5.

Spend some time around people who play high-level sports for a living, and you’ll learn the truth.

The truth is that everyone in that world is on something. They’re all “on the shit.” Trust me on this. If you thought Lance Armstrong was clean for all these years and you’re shocked and appalled about his Oprah appearance, you’re a fucking moron.

You don’t get there without being on the shit. Show me a sport where athletes reach the professional or Olympic level without the shit, and I’ll show you a sport filled with athletes who’d be abject failures at every other sport.

Want to celebrate the Super Bowl in solidarity with your favorite players from Baltimore and San Francisco? Cool. Grab some Vicodin and some Tramadol—injections are more effective—and down those fuckers about two hours before the game. Not that either of these are illegal—they don’t really qualify as “the shit”—but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Of the 90 players on the field this Sunday, I’d wager 80 of them will be loaded up with enough painkillers to tip over a Clydesdale.

Everyone is on the shit. We’ve always known they’re on the shit, but we make Lance Armstrong lie for all these years, then look like an asshole sitting across from Oprah, because the media—who, I suspect, know precisely what went on for all these years—love to advance their own careers by drumming up phony outrage about stuff that doesn’t matter.

It’s all bullshit.

4.

From now on, when someone asks for a favor, I’m going to apply something I’m calling my entitlement screen. This will allow me to ascertain the “I’m eventually going to burn you” potential of each individual favor-seeker.

The entitlement screen will require potential freeloading fucks to offer their thoughts on entitlement as a concept. It will ask them, before any favor is provided, precisely what they believe they’re entitled to.

The screen itself will likely be limited to “people I don’t know very well,” and “people of whom I am suspicious.” This puts into place a well-organized and highly predictive system that will, I suspect, validate my gut instinct with regard to people similar to the ones who inspired this post.

I am preparing this document as we speak.

3.

I think there’s still a huge place in the world for traditional long-form journalism and storytelling, as opposed to this pervasive Twitterverse-type shit that tells stories in bits and pieces with sixteen sidebars and fifteen charts instead of 5000 words—at least in the magazine and newspaper world—of properly written straight-up fucking English.

People have stories they need to tell. Stories need room to develop. People who are too busy to tell their own stories need to have those stories told for them. The people telling these stories need room, too.

The world hasn’t lost its attention span for a good story, regardless of the medium. What’s sad, however, is that your tastes are being dictated by a class of people who can’t even write a coherent email. #truestory

2.

I learned this past weekend that not everyone needs—nor wants—my version of a pep talk when things go sideways. It’s traumatic to learn that you’re about to lose your job—even, or maybe especially, when the job you’re losing comes with a very high salary and your employer gives you six months to find something else. If this happens to someone you know, and you really want to help, don’t say this:

“Honey, I wish I could wake up tomorrow morning with your problems.”

Instead, realize that everything is relative, and that that precise moment isn’t the best time to be a royally insensitive boob—i.e., if you’re me, the idea is to not say exactly what you’re thinking every single time.

My goal for this year, even if it kills me, is to finally achieve some degree of tact. I swear I will.

Day One Redux

Writing about a visceral dislike of someone—or of a group—is a tricky business. From one side, you’re bound to hear from that whole group of people who’ll say you should know better, that you’re “too good” to incessantly—and, all too often, cryptically—piss and moan about something when you haven’t shown the courtesy of letting your readers in on the full story. On the other side, excoriating pathetic, mediocre people in writing feels really, really satisfying when you know they’re reading (for reasons, this far along, known only to them).

The prognosis? The tirades won’t happen often, but they’re not going to stop altogether, either. A happy medium, in the absence of several dozen well-deserved punches to the face for a slew of people who most assuredly deserve that and then some. 

And this time, if you think I'm referring to you, you're right.