RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Friday, February 1

NFL WK 22: the stupid fucking Super Bowl

Man, I had no idea how to really go about doing my final bullshit NFL weekly post, because no retard science can really interest me in this game. A few weeks back, I was in first in some local classic rock station's stupid contest to win a flat screen DVD bullshit set-up, but the Giants caused me to flame out, meaning I will never have a $1200 TV now (because I ain't spending that much money on some shit I just sit there and stare at like some zombie faggot, like I got real shit I could be doing other than fucking my own brain up happily at a high price tag), so it's still my shitty old school 32 inch motherfucker from 1990-something that my bro-in-law gave us for free as a present, which will be our TV again for another few years. (Oh yeah, some other dude gave us a nice non-new flat technology TV, but it was too big for the wardrobe cabinet my grandfather made that we use as our TV cabinet, so I gave it to some other folks who didn't have no TV at all... trickle down economics man. Fuck a tax rebate, they ought to just make rich fuckers put a bunch of stuff outside their gated communities for middle class fuckers to have, and then middle class fuckers could put all their old shit at the strip malls for poor people to get bused out and have. And then the poor people could burn all their old useless shit in abandoned buildings and the government could provide beer, those little cheap ass "drinks" that come in colors not flavors in fake ass plastic barrels with aluminum foil tops, and slimy red hot dogs by the dozens.)
But finally what I decided, not only to make a chickenshit salad post out of a chickenshit attitude towards this Super Bowl game, is to list out who I was pulling for and against, as individuals. I had thought about doing that same old corny Top 8 list with the helmets like all year, but what would I do? Offense, defense, special teams, and coaching? Man, that's fucking played. Every two-bit newspaper cockhole is doing that shit for Sunday's paper as we speak, so fuck that noise. I got my two lists of ten, each spot is either negative or positive points for my rooting ability, and by the end of this fucker I guess I'll figure out what I'm pulling for. I'll start at #10s and work up to #1s, and we'll let positivity start over negativity because I've been listening to a lot of Guru lately...
#10 DUDE I'M ROOTING FOR - GIANTS DEFENSIVE END OSI UMENYIORA. He's obviously by his name some sort of crazy foreigner who probably slow-cooked goats in his dorm room in college, and then John Dawson hipped me to this story of some chick talking about how ol' Osi likes to shit on chicks as a sexual kick. Man, in this time of everybody being all jaded and cynical about being American, what with wars and full of shit politicians running amok on cable TVto get our "vote" like two years from now or whenever that shit actually finally happens, it's good to just remember the American dream. Here's some African fucker who probably twisted scrap lead wire into toy cars as a youth, sniffed jenkem as a teenager, but made it to America, where he makes millions of dollars for chasing whiteboys with balls around, and gets to shit on full-grown American women for his own slimy pleasure. It's not only a slice of the American Dream, but it's a tale of African comeuppance as well. God bless motherfuckin' Osi Umenyiora. I hope he shits all over Ghiselle Souvilihana or whatever that model slut's name is that's got Brady sperms in her urethra. (Plus one point for the Giants, putting me at +1 a Giants fan this Sunday)
#10 DUDE I'M ROOTING AGAINST - PATRIOTS LINEBACKER JUNIOR SEAU. When Junior Seau was the only Samoan dude other than Mosi Tatupu in the NFL, and he played in San Diego where it was sunny and California and you could easily imagine the Boo-Yaa Tribe and all of Afa & Sika's nephews hanging out in the parking lot, lifting weights and giving each other tribal/cholo tattoos, Seau had this certain gangsta ass appeal as the crazy linebacker dude. But now that he's been playing for 29 years, including three or four in his latest post-retirement stint, hoping to clutch at a Super Bowl ring, and every NFL team seems to have like five former WAC players with names long on vowels and short on hard consonants, Junior Seau just seems like an old fucker who won't go away. I could give a fuck less how great a linebacker he was, there is nothing less impressive than old superstars riding some young players' collective jocks for a professional team sports title. I hope not only that Seau doesn't get his ring, but he tears his ACL or some shit and can never make another half-assed "Let me play like seven plays but get 39 camera shots standing around on the sideline being an intense veteran leader" attempt at a ring. Fuck him. (Minus one point for the Patriots, putting me at +2 for the Giants.)
#9 AGAINST - PATRIOTS COACH BILL BELICHICK. I don't really loathe Belichick like I have loathed other NFL coaches, I'm just sick of hearing people talk about him. It's gotten boring. I mean, I hated Bill Walsh and Jimmy Johnson far more than I could ever probably hate Belichick, but at the same time, that whole genius sweatshirt monotone interviews puts everybody on the injury report shit is getting tired. He should switch up his schtick and like want to wear suits on the sideline next year, but wear really flamboyant ass suits that Bryan Cox picks out for him, and do his media engagements in a fake British accent. (Minus two points for the Patriots, putting me at +4 for the Giants.)
#9 FOR - PATRIOT KICKER STEPHEN GOSTKOWSKI. Adam Vinateri was considered the most clutch stupid kicker ever, and maybe the first ever to get in the Hall of Fame (I think there ain't no homo ass kickers there right now, at least not dudes who were kicking specialists but probably some old school fuckers who were like linebacker/wide receiver/kicker), so when he got allowed to be a free agent fucker in Indy, the Pats went out and drafted this kid. He has done pretty well, and I like the fact he has one of those corny ass ethnic white person last names. You don't see enough of those anymore, what with rap music causing us all to fuck betwixt the races. Plus, half the kids nowadays take their mom's last name. It's nice to see a spunky little white dude named Gostkowski kicking extra points for the Patriots. I also think, again because of rap music, I have an affinity for guys with "-owski" names, because it used to be slang that a dick was called "Jimbrowski" or "Jimmy". UVA, back then, had an offensive lineman named Jim Dombrowski, and being I was young, I assumed he probably had the biggest dick ever. And I guess any time a football player is named Someshitowski, to this day, I assume he's packing a Haitian Special Police baton third leg, and what guy isn't stoked for another dude who's dragging such a sexual specimen around between his thighs? We would all have one if we could wish for it. (Plus two points for the Patriots, making it +2 for the Giants.)
#8 FOR - PATRIOTS WIDE RECEIVER WES WELKER. Stupid looking, average build white dude becomes superstar, just by being meticulous about doing what he's supposed to do with the Xs and Os. He ain't fast, flashy, or flamboyant. He's a stupid white dude still playing wide receiver in the NFL in 2008. It might be an unconscious deeply embedded racism within me, or it could just be the same contrarian asshole nature that loves black punters, but I will always be stoked for a white wide receiver in this day and age. Except Joe Jurivicius. I hate that fucker. (Plus three points for the Patriots, putting them ahead +1 in who I will apply my cosmic energy towards.)
#8 AGAINST - GIANTS OFFENSIVE LINEMAN CHRIS SNEE. To be honest, I just don't like Snee because he's Tom Coughlin's son-in-law. What's the fucking chances you'd get some chick pregnant whose dad is an NFL coach, and then end up being NFL caliber enough to play for that team? Slim and none, that's the chances. There's some athletic illuminati bullshit going on behind all this, and I can't really think of a lot more to it because I have yet to buy an old copying machine from a surplus store where the machine came from NFL headquarters and inside on the glass was a detailed flowchart and description of how NFL power structure since Bill Walsh powered his way to the top of the behind-the-curtain hierarchy shapes up, and where Coughlin fits in this, and what '70s NFL team coach or executive Chris Snee has lizard bloodlines to. (Minus 3 points for the Giants, making it +4 the Patriots.)
#7 AGAINST - GIANTS COACH TOM COUGHLIN. See above. Also realize that Coughlin is a born again holy roller who was as hardcore about his players being born again in the spirit of Jesus themselves as he was about them being five minutes early to meetings in Jacksonville. I doubt that's changed entirely since he went to New York, though the big storyline is how he changed so much this year, became so much more easy-going and shit. I guess either the zionist influence of Jew York weakened his will, or just the overall devilish influences of such a Babylonian metropolis did it, but whichever way, it would be funny if God (haha, I capitalized it like it not only exists but I should revere it) smote him down. Although his red ass face in that Packers game was funny, like he went skiing with goggles on and got sunburn everywhere except around his eyes. (Minus 4 pionts for the Giants, making it +8 for the Patriots.)
#7 FOR - GIANTS KICKER LAWRENCE TYNES. Damn, two kickers on the For list. Tynes is some sort of white foreigner (meaning either Norwegian or Australian, but I can't remember which), and he got into drunken fistfights as a Kansas City Chief. The ONLY way a professional football kicker can be awesome is if they are a drunken foreigner. Bonus points if you never played American college football (which I don't think Tynes ever did), and double bonus points if he's violated the NFL's drug policy by using recreational pharmaceuticals (which I have no idea whether Tynes has done, but I'm sure if he hasn't violated the test, it's because they weren't asking his piss the right questions.) (Plus 4 points for the Giants, cutting it to +4 for the Patriots.)
#6 FOR - GIANTS WIDE RECEIVER PLAXICO BURRESS. That "guarantee" interview thing from this week was the biggest non-story there ever was. Like, if that's bulletin board material, then the Patriots ought to just start sharing peanut butter pie recipes on the bulletin board too, because they're obviously over-sensitive faggots. Plaxico didn't say anything really shitty; he just straight up had confidence in his team, like you would want somebody to do. I guess Brady made a huffaw at the fact he only said the Pats would score 17, but he said 23 to 17. It's not like he said, "Man, those guys suck. We should be up by 3 touchdowns at halftime, and coast through the second half, flirting with dancers on the sideline. Get your popcorn ready." I also like it because I don't think Plaxico has practiced all year long, because of an ankle injury he's been nursing every day of the week except Sunday. You gotta respect a cat who's got his hustle together, doing as little as possible to stay paid, but doing just enough to keep from getting replaced. (Plus five points for the Giants, putting them back ahead +1.)
#6 AGAINST - PATRIOTS OWNER ROBERT KRAFT. I have read enough Howard Zinn essays on Industrial Age barons to know not to fucking root for guys whose last name is things that are in the store (or the store itself). Those types of old rich white dudes would gladly rape my children as they ate fancy hard crackers with a pate made of my ground brains. I know I cannot trust a guy named Kraft, and the fact that I think the previous owner was from the Gillette family makes it even worse. You know it was some Trading Places dollar bet bullshit, but instead of the wacky negro and the straight-laced innocent pawn white guy getting their comeuppance for feelgood movie shenanigans, Gillette and Kraft had Billy Ray Valentine and whatever Dan Akroyd's name was fellating each other for rolls of quarters that kept falling through a grate underneath them, but they would just fellate each other harder, hoping to get something. And old Gillette and Kraft were laughing it up, and Gillette goes, "You were Robert old pal, those two really do enjoy giving another man's penis a waxing, here's the Patriots." But then Kraft took care of tipping the caddies at the country club the next morning on their golf date. (Minus 5 for the Patriots, making it +6 for the Giants.)
