Jonathan Papelbon, Crazy Motherfucker: A Tribute

It's been quite a week for the Red Sox generally, and David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in particular. But no one has really dominated our consciousness over the past ten days, from AL East clinch to ALDS clinch, like Jonathan Robert Papelbon, fast becoming my first undisputed #1 favorite Red Sox since Nomar led those hateful teams in the early 20-Aughts.

Below, submitted without comment (since none could do Paps' genius justice), a short multimedia retrospective, in reverse chronological order....

Whoring for Attention, October 4

This is our new feature, "Whoring for Attention," a link dump for things I read today that I really enjoyed. Why the name, you ask? Because the only way people are going to read this thing without us advertising it is if we link to a lot of other blogs, and they see these links, and come back to us and enjoy our stuff enough to link to us. (Gotta love the blogger circlejerk ethic.) To this point, I'm pretty sure the only people reading this site are the four of us. And my wife, just to make sure I'm not making fun of her. Anyway, on to the links....

Jose Melendez, our fellow pseudonymous blogger, has a topnotch (even by his high standards) KEYS TO THE GAME that gave me extra faith that the Red Sox will be in good shape, even if every game isn't as magically delicious as Beckett's Game One.

My favorite part is this: So what does this tell us about today’s contest? If one looks at the record, the Normans are 1-0 against the Angles historically, so one should anticipate a Red Sox win today followed by five hundred years of intermarriage, the eventual merger of the Red Sox and Angles into one team, and then centuries of colonial rule over the Cleveland Indians.

Also a big fan of the Soxaholix treatment of last night's game. Makes me wish I still worked with people who cared about baseball at all, let alone helping me enjoy the warm and fuzzy.

BC has a sneakily important game against Bowling Green (is that the Ohio one or the Kentucky one?), and Eagle in Atlanta's got your preview. Every other BC fan I know is just amazed to see a "6" or "7" next to our alma mater's name, but MGoBlog's Blogpoll seems to have noticed more than the "real" polls that our last two wins over presumed patsies have been something less than dominant.

And while I'm at it, I am in awe of the Upon Further Review that Brian puts up after every Michigan game. Bill does a good job of recapping the BC games in very general terms, even going position-by-position, but there's nothing quite like the MGoBlog play-by-play recap. And Brian is dead-on about Michigan's lack of creativity; even in row 92 of the Big House I can immediately call which direction we'll be running.

Like Justin Wolfers' students, I, too, was warned not to do sports economics papers, and that seems like sound advice. It's Toy Department Economics, and yet people love to write these papers because it's fun to write about sports. His reason #6 really carries the most weight, I think.

A bit more geekiness: the debate on Greg Mankiw's blog about SCHIP. The White House guy has a surprisingly nuanced (for this administration) argument, but of course I agree more with Furman.

Finally, any post about football that also mentions Queens of the Stone Age gets the Whoring for Attention treatment, and I'm a big fan of Big Daddy Drew's work. Kissing Suzy Kolber was obviously one of our big influences for this whole team blog thing, and it's his stuff that makes it worth the trip. But stop offering to pay people to injure Brady! I'd offer one dollar more to not injure him, but $31 times 11 defenders times 14 remaining opponents will get expensive.

Man on Man Action: Get Off The Bus

I'm obviously anti-bus, because My People aren't allowed to sit in the front. But aside from Ms. Parks struggle, there's another reason to hate that particular form of transportation:

Uggos.

When I lived in Boston, I used to take the Green Line to work downtown. The Green Line is infuriatingly slow, especially in the morning, when asshole drivers take left turns immediately in front of the train, and the "next three cars" rule at traffic lights slows everything down even further. (I prefer Houston's answer to the whole "cars in the way of the light rail" thing - the train just runs over the cars.) So to pass the time, I often liked to play a game in my head: Queen of the T (the name was Keyser's idea; turns out he was playing the same game). Simple enough, you just find the most attractive woman on the train and anoint her Queen. When she gets off (heh), a new Queen is anointed. This continues until I exit the train, or until I climax.

