Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Marijuana Slows Science's Ability To Figure Out Marijuana

Scientists in New Zealand
So an international team* in New Zealand spent twenty years not playing rugby. I didn't know this was possible. Instead, they worked all that time to prove what Matt Foley told us in 1993: pot makes you stupid. Sure, the Kiwi's are far too kind to say it that way. But why hold back? Most stoners have already forgotten the point of the study, or the definition of "study." Not one of them knows where the fuck New Zealand is.

I'm not upset at these fine folks for telling me something I already knew, nor do I mind them being paid for it. Much of academia works the exact same way.

"This study took an amazing scientific effort. We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users."

What "amazing scientific effort" did it take? Have kid put square peg in square hole, bang out some multiplication tables, show horse at the beginning and the end and ask them to trace how the horse got there. Oh, make sure they don't think the horse is an alligator. Done. Did it take effort to make them sit still? Absolutely not. You can give them pudding or you can threaten them with torture. Obviously the pudding is more expensive but it's your call, moneybags. Then you wait a few years. No scientific effort there. You're just waiting. Yesterday I waited in line at Publix.

Things the cashier didn't say when I finally made it to checkout:

1. Afternoon, you fucking scientist you!
2. Did you put the squash in the bag all by yourself? AND waited in line? What effort!

LOOK AT ALL THE SCIENTISTS!


"Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today."

Of course they did! What else were they doing but being complete fuck ups, according to you? They'd have stuck with anything to get away from the can of Pringles and another showing of Lethal Weapon 4. What's weird to me is that the scientists did in fact take into account the use of alcohol and other drugs. But when charged with pinpointing the reason for a drop in IQ points:

"It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Fairly. They're fairly confident it wasn't the ecstasy or cocaine or heroine or fifths of tequila. After twenty years, enough time to make even my dumbass abandon some empty bullshit like "fairly," Egon Spengler and company took a bong rip and said, "meh, seems like it, right?"

"If you eat this I get published."

I haven't smoked pot in years. I did not quit in an effort to take some moral high ground or because I was worried about my health. Nope. I just got bored with it. Every time I got high I became quiet and paranoid and weird and that's terribly boring. Know what else I did in my much younger days? OTHER DRUGS. These days if I'm slow to answer a question or I'm stumped about a topic of discussion I'll often refer to myself as an idiot. My friends, because they're lovely people will say, "no you're not!"

"Not what?" I say, "Stop being weird."

Do I blame blunts? A little. Do I believe those raves I attended actually helped matters? No. LSD never helped anyone pass a test. Sadly, I live in Tallahassee, Florida and I will never receive a paycheck for any of this information. If I lived in New Zealand? Legend!


* Do they wear the Ukrainian Olympic outfits? Because that would be one snazzy team of scientists!






Monday, August 27, 2012

Donte Stallworth cut from the Patriots for being too tall.

Your 2012 Patriots
Not really. But it seems that way. Belichick likes his wide receivers to be small. Actually, he likes all of his skill players to be small. New England's backfield consists of Tom Brady and an endless stream of hobbits. Remember when Brady had Randy Moss and set a ton of records and lost only one game? Granted, it was the Super Bowl. But we've seen what Brady can do when given viable options. 

Sure, the Pats just gave Hernandez a contract extension, and he's a BEAST. They also still have Gronkowski, assuming he can stop funneling coeds long enough to run a post route. But these two are both tight ends. The receiving corps remains three Matt Lauer's and coal miner's kid who played left field for a traveling whiffle ball team in junior college. 

Look, I hate the Pats. I'd like nothing more than to see Brady treated like the fat fish at the beginning of The Shawshank Redemption. But one of my best friends is a die hard New England fan so I have to watch every game. I'd at least like to be entertained. But no. Belichick insists on employing an endless stream of tighty whitey's for sprint draws and 3-yard crossing patterns designed to suck happiness from my eyeballs. Poor Dante is the latest casualty. Too tall and too athletic and far too effective. Stretch the field? Maybe a deep ball? Not on Bill's watch!

Friday, August 24, 2012

Inside Info

At 22 this was dope as a motherfucker.
I spent yesterday tearing through my apartment and throwing away what I no longer use/need. Sometimes it's obvious: I shouldn't have 27 shakers from different Alabama football games when I know damn well I'll attend 100 more. Sometimes it's a matter of memory: how can I throw away the hoodie an old roommate and sorority girl #3 got busy on? I mean, dude's dad bought me that hoodie. It's from Wisconsin, says so right on the front. Shows I've traveled! The insignia I mean, not the stain. There are always memories attached to our old threads or Darth Vader PEZ dispensers or white plastic brontosauruses, or busted seashells, or concert tickets, or souvenir shark fetuses, or EVERY FUCKING LIQUOR BOTTLE EVER!*

I feel like a lot of the stories that go along with these items are fairly universal. And often there's no "inside info" rendering one's value in their own memories any greater than someone else's. These things say something about where we've been or how we've lived or who we were/are. At the end of the day their value is a matter of opinion---I believe the story is funny or I still hold this experience as unbelievable or sweet Jesus's last pork chop the poor guy must've washed that hoodie sixteen times before finally bringing it back to you like a dog who knew the secret place where he'd just taken a shit and is now just waiting on you to find it. 

But ESPN subscribes to the cockbrained belief that opinion counts as inside info. At least once a day I click on a link by a writer no one has ever fucking heard of, or better yet, a talking head from a television show who has incredible difficulty with the English language and yet has now decided to write, and after one inane paragraph there's an ellipsis followed by an "IN-" tag. For a monthly payment I can read what Clarence Sportsdiddler thinks about a third-string tackle on the Raiders. THE FUCKING RAIDERS! People still write articles about the Raiders? NFL films doesn't even cover the Raiders. The Raiders are like the last time I saw Jennifer Anniston in a movie and thought, "Holy hell! Still with this one?" The Raiders are a cousin you thought was still in prison. But when you discover they're not in prison they don't even try to convince you've they've changed. Nope. They simply outline their next illegal scheme you know will fucking fail. 

