And Furthermore...

Moments in great Youtube comments...

2010-01-28T16:32:00.002-05:00

...since they occur so infrequently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RjkK6QQ4Y

"This song is about punching ninjas in the face."

Submitted without further comment...

2010-01-26T10:36:00.002-05:00

...because this speaks for itself, really. This is the type of fucking compassionless animals we're dealing with here.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lt_gov_don_t_help_the_poor

Things you don't really want to dream about...

2010-01-25T06:41:00.002-05:00

I'll tell you, there's nothing like waking up at 6:30 (a full 90 mins before one's alarm) from a dream in which your own mother tells you that you've already reached the end of your allotted lifespan.

Now, don't get me wrong...I don't believe I'm in Final Destination 12 or whatever they're up to now...it's just...why the fuck would you DO that, subconscious mind?

And so Brown wins.

2010-01-20T00:18:00.002-05:00

I have vacillated on this point many times in the past...but I think I have come to a final decision. In the end, intelligence is a curse. Maybe it wasn't back in 200 BC, when intelligence meant that perhaps you came to the conclusion that, oh, leeches were a terrible idea medically speaking (or you were Sun Tzu and you wrote The Art of War or something)...but these days? All it serves to do is make one painfully aware of the fact that things are circling down the drain while the types of brainless fucking monkeys that could vote for a fucking empty suit (that aside from his Tea Party-esque retardation of course) like Brown celebrate their Pyrrhic victory tonight. It's enough to make me want to vomit up the delicious +6 (Dundee Honey Brown) that I have consumed tonight.

The extent of thought that seems to have gone into this as far as Brown voters go seems to be one of the following:

1. "HUUUUURRRR....we can't vote no wimmens into office!"
2. "HUUUUURRRR....that wimmen is too librul!"
3. "HUUUUURRRR....we don't want no govenmint socialust helthcayre!"

OK, great. I sincerely hope from the bottom of my motherfucking heart that every fuckstick that voted for Brown encounters some form of unpayable healthcare bill thanks to the rampantly-unchecked healthcare industry of today. I mean, it's really easy for me to say that making a decent middle-class wage and having no dependents and a doable rent...I know that, don't get me wrong. My joke of a fucking healthcare provider isn't trying to pay the $770 ER visit I had back in November...but if I lose that appeal, I'll manage. No one wants to fucking hear it, but what if I bagged groceries in a supermarket? What if I were a single parent? In that case, I MUST BE ON TEH WELFAYRES!, according to the GOP and their fucking minions. Errr...actually, what about 5 years ago when I was busting my ass and performing well working in a corporate office in New York City for 10 motherfucking dollars per hour? Had my perfectly reasonable soccer injury happened then, how super-fucked would I be right now, let alone the aforementioned bagger or single parent?

But no, this empty fucking suit drives a truck and wears a blue collar, SO HE MUSTS BE ONES OF US!!!!one!!!. Seriously, Massachusetts, die in a motherfucking fire, all of you. Of course, I'm sure this isn't a NIMBY "we have a state-run universal healthcare system, so fuck all the rest of you" situation at ALL, is it you fucking cunts?

One day, I hope to move to fucking Ireland. It has its own problems, but at least there isn't this kind of rampant stupidity amongst the populace.

I just don't get it...

2010-01-16T01:09:00.003-05:00

With all due respect - if you play sports just for fun, then quite frankly I don't understand your fucking worldview. I just don't.

Drinking is fun. Watching TV is fun. Hanging out with friends and/or family is fun. Know what all of these things have in common? THEY HAVE FUCK ALL TO DO WITH THE ACT OF COMPETITION. I don't understand how you can voluntarily go out into a competitive situation and not care about actually, you know, competing and stuff.

Don't get me wrong - it's not the act of losing itself that gets me this angry. I have lost many games before, and I'll lose many games in the future. But, what really burns my ass (and I've said this before in other places) is I will never understand people who go through life without the basic fucking desire to want to do better at whatever activity they choose to do.

Let me circle back for a second...I think this will illustrate the point I'm trying to make. I had two outdoor games tonight, and both opponents were teams that have historically made a habit of kicking my Irish ass all over the place every time I play against them. The first game was against the side that my main team beat in the semifinals of the fall season (the less said about the final, the better) in what I still think is the single best performance I have ever come up with. I wasn't quite that good tonight, but the only thing they beat me on was a rebound. It finished 1-1, and considering the relative skill levels of the teams involved, it was quite a solid performance from us tonight.

The second game was even better, because I was playing for a third-division team against one of the stronger teams in the first division. Not only did it finish 1-1, but I was at fault for their goal...we should have actually won. Still, I can be proud of my efforts, as I came up with several key stops to keep it at 1-0 until we eventually got the tying goal.

Long story short - ass-kickings happened in the past...I worked hard, got better, and came away with the satisfaction of tangible improvement. With the second game especially, even though we probably should have won (and the fact that we tied was 100% my fault), I could be proud of the effort I put in.

Then, I had the indoor game...not only did we lose, but it was 20-2 or something like that. Roughly zero of those goals were my fault, and, well, I wish that it was socially acceptable to ask these questions of my teammates:

1. How can you play soccer for as long as some of you have and not have the most insignificant iota of soccer intelligence? How can we keep playing three players up front in a 4-on-4 game after, oh, the 8th or 9th breakaway goal? How many times does the same result have to happen before you realize that you're doing it wrong? Seriously, I wonder if they watch a depressing movie over and over hoping that, this time, the ending will be different.

2. Shouldn't pride kick in at some point? Once it's, oh, 15-2 or something, shouldn't there be some kind of response to the stimulus of being embarrassed over and over?

