Red Herring, Sick Mammal

I have the privilege of being privy to several literary techniques, you know, because I've been classically trained by Plath, Vonnegut, Hemmingway, and Kerouac.

For example, I had to have a minor, and that sounds terrible but journalism school required that in order to be through the program you had to have a lesser degree in something else.  Dolla dolla bills, y'all.  So I picked English writing, which should have been a cake walk but it was way more technical that it sounded.  I actually had to learn the business side of it and that brings us here: teaching me the inside workings of the whole establishment was the worst thing you could have done.

I know too much now.

One of the classes I took to finish that English writing minor was a science fiction writing class that was held online.  The final grade was an original written short story based on the techniques that we have learned throughout the course.

The following is 100% true.  I tell no lies.

I wrote the entirety of that short story in a hotel room in Chicago across the street from Grant Park.  The room did not have any hot water but I got free porn on the television.  That seemed like a fair trade off at the time.  I was across the street from Grant Park because that's where Lollapalooza was being held and that's a three day music festival that I traveled to alone in a city that I had never been to before.  My cab driver told me a story about how he got so fed up stuck in traffic that he just up and left the cab with a guy in the back seat.  He told me this, while we're stuck in traffic, in a city I've never been before on the way to my hotel.  No hot water, free porn.

I was there to see the The Shins and some guy named Kanye West that just so happened to be from Chicago.  I also really enjoyed Gnarls Barkley.

It dawned on me when I finally got to the hotel that I had not even attempted the final grade for my science fiction writing class.  So I sat on the bed, whipped out my trusty MacBook, and wrote an odyssey.  Well, it wasn't The Odyssey, but all you could do is buckle up and ride along.  It was a parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and it was completely absurd but it was also a deus ex machina.

That's Latin, doll, but it's also a literary technique for basically having something save the day, when all hope was lost, and it was never mentioned before.  It's a cheat.  But I thought it was hilarious and it made perfect sense in my Frankenstein parody, which was titled The Aardvark's Bane.

NOW, when I tell you, that I use a deus ex machina, purposely, regardless of what kind of porn is going on in the background while I'm writing it, you should know that it's all meant as absurdity!  It's fucking called The Aardvark's Bane for Christ's sake!  I'm not mocking the class, the professor, or anybody else who took that class...I'm mocking myself?  Okay, I don't really know who I was offending there but the professor definitely took offense and that was the day that I almost lost a shot at a minor in Chicago at a music festival.  Again, the wording of all this sounds a bit awful.

And now I can't help but think of the Miami Dolphins, dear Lord, why do I think of the Miami Dolphins?!

The Dolphins have traded my favorite Fuzzby in the whole-game, Ryan Tannehill, to the Tennessee Titans.  We thought he'd be right at home in purgatory with the rest of the teams that don't ever seem to do anything ever.

With Tannehill gone, the only other quarterbacks on the Dolphins roster were two guys that just got done with their shift at Dairy Queen and said, "eh, whatever."  I'm not even sure if I'm shitting on Dairy Queen at this point or if it's the Miami Dolphins.  Lines are blurred, factions crossed, and I'm just rambling because what the Hell is the point of all of this?  There's just under a month before the draft and I can't see my team winning more than three games next year.

Fuck!  I even forgot to tell you that we just signed Ryan Fitzpatrick!  This guy might as well be me as an NFL quarterback in that I have no fucking business being an NFL quarterback.  Fitzpatrick is the guy that would work for different gas stations and if that doesn't tell you anything, 'cigarette bribes' will.  He's the guy you can get to do things for cigarettes. "Hey Ryan, I'll throw you two packs of Marlboro Reds if you help my Sister-in-law move her new couch in next Tuesday."

"Hell ya, brother!"


All of this makes me want to watch that Jay Cutler show that's on tv, and then I quickly remember I'd sooner chop off my left hand, and now we have Ryan Fitzpatrick.  And I referenced it as the "Jay Cutler" show but he's just really the supporting role because when can he actually take control of something for once in his life and I feel for you Kristen Cavallari because what the actual fuck..


