Tuesday, December 20, 2011

NCAA vs. OSU - WTF?!

My last post was disgusting.  I mean, seriously, if I had come across that post on someone else's blog, I would have bitch-slapped the blogger.  It was pure self-pity and a morass of nastiness on all fronts (sorry for the mixed metaphor).  However, since I cannot quite bitch-slap myself, I'm offering up that particular pleasure to anyone who actually read that piece of total manure.  Takers?  Text me.

Anyway, this piece is not about me.  I won't be writing about myself again for a long, long time.  It's just an exercise in fatuous self-debasement.  No, this is about college football.

OSU received their NCAA sentence today.  Before I discuss the actual sentence, I would just like to say that ESPN's Mark Schlabach is a wanker.  He thinks he's clever, and he thinks he's objective, but mostly, he's just a pedantic wanker.  Typical Mark Schlabach: "To be honest, I'm surprised the NCAA hit the Buckeyes as hard as it did. I figured The Ohio State University was immune from the kind of punishment that might cripple a program in recruiting and severely sully its once-pristine reputation."

Piss off, Mark.  What is this vitriolic hatred that sports writers seem to have for Ohio State?  I've never understood why it's a program that draws such viciousness.  But it does; whether winning or losing, sports writers, from The Sporting News to AOL cannot seem to resist the urge to beat the hell out of everyone's favorite team to hate.  And why the hell is that?  What does OSU have that other major programs like Texas and Florida and USC don't have, that makes people just ache to pour the hot lead down OSU's throat?  Oh, right, it used to be that OSU was a school with integrity.  I forgot - people love to hate the good guy.  Wankers.  The lot of 'em.

Anyway.  So, despite the fact that OSU vacated all its wins for last season - effectively making it almost impossible for us to beat Michigan in wins in my lifetime, thank you so f***ing much - got rid of Jim Tressel, returned Bowl Game revenue, and eliminated five scholarships over the next three years, the NCAA still smacked OSU with a one-year postseason ban (which means no bowl games, no Big Ten Championship, no National Championship (not that that was a real possibility, anyway)) and the loss of three further scholarships.  Oh, and Jim Tressel?  Yeah, he won't be coaching college football ever again.  The NCAA also bitch-slapped him with a five-year show-cause penalty, which means that any school that wants to hire him would have to write a detailed report as to why they had to hire him, and what they're going to do to make sure he's a good boy.

Okay.  Seriously.  I have to ask: w. t. f.

Now, before you get all preachy on me, hear me out.  First of all, I have nothing but contempt for the players involved, disgust with Jim Tressel, and a general, all-out sadness and frustration with college football as a whole.  I mean, I watch college ball specifically because it isn't pro ball, because it isn't riddled with all that problematic Michael-Vick-should-be-banned-from-existence-dog-fighting crap.  I like to think that I'm watching a game that at least tries to use spit and polish when shining up their morals, that at least pretends to value sportsmanship and decency and good 'ol proper ball, and isn't a venue for moronic drama queens whose last good idea was before they took their first hit on the field, and had all sense and sanity knocked from them.

Honestly, ask anyone.  I was so pissed off about the whole thing that I refused to watch any football this year, didn't watch last year's Sugar Bowl, was appalled that OSU allowed the players who had done the deed to play, didn't completely kick them off the team, and do their own housecleaning.  I'm still bitter about it all.  I mean, what kind of totally unappreciative, fan-hating, spoiled bitch sells their Big Ten Championship ring for a f***ing tattoo?  Who does that?  The tattoo should read "F*** you, OSU fans!"  I would so love to hurt Terrelle Pryor in ways that have not yet been invented.  I would dearly love to shake Jim Tressel and ask him what the hell he was thinking.  I felt betrayed by the whole thing.  Not betrayed the way I did when we lost two consecutive national championships.  Not betrayed the way I did when we lost to Indiana - Indiana! - when we should have trampled them into little pieces down the field.  No, I felt - feel - betrayed because my faith in the entirety of college football has been seriously damaged.

However.  That being said, I still think that the NCAA is just being punitive.  Yeah, there should be penalties.  Hell, yes, Ohio State should undergo some kind of judgment.  This, however, is just more vitriol for a big program that finally managed to get caught doing something disgusting.

I don't want to hear comparisons to USC, either.  As far as I'm concerned, what went down there was far, far worse, and the fact that ass-head Pete Carroll got off scot-free, and is now coaching the Seahawks, is an abrogation of justice on a major scale.  USC got what they deserved.  OSU got far and away more than they deserved.

You know, it's this kind of thing that makes me really reconsider all those criticisms out there about keeping college ball in the hands of the NCAA and not privatizing.  I'm not saying that I'm up for privatization - I think that would be such a mistake, for so many reasons - but I do think that, to allow the NCAA to materially hurt the school this much for an infraction of this scale - essentially, the coach not reporting what he knew to the NCAA - is just ridiculous.  I mean, this is not the Third Reich.  It is not necessary to so destroy a school's reputation that they'll no longer be able to recruit efficiently, or keep any coach worth his salt away from the team (I'm not sure how I feel about a burned-out Urban Meyer returning to coach OSU, but it doesn't matter anymore now, does it?), or impact revenue which gets used, b-t-dubs, to fund stuff other than just football, like, oh, I don't know, academics.