Perhaps you think I overreact, but I look at it like this: I'm 31 years old, and I have only won one championship in all of the seasons of soccer that I played. I spent most of the early parts of it getting hammered by 8, 9, 10 goals when playing for my company team (in fairness, we were in over our heads the vast majority of the time, and god did I fucking suck back then). Even now that I'm in a league that brackets out teams by skill level, I have only rarely ever been in with a shout of winning a title, and most of those times have ended with ridiculous, unlucky heartbreaking losses. Beyond that, I do not get through any game (or night of playing, more accurately) unscathed. Every time I come home from soccer, something hurts...my knees, my arms, my elbows, maybe I took a shot to the nose that night, maybe someone struck me in the head. I have been unbelievably lucky as far as injury goes, but every night that I play means it is likelier at some point that I will be seriously injured. Pro wrestlers understand this - every time they do a dangerous spot, they refer to it as one more notch taken off their "bump card". Now, I'm not saying that what I do is the equivalent of doing backflips off of high places through a table or anything like that...but I know that at some point, I will break a bone, or dislocate something, or get concussed again. Some day, I will sustain something that means I may have to stop playing (or best-case, seriously reduce how often I play).

In other words, I only have a finite time left to experience that feeling of winning something one more time. With that one title, I didn't make a point to enjoy the moment nearly as much as I should have (it also doesn't help that my individual play had, at best, a dubious correlation to us winning the fucking thing...that team was so good, I could have read the New York Times in my goal crease for most of those games...even the final against the undefeated team wasn't really in doubt by halftime or so). I want to lift a trophy one more time, and make goddamn sure that I remember everything about it...that I let time slow down and soak in the realization that what I've worked fucking hard for has eventually had something to show for it in return.

Quite frankly, every game I play in like this where people just sort of wander around and laugh off an 18-goal loss kills off a piece of that finite time. It WASTES it. It squanders the price it takes on my body, and on my peace of mind. If I had went home after my first two games, I'd be asleep right now with a smile on my face. Now? I hope I can calm down enough to fall asleep before it's fucking light out.

I'm getting too old for this shit.

Bits and bobs...

2010-01-13T13:03:00.002-05:00

I do seriously want to blog more, but the problem is that I do the bulk of it at work and shit's been biiiiiiiizaaaaay there. I honestly shouldn't be blogging now, but just wanted to get some quick hits out there since it's been a while:

- First off, one of the guys here has been singing the Three's Company theme song all week, and it got me thinking. With the current era's lower threshold of pretense (especially as compared to the 70s and 80s), I wonder what some of the most famous shows of that era would be called if they came out now - especially on HBO or Showtime...

Three's Company would probably just abandon pretense and call itself Menage a Trois. You KNOW they implied that shit throughout that whole show anyway. I'm thinking All in the Family would just be, oh, Racistpiece Theater or something. Empty Nest would be My Deadbeat Daughters, whereas My Two Dads would be My Gay Dads. See? It's fun - and there's plenty more out there to choose from.

- I saw a story about how there's a small subset of people who go see Avatar who end up having to be treated for depression because they wish they could live in the world that James Cameron created. First off, GROW THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCK UP. Real life isn't easy or utopian because it's not fucking supposed to be! Humans learn from mistakes and from painful situations...pining away for a pain-free utopia is not living. Furthermore, if you want to make your life better, try actually fucking doing something about it.

Second, if you absolutely must pine away for a fictional utopia from a movie, can't you pick a better one? My immediate first choice would be Naughty Schoolgirls 3.

- I got a haircut the other day ("Not now, chief...I'm in the fucking zone!"), and it's beyond amusing to me the reactions I've gotten. The great thing about being a total degenerate is that the slightest, most insignificant step in the other direction is treated with a highly disproportionate response. In other words, it's amazing how much mileage one can get out of 5-6 less inches of hair.

Right, then...back to the salt mines.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over...

2010-01-05T17:45:00.001-05:00

OK, so I don't normally talk about things like the love lives of celebrities. I refuse to subscribe to the cult of personality that dictates that they're better people than us or somehow more important.

That said, I have to know: What on earth do Wladimir Klitschko and Hayden Panettiere have to talk about? How did they meet? It's just so fucking bizarre...like the Celebrity Relationship Randomizer went on the fritz or something.

Deep thoughts (wrestling edition)...

2009-12-30T11:43:00.002-05:00

(Yes, I'm a pro wrestling fan. Fuck off.)

Random wrestling question: If you take John Cena and travel back in time to when the main event tier was Austin, Rock, HHH, Taker, HBK, Foley et al, would he ever (ever ever ever ever ever ever ever) get beyond Intercontinental Title status?

I highly doubt it, and that is one of the many damning indictments of the current state of the industry.

I'm back!

2009-12-29T13:51:00.002-05:00

Right then, back to work.

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season, and that your New Year's Eve is both drunken and rad. My vacation was fairly awesome (minus some Jerry Springer-esque nonsense on the last day that doesn't need to be spoken about here), and I honestly do feel refreshed and ready to take on the grind again. I damn well better, as I don't believe I will be taking any kind of significant time off again until the Outer Banks next summer.

Anyway, spending a solid 3 or 4 days in contact with young children caused me to reflect once again on kids and why I don't want to have any of my own. I've mentioned several times before that I love being an uncle, and that hasn't changed. I was much more tolerant than I used to be of events like the baby throwing up on me, and I even went so far as to feed her a bottle (actual pictorial evidence of this is on Facebook). I know that with Shannon and Ryan, I never consented to be in that situation. As for the toddler, she on more than one occasion took great joy in jumping up and down on my chest while I was trying to read a book.

Much of it is the simple fact that I just don't want that level of responsibility. I am self-aware enough to know that for the most part, I trend towards laziness and selfishness. It's not to a ridiculous extent - but it is there and it isn't conducive to good parenting. There is a part of me that would resent the child for my lost freedoms, and that isn't fair to anyone involved.