Just this morning there's an article titled "2012 NFL Sleepers." For those of you not familiar to the listing of possible "sleepers" it works like this: find a space on the floor, position yourself in what those who have time for such activities refer to as "downward dog," and talk exclusively out of your fucking ass. There's no science to it. There's no research. You don't even have to watch, or to have ever watched, any football. You could literally look at a list of names and think, "shit, I once knew a cat named Jenkins. That's it! Fucking Jenkins, baby! That's my sleeper!"
What? I've always irrationally supported the Browns.**

Another article says, "2012 NFL Running Backs Ready For A Big Year." Has there ever in the history of sport been an athlete who worked all offseason readying themselves to be terrible? "I realize I have world class speed, traps like bike ramps, and triceps that look like the Black Stallion's goddamn horseshoes. But think, man! How awesome would it be if I just all of a sudden sucked? Like really sucked. What if I just took the ball and threw it backwards, or took a handoff, stuck it up my jersey, and ran to the sidelines to sing Private Dancer to the Special Teams coach?" Every player is ready for a big year, you choad nugget! You don't have any "inside" info! You got drunk last night at Applebee's and Lulu took her wooden leg off so she could fit in your Kia and give you a hickey the size of Texas. And in that time you thought, "Ronnie Brown! I loved him in the Outback Bowl! This is the year!" And when Lulu barfed on your copy of 50 Shades of Grey you saw it as a sign. Fuck you. 

You're not Oz. You have a press pass and saw Ryan Moates naked once. Mark Sanchez retweeted your girlfriend. That's it. That's all. I need you to interview people and give me stats. If I want intelligent analysis I'll go to Grantland and keep my fingers crossed that Simmons is on vacation. 

I hate ESPN, but it's the only game in town. And just like my sky blue Ekco sweater vest, it's time for them to ditch this "IN-" garbage. You're not in. You're just the only game in town. Enjoy your monopoly you selfish bastards. 




* Is this still a thing? Do kids still save bottles? Oh shit, do they still put candles in them because the wax looks cool when it dries over Jack Daniels? I never did this, mind you, ESPECIALLY while The Wall was playing.

** That? That's just Big Lick Dick. He's my 2012 sleeper.



Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

C. Thomas Howell told you Pussy Riot was coming

I've been reading an awful lot about the imprisonment of Pussy Riot lately.* It's all over my Facebook and Twitter feeds. "Russia is awful!" "Down with tyranny!" "The world should do something!" I imagine the first headline read something like, "Feminist Punk Band Arrested in Russia," and you thought, "Fuck was Bikini Kill reuniting in Russia for?" Probably just left your Whole Foods cart right in the middle of the aisle because the world matters to you THAT MUCH! 

It's awful that these brave women are being locked up for "hooliganism" (or as we call it: Saturday). But to all of those young Americans who ran home to grieve and post those first articles they saw: WE TOLD YOU SO


Did you think we were watching Rocky IV and Red Dawn for our health? No! We were watching those documentaries to prepare ourselves!** You think C. Thomas Howell was tagging Russian tanks with "Wolverines" just to keep his arm warm for Side Out? No! He was doing what Patrick "The Patriot" Swayze told him to do because AMERICA MOTHERFUCKERS! 

Russia is terrible. You thought it was all good because Tom Hanks worked for the Russian Fed Ex before he got stranded on that island. Well, Tom Hanks is loved by the Russians for some reason and I think we know why---Tom Hanks hates women.*** Yes, even gymnasts.  Here you've been mislead to believe that all Russians are tiny, manageable gymnasts. Not true! Not true at all! You ever been scissor-locked by an expert in the floor exercise, or pinned to the ground by Yuri, the beefy rings swinger? Me neither! But can you imagine? 

I hear stories all the time about people waking up from their falling dreams, or nightmares about demons, or about being chased by sharks, or being eaten by Meryl Streep.**** Well I have nightmares too, and they all involve Ivan Drago. He killed Apollo Creed! Does that mean nothing to you? Apollo Creed LOVED feminist punk rock! You think he wanted to come out to James Brown? Of course not. But the capitalist machine with its patriarchal gears made him do it and then his head wasn't in the game and HE DIED! Get your head in the game, youngsters. Russia is an evil place where this man lives, clubbing seals and playing ice polo on the backs of polar bears. It's terrifying! 

Wake up!




* I've read absolutely nothing substantial on the Pussy Riot situation except this. Which is really insightful and I think everyone should read. 

** Well, if they weren't documentaries they were based on true accounts. From someone. Probably deep in the woods of Michigan. 

*** Again, none of this can be substantiated by actual evidence. But don't act like you've never thought about it in these terms!

**** My dreams from the last four nights. 




Monday, August 20, 2012

Aged piece of leather found in Straits of Florida

Look out! The ancient ones need inspiring again! Cue Diana Nyad, an energetic old mutant determined to swim from Cuba to Florida. Nyad says she got the idea on a trip to Cuba from her home in Florida in the 1950's when she was 8 years old. So she's a Corleone? Apparently she's tried the swim three times before, but was forced to abandon the trek due to jellyfish or currents or waves. I mean, THE OCEAN, amiright? "There's no stopping her now,' the crew said on her blog." And how! You know Gram. Once she's set on Piccadilly no other soft serve cube steak will do!

