Clusterfuckotopia - the glass half-full edition
Oct 5, 2008 2008 Season, BFD's Real Doll, Putting people on notice, Ranting
This is going to be a somewhat rambling post I hope to tie up with a nice pretty ribbon in the end, so bare (sic) with me for a bit.
First of all, what Tim said:
The Texans lost this afternoon because of one player, and one player alone. After playing efficient, winning football for approximately fifty-six (56) minutes, Sage Rosenfels singlehandedly cost his team the win. No one else, and I mean NO ONE–no other player(s) and no coach(es)–lost this game. Sage lost it. By himself. In absolutely historical fashion. I’m sure he knows it, and we certainly know it.
The only extent to which I disagree is Richard Smith’s defense giving up another 30+ point effort, but 14 of those weren’t necessarily “his” fault. Still, this epic collapse was kicked off by a ruthlessly easy drive that was started by the Dolts at their 19-yeard line and ended with a bit over four minutes remaining on the game.
Then, what Chris said:
What a disgusting end to an otherwise amazing game.
For those that say the bootleg was a poor, complacent play-call, I disagree. In fact, I was yelling at the TV (with a ton of family over) to do exactly that with images of a play that will forever live in Texas Longhorn lore: Roll Left.
Sadly, for some incredibly unknown and fucked up reason, Sage thought he was Sam McGuffie.
The rest is whiskey-chugging history.
But, WTF?, why is this the glass-half full edition?
Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to go a little more micro with this in the future, but I want to start off with the schedule and a little bit of hope.
We lost @ Pittsburgh, there was a horrific “Bye” week, lost @ BE-SFs, lost @ Jacksonville, and lost to Indy. So let’s break this down in logical groups.
Host Miami, Detroit, and Cincinnati: Let’s be honest with ourselves: the first four games of our schedule sucked ass, no matter how you look at it. We knew this heading into the season, and Ike added another dash of hate to the equation. I’m calling 3-4 after these three games.
@ Minnesota, home against Baltimore: Saying it right now: we are 5-4 after these two games. Yeah, I know I’m a little psycho-nutz, but hear me out. I’d rather play teams with a strong D and weak O than vice-versa. I am far, far more worried about our ability to stop an opposing team’s offensive ability than I am for our team to beat a strong defense. Yes, a logical argument is to point at BE-SF, but they are proving to be pretty elite in that realm.
@ Indianopolis: Need I say anything? 5-5.
@ Cleveland, home against Jacksonville, @ Green Bay: That’s right, people, I am calling 8-5. Yes, I am retarded, so thanks for asking. Cleveland and Green Bay are both struggling on D, and we almost took Jacksonville there.
Home against BE-SFs: If we are up against Vodka, we lose. Against Radio, we win. Calling 8-6. My biggest hope, regardless, is that they are team seriously fighting reversion to the mean.
@ Oakland, home against Chicago: 10-6, people. It’s a long limb, and I feel as stoned as the Music City people, but these are also excellent match-ups for us.
Let me add, dear readers, that these predictions are, ummmm, predicated on two very and precise factors:
1. We hire a personal chef and taster for Teh Schaub so that Rosy doesn’t take the field again unless it’s trash time.
2. Richard Smith is fired.
Demand #2 is just as much a stretch as my 10-6 prediction, but there is a point: we have talent on defense. Zac Diles looked far better in coverage today. Frenchy, even as iffy as he has been so far, is a quantum leap better than he was last year. IF ONLY HE WOULD LOOK BACK FOR THE BALL ON EVERY FUCKING PLAY! *ahem* Frank Okam needs to dress and play, and Fred Bennett needs to look as well as he did today, but the defense has talent.
I am, honestly, liking the offense more and more with every week.
Do we need to place DisplacedTexan on suicide watch after the game today? Yes, and with good cause. But, and I’m saying it right fucking now, my people, that there is hope. We pwn3d the Colts for 56 minutes today with the exception of playing an obviously inferior QB as our starter. I believe we are a better team than the Colts and Jaguars right. Fucking. Now. We just need to bring this whole motherfucker together into one big beautiful ball of consistent, ass-kicking love.
Now, EVERYBODY LOVE EVERYBODY!
– This post came from: DGDB&D: a Texans blog, and is copyright by the authors. This RSS feed is intended for the personal use of readers and not, for instance, spam blogs.
