the lord our savior

October and November 2004


11.21.04
2nd Edition

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

So said John Ashcroft in his letter of resignation. Awfully convenient to say this AFTER the election.

Which leads me to wonder, does anyone actually pay attention to the terror alert levels anymore? What is it now, yellow? Orange? Did anyone ever pay attention to those? I dare you to try calling your boss tomorrow and saying, "Yeah, I was watching the news and it looks like there's a lot of terror today. I'm not going to be able to make it in. I'm just too scared." Call in cold. Call in scared. I'm finding all sorts of reasons to miss work.

If you're scared, get a dog.

NBA suspensions were handed out for the Melee in Motown. Ron Artest, suspended for the season. Stephen Jackson, 30 games. Jermaine O'Neal 25 games. Big Ben Wallace, six games. Anthony Johnson, five games. A handful of players received a one game suspension and fines for leaving the bench.

Also, some corrections from the last e-mail. When I said Rodney Brown, I meant Rodney King. It was late. Also, the President of lineofthenight.com informed me that Jermaine O'Neal's running punch was delivered to a different fan than the one Artest jacked on the court.


11.21.04

THE MELEE IN MOTOWN!

I hope that was a headline in one of the Detroit papers.

Today we're talking Detroit Pistons basketball. You can't argue that we don't have some passionate fans. We also have some idiot fans. That riot on Friday? Yikes.

For anyone who somehow missed it, at Friday's Pistons v. Pacers game in Detroit, there was a brawl between fans and players. It all started with a flagrant foul by Ron Artest on Big Ben Wallace. Wallace took exception and issued a Big two handed shove to Artest's face. Emotions flared and there was a lot of shouting and pushing, but it seemed that the storm had passed, with Wallace being calmed by teammates and Artest laying down on the scorer's table to collect himself.

And then, like a not guilty verdict in the Rodney Brown trial, a cup of soda and ice came flying in from the stands, hitting Ron Artest in the chest/head and igniting a rash of violence. Artest leapt up and stormed into the stands, swinging fists of fury. He found the fan he believed to be responsible and put him on his as, questioning him as other fans tried to corral him. As this was happening, gap toothed Stephen Jackson flew into frame, landing a haymaker on some unsuspecting, suit-wearing man. Yowsers. Fans started pulling the men out of the stands while other fans took cheap shots at the Jackson and Artest.

So, finally, the Pacers were pulled form the stands. It's over, right? Don't bet on it. Artest found a fat Piston's fan standing on the court. The fan must have said or done something, because Artest laid him out. Then, in perhaps the most amazing part of the whole event, Jermaine O'neal delivered a Happy Gilmore-esque running punch to the jaw of the same fat fan Artest had cold-cocked. The guy got...JACKED UP.

The Pacers were ushered to the locker room, receiving a delicious soda/beer/popcorn shower on the way. Absolutely bananas.

Melee In Motown lessons:

1. Do not throw things at professional athletes. It's dumb. It's rude. It's unacceptable. If Artest would have just pointed out the fan, he would have been punished and that would be that. It was a shameful act and I hope the guy who threw the cup got at least on punch in the mouth.

2. You can not claim self defense when you attack someone. A flying cup of sod is not life threatening. There were ways for Artest to save himself that did not involve charging into the stands and assaulting a fan.

3. If you're ever around a riot involving giant, physically superior human, RUN AWAY! Get on your horse and ride. Those men are giants and you are just a normal human. You do NOT want to catch a roundhouse from a seven footer. Shit could wreck a man.

4. If you are an athlete, do not go into the stands. Unless it's your home crowd and you're celebrating, there is no reason to go up there. They didn't kidnap Artest's kids. They threw a cup of soda. Let it go big fella.

And now, the Melee in Motown awards...

Most to blame: Ron Artest. Ronny is crazy. We knew that before. But this was extra crazy. Just no excuse for what he did.