Nyad isn't using a shark cage to deter the animals who live and feed there. Of course not! That would be too humane! She's giving them the appearance of all-clear. Then if they get too close, WHAM, a forcefield of electricity blasts them from snout to tail fin. Imagine you're sitting at the dinner table, completely famished, when a platter of chicken alfredo floats by. You go to grab it, because it's your fucking dinner table and all, then WHAM, you're shot backwards into the ceramic orca figurines your granddaughter brought back from Sea World. Here you are in the floor surrounded by sheetrock and busted orca fins; starved and traumatized.

Now you know how every shark in the Florida strait feels this morning. Did this have to happen? Listen, both of my own grandmothers have passed on. Were they still around and dreaming up asinine aquatic activities like, I don't know, swimming from Cuba to the Golden Girls house, I'd take them to a swimming pool: One friend stands on the edge of the deep end dressed like Castro. I stand on the steps of the shallows in a Tommy Bahama shirt shucking oysters and making "Tha U" with my fingers, while one of my girlfriend's booty claps beside me. FLORIDA! And I'd cheer them on, "C'mon, grandma! Almost here!" Shit man, they could make the trip 5 or 6 times. How inspiring!

What about historical awareness? Think of the numbers that made this exact same voyage. Not to impress fellow Matlock fans, but for political asylum.

What if someone else wants to make the swim? Now they're behind Nyad, who'll probably come to a dead stop where she's not supposed to because she could SWEAR Florida used to be RIGHT HERE! Can she even see over the waves?

Am I on the sandbar? 
From the Godmother herself: "When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late, I can still live my dreams.'"

No. NO NO NO NO NO! What novel are you going to write, Ethel? "Everyone has a novel in them." No they do not. Everyone has friends who bullshit them because they love them and want them to stop staying in their house every day watching Donahue episodes on VHS. Take a walk. Start a dodgeball league at the home. Try a sit-up. See a movie. Call your kid. Don't write about that time your poodle almost choked on a butter bean and it made you feel just like Elizabeth Taylor.

What fucking farm in Africa? Do you mean Africa? As in, "I heard shit was bad in Africa. Someone should help them out"? Slow your roll, Lennie Small. You can't just go barreling onto farms because a bug bit your wrinkled ass. Hell, the immunizations would probably kill you. Why won't you just drive through Oklahoma and call it a day? Fucking farms everywhere in Oklahoma! Africa? Shit on a biscuit. If that Columbo marathon doesn't start soon we're gonna lose Grandpa.

Adopt a child, she says. Nyad's 67. Let me tell you something, Miss Daisy, I'm adopted. I feel incredibly lucky to have the most loving parents imaginable. Talk to them everyday. We're thick as thieves. Know what they didn't do? Wait til they were dining with death to adopt a kid. You know how little chance you have of even seeing them graduate high school? Plus, the mind deteriorates as one ages. Old folks do weird things, like try to swim from Cuba to Florida. You want your kid to have mom or dad sane for about 10/15 years? What then? What a self-serving fucking idea this is. "Know what's better than bridge, Frank? A fucking toddler. After all, we eat the same food!"

I love an inspirational story, but this is useless. Indeed, the human body can take a lot, even as it ages. Noted. I might even be inspired if you did it without protection. But you're doing it with a full crew, an electric fence around you, and for a FOURTH TIME. Is that the inspirational part? That you can try as many times as you want provided you don't have other shit to do? Well good luck, Aquawoman, I've other shit to do.













Saturday, August 18, 2012

Starving

Slow news day. And it's Saturday. And since it's so close to football season, I just can't be angry. But I can be hawngry.




Friday, August 17, 2012

Florida Update: Still Scary

So this exists: 

no cameras, dude


And it exists because this exist: 




Where there are not only prehistoric looking bugs that attack you, but also outdoor activities: 



I realize I'm from Alabama, but sweet Sam Elliott's eyebrows, Florida, you're terrifying. I can deal with your leathery locals and your awful public education and your absolute refusal to see a meat and three as a profitable lunch option (fucking idiots) and your 80's sports teams relevance and their still tacky uniforms. I really love your beaches, and Miami Vice, and the adorable claim that you're "diff'rent from you other southerners." 

But you are not safe, my friend. Not by a long shot. Wolf spiders and black widows and recluses and gators and snakes that are native and other snakes that you bought at an exotic pet store then released into the wild and now they're all breeding and making SUPER ULTRA MEGA MEGA SNAKES! Not to mention hurricanes and tornados and thunderstorms that often feel like hurricanes and tornados and now this bug. 

THIS BUG THAT CHASED ME INSIDE WITH ITS MANDIBLES OF RAGE.  





Thursday, August 16, 2012

NBC is getting its Costas all over America


Remember NBC? It's where we were all really American for a couple of weeks during the Olympics. You were there. I saw you at the bar and you said, "Who's winning?" And since I couldn't have comprehended the rules if NASA was sitting at my fucking table I told you I didn't know. Par for the course (golf reference! NBC LOVES GOLF!), considering Americans don't know a whole hell of a lot. 

But we know one thing: NBC was once relevant and awesome and must see t.v.: Cosby, Cheers, Night Court, 227, Miami Vice, A Different World, Family Ties, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues, and E.R., at least until Clooney bounced. Even with all of these gems NBC's greatest accomplishment was that iconic slice of Americana---Saturday Night's Main Event

It was the 80's, and a couple years in the 90's, and it was wrasslin', and it was cage matches and scaffold matches, and open steroid use, and outrageous managers, and Koko B. Ware, and Fuck. The. World. It was the best. Total spectacle. 

Saturday Night's Main Event didn't happen every Saturday. Sometimes it was once a month. Sometimes three months would pass until another aired. Once, there were two in one month and I thought my 10 year old brain would explode into Capri Sun pouches and dirty playing cards. A glorious time, truly. 

