PR

Ben, thanks for stopping by today. As I understand, you've had a bit of a hit to your image recently.

Yeah. It's been a rough couple of months. Ever since I raped that second chick, everybody thinks I'm a rapist.

You don't say. Well, you've come to the right place. Here at Fuckstick and Jones, we specialize in rebuilding that trust and public image that you've dismantled with your recent actions. We help the media to see the real Ben again. You will be redeemed, Ben.

You must be Fuckstick.

Uh...yeah. Anyway, I see you have brought a friend with you.

Yeah, that's my man Willie Colon. He's my offensive lineman. My right-hand man. Say hi, Willie.

...he's kind of shy. Anyway, what have you got cooked up for me?

Well...you've really done a number on yourself, Ben. People absolutely hate you right now. Women are appalled that you're raping them, men are appalled at the low quality of the women that you rape. The men we can worry about later. First step is to get women back on your side.

That's a great idea. How we gonna do that? Maybe I could do some breast cancer speeches or maybe bake some shit? I could do some kind of charity for battered women. You know, the one Silverback was gonna do if he actually gave a fuck about his public perception.

Well....that's what we would have suggested last year. But this is your second rape. Most people on their second rape are kind of, you know, in prison. We're going to have to go a step further for you. 

You want me to actually do some community service of some sort? I could donate a lot of money to a woman's charity or something like that.

Let's just say...this one's gonna hurt you somewhere other than the wallet. I'm glad you brought your friend Willie with you.

...uh, yeah. I bring Willie everywhere. He makes sure I don't get in any trouble.

Well, he's obviously doing a heck of a job.

Ben, would you say that Willie is a good friend? Like, a real good friend?

Of course, me and Willie are total BFFs. 

And you trust Willie? You have a good enough friendship and enough security to overcome certain...activities?

Uhhh...what are you getting at?

We figure there's really only one way for you to connect with these women that are against you even playing in the NFL again.

What is that? Willie sucks at baking. He's not going to be able to help me there.

Ben...we need Willie to rape you.

Whoa, motherfucker! I don't swing that way, bitch! I'm not even under contract right now!

But Willie, surely you see...

I don't see shit, motherfucker! Cut him! Trade the motherfucker! I don't recall being asked to rape Dennis Dixon. Fuck. That.

But Willie, this just might work. And we're total BFFs...

Man, fuck you! I ain't raping you! I'm not even the rapist here. THAT'S YOU! YOU NEED TO STOP RAPING PEOPLE!

I told you, Willie, I swear, that was my last rape!

Willie, this is the only way to salvage Ben's reputation.

Fuck off, man! Everybody knows he did it. His reputation is irreparable. What's me raping him gonna do? You think this is a media distraction right now? Just imagine until it gets out that the Steelers players are raping each other. I'm supposed to deal with that on the road? Man, fuck this. I'm out of here.

Come on, Willie!


*Willie leaves the room*

Damn it. I figured that might happen. Ben, do you know anyone else who may be alright with this plan?

I think I got this covered.

*Pulls out cell phone*

Yo yo Big Ben, what's goin on my man?

Hey Jeff, we got a keg down here at....

I'll be right there.

*hangs up*

You think you can get a keg?

Sometimes it snows in February

 

Ok. We've gone over global warming before with the assistance of a Venn Diagram, although for some reason Blogger decided to remove my penis-laden Venn image at the end. That decision leaves me decidedly nonplussed. Hey Blogger...blow me. Or delete my blog. I don't care. Just don't touch my penis images.

Anyways, it has snowed quite a bit. Record snow. In the Northeast United States. In February. And all I'm reading is "where's Al Gore", "30 inches of global warming residue", and "holy fuck it's snowing a lot". Now, there is a lot to be said negatively about Al Gore, not so much as the message is concerned but mainly how he's got quite the vested financial interest in many of these foundations and whatnot that he is largely responsible for creating. I wouldn't care if he were just some hippie that drove around in a flower-painted van extolling the virtues of 'green' energy (of which there are many, many, many virtues regardless of who's right about global warming, but that's a story for a different time and maybe following a different generic energy drink), but he's more than that. I also don't really care if he takes a hybrid car or emits 19,000 pounds of CO2 in a fetus-powered hover-jet. Moving on.

SNOW IS FUCKING RAIN. You don't usually get this much snow because the cold air is not wet enough to make it! It's cold as balls in Barrow, Alaska, yet they received about 0.3 inches of snow during this same time period. Why? Because they are in a desert! Regardless of how cold it gets, it isn't going to snow there because the cold air is too dry to make fluffy blizzard snow. And cold has nothing to do with how much snow you get.

On DC's snowiest day, the temperature recorded was a high of 37 and a low of 32. The average daily high is 45 and the average low is 28. Brrrr! What a crazy occurrence! Two degrees below average on the whole! The next day, however, was 10 degrees below average and also got pounded with snow. BUT, the high was in the 30s and the low was under 20. The next day? 12 degrees below average and not a trace of snow. This leads me to believe that sometime during the day prior, it stopped snowing and got cold as balls. Because the warmer, moister air was moving out. I'm not a weatherologist, but...I mean, come on now. Snow in Washington DC in February does not disprove man-made global God-damned warming. It proves or disproves nothing outside of the fact that it was cold enough to snow and the air happened to be very moist. If anything, the moist February air is probably much, much rarer than days in DC that are cold enough to produce snow. Which leads me to formulate my new theorem...we are suffering Jeff Reed-induced "global moistening".

