Keith Spillett
I have a lot of strange debris rattling around my mind that I need to work out in a useful way.
Homepage: https://tyrannyoftradition.wordpress.com
The Price of Freedom Is 4 Dollars
Posted in The Politics Of Catastrophe on April 23, 2011
“as freedom is a breakfastfood” –ee cummings
The smell of freedom. I hadn’t thought much about this idea until a few hours ago. What, in fact, does freedom smell like? While wandering aimlessly through CVS this morning I happened upon a new Old Spice product referred to as “Fiji”. It is a combination of unpronounceable chemicals that are supposed to save me from hours of social humiliation if I simply roll it onto my armpits. A sticker on the front announced to me and anyone else who passed through aisle 9 that it “smells like Palm Trees, Sunshine and Freedom”. Fantastic! I threw it in my shopping cart immediately. Four bucks for the scent of freedom?!?!? A bargain if you ask me.
This could be the beginning to one of those columns where the writer quotes George Orwell a lot and rails on and on about the dire effects of the degradation of language. I promise you, it isn’t. If you haven’t figured out that language has been cheapened I recommend that you get back in your spaceship and go home immediately. Instead, I’d like to take a few moments to genuinely appreciate how the word “freedom” has become a complete free-for-all of a word that may not mean anything but does so in the most convincing of ways.
The Old Spice deodorant claim is a beautiful example of it. You can stick the word freedom on the end of anything and it sounds like a halfway convincing argument. Old Spice even manages to have the added dimension of irony attached to it. If you are a complete rube and you think that buying a specific brand of fumigant will make you more free, go ahead and buy the product. If you are one of those self-aware ironic types who looks down on those moronic enough to be influenced by this claim, go ahead and buy the product and laugh at those other idiots who bought the product. Freedom for everyone!!!
I must tell you that I happen to be an expert on the subject of freedom. I am an American. Many of my politicians have taken great pains to remind me that Americans are the freest people on earth. We are so free that former President and freedom lover George W Bush announced to the world that the reason 9/11 took place is that “they hate us for our freedom”. You have to be pretty darned free to be hated for your freedom.
Just in case those credentials don’t impress you enough I should tell you that if we could afford to own a house my family and I would most certainly get our loan from American Freedom Mortgage or American Freedom Lending and we would get our homeowners insurance through American Freedom Insurance.
I am so free that I basically sweat freedom out of my pores. If an unfree person happened to get my sweat on them, they would immediately become free. Sweating is kind of a problem for me, which is why we will hire American Freedom Heating and Air to cool off the house that we will be able to afford at some point in the next 50 years.
How will we get our furniture to the new house you ask? By putting it in a 2009 Pace American Freedom Cargo Hauler which we will fill with gasoline at American Freedom Fuel and Package Store. On our journey to our new home (located in Freedom, Wisconsin) we plan on letting freedom ring by visiting the American Freedom Bell in Charlotte, North Carolina.
We are certainly not living the American Dream if we don’t have a dog in our new home, so we plan to purchase a cute little pit-bull over at American Freedom Kennels. Pit-bulls are expensive dogs, but after all, freedom isn’t free.
One of the great things about being an American is that I can freely use the word freedom anytime I want. “Freedom!” Want to see it again? “Freedom!!!!” Not convinced? “Freedom!!!” “Freedom!!!!!!!” “Freedom!!!!!!!!!!” See! Some places don’t let you do that. It is really important that you get to do that, because if you can’t, you are NOT free. That would be bad.
5 Reasons Men Should Go To The Doctor
Posted in Health Tips for An Early Death on April 18, 2011
You probably saw the article last week on Yahoo that “Men Often Don’t Go To The Doctor Because They Secretly Long To Die”. The story was based on a survey that 90 percent of men would rather spend their time watching re-runs of “Two And A Half Men”, eating enormous plates of fried foods and harassing female bartenders than going to the doctor. According to a study done by a guy I know from work, most American men have cholesterol rates over 2,300 and nearly 3,000 on weekends. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing, except for the fact that some doctors have recently linked high cholesterol with heart problems.
According to the American Academy of People With Stethoscopes and BMWs, 56 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 34 don’t even know what the word “doctor” means. What gives?
Simple. “Men are pretty freakin’ stupid,” says I.P. Knightly, a contributing editor to Urologist Weekly and writer of best-selling books “Urine Trouble” and “You Gotta Be Kid-ney”. “Men avoid doctors, mostly because they are scardey cats and also because their co-pays are around 80 bucks a visit. Therefore, many men at some point in their life will die, in some cases without warning.”