Twenty years and a treasure trove of bad decisions later (Notre Dame football, anyone?) NBC is peddling a new sports network. They're calling it NBCSN. The SN stands for ShitNoodle. Just kidding. It's SailorNookieWhat will NBCSN give us? How about Major League Soccer? Intrigued? Well hold on to your binky! They'll also cover motor racing*, cycling, boxing**, horse racing***, and hunting and fishing****. Still not blown away? There's also a sports talk show hosted by Bob Costas! Get the towel, Betty! I seem to have  made a mess!

The one good part of NBCSN is their coverage of the NHL, which thanks to my friends from the Northeast, I've grown to love. Hockey is badass. Don't worry, loyal NBC viewers, they're still covering Notre Dame football. Only now their couching it in the phrase "college football." IT'S NOT. It's Notre Dame playing the Service Academies where all the players on both squads weigh 95 lbs and then they'll play USC and ten people will show up because their kids play for Notre Dame or USC and USC will monkey-stomp the living shit out of Touchdown Jesus and NBC's announcers will say, "This USC team is FOR REAL!" No, they're not. They just beat the dormitory from Cider House Rules. Fuck you, Notre Dame. 

I'm all for someone challenging ESPN. But not Costas and the Private School Peonies. In fact, hockey deserves better. I'm looking at you, CBS. Could there be a tougher network than the one responsible for SEC football and the NHL? You couldn't even watch commercials on that channel without getting two black eyes. Make it happen. Don't get Costas all over the ice. PLEASE. 




*Motor racing? Motors on what? Motorcycles? Motorized Costas dolls? 

**Just stop with boxing. Suspend it until it's cleaned up. Did you watch the Olympics? Boxing is dirtier than a Raiders fan at HOOTERS. 

***Maybe the Prince and Princess will show up, just like the Olympics! Then we can talk about what designer she's wearing! Then Ralph Lauren will ride in with a broadsword and behead children of the lower classes!

****Unless you're hunting Costas and using meat from his torso as shark bait NO ONE WILL CARE. 








Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Nice Work, Australia

Warning Label
I'm a smoker. Not proud of it. Not ashamed of it, either. I just am. Like people are L.A.R.P.ers or listen to Katy Perry or love the Cowboys. 

Just like those people I'd really like to quit. Smoking. I have tried to quit a time or six. Usually my smoking is replaced with something--I exercise more, or try to write something each time I get the urge to light up, or I picture someone from Arkansas. So far nothing has worked. But this might. It's called "plain-packaging," and it's a graphic warning of tobacco's long-term effects. Turns out when Australians aren't using other Australians to chum the water for great white sharks, they're passing cool legislation. Who knew? 

Granted, I wasn't turned on to cigarettes because of any label or magazine ad or television commercial or movie star. Nope. I was at the bottom of a Wild Irish Rose bottle in high school and thought, "nothing can be worse than this." Of course I was wrong. But I liked the taste of a cigarette, the ritual of it. At no time did I see a pack of cigarettes and say, "those look harmless" or "what gorgeous packaging!" 

Don't think I mean to defend Big Tobacco. Tobacco companies and their supporters are full of shit. "It'll mean more non-plain packaged smokes on the black market," they say, "more children will be smoking!" Horsedicks. If they could drop a CAMEL down every pregnant woman's throat just to get that fetal demographic they'd do it. I'd be much happier if cigarettes just didn't exist. Same goes for cockroaches, Tim Burton, country clubs, Miller 64, True Blood, and the Dallas Cowboys. 
Another badass Australian thing.

Do I want to see a suffering infant on my pack of Ultra Lights? Of course not. I don't want to see a car crinkled to an unrecognizable heap on my bourbon label either. But them's the facts, right? That's why I think this kind of legislation would work. FOR EVERYTHING. 

1. NFL---Instead of the shield, lay the letters on a backdrop of brain scans revealing multiple concussions.

2. Junk food---Don't give me a smooth talking cheetah in sunglasses. How about 80's Roseanne Barr?

3. Ralph Lauren---Mitt Romney*


4. Gun shops---Just a digital sign with an up to the minute death tally. 

5. Australian flag---Dude jumping into a shark's mouth.

Not that all of these would work. I would still watch NFL football. And truth be told, you'd have a better chance getting me to quit if you cover a pack of cigarettes in an Auburn University logo. Don't worry about Australia. There isn't enough money on the planet to get me there. 

"In a report last year, the CDC found in a 14-nation study that graphic health warnings on cigarette packages have led a 'substantial' number of smokers to consider quitting."

Good enough for me, world! Imagine what we could do with guns, or vodka, or Tony Romo


* I realize Ralph Lauren isn't technically bad for you. But c'mon.

















Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Gone With The Windbag

So good to be back!
Great Gabe Kaplan's mustache, that was a long hiatus! I finally saw Seattle, attended Iron Maiden Day, wrote two papers and an annotated bibliography, taught six weeks of freshman comp., finished coursework, and turned 35.

What did I not do? Let's see...

For starters, I didn't shoot a water moccasin and hang it up in a tree to make it rain. I don't "believe snakes hold mystical powers" or that "they will charm you if you look into their eyes." Why? Because this isn't Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and I haven't been smoking PCP behind the Arby's.

Maybe it's because mom never fed me Coca Cola from a baby bottle. But apparently that was someone's experience, and his name is Rick Bragg, and he authored this drivel. And since I'm from the South (Tuscaloosa, AL, stand up!), and since I love college football, I suppose I'm implicated in the universal "We" Mr. Bragg insists on using.

Well fuck you very much.