Every time that drunk kicker pisses in public, there is going to be some evaporation. And that piss-air has to go somewhere. Introduce some kind of weathery El Niño jetstream and you've got Jeff Reed pissing all over metro Baltimore, only this time it happens more than the standard once per year. And there is no amount of young men with families that Ray Lewis can murder to stop it. It's just gonna snow. That's just what it does in the northern US. It snows. If it's cold enough to flurry, then it's cold enough to blizzard. Would people still be asking for Al Gore if it were flurrying?

Mike Florio's levels of magnitude

Mike Florio is the head honcho over at Profootballtalk, a site that has been pretty big over the past few years before blowing up recently and moving under the NBC umbrella. Well, while I do follow his site for the rumors which, regardless of what people say, seem to me to be correct more often than not (empirical observation, of course). That being said, however, Florio seems to have a penchant for posting absolutely asinine comparisons and observations for whatever reason...ratings, slow news days, just feels like he has to get things up because he's all NBC and shizz...and, as today's example was Stillers-related, I found myself taking extra umbrage at it's ridiculousness.

Will the Steelers put Jeff Reed on a short leash?

Uhhh...I don't think so. It was one game. He's been awesome for them for a few years now. What are we going to do if Reed is on a short leash? Go for it more? Have Sepulveda punt it through the uprights?




The Steelers have demonstrated a clear double standard of late as to players who get in trouble off the field.

They absolutely have. I'm not going to deny that. In fact, I've been on record as saying that the "Steeler Way" is nothing but a myth that we yinzers buy into just to pretend that we are above the fray when it comes to signing players of questionable chara....wait. HOLD ON ONE MINUTE. You aren't going where I think you are going with this, are you, Florio?








When receiver Cedrick Wilson allegedly roughed up his girlfriend, he was cut.  When linebacker James Harrison allegedly did the same thing, excuses were made on Harrison's behalf.

Right. That's absolutely true and it should pretty much shatter the "Steeler Player" myth that has been propagated about in the past. Both of these guys are wife-beaters, one just happens to be awesome (Harrison) while the other, for whatever reason, was never really embraced by the city (Wilson). I'm not going to get into this issue, though, because I don't see what it has to do with Jeff Reed missing field goals. Continue, Florio.




It's a common dynamic in sports.  Teams make examples out of guys they deem replaceable.  A separate set of rules applies to the stars.

I've gone into this before. It's not just sports. Listen, if you are a superstar accountant and you can fucking debit and credit like a maestro, you are going to get special treatment by your company when you go out and beat your wife (in most cases, at least). If you are a huge benefit to your company with your accounting, you will get a lot of leeway. However, if you always show up drunk, credit your debits and like, jizz all over your company's general ledger weekly, and then you go out and get arrested for indecent exposure at a local Taco Bell, you are probably going to get fired. It has nothing to do with sports. Whatever. Tell me how this would place Reed on the business end of a short leash, PFT.




And there's where kicker Jeff Reed comes in.  He arguably blew the game for the Steelers in Soldier Field on Sunday, missing twice in the fourth quarter.  In the offseason, he was arrested for beating up a paper towel dispenser.

Holy mother of fucking Christ, Florio. Holy. F-ing. Lord.

Are you legitimately comparing beating your fucking wife to getting drunk and breaking a PAPER FUCKING TOWEL DISPENSER???? Are you? Aren't you supposed to be a lawyer by trade? This is one of the dumbest comparisons I've ever heard in my life, and that's saying something because I've read Romeo Crennel's "Comparing Land Wars in Asia to Breeds of English Hunting Dogs" from cover to cover. One is a misdemeanor, punishable by like, a $600 fine. The other is BEATING YOUR FUCKING WIFE.

Let me amend my earlier comparison of accountants. Say you are the good accountant, and you don't hit your wife, but instead you get arrested for breaking a light in the street. You don't do any jail time, don't miss any time at work, your work isn't even affected. You pay a $600 fine and it goes away. You aren't getting fired. But then say you have a bad week at work three months later. You still probably wouldn't get fired...I mean, that happens to everybody. Now, the bad accountant, the guy who jizzes on your company's books, let's say he goes out and fucks the boss's 14 year old daughter in the company parking lot. Would he get fired? I don't know. Let's ask Florio.




At the time, the Steelers gave him a pass.  If he keeps missing key kicks, the incident could resurface as partial justification for giving him boot.

I'm sorry, I wasn't really paying attention because the part of my brain that processes information was busy declaring a jihad on my eyes. Are you now saying that if Jeff Reed keeps missing kicks, they are going to cut him not because he's, well, missing kicks, but because he's missing kicks AND punched a paper towel dispenser four months ago.




"Of course this is uncharacteristic of him," coach Mike Tomlin said. "He just kicked the game-winner in overtime last week, and that's what we're used to.  We aren't used to what happened with him today."

It was very characteristic of him, however, when he DIDN'T BEAT HIS WIFE.




Though it's highly unlikely that the Steelers will dump Reed after only one bad game, we'll be interested to see whether they fire a shot across the bow by bringing a couple of free agents to the practice facility on Tuesday to see how they swing their legs.

Would have as much to do with a Sheetz towel dispenser as John Holmes' AIDS had to do with the Michelson-Morley experiment, which showed that the Earth's atmosphere was not made out of "ether".




And if Reed doesn't turn it around quickly, he likely won't be around for his seven-year anniversary with the team in November, when he got a chance in 2002 due in part to the fact that the guy who had the job at the time wasn't very good at it.

Right. Because he'd be a field goal kicker who was missing a bunch of field goals. Not because he got drunk and beat on a wall-mounted piece of plastic.

I have a feeling there will be many more of these to come.