The Studly Pasture's Equine and Canine Paradox!

Every now and again, if the unicorns have been behaving themselves for a solid amount of time, I'll gather them all up and sit them down for what I like to call "better time".  No, not "bettor", like our dear friends at Kalshi are doing down at the ol' Prediction Market but better.  As in, "what the Hell happened to Lunchables?  Am I crazy or did they used to be a whole lot better?"

It's "better time", like what can we do to be better?  Usually, I'll just spout off on some wild tangent about some random topic that I happen to know about for absolutely no reason.  Every once and a while I'll hit on something that resonates with the lil' horned horsies.  Speaking of lil' horsies, I'm sure we're all familiar with the colloquial term "dog and pony show."  But did you know that it was a real thing?

People back in the 19th century that lived out in the sticks and couldn't make it to the big city to see the circus would get their own little treat when a troupe of performing dogs and small horses would come by and do their act.  It was pretty much what you expected and not very exciting, but these weren't exactly the kinds of crowds that needed much more than that to feel alive.  Shakira wasn't readily available at the time.

My favorite thing about all of this is that the guy who started these shows originally called it his "equine and canine paradox" and that's about the best goddamn name for something I've ever heard.  I'm no musician but I'm about to become one so I can name my band that.  I'm thinking death metal is most appropriate.

Kids, I want you to succeed.  I have nothing but high hopes in all your endeavors.  It would mean the most to me if you just followed your dreams.  It's important.

We can be so much better.

Goddammit, we spend so much time fighting each other and trying to get one up on each other that shady motherfuckers think they can turn a profit on our misfortune and things like goddamn prediction markets turn up.

It makes me sick.  You can't win.  You can't.  They don't operate like that.  They take advantage of people that have passion and emotion and use it against them.  They turn the very thing you love against you.

There is a very clear and damning cloud of sports gambling hanging over this country right now and I have the luxury of being a fan of shitty ass teams, so I've never been tempted to drop my mortgage payment on a "sure" thing, but insert your goddamn name here!

Prediction market.  Get fucked.  I hate Kalshi, and Draft Kings, and whatever the fuck else ESPN is peddling these days.  It's a goddamn trap, kids, and I don't want any of you to fall into it.

What a time to be alive!  You can literally gamble on which player farts on the broadcast first!  Isn't that fun?!  By the way, we take several credit cards on file.  It's a sham.  It's a dog and pony show, kids.  We market it as something different, because nobody gives a flying shit about literal dogs and ponies, but that's all it is!  We're falling victim to a trick that's been around since the 1800's.  What the fuck are we paying for?  Hopes and dreams?  Thoughts and prayers?!

They'll take your house and not bat an eye.

Better, not bettor.  Remember, graceful swans.

Hard F

I've mentioned on several occasions that the unicorns are pretty strange when it comes to their everyday activities.  I still haven't figured out if it's because they are mythical creatures or if they're just fucking with me.  But anyways, come see the horned bastards.

One of the weird things that they like for some godforsaken reason is hard candy.  Not just any hard candy, like a brand or anything, but 'the one specifically your grandma likes', and I'm not really sure what to make of that.  See what I mean about them fucking with me?  Look, they could honestly just not know what they are called and that their only frame of reference is that older people tend to like the same type of candy.  They could also be playing a sick and twisted mind-game where they insinuate that they have been having sexual relations with your grandmother, I'm just not sure!

But one thing I am sure about is that the other day I was carrying a bucket of hard candies out to the unicorn stable and I misjudged the distance I had between the lock.  Here's a quick recap of what followed: the bucket dropped, the hard candies spilled everywhere, I grabbed my elbow, and yelled out, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

The unicorns' faces went pale, their eyes widened, and they immediately went into hysterics.  I'd like to believe that it was either because I was in such pain or shouted out such an obscene word, but it was probably because all of their precious grandma candies were now all over the ground.

You see, I've been cursing around the unicorns since they were born.  They need to know.  And I haven't been churching it up with 'fudge' and 'frickin' either.  They've been getting the hard F since they were unicolts because that's what's real.