The fact that we didn't send Tannehill off in a Viking funeral really makes me mad.  Fuzzby deserves better than the Titans.  I think everybody deserves better than being the back-up to Marcus Mariota.  What a weird web we weave.

Float on, graceful swans.  By the way, in case you didn't know, the entire first part was a Red Herring.  Love ya.

Miracle Boy

It's been 363 days since the last time I've posted from the Studly Pastures and all I have to say about that is that I'm only contractually obligated to post once a year.

I'm like the George Clooney of bloggers.  I did my thing, now I'm resting on my nest egg on the shores of an Italian lake and every now and again I'll surprise everyone by appearing in a commercial for an express coffee maker that as far as I can tell nobody actually owns.

Just kidding, I'm still over here shoveling pound after pound of unicorn shit and keeping a keen eye on the weird, wonderful world of sports.

Now that I'm significantly older than when this wild ride took off for the first time I'd like to think that my view has matured and I'm more open to discussion rather than my opinion operating like one of the Ten Commandments.  I'm not sure if you're supposed to capitalize the Ten Commandments but I'm going to anyways because I don't trust the odds of being struck by lightning.  Anyways, I've been really trying to see different view points and really become a structured individual when it comes to conversation but I seem to be running into this problem each and every time--they're always wrong!  It's the damndest thing but I can't seem to find anybody I actually agree with over myself.  Oh well, good thing this blog is like talking to myself in the mirror anyways.  Off we go!


This year brought back haunted memories for me as an old friend was reintroduced into something he has no business doing.  The Green Bay Packers decided it was best in the middle of a season to fire their head coach, Mike McCarthy, who led them to a Super Bowl victory, and told Joe Philbin to go get them tiger!  Now keep in mind, when the announcement came over the airwaves I felt like Darth Vader did when he sensed Obi-Wan on the Death Star.  I was just as surprised as anyone that Philbin was still in football, let alone a position that allowed him to be promoted via assassination.  What the Hell is it with this guy?  Does he knit Christmas sweaters for the commissioner every year and he gets these ridiculously underqualified jobs in return?  Like I said during the painful years that he coached the Miami Dolphins, Joe Philbin is better placed in some high school in Wisconsin trying to get kids accepted into trade schools.  I'm sure this past Sunday, when the Chicago Bears clinched the North and eliminated the Packers from the post season, Philbin let out his best "Well, shoot!" and then proceeded to gently blow on his hot cocoa.  I'm sorry for you Green Bay, if only more of you subscribed to the SP you would have known about Philbin.

Speaking of the Miami Dolphins, they've now resorted to Divine Intervention in order to achieve victory.  Last week's win over the Patriots was dubbed the "Miracle in Miami" and I immediately thought, "Great, a miracle, I'm sure we'll get some more of those!"  Don't get me wrong, watching Tom Brady wipe that smug shit-eating grin off his face while he's talking to some teammates about what type of Uggs he's wearing that night as Kenyon Drake goes racing past is one of those moments that I'll keep seared on the back of my cerebral cortex for the rest of my life.  But a miracle?  Hardly.  When it comes to the Miami Dolphins and miracles, I'll start believing when I don't spend the final two weeks wondering if we'll get the fourteenth or the fifteenth pick in the upcoming draft.  I'll consider it a miracle when Ryan "Fuzzby" Tannehill doesn't hold the ball for ten seconds and takes a game-altering sack on third down.  I'll start to believe that maybe a higher power has something to do with it when I can watch them play against a broken ass team like the Minnesota Vikings and have them not manhandle us like we owed them money.  An early December win against the Patriots is the same as getting a participation trophy, not a miracle.

So let's see, is there anything else in the last year I want to bring up other than the two things that happened in the last month...uhhh...LeBron joined the Lakers...nobody cares...Bryce Harper is going to get a contract that instead could be used to sustain the rainforests...nobody cares...oh, I got one!