Here are 5 warning signs that should tell you to go to a doctor immediately:
Profuse bleeding
Many American men see bleeding as a sign of weakness. They think it shows that they are too emotional. They worry that women will not be attracted to them because they are hemorrhaging out of their face, neck and chest. So, they try to pretend they aren’t bleeding.
The first major symptom of bleeding is blood loss. This is often followed by a red substance staining their clothes. Men often ignore these signs until it is too late and they have ruined the nice white carpet in their office.
“Bleeding is a really bad sign,” says Dr. Marvin Obvious, a noted PhD who has spent most of his career studying the history of adhesive tape. “Exercise and diet can help, but major loss of blood can overcome these things and lead to, well, something bad.”
Growth of Additional Limbs
I know, I know, you find that additional arm a big help in your job at the local copy shop. Maybe you’ve gotten some complements on those extra toes that appeared at the end of your chin. But beware, these seemingly innocuous appendages could be a sign of a deeper problem.
9 out of 10 Americans who have grown extra legs may be morphing into giant human spiders said a survey in the Upper Alabama Journal of Medicine and Other Forms of Witchcraft. Sure, they look cool, but at what cost!?
Stoppage of Breathing That Lasts More Than A Week
What do all dead people have in common? If you guessed, “they are not breathing” you are exactly right. If you haven’t drawn breath in more than a week there is a good chance that you may, in fact, be dead. A visit to the doctor could help delay the onset of early rigor mortis and severe bad breath. Please, do not drive to your doctor if you have this symptom. You may be lucky and just be one of the legions of undead zombies that walk the earth, but why risk an accident?
Spontaneous Combustion
A silent killer ends the lives of nearly 1.8 million Americans every month. Four thousand humans accidentally burst into flame every ten seconds around the world. This horrible affliction turns average, normal people into human blowtorches at a moments notice. It often goes unrecognized, but people all around us are exploding all the time. If you notice profuse sweating, overwhelming thirst and flames shooting from your chest your body may be telling you something.Americans who have been diagnosed with pyrokinesis are especially susceptible to this ailment.
An Overwhelming Urge To Eat Someone You Know
Some cultures practice ritual cannibalism. We, unfortunately, are not one of them. Besides the risk of social embarrassment that acting on this fantasy could create, there is the issue of indigestion and potential consequences from improperly prepared human remains. If you are looking greedily at a friend or family member thinking of eating them…DON’T. It’s unhealthy, dangerous and just plain gross.
So, the moral of the story is see your doctor. The American Doctors In Need Of Pensions Because They Invested In Tech Stocks Association recommend visiting your doctor at least 3 times a week. American men who visit their doctors regularly, don’t smoke, avoid ingesting large amounts of heroin or arsenic and eat more than once a week are four times as likely to live into their 70s. And as everyone knows, the most important thing is not being dead.
Dumb Metal Rumors and The People Who Love Them
Posted in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on April 17, 2011
Metalheads, as a lot, tend to be some the most cynical people on the planet, but we are often willing to believe some amazingly suspect information. Get a roomful of bangers together and most of them will agree that the government, in league with a group of rancorous aliens who crashed in New Mexico, are conspiring to enslave the human race and force us to listen to Black Eyed Peas records until our ears bleed. What can be said of a group that seems to have a universal distrust Christianity but believe strongly in the existence of Satan? We tend to be suspicious of any sort of authority structure, but have complete faith in strangers who happen to arrange a series of musical notes in a way that makes us want to run into each other screaming “KILL!!!!”. In short, we are a group that is susceptible to getting caught up in some bizarre rumors.
Over the years there have been a some I particularly enjoyed. Here are a few of them…
Paging Dr. Goregrind
The story goes something like this…A bunch of frustrated med students dropped out of college moments away from becoming doctors. They took their wealth of medical training and used it to write a series of revolting metal albums in the late 80s and early 90s. These albums, which featured songs with catchy titles like “Swarming Vulgar Mass of Infected Virulency” and “Cadaveric Incubator of Endoparasites”, must have been penned by people with an acute understanding of human anatomy, the type of understanding that could only be gained by hours of study at a medical college. It’s a great story and it actually makes some sense but it is completely untrue. Carcass are, in fact, brilliant musicians with highly overdeveloped vocabularies and no medical training whatsoever. This didn’t stop a friend of mine, years back, from sending a letter to the band offering to allow them to remove his spleen onstage.