What I realized on this trip though is that this isn't the only reason. At one point when playing with Lily, I thought a bit about how sweet and innocent she is...it's a level of purity in a human being that I have not seen before and probably won't after. And, what I realized is that one day, that innocence will go away. She will go to school and some stupid kid is going to teach her bad things. Later on, some fucking redneck hick boy is going to break her heart (or, if they move to New York by then, it'll probably be some Jersey Shore-wannabe guido). She will one day be disappointed, one day be jealous, one day be hateful.

I already can't bear thinking about this for too long with my niece, so why would I want to go through it with a child of my own? Fuck all that.

Also, I did mention the whole loss of freedoms thing, right?

The Origin of Obsession

2009-12-17T17:33:00.002-05:00

Back in 1992, English writer Nick Hornby penned a novel that served as a watershed for many soccer fans (although had he known that the colonies would eventually turn it into a bastardized movie about a baseball team, he may not have bothered). It was called Fever Pitch, and it used his obsession with the London-based soccer team Arsenal FC as a backdrop to his autobiography. It centered on his personal relationships (familial and romantic) and his fumbling attempts at transitioning from childhood to adulthood. It is a brilliant work, but in a lot of ways it doesn’t tell the whole story. While Arsenal meant something very particular to him, I wanted to take this opportunity to explain why it means so much to me (as anyone who has seen angry Facebook status updates along the lines of “SORT IT OUT (player’s name here)” can attest).

You know, I don’t even entirely know why I chose this as my Super Soaraway Decade-Ending Extravaganza piece. It’s not exactly in my nature to share with the class, you know? Perhaps it’s because the decade’s ending, I’ve recently entered my thirties, and about the only two constants I’ve had in the last very long time have been Arsenal and my employment at my current company. While I’m sure a retrospective about what proofreading reports was like would make for fascinating reading, you’ll have to make do with the footy instead.

Anyway, I wish I had a good reason to support this particular club like Hornby does. I can’t say that my father took me to Highbury in an attempt to rescue a fractured relationship…as a matter of fact, I didn’t make it to The Home of Football until 1998 (and they lost 5-1 to sodding Chelsea on top of it). Right around the time that Fever Pitch was coming out, the old SportsChannel New York was showing the English Premier League highlights show. Arsenal weren’t especially great in those days – I believe they ended up finishing 6th or 7th that season. Anyway, there were two clubs whose names I really liked – Arsenal and Queens Park Rangers. I think the cannon on the crest and the fact that they wore red instead of blue is what tilted the scales in favor of the Gunners. Either way, that is seriously how I ended up throwing my lot in with this particular side. Hardly an epic tale, I know.

Now, I’ve always had a fascination with soccer in terms of the actual gameplay. Even in my youth, I aspired to be a goalkeeper and quit my youth team in a fit of pique (throwing fits and quitting were two things I excelled at back in those days) when my coach wanted to stick the fat kid in goal instead. But, I was slavishly devoted to hockey and football and baseball as well. Soccer didn’t have any particular hold on me as a sport over and above my general infatuation with grown men playing children’s games.

But, soccer was the only one that was well and truly mine – no one else I knew followed it at all. The first time I ran into someone who knew that 4-4-2 wasn’t an area code was in college, when my sophomore-year roommate held floor-wide FIFA ’98 tournaments on his PlayStation (we almost won the World Cup with the Cook Islands, which just about explains the level of our collective obsession…if you can find the Cook Islands on a map, that is).

I can understand if you dismiss the above as being no different than a music snob who only likes a band until the millisecond they stop being obscure. However, you have to understand the family I grew up in. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that there are almost no shrinking violets in the Swift/McNay family, but it would probably surprise you to learn that I was one of them until very recently. Both of my parents are gregarious, stubborn people who won’t take crap from anyone (that explains the early divorce, then). My younger brother Daniel was a showman and a scene-stealer from the time he could talk, and even to this day he is the kind of guy who gets away with saying and doing things that no one else would get away with.

More importantly though, you have to remember that I’m an identical twin. For those that aren’t one, I can hardly describe what the experience is like. On one hand, it’s comforting to have someone who is closer to you than anyone, who knows you better than you do and will say things you need to hear even if you don’t necessarily want to hear them at the time. On the other, people tend to view you as almost two halves of a singular unit, and are often surprised to discover that there are two distinct and unique human beings in there somewhere. Hold on to your hats, but they may even have differing opinions and personalities! In other words, it’s easy to be pigeonholed as That Guy’s Brother rather than being a distinct and sovereign entity.

Not only that, but no one who ever met him along the way is surprised that Patrick is the one whose vocation can be summed up as “rock star”. I’ve been on tour with him twice, and I can’t believe how adroitly he handles a crush of strangers all wanting to be in his presence (for the record, I think every synapse in my brain would short-circuit in that situation if we ever traded places). Whenever he enters a room, he is immediately the absolute center of attention – either it starts that way or it gets there upon his request. That, friends and neighbors, is what I’ve been competing with since the days of untying every variation of knot to escape our carseats as kids.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t say “compete” to imply that I am resentful of him or that I am envious. He has a life that he is happy with, and that I would not be (I swear on my uncle’s grave that I would rather have swine flu than children). I have a life that I am happy with, and he would not be. It all worked out, in short. However, it would be dishonest to say that we had an equal station in life for most of the duration, especially when we were younger. That’s the way it is, and I’m OK with it. It also doesn’t mean that I had no friends or that I was completely a miserable curmudgeon (I’ll give you “partially”), but I’d also be lying if I said that I knew that many people who didn’t know Patrick first.

The sum total of the above blathering is that around the time that I discovered that the English Premier League existed, I was desperate for something that I could associate with that was a part of a greater whole, but simultaneously would belong only to me. For me, Arsenal Football Club could not have come at a better time.

It was hard to follow them at first, as Fox Soccer Channel and Setanta Sports were far into the future, as was the idea of a soccer pub in the United States. Once the Highlights Show went off the air in the mid-90s, my soccer consumption was limited to the late, great Online Arsenal Fanzine and (strangely) the occasional Ajax Amsterdam match that would intermittently appear on ESPN2 (by the way, those Ajax teams were ridiculous – van der Sar was in goal, and the attack featured luminaries like Jari Litmanen, Dennis Bergkamp and Marc Overmars).

