Some of the Ways in Which Chester, Pennsylvania Is A Giant Shithole

We set out to have a nice weekend, and I suppose that, overall, we did, thanks in part to the wonderful city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is not, as some might suppose, a giant shithole. We had some very nice food, and some very accommodating folk in a pub near our hotel were kind enough to dedicate a television to the USMNT friendly against Scotland (friend Goth: "...I kept finding Waldo."). Actually, the parenthetical deserves emphasis. Here you go:

It almost looks better on the women. Almost.

The numbers don't contrast well enough with the background to be seen, either live or on television, in addition to the disturbingly French Navy lilt to the shirt's overall...idiom. And yes, the women wear exactly the same shirt.

Which brings us to the city of Chester, Pennsylvania. Once upon a time, some Phunions fans serenaded us as we entered the Soccerplex, which is in every sense the home field of the Landru family, singing "Baltimore United." They shut the fuck up a whole lot when I yelled, "You live in Chester." They mostly shut the fuck up because they were laughing their asses off, having no other reasonable response. Because Chester is, in every single respect, a giant festering shithole.

We went to Chester earlier this evening because the U.S. Womens were playing the Chicoms at Phunions Park. And it was a lovely game, just lovely. The Womens gave up a goal pretty early, like in the 18th minute or so, and it was a pretty dumb fucking goal to give up, and it was pretty much all Amy LePeilbet's fault, except it wasn't, because Pia Sundhage, who I have previously admitted makes a shitload of money as a U.S. national team coach, while I don't, was playing LePeilbet at right back, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever, because LePeilbet is a fucking center back who suffered through an entire World Cup last year at left back, but is now apparently our best option at right back, which I find really fucking hard to believe. But like I said, Pia makes a shitload of money to know better than me, and frankly, the woman got the team to a fucking World Cup final, so I should probably just shut the fuck up a whole lot about that, except I can't, because that makes the stupid goal Amy LePeilbet's fault for getting turned inside out, and I don't find that to be a satisfactory conclusion, so I'm not getting to epistemic closure on this shit anytime soon.

After that, it was all cake and Alex Morgan, though Abby Wambach was inexplicably named WotM for a 1-goal performance, even though Morgan (best sign in the crowd: "Alex Morgan Used To Like Me") had two goals and an assist. The Chicoms are a speedy lot, and pretty well-drilled, though not so much as the hated North Koreans, but they're just plain fucking tiny, and well-fed, longshanked American womanhood just pretty much beat the little Commies down into the hole they deserved to be in.

And that's the last nice thing I have to say about the game. Phunions Park is a fucking shitmoat. It's on the Delaware River, right underneath the Commodore Barry Bridge, in Chester, Pennsylvania. It's a badly designed firetrap, with poorly placed concessions, ridiculously arranged seating sections and concourses, a fucking totalitarian staff, and scandalously inadequate parking and traffic access. And oh yeah, it's located in Chester, Pennsylvania. One phylum of the animal kingdom finds the location out-fucking-standing, and that's insects, because the place is built in a fucking swamp on the shores of the Delaware River. Everything else living? Not so much, because it's also built in a heavily industrial section of Chester, which description doesn't really do much to distinguish its level of shittiness from the shittiness that is the non-industrial sections of Chester, one of America's least appealling cities to begin with.

Which is, as I may have mentioned, a giant shithole. It literally smells like fucking Calcutta. There is nothing charming or useful about the city. There is an abundance of nothing around the park, except for a giant Pennsylvania Power and Light facility (appropos of which the stadium is officially named PP&L Park, which is okay, sort of, because my family has a long history of involvement with PP&L, including painting its electrical towers and making some money, back in the day, off of its stock--thanks, Grandpa) and some really foul-smelling industrial stuff. And a whole lot of urban blight.

We should've clued early; as we came down off of the highway, many less-than-scrupulous persons tried to flag us into unofficial "approved" parking areas formed from abandoned lots marked by ramshackle abandoned buildings. We were a little squeamish about that, because we had luggage in the car from our trip, so we made for the official lots. They refused to let us into the one closest to the Park, even though it was clearly marked as a cash lot, and they were collecting cash. They sent us another half mile down the road to a lot surrounding the aforementioned PP&L facility.

Let me describe the geography. The Park sits on a more-or-less east-west road that runs by the river. There are two north-south streets that lead up to a single east-west road (PA 291) that feeds back into the highway that leads to New Jersey or I-95. We got sent well to the west of the park. Fine. Whatever.

Here's where we get to the part about the fucking ineptitude of the PP&L Park staff, and most especially the inexcusable incompetence of the fat, stupid, mongoloid, hydroencephalic retards who populate the Police Department of the City of Chester, Pennsylvania. When we exited the far lot, we got sent west, to the westernmost access to the north-south street that leads up a few blocks to PA 291. We had to go east on PA 291 to get back to the highway. We spent 55 minutes tracking back to the highway access.

Why, you ask? Because the fucking dumb shits who constitute the Chester PD were blocking one lane of two-lane PA 291 to let out all of the traffic from the easternmost stadium lots, leading to a 55-minute backup for anyone forced to go the way that the PP&L Park staff and the Chester PD told them to go.

I suggest doing crimes in Chester, Pennsylvania, because the fucking Chester PD is too fucking stupid to solve the mystery of how traffic works.

In conclusion, I have a number of people to insult:

Fuck you, Mayor John Linder of Chester, Pennsylvania, you fucking inept, lying hack. Mayor Linder, on the city's Web site: "Chester is a regional transportation hub with direct access to major roadways..."

Not when your retarded Yankeecracker police force blocks that access, you dumb shit. Fuck you.

Fuck you, Police Commissioner John Bail, of the Chester Pennsylvania Police Department, you fucking inept, lying hack. Commissioner Bail, on the city's Web site: "We are members of an elite and highly trained profession: law enforcement."

Yeah. You're the least elite and most untrained members of the profession, but yeah, sure, technically you're members of that profession. Let me make this clear for you, Commissioner Bail:  Your officers are fat, stupid, inattentive, and poorly trained at traffic management, a pretty basic police function in an urban environment. They couldn't stick their fingers up their fat asses and pull them away smelling of shit. I got a clue as to how fucking clueless you are when I found, on your Web page on the city's site, numerous mentions of places you've travelled in becoming an anti-terrorism expert, many of which, like Mumbai, India, have absolutely no traffic control whatsoever.

But wait, there's more, you fat hack: it's great that you're actually a fucking legacy commissioner, you're fucking Flounder. And you've chosen to build your career, in fucking Chester, Pennsylvania, on antiterrorism expertise? What a fucking maroon. Terrorists aren't going to touch Chester; it's already fucking wasted.