Malevolent Obfuscation
The saga of Phil Fasciana, guitarist from the band Malevolent Creation, and his heroic killing of a “80-pound homeless crackhead” Kwik E Mart robber gripped the metal world back in 2009. Apparently, Phil stumbled in looking to buy some chocolate milk and was shot at by the thief. In a scene that seems right out of a bad Don “The Dragon” Wilson action flick (because it probably was), Phil tackled the bad guy and wrestled his gun away. But this cagey crackhead reached for his hideout piece located, in of all places, his sock. Phil was forced to fire on the guy and kill him. There were more holes in the story than in the USS Bismarck. The poor, desperate homeless guy with enough money for two guns. The lack of a murder weapon, a dead body or a witness. Days afterwards, the police confirmed the story was complete nonsense. This didn’t stop a good number of metalheads, myself in particular, from running wild with this fable.
The Parable of The Cave
Wolves in the Throne Room are just your average Rudolph Steiner reading, eco-anarchist black metal band. Over the years, they have rightfully gained a reputation for being somewhat eclectic. This, however, does not mean they live in a cave. Nearly every description I heard about the band went like this “They sound like ____________________ and they remind me of ______________________ and, get this, they live in a cave.” In fairness, they do look like they live in a cave, but so do 2/3rds of the metalheads under the age of 25. They live on an organic farm. There are clear structural differences between a cave and a farm that I shouldn’t have to explain.
Dead…Again?
Death rumors are a favorite among metalheads. Back in 2005, Type O Negative pulled off the ultimate hoax when they convinced the world that singer Peter Steele had died. This became quite confusing when Steele actually died last year. Was he really dead this time? Would he rise on the second day as some sort of ironic, Easter-themed publicity stunt? The last album was named Dead Again for gosh sakes! And Rasputin was on the cover. That zany Russian died something like 28 times and kept coming back! This had to be some sick joke. Unfortunately, it was not and Steele has not risen…yet.
The 2005 Steele death was the most convincing death rumor I have heard, but far from the first. I’ll never forget spending an embarrassing evening back in 1993 mourning Pantera singer Phil Anselmo’s untimely death. The word was he had dove off of the stage and the crowd had parted, unwilling to take seriously their responsibilities as members of the metal community, allowing Phil to slam into the floor. His neck broke and he was pronounced dead in the pit. The injustice! I remember mournfully looking at the sky and shouting “I would have caught you, Phil! I would have caught you!”
News and Notes From Around Major League Baseball For The Severely Deranged
Posted in Blithering Sports Fan Prattle on April 12, 2011
Chipper Celebrates His Big Night
Last night was a historic night at Turner Field as Braves third baseman Chipper Jones was scratched from the lineup with his 3,000th oblique injury. While taking batting practice, Chipper felt a familiar tug in between his stomach and his ribcage and knew that he had done something special. He informed the trainer and Manager Fredi Gonzalez about the accomplishment immediately and his name was removed from the lineup card. The capacity crowd of 35,000 people leaped to their feet when the lineup change was announced and Chipper was given a five-minute curtain call during which he pulled a hamstring muscle. After the game, Chipper’s entire oblique muscle was removed and sent to Cooperstown. “There are many moments that live forever in the minds of baseball fans, Hank Aaron’s 755 homerun, Pete Rose’s 4192 hit, Oliver Perez’ 10,000th wild pitch and now this moment,” said commissioner Bud Selig in a ceremony held in the Emergency Room at Atlanta’s Grady Hospital, “There is a new strained oblique muscle champion and his name is Chipper Jones!”
In other injury news, the Mets placed Jason Bay on the 15,000 day disabled list retroactive to 2004. Bay was diagnosed with a broken leg, three sprained fingers, a ruptured spleen, toxic megacolon, chimpanzee acne, male pattern baldness, mumps, gastroenteritis, Bogart-Bacall Syndrome, an ulcer, type 4 feline diabetes, colic and schizophrenia. Bay sustained all of these injuries crashing into the wall at Dodgers Stadium in a game last July. The Mets Medical Staff has ordered Bay to fly back and forth from the West Coast four times a day for the next month in order to improve his condition. Former Mets General Manager Omar Minaya responded to this latest setback by offering Bay a 5 year 100 million dollar extension. The Mets, unclear as to why a person who is no longer GM is making offers to players, responded by offering Bay a 7 year 140 million dollar extension. Mets GM Sandy Alderson said in an afternoon press conference that “As a major market team, we simply cannot be outbid by former employees who no longer run baseball teams.”