Then, there was the aforementioned 1998 trip to England. I studied there for a semester, and I distinctly remember walking in the neighborhood around Highbury to watch an away Champions’ League fixture (Panathinaikos of the Greek league were the opponents…how I remember this, I have no idea). At the time, the Gunners boasted a defensive midfielder from France-by-way-of-Senegal named Patrick Vieira. As it turns out, I was stopped in the street by a gentleman from Senegal, and ended up shooting the breeze with him for a good 15-20 minutes. It was only much later that it struck me – what the bloody hell else would I have in common with a guy from Senegal? Only Arsenal…that’s it.

I’ll fast-forward past the game catching on (relatively) on these shores after we hosted the 1994 World Cup, my moving to the New York City area in 2003, and Nevada Smith’s transitioning from a Manchester United supporters’ bar into The Great American Soccer Melting Pot. Today, every Saturday or Sunday (depending on the fixture list), I find myself in Nevada’s with a regular cast of characters – and my god, are they ever characters – as part of a collective all supporting the same cause. In a lot of ways, I feel home when I am there, and it’s all of the rest of the times where I feel like I’m away from it all. It’s only a couple of hours a weekend, but I can’t do without it.

It all comes back to the notion of individuality while part of a group. As I’ve written in other places, football is an amazingly tribal culture…think about it, you’re all wearing the same colors and chanting the same words. You’re in opposition against another group with their own colors and chants, and even the verbiage of the songs tends towards the militaristic (the typical injury-time ditty when we’re winning is one guy says “Arsene Wenger’s” – that’s the name of our coach – and everyone else yells “Red and White Army!”). But, all of the regulars there mainly know me in my capacity as an Arsenal supporter. I’m not That Guy’s Brother, I’m just the guy who always stands in the back corner near the big screen, wearing the 1998-99 goalkeeper kit. It’s quite nice to have that one refuge, to be frank.

That said, it’s far less of an issue these days. I started here almost six years ago, and most of you have never met my brother. I joined a soccer league two years ago, and instead of “Oh, you’re Pat’s brother?”, it’s more along the lines of “Why does he play so many games each night?” or “Why’s he pissed at the referee now?”. This is all progress, and it’s good. Still, Arsenal was my first opportunity to branch out in that manner, and it will always maintain a frighteningly-high level of importance, just like it does for Hornby and the millions of other Gooners out there who all follow the cause as well.

And, with that…

I’M ARSENAL ‘TIL I DIE!
I’M ARSENAL ‘TIL I DIE!
I KNOW I AM,
I’M SURE I AM,
I’M ARSENAL ‘TIL I DIE!

Ugh

2009-12-15T13:41:00.001-05:00

I don't know when Joe Liberman is up for re-election. But, I fucking swear that if you people up in Connecticut re-elect this douchebag when the time comes, I'm going to take the Metro-North to some random stop on the New Haven line, get out, and just start punching people randomly.

That is all.

My friends are hilarious

2009-12-11T10:25:00.002-05:00

From my friend Shannon's Facebook update this morning: "Interesting how the song goes "i got hoes in different area codes" instead of zip codes...which just means homeboy has chicks with 917, 347 and 646 cell numbers...which means you're really not that cool..you're just a guy lol..that is all."

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Awesome.

For the record...

2009-12-09T19:19:00.003-05:00

Just in case there's anyone out there still who thinks soccer is a pussy sport, the list of the parts of my body in total agony right now is as follows:

Right knee
Left knee
Left calf
Right elbow
Left tricep
Strained muscle under left shoulderblade

So really, fuck right off with that. Oh, and I have two games tomorrow if the weather holds up. In other news, I'm praying for a monsoon/blizzard.

OK, srsly, I've had it...

2009-12-09T13:15:00.002-05:00

I know the deal with celebrity reporting - it's never going to go away, and hell, I even read The Superficial from time to time (mainly for pictures of celebrities in bikinis, but whatever). Anyway, I DO NOT FUCKING CARE WHO TIGER WOODS STUCK HIS DRIVER INTO.

The caveat is, of course, that I understand why The Superficial and Egotastic and Perez Hilton and those types of sites are all over this story - at the end of the day, this sort of thing is their raison d'etre. However, the fact that the "legitimate" news media is running with this as much as they are is the quickest explanation I can provide as to why I have never used my journalism degree.

For fuck's sake, all this tells us anyway is that with enough money, even a golfer will be attractive to ridiculously-hot women. Also, there is someone out there who will cheat on someone who looks like Elin Nordegren. With that said, WE'RE DONE HERE, MOVE THE FUCK ON.

Work coffee

2009-12-09T12:13:00.002-05:00

Here's another random question - how is it that you can have the same brand of shitty instant coffee, the same coffeemaker, the same filters and everything else...and sometimes the coffee is drinkable, and sometimes (the other 85% of the time) it tastes like liquefied tires?

Jersey Shore

2009-12-08T17:14:00.002-05:00

It seems all the kids are talking about this Jersey Shore show that's on MTV. I had wondered what it was, but not enough to, you know, ask anyone or Wikipedia it or anything (too busy trying to rescue Derby County's second-tier status on Football Manager 2010). A few co-workers were talking about it today, and so I finally enquired as to what it was.

Jesus lapdancing Christ...I would rather have my balls dropped into a vat of boiling acid rather than watch 5 minutes of this fucking thing.

Look, I'm no connoisseur of reality television by stretch of the imagination. Were I to take over the world with my invincible army of killer robots (you know, theoretically speaking), banning it outright would be one of my first acts. However, it's not just the fact that it's a reality show (or that it's on MTV, which I've successfully avoided since the last time they played a decent music video, circa...oh, say 1995) that disgusts me so. It's not just any reality show - it's a show that follows the trials and tribulations of a bunch of guidos - as an example, one of the episodes apparently includes some dude punching a girl in the face.

