Random Thoughts

(pic from Worcester Telegram)

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Reader Email: 

Email #1

Are you fucking serious?  I wish I could write this letter politely, but for an asshole like you I really don't have the self restraint.  I can understand a lazy piece of shit like you not understanding the sport of cross country and thus not appreciating it, but poking fun at a kid who collapsed and got sent to the hospital is fucking pathetic.  Wow, congratulations on being able to jog 5 miles.  There's a huge difference between racing a 5k and "running" 5 miles at 14 minute pace.  In a race, you push yourself as hard as you can.  Ben Perron is a talented athlete and was somewhere around 10th-15th place in Saturday's ALL-STATE meet before he collapsed.  There is absolutely nothing funny about what happened to him regardless of the reason.  This kid has a significantly brighter future in running than you have in writing, as you're clearly a talentless bum.

You're an asshole,
Cliff Bargar

Email #2

Dear Barstool Sports,

I just wanted to comment on your opinion of the cross country runner from St. Johns. This is definitely one of the most inspirational videos I have ever seen. The guts, heart and determination this kid showed was unbelievable. Sure it was only a 5k race but its all relative. It's all about how hard you push yourself. This kid went all out, gave it everything he had from start to finish. He would have run an unbelievable time unfortunately his legs gave out a few yards short from pushing himself so hard.

Congrats on running 5 miles, I thought the biggest workout you've gotten in the past couple years is getting up from your computer chair to walk to the fridge to get another beer. Try running a 5k at a 5 minuet mile pace then you can comment on this video.

This kid is one of the best runners in the state believe me he has a future in running especially when he has the guts to push himself to the limit like this.

One more thing this is the STATE CHAMPIONSHIP, of course there are going to be a lot of people there. Not everyone divides their time between watching football games and deciding who the next barstool smoke show is going to be. 

Get a real job

Email #3

Real big of you all to make fun of a 17 year old kid in need of real medical help.  Oh, and I'm glad you've run 5 miles before, congratulations.  Ever done it at 6 minute mile pace in HS?  And the kid was near the lead when he collapsed.

Glad you could make a few jokes at his expense though!

Jeez, joggers are a sensative bunch huh? Regardless let’s clear some shit up.   I didn’t run no 14 minute mile when I completed my mini marathon back in 2001.   I was running sub 9 minute miles like it was going out of style and finished in 189th place and was passing bitches left and right.   And I would have come in 188th if I wasn't such a gentleman and let my ex girlfriend finish 1 second ahead of me. (Yes I just looked it up)   Sure I felt like quitting when that brisk Marblehead sea breeze hit me in the face and yes my legs were shaking.  But guess what?  I’m a man!   So I did what men do in short races!  I toughed that shit out and kept going.  None of this crawling bullshit.   Anybody can crawl to the finish line.  Babies can crawl!  Chicks can crawl!   Men run!   And keep in mind this was a 5 mile race!  Basically twice as long as this chump. But that’s just how we do it in the NEC!   Now excuse me while I get off my ass and grab a beer.  Hell I may even do a push up on the way back just to stick it to all the haters. 

Reader Email

From ESPN Power Rankings

10 (7)

Patriots

6-4-0

Like the black knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," the Patriots keep losing appendages but they fight onward. "It's just a flesh wound!" (TG)

TG - Tim Graham (AFC East);

Does Tim Graham read the stool??? I am pretty sure he does cause he totally stole that shit from Jerry

Umm, who does this Tim Graham from ESPN guy think we are?   Some no name blog being run out of my mother in law’s basement where he can just go around and steal shit and nobody will notice?  Dude that was so last week.  I mean this is pretty fucking bad right?   Poor Jerry is probably still trying to pull the dick out of his ass from getting raped like this.    Oh well.  At least it’s good to know ESPN is reading the Stool I guess?

PS - Jerry posted his article at 11:30am. ESPN posted their thing at roughly 1:40pm

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) - Danbury police say a dispute over a karaoke song triggered a brawl at a city restaurant that ended with the arrests of three men. Police say they were called to Terra Brasilis Restaurant at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday. They say 31-year-old Jefferson Gomez got angry after he thought the karaoke disc jockey skipped the song he wanted to sing. Officers say bouncers threw Gomez out of the restaurant, but his friend, 25-year-old Marcos DaSilva of Danbury, smashed a beer bottle over the DJ's head. Bouncers then threw DaSilva out, but police say the fighting continued outside. Police say they arrested Gomez after a car chase. He's charged with reckless driving, breach of peace and other crimes. He posted his $10,000 bail.DaSilva and another friend of Gomez, Jose Burges, were also arrested.
 

