It’s Hockey not Baseball and we’re in D.C. NOT Baltimore

Dear Retarded Assholes sitting behind me in Sections 412 and 413 at the Verizon Center during last night’s Washington Capitals game against the Carolina Hurricanes,

First off, let me thank you for the effort you put in hauling yourself to your feet when the nice lady who’d won the ESPN Zone Star Spangled Sing-Off started in on her not-too-bad rendition of our country’s National Anthem. This shows you have at least some of the basic motor skills necessary to maintain rudimentary control over the lower functions of your barely evolved primate-like bodies.

Personally, I generally don’t sing along with whoever is chosen to perform the Star Spangled Banner, but will sometimes do so in the absolute privacy of my own home when I’m sure there’s no one around. This is mainly because it is a tough song to sing, and my singing has been known to cause birds to drop dead and fall from the sky and young children to run screaming for their mothers.

I don’t like to subject the general public to this kind of abuse, so I refrain.

You retarded assholes, on the other hand, did join in, which is fine since you obviously don’t care about what others think of your singing voices. But, if you’re going to sing it, sing the whole song not just the single syllable you think makes you cool and allows you to giggle like a tweener touching herself for the first time.

I’ll start this off simply so your cretinous, pre-anthropoid walnut-sized brains can absorb it without bursting into flame and turning into a teaspoon of ash.

No matter what you’ve been told by the people you believe are your natural, biological parents as you’ve grown up, it is never, ever OK or cute or supportive of the team or whatever to shout out the “O!” in the line “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave” of the national anthem.

I can even spell that out for you if you’re having trouble with the concept: N-E-V-E-R. NEVER.

And here’s why you warthog-faced buffoons:

1. First and foremost it’s disrespectful. We’ll leave aside for a moment the person singing it for real won the ESPN Zone Star Spangled Sing-Off, but she sang it well, so that’s a push. Most people can barely deal with the actual singers mangling the song; do not aid and abet these singers in their crimes.

2. We were at a friggin’ hockey game, not a mid-summer contest at Camden Yards fercrissakes. Yes, yes, I know you were deprived of local baseball growing up and were forced to root for the Orioles and I’m truly very, very sorry for that (and for your having to live with a jackass of an owner like Peter Angelos). Trust me, I know about sorry, I grew up a Pirate fan.

But guess what? Good news. In case you haven’t heard, we (my hands are circling around in an inclusive motion) have a local team now, the Nationals, who are getting ready to start their second season in their lovely, if somewhat horrendously overpriced park in Southeast. Even better news: You can trade in all of that ugly black and orange Orioles’ gear at least, for Godsakes, on hockey nights. (I’d never ask someone to switch team allegiances just because a pro team moved to your city.)

3. Take a look at this map from the good folks at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (they’re pretty smart). Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to catch up.

See that yellow rectangle with a little something dangling off it in the bottom left corner of the map? That’s Washington, D.C. Extra bonus information: The D.C. stands for District of Columbia. Now you can impress all your friends and win bets at your local watering hole.

Now, up there in the top right corner of the map? That yellow Nevada-looking polygon? (I won’t even try to define that, just trust me) that’s Baltimore, Maryland. I’ll say that again sloooowly: Bal-ti-more, Mary-land.

Quick quiz: Where were you when you shouted out the “O!” in the Star Spangled Banner? Correct! Slow, but correct nonetheless. You were at a HOCKEY GAME in WASHINGTON, D.C.!! Not a baseball game in Baltimore, Maryland.

Shouting out the “O!” at a sporting event in Baltimore, let alone Washington, isn’t cute. It isn’t funny. All it does is make you look and sound even more like the retarded assholes you actually are.

Thanks so much for your time, you can now return to your daily drooling. (Of course, the drooling thing only applies to the actual retarded assholes who do this, everyone else, thanks for reading.)

The Foggy Dew

(And don’t think I don’t have my eye on you Atlanta fans who, for years, have been singing the last word of the first verse as “Braves” rather than “brave.” That’s even worse than the jackasses this post is directed toward.)

Sticky Information

I always find the bumper stickers, and the combination of stickers, people slap on the ass ends of their cars interesting. If one catches my eye, but can’t quite read because of location or distance, I’ve been known to maneuver my car for a better look.

And while I currently don’t have any bumper stickers on my car, I do have two UNC window stickers. On my first car, a trusty and loyal blue Dodge Shadow, I had a “Give Blood, Play Rugby” sticker which was later replaced, along with the bumper, with “He’s Not Here…” and “Support Your Local Brewery” stickers.

This morning I was behind a full-size pick-up, it’s entire rear bumper plastered with those annoying oval three-letter stickers. Although, I will add, it was done in a kinda cool overlapping and random pattern, and included one reading “FU2”. For those of you who’ve never spent any time around Ham operators or military communications, FU2 is shorthand for “fuck you twice.”

So I got a little laugh out of that.

The other interesting combination I saw would, to me, seem counterintuitive. On the back of a Camry or Accord two of the bumper stickers read “One Nation, Under Educated” and “John Stewart ’08”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good laugh as much as the next guy, but it would seem to me if you got your news from a source other than a comedian we might just make a dent in that education problem.

It's like, you know, a gift idea

I saw an article about the Keyboard for Blondes (it's a British product, hence the "e") yesterday and knew, right then and there, I had to get the word out about it in time for your Christmas shopping.

From the MSN article about this special keyboard for that special blond(e) in your life:

"The all-pink keyboard swaps out standard keys with funnier, dumber key names. The backspace key now says "Oops!" and the entire row of function keys spells out USELESS KEYS. Hit the "$" sign and you get the sound of a cash register clinking."

J, this could be the perfect present for a certain Robot, it even uses the useless "e" just like she does. Maybe you could take up an office collection?

I'm not going to list all of them, but the Web site has a Top 10 list of 13 reasons to buy the Keyboard for Blondes, including:

10. You have to use a keyboard. Why not get the best one! [FD-Fer sure! Like totally!]
7. Matches your lipstick. [Always an important consideration in an electronics purchase]
6. Excuse for a cute guy in the office to talk with you. [Not unless you're holding it between your thighs...]
3. Angelina Jolie adopting one. [Yeah, to cave in someone's skull as a world-class assassin in her next movie]
1. Bruce Wayne has one in batcave. (Pink goes perfectly with black.. Draw no lifestyle conclusions.) [He did spend some time "walking the earth" and maybe he "discovered" something about himself along the path]
1. A very important and glamorous thing to have. [Because that's exactly what we're looking for in the office.]
1. Better looking than some co-workers. [OK, they may have a point here.]
1. Use as barter at a gas station. [Just not below the Mason-Dixon Line.]

Ya know, I was thinking about how I could mock this some more, but I think my work here is done...Except to say I know exactly who I'd get this for. How 'bout you?