Skundered!

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 10

An Irish friend once shared the story of a neighbor who went to a pub to see a girl he was seriously smitten with.  He downed pint after pint to steady his nerves as he waited for her to arrive, and when she finally did, he barfed all over himself while trying to ask her out.  As my friend sadly put it, the young man was skundered. 

It’s hard to think of a better term for what happened to the Turduckens in Week 10, as they were viciously deposed from their newly-assumed 1^st place-perch by the Dingobros, a lower-middle tier sleeper with a taste for blood and the derailed aspirations of haughty opponents. This wasn’t the only dramatic upset to rain down on Our Beloved League in Week 10: Dark horse HellFire Club stomped the Duestakers like a female protester at a Rand Paul campaign appearance, but the Duestakers somehow managed to cling to 2^nd place.  And, perhaps most astonishingly, the last-place Lakeviewers FUBAR’d the once-mighty Salukis, who tumbled to 6^th place in near-complete disgrace.  

Some insiders refuse to buy into the drama surrounding these upsets, pointing out that it all boils down to a bit of shuffling around; Week 9’s top six teams are still Week 10’s top six teams, they say.  There is no question, however, that the week’s biggest winners were the aforementioned HFC, who jumped from 5th to 3^rd place in the blink of an eye, and Gonk’s Revenge, who, with the relentlessness of a Terminator, completed their seemingly-inevitable climb to 1^st place by beating the tar out of the N.O. Brass—an outfit fatally compromised by bye-week holes and impaired-judgment, reportedly due to mixing box-wine with over-the-counter cold medicine.

In other action, Token Female was eighty-sixed by a roid-raging Mental Garbage, while the Wackers scored a freebie-win by virtue of their matchup with the Pulled Hammies, our League’s answer to passing GO in Monopoly. And finally, facing off against the ascendant Dayment, the Blue Devils pulled yet another colossally-flawed offensive scheme out of their toxic catbox of a strategic repertoire, with predictably-tragic results.

We all have to remain on guard against losing focus, with the playoffs a mere four weeks away.  A lot can happen in that amount of time, given our current 5-team 7-3 cluster tailed closely by another 3 who are only a game or two behind them.  The only thing we can be sure of is that dreams will be shattered and lamentations sung by the unlucky six whose seasons end short of the playoffs.  That bracket’s gilded gates will surely slam shut, locking them in the mausoleum-like gloom of our consolation ladder, where their eyes may eventually adjust to the darkness, but their hearts never will.

More Fun Than Rectal Bleeding

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 8

There’s not much to say about what happened in Our Beloved League in week 8.    Overall, it was the kind of scene that just leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable, like interpretive prayer-dance, or watching Glen Beck go on an extended crying jag.  

Most of us chalk it up to what old-timers call the Bye-Week Blues.  For the unlucky among us this translated into low scoring of the sinkhole-variety, as we watched our second- and third-string starters stumble around on the field like they’d been smoking ditchweed.  But one or two matchups were still worth a look-see.

All eyes were on the newly-crowned Duestakers as their fall from 1^st place-grace came at the hands of a bitter Gonk’s Revenge, who back-daggered the Duestakers as if they were a bastard-pretender to the League’s throne.  Proverbs teaches us that pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall, or something along those lines. The point is, a mere taste of hubris proved devastating to the 6-1 Duestakers, who now have one more bell that they’d like to unring.  And while you have to give credit where it’s due, ESPN’s projection of the Duestakers as the underdog in this matchup looks a little less impressive when you consider the fact that Revenge scored 185 more points than the Duestakers in the first seven weeks of the season.

Among the other scores that were settled on Monday night, the Blue Devils managed to expand and nail down their slight-lead over DingoBros, while Token Female dragged the Wackers back into the pit from whence they crawled, and 10^th place Mental Garbage managed to eke out a breathtakingly-humiliating 1-point win over 4^th place N.O. Brass, whose owner was reportedly so despondent that he holed-up in his attic with a laptop and a 12-pack of Meister Brau.

Elsewhere, in an act of sudden, arbitrary brutality rarely seen outside of correctional institutions, 7^th place HellFire Club gave 5^th place Dayment the kind of horrendous whooping that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a Mormon picnic.  The 2^nd place Salukis inflicted similar damage on the 13^th place Hammies, in a win that called to mind playground bullying and left most observers shaking their heads.  The 3^rd place Turduckens provoked the same reaction when they callously phoned in a cheap victory over last-place Lakeviewers.

In the end, Week 8 brings us past our regular season’s halfway point, and is as suitable a vantage point as any from which to reflect on what, if anything, all of this means.  For most of us it’s simple: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being something cool like Shark Week or a winning PowerBall ticket, and 1 being, let’s say, rectal bleeding, the 2010 fantasy football season would fall somewhere right in the middle, along with oatmeal and folk dancing. 

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

Lamentations of a Halloween Nerd

I know I’m at risk of reading too much into something that matters disproportionately to me, but I’ve been troubled by what appeared to be a significant drop in house and yard decorating in my community this Halloween.   In terms of outdoor decor, my town has always been more Christmas-oriented, but in past years you could always find at least a few houses on every block that put up orange lights, or a scarecrow, or a jack-o-lantern, or something.  But this year was different; you could drive from neighborhood to neighborhood on the big weekend and see nothing but darkness.

I tried to take comfort in the fact that the Midwest was buffeted by several consecutive days of near-record high winds last week; it’s possible that many people either took their decorations down, or decided not to decorate at all, because of the wind.  But the lady who cut my hair today offered a simpler and darker explanation.  She was talking about how the economy was affecting people; that more than one man cried in her chair while describing this impact on their families and lives. Her theory is that people are just depressed; they’re having a hard time getting in the holiday spirit at a time like this.  That’s a sad explanation, but it makes more sense than the wind. And it makes me wonder what Christmas is going to look like in my community this year.

As for me, Halloween is an obsessive calling.  I’ll keep lighting up my little corner of the world until the kids stop coming or until, in some bleak future, religious extremists are finally able to outlaw Halloween along with homosexuality and immigration. I can’t help thinking that—especially in times like these—the world needs haunting.

2010 Haunt-inventory (outside items):

Giant Spiderweb for garage

Giant Spider (the right eye needs to be re-wired)

Jack-o-lantern covers for the garage lights

Light up Happy Halloween sign for garage

Light up witch sign for garage (shorted out)

Wooden Zombie Danger Level sign

Zombie torso and head to go with sign

Light-up skull and hands (2 sets)

6 ft. cardboard coffin

Orange LED lights for bushes on side of house

Purple LED lights for bushes in front of house

Pumpkin lights for bush by driveway

Cornstalks wrapped in orange LED lights by driveway

7 pumpkins (only had time to carve four)

Baby-skeleton hung in wire fish-trap cage

Small ghost on a wire in front of house

Ring of five ghosts dancing around front tree

Large 2D skull lights for front tree (2)

Assorted disposable spider webs in bushes (6 or 7)

Zombie groundbreaker with moving head (broken by middle-schoolers)

Skeleton groundbreakers (2)

Foam tombstones (7)

Small seasonal signs on stakes (5)

Small zombie warning signs (4)

Witch figure with lighted, smoking cauldron

Fog machine for cauldron

Large werewolf figure with moving head

Large dog-cage for werewolf

Large witch-queen figure with lighted eyes

Throne for witch-queen

Large strobe-lit monster cage for living room window

Monster figure for cage

Skull lights and skull mini-border fence

40 foot wooden cemetery fence

Skull-topped gate-posts with lighted eyes (2)