Fuck You, Chester, Pennsylvania, and Fuck You, PP&L Park. It'll be fucking cold day in Hell when I spend money in your city, or your stadium, ever again.

No, Seriously, Matt Reis Looks Like An Uncircumsised Penis

Remember? Ilse said it? I couldn't find a pic? Ultraloyal minion Goth says, "No problem, kemosabe¹."

This is Matt's fully erect state.

Ginormous gobs of gratitude to Goth, who had to sit through his two favorite teams playing a NCAA regional final on Friday night, and is now pretending he doesn't really like the one that won. Or, for that matter, the one that didn't. Goth is a fan in the finest Terps tradition, and we salute him.


¹Goth means it this way, of course:

 Far Side copyright Gary Larson and used without permission, but if the man actually gives a shit, I'll take it down and link to somewhere else that used it improperly.

Briefly

WE got new underpants for Bam-Bam. The previous ones were too small. Ilse didn't understand that briefs could be too small. She thought we menfolk like our boys snug. While this probably explains a great many things about Ilse, I'm not sure exactly what they are.

IF you are sporting a bumper sticker advertising a political concept, philosophy, or sporting team with which I sympathize, please do not drive like a dick.

Say Hi to Sid

THE Washington Capitals fucking rock, and the word "douche" is too nice, and far too tasteful, for Sidney Crosby.

Note the Sid-friendly spin on the title of the video. Lessee...play is stopped, and Sid hooks Ovie, shoves him over the boards, whining the whole time, and then has a high vagina sprain when Ovie pays him back. Niiiiiice. That's definitely Ovie roughing Sid up.

I've discoursed before on my abject, most unpretty hatred of every Eastern Conference NHL team that isn't the Caps, and on my grievous distaste for much of the Western Conference as well. When it comes to hockey, I am, in fact, a black hole of hatin'. I can hate other hockey teams with the best of them. I got the PhD in Hatin'. There is no hell fiery enough to punish me for the degree and volume of my hockey hate. This may sound a little Brer Rabbity to some of my closer friends, but really, I am a bad, bad person when it comes to hockey fandom/hatedom, and in an eternal, philosophical sense, I almost certainly deserve some form of retribution for this stain on my karma.

Even so, Sid Crosby is such a hateful, whinging, bleeding pussy that it detracts from my enjoyment of how much I hate the Rangers, Flyers, Devils, Bruins, Islanders, and Canadiens. I mean, seriously, the Pens are fucking-A despicable, and it's a long, hard hate, born of far more spite than is healthy to have experienced in one short lifetime, a hatin' awesome enough to match my 40-year hate on the fucking Habs, which dates back to Ken Motherfucking Dryden (yeah, yeah, you kids get off my lawn).

So fuck you, Sid Crosby, you fucking viral cockblight, for fucking up my joy in hatin', for monopolizing my black soul's dark places so thoroughly (at least until tomorrow night, when the Caps take on the Flyers) that I couldn't even properly hate on Sergei Gonchar and Brooks Orpik and NBC's coverage of yesterday's game total monster ass-whupping. While you, Sid Crosby, are in fact a douche, your douchedom is of a character far too grotesque, too pestilential, too infected, too seedy, too odiferous, to be articulated in this hallowed space. Just fuck you, Sid, and with the dick of someone I don't like.

All this is a little funny, because Thursday, I'm taking this guy and Planet, the Best Kid Ever, to a Caps game (her first, I believe; I'm not sure about him) against the Thrashers, who aren't really worth the energy to hate. I hope they're not disappointed.

Okay, that wasn't brief. I got rolling. Totally my bad.

FINALLY, I can't find an online cite to the story, but I heard on my local all-news, all Badenful all morning, all scary all panicky traffic guy all afternoon, radio station that the president of my local locality's county council is a douche. Now, this is a douchedom less spectacularly pustulent than the aforementioned pestilential douchedom of Cindy Crysby. But it's still pretty doucheriffic, because this guy loves trees almost as much as he hates teachers. The man belongs on the Left Coast, which hasn't stopped him from getting elected and hanging in long enough to take his turn as head of the council (it rotates, I think annually). But now, the aforementioned radio station tells me (without backing it up on the station's Web site) that Council President Duckfucker is tearing into the county Board of Education for its $13-million (chump change) contract to buy Promethean Boards, claiming it violated state law for the Board to scatter a few pennies to install these things in every classroom in the county without first sucking Council President Duckfucker's tiny shrivelled classic liberal pussy dick.

Ilse, Goth (blog deceased), and this wise and wonderful uberwoman, will tell you that Promethean Boards are a life-altering event for teachers. I've seen them in action, and as a total layperson, I agree totally. That Council President Duckfucker wants to interpose his tree-loving self into the educational spending process in this, a top-ten U.S. school system, is just diamond shitting of the worst sort. That this jerk has actually caused me to abstain from voting in a council election makes it even worse. Suck it, Phil Andrews.

New Employment

Things are now official, and I can now report that Goth's worst fears are true: I am, in fact, the new Professor of Religion at his school, Repressed Jailbait High in Flynt, Oklahomianinois. What's especially exciting is that the girls in my 4th period The Somewhat Messy and Thoroughly Degrading Aspects of Satan Worship go straight from my class to to Goth's 5th period History, Dissection, and Frottage of Semiotics class. We expect them to learn real good.

Okay, okay, I got the aforementioned top-secret job. It puts me back in the people management business. Fear for them.

A Smoking Pair of Boots

That's all that's left of Minions' bracket. It became apparent by the end of the first round that this was no ordinary tournament; a pair of true upsets and an 8-9 game or two were the only deviations from the chalk. The day thereafter, Minions officially lost interest when Maryland played so badly against a pretty crappy mid-major that its only hope of victory lay in decent officiating; good luck with that. And the day after that, Minions was declared legally dead when Texas, Virginia Tech, and Wisconsin all bit the big one in ridiculous displays of ineptitude.

Dignity and some other things* require that Minions stick by its unfortunate prediction that the Fuckeyes of the Official Land Grant University of the State of Ohio will win the tournament. Even if that happens and Minions is, technically, vindicated (in some tiny and mostly technical way), Minions' wife is going to kick its ass, because she also has OSU to win.

But it is not to be. Florida is smokin' hot, dood. I hate them and I'm pretty sure God does to, but what the fuck is to love about this Final Four? The successful title defense is there, waiting to happen, compounded by the football-basketball Florida-OSU thing, and the impending departure of Greasy Billy Donovan for Lexington, Kentucky--another news item sure to drive Our Friend Goth one step closer to a rope in the garage.

Hence, Minions' silence. Only now, after the dearth of anything to like in the Final Four, can I finally simmer down and write about the smoking rubble that has been the last two weeks of basketball.