You stay classy, New Jersey.

The thing is, the amount of faith that I have left in humanity can fit inside of a thimble, and that precious little amount is in a perpetually-fragile state. I have a feeling that if I spent more than 15 seconds watching this show, I would give up on everything entirely and live out the rest of my days in seclusion as a Shaolin monk. While I would enjoy the ability to shoot flame from my hands, I would sort of miss playing soccer and drinking beer.

Wingnuttery

2009-12-08T14:22:00.002-05:00

Another thing I wanted to get to today (well, actually for the last week or so before real life interfered) is the time limits that Obama has set for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Seriously, the next time I hear someone say "it will give aid and comfort to our enemy" with a straight face, I just may stab them in the throat with a red-hot poker. First off, most of those who are saying that couldn't reasonably explain who our enemy IS, let alone whether we're aiding and/or comforting them. I'll tell you what - if you can explain the difference between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban without talking out of your ass, then you get to have an opinion about this sort of thing.

Most importantly, our being in these places is pointless BECAUSE OUR ACTUAL ENEMIES ARE NOT LIMITED TO A SINGLE GEOGRAPHICAL FUCKING LOCATION, YOU TARDS. Never mind the fact that Great Britain and Russia both were humbled in their attempts to pacify this region in the last century, which does not augur well for ours. Even if we were to do the impossible and install happy-little-trees democracies in both Iraq and Afghanistan (I assure you, I'll know Natalie Portman in the Biblical sense before that happens), the principals in question would just pick up sticks and move to Somalia, or the Sudan, or Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or one of the Muslim countries of Central Asia. I promise you - if they're OK with life in the mountains of Afhganistan, they're OK with life in the mountains of Tajikistan.

Honestly, if Sun Tzu or Cao Cao were alive today, they would have sent five good warriors and returned with Osama bin Laden's head on a pike. Instead, our previous President starts not one but TWO unwinnable wars, the end result of which is thousands of lost lives and billions of lost dollars that has accomplished the square root of fuck all.

Awesome.

Sherlock Holmes

2009-12-08T14:07:00.005-05:00

I am, at this point, officially torn.

The thing is, I am OBSESSED with Sherlock Holmes as a character and as a work of fiction. I have the Complete Sherlock Holmes collection that I stole fair and square from my mother, and I make a point of reading it once a year (well, except for the Hound of the Baskervilles, cause my fucking god is that the most boring thing Doyle ever committed to paper). I cannot think of two characters in any other book, film or epic tale that I appreciate more for their depth and their authenticity. I adore the fact that Doyle was smart enough to have him fail every once in a while - it makes him far more human that way.

All of that said, there is a Sherlock Holmes film coming out soon, and my first reflexive instinct is to want to go see it. On the other hand (and admittedly, this is based off of one trailer), it looks like a big old pile of wank that completely gets the spirit of the characters wrong.

Given that the last good film I've seen besides The Wrestler is...umm...yeah I'll get back to you on that, I think my default setting right now is to not see it at first and wait to see what the general consensus is of those whose opinions I respect (Roger Ebert not being the least of them).

Quick music question

2009-12-02T19:47:00.003-05:00

So, does anyone else do this, or is it just me? There are some albums where I absolutely fucking HATE the order that the songs are in. I feel like I have to rearrange them in a sense, where I always listen to it in a different order. It spans across all genres of music for me, too...I do it with Covenant's "In Transit" (a live record, meaning I disagree with their own official setlist...it's a bit arrogant when you think about it, isn't it?), "Agony" by The Tossers, and "Drunken Lullabies" by Flogging Molly, just to name three.

Much rarer are the cases where I agree 100% with the song placement of a record..."Defiance" by Assemblage 23 is the only one that comes to mind (and that is as close to perfection as a single EBM record gets for me...that would absolutely be on the hypothetical desert island list).

Am I alone here? Is this just me being a control freak?

Invasive advertising

2009-12-01T19:04:00.002-05:00

Advertisers have never exactly been known for possessing shame in any great quantity, but this has officially gotten ridiculous in the Facebook age. I'm checking my page when I see, in the ad space on the right hand side, "Are you 31 and single?".

Well shit...at this rate, why don't you tell me? I'm surprised it doesn't say "Are you single and were born on 10/12/78 at Booth Memorial Hospital (which is now defunct) at 2 PM exactly?". "Are you single, bitter about Arsenal losing on the weekend and pissed off that you have to play a farce of a playoff game tonight?"

I'm seriously contemplating putting that I'm 85 years old and married. I think at this point I'd rather look at ads for Depends all day rather than these endless stupid dating ones. If I were that interested in dating right now I'd be, you know, dating.

BAH HUMBUG

2009-11-30T10:52:00.004-05:00

OK, let me just get this out of the way now. I'm not a big holiday guy in the first place - outside of ones that are just meant to be fun, like Halloween or St. Patrick's Day/Cinco de Mayo, I don't have much time for them. I don't even make a big deal about my birthday anymore (once you hit 30, why would you?). But, there are few holiday seasons that bring about dread and loathing in me quite like Christmas.

Already, I imagine a section of my readers (all 7 of you) gasping in horror: "Not CHRISTMAS!". Yes, for fuck's sake...I despise Christmas. LOATHE it. It wasn't always that way...I quite enjoyed it when I was a kid (GI Joe aircraft carrier FTW!), and I to this day don't mind the actual day. Perhaps I should say that the holiday that specifically falls on December 25th, I'm perfectly fine with. I visit my Mom, she plays some music (the only day of the year I can stand it), we eat some food and have a good time. This year, I'll be in Texas and I'll get to spend it with my twin, his wife and children, and some friends I haven't seen in a while. This is all rad.

