Update: I'm day-to-day and won't need to be placed on the DL. I hope to regain normal typing ability by tomorrow. Meanwhile, Lisa endures …
Lisa the Temp: You know what's ironic, peeps? Everybody and their uncle likes to laugh at my 4-button keyboard. Har-har-hardy-har. So funny.
Lisa the Temp: But right now Brachen would love to get his bloody stump on this 4-button bitch.
Lisa the Temp: I mean, seriously, not only can I work this without fingers, but hell yeah, I can do it without any limbs at all.
Lisa the Temp: And they could make a move about it and call it "My Left Teat"
Lisa the Temp: Hello, people, Lisa the Temp here with the deal …
Lisa the Temp: It seems your buddy Brachen was involved in some sort of David Wellsesque freak accident, the result of which is a temporarily bandaged hand making typing quite cumbersome.
Lisa the Temp: Yeah, go figure. I'd have bet Brachen would be quite the pro at "one-handed typing."
Lisa the Temp: I mean I know many of you are.
Lisa the Temp: You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I'm looking right at you "LC."
Bill: But this Helton's a guy with a huge contract, who's 32 and whose OPS has declined fastah than a Kevin Fedahline album in the last two years.
Mike: Here's anothah way to look at it … How would you feel if the Yankees had acquired Helton rathah than Minky?
Bill: See that's just friggin' it. This thing reeks of a Yankees-style deal. I thought the party line was we were gonna be smahtah than the Yankees and not we are gonna become the motherfucking Yankees.
Mike: If Helton gets back some of his old form or even plateaus, this deal has a lot of upside.
Bill: Yeah, well I'm envisioning being doubled ovah with my own stomach cramps come August when we have no young, fresh ahms to call on because we traded 'em all away.
Bill: Yeah, well, I'm still not convinced, but, you know what? I'm happy as hell to have something to occupy my mind and divert me from the 24/7 Peyton Manning media spoogefest.
Marty: Hey there, Billy Boy, just wanted to be the first to congratulate you for entering the JD Drew Era …
Marty: Or rather the Nancy Drew Era. Bwahhaaha. I guess this makes Theo the Ned Nickerson of the oh so cute couple.
Bill: Jeez, Marty, as local chairman of the Hilary Clinton fan club and election office, I figured you'd have more important mattahs to attend to just now.
Marty: Just like you to try and change the subject, Callaghan, when I'm starting to sweat your ass over another round of Red Sox impotence.
Bill: Yeah, but, Marts, the momentum has shifted. It's like Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS and Obama is the Red Sox.
Marty: Still clinging to the past, eh, Bill? Sad.
Bill: OK. Let me get this straight, Marty. You're the guy who's so Clinton blinded that you're available 24/7 for a little yodeling in Hillary's valley while you let Bill "order out for pizza" with your wife, but I'm the one who's living in the past?
Bill: It's time you step out of your insulah New York enclave for a moment, Marts, and realize the Clinton's are yestahday's news in politics. People want to move on, fresh faces, fresh ideas.
Susan/Circle: You know, as a woman, of course I'm proud of Nancy Blinky Pelosi's achievement in becoming Madame Speaker …
Susan/Circle: But, you know, considering the so-called "marble ceiling" of male politicians consists primarily of lying and preening and raising ginormous sums of campaign money to insure one can continue a life of lying and preening ad infinitum, I'm unsure just how much of a forward step for women Pelosi's position really is.
Susan/Circle: When it comes to being an examplah of a woman's achievement in busting through ceilings, both figuratively and literally, I say look no furthah than Janet Marie Smith.
Susan/Circle: She is to Fenway what Brunelleschi was to Florence.
Mike: Because of her Fenway lives.
Susan/Circle: Have you ever noticed how the sky when seen over the Fenway rampahts is the brightest thing in Nature?
Mike: And the bluest.
Susan/Circle: The sky over Fenway is the absolute separation between the timeless man-made and the Eternal.
Mike: The distant past is brought into sharp adjacency with the present.
Susan/Circle: Do you realize that when the Yankees abandon The House the Ruth Built that Fenway alone will stand as the physical, primal connection between Baseball past, Baseball present, and Baseball future?
Mike: It is like the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.