The University of Central Florida Knights haven't lost a football game in two years and all they get to show for it is the chance to play LSU on New Year's Day in a bowl game that doesn't really mean jack shit.  A four-team playoff to decide the National Championship is nothing short of a joke and really makes me revisit that path I always take when I say I hate the NCAA.  I really fucking hate the NCAA.  What are we doing here?  Four teams out of 130 are the official odds, but they're really not because you let a 'committee' determine those four teams based off of their own biased opinions.  And, guess what, who would've thought that those opinions are leaned heavily on by money?  At the end of the season we end everything with a big Bullshit Parade and tell people that Alabama are the champions when really all they had to do was beat two teams picked by a committee of people that actually don't give a shit about football.  WOOOOOOO!  Congrats, dickheads.

Why not UCF?  They haven't lost in two years, nobody else can say that!  You want to argue strength of schedule and I don't really get that because we're just asking to play the big boys, not get handed anything.  What would be so really terrible for the NCAA if they let UCF play Alabama?

That they could beat them?  Then what would we do?  Change everything?

Now there's a theory...

The Revenge Of The Sith

I woke up this morning to the terrible news that I am no longer a baseball fan.

In a move that revered scientists couldn't even explain to me, the Tampa Bay Rays have traded Evan Longoria to the San Francisco Giants, effectively rendering anything they ever do again be pointless and terrible.  This is by far the stupidest move the Rays have ever done.

As a small market team, the biggest problem is trying to keep home grown talent and trying to not be a minor league team for a big market team.  Just ask the Miami Marlins how they feel about the New York Yankees right about now.  They just "traded" away their franchise player in Giancarlo Stanton to the Bronx for the equivalent of a ham sandwich, with now I whom sympathize with. (Marlins' fans, not the ham sandwich)

Does it really matter who you get in the trade?  The Marlins traded away their Barry Bonds.  The Rays traded away their Derek Jeter.  Could you imagine the New York Yankees trading away Derek Jeter?  No, you couldn't because you know it would never fucking happen!  Just as you knew that Jeter was the heart and soul of the Yankees, Longoria was the heart and soul of the Rays.  We just traded away the first thing that ever gave us any hope, that ever gave us any success, and that ever acted like the Rays could compete with the rest of the assholes.  Price was the shot to the gut, Maddon was the death sentence, and Longoria is the dirt on the casket.  It's over kids, we just traded our own son to somebody else.

You don't trade Longoria.  I can't believe that should have been a sign we had made up and put in the GM's office.  How do you not know that?  Why is there not somebody's job that all they do is stand around and as soon as someone says, "Well, why don't we trade Longoria?" and they quickly run over to that person and slap them as hard as they can directly in the face.  I would have paid that salary myself if I knew this day was coming.

I have no intentions of listening to any press conferences or statements from the team because it's all bullshit anyways.  You can not tell me that you were actively trying to make the team better by removing it's foundation.  You're trying to sell me a car without wheels and expecting me to jump in and take off.  It's not gonna work.  What the Hell is the point anymore?  If this wasn't the official stamp on the "We're Just A Breeding Ground For Four Other Cities" then I don't know what else to call it.  Hey kids, come play for the Rays and just maybe someday you'll actually be taken seriously and traded to San Fran, Boston, LA, or hell, maybe even New York!  I feel like I could angry vomit right now.

I just know that some San Franciscan is turning on ESPN right now and saying "Cool, that guy's a good pickup" and I'm over here updating my will but it's entirely accurate.  There's no angle to look at this and say it isn't devastating.  The people behind this deal are probably related to the architects of the Titanic and the Hindenburg.  I want to be able to say "Well, fuck you San Francisco" but it all reality it needs to be "Well, fuck you Tampa Bay!"  How could you not know?  How could you not know to not trade Longoria?

Oh dear God...they did know.  That means that they simply just didn't care.  They don't care what this means to me, and you, and everybody else like us.  Some men just like to watch the world burn.

Goodbye, Longo.  Goodbye, underdog.  Goodbye, baseball.

The Cutler Did It

I'm not friends with the entire city of Chicago or Fox Sports anymore...it's official.