#5 AGAINST - PATRIOTS QUARTERBACK TOM BRADY. It has been said to not hate the player, but rather hate the game. Except I rather love the game of football, so due to these special circumstances, I am required by personal oath to hate the player in this instance. There is nothing glowing that hasn't been already said about Tom Brady somewhere, and there is nothing hateful that you haven't heard one of your drunk ass friends who is a Jets, Dolphins, Colts, Raiders, or Steelers fan already say. So I will just leave it at I am actively rooting against Tom Brady, for the rest of his life. If he becomes a politician, I hope he loses. If his children play little league baseball, I hope they lose. If he plays shuffleboard in Florida upon retirement, I hope he always loses. If he gets skin cancer, I hope he loses then too. I want him to lose, all the time, forever. (Minus 6 points for the Patriots, so now it's +12 for the Giants.)
#5 FOR - FORMER GIANTS LINEBACKER LAWRENCE TAYLOR. If the Giants are in the Super Bowl, that means the real L.T. is gonna be around, circulating amongst parties, hopefully getting all coked up so his ultra-gacked up white eyeballs are popping out of his dark sweaty face, and he gets crazy Arizonan lingerie models sexed up. And if the Giants win the Super Bowl, that extends L.T. time by a couple of weeks. He'll be celebrating, even if by himself, until at least St. Patrick's Day. And as a kid who came of age in the '80s, L.T. represents a certain ethos of that time - flashy car and dangling earring, drugged up yet able to hold it down, and heading to the top only to crash back down about halfway back to where you started, which is still way above what you were back in the day, and plus you have awesome stories from your uber-decadent time at the top. I like that, and I like L.T. because of that, and it gives me hope that one day I can have sex with conjoined twins while we're all on E. (Plus 6 points for the Giants, and they are running away with it at +18 now.)
#4 FOR - GIANTS LINEBACKER ANTONIO PIERCE. Pierce played for a couple of season in Washington for the Redskins, and he was the no-nonsense, offensive schematic-reading, reverse quarterback style middle linebacker that today's gimmick-ridden NFL defenses require. Except most linebackers are protein-fed halfwits. Not Antonio Pierce though, and that time the Redskins decided not to even make a meager match to the Giants offer, being Pierce was a restricted free agent or some shit at the time (or maybe he just wanted to stay in Washington, I can't remember), that is one of about a thousand times I dreadfully remember every morning I wake up the fan of a team ownered by Dan Snyder. (Plus 7 points for the Giants, making it +25... a blowout.)
#4 AGAINST - GIANTS QUARTERBACK ELI MANNING. I am sick of the Manning family. I am sick of Peyton, obviously, but also sick of Eli's coming of age at the end of this season, and I am double sick of down home Archie Manning interviews about his boys. I'm sick of knowing Cooper Manning is an insurance salesman. I'm sick of hearing that Eli Manning has some girlfriend that he treats like a peasant, forcing her to sit in the crowd with everyday NFL fan riffraff (like myself). I'm sick of looking at Eli's face in the paper or on the TV screen and thinking, "Take Peyton, make 12% younger, plus 4% more Down's syndromey." I am fucking sick to death of Manning brother hype and hyperbole and over-exposure. With Peyton gone, Eli gets all my Manning hate, plus a little extra for being stupid ass fucknosed Eli Manning. Oh man... if there's ever a Colts/Giants Super Bowl, I'm gonna rent a Ryder and Tim McVeigh the fucking pre-game festivities in hopes of putting a stop to it, or at least having me jailed deep in a dark building where I don't have to witness any of it once it happens. (Minus 7 points for the Giants, shaving it back to +18 for them.)
#3 AGAINST - PATRIOTS LINEBACKER TEDY BRUSCHI. You know what, I understand dude had a stroke and had to re-learn how to talk and walk and all that. My real problem is why did he have to learn to look like such a goomba fratboy cocksucker again too? I have never been a big fan of the Overachiever label when it's applied to a player on a team full of guys who all want to come there just to win... it seems so hokey and contrived. And Bruschi seems contrived too. I mean, I know he's got kids and a family and risked destroying their lives if he had come back and gotten brain dead from being a stroke dude who wasn't ready for full contact football, but it all worked out. Which further makes me think there's Illuminati football shit going on. How the fuck can a guy have a stroke and come back to play in the Super Bowl as a contributor? Don't tell me that's how much heart he has, because I remember Hulk Hogan having that much heart, and his heart wasn't really that much in the for-real ways. The whole Patriots schtick seems so contived and Vince McMahon-esque, although the Giants build-up as super underdog who can't lose on the road ever since they shut down the Redskins on the goal line that game forever back seems just as contrived. Like Tiny Lister rolling in as this unstoppable force but Hulk Hogan legdrops his ass into submission, and then they blast patriotic songs and people wave American flags and buy things on their way home. (Minus 8 points for the Patriots, making it +26 for the Giants.)
#3 FOR - GIANTS RUNNING BACK AHMAD BRADSHAW. Seeing this nobody late round draft pick rookie running back busting through motherfuckers in Green Bay, the paint actually chipping off his helmet it was so cold, that was some old school ass shit. The thing is, this guy was supposed to be a can't miss prospect, except he's been a chronic fuck-up. He came to UVA (near me) as a blue chip recruit, but they cut their ties with him because he was a hood. He transferred to Marshall, moving down in college status, and was a small town superstar, but even there, he was about to get into some shit for stealing games or something trifling like that out of somebody else's dorm room. I mean, how the fuck do you get into trouble at Marshall on their football team? That's where Randy Moss went, and I think he used to rape chicks on the regular back then. So Bradshaw left Marshall after his junior year of eligibility, with two children already paternity tested to him, and took a shot at the NFL draft, hoping he could get paid and not just end up like every other broke ass shoulda been brother with multiple kids working construction part-time until they decide to sell drugs and then go to jail in towns everywhere. It is a sad cycle. Except the Giants took a shot on Bradshaw, and he's come in late this year and fucking kicked ass, mostly because his style is a lot like Tiki Barber's, but without all the corporate voice coming out the smiley mouth, and excess baggage of being the veteran leader on offense. Bradshaw has made a name for himself in the past two months, and I'd love to see him blow up Timmy Smith style in the Super Bowl, win the MVP, and get paid out the ass because of it. Then we can all enjoy his native hoodlumism shine bright on a national stage. (Plus 8 points for the Giants, so they ahead +34 points.)
#2 FOR - PATRIOTS RUNNING BACK LAURENCE MARONEY. I am always a fan of running backs like Maroney or Edgerrin James or Marshawn Lynch who look like they would be original members of the Boot Camp Clique. But a few things make Maroney even more enjoyable than the others. Right off the bat, he spells his first name in a classy black guy way like Laurence Fishburne does, automatically making him seem better than the rest. But most importantly, dude is obsessed with Kool-Aid. He has Kool-Aid tattoos, a Kool-Aid pendant, all because his nickname is Kool-Aid, but fuck my name is Raven and I don't have that shit tatted up on me and in diamonds on my neck and shit. And Kool-Aid is some broke ass kid shit. I lived on that stuff forever (my recipe was, oddly enough, just like Maroney's when asked on media day - "water and sugar"), and the only thing more ghetto than Kool-Aid is those generic Kool-Aid packets which never really mixed right like Kool-Aid does and you'd get weird little clumps of shit in your drink that tasted like some Sweet Tarts had taken a shit like a fish does. The fact that a major NFL running back drinks Kool-Aid... I don't know, it makes me happy. Though I think I read he customized his car with the Kool-Aid man too, and I seen a few of those themed donks on the Donk magazine, and they are stupid wack. I hope he doesn't have stitched ostrich skin Kool-Aid men in his ride. Although, to be honest, even if he did, just having some retardedly customized nonsense like that in a tricked out car would make him better than most other football players with their very uncreative hood-rich ways. (Plus 9 points for the Pats, cutting it to +25 for the Giants.)
#2 AGAINST - GIANTS DEFENSIVE END MICHAEL STRAHAN. Strahan is such a chump, and I think most people realize this. Whereas previous awesome future Hall of Famers like Reggie White would sometimes come across as odd, you'd still have people in real life explaining to you how they were the greatest ever. Not with Strahan though. Everybody kinda knows he's a full of shit chump ass. Even reading the paper today, the columnist guy I was reading referred to him as a "potential Hall of Famer". You'd think him being the all-time sacks in a year leader after Favre laid down for him that one time, he'd be a definite. But his laying out of training camp because he's a lazy fucker gimmick has grown tired, as has his "let me do a really stiff-legged soul train dance line routine whenever I'm near a quarterback who falls down" celebration bullshit. Even his fucking ex-wife suggested he might be a homo. The sad thing is he's already done a couple years of "my team is not in the playoffs so let me sit in on the pre-game show" interning already, so he'll probably STILL be on the stupid television every week even after he stops being an annoying closeted football player. (Minus 9 points for the Giants, down to +16 for them still though.)
#1 AGAINST - FORMER GIANTS QUARTERBACK PHIL SIMMS. Phil Simms is the epitome of boring. He could make redneck guys holed up in the middle of a week-long meth binge fall asleep. I'm not sure who has the Super Bowl this year, but I sort of almost hope it's CBS so he and Greg Gumbel can bore America to death, and then hopefully the Giants will get crushed, forcing stupid Simms to abandon his feigned non-bias, and he'll something really flagrant and out-of-line, execpt nobody will notice it because he will do it in such a quiet condescending voice that it will sound like a gay man's description as to how to properly need a homemade loaf of rosemary olive oil bread. I feel sorry for Chris Simms, because you know he catches a ton of shit - and probably always has - for being Phil Simms son. I mean really, is there a more pretentious fucker who analysists the football than him? (Minus 10 points for the Giants, making it only +6 for the Giants.)
#1 FOR - PATRIOTS OFFENSIVE LINEMAN LOGAN MANKIN. Mankin is a mainstay on my fake ass Madden franchise of the Saints, because he is a giant fu manchu ass wispy haired white offensive lineman. He looks like the type of guy who would've been an MMA fighter back when MMA was more the dream of guys who trained in meat warehouses (talking on the early days when Tank Abbott and Oleg Taktarov were stars) and it seemed like something a good Clint Eastwood movie could be based on, not this pseudo-sport Brazilian dudes rolling around holding each other and then slipping around and one guy quickly taps out in violently homoerotic fashion. But, as if Logan Mankin wasn't already awesome, being such a white boy, and from Fresno state, where you can only assume academics were secondary to beer bongs and blowjobs, he's now, as part of some sort of Unabomber code of solidarity with the other O-linemen, sporting a giant beard that makes him look like a cross between homeless Vietnam veteran and Nordic warlord. The only thing better than rooting for Logan Mankin, is hoping he pulls a Barrett Robins and disappears the night before the game into Mexico for a drug-fueled romp to ruin his career. Except I would expect Mankin to not be a punk ass like Robins and claim the made up psychological disorder of bi-polarity, and instead Logan Mankin would just become the leader of some village where he runs a human smuggling business, a cockfighting arena, and sips on expensive champagne at his VIP table nightly at the donkey fuck show. (Plus 10 points for the Patriots, putting them over the top by +4. Except fuck that. I could care less about either of these fucking teams, or this game. Luckily, the satellite sound system in my ride with detachable robot box to plug into house speakers is broadcasting the game in like 10 different languages, so I'll probably just sit in my truck in the yard, getting blasted, and listening to the Super Bowl in Korean or some bullshit.)