Yesterday, Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane signed 12 year old Little League sensation Ryan Murphy. Murphy had a .560 OBP in 132 at-bats for his Pony League team, The Shoprite Superstars and had a 1.230 OPS in all summer wiffleball games played between 14th and 18th Street in Columbus, Ohio. Murphy, a 5 foot 2 and 345 pound shortstop, is thought the team’s leadoff hitter of the future.
Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa debuted his new “lefty-killer” defense designed to neutralize the power hitting left-handed bats on the Phillies in St. Louis last night. The defense featured 3 second baseman, 2 first baseman and 11 rightfielders. LaRussa, a manager known for employing creative lineups and defenses, made history last week by deciding to use a designated hitter in games against other National League teams and batting Albert Pujols 2nd, 4th, 7th and 11th in the lineup.
Philip Morris Corporation Purchases Exclusive Naming Rights to Emphysema
Posted in Health Tips for An Early Death, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on April 10, 2011
In a move to reestablish itself as a force in the cigarette industry, tobacco giant Philip Morris today purchased exclusive naming rights to emphysema. They will pay the World Health Organization (WHO) 900 million dollars over the next 10 years in order to own the right to name the disease whatever they want to. Initially, Phillip Morris simply wanted the words “Philip Morris, Official Sponsor of Emphysema” to be spoken each time the crippling illness was mentioned, but for an additional 100 million per year they have been given the ability to give the disease an entirely new name. In order to get rid of the negative connotations people have with the word “emphysema” the disease will now be referred to by doctors and health care professionals as “Skippy”. “We felt that emphysema strikes a gloomy chord with the public and that there was no harm in brightening the name up a bit,” said Philip Morris Public Relations Director Henry Haldeman.
The corporate re-naming of diseases is part of a larger privatization trend that includes selling formerly public property to corporations. It started with the privatization of water supplies and other formerly public resources, but has now moved to more abstract concepts like disease names. The bidding war has already started for the rights to name rhumetoid arthritis and diabetes, the next two ailments that will be on the block. There have been rumors that the right to name several body parts is the next frontier. Last year, The Disney Corporation offered 400 million dollars for the rights to name the human pancreas, but a serious bidding war has yet to develop.
Part of Philip Morris’ deal with the WHO is to pledge 10 million dollars a year to emphysema research. According to “We are not trying to convince people that emphysema, uh, excuse me, Skippy, is a good disease. We are just trying to remind people that Philip Morris is an important member of the global community. Therefore, we will continue to maintain our commitment to eradicating Skippy from the planet,” said Philip Morris CEO James Erlichman in a press conference to announce the deal.
What If Danzig Dated My Daughter?
Posted in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, Parenting Tips For Those With Children, Totally Useless Information on April 6, 2011
One of the things you come to accept as a parent is that your life is going to be filled with a series of irrational fears. After a while you get used to it, but there are a few that never seem to go away. Sometimes they appear in the form of a nightmare that wakes you up every night in a cold sweat with your heart thumping at 185 beats per minute. For me, that nightmare is Glenn Danzig pinning a corsage to my teenage daughter’s dress as they leave for her high school prom.
It is certainly a preposterous thing to be afraid of, but most fear has an element of the absurd to it. About three days before the prom my daughter starts telling me about this great guy named “Glenn” who she met at the mall. Fast forward to the night of the prom, the doorbell rings and I walk over to it. She is upstairs getting ready. I open the door. There he is…Danzig. Of course, my daughter is two years old right now and Danzig is 56, so there is a bit of an age difference. By the time my daughter is ready for the prom Danzig will be 72. In the nightmare, he doesn’t appear that old. He looks like the snarling Lucifuge-era Danzig that could beat up four Marine battalions and the Dallas Cowboys without breaking a sweat. He is wearing one of those horrible rental tuxedos with the godawful ruffled shirt and yet he still looks menacing. He is polite at first. I ask him to come in and have a cold soda. He sits on my couch and stares blankly at nothing in particular. I am freaking out. I keep hearing that part of the song Mother where he says “I’m gonna take your daughter out tonight….Gonna show her my world…. Not about to see your light….If you want to find hell with me…I can show you what it’s like” Ehhhhh!
“So, Glenn, how did you meet my daughter?”
(Here’s the part that is kind of strange. During this section of the dream, he sings everything he says in a sinister, baritone voice)
“We were in…Hotttttt Topicccc…..and we started….talkkkkkkking…..She said she likes Gothic Roccckkkkk…..”