You see, living in the Twilight Zone is weird.  On the one hand you keep getting completely random and unforeseen ridiculous crap thrown at you and on the other your morbid curiosity catches you and you wonder what's next.

What's next?  Jay Whatever-the-Hell-his-middle-name-is Cutler.  That's what's next for me.  I have Jay Cutler.  There's going to be Miami Dolphins jerseys made that have the name Cutler on the back and they won't be custom jerseys that Dave Cutler had to have made because he can't decide who his favorite Dolphin player is and if he's paying sixty bucks for it, then fuck it, what's twenty bucks more for the customized version?!

Kids, quick recap, last season the Miami Dolphins did just enough to beat shitty teams and had crawled out from that spot that's constantly kept in the dark on purpose to make that playoff game...that they quickly bowed out from.  I mean, Pittsburgh?  Can I fan-boy crush on them harder?!  We should have won that game.  We SHOULD have won that game.  But it's PITTSBURGH...and miami.  Whatever.  I'm not bitter.

The important part about our little trip down memory lane is that my favorite little fuzzby in the whole game, Ryan Tannehill, hurt his knee juuuuust enough to not need surgery but to make sure he had no part in that Steelers game.  Anyways, he doesn't get surgery, he drinks some tea, reads some tarot cards, and eats fish oil pills to heal his partially torn knee ligament.  Obviously I'm exaggerating because who the Hell doesn't get surgery in the NFL?!  They have access to the best health care system in the nation.  They go to the top surgeons in the United States for torn ligaments.  Notice how I didn't say 'heart transplants' or 'brain surgery' there.  They're pretty much the biggest players in the surgery game (cause I'm sure that exists) and yet...YET...Tannehill said, "Eh, I'll throw a few ice packs on it for the next five months and we'll see how I feel."

In the entire history of things being partially torn have you ever, ever, heard of one time...just ONE time that it reconnected itself together, you know, just cause?  That's a rhetorical question and in case you don't know what that means it means that I'm not waiting for your answer because it's irrelevant to me because I already know the answer.  It's no.  The answer is no.

So we go all through the summer and get to about the week before the preseason starts and guess what happens?  Tannehill crumples to the ground on a non-contact play in practice.  Wow.  Shocking!  I would have thought his knee would have regenerated new ligaments by now, I mean, he waited long enough, right?

Whichever doctor it inevitably came down to that said surgery was unnecessary was clearly drunk.  Was he unsure of what quarterbacks are expected to do?  They should, at the very least, be able to run.  There's not many paraplegic's out there huckin' the pigskin.  God forbid what would have happened to him had it been a tackle.  He might be picking out which prosthetic he thinks still makes him look the most human.

That's a bit dark, I apologize to all the stumps out there.

I'm rambling.  Anyways, I lose my fuzzby for the season and it finally dawns on the rest of the team that, 'Shit, we should probably find someone else to throw the ball, right?'  And I can imagine them saying this within earshot of Matt Moore who's been our backup quarterback for...ever...and all we seem to do is shit on the guy.

Tannehill's down?!  Whatever will we do?  Who do we get to play quarterback for us?  We better look at broadcasters!"  (Meanwhile, Matt Moore sits in the corner of a locker room crying ever so silently)



Enter the Cutler.  Which sounds like a parody of a classic Bruce Lee film but it's really the harbinger of doom of 2017 for the Miami Dolphins.  Before I tear it all to shreds, the reasoning for all of this is because Cutler's best year was with Adam Gase in Chicago.  Gase is now Miami's head coach and apparently he's the only one that knows Cutler.  He really knows him, you know?  You may think you know how to utilize Jay Cutler but you'll never know how to utilize him like Adam Gase!

Me?  Eh, I'm one of those weirdos that likes a little more of a time frame of statistics than one year.  Especially when you compare it to his entire body of work.  I mean, the guy is bound to have one best year, right?  What are the odds that it's because it was this other guy that really motivated him or taught him better than anybody else that ever did it before in the twenty something years before that he's been playing football?

Because, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but the guy has spent his entire life looking like he would rather be somewhere else.  A guy notorious for sitting out of key situations and never really giving a damn is worth chasing because once, a couple years ago, two guys captured lightning in a bottle? 