Kudos to Georgetown; I hate the Hoyas so much that I was very nearly hoping that UNC would beat them. I was more hoping for a random act of terrorism by a vengeful and angry Old Testament God, but I understand the limits of reason, and I concluded that, if a gun were held to my head in demand of a preference, ACC loyalty would win out. But l'chaim** to the Hoyas; coming back from 11 down and holding the Heels scoreless for 80 percent of an overtime is Pure Comedy Gold.

Kudos to UCLA; I hate them very, very much, after a 50-point second-round drubbing of the Terrapins some years ago. But goddam are their cheerleaders hot. Those little blue shifts? The basketball jerseys and not much else? Mwah!

There are many who will call this the most boring NCAA tournament evahr. I'm with them. Matters are not helped by the Terrapin women choking on a Mississippi team (and grats to them--they've a shot at the Final Four tonight) that they absolutely firebombed just four months ago.

I'm sure that energy will overcome me at some point, and I'll manage to post something less self-indulgent. Or not. See you then.

*Mostly a desire to fuel the crazed paranoia of Our Friend Goth.
**And t'voyu mat.

Not Worth Waiting For

(Updated! Scroll down. Or read the post, then scroll down.)

But I made you wait anyway. It's the first of two consecutive national holidays--on my planet, anyway--my two favorite days of the year, when I pretend that guessing the outcomes of more than 50 percent of a collection of basketball games is a good thing. Welcome to Minions' NCAA tournament preview.

We're talking the men, of course. For the women, just take my Terps, shut up, and make sure that there is a clear path to your kidneys so that you do not waste any of Miss Christie Tolliver's valuable time.

East Region

This region belongs by rights to either Texas or the Fuckheels. Georgetown is sparklingly overrated (but likely to reach the regional final by virtue of weak opposition). Washington State is about as good a long-shot first-round upset bet as there is, as painful as it is to write "Oral Roberts" on your bracket sheet. The rest? Do not sparkle.

Early Upsets: Arkansas, Oral Roberts, Texas Tech

Can't Die Quickly Enough For Me: Michigan State, USC, George Washington, BC, Georgetown

Secret Minions East Region Fetish: Vanderbilt. I want Texas to win the region, but the notion of Vandy competing in the SEC just cracks me way the fuck up.

Winner: Texas. Tyler Hansborough is a big donkey pussy.

South Region

A wild region that the Fuckeyes of Ohio State cannot fail to win. When you write them down on your sheet, chant the following: "We love Fuckeyes, isn't that odd? We love Fuckeyes, we're taunting God."

Then doff your cap in the direction of Cincinnati, where Chief Fuckeye Gothmog is cursing my name.

O-ver-Ray-ted: Virginia.

Early Upsets: Xavier (technically), and maybe Long Beach State, although that's a hard one to feel great about.

Don't Discount: Louisville--Rick Pitino is a dirty bitch. Also, while I despise the Aggies to the very core of my being, I must admit that they are a dangerous team.

Can't Die Quickly Enough For Me: Texas A&M, OSU, Virginia, Louisville, Stanford

Secret Minions South Region Fetish: Penn. But let's be realistic here.

Winner: OSU, although the regional final against John Calipari's Memphis Tigers might be good for some fireworks. Especially if it's against the Aggies instead.

West Region

What a skankho of a region. I'm looking for Kansas to bite the big one pretty early, the first 1-seed to tank, quite possibly in the second round against Villanova or UK. This may actually be the most interesting region, despite the presence of UCLA.

O-ver-Ray-ted: Pitt. Way the fucking fuck overrated. Also: Saluki.

Early Upsets: Holy Cross over the Salukis. Nova over UK, but only as a technicality. And finally, the upset that dare not speak its name, because so many other fuckers are speaking it that it's jinxed to hell and gone. Don't say it! Seriously, shut the fuck up!

Don't Discount: VTech, as much as I hate to say it.

Can't Die Quickly Enough For Me: VTech. I mean, duh. Also: UCLA, Pitt, Puke, SIU, Illinois, and Kansas.

Secret Minions West Region Fetish: A quick obligatory wank in the direction of VCU, which is the one of Ilse's 946 almas mater from which she actually obtained a degree.

Winner: Tough one. I'm taking VTech--again, painful but something that strikes me as abundantly plausible in the ebb and flow of the universe.

Midwest Region

Sure smells like Florida's region, doesn't it? Sadly, I must recuse myself from this one. Personal interest, refusal to taunt God, you understand. But here:

O-ver-Ray-ted: Butler. Also, Oregon, but that's way overshadowed by the moronic mid-major love that Butler's sucking up like a dry sponge. And finally, sadly: The University of Maryland. That ACC tournament loss to Miami put me right back squarely in the position of not really trusting my Terps all that much. I expect the Sweet Sixteen, but only because their subregion is soft.

Early Upsets: Not the one all you Terp-hating assholes are picking. ODU (the one of Ilse's 946 almas mater that she did not attend) over Butler. Tech over UNLV.

Don't Discount: Tech. They're mighty solid, and Paul Hewitt is a seriously sneaky fuck.

Can't Die Quickly Enough For Me: Florida, Arizona, Purdue, Butler, Notre Dame, Oregon, UNLV, and Tech.

Secret Minions Midwest Region Fetish: I don't think we can characterize this one as a secret.

Winner: Those wacky Badgers, in a regional final matchup that you are not expecting.

Final Four

We love Fuckeyes, isn't that odd? We love Fuckeyes, we're taunting God.

In a marvelously boring rerun of the Big Ten tournament final, OSU gobsmacks those wacky, but slightly out of their element Badgers, once again. Or maybe they do it to VTech, in the mother of all meteor games.

This concludes another Triumph of Emotion Over Science in Basketball Writing. Enjoy the holiday weekend.

Update Update Update: One quarter of the way through the first round, Minions stands at Oh For Three on upset picks, primarily because there have been no upsets (!) as yet. I can make an argument for One For Four, because I was right that Davidson wouldn't upset Maryland; but it's a pretty shitty argument. It's 6:09 PM Eastern, GWU is going down hard (My Local Locality Basketball Principle Number One: Teams Named George Suck Turkish Sailors' Bottoms for Nickels and Like It), and Minions will manfully take its 5-3 record for the first set and settle in to scrounge through leftovers and watch whatever My Local CBS Affiliate dishes up.

Oh, and thanks, commenter Purple, for letting us know, here, on the fucking Internets, that your parents had sex in Blacksburg and that you may or may not have been the result. We will look forward to the next installment in your ongoing series, "Places Where My Parents Have Shagged." Dood, I don't even know your parents and I'm devastatingly creeped out by the thought of them bumping uglies. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go Photoshop some fake porn of the She-Nurse of the SS and John the Daftist and post it on your fucking Web site.