See, it's this type of tired, fetishized bullshit that forces me to listen to the same southern jokes at the same lame ass academic parties I attend on occasion.

"You're from Alabama? 'Y'all', amiright?"

Rick Bragg
Sure, ass-hat, you're right. I have a master's degree and just finished coursework in a PhD program because I ran around hanging snakes and chanting "y'all" with my voodoo beads wrapped around a white-tale deer dick passed down from my daddy. If you're not careful I'll turn your Volvo into a stock car! Why? On fucking instinct, brother! Can't help myself. Hellfire man, all I have to do is hear the word CAR and I start jonesin' for Daytona so hard my left eye shuts and I piss myself.

Bragg's stories have already been told a thousand times. Old southern men talking about the good ol' days of SEC football? Check. Old southern white men still upset about the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War? A big ol' racist check. College football fandom, the most cliched side of it, made to define an entire region? Well, face palm, and then check.

"The point is, we talk real slow down here, so it may take a while to get to it, that we believe some things regardless of science and sometimes common sense."

You mean dipshits? You're talking about dipshits. They have those everywhere. I've been a dipshit before. One of my best friends thought it was "bold faced liar." See? Dipshit. He's from Boston.

You say Nick Saban smiling after his second national title in three years "scared" you, "as if Billy Graham had done a handstand."

Congratulations. You've squeezed halfwit ritual, catfish, and Billy Graham into an article about the South. It's a wonder ESPN didn't just have you recite it from bourbon-soaked memory under a swamp cypress with a straw hat on and a grass blade between your teeth. Oh wait! Fuck me, you even mention hay and cotton!

"Those young men drew on a long history of not being afraid, of the hottest days or endless rows of cotton or a million bales of hay." So the football team was made up of a bunch of farmers who dropped their pitchforks and picked up helmets? You're confusing myths.

"In the winter of 1993, in an attic apartment in Cambridge, Mass., I watched Alabama beat the trash-talkin' Hurricanes--I mean beat them like they stole somethin'."

What Bragg saw in the 1993 Sugar Bowl.
Why is "stole somethin'" in italics? You already dropped the "g" from "talking." Why attribute "stole somethin'" to some southern ghost? THAT was too much? And why attribute all this old shit to me? To some "We" you presume to speak for?

I watched the same game in 1993 sitting on the floor of my family's living room. Lots of southerners were there. No one had a snake or fed their baby Coke or played the banjo or sang about God and cotton. My grandmother was there, too. "It makes a difference," she said, because she always said that. It worked as a non-sequitur, a post-script, a preface. Regardless, it was always the crux of her message.

And that's my message to you. It makes a difference.

My "we" wants to find the positive aspects of our home, not be a cliche. We want to be different from the people who give it a hayseed name, not that hick gleefully reflecting on a time when the team consisted of whites only because they were the only ones allowed to play. We revel in rivalry Saturdays. It's the end of the week and we drink before noon and we believe in the restorative power of hate. But we are far more than an ESPN 30 for 30 that gives carte blanche to six kooks from Jasper for an hour and calls it a day.

We are not the same, you and I.

What you've done, Gump, is disregard southern football fans who weren't born from a bag of pork rinds or don't dislike a team just because they're north of the Mason-Dixon (we despise ALL opponents) or don't adhere to the belief that "God prefers our teams." We love college football. We grew up with it, or graduated from there, or moved there and thought it was strange at first but now we love it. Do we follow it religiously? Sure. Shit. That term always gets thrown around when describing the southern football fan. Never Bowie fans or squash players or vegans. "My, you follow that carrot juice religiously! You're CRAZY!"

No. Because of rubes like Bragg every Saturday is a Sunday and every football stadium down south is a fucking church and that's not rib sauce on my fingers it's Jesus syrup! Well okay, Bubba, I follow it religiously.

Know what else people follow religiously? Religion. I'll let you decide which is more logical. Scientifically speaking, of course.









Saturday, July 7, 2012

An Open Reply To Brilliant Panda


You sure do talk a lot, World.

My Very Favorite Panda,

Indeed. You are Brilliant. I’ve scaled the tiny mountains of this Hassee province often to listen to your musings on all things science, music, literature, porn, and football. It’s that last one that rouses me this particular morning, the dream that happens every summer—pigskin soaring in slow motion through a stadium-lit sky, repetitive crunch of tackle after blindside sack, a one-handed snag, a kick return for touchdown. We’ve all had the dream. We love it. We miss it. We wake up only to realize it isn’t real, that our morning paper is merely an A-Rod article, or some Red(neck) Sox kid complains to his crotch on ESPN, or 3-4 games a day on television for what feels like 10 years. The worst—a “sport” that occasionally speeds up to a crawl in the hottest season of the year. Can you imagine sitting in a microwave and counting to 600 in Mississippi’s? That’s a Red Sox/Yankees game, only the microwave is filled with assholes.

Your open letter raises some interesting points. I am, in fact, hilarious. But this morning I woke from my dream and turned on the television to see “Breakfast at Wimbledon” and thought—Is this the world Brilliant Panda wants for us? Say it ain’t so!

Now, tennis is a helluva sport. It’s fun and fast and tough. I enjoy watching, and there was a time when I enjoyed playing. But “Breakfast at” anything is not a pre-game show I’m okay with, especially since Roger Goodell seems determined to put the NFL in Europe. THE NFL! Can you imagine “Crumpets With Eli” on BBC? This would be a disaster. I care nothing about watching the London Kettles versus the Edinburgh Sads. You’re an Eagles fan, for fuck’s sake! At halftime you want 3 beers and a shouting match with your cousin Sully. The Edinburgh Sads hold a halftime funeral for Balgaire’s Ma who croaked at kick-off. Tough old broad fought with William Wallace, you know.