Sunday, January 20

10 Random iPod Joints

I have decided to also do the stupid 10 Random iPod Joints thing like Mike did, because I feel inclined to write something, but have no real direction right now, as I’ve not been drinking much and all my drunken mind misfires have been stifled by sobriety. Which means I’ve been reading too much. I just read a whole bunch of bullshit about the future of virtual reality and Second Life and all it did was make me crazy and want to shoot people. Actually it made me want to stay on my property, never leave, never pay bills, and then wait for people to come and try to make me leave or check on me or whatever, and then shoot those people. Unless I liked them, then I would talk frantically and hand them cryptic manifestos I wrote on an old Brother word processor.
Anyways, I don’t have an iPod, but my wife does because I bought her one a couple of Christmases ago. She was always the type of person who stuffed seven CDs into one jewel case, with none of those seven being the one that was supposed to go in there. Me being a music nerd who at one point had 10,000 records organized by self-created genres and then alphabetically within those genres, this would bother me worse than watching people rape fetuses to not get AIDS anymore. So I got her an iPod. But she doesn’t do computer nerd stuff (which saves me a lot of clear historying, you know), so I have to load all the bullshit into the little robot music machine for her. I try to sneak some stuff I like, but mostly the only things I sneak are things she’d like too, because frankly, fuck an iPod. I will not waver on that fact. My oldest kid wants a lavendar shuffle now too, and I’ll probably get it for her birthday next month, but I do not want one. Fuck them bitches. iPods are for girls, that’s why they make all those fruity iPod covers with fake diamonds and pink boxes with anime smiley faces and shit to carry around your accessories.
I will also skip any long mixes or non-music things, like Mike, although I might not as well if I feel it necessary. Also, I will force myself to listen to the whole shit, even if I hate it, which I imagine will happen about half the time out of ten. Her 60 gig iPod is about half full, and half of that is shit, in my opinion.
#1. Queens of the Stone Age - You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar but I Feel Like a Millionaire (off that Songs for the Deaf CD): Yes, this was my doing, but my kids and wife like good rock-n-roll that’s not too annoyingly stupid rock-n-roll, which has led me to sneaking in some various notables from the “stoner rock” genre, which is the stupidest made-up name for a genre of music ever, especially since most of these stoner rockers are faggot college kids who grew a beard after getting a 3.8 GPA in Philosophy with a minor in Religious Studies. I like the QOTSA Josh Homme dude a lot though, becauses he’s a nutjob, and he scared stupid Blag Whatever from the Dwarves so much that Blag got a restraining order out on Josh Homme, which is about as unDwarvesy as you could possibly get. But I also read a book that Blag dude wrote last year for a magazine I do book reviews for, and his book was like 13-year-old fat goth girl fiction, so I imagine he scares easily, stage image aside.
#2. The Cure - The Snakepit (off of some bullshit called Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me): See, I knew this was going to happen. My wife and I diverge wildly on our formative years. I listened to the hardcore rap and the thrash metal. She was into the shitty alternative bullshit like The Cure that I always stereotyped as part-and-parcel with the sheltered pussy ass private school white people, who were a different breed entirely than my poor ass white people lineage. Sure, those white people were good for getting blowjobs from girls that had money to buy all the things you’d need to waste another small town weekend night, and those dudes were the perfect recipients of me buying a quarter bag, cutting it into one normal eighth for myself and two skimpy ones for others and selling the skimpy ones to. I have never understood this type of music, and to be honest, all things Morrissey/The Cure/Depeche Mode/etc. are not even in different categories... that’s how little I understand it. It all sounds like gay anal sex foreplay trickery to me, and I am entirely uncomfortable with making the rule I said above that I’d listen to the whole song. This one has already gone on for three-and-a-half minutes, and it only seems to be halfway done according to the bar time graph at the bottom of the display screen. I think I’m gonna have to waste the next three minutes playing that game where you slide the stick along the bottom to bounce the ball up to blow up rectangles, thinking the ball is this song’s faggotry, the stick is my unwavering heterosexuality, and those rectangles are colorfully condomed up dicks that want to fuck me. I will take this faggot song and smash those hard penises to oblivion, and maintain my straight up bro sexuality. Oh shit, there’s two purple dicks left in the far corner and the ball’s bouncing too fast and too much sideways... I think I’m fucked. And there’s still 30 seconds left. I am being lulled into stupid.
#3. Ani DiFranco - Napoleon (from her Dilate CD): Man, my wife used to pump mad Ani DiFranco when we dated the first time, which was crazy because the first time we dated, I was a degenerate bastard that was cheating on her with two other women, living a life of debauchery in a house where there wasn’t a surface in the place free of knife holes or pornographic images or blood splatters or vomit or something. Seriously, there were three of us there and that place was fucked up. The dude who sings in Lamb of God moved in after us, and the place was like rehabilitated gentrified with him living there. I guess tons of coke, scat flicks, and early 20s mindframe sociological experimentation will do that. It was nothing to come home and have a chick handcuffed to the table. One time I fucked this chick and we were laying there in the middle of the night (my room was basically a closet with an egg crate and sleeping bag on the floor and some clothes in a milk crate) and my roommate starts yelling, “YOU FUCKED A CHICK AND YOU ATE THE LAST PORK CHOP! YOU FUCKING FAGGOT!” and busts open my closet door buck naked, holds a sword to my throat and says, “I’d fuck you up if she wasn’t here,” then walks off. The chick, who was supposedly punk as fuck, is visibly shook, and goes, “Should I leave?” I was like, “Nah, he’s always like that.” Anyways, now that I’ve grown and am not a total dick towards all humans without penises, I have come to enjoy Ani DiFranco’s early reverse misogynist work as memory-filled happiness. My wife, back then when we were dating, would play this shit to passive aggressively get at me when I was obviously fucking shit up in terribly assholish ways, so I guess it reminds me of when she was young and firm and so damned cute. I don’t go out of my way to hear any fucking Ani DiFranco by any means, but if she comes on the system when I’m drinking beers (probably PBRs but maybe Tecates) at some hipster douche bar, I’m not gonna be all, “Oh fuck! Not stupid Ani DiFranco!” or anything. My favorite jam by her is “Untouchable Face” though.
#4. The Grateful Dead - Big River (from One From the Vault disc two, which is probably actually like 7000 from the vault): My wife was on Dead tour back in the days when Jerry died man, so she’s into their shit. Or was I guess. There’s lots of it on her iPod, but not as much as you’d expect. I think we both got older, and once the drugs weren’t in our system as often, the Dead is one of those bands that really really really sucks in more than miniscule amounts. Most Deadheads refuse to admit this ever, but most Deadheads also never stop smoking really chronic weed that clouds your judgement. I guess if I had to have a Dead song, “Big River” is not the worst. I got a belly tattoo at this shop in town, and the guy who did it was a Deadhead working hard for three months before he flailed up his life again to go follow Disco Biscuits or Humphry McGees or whatever the fuck is the fake Dead group of today, and he had an iPod with NOTHING but Grateful Dead live shows. Man, it was rough to stomach. But he liked me because we both had bad southern accents, my Snuffy Smith passed out drunk tattoo was hilarious to him, so he cut me a big deal on my tat (haha, I know) and showed me pictures of his favorite weed he ever grew before, like it was his child. He was pretty heavy handed with the needle too, so part of my LOUNGIN’ has almost a camo effect to it, as he faded it from black to white bottom to top. I never understood why he did white. I’m already white; why the fuck would I want white tattooings?
#5. Ani DiFranco - Out of Range (from a s/t CD): Oh god, this is more into the really angry wife was my girlfriend days, riding around in her Maverick so she could bitch at me because when she came to that party last night I was already incoherent from taking too many painkillers and drinking tall cans. And then she’d talk about what an asshole I was when she took me to the bar, and I was internally thinking, “We went to a bar?” but even though I was a womanizing piece of shit to her at that point, I would somehow weasel my way back into her life once the hurt wore off, as I’d straighten up enough to be decent, and my rugged charisma is undeniable, not to mention my ability to give orgasms in various ways. I remember days like that, waking up in her bed, not knowing how the fuck I got from some point like eight memories ahead of reality, and thinking, “Wow, this chick really must like me to take care of me when I’m this fucked up. And she’s got nice tits. I wonder if she’ll buy me breakfast.” And she would. That’s why we’re married now. At least part of the reason.
#6. The Allman Brothers Band - Melissa (from some hokey greatest hits shit): Haha, I was loading all sorts of shit from my youngest stoner sister’s collection onto my wife’s iPod last month, but all I could find at her crib was her second-tier CDs. She kept all the good stuff in her busted up Escort. So that’s how this got on there. I do not mind admitting growing up a rural white piece of shit, I have a certain amount of classic rock tolerance that most people lack. Like the Steve Miller Band is not an automatically terrible thing in my opinion, believe it or not. I had this song on the original Brothers and Sisters LP and it’s one of my more favorite Allmans records, so I can’t diss on it, even though I feel almost compelled to pretend I don’t like it since this a gay-assed internerd blog and I should probably be too wacky and subservient to ever enjoy the R&B by way of the white man’s Georgia noodlings of Duane Allman. But I do, so fuck you. I also like watching freight trains rumble by, and seriously, if it was warm enough, I’d totally be catfishing right now, using raw chicken livers for bait and keeping my beers in a Carolina cooler, which is a supposedly derogatory term for just leaving the 12-pack in the brown bag they are required by law to stuff your shit into. Except they put it in stupid clear plastic bags nowadays because the world’s gone too shit. “Oh sweet Melissa...” I should mash-up this shit with King Diamond.
#7. Prolo - Welcome to the World (off of a comp called Subliminal Soul Sounds): Props to my wife because she has all sorts of music I’ve done over the years on her iPod, which always pops up on the randomizer and forces me to deal with my lack of self-worth and how I hate the sound of my voice. Lucky this is just an instrumental intro Boogie Brown hooked up for some old Prolo shit, with none of my stupid offbeat white man rhyming on top, and double luckily I’m wearing headphones. Brown was in his “let me smoke a ton of weed and do weird shit with the Ensoniq EPS 16-plus that only someone in a similar mindstate could hear with headphones on” stage of making beats. We’ve still used this track as an intro track for playing live, but you wouldn’t give a fuck about all that.
#8. Yellowman - If You Should Lose Me (You’ll Lose a Good Thing) (off his King Yellowman CD): My wife likes some reggae, and I am thankful that rather than one of the 9000 Bob Marley tracks the iPod randomizer could’ve spit out at me, it gave me some Yellowman. I have always respected the fact that Yellowman made songs about being a sexy motherfucker, when he’s probably the ugliest dude ever born. Although, with Shabba Ranks and that Mavado dude out now, it seems Jamaican music has a strong history of really ugly assed dudes getting plenty of boots from those women who do that rapid ass twitch thing in front of tin buildings in alleys, if BET Island Vibes (or whatever it’s called) videos have taught me anything. You know one thing I’ve always noticed in a faggot music nerd way but have never remembered to mention somewhere where other people might notice and realize I made an important realization is, when you listen to Yellowman you can hear a lot of what influenced DJ Quik. Quik, when on point (not that bullshit he did last year called The Fixxxers or whatever), is one of my favorite producers. But he’s got that tweaked out semi-dub style that Yellowman ran shit with, with his albino ass.
#9. The Stray Cats - Rev It Up & Go (off the Runaway Boys retrospective shit): I simply cannot fathom purposely listening to anything associated with rockabilly at this point in my life. When you go to the magazine racks in book stores nowadays, there’s a whole set of like 12 magazines dedicated entirely to that weird hot rod culture run by rockabilly dorks, where everybody has either a card suit or dice tattooed on them somewhere, and the chicks all look like malnourished aliens with magnetic metal dots sticking out of their face got an extreme makeover to look as much like Betty Page as they possibly could. I can’t stand that shit. They all get made to look cool, but seriously, I went to an artsy ass urban college and met a number of rockabilly type dudes - none of them ever was cool. In fact, I’d bet that one in three of them was secretly a wannabe child molester, and that’s a conservative number. Like the only way being a rockabilly fag would be cool is if you could somehow bleach your body and clothes of all color and you were just like a black-and-white holograph of yourself like those really old hot rod movies where Chuck Connors would be the pissed off dad and Jack Nicholson probably had a bit role in there somewhere as well. But even then, after seeing the B&W rockabilly fag once or twice, you’d think, “Oh shit, here comes that rockabilly fuckface. He thinks he’s so awesome because he’s in black-and-white in a colored world. Let’s go stomp his ass and steal his grey Cadillac to see if it’s pink or not.”
#10. Ani DiFranco - Talk to Me Now (off her self-titled CD): Seriously, I think there’s like four CDs worth of Ani DiFranco shit amidst 2500 songs, so I have no idea how three songs came up at once. Perhaps the psychic energy of my wife is reminiscing back to those days since she just popped out our third kid - all daughters - and although I’m a committed awesome husband/dad type dude, I’m still a little drunk around the edges and lack the motivation to live to my full capabilities. But fuck, I was born a piece of shit, not someone who listens to The Cure, so I don’t know any better. To me a good day is blowing off work to go down to the river and drink a shitload of beer while freestyling personalized lyrics to the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See”. I’m just me, and if we fall behind a month or two on the mortgage and the lights just barely missed getting cut off, it’s alright, because I’ll hit a lick here in a few weeks and everything will be tight and we can have gingered tuna steaks for dinner on a Friday night and she can drink her Sammy Smith Nut Brown Ale and I can guzzle some Millers in blaze orange cans and we can sit outside on the five acres we motherfucking own - so long as I don’t fall another month behind on the mortgage - and live larger than fuck. Shit is good right now, so fuck all this Ani DiFranco angry bitch nonsense. Isn’t there some Michelle Shocked on here too?