The source of my hatred then isn't the holiday itself, it's the holiday *season*. It goes on and on and on and on and on...it's longer than the fucking baseball season. I am a firm believer of there being a time and place for everything - and in my opinion, several days before Thanksgiving is NOT the time or place for my senses to be assaulted by Christmas carols. It just bloody well isn't.

Even worse is the fact that for the most part, the season combines the most crass kind of commercialism possible with a saccharine and completely forced spirit of togetherness and brotherhood that is about as tangible and authentic as a politician's promises. Seriously, it's on some American Beauty shit...for a month or more. It's HIDEOUS.

And honestly, I understand tradition and I am down with it in many cases. But good lord, were any of these carols or TV shows or movies made at any point after 1953? Not that it's a problem when taken in a vaccum, but I feel like this season is in large part a ritual kneeling at the altar of "How It Used To Be". Really? You want to go back to 1953? If so, I imagine you aren't black (or Hispanic, or gay, etc and so on). It's dishonest and I don't like it.

I really don't mean to be a total Debbie Downer about the whole thing. If you enjoy the holiday, that's awesome...I'm not saying you shouldn't. All I'm saying is that I'm so over being looked at like I have 12 heads because I don't share that view. It immediately raises my hackles when something, anything becomes that much of a sacred cow.

Bah humbug, bitches.

Ahhh...that's better.

2009-11-28T13:37:00.001-05:00

If there's anything on this earth better than 11 hours of sleep on a Saturday, I seriously don't want to know about it.

Bliss.

OK, seriously, GFY...

2009-11-25T13:43:00.003-05:00

I really don't intend for this blog to only contain posts bitching about Facebook games that I use to kill time at work. I hate writing them, and you probably hate reading them. But, this is something that I absolutely couldn't let go without some form of comment.

Here's the thing. I (heart) Bejeweled Blitz. It's simple, fun and addicting...and it's a lot like Tetris Attack, which is nice because it reminds me of fun memories of schooling my stepmother in that game like she owed me money. I have no quarrel with the game itself, other than I could probably have re-learned French or written a novel in the same amount of time that I've spent playing the bloody thing.

However, the way the game works, you're going to have good games (I refer to it as "being in the Matrix") and bad games. While the game always had the annoying pop-up windows asking you if you want to put high scores on your wall (that's a separate rant, but it basically boils down to "WHY THE FUCK DOES ANYONE CARE AND DO YOU HAVE TO BE THIS OBNOXIOUS EVERY TIME I BEAT MY PREVIOUS HIGH SCORE BY 100 FUCKING POINTS?"), they recently have instituted another one for when you have a bad game - basically mocking you with a sarcastic notification of "Wow, I bet no one is going to beat THIS score".

OK, first of all, fuck you. Second of all, fuck you. And finally, FUCKING FUCK YOU.

With that out of the way, how stupid is this, anyway? If I'm not going to notify people when I do something well, why the crap would I do it when perform poorly? Why would I do the equivalent of shouting "Hey, I really suck, don't I?" from the rooftops? WHO DOES THIS? Besides that, seriously, fuck you. I'm at work, I'm bored out of my mind, I'm hungover...oh, hey, I had a shitty game! How stunning! I know I had a shitty game, and now you're going to kick me when I'm down?

Catch swine flu. Kthxdie.

Sorry for the lack of updates...

2009-11-23T12:47:00.003-05:00

...it's been a crazy week or two.

But, in the meantime, I had a thought while getting a coffee in our break room. It's already been well-documented by comedians and whoever else that there are about 700 gazillion variations of the CSI franchise. What I wonder though is what must it be like to actually live inside of that universe? Think about it - there's at least one stiff in each episode of each variation of the show, right? What must the murder rate be like? Where are the police? ARE there any police? Seriously, if I lived in that universe I wouldn't leave the house without a Kevlar vest and a concealed weapon.

Also, think of how long the judicial process takes in real life. With all of the depositions and delays and legal bullshit that goes on, where do the characters find the time to process all of these cases? Not only that, but they always convict the dude in the end, right? I honestly don't know...I don't watch this stuff. But, assuming that they do, how do the jails hold them all? Do they just deport them to a desert island?

Come on, I can't be the only one to ask these questions, can I?

This is why we're great

2009-11-16T15:40:00.002-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not the blind-patriot type. I love America and I give thanks that I was born here instead of, say, Somalia. I recognize VERY clearly that I won the fucking birth lottery in that respect. But, I don't have much time for people who say that we ALWAYS wear the white hat - you know, the people who try and explain away Vietnam atrocities or Hiroshima/Nagasaki or Japanese internment camps as the right thing to do.

With that in mind, the fact remains that this country has (in my opinion) many more factors on the positive side of the ledger than the negatives. One of the cornerstones of that for me is our insistence on due process. No matter what kind of scumbag you may be, we'll give you a fair trial (unless you're in Texas, but that's practically a foreign country anyway). I'm not trying to say that we're the only country where this happens - but what I am saying is that it is one of the common denominators of the civilized First World. It's pretty much the first question on the application form for Not Being a Failed State and/or Dictatorship.

Isn't it fucking amazing then how the conservatives - you know, the ones who go on and on about how liberals aren't real Americans and whatnot - are the ones who are so shit-scared of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York?

A lot of what I would say has already been mentioned by John Cole over at Balloon Juice. One of the phrases he uses on his blog (that makes me cackle like a lunatic every time I see it) is "The 101st Chairborne", used to mock those who are brave and valorous when behind a keyboard, but would never have the testicular fortitude to actually sign up for the military themselves. I think it's hilarious how those were the guys (and it usually is guys, isn't it?) who were all about bombing any county with brown people in it in the aftermath of 9/11, and who now are pooing themselves at the notion that one of the main perpetrators will actually be on our soil.