Variants on Nothing

Mmkay, so Ilse got a long-term substitute job at one of the best schools in the county. She is officially an English teacher. Of course, at the moment, she's an exploited temporary worker allowing The Man to tread on her back for His benefit (she'll be doing actual teacher work, as an actual teacher, for about 60 percent of the salary), but it's an in, and it's a fabulous opportunity. So good on her.

I inadvertently wronged a beloved friend with my original post when I tagged Goth as the greatest English teacher on the planet. Actually, I probably wronged a bunch of people, but the point here is that I wronged another one of my minions, and I really hate myself a lot when I do that. Take a bow, Kimmah. Sorry about that whole ass-fucking thing, babe. I'll try to give you some warning and an anesthetic next time.

There will be more--much more--about important things like laughing my ass off at Bears fans Goth and Ilse over the next week. But for now, I'll leave you with yet another reminder of how and why DOOK SUCKS.



Fuck the fucking fuck out of Dook.

But speaking of which, one of my two Dookie friends on this planet is getting married. If'n you can't keep getting the milk for free, Sparkles, well, then good on you, love. Congrats and good luck. But Dook still sucks.

You Are My Dickens

So Ilse left her job at Eat The World, Inc. This is a good thing; the commute was driving her bonkers, and she was considerably underappreciated anyway. I mean, I assume the sex was as good for them as it is for me. Ilse has chosen to embark on a new career in poisoning the minds of America's young.

This requires a little bit of an educational realignment, because the topic in which Ilse would like to direct her poisoning is high school English. Ilse's postsecondary education thus far has focused entirely on alcohol, anatomy, and to a lesser extent, American history. So while she has been admitted to a graduate degree program that will certify her in mind-poisoning, it is with the stipulation that she take a little extra course work in literatoor.

We have a good friend, Goth (who seems to be getting a lot of linkage/play here lately), who is the world's greatest high school English teacher. He is brilliant and funny, and engages teenagers (girls in plaid skirts, no less) with his innovative antics, such as dressing up as Biggie Smalls and rapping The Canterbury Tales or interpreting Romeo and Juliet in South Florida in the 1990s with Leo DiCaprio and some random whore as the leads. No, wait, somebody else did that second thing. But they stole the concept from Goth.

So Ilse's drive to succeed is multi-sourced. She's always wanted to teach, and our good friend is an outstanding role model for the kind of teacher everyone should be. But there's this literatoor thing to hurdle, first.

And "hurdle" isn't too far from what this course is inducing for poor Ilse. I see stacked on the table before me a partial sample of what she is to endure over the coming semester. It involves romantic poets and people named Heathcliff and Emma. And windswept moors. Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Eat Miss Havisham, bitch!

I love my wife, I really do. And I am not a horrible little man, as she will have you believe (after reading this). But weeks and weeks of Rex-torture followed by this?

Life is schweet.

Obligatory Football

My friend Goth, a Bears fan, writes in another (secret) place that Da Bearss are going to "celebrate their victory" over America's former sweethearts by "killing some kittens and eating babies. With a fine chianti." His sentiment best encapsulates my feelings about the week-long slobber job that the Aints have enjoyed at the hands of the media, right up through their death throes in yesterday's game.

Let me clarify my base position. My wife, the lovely Ilse, calls herself both a Redskins fan and, at a secondary level, a Bears fan. Since this is mathematically impossible, and I have no way to address it without resorting to saying bad things about my wife, I have concluded that she's just stone fucking batshit. There's a Daddy thing here, too (he inexplicably taught her that this madness was okay), but I will leave this and continue to love my wife and her Daddy without reserve.

Like any actual Redskin fan, I hate the fucking Chicago Bears, in a primal, atavistic way. Ilse questions my sanity with the insouciance of those who can't manage to respect their elders, boggling that this atavistic hatred is based on events that occurred 20 years before I was born. Of course it is. That's what fandom is about. It's about carrying on traditions of hatin' and doing your level best to ensure that peace can never be restored--which, in the case of football, it should never be. The Bears' grandfathers once beat my grandfathers 73-0 in an NFL championship game--the game that saw the introduction of the T formation, by the way--and this can never be forgotten or forgiven. Ever. Do you fucking hear me, wife? Ever.

Understand, then, my dilemma of the last few weeks--of the whole season, really. I've actually had to hope that the reprehensible, T-Rex-to-my-mastodon, herpes-embracing, Grossman-loving, Ditka-worshipping punkass bitch Chicago Bears win football games. And it's been a unrelenting succession of no-brainers, because the Bears schedule has been an unrelenting succession of pansies and dickheads. I'm not trying to diss the Bears here; they've won two tough playoff games to get to the Stupor Bowl, so it's not like I'm saying they're undeserving. But until yesterday, the only team they played all season that approached minimal competence was the Seahawks, and "minimally competent" is a pretty dubious assertion even there.

Not that I haven't enjoyed this. That bizarro Monday night game when the Bears nearly choked on the fucking Cardinals was one of the most entertaining evenings of my life, mostly because I had no real stake (I hate the Buzzsaw with a passion born of remembering well when they were division rivals of the Skins) and got to fan the flames of my wife's twitching, spastic nervous breakdown. That shit is what we call pure comedy gold, ladies and gentlemen.

Which brings us to yesterday. We only got to watch the first half on television, because we had to make a 5-hour journey into the winter wonderland of the DC metro area to go fetch the childrens. But the one thing that CBS and Westwood One (the radio carrier) had in common was their shared love of gobbling the penii of Sean Peyton, Reggie Bush, and Mamasboy Brees. I thought Bob Trumpy (Westwood One's color guy) was gonna have to take a shower after Bush's touchdown catch/run (which, courtesy of YouTube, I now understand was a really fucking dumb thing to do--can you imagine a world where taunting a diseased felon like Brian Urlacher is a good idea? Conveniently, Trumpy and his radio broadcast didn't tell us about that part of the play.).

This, coupled with the week-long suckfest that has been your American sports media, pushed me way over the edge into open, unabashed Bear-loving. When former Dallas Cowgirl (NEVER FORGET!) Billy Cundiff missed a figgie and the Bears subsequently went up 18-14 on Brees' badly timed grounding, the radio guys still swore that the Aints had the momentum and the Bears were foundering on the rocks. Perfectly content with not having been paid in advance, these morons kept slobbering away until the very end, hoping for that yummy, humiliating money shot. Pack of fucking diseased whores.

