swimming in their wake.

First of all, to like half of my friends...Not only do I go outside on a regular basis but I also own a house with about 16 windows. While I appreciate the updates, I understand that it's been raining a lot in the northeast lately but there really are few things more mundane in this world than people complaining about the weather. It may be the most tired exercise one can partake in. Please just stop.

Disclaimer: I started writing this almost a week ago in a hotel in Hershey, PA and had it saved as a draft and then got sidetracked by MJ dying and I came back to it this morning with a different point of view. While I think it would make for great blog material, something about it seems shady. I don't want to be that guy. If I want to make fun of people I know, I'll just keep doing it right in front of them. If they can't take, maybe we shouldn't be friends in the first place. For the hell of it, I'll throw in a quick vacation story after the jump though.

Is There A Doctor In The House?

First a quick grievance for my man Joe Girardi. Joe, the next time your biggest rival decides to blast your star player in the back with high heat and makes it look so obvious that the umpires have no choice but to deem that it was on purpose thereby giving both team’s warnings so that you’re unable to retaliate against their star player, instead of sitting there in the dugout looking like a deer in headlights while the manager of the other team storms out acting like the indignant asshole who just got fucked while the retarded fan base buys right fucking into it…try acting like you give a shit. Okay?

Well as some of you may have noticed, it’s been a little slow around here as we’re in one of those perfect storms of all of us being a little busy and maybe a little burnt out and this is too cool of a blog to produce one post a week so before we lose too much momentum and/or readers, we’ve asked for the help of AofG legendary reader and commenter, Dr. Whatley. Whatley will undoubtedly be a fine addition but even if he sucks, we’re not paying him anything so it’s a win-win. Now sit back in anticipation for the doctor to arrive.

For a little trip down memory lane, here’s a collection of literary masterpieces otherwise known as “everyone else’s virgin post.” (Can’t find Chiles’)

Klompus/Assman/Moi/Newman/Kruger

Some Random Grievances

I’m in one of these “sort of busy-sort of don’t feel like blogging” phases and I’m apparently not the only one. It must be something in the air. Anyway, here’s a bunch of quick thoughts on subjects and or grievances that I might have blogged about over the last couple weeks had I had the time or the inclination.

America – Really America? Really? This is “news”? This is a big deal to you? Some beauty queen doesn’t believe in gay marriage and we have to rake her through the coals? I mean, she’s not one of these assholes walking around the streets protesting proposition 8. They asked her a question and she answered it. More importantly, your own fucking president doesn’t believe in gay marriage!

Carrie Prejean – Really Carrie Prejean? Really? I completely understand you’re just some hot chick from California who answered a question with her honest opinion and then was unjustifiably dragged through the mud because of that opinion and I didn’t think you’d have to spend three weeks defending it. Don’t get me wrong, we suck…but you were raised with the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman? How does that even come up? Who actually gets raised with something like that being a cornerstone of your moral foundation? I can’t imagine a scenario where one of my parents approached me as a child to make sure I understood that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Oh No You Dit-int!

On my way into work this morning I stopped at Dunkin Donuts because I’m from New England and that’s just what we do. I was a little cranky after being up late trying to console a child with a ruptured ear drum so it really wasn’t going to take much to put me over the edge. DD is on my left and there are cars coming down the other way so I put my blinker on and waited. Then some lady in a Yukon or something comes toward me kind of slow but she was close enough where I didn’t want to cut her off so I just waited for her to go by. Instead she just casually takes a right turn into DD with no blinker and ends up ahead of me at the drive-thru after I’d been waiting there for like 45 seconds. Put your fucking blinker on lady! So, I just gave a beep and a WTF and then rolled up behind her. Now as we’re waiting in line I see her talking on her cell phone and she keeps looking at me in her side mirror where I’m just giving her a dirty look into the mirror and hoping she catches it. Pretty much the whole time I’m thinking to myself about how ignorant we’ve become as a society and why did I have to live in a town with all of these stupid wops that think they own the place. Who does that on Holy Thursday anyway? Yes, I have bad road rage.

When I finally get up to the window, the Dunkin Donuts lady hands me a plastic card and says that the lady in front of me bought me a $20 gift card because she felt so awful about cutting in front of me. WTF indeed! I’d already resigned myself to a day of walking around with a chip on my shoulder spitting in the face of perspective every chance I got because of this woman and now she even deprives me of that? Now I have to walk around all day all humbled and shit with a renewed faith in humanity? Thanks lady…you cut me off and then make me realize what a shallow asshole I am? Well played, ma'am. I think we need a name for this phenomenon.

Hey, speaking of Holy Thursday, I actually have a Holy Thursday story. Come with me, after the jump if you so chose…

TypePad Trying to Help a Brother Out

Yeah, I've had pretty much nothing to write about in the past few weeks, so I've had to dip pretty deep at times. Part of it is being idealess, another part is being too lazy to actually write something, and then the remaining 17% was in deference to the highly-respected grandeur of Black History Month. So, while I was writing up my entry for my fitsstakes, I saw an article that TypePad linked to entitled "10 Ways to Find New Blog Topics". I thought, "surely, this is going to be incredibly gay". And I was right. But, hey, I guess it gave me something to write about.

Hey-Yo!!!

Here's a quick story about a pilot that decided one day he didn't need to be held to the same TSA standards as the rest of us plebeieans.

A source said: “The pilot was asked to take off his shoes and belt like everyone — but completely lost the plot. “He pulled down his trousers and pants to completely expose himself, then turned to the security guard and asked angrily, ‘Do you want to search this?’”

BOOM!!!

I can't really say enough about what kind of narcissistic asshole this guy is; thinking he's above everyone just because he's flying the chopper. To react that way to people who are just following regulation and trying to do their job is completely juvenile and this cat is worthy of all the scorn that you'd like to direct his way. He's a true scumbag in every sense of the word.

Now what does it say about me that I really, really want to be his friend? Like if they had actually provided his name, I'd probably be looking him up on Facebook as we speak.

Things I Did Not Know

So I've never seen the movie MASH and I may have seen a few episodes of the TV show in the later years but I'm certainly too young to have seen any of the first season. I never watched it in syndication either. Frankly, I didn't find it all that funny. Nonetheless, there was apparently a character in the movie and the first season of the TV show who was a black man that had thrown a little javelin in college. He went by the name of Spearchucker Jones. Fortunately, after the first season the producers came to their senses and decided to do away with the Spearchucker character because they realized how blatantly racist that is that there is no record of African-American doctors serving in Korea.

That's pretty much it. Up until last year I didn't know that hippos were mean and I still don't know how to draw a golf ball. Short list, really.