you can call me tom hatey

maybe it is because i have been busy at work...but the last post and this one i am about to write are rant-esque...and i am sure if laura read this she would go on about how i am so angry all the time...which i don't think is true. overall i enjoyed the weekend, but the columbia thing and the nfl playoffs were unsatisfactory to me.

so we all knew that the patriots were going to the superbowl. philip rivers sucks and the patriots are the patriots. prior to the games on sunday, i was talking to dave about the playoffs and comparing it to star wars, where the patriots are obviously the dark side. tom brady is darth vader and bill belichek is the emperor. randy moss was boba fett. brett favre was supposed to be han solo. i'm not a star wars nerd, but i felt it was a fairly relevant comparison.

well favre and the packers went ahead and screwed things up. they were awful and lost a game that they should have easily won. they made eli manning look like a fairly adequate qb, which is not easy to do. maybe he's ok...i dunno...i think i just have a problem with the dumb look he has on his face all the time. the packers had soooo many chances to win the game. i don't remember a lot of game specifics, but i know the giants kicker missed at least 2 field goals from like 35 yards away..including a miss at the end of regulation that would have won the game for the giants. the packers even won the coin flip in overtime and favre threw an awful pass that resulted in an interception. it just wasn't meant to be i guess.

but now look at the awful mess of a super bowl we have. i really hate both teams, and chris' man-crush on antonio pierce aside, i don't think any of my friends wanted this either. i strongly dislike both teams and as a result, i really have no interest in watching the super bowl. i would have loved watching favre defy the odds and pull out a gritty win against the evil patriots...but instead we have stupid eli and the redskin rival giants facing the patriots in what will surely be an unamusing comedy of errors.

we had a stretch of good superbowls in the late 90's and early 00's. but the last few have been stinkers and this one may go down as my least favorite of all time. remember watching derrick mason coming one yard short of winning the superbowl at the end of the game for the titans? or remember watching john elway lead his team to victory...scrambling his old ass out of the pocket and taking a big hit that flipped him around...just to get the first down? well that's not gonna happen this year. instead we have 2 very unlikeable teams (at least to me) that will play a boring game in which the patriots will abuse the giants like i abused phil in left-handed arm wrestling.

columbia is the opposite of good

work continues to be ridiculously busy (by my standards) and i haven't been able to blog like i want to. this past weekend was nice in that it was 3 days long. louise and i made the mistake of trying to go out and eat on a saturday night (big mistake). she usually works saturday nights, so it' been a while for me, but we found that every restaurant had a waiting time. we had a gift card for the cheesecake factory and went to the one in columbia...well that was an 85 minute wait...no thanks. we then proceeded to go to various other restaurants like macaroni grill, don pablos...they all had waits of at least 45 minutes. while i acknowledge that it was kind of naive of us to assume that we could just go out and eat at an average restaurant on a saturday night without waiting more than 10 minutes...but i was annoyed anyways.

i was also annoyed with columbia, which i never liked, but am disliking more and more these days. everywhere looks the same...and there is such a strong yuppie vibe that i don't particularly care for. i'm not saying laurel is anything great (louise will always let you know it is not) but at least it has some character to it. screw you columbia...i hope to never return to your dumb planned communities and identical streets that lead to identical shopping centers. screw you....that is, until we plan on redeeming out gift card at cheesecake factory...oh and we also got a gift card to the movie theater at columbia mall...oh well, nevermind, i give in.

seriously, who sits ladanian tomlinson???

the regular season for fantasy football is just about over and while 2 out of 4 of my teams are going to go on to the playoffs, i have a few things to gripe about.

gripe #1
in one league with some friends i will be missing the playoffs for the first time ever. i managed to have the 4th highest point total, and yet i am in 11th place, only besting the intern who gave up on her team in week 3. i'm not saying my team was the best, but i think i would have stood a better chance of beating the top 3 teams in the playoffs than the current teams ranked #4-6.

gripe #2
in my keeper league, where i have been doing well, and my team is playoff-bound, i noticed some shady business going on. team 1 has a bad record and is out of the playoff race. they are playing team 2, who is only 1 game behind me for a playoff spot. team 1 decides they will:

• not play a qb
• only start 2 rb's instead of the normal 3
• sit the following players: peyton manning, ladanian tomlinson, purple jesus, mjd, frank gore and steve smith

well team 2 goes on to crush team 1 by 100 points. luckily i won my game or i would be tied with team 2. that is some blatant cheating, and while i would like to call team 1 out on this, i don't really know most of these guys. also, i believe that as the new guy in the league, they are kind of unhappy with my success this season. i might e-mail the commish about this....i dunno.