Susan/Circle: Somewhere are places where we have really been …
Mike: Dear spaces …
Susan/Circle: Of our deeds and faces, scenes we remembah
Susan/Circle: As unchanging because they were changed.
Bill: But the news that he was wearing said ring at the Sundance Film Festival makes me go "Huh?"
Bill: I mean what in the fuck is Roger Clemens doing at Sundance?
Bill: Somehow I just can't picture Clemens kicking back in a cinema and watching a screening of Teeth while contemplating vagina dentata mythology.
Mike: Dude, that's only half of it. He was seen with the ring before entering the MySpace.com pahty at Sundance.
Bill: !
Mike: Yeah, I know, boggles the mind, right?
Bill: I so can't wait until Clemens is done chillin with his MySpace friends and rejoins the Yankee again so he can get the oh so pleasant remindah of the difference between the American and National Leagues.
Mike: Yeah, talk about a castration mythology come to life. After facing Ortiz a couple of times, Clemens will find the so-called yawning mouth of hell* a preferable alternative.
Doug: The funny thing is though, in a culture where a celebrity flashing her v-goods is no big deal and where people will go to a museum to see shit smeared on a canvas et cetera et cetera it's somehow a beyond the pale taboo to pick one's nose in public?
Bill: I guess even in a society as debased as ours, there are still limits.
Doug: But you know, from a technological standpoint, there really isn't a viable alternative for the boogahs that remain impervious to the tissue blow other than the humble phalange and metacarpal nasal insertion.
Bill: Truah words have nevah been spoken.
Doug: It's high time we stop "blaming the victim," you know?
Mike: Holy shit blowing a 21-3 lead in a game for all the marbles? I so can't believe this is happening to us.
Susan/Circle: I'm totally dumbstruck. They went into the lockah room at half-time as the New England Patriots and they came out for the 2nd half as the 2004 Yankees.
Susan/Circle: The beauty that was the Tom Brady era is no more.
Susan/Circle: The beautiful things nevah last.
Mike: The beautiful are found at the edge of a room crumpled into spidahs and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left.
Susan/Circle: The beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.
Mike: This has hit me right square in the sacral chakra. My gonads ache fercrissakes.
Susan/Circle: Are you kidding me? I feel like I've been on the wrong end of a female circumcision. And I'll never know pleasure again.
Mike: Now that the Patriots have begun their slide into the past perfect progressive to join the Celtics and Bruins as has beens, it's up to the Red Sox to save us.
Doug: So the interwebs is all up in ahms ovah this guy's YouTube video saying that's why they hate New England fans but I just dont' get it. The dude's only speaking the truth.
Mike: Yeah, mofo's can't handle the truth, so they want to shoot the drunken messengah and shit.
Doug: Yeah, but befoah they hatahs can shoot this dude, while they're sweatin' his ass, he's gonna wipe it all ovah their noses and see how that smells for ya, buddy.
Mike: Fantastic line. It's crude yet the visual detail it summons is nothing less than cinematic.
Doug: "In the stadium of everybody."
Mike: "Go fuck yourselves."
Doug: So who you pickin' in that Saints Beahs game?
Mike: Saints all the way.
Doug: Yeah, the Beahs are handicapped by Grossman and the Saints seem to have that destiny thing going.
Mike: Totally. And now the pressure is off the Saints to "heal the city of New Orleans" and all.
Mike: Ah, projections. [Sigh] Kind of like how the Administration projects that a 21,000 troop "surge" will secure Bagdad and, finally, all will be hunky-dorey in Iraq?
Mike: Projections aren't worth the papah their written on.
Steve: What the frig's up with you, sour puss? Have you been hanging around with that guy Paddy24 or something?
Mike: Nah, I'm just in a wicked lousy mood.
Steve: Well, cheer yourself the fuck up. And if you've got any latent anger and frustration, just direct toward it Peyton Manning in anticipation of Sunday's AFC Championship game.
Mike: No kidding. But, hey, don't mention that Daily Kos anti-football screed to Doug. He already thinks the Left is made up of nad-less sycophants and America hatahs. No need to give him more ammo.
Bill: Yeah, but who knew fans across the country are in a quandary over who they hate more: The slant-eyed Hillbilly Womanning or us kindly folks from New England?
Doug: I love being hated.