Most out of line: Stephen Jackson. You have bad teeth and a bad haircut, so I understand the anger. But don't go throwing punches at fans. You weren't involved in the Ben Wallace push. You didn't get his by flying soda. You weren't even trying to defend your teammate. Just foolish.

Mike Tyson Look-alike: Jermaine O'Neal. Good god, if he hadn't slipped he might have punched that man's head right off his shoulders.

Most Shocked: The fan Artest first attacked. If you watch the tape, at first the guy is smiling and shouting. There's no way as a fan you believe a player will actually climb into the stands to beat your ass. So when the do...yowsers. He went from smile to shocked in not time flat. Ha.

Worst Person: Some fat man in a gray warm up shirt of some sort. Threw cheap shots at Artest and Jackson. And then could later be seen consoling two crying children. That guy is awful.

Unwarranted Blame: Security guards. Some people are blaming the whole incident on a lack of security. I'm not sure you can say that. My guess is, security guards knew rule #3 from above.

In the end, it was wild. It took half of SportsCenter to do the story. It was bad for the NBA. Bad for Detroit. Bad for everyone involved. But good to watch.


11.17.04

Fury, anger and rage. That's what fills me when I hear about all of this "controversy" surrounding the Terrell Owens/blonde woman Monday Night Football introduction. There is no controversy! It wasn't that wild. You didn't see a tit. You didn't see an ass. You didn't see any girl-girl kissing. Shut up! I guess I shouldn't be surprised. After conservative-ass America re-elected our God-chosen leader, I should expect such outrage at a black man kissing a white woman. Imagine if Owens would have made out with Toby Maguire. Then the nation would really be in an uproar.

Point is, no kid that's watching Monday Night Football at 9pm on a school night was shocked by this. No kid old enough to care about Monday night football isn't mature enough to know that grown-ups kiss. In fact, it's probably about time those kids learn that athletes routinely get hot pieces of ass. They actually should have had a post-game segment where Owens fucked that bitch in the shower.

Kids see violence and sex and hear curse words in all walks of life. It doesn't make them bad kids or turn them into hoodlums. Bad parenting does that. So if you don't want your kids to see ANYTHING remotely sexual or violent, let them watch the cartoon network or Nickelodeon. Even though I bet at 9pm there's some shows on those channels you wouldn't want them to watch.

On second thought, turn the television off if you don't like what you see. Read a damned book. Idiot America.

Also, don't let your kids read this shit. That's for sure. Tits. Pussy.

End fury.


11.11.04

The eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, eleventh minute and eleventh second is great.

11:11:11, 11-11-04

This will be even better in seven years. Mark it down, I'm having an eleven party. You have to bring eleven of something, anything. And I am only inviting eleven people. So start being nicer to me. It starts at 11:11:11 am and ends at 11:11:11 pm.


11.10.04

If you live and work in an area where it gets cold--legitimately cold as in frost and snow and ice--I think that a few days a month you should get to "call in cold".

Calling in cold is similar to calling in sick, only you wouldn't need the whole day off. On any given morning, if you wake up and your room is cold and you're in a warm blanket cocoon, just call in cold. After the call you can sleep in the warm for awhile longer until it feels like a more natural time to get out of bed. After that, you go work for the rest of the day. Maybe you could even put in a few extra hours on a "call in cold" day.

The main reason for this is that when you have to get up on these cold mornings, it feels awful. It's torture. There's almost nothing worse. And medically speaking, when something feels that bad and unnatural, it's probably bad for your health. A doctor will tell you, "if you're doing something and it feels wrong, you should stop doing it." Well, getting up early on cold-ass mornings feels very, very wrong. So for the sake of northern America's workers, I believe "calling in cold" is a just and reasonable way to make winter mor tolerable.

Thank you.


11.09.04

Because very few people have a car in New York there are always tons of people walking around. While this may be healthy in theory, it is actually quite dangerous. You see, with all these people out ambling around there is a dramatic increase in the number of "strangers walking toward one another where do I look" encounters. Naturally, to see where you're going, you have to look ahead. But when another person is walking toward another, inevitably there is going to need to be a decision made about where to place your eyes.

