Rant of Week: Hi Mark, and other missives.

For the first PC hockey "weekend" of the new year - should a Tuesday game count as a "weekend" - I'm dusting off the free form rant from earlier in the year.

-First off, Hi Mark. Yes, we will come and visit soon. I was thinking of this weekend, but yet again there's a "the World is coming to an end! Load up on milk and bread and lobsters!!!" type snow storm coming on Saturday night. In truth, it will probably be about 1-2 inches, but the roads will still be awful. Go figure.

-I understand that Tim Army can't come right out and say "Oh my God, we're screwed, we're screwed!" but if there's a reason for optimism about PC's season right now, I'm missing it. One point in Hockey East. One.

-I'll stay in Rhode Island for the next comment. Congrats to Keano Davis and company for somehow getting the PC team I saw flounder against BC to 3-0 in the Big East. I don't care what kind of teams they had to beat to get there and how big of a challenge the game at Georgetown is going to be. That's an accomplishment. Keep up the good work.

-And on opposite side of the spectrum, we have the Celtics. Talk about a perfect cocktail of awfulness: unforgiving schedule, awful bench play, an offense that disappears in the last quarter, teams "figuring out" my man Rondo, a defense that has played poorly at times, and - as always - the awful officiating that NBA is famous for. And now, we have Cleveland on the horizon. The way this travesty of a month is going, look for LeBron to score 137 tonight.

-It's such a cliche: "I almost drove off the road when I heard BLANK on the radio." So no, I didn't almost drive off the road when some caller to WEEI called in to say he thought Theo Epstein was doing a great job this off season. But I did laugh. Loudly. As currently, constituted, the Red Sox will be fighting the Yankees for the Wild Card spot. If everything works out, they might beat out Tampa Bay for the division lead - I'm not sold that the Rays are going to fade.

-Charlie Chaplin needs to focus his feline anger on the tools that infest the Celtics side of www.boston.com. Is it really that boring in Los Angeles that the same two or three Lakers trolls have NOTHING better to do than post immature trash talk and whine about how the person who runs the blog keeps deleting their idiocy? My advice to them : If you don't like your posts being deleted, why don't you attempt to add to the conversation instead of posting like a 9 year old with a sugar high and no dictionary? Or get your own blog so we can make fun of you in a new and different way!

-The biggest story in Boston sports right now is the dismissal of BC's football coach for going behind AD Gene DeFillipo's back to interview for ... the Jets?!?! I've heard every conceivable angle on this story, but no one has yet brought up what an awful job that is: not only are coaching a team that plays second fiddle to the Giants, but you play in a stadium NAMED after the team you're playing second fiddle to. While there's a lot of talent on the Jets, you do have to deal with a quarter back who practically gifted the last game of the season to the opposing team. To top it all off, you have the New York media breathing down your neck and practically begging you to fail. Yep, sign me up for that job! He was better off at the Heights.

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!

Somebody Break Their Keyboards Part IV: The Quickening

Including my own irritable rant yesterday, there's been a lot of venom spewed on blogs and message boards all across the internet. But there's a new enemy of all that is decent and reasonable: the comments section.

Yes, whenever someone writes an online column or blog entry, there's usually a few people (unless it's MY blog for some reason) willing to add a comment or two. Sometimes , the comments are useful and intelligent (again, my blog). Most of the time, they're completely insane.

The worst offenders are ESPN and You Tube. I dare you find a single comment section on You Tube that does not include a F bomb, an ad hominem attack, or a misspelled word. ESPN is just as bad, except the spelling is marginally better. The comments on Spygate have been particularly insane, leading directly to my latest rant. Honestly, are there really that many stupid, illiterate, and hostile people in this country?

Yes, yes there are. And lest you think this is mostly an attack on people outside of New England (ie, the Pats haters I went off on yesterday), there are just as many tools in the Northeast. Check out the comment section on the Boston Herald. In any political discussion, you'll find a bunch of people who best exemplify the lowest common denominator that infests WEEI and WRKO: nitwits who think they're Howie Carr. I already went off on Howie for his repetitive column. I could have just as easily gone off on him for producing a seemingly endless array of whiny, racist, homophobic, misogynistic paltroons who infest the Boston Herald website and make the comment section unintentionally hysterical. I don't know if they're mocking Howie or agreeing with him, but they come across as morons.

Sadly, I can also say the same thing about my favorite sports site on the internet: the Boston Sports Media Watch. I enjoy the columns and blog entries on this site immensely because they share my view of WEEI, the Globe, Herald, and NESN. What I do find distressing is the amount of idiocy that makes it's way on that website anyways. It's particularly sad to see any article about a female reporter degenerate into a discussion about T & A, which is exactly the type of frat boy nonsense the website seems to be against.

The comments section in any website are basically anonymous, giving someone the opportunity to spew whatever idiocy they feel like. I don't think it adds much to any discussion, and thus I would like to clone Charlie Chaplin about 10 million times and have him destroy the computers of anyone who choses to use a comment section as a way of displaying what kind of a pathetic human being they really are.