Friday Night Negativity

It's been a very stressful week here at Casa de Junkie, so I'm gonna take a few moments to vent a bit. Make that a lot.

THINGS I AM COMPLETELY SICK AND TIRED OF IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

1) Steve Bartman and whatever the fuck NAXCOM is called now.
I hate the stinking Cubs and I laughed like hell when those losers blew that game, but how any rational thinking baseball fan can blame that loss on Steve is beyond me. Just because ESPN showed the clip 8 billion times does not mean that stupid foul ball meant a damn thing in the Cubs losing that game. Steve Bartman did not:

walk Luis Castillo after the foul ball.
boot a grounder to short, loading the bases.
give up six hits in the inning including three doubles.
to go along with three walks for nine baserunners in the inning.
eight of which scored, with none of the runs counting against Steve Bartman's ERA.
BECAUSE HE WASN'T PITCHING.
he also didn't blow game 7 at Wrigley with Kerry Wood on the mound.

So just shut up already. Alou had no chance to catch that ball anyway. If he wasn't such a whiny little bitch who slammed his glove on the ground afterwards it probably wouldn't have had turned into the big goddamn mess that it did.

As for the artist formerly known as NAXCOM, I didn't use your service before simply because I wasn't familiar with it. I'm not going to be using it now because you're exploiting some poor chump who was in the wrong place at the wrong time to try to promote your service, which is a completely dickish move. AND spamming me with the crap to boot. Bartman has wisely stayed the hell out of the public eye instead of trying to milk elvery second of his 15 minutes of fame and I respect him for that. You guys can take your ill-gotten free publicity and shove it up your ass.

2) Topps and the Sklar Brothers and Meaningless Marketing.
I've never really watched the Cheap Seats. I don't have a lot of time to watch TV, and when I do I usually gravitate to the 5 or 6 shows I know I like to waste the hour or so I have to waste. I'll admit I haven't watched their show and I don't really know anything about it. Maybe once for 5 minutes at 3am while flipping channels, but I sure don't remember it. They may be super geniuses, they may suck, I just don't know. They did voices on The Oblongs so they couldn't suck that bad. What's pissing me off is Topps thinking that a couple comedians doing a web show about their products will make up for them half assing the cards. It's obvious that Eisner's vision for Topps is all marketing, but it would be refreshing if they paid just a little attention to the goddamn product for once. Looking at this year's releases and the stuff schedued for the rest of the year, and it's starting to look that when it's all said and done and we're looking at the 2009 products there will have been exactly two sets from Topps worth a shit from 2008. It's easier to market stuff when it's actually good. I'm sick of gimmick cards, I'm sick of phoned in set designs, I'm sick of superduper short prints, I'm sick of artificial scarcity, I'm sick of walking into a card shop or the card aisle at Target, looking around, and seeing absolutely nothing that's worth my time.

I WANT TO BUY YOUR CARDS.

GIVE ME A REASON TO BUY THEM.

WEBCASTS AND RIP MASTERS AND TOPPSTOWNS ISN'T A REASON.

3) People acting like Ben Henry is Hitler reincarnated for having the audacity to point out the donate button on his blog.
I just don't get the whole "Let's shit on Ben" fad. The guy writes well, he loves his cards and the blog is consistently a fun read. He's been blogging about cards for longer than just about everyone and had a pretty good readership until the posting frequency fell off due to real life concerns. Now for some reason, he's The Big Evil. I guess since he's been around a while and had a lot of readers, he's The Establishment Blog, and we all know one of the favorite pastimes on the internets is hating on The Establishment. The guy is a card collector from Massachusetts for fuck's sake, not Halliburton or Monsanto or some shit. What the fuck does it matter that he's been blogging for a little longer than the rest of us? I've had a shitty blog since 2004 and if it had just occurred to me back then to write about cards instead of random internet bullshit, then I'D be the big fucking Hitler right now. Who cares how long he's been writing, I'm just glad he's writing more frequently.

And about that... The reason he's writing more frequently is because he's freaking unemployed. As in no job. As in, he's not making any money from a job. So he light heartedly points out the donate button on his blog, and everyone reacts with such shock and horror you'd think he ran up to the President of the United States, kicked him right in the nuts with a steel tipped boot, wrenched the nuclear football out of his hands and gave it to Osama Bin Laden, and then dropped his pants and shit on the flag while eating a live kitten during the halftime of the Super Bowl. NEWS FLASH: BLOGGERS BEG FOR MONEY ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. Look all across the interwebs, and there's blogs as far as the eye can see, and 99% of them have donate buttons, google ads, banner ads, pop up ads, cafepress t-shirts and coffee mugs and shit and when they need money to keep things rolling, THEY BEG FOR CASH. That's how it works, folks. Running a halfway decent blog takes lots of time, serious talent and in many cases significant money for hosting and bandwidth costs. The guy who runs MLB Trade Rumors quit his job this year to blog full time, and no one freaked when he asked for support. Josh Fruhlinger of The Comics Curmudgeon begs for cash occasionally and usually gets it. You don't even really need talent to make money off a blog as evidenced by that girl who begged for money to pay off the credit cards she ran up a few years ago.