things I ain't ever done did before

I just had another baby about a week ago - my third daughter, and doing the math I will be the father of a teenage girl from February 2012 through January 2028. That's mad fucked-up. But the spiritual beauty of a solid homebirth, our family circle huddling up and keeping this shit personal and not all sterilized and anesthized and despiritualized, it really drove things into focus and made me realize all the idiotic bullshit I fill - or at least attemp to - my life with. The internet is a big part of that, writing crap here or there, as if anyone gave a shit. I mean, everybody feels that just because they shoot their opinion out onto the info superhighway, it actually carries more weight than if they were just talking their full of shit nonsense to the four guys sitting around them at the lunch table. It doesn't. Yet, the internet has created big fish in small sub-cultural ponds, where dudes get their heads swolled with the adulation of anonymous fucks with questionable IRLs to roll with, and they mistakenly think they actually know all that shit they pretend they know about. I am not that. I will be the first to tell you I am full of shit as much as anybody else (but no more), except I attempt to be full of shit in a way that is enjoyable for myself. For you, I could give a fuck less. You are 0s and 1s with robotic pen names containing that "@" symbol, whatever the fuck it's called. But anyways, in an attempt to keep myself in check, and to be honest with the robots out there, I want to throw out all this know-it-all expert whatever the fuckness, and just be straight up and tell you about some things I've never done in my life, instead of pretending I've done it all seen it all and know it all, fuck you if you disagree.

#1: I HAVE NEVER SLEPT WITH AN ORIENTAL CHICK. I'm not sure if "oriental" is a derogatory term nowadays, but the fact of the matter is I have never stabbed at the fabled sideways vagina of the celestial womens. It's not that I haven't wanted to, but that's not really saying too much, because I've never slept with all of the following, even though I've wanted to: Colombian chicks, small tittied women, Christy Canyon lookalikes, this girl named Crystal who was in my French II class in high school and works at the Wal-Mart back home, thirtysomething hefty black women with braided blonde weaves, Lucinda Williams, and Siamese twins. Really, the last one is the only one I'm still keeping actively a possibility, even though I'm happily married and shit, because I've always been heavily intrigued by the sensual possibilities of two vaginas sending pleasure up one spinal chord to two brains. Really, at this point in my life, it's the only menage-a-trois I'll accept. But as for the Orientals, I don’t know, body-wise, on average they just don’t do it for me. I mean, they’re kind of scrawny, and I know whenever you say that somebody pipes up with, “Man, I know all kinds of thick-butted big-breasted Asians,” but then you look at them and it’s like someone proving to you that somebody who played basketball at Georgetown in the ‘80s or ‘90s wasn’t half-retarded... you don’t make rules out of exceptions. It seems inside the internets, there’s tons of yellow fever running amok, which I can only assume is because most internetted second lifers are socially misfitted in real life, probably due to a lack of self confidence, which is probably due to a lack of physical endowment, which probably causes them to fetishize the tiny proportions of Oriental bitches because it makes their dick look bigger. Plus the internet losers can always do that hooker’s voice from Full Metal Jacket for Oriental chicks on a fantasy level, which makes the dream more real. But I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on much by not boning a nice Chincoteague pony, because tiny bitches are not my thing. To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed ultra-tight pussies that much, as it’s far too much work to make it start to slide in and out, and I’m kind of lazy. Basically, although in execution it is done with far more flair and attention to detail, I’m a lick your cooch until either enough of my slobber or your vaginal secretions are present for me to stuff my penis in, whence I slide back and forth, playing with your breasts, until I’m about to orgasm, and then I start thinking about playing checkers with the old men outside the country store down the road, except they won’t let me play checkers so I just stand around drinking RC colas out the drink machine (only 35 cents!) and hoping I’ll get a chance. Eventually, this one old mulatto guy who looks kind of like Grady from Sanford & Son but in overalls will say in a loud bumbling voice full of a lack of education, “You wanna play a game boy?” And usually before I sit down to play, I’ll come back to focus on the physical, notice my penis sliding in and out of a vagina from behind, my thumb sticking in a round feminine anus, hear moaning sounds, and I’ll orgasm. Eventually, my goal is to get to the point in the mind thinking to actually play the game of checkers with mulatto Grady, and have my first checker get to his back row, so that I can say “King me” in the physical world as I orgasm, knowing that even in mental imaging land, playing checkers with old ignorant mulattos goes slow as fuck, so by the time I get a king, I’d probably have waxed the shit out of that ass. (Wow, that’s a poor choice of words at the end there.)

