Tearing down the mailbox, one pessimistic comment after another.

Mailbag time!

>"Only four spots are available on the Astros: one starting pitcher, two catchers and a backup infielder who can play shortstop and second base. Abercrombie, an outfielder, and Johnson, a third baseman, probably won't make the cut..."

Well that sucks.

There's nothing to say about this. Just take a look at the roster and say "theres only one starting pitcher spot available." Don't worry, that puke taste in your mouth won't last too long. I feel like we're in the movie Major League, and Rachel Phelps is trying to move the team to Miami.

Imagine reading and then having to answer this question:
>"According to early reports, Russ Ortiz looks good. If Ortiz can get close to his 2004 form and makes the rotation, how much better do you think the staff is and who do you think will be the odd man out?"

I wouldn't want to. I would respond: Have you ever played 5 card draw poker? This is your hand: Jack of Hearts, 9 of spades, 7 of clubs, 5 of diamonds, and 3 of spades. Draw four... No. Fold. It's time to think longterm, and I would use the "bandaid" metaphor thing... but we aren't using bandaids anymore. The bandaid was falling off and now we are just duct taping the bandaid back on over and over.

>"...but I can see him pitching beyond the three years remaining on his contract. Oswalt doesn't care about stats or the Hall of Fame; he just wants to win a World Series. If the Houston's farm system indeed is back on track and churning out the Major League talent by then, and the Astros again are perennial playoff contenders, I think Oswalt might stretch his career out longer than he thinks he will..."

I love me some Roy. He's a great pitcher and he's doesn't care about much other than winning. He could have gotten more money somewhere else with his last contract. He could be out there whining and bitching about how our team resembles a pick up softball league team (zing!). He's not that guy. He's simply a bad ass.

I also share Footer's opinion on the matter of Roy hanging it up at the end of the contract. Somehow we build a team that is capable of winning more than half our games, he'll stick around.

What do you do?

Sorry guys, I don't care about spring training. I like seeing highlights though, but if Shitty Astro Pitcher X gives up 9 walks and schfourteen-teen thousand runs per inning, it doesn't matter.

So instead of posting more crap about what pisses me off or what songs I like right now or some other mindless babble.....

WHAT THE HELL IS THERE TO KEEP UP WITH IN FEBRUARY-APRIL "DEAD FUCKING ZONE OF SPORTS"


Basketball... I can't watch it. The pros try to make it interesting, yet everytime I hear "Well he's SoAndSo player, he is going to get that call" it makes me want to puke. Why? College ball is a little better I suppose, but I can complain alot about that too. Maybe I just don't like basketball.

Does anyone watch hockey? Can you watch hockey? I've only seen it at bars or highlights on espn. I could get into that, but it would take a full season for me to "get" the game.

I guess the tournament can be fun to talk about / have an office bracket. Hurry up with that though, Ive heard more sports talk radio about what hairspray the guys use or what color their car is... terrible.

unfuckingtitled

I've never really "got" the movies Office Space and Fight Club, until I worked in an office setting long enough to realize what these movies were really about.

Not all of these things I'm going to list will apply to everyone, but every office has their quirks and shit.

-Repetitive bullshit. Like the Edward Norton's character said. Everything is just a copy. A scanned in, photocopy of another thing. Sit in this chair behind this desk for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. Hey did you know that 40 hour weeks @ 50 weeks a year = 2000 hours? Did you know that you sleep an average of 2500 hours a year. Did you know that there's only 8760. In case you suck at math, Sleeping & Working (40h weeks) = ~50% of your life in a year.

-Co-workers retarded daily habits/noises/mannerisms. The guy I share my office with, sneezes no less than 75 times a day. He is a very loud sneezer. I don't want to say anything because its just me being annoyed all the time at work. But shouldn't you go see a doctor about that? This isn't a seasonal/allergy/cold thing. This is perpetual... all year long.

-"I've got 8 different bosses Bob. 8 Bosses." Yeah I've got like 5. It's fucking stupid, and just like Office Space, if something goes wrong, most of them let me know via yellin at me. I've got some old school bosses too, so if they need to lay into me they aren't holding back. None of this P.C. shit. "Listen, you need to fucking get the ball rolling, I'm tired of this shit where you don't do any fucking work"

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

Materialism sucks. I'm caught up in it to an extent too I guess. I'm at work right now to pay for shit like a car, guitar shit, shiny fancy utterly worthless shit I suppose.

"Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day"

Yep. Can't agree with this more. Fuck this idea. The sound of people's voices in my office are enough to set me off into a fucking angry yelling match inside my head. That is not good, this means I'm not the type to sit in an office all day.

You see, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?

Yeah, when you get paid trashcans, whats the fucking point? I don't work my ass off on purpose, because if I do more work and not get credit for it, my mind thinks its been cheated and goes into pissed off mode (which im in 90% of the time anyway, I don't need any help with this)

I should have called this blog Negative Nancy's hideout or something. Tune in next week for "completley mindless babble and ranting about how car squeaks and wind piss Lane off"

Stuff?

No idea how to title this post. The title should be something like "Questions I have for Jonathan and stuff I've recognized about myself that I need to change or find ways to moderate in respects to diet/working out and would like Jonathan's opinion of"

Ok.....

I looked into that Paleo stuff a little, but I'm confused. I get the whole natural food things, but damn I've read some crazy restrictions. Why are peanuts so bad... *must avoid* Green beans? I would have figured crazy old cavemen would have encounter those and eaten them at some point.

Maybe you wrote or linked this, but I remember reading about how your familys history could have something to do with how your body reacts to some foods. Example: *Rule: avoid rice* Though, if you are Chinese/Japanese, they've eaten rice so damn long that their genetics have possibly adapted? Maybe its all the fish they eat, I don't know.

The binge drinking and following hungover compulsive eating has got to stop at some point. When I drink, I DRINK. The last month I have been chronicling everything I've put into my body. Some Friday/Saturday's i've put up to 200 oz of bud light a night. Ridiculous. Still managed to LOSE a minimal amount of weight, even though I was trying to just maintain it. Which leads me to believe I've been losing more muscle than fat.

Do you plan stuff out before doing it, or are you one of those people who can just keep a routine without actively thinking about it? I've noticed in myself that I when I plan to do something, I can do it and get in a routine... then maybe a wrench gets thrown in there and I totally screw EVERYTHING up for as long as a week or 2. On a long enough timeline, everything just evens out... 2-3 weeks of doing everything right and a week of ignoring everything is just like a step forward and a step backwards.

Ehhhh, I can't wait for baseball season to start so we can type meaninglessly about how bad our 3rd basemen are, or how our second basemen is on pace for 3 homeruns in July.

There is like, nothing to post about.

Seriously.

I don't care about basketball. Football is dead. Baseball is still a ways away.

Random news:

• Texans apparently violated some rules about contact in minicamp or something. Who cares.
  
• Phelps ganja smoking? Why is this such a big deal?
  
• Crossfit stuff is still hurting me everytime I do it. I haven't got the nerve to try 3 in a week yet.
  
• Finally got a tube amp. It's great, but I still don't agree with those elitist guys who say solid state amps are terrible no matter what. Amp doesn't make the player.
  
• Uhhhh?

Meh.

Enshrined Guitarist - January

Forgot about this, Only got one day left.

No words to describe him are necessary.

Thanks for being my favorite guitarist ever.

Woot!

http://www.halfstreetblues.com/2009/01/whos-worst-franchise-in-baseball-not-us.html

"Keith Law from ESPN announced his 2009 organizational farm system rankings (ESPN Insider password required) this week, and the minor league system of your Washington Nationals ranked 29th out of 30 MLB franchises, ahead of the Houston Astros."

This has GOT to be posted on some kind of bulletin board @ the Astros front office.

fuck.

It's all scoreboard.

I swear this is the last one about college football for a while.

Can Texas get the 1 loss love for the next decade or so? Oklahoma proved once again that they don't deserve it right now. Stoops, aren't you like 1-7 in your bowl games now? Atleast Mack wins the fucking bowl games he gets.

Can we turn a new page next year regarding the favoritism showed to some teams?
Ohio State? ITS NOT 2002! Stop putting them at the fucking top, they play a weaaaaak fucking conference.
USC? They are pretty good every year but Jesus can they get an easier road to the championship game? WAKE THE FUCK UP PAC-10
Oklahoma, see last night. Go away.
Florida/LSU - I can't bitch too much, the SEC has been pretty good as of late and been taking care of business in the bowl games.

