Soccer Moms, George II, and Shopping For Me

Dear Monponsett,

   My son has yet to play the position that he loves in soccer . The season is over and yet he is greatly dissapointed in how the coach didn't let him play his position- only midfield. A long game away the coach yelled at him to clean up everyone else's mess and he wasn't allowed ot play.

We dont want him to give up the sport, but it might happen. Thoughts?

- Nat

Dear Nat,

   Midfield is an important position in soccer. The person in that spot is sort of the General of the team... in charge of bringing the ball up, and in charge of leading the defense when the ball comes the other way.

   If the coach even raised his/her voice at my daughter during what I gather is a friendly recreational soccer league, I would have walked down onto the field, stopped the game, and took her away from this Freak immediately. If my husband was with me, the coach would most likely be physically assaulted. I would definitely file a complaint with the league.

   A lot of coaches come from the Player side of the ball, and athletes aren't the most sensitive people in the world. They are more likely to bark at someone for nothing, and they are more likely to single out a kid for some sort of cruel hazing that seems to make perfect sense to them. Basically... a bully.       

   In fairness to the coach.... he may see great talent in your son, and is riding him extra hard to try and make a complete player out of him.

   Most likely though... he's probably just some sort of neo-fascist third leg of a man who forgot somewhere along the line that soccer is supposed to be FUN... especially for the Wee.

   I coached a HS basketball team that went 1-16 for two years in a row (it wasn't my fault- we had 20 kids in the whole school). We took some fairly terrible beatings in our time, and many were difficult to watch. I repeatedly saw my kids forget to do stuff I had just told them to do. It does get upsetting, I'll admit.

   Still... I never once used words like "disappointed" with them (unless there had been a fight), and I never raised my voice to anyone who wasn't like 50 feet away from me.

   Other than cases involving:  

a) a money bet on the game  

b) something terribly shady, like a fight or the use of a racial slur.  

c) a bear coming out on the field, and sneaking up on an unsuspecting player  

d) an injury to the coach himself      

 ....NO coach should ever raise his voice at a recreation soccer game.  

- Stacey  

PS...    My husband just got up, and asked me what I was writing. When I told him, he said, "I'd have given that coach one really loud warning from the stands, and then I would have gone down there on the field and grabbed him around the neck. Bullies often only understand bullying."       

And he's the calm one....  

Other Vote

Date: 10/20/2005

2:08:38 AM Eastern Standard Time

From: JoesZ

Reply To: To: Monponsett

Yep the other Bush son might just get my vote to. Ivoted for George W. and I am quite satisfied with his leadership. For your information gas is the only thing that has stayed low in this Country for years. Over the last 40 years gas has only had an average increase of some 3.7%. Gas is now catching up with time so don't cry to George W. over it. It has been predicted and said for years it would eventually go to $5 a gal. so happy driving Liberal buddy.     

   I occasionally veer into political blogging... although I usually do it more in comment form at The Daily Pulse (Join In and Shape the News) blog, and occasionally John Scalzi's By The Way ( By The Way...) blog.   It's really a lot of fun if you like to write.

   This week we talked about:  

  

- David Stern Being Upset As He Finally Realizes That His 90% Black NBA Doesn't Dress Like A  50something Rich White Guy Thinks They Should.

- Is George II responsible For Hundreds Of Murders For Putting Party Hacks In Charge Of FEMA ...I  Mean, They're Charging That Bus Driver In Houston With Negligent Homicide, no?  

- If I Won The Powerball Lottery, I Would Spend On Armaments, And Try To Take Over Burkina-Faso Or The Ivory Coast.  

- Has Bush Murdered More Iraqis Than Saddam Did?  

- Save The Wishy-Washy Stuff, And Just Try To Force Billy Graham Onto The Supreme Court.

   OK... in fairness to the Daily Pulse blog, the titles were a little more-even handed than I'm letting on. They were simply asking for AOL readers to give their opinions, and I have a lot of free time in the morning.

   Still, my views fall on the extreme side. I'm not remotely liberal- a lot of my ideas border on Evil.   I think that if we're killing Mesopotamians, we should at least get some cheap/free oil out of it... and we should also smash Iran while we're over there. We're gonna have to do it eventually, anyhow...

   I think that no one in charge of Oil Companies should be running this country, ever. Too much conflict of interest exists. Bread and milk aren't poised to quadruple in price since 2001... gas is.  