#2: I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO FLORIDA. Mostly, this is because it has been out of the way of all my random pointless travels, but also because it sticks out going to nowhere. If it was on the way to like Little Rock or Alexandria Bay or Louisville or something, I most likely would’ve passed through by now. One time, I came real close to driving down there with my boy Born King to visit his dad, who lived where I was promised we could throw rocks at alligators in his back yard while drinking beer and if they tried to attack back we could just run sideways back and forth until we got on top of our cars and this would confuse the alligators and send them back to the marshes to get more rocks drunkenly thrown at them. I can’t remember exactly why we didn’t end up going there, but for some reason we ended up in Asheville, North Carolina, where we got a shitty hotel, watched public access preachers, drank beer in lawn chairs, and I helped an old drunk guy count his change for two forties at the convenience store across the street, and he rewarded me by telling us about a cookout some folks of his were having a couple blocks over, and that we shouldn’t be afraid we should go, and if they ask why we showed up to just tell them, “That old crazy nigga sent y’all.” Not quite thinking that was the most acceptable ghetto pass, we stayed at the hotel, drinking beer, and ogling this one slut who kept coming out her room to act like she had to do things, when really she wanted to fuck. But about Florida, I think I’m even less likely to go now because I assume it’s full of about five different sectors of retard. Like, part of it is redneck riviera where the fork lift driver to woman ratio is around three to one. Then there’s the Disneyfied soulless miracle mile chain box store mecca that I assume the whole Tampa/Orlando chunk of the state is. I figure the whole southern tip is either stupid Cubans who hate Cuba (who always seem to suck for some reason, which is perhaps why they were forced out) or people who think Rick Ross is awesome. Then there’s the Yankee Jew section, which I think is gerrymandered around the edges along both sides of the dangling part. And you also have the sector full of all the stereotypical lazy Mexicans who were forced down to Florida since hard-working Mexican illegals took over all their jobs in other states. So I have no real desire to go to Florida, although I think my man Teabag Brian and his old lady Stacy and their kid live down there. But I also think they live right where Alabama borders it, and I’d much rather go to Alabama than stupid Florida. Seems too Honda Civic Hatchback with rims and dual exhausty for my tastes.

#3: I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN A STRIP CLUB. Again, there’s really been no reason for this outside of I’ve never been too geeked up on the idea of spending a lot of money to have a hard dick. In Virginia, they have no nipples, plus panties required laws, and you can’t touch the bitches, so the possibility of busting a nut involved much more money and V.I.P. room overpriced bottles of champagne to get even a handjob from a purty girl, when I could just shell out like $12 for a Penthouse Letters and a Club magazine, go home, bust out the baby lotion in the bathroom, and take care of business at a far cheaper price tag. Plus, if I keep my foreplay reading down to a minimum, I can keep a lot of the Penthouse letters unread, giving me “virgin” stories to read for later horny moments. Had I growed up and habitated somewhere where strip club laws were more lax (like West Virginia, with full nudity in trailer parks bring your own liquor bottle and shit like that), the situation might be different, but at this point in life, with three daughters plus two younger sisters, strip clubs conjure up too many creepy introspections. The last time I was tempted was when me and my boy Boogie Brown were staying near Weirton, West Virginia, which is like Bukowski played Sim City as one whole end was swallowed up by a shut-down steel mill (seriously, the town sort of dead ended into the mill), and the rest of it was block after block of lottery stores, “clubs” of various sorts, about five or six bars per block, and ragged hotels with lead paint from twenty years ago flaking off the siding. There was a strip club there we were gonna check out, because we were drunk as fuck when we left Pennsylvania and couldn’t find a hotel room, so figured the best change in plan was to get drunk in a strip club, but the place had hand painted lettering and old brown grocery bags covering up the glass, and judging by the rest of the town, we kind of feared what kind of scenes might be inside. And I am cursed with something called Retardar, where the most convoluted and ridiculous interpersonal situations - never tragic but always outrageous - present themselves to me, and I invariably become trapped because I know it will make for a funny story later in life if nothing else. We weren’t quite ready to swallow whatever the Retardar would deal us in a place like that, so we just swerved on into Ohio and found a hotel room finally, and drank a ton of Schaefers playing Spades with some fiber optic cable dudes out of Kentucky who were in the next room over.

#4: I NEVER WAS REALLY AWESOME AT MORTAL KOMBAT. I mean, I could slam buttons with the best of them, but when it came to memorizing button combos to do shit like steal people’s souls, I wasn’t down. I’m not trying to play video games to memorize codes and symbols and decode shit. I get enough of that bullshit in life. I play video games to fritter away the unobligated moments of my life to make me feel better about how much of my obligated time is wasted on unsatisfying things. The last gaming system I owned was a Super Nintendo, and I’ve hung with my young ass cousins and their next gen gaming robots... I’m not fucking with that shit. If the extra two buttons on top of a Super Nintendo controller was more than I felt like fucking with, there’s no way I’m holding one of those new school keyboards and tapping Russian symbols to make crazy things happen. So mostly I get my ass kicked, losing at Madden ‘08 the day after Christmas like 35 to 6 before I quit, and went into old man talk, about back in my day Super Tecmo Bowl if you beanballed Okonkwo he’d charge the mound and you could always beat Philadelphia 3D Worldrunner on acid was good times blah blah blah. Probably the pinnacle of my gamesmanship was when I was like 13 and first discovered the joys of marijuana... well, my folks always smoked, but I discovered the joys of smoking weed with fellow delinquents outside the home, and we all hung out an arcade (how ‘80s of me) where we’d go around the corner to an alley, get high, drink stolen vodka, and come back and play foosball, unless we didn’t play foosball. Then we’d play video games, although the quarter spent to amount of time wasted publicly while wasted quotient was way lower on video games. But I’d always play Spyhunter or Excitebike, because I lived in a small town and the only gaming machines we had were like shit no real town would have, so it was serious first wave bullshit. I could fuck up some Spyhunter and Excitebike. Also I could fuck up some dirtweed and cheap vodka. I was a young super destructor and we all wore jean jackets and were amazed that something as perfectly awesome as Slayer hadn’t existed all our lives. And every girl who hung out was either named Cindy, Crystal, or Cissy. And I stained my forefinger with all of their pussy juices. Not really, but I wish. Man, if I had been 13, stoned, drunk, and fucking bitches, I never would’ve graduated high school. Then I never would’ve went to college. Which means I never would’ve learned how to internet things. Which means I wouldn’t be here right now, remembering this. Stupid fucking stuck-up bitches in the arcade of my youth. You ruined my life.

#5: I HAVE NEVER DONE MORE THAN TWO LINES OF COCAINE IN MY LIFE. I used to live in a crib where a lot of yayo passed through and passed around, but I never fucked with that shit. Did two lines total in my high school days, and didn’t like it either time. Allegedly, it was some puro shit both times. But I also did a lot of dirtbag speed type snortable substances, so I guess psychologically, I associate nose drugs with intense burn and about 9 hours of constant psychobabble. Which is all good, because I still have fond memories of crank, but I haven’t done that for years. Last time was the day we buried my father, believe it or not, and I shared a few mirrorfuls of bumps with an older chick who has hep-C, but when I was a teenager and she was a 20somethinger, man, she was Marilyn Chambers in the flesh, biker chick hot and heavy and causing my young boy’s body to feel all tingly. By the time I did crank with her though, she was one of my mom’s best friends, and plus, we were all dedicated to having a giant fire and being fucked up for as long as we could since we just buried my dad. That’s how us rural redneck hippie lifetime loser celebrate death - big parties where we snort, smoke, drink, and shoot off things until the last person passes out. When a real local legend heavyweight dies, sometimes you’ll get a pack that’ll make it till the next afternoon and some of those who had already passed out will wake up for a second round of action, and when you throw in bathtub crank, there’s always the possibility of multi-day abuse, although at funeral parties, usually we keep it tasteful and nobody pulls a long-term bender where you sit in the dark all day long and have the sofa pushed against the front door.

#6: I HAVE NEVER FLOWN IN AN AIRPLANE. Really, there’s no John Madden crippling fear involved here or anything, it’s just the situation never arose through me being like 25 years old, because most trips I had to take were in North America, and I’ve got no problem with launching wacky hijinks by taking a Greyhound 3000 miles one way (if that’s possible, I don’t be knowing my North American land width stats by heart). So I decided, since I’ve always wanted to skydive, that I would make another one of my trademark completely ridiculous arbitrary rules for life, and mandate that the first time I fly up in a plane, I come down without the plane. Not a real big deal, since you can take those all-day training sessions and do a controlled free fall where someone else pulls your chute, or even just a two-hour safety course and do a tandem jump where you’re latched onto some other fucker. I figure this is no problem and a good way to make sure I do that, and confront every molecule in your body being like, “Man, are you stupid? Fuck this shit.” and telling you not to jump, but you just jump anyways, giving your entire physical existence’s cellular memory a middle finger and hoping for the best so that right before you hit the ground to die you don’t have to hear your mind go, “You stupid fucker... I TOLD YOU.” Well, the problem now is I guess people die and shit from jumping out of planes in those tandem deals or the one-day training session, because those places are run by sketchy fuckers who make you sign away all rights to recoup any money if you end up a dead fucker. This means, me being the primary breadwinner for a family of five and counting, my wife gets all somber and responsible thinking about me jumping out of an airplane. Except she also wants to go on trips in the future, and I think my dad must’ve had part mountain goat semen in him or some shit, because when I make these completely ridiculous arbitrary parameters for my life, I refuse to let them go. So I ain’t flying to no fucking Costa Rica or Belize until I get to jump out a goddamn airplane. And I mean it.

#7: I HAVE NEVER HOPPED FREIGHT TRAINS. Being a hobo is basically the one thing I've romanticized more than anything in my life. I think of riding the rails through wide open spaces and sharing good laughs with other vagabonds as opposed to the more probable scenarios of getting stabbed by feral old racists and putting up with full-of-shit crusty punks, who would probably cause me to forsake all multi-culturalism and start claiming F.T.R.A. with prominent sewing needle tattoos. It's hard to say what makes me be all hobo fetish about the shit, but I think it's a combo of all things that have molded me. Country music has crazy amounts of hobo songs, and I was raised on my drunken dad playing outlaw country really fucking loud as he drank off his hangover. Freight trains are pocked with graffiti, which gives it that urban hip hop vibe. And shit, it's just a train rolling through back lots. Interstates tend to be near the action, because all the malls and four-lanes and shit go up by the interstate on purpose. But train tracks roll through abandoned land, virtually unseen a lot of the way, and I tend to be a shadow dweller. Fuck the limelight, but also fuck paying some obscene ass amount of money to ride an Amtrak. I rode the Amtrak one time when I woke up about two hours away from Richmond (where I was couch-crashing at the time) without having any idea how I got there. So I went to the train station, found out a ticket was twelve bucks, went out and bummed ten bucks, then rode back to Richmond. I think Jim Beam was oozing from my pores, and the rest of the passengers looked at me like I was slow death creeping up on they ass, so I felt like shit and was stoked to stumble off the fucking piece of shit train when we got to Richmond. Looking back, I probably should've just hopped a train then, as my ass was deep into degeneracy, and I could've just took that fork left and ran with it. Although I have no regrets being the retarded half-functional family man I am. I spent most of the morning talking my oldest kid (almost 9) into drawing pictures of hobos on trains. Then we talked about graffiti, and I hadn't practiced my graffiti handwriting in a long ass time, so we talked about that and she started practicing doing it herself. She really likes the shooting arrows coming off of lower case Es, but what kid doesn't? That's like the most fun letter to graff up on notebook paper, except maybe a bubble S. Or capital Es if you can do that cholo style.