You can't play this game on the bus. Everyone on the bus is hideous.

Now, this is not unrelated to the issue of the poors that Dr. Cartola presented. Beauty is an increasing function of wealth, as we geeks who have never touched a beautiful woman except for when paying her ten Canadian dollars per song (God bless Montreal and their liberal touching policy) like to say. You're more likely to be good looking if you're rich. Sure, there are a few recent immigrants with enchanting eyes and full Latina bosom if you can see past the unwashed hair and the feces-stained janitorial uniform, and maybe in the suburbs where the train isn't an option you'll find the occasional looker. But in general the poors who populate the buses are some combination of fat, old, handicapped, and smelly, often all four. This is especially true in Boston, where attractive women are hard to come by to begin with - thanks for sending us all the smart ugly chicks from your high schools, America!

(A brief aside: Why are rich people better looking? Obviously they can afford better hair and skin care and gym memberships and the occasional plastic surgery, but this piece at Marginal Revolution suggests that because men are shallow for good looks, and women are shallow for big wallets, a rich man will marry a beautiful woman regardless of her social status. Looks are in large part hereditary, so their children are more likely to be good looking and certainly more likely to be rich. Repeat for a few generations and you have a spoiled socialite with a puppy purse who doesn't even need the nose job you offered to buy her for her Sweet 16.)

Anyway, with my extensive experience riding public transportation in the Hub Of The Universe, here's my list of the various MBTA lines, in ascending order of average rider attractiveness.

9. The RIDE

This isn't really fair. How many hot disabled chicks have you ever met? Plus it's mostly grannies, and it takes a lot of imagination to picture them forty years younger when they had gams that wouldn't quit. Unfortunately, television has killed my imagination.

8. The Bus

The problem with the bus, besides its eco-hostility and its unpredictability, is that it tends to run through the bad neighborhoods. I'm not sure what direction the causality points, because it might be that the areas along the subway lines became better when they were connected to downtown by light rail while people moved away from the areas without subway access, leaving the subway-less areas for undesirables.

7. Orange Line

It's pretty much the bus on rails. It's only saved by the fact that you'll occasionally get the Dorchester girl with some serious booty, and I don't mind saying that I've become more of a fan of cushion-for-the-pushin' as I've gotten older.

6. Blue Line

Revere Hair alert! Only Worcester rivals Revere for bad hairstyles, but Worcester's accent isn't nearly as ugly. (Worst accent: Providence. Period.) The Blue Line is spared by the occasional airport commuter or chick heading to the beach.

5. Red Line

Upset special! Yes, you get the hot chicks who want to find husbands at Harvard and MIT that will one day be rich, but you also get too many redheaded Irish lasses, and redheadedness is such a hit-or-miss thing when it comes to being attractive.

4. Silver Line

I've only ridden it a few times, but I have a feeling that this one is going to be rising up the rankings if the waterfront area becomes the new hot area, as it appears to be.

3. Commuter Rail

There's just something about MILF's in power suits that really gets me going. Queen Of The Commuter Rail is a fine, fine game, which is good because the train from Worcester only goes like 15 mph the whole way.

2. Green Line

My old home. The most attractive women in the city go to Boston College; of course, they'll never talk to you because they're too important, but they sure are fun to look at (and my GPA in non-economics courses will attest to that fact). There's also the occasional (usually Asian) BU hottie, at least the ones who aren't 400 pounds. And the Green Line is the one that goes right through downtown, connecting the hotspots at Lansdowne Street and Fenway, the Newbury Street area, and the neighborhood around the Garden. You could do worse than to spend your Friday night riding from BC to North Station and back with your hand in your pants - of course, one trip might take you all night, but it's worth it.

1. Night Owl

Drunk chicks. Like fish in a barrel.

Man On Man Action: Bus:Poors::Camel:Sand-monkeys

Why do Kurds suddenly appear? Everytime, I drink beer.
Just like money, they long to be, grossing Jews.