   For that fact alone, Bush should resign.... and I think that the Red States that put this despicable oil whore into office (twice) have added another sorry chapter to their history.

    I get a lot of Harvard guys like Joe in the letter above popping up in my emails... people who fail to understand my essence.

   Joe is doing what he thinks is right- sticking up for what he believes in. I goofed on him in my replies, but I bear the man no grudge. Hell, I could be the one who is wrong... it happened, once.

   Still... I get the feeling that Joe could go to a GOP fundraising dinner, be served a nice steaming plate of feces... and even if he threw it up after, he'd compliment the chef and ask for seconds.  

   And the sad part is that this kind of person seems to make up a majority of the voters... well, except for Bush II's first win, which reminds me of the old Harry Truman quote:  

   "The election in your state was run in as low a manner as I've ever seen or even IMAGINED, and I've been in this game since 1905."  

 

  - Dear Stacey....nice picks this week (2-6) Do you even WATCH these sports???

   If all goes well, I should have cable TV today.  

   A small confession: I've been writing this column for quite some time without ever having watched sporting events that were on cable. I'll see games on at the local tavern, or go to a friend's house where the game is on.... but other than that, my main sports fix is WEEI-AM 850 or the Cape Cod channel that picks up the broadcasts.

   We're not poor, either. I've just always been a bookworm, and the TV is usually running some sort of Disney video if it's on at all. Stephen will watch the news or the Patriots game... but he mostly fixes stuff during his free time, or plays basketball.

   People look at us like we're crazy (hehe) when we say we don't have cable... especially where I serve Quail for dinner now and then. I operate outside of the accepted idyll.

   We have 5 TVs (we got all the gear when the family house sold), including one in the kitchen that I currently have potpourri sitting on. The house overlooks the bay, high on a hill.  I was raised in the wealthiest town in Massachusetts. Stephen and I have about 12 years of college between us, and even the baby is showing Snobbish tendencies.

   I'm pretty easy to please, but tough to shop for... if that makes any sense.

   Electronics intimidate me. The newspapers, an occasional show, and AOL are pretty much all the broadcasting I need... and this column (and the columns I enjoy visiting) take up most of my free time. I don't really wear jewelry, I dress modestly, I refuse to fly, I love my current Jeep too much to get rid of it, I fell asleep at Miss Saigon, I have too many pets and stuffed animals already, and I hate crowds.

   I've asked for a basketball before, when I was 26 years old. The CIA estimates that this has never happened before. I've also asked for a Lebron shirt, a computer WWE game, and a flanking pair of little lighthouses that run off solar power for the walkway.

   Sloppy Dog was a birthday gift, as was Tippy Turtle. I'm pretty sure that Melissa was conceived during a gift vacation we took to a cabin in New Hampshire. This year, I had asked for a little thingy that goes up on the roof, wires down onto my desk, and tells me how fast the wind is blowing. It's already operative. Things work themselves out, mostly.

   I usually get what I want, too. I've learned to forego surprise in return for satisfaction... and I will basically tell people what I want, where to get it, how much to pay for it, and - quite often- how to present it to me (as with the anenometer... I was pretty specific about wanting to come home some time to find it installed already).

   When discussing what to get me for Xmas, I've seen my husbandsteal a glance at my sister, who I'm pretty sure mouthed the phrase, "Give me the money, and I'll get it this weekend"  back to him. I was going to complain, but I could see that he was simply aiming for my complete satisfaction... and short ofjust giving me money for Christmas (which I would accept without complaint), hiring my basic genetic equivalent to shop for me is the best way to meet that goal.

  It (especially as Shea and I usually shop together, leading to a scenario where I basically shop for myself with someone else's money... but where I can't wear/use/play with what I get until either mid-October or late December) works.

   So, I have pretty much everything I need already... and whereas I shop so damned well myself, I require nothing more than a nice dinner out and a trip to somewhere that French is spoken to pretty much keep me walking on air till Christmas.

 

   It's a good gig for a husband. I'm sure many people reading this have been torn to shreds by their wives/husbands/family for coming up with some reallllllll shifty gifty at some point in their lives... when they had to buy something for someone, and had no idea what to get.