Bill: Absolutely. Hate has total pwnage ovah the othah emotions. I mean love comes and goes, but, hate, well hate fucking lasts.
Doug: And, seriously, if I lived in some hell hole backwatah, I'd hate us too.
Bill: Yeah, as I've said befoah, Our doctahss kick ass. Our universities kick ass. Our football team kicks ass. Our fried clams kick ass. Our gay Members of Congress kick ass. So on and so forth.
Doug: Listen up neerdowells: Our New England resplendence is real, is nevah silent and has no bitch.
Mike: Beats me. Maybe we signed him and we forgot already, you know, like when Gerald Ford died and I was like, dang, I thought dude croaked like 10 years ago.
Bill: Seriously. Same thing happened to me with Dick Clark.
Mike: Are you kidding me? I want the iPhone the way the Red Sox wanted Matsuka.
Bill: Yeah, that $499 price tag makes me think Scott Boras was involved.
Mike: Think about it. You can be in the middle of East Bumfuck, Iowa, and with the iPhone's built in WiFi all you need is a hotspot to boot up MLB.com and stream a Red Sox game.
Bill: Right, because, yeah, you find yourself in East Bumfuck, Iowa so often.
Mike: It's called being prepared, guy. Being prepared.
Doug: Yeah, while I couldn't give a rat's ass for the Hall of Fame, because it means a lot to Jim Rice and othah playahs, I do sympathize.
Mike: Wait a second, you don't care about the Hall of Fame?
Doug: Yeah, yeah, I know, it's shocking to the baseball nostalgist that lives in the soul of 99% of fan to learn that not everybody genuflects at the mention of Cooperstown.
Mike: But what's up with that? I mean c'mon, Cooperstown, the history, the magnificence, the bloody sock!?!?!
Doug: Hey, it's like Ditka says, "Those who live in the past are cowards." Me, I'm a futurist.
Mike: Dude, you're a nihilist is what you are. The Hall of Fame is the nads. You have to know the past to understand the present.
Doug: Whatev. All I know is entrusting the selection of who gets in who doesn't to the collection of interlopahs, misfits, and miscreants that make up much of BBWAA is at best laughable and at worst heinous.
In a group of Soxaholix, a woman speaks: I flipping hate it when there's no Soxaholix …
In a group of Soxaholix, a woman speaks: "Technical difficulties"? Yeah, right. My guess is Brachen's holed up somewhere listening to his David Hasselhoff record collection.
Bill: Attention Redneck Women of Arizona. Lock your trailah doors and gird your yee-haws. The RandyJohnson is back in town.
Doug: So in in the spirit of New Years, I've resolved to be less inimicable to the Yankees in general and, in particulah, far less hostile toward that swellest of swell 5-tool players, Mr. Alex Rodriguez.
Doug: Though you've got to admire the WVU dude's ability to drop a load in public like that. I'm way too shy regarding my bodily evacuations to ever pull a similar stunt even if I was crazy enough to want to.
Bill: I hear ya, guy. The old piss troughs at Fenway always gave me stage fright unless I was a bit drunk.
Doug: Yeah, one time I went hiking up Mt Chocorua and I went so far off the trail to take care of number two in isolation that I got totally lost
Bill: So you found yourself off the Pipah Trail and on the Wipah Trail.
Doug: Dude, it so wasn't funny. I spent 3 anxious hours wandering around the woods like those poor fucks in Blair Witch Project. I haven't ventured north of Portsmouth since.
Doug: Schilling likes the move. And Dave Pinto writes, "Pineiro faced just 295 batters as a reliever, but did very well, allowing a .205 batting average, a .301 OBA and a .309 slugging percentage. If he comes anywhere close to that for the Red Sox, he'll do just fine."
Mike: Yeah, but Schilling also likes Bush and is waiting for the Christian rapture, and as for ubah baseball bloggah Pinto, well, ever since he went on that curling binge, I've been circumspect regahding his punditry.
Doug: Well, you know what they say: In Theo We Trust. Except, of course, when we don't trust him and think he's ruining our summah.
Doug: What a shame. No more skinny bad backed dead beat dad redneck in pinstripes to kick around any more.
Mike: First they purge themselves of Sheffield and now Johnson. Holy fuck it looks like Cashman finally got his package from Amazon with the Moneyball book.