Why is it that an alarming number of poor people ride the bus? The bus isn’t just a place to hang out and discuss food stamps. I take it to work everyday due to parking in Boston being relatively non-existent as do, I am sure, lots of other regular working Joes. Why must we endure their poorness?

Solution. We give the poors their own bus line. Wait a minute. Got to catch my train of thought. PETA is outside protesting Panera Bread into a megaphone. But that’s a post for another day. Anyways. The Poors. Own Bus Line. I know what you are thinking – Rosa Parks is flashing before your eyes and the riots in Birmingham. You are no doubt marching on me right now. But hear me out.

The Handicaps have their own Buses. Short yellow ones and THE RIDE. Why not one for the poors. I’m sick of getting a face full of unwashed Asian male crotch in my face when I sit down on the bus to and from work. The other day some dude was self-medicating himself, obviously just released from the hospital – arm in a sling, with a six pack of Bud Lite in a brown paper bag. One you say? NO, six at the same time. He asked me the time and I was all “MILLER TIME!” Not really, but it was definitely time for him to ride a different bus.

Spike Lee had it all wrong. Get OFF the bus, I say.

Rollo and Lesotho, forget prison. We need to re-segregate public transportation for the good of the nation.

This has been another random ranting of Rick Cartola.

Man on Man Action: Penal Manipulation (continued)

Note: Lex may not be sympathetic because he's not a hippie unwashed tree-hugging grad student, but real life got in the way this week, so my response was delayed. Also, football-induced hangover got in the way, but even I'm not that sympathetic to that. Anyway, here are the long-awaited details of our plan to reform the penal (heh!) system.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have two solutions for you - one immediate-term, one more long-term. Both solutions answer concerns from both sides of the aisle; they are punitive but rehabilitating, force convicts to become productive members of society while at the same time staying safely away from the temptation of potential victims and, as a bonus, help solve two of America's most pressing problems.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're sending some of our convicted criminals to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're sending others to space, to work in mines around the solar system.

Let's examine both options, beginning with the first one.

Crank It, Soulja Boy

I support the troops. I do. Why wouldn't I support them? The White Man is going to keep sending them to oil- and/or drug-producing countries whenever there's an election coming or the politicians' sponsoring industry needs an infusion of government cash, so we'll always need soldiers, and I don't exactly want to go, so I support them because I know that if not for them, it could be me.

(I'm not a coward - ok maybe I am - but mostly I'm just taking into account what we economists call comparative advantage. I hate risky activities, I suck at video games, I don't really listen to authority figures, I'm an asthmatic with bad knees; I would be the worst soldier ever. And while the guys in Iraq might be better researchers (they certainly work harder than I do), they're that much better at soldier-ing than I am, so they should do the fighting while I research why they have so much trouble getting health care when they get back. Boom, comparative advantage, and I'm delightfully shrapnel-free.)

So I support the troops, but lately we've been losing our wars. Take a look at our conflicts since the turn of the 20th century:

• World War I - We got in late, maybe made some difference, but we're talking a couple of feet in the trenches, not miles. Germany and Austria-Hungary just had the good sense to call the whole thing off before everyone in Europe got the plague again.
• World War II - D-Day was fucking badass, and we did a number on Japan, but we never win that war in Europe if Germany isn't concentrating on the Soviets to the east. Lex is going to reiterate his opinion that I'm a communist, but I almost don't blame them for keeping half the continent for the next fifty years. Almost.
• Korea - China pretty much kicked our asses.
• Vietnam - North Vietnam did kick our asses.
• Grenada and Panama - The Boy Scouts could have handled these just as efficiently.
  
• Iraq I and Serbia - See how much easier this is when the whole world is actually on your side?
• Afghanistan - Sorry, where did you say we're still doing battle? Never heard of it.
• Iraq II - The less said, the better.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think it's the soldiers are doing a bad job. If you're a teacher and you never teach them how to read, and don't tell them anything about the test beforehand, and when the test finally does arrive you tell them to draw pretty pictures on their bubble sheets instead of filling in the answers, all the while mocking the Kaplans and Princeton Reviews of the world... is it your students' fault when they get 400s on their SATs?