See now this is what being a good wingman is all about.     Your buddy gets skipped in line for Karaoke; you can do one of two things.   You can sit there like a little pussy or you can smash a beer bottle over the DJ’s head.    Sometimes actions speak louder than words and this is one of those times.  And frankly the DJ has nobody to blame but himself.     I mean once that switch has been flipped and you think you’re up next, the DJ can’t expect to pull the plug without people getting hurt. It’s like when Lincoln Hawk turns his hat around in Over the Top.  There is just too much testosterone flowing at that point to keep it bottled up for long.

NEW YORK -- Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia has won the American League Most Valuable Player award. Pedroia got 16 of the 28 first-place votes and easily beat out Minnesota Twins slugger Justin Morneau.

This is a hell of an accomplishment for a 5' 8" guy with a ridiculously big swing in only his second year in the Big Leagues. There are only two ways to celebrate this momentous occassion:

1. By counting down the Greatest Undersized Athletes of All Time, and
2. Buying case after case of Pedroia t-shirts.

MONROE, Wash. -- Two children and their mother lived for about two months with the decaying body of a 90-year-old Monroe, Wash. woman on the toilet of their Wisconsin home's only bathroom, on the advice of a religious "superior" who claimed the corpse would come back to life, authorities said. Tammy Lewis, and self-described "bishop" Alan Bushey remained in custody on felony counts of being a party to causing mental harm to a child. Lewis told the deputy that Middlesworth had died about two months earlier, but that God told her Middlesworth would come to life if she prayed hard enough.


Can I ask an obvious question here?   If Mrs. Middlesworth’s dead corpse was sitting on the only toilet in the house for the past 2 months where was the rest of the family going to the bathroom?   Actually never mind, because I don’t think I really want to know the answer to that anyway.  More importantly let this story be a lesson to all the kids out there.   You never take advice from a “self described bishop” because that’s how you end up with a dead lady hogging the shitter for 2 months.

SHREWSBURY, Mass. -- A former school bus driver who ordered a fourth-grader off his bus nearly two miles from home as punishment for changing seats without permission is facing more trouble.  Shrewsbury police on Monday filed a reckless child endangerment complaint against 65-year-old Donald Davison Jr. of Grafton. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 3 to determine if there is probable cause for a charge to be filed. Davison was fired after the Nov. 5 incident.  Nine-year-old Cyrena Madbury started walking home before another parent picked her up and drove her the rest of the way.

Wow Shrewsbury is on fire today!   This is the 2^nd story to make the big board in 24 hours.  Congrats!   Anyway this is bus driver persecution at its finest.   Listen everybody knows the only way for a bus driver to earn respect is to take it.  So if some puke little girl changes seats without permission you need to lay the law down on her ass and show everybody that you play hardball.   Because if you don’t those kids will walk all over you.   It’s your bus, your rules.   No mercy!    And if “the man” doesn’t like it then maybe he should come down from his ivory tower and drive the bus himself.   Not to mention the fact that since when does making a chick walk two miles qualify as reckless endangerment?  That’s exercise and teaching somebody a life lesson all wrapped into one in my book.   Free Donald Davidson!  Free Donald Davidson! Free Donald Davidson!

Holy crap. And I thought the NFL was bad when it came to wrongly disciplining players. David Stern's minions have decided that KG's retaliatory flail (it clearly was not a punch or even a slap) at Andrew Bogut was worthy of a one-game suspension. Bogut, who initiated the entire thing by purposely crashing his arm down on Garnett's cranium, was not suspended.

Let's compare this to the punishment recently handed out to Shaq. He got the same one game suspension for shoving players during a fight with the Rockets. And then a couple of nights later, O'Neal gets ejected after slamming Rodney Stuckey to the floor. Now I'm reading the league is considering reducing O'Neal's $25K fine for nearly killing Stuckey. WTF?

Look Stern, I realize the Celtics are head and shoulders above every other team in the league, but taking away one of their players for a pivotal division matchup with the Knicks for the sake of parity is just plain wrong.

Chuck - Red's Army

Click here for the answer

The Herald- Terrence Wheatley’s season ended just when it was starting to look good. The rookie second-round pick out of Colorado was placed on injured reserve yesterday with an injured left wrist. Wheatley hurt it Nov. 2 against the Colts in Indianapolis and hadn’t played since. The Indy game had been his most productive of the season, with an early breakup on Marvin Harrison to force a punt and another breakup downfield on the play that led to his injury when he landed awkwardly... it wasn’t clear if he had suffered a break, though a source close to the player said the pain was the most intense he had felt in his career. That was saying something, since Wheatley needed to have a metal rod inserted into his right wrist following a bad break in college.

So the Patriots have to IR their 2nd round draft pick right at the moment he was starting to emerge as a playmaker in their already depleted secondary? Sure. No problem. Why should this week be any different? It doesn't matter that this is the kind of break that would make a lesser team bury their heads in their hands and whine about the hand dealt to them by Cruel Fate. But to the 2008 New England Patriots, 'Tis but a scratch. Two weeks ago they lost their best defensive player? Only a flesh wound. Lost their top three Running Backs? Have at you. Their Hall of Fame defensive captain and emotional leader? We'll call it a draw. Oh, yeah, and the most indispensible player of our times had a season that was too short to hard boil and egg? They've had worse.

You can scoff and say that Wheatley had hardly been a factor this year and you'd be correct. But it was precisely this time last year that Brandon Merriweather began to step up and play a significant amount of snaps, which increased right through to the Super Bowl. And Wheatley was emerging at the right time to do the same. But the Pats are so banged up in the secondary right now that they went with a nickel package on only 22 of 77 downs last week and haven't employed a dime package in the last two weeks. There's not another team in the NFL that could withstand this kind of attrition and still be in the thick of the playoff hunt. All things considered, the 2008 season could end up being their proudest moment because where most teams would've packed it in by now and started playing for next season or for contracts, the Pats have hung in there, still fighting for a championship. So let the rest of the NFL come back here and take what's coming to them. The yellow bastards.

Bostonherald.com - A Boston cemetery worker who was supposed to prevent co-workers from stealing gas from a city pump brazenly kept his own Dodge van running for months on taxpayer-funded fuel before he got caught red-handed, the Herald has learned.  As many drivers struggled with $4 a gallon gas, Paul J. Hamm helped himself once a week at a Mount Hope Cemetery pump reserved for city vehicles, according to the Boston Finance Commission, the city watchdog that allegedly caught him. Hamm, who was assigned in April to keep his co-workers honest, resigned from his $57,000-a-year job Oct. 28 after being confronted with evidence of his alleged misdeeds. Hamm could not be reached for comment.  Hamm, a 22-year city employee who made nearly $80,000 last year with overtime, was able to allegedly siphon off fuel meant for cemetery equipment and vehicles because the city’s oversight was insufficient, Conley said. Hamm’s log ultimately was used to show he’d been ripping off Boston for months, Conley said. The stolen gas was charged to a diesel truck and the cemetery pump only dispenses regular gasoline. “He outfoxed himself in that regard,” Conley said.

Is this Paul Hamm the gymnast?  It must be right? How else can you explain a 22 year old making 80 fucking grand for guarding a gas pump at a cemetery unless it’s the former Olympic Gold medalist in the all around?    And even then it still makes no sense.  Listen, it would be one thing if Hamm actually worked in the cemetery.  I did that back in college and the pressure of getting everything ready for Memorial Day was almost too much to handle.   It got so intense I needed to fake like my weed wacker was malfunctioning just so I could collect my thoughts.   But this guy was just guarding gas.    No way he deserves 80 grand for that.  So maybe instead of worrying about punishing this kid we should be wondering how the fuck this job paid so much in the first place.  If only Menino wasn’t so busy worrying about newsrack legislation maybe we could get to the bottom of this.

(pic from Worcester Telegram)

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First of all this has to be the biggest crowd in the history of cross country running in Massachusetts right? I mean what the fuck? Wasn't there a football game or something going on? Anyway, I know what people are thinking. Wow, this is such an inspiration. This kid has the heart of a champion. He refused to give up and willed himself to the finish line. And I guess you could certainly make that argument. But then I remembered that this was only a 5K race. Umm, not to brag, but I've run 5 miles before. Seriously who pulls this shit in a 5K race? This is the crap you see at marathons and triathlons, not by people who run around the Charles River. So I think it's safe to say despite the big heart of "Let's Go St. Johns" this kid doesn't have a bright future in running.

PS - I like how his teammates patted him on the back as they ran by him. That was nice. And that lady who couldn't even bare to watch can calm down. It's not like he was dead.

- Thanks to Matt for the tip

More of the Terminator star here...

Who do you want to Wake Up with? Ub@barstoolsports.com