onto basketball....reading back on my last fantasy update, i sounded pretty cocky. well i was in 1st place and even without arenas, my team was showing up. well my run ended last week, when i lost to blumpkin 7-2, dropping me from 1st place to 4th. ouch. what happened you ask? well chris bosh re-injured his groin. great. marvin williams got hurt. a lot of my good players (mainly roy and granger) decided to get streaky, having shooting nights like 1-12. i discovered that rajon rondo is afraid to shoot. blatche and haywood are cannibalizing each others' stats. peja scores 25 one night and 4 the next. ugh...i feel like my team is becoming the knicks of yahoo league 145124.

can my team sustain itself without arenas? when will bosh be back? i have no idea. i do know that i have to make some roster moves. players i would consider dropping are brendan haywood, andray blatche, udonis haslem, and marvin williams. i am not feeling that comfortable dropping any of these players, but i need some serious help in points, threes, steals and assists.

right now i am considering picking up the following:

pg rashad mccants
sf travis outlaw
pg beno udrih
sg juan carlos navarro
sg willie green
pg sebastian telfair

i dunno...none of these guys really jump out at me. they are either inconsistent, not getting starter minutes or i just feel lukewarm about. i will monitor these guys along with a few others, hope that bosh gets back in the lineup, my players start showing some consistency and maybe make a move that will help me stay competitive.

this is a long, boring, not well-supported/constructed/thought-out rant that is just for me

I was driving to work this morning, sitting in annoying city traffic, when I read an interesting bumper sticker. It read "I was against Bush before it was cool." Now I am super liberal, anit-Bush, blah, blah, blah...but this bumper sticker annoyed me for numerous reasons. This rant is long and kind of lame in that it was sparked by something as inconsequential as a bumper sticker, but oh well.

Let me make this clear, it is not "cool" to be anti-Bush. Now everyone is anti-Bush. If you go to any elementary school and ask kids about the president, 90% will give you the same mindless, programmed comment about how we shouldn't be in Iraq and how Bush is dumb and a "bad president". It is a safe, culturally agreed upon thing to say now. This is a big change from say 2001, where most people were supporting the president and by extension, their schools and kids echoed that same sentiment. 6 years later, with thousands dead, shady dealings and appointments, an enormous list of fuck-ups, and a general sense of an evil agenda, it could have been considered "cool" back then as it was not a mainstream sentiment, but certainly not in 2007.

Back to the bumper sticker. So let me ask this guy a few things? You say that you were anti-Bush before it was cool? So you were against him when he was governor of Texas? Or maybe you were really ahead of the game and hated the way he owned the Texas Rangers...Do you have a problem with people agreeing with you now? If it is that important that you be recognized for your being ahead of the general consensus (maybe) as far as questioning Bush..goodie for you. In something as important as fighting the evil regime of Bush, should you waste valuable bumper sticker space so that you can feel superior over others who are supporting the same cause?

I have been on both sides as far as appreciating things earlier than most and later than most. I understand the feeling where you like something that seems unnoticed, not yet appreciated and "cool", only to see it reach mainstream audiences and you get into eye-rolling conversations where some idiot is like "dude, you gotta check out this band ________, they're pretty underground, so you probably haven't heard of them, blah, blah, blah." This type of encounter is disheartening and can sap your appreciation for said band, movie, book, whatever. It's like someone invited the obnoxious frat guys to your secret nerd club. I understand this and have encountered it, but complaining about it makes you look like a complete ass, and not a "that guy is hilarious, he's such an ass", more of a "that guy is an ass and a douche and i kinda want to punch him." After the initial thought of "I don't like that this guy and I enjoy the same type of music", I am glad that this band or whatever is getting the appreciation and recognition it deserves.

I have also dealt with some elitist assholes who criticize others and try to make you feel lame along the lines of "oh, you're just now getting into _________, haha, man i was into them like 6 months ago!" Shut the fuck up.

So, yeah, everyone and their idiot kid is now anti-Bush, and it is not "cool". It is mainstream in fact, the opposite of "cool". So your bumper sticker and aforementioned statement is not only douchey, it is completely incorrect. I guess your bumper sticker could have said "I was against Bush while it was cool" or "I was against Bush before it became mainstream" or "I was against Bush before it became the MTV of political statements". So congratulations on being wrong (not in hating Bush, but as to what is cool) as well as being a big ol' elitist d-bag.