I puff out my chest and try to pull off the intimidating, “make sure and have my daughter home by midnight or else” dad act. This would work on most high schoolers, but it’s not going to put any sort of fear into Danzig. “Uhmmmmm. What are your plans for this evening, Glenn?”
“We’re going for a ride on my….Harrrrlllllleyyy. Then, we’re going to go out (drums start to pick up from out of nowhere) dannnnnciiiiinnnnngggg!!!!”
I try to change the subject to something less threatening. “So, any chance of a Misfits re-union?”
Danzig just laughs and stares off into the distance. The room is filled with three minutes of icy, uncomfortable silence.
The next fifteen minutes are a blur of horrible memories. My daughter dancing down the stairs and leaping into Danzig’s arms, taking pictures out on the front lawn with her, her friends and the dude who once sang the lyrics “I Want Your Skulls, I Need Your Skulls”, sneaking glances at my equally horrified wife. I wake up screaming.
How does a responsible parent deal with this? If we tell her she can’t see Danzig, that might drive her right into his arms. I could see it now….“Honey, you can never see that Danzig fellow again!”
“I hate you mom and dad!!!!! You are trying to ruin my life!!!!!!”
Next thing I know it I come home and there is a note on the refrigerator that says “Went to Vegas to marry Danzig. Back on Monday.”
We certainly cannot condone this sort of behavior. I’d much rather see her dating one of those brooding, introspective Echo and The Bunnymen poet-socialist types. However, so much is out of your control. You just try to do the best you can raising them and hope they make good decisions. Being a parent is hard enough without having to worry about your daughter dating Danzig.
2011 Baseball Predictions For The Disinterested and Ill Informed
Posted in Blithering Sports Fan Prattle on April 1, 2011
Unlike Past Seasons, The Royals Expect To Score SEVERAL Runs In 2011
In the hopes of doing something original with the highly stale pre-season baseball prediction column, I have decided to pick all of the winning teams randomly. I took the names of the teams in each division and threw them into a hat. I picked the winners of each division out and will then threw the rest back in and picked the Wild Card. After that, I threw the winning names back in and picked the World Series Winner at random. The challenge is now for me to come up with reasons that the teams I picked might actually win. We are making history here folks. Hang on to your hats!
American League
AL East-Yankees
Whew! I got off easy on this one. Great pitching, a powerful lineup and a payroll that resembles the Gross Domestic Product of Angola, what is not to like? I think I’m pretty safe here.
AL Central-Royals
The lineup isn’t totally horrendous. Jeff Francouer, the team’s right fielder, might well hit 30 homeruns this year (if he manages to get somewhere around 1300 at bats). First baseman Kila Ka’aihue has a shot to lead the league this season in Vowel To Consonant In Name Ratio (VCNR), an important predictor of player success. They feature Bruce Chen and Kyle Davies who both spent some of their careers with the Atlanta Braves. The Atlanta Braves system produced John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, two certain Hall of Famers.
An oft-overlooked statistic that bodes well for the Royals is team weight. The Royals position players outweigh the rest of the leagues position players by nearly 220 pounds and an average of 10.7 pounds per player. Starvation is a disease that afflicts many professional athletes and it is almost guaranteed that, if there is any sort of famine, the Royals will be able to outlast the rest of the Central.
AL West-Mariners
The Mariners feature an exciting team that could easily make a run at their first division championship since the Ford Administration. They feature a budding star in first baseman The Dude Who Got Traded for Cliff Lee, and a dominant starting pitcher, The Heavy Set Young Guy Who Sportswriters Seem to Really Like. The Short Speedy Guy Who Used To Be Good is a sparkplug at the top of the lineup. The Guy With The Strange Looking Name is a top-flite closer who looks to rebound from a shaky 2010. Slightly Mentally Disturbed Former Power Hitter Who Has Been Kicked Off Of Nearly Every Team In Baseball showed signs of regaining his All-Star form late last season. They have a lot of other talented players who are capable of both hitting and even fielding, on occasion. New Manager, Guy With The Mustache Who Got Fired By Somebody a While Ago, brings a new enthusiasm and energy that should translate into more wins.
AL Wild Card-Tigers
The Tigers are one of the toughest teams in baseball. They have to be…they live in Detroit. Detroit, a city that is best known for devastating poverty and Robocop, has a proud tradition of excellence. No examples of this spring to mind immediately, but I’m sure there is some fellow in a Chet Lemon throwback jersey who can come up with a few. Detroit also features a baseball stadium that is untouched by the bloodshed and terror that take place outside of its gates. They will probably sellout most of their games this season as panicked citizens search for shelter, food and safety.