I DON'T GET IT LIEUTENANT DAN!

Meanwhile, the guy who should get the job is already on the team and doesn't have to be lured away from his broadcasting job from Fox Sports for $10 million!  If you told me I could get Dan Marino, at his peak, for one year at $10 million I wouldn't blink an eye.  If you told me I had my choice between Jay Cutler or Matt Moore, just how they are right now, for $10 million my last word would be Moore as I blew my brains out.  Ten million dollars for what?  Ten million dollars for pissing on our loyal and most likely source of success and retaining the rights to the guy that was about to be Fox Sports color commentator.  Cool.  I'm onboard.  Let's have a great season, fellas!

Jay Cutler has a body language that wonders why the martini selection wasn't as good as it was at that last art show.

Jay Cutler cares as much about the Miami Dolphins as he does about famine in Africa.

Jay Cutler is probably only in South Florida so he can finally find that rug that matches the curtains in his guest bedroom.

Jay Cutler is...the starting quarterback of the Miami Dolphins.

I just vomited all over the place.  I need help.

Meddling Kids

I was talking with Biscuits the other day and the conversation kind of went something like this:

You ever notice how time just seems to get away from you?  It's kind of scary of how quick it goes by, you know, because it's not like we can get more of it.  (That was me, by the way)

Yeah, time, one of life's ancient mysteries, just like Scooby Doo. (That was Biscuits)

Wait, what?

You know, Scooby Doo, he's one of the documentaries I watch.

Okay, first off, Scooby Doo is an animated character on a show meant for children and it itself is not an actual mystery--they solve mysteries that usually follow the same dynamic.

Yep.

You didn't understand any of that, did you?

Yep.

The dog and his team of weird teenagers solve mysteries that the police could solve in about two seconds because it's always some psycho adult dressed up as a monster.  It's not one of life's ancient mysteries--you know exactly what's going to happen each and every episode!  The only great mystery of it all is how it's managed to stay relevant for this long.

There you go.

I...what...do you...do you think you just Jedi mind-tricked me into believing that Scooby Doo is one of life's ancient mysteries?

Yes.

Damn it, Biscuits, I was trying to actually talk to you for once and yet again we ended up talking about nonsense!  Go back to the stable before I lose it!

Fine! And I'll watch all the Scooby Doo I want while I'm there!




There you have it.  That's the extent of our weird existential crisis/children's show conversation.  Granted I was having it with a unicorn who thinks that cartoons are documentaries that he watches in a stable but he had a good point about where I was going with my thought on time.  I mean, he probably just wanted me to watch Scooby Doo with him, but I took it as that time isn't some great mysterious force but as something that we can control, just like those grown ass people pretending to be ghosts in Scooby Doo.  Time is our creation and this is my time.

 Speaking of which, not much has changed during our last talk.  The NBA is still irrelevant because of no parity whatsoever that it's more fiscally sound for Las Vegas to post odds on Australian football.  I'm not even sure if Australian football is a thing, and if it is, then I'm not sure if it's rugby, football, or soccer, but anyways it's a better payout these days than the NBA.  The two guys all year long fighting for MVP and one averaging a triple double, James Harden and Russell Westbrook, are out.  The San Antonio Spurs, a perennial great team that looked great all this year, looks like junior varsity next to the Golden State Warriors.  Lebron James has to hear all year about how he's not Jordan and how shitty his team looks and that they're not cohesive together.  Yet the Warriors and the Cavaliers are undefeated in the playoffs and in their respective conference finals looking forward to Cavs v. Warriors III: This time it's...personal.

But it's really not.  The sports media did a really good job of telling us that the regular season mattered and here's some teams that we should really watch to make a move in the playoffs and I just threw up in my mouth.  If this is how the NBA is going to roll then we'll just have the Warriors and Cavaliers play 82 games against each other and if they end up going 41-41 then the tiebreaker will be all the players have to become insurance brokers for the rest of their lives.


