The Highest Bidder

The unicorns and I usually find ourselves having a lot of free time on our hands/hooves this time of year.  October usually means that most of my favorite sports teams have shit the bed and because of this we usually spend a lot of time trying to preoccupy ourselves with mundane activities.  Myself?  I like the booze so that helps but the damn unicorns might as well be Mormons because they don't drink.  They like puzzles. 

What kind of puzzles?  Any.  kind.  of.  puzzle.  The house is chock full of sudoku, crosswords, Rubiks cubes, straight jackets, mazes, riddles, algebra books, health care forms, things that rhyme with orange, and just regular puzzles.  While this makes Christmas shopping for me easy as pie I can't stand that they insist on never getting rid of the finished puzzles.  It's a puzzle.  You solved it.  It's done.

Nope.  Not them.  They like to hold onto them like little trophies of vindication that they really are that smart.  It's pathetic!  They sleep standing up and let their bowel movements fall wherever they happen to be at that particular time.  Sure, they can do magic and cause rainbows, but they're pretty fucking far from majestic.  They don't see themselves that way, obviously, and that's why the house is filled with finished puzzles.  Every now and then the unicorns will go around and hoist one up and start to bask in all it's glory and I'll walk by and take it from them.  It's not very hard, they have hooves, they can't grip anything.




Speaking of puzzles and holding up bullshit, I think it's time to talk about the NCAA and college basketball.

So a hooker has come out and said that Louisville is trying to recruit basketball players by having sex parties in the athletic dorms and I find that absurd because the sale should be made on making baseball bats and fried chicken.  All kidding aside, has anyone ever done anything with a hooker and been completely mind at ease over the whole thing?  I said 'all kidding aside' but what I really meant was this whole thing is a joke and how the Hell can we take it seriously?

Let me put it this way:  In our nation we have a institution put in place for higher learning called colleges and universities.  It's our way to cultivate and nurture our bright young minds so we can usher in a better quality of life for our children and that's really what we're all here for.  I truly believe all that.  I do.

But the kids, they need to get out and play, and so play we let them.  Sports was introduced into higher learning and things were just dandy until other people were like, "Hey!  Those guys are doing things that might be entertaining to other people!  How do we profit off of this?"  They started out modest enough but they would soon refer to themselves as the National Collection of Assholes Anonymous and their main objective would not be to protect the young, vulnerable minds that our very country depends on but to make sure they made every possible penny they could at any expense of human sacrifice.

You see, what happens when you start thinking about the dolla dolla bills is that you start thinking that all those things that you used to think were important really aren't anymore because it's hindering your ability to get those dolla dolla bills.  You start to look the other way, you encourage competition against those that really shouldn't be competing against each other, and you take any edge you can against everybody else.  Your recruiting pitch goes from "We have a well established institution of learning" to "Go in that room and enjoy the sex party".  What the Hell?  Money is only important as we make it and we've made it higher than our values and our future.  We're recruiting our young, bright minds on the pretense of sex parties.

The NCAA is a pimp, not a professor.  The American youth is vulnerable to the hands of an organization that demands satisfaction now, not later.  This isn't just Louisville.  This is everywhere.  UCF is one of the biggest schools in country...God only knows what closed doors hide there.

So a hooker has come out and said that Louisville is trying to recruit basketball players by having sex parties...and we only know this because she called the NCAA looking for someone to foot the bill and they hung up on her.

By the way, I keep using the term 'hooker' and I mean no disrespect, it's just what the NCAA likes us to refer to ourselves as.

New Year Water Coolings

Greetings faceless entities and welcome to the year of two-ought-fourteen!  Fingers crossed, this will finally be the year that the 'I just rolled out of bed' look will be socially accepted.  Please note that just because scumbags have adopted this look for years previous that it has still not been socially accepted as the norm and if you have personally rocked this look at any given time prior to this posting you are most likely a dirty hippie or just a world-weary sonuvabitch.

If it's the latter, welcome brother!

This is the type of post that I'm trying to make a 'regular' but just can't seem to post with any relevant sequential posting technique so it's just coming off as a 'shove it down your throats' type of thing.  Eh.  Whatever.  I stopped getting paid for this a long time ago, isn't that right LATVIA?!

It's almost like Latvia doesn't even care anymore.  Remember, Latvia, when I used to get mad because all you wanted to do in bed was cuddle and now I can't I even get you to look me in the eyes and treat me like an actual human being!  You've changed, Latvia...you've changed.

In fact, you've changed so much that my most subscribed readership (outside of the United States) is now...wait for it...Russia!

Wait.  What?  Russia?  In fact the top three non-US readers of the Studly Pastures are Russia, Germany, and Canada.  That's fantastic.  I might as well pull the plug now.  I can't even be cool ON MY OWN BLOG THAT I DESIGN FOR MYSELF!

In fact, the French, my own goddamn people, read me less than Latvia does!  I can't take this anymore...what's next?