Not going to bitch about Texas, im a homer and they did get partially (PARTIALLY: see Utah) screwed.

Um. Friday. Yea.

One last college thing

I'm guilty of this, but I wish it would stop:

"Team x beat team y, but team z beat team x so automatically z > y."

Even the common opponent argument is crappy to me. No argument will ever be as great as arguing for a team that beat another team on the field of battle, and that is that.

I'm trying to not sound too much like sour grapes, but it will happen none-the-less. Since Texas had a tough time dispatching Ohio State, Florida and Oklahoma both could beat Texas easily - that's an easy and popular statement to make today, but this is far from being justifiable. There has been more than enough evidence show this year to think that Texas could beat any team in the country.

Now, someone make the case for Utah, because you know... that Alabama win.... well... let's just say that 13-0 looks nice.

invisabul air squigglies

Mmmm. Can you smell that shit??? Smells like unjustified optimism to me!

I think I may like waiting on baseball season to start more than when baseball season starts. Only becuase the Astros will most likely fail in a lot of areas this year, and probably years to come. Who cares though? It's always fun thinking about how it *COULD* happen. Geoff Blum as our 3rd baseman? Aaron Boone? No pitchers? Oh well! We don't have to start bitching until April (March if they REALLY suck in spring training).

Looking forward to:

• Yankees failing with 700 billion dollar payroll
• The MLB dumpster that is the NL West
• Astros winning games 16-15

Not looking forward to:

• Turning on ESPN even though I know its a mistake everytime (if only to try and catch a brief brief brief brief highlight of a walk off homerun, because hey... ESPN doesn't give a fuck about Houston)
• Astros losing games by 19 runs
• Hunter pence sucking again
• Having Miguel Tejada on the team
• Anyone pitching

Hey D, you wanna try a different kind of blog rivarly for baseball? 2 teams in some other division? I like the idea, because there are teams I like out there but I don't pay very much attention to them... I like the Twins, and I find myself rooting for the Marlins, A's, and Blue Jays alot. Let me know what you think.

If only to get those chicks off the front page.

All is right in NFL world.

Cowboys? Sit the fuck down!
Patriots? Shut the fuck up!

Lions 0-16? Fucking awesome

The Texans made a little something out what they could. Still can lick my sack for the terrible display of "football" they played in some of those games, but whatever

Holidays fucked me up. I ate compulsively and didn't move off the couch. I woke up this morning determined to get back on the horse, and I drank coffee and didn't do any kind of work out.

The office is more annoying with less people in it, because they all want to bother me. Or is it that I just hate people talking to me unless I want to talk back? I guess it's the asshole in me. Small talk is stupid, get to the point.

What else can I ramble about...

Whitlock sucks, I hate his writing and I hate when he fills in for Jim Rome. He's so biased on some things that people expect that he's going to be biased and let him blow everything out of proportion and then he gets rewarded for it /runon

Are those girls down the page enough yet?

Merry Christmas to the dook & kix + eric. From: Hot tits mcgee santa girls

I think thats my whole base of readers.


Here:

Red Sox find new way of sticking their Beantown (and probably tiny) dick in Yankees butt.

I don't like the Red Sox, like pretty much anyone outside of Boston now-a-days, but long before I've hated the Boston area - I've FUCKING DESPISED the Yankees (side note: I'm no writer, and I have no idea how to construct that sentence). So sometimes, I find it necessary to say "hey you guys aren't so bad sometimes when you slap the Yankees around like Tina Turner."

Here's one of these times.

The media is going to make this sound like the Yankees are geniuses, and the Red Sox are failures. The Yankees sign 2 coveted starting pitchers, the Red Sox pull out of the Texierearerareara deal.

This is just a way for the Red Sox to say, "look you fucking retards, not only are you mental for blowing eleventy billion dollars on free agency, we aren't even going to sign this guy and still beat you."

I've already laid out my stance on C.C. And AJ? (Imagine me sitting at a table with the Yankees brass and Brown/Pavano/Johnson/younameit standing behind me) Tell me the truth guys, did you pull a Bill Clinton and look for the closest thing you could find with a vagina?