Saturday, January 19

NFL WK 20: Conference Championships teams

So you probably asked yourself, "What the fuck will stupid ass Raven do now that there's only four teams, since his bullshit system he never explained is all fucked up anyways? I guess he'll write bullshit about the four teams and get half the games wrong again, haha." Well, you'd be a wrong motherfucker if you thunk it that way. Because, sure my team ranking system went hoo-ha at the end, which shows you math ain't worth a fuck when it comes to heart. But still, I feel compelled to keep this shit rolling in sets of eight, because that's how I've rolled all year long. So I split the teams up into offense and defense and that made eight. But how to rank them? Just off the dome, or hodgepodge other shit I read elsewhere and pretend I'm the originator of some common sports ass memes? Fuck all that noise. I broke it down to organic compounds, took myself four newspapers, five magazines, and eleven websites, ingested all the numerical knowledge, combined that with a scientific calculator, abacus, some I Ching sticks, plus a book on Rorshach test blob analysis using semen stains I left in between sheets of lavendar and pastel green tissue paper the past week. I put the motherfucking science to the metaphysics and came with it, crunching numbers and intuitive deduction, doing reiki on rosters, and I got a number. You see, all these faggot washed-up jocks with blow-dried hair who roll with the picks and are like "70% WINNERS GUARANTEED! Here's why..." and they claim they have crazy science and insider information. I'm not claiming science. Fuck science. Take your science and shove it up your fucking white asses. I trust my gut, calculate up some math, and feel what's right while looking at stars in the sky, not on the flat screen. Know what I'm saying? So I took all this crazy data, took some codeine pills, sat in the back yard in the frozen tall ass grass that breaks now since it's frozed up which is why I didn't cut it since July anyways, and figured this shit up. So here's my rankings of the two sides of the ball of the four teams still dancing, with the motherfucking rankings of ultimate reality on the back end inside the hugging arms punctuation. Know what I mean? (Also, check out the retarded football blog I started up, but not just with my stupid shit but a bunch of stupid fuckers stupid shit - ARMCHAIR LINEBACKER! Okay...
#1: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS OFFENSE (hypernerd power variable 10.752625) - The Patriots offense, even if it has sort of seemed slower than 5th gear overdrive lately, is still by far the most dominating bullshit left in the playoffs. But what up now? Randy Moss, it turns out, was beating some stupid bitch like he beat cornerbacks on the deep slants all year round. It's extortion or six-figure offers were made or what the fuck who cares? You knew Moss was gonna fuck up eventually. Knew it. Dude had been quiet for a few years when it came to the showing his ass activity, but he'd been quiet on the field too. A man start catching touchdowns like mad, he's gonna start feeling that swagger again, talk with that West Virginia drawl, go down to Orlando and smack up some slut. Will that affect the Pats high-powered attack? Fuck no. It's the NFL. All these dudes smack up bitches, being football holds that old school mentality dear. What could screw up the unstoppable Patriots mechanism of six-pointing is shitty windy weather, oddly enough. You'd think a cold city team would be built for smashmouth football, but the Pats are not. Tom Brady's pretty future President on the hundred dollar Visa promissory note does not have hair made to be mussed by cold winter winds. And Maroney and company have not yet proven they are the backfield destroyers when completely necessary. But still, that shit works both ways, and the Patriots merchandising Illuminati positioning within the NFL, combined with the 25-year plan to make Brady 33rd degree freemason grand wizard theodore unit head of America’s underground government based in the mountains of West Virginia will probably “lead” them to victory. It’s been a great run for them this year, and I was pissed to be gypped out of that Colts/Pats match-up, which I guess they’re saving for next year so as to not take away from the last hurrah Brett Favre’s Super Bowl memory parade booking that’s been set in stone since the middle of October.

#2: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS DEFENSE (hypernerd power variable 6.900375) - Yeah, when I figured this all up, the Chargers defense came up second, which makes sense I guess thinking about it hard. Merriman, when properly supplemented, is a monster, and Antonio Cromartie has stepped up to be the defensive back field bastard Quentin Jammer was sposed to be. I think the Chargers defense will be trickier for the Pats than the Jaguars were, or whoever the fuck else. It’s a solid ass defense with some ballhawking ability that can throw six up on the board themselves, and if the d-line can sneak behind the front lines and slap Brady’s pretty face into the cold ground a couple of times, they might have a snowball’s chance in Foxboro to make some shit happen.

#3: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS DEFENSE (hypernerd power variable 5.580375) - Aging collection of Patriots standard bearers, mixed in with some even older free agents, and a couple of young ass studs, combining to be a force. but they’ve benefitted from playing ahead most of the year. The thing about this defense is, even with the old ass fucks they have, they cycle players in and out more than almost anybody. I mean it’s ridiculous how much they substitute in various packages, which is why I think the Peyton Manning super-animated audible machine of no-huddle housing it was the best match against the Pats defense. I don’t think P. Rivers has that same capacity, but we’ll see what happens. I’d expect the N.E. defense to do just like they did against the Jags and that’s bend bend bend and look not nearly perfect, but then hold it together enough at the end to let the offensive juggernaut move ahead for good.

#4: GREEN BAY PACKERS OFFENSE (hypernerd power variable 5.456625) - Good fucking lord, as much as I want to root for the Packers, I don’t know if I can handle two weeks of BRETT FAVRE SUPER BOWL newspaper stories. Green Bay has their shit coming together though, with dudes none of us heard of before this year making shit happen. Mike McCarthy got a contract extension out of this run, and really, to be honest, outside of that super-kid still sitting on the bench as the second string shitty QB, whoever the GM of the Packers deserves some serious ass credit for finding these jewels in the shitpiles of the NFL draft. Fitting a system is more important than whatever pre-draft hype, and they seem adept at getting guys that’ll work within the system. It kind of makes me sick to type that shit because it reminds me of Ray Kroc and McDonalds and subbing anybody at five an hour into the shit and it’ll work. Fuck that robotic android shit where you can plug anybody in with no concern for the individual. Except they don’t do that necessarily with Brett Favre at the helm. Remember, he’s one of us. He’s a regular guy in Wrangler jeans who plays with passion like a 12-year-old. And if you forgot, don’t sweat it, they gonna beat that shit into your brain the next two weeks if they win this weekend.

#5: GREEN BAY PACKERS DEFENSE (hypernerd power variable 4.099375) - Young stud linebackers? Check. Big goofy whiteboy defensive lineman? Check. Dreadlocked Boot Camp Clique looking ass cornerbacks? Check. Ginormous fat ass Chinese buffet five-times-a-week looking heart attack waiting to happen 350 lb. black fucker to stuff the line? Yep. They got it all, every Frank Caliendo doing a ten-minute All-Madden team skit stereotype you could think of on defense. (By the way, I don’t know for sure that Kampman dude is a white guy, but I think his name is Aaron, and I’d be hellafied shocked if a dude named Aaron Kampman who played in Green Bay wasn’t white. Now Cletidus Hunt, that’s obviously a black dude, although I’ve always wanted a son named Cletidus. A kid named that shit is gonna be a monster, regardless of genetics. But don’t let him go by Cleon for short, because then he’ll just be an unemployed drunkard always complaining about how someone else is causing him his self-inflicted problems.)

#6: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS OFFENSE (hypernerd power variable 2.599625) - Philip Rivers is a wild card, because he’s apt to fuck shit up. Did you see him last weekend doing like Hulk Hogan poses at the crowd in Indy? What a fucking fool. He’s a multi-millionaire quarterback in the NFL and he’s letting some drunk fuck in the crowd’s sound get inside his ears. Dude, young Rivers, you’re richer than fuck and could pay his mom to fuck his wife with a strap-on in the ass while she licked your balls. Who gives a fuck what some dude in the crowd says? Well, it’s obvious young Rivers does, which doesn’t bode well if they start riding him. Except he might get gimped up again and this week’s Todd Collins - Billy Volek - will stroll out and attempt to do the impossible. Seriously though, all the way back to his days behind Air McNair in Tennessee, Volek’s been one of those high end second string quarterbacks who’s really fucking good but not quite good enough to be your starter. Like, those years where you lose your franchise quarterback and have a couple of retreads like Kerry Collins and Patrick Ramsey in camp, Volek’s the guy who is the other part of the quarterback competition in training camp who might be the future, even though everybody knows he ain’t. He’s fucking Billy Volek. I think most of all, I’m amazed at how Norv Turner has not fucked up this team yet. Seriously, I’m amazed. It’s a testament to how well Schottenheimer had this team in order for Turner to be able to coast on fumes this deep into the playoffs. Still, with L.T. gimpy as well (even if the Chargers might have the best #2/#3 on the depth chart halfbacks in the league), if he can’t go buckwild on the ground, this could be an ugly game for the Chargers. And I’m torn. As much as I hate the Patriots now, it doesn’t overrule my hatred for Norv Turner, who I wish would get cancer and then raped in the ass while getting chemo treatment and catch the AIDS. Yet, I still have to pull for the Chargers over the Patriots. Maybe they can win but Turner will get crumbled on the sidelines during a play and have his femur shattered. That’d be my perfect scenario for the early game Sunday.

#7: NEW YORK GIANTS DEFENSE (hypernerd power variable 2.364375) - The Giants secondary is hodgepodge and the Packers will pick that shit apart. They’ve been getting by with their punishing defensive line and competent linebackers to keep things from progressing too deeply into the defense, but the Packers offensive line is not shoddy nor pussified. They’ll be able to hold off the Giants enough to give Favre time to do his choreographed bullshit theatrics. And this ain’t a regular season meaningless exhibition where he’s gonna lay down for his pal Strahan. They gonna get fucked this weekend.