In the interest of science, I spent the day yesterday looking at people who were walking toward me. Not an evil stare, just kind of a look. It was fun, since I enjoy looking at people anyways. These are the results of my experiment.

1. Almost everyone looks away. There is a common pattern. They make eye contact with you, panic, then quickly look to the ground and then find something else to look at, as if they hadn't just made eye contact. Many of these lookers will take another glance at you to see if you're still looking at them. When they see you are, they repeat the "eyes to ground, eyes to alternative object" routine, but more frantically.

2. Old people give you a smile and a nod. It makes you feel good.

3. If you look at dogs, the owner is comfortable with that. The dog doesn't even know you're looking at it. Usually, dogs are looking at things with their noses. This is also known as smelling. I tried not to smell people as I walked by them.

4. The only people who consistently maintain eye contact with you are crazy people. Maybe this is why people quickly look to the ground. If the only people who are ever willing to maintain eye contact are crazy, then it's best to avoid making eye contact with anyone and not risk becoming involved with madness. People who are looking for a fight will also stare you down. I don't know this from experience, but I bet it's true.

5. When you make up your mind to not break eye contact, it's fun to watch people react.

The best approach to walking, based on science, is to always look at something else. Don't even bother looking at people, because you're going to be forced to quickly look away. Or, if you're crazy, look all you want.

In unrelated news, if I had to have sex with a magazine, I'd choose one of those cosmo-type magazines. Sure, they're made of paper, but they smell nice, like a woman. I would also have sex with a newspaper instead of a magazine, if given the choice. The paper is softer.


11.07.04

Car alarms are terrible. How often have you been laying at night, trying to sleep, or laying in the morning, still trying to sleep and all of a sudden a car alarm goes off. Is the car being stolen? Nope. Has it been vandalized? Nope. Someone probably bumped it while they were parallel parking. Is the owner rushing out to see what's happened to his precious car? Nope. In fact, that car alarm will continue to sound to the next five to ten minutes infuriating everyone within hearing distance. It's almost enough to make me go down and smash the car's windows, just so when the owner finally does show up there's actually something wrong.

So that's the complaint. The solution, well there's two. First, if your car has a car alarm, you should have to list your phone number on the car. Tha way, when it's activated, people can call your dumb ass and tell you to shut your car alarm off. The other solution would be to make the alarm something pleasant to listen to. Like Barry Manilow's "Mandy". That way it's not so annoying, but it still gets people's attention.

The third option would be for the car to send an alarm to your keychain. That way if you're sitting at dinner a few blocks from your car and something happens, the "beep beep beep," a really loud beeping rings through the restaurant bothering you, instead of me. It would also be letting you know there's a problem.

Final word: car alarms bad.


11.01.04

Hail to the victors. Good game this weekend Spartans. Well, not so good for you. Miracle time! Braylon Edwards for President. Write him in. Michael Hart for VP. Chad Henne for Prime Minister.

In related news, I am officially against artificial turf in outdoor stadiums. Especially for college football. Grass and mud are football. Plastic grass and little black pellets, not so much. The only exception to this rule is if the field is blue. If you're going to be fake, be really fake. That Boise State stadium looks like it's on the moon. If there even is a moon.

"I don't even know if I believe in outer space."
-Charles Barkley, last year sometime

I also think that I'm starting to dislike Halloween for adults. People in costumes are creepy. When you go to the grocery store and the bag-boy is in a hula skirt, that's bad. When you go to the bar and your waitress is wearing a mullet wig and has a dirty face, what the hell is that? How can a girl grow up and not know that Halloween is for dressing like a nurse or a kitten or a cheerleader? Something that makes you MORE attractive, not less. Ugh. And the amount of effort and thought that goes into some people's Halloween costumes, I don't like that either. I do like jack-o-lanterns.

If only Drew Stanton hadn't been injured...shhhhhh...