I mention Europe because of your concern over what the world thinks of America, and when one makes this argument they usually mean what Europe thinks of America. So please allow me, Worried Panda, to sooth your ruffled and wooly coat.

1  1.  Americans can get anything. We just got healthcare. Just now. But alas, I understand you mean the little things, those we take for granted—cats, blue jeans, and Hollywood memorabilia. Well, I may acquire a kitty that looks eerily similar to Robert De Niro, and I may acquire said feline with the quickness. Know what I can’t get right up the street? A Union Jack scrotum beanie for those frigid Florida winters. We all make sacrifices.
   
We'll backpack anywhere we please. 
    2. Political Idiocy—I don’t know which side of the pond you're claiming this idiocy falls on. First off, if you’re an American travelling the world and pinning anything other than a RATT patch to your backpack, well, sir or ma’am, you’re dead inside already. Why would we, a Panda and a Mink, have to defend anything? Governments make terrible decisions, and ours may be the worst, but I can’t remember ever receiving a text that reads—“Yo Mink. Prez here. You got a thought on this Iraq bizz-nass? Holla if you go out later. #opentosuggestions.” This European demand is the equivalent of me blaming all of Italy each time Mario fails to save the Princess.

     3. Canada is better. John Candy, Ryan Gosling, and hockey vs Me, You, Wu-Tang, Bear Bryant, muscle cars, and snack packs? 'Merika. 

     4. It's Not "America". Maybe, but "BossOfAllBosses" wouldn't fit on the bandana I like to tie around my Levi's. LOL Europe!
    
     5. We’re Wasteful. Yes. Yes we are. I am a terrible offender here. No defense. HOWEVER, whence I’ve scaled those heights to gnaw bamboo with you we’ve chowed down to the melodious sounds of Dick Wolf. Were we actually watching the television? No, Hypocritical Panda, we were not. We just felt better because it was on, because there was justice in this crazy world, because the lone noise of conversation puts us in a panic. And this is okay! We have toys and we play with them. I understand America has a waste problem, but Elizabeth Vargas? She has a lot of money and four kids and a huge house. Her carbon footprint is the T-Rex to my Emmanuel Lewis. According to her "report" we should piss in the streets and never shower. If I wanted that I’d just live in Ohio.

My point, Understanding Panda, is that I don’t need Europe to tell me we have issues. The only America that Europe knows is New York and L.A. anyway. I’ve enough problems trying to convince people in my own country that I’m capable of holding an intellectual conversation after they find out I’m from Alabama. Europe doesn’t even know Alabama exists. To them there’s only “The South” and it’s shaped like a klan hood. Fuck those people, too. We gave Europe an American and you know what happened?

Mmmmm.... privilege and gelato 

So yes. You’re right. I should conserve far more than I do. And I will admit that while your open letter was well received, it cut a little. When I am cut, Kind Panda, I bleed. And when I bleed, I bleed fucking Springsteen guitar strings because AMERICA! WOOHOO! LOL EUROPE!









Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A Whale Of A Time


I do not conserve. I will leave every light in my apartment on, the water running, and fall asleep comfortably on the couch to the sounds of District Attorney McCoy magically panting the city of New York to another conviction. If I left the oven on, all the better.

this is an actual whale
But you know what I like? Whales. Love a whale. I don’t actually work toward educating anyone on the habits of whales. I don’t donate money to whale conservation and, honestly, I’ve only ever seen a whale in captivity at a museum I snuck into illegally because the line was too long and I had a flight to catch. LOL, Shedd Aquarium, I saw your belugas for free!

Point is, asked if I dig on whales, the answer is yes. YES. They’re smahht. Not dumb, like everybody says. When I say “everybody” I mean—people from Wakulla County, FL and the Japanese.

This morning I read that a bid to create a whale sanctuary in the Southern Atlantic Ocean was voted down at the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) annual meeting. I know, right? I want to be on the International Whaling Commission. Although the bid gained more than half the votes, it needed a three-quarters majority. Boo.

Granted, these do-gooders wanted a nice chunk of salt—“The proposal covered almost the entire Atlantic Ocean south of the Equator, from the west coast of Africa to the east coast of South America.” Wow.

An actual invitation from the above whale.
Whale #1—party at my crib!
Whale #2—where’s your crib?
Whale #1—everywhere!

I don’t mind that it was voted down with the promise of more talks. Part of the problem was shear area. Countries/continents can control their own shorelines, and so, rather than mark off a portion of planet, those who voted against suggested the closer policing of these shorelines. Word up, haters.

But who were one of the biggest opponents of the plan? The Japanese. Mother. Fucker. No and no. I have a problem with Japan getting a say. The IWC tried to nix commercial whaling in order to increase whale populations back in 1986. The Japanese, always happy to help a whale, found a scientific research loophole within the legislation, and continued right on killing. I suppose they needed to make sure the meat still tasted the same? Yep, tastes right. Just to make sure, though, lets capture and kill about 70 more. Nothing like consistency!

Here’s what has never happened in warfare:

General #1—Hey, guy, Gen here, I’m gonna need you to stop this little coup or whatevs. I mean, you’re massacring a lot of innocents.
General #2—For reals? I didn’t even realize. But, seriously, we’re just conducting a little resea….
General #1—No, dawg.

Don’t get it twisted. This is warfare. The whales haven’t had many warriors, per say. There was Moby Dick and this little guy. And why shouldn’t he attack a diver. Do we not try to kill bugs that fly around our face? I went diving once, in the Bahamas. The only things in that water are tiny little fish that look like bouquets of flowers. It was like swimming in everyone’s anniversary.

But those big ol’ so and so’s need help. I’d like to arm them with lasers, but sharks have kind of cornered that one. Sheesh…sharks.