   I'm the opposite of that- one of my few Good traits. If I don't get what I want, I'll just go buy it myself. I'm generally pretty happy that someone took the time to do something nice for me, and if the present is good.... Gravy.

   Still, I had to ask for SOMETHING for my birthday, so I figured what the hey? Get some cable... it makes me a better person.

   For those of you who think that I'm intelligent, ask me about Seinfeld  or Survivor  or Sopranos  or Sarah Jessica Parker's show sometime. See if I don't shrug, and try to change the subject. This lack of Pop Culture Training hurts more than you'd think it would:

- Beth..."If you don't have HBO by Thansgiving, I can't even talk to you anymore. I'll eat dinner at the friggin' Sheraton."

(Beth and I are both Vivi Award Nominees,,,,Sportz, Jersey and other HAC friends, too)

- Treesoup-..."You've never watched Survivor?"

Me- "Nope. What's it about?"

"There's a bunch of people stranded on an island, and they have to survive day by day."

"Ohhhhh....I saw that....Why doesn't the Professor just fix the hole in the boat?"

 

- Jamie... A nice guy, Jamie.... getting himself a really huge break when asked to appear on Cold Pizza, which is some sort of ESPN show.

 

  Jamie has always treated me well in our dealings, and you'd think that I'd have the decency to flick on a simple device and see- sorta live- something go well for someone I think highly of.

   Nope. Until I asked Tammy...when Jamie said "I'll be on Cold Pizza next week,"  I assumed his wife had thrown him out.

   Tammy, you may remember, is my hippy friend who once asked me- during the Pats/Carolina Super Bowl- why players don't just run behind all the guys standing on the sidelines. I don't like to have to defer to her for anything sports-related, so I have decided to join the rest of you in 2005 by getting cable.

   I may come to terms with the Microwave Oven next. I did get the X-Box to work, and am no longer frightened by it.

 

 

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...

OKLAHOMA CITY (Oct. 20) - A man got a prison term longer than prosecutors and defense attorneys had agreed to - all because of Celtics great Larry Bird.

The lawyers reached a plea agreement Tuesday for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But Eric James Torpy wanted his prison term to match Bird's jersey number 33.

"He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird's jersey," Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be.

"I've never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it."

(Lucky he wasn't a Gretzky fan...)

 

Remember, kids.... First the Tread Mill, then  the Gin Mill:

 

Monponsett:  eff him
Monponsett:  you robbed him... 
Monponsett:  lol
MrBierSnob:  Hey, I'm not the one who put a $200 buck cd changer up for auction buy it now for 50 bucks!
MrBierSnob:  I'd have paid 100 for the unit, actually
Monponsett:  i hear ya
Monponsett:you won out on the Greater Fool Theory, if it's not stolen
MrBierSnob:  Explain please?
Monponsett:  <FONTFACE="COMIC MS? Sans>oh... sorry .. a saying of my father's...
Monponsett:  no offense meant... it's a compliment when i translate it from French properly 
Monponsett:  but the saying is that even if a fool sits in the market selling the air we're all breathing.... eventually a Greater Fool will come along
MrBierSnob:  and buy it

Monponsett:  it's silly, but it's essentially what our stock market is based on 
Monponsett:  the GFT works both ways
Monponsett:  you were on the Big Fish end of the old food chain poster
Monponsett:  you won
MrBierSnob:  Hehehe apparently so!
Monponsett:  Econ 101 ... although in the context I learned it, it was basically why my father was telling my sister and I to set up a lemonade stand rather than bother him for an advance on our allowances. I think we were either the fooled or the fools.... but it doesn't matter too much now, I guess
Monponsett:  i may copy/paste that as a journal entry... it'd be a good thing for my teen readers to know

 

A few other silly things to brighten your morning...

   This may be the stupidest thing ever invented... which is why it rules. Beth sent me this, and basically... you're a Yeti who smashes penguins for distance with what I'm guessing is a 7 foot icicle. It's the Home Run Derby that the ASPCA doesn't want you to know about.

   It's as addictive as crack, too. The key seems to be to hit them peng-oo-ins at an angle that would be a double up the gap in a big league game. Anywhooooo...

http://meph.eu.org/penguin1.php

 

If mimes are what piss you off, we have that covered, too...thanks to Mr. Scalzi:

http://www.ihatemimes.com/games/mime-mayhem/

 

I rent dspace occasionally here...