10.29.04

New Feature: What's In The News?
(leads courtesy of the hawk, who has a keen eye for news)

On the heels of the last statement of my last e-mail, I find that the Salem Witch trials did not actually get all the witches in America.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136946,00.html

Apparently, in Washington, Halloween has been cancelled. At least for students at one elementary school. Apparently the school board felt that "ugly" witch costumes were offensive to local witches. What? That's one of the dumbest PC moves I've ever heard. This could start a rash of Halloween cancellings all over America. You know there's some hairy-ass guy with long nails out there thinking, "hey kids dressing as werewolves are giving me a bad name." Mummies, however, offend no one.

When asked for comment, one witch said she was not offended.

And if that's not wild enough, check out this "news" about a rat brain in a dish flying an airplane.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20041018/brain.html

Now I love science and news. But this seems like a load of bullcrap to me. I believe they could put a bunch of rat brain cells in a dish and that these brain cells could connect and maybe even that they could learn. But learn to fly a plane? Naw. Not even the world's smartest rat could fly a plane. Drive a car, maybe. But not fly a plane. I'd be more apt to believe that they used pigeon brain cells in this experiment. At least pigeons know how to fly.


10.27.04

Mob mentality is a beautiful thing. One great example of this can be seen while walking to the subway shuttle between Grand Central Station and Times Square. I'm not sure if there's a schedule for when these trains leave or not, but it's pretty frequently. Still, once you get within 50 yards of a train, one person will panic, thinking "Oh crap! It's leaving, I better run." And run they do. Well, other people see this running and think the runner might know something they don't. And soon, you've got a whole mob of people all running to stand for two minutes on a train that wasn't leaving at all. I should know. I'm one of the runners. It's fun.

Another great example of mob mentality were the Salem Witch Trials. Unfair? Perhaps. But at least they got rid of all the witches in America.


10.25.04

Yikes. Did everyone see that figure skater get dropped on her skull? That will really scramble your brains, smashing your head on hard ice. I guess that's what you get for being a figure skater. That girl got JACKED UP!

This guy knows what I'm tolkien about.

Did everyone also see Fidel Castro take a tumble walking off of the stage after a speech? I heard he broke a bone in his arm and his leg from that little spill. Didn't look so bad to me. Moral of the story, people falling down is funny. America's Funniest Home Videos is proof of that. I love that show. Even without Bob Saget.


10.24.04

Cotton candy should be a more readily available item. It is delicious and eating it makes you feel happy.


10.23.04

Keep your eyes peeled for this spammed e-mail...

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A disease must be made DORMANT to stop infection. 'The ANTIDOTE' is the answer.

www.clenseyourself.info/hp/

WE ARE THE ONLY COMPANY IN THE WORLD WHO HAVE DEVELOPED AND ENHANCED THIS PRODUCT FOR SALE.

Check Here For More Information

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What!? I knew that crocodiles were important. But who knew they contained the cure for SARS, HIV and Cancer. That's great news. Seems like we would have been hearing more about this miraculous drug. Luckily, I got this e-mail. Now I'm sharing it with you.

Seriously though, why not pick something more believable like "crocdile extract increases genital size"? That maybe I could believe. But to claim you have the cure for all those diseases, that's just plain stupid. Bad marketing at its finest.


10.22.04

For those of you following the election: if your source of information as to who's winning is internet polls, you're not seeing the whole picture. The problem is that many internet polls show the race to be in favor of Kerry or a very, very tight race. The frightening thing is, if the internet shows the race to be so close, Kerry is doomed. Because the internet hasn't quite reached middle America. I'm talking about those out of the way, back-asswards towns in the middle of Oklahoma. You think those people are online participating in some survey? Nope. They're shooting vermin and chewing tobacco. And when it comes time to vote, you can be damned sure they're voting for Bush. God wants them to.

Don't be misled.

Don't forget to vote. Even though your vote doesn't count, you'll still feel good taking part in this wonderful fake democracy. How in the world can they not do away with the electoral college process? When we "liberate" other countries and allow them to vote for a leader, do we also put in place an electoral college to cast the "real" votes? Nope. One man, one vote. That's how a democracy should work. Fake-ass USA.


