A Brief Thought: Homophobic Humor & the American Liberal Crisis of Conscience - Link

Read "A Brief Thought: Homophobic Humor & the American Liberal Crisis of Conscience" here.

- nina

Frontrunning with Extra Vigorish: Week 3 NFL Picks

Editor’s note: well, we’re late again; despite giving myself two whole extra days to get this week’s picks column ready — here I am on Saturday afternoon typing away furiously with the clock ticking and the tiny fascist editor inside my head screaming bloody murder.

Unfortunately, this once again means no introductory story but I have been assured by numerous readers that roughly four thousand words worth of humors NFL picks are good enough for the weeks where that’s all I have time for. I thank you for your patience and I’d like to inform concerned readers that my cat Ginger has actually turned a few small corners and miraculously is in notably better shape than when I first brought her up here on this website. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we have a vet appointment on Monday and it seems like all the extra love and attention might’ve worked a minor miracle for my beloved kitty; it’s been a good week in my family and truthfully my difficulty finishing this column was more about a nagging case of writer’s block than anything else.

At this point, I’ll refrain from making any promises about the return of the Gambler and our intro stories; on weeks where I have time and inspiration I’ll write one, on weeks where I don’t, I’ll focus on making a few more picks to compensate — despite all outward appearances, I’ve learned that writing fiction under a deadline is actually quite hard sometimes.

As always picks are made against the Pinnacle line at the time I write the column, our choice to win is listed first and home teams are printed in all caps. Please be reminded this website is not responsible in any way if you take gambling advice from a deranged madwoman who still hasn’t managed to break .500 on a week this season; at this point we’re subsidizing Vegas with “the vig” each week — or we would be, if we were actually gambling officer.

PATRIOTS (-1) over Texans:

During last week’s column, I blithely suggested that “New England could promise to hold a bloody punt, pass and kick contest at halftime to see who gets to play quarterback for the rest of the game and I’d still be picking them” — which as it turns out, is precisely what happened last Sunday when the Patriot’s latest attempt at cloning Tom Brady was slammed hard into the dirt and Jimmy “I’m still looking this shit up every time I have to spell it” Garoppolo went down with a fucked up shoulder.

Reports indicate that Garoppolo is technically dressing for this game as the backup QB but that’s pretty much entirely because Bill Belichick is a stone cold mutherfucker with a long, long memory and Jimmy is hoping to someday succeed Tom Brady in New England; he absolutely cannot fucking play after folding his goddamn throwing wing up like that just four days ago and everyone (including the Texans) knows it. Dutifully, I have spent parts of the past three days watching all nine (yes, nine) passes something or someone called Jacoby Brissett threw against Miami last week on loop like every other deranged gambling addict in the country and I can say with some certainty that Brissett is basically terrible; at least for the moment.

This is a problem, because the Patriots are facing off against a devastating pass rush from a Texans front seven that can be best described as a “pack of psycho, fucked-up butchers” who just happen to play football; Brissett’s family should probably consider taking out a goddamn life insurance policy under an assumed name at this point because the rookie is going to get hit hard and often by a defense that knows New England doesn’t have another “real” quarterback available for this game. Don’t expect the run game to help out much either; the Texans defense is vulnerable to speed when they over-pursue but they eat lard-ass power backs like Legarrette Blount for fucking breakfast on the regular — New England is going to have to win this game in the air, with a rookie 3rd-round QB throwing at least twenty-five passes.

The Texans have prepared all summer for this game; they dropped $72M on a goddamn Ent who plays quarterback just because he beat the Patriots in Denver last year, they’ve known for months they wouldn’t have to face Tom Brady and just about everyone on the fucking planet is assuming they’ll get the job done against a team that might seriously be starting Julian Edelman at QB by the fourth quarter.

This is of course, exactly why the Patriots are going to win this game outright on Thursday Night Football after Bill Belichick drags their asses to a “ho-hum” victory through a combination of dark magic, the ritual sacrifice of a practice squad punter and sheer, unbridled assholery.

I told you folks last week, I’m done losing money because I forgot about Dre.