Hi Guys,    It's me, Paul, that annoying proprietor of CarnivAOL. I'm sending you this because at one time or another, you guys have all submitted to CarnivAOL, and I want to ask you a favour. If possible, could you you guys post a plug for CarnivAOL in your journals this week? I'm looking to get this thing seen by as many people as possible so it will continue to grow. Thank you all for submitting in the past, and I hope you will continue to submit from time to time in the future. If you see fit to help me out here, I thank you.     Paul 
"When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them"--Frank Herbert

Paul's blog- Aurora Walking Vacation

 

Soccer Stacey from  http://spstudio.elena.hosting-friends.de/spstudio.html Make yourself a South Park drawing! Thanks to Miss Stacy's site.

SHUT UP!!!!

Quebec

   You know, they seem harmless enough... but I just don't trust the Canadians.

   I go up to Quebec every now and then. It's a tremendous long weekend getaway for Massachusetts folk, a sort of B+ France that you don't have to get into some death-trap jet to go to.

   If you can handle French people who know English but refuse to speak it, it's a nice October drive through foliage country to a charming riverfront city.

   It's ancient as far as American cities go, with Jacques Cartier planting a cross there in 1534. The Algonquins there were dealt with easily enough- where the English killed them, the French traded with them, and few Froggers were hatcheted by the men who would later become the more Southern Englishmen's sports team mascots.

   Quebec- an Algonquin word for "narrows" (n)- dominates a bend in the St. Lawerence River, in that it has nice hills from which to rain cannonballs on any sucker from another crown who might try to sneak a troop transport past it downriver.

 

   Whoever owned it owned the American interior, as the US influence at the time stopped at the Appalchians... and wasn't that solid at all more than a mile from the coast in most places.

   This led to settlements that lasted after the Brits won Canada in 1763. A lot of these settlements were sold to make cash for Napoleon's war machine... we Americans know this as the Louisiana Purchase, and it doubled the size of our nation for crazy dumb cheap fundage.... like a nickel an acre.

   The Froggers were having enough trouble with the rest of Europe (and especially within France itself), and the last thing they needed were 20,000 Apaches falling on their unprotected settlers before the Smallpox kicked in. They were happy to dump some wilderness on Thomas Jefferson for a little Cannon Cash to try to kill Russians with.

   This probably doesn't concern you unless you live in Kansas... or Quebec. The British needed the French to cow the aboriginals, and they allowed New France to remain somewhat French... especially Quebec.

 

   French is the official language of Quebec, all the signs are en francais, and there is an ugly little separatist movement that could result in a hockey game terrorist bombing someday.

   But that isn't what I'm here to tell you about. I'm basically telling you why, even though Montreal is closer to NYC than Denver is... Canada may as well be friggin' Jupiter as far as I'm concerned.... and keep in mind that I am 100% French, and fit in there as seamlessly as I didn't fit in when I went to Houston:

- Cigarettes come in these purse-hating side-sliding packages, and taste like bad homegrown dope.

- Homosexuality is rampant here, what with the gay marriage laws and the ability of both partners to watch the hockey game while performing the sex act.

- Speaking of hockey... if you go to 3 or 4 bars on a Sunday afternoon, you'll see nothing but Ottawa Senators games. The patrons could be called "very much opposed" to the idea of turning on an NFL game instead.

 

   This fact alone justifies a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as far as my tax dollar is concerned.

- They call real  Americans "Upper Mexicans."

- They have their eyes on Greenland.

- If the next war involves wood-splitting or lots of skating... they'll conquer us like Iraq vs Kuwait.

- They will be diplomatic about it, but you can tell that they think their bacon is better than ours.

- They have a more soulful National Anthem than we do, and they know it.

- If you've never seen a woman who has lived nowhere but Covington, Louisiana try to order Marlboros from a French-Canadian-Asian, you can't imagine how funny it is... even after 3 minutes or so.

   At different points of the conversation, I saw the poor clerk hold up whiskey, tampons, aspirin, batteries, a Hustler... it was reality show-surreal. You could have taught a monkey to type faster than old Cindy Lou was going to get her cancer straws. "Dagumnit, just gimme some tobacker,"  she drawled out at one point.

   I didn't intervene... even though I'm fluent in French, and the Cajun was my roomie when I went to school in Rhode Island. I never took my lips off my Slurpee for the whole episode... except to laugh.