I call it the hard F because if unicorns aren't exempt from it, why should you?

The Hall of Fame Game was the other day, and for those of you not in the know, it's the first preseason game of the NFL that they reserve for the two shittiest teams in the league.  It also corresponds to some of the inductees into the Hall that weekend, but you can't help but always think, "Football is back!...and I'm still going to watch baseball for a little bit."

This year's inductees include Roger Craig, Luke Keuchly, Adam Vinatieri, Larry Fitzgerald, and Drew Brees.  And most of those I gloss over and say congratulations to but also don't really care as much.

Except for you, Drew CHRISTOPHER Brees.  I said your name out loud like an old Jewish mother that just caught you stealing cookies and I hope you rot in...I don't know...some sort of beignet?  

I don't hate you Drew Brees.  I hate what happened.  I'm always going to be hung up on what could have been between us.  This Hall of Fame class gets a hard F because I'm always going to be chasing that dragon.  That Drewgon.  I'm chasing that Drewgon.

Don't tell your grandma, swans, but I'll be floating by for some candies later...

Silent P

 You know there's been a few things I've had to suspend about reality here on the unicorn stud farm.  I promise I did not write that last sentence for a bet I had on Kalshi, the PREDICTION market.  Look, I love a good loophole, in fact, it's my third favorite hole, but prediction market?  I prediction market you that they have to call themselves that to make certain illegal things legal.  And again, all good here.  I run a stud farm for unicorns while simultaneously writing a pop culture sports blog--you think all of my shit is legit?  You think I'm too legit?  Too legit to quit?!

I'm kidding.  I pay my taxes literally as soon as possible.

But one of the things that gets lost is a little thing I like to call mortality.  I like to call it that because so does everyone else.  I've talked about death on this blog quite a bit.  Someone's death, my death, the death of literally everything good...blah blah blah.  But nothing really shakes up your idea of mortality quite like the death of someone fairly young and in otherwise good health.  Kyle Busch, a NASCAR driver, died suddenly a few days ago from pneumonia and sepsis.  He was 41.

Look, I've had my fun at the expense of NASCAR and it's fans for quite some time and if they could read what I wrote they would probably be very upset.  But if you could read aloud the following for them I would be very grateful:

Nobody should die at 41.  My condolences to his family, his fans, and to anybody else that just lost a bunch of money on Kalshi, the prediction market, because he was supposed to race this past Sunday.

I make jokes because this is what I use in the face of mortality, this is nothing to mock the death of Kyle Busch.  His death is unfortunate and I'm sorry it happened.

Buuuuuuuut I can't shake it, this nagging goddamn feeling I have about pneumonia.  Anybody else have a feeling about pneumonia that they just can't shake?

First of all, that silent fucking P is ridiculous.  We all put up with it with pterodactyls because those are badass dinosaurs but why are we dealing with pneumonia?!  This is an infection of the lungs so why didn't we call it Lungitis?  I think that has a nice ring to it.  Pneumonia.  Was there an old monia?  Just in case, this one's new.

Second of all, pneumonia is very treatable.  Antibiotics, son, we've been developing them for ages.

So how does one, a professional athlete, die from a treatable infection like pneumonia?  Severe pneumonia lets you know you have it by coughing up sputum.  Sputum, kids, is mucus and if you're coughing it up, it's past time to consult your town doctor.  In Kyle Busch's case, it was blood.  He was coughing up blood.  I'm not a hypochondriac, but coughing up blood to me seems a little high on the panic meter.  

Look, death comes for us all, nothing matters and we're all hamsters blah blah blah, but we can prolong this shit.  It has nothing to do with toughing it out or being manly about it.  That nagging cough, that cold you can't shake, that feeling of malaise day in and out, please go get it checked out.  Pneumonia is treatable but you have to get someone to fucking treat it.  The chest X-ray on lungs that have pneumonia makes it look like a lava lamp. 

Get yourself checked out, kids.  Don't let this shit get you.  We're too epic for that, graceful swans. 

Apparently, You Can Leave

Well, that aged like friggin' milk, didn't it, kids?

