The End of Times: Donnie Darko, Merle Haggard and the Red Sox

THE WORLD IS ENDING!!

It's a good thing that I don't make that claim lightly. I wait until all the facts are in, then I evaluate them before making my Armageddon-ish predictions. It's not like I go around declaring the Apocalypse every week.... Then again, it's not every week that I hear that the world will end from a 6-foot tall rabbit, either, like Donnie Darko did:

Ok, so maybe the rabbit is wrong and we have more than 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds left after all. But don't come crying to me for more time on November 27th at 7:40 and 12 seconds p.m. C.S.T.. (holy crap, that's my birthday...now it really IS getting eerie.)


**Advice Columns: "Dear Merle..."**

So on what factual basis do I base my claim that the world is ending? For starters, MSN is now posting articles about life advice from 70-year old country singers. "What I've Learned: Merle Haggard" tells us such pearls of wisdom as:

"We weren't thieves by nature. Pranksters. Practical jokers. We were without a car one time, Dean Holloway and I. We just went out and started borrowing cars. Sometimes we'd bring 'em back. Put gas in 'em. Clean 'em up. Leave a little note: THANKS FOR THE CAR. Like the Phantom."

and...

"Willie Nelson is an idol for me. The music is sort of immaterial. Willie is seventy-four. A lot of people don't realize how healthy he is. He doesn't eat any strict diet. But he doesn't eat very much of anything. He understands the value of water."

Do the munchies not count as eating? But then there's always...

"I probably had as bad a sex urge as anybody when I was younger. I remember an old guitar player, Eldon Shamblin, told me, 'When you get p**** off your mind, you can go ahead and learn something.' Isn't that great?"

Yeah. It's really inspiring. But I do like his comments about the next Presidential election:

"I don't look for a politician to bullsh** his way in this time."

And maybe Merle Haggard has got a good point (which is something I never thought I would ever utter in all my living years). But, politicians shouldn't be able to BS their way into office. So how do I know that the world is ending? Maybe it's the sad fact that Presidential candidates are now getting questioned in debates about whether or not they've seen a UFO!! (click here for the article)

Yeah, apparently Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich is 100% certain that he has seen an Unidentified Flying Object. It's tough to argue with him though. Maybe alien life forms have given him strange and awesome powers, while still keeping him from breaking the 5-foot mark. Hell, it would certainly explain how he was able to woo his wife into marrying him!! Here's a picture of Dennis Kucinich (clearly standing on a stool) and his uber-hot wife, Elizabeth:

Although, Jason Jones of 'The Daily Show' had the best take on it, calling her a FLILF:

"It's an acronym....also a palindrome."


**Beantown: #1 Again?!**

So you want more proof that the world is ending? "Dear Merle" and FLILFs aren't enough for you? Well, how about this: the Boston Red Sox won the World Series again this past Sunday. That's the 2nd time that the "loveable losers" have won the Series in the last 4 years, after having suffered 86 years of Championship futility. This can't be right! The Red Sox won the Series....again!!!???

But I think what I find funniest is that Boston fans, after feeling bitter for soooo long thru the years of chokes and heartbreaks, have somehow managed to still remain bitter even after their recent successes. Boston fans, for some unknown reason, still want to be viewed as the "loveable losers" and have a hard time coping with the fact that when the "loser" prefix gets dropped from the title, so too does "loveable".

So, amidst all of the celebrations in Boston, why is it so hard for their fans ('Red Sox Nation') to just accept who they really are now? They've cast aside the shadow of "loveable losers" and are quickly disrobing the New York Yankees and donning the cloak themselves as the next "Empire". They're probably only one more title away from becoming known as the "Evil Empire" as well.

Back in '04, when the Sox won their 1st Series (after 86 years) everyone was rooting for them. They came back in record-setting style. Now, just 3 short years later the Sox won the Series again, this time over the Colorado Rockies. However, here in '07, a recent poll shows that 3-out-of-4 people (75%) were pulling for the Rockies to win. (Of course that poll was conducted by me, and I only asked 4 people......but I think it's still a fair representation of the amount of people who actually watched the World Series outside of Boston & Denver.)

So why the downfall in polularity? People love to root for the underdog, and that no longer applies to Boston. The Sox are now the favorites to win every year. They are now the Goliath of baseball: the big, bad giant who is invulnerable (except to very small boys with slingshots). And how do those who hail from Boston feel about it? Here's one man's opinion, and I'll keep his name secret...although he knows who he is:

"You know, fuck everybody who says the Sox are the new Goliath. They still play in one of the smallest parks in the league and it's not their fault if they're outsmarting everyone in terms of marketing and squeezing every last cent out of that place. Sure, they have NESN but plenty of other teams have regional deals with ownership of cable stations. Sure they overspend at times but who were the real stars of that playoff run? Pedroia, Paplebon, Ellsbury, Youkilis: all home-grown talent. The key is to mix free agent signings with guys off the farm. The only free agents that were not on the team in '04 that really contributed were Lowell, Okajima (2 mill I think), and Beckett. We'll see about Dice-K.

"As a prototypical provincial Masshole, I didn't want anybody on the bandwagon anyway.

"Eat it haters, EAT IT!!"

Jeeeeez....... Got Bitter? EAT IT???

The Sawx did it the way it has to be done in baseball nowadays: They spent a lot of money (2nd only to the Yankees) on free agents and mixed it with some younger home-grown talent. But don't try passing off all of the success as just a bunch of kids from Southie doing the home town proud. It's not Good Will Hunting we're talking about here! I guess Beantown is going to have to somehow live with the fact that they've become what they for so long hated and tried to defeat: The Empire!

And now that the Sox won the World Series (again), just think about those promises made....if...they...could...only...win it:
(Dennis Leary is so f***ed!)


**Beware...the End of Times? ...or of Dogs?**

So maybe not everything is a sign of the Apocalypse. Even when the world is crazy (like KU being 8-0 and ranked #8 in both polls and the BCS ranking *cough*) and everything leans toward predications that we need to beware of the end of times, perhaps instead we just need to Beware of Dogs!

All I know is that if I were Michael Vick, confessed ringleader of dogfighting, I'd be keeping an eye out for any shifty-eyed canines in the neighborhood. Especially after news broke that a hunter in Iowa was shot with a rifle by his dog. The animals are revolting people! Domesticated and wild alike, they're starting to learn how to use our weapons. Did we learn nothing from "Animal Farm"? We're screwed!!!