See, the whole “hey, kid, stop being a jackass” hasn’t worked with the Japanese whalers. Now it’s time to stop letting these fools vote. And before you go screaming about how I’m lumping all Japanese people and Wakulla people together under a negative light of righteousness, let me correct you.

Yes. Yes I am. This morning. Because this is bullshit. This is King Bullshit. You seen The Cove? Those are dolphins. Seems like if it’s an intelligent sea creature, there are men in Japan who will ice it. No questions asked.

You will eat the fast food!
Just as America should have nothing to do with any international dietary legislation, Japan should be left out of any vote regarding whales. If you’re doing everything you can to wipe out a species (human or whale) you’re done. DONE.



Wednesday, June 27, 2012

College Payoff



4-team playoff? Everyone will miss the BCS once this shady reach-around is instituted in 2014. For now I'll just say---You don't fool this old rube, college football.

Your college football playoff Selection Committee 
Those old men relieving themselves in the picture? That's your selection committee (kind of,) and here's what the Great Oz (ESPN) says: "The committee will be charged with giving all teams an equal opportunity to participate in the playoffs and will consider factors such as strength of schedule, head-to-head results and whether a team is a conference champion."

What part of that is a computer incapable of? Odds are the committee will be made up of conference commissioners, retired coaches, and retired players. Let me tell you something right now---Bobby Bowden didn't know where the fuck he was for the last three years he was coaching. I imagine he's in an Alvin's Island right now wearing a snorkel and trying to convince the register girl that these souvenir shot glasses are actually "pee-pee hats."

Old players? You mean this one? Or this one? Or this one? Christ.

Don't even get me started on conference commissioners. These are the same conference commissioners that have rejected a playoff for 20 years because it had "the potential to infringe on academic expectations of student athletes." Horseshit. As soon as the playoff became economically viable these fools shook on it, and were so giddy about the possible financial windfall, they appointed a committee of this---

What bowl are you taking us to?
So, yes, college football, I doth protest. I love you, and I will watch you. But just like a stripper in Panama City, I will never trust you.


Monday, June 25, 2012

Ugh. Whatcha Say Whatcha Say, Ugh. New York*


I hate New York. Let me rephrase—I tire of New York. I tire of television’s depictions of New York, whereby ANYONE can make it. I thought the whole deal was “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!” Apparently not. You want to impress me? Make it in Phoenix. That place blows.

I tire of people falling in love in New York, but then almost not getting together, but then getting together right when the lights of some building flicker on. Fuck you. I tire of people in New York being “neurotic” and thus “interesting” instead of “neurotic” and thus “eat shit”. 

this guy made it
I tire of the Knicks, who haven’t been relevant since Clinton was throwing late night cigar parties. I tire of Spike Lee’s camera-close-up rants. It’s not subversive anymore, you little troll; it’s just derivative racism. Eli Manning? Oof. 

I know I’m in the minority here. I realize that New York is the center of everything. New York is our cultural power source. It’s the reason America as a land mass didn’t move any farther west. Why is everything accepted in California? Because those poor folks are too far from the power source! They don’t have the strength to fight it! What “it”? Any fucking it!

It’s the same reason people in my home state of Alabama are so stubbornly fucking backwards. See, Alabama is entirely too close to the power source. Don’t ever let rednecks drink the redneck juice and redneck too close to the power source or them rednecks will just redneck other rednecks into a big redneck**.

This morning I see that the New York Mets played the New York Yankees in a baseball game and all the world is smitten! Two New York teams play New York in New York? New! York! There’s a subway!

Make contact or me and mom
don't love you anymore. 
Look, my father wasn’t a baseball fan and neither was my grandfather or my older brother. Mom didn’t watch it. Grandma didn’t watch it. Nobody in my family watched baseball. Love of sports (by and large) is a learned condition. You watched games with an older family member, a mentor, a creepy postman. No child ever actually walked onto a playground, saw all the sports being offered there and said, “Oooohhhh! That one! That one where people stand still most of the time! I want to do that one because I just don’t have the energy for the others!”

No. Didn’t happen. You ever go to a little league game and see a fly ball land and roll right passed the center fielder who’s staring at cloud shapes and chasing nose goblins? He’s fucking bored. The coach has to yell at him to get his head in the game. Scars him for life! Years later he’s calling me to ask if we can go watch the Mets/Yankees game. No. No we cannot.

Two teams who play baseball in the same city played one another. Makes perfect sense to me. But this morning I thought all the excitement was over a cancer cure, or world hug-it-out day, or Nickelback had exploded into a beautiful firework, or Kanye West had disappeared. You’re this excited over baseball? There are 14,000 more games. Is it the subway?


* I love Hip-Hop. Thank you, thank you, thank you, New York, for Hip-Hop. 

** There's no real point in bringing up what's actually backwards with regards to education, institution of a lottery for better funding, the university's specific navigation of racism, immigration, corrupt local government, etc., because all anyone else hears is the word "redneck". That's why the same southern jokes still slay, somehow. People see no problem with regionalism. Cool. I mean, fuck off, but cool. 






Friday, June 22, 2012

Ill Communication


When texting just isn't sufficient. RIP

How do we keep up with all of the people we care about? Family, old friends, new friends, friends in low places, friends with benefits, Fox and Friends, friends we’ve made at conferences, friends we met on twitter. We could, I suppose, clarify what constitutes “friend” vs “acquaintance” vs “dude/chick that seemed cool,” but because all those qualifications are often separate parts of the same process, and because you’re not an idiot, we’ll just say “friends". 

An article in the guardian from 2009 questions whether technology is a tyrannical force “driving us further apart.” Not if INXS has anything to say about it!