We missed most of the other game, too, although we got home in time to see the part that counted and, more importantly, the look on Dreamboat's face when the Colts went up for good. The Patriots and Manning-bashing are another pair of playoff-time media sex obsessions. I've told you that I'm not a Manning fan (and I don't like his coach or his team, either), but to pretend that yesterday's result wasn't righteous is to admit that one is a pure Patriots fan. If that's what you are, fine, you're entitled to it. But owing to its perpetuity, the annual media suckoff of Dreamboat and Homeless Bill is far more galling than their temporary insanity over the Aints. It was also pretty satisfying that the game's outcome revealed what a mannerless piece of fuck Belichick is. His appallingly rude postgame snub of Manning and his monosyllabic interview outside of the locker room after the game were classics of childish passive-aggression. Homeless Bill is a cast-iron fuckhole who should be punched in the fucking mouth.

Who to pull for in the big game? I'll save myself the tsuras and sort of half-assedly support the Bears. The whole thing will be a bit of a yawn for me unless I make my own entertainment. But with Mister Laser Rocket Arm and the Jizzmeister competing for my satirical energy, I ought to be able to get somewhere with that.

What If Prairie Home Companion Had A Fight Song?

My Beloved Alma Mater (the one I graduated from) has a fight song (actually, it's called the Victory Song; the actual fight song pisses me off because it should be called the We're Getting Our Panties Jammed Up Our Crack By A School We Hate Song) that can, sometimes, bring tears to my little mob-mentality eyes. The Victory Song (and the Alma Mater, to which I have repenned the lyrics to pay homage to the things that make state schools great) bring me to my feet reflexively every time. Music, of course, has great power. Just ask Wagner.

From today's edition of NFL.com's very fine (JOlene's disdain notwithstanding) Tuesday Morning Quarterback, by Gregg Easterbrook comes an item about the fight song of Saint Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota. It is, stomp-down, the greatest fight song in the history of the universe.

Listen to it here. Don't argue. Just go listen to it. Now. Imagine as your own.

Yes, The Game Ended Two Days Ago

We've just crossed the Styx of the first big football weekend of the fall, and my soul is dead-tired from all that paddling. My arse is similarly tired from the paddling that one of my favorite teams took as it closed off an ill-deserved victory.

It started early on Saturday, because the Terrapins (bow down in worship, unbeliever!) kicked off to Clemson a few minutes after noon. Gloom and despair overtook me because I quickly realized that the Rat Bastard Charlie Whitehurst, Clemson's quarterback for the last 314 academic years, had returned (I thought he had graduated used up his eligibility). But it looked good three quarters of the way through the game, despite the presence of this greasy little bastige who will never play a second of high-level professional football. At least, the scoreboard did; Maryland was up by a whopping 10 points or so.

Well, it would've looked good to an unbeliever like you. I? Knew that those orange-and-purple fucks had us right where they wanted us. And so it was, as a ridiculous roughing call deep in Clemson territory fueled their drive into our end zone. The alleged rougher, a fine young gentleman named Gerrick McPhearson who has never in his entire life unduly harmed so much as a fly, hurled a Clemson receiver out of bounds. Now, Mr. McPhearson had a choice; bring down the little orange fuck--a glorious and patriotic thing that happens on Our Nation's Football Fields every single day--or let him scamper down the sideline unmolested for yardage that might lead to a game-winning score. Mr. McPhearson simply flipped the little peckerwood out of bounds. It was what, in football circles, is called a tackle. The retard of a head linesman--a Clemson graduate, by all available evidence--who was standing right on top of the play apparently expected Mr. McPhearson to call for the little orange fuck's honorable surrender, though, because he threw a flag.

Okay, it's true that this left the orange fucks at about their own 25 or so, and that it was Whitehurst's 60-yard bomb over the head of our perfectly fine, but apparently just a tetch slow safety, Chris Varner, a few plays later that sealed our demise. And that was a coverage screwup--there were twin wideouts, and the corner stuck with the short route while the unfortunate Mr. Varner took the deep one. This being the exact same goddam route that the cornerback had successfully defensed two plays earlier.

It's also true that there were coaching breakdowns--the bomb was one of them, because I have no clue why you'd cover the short outside with an indescribably fast corner and the long outside with an inevitably slower safety--but there were fundamental problems in the play-calling, too. Clemson has a pretty tough defense, especially against the run. Our halfback is a not-shabby guy named Mario Merrills. Mario's built like a bull. He's pretty quick, too--sort of a low-grade Jamal Lewis, only...well, low grade. And probably not a convicted drug dealer. He breaks tackles real well, and he's neither the fastest nor slowest biggish-time running back I've ever seen. Our O-line, however, is young--chock full o' underclassmen. Not horrible, but certainly still learning the trade.

It took our coaching staff an awful long time to figure out that Mario was getting his head stuffed up his ass every time he ran up the middle. Which was, like, two out of every three plays. They got a little traction running him outside, and they got a little traction when they put in his smaller, faster, more lithe backup, Keon Lattimore, who was (mirabilis!) running outside. And it took most of the fucking afternoon and way too many forced fumbles for Our Other Lord and Savior Ralph Friedgen (the head coach, and he's only The Other One because you will bow down before Gary Williams, who coaches us in The Real Sport, and you personally will especially bow down, GermBabe, because I know you're still reading this) to get around to figuring out that we weren't moving the ball on the fucking ground.

We don't like losing to Clemson. They cheat, at least they did when Danny Ford was their coach, and since their coach is a guy with the last name of Bowden, you don't need to meet a very high standard of evidence to conclude that they still cheat. We don't like Charlie Whitehurst. We don't like losing on our home field. We'd better not do it on Saturday, when I will personally my own self be in attendance as My Beloved Terrapins take on our mortal Lex Luthor archrivals, the Hillbillies of West Bygod Virginia, in our the annual Beer Swilling and Couch Burning Festival of Brotherhood Between The States.

Our good friend Gothmog feels my pain, only far worse. My second football love is the Longhorns of the University of Texas. They're also one of Goth's loves, except that on Saturday night, in a major hoopla nationally televised event, the Horns were visiting some cow town in Ohio, home of Gothmog's first and mostest football love, the Ohio State University Fuckeyes. I learned to detest OSU when I spent a year as the guest of a small liberal arts college a short distance from said cow town. I say "guest" because while I was, in a very narrow administrative sense, a student of that school, I mostly just did hospitality stuff like consuming things and rubbing up against women.

And detest the big land-grant school we did, with snotty Eastern liberal intellectual pride in our string of 35 consecutive victories over them. In swimming. I'm pretty sure we topped them in snotty Eastern intellectualism, too.

Texas and OSU are both huge football programs--real football programs, compared to my beloved alma mater's (that is, the alma mater I graduated from, that being the aforementioned University of Maryland, which last won the national football championship in 1953 and has since been relegated to despair or the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl, which are after all pretty much the same damn thing). Big-time regular-season hoopla events like this one, between big-ass football schools from different leagues, are rare things, because such schools try real hard not to play meaningful out-of-league games before the end of the year, lest they screw up their shot at an undefeated season (and hence a clear shot at the national title). This was, by any reasonable reckoning, the college football Game of the Year, and the televised hoopla surrounding it reflected that.

