Somebody break a whole mess of computers part VI: Jason Takes Manhattan

For those of you who are coming to this blog for the first time... I apologize. Very sorry, I'll try to do better.

Seriously, for those of you who are new here, one of the running jokes in this blog is the destructive temperament of my cat, Charlie Chaplin. The only things my cat enjoys more than eating, my lap, and sleeping is destroying things. Sadly, his first victim was my computer. Since then, I've been trying to focus Charlie's destructive impulses for "good". "Good" in this case means destroying the computers of people who irritate me on the internet. (this is pretend of course. Charlie isn't allowed to leave the house, much less board a plane and start sabotaging other people's computers. I feel someone might take this is a serious threat. It's all in good fun, even if these people deserve it)

Here are Charlie's pending warrants of destruction and the status of those warrants:

-Bill O'Reilly: Reason for incurring my wrath? Writing the worst column known to man. Warrant status? Pardoned I've managed to avoid his awful writing for the better part of six months. The McCain defeat was punishment enough for him.

-Howie "The Hostage" Carr: Reason for incurring my wrath? Boring me to tears by writing about the same topic endlessly for 20 years and making me not care about government corruption at all. Bashing Patriots fans and gloating over Tom Brady's injury. Warrant status? pardoned Never followed up on his idiotic Brady bashing - probably because he was scared of Charlie. The defeat of his lady love (who can see Russia from her home!) was punishment enough.

-Gregg Easterbrook: Reason for incurring my wrath? Impersonating a Russian author. Warrant status? Oustanding I apologize to his editor for Charlie's lack of action. Imagine proofreading the Encyclopedia Britannica every week. Ouch!

-Phil Mushnick: Reason for incurring my wrath? Acting like the Bill O'Reilly of sports columnists. Mentioning pro-wrestling. Status of Warrant?Elevated Has been whinier than usual lately and has managed to stereotype all college athletes as criminals. Generalize much? Charlie needs to take out his monitor as well as his keyboard!

-Idiots on Youtube/ESPN: Reason for incurring my wrath? Being unable to spell, make a coherent thought, or function as a rational human being. Status of warrant? I'm sending Luca Brasi instead Add Boston.com to the list. These people need their computers smashed. I'm scared that I share oxygen with these jackanapes.

Here's the newest warrant for Charlie to take care of:

-Dan Shaugnessy: Reason for incurring my wrath? Writing a book about the Curse of the Bambino, thus perpetuating that curse non-sense. Writes about how every team in New England is going to win a championship... then changes his mind half way through the year and writes about how the teams suck. Say "Bye bye bye!" to your computer!

Someone Smash this Man's Keyboard Part III: the Search for Spock

Having already sent Charlie Chaplin - who did such a great job of destroying my computer - after Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly and repetitive local personality Howie Carr, I'm going to shift gears and send my cat after someone from the monolithic presence that is ESPN.
As I'm sure most people reading this blog would agree with, ESPN's Page 2 is an endless source of bad humor, 80's movie references and idiotic opinions. Basically, it was ESPN's version of the monstrosity that is sports talk radio (WFAN's Steve Sommers excluded). There are so many columnists from Page 2 I could lambaste in this blog entry - Scoop Jackson for his faux "let's keep in real style", Jim Caple's inveterate Yankees bashing which somehow makes me sympathetic to Yankee fans, and Bill Simmon's inability to go a paragraph without referencing either an eighties movie or one of his friends that I don't care about. But no, today I will go after TMQ columnist Gregg Easterbrook.

But first let me go into the reasons why Mr. Easterbrook is NOT a prime candidate for a Charlie sanctioned keyboard smashing. It is NOT because he wouldn't let go of the Spygate thing because if that were true, I'd have to have Charlie smash the keyboards of 95% of the sports media in America (hey, now there's a good idea!). And let's be fair: Belichick and Roger Goodell could have handled the scandal a lot better than they did. It would be highly hypocritical of me to trash Easterbrook for making fun of the Patriots and not similarly blast DJ Gallo or the creators of "South Park" just because their Pats bashing amuses me.

It's not because Gregg can't go a column without opining on chaos theory, aircraft carriers or the Westminster Dog Show, even if I could care less about what he thinks about non-sports relating things (see my comments about the Dennis and Callahan show for details). It's not his irritating belief that he can tell when a game is over by whether or not a coach settles for a field goal. It's not even because his obsession with posting pictures of cheerleaders and bikini models make his column impossible to read at work without getting fired for violating your company's sexual harassment policy.

No, the real reason I'm going to beat up on TMQ is because the column is insanely long. I know that my fault - whether it be blogging or writing random content for The Coffin Online - is that I tend to get carried away and my writing style tends to look more like my mind vomited on the screen rather than a carefully edited piece. The difference between the Coffin Online and TMQ is that I'm not being paid to write the Coffin Online. And - sad to say - no one reads my webpage. Most PC fans don't even know it exists. Mr. Easterbrook is a nationally read columnist on a website run by the most popular sports news station in America. His verbosity is inexcusable. Clearly, someone has to step in and edit.

I love reading authors who can be long winded (Tolkien, Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski) or insanely obscure and difficult (Joyce, Faulkner, and Pynchon) but I'm not really sure I need that in an ONLINE COLUMN. The perfect online column should be just long enough to read during lunch break. Reading TMQ is an all day affair and that's why I'd like to send my cat to smash his keyboard.