THE GOOD: Normally a grown man sobbing on the sidelines at a game would get lambasted here.  Crying in sports is only acceptable for two things: the first is if Tonya Harding hired some thugs to break your leg and the second is a great win after a death in the immediate family.

Before we get to the point of where I was going with this I need to talk about Tonya Harding some more because who doesn't, right?  One of the guys that Harding got to bash Nancy Kerrigan's leg in was her current husband.  After all the shenanigans went down a sex tape came out of Harding and that same guy.  That's right, not even one of the biggest sports scandals in recent history was enough to propel Harding into fame that she still had to release a sex tape.  What a supreme loser.

Mark Fox is the current men's basketball coach for the University of Georgia and last night, with his team on the verge of an upset victory at Missouri, broke down in tears.  Fox succumbed to emotion late in overtime when it was clear that his team was going to win and it all finally crashed down on him.  His father died last Saturday and when you couple that devastating blow with the fact that Georgia hadn't won on the road all year long it looked like the Bulldogs were in for a long night.  But the team rallied behind their coach, and it wasn't exactly "win just one for the one for the Gipper", but Georgia defeated No. 21 ranked Mizzou 70-64.  Fox was crying because he got to experience the best part of sports--the whole reason why we do the damn thing--and that's the human aspect of it all.  Fox is a father-figure to his players, he lost his father, so they play to honor him.  So it goes.  I love sports.



THE BAD: Did I just say I love sports?  Sigggghhhhhh.  Liking sports is having a girlfriend that's totally into S&M and you're ambivalent towards it.  Just when you're starting to get on the same page you get whipped just a little too hard and it's back to square one from there.  This will all be relevant once I tell you I'm about to talk about Bobby Petrino.

It looks like Louisville is about to hire Bobby "The Shark" Petrino as their head football coach and I'm just sitting here wondering why Louisville doesn't have that friend to convince them to just turn the damn phone off.  For those at home that need the Cliff notes: Petrino was head coach of the Louisville Cardinals, then went to coach the Atlanta Falcons and he quickly lost the locker room and bolted back to the NCAA (mid-season mind you), to the Arkansas Razorbacks where the married man and father of four was caught sleeping with a female staffer.

He was caught when the two were in a motorcycle accident together.  "Hey baby, watch this sick wheelie I'm about to pull--OH GOD MY CAREER!"

The press conference with him in the neck brace was an instant classic.  I watch it every Christmas Eve while drinking hot cocoa.

Then I see that Western Kentucky Coach Bobby Petrino is a strong candidate for Louisville Coaching job.  My initial thought was "clearly Western Kentucky is a whore" and after that I really felt bad for Louisville.  Louisville had themselves a nice, gentle man in Charlie Strong but Louisville was too damaged and he left for  self-confident Texas.  So what does Louisville do?  They open a few photo albums, remember the time they said, 'wouldn't it be cute if we got matching tattoos?', and they pick up the phone--hesitant at first--because they also start remembering the black eyes, the 'falling down the stairs', and all the other girls he used to 'just be friends with.'  In the end, loneliness and heartbreak are the victors and before you know it Bobby Petrino's dirty Duffel bag is on the floor of your bedroom and all your orange juice is gone.  I've seen it a million times.

Look I'm not saying that putting Bobby Petrino in charge of college kids is bad business practice I'm saying that it's a stain on the human race and I'm utterly disgusted.  How is he going to be the head coach at Louisville and not the guy that picks up roadkill on the side of the interstate?  You're better than that, Louisville.  Please be better than that, Louisville?



THE UGLY: I've just sat here for ten minutes trying to come up with a J.R. Smith and a Three Stooges reference but I just keep getting so mad at J.R. Smith that it's impacting my funny.

The following statement is true:  Twice, in the past week, J.R. Smith tried to untie an opponent's shoelaces during a free-throw attempt.  Let that soak in.  A professional basketball player tried to untie shoes to give himself an advantage, on television, and in front of everybody.  His punishment was a $50,000 fine.

This is another reason why I hate David Stern, I mean besides being the entity of evil.  Instead of pulling this guy aside, smacking him upside the head, and telling him that Space Jam was just a movie he just issues a fine.  Are you kidding me?  Clearly, Mr. J.R. Smith has some mental imbalance that allows him to think that pre-school tactics are okie-dokie in professional settings.  David Stern lacks anything that allows him to appear human.  J.R. Smith is a wayward sheep that should probably not find it's way home.  Why isn't relegation to the D-league a suitable punishment?  "Oh you think untying shoes is funny?  Here, play for nothing."

Maybe J.R. Smith is pulling these kinds of antics so he'll be traded away from the awful New York Knicks and maybe he's just an asshole.  I'm voting asshole and hope he'll get elected soon.


Enjoy going back to work, kids.  Remember, you probably won't be able to afford retirement at a reasonable age!