F*ck You, Santa.

F*ck You, Santa.

Do you like writing on graph paper? I sure do. I would have done every math problem I've ever done in my life on the stuff if it had always been around. Somehow there was always a shortage of graph paper, perhaps because I never bought it. In college I got most of my paper from the printers at the job I had. Fuck spending money in college on things that won't get you wasted in some way. The only paper I probably bought was "triple-dipped".

start digression
I have never understood how "triple-dipped" is better than "single-dipped". Let's say you take a cracker and dip it into a salt solution. Then you let it dry. Then you dip it back into salt solution again. As the cracker gets wet (notice I didn't say moist -- moist is for cake and panties only, and a cracker most certainly is neither cake nor panties), the salt absorbed in the cracker joins the salt in the water and the whole thing ends up with the same uniform salt level it did before. Multi-dips are great if you're at Dairy Queen though.
end digression

Back in high school I would score some graph paper sometimes, mostly from my dad who was also fond of writing business notes on the sweet grid lines. My mom didn't seem to seek it out when making school supply purchases. This is why, as painful as it sounds, you have to go to the store with your mom when these purchases are being made if you're a non-dropout K-12 mofo.

While graph paper is obviously a great thing for making plots with the good old Cartesian coordinate system, but its utility goes way beyond the math world. Let's say you have to make a speech or are just making notes on an event you observed. Writing those notes on graph paper make me feel more intelligent and organized than normal, which is nice.



So to handle my feelings about the Detroit Lions in an intelligent and organized manner, I've created some virtual graph paper and wrote down some of my thoughts about the team. And I'll tell you, I feel better.



This past Sunday the 'ship and I witnessed an incredible beat-down of the Lions by the Redskins in Landover, MD. 34-3. We haven't had much luck this year. Back in September we both flew to see Michigan get crushed by Oregon. 39-7 or something like that. It's hard to say which game sucked more, and it doesn't really matter anyway.

Sunday started out with deranged optimism that somehow the Lions would end the 0-20 road losing streak against the 'skins. The blue line train had several fans of the Honolulu blue boys, and we talked about how the Lions might have a shot, and how we couldn't wait to start drinking. One Lions fan I met was from North Carolina, which I found to be peculiar, so I asked what his story was.

"When I was a little kid growing up in Carolina, they didn't have the Panthers, so everyone rooted for the Redskins, since they were the closest team. One Christmas I asked for a Redskins jersey, but Santa didn't bring me one. I was crushed, so they took me to JC Penny to get one. When we got there, it was right after Christmas and they had sold out of everything but Lions jerseys, so that's what I got. A Billy Simms jersey. You can't have a jersey when you're a little kid and then just switch to a different team, so I've been a Lions fan ever since."

This is the single greatest hard-luck Detroit Lions story I've ever heard. The poor guy had driven up from the Outer Banks with his buddy, spent money on a hotel room in downtown DC, probably spent close to $100 on the ticket to the game, and now was on the train to get his spirits crushed. Poor fucker. So if you're a Lions fan out there, and you're feeling pissed off about being stuck with them, at least you can understand why they're your team since you're almost surely from Michigan. Be thankful that you're not cursing Santa when Kitna throws his next interception.