It was a good game, too--back and forth, exciting rallies, huge screaming mob-scene crowd, usually close on the scoreboard, lots of turnovers (and had OSU been better able to capitalize on its shutdown of Texas' high-powered offense through turnovers, it would be a much happier day in Columbus), lots of beauteous athleticism, some rare stuff (Texas managed to score on a safety when OSU was buried deep in its own territory, a score that eventually provided the margin of victory). The Texas quarterback is just freakin' amazing, and the OSU defense is monstrous good, especially their linebackers. Texas won on a late rally, driving to score a touchdown with a minute left in the game.

It was a really, really great game, and I'm sorry that Gothmog's season had to be screwed up by it. But it was great entertainment. I won't deny that I was pleased by the score, but I won't rub Goth's nose in that shit, either. I must, however, respectfully suggest that he lead a mob to force haircuts on his team's linebackers.

We (Ilse and I spent a rare and precious weekend on the couch together) spliced a soccer game into the big huge hairy Game of the Year, too, because we follow DC United, my media market's entry in Major League Soccer. They were playing at FC Dallas on Saturday night, and the game was televised. We saw United play Dallas (formerly The Burn, which produces all kinds of cool songs about sexually transmitted diseases when you go see DCU play them live) a few weeks ago at a suburban soccer park a few minutes from my home, in an open cup game (the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, if you care). DCU lost that game horribly--DCU was up one-nil (I'll adopt a slightly different language to discuss soccer proper football, thank you), but The Burn scored in stoppage time to tie the game, and after a half hour of overtime on a school night, topped DCU on penalty kicks, which is just vomitorious.

It was a different game at FCD's brand-spanking-new Pizza Hut Park, a soccer-only stadium that looks like it was built from leftover pizza delivery boxes. There were sections of the Atlantic Wall defending against D-Day that were more attractive than this Eastern European-looking pomo dump. But I don't care, because if I ever stay in Dallas longer than it takes me to change planes, I'll have friends to visit and won't bother with the concrete bastion that is Pizza Hut Park. I do have this to say to the designers: there will never be a soccer riot in this country, and if there is, it sure as hell isn't scheduled for Dallas.

It's hard to do justice to the flowing beauty of a soccer game in words, so I'll just note that DCU played reasonably non-poorly--well enough to win--and that my new favorite member of United is a young man named Facundo Erpen.

And Brian Carroll sucks; he could only suck worse had he attended Duke rather than Wake Forest. Every time I catch him using his insufferably inadequate little brain on the football pitch (don't you love it when I'm affective?), I want to run down and slap him. Just kick the fucking ball, Brian. No, don't think. Kick. That drunk Salvadoran mindlessly banging a drum down in the Barra Brava section thinks better than you do. Kick. Uhp? What'd I say? Did I say think about to whom you are kicking? Just kick, you little scrote. Don't think. React and kick. Bitch.

(To whom?! To whom?!)

Sorry. That last was a massively deep inside joke (you kicka da ball wit da side a you foot! would be the other) that brings us abruptly to Sunday. I know that many of my two or three readers spent yesterday as I did, watching the gluttonous orgy that is the NFL's opening weekend. My local media market was treated to the usual spectacle, that of its offensively and inaccurately named local franchise (the team is based in Virginia and plays its home games in Maryland, yet is named after Our Nation's Capital, and you all know about the offensive part) playing a really ugly game of football. This game was perpetrated against the Chicago Bears, who are the stuff of pathos; it was a hurricane-scale disaster, with the inept excuses for professional football teams knocking heads for what seemed like an eternity, preceded by an endless 9/11 wallow and followed by a maudlin trip to Charlotte to see the end of the New Orleans Saints' ultimate triumph over adversity and the Carolina Panthers.

The Foreskins' game was slovenly and droll. Our coach, Joe El Senor Jesucristo Supermayamaya Jefe Gibbs, is a senile old fartbag who thinks he's running a team in an era where you can punch a real man like John Riggins through the middle of the line, and your Hawgs will push those pansies on the other team over onto their little sissy keesters and the spectacularly hungover Riggo will blast 44 yards up the middle and put paid to those Godless little heathens.

Several critical reality-based factors intrude upon this rich fantasy. One is that it's not Joe's father's game any more, which is to say it's not Joe's game, because he's older than dirt and left the league for 12 years to go run stock cars around tracks in Our Nation's Glorious South. The players are all pansies, including the O-linesmen, and they're all prima donnas, and they're all jumping excitable me-first overamped drugged-up pieces of overpaid gooseshit who don't take guff from legendary old men like El Senor. None of them are John Riggins, and none of them, most especially the Foreskins' O-line, are remotely capable of knocking their corresponding defensive overamped drugged-up tubs of lard onto their overpaid keesters. And you cannot, in today's NFL, run the same fucking play 33 gorram times and advance the fucking football, a mentality that was only rebarred by El Senor's lengthy sojourn in a world where sport travels in a circle 200 times very very fast.

I wrote a lengthy piece in another online venue the day that El Senor returned to this fair city. Well, its fair suburbs, anyway. It was like MacArthur returning to Leyte. It was like Jesus returning overtop the Mormon Temple. It was like...it was fucking indescribable, the fawning obsequiety that this man's return to football, and to the fuckall pathetic wreck of a franchise that is the Redskins, engendered. To this day, 18 long months later, it makes me puke in a rocket-propelled manner. The man is a fraud. He gave us three Super Bowl championships, Back in the Day, and Heather Havrilesky Love Him for that. But he has no more clue how to operate a modern NFL franchise than I have a clue about how to get Lucy Liu to felch me.

Ilse, if you were drinking something when you read that last line: he shoots, he scores.

So the Skins open this tragicomedy by running their uberstar halfback, Clinton "Butter for Breakfast, No Cutlery" Portis, up the middle until he limps off the field with a high vagina sprain. During his absence, they run the ball up the middle once, and punt a few times, the Bears punting back in return. Late in the first quarter, El Senor finally gets around to running Ol' Lardfingers around to the outside. Woohoo! 8-yard gain, second and two! Time to push that ball upfield with a well-timed freebie pass, ayup, because even the MercyMutha can gain two yards on third down!

Not quite. El Senor calls the exact same motherfucking play, and Portis is stuffed for a two-yard loss. A few plays later, early in the second quarter, rookie-after-three-years quarterback Patrick Ramsey is viciously clotheslined at the Bears' 10-yard line, knocking him to the sidelines for what should be a bit.