A little more on Duane Brown
Jul 27, 2008 2008 Training Camp, Duane Brown as Eliza Doolittle, Putting people on notice, Ranting
First, my intertubes connection sux tonight. I guess there are too many dump trucks out there. This post will be fairly link-free.
I know that some of you might think I was a little harsh on Duane Brown in my Kickoff post this morning. DSITE, I believe, was more than a little offended. And, you know what? That’s fine. I can sometimes, and freely admit, be an asshole. That said, I want to say a couple more things about the subject.
Why am I pissed that Brown came into camp out of shape? The subject is definitely arguable, but I believe that Matt Schaub is a playoff caliber quarterback and Rosy Rosenfels is not. Why do I believe this? Mostly, because Rosy’s track record really does say “Backup QB,” and, to me, Schaub hasn’t proven to be so easily type-cast. To me, Schaub has a bigger arm, more mobility, and seems to do those warm and fuzzy leadership things that excite egocentric journalists so much. Again, this is arguable, and it’s just my opinion.
For all intents and purposes, Brown was the starter at LT the day he was drafted. Alex Gibbs’ shelf-life is only another season or two, and Brown is his final high-profile pet project. Probably. Brown must’ve known this, or at least had some non-subtle clues. He was the one at OTAs and minicamp, after all.
This, to me, is why there was no excuse for Brown to come into camp out of shape in any way. Yeah, it’s just 10 pounds, but it’s irrelevant. Contract negotiations do not mean it’s OK to sit on your ass and eat your way through the Little Debbie line of products. You are the starter, you are new to the position anyway, and you have a mighty steep learning curve in front of you.
And your primary job is to protect our starting QB’s blind side. If Teh Schaub gets hurt, Rosy starts. If Rosy starts, we are phucked.
It’s really that simple.
Xavier Adibi and Steve Slaton and especially Antwaun Molden (h/t Steph) are getting some serious props in camp, but it’s the one on whom we are relying the most, Mr. Duane Brown, who is out of shape. That pisses me off.
Call me crazy (and I’ll ban your ass. heh.), but I am going into this season being a bit more demanding about my expectations for our team. We have a playoff caliber roster and staff, and mediocrity is no longer an option. Either get it together, or get off the team.
Meka Leka Hi Meka Hiney Ho
Apr 9, 2008 Bad Juju, Blasphemy, Dancing With the 'Tards, Faggination, Houston Chronicle, Might as well piss off as many religions as possible, Putting people on notice, Revenge of Durga!, Tempting Fate
I do not mean to alarm anyone, but it seems that DGDB&D is the most powerful blog in the universe. Sure, there are blogs that get way more hits. There are blogs that entertain without making dick jokes. There are even blogs that people are willing to pay to advertise on.
But there are NO other blogs that have accidentally reincarnated a Hindu goddess.
SAINI SUNPURA, India — A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said today. [***]
Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.
Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told The Associated Press.
“Lali is God’s gift to us,” said Jaipal Singh, a member of the local village council. “She has brought fame to our village.”
Village chief Daulat Ram said he planned to build a temple to Durga in the village.
This blog’s reliance of Durga to do the dirty work that certain Christian deities were unable or unwilling to do is well documented. Thus, I take full credit for the return of this goddess to Earth. The negative among you might think that this is a rather ominous sign for me. To that, I say p’shaw! This is a sign that Durga realized she needed to be on Earth to properly dispose of Petey Faggins. Her attempt from the ethereal realm of, um, wherever Hindu gods reside had the unintended consequence of injuring Dunta Robinson. She won’t make that mistake again, Petey. No sir, she’s here and she’s taking careful aim, sucka. You dead, dawg.
In related news, as reader Brent pointed out, it’s rather ironic that the Chronicle’s coverage of a Hindu goddess is much better than their coverage of a certain local football team.
Act III, in which our hero politely tells the villain to go fuck himself
Mar 21, 2008 Bloggerating, Dancing With the 'Tards, Putting people on notice, Ranting, Weak-ass arguments
OK, fuck it.
I was going to write the following post without naming names and without really calling anyone out for anything. My plan was to complain about blog rumor mongering in general and suggest that, maybe, if we wanted blogs to really be seen as the future of sports journalism, some of us should cite sources and try to hold ourselves to some sort of standard. I was going to be even-handed and I was going to try to keep the entire post somewhat light-hearted.
I was, but now I say fuck that noise. There is some bullshit that needs to be addressed in the Texans-centric blogosphere and I am just the asshole to fire the first shot.