So if we're going to waste so many Americans' lives on something that we're probably not going to win, and even if we do win will end up with loads of casualties, why waste good productive American lives? Why do we keep sending our reservists, people who have jobs that actually keep this economy going?

Instead, we propose sending our convicts. If I may, for a moment I'm going to pretend that I'm a gay-hating, hypocritical-megachurch-going, gas-guzzler-driving, union-busting, immigrant-shooting, rich-fellating blue-blooded conservative and list the advantages of this plan from the (cough) right side of the aisle:

• They're already shown that they're good with guns.
• Convicts are goddamned intimidating, much more so than the elementary school teachers and computer programmers that we sent there already.
• Finally gets these crooks some discipline.
• Running 80 miles in 120 degree heat carrying 50 pounds of gear is way more punitive than anything we have in the American penal system, short of executions.
• America - ten percent whiter.
  
• Those A-Rabs won't understand their rap songs any better than we do.
• Frees up room in prison to send the pot smokers and war protesters.
• Much less buttsex.

Yikes, that was scary. Now, from the more accepting, understanding, logical left side of the aisle:

• The military (at least, if you believe the commercials) provides valuable on-the-job training and structured living to the convicts.
• The possibility of combat death is an actual deterrent, unlike the death penalty or spending five-to-ten in lockup with all the people who Whitey thinks you look like.
• Convicts are less likely to spend their time learning how to be better criminals like they would in prison.
• Who knows? They might be better at this military thing. Hell, they can't be worse.
• You know, I agree with that whole "convicts are goddamned intimidating" thing.

The only downside I can see is that if there's zero chance that politicians are going to have to worry about their sons Tad and Chip possibly being drafted if the war becomes a quagmire (unless, of course, Tad and Chip are exposed in a point-shaving scheme in their lacrosse tournament), then we're going to pick more fights with countries and start more wars, and the last thing politicians (and not just Republicans) need is another incentive to be more bellicose.

Space, Bitches

Of course, our other plan will take some experimentation and some serious technological breakthroughs, but both Lex and I are equally as excited about this one as we are about the soldier one, possibly more so.

Not sure if you've noticed, but we've had some trouble creating more fossil fuels, because THESE FUCKING DINOSAUR BONES WON'T BURN GODDAMN YOU T-REX AND HEY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY I'M TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD YOU CAN'T KICK ME OUT! Leaving aside the pollution thing, coal, oil, and natural gas supplies are starting to dwindle (though, admittedly, we've been saying that for decades) and prices are climbing. Energy is not cheap, and it's not going to get cheaper.

At the same time, NASA has been a clusterfuck of uselessness. Simpsons quotes are always overused, but the "ants screwing tiny screws in space" thing doesn't seem to be far from the truth. What has space exploration ever given us besides Tang and DirecTV? (Many thanks to my landlord for not allowing me to install the satellite dish in my side yard. Now how am I supposed to watch the Big Ten Network? Whores!) It's time to direct NASA to two projects with actual utility to us terrestrial beings: (1) meteor defense and (2) interplanetary mining. We'll save discussion of the former for another time, because I want to focus on the latter, because we know our convicts here on Earth can help us out.

For centuries, unskilled labor fed our insatiable lust for such precious gems as diamonds, gold, and coal. If there's anything that convicts have proven themselves at, it's being unskilled. Put the two together, and we've got some potential. But we don't want them mining here on Earth, because mining is disruptive to the environment, dangerous, and increasingly fruitless.

So let's get Xzhibit to Pimp My Space Shuttle - add seats for about two dozen, a bigger cargo hold for energy-producing minerals, better takeoff and landing gear to handle the frequent round trips. And, of course, a motherfucking Bose stereo with heavy bass that will knock your teeth out to blast the tunes for those long trips to Mars.

Why should the unholy army of the night... er, conservatives... like this plan?

• There's something oddly erotic about watching those criminals blasted off this Earth at mach 6. After all, we've been saying for years that we should blast our trash into space.
• Cheap labor from other planets? We love outsourcing!
  