I'm referring to my last post, approximately six months ago, when I asked the powers that be to not release Tua and Mike from the Twilight Zone because why should they have it so damn easy?  Is it too much to ask to have the direct protagonists of your suffering have to endure said suffering?  Just a little suffering?  A teensy, little, microscopic suffering perhaps?

Perhaps not.

They both got their walking papers and I'm still sitting here like I wasn't paying attention when they called my name and I'm too much of an introvert to get up and ask anybody and now I'm just going to sit here until my untimely death because that's less stressful to me somehow.

Now, there's some new guys.  We've got new guys now.  That's great.  I was just thinking that maybe the thing that could really jumpstart this whole thing and really give it a swift kick in the ass, is just some new guys.  Why didn't anybody just go out and get some new guys before all this shit happened?!

I don't even know their names or where they came from or whatever possible Hell they might've endured before this, but, heh, strap yourselves in fellas, shit gets weird around here.  It is now April of 2026.  The Miami Dolphins last won a playoff game on December 30th, in 2000.  That's 25 and a half years ago.  A quarter of a century of just nothing but bed-shitting and farting in the bathtub.  You know that goddamn game went into overtime?  CAN YOU EVEN FATHOM WHAT I'M TELLING YOU?!  The Dolphins needed extra time to sneak in a playoff victory in a world that DID NOT HAVE ANY SIGNIFICANT EVENT HAPPEN ON SEPTEMBER 11th YET.

But hey, we've got some new guys now.

Mike McDaniel went to the west coast to go and make an offensive juggernaut out of the San Diego...er...Los Angeles Chargers of Anaheim...er...whatever.  Because they have Justin Herbert, the guy that the Dolphins SHOULD have drafted instead of Tua, right?  Because that guy has just been wrecking it, right?  Or, he will, now that Mike McDaniel is there.  Isn't that exactly what's going to happen? It's so damn obvious from my seat in the penthouse of the Twilight Zone that if I were a betting man, I mean I'm obvioulsy not because HELLO, but if I were, I would put mucho dinero on the Chargers being the best offense in the NFL next year.

Tua goes to the Atlanta Falcons to be the backup quarterback in a situation where it almost seems like he can't lose no matter which way you spin it.  He's getting paid almost nothing from the team to be there because the Dolphins are paying the bill.  He's immediately entrenched as the backup to the current starter, Michael Penix (yes, that's actually his name), who is already on borrowed time because the Falcons drafted him WAY before he should have gone.  So, inevitably when Penix is benched, and Tua goes out there, he's going to be received very well by the fans because they don't even expect him to color within the lines very well at this point, so as long as he doesn't just completely barf all over himself, which he won't do because Tua has never done that, he's gonna be on easy fuckin' street there!

And I sit here, knowing full well they should have called my name by now but it's well past time for me to do anything about it and the end of the world can't come soon enough.

I often wonder how I felt on that day in December of 2000 because I honestly can't remember what it was like because it seems obvious now that was the last day I experienced a new emotion.  How ridiculous.  25 years?  That's what some people get sentenced to prison for killing someone for.  I could have killed someone, done hard time, and still not have missed a Dolphin's playoff victory.

There we go.  There's my Twilight Zone.

You Can't Leave

You know it's a wonderful thing when a baby unicorn is born into this world.  The weight of it all feels a little lighter, there's multiple rainbows in the sky, and Skittles are half off at every gas station.  We've had a number of newborns over the years down here at the farm and I've been proud to be present at each and every birth.

It's very important to me that as soon as the little unicolt witnesses the world for the first time in its existence that I'm there to grab it and hold it close and whisper ever so gently, "I'm so sorry, you're going to be a Miami Dolphins fan."  And then I give it a little kiss on the head, smack its ass, and off we go into this whole fantastic voyage. There's no sense in coddling in this day and age--it's going to hit you regardless.