10.21.04

A bit of advice. Any time you're walking in New York and think, hey, I should take a picture of that (Times Square, Statue of Liberty, etc) be prepared to pay for that picture. Not pay in any official manner. But realize that as soon as that camera comes out, an alarm goes off in panhandler headquarters and a notice is sent to the nearest agent--go ask that tourist for money. So take your pictures, but have a pocketful of change ready. Somebody somewhere is trying to get a bus ticket home.


10.20.04

Gym class has changed a lot since we were kids. For instance, I've heard they no longer play dodgeball. What the hell is that? One of the best games ever invented and kids don't get to play it? My kid is going to play dodgeball, I can guarantgoddamntee it. What will they cancel next, kickball?

And thinking back on it, if they thought dodgeball was dangerous, what about rope climb? If your school had it, you know what I'm talking about. That rope that went up thirty feet into the gym's rafters. That kids had to climb. Are you kidding me? Eight year old kids climbing a thirty-foot rope? Did the common sense fairy take the day off? I know gym teachers ain't the brightest bunch, but throwing down a couple three-inch thick gymnastics mats aren't going to save a ten year old dropping three stories. I wonder how many broken legs it took to fix this glitch in physical education reasoning.

In related news, the Presidential Fitness Challenge is great. I was pretty good at it, especially pull-ups.

Other good games:
bill hill, bill hill, who's afraid to cross my hill
any game involving the giant parachute
crab soccer
floor hockey with those styrofoam sticks and pucks
some game where we stood in a circle and the gym teacher swung around a giant stick that you had to jump over (I think it was called poison stick)
silent ball
7-up


10.19.04

One thing I've noticed walking home in the city at night is that the streets are lined with girls sitting on the steps outside of their apartments having arguments on the phone with their boyfriends. One thing you never see is a man sitting on his porch, looking sad and stressed out arguing with his girlfriend.

There is a simple explanation for this.

During all of these arguments, the man is sitting in his living room watching television. Multi-tasking. That way you don't have to get too involved in the whole "fighting" aspect of the relationship. Apologize a few times and watch Law and Order.

And anytime you zone out while your girl is yapping about something and she calls you on it, just say "I'm not even sure how to respond to that." Then she'll elaborate on what she was saying and you can pay attention.

Ladies, TNT is the place for drama, not your front porch.


10.18.04

Is it too much to ask that a grown man working for a giant company in New York City buy a suit that fits him? I know not everyone can afford a nice suit, but seriously, even if you go to a thrift store you can find something that you're not swimming in. There's a man who works in my building that looks like a kid wearing his dad's suit. And maybe that's what he is. He might have just grabbed one of pop's suits, put it on and called it a day. Or maybe he believes he'll grow into it. Granted, he looks to be about forty, by which time I'm pretty sure you're done growing. But hey, a fella's gotta have hope. If he does grow into it, I'll be proud of him.

Even his tie looks oversized. Strange little fellow.


10.16.04

So it's been awhile. Several things have changed. The big change for me is that I am now a resident of New York City. The Big Apple.

There are good things and bad things about living here. One good thing is that you don't have to worry about drunk driving. Anyone who's done any time in Michigan knows the dangers of drinking and driving. One danger is being pulled over. DUI's can be expensive. Luckily, there's a trick to beat the system...if you get pulled over and you've been drinking how do you beat the breathalizer? Have you heard you're supposed to put pennies in your mouth? Where did this stupid rumor start?

My guess, it was started by the police. Now they have a sure way to identify drunk drivers. Because no one that's in any way sober is dumb enough to think putting pennies in your mouth will trick the breathalizer. Instead, when policemen approach a car and find the driver has a mouth full of pennies, well, they know that f*cker is drunk.

Myself, I've found that a good mouthful of dirt will trick a breathalizer. Try it. It works. Idiots.


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