• Who do you think is going to make all the money from our space mining ventures?

And liberals?

• Space mining is obviously heavily unionized.
• It's about time we start destroying some other planet for a change.
• People will be confessing to crimes left and right for the chance to go to space. For instance, Lance Bass just admitted to being Nicole Brown Simpson's real killer just on the off chance this plan comes to fruition.
• Dude, there's got to be some killer drugs on Venus.
• A revival of David Bowie music.

So that's our plan. Bask in its genius! Bow down to the thinkers!

I'll stop here for comments, because this is already longer than my dissertation will be.

A Bunch of Cunts

I just wanted to point out that I am blogging with three of the laziest cunts to ever crawl out of an enlarged uterus.

It's no wonder they're all shitty in the sack (I asked Rollo's sister) and leave

Man on Man Action: Penal Manipulation - Is There A Way To Rehabilitate Prisoners Effectively Without Requiring Prisons?

Preface: Rollo and I were enjoying a little political sparring today in between comparing the relative sizes of our girlfriends' vaginas. In one short second, both Rollo, the lunatic leftwing Democrat of the group, and myself, the middle of the road Amerocrat agreed on something.

The current prison system is tired, abused, and not working anymore - sort of like Keyser's mom. The idea behind the prison system in America, before we started jailing people for being of a slightly different color or perhaps carrying a Koran and/or a pipebomb strapped to his grundle, was to take those with questionable behaviors and teach them the wonders of being an effective member of society -- someone Democrats could wring a little more tax money out of to pay for late term abortions, no doubt -- but it WAS a noble cause.

Prison was supposed to be more than a "time-out" for adults. It was supposed to be a place to install a basic moral foundation. It was supposed to be a place where a societal deviant could learn a basic trade or earn a degree from an accredited program. Though more than that, it was to be a place where a convict could have the time to reflect on how their actions did not fit with society without the fear of not being able to afford food, clothing, shelter, and DirectTV.

The death penalty is not enough. Republicans think of jail as punishment. Democrats think of jail as an adult boarding school that should have internet access, voting terminals, sushi restaurants, and unlimited gay sex. There will never be a middle ground between the "Kill them before they become the next Islamic House Representative" and the "Let them free and with a taste for man sex" groups.

This is where our wonderful cross party solution can fit in between like the Ru Paul middle of a kinky bologna sandwich. Yes, Democrats, the bread is organic.

Don't Taze Me Bro.....

The Kaiser Has Finally checked in.

Please excuse my tardiness, but due to some technical difficulties with having the password changed Cuntolo I did not get access last weekend as I would have liked. And all week I have been traveling to your home state of Jersey to find your crack-whore given-up-for-adoption sister to give me head.

Fortunately I was able to find her and score myself a Velvet Hattrick.

What I wanted to discuss last week, before I left is how short people have no reason to live, although my boy Randy Newman stopped a little short, as he forgot to mention dykes, kykes and boy-bands. Seriously, other than for occasionally allowing me to enjoy the midget-porn fetish what do these mini-me-wanna-be's add to society? Don't get me wrong I'll let one of them hold my beer on their head while they suck me off, but realistically that's a need that has been replaced since the invention of the beer-helmet.

Changing topics and steering back towards the title of this post, Taser guns, and their place in society. Frankly I feel that they are an underused weapon. Let's think of some candidates that had they been "tazed" the world would have been better off. Wacko Jacko, OJ, Barney, Whitney Houston, Cartolo's dog Sambo (while giving it anal, just for a little extra kick), Britney Spears (for that lard-ass VMA performance) and the Bee-gees (in any order)

Great Travel Ideas with Lex Lesotho! Week One

So the court finally approved your vacation, your probation officer has signed off on the travel document, and the check you sent to the probate office has cleared. Where are you going? How are you getting there? How long are you staying? Who are you staying with? What is the phone number of the residence you are staying at?

Well let Lex be your travel agent to world. Let me lead you to some of the most wonderful sights this planet has to offer. I will be everything a travel agent is except for charging you money and being gay.