   Only the future liberal application of Rum to this Slurpee stopped the laughter, and it resulted in a terribly ugly scene at what the Quebeckers think is a pizza place.

   Sometimes, you have to get yourself out of these kind of jams with the resources you have at hand.... and the sooner Cindy figured all this out, the better.

   I'm pretty much all for making Oh Canada the 51st state, whether they like it or not. I don't trust them, and guys who may have been on our dollar bills were repelled attacking Quebec.

   I just feel better owning all that timber and uranium. We can force football on them, and they'll recognize the superiority of our beer in a generation or so. The sooner we do it, the sooner the killing will stop... and it gets the troops out of those God-forsaken deserts and mountains that Bush has them in.

   We'll win every Olympic hockey medal between now and the Mars colonization. It also gives us an enormous buffer zone if Earth ever gets ugly in a decade or ten... sort of a huge, frozen Latvia. You never know when the Swedes are gonna try something sneaky across the Pole, and I'd rather fight them on Baffin Island instead of Buzzards Bay.

   If the New Americans resisted, I'd shoot them down in the street like mad dogs. That whole lack-of-NFL thing is truly disturbing, and they deserve whatever happens to them when the Big Red One rolls in out of Montana. I'd have no bloody pity at all.

   Once we have them all pimped up, I'd pull a PR move and let them keep the whole French scene up there in Quebec. Diversity is what makes this country great... and every New Englander knows that if we can tolerate Vermont or Mississippi, we can incorporate Montreal somehow. Can they be goofier than some Amish buggy-jockey, or a Mormon with 6 wives?

   The fact that we have such a wide range of peoples is what makes this country great. Nothing shows this off better than a nice War of Conquest.

Smurf Bombing

                            

   Good Lord, it's hard being the Smurf... even when you're kicking it Old School.

Smurfs bombed in new UNICEF ad - Europe - MSNBC.com

   My neice got that information to me, and I wasted no time at all in sliding down the Batpole. After sex, I got a shower and am heading off to Belgium in the Schmoo Jet tomorrow morning.

   UNICEF has had a pretty easy ride here in America, and people will pump quarters into those little boxes without a second thought. It was not unusual at all to see a kid claiming to have been robbed his UNI-box at school the next day... although the robbers seemed to have bypassed his Tony Montana pile 'o yayo-sized candy stash that he had working on the desk.

   Ever wonder where all that money goes after you give it to the Uniboxers? UNICEF is one of those do-gooder groups that does a lot of African-feeding, and they turn up at tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, etc...

   They also make the occasional commercial. They use different methods for different cultures. America and their fat wallets are shown a mountain of starving children, while countries that might be driven out of NATO usually are fed a steadier diet of Fear.

   Europeans get the wuss rap from Americans, but they sure do a lot of fighting for sissies with bad techno music. From what my father tells me, I've calculated that I lost- given a 3 kid per family average that is actually quite conservative in a Catholic nation- 15 or 20 wedding presents due to marching Germans.... and not only are they 15 or so gifts, but they are gifts from Europe- which tend to be tres bien....

   If you think that American staples like n***** jokes and drunken Irishmen mascots are bad racism, you should have heard some of the white/on/white hatred that was kicked around in my kitchen growing up. It was odd going out into the world and finding outthat most Americans didn't really hate Germans that much. Blacks sort of top the list of racism for most white Americans, while they were 25th or so in my house.

   Imagine if America had a lot more Civil Wars, and that they were much more isolated and brutal. Picture a nice North Carolina/Virginia war, or maybe a free-wheeling Oregon/Washington throwdown. Imagine the hatred that would exist... rocking a nice Espo throwback might get you a beating in Chicago- even though his brother played there for like 50 years.

                                                                   

   Belgium became important in a geopolitical sense when a godless Prussian named Von Schlieffen (or something close to that) devised the plan for an invasion of France. Rather than slugging it out through the near-impassable Ardennes forest, the Boche would violate Belgian neutrality and attack France from the north. This stomps a lot of innocent Belgians, but you have to break a few eggs, no?

   Germany's invasions were generally pretty nasty affairs, and this relates to the article in that Belgians- whatever their yummy waffle making faults may be- don't scare easily. Like the French, every Belgian child has heard a grandmother describe a Nazi invasion, and a lot of people don't have uncles because of it.

