Those hurtful, hurtful words

Somehow this is news: Avondale Estates to change the verbiage on park signs, because they seem too mean

Avondale Estates is an interesting part of town.  They’re technically within Metro Atlanta proper, because they’re within I-285.  But they’re also in Decatur, which is often known as practically something of a liberal hippie commune, so absorbed in their own want to not be associated with Atlanta, that they almost take a sadistic pride in how difficult it is to get in and out of their little segment of town and how much the traffic sucks.

Needless to say, exclusion and exclusivity is a concept that isn’t lost to Decatur on a regular basis, so it’s amusing to me that there’s controversy over a sign that promotes even more exclusion and exclusivity within an individual neighborhood within Decatur.

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Oh, Atlanta #457

Short story shorter: convenience store owner assumes black customers are using phony money, locks them in store

Why editing is important: CBS News 46 uses the phrase “confederate” when they probably mean “counterfeit.”

It should be noted that the students are from Morehouse College, a historically black college, so there would be a good amount of irony involved if it turned out that black students from a HBCU were actually trying to use confederate money.

Ultimately, this sort of racial profiling is yet another sad, sad story in this modern two thousand and sixteen world we exist in now, but it’s ironically humorous to me that CBS46’s writers and editors make an error like this that are probably chalked up to an ironic Freudian slip.

The war never ended for some, y’all need to know.

TLC Go: my prayers have been answered

I remember having a conversation with some friends about the progression of the television industry, and how television today is going down the route of individual network apps with trying to give people the long-awaited ability to pick and choose the things they want to watch, a la carte.  Somewhere along the conversation came the question that if we could only have one network to watch, what would it be?

Unconsciously, I said TLC.  Didn’t even hesitate to say it.  And I guess because it’s true, that if I had to be limited to watching a single network, the endless train car of train wreck shows would have to be it, since wrestling and sports do eventually get repetitive, nature shows have too much overlap and recycling and David Attenborough isn’t going to live forever to narrate them all, and if I had to pick between trash-fiction and trash-reality, I’m going with TLC.

Well, in a rare wish come true, I recently discovered that TLC actually does have their own network app now: TLC Go.  Granted, it’s only available on platforms such as Roku or AppleTV, or via Android or iOS, which kind of inhibits the ability to watch on XBOX or PissNetwork, but I have the capability of still being able to take advantage of its existence.

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It probably says something

That the most compelling shows on television these days seem to centralize around the theme that people are horrible.

Westworld was easily one of the more refreshing and enjoyable shows I’ve seen in quite a while, and although this season has been a little too slow building and plot-heavy, The Walking Dead remains one of my must-watch shows.  Both definitely fit the description that it doesn’t really matter what else is going on in their respective worlds, it’s the people that are the worst parts of them.

Robots?  Zombies?  Pfffh.  Neither are as much threats to humanity as humanity is to itself.  I wonder what this says about the world in itself?  We can’t really blame it on the voices of today being all nihilistic and cynical, especially considering TWD has been around for over a decade, and the original Michael Crichton story was written in the 1970s.  But such stories are being turned into television dramas and being broadcast now, yet such droll idealism about the quality of humanity translates so seamlessly and effortlessly to today’s standards.

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Not entirely sure I believe

Did I write about “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka back when he was first convicted of manslaughter last year? [yes I did]  I want to say I did, but I still have no means of cross-referencing my own prior posts to verify.  It still kills me that I can’t, and adds to the cauldron of unhappiness that I’m dealing with on a daily basis.  I want to say that I did, but I can’t with full certainty, but really it has everything to do with the corresponding photo and not necessarily the words I write, although there could very well be an overlap.  Whatever

Anyway, I saw news about how Superfly now has terminal cancer in the stomach and has been given around six months left to live.  This is pretty sad news for nostalgic old wrestling fans, and it doesn’t help that Big Van Vader just weeks ago was diagnosed with a failing heart and estimates that he has two years to live.  Superstars of yesterday are meeting their maker today, in the most unfortunate of circumstances, due to in what will mostly likely be attributed to their younger years in an industry that had a tremendous amount of drug abuse and a sheer lack of concern over head, brain and other physical ailments.

However, given the circumstances that Superfly is under the legal gun and the primary suspect in the 1983 death of his then-girlfriend, I have to admit that my knee-jerk reaction to the news of his health as being one of skepticism and potential nonbelief.  Whether it’s a strategic tactic to garner sympathy or pity so that a dying man is not sentenced to prison, or there’s an elaborate plan for Snuka to fake his death and then exile himself back to Fiji where he could presumably live out his life on the run, I have to say the timing of this “I’m dying” scenario is a little too convenient and atypical to the types of diseases or ailments that seem to emerge for anyone with a modicum of notoriety getting put on trial.

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It wasn’t unexpected, but I’m still disappointed

Clemson beating Virginia Tech (again) for the ACC Championship was a game that would be construed as a “good game.”  The #23 Hokies did not shrivel up and get blown out like so many going up against a National Championship contender, instead keeping it close and undecided until literally 1:51 left in regulation. 

The final score was 42-35.  It was a good game.

But I’m still bummed out about it.  I realize that of all the sports I enjoy and all the sports I watch, nothing brings me down harder than Virginia Tech football.  They’re like the one team I’m ingrained to remain loyal to, so it’s their inability to reach the pinnacles of success and their failures to succeed that actually manage to make me feel mopey and disappointment when they occur.

I turned the game off before Dabo Sweeney could talk about how great of a game it was, how Virginia Tech is a program on the upswing, and other graceful remarks in said in victory.  I don’t want to hear that shit.  I don’t want to hear people saying nice things about Virginia Tech’s respectable performance in defeat.  I know all this shit.  Every Tech fan knows this shit.  None of it changes the fact that Tech still lost, and losing sucks.

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The Atlanta Braves are basically Kurt Angle

What other shitty things can they do: Cobb County to evict and demolish anywhere from 15~30 existing homes in order to create a four-lane road to help alleviate traffic, namely that will be caused by the arrival of the Atlanta Braves

In the late 90s, Kurt Angle arrived in the WWF.  Back then, nobody really knew what was going to happen when he showed up on television, and it was clear that creative had a general idea, but they had to see how the fans would react before they could really move forward.  So Angle came out, started winning his matches, celebrating a little on the excessive side, and started cutting promos about his “three I’s.”  As hoped, the fans soured on his character, and Kurt Angle headed down the path of becoming an insufferable heel.

However, in spite of the fact that he had successfully drawn the ire of the fans, and was on the heel end of the spectrum, his character was obnoxiously square, acting like he was the best guy on the planet, and insisted that he was a respectable, admirable, wholesome wrestler that everyone’s kids should look up to.

That’s basically what the Atlanta Braves are now, with the help of the greedy bureaucrats that run Cobb County acting like Creative, to help churn this heel of an organization along, while they act like they’ve done nothing wrong.  They’re Kurt Angle.

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