I had a hard time this week narrowing down where to send my wonderful internet friends IRL. (IRL means "In Real Life" in computer talk. Lex is interningual.) This week's pick is a homegrown good-ol' American city. With the rapid implosion of the Greenback and the beyond explanation Loonie parity, I figured all of you trashy low middle class dickheads would want to stick to your own.

So without further ado:

Destination One: Seattle, Washington

Nothing speaks louder for the United States than a Tall Green Tea Frappuccino Blended Cream. Seattle is one of the cornerstones of America if only because it's in one of the corners of America (sorry Alaska, you're more Canadian than American, so piss off, you hoser). Seattle is the home of a powerhouse NFC team, the Seahawks. By the way, Green Bay is a powerhouse NFC team too. It's like betting on the Special Olympics: It may be exciting to lay one hundred dollars on the American Handicap Bowling team, but your still laying money on the American Handicap Bowling team.

Seattle is also home to the Major League Baseball team, the Mariners. The team mascot is the Mariner Moose. "Hey Lex, how does a moose fit in with an obvious maritime themed franchise?" Good question, Timmy! You, like hundreds of thousands of other brain-stem equipped Americans have asked the same question. Unfortunately, Seattle is the only school district that teaches their young from grade one that Christopher Columbus was from China and was actually a moose. He discovered Seattle on April 6,1977. During his perilous journey across the ocean, he stopped in Japan and picked up Ichiro Suzuki, the gayest baseball player in the entire world. Rumor has it that Alex Rodriquez left the Mariners because he was intimidated by Ichiro's lisp and exotic Asian features. Yes, Seattle teaches this to their children.

So I suppose it comes as no surprise that Seattle offers SLUT rides free to children under 5. The country is still reeling from acronym fever after being assaulted by NASA, RSVP, NAFTA, CIA, NAMBLA, FBI, R2D2, OBIWAN, HOLLYWOOD, etc etc. SLUT is just the obvious next step. Hey, we have a MOAB in Florida, why not a little SLUT up in the far northwest corner? Traveling by SLUT is the only way to get around the south-side of Seattle. It's cheap, dirty, and Tomasi's mom is a conductor.

So, where do we go when we travel to the birthplace of Grunge and the final resting place of rock? So watching a soft swinging, fast running, homosexual at Safeco field isn't a turn on and watching a bunch of grown men grunt with neon green wigs and gloves and face paint isn't your idea of romance? Well, we have a couple of interesting places for you to see: Pepperspray Productions, a fast growing den of retardist Liberal media, claims it's headquarters in Seattle. This "edgy" company has the distinction of producing video tapes of a supposed Army Ranger who killed over 200 people, including people praying at mosques, while fighting in Iraq. They were supported by local Muslim activists (go figure, Muslims are sneaky shits?) and subsequently apologized profusely for publishing the disgusting lies and propaganda which turned out to contain not one shred of fact. Whoops! Must be a conservative conspiracy or the work of the Jews.

Anyway, where else can we go?

Well, don't you worry, because wherever you go downtown, you'll be safely protected by a halo of video cameras, and if you happen to wander away from the areas where a bunch of people can monitor you picking your nose and scratching your nuts, the police will be on hand with their own private recording devices to catch the act, jerk off to it at home, and then sell it on ebay!

In conclusion, because I'm sick of talking about Seasshole, Washington and because after spending two hours trying to find positive stories about the place I found absolutely nothing, I will leave you with one nice story that doesn't involve Seattle at all, at least in the sense that God hates someone more than it:

Biker's penis hit by lightning

A Croatian motorbiker's penis was zapped by lightning as he stopped beside the road to take a leak.

Ante Djindjic, 29, from Zagreb, said: "I don't remember what happened. One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.

"Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis."

Djindjic, who suffered light burns to his chest and arms, added: "Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually."

Poor guy. I hope he takes on the nickname "Hard Charger".

Lex out! Email me for travel discounts and to get Cartola's mom's phone number! ON'T CLICK THAT LINK AT WORK!. It's a picture of Cartola and his mom that I took about ten years ago!