Except it's not, it's the rest of the game. After one more exchange of three-and-outs, the inept Fox broadcast team announces that the Redskins' medical staff has cleared Patrick to return to the game. We wait for the rest of the game and do not see Patrick on the field again, although we do see him bouncing around the sidelines, singing "Put Me In Coach."

But it is not to be, because Patrick is a Godless heathen, and El Senor has spent our team's salary cap (another concept with which El Senor has grave difficulty) on an inept, left-handed (never, ever, ever play a left-handed quarterback, unless all of your quarterbacks are left-handed and that's just how you wanna live your damn life), older-than-dirt (that is to say, almost as old as me) fellow Christian traveller named Mark Brunell (although our Fox broadcast team will insist, for ten full game minutes, that the elderly scrag's name is Scott Brunell).

Mark Brunell is on this team for one reason; he's a Bible-thumping Christian. He is too old to play this game to any effect. He wallows around in the backfield, virtually immobile, and we've already canonized one immobile quarterback in this here town; we got limited room for saints. He is making five million dollars annually to not quarterback this team.

Patrick Ramsey has had an unfortunate three-year career here. He started as the first victim of our former coach, who shall not be named, although just watch the dance I do to dispel evil spirits if you should happen to name him. He spent one full season doing absolutely nothing save getting sacked, until he broke, and was replaced by Elizabeth Filarski's husband. Then he broke again last year, in his first year under the tutelage of the saints. There is a look in Patrick's eye that is hard to articulate, but let's try this: you'd better have a spare diaper in your hand if'n you say "Boo!" to the poor bastard.

There are things that need to be done with this football team. El Senor must be caused to go away. I don't care how. Mark-Scott Brunell must be caused to go away. I don't care how. Patrick Ramsey must be sent to a place that is warm and quiet and loves him, preferably a team with an offensive line. I don't care if he thence becomes Tom Brady; the poor guy is never going to amount to anything here. The team is pressing the salary cap and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt--they're going to have to do that soon anyway, because the team is about to undergo a massive salary cap crash. They've already had to start breaking up a damn good defense because they let the cap get out of control.

But first, they have to fire Gibbs. Ring up another excommunication for your old pal Satan.

I have one more football topic to explore. After the endless disaster that was the Redskins-Bears (and it was actually the first of the 1 PM games to end), I took a few hours off from football, and didn't return until well into the second quarter of the nightcap, the Ravens-Colts. I don't mind the Ravens; they're my emergency backup team, and no Redskins fan should be without something else to care about. I only watched a few minutes of the game, because it was visually hurtful to do so.

The Ravens' new unis are a war crime. Black jerseys, black pants, white socks. They look like beat poets without berets. They look like ogres dancing The Rites of Spring. They look like mimes without the facepaint. They are a fucking nightmare. New unis, please.

Blockage

Yeah, I like starting things off that way, for those of you who pay a lot of attention to the workings of my coronary arteries. But the title refers to the state of my ability to write about anything. I'm blocked at the moment by frustration and anger and probably ennui. Which, being French, is not the same as boredom.

Baby steps then. Condolences to my friend Gothmog, whose father died yesterday after a long illness. I'm feeling it for the Gman; his dad was ill for quite a while, and G has gone through a great deal of pain and confusion in the last many months. Peace to you and your family, Gothmog.

Condolences also to my friend Augie, whose kitty parted this Earth recently; owing to a combination of factors more related to ennui than anything, I've been a bit tardy in making the rounds of some friends' blogs of late, and came by this news far later than I should have. I feel your pain, Augie; Gamara and I had to give that final bit of help to our two elderly kitties (her kitties, but I married the kitties and divorced only Gamara) over a six-month span last year. There are times I think I'd sooner do that for certain family members than for a beloved cat. Peace to you, Augie.

My fine whine pales compared to other peoples' issues, but there was another death recently, that being the death of my relationship with Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc. A week ago today, I told Mister Bigglesworth and Prince Evercrack to shove off. I thought this would bring some peace to me; GIGPI ain't gonna survive, but it's going to take a long time to sink beneath the waves, and I saw no reason to thrash along with it. It became pretty clear that the company would do whatever Bigglesworth wanted, and I was just expected to be a shit donkey.
The usual realm of this blog isn't providing any reason to rise up from the muck, either. The Ubercunt has gotten no less provocatively criminal, Dimpleboy is still dead, and I can't even get it up for Wonkette. I'll snap back sometime, but for right now, there's just no reason to make you morose, too.

What Wine Goes With Not Doing a Reunion Show Summary?

At Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc., we're not just about producing software and taking your money so that we can retire early to some sunny tropical place where we can jet around in cigarette boats adorned with mostly nekkid and entirely willing babeage. In point of fact, we're not about producing software at all, at least not so far. This causes me a great deal of anger management, and not just because I'm not yet speeding around Tortola with a scantily-clad Lucy Liu draped over the other seat begging for a spanking. And oh yes she is that hot.

Sorry, I had to take a moment. Where was I? Oh yes. Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc. So as you all know, I went to the very bowels of Ohio, where it was my sole pleasure there to meet the Mom and the lovely and brilliant and funny Mrs. Mom, who saw through me like I was a wet t-shirt. Being fabulous, she was damned polite about it, though.

Yes. Ohio. Business trip for Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc. So there are two pieces to this software that's keeping me from the BVIs and my high-velocity sodomy date with Heather Graham. One is the game engine, which is the bit that actually runs this game which we intend to reproduce programmatically, giving you, the person giving us your money, a high-quality virtual representation of the boardgaming experience. This game was the game of the year two years ago, which was shortly before we decided we were going to get rich off of the Internet.

So a while back, we--me, Mr. Bigglesworth, and our other partner, Prince Evercrack--did a really great business plan and got some money from some guys in Vegas, actual venture capital money, and we incorporated and bought cool laptops and a nice server and shirts with our logo on them and some other stuff. A really great business plan is, by the way, defined as "a collection of lies that induces people to give you money," and we operated under that plan, some of which was actually factual, for some time. Then, after six months or so, the Vegas guys decided we were going about it all wrong and that their vast experience in running porn sites led them to conclude that our skills--Programmer, Programmer, and Guy Who Tells Other People What To Do (guess which one I am)--were best put to use by sitting back and remotely supervising badly paid coders in foreign countries where life is cheap.

We told them thank you for your money and goodbye now, mmkay? They threatened to sue. We laughed. They threatened to break our kneecaps. We reminded them that they only knew where one of us lived, and by the way, it's not illegal to record certain telecommunications in the jurisdictions where two of us live. They threatened to sue again, we laughed again, and all was eventually forgotten. Including, for a period of four months, the software, by Prince Evercrack, who decided that we were kinda making his life miserable and that he should ignore our emails from September through December. Which he did.

