Spiced Ham

I don’t know about you all, but I have an electronic mail account. It’s a great new way for family and friends to communicate with each other instantaneously without the hassle of stamps or telegrams. As the world wide internet rapidly expands, I receive more and more unsolicited messages from random people with stupid ass names like Danity Kane who tell me that I need “pharms” or that my penis needs to be bigger or that so and so wants to meet me, then sell me some ViAgrA. I believe they call it “spam” for some reason nowadays, which is a real shame for the Hormel Corporation. They’ve actually been prompted to publish an official position statement on internet spam, saying that they aren’t the ones who want you to have huge unit. They just want you to eat their processed meat in a can.

Every time I see that I’ve received a dozen or so spam emails, I always wonder how the hell anyone is making money by sending them. I’m no economic genius, but the fact that I receive a dozen or so of these emails every day must mean that someone is making money by doing it. But I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who are so gullible that they see a message from a person named Violet Bickerstaff or something with a subject like, “RE: your proposal” and say to themselves, “Hey, I guess I could have written a proposal that I sent to someone named Violet. I mean, I stock shelves for a living and don't know anyone named Violet but who knows what I do in my sleep? It appears she's responding to a message I sent--must be important. Oh, she wants me to buy anti-depressants. Well, I hope this gets my proposal approved.”

So what’s the explanation? My guess is that it’s probably so easy and cheap to do that it essentially boils down to a numbers game. You send out millions of these computer generated messages to people around the world and it probably only takes a few morons to make it worthwhile.

Sporty Beta

Watching the NFL on TV is stupid. That’s right, I said it, America. Every Sunday, I think to myself, “Hey, this might be a good day to lie around and watch a little of the ol' Pigskin Challenge. A battle on the gridiron. God’s game. Canadian football’s abusive step-father.” Then I click on the TV and all disappointing hell breaks loose. If you watch any NFL coverage at all, you cannot avoid the Fox network, which has the most annoying and inexplicable robot fetish. Robots warming up. Robots playing catch. Robots in the shower. Throw in seven hundred truck commercials, one of which features John not-Couger Mellencamp singing (surprise, surprise) a song about America and uses imagery from the New Orleans and 9/11 tragedies to sell Chevrolets, and you’ve got a sufficiently agitated Slurry B. And as my fellow readers know, this is not fun for anybody.

Now, I would stay in this poor disposition until the Fourth of July if it weren’t for a little thing called the National Basketball Association. I love the NBA, but more importantly, I love the Minnesota Timberwolves. Sometimes I get so excited that I can’t sleep at night and I spend hours rifling through my Kevin Garnett trivia flash cards (homemade) and listening to my Troy Hudson mix tapes.

On the verge of the 2006-07 season, the Wolves are in a peculiar position: trying to win a title with (arguably) the best basketball player in the league while an incompetent GM tries to run the organization into the ground. Actually, they’ve been in that position since Kevin McFail drafted Kevin Garnett in 1995. Only this year is different because if the Wolves fail to make the playoffs for the third season in a row, KG will be gone and so will his all his fantastic sound bites. Since McFail’s biggest off season acquisition was a 31 year old CBA veteran who had one good year in the NBA, the future looks a little bleak, to be honest.

Several things need to happen this season if the Wolves are going to even think about contending for a title:

The backcourt needs to grow testicles. So far Marko Jaric has been a huge disappointment and has the most fragile psyche in the NBA. Luckily, if he ever improves we’ll get to witness his comeback because he’s been signed for the next 12 years. Troy Hudson will never play another full season again. That leaves 31 year old Mike James and the 2007 rookie of the year Randy Foye. James had one stellar year last year while on one of the worst teams in the league so, logically, McFail locked him up until he turns 40. Foye, on the other hand, is an orphan and you can always bet on an orphan. (See Annie, Oliver Twist , Luke Skywalker, Anne of Green Gables)

Eddie Griffin needs to step up. We don’t have a legitimate center to take the pressure off KG so really the only solution is the incredibly athletic EG. The only problem is that he never listened to his mother’s advice as a child and has, in fact, gone blind from touching his no-no place too much. While driving. Drunk.

Dwayne Casey needs to become a better coach. In the words of the guy who knows Angel Moroni better than he knows himself, “I’m not impressed with what Casey did last year.” I'll cut him some slack, given that last year was only his first as a head coach but I heard more excuses out of him than a eunuch at an orgy. Get better Dwayney, or I’m coming for you.

Rashad McCants needs to heal quickly. Despite a fairly slow start last year, McCants really turned it on towards the end of the season. There are actual statistics somewhere but I don’t have time to round them up. The bottom line is that he is a phenomenal offensive player who could make huge contributions to the team. Or his knee injury could end his career. Either way, McHale is going to give him a long term contract whether he deserves it or not because that’s what he does, if you haven’t already gathered.

NBA League Pass needs to be free. To be clear, Comcast, this is not a request. I don’t know if you know me, but I have a rapidly expanding media conglomerate consisting of Slurry Beta blog articles, text messages, and drunk dials that reach a large swath of the population. I think it would be in your best interests to hook it up or I will single handedly bring you down.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got for a "preview". I’ll have more to say as the season drags on but if I write anymore now, I’ll probably get fired.

This just keeps getting better

This will be the second and last post about Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) because I don’t want my readers to get the idea that I actually care about current events. And the whole situation deeply disturbs me. However, I felt like there were some loose ends and some interesting developments that need to be addressed.

It’s truly amazing how the Republicans are handling this whole situation. It’s so incredibly Christian right wing that there must be some sort of handbook for this shit. First, they tried to keep it a secret, apparently knowing about Foley’s propensity for pedophilia since last year. Denial, as we all know, is the single most powerful tool in Christian fundamentalism (see dinosaurs, evolution, space exploration, sexuality, science in general, etc.). Second, and the absolute best part about this is that after he gets busted for doing everything short of committing a felony sex crime, he goes into rehab for alcoholism. That kills me. Way to address one major problem by seeking an acceptable solution for another, completely unrelated, more socially acceptable problem.

Also, I love how nothing in Washington is truly scandalous until the word “gate” is thrown onto the end of it. It’s not just “the time Republican Congressman Foley seduced a 16-year-old boy on the internet”, it’s FOLEYGATE. A few years ago it was Monicagate then Nipplegate (Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl), Macacagate (George Allen’s exposed racism) and surely we can’t forget Slurry Betagate a few years back (it was a localized scandal, which I denied and blamed on Razzleberry Pucker) among the countless others. Of course, all of these “gates” are obvious references to the mother of all political scandals: Teapot Domegate. I know my history, people.