As states, Cole covered a lot of that ground already. But, what really fucking burns my ass is that I would wager that many of those who are writing and saying this sort of thing are safely ensconced in Bumfuck, Ohio or wherever else...you know, somewhere that DOESN'T HAVE A BIG FUCKING BULLSEYE ON IT. Well, let me tell you something, sunshine...I actually live here. I work in Manhattan every day, and I take public transportation back home to Brooklyn every day. In the back of my mind, I know it's within the realm of possibility that something like that could happen again, and fate may have it that I am caught in the crossfire if it does. It's unfortunate that it has to be this way, but at this point it comes with the deal of living in this great city.

I haven't seen any poll or anything like that, but I imagine that the majority of us here in New York are actually quite OK with trying the bastard here. Honestly, you think we're scared that he's sitting in one of our jails? Really? With all of the security that will be watching every time the fucker takes a piss, there really needs to be more fear than usual? It's not like we ceased being a target in between 9/11 and this waste of life being tried here. If their twisted, tainted version of Allah willed it, our entire city would be a smoking rubble. If you tried this guy in Peoria, that wouldn't make Peoria a target all of a sudden. If anything, it's probably more useful to them at this point to have KSM here and in the news on a daily basis.

That is one downside to the whole thing that I have to concede. In some ways, it would probably be more beneficial to us if we let Fat Tony from the Jersey Mob take him for a ride to go visit Jimmy Hoffa. He will to some extent be a martyr for their sick cause, and there isn't much that can be done to prevent it. There's no arguing any of this.

But, that is not reason enough to go against our principles as a nation. Yes, the man is culpable for a sickening loss of life. Isn't it better though to show the rest of the world that even in the face of adversity, America still stands up for the values it was founded on? Rebuilding the WTC is great...shit, go ahead and build it 5 feet higher or whatever. Ultimately, that is not what we will be judged on. Let us show everyone what it truly means to be America. Let us show the world that you can bloody our nose, but we will still conduct ourselves the same way we always have. Hell, I'm proud that we're trying him in New York. As far as I'm concerned, it's our way of saying that he can knock down one of our signature buildings, he can murder innocent people, but he will never cause us to bow down in fear. He's not the goddamned Boogeyman - he's a flesh-and-blood criminal. Whatever problems our justice system has, it would be horrible condemnation of it if we can't trust it to convict someone who has confessed to the crime already.

So, bring on KSM. I only hope we get to execute him in New York as well.

Why the fuck do I play Mafia Wars?

2009-11-13T14:22:00.002-05:00

My god, do I fucking hate Mafia Wars.

For the two or three of you who aren't down with social-networking (though I'm not sure why I address you since I'm fairly sure that the Amish haven't brought in the internet yet), Mafia Wars is a shitty shell of a game that is available on Facebook. I also vaguely recall it being on some other ancient platform that no one uses - I don't remember if it was Myspace or cuneiform tablets...both are roughly equal in their obsolesence.

Anyway, the structure of the game is that there is a list of jobs available per level - you click on the button to do it, and it spits back a certain amount of experience and money. There's no story, no plot, no skill involved. Do job...do job...do job...do job. Eventually you run out of energy, and then you have to wait until the next day for it to refill to repeat the process. Most people rightly get tired of this by level 3 or so, and never return. Of course, I'm at level 170, have almost finished New York and have gone most of the way through Cuba. Not that there's any main difference (oooh, the screen is a shit-brown now and there's some of them Spanish words...HAY THIS IS MERKA SPEAK ENGLISH!)...it's still do job...do job...do job.

Even worse, there are items that you need for later jobs that you can only get by doing jobs from a previous level. How fucking obnoxious is that? You can't buy them with in-game money, which is fucking ludicrous (never mind the fact that the zillions of dollars I have in New York are not applicable at all to Cuba...IS THERE NO SUCH THING AS A FUCKING CURRENCY EXCHANGE IN THIS STUPID FUCKING GAME WORLD?). There is a gifting feature where, randomly upon logging in, you can send gifts free to your friends. Not a bad idea, but the problem is that it gives you a wide range of choices...meaning your friends can continually send SHIT YOU DON'T FUCKING NEED over and over and over again when there are exactly three things (Untraceable Cell Phones, Illegal Transaction Records and Blackmail Photos) that have ANY UTILITY AT ALL.

At this point, I play this piece of shit out of stubborness and for something to do while Football Manager loads in between matches. What blows my mind though is that there are people who are so into this game that they a) have hundreds of strangers as Facebook friends specifically to be part of their mob and b) spend actual human real-life currency for "favor points" which translates into weapons/vehicles/whatever that unbalances the game to a ridiculous extent. I mean, I get why the developers do it, they're not a non-profit charity, but WHO THE FUCK PAYS TO PLAY THIS GAME? There are scads and scads of games for consoles and the PC in any conceivable genre that are far more worthy of your support than this. I just don't understand it.

In short: fuck Mafia Wars, fuck game developers that are too lazy/complacent to produce a quality product, fuck the people dumb enough to pay them for it, fuck the losers who have mobs of 500 people and pay for favor points for nuclear warheads or whatever-the-fuck, and fuck me for wasting precious seconds of my life clicking a goddamn button that says "Do Job" over and over and over again. Goddamit.

Now that the introductions are out of the way...

2009-11-13T00:10:00.002-05:00

Here's something that pisses me right the fuck off, and it relates to why I opt to do this in the first place.

Ever since people have started blogging and going on social-networking sites, there has always been a meme floating around from those on the outside that goes along the lines of: "Why should anyone care about stuff that you write on the internet? What makes you so special?". I almost don't even know where to begin with just how fucking stupid this is.

I say almost because I do know where I'm going to begin - on here, you will in time see me mercilessly heckle and take potshots at people I don't respect...right-wing wingnuts, Manchester United, the types of people who show up on Lamebook, etc. This time though, I want to take aim at a guy I like and whose work I mostly admire. For those that don't know, Bill Maher is a former stand-up comedian who hosts a political show on HBO called Real Time with Bill Maher. New Rules is one of the best segments on television, even if I don't really watch the show anymore (I would voluntarily sign up for swine flu rather than listen to people like Michael Steele talk for an hour).

