The best part of state employment is all the perks. Like on the first day when we got to clean dried blood off our desk (in fairness, it was under 3 inches of dust so it really wasn't readily visible). Or the fact that an office with a view (read: not ours) isn’t a view of the outside but a view of a window. With benefits like that, it's really hard to find anything to complain about. But, we'll try anyway.
We work in a 9 floor building and the brilliant individual who designed it, presumably for aesthetic reasons, decided it would be an excellent idea to put the majority of the elevators on the “first” as opposed to the ground floor. The placement of the elevators on the second floor requires the roughly 5 million (give or take) people who work in the building to get to that floor before making their way to their blood-cover, darkness filled offices. Normally, this isn't a problem due to the presence of 4 handy-dandy escalators that, despite that are not the engines of death they're made out to be.
They generally provide a smooth and safe passage. Until, of course, they break. Now, one could argue, to quote the great Mitch Hedberg, that "an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs." ("Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”) Not, if you work for the state, then you get this:
They generally provide a smooth and safe passage. Until, of course, they break. Now, one could argue, to quote the great Mitch Hedberg, that "an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs." ("Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”) Not, if you work for the state, then you get this:
Yeah, absurdly intense yellow signs warning you not to use the stairs. Not only does it ignore the fact that a moving escalator is significantly more dangerous than a stationary one. But, the alternatives to using the "broken" escalator involve either walking up a weird enclosed stairwell that's akin to a grain elevator or stuffing 400 people on an elevator that only seems to occasionally work properly. At its best the state should protect us from ourselves, at its worst, it protects us from the stairs.
In most buildings you’d expect an issue like that to be solved pretty quickly, right? Maybe a day to get repair person in. And another few days to fix it. Even if you have to order a part from China, that’s still like 4 or 5 days. Yet, there’s no indication they’ll be coming down anytime soon. So, we’ll continue to trudge up the grain elevator and thank the ineptitude of the State for ruining our f’n morning for five straight weeks.
In most buildings you’d expect an issue like that to be solved pretty quickly, right? Maybe a day to get repair person in. And another few days to fix it. Even if you have to order a part from China, that’s still like 4 or 5 days. Yet, there’s no indication they’ll be coming down anytime soon. So, we’ll continue to trudge up the grain elevator and thank the ineptitude of the State for ruining our f’n morning for five straight weeks.
On to over analyzing and discussing pretend, meaningless football.
1. Offense, Buffalo Bills, Bizarro World
Ryan Fitzpatrick, 264 yards, 3 TDs, 23 yards rushing.
Fred Jackson, 15 carries, 117 yards, 2 TDs.
Stevie Johnson, 8 for 96, 1 TD.
We recognize that to the extent our obsession with the Bills was ever funny or interesting it stopped being so a long time ago, but obsessions aren't easily forgotten. So, we'll continue to wonder when this is going to end. Fitzpatrick can't be this good, right? He has to have a 117 yard, 3 pick stinker in him at some point, doesn't he? We certainly hope midnight comes soon because we're highly uncomfortable living in a world where the Bills-Raiders game is the most exciting of the day and a guy from Harvard is one of fantasy's top scoring quarterbacks.
2. Denarius Moore, Wide Receiver, Oakland Raiders
Speaking of the Raiders. Rarely do we find ourselves in the middle of a fantasy draft trying to figure out who a player is. Not his spot on the depth chart, his previous season's stats or where he went to college. No, literally, who the player is. So when we did our draft this year and \someone by the name of "D. Moore" sat there conspicuously high on the remaining players queue, we were confused and intrigued. Thanks to the power of The Google, we were able to determine that he was a rookie out of Tennessee who was dazzling in training camp and, because he's a Raider, is ridiculously fast. We'd seen that before and after he ended up inactive in Week 1, many rightfully assumed that he was just a training camp wonder. The, in week two, with the Raiders "best" receivers (Jacoby Ford, Louis Murphy and Darrius Heyward-Bey) fighting injuries Moore got his chance and shined, shined, shined with 5 catches, 146 yards and a touchdown. He's got the physical tools to be good so take a flier on him this week to see how he looks when the more established guys get back. If he continues to put up numbers, learn his name.
3. Knee, Crushed Hopes, Your Fantasy Team
Rarely does an injury actually make us sad. They happen so often in football that the news just washes over us, barely noticed (unless its a Giant, then it sends us into a deep depression). But, on Sunday when we saw "knee injury, out for game" after Jamaal Charles' name, we felt sad. After "game" became "season", anyone who picked him in the Top 3 began convulsing wildly. Jamaal with the extra "a" was one of the rare top-level fantasy players who still represented hope and upside. If he could just get more carriers he was the next Chris Johnson. Now, instead of hope, it's more likely he's the next great runner who's career was derailed by injuries. It's a shame. The Chefs (as well as Charles' former owners) will likely call on the ancient spirits of evil and rouse Thomas Jones out of his tomb in the Black Pyramid.
