Wednesday, October 26, 2005

SOX ARE WORLD CHAMPS!!!!!

Anyone who knows me and has asked knows why I love the White Sox so much. In one sentence that doesn't nearly cover how strongly I feel about it: The Cubs cater to the rich, elite snobs who go to Wrigley Field to be seen and don't care for the little people, while the Sox were sending me free vouchers for games when I achieved perfect attendance and/or good grades in elementary school and always made me feel welcome when I went to their games. There's also the feel of actually caring about the game when I'm at Comiskey Park/U.S. Cellular Field, as opposed to the feel at a Cubs game of, "Wow, check out that hottie!" So it's many years of knowing that the Cubs are the more popular team in town only because the lowest common denominator of intelligence dictates that the trendy, more visually attractive franchise should be the more beloved. Any baseball fan knows that the Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1906 and that the Sox had not won one since 1917, so the factor of the Cubs going nearly a century without winning is canceled out. More people love the Cubs because they're sexier, plain and simple. And now look at them. All that money that the Tribune company can choose to spend bringing a winner to Chicago, and they don't because they know the park will be filled with dumbfucks every year no matter what. And they can't look any dumber now that the "lesser" team, the White Sox, are World champions of baseball. Cub fans have nothing left now. They would like to crucify Sox fans for constantly talking shit about them. My friend "Jacob" especially would give me hell for even thinking about the Cubs in the Sox' finest moment. The way I see it, being a Sox fan in this city is like being a black man in America: The other side cannot possibly know how it feels to be oppressed, looked down upon, sneered at, viewed as inferior, and openly hated and treated as a lower class for no other reason than fear and ignorance. So of course Cub fans don't understand how Sox fans feel. All is fine in their world, so long as the $6 beers keep flowing and the trendsters keep butchering the seventh-inning stretch and the beautiful, privileged people continue to treat the fuzzy Cubbies like lovable losers. Well, tonight the not-so-privileged shocked the world and won it all. That's why it's so special, because the Sox are the bastard kids that no one wanted to see succeed, and I can relate. The Sox are the group that embarrassed baseball with the fans attacking the Kansas City 1st-base coach a few years ago, and Disco Demolition Night, and building a ballpark in the shadows of the projects that no one wanted to go to because it was butt ugly, and I can relate because I feel like everything I do ultimately blows up in my face and embarrasses me. So yeah, this is pretty fucking special. For all the Cub fans and Wrigleyville hipsters and racists and supremacists and Nazis and feminists and thin chicks who would rather kill themselves than be a "fattie," and all other haters who think they're better then everyone else, I'll say it one more time so all of you motherfuckers can choke on it:

The Chicago White Sox are World champions of baseball. The ugly duckling just turned into a beautiful swan. Then it kicked a coach in the nuts, blew up some disco records, spit on Wrigley Field, and went to go party with the homies in the projects.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Happy Singles Awareness Day?

Just heard someone describe Sweetest Day, which is this Saturday, as "Singles Awareness Day," and that couldn't possibly be more accurate. I usually feel alone and desolate sitting here every night by myself, but tonight I feel downright sick, and Saturday is partially to blame. My family wants to drag me out of the house Saturday for some bowling outing, but not just any outing, a twosomes outing where apparently the couples showing up, in a twist, will have to team up with someone they draw out of a hat as a bowling couple. How cute. I haven't totally decided to go on this outing yet. The only thing worse than isolating myself in my apartment for Sweetest Day is being out among a bunch of kissy-face couples while I sit there, so I have to decide if the lure of bowling and seeing a few people I used to bowl with every Sunday is worth the pain of watching everyone around me enjoy life with a loved one, which it seems I will never get to do again. Melodramatic I know, but it sure feels like I'll never be with a woman again. Usually you're either kinda close to starting something with someone or actually in a relationship at all times; I don't feel like I'm even close with anyone.

You know the last time I spent a Sweetest Day with a loved one? Fucking ho-bag "Karen" two years ago. "No one ever gave me flowers for Sweetest Day," she wrote me in an e-mail the next morning, thanking me for a great time. I've been thinking about her again lately, wondering who she's fucking now, if she's giving him the same quiet little innocent girl act in bed or if she's actually making a sound with him during sex, whether I'm ever going to run into her again. The changing of the seasons from summer to fall may always remind me of her because that's when we started dating in 2003. At least I have not gone back to her fake Yahoo profile to see if she's updating it still. I've been tempted of course, but I feel like that part of my obsession is behind me, probably because I was so powerless to do anything while I watched her live her life. Unless I was going to go up to Wisconsin and do something about it, it did no good to stay abreast of her every move. I'm still curious, but it's not as bad as it used to be. The two-year anniversary of our first date passed several weeks ago, and I didn't even realize it. But I knew that with time the hurt from being screwed by her wouldn't sting so much. In five years, perhaps, I won't wonder at all who she's fucking. I'll always think about her, but I won't always care about her.