Here's the deal. Ben's a good writer. He puts out a good product. If you're reading this blog, you've probably come across his blog at some point or another. If you like his stuff and have some cash, help him out. If not, ignore it and move on. Don't act like this is a big affront to the purity of collecting or anything. It's how the damn internet works.

Heh. Right as I was proofreading the post I see Bad Wax has a similar take on the subject. Good post, Chemgod.

4) Brett Favre on Goddamn ESPNFL all the damn time.
Retire or don't. Quit pulling this Michael Jordan "I'm retired, no I'm not, yes I am, trade me now, I'm retired again" crap. I don't want to hear it anymore. Ya know what? Fuck the NFL. There's gonna be a lockout or a strike that wipes out a season or two soon anyway because the owners are going to screw up the salary cap and try to grab more money off the players they routinely cripple. Do whatever you want, I'm done with you idiots. Fuck the Falcons and Fuck Arthur Blank and Fuck Matt Ryan and Fuck the NFL.

5) The Braves thinking they have a chance.
It's after the All Star Break, you're 4 games under .500 and 6 out of first. YOU'RE NOT MAKING THE POSTSEASON. I've been listening to them kick the crap out of the Phillies while whiting this long ass post, but it doesn't matter. Even if they sweep the Phils this weekend they're still going to be under .500 and in 4th place. The Wildcard winner is coming from the NL Central this year so in order to get into the postseason we have to jump three teams in the division. Ok, so crazier things have happened. If they go on a ten game winning streak all of a sudden they're back in it. They could do it! They could win it all!

NO THEY CANT.
THEY DON'T HAVE THE PITCHING.
THE ROTATION IS IN SHAMBLES.
SMOLTZ IS GONE.
GLAVINE IS OUT.
HUDSON IS HURT.
JURRJENS IS A ROOKIE.
LEAN TOO HARD ON A ROOKIE PITCHER IN A STRETCH RUN AND YOU GET KERRY WOOD.
OR MARK PRIOR.
OR FRANCISCO LIRIANO.

The pitching just ain't there. Jo Jo Reyes and Jorge Campillo are not leading us to ther promised land. Hampton is scheduled to pitch tomorrow but I will bet anything he pulls or tweaks or breaks something tomorrow. If he actually makes it out to the mound he'll probably spontaneously combust during his windup. This is all with an offense that has woefully underachieved all year. Forget about Chipper being gimpy, forget about Frenchy forgetting how to swing and forget about the dozens of scoring opportunities that have been wasted all year long. The pitching just ain't there!

That's why it's driving me nuts every time I see an article stating that Frank Wren hasn't figured out if we're buyers or sellers yet. We have no chance and at least two or three extremely valuable trade pieces, including a first baseman that can win a division for the team that picks him up. See this is my recurring nightmare:

We keep Teixeira.
Scott Boras demands $20mil a season.
The absentee owners in Denver say hell naw.
We think about offering arbitration.
Management gets cold feet again because Boras and Greg Maddux accepted arbitration a few years ago and made a mint.
We don't offer arbitration.
We lose the two compensation draft picks for Teixeira.
The Mets swoop in and sign him through 2015.
Tex beats the crap out of us for years and we end up with nothing.

Now, there is probably not a chance in hell that this happens, but it's been standard operating procedure for the past five years so who knows what will happen. The great teams of the ''90s were built on pitching and bringing up good prospects. We are just about out of pitching, it's time to just let go for one year and get back some of the prospects. If the braves keep trying to win now every single year and making dumb moves like giving up a first round draft pick for two Tom Glavine wins, this is going to be a .500 team for a long, long time.

6) Negativity on the Internet.
GODDAMNIT one of the main reasons I started blogging was to get away from all the bullshit internet drama on the forums and do something I could enjoy without all the griping and complaining and whining and bitching and moaning and sniping at each other and NOW PEOPLE ARE DOING THE SAME STUPID SHIT IN THEIR CARD BLOGS AND IT'S PISSING ME OFF SO CUT IT OUT AND YES I KNOW I'M DOING IT TOO I'M PUNCHING MYSELF IN THE FACE WHILE I TYPE THIS BECAUSE I'M SO SICK AND ANGRY OF THIS CRAP GARRRRAARRGHRGAHRGHAGRGRGRRGRHAGRAGGAGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

(deep breath)

Ah. The Angry has been purged. Now I feel better.

Silliness to return tomorrow morning.