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.