#8: NEW YORK GIANTS OFFENSE (hypernerd power variable 0.135625) - Now Eli Manning is safe again and somehow the angle is it’s not that he’s a fucking hick retard with overrated status due to his last name but that Tiki Barber and Jeremy Shockey were holding him back. Do what now? Fuck a Eli Manning. I think the best thing that happened for the Giants is this Ahmad Bradshaw kid stepping up. He played at UVA at first, and was their next Tiki Barber, who is UVA’s ultimate alum for football. Except Bradshaw was a shady ass negro and got dumped from the team since UVA is an ultra-whitey school (allowing exceptions for Hindus and Orientals and the higher-minded mulatto-based minorities) and wasn’t fucking with his gully shit. So he ended up playing his career out at Marshall, and came into the NFL as a late round pick, deep on the bench. But he’s the closest thing to Tiki they’ve had at running back, and let’s face it, that’s how this team was built. Jacobs is a big punisher, but dude couldn’t catch a pass to save his overweight life. Plaxico’s been aching all year long and Amani Toomer used to be teammates with Harry Carson, and that Barney Rubble with tattoos tight end is out with a broken pride, so they’re gonna lean heavily on young Eli to make it happen. That shit ain’t gonna happen because he’s still Eli Manning, regardless of how the past few weeks shook out.

Wednesday, January 9

NFL WK 19: Divisional Playoffs teams

I am a big fan of reworking the normal lyrics of popular culture songs into things that reflect what's going on in my life. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, the past week or so to make Kurtis Blow's "Basketball" fit football, but I just can't come up with anything smooth off the top of my head. It has annoyed my daughters to no end, because I usually like to do this as loud as I possibly can. But fuck them. I used to be able to play music loud every fucking night of my life until they were born. They're lucky I at least have the tact to cut shit down like when I'm playing The Geto Boys We Can't Be Stopped. Of course, there are alterior motives, because I don't really want to have to explain tha otha level of the game to my 8-year-old, much less my 4-year-old. I am about to have another kid, and I hope it's a boy, because all girls will be crazy since none of them will believe the sexual predator thought patterns of males if it's just me describing it, and they'll think I'm exaggerating shit, or my wife will be like, "You're just a pervert," thinking in her naive mind that it's not natural for all men to think completely sexually about any living human with lumpy flesh in their chest region and strange curves but with relatively hairless skin. I mean fuck, men love the idea of fucking everything, and it's silly when women are like, "Yeah, well I'm like a guy because I like sex, too." There has never been a single bitch in the history of humans who thinks like a man does. Like, a woman can't even rape a guy, because a man actually physically sticks part of his body into the bitch, whereas a bitch just climbs aboard the dude. We are trained to think fucking everybody is bad, but straight up, if we were straight animals, I'd have attempted to sexually assault like a third of the women I've ever known in life. Just saying.
Anyways, I can't seem to re-work the lyrics to "Basketball" to cover football, and now that the Redskins are out, I don't feel compelled to. I can now be one of those casual fan assholes for the next couple weeks, and then there won't be shit to do sports-wise until the NCAA conference tourneys start up towards the end of February. But I guess I've gone this far with these pretentious indulgences of sports faggotry, and it'll be some sort of accomplishment to make it all the way through the NFL season, so I'll finish this out, even if I mail it in like I'm about to this week...

#1: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (16-0, #1 overall) - The Patriots perfect regular season was historic on a personal level as well, because with that win, they became a team I no longer care for. Up to this point, when they had that first Super Bowl run or two, I actually rooted for them, perhaps because of the out-of-nowhere nature of Tom Brady, or perhaps it was subliminal patriotism. And even the third one didn't bother me, and I would root for them against most other NFL teams. But with this last win, they went over the top, and now I hate them. Tom Brady has moved from the loveable underdog 6th round draft pick to shithead fuckface ala Joe Montana, who is too much of a media darling for me to wish anything except ill will upon his Disneybook life. I came to realize, in thinking about it this week, that I will probably even root for the fucking Colts and the most loathesome man in the pro footballs - Peyton Manning - when they go up against the Patriots. Previously, this never would have occurred, and in fact, wasn't the case when they met earlier this year. Now, whether I'm - as fags would say - a "player hater" or I'm just sick of the fucking Patriots like Jan Brady was sick of Marcia's primadonna ass, I'm over it. I hope they fucking lose. Luckily, they will before this season ends, and most likely in two weeks. Not this one though. The Jags are clawing their way to a respectable top-tier franchise, but they ain't gonna get through this weekend like they did last.

#2: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (13-3, #2 overall) - Fuck. Not only will I root for the Colts against the Patriots, but I'm inclined to root for them over the Chargers, because of the indiscriminant scorched earth hatred I have for one Norvell Turner. This means, technically, and completely by default, I am pulling for the Colts to actually go to the Super Bowl. That sucks. I guess I don't hate the Colts so much as am completely unimpressed and disinterested in them. Except Bob Sanders. That dude's a hoss, and it's a shame he has to waste away his career, being such a pimp ass player, in those plain white uniforms that were wack by 1965 standards. The fucking Colts... how can I be rooting for those assholes? But they really have been under the radar for the most part, which is why I think they'll be able to man up and beat out the Pats in Foxboro in the AFC championship. I do an email football pool that's in its eighth year, and the first bonus question during the first week of the season is to pick a preseason Super Bowl champion. Out of like fiftysome people in the pool, nobody - not even one - picked the Colts at the beginning of the year to win the Super Bowl. That's ridiculous considering they won that shit last year, and really until proven otherwise, you have to think they have a good shot again this year, regardless of whether they have to go to New England or not.

#3: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (12-5, #3 overall) - Fred Taylor made the Pro Bowl, hurray for justice. It's funny how the Jags are all like, "Nobody respects us! This is mad fucked up!" They need to realize that first off, they are based in the smallest metropolitan area in the NFL (I think they're smaller than Buffalo, but I might be wrong, and don't feel like looking in my almanac), and secondly, all their star players have very un-star names like Fred Taylor or John Henderson or David Garrard. I mean fuck, they sound like Desi Arnaz big band members, not NFL studs. Still, this is a franchise on the rise, building momentum towards a move to Los Angeles, which I assume will happen since it always does in franchise mode of every Madden game I've played for the last three years. They will be the Los Angeles Bulls and play at L.A. Coliseum, which I'm assuming will upgrade by then to have all those fancy ass homo corporate glass boxes for dudes who love to go to NFL football games without all the nastiness of going to an NFL football game. Hopefully, rather than fuck around, the NFL will immediately re-align the AFC at that point, send the Jags to the west, and move Kansas City to the south. While they're at it, they could move the Dolphins to the south, move the Colts to the north, and send Baltimore to the east division. Miami/Tennessee/Kansas City/Houston - that's a motherfucking division right there.

#4: DALLAS COWBOYS (13-3, #4 overall) - OMG TONICA SEEN IN CANCUN WHAT WOULD JESUS JONES DO? Man, the Cowboys are lucky there is so much retarded hype behind the Giants right now as a resurgent Lombardi contender, because when they eke out a win against a lackluster New York team this weekend, it will falsely make the Cowboys seem like they are a juggernaut of sorts to compete with the top teams the NFL has to offer. But they are not. Wade Phillips should enjoy this ride for the rest of the season, because he's basically running with what Parcells put together. And with Jason Garrett being a top candidate at other head coaching gigs, T.O. having a built-in blow-up excuse with Jessica Simpson prancing around with her silicone good looks in pink Cowboys gear, and Jerry Jones just being Jerry Jones, the wheels could come off this supposedly well-oiled machine sooner rather than later. Still, the fucking Giants... the Cowboys own the Giants. Even Roy Williams looks good against the Giants. Speaking of which, how the fuck did he make the Pro Bowl, even as like 9th alternate? They actually played him less this year because of him being such a liability on-field, and he makes the Pro Bowl? What the fuck?

#5: GREEN BAY PACKERS (13-3, #5 overall) - BRETT FAVRE FROZEN TUNDRA THIS IS FOOTBALL LIKE GRANDPA KNEW WHEN HE HATED BLACK PEOPLE AND BEAT GRANDMA FOR INTERRUPTING THE RADIO FEED OF THE GAME BY BIDDING HER CANASTA MELD TOO LOUDLY WITH HER FRIENDS FROM THE MOOSE CLUB! Also, there's LINEBACKER MENTALITY SIDE ARM PASS YOUNGEST DEFENSE IN NFL LED BY FIELD GENERAL CORNERBACKS FUTURE SO BRIGHT GOTTA WEAR SHADE CHEESEHEAD! Plus, you can't forget FAT PIGFACED FANS NO LUXURY BOXES TOWN OWNS TEAM KIELBASAS COOKOUT GOD BLESS AMERICA JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP THIS IS FOOTBALL!

#6: NEW YORK GIANTS (11-6, #6 overall) - Congratulations Tom Coughlin, for buying yourself another year in NYC (by way of New Jeru), and enough credit to not be questioned about what a fucking hardheaded retard you are at least until halfway through next season. Congratulations Eli Manning, for tricking people into thinking you are actually a great young quarterback with your performance the past two weeks where you have miraculously forgotten how to ignore defensive reads and throw interceptions to safeties as if they were a 12th man on your offense. And congratulations Giants fans, for convincing yourself this past week that you actually have a shot at beating the Cowboys. That shit is funny. Luckily, you guys rule sports talk media, so I'll get to hear you assholes have a thousand complaints next Monday.

#7: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (12-5, #7 overall) - Let's say I rubbed a magic crack pipe and a retarded genie popped out and was like, "Yo, you get three things, but they go like so... First, you can have one pussy in the freezer for the rest of your life for an on-hold skeezer. Secondly, you get to skim 5% off the top of any one corporation for the rest of your life. And thirdly, you can kill one NFL dude however you want to." I'd keep Tyra Banks pussy in the freezer, this of course assuming that the vagina slab includes the hips and ass shape, although without her mesmerizing eyes, it may not mean as much. Also, I am not sure on how long you have to thaw out an on-hold skeezer. Plus, I'd have to put it in like meat market wrapping paper and mark it some sort of pork product since my wife doesn't eat hog. I'd hate for her to take something out the freezer for dinner tomorrow and it thaws out and it's a strange cum-stained pussy. But I digress... I'd skim off Wal-Mart, because them motherfuckers will own certain countries at some point. They have banks in Wal-Mart now, and you go in and it's the same blank-eyed retards in matching shirts working there as there are in the 21 items or less Supercenter express lane. And for the NFL dude to kill, without a doubt I'd pick Deion Sanders, but I'd want him to be doing a sit-down interview with Norv Turner, so that hopefully Norv Turner would be incapacitated eternally by shrapnel blood diamonds. Also, for further information about on-hold skeezers, consult your local library for Eazy-E's first solo album, Eazy Duz It.