The whole thing just makes me want to throw my head back and howl.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Abjection

I should be writing a paper right now.  Two, papers, actually, although one is really just an extension of the other, or, perhaps more accurately, the first is a condensed, more succinct version of the second.  Whatever.  I have approximately 35 pages of writing due Friday and Saturday.  I have, of course, not yet committed a single word to paper.  It's 5:30 AM on Thursday, the first paper is due sometime Friday (8-10 pages only), and nothing has managed to transmit itself from my brain to paper.  And yet . . . and yet, the panic, the stress, the sweat-inducing, stomach-cramping fear that should be there, isn't.  It's just . . . missing.

I would be puzzled that by that, were it not for the fact that this is something I have come to recognize in myself.  It's called "I'm-So-Unbelievably-Terrified-That-Nothing-Bothers-Me Syndrome".  I have, as Terry Pratchett so often puts it, gone through fear and out the other side.  It is behavior that has characterized my life so much recently that it's difficult for me to remember what it felt like to have actual emotions.  I don't have emotions anymore.  Everything is all shrink-wrapped and cotton-balled into stillness and muted distance, and I just skim through things without really feeling anything.  It is utterly bizarre, and if it weren't impossible, since it would require me to have feelings, I would say I'm getting a little bit tired of it.  I kinda miss those manic days, where one moment I was on top of the world, and the next dwelling somewhere on the ocean floor with scary-looking fish with light-bulbs on their head for company.  You know what I'm talking about.  The moments of sheer delight and exhilaration and joy, and their cousin-moments of despair and depression.  Yeah, those.  I don't remember what they're like.  Do you?  Would you mind reminding me?

I tried writing the other night.  Not what I was supposed to be writing - because that would require me to confront the fear and do something positive to extirpate it - but a piece of fiction I've been working on-and-off-and-on for the last, oh, like, six years or so.  It was shit.  I mean, pure and utter shit.  Here's a sample.  I should be too embarrassed to put this up, but see above re: emotions:

The cliffs were a dark, unbroken line against the icy blue sky.  Raging at their base, the waves unceasingly crashed into the black rocks, occasionally loosening a piece of the cliffs and tossing it about in an orgiastic delight of destruction.  It was only a matter of time before the cliffs were totally claimed by the sea, and as Azara stood atop them, she felt the ephemeral nature of her own existence.  Alternately squinting through the wind – a cold, bitter wind, that ate through her clothes and chapped her skin – at the sea below her, and the ship sailing out of the harbor, she ceased to be aware of personal time, and existed only in the time as it was told by the cliffs beneath her, the forest behind her, and the sky above her.  Her fur cloak whipped about her, occasionally catching her cheek with its stinging tail, and the grass snapped at her ankles, welting them with thin, red lines of gentle poison.

Are you embarrassed for me?  Thanks.  I was pretty disgusted when I re-read it in the cold light of day (I wrote it at something like 3:30 in the morning).  It's so emo-filled and adolescent-girl-reeking and all those other horrible things I hate about most fantasy writing.  It should be burned, if it didn't mean burning my laptop.  I would be indignant, too, but it makes sense, really.  I can't feel anything, so how could I possibly write?  I used to be a good writer.  I could wrap adjectives around nouns, adverbs around verbs, with the smoothness of caramel around tart green apples, combining phrases into sentences of beauty and pure pleasure.  Now?  Well, you see above you what I can - or can't - do.  It would be depressing beyond belief, were I not still shrink-wrapped into abstraction.

I think I know what's causing all the fear and loathing in Charlottesville.  The thing is, there isn't a damn thing I can do about it, and for the first time in my life, I can't run away.  I mean, really, I can't.  It would be an admission of failure on such a colossal scale that I may as well just end my life, and since that isn't something I'd ever do (since I truly believe it is the most selfish act one could possibly commit), I'm stuck.  I have to find a way to work through this.  All this malaise and fear and bizarre blankness isn't something I can escape; it's something I actually have to deal with.  That makes me a little grumpy, actually (yay! an emotion!), but aside from momentary grunts of grumpiness, I forget about it.

Every so often I remind myself how lucky I am, hoping to precipitate a reaction.  Nothing.  Then I'll remind myself how spoiled and selfish I am, and that catalyzes a brief guilt-and-shame reaction, but then I return to my normal state.  No excited electrons here.  Every time they manage to briefly get excited to a higher state, they fall back to a more stable, less-excited, totally-blank state.

I know that part of it is the loneliness.  My inability to really make friends is getting in my way.  But the thing is, relationships require so much, and I don't have anything to give.  I just don't.  Not as a friend, and certainly not as a girlfriend.  It would mean shifting the focus from me, and, well, that's scary.  I mean, that opens up new fields of rejection, and it means putting yourself out there, and having people judge you, and I get enough of that shit in grad school, thank you very much.  I mean, it's gotten to the point that I vacillate every time I put up a fucking post on Facebook.  So if I can't open myself up to rejection there, and if I don't want to be pulled into a needy, dominating, please-feel-sorry-for-me-and-help-me relationship (the only kind I seem to be able to have, fucking savior complex), I must remain alone.  But honestly.  Someone else's emotional baggage?  I don't even want to talk about mine, let alone yours.  But people get offended if you just want to have an occasional hang-out-and-chat-and-maybe-drink kind of relationship.  The thing is, if they got in my head, they'd stay there for three seconds, and then start looking around desperately for the flashing red exit sign.  See?  Rejection.

Okay, I'm tired of this.  I'm done talking about myself.  I'm going to go and work on a paper.  It's on abjection, funnily enough.  That might be what made me start thinking about all this.  I'm doing such a good job of abjecting myself, although, in my case, it isn't unconscious.  I know precisely what I'm doing.  Sorry if I've disgusted you, or depressed you, or caused you to feel any emotion other than joy.  It's the danger of reading these posts.