Correspondence from a crazy person #3

This correspondence came after a throw away line given at the end of what was a very good special comment from Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Yeah you probably didn't catch it but at the end he quoted Oliver Cromwell, a contentious figure in Irish-English history. It probably didn't deserve this response:

" I loved your special comment about Dick Cheney. At least until the last bit where you quoted from Oliver Cromwell. As someone from Irish heritage it infuriates me whenever someone references him as if he were a great or good man. The monster waged a religious war upon the peoples of Ireland and Scotland, burning people alive inside of churches. He was a hero to the English of Ulster in their continued violence against the Catholics of northern Ireland. I make no attempt to spare either side from their right blame in the continuance of the troubles. But to remember Cromwell as anything other than a bloodthirsty dog is to allow the truth to be dictated by the victor and not by reality. A zealot and a monster is all he ever was, who slaughtered innocent women and children refuged in the house of God.

That aside, I love your show and I wish you continued success.

God bless,
rich aycock "


This letter is particularly crazy because, well, I don't represent history entirely accurately either, and also I completely misrepresent myself as someone who is at all religious. I'm gonna stop putting my name on these.

Correspondence from a crazy person #2

In this, the second installment of me acting crotchety towards the world in general, I take offense to this political cartoon:



I would be surprised if anyone else reading this DIDN'T find the cartoon pretty offensive. It's a pretty big risk any time you go for the nuclear option and compare somebody to the Nazis. You could get an e-mail like this:

"I can imagine you probably got quite a bit of e-mail after your cartoon that not so subtly compared Pelosi to a Nazi leader. I won't even get into how offensive that is, I'll only remind you that you probably were horribly offended any time anyone compared Bush or any member of his administration to Nazis. In neither case is the comparison anything other than grossly unfair and borderline irresponsible.

Since I'm sure that point has been brought up plenty, I'd like to take issue with the content of the cartoon BEFORE the last panel. On what basis do you have Nancy Pelosi saying that certain people should be killed, and that others should (if I got the implication correct) be sterilized? If that's a criticism of any policy of hers or of anything that she or for that matter any other liberal leader has ever said, then it's one I've never heard. It seems to me it's an extension of the perceived disregard for human life that liberals have based solely on the stance that abortion should be legal. It's a ridiculous stretch, and one that I hope you don't take seriously.

The whole cartoon is a conflation of several legitimate viewpoints on debatable issues including welfare, contraception, sex education, abortion rights, and the responsibilities of government for caring for it's citizens, along with radical ideas that are held mostly only by imaginary, hedonistic, irresponsible, immoral liberals that want to practice some sort of rebirth of eugenics. It seems pretty hypocritical to me to see this cartoon when I remember the outrage you expressed in post-Katrina cartoons at the taxpayers having to help pay for the housing of people who had been so "irresponsible" as to build homes on the coast.

The message I can only infer from the cartoon was supposed to be: "We should think about the policies that are being implemented by leaders on the left and what they can lead to if we aren't careful." But all I take away is that the die-hards on the right will never understand what motivates liberals, or what we care about, and comparisons like these make me doubt if any really care to try.

I wish I could have kept more anger out of this e-mail, but the Nazi comparison always makes my blood boil. That aside I hope you're well."

-Now it's important to note that this e-mail could not be nearly as vitriolic as the one to blockbuster. This particular cartoonist is somebody that I e-mail back and forth with kinda frequently, and while his ideas may be crazy and outdated, he's always been a nice, respectful guy in our correspondence, and is amazingly good at responding to e-mail. Much better than I am in fact, and he probably gets about 20x as much. If I get his permission I'll probably put the whole of the back and forth about this cartoon on the blog.

Correspondence from a crazy person

The first in a series where I share with you the ridiculous e-mails I send to people who offend me.

Today's episode has me upset about this story:
Mexico's voodoo promo for soccer match gets sponsor

Ever since this little episode, the relationship between US and Mexican soccer fans has been a bit of a sore spot for me. As far as I'm concerned they can all go die in a fucking fire. I don't excuse their drunkenness, nor the fucked up little-brother complex that they have with the US. So I might have gone a bit overboard when I wrote this e-mail to Blockbuster:

"Before I begin I want to make sure that I am not responding to something that is an exaggeration or a prank. So I sincerely hope that this story is untrue, and I would like to receive assurance that it is not:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/6250803.html

So if the story is a fraud, then I apologize for hastily jumping to conclusions. If not though, please take the following to heart:

Are you out of your mother-fucking minds?! I cannot believe that you would sponsor such an offensive campaign. It's beyond galling that you could allow your stores to hand out voodoo dolls representing American players, representing American citizens. Your stores are actually encouraging people to stick pins into effigies of the American team! Fuck the fact that voodoo is bullshit, I'm not complaining because I'm as delusional as some of the fucking dips that hope this will in any way help their national side. It's the absolutely violent disrespect that you have shown for US citizens that enrages me. I have canceled my Blockbuster DVD rental subscription, and will not be sending back the DVDs I have out. I am going to burn them and you will never get a fucking dime from me for them. I will also make sure that none of my friends or family ever step foot in a Blockbuster store ever again. No apology or action can ever convince me to change my mind on the matter. Go to hell."

For the record, I don't have a blockbuster subscription, and I don't have any dvds of theirs. I am though putting them on the banned list, and I encourage anyone else to as well.

Three days til pitchers and catchers report!

The first benchmark of the 2009 season is almost upon us, and just a few days removed from the Bill Murray sanctioned groundhog day comes the baseball equivalent. Baseball Prospectus, the Cadillac of analytical statistic-based performance predictions, has released their projections for the 2009 season. It's surely comforting to see the Cubbies projected as run-away favorites in their division, but it's certainly not news. With Houston and St. Louis at least two years away from their prospects and rookies developing to the point that they can compete again, and Milwaukee falling apart at the seams faster than Ben Sheet's elbow, the path is pretty clear for NL Central dominance. (There have been rumblings of Cincy as a sleeper team to look out for, but that's a bigger long shot than A-Rod winning the Roberto Clemente award in 2009) So with the obvious aside let's get on to the subtle good news.

Now OF COURSE this is only a projection, but I can't deny that seeing the Cleveland Indians winning the AL Central made me smile. I've never been a fan of AL baseball, but I now have a favorite AL team, the Cleveland Indians. I've always been a defender of Kerry Wood, a man who could have abandoned Chicago a hundred times but always wanted to make sure he did something to repay the city and his fans. Certainly not a role-model (other than to the socialite, hot tub surfing crowd) but a good guy whose charitable contributions helped the city for many years. And now he's an Indian, and a team mate of the former Cub who I had a child-like hero worship for, Mark DeRosa. (I'll have to get a DeRosa #7 to hang next to my Vaughn #99) In my mind, you can't get any more respectable than a guy who played 6 different positions in a season and always managed to contribute offensively. He always did what was asked of him and more because his #1 priority was to do what was right for the team. He's the kind of guy Mike Singletary would love.

So now, I go into 2009 excited and hopeful. For the first time I'll be following two teams (You can't think of a fraction small enough to compare how much I want the Indians to succeed versus how much I want the cubbies to succeed), and the outlook for both of them is looking pretty rosy. All I have to say is, when I get 6 bleacher seats for the Cubs v Indians home series in June, who are the other 5 people who are gonna come with to be the D, e, O, S, and A?