   Anyone who has lost someone to war won't really respond to a smooth Navy commercial with a Godsmack score. So, you have to work harder to get contributions there.

   This is how it came down to a decision to bomb a bunch of cute blue Smurfs. War touches everyone,the message says... even cartoon icons.

   Americans are spared from this. We have college football. Nebraska and Oklahoma can work out all their differences on a football field, and no one's farm gets pillaged. It's why America kicks so much more butt than those Smurf-killing Huns over on the Wrong Side of the pond.

                                           

Golf, Anyone?

   What do an incoming tornado and an Iowa divorce have in common?

   Someone's about to lose a farm.

   These were sent to me as Katrina/Alabama pics, but my man Uncle Joe at Magic Smoke informed me that this was a common "hoax," and that the pictures are actually from a series of Nebraska-type storms in 2002-04. Thanks to www.Snopes.com, as well. We'll credit the real photographer at the end of the piece.

   Funny thing about either Me or Nebraska... take away the storm clouds, and you'd still get a visual of why I would shoot up a Wal-Mart if I lived there. It's too God-love-it flat, and New Englanders need a little definition to their landscapes.

   I suppose I'd also vote for the more fundamentally Christian presidential candidate if I got Wrath of God storms like these MFers every year... or maybe I'd vote Democrat and just live full-time in a sealed concrete bunker.

 

   Only on the Great Plains can you golf in shorts while farms are being thrown into the lower stratosphere a half mile down the road. It's Iowastanding!!

   The Japanese mob (the Yakuza) actually made these storms to slow wheat production... as a sort of pre-emptive strike at buying Kellogg, and replacing Tony the Tiger with a 95 pound rabid Akita (It's grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!) to get us back for Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

   This picture (a diff version of a previous pic on this page) was the base of the mail I got with these pics. Notice the visage de la sorcière  off to the right.

   Seeing evil witch faces in storm clouds/WTC smoke is perfectly natural psychological ju-jitsu. Storms are terrifying, and people will have "irrational" reactions to terror. Personally, I see Jay Leno.

   Seeing Jay Leno is indicative of a certain mental instability that we won't go into on these pages.

   I've given out a few ink blot tests in my time, and once you know how those "end," you sort of become too jaded to properly see cloud shapes.

   It's like Freud said: "Everyone who smokes is attempting to satisfy a subconscious oral fixation- a fixation based on the pleasure one took as a baby when breast feeding.... except for myself, as I do it just because I love tobacco.... now that I know."

   If you were watching more gentle clouds drift by on a sunny summer day, you'd probably get between your wife/hub and the kids if your spouse looked up and said, "I see a decapitation, with torrents and torrents of spraying blood."

   I did see a Bunny in the tornado shot a few back, and yes- I'm being vague on purpose. I'm sort of the opposite of the guy in the previous paragraph, which just makes me a different shade of Unusual Blue.

   These images are actually photographs of tornadoes and other extreme weather phenomena taken by storm chaser Mike Hollingshead in Nebraska and Kansas during the summer months of 2002 and 2004. Visit his page... it rocks like taking an armful of heroin and going to an Alice In Chains concert, circa 1994.

N*****, Please...

 

   Some kid (maybe one pictured above) is going to try to get into the NBA Draft next summer, and he will be refused.

   The NBA will point to a rule they drew up, and tell the kid it's nothing personal. David Stern won't tell the kid that American public mentality feels that you can't give a black kid $60 million, or that the same black kid is- genetically and demographically- less qualified to operate in the world than a tennis player, a curveball artist, or a golfer.

   If the kid hasn't figured all that stuff out by the time that he leaves Stern's office... he almost deserves to be smashed into a pile of quivering flesh-Jello as he steps off the curb and gets hit by Michelle Wie's brand new speeding Porsche.

ESPN.com - GOLF - Adelson: What took so long?

   Soceity has grabbed the black man by both ears, and drove its' collective knee into his exposed groin.... again. There's some kid in high school right now who is a better player than whatever stiff the Miami Heat will draft at the end of the first round next summer, but he won't be let into the NBA because they have decided that he is more likely than not no better than a thug n*****.

   Baseball and hockey draft piles of high school players every year. The #1 tennis player in the world is a teen Russian. The oldest person on the next Olympic girls gymnsatic team will be younger than Lebron James. Baseball gets them as young as possible, and literally robs from cradles in some Latin American countries.