Over at Chron.com–the citadel of irritating stupidity–you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who thinks s/he is the greatest thing to ever happen to sportswriting. I suppose it was only a matter of time before that inflated sense of self-worth spilled over into the Fanblog run by Thomas Hilton.
When Hilton took over the Fanblog that had been previously run by Steph Stradley, it quickly became nothing more than a link dump. New “posts” were put up every few days consisting almost entirely of “here’s what ESPN said about the Texans” and “here’s what CNN said about the Texans” and “Oh, look at all these Texans pictures I found on GIS.” Any sort of additional analysis or insight was notably absent, meaning that a person who surfed the web could find all the same material elsewhere and not need to read Hilton’s blog. Those were the salad days, my friends.
More recently, however, Hilton has pulled a complete 180. Gone are the link dumps–actually, gone are any links to anything at all. Because, you know, it’s hard to link to something YOU JUST MADE UP.
That’s right–I’m saying that all this shit about “my sources in the NFL” or “my sources with the Texans” is nothing more than blatant, Florio-style rumor mongering. I mean, I might be going out on a limb here, but I find it highly unlikely (read: fucking impossible) that Thomas Hilton is privy to information that has eluded Len Pasquarelli and John Clayton. I find it even less likely (read: really fucking impossible) that someone who lives thousands of miles from Houston and is one of the worst writers in the Texans blogosphere would have contacts within the league and within the team that would willingly tell him things for his blog. And I find it both unlikely and curious that these sources would start offering up information right around the time the season ended and everyone’s attention turned to the rumor mills and the “what if” scenarios.
The funny thing is, if all he did was keep offering up these unfounded rumors (and vociferously defending himself as “not making anything up” in the comments), I would probably never have said anything. I mean, I would have mocked him endlessly to other bloggers, but that’s just sort of how this slightly-incestuous club rolls. No, the last straw (as it were) for me was the fact that, over the last few months, Hilton himself has gone from “unassuming blogger who realizes how fortunate he is to have his forum” to “conceited shithead who thinks he is some kind of blog rockstar.” The former version of TH was tolerable; the latter version needs to be kicked down a few pegs.
As such, allow me to thoroughly fisk his response to a reader who asked why he was so “nice” to the people who talked shit in his comments.
Uncle Jack,
I am more than capable of standing my ground and berating someone.
Congratulations.
However, I don’t really see the need to argue and do that with posters whom I have never met before and they have never met me.
Two sentences in and we already have our first instance of ridiculously bad grammar. Sadly, I don’t even think that is a new record.
It’s easier to start arguing or putting someone down when the person you are doing the berating to probably will never come in contact with the person acting like an A-hole.
Guh? So, ignoring your tortured use of the second and third person, you are saying it is easier to ridicule someone you’ll never meet? This is probably true. Of course, if someone really needs to be ridiculed–more on that theory in a bit–then whether you will ever meet that person should be irrelevant.
You see, I am not worried about my own pride being crushed because I didn’t retaliate. I am not intimidated by anyone.
Translation: I’m too much of a pussy to really lay into someone when they point out that I write like a dimwitted ten-year-old, so I am going to pretend like I am taking the moral high road. These mean commenters don’t intimidate me! I am a big deal around here! I GO TO AN IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL!!!! I HAVE MANY LEATHER-BOUND BOOKS AND MY APARTMENT SMELLS OF RICH MAHOGANY!!!!
I view all of us as equals.
Two things: 1. No, you don’t. You like to think you are somehow superior to others because you go to Penn. Hell, you mention your school almost as much as you mention the Texans. 2. If you do view all of us as equals with respect to blogging and commenting, then you are a delusional little shit. Some blogs are better than others (note: yours is not better than any others) and some commenters are better than others. We are not all equals in this enterprise.
Usually folks that scream and argue with one another is good at times, because at least it’s communication.
Your Ph.D. is not in English, is it?
The other side of it is some folks like to argue and shout and scream because they are either very unsophisticated, low-brow, or they have very low self-esteems.
Yes, the people who like to argue on the internet do so because daddy didn’t love them enough as a child. Or–and I’m just spitballing here–maybe it’s because they disagree with what you’ve written and the fact that you come across both as a liar and smug asshole makes the commenter a little indignant.
This is what a lot of people (but nobody on this blog) don’t understand.