The year is now 2025.  I've written about Andrew Luck being the potential savior of the Miami Dolphins but instead fate had him go to the Colts and he's now retired and in charge of Stanford making sure they keep winning math competitions and shit like that.  I've also written about Ryan Tannehill, my little Fuzzby, being the potential something of the Miami Dolphins but instead he went to the Titans and now he's retired and...welp...I don't honestly have a clue what he's doing now.  But now the Dolphins have Mike McDaniel and Tua Tagovailoa and things have been...the goddamn same.  IT'S THE SAAAAAAAAMMMMMEEEE!!!!

How? How is this possible?  

How can you be so ridiculously mediocre for two decades?  TWO!  DECADES!  Decades, kids, in this instance is the amount of time it takes to fill ten years and two, is well, TWO OF THOSE!  Could you imagine, just for the sake of humoring me, going twenty years and not being able to do something that is completely in your wheelhouse of doing?  Like, just for shits sake, let's say that I needed you to change someone's brake pads on their car and you don't know brake pads from the hole in your ass.  You don't think, in twenty years, you could not only change brake pads but also probably become goddamn Callahan Auto Parts from Sandusky, Ohio! Twenty years. I'm giving you twenty years to be Chris Farley in Tommy Boy and you can't fuuuuuuuuucking do it.

I say all of this because it's 2025 and the Dolphins are currently 1-5 and looking damn shitty doing it too!  The talking heads are calling for the heads of everyone from top to bottom and that sounds like a rational response to me for a team that somehow has little expectations and falls short of them anyway like the little rascals they are.

Rational.  Uh oh.

I used a 'no no' word.

You see, kids, we're stuck in the Twilight Zone and things like 'sense' and 'rationalization' have no meaning here.  In fact, they're flagged as 'no no' words.  Can't use 'em.  

So that leaves me with the alternative.  I propose something radical and hear me out--or don't--I don't care.  Don't fire them.  Make them stay.

MAKE THEM STAY.

If they stay, and after every loss, they have to face a battery of questions from the astounded media that have been hired and retired since you've been relevant, well then maybe we're getting close to where I feel.  A whole cycle of reporters asking why you're still shitty when everything else that has been shitty became unshitty? That sounds like purgatory and that's exactly where I've been for TWENTY YEARS.

And I want them here with me.  Mike, Tua, get yourselves comfortable because we should be joined at the goddamn hip.  You don't deserve the luxury of being fired.  You have to stay, right here, with me. So grab a shovel because this unicorn shit piles up like you wouldn't believe.

The Old Man And The See?

 What?

What's everybody looking at?

Sheesh.

So it's been...oh shit...years.  It's been years. I was in a coma.  Just bluntly like that.  Coma.  Tell me I wasn't?  Be that jerk.  You see the thing about a coma is that it's so convenient for just disappearing for huge amounts of time while simultaneously being immune to the world's struggles.  And also letting that body hair have a reason to grow like a jungle before...well...white men.

Is all this still kosher?  Was it ever?  I'm sorry, I just got defrosted.  Did I mention that?  I was in a coma, while frozen, because you can do both.  It wasn't anything planned, funny story, I fell into a vat.

But then I got out of it and was subsequently put into a coma and frozen.

I'm clearly talking out of my ass, but who isn't these days?

I mean, clearly you knew I was coming back for this, Nick?

We don't go gently into the night.

I'm referring to of course, Nick Satan...I'm sorry, still defrosting, Nick Saban.  He retired this year and I barely noticed except for the fact that sunshine happened again.  What an absolutely legend...ary ass-wipe.  He's the epitome of "smug asshole" face, and if you are unsure, it's not pronounced eppy tomb but more like ep pit of me.  It helps to break it down by the syllables, which is another word he can't say either because the Devil's tongue is forked and it sounds like szzzzzzzz.

I wasn't really in a coma, I just felt like we needed a break.  Didn't we need a break?  Don't we all need a break from some time to time?  I just happen to have no idea of the affects of time so I just went away for...well...this amount.

I've wanted to come back for so many other things but my publicist wouldn't let me.  I'm just kidding, my publicist was begging me to come back.  It was embarrassing for her because none of this is published and it's definitely not for the public and beyond that, the public doesn't want it, in fact, I asked them and they collectively said, "NO".