   Only genetics and the negative media perception  of steroids (and the same high Black Guy ratio) keeps the NFL from drafting children, and I suppose NASCAR would have a lot of trouble:

A) running a racer who isn't old enough to drive the car, and

B) finding a car owner who will let a teenager pilot his Meal Ticket next to a guy like Dale Jr- who is sort of genetically programmed to Wall the kid, just to teach him a little lesson.

   The PGA/LPGA is now about to let a girl into Professional status who would have to wait until 2008 to earn dollar one if she were a big, dumb power forward from Cabrini Green who didn't play a rich White man's hobby.

   Since most blacks don't golf, play tennis, or skate... America applauds the entry of children into these professional ranks. Maybe someone will get a pic of her going to her Prom with Eli Manning . It's cute.

   It's just when you see an uppity black like Darius Miles driving a Ferrari that you realize that there are some flaws inherent in the system.

   It's kind of sad... because sports should be a place where penis length or what your father does for a living doesn't really have much of a bearing on what happens on the field.

   The sharecropper's son should win the race if he's faster than the accountant's daughter... and if the girl from the rich high school turns out to faster than either of them.... you won't hear a peep out of me.

   What bothers me is when they make the sharecropper's son run an extra mile to reach the same goal.... even if he's the class President.

   This crap you're seeing when you compare the PGA to the NBA is almost like a Bush Tax Cut.... "We're all equal... it's just that some of us are more equal than the others. "

  

"If those n****** had any sense, they would have learned to fish.... instead of robbing that Foot Locker, they could get out on the BASS tour...like me."

Keepin' It Riz-eal

   A lot of people hate the new Welcome Screen, but not me. I look at it as a new toy. Sure, it's not a gram of cocaine or anything... but it kills some time.

   If you don't like what's on your welcome screen, you can change it around a bit. Just look at it long enough, and you'll find the "change this screen" button, or whatever they call those things you click on.

   I went with a Black Voices Welcome Screen, mostly for laughs. Even though I have some Portuguese blood, my skin is whiter than this font you are reading. Still, it'll amuse me for a few weeks... after which I'll use the Spanish one or something.

   I managed to find the Unexpected Benefit, though. Black Voices Welcome Screens are the only one with a Sports section.

   Sure, it's a Black view of sports.... but all the sports I like are mostly black anyhow, and the white sports- golf, tennis, hockey- have just enough black folk playing them (Serena, Tiger, Fuhr, etc...) to satisfy my need for information on them ... which is basically negligible anyhow.

   Still, I only had a Black Voices Welcome Screen for 10 seconds before I had several good articles to read while I blew off church for the 500th straight week. Here's the 411, dawg:

AOL Black Voices: The Player's Life -- Behind the Scenes of the Hip-Hop Sports World at BV Sports - Brandy, Quentin Richardso...

- Doh!

   Things seem to have gone downhill for Quentin Richardson and Brandy, who were engaged about this time last year. My sources tell me that the engagement is Off like mosquito repellent.

   Brandy has a last name, but neither myself nor anyone on my Buddy List can think of what it is. It was going to be "Richardson," but that doesn't look like it's going to be happening any time soon... unless she's working through the NBA in reverse abecedarian order- in which case, Jason Richardson had better watch his Nuggets.

   Q-Rich lived up to his nickname by icing the R+B diva to the tune of ELEVEN karats last year- a solid million dollar ring that reportedly really pissed off Vanessa Bryant. 11 karats feeds a LOT of bunnies, kids... 

   Brandy had to actually move the ring from left to right hands several times a day, as the scrawny right arm looked unattractive when compared to the Big Poppa Pump-sized gun she developed lugging that ill rock around entirely on the traditional engagement ring hand.

   This is on some he said/she said BS... I've heard everything from Infidelity to Bothersome Mothers as the straw that broke the camel's back. Brandy may have also disagreed with the Los Angeles/Phoenix/New York odyessy that Q's last 12 months have been.

   At that rate, she'd be living in Minnesota, Portland, or Milwaukee in a few years, and there's nothing glamorous about walking around in a ski jacket when you're not skiing, being hit by Mount St. Helens lava, or having Serbian neighbors.