DOLPHINS (+10) over Browns:

Look, I really don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about this game because objectively, it’s going to be a goddamn crime against football and if you’re the type of person who can actually sit through a contest this fucking terrible from start to completion — you’ve got way damn bigger problems than a ten point Dolphins spread.

I’d merely like to point out that this game represents a reasoned violation of one of our “mostly immutable” rules of wagering; Miami has in no way shape or goddamn form proven that they’re capable of covering a ten point spread and under normal circumstances I’d slam Cleveland so hard here, I’d end up in traction — which is basically where most of the Browns best players are right now and therein lies the problem.

Over the past two seasons we’ve been rewarded by picking Cleveland to cover when shockingly competent Browns QB Josh McCown is playing but he apparently snapped his collarbone like a deep-fried chicken wing (again) last week and the Browns are starting a rookie QB (Cody Kessler) that even management admits is nowhere near ready to play at the bloody NFL level. The Browns are now so desperate at the most important position in football that they actually signed the quarterback-like substance and accomplished clipboard warrior Charlie fucking Whitehurst to back up Kessler; despite the former having proven conclusively over his eleven year career that having Chuck Whitehurst at quarterback is pretty much exactly the same goddamn thing as having no quarterback at all.

The Dolphins don’t really deserve our faith this Sunday, but I’m not even sure the Browns can actually score on offense at this point and Cleveland is already staring at a long, painful year of absolutely fucking brutal tanking; in week three of the 2016 season.

Read the rest of the article on ninaillingworth.com now…

New “Deluxe” Wall of Shame Update: Jonathan Capehart Edition

Editor’s note: well, we’re finally here – after several months and literally dozens of requests, the “illustrious” Jonathan Capehart has finally joined our other “distinguished’ honorees on the Wall of Shame. 

Initially, I’d resisted adding Capehart to the wall because while there is no question whatsoever that he’s an insipid, partisan shill who openly spreads disinformation for the Democratic Party at virtually every possible opportunity; his method of doing so is so staggeringly banal, robotic and soulless to the point of being literally “un-funny.” To paraphrase a much better writer than myself, Jonathan Capehart is how “the whole hep world would use Twitter if the fascists on Madison Avenue ever completely won the war for our hearts and minds;” the guy is a walking, talking, bullshiting infomercial for the Democratic Party – certainly worthy of scorn, but not really “Wall of Shame” material in the classical sense. 

Imaging my surprise then when I typed Jonathan’s name up in the ol’ Google search machine and the magic of the internet spit back clear evidence that Capehart had spent the better part of February  falsely smearing Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party and then actually fucking married into it when he tied the knot with longtime boyfriend Nick Schmit (Assistant Chief of Protocol at the State Department) in May. It would seem that there’s a calculating political operative somewhere behind Capehart’s dull, vacant eyes; which is a problem when you’re supposed to be a fucking journalist and you write for something called the “PostPartisan Blog.” 

Of course, the problem of Capehart’s insipid and quite frankly boring, advertisement quality tweets still remains, but I’ve tried to address this by presenting a larger number of Jonathan’s tweets to highlight the sheer volume of mindlessly stupid shilling for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party that he engages in:

Read the rest of the article on ninaillingworth.com today...

Third Party Purgatory: Election 2016 Meme Collection

Editor’s note: so, after three consecutive days of insomnia finally caught up with me; I passed out roughly ten minutes after the football game ended on Thursday night and into a nine hour coma. I’m currently working on another couple of essays for release in the comings weeks – but after cranking out over 10K words in the last seven or so days, I’m feeling a little sluggish. 

In the meantime, here’s a small meme collection focused on third party candidates that I threw together after Gary Johnson’s now-infamous “what’s Aleppo” comment on MSNBC’s typically dreadful Morning Joe show. While the moment was amusing, I should like to note that the greater tragedy in all of this is that the American people as a whole have no goddamn clue “what Aleppo is” either because the news media is largely disinterested in reporting the horrific consequences of supporting “anyone who hates Assad” in Syria. Even the New York Times is clueless; they were forced to issue two separate corrections in a journalistic shitshow that actively demonstrates the America media’s total lack of fucking interest in reporting on the devastating war being waged in Syria right now.