A lot of people don’t understand your overarching sociological theory about why some people argue on the internet? Well, please enlighten us, George Herbert Mead.
As a civilized society (humans), we all were born with this mechanism in our brains that is utilized for “constraint”.
Flaw #1: All humans are arguably born with this, but not all humans are part of a civilized society. Even tribal peoples who would not fall under any definition of civilized are, in theory, born with the same sort of internal restraint. Also, I am reasonably sure Liston and Shake were both born without such mechanisms.
It keeps us humans and our society civilized so that we don’t act on every impulse or desire that pops into our heads.
Pardon me, but what the shit does this have to do with people arguing on the internet? If we are all born with this mechanism–as you suggest we are–then the fact that people are arguing on the internet must stem from something else. I really fail to see where you are going with this, but, then, I didn’t go to Penn.
If we all acted on every impulse, it would be utter chaos and we would see the fall of our own society collapse.
“[T]he fall of our own society collapse?” The fuck does that even mean? Pull back on the hyperbole throttle, take a deep breath, figure out where you are going with this, and fucking proofread from time to time.
The reason I don’t yell back, is because I don’t need to.
And, also, because yelling at your computer doesn’t accomplish much. Also, see this primer on comma usage.
I don’t have to act like I know everything, because I don’t (not even close).
No shit.
The constant bickering and arguing on who is right and who is wrong is silly, if you sit back and actually listen to it.
Ah, yes…arguing two sides of a debate is silly. Why the hell would people want to argue a topical as trivial as sports? Don’t people appreciate that you go to Penn and, therefore, have all the insight? They should just allow you to inform them and not try to argue counter-points.
That’s kind of childish. I don’t mind debating and disagreeing on the topic at-hand, but I expect it to be done in a respectful manner for everyone on here.
So, wait. “Arguing” is bad but “debating and disagreeing” is ok? And the only difference between the two is whether you think the people involved are being respectful? That’s fucking gay. Yes, ideally you will get high discourse between two informed, civil parties and those parties will reach a mutually-agreeable conclusion. In reality, however, that shit doesn’t happen. People get worked up about sports, they get angry because they care about their team, and that anger spills out into posts from time to time.
You’ve been on this blog as an original member of this forum. Remember a year ago when I started to take over this blog and everyone on here asked why I was so polite to the negative people who took shots at me.
This should have a question mark.
I said at that time that I am a nice and polite person by nature, but I also pick my battles.
Oh my god, that’s Thomas Hilton’s music!!!!! I feel a battle coming on!
We’ll I guess the chickens have come home to roost.
All that cool shit I just said? Yeah, you ruined it with the chicken reference.
I have a list of everyone that has either shot insults at me or other readers on here or who have constantly corrected me on my grammar.
I let all of that go last year because we were just getting this blog jump-started.
How noble. Of course, you took the blog over from Steph and promptly made it shitty, but that was all part of the “jump start” strategy, I guess.
Today, we have a massive following and since I have been doing this for just over a year, I have reached almost 400,000+ visits for a 12 month span. That calculates to almost 30,000+ visits each month and 10,000+ visits each week and 1700-2000+ visits per day to our blog.
This might be the most irritating part of your entire, rambling, semi-coherent missive. You throw those numbers out there like they are a reflection of your ability or the quality of your blog, ignoring the fact that you have the only fan blog on the only website for the only daily paper in the fourth-largest city in America. If you were NOT on the Chron, you’d be lucky to crack 2000 hits a month with the way you write and the ignorant shit you post. I said it earlier, but it bears repeating–you have THE WORST TEXANS BLOG IN EXISTENCE. And it’s not even a particularly close contest.
Does that sound like sour grapes? I suppose, to a certain extent, it is. The fact that you can consistently churn out drivel and still get more hits than all the other Texans blogs combined is pretty fucking insulting. Yet, instead of realizing how fortunate you are, you are trying to get high and mighty and start laying down the law to people. Fuck that.
This could not have been possible without all of you readers doing your parts by coming in here and just either wanting some information, updates or you may have a good idea that you want to share with the rest of us.
Honestly, is writing not a pre-requisite to get into Penn?
My readers truly are the most knowledgeable and respectful people I have ever been a part of.
Correction: The readers who keep sucking your ass and telling you that you are doing great are the the knowledgeable and respectful ones. The ones who dare to argue with you are mindless assholes.
Now that we have grown so big, the people that ever put me down for trying to do my best, these people will be “officially” banned form this blog from now on.
