Holy Fricken Crap

So, you're probably wondering what the damn hold up has been and why The Empire has been so laid back in the production of quality snarkitude. Well, it's because WE'RE FREAKING THE HELL OUT ABOUT THE SUPERBOWL.

Let's get a few things straight about XL -

First of all, I love Jerome Bettis. If I could, I would take him home and feed him meat everyday just so we could chill out and watch westerns in Clint Eastwood costumes. He is My Bus, The Bus, the Super Bus. But the hype over him going home to Detroit is about the EAT THE WORLD! The Empire hates hype. We hate predictors, we hate analysts, and we sure as hell hate people who trash talk before the game. So, all this "career ending at home in the super bowl... yada yada yada," is just stinking of jinxing. Why wont they stop?! The Empire will be fingernail-less by Saturday afternoon if the sports media doesn't reel it in a bit.

2ndly- Bengals fans can bite my ass. If I have to listen to one more Bungal fan tell me that those orangy chumps would be in the big game if Palmer hadn't been hurt, I will barf in my hands. No one can speculate that. If Palmer wasn't hurt there isn't even a guarantee that the Bengals could have beaten the Steelers, let alone whoever they would have had to play in the next two rounds. For crying out loud, they had a 10 point lead at the half! Last I heard, you needed defense to win in the playoffs, not just a pretty quarterback. Just ask Indy.

3rdly- I still think Tom Brady is a homogoatlover. Yes, I appreciate that my Pats-loving friends were rooting for the black and gold in the divisional and championship games, but let's be honest; I still really don't like that pretty boy suckmaster. I will never like him. He will always remind me of slowly curdling milk.

4thly- I respect Mike Holmgren. He's a good coach with a good record and a good rep. He's no Cowher, but he ain't Brian Billick either.

5thly- Detroit is still the ghetto. Yeah, it's a fun place to have such a historical game but let's not lose sight of the motor city's exceptional talent for suckitude of late.

6thly- THIS WEEK NEEDS TO GO A HELL OF A LOT FASTER!

and finally- I hope and pray my team wins. GO STEELERS!

Running on Faith (sorry, I can't be snarky today)

It occurred to me today that, of all the things we expect of death, we are seldom prepared to welcome it into our lives. That statement probably seems a bit oxymoronic but I'm not talking about accepting one's own death, I'm referring to accepting a death that tolls on us.

It’s easy to rationalize that the death of an elderly or sick person is inevitable or expected but somehow people seem to perpetually hold onto the hope that death will never come. At least it seems that way. How else can we explain away the sudden pain, anger, and anguish that follows. Sure, being shocked by a sudden death makes sense. But what of the slowly approaching death? Why are we never prepared?

Sheesh! If I could answer that question, you'd be reading this in a $24.95 soft cover, stamped by the Oprah Book Club. I have no idea why man, over thousands of years of civilization, has never bothered to properly prepare himself for the inevitable. We teach children of heaven and hell, and we teach adolescents about drugs, alcohol, and sexually transmitted plague, but we never stop to say, "By the way, people are going to die all around you for your entire life and you'll have absolutely no fucking clue how to reason it away."

The truth is, we cannot ever prepare for the unexplainable. Most people need the answers to see the reasons. We diagnose bad weather with global warming. We excuse psychosis with chemical imbalance. We site social ill when justifying crime. But we can't explain death. We can't even explain life. Billions of people walk around every single day wondering "why."

Well, I give up. We'll never know why. I suppose if we ever did know, we'd find a way to figure out why not.

The way I see it, since we can't figure things out, we have two options. We can be completely apathetic (and at the same time completely selfish because, let's face it, that's what true apathy is) or you can just take your lumps like a beat dog.

The only true pleasures in life are love and serenity and you couldn't properly define them with a thousand pens and a million learned scholars. These pillars of humanity are abstracts. So we're stuck accepting (or not) that there are only two constants, death and taxes - and I'm not getting into taxes.

All in all, we don't have it so bad though. We distract ourselves with luxuries, material pursuits, and -thank goodness- family. Thankfully we only encounter death from time to time and it sucks. We deal with it in our own ways and we move on. Each scar gives us a new perspective on things. Each moment of despair exposes a new piece of wisdom. And, with any luck, we find a way to -as the song goes- keep on keepin' on.

Rest in peace, Ruth. I will truly miss you. I pray that losing you will somehow teach me how to live and love better.

The Year of Cool Moss

So, here we are in 2006. It has indeed been quite a while since The Empire let some hot air fly out into the vast empties of the world wide web but it's been said that if one has nothing good to say, one should keep his big fat pie hole shut.

I would like extend sincere apologies to any of the faithful who felt abandonned over the past several weeks, but let's be frank, all 8 of them had busy holidays too.

Enough babbling, on to the important stuff.

You're probably wondering what the hell "the year of cool moss" means. Well, it's pretty abstract but basic. A few weeks ago Mr. Bigg put a question to me. He said, "...is there anything you don't take seriously?"

Anything I don't take seriously?!?! Now, I didn't want to get into a semantic debate over prioritizing angst so, I opted against launching into a classic Empire-style tirade but the inquiry really got me thinking. Is there anything I don't take seriously? Furthermore, what's the point of taking things so seriously?

You can go through this life in willful ignorance just chugging along, wading through the media feces and social trends, disregarding what you want in favor of what you're told is best for you, and not taking anything seriously becuase you'd rather be rushing home in time to catch the reality television flavor of the month. But what kind of satisfaction does that offer? One answer could be, low blood pressure. Sure, people who don't take things seriously seldom get aggrivated and out of hand. But at the same time, if you don't take anything seriously, you end up in a passionless rut.

But Mr. Bigg did make me question the side effects of being a trigger happy critic of everything. It takes a lot out of a man to be constantly searching for a witty and sardonic angle of critique for the social ill of the day. It's just plain exhausting.

So, here's what we're going for in 2006. Cool Moss!

Cool Moss is; not crying over spilled milk, not crying over bungled politics, not throwing a bottle of Budweiser at the television set if you catch your girlfriend watching Laguna Beach. Cool Moss is; taking an afternoon off when you feel yourself losing your edge at work, accepting the fact that people that piss you off are not always doing it on purpose, enjoying it when your life is treating you well. Cool Moss is the state of being comfortable in the face embittered surroundings. Cool Moss is keeping your head when those all about you are losing theirs (yeah, I know that one is cliche.) And most importantly, Cool Moss is; killing them with comedy.

It's not a resolution. It's not a new dogma. It's not even a new outlook on life. It's just a neat little way of reminding yourself who number one is. And the next time the grocerie clerk short changes you, or your mother criticizes your lifestyle, or some guy on the street just ticks you off by looking strange, trying to say it - out loud if you can.

cool moss

And just to clarify, The Empire still firmly believes in ruthlessly criticizing, we're just going to try doing it in a cooler more laid back kind of way.