As with all the comedy meme collections on this site; the primary goal here was humor, but each of these memes is based loosely on some incident in the news – if you click on the image, you’ll be taken to a story that inspired the meme in some way.

Read the rest of the article on ninaillingworth.com now... 

- Nina

Stalag 2016: Week 1 NFL Picks

“Good god man, of fucking course not – you know full damn well that my idea of fantasy football is fifteen minutes alone in a locked, windowless room with the Ford Family and a goddamn chainsaw” I replied, slamming the car door shut and moving towards the store.

“And just what in the name of fucking christ is a harambe by the way?”

* * * * *

Panthers (-3) over BRONCOS:

Look, let’s just get one goddamn thing absolutely fucking clear before we talk about this game; Thursday Night Football is an abomination against all that is right, pure and true in this exulted national pastime that also happens to slowly turn grown men’s brains into a scarred mass of dysfunctional, bleeding hamburger. The games are notoriously lousy, having to start the NFL schedule in the middle of the week plays absolute hell with bookies and the only reason the league insists on trotting out an inferior product every Thursday night is because advertisers are preternaturally attracted to prime-time, pro football; no matter how shitty the games are.

With all of that having been noted however, this match-up is probably about as good as it gets on Thursday Night Football as it features a rematch of last year’s Superbowl and arguably the best defense in each respective conference. The Broncos won that game 24-10 but unfortunately for them, they’re replacing a future Hall of Famer at the most important position in professional football with a guy who may well be asking you if you want fries with your Big Mac in three years.

Frankly, I have no fucking idea how good Trevor Siemian is, you have no fucking idea how good Trevor Siemian is – hell, Trevor’s own damn mother probably has no fucking idea how good he is either. What I do know is that the last time a seventh round draft pick with a grand fucking total of one season and one snap under his belt successfully replaced a two-time Superbowl winning, Hall of Fame quarterback was – well, probably fucking never; I’m certainly not looking that shit up. Both teams have lost high performance, mutant freak athletes on the defensive side of the ball this offseason but only one of these squads has a 6’5, 230lb quarterback who single-handedly declared America “beyond” racism this summer in an interview with GQ magazine. Thanks Cam; that should totally solve everything buddy.

For those of you keeping score at home – this week’s official “White America Cam Newton Approval Rating” is “Doug Williams” with a side of “not Colin Kaepernick.”

Read the rest of the article here on ninaillingworth.com...

- Nina Illingworth 

New “Deluxe” Wall of Shame Updates: August 27th

New “Deluxe” Wall of Shame Updates: August 27th

Editor’s note: it has been said, by minds perhaps greater than my own, that “all work and no play make Homer something, something.” While I’m still not entirely sure what that means, I thought it might be nice to shift gears today and revisit one of my favorite hobbies – exposing sniveling, mark-assed, shill propagandists masquerading as the ostensibly “liberal” media. Yes my friends, it’s time for a new Wall of Shame update and today we’ll be looking at two folks who’ve probably deserved this “honor” for quite some time: Matty Yglesias and Joy-Ann Reid.

In the interests of full disclosure* I should mention that both of these upstanding, impartial media professionals have me blocked on Twitter for reasons that escape my memory but will undoubtedly become crystal clear by the time we’re finished this post. All information presented is publicly available and indeed, proudly touted by both Yglesias and Reid as part of their work in “journalism.” Additionally, none of these tweets have been edited in any way; although, they may not appear in chronological order as they are often grouped by topic – space permitting, I tried to leave the dates and time-stamps on the individual tweets wherever possible.

Finally, and I really do believe this should go without saying but here goes anyways; the purpose of these posts and indeed the Wall of Shame in general is to point out the obvious, mainstream media bias towards “the status quo” and certain politicians by grouping screenshots of the things they say on social media into one reference guide. We’re also looking to have a little fun here, so there are some jokes – this is not however an open call to harass anyone online for fuck’s sake:

Read the rest of the article on ninaillingworth.com today... 

- Nina Illingworth