National League
NL West-Giants
In spite of the fact that 2/3s of the team look like they have been waiting on line for 15 hours to get tickets to a Nickelback concert, they have a great deal of talent. The pitching is flat-out awesome. Lincecum and Cain are tremendous at the front end, but they also have the unfortunately named Madison Bumgarner and Barry Zito, who’s contract conclusively proves he is one of the top pitchers in baseball. Expect great things out of enigmatic lefty Jonathon Sanchez, who should pitch well enough this season to allow another organization to set themselves back 10 years by giving him millions of dollars in the off-season (see Oliver Perez). The fact that they collectively will probably hit 12 homeruns shouldn’t bother you because good pitching always beats good hitting and clichés repeated ad nauseum by baseball announcers are always correct.
NL East-Nationals
The Nats went out and spent some money in the off-season for the first time since Ronnie Belliard turned down a lucrative career in Real Estate Sales to join the club back in 2007. Their big splash was the signing of Jayson Werth, who should react favorably to a less hitter friendly park and limited protection in the lineup. They also signed Adam LaRoche, a player who has accumulated a great deal of experience playing in front of 300-1,000 fans, a major advantage for players first joining the club. They feature a bevy of young potential superstars including recent arm transplant recipient Jordan Zimmerman and David Clyde-esque flamethrower Stephen Strasburg. If minor league sensation Bryce Harper does not drown in eye black, he could join the club for a late season push.
NL Central-Brewers
Somebody has to win the Central….right????
NL Wild Card-Florida
Florida’s fan base has suffered through several subpar seasons due to the nearly constant fire sale that has taken place since the franchise last won the World Series in 2003. Those twelve people have suffered terribly and deserve a great season. This is their year!
World Series Winner Florida Marlins
If I Never Hear It Again It Will Be Soon Enough: Clichés that Push Me Over the Edge
Posted in Totally Useless Information on March 28, 2011
I've Got An Idea...Why Don't I Put An Attention Catching Photo That Has Nothing to Do With The Article On Top
“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.” –Salvador Dali
There are simply too many clichés in the world. The language is filled with them. It is hard to get through a conversation without hearing one or saying one. Most of them started out as colorful ways to describe an experience and have, through years of endless repetition, become mildly annoying, harmless platitudes that move conversation along. For some strange reason certain clichés make me extremely angry. Most float through my mental filters without much of a struggle, but every once and a while there is one that disturbs me. Since the chances of me actually getting legislation past to outlaw these incipit expressions are remote at best I have decided to address them in a constructive way, instead of quietly fuming about them day after day. I have been compiling a list over the past few months of these along with descriptions of why they bother me in the hopes of understanding the pain that they cause me and hopefully inflicting this pain on others. I have also included helpful sarcastic responses to confuse the cliché user and possibly prevent the offending expression from being used again. So, as they say, away we go….
Cliché: “Throwing the Baby Out With The Bathwater”
What kind of sick freak thought this one up? As a parent of two small children, I find the idea that I might actually forget one of them and toss them into the river with dirt-ridden water to be entirely preposterous. I get that the creator of this one is trying to make the point that whatever the person is doing is a really ridiculous thing, but what sort of lunatic would toss a baby out with bathwater?!?! They are certainly tiny, but not nearly small enough to accidentally thrown away. Maybe the person is an evil, malicious hater of babies, but this is far from the most efficient way of getting rid of them.
Appropriate Response: Look down at your shoes shaking your head for one dramatic moment, then look up and shout “Well, it’s better than shooting it!” Turn and walk off.
Cliché: “I wear many hats”
AGHHGGHHHH!!! I can’t even think about this one without seething. Yes, I know it means doing more one role, but the metaphor confuses me. Do they mean at the same time? What kind of fool would wear 3 or 4 hats at once? It would be stupid looking. There have been a lot of asinine fashion trends throughout history, but I cannot recall a single fad that had anything to do with the person wearing a lot of hats at once. Is the point that the person has multiple heads? Am I meant to imagine the person in front of me morphing into a giant hydra like beast wearing a prefaded Red Sox cap, a turban and a Michael Coreleone style fedora? More than likely, the person who said it wants me to see them as a beaming icon of capitalism and industry, efficiently moving from task to task, a vaunted leader one moment, a regular lunch pail working stiff the next, a person who can be all things to all people, a technocratic “renaissance man”, a proud beacon of all that can be achieved in a 24 hour day with a little know-how and a fist full of gumption. I think I’d prefer the hydra.