I would like to call Tesh-ara an "85." Meaning he's 85% of what a "team's best player" should be. No way should he get 20 something million dollars a year.

Stick your chest out today Yankee fan, its going to hurt in 2012 when the payroll is 400 million and you still get beat by the 40 million Rays.

This happens everytime, I spend so much time ranting that I forget shit and I end up some place way off from where I started. I hate blogging. Fuck this!

Last place

Last year, this guy won his fantasy league.
This year.

Well. As I look through the scores. I lost to the 1-12 team in the losers bracket, after losing the first round of the losers bracket.

I don't care what it says at the end of the season. THIS GUY IS THE WORST LOSER.

Monday stuff

Well this weekend was fucked. Last week I came down with some shit, but instead of relaxing and letting my body recover I busted my ass working out. By Friday I couldn't even finish the day at work, full blown 'sick as a motherfucker' by Friday night. In between throwing up I managed to sleep for something like 18 hours. After that passed I spent yesterday eating everything I could because I had the craziest hunger in the world.

Now I must get back on the horse, and it didn't help that I forgot to set my alarm to do my HIIT this morning. Now I gotta do it at night and that sucks.

On to some sports.

Andre Johnson for the mother-fucking win. Why did we ever let Jonathan pick him up in the draft? I'm definitely trying to pick himup next year. I had 'em last year but he was hurt for quite a bit.

How great do the Titans act in defeat? You are only trumped by the faggotry-ness (what?) of Cowboys players and fans. I won't throw the quotes on here but they are pretty lame.

Suck it Tennessee. Discredit us all day, have fun getting kicked the fuck out of the playoffs.

Enshrined guitarist of the month.

December - Zakk Wylde.




He's a beast!

Great songwriter

Can shred

Makes this ballad fucking awesome

Is a southern rock fan.
Can riff you to death.
Chicken picks.
The list goes on.

Like me, Zakk, you show in your music that you appreciate many different types of music. You're musician's pallette contains many more colors than 'gunmetal gray.' I don't believe theres a better combo of instruments to know than Guitar & Piano. You sir have mastered both. I aspire to use your influence in my music whenever possible. So welcome, enjoy your immortality (or as long as Move to Dallas has a server to deliver this blog)

Side note: Too many times I have seen idiots with worthless opinions post on forums, article comments, and youtube comments. So much hate out there for so many guitarists. I believe appreciation has been lost. So I'm going to appreciate.

Free agent stuff part 1

CC to Yankees for 161 Mil, 7 years.

Helps 'em? You bet.
Playoffs? I wouldn't bet money against it.
Drag on the notion that money buys championship? CHECK!

I guess it's my (kind of) blue collar upbringing, but I just hate teams that buy every fucking player they can. That's the only criteria. You buy every fucking free agent there is, I hate you. You're the equivalent of the asshole who's parents bought you that nice car when you were 16 and you wrecked it. That's what the Yankees do just about every year. Buy themselves (sometimes old) nice cars and metaphorically wreck their season. I don't know where I was going with that.

CC has been pretty damn dominant, hes a surefire ace on any staff.
Ready for my oh so bold predictions?

• CC is fat. He's David Wells fat. Yes, I know David Wells pitched a perfect game as a fat drunk man, he was also not suppose to be Christ reborn. This fatness will not help him in the upcomming years. Depression will hit him like a falling rock after the New York media portrays him as the fat characters off Austin Powers (those movies blow btw). He will eat, and become fatter. Welcome to New York, Bartolo Colon! (This may be a little over the top)
  
• Those outings where he just ate the innings will take their toll. 'Ate' the innings. Man I crack myself up. Pitchers now are pussies, they aren't built like Nolan, all those 5 billion inning outings last year will catch up to him in a few years.
  
• New York sucks. Also, how many pitchers have signed there as free agents, coming off spectacular years only to spend a few years in NY as mediocre to above average pitchers? Anything less than 20 games/3.00 era/250+ innings is a failure... that is a bad sign.

Deadspin commenter: "Enjoy your fat Mike Hampton, New York"
Hahaha!

Personally... welcome to my "God I fucking hate ___" list.

