Red Sox Fire Valentine; City Commits Collective Suicide

That color is actually a Charles River of blood (AP).

Boston, MA, October 4 (AP) – Following the Boston Red Sox’s worst season since 1965, the citizens of the Massachusetts capital all killed themselves Wednesday and Thursday.

The team had been plagued by injuries and poor performances all season, while tension developed early between newly hired manager Bobby Valentine and some of the veteran players. Red Sox management dismissed Valentine today, with a year remaining on his contract, then joined the rest of the city in an orgy of self immolation, disembowelment, slit wrists, hanging, jumping off tall buildings and taking a bath with a toaster.

“Goodbye, cruel baseball world,” cried Alfred O’Donnell, 38, a lifelong Sox fan and father of two, as he prepared to inject himself and his family with massive overdoses of heroin. “My children, I do this to spare you from the agony that would surely be yours for ages to come.”

The self-killing spree began on Monday, after the hated New York Yankees, the team’s longtime nemesis, clobbered the Sox in New York, 10-2. Any thought of salvaging at least some dignity by beating the Bronx Bombers disappeared in a savage puff of smoke as the Yankees piled on the hits. Boston fans began jumping in front of oncoming T Transit trains as soon as the last out was recorded. Police statistics are sketchy, as the officers normally tasked with maintaining the data opted to off themselves with their service revolvers rather than continue to inhabit a world in which there is no justice.

Another disappointing loss on Tuesday pushed thousands more over the edge. Four hundred downtown businesses and sixty thousand prominent individuals took out a full-page ad in the Boston Globe announcing their intention to commit mass suicide by various means over the course of the next day if the Sox did not at least avoid a crushing series sweep at the hands of the Evil Empire.

The final game began in a promising fashion, as Cody Ross singled in a run in the top of the first inning, and Bostonians looked at their razor blades and katana swords with slightly less eagerness. The moment lasted about forty seconds, as Ross was caught stealing to end the inning, and the team would only add one more run over then next eight. The Yankees, meanwhile, answered with fourteen of their own. Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson each hit two home runs, with the latter’s second blast giving the Yankees 245 homers for the the season, a team record.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, could barely manage to maintain their will to live, let alone put up a fight. At the team’s headquarters, upper management held a dour meeting the following morning to discuss whether they should bother doing anything beyond dismissing Valentine before they all went home and drank bleach.

No one in Boston was available for comment.

Please Like Mightier than the Pen on Facebook. Especially if you’re a Yankees fan. Smug jerk.

The Blogging Frustration Proficiency Quiz

Please Like Mightier than the Pen on Facebook. The valid reasons for not doing so are:
(a) You have already done so.
(b) You work for Google, and are required by company policy to believe that Google+ is so vastly superior to Facebook that even having a Facebook account for non-work purposes would be ridiculous. Of course that just means you have to share this stuff on Google+, which we don’t exactly see you doing.
(c) You have fewer Facebook friends than Bill Buckner, so what’s the point?
(d) You don’t like anything. Not even puppies, chocolate or music.

The Media: Just the Plural for Medium – as in Fortune Teller

Headlines as Appearing in:
The New York Times	The New York Post	Your High School Newspaper	The National Enquirer
Cuomo’s First Nine Months in Office a Modest Success	Guv Giving It All	Andrew Cuomo Elected Governor of NY (the State)	Cuomo Family Avoids Staying at Haunted Executive Mansion
Osama Bin Laden Killed in Commando Raid	We Got Him!	Who Is Osama Bin Laden?	Navy SEAL Team Six Kills Two-Headed Elvis Clone at Bin Laden Compound
Obama Presses Israel on Settlements	Prez to Bibi: Stop It	Debating Team Debates Israel vs. Palestine	Obama Proves He’s a Muslim
Yankees Clinch Division; Red Sox Eliminated	Yanks Top Sux -Again	Cougars Beat Westville High	Ghost of Babe Ruth Runs Amok in Fenway Clubhouse
Irene Damage Estimated at $4 Billion	Hizzoner: Send Irene Bill to Feds	Mrs. Miller Remembers 1985 Hurricane Gloria	NASA Steered Hurricane to NYC
Stock Market Drops 8%	Stocks Tumble, Execs Grumble	Teachers in Foul Mood Over Something or Other Regarding “Pensions”	Invisible Hand Seen over NY Stock Exchange Floor
Gunman Kills 10 in Memphis Campus Shooting Spree	Redneck Rampage: 10 Dead	Student Suspended for Bringing Fake Gun to School	Giant Anaconda Devours Children on Way to School
Idaho Ex-Governor Convicted of Embezzlement, Breach of Trust	Book Thrown at Boise Bookie	Betting Pool Arises over Anticipated Firing Date of Chemistry Teacher	Possessed Jury Calls for Capital Punishment in Civil Lawsuits
Pollution Depresses Economy Dependent on River Fish	PCBs Pound Palookaville	A Reminder to Wash Hands after Using the Bathroom	Godzilla’s Return Imminent, Say Government Scientists
US Strips Former Death Camp Guard of Citizenship	Ex-Nazi Extradition	Mr. Parker Lectures on Prejudice	Auschwitz Guard Reincarnated as Lamp Post
Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple, Dead at 56	Jobs, Well, Done	A Portrait of an American Entrepreneur by Jamie Howard (9th grade)	Will of Steve Jobs Found Scrawled in Blood on Skin of Missing IBM Exec
2 Americans Awarded Nobel Prize for Economics	U.S.A.! U.S.A.!	Senior Awards Ceremony Canceled	Economists Predict Third, Fourth and Fifth Great Depressions before 2015
Heat Trade James Back to Cleveland	LeBron Comes Crying Home	Coach’s Arrest Delays Varsity Tryouts	‘I Learned Basketball from Himmler,’ Says Drunk LeBron
NASA Announces Discovery of New Earth-Like Planet	Life Out There?	Pluto No Longer a Planet	Life Out There!