Appropriate Response: Vomiting on the persons shoes
Cliché: “Give it 110 percent”
I am well aware that the test scores of American students in math and science have declined over the last 30 years, but the fact that Americans have no qualms about repeatedly asking each other to violate common sense and mathematical reason in this way is alarming. As if this wasn’t troubling enough, the cliché inflation that has taken place is now taking place is insane. During the 2010 baseball season, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said that pitcher Gavin Floyd would only pitch if he were at “200 percent”. 1972 Democratic Presidential Candidate George McGovern, the Godfather of Cliché Inflation, started this madness when he said he was “1000 percent behind” his Vice Presidential Candidate Thomas Eagleton seconds before he tossed him kicking and screaming off of the Presidential ticket. Of course, none of this compares to the all-time Cliché Inflation champion Atlanta Attorney George Lawson who asserted that he was “a million percent certain” that his client, Auburn Quarterback Cam Newton, did not take money. Where does it end?
Appropriate Response: Give an overly loud, awkward pretend laugh, and then shout, “If I ever see you again, I’ll break both of your legs!” Turn and walk off.
Cliché: “Too many Indians, Not Enough Chiefs”
This one has started to fade into cliché obscurity for everyone except people who write those grotesque books that quote Vince Lombardi a lot and compare great managers to Ghandi and Napoleon. It doesn’t get play in the real world anymore mostly because “too many indigenous peoples and not enough chiefs” really doesn’t have a great ring. Here’s the larger problem…Chiefs ARE Indians.
Appropriate Response: Look deeply offended and reply, “Are you trying to say that there are too many Indians? What kind of idiot racist would make a claim like that!”?
I’ve got a ton more of these but I’ll save them for a rainy day.
A Dish Best Not Served
Posted in Mr. Spillett's Academy Of Film Study For The Mentally Tormented on March 26, 2011
Jodie Foster Reacting to Her First Reading of the Script
It has taken nearly seven years for a film to eclipse Gus Van Sant’s trainwreck “Elephant” as the reigning worst film of all time, but today, at approximately 4:33, I finished watching the Neil Jordan 2007 movie “The Brave One”. All hail the new king!
For me to try to describe the plot of this film in a way that did it justice I would need to use start making gorilla noises and smacking myself in the face. It is purile, infantile garbage. Just so you as the reader fully understand my contempt for this vile bucket of swill, I plan on divulging every possible plot point that might surprise a person who has the misfortune of watching it. Hopefully, this will discourage anyone who has not taken my warning seriously from seeing this monstrosity.
Jodie Foster plays the preposterously annoying Erica Cain, a public radio “personality” who rattles on and on about her love of New York City and all of its whimsical, gritty charm. Erica and her boyfriend go out to walk their dog and get brutally beaten, he dies and she quickly morphs from Garrison Keillor to Charles Bronson. A Bernhard Goetz for the Starbucks set. Erica must just be unlucky because everywhere she goes some demented sociopath shows up and puts her life in jeopardy. So, she does what every red blooded New Yorker should be doing (if you follow the deeply embarrassing moral logic of the film). She busts a series of caps in the collective backsides of some of the worst human beings this side of America’s Most Wanted.
Don’t worry, she won’t actually be doing any jail time for killing more people than Charlie Starkweather because Detective Mercer (played with remarkable disinterest by the usually reliable Terrance Howard) is on the case. There are a whole bunch of conversations where he pontificates about the difference between cops and vigilantes and then, in a plot twist that carries the film to new heights of absurdity, he helps her murder the perps who killed her boyfriend. The best feat of acting in the film takes place when Howard comes full circle and tells Erica that if she kills someone she should “use a legal gun”. See, because we thought he was going to arrest her, but, see, he doesn’t and instead he helps see justice done. What’s great about that moment isn’t what he says or does, but that he manages to do it without bursting into fits of laughter. I’d love to see one of those old outtake reels that they used to run under the credits of Burt Reynolds films but with Terrance Howard trying to get the dumb line about legal guns out and cracking up over and over again. Better yet, I’d like to see what Dom DeLuise could have done with that line.
After that, Jodie Foster marches triumphantly through the tunnel where she was attacked and, I swear I’m not making this part up, the dog they were walking at the beginning of the film COMES BACK TO HER!!!! Months have past since the attack! WHAT?!?!?! It still has the leash on for the love of God! Was the dog just waiting there performing some canine version of Waiting for Godot, hoping Erica would reappear? How did it survive? I know there have been some budget cuts in New York, they still have at least one or two people working animal control…right?!?!