But eventually, Prince Evercrack saw the light and heard the siren song of Virgin Gorda, and we sort of resumed our dream of the sun. Then, back around the beginning of April, which should've been my first clue, we had this argument, Mr. Bigglesworth and Prince Evercrack and me, while we were sitting around Mr. Bigglesworth's dining room table up in some hideously Yankee jurisdiction. Mr. Bigglesworth argued that we had to have this deal ready for this big geek deal in Columbus. I argued that history, statistics, probability, and the dialectic made it a mathematical impossibility for us to do anything but make giant gaping asses of ourselves on a five-week timeline.

I was shouted down. I shouted back. Words were exchanged, ICBMs prepared and nearly launched. I prophesied, correctly, that one of the Pirates would get screwed in the end, and that the most likely candidate for this penetration was me, because while Prince Evercrack took his sweet freakin' time finishing the game engine, and Mr. Bigglesworth took that and added the instant-messaging bit (the second piece of our grand plan), Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy would have no time to ensure that these things would actually work, and would have to test the thing in front of a crowd of geeks expecting professional-looking software. Which brings us to Columbus, and me draped facedown over a table in the Radisson, a convenience that The Mom and his spouse most thoughtfully ignored.

My, this has become a long story. How sad for you. But I will shorten it by saying that after two all-nighters, Mr. Bigglesworth finished up his piece of the product at about 10 AM Sunday, leaving Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy to test it in front of a crowd of skeptical geeks. This had about the result you'd expect.

Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy struggled home after his almost entirely unpleasurable (save those two hours with The Mom and The Delightful Mrs. Mom) trip to Middle America. He settled in for what he hoped would be a nice long week of ignoring Mr. Bigglesworth and Prince Evercrack, because frankly, they were really starting to piss him off and it's not like we have any chance of banging Catherine Zeta-Jones at eighty miles an hour anyway. And all of this is making me truly tired, in a soulsick, semi-permanent sort of way.

Yesterday, Mr. Bigglesworth demanded that Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy produce forthwith the list of all the bad things that happened to Our Software. The Pirates had to get to work now now now, and Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy was singlehandedly keeping the ship from leaving.

And that's why I destroyed civilization. Sorry about that. I guess you prolly want me to STFU and go write that summary-thing now, huh?

The End of History

So I met The Mom. And Mrs. Mom. They are lovely people. I mean, really, really lovely people. I know that pas d'irony is not what you expect from me here, and I'm sorry to be temporarily irony-free, even for a couple of sentences, but truly, Goth and Mrs. Goth rock. We ate Mexican, for those of you who are enthralled by such detail, and talked, for about 2 hours.

So, for the record:

• Goth is most emphatically not the one of all who sucks.
  
• Mrs. Goth is, in fact, hot, but she was kinda repulsed by me, so it's all good.
  
• The voices in my head cooperated and I did not fart; Goth was even kind enough to flatter me by pointing this out.
  
• I am not, as yet, a Republican.
  
• I didn't set my shoes on fire and, for the next 24 hours or so, I have a cool cow-spot lighter. Thanks, TSA!

Four stars for The Mom and his faboo spouse, who have the super power of making Middle America disappear. That's a pretty fuckall cool talent, there. I'd hang with them any day and twice on Sunday.

The Continuation of Whining

So I'm sitting here in Ohio, a place distinguished only by the presence of The Mom, and things are just peachy.

Well, no they're not. Mr. Bigglesworth was up all night coding, and he's pretty damned cranky. He's also not finished coding. Which means we're not finished testing--haven't started, actually. Which means that hanging over the happy occasion of the meeting of Me and The Mom will be the ghastly spectre of imminent testing, and the even ghastlier and considerably more stinky spectre of impending code failure, because that's what happens when we here at Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc., do testing--we experience code failure.

The hotel--the very town, actually--is a shrine to Middle American dumpage. Mind you, I have no problem whatever with those of you who actually live in Middle America, and I don't even actually consider you Middle Americans, because obviously you're of some superior form if you're reading this and haven't gone off to burn Democrats at the stake or crucify cheerleaders for their demonically short skirts. But this town--a Middle American suburb of a Middle American city that I do not need to identify--is...uhm...well, let's see. There's an interstate exit. There's...there's...there's an interstate exit. Jesus, I can't even write about this. The highlight of the last twelve hours is that I got a new lighter to throw away when I get back to the airport. It has cow spots on it.

I'm stifled by it all. I'm gonna go meet The Mom, which will eclipse anything else that will happen to me here, west of Appalachia, and when I come back, I'm gonna beat the crap out of Mr. Bigglesworth in a real satisfying, East-Coast sorta way. That'll make us all feel better, won't it?

Now I'm Just Whining

So I'm off to visit the world for a few days, as part of my incarnation as a busy software company executive wannabe. What? You didn't know about that? Yeah. I lead a number of professional and semi-professional lives, two of them related to boardgaming (see the Diplomacy thing).

By day, on days when I can't avoid it, anyway, I'm the project manager for a global public health program that's housed at a U.S. government agency (it's not a government program, but the funder gave the money to the government). By night, I'm a teenage tiger and a goo-goo muck. Wait, that's not right. By night, I'm a busy software company executive wannabe. Okay, not so busy, because we have no product, and no revenue, and no customers. Yet. But let me tell you, that endless railing at my two partners, who are the busy programmers producing our wannabe product, that gets exhausting and stuff. In fact, I think I need a lozenge.

In between all that, by which I mean when I'm pretending to work on my other jobs, I'm the Director of Competition, or some such twaddle, for a big Diplomacy hobby organization. We're hosting the World Diplomacy Championships this summer in DC. I'm the one delegating everything to my horrible teammates and cleaning up their messes and all that. And I still have to be pretty when Mr. Trump shows up. It's so unfair.

So where I'm off to this weekend is Columbus, for some big show of geekery, where we may debut a demo of our actual product. That is, if my partner Mr. Bigglesworth can take the game code that was just cleared from testing yesterday and wrap the communications code around it without hosing everything up entirely. Since Mr. Bigglesworth didn't find my email from yesterday until this morning, I'm feeling a tad pessimistic about the possibilities here. But I'll get to sit next to him on the airplane and nag him while he writes the code.

So what am I trying to say here? Well, the real message here is that I'm meeting Gothmog this weekend. This raises all kinds of fears. I've met (in person) probably a dozen and a half people that I originally met on the Internet. What if Gothmog is, like, the one of those who sucks? What if he has a hot wife and she likes me? What if the voices in my head tell me not to maintain my usual policy on not farting on the first date? What if travelling to Ohio makes me a Republican? What if not having a lighter on an airplane makes me try to set my shoes on fire with matches?

Life's just too fucking complicated.