That said, Maher has always been a proponent of this nonsense. Whether in his opening monologues or in one of the throwaway lines on New Rules, he'll come up with some variation of the theme every so often. If I had the chance, I would ask him one question. If we're all just a bunch of schmucks who shouldn't be bothering anyone with our opinions (leaving aside the trifling detail that I'm unaware of any blogger or Facebooker who has ever held a gun to Maher's or anyone else's head to make them read their stuff), then what the fuck is so important about your opinion that we should be watching it on TV? Isn't there an underlying (and gallingly arrogant) implication that their viewpoint matters in a way that yours and mine does not?

Look...I am willing to concede that there is an amount of banality and stupidity in these arenas that is coincidentally exactly proportional with the number of banal and stupid people in the world. The existence of Lamebook is enough evidence on its own to prove this point. However, what often gets lost in this line of thinking is that there is a significant number of exceptional, interesting and highly intelligent people as well (and then you have sarcastic assholes like me who make fun of things in lieu of anything constructive, but that's par for the course here on the internet, yeah?).

For instance, my other blogging endeavor (as mentioned in the post below) is done with my roommate. Rarely does someone with his intelligence focus their attention on professional sports - the man really should be working for the President on the healthcare bill or ending the war or something. Anyway, does the fact that he writes about Arsenal and MMA on the internet make him any less intelligent or interesting? Fuck no, it doesn't. If anything, he's eminently MORE qualified to express his opinion than a guy making fun of stuff on the teevee.

If you look at the rest of the links over there on the right marked "Friends", you will find quite an array of diverse interests and goals. Several are links to bands, and whether you like their various genres of music or not, they all sacrifice in order to create their art. Speaking of which, there are several links in there to people who create art in the physical sense - be it in the medium of painting, jewelry sculpture or web design. By the original Maher logic, should these men and women not impose upon the rest of us? I mean, who are they to assume that people would want to enjoy their work...AMIRITE?

It isn't just art, either. My friend Drazzel invites discussion on theology in Asking the God Question. My friends Dave and Adrea - in the middle of the worst recession in history no less - have fought for their goal of starting their own business, and have done something about it.

I can go on and on, but what I'm getting at is that PEOPLE ARE FUCKING INTERESTING. Everyone has their own story, and that is fascinating to me. If you don't want to hear them, don't fucking ask! Don't fucking surf the web! Personally, I can't think of anything in this world that's more interesting. When I commute to work in the morning, I look around at the train and wonder what everyone's story is. Are they happy? Are they going to work or somewhere else? Do they wish they were somewhere else? What do they regret? What do they long for? Maybe it's the last vestige of the journalist left in me, but I wish I could interview everyone in the world. Some would be more interesting than others...some would be incredibly sad, some incredibly joyful. Others would likely drive me to a Jules Winfield rage. But, to my mind, there is no such thing as a boring human being. There just isn't. As a matter of fact, I think it's unspeakably and disgustingly arrogant to surmise that there is. Who the fuck are we? No, sir...who the fuck are you?

In short, I may not like you, but I do want to hear what you have to say.

It's on, bitches...

2009-11-12T22:53:00.000-05:00

I've been an intermittent blogger for the last 5 or 6 years - for some reason, I've only been able to motivate myself to continually update a given blog in spurts. However, a large part of the reason (in retrospect) is because I've always done blogs with a limited scope - I've always done sports blogs, and a poker blog once or twice. Now, I still do sports blog - my roommate does most of the heavy lifting, but I do contribute here at The Ship Be Sinking.

Given that I'm an overly-opinionated miserable prick, I'm actually kind of surprised that I've never done a vent-my-spleen kind of blog before. I suppose I just never thought of it when I had the time and inspiration to get a serious hate on for something. Two things occurred today though that finalized my decision once and for all. First, I was checking in on my twin's Facebook page and saw this link. Upon the first 30 seconds of reading it, it hit me that this was EXACTLY the kind of thing I've always wanted to write. That in turn reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend/work colleague Maria right before she left for maternity leave.

Actually, I should give a bit of backstory first. The company I work for puts out a publication that isn't really a newsletter - sure, it has interviews with the employee of the month and the CEO answers questions in it, but it's mainly just an outlet for the creative types to write things for their co-workers to read 6 or 7 times a year. Since the first few issues, I have always had a ranty-pants column that I had entitled "And Furthermore...". As an example of my work, I once wrote over 1000 words bitching about how idiots order at Chipotle and hold up the line (even funnier now that I've broken up with Chipotle for a much better option in Qdoba), and more recently I ranted about the 60 minutes of my life I'll never get back from watching the pilot of The Vampire Diaries. Anyway, long story short (and the first asshole to say "too late!" is getting judo-chopped in the larynx), Maria asked me if I was ever planning on doing a web version of the column that would serve as the unfiltered and uncensored version of it. At the time, I thought I wouldn't have the motivation.

But now, you've got your wish, Maria. It's fucking on.

So anyway, what you can expect here is much sound and fury, signifying nothing. When things piss me off, I will tell you about them (often in painstaking detail, with many tangents in parentheses...you know, like this one). Of course, I won't ALWAYS be Mr. Angry - once in a great while I'm capable of being funny, and I suppose I'll take the odd stab at it here as well. Your mileage may vary, naturally.

I hope you enjoy your stay...nah, actually, I don't give half a monkey shit either way. This is primarily for my own amusement, and any chuckling/cackling/guffawing from the peanut gallery is just gravy. Even better, if you think I'm an asshole, do leave a comment in the usual manner - I enjoy a fine battle of wits every now and then (and I have none of the usual compunctions about duels with unarmed men - I'll go Jules Winfield on your ass).

I'm out like the fat kid in dodgeball...for now.