Very brief comment about the controversial call in Game 2 of the ALCS between the White Sox and Angels: The ump blew the call, the ball never hit the dirt, and it pisses me off because the Sox were playing so shitty those first two games that it now seems to the world like they can't win a pressurized playoff game unless the retarded umpires help them out. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't win a game this weekend while they wait for another horrible call to take the pressure off. They haven't executed in eighteen innings of baseball so far in the ALCS, and they've wasted one and nearly two excellent starting pitching performances to boot, and now they get to play the next three games in Anaheim, where they have never played well. Oh well, it was a nice run. (The above passage can be interpreted by sports geeks only. If you're confused, it's sports, don't worry about it.)

Small piece of good news finally: I got a letter seemingly indicating that I will be receiving some assistance this semester and next semester from financial aid for my college classes. The letter said that the figures shown were "estimates," so I still don't know exactly what's going on, but I'm going to wait a couple more weeks for them to clarify what this "estimate" thing means, and if I don't hear from them, I'll go up to the financial aid office at school and try to get some answers. I'm having no problems at all with my two classes, and when I pass them, that will make 28 credits so far, or as Cassandra says, the end of my freshman year, which makes perfect sense because if it takes 120 credits for a bachelor's degree, then 28, give or take a class, is about one-fourth of the way through. And I'm so desperate to find something to be proud of in my pathetic life that I'm almost welling up sitting here thinking about being one-fourth of the way to a bachelor's. Maybe it's a good thing that I'll never get another date again--I've always gotten so nervous before meeting someone new, and if it worked out well enough that a wedding date would be set, I'd be so anxious leading up to that day that I might not make it. I'm an emotional mess when it comes to achieving my goals. That's how my desire works, always has. When I want something very badly, I can hardly handle receiving it or coming close to receiving it. The 1990 spelling bee saga--I labeled a 30-second video tape of the local news coverage of my city title win "My Greatest Achievement"--is a perfect example of how I handle succeeding at something that I badly want to succeed at. I'll talk about it in my next post.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Happy Kill-The-Injuns-Rape-Their-Women-And-Steal-Their-Land Day

CEDA is a government organization, and Columbus Day is a government holiday, so the offices are not open today, so I'm just sitting here at home watching sports highlights and wondering if those fumes from the construction next door are always that strong or if it's just my lucky day. I can't make up the missing work hours with overtime anymore, because CEDA has hired even more temp workers for an evening shift and for Saturdays and Sundays, so they made the announcement that overtime hours are no longer an option for anybody since theoretically they now have enough personnel that OT shouldn't be necessary, even if we want to do it. But OT means time and a half, so I'm not surprised that they outlawed it. Those of us in the main computer area that work the 8:30A-5P shift actually have to get up at 3:30P, when the 3:30-10 shift arrives, and move to a different area adjacent from the main area so that the new shift can all sit together. Whatever. I'm just pissed that I could have taken advantage of OT last Saturday and Sunday and chose not to because I was tired and I figured I could just do it next weekend. Now there is no more OT. Those six or seven hours at $15 per made for a nice little bonus in the regular weekly check. Oh well.

"Laurie" and I have communicated better lately, although it looks like nothing is going to happen between us for the forseeable future. She says she needs to straighten out her life first, and that she doesn't "feel it" with me right now, which I can't blame her for not feeling it after I almost hooked up on a booty call with a stranger a few weeks ago. Not much else to talk about here. She's dealing with her situations where she is, and I don't fit in her life right now. There's so much tension and nervousness in our phone conversations that I don't know if we would even make good friends right now. That could be because I can only talk to her when she's at work, since her cell phone is still not on. But since we're not getting together anytime soon, I'm not sure what we're going to talk about when she turns her phone back on. She e-mailed me telling me that she's going to be asking for my address so she can send me the money she owes me instead of having me come up there to Detroit and see her. Ouch. Nothing I can do about it, though. If she doesn't want to see me, she doesn't want to see me. She also told me that she's not stopping me from continuing with my life, meaning that I could go try to get with someone else, I suppose. But my heart's not in it. When I stopped seeing "Torrie" a couple of months ago, it was because I thought I was going to step up and build something with Laurie. Now that that's out, I don't want to go somewhere else. The thought of another relationship right now makes me sick (or is that the fumes??). The big 3-0 is looming in a couple of months. Right now, I feel like starting over and going from scratch in pretty much all aspects of my life, considering how badly I fucked up my 20s. That would mean no more internet hos, no more cross-country attempts at love, no more begging women to love me. I can easily see myself going six years without a date again, like I did from 1996 to 2002. It's not worth the aggravation, especially (most importantly, those who know me would say) if it's a situation where I don't feel good about myself and I don't feel that anyone with any respect for herself would want to date me, so I find myself dating someone that I don't like or respect. That's part of what made me go mad when "Karen" screwed me over--I felt like I was going out with a drunk, ugly, boring woman who was horrible in bed, plus she was dating me so she had no taste, but I stuck with it because she said she loved me and I wanted love so bad, but she was a lying skank all along.