4. Antonio Gates, TE, San Diego Superchargers;
0 catches, 0 yards, 1 target.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2011 pre-season #1 tight end! Don’t worry though, here’s what the guru’s at ESPN had to say:
Spin: Relax! Yes, we all know Gates got a big goose egg in Week 2, but it was the Patriots game plan to take him out of the mix and he even saw triple coverage at times. Few teams are going to have the audacity, or the talent, to pull that off and still win the game. Gates will be fine.
Relax? Really? You want us to relax after a player we had to take a round early to make sure we didn’t miss out and expected to help carry us back to the fantasy glory that has eluded us for too long, gives us as you put it “a big goose egg.” We can’t fucking relax, particularly, when he plays on a team that passed for 372 and that shit face, hold-out, loser V-Jax had 10 catches for 172 yards, the most he’s had since … well … forever. And to rub salt in our goddamn wounds, not one but two TEs from New England (plus that useless ass Ochocinco) outscored our guy. Obviously if we’re taking time out of our day to visit your website and read your glib little blurb, we care way to much about fantasy football and relaxing is not a viable option. So fuck him, fuck you and fuck you’re “spin.” At least until next week when Gates scores 2 TDs and goes back to being awesome.
5. Cam Newton, QB, Carolina Panthers;
This is already getting a little ridiculous. Two weeks in to his, now apparently destined to be stellar, career and our the newest member of the Man-Crush All Stars already has as many 400 yard passing games as Aaron Rodgers, Jim Kelly, The Dongslinger, John Elway and, most importantly, the immortal Neil Lomax (who does not speak for the trees) and has reinvigorated one of our original loves, THE REAL Steve Smith. Oh yeah, he also leads his team in rushing. Somehow Newton has seamlessly transferred the dynamism he showed on Saturdays to Sundays. Even if he turns the ball over, Carolina seems determined to let Newton do his thing and for fantasy owners, that means the ceiling to his rookie year production has officially been blown off. Make sure you don’t just dump your back-up but unless you have one of the top 6 guys, get him in your line-up right the hell now.
6. Arian Foster, RB, Houston Texans;
Injuries happen and the best a fantasy owner can hope for is to know if the guy is going to play or not. The worst is what happened on Sunday. When a Top 2 running back is listed as a starter for his team, he's a lock to be in your line-up. Unfortunately, when Gary Kubiak (a disciple of Shanahan’s school of fantasy annoyance) decides to keep said running back out for the entire second half of a game, where the team has a comfortable but not ridiculous lead and should have given him the ball 15 times, because of “fatigue”, a fantasy owner can be forgiven for wanting to drop an anvil on some one's head.
If we owned Foster, we'd be a little worried at this point. Hamstrings are tricky, even when they seem healed one bad move and its back to square one, and his back-up (former back-up?) Ben Tate now has back-to-back 20 carry, 100 yard games and, at this point. The reign of the Arian Nation could be over before it even had a chance to get annoying (actually we were annoyed after 2 games last year but whatever). Anit-awesomeness.
If we owned Foster, we'd be a little worried at this point. Hamstrings are tricky, even when they seem healed one bad move and its back to square one, and his back-up (former back-up?) Ben Tate now has back-to-back 20 carry, 100 yard games and, at this point. The reign of the Arian Nation could be over before it even had a chance to get annoying (actually we were annoyed after 2 games last year but whatever). Anit-awesomeness.
7. Felix Jones and Shonn Green, Running Backs, Disappointing All Stars
For years, we’ve been treated to headlines like “Shonn Greene: Ready to Break Out” and "Felix Jones: Won’t Suck as Bad This Year.” Then, two weeks into the season those guys are losing carriers to half-dead LT or fighting yet another nagging taint injury, you realize the reason they’re still supposed to break out is because they’ve never really been any good. This year, the Cowboys were supposed to have a dynamic offense and with MBIII finally gone, this was going to be Jones' year. Everyone was pumped. Now, with 69 yards in two weeks and a 2.7 yard per carry average, not so much. As for Greene, aren’t the Jets supposed to be all “ground and pound”? At least that’s what they tell us they are. What kind of smash mouth team with a bruising running back only gets 49 yards in a 32-3 route? One's that talk to much, we guess. Hype-monsters like these guys are the ones that ruin your draft when you don’t get them, your team when you do, and your day after you fall for it year after year.
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