Neil Jordan has never impressed me all that much, except for that five second stretch of The Crying Game where America collectively spit its popcorn on the person in the seat in front of them. This, however, is a new low. He and the writers spend two hours arguing that Americans should stop leaving issues like crime to the police and simply gun down any of the menacing characters they bump into while trying to find their car after a Saturday night performance of Jersey Boys.
It is a highly irresponsible movie, but I don’t even think it’s worth spending a lot of time on why. If you can identify with the moral language used in this film you are way past being reasoned with. Trying to talk someone out of relating to the message in this film is like trying to convince someone who just watched Plan 9 From Outer Space that they should not be afraid of alien controlled zombies.
The Pitt of a Jamie Dixon’s Fears
Posted in Basketball Coaching Nonsense, Blithering Sports Fan Prattle on March 21, 2011
Jamie Dixon...I Feel Your Pain
Unless you are a hardcore Butler basketball fan or a masochist, the ending to the Pitt/Butler NCAA basketball game this past Saturday was awful to witness. Two basketball teams played 39 minutes and 57 seconds of basketball that was so beautiful it would have made John Wooden himself well up with tears. Then, inexplicably, both teams spent the last three seconds going out of their way to implode on a Bill Buckner-esque level never seen before in the NCAA tournament.
The March Sadness began when Butler guard Shelvin Mack, who had played an astonishingly good game up to that point, fouled Pitt guard Gilbert Brown nearly 50 feet from the basket. There was almost no chance Brown would have converted from that distance. Instead of a wild shot from an absurd distance, Brown got to settle in on the foul line and shoot free throws. Mack’s foul was beyond inexcusable. For exactly 1 second, it stood in the annals of NCAA history as the most horribly timed foul ever committed. Then, Pitt’s Nasir Robinson took things to the next level and committed a foul that will forever awaken Pitt fans in the middle of the night screaming. With the game tied and about a second remaining, Robinson fouled Butler’s Matt Howard on a rebound. Howard was roughly 90 feet away from the basket with his back turned. The foul allowed Howard to go to the free throw line and hit the game winning shot.
The game was a catastrophe for Pittsburgh. Few teams have ever self-destructed at such an inopportune moment. The equivalent of this foul in baseball would have been hitting the game winning homerun in the World Series then missing 1st, 2nd and 3rd base. Nasir Robinson, who seems like a nice enough human being, will probably have to carry this one for the rest of his life. You never want to see anything like this happen. However, Pitt’s coach Jamie Dixon has been excoriated for how the game ended. I feel like most of the rage that is heaped on people that make mistakes at critical moments is unfair. It is awful that Robinson will have to be known for this for the rest of his life. The criticism of Dixon is particularly unsettling because, unlike Robinson, he didn’t actually make a mistake.
The big knock on Dixon was that he should not have had the rest of the Pitt team on the foul line when Brown took his second free throw. I believe that this argument doesn’t make sense. The game was tied at 70 to 70. One of Pitt’s major strengths during the season has been their rebounding. Pitt ranked seventh in the country as a rebounding team with 40 rebounds per game. Further, nearly 42 percent of their rebounds have been offensive, the highest percentage in the country. Dixon’s thinking was sound. He believed that it was much more likely that one of his players might grab a rebound and tip it back in then one of his experienced, veteran players would commit a ridiculous foul. Had the Pitt player grabbed the offensive rebound and put it in, few people would be arguing that Dixon shouldn’t have had players on the line. Had Pitt been up a point, it would have been wise to pull the players off the line, but NOT in a tie game. If Dixon had pulled his players off the line and then lost in overtime, I believe his decision would have been much more suspect. Their rebounding prowess gave them a chance to win and Dixon tried to capitalize it.
This is not an argument to heap scorn on Robinson. Everyone makes mistakes. He happened to have his at the single worst moment imaginable. There is no point to beat up on Robinson for his error. He knows what he did and why he shouldn’t have done it more than anyone on earth right now. However, criticizing Dixon for decision-making here is completely illogical. As a coach, one thing that you have to accept is that bad things happen sometimes when your players ARE in a position to win. You can do everything right and still lose. Dixon made a logical, appropriate decision that didn’t work out. Being a coach means living with being second-guessed, even when you are right. This is an occupational hazard. Unfortunately, part of the narrative around this game is that Dixon should have made a different decision. One day, the memory of this game might cost Dixon his job. This is unfortunate because he did the right thing here. It just didn’t work out.
The Tyranny of Tradition 