The Greatest Hate of All

Whitney Houston is a worthless, lying piece of garbage. No, I’m not talking about her recent meltdowns with the crack pipe or her bearded sham of a marriage to an abusive Bobby Brown. What did the five fingers say to the face!?! I am talking about the lyrics to her song “The Greatest Love of All,” chiefly the last four laughable lines of the chorus:

I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

Chorus:

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows I
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

The fuck? Besides this song making me want to puke every time I hear it – I mean come on, who doesn’t know the future will be composed of our children? But seriously, where do you get off saying that “the greatest love of all is easy to achieve.” Do you know how many depressed people struggle with the ability to love themselves? To just get out of bed in the morning and face the mirror? “Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be?” How about I go start a tickle fight with my cranky, ex-girlfriend or make mud pies with my noxious landlord when the downstairs neighbors won’t stop parking their car in my spot. How about I take my dick and throw it in your ear world!?!?!?

Ladies and gentleman, I give you the fucking Care Bear Stare. “Learning to love yourself is not that easy.” Life sucks. Then you die.

I'm going to go drink until I shit myself.

Have a nice weekend.

--- Cartola

Exploring my modest racial ambiguity

It's like they've been filming my entire life.


As far as the family tree that I was forced to make (en francais! for some reason) in seventh grade would have me believe, I am 100 percent pure-bred European-American. Experience tells me differently. Surely, I'm not trying to back out of my presumably Caucasian heritage; being white has its advantages, after all:

• I've never been arrested, even on the occasions when I have been blind-drunk (c.f. Sunday morning around 3:45 a.m.) or stealing something (c.f. the "No Ballplaying Allowed" sign that used to be across the street from Keyser and my old apartment, and now hangs in a friend's campus office). It goes without saying that I've never had drugs planted on me either.
• I have no problem obtaining credit.
  
• People don't feel the need to do something fancy when they shake my hand, like grab closer to my wrist or just the fingertips or that little spin-move that Reggie Miller used to do before Pacers games.
• Much smaller chance of having sickle-cell anemia.

But there have been a number of occasions when I have had to call into question whether there isn't more to my ancestry. Occasions like these:

• Summer 1999 - Gerald, my fellow bank teller and a native of Ghana, continuously calls me "my brother" throughout our time working together. Granted, if criticisms of Barack Obama are to be believed, Africa-Africans like Gerald cannot be considered "black," but it was still nice to be added to The Struggle.
• Fall 2001 - I'm at a tailgate, talking to this friend of a friend, an Asian-American in his mid-20's. On the other side of the grill, another friend's mother asks her son, "That guy that [Rollo] is talking to, is that [Rollo]'s brother?"
• Winter 2002 - A dozen or so of us go on a Caribbean cruise, including Cartola's future girlfriend and Keyser and his then-girlfriend-now-wife. We're all on the lido deck getting the security debriefing and practicing our loading of the lifeboats. Each of us is supposed to have a life vest, with a whistle and a little light to help rescuers find you in the dark. My life vest lacks those two features. The only other person whose life vest lacks those features? Our token black friend. It's a conspiracy, we decide.
• Spring 2005 - While walking down the street in Ann Arbor, an older black gentleman ambles towards me, spots me, smiles, and says, "How's it hangin', my brotha?"
• Yesterday (and my inspiration for this post) - Again, walking down the street in Ann Arbor, though a different street and a different older black gentleman. This time, my greeting is, "My soul brotha!"

Could it be that for all this time I've been mislabeled? Perhaps my father's very thick, barber-scissor-breaking hair that I've inherited is not just knotty but nappy. Perhaps my smallish eyes and ability to do hours of pointless algebra is due to my Asian heritage. Perhaps my odor is... nah, I think I'll stop there.

But still, I'm concerned that my self-image has been somewhat different than reality. Could I have been checking one of those boxes on my many college applications? Could I have had more confidence in my ability to dance and less in my ability to drive? Is there a meeting I'm supposed to be attending with other racially-ambiguous people like thespian Vin Diesel and former major leaguer Davey Lopes? Does it even matter? Should it? I hate to throw one of those big questions out there, but... well, I guess I just did.