I'll end this with a few words about the White Sox and their push for the pennant. I am so proud of them. I've been wearing this Sox ring that I bought after I first started working for CBOE in 1995, even though it's bent and no longer fits my ring finger because I keep getting fatter and fatter, so I'm wearing it as a pinky ring like I'm auditioning for the Sopranos or something. I've had to wash my Sox cap twice since they clinched a playoff spot a week and a half ago because I've been wearing it everywhere. I have a Sox jersey too, and it's personalized with my name and the number 00 (because I'm a big nothing), but my apartment is so messy, I can't find the damn thing. And yet I'm not bragging or talking about the Sox every second like I would be any other year. The reason? Simple: I don't feel I have the right to be yelling and screaming about them because I completely buried this team before the season began. I said they wouldn't be shit. I was very angry that they traded Carlos Lee, a powerful OF about to hit his prime, to the Brewers for a light-hitting 30-year-old guy who could run and a no-name RP for no other reason than Lee's free agent year was this year and they wanted to get rid of him before it became obvious that they were not going to pay him. I was very angry that they pretended that they couldn't re-sign Magglio Ordonez, another powerful OF who was actually their most consistent player the last five years, because the knee injury he suffered to end last season was just too questionable. A bunch of other teams were lined up with contract offers (Ordonez accepted the Detroit Tigers' offer because, with incentives, he could make more money there than with any other team), but not the Sox. Oh no, they couldn't risk signing a guy who might not recover from his injury. So who did they sign to replace him? Jermaine Dye, one of the most injury-prone players out there. But Dye's market value was very low, or, as I put it when the Sox signed him, "Do you really think Dye would sign with the Sox if there was a good team out there that actually wanted him??" And to top it off, they signed a 30-year-old Japanese guy named Tadahito Iguchi to play 2B for them. The guy had never played major league ball in his life. There's usually a big bidding war for good Japanese players that want to come to the majors, and you know if there was a bidding war, the Sox weren't going to be involved. But no one wanted the guy, so he signed with the Sox. So all of their moves this past offseason, in my opinion, were made because the price was right and they didn't want to spend the money, and that followed hiring Ozzie Guillen as their manager the year before because he had no managing experience and therefore would be cheaper than getting someone that, you know, actually managed in the majors before. I angrily responded by cursing them and vowing to not buy any tickets to any Sox games this year, which I haven't. I didn't count on their moves all actually working out. The skinny guy they traded Carlos Lee for, Scott Podsednik, led the majors in SB most of the season before his legs gave out, and he was a big-time catalyst at the top of the lineup. That offset the fact that Carlos did have the breakout season he was expected to have, making the All-Star team for the first time. This Iguchi guy seems to have a habit of hitting clutch opposite-field HRs when you least expect it, and he's a decent fielder, too. Dye shocked the world by staying healthy all year, and he had some huge hits as well. Ordonez couldn't come back from his knee injury until about a couple of months ago, making the Sox look like geniuses. And Guillen is absolutely fucking nuts, which is a good thing, because opposing managers have a hard time managing against him because they don't know what the fuck he's gonna do next. Clearly, having no experience works well for Guillen, because he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants and he doesn't have to have an answer for why he does it, just that he "had a feeling." This team really is just like the Boston Red Sox team that won the World Series last year. The Red Sox earned the nickname "The Idiots" because they didn't know why they did half the shit they did, they just knew that it worked. So who did the White Sox sweep in the first round of the playoffs this year? The Red Sox. The Idiots were swept aside by The Morons. And The Morons are too stupid to know better. They're not done yet. And while I might not be yelling about them at the top of my lungs, I am watching from afar with a great amount of Sox pride.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

Just noticed while watching a little television that, in the name of wireless plans, I just saw Catherine Zeta-Jones compliment a cross-dresser and Joan Cusack sniff cell phones. Just what they trained to do when they attended acting school. Ah, advertising.