You Can Take The King Out Of Cleveland, But...

Welcome To Cleveland!

Poland was completely fucked in World War II—the brutally unlucky doormat of a belligerent continent under siege. First the Germans invaded and raped their way through, on their way to Russia, and then the Russians counter-invaded and -raped their way through, on their way to Germany, and all poor Poland did was take it and suffer terribly.

At least in the worlds of culture and sports, Cleveland is America's Poland, and World War II has never ended.

Northeast Ohio, which for our purposes we'll collectively call Cleveland, is the land of the double-fucked: the inhabitants are ridiculed, but to leave, to escape, is, in a way, to insult everyone you grew up knowing and loving, who stayed. The region needs your big brain, but you're moving to where the grass is already greener. Which brings me to LeBron James.

Perhaps the heretofore unspoken double-tragedy of LeBron James will illustrate the extraordinary double-fuckedness of being a sports-loving Clevelander.

LeBron grew up in Northeast Ohio, or, let's call it, Basically Cleveland. The Whore of Akron was never much of a Cleveland sports fan, however—and this is incontestably and even demonstratively true

"I'm not like you losers. I'm not! I'M NOT!"

—and for that reason I was honestly never LeBron James' biggest fan. I loved that my beloved Cavs were winning (during the regular season), and I greatly admired the uncrowned King's skills, but I've always felt about him the same way I feel about Ron Paul and Eminem: I love what they're doing, but there's something about them that really creeps me the hell out. 

With LeBron, I think I figured it out, and it surprises me that nobody else has mentioned this: Cleveland, the double-fucked, is the land of the goddam yip. (A yip is when someone unintentionally flubs his or her role in something important: like fumbling a football on the goal line, or giving up a World Series–losing hit.) And LeBron had to have grown up watching those local Cleveland teams yip their way out of contention every year, and he must have thought to himself, must have felt he HAD to think to himself: I'M NOT LIKE THOSE LOSERS. (What I've heard referred to as an "unsolicited denial.")

I think something within LeBron James is terrified that he's just like the rest of all the Cleveland sports heroes from history that he can remember: he's a yipper.

After all, winners want to take the shot at the end of the game.

Here we go again...

You know who doesn't want to take the shot at the end of the game? 

A yipper. 

The Difference Between A Winner And A Loser

A double-fucked Clevelander.

Lee Evans dropped a game-winning touchdown to get the Ravens into the Super Bowl last year. You know where he's from? Yipland, Ohio. You know where the Ravens are from? You betcha. Even the one Super Bowl the Browns/Ravens won is pretty much the worst Super Bowl in NFL history—so Clevelanders not only got to see their team leave and then win it all, but winning it all involved an unwatchably boring Super Bowl that made Trent Fucking Dilfer into someone whose opinions we now have to tolerate hear on ESPN.