#8: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (11-6, #11 overall) - The most boringest team in all of footballs gets another week to dull us to death. Watching them beat my Skins last week, I thought about that Simpsons Halloween special where Bart had the evil brother who looked kind of mongoloidish and ate raw fishheads out of a bucket, because basically Shaun Alexander looks like the mongoloid retard brother of Tiki Barber who eats raw fishheads. I would do a side-by-side picture comparison to prove this to you right here, but that would involved finding pictures of them both, and fucking giving enough of a shit to try and prove something to your faggot ass. I'm too busy mailing this week's NFL bullshit in. You should just take my word for now that Alexander looks like that, and then next week, when watching the game, you'll see what the fuck I'm talking about.

Wednesday, January 2

NFL WK 18: Wild Card teams

Right here is where I would normally do some sort of introductory nonsense, to set up the team blurbs for the week, but I can't think of anything. I tried a couple of angles and they all sucked, so I just scrapped it altogether and decided to do this instead. I hope you liked it enough to read down to where I started talking about the teams actually playing this weekend. Note the overall rankings according to my completely flawed mathematical system, as they are kinda hilarious at times. Especially in the case of the Giants and Titans...

#1: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (11-5, #4 overall) - Vanessa Del Rio's eldest boy Jackson has certainly built an old school on-the-ground mean machine down there in Jacksonville. Led by Fred Taylor, who was shot and killed by his wife when he played for the Carolina Panthers, they have been born into that Next Year's Upper Echelon category of football team like the Colts always were in until last year and the Chargers always seem to think they're part of. This means that the Jags will be good for the foreseeable future, and always fall short in the playoffs, until they can get some sort of ballhawking defender or playmaker offender to put them over the top (meaning Colts and Pats). Jackson Del Rio's black quarterback smorgasbord in the preseason seemed controversial when he was all like, "Yo, my man Byron Leftwich, I like how them dudes carried you literally in college as you QBed and showed crazy heart, but shit man, we need dudes who don't fuck up. Peace out. I'm doing this early enough so people can confuse you with the new Michael Vick." But David Garrard has shown and proved enough that foolish Jags fans are, "He should've been in the Pro Bowl! We was dissed!" He'll get his chance for showing up when he faces Big Ben Roethlisberger - the third AFC Pro Bowl QB behind the two-headed Position Status Symbol of Brady Manning - this weekend on the same rugby field they beat the Steelers upon a couple weeks ago. This should be your one road team winner this week, and I would not be surprised to see them upset a certain unblemished dynastic team next week as well. Then they can lose to the Colts like the Colts used to always lose to the Patriots.

#2: NEW YORK GIANTS (10-6, #6 overall) - Last week was one of Eli's "On" weeks, so now all of a sudden all the talking heads are like, "Whoa nelly! If the Giants play like they did last week, then they'll certainly destroy the Buccaneers!" Except the Giants have always been inconsistent this season. Also, the Patriots have been less than dominant the past few weeks of their 16-0 run. So most likely, the Giants are still just the Giants - a team led by a shitty quarterback who, even though he'll never be his older brother, seems unable to do some of the simpler things like reading defenses to not throw like four interceptions all of a sudden that you'd expect from a #1 overall pick. He seems to be as much Ryan Leaf as he is Peyton Manning. The Giants complement this offensive stalwart with maybe the shittiest secondary in the NFL. Which means if the Buccaneers offensive stars can remember their pass routes after their month-long vacation on the sidelines, they should be able to light up the Giants enough to spread them out and let some dude named Earnest run roughshod upon that bloated defensive line. Which also sucks, because it means stupid fucking black hobo Michael Strahan will be on the playoff pre-game shows next week. It's also too bad Jeremy Shockey is gone for the year, because some Shockey/Derrick Brooks confrontations would be quality wild card weekend viewing in my opinion.

#3: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (11-5, #7 overall) - The Chargers re-signed their stupid GM to a long-term extension this week, I guess to reward him running off Schottenheimer after a 14-2 season, and getting the worst NFL head coach since 1991 in Norv Turner to basically hobble an 11-5 season out of a team that should've coasted to 12-4. L.T. is one of the best, but you can sense some frustration in him this year, and I don't think that's gone away so much as you stifle that type of expression of hatred for things when it's going good. But once they blow it, I would expect all sorts of finger-pointing and complaining about the wasted potential of this 2007 Chargers team. But what do you do? You can't fire Turner or else you have the same problem next year; and if you stay with Turner, you're wasting another year of L.T.'s limited prime with the ol' monkeypox-faced coach still at the helm. That being said, they should be able to sleep their way through beating the Titans, so enjoy this weekend in the sun Chargers fans. Unless of course, they somehow wrestle failure away from inevitable victory like last year's playoff team did. And we don't know if Norv Turner is cursed like Marty Schottenheimer was in the playoffs, mostly because Norv Turner usually doesn't make the playoffs.

#4: TENNESSEE TITANS (10-6, #9 overall) - I don't remember people sitting so many bigger players at the end of the regular season back in the days like they do now, and that's basically the only reason the Titans made it into the playoffs - thanks to the Colts turning last week's regular season finale into a glorified preseason game. The Titans defense is fucking solid, and it should be fun to watch them against the Chargers. Actually, this game is going to boil down to who is the bigger fuck-up - Philip Rivers or Vince Young, because the Titans d-line seems like they are kept in cages and fed gunpowder during the week. I could see them putting some shoulder into both L.T. and P.R. rather heavily during this game, and probably causing Rivers to loft a couple into the secondary's hands (which is why the Titans were fucked by Pacman Jones, because they could've used a ballhawk showboat like that this year to feed off the softballs that the defensive line caused quarterbacks to toss). But come on, Vince Young is basically a halfwit with Jed Clampett leg maneuvers. He's liable to make more completions to Antonio Cromartie than his own receivers. The Titans defense is a punisher that should keep the Chargers offense in check, but the Chargers defense might score more than the Titans offense in this one.

#5: WASHINGTON REDSKINS (9-7, #10 overall) - I wrote a long-winded ass thing about the Redskins, but I also started a new group football blog called Armchair Linebacker that may or may not survive through April, as stupid ideas for blogs are wont to do, so I put my long-winded bullshit about the Redskins there. You should check it out. And my apologies for dumpin.net being nothing but my fucking football bullshit the past few weeks. I think Keenon is the only other guy trying right now, and he's back in mulatto prison again for the holidays.

#6: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (10-6, #11 overall) - The Seahawks are the most fucking boring piece of shit team there is right now. And Pacific Northwest fucks have this chip on their shoulder all the time like the rest of the country is prejudiced against their stupid shit. So it makes them get all indignant about obviously weak ass crap like the Seahawks, thinking they're an actual Super Bowl contender that should be given attention. The rest of the country is not as liberal and not as open-minded and doesn't want to recognize not only the inherent greatness of Mike Holmgren and Matt Hasselbeck, but also gay marriage and frappucinos and Microsoft Vista. Guess what though? Fuck you. Once they finish chopping down all the trees in the Pacific Northwest, there'll really be no reason to still have it around, except for maybe like a grungy goth kid rainy day homeland. And how the fuck did a guy like Sir Mix-a-Lot end up being from Seattle? I never figured that one out. Shaun Alexander has finally been exposed as a pussy this year, but let's not forget this is a team full of pussies. I mean, even Lofa Tatupu, who was a punishing little heatseeker midget Samoan warrior when he came out of college, has become hit-or-miss this season. It's basically the NBA mentality applied to a football team. And I'm sad my favorite team has to play it this weekend because I hate the fact I'm gonna be bored watching my lifelong favorites in only their third playoff appearance in like fifteen years because they're playing the stupid boring piece of shit fuckface uniformed walrus coached faggot Seahawks. (Although, I have to admit, my wife always calls them the Seahoohas, and that makes me laugh. My kids do it now too. They call the Seahawks "Seahoohas", and also when I'm all drunked up in football anger mode, yelling "HOLD 'EM!" at the Redskins defense, my kids will respond, because my wife taught them this, "CUDDLE 'EM! MAKE THEM FEEL LOVED!")

#7: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (10-6, #12 overall) - The Steelers have looked less than intimidating the past few weeks, and against a scrub wild card team like the Titans or Browns had they made it, that might've been okay. But the Jaguars have crazy cocksure swagger, and you don't want to be stumbling along against crazy cocksure swagger. Willie Parker is out, which means the Steelers ground game will not be as menacing, but that also means their fumble game won't be as devastating, so it's hard to say how much that'll effect them. The real problem is their defense looks like shit lately. Fuck man, I think ever since I was like seven, the Steelers have ALWAYS had some sort of punishing negroid monster super destroying oppositional backfields, but they seem to be a little impotent here recently. Even Polamalumalu the Polynesian Heartthrob has been gimptastic. But this is the playoffs, so if they can patchwork their mangled ass roster together for four quality hours this weekend, they can live their dreams! Well, not really their dreams because a lot of these dudes already won a Super Bowl, but maybe they can make Mike Tomlin smile one more time this season. He has such a charming smile. And twinkly eyes too.

#8: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (9-7, #14 overall) - Usually the type of teams that rest their skill position superstars are teams that are like 13-3 and have actual, you know, superstars. The Bucs have done so to the tune of 9-7, and are led by journeyman Jeff Garcia and a running back nobody even heard of before like week six of this year. I guess Joey Galloway too, but that dude's hardly a star. 9-7, with an aging defense making one last run like a wild west flick, and an overhyped ass coach, and this is supposed to be a threat in the playoffs? Seriously, this Giants/Bucs game is lucky they even put it on TV at 1 in the afternoon. They could've just did this one overnight and told us about it in the morning. I actually can't see either of these teams being able to put up a good showing in either Dallas or Green Bay, so this is basically the season for both teams.