If 2009 is too long ago—“C’mon, Mink, I’ve live-tweeted the births of three children and Instagrammed 16 vacays since then, bruh”—then here is a more current labeling of modern communication as a tyrannical force dumbing us down. Mark Bauerlein's piece feels very much like an updated version of Sam Waterston’s robot worries

Miami Heat fans would say you're just hatin'. Then they would do this and this.

I don't necessarily disagree with what Elizabeth Day is saying, though she seems terribly young to fear machines, because she's simply reporting back the beliefs of communication's old guard--"Hitch this calligraphy to the wagon, Buck, and make sure Mrs. Haversham receives it directly!"--but I do take issue with Bauerlein's assertions, which seem more provocative than proven. 

There’s a running joke within my crew of how incapable I am of surviving without my cellphone, even while physically amongst friends who are trying to carry on a conversation with me. I am never beyond pulling out my cellphone while a buddy is in mid-sentence to check my twitter, Facebook, email, or text. In my mind, I’m fully capable of doing all of the things all of the time. But the fact is that it’s rude, and it’s a social misstep I no longer even recognize I’m making. It’s routine, habit, addiction. I am immersed in so many lines of communication that I forget those right in front of me, and subconsciously, I think, I worry that if I don’t know what’s going on everywhere with everyone and don’t respond asap that the world will pass me by. It’s terrifying!

This is why I, in part, agree with the rhetoric that accuses me of being a mindless drone plugged into a spiritually dead world, leading us further away from the very intimacy that defines us as human. My b.

But where these saviors of ye old handshake miss the point is time and priority.

I say! What ravenous clicking on that picture box!
Bauerlein says, “most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot.)"

Surely you’re aware that young people today travel much more than generations before, and that, there is only so much you can bring on a plane. Shall I pack an extra suitcase of books because I like the smell of paper, or just use my kindle? It’s a valid question. For while I’m sure not everyone uses their kindle to read War and Peace while on layover, they’re also not all banging away on Pac-Man.

At Florida State University (where I am a PhD student in Creative Writing), Graduate TA’s teach over 80% of the undergraduate courses offered in the English Department. Ask our employers how that’s working out for them. I would forward you their numerous emails lauding our efforts each semester, but I doubt you’d read them. Principles and all.

What counts as a “cultural institution”? Museums? Visit them each time I’m in a city that has them. Not all do. But that speaks to government funding of the arts, as well as each particular city’s wealth of economy. Much larger discussion, but it’s not the fault of those who tweet.

Voting. Oof. You can’t be serious. Is it your belief that Obama was elected President of the United States largely on the shoulders of old white people? You think Butch, who runs the hardware store in upstate New York, plastered his windows in “Hope” or “Change”?

Scientific method? In what arena? Tuesday I was with a young writer who got every physics question correct at trivia night. We were in a bar WRITING the answers in PENCIL on PAPER! Oh, the sophistication!

I can recount a ton of American history: there’s slavery, the corruption of government, capitalism, the patriarchy within the literary community (past and present), war, an economy our corrupt government renders impossible to understand or control. What else? Oh! Classism. Elitism. Racism. Ageism. Gender bias.

Here's a local representative. Impressive, right? 
You’ve got us on the knowledge of local representatives. We suck at it. Then again, local government is more easily corrupted, so we become jaded. That’s still our fault, but again, more complicated than just, “those damned kids.”

“They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories.” You mean like news of what’s happening in the world? Oppressive regimes? The rise or fall of democracy? Polling numbers? Essays by an increasingly intelligent army of bloggers who often report the world’s happenings before Scoop McNulty at the Times can pull his golf pencil from his favorite fedora?

Oh. You don’t like funny cat pictures, e-cards, duckfaces, OMG’s and LMFAO’s. These things raise my hackles, as well. But then again, they take 2 seconds of your life, and you can choose to ignore them, dial Professor Pumpernickel on your rotary, and complain over static.

The fact is, to meet a friend or to call a friend or to write a friend a letter takes time. Now imagine you've more friends than just Professor Pumpernickel. Now imagine those multiple friends are dealing with the shit that life often is and need a shoulder to cry on, an ear to ramble into. Or they just want to discuss what they've seen, read, heard. Or they have a relevant joke. Or, GASP, they want to discuss work, an assignment, moving, etc. 

So you’re a part of these multiple dialogues with multiple friends, and often, you require these same things of them. You are the shit in the shit of life with shit on your mind you must get out in lieu of going bonkers fucking crazy. This happens.

And it happens on top of the little things one must accomplish each minute, each hour, each day in order to be successful.

Going out for a paper means having to dodge these people.
Technology, while certainly flawed in many ways, makes this navigation faster and more manageable. It’s that simple. If I couldn’t IM or email or tweet or Facebook comment on a friend having a baby, getting married, suffering a death in the family, getting a job, publishing a book, then we would lose touch. I don’t want that. The world is hard enough without adding “lonely as hell” to the equation. I love these people. I am fortunate to have them in my life, and if technology makes that easier, Christ, makes it possible at all, then we’re better for it. Not to mention the FUCKTONSHITLOADS of information made readily available at the click of a key. I don’t even have to leave my house. I don’t have to go outside, travel to some location, pick up a paper, and run into your crabby ass who’s probably going to cut me off in traffic because you drive like shit.

What’s more is that many employers, at least in my field, now REQUIRE a social media presence on applications. Facebook, twitter, a blog, an email, Pinterest. PINTEREST! They want me to scrapbook! So even if I wanted to sit in a dingy house reading my Freud through a monocle and stroking my beagle, Claudius, I would still be FORCED to be a part of the digital community in order to make myself more viable for potential employment.  

Got it? Now, go follow me on something.