Awesome. Now that you have “grown so big,” as if you had any fucking thing at all to do with that, you are going to ban people who have put you down? Are you ten years old? One of the very best parts of blogging is that the readers serve to let you know when you are slipping and to call you out on bullshit. I don’t think anyone put you down for TRYING to do your best; people put you down because your best seems to include unfounded rumor and mildly retarded sentence structure. That seems like a reasonable reason for putting you down, really.
Full disclosure: I realize that I banned Douchebag Tom. That was not because he was “putting me down,” however. It was because he was a mindless troll who was following me from website to website and was not willing to address any counterpoints I made. I even let his stupidity go on for a while before it became a distraction in the comments to every post. Other than that asseating shitbag, I usually welcome disagreement–the debates in the comments are where I get ideas for future posts and they help me see the light when I am offbase on something. But go ahead and silence anyone who you might find insulting, Adolf. (As for people correcting your grammar, maybe that should tell you something about you and not about the person who is correcting you. Just sayin’.)
It’s not because they disagree with me.
Bullshit.
I am not asking anyone to agree with me, but someone who’s wanting to find every little thing to criticize me about in a disrespectful way will no longer be allowed to post and will be blocked from this blog.
Oh no…whatever will those people do? I am sure the suicide rate in greater Houston will skyrocket.
I could also have them banned from ever posting on any blog on the Chron.com website.
Aren’t you a fucking badass?
It wouldn’t matter if they changed emails and names. We have a tracker of everyone’s ISP address, so there’ no way they can get one past me.
First of all, you mean “IP” address, not ISP address. That you got such a simple thing wrong tells me you probably don’t know dick about internet technology. This suspicion is verified when I see that you have completely ignored the fact that many, many people have dynamic IP addresses. So, unless you are willing to block large chunks of IPs and risk blocking people who are more than willing to suck the golden sunshine from your ass, you will fail at banning any number of people.
Trust me folks, I am not trying to show off or act like some hot-shot.
“…BUT I DO WANT TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT I GO TO PENN AND IT IS A GOOD SCHOOL AND YOU SHOULD ALL JUST BE GRATEFUL THAT I AM DEIGNING TO SHARE MY INSIDER KNOWLEDGE WITH YOU!!!!”
I just feel that since I more than happily do this blog for all of you without any compensation or complaining, I am starting to realize that I don’t deserve to be put down or ridiculed (or any other reader for that matter).
I am literally getting a headache from trying to decipher your sentences.
I sincerely do the very best I can for you all and you all know that if my responses come out as maybe I was defensive, I am and was always the first to apologize and ask what I could do take make it up to that person.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe your “best” isn’t all that great? It’s totally possible. If the Rockets put me at point guard and I got destroyed on every single possession, my claiming to have “done my best” wouldn’t really mean much, would it?
I think for the most part, I feel I am courteous and treat everyone as an equal.
And “I think for the most part,” you offer nothing but made up bullshit and that people are right to call you out on it. Giving people “just wait and see…the media will pick up on it eventually” doesn’t mean shit.
That being said, nobody deserves to be ridiculed for anything they are trying to convey.
Wrong. When you are making up rumors and/or writing in a manner that is only slightly coherent and/or showing a complete lack of football knowledge (not knowing who had signed where, not understanding why certain players are a fit for certain systems, etc.), then you do deserve to be ridiculed for these things if/when you choose to ignore the initial constructive criticism.
With the Texans finally getting better, our blog is just going to get even bigger. I was glad for this opportunity to start before the Texans got really good. The better they become, the more traffic we will get on here and more discussions will develop. PS. Sorry for the long post, Jack. I just needed to use your post as a springboard to all the readers out there. Thanks, for hanging in there with me and never given up on me! Take care. -TH
Yeah, it sure was nice of them to never “given” up on you. Goddamn.
As I see it, the best part of the team continuing to improve is that, at some point, the people in charge at Chron.com will decide “you know, we are getting a lot more traffic–maybe we should bring in a blogger that doesn’t make Richard Justice look like Ernest Hemingway.”
***
Like I said earlier, I know that some of this will come off as sour grapes. I am totally fine with that. What I am NOT fine with is some assbag getting high and mighty and pretending he is some big success when this blog, BRB, TTG, Houston Diehards, and the like put out better, more insightful content in our collective sleep than TH does at his “best.” That is horseshit.
Consider yourself on notice, fuckwad.