Speaking of sports media, did you all see the purge at ESPN recently?  ESPN is reportedly hemorrhaging money and has decided that the best course of action is to get rid of anybody that viewers and readers follow at ESPN.  This is concurrent to a sinking ship and the captain yelling, "Quick, throw off all the life-jackets and signal flares!  We're sinking and need to save weight!"  Then the captain yelled, "Quick, throw the network to a live feed that we've been advertising for days for to Derek Jeter receiving a plaque in New York!"  None of these are good decisions.  I've always liked Derek Jeter...okay, I've always respected Derek Jeter but I thought it was a little ridiculous that a world-wide broadcasting network decided that during prime-time they would show the number retiring ceremony of one guy that played for one team.  I get what Jeter means to baseball, and he's a New York Yankee, and was always a good guy, and all this carries weight.  I get that.  But what does ESPN have to do with it?  There's lots of Yankees fans all over the world but there's mostly Yankees 'fans' all over the world.  They like the logo.  They like the pinstripes.  It's the only baseball team they ever heard of.  The numbers are skewed on the number of Yankees fans because of these reasons.  It's kind of like someone wearing Jordan's and not knowing who Michael Jordan is.  I know this.  Why doesn't the 'world-wide leader in sports'?


Well kids, it's good to chat again.  See you soon.  Float on, graceful swans.

The Studly Seven

I usually reserve the nostalgic 'talk about life' posts for July but I skipped this year because as Biscuits told you, I've been on radio silence.

The unicorns have been displeased, to say the least, at my attitude lately.  They said, and they looked it up and everything, that I have been a "cantankerous old blowhard that has disconnected himself with the rest of society and is content to live a life in solitude."  As proud as I was that they were able to so eloquently deliver that speech I was also infuriated that they used the internet outside of the allotted fifteen minutes I give them each week.  If I don't set a strict limit they'll just keep facetiming randoms from Scotland because they think it's absolutely hilarious that they're the national animal of Scotland.  I'm not kidding.  That's real.

But they're also right.  I have been cantankerous.  As far as disconnect goes...well...they wouldn't be the first to accuse me of that.  All of that aside though, they do deserve better.  Especially Biscuits...

When Biscuits was born, a rainbow formed in the sky, per usual with every unicorn birth.  Unfortunately his mother passed away soon after giving birth and his biological father was never in the picture and that left the little unicolt in my vastly unprepared hands.  I mean that literally.  I should have worn gloves because he was covered in this weird goo.  When he opened his eyes the first living being he saw was me and thus began a daily struggle to become a single parent to a mythical horse with a horn in it's head.

It wasn't pretty in the beginning.  Biscuits had a depth perception problem for the first few months or so and basically every wall in the house had a hole in it.  He also had a big proclivity for crapping.  He crapped so much that I should have opened my own bakery.  I should probably explain that unicorns crap cupcakes.  They still smell like shit though.

When it came time to mold Biscuits into the image that I wished for myself by pushing him into contact sports he looked me dead in the eye and said, "No, Dad, I want to be a writer."  My heart sank.  A writer?!  Nobody has ever accomplished anything by writing.  Writing sucks because it requires a partner.  You need somebody to read it.  Without anybody reading it, it just becomes words in the air...or the internet, lodged between weird tentacle porn and cheap hotel fares.  As much as I tried to deflect Biscuits on his fruitless life path...the boy continued on.  Despite the hooves he's somehow managed to overcome and be able to use keyboards quite effectively.  It probably has something to do with the magic powers that they're born with.

He's entered several writing competitions over the years and has never come close to winning.  Most of his entries are ramblings on rainbows and where to eat the best grass and how to accessorize head wear with a large spiral growth coming out of your head and the people don't seem to really connect with that.  But there he sits at the computer, mashing away with his hooves, and smiling the whole time.  People can be quite rude and I feel the need to protect him but he won't let me stop him.  I guess...I'm proud.  His resilience against such odds is inspiring.  He makes me want to be a better person.