( "... raisin' up off the cot ") 

   Alicia Keys doesn't take that kind of s***, and Brandy sure as Hell isn't gonna... especially from the NBA's second best Richardson.

 

AOL Black Voices: BV Sports Feature Programming - Lester Still in The Chase

 

(It really IS my car, officer!)

- Contrary to what my uninformed supposition led me to believe, there are indeed a couple of black guys driving those NASCARs around.

   The South is blacker than the rest of the United States, and it should not, on the surface, seem that unusual to see them involved in- despite the fact that people up here love it, too- what is a predominantly Southern Institution.

   Then again, the KKK is a Southern Institution as well, and they probably don't have a lot of Sir Mix-A-Lot playing on the juke box in the Klan bar.

   While blacks are as into cars as any other American (many of my students were entirely car-focused... even before they were licensed to drive one or wealthy enough to own one, which was often how they ended up in my school), the whole NASCAR scene seems a little too Waylon Jennings-esque for even Republican-voting blacks.

   Well, somebody better get a really baggy sheet and hood, because here comes Bill ("Mo") Lester.

   NASCAR isn't stupid. Any huge company that makes no effort to attract 15% of the United States into their fandom won't be huge for long. Magic Johnson has been brought in, and someone who I believe is a Poston cousin is in the mix somewhere.

   They even run Drive For Diversity- which aims to not only get black people (and Hispanics, women, gays- anyone you can't picture actually being in the crowd) in the stands, but into the cars themselves. They run  a training program that graduated 8 people this year.

   Bill Lester drives the race trucks, which - given the 99:1 front end weight ratio- must be hilarious to watch. He has the backing of both Toyota and Bill Davis Racing, which appears in the article like Bill is a pretty good name to have painted all over your truck.

   Bill is not the first brother on the track in NASCAR's history. The splendidly-named Willy T. Ribbs wasthe first Indy 500 racer with sharecropping descendants when he Started His Engine in 1991, and was the first black full-time CART series driver...whatever the f**** that is. It looks good on a resume, I guess.

   Another guy with a cool name, former Morehouse grad George Mack (this is the guy who should be driving the trucks... tell me Mack Truck wouldn't buy this dude a rig, even if he were as blue as a Smurf), scored the highest brother-driven Indy finish ever- a not-too-shabby 17th place in 2001. He is also Indy's first full time Soul Rider.

   His catchphrase isn't "I make people say 'F*** Burger King,' and start calling me the Big Mac," but it should be.

   The one black racer who can actually lead visitors to his home into a trophy room is (or maybe was... I have no idea) Wendell Scott, who won a NASCAR race in Jacksonville in 1963. Both Lester and Mack look like pretty good bets to win something at some point in their careers... and the good thing about that is, unlike the PGA, if Mack makes everyone eat fried chicken like Fuzzy Zoeller may be worried about after the race, it won't even be noticed.

   These are Southerners, remember... they'd be more upset if my lily-white ass won a race and made everyone eat (and finish) their cauilflower.

   Diecast Dude and the Scottish racer guy would no doubt tell me that even a Race Truck victory would be a significant feather in the CAT cap of any racer, black or white. You can- although I don't have the link handy- wager money offshore on the probability that a black man will win the US Presidency before a black man wins the Daytona 500.

   Either way, I hope a speeding pickup is involved.

- I know a black guy in Monponsett- a carpenter- who drives a truck. While I never saw this in person, it is said that NO ONE rides in the front with him... except for his 130 pound Rottweiler, "Pooh Bear."

   This stipulation is broken for no one- even his wife. "She stopped asking to go down to Hosea's with me not long after I introduced this policy," he is said to say. The dog also makes for a very effective anti-theft device while Earl discusses the matters of the day- all by himself-  with the other small-towners in the tavern.

   If you ever see a truck driving down Rte 14 in Pembroke with a shivering woman holding on for dear life in the truck bed, say "hi" to Earl for me.

(NOW who's riding in the back, Earl??)

- Since the Irish are the blacks of Albion's Empire, I can work this line in:

"Clout" is when your hometown football team plays a California team, and- rather than making the New Englanders wait till 4- they make everyone in San Diego get up before 10 to watch it.

   San Diego must have no Irish population at all. If they started NFL games at 9:30 AM here, people would be starting their pre-game drinking while it's still technically Friday in Asia.