I know, I shouldn’t bother, but this is my personal venting space. The Rangers are as good as they’ve been in a long time and the Giants, well, if I posted every week on this crazy ride they’ve been on, I’d write a lot of incoherent, screaming, excited gibberish, which you will probably get if they happen to win a week from today. 

Anyway, last thing I’ll say about them, and let it be on the record I was saying the trade was a poor one from the get-go. No hindsight here:

Imagine if James Dolan didn’t get involved?

T.Chandler/Amare/Gallo/Shumpert/Felton with Fields, Walker, W. Chandler, Douglas and Mozgov off the bench. That team is 10 deep and with plenty of pieces to trade for a truly elite player like Paul, D-Will or Howard.

But nope, instead we got TWO SUPERSTARS and 90% of Knicks fans falling for the dupe. You got exactly what you wanted, guys. Good job.

(Also, it’s been asked, “What would you have done if the Nets got Carmelo?” Who gives a shit? They would be a 30 win team like they are now.)

Trying to set myself right and be optimistic and blah blah blah but there are some phrases and whatnot that irritate me when I hear or read them, mostly because I have to fight to urge to go “WELL NO BECAUSE I…”. 

Damn you, damn you to hell New Year’s resolution. 

But seriously, believe whatever works for you, people.

From a Reuters update:

Perry is slightly ahead of prank candidate Vermin Supreme, who has 95 votes on the Democratic side. 

Supreme is promising better zombie preparedness, free ponies for all, and more funding for time-travel research. He came to a Ron Paul rally recently wearing a rubber boot on his head and multiple neckties.

Why was I not informed of the existence of this campaign? Just the mainstream media trying to keep the people down, man. Always trying to keep us from our constitutionally guaranteed right to ponies.

Trite nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it isn’t well-meaning. It certainly is. It just seems like the kind of thing people say after their lives have turned out how they wanted them to, to rationalize past bullshit. Have you ever heard somebody who’s heartbroken, broke, and otherwise not doing terribly well insisting to those around him that all of the bad things in their lives happen “for a reason”? Of course you don’t.

Well, of course it’s easier to cope with if you just refer to the wasted years of your life as happening “for a reason”. Or, I don’t know, maybe sometimes things suck and sometimes things don’t, and there’s no shame in looking back at not figuring it out and just taking it for what it was. It certainly didn’t happen because of some greater plan. Thinking everyone’s lives fit into a movie script-like story arc is folly.

Everything happens because everything can happen.

Wizards of the Coast announced today that a new version of Dungeons and Dragons is in the works. My response to that is “meh”, as I haven’t the slightest idea what to expect of the next edition and it seems like a bit of a PR stunt/panic move as it’s come relatively soon after 4th edition. The news also inspired a typically fluffy “lifestyle” piece from the New York Times where celebrities get name-dropped and the unfortunate phrase “badge of honor for hipsters” gets used, because that’s relevant or something. However, this paragraph I think perfectly illustrates the article’s depth of thought, or lack thereof:

Dungeons & Dragons, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, was the first commercially published role-playing game when it came out in 1974. In the game imagination is the playscape, assisted by graph-paper maps, miniature figurines of orcs and hobbits and a referee called a “dungeon master” who moderates an improvised story with a pretend fellowship of wizards, warriors and rogues. Players toss polyhedral dice and consult tomes of rules to determine outcomes. It has shades of the “Lord of the Rings,” except that in the game players assembled around a table get to be the characters.

Alright, first off, there are no hobbits in D&D. I’m fairly certain the term “Hobbit” is copyrighted by the Tolkein estate. Maybe you meant “Halfling”. Also, don’t you dare call what I do on Saturday nights once or twice a month “pretend”. It is very real and very intense. Those characters are a part of my SOUL.

However, I am going to start insisting that my Dungeon Masters, or “referees”, start dressing like NFL line judges from now on.

This Sunday got off to a rather inauspicious start. Having DVR’d the Manchester Derby, I awoke at 9 AM downstairs to the sounds of my dad yelling at the television about how shit the referee was. Over the past couple of years, I’ve gotten Dad to become a City fan, so much so that he makes it a point to try to watch a lot of the matches with me when he can and that he often gets angrier at the players than I do. (“Dzeko is lazy! He doesn’t track back! Why isn’t Adam Johnson playing?”)

With that kind of alarm, I had an idea what I was about to endure when I met up with Bowie at 11 AM to watch the game over bagels - a brave, but heartbreaking loss. Chris Foy, Manchester United’s Man of the Match, managed to do what no team in England has this season and completely nullify City captain Vincent Kompany by ejecting him from the proceedings a little over 10 minutes in for making as much contact with Nani as you or I did. United had already scored once against the run of play and, with the added momentum of having City’s best defender sent off, added two more before the half. City, however, would not go quietly into the night - Kolarov scored a free kick shortly after the restart, and Aguero, who was phenomenal as the only true forward on the field for City, added a second setting up a final 20 minutes in which Manchester United, despite being up a man, hung on for dear life after having a 3 goal lead only a half hour prior. I briefly thought I had been hallucinating in the morning because I swore I heard Paul Scholes’ name coming from the TV, but there he was, his exhumed body one of the 11 trying to stop City from a historic comeback. They did, but just barely, and given the 12 on 10 advantage United enjoyed, I’ve rarely felt as good after a defeat, especially to…them.

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I haven’t dated anyone for a calendar year now. I don’t mind saying that because I don’t think any judgement should come with that fact, but it’s still a bit jarring to write. I’m 26! I’m supposed to be in the middle of some 20-something love affair like all the people on TV and the movies are! Nope. Not me. I had a serious attempt at online dating in 2011, followed by a parodical one, followed by a few months of bitterness and trying to convince everyone I was an INDEPENDENT STRONG DUDE GRR NO TIME FOR THAT BULLSHIT. That…ended poorly.

Obviously, one can only put on a face for so long. Eventually I had to be honest with myself again, a process which brings with it a lot of emotional binging and purging, which always makes me a bit tougher to be around. I’m always fortunate to have friends patient enough for that, but it’s unpleasant, and I’ve decided that I might as well be honest with everyone than be some kind of cynical self-parody that swings around in perpetuity. Before New Year’s, though, I decided after talking to a friend I had to get things in order, and primarily focus on bringing to an end my eternal quest for gainful full-time employment. Just before that I had lost out on a job last month because I was, as the employer put it, overqualified. I thought it was a slam dunk, and the setback did little for my mental facilities.

Once I buried myself one more time it was time to climb out, forget past failures, and get to the business of setting myself straight. I’ve cut back on drinking and tried to stop repeating the same self-defeating cycle that drives everyone, most of all me, completely insane. Those things never go totally away, of course, but I believe I will conquer them in due time. I say they won’t go away until then because there are still days like today when I wake up tired and irritated. Why? Because of someone I dated a year ago.

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