Like the unicorns said, I've been cantankerous.  I really don't have a reason other than...I'm over it.  It.  Everything.  And then I look at Biscuits and see him just devastating the keyboard on the computer with his hooves, writing complete nonsense about stuff no real person cares about, and yet he just keeps mashing away.  It's inspiring.

Tomorrow is Biscuits' seventh birthday.  I think I'm going to take him to Key West to let him piss on the tree that Hemingway used to piss on.  He deserves it.  What better way to celebrate a birthday than honoring a piss monument from one of the greatest cantankerous writer's of all-time?





Happy seven years, Biscuits, happy seven years Studly Pastures, and happy seven years kids for still reading this nonsense that I just mash away at the keyboard.

Is Arby's Hiring?

This year has been marred with a lot of tragedies and I for one could use some good news for a change.

What's that?

The New York Yankees are telling Alex Rodriguez that his last baseball game will be Friday?!  And he's accepting this as the end?!

Look, if this is some sort of sick joke I need to know right now because I have been saving these balloons and confetti for a long, long time and I don't want to waste them on a ruse.

So it's real?  It's really real?!

DROP THOSE MOTHERFUCKING BALLOONS, KIDS!  A-ROD HAS BEEN DEFEATED!

The Yankees are going to release him into a 'supervisor' position but that's just fancy talk for how they would rather pay him $21 million dollars to still have to wake up early every morning and fight the traffic just like the rest of us.  Baseball contracts are guaranteed, no matter what, so of course the Yankees are going to give A-Rod one last 'go fuck yourself.'

Personally?  I would line a room with unmarked checks and release a squad of golden retriever puppies into that room and I would sleep well at night knowing that every cent of that twenty-one million had some sort of dog doo on it.  That's what he deserves.  Dog doo money.

The weird thing about the whole situation is that the Yankees called the press conference and he agreed to go, knowing full well what the conference was about, and delivered his own eulogy, and he's still going to play on Friday for his last game.

What's the point?  I am so confused.

The only legitimate box score he should have for that game is HBP (3).  I say that because old boy's last game will be at...my house!  The Tampa Bay Rays host the New York Yankees for Alex Rodriguez's last game and I hope we hit him with the ball every...SINGLE...TIME.  It's the perfect retirement gift.  No moment in the sun for him.  Not even a Ray.  (That was pretty clever, right?)

If you've read this blog for a while you've known for quite some time that I hate Alex Rodriguez and Cole Hamels aside he's my least favorite baseball player.  It's because he's the anti-Griffey Jr.  You were so gifted that you could have landed in the stars but you were friends, or "cousins", with the wrong people and your own ego got the best of you and you cheated.  You cheated, lied about cheating, felt the noose tightening, gave an interview about how you were cheating, got suspended for the most amount of time that any baseball player had been suspended for, got that lengthy suspension reduced to just a year, and then came back after that year.  Alex Rodriguez is so illegitimate when it comes to just about anything that I don't doubt that he's absolutely lost right now.  What the Hell is he supposed to do when everything he's ever done is a lie?

Everybody knew it too.  New York threw a year long celebration for Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez gets a day in Tampa.  The best part is that Jeter got a kayak from Tampa for retiring and A-Rod will probably get gonorrhea from Ybor city as his parting gift.  And this God is cruel and unforgiving and I couldn't agree with Him more.

I went Old Testament for Alex Rodriguez but that's all he gets.  Look, if all your life you were told you were going to be the greatest baseball of all time and you went out and played baseball and said to yourself, "Holy shit, they're right!" and then worked your ass off for years and years and your self-esteem was so low that when people said "Yep, you're great, but what if you could be better with this illegal drug?!" and you said "Sign me up!"  Then I just don't know...

There's a very good possibility that Alex Rodriguez is just an idiot.  But he's not an idiot.  He thinks we're the idiots, so much so that he's convinced of it enough to jointly give a press conference that wasn't his cutting from the team but it really was at the same time and embrace his last game that takes place more than a week later.  And sometimes sociopaths play sports instead of taking up weapons.

By the way, I'm kidding.  Alex Rodriguez definitely has gonorrhea already and won't have to rubber up when he's in Ybor.