All I know is that I've never been mistaken for Latino. But my sister has.

Oh, so that's what a Cape Verdean is!

A couple of updates...

Our blog is off to a slow start, but it's only because our standards are impossibly high. Any day now Kaiser Soze will actually feel the need to contribute, we suppose; it's likely he would have already if his invitation wasn't lost in my continuous drunken haze over the weekend. And note the update at the bottom of our very first post - we strive for accuracy in our anatomical citations, after all.

Also, everyone should know that a certain team member has already lost his admin rights, because he keeps changing the password, presumably because said password is in reference to said team member's said mother performing carnal acts upon certain other team members. Admin duties will be restored after an appropriate probationary period.

My Name is Rick Cartola...You Wack Off to My Mother...Prepare to Die!

Ever since I was ripped from the womb, slapped on the ass, then prompty stuffed back in momentarily, I've had a dream. That's right, I've had a dream, I have dreamt, and I am currently dreaming. I will have a dream. I dream that one day a person will not be judged by the color of his prejudices but rather the content of his humor. I have a dream. The length and girth of this dream rivals Rollo's affections for little children. Ungodly, lustful pedaphilia aside, I have a motherfucking dream!

Good day, fellow fappers. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for apathy in the history of our nation.

One score and eight years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, fucked a giant turtle. This momentous bestiality came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of child molestors who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But twenty-eight years later, the turtle-love boy still is not free. Twenty eight years later, the life of the turtle-love boy is still sadly crippled by the manacles of political correctness and the chains of discrimination. Twenty-eight years later, the turtle-love boy lives on a lonely island of sobriety in the midst of a vast ocean of material humor. Twenty-eight years later, the turtle-love boy is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to Worcester to cash a check. A bounced check...

[TEN MINUTE RANT ON BESTIALITY AND ITS RELATION TO THE STOCK MARKET]

...From the Hills of Grafton, Let apathy ring!

And so we sign that bounced check by crossing the line continually on this great blog. Welcome fellow, fappers. I look forward to shooting my mouth off and ignoring your criticism. I've got some teeth to pull.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rick Cartola, DDS

Hi, I'm Lex

It doesn't take a person very long to realize when they might be stepping in to something spirtually and emotionally damning.

From the moment of my own physical conception, I have dreamed of destroying a person from the inside. I wanted to eat away at the very fabric of stability and install my own twisted concept of reality. I wanted to break a person down and build them up, like a mini Lesotho clone.

...And then something happened. Well, lots of things happened, but meeting a support group of friends with hot mothers and sisters and sometimes both mothers and sisters and also brothers and sometimes fathers and maybe fathers who take pictures of mothers fucking stuffed animals and Shaw's cucumbers (with the little hairy bumps on them)...which really chilled me out.

Looking back, it was probably the insane relief I found while beating off to pictures of Rick's mother that I stole one night during a sleep over that finally put me in to a state of mind where instead of trying to destroy a person I just wanted to win their trust, and then have kinky, yet gentle and somewhat unsafe sex with them while Teddy Ruxpin watched from a corner with a faded red dildo strapped to his forehead.

I look forward to diseasing your minds!

=Lex

Welcome to the world!

Friends, this is a picture of a breach birth. A breach birth is when the baby (or baby-to-be, depending on your political status) exits the mother feet first. Every step in the delicate biology of childbirth is centered around the idea that the baby leaves the womb head-first. Breach births are dangerous to both child and mother, upset the natural order of things, and may cause birth defects.

Ladies and gentlemen, this blog is a breach birth.

UPDATE: Information has been made available to me (by my appalled wife) that breach births are not when babies are born feet-first, but butt-first. This makes perfect sense if you think about it - the fetus is in the fetal (duh) position, which means that the first thing you see is the ass. Somehow, this makes our breach birth blog seem even more appropriate. Prepare to see lots of metaphorical, and less-than-metaphorical, ass around here.