The BCS 'losing early is not as bad' debate.

/bitter fan rant engage!

Can I put it out there that if OU beats tech this weekend, and Florida ultimately ends up beating Alabama in the SEC championship, and niether lose any other games then that is your National Championship?

That seems the most likely scenario with the talking heads anyway.

In my scenario, Texas is snubbed out of the Big 12 championship and the national champions over a team they beat. This is because of the dumb Big 12 tie breaker rules. Lets use the BCS rankings to determine our Big 12 South champion... shall we have that computer from War Games make decisions about our military too?

How about something in the games, that we can all look at and agree upon and say 'ok, this sucks but they are the rule and atleast I can point to it and say blah blah blah' instead of 'the computer ranked me lower, and I don't know why /punches clown'

Lane's awesome idea that will never happen: How about point differential between the 3 head to head games of the 3 tied teams. Ex:
(I don't remember the OU UT score but i think the differential was like 10 points?)
UT beats OU by 10
Tech beats UT by 1
say Tech gets beat by 4 by OU

with my math, Texas is +9 Tech is +3 and OU is -6
atleast that gives credit to Texas's 1 point 'omg throw it to Crabtree' loss. (I did say bitter fan rant)

This also puts no emphasis on when the team losses. Why should that be a deciding factor? A team should be ranked higher because they lose early and get their shit together instead of losing late when everyone has been planning for them all year and gunning for their seat? There is no need for this debate because there are better ways of deciding the tiebreaker rules. Don't use the BCS.

Hell I would rather see a coin flip, beer pong toss off between team captains, or maybe even settled by that human sacrifice basketball game those South American indians played.

Hey, I don't spell check, proof read, check for grammar, or even care about punctuation. So.... I'm pushing publish now.

OH ITS FUCKING RANT TIME BABY

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8792662/Jets-haven't-truly-ended-Pats'-reign?MSNHPHMA

Title of link I clicked on: "Jets win, but not vs real Pats"

Now let me preface my ranting by saying that while I don't consider myself by any means a Jets fan (and I fucking hate Brett Farve's wranglers), I would rather see the Patriots' plane crash than watch them play football. Wonderful.

>Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see Tom Brady or Rodney Harrison on the field in New York's 34-31 victory on Thursday night. The Patriots were also missing their star linebacker, Adalius Thomas, who went down with what appeared to be a season-ending forearm injury last week, and starting defensive end Ty Warren, who sat out the loss to the Jets with a groin injury.

>The running corps had become such a mess that undrafted rookie BenJarvus Green-Ellis was thrust into the starting job for the last few weeks.

Nice. America really wants to read about how the Patriots couldn't overcome adversity. Get over it, every team has injuries. I'm pretty sure the 'real' Patriots lost in the superbowl to a (at the time) ridiculous underdog.

>The Patriots won't use excuses, but I'm going to do it for them.

Why? Don't we try to push out the 'No Excuses' message to the masses? The Patriots won't use excuses. G---FUCKING-Good (like Gahhh-Fucking-Good). No one wants to hear the excuses. My future children are going to grow up, read this assholes article, and come to me with something like "Daddy, I couldn't win my spelling contest because I didn't have a liver at the time." No excuses, cock!

... (article goes on breaking down the game, making the Patriots seem like an underdog) ...

>"This one ranks right up there," Favre said. "In the moment it's easy to say, but it may be at the top."
Are you serious?
In an 18-year career filled with more than 40 4th-quarter comebacks, this victory ranks at the top? No chance.

Are you serious? Taking a quote you see somewhere out of context? No chance.
He did say "In the moment it's easy to say." This is what he meant:

Guy hasn't had sex in a year.
*sex*
Girl: That was good baby
Guy: That was the best damn sex I have ever had.

I'm ending this post right now. I'm listening to Creeping Death by Metallica and the bridge is going on. DIE! BY MY HAND! I CREEP ACROSS THE LAND! KILLING FIRST BORN MAN!

I got another rant about Mel Kieper later... maybe

Embed it!

I mentioned this before to Donovan.
Great metallica song? Check.
Mastodon covering? Check.
Bad ass cover? Fuck yes.

I can only imagine how long it took them to get all the great tones they get in this song...