But Nick Saban retired!  I always come back for the death of a villain!

Now, as happy as I am, that a truly, horrible person, that definitely hates dogs, announces his "retirement", which I know just means "I'll be back in another form and you'll never truly defeat me, szzzzzzzz." He's still considered the greatest.

The greatest?!

I keep that in lower-case so you don't confuse that with the actual "Greatness", Muhammad Ali, and I will DIE before the two are considered one and the same.

But still, he says that he has a problem with college kids making money, while in college, which affectively ruined his advantage over the rest of his competition, so he effectively said, "Fuck it", and just retired.  And he mentioned a 'touching' story about his wife, how they would host breakfast and invite the new 'recruits' over and how that doesn't mean anything now.

Barf.

I have no high-horse, no box to stand on, it's literally me and the unicorns and now they're wondering why I don't pay them, Saban!  What the fuck!  Just retire and keep your big mouth shut!  

Kidding.

They don't even know what money is, they just go ape-shit for honey combs.

The big problem here, is that Santa, errrr...whatever his name is, retires when, finally, college players are getting paid.  He's afraid of the future when the rest of us were always afraid of the past.  If I break my neck on an oil rig as an intern, who cares?  Uh, probably my family, everyone that's watched me grow on oil rigs over the years, and, I don't know, the muuuueeellllliiiiiioooons watching at home on their goddam tv!  Maybe, just maybe, before I sacrifice literally everything I have there can be some compensation first?  You know, in case I break my neck?

The old man left because he was afraid that the future wouldn't be in his favor.

No shit.

The future isn't something to be afraid of, or run from, we embrace it.

Float on, graceful swans.

Los Delfines Son Malos

 To illicit fear in the heart of your enemies, one must choose a symbol of strength and ferocity.  A symbol so powerful that just upon the very sight of it would speak volumes and send you running with your tail betwixt your legs.  That word of the day is brought to you by Subway.  Eat fresh, douchebags.

My symbol is a dolphin.  An elegant, sophisticated, and incredibly intelligent marine mammal, fair enough, but not exactly the animal you want to strike fear into the hearts of your combatants.  Most people would probably associate the dolphin with balancing a beach ball on it's nose, or whatever the Hell you call a dolphin's nose.  Beak?  Weird protruding mouth with way too many teeth?  But also weird, gummy teeth?  Also, let's not forget the blowhole, my favorite feature of the dolphin.  So how does it breathe?  Oh, there's a hole in the top of it's head that it surfaces from the depths of the water and takes a deep breath from and goes back down into the abyss again.  You see, the dolphin is so smart, that it breathes from a hole in it's head.

Athletically?  Dolphins are incredible!  They swim through the water like a knife through cheese and also jump through hoops just to flaunt their own talent.  When it comes to physical contact though, dolphins are like the poet laureate of the seas.  They'd rather just sit back and talk about how intelligent they are.  Which is fine...for dolphins.  Now when it comes to human Dolphins, specifically from Miami, they're not very athletic at all.  In fact, they also have a blowhole, but it's not for breathing, it's just a giant gaping hole in their brains.  That's it.

Kids, I've been in the Twilight Zone for quite some time now, so I'm not so easily surprised these days.  It's no shock to me that the Miami Dolphins are terrible because that's all I have ever known.  Did you hear me?!  I've only known failure from them and I've been alive...well...a while.  It's coming to the point where I give up on me and just hope the best for the unicorns because those dum dums followed my footsteps and became fans of them too!  If not for me...for the unicorns?!

Miami is crap.  Tua is hurt, our starting quarterback is named 'Jacoby', and the offensive line is made up of whatever was left of the stockpile of Fatheads.  You guys remember Fatheads?  Good concept, but their clientele was very limited.  As a grown ass man, how do you explain to your wife why a life-size sticker of Ray Lewis on your wall is a good idea?  

What does the future hold for my dear Miami Dolphins?  Cheap ticket prices.  There's nothing else.  You know, they say that purgatory is worse than Hell, and I agree.  At least with Hell, you've made it to your destination.  

It's all blowholes, kids.  Take a deep breath.