CS85

God, I hate April first.

I honestly expected a lot worse.

Sodboy said as much, these grifting pieces of crap all seem to follow the same playbook.

That puts the Coyotes within a few million of being equivalent in value to the net worth of Gordon Ramsay. Ask the NHL - would you rather exclusively own Gordon Ramsay in all professional capacities and have around $10M in loose cash to line some pockets and keep the lights on? Or would you prefer to have, ya know, the Coyotes?

This was the greatest. For a split second after the vortex was opened you can hear some guy taking a gentle, meaty breath before turning up the basketball game he had on in the same room.

These sure suck. I have nothing good to say. 0 stars.

Sea Foam is awesome. I'd put it right there with Totino's on my lists of stuff I'd buy without question.

We gotta talk about something while we stitch doilies, eat coffee cake, and sip our tea.

So my office calls and says they want me to return to work for a few months. They've got a hotel a couple miles away from the office all outfitted for us. They put in all this work, money, and effort to get as many of the vital employees back to the building. They say they need me, it wouldn't be the same without me, the company'd go under. There's a lot riding on me coming back. They tell me they've got premium vending machines and food trucks that'll constantly be in and out of the parking lots and cafeteria and all of it free of charge; I get a heavy-duty laptop bag with the company logo on it, I get the premium parking spot, and it would absolutely factor into me not only keeping my job during a time of financial uncertainty, but likely earning me a hefty raise afterward because of my participation. Plus they're putting us in a swanky hotel, and family visits are totally an option! How could I say no? They do admit that yeah, I could just stay home and get my paychecks for no work at all, but not only is that a bad look, it really shows where I put my priorities to my co-workers. They're choosing to come back to the office, they're willing to wear masks, get routinely tested, and deal with the inconvenience and discomfort -- why am I better than that? And they also tell me that I definitely earned my position in this company. I've worked hard, put in the hours, built the necessary bridges and skillsets, so why put that at risk? Why open the opportunity for somebody younger, somebody cheaper to come in who is willing to fill my absences, and potentially do my tasks better than me, all while the higher-ups see that I'm sitting at home playing on my Nintendo Switch collecting a full-time paycheck. So in spite of my wife's objections, I tell her I'm gonna head into the office to show my loyalty, and give up a few months at home with her and our dogs so that I can do right by my employer and put my best foot forward. I see a bunch of my coworkers there at the hotel when I arrive, and we get about going to work. We find out pretty much right away that things aren't quite what they seem. The premium vending machines and food trucks? They're just a local sandwich place bringing the same selection of ham or turkey with a bag of plain lays every afternoon, and it's certainly not free of charge. The heavy duty laptop bag is made of some sort of cheap fibers that had holes in it after only a couple weeks. The premium parking they promised is already being used by the executive committee and their project managers, so we all park in the rear like we used to anyway, and the hotel they put us in is alright, I suppose, but the minifridge reeks and there's been construction outside my tiny window every morning. Plus they put a freeze on raises for at least a calendar year. We asked about having our families visit us, but the management of our company and the hotel could never make it work, and they gave us a shrug-off, so we dropped the matter. But hey, I put on my mask, I do the temperature checks, and I do my job the best I can. I'm getting paid, after all, and a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do. After a couple months, time seems to stop. We can't go anywhere but maybe a few different places in our hotel or the office building, but even that's heavily restricted, and we all miss our families, who we're not allowed to see. It's not permanent, so we're all looking forward to our opportunity to go home, but it's definitely not what was promised. This guy, a local reporter, calls around and says he's curious how our company is treating us, promising complete confidentiality. A lot of us got together and discussed what we should do. We all agreed that our company kind of blew smoke up our asses about all this, especially as concerns a lot of guys at home with their families, looking pretty smart and getting paid for declining the offer, but you know what we did? We told that reporter to GO TO HELL, because our company paid us, and when you get money, you're not allowed to complain. That's the law. If you break that law, you should be shot and killed. You're weak. You're pathetic. And the next time my company wants me to leave my family for 3-4 months and con me into staying in a low-rent living experience, by god I'm gonna do it, and I'm not gonna complain, because I got money. And lotsa people don't have money, and don't have jobs, so they do get to complain. So if I want to complain, I gotta get fired and be broke. Which sucks, because I really want to complain, but I'm not a wimpy sissyman. Anyways, I'm going back to work now. Decided I'm gonna walk between the hotel and the office instead of driving. Only thing is, I'd better not run into that homeless guy I usually see begging for change. "I got no job, I got no money, wah me, waaaah me." Lazy piece of crap - all he ever does is complain.

Bunch of grizzled, “uphill both ways” takes.

ESPN has a great read on how the NHL conned players into going to Edmonton's bubble which was, by one account, a prison with a Tim Horton's truck in its exercise yard. https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/29939605/nhl-bubble-confidential-go-toronto-edmonton-playoff-hubs "Even playing golf was a hassle," one Western Conference player said. "You have to set up a golf time. It has to be an exact time, but it has to be everybody or nobody. Realistically, what team is going to set up a full-team golf outing between Games 3 and 4 in the second round?" It wasn't just the lack of golf trips that irked players. "They promised us excursions: 'Oh, we're going to have fly fishing and golf, a golf course just for us -- you can go whenever you want -- and a field,'" a Western Conference player said. "We went to the field one time. It was a fight to even golf once. And please let me know if you talk to anyone who went fly fishing." In fact, fly fishing became a punchline. "In the little brochure they sent, there was a picture of a man fly fishing in the mountains, and one of the guys was like, 'Where did they get this picture of the mountains? The mountains are three hours away,'" a Western Conference player said.

Most AM sports talk radio and it’s remaining listenership considers 1993 to be an incredibly progressive time to be stuck in. McNeil was a meathead oaf who bridged or returned a lot of old guard listeners to the fold after being run out by Bernstein’s admittedly wearisome “I’m smarter than you and your politics are horrifying” schtick, as well as firing Jason Goff for being too black and too basketball-y. Not that he was that great of a host, but I digress. WSCR is one of the most juvenile, needlessly dramatic things I follow. Maybe that’s all of sports talk radio simply is collectively that way. Julie earned my checkout moment when she did the cringeworthy video of having men read mean tweets to her face.

As soon as I saw Julie DiCaro tweeted a typo blurb about Dan McNeil's firing and subsequently linked to a pity shower article at her new home of Deadspin, I realized how well and truly deceased that site is. Julie is a fine example of somebody who makes an interesting guest and has some fairly decent thoughts in writing, but has woven the unique banner of "I'm a larger woman, a lawyer, and a true sports fan" into an obnoxiously woke victim complex that gives the modern Deadspin an at-a-glance virtue polish that falls through the moment you hear her talk. She's not at all talented at being a professional radio personality, and I hate that she constantly gets hired because she checks all the boxes except the ones that make for a good product. It looked bad for the already kind of terrible WSCR to make her part of the pandemic firings, but just because Dan McNeil is an idiot doesn't mean she gets to dance on the corpse of his career. I doubt he had anything to do with her firing, and I have doubts that sexism or other similar prejudice resulted in her losing her job. I think she's an objectively poor radio host. But hey, the poster child for compulsive gambler/alky/depressed sports buffoon tweets an idiotic thing, it's time to text Les Grobstein to sleepily send you the internal memo so she can wheel out the shell of Deadspin, plunk a few ad click opportunities in there, and look like an insider for a day or three.

I mean c'mon, JayMac. It's America's Team we're talking about here! Man up! This isn't some trivial crap...this is Dallas Cowboys football, and we can't have a sissy leading the squad.

Do the stars have any significance?

I think they were trying to go for some pattern to make sure the latest two cup banners are in the middle, but when the banners are identical, it renders this idea pointless.

You’re the broadcasting advice capital of the forum!

They photoshopped everybody to be the same height and it gives me a dwarfism illusion.

After you win the scratch-off ticket contest, which I think they run every couple of weeks, you qualify for the monthly newsletter. There are several vouchers in every issue that you need to put your username on, mail those back to the CCSLC P.O. box, and if you're lucky they'll Sharpie your username onto a ping pong ball for the bi-annual Mod Drawing. If your ping-pong ball gets selected, there's a 10-week vetting period where existing mods will go through your post history, and if that goes well they will mail you a parchment note wrapped around a severed goat hoof. The hoof is purely ornamental, but the parchment note has the coordinates for the next winter's ModMoot, held on some remote location which I believe is near Vancouver Island. The mods then, insofar as I have heard, perform various manners of blood ritual to channel the wisdom of all previous mods, and Creamer himself makes a rare appearance to scatter bones and pebbles onto a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. Should the moon and omens all be in your favor, they'll probably make you a mod. Majestic XII fact checkers have determined that this post contains information that is false. (Except for the parts about the hoof and the island.)

I'm hoping they follow The Athletic's trend of having about 30 different opportunities during the calendar year to pay below half-price and perhaps I'll join up.

Topical: MOD EDIT