The Boston Red Sox: Charlie Brown to a Football-Wielding Lucy

Since I’ve failed miserably at generating a new post today, I’ll simply refer y’all to an ever-more-relevant post from August 6, back when the Boston Red Sox were sitting pretty atop the American League East. I’m going to sleep. Wake me up when the World Series is over.

Raising Kids vs. Rooting for the Red Sox: a Comparison

	Children	The Boston Red Sox
Financial return on investment	Ties of questionable taste for Father’s Day	Ticket stubs; memorabilia of questionable taste
Reward for continued faith	Another pierced body part	Bill Buckner; Aaron Boone
Insurmountable obstacles that eventually, somehow, become manageable once they’re over	Toilet training; abstinence from homework; adolescence; your own hopeless parental dorkitude	October
Associated simple pleasures	Dr. Suess; Sandra Boynton; the kid’s cognitive and intellectual milestones	Watching the Yankees get beaten by other teams; reminding Yankee fans of 2004
Notable milestones	Graduation; wedding; grandchildren	Snagging tickets; following a bunch of millionaires you will never meet, whose collective athletic achievements in Boston somehow have some bearing on your life merely by virtue of your wanting the Sox to win
Methods of reminiscing with/about	Beer; old photos	Beer; old photos
Evidence of your dedication to their proper development	Harsh words when necessary	Harsh words on radio call-in shows
Advice you’ve given repeatedly, only to have them ignore, with predictably disastrous results	“If you keep eating so much candy you’ll get cavities”	“Take Pedro out! Go to the bullpen! Take Pedro out! GODDAMNIT! TAKE PEDRO OUT!” ”AAAAAAAAAGH! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!”
Reaction to substance abuse	“You’d better get yourself into rehab, kid.”	“Blah blah blah A-rod blah blah blah.”
Derek Jeter	Now there’s a role model.	Jeter sucks!
When achievement or behavior deteriorates	Show loving concern, support; provide help	“Trade the worthless son of a bitch.”
Effect of missed opportunities	Maturity;  character development	Constant revisiting of Babe Ruth deal
Reasons to keep investing emotionally	Profound sense of giving; satisfaction from nurturing a person and relationship of eternal value	Because the faceless corporation that is a Major League Baseball team really gives a crap for you, the individual fan, beyond the dollar value you represent.

Hey, Beantown (Someone’s Losing a Game)

Hey, Moron.

(Someone’s calling my name.)

Hey, Moron.

(And I hear it again.)

You’re wanted on the telephone.

(If it isn’t geek-face, I’m not home.)

Thus goes part of the sing-song chant that occupied many of us on portions of long bus trips during our childhood. The part quoted above remains free of dispute.

Where the controversy comes in, however, is the drivel my sons brought home today from day camp. I shall not name names, but it appears that the director of the camp comes from a certain city in Massachusetts with pretensions to sports grandeur and a propensity for thinking that the world-class academic institutions in and around its metropolitan area somehow grant it an aura of justified snobbitude. This region, it appears, fairly teems with corrupt versions of children’s playground and bus-ride chants.

I shall not dignify the perverse “version” of the song (it’s a “version” the same way cancer is a “version” of a healthy cell) by reproducing it here. I shall, however, once and for all, issue the authoritative – nay, the only – legitimate text, to which you must all hereafter adhere, hear?

The ignorant among you, please note: the terms “moron” and “geek-face” can also be exchanged for the actual given names of people present; in fact it was thus practiced most of the time, when girls were the main participants. The boys, however, played a game-within-a-game: finding a sufficiently provocative or offensive appellation that also had the proper number of syllables and syllabic stress. Fagot, ___head, loser, dorkwad, etc. were always popular. At some point the actual identity of the next participant became less important.

Hey, Loser.

(Someone’s calling my name.)

Hey, Loser.

(And I hear it again.)

You’re wanted on the telephone.

(If it isn’t Stupid, I’m not home.)

With a rick-tick-tickety-tick
DING DONG
This song is makin’ me sick
DING DONG
Hey, Stupid…

Next time, we shall address the episode of a theft of some cookies from their storage receptacle, and the way the children play the blame game all the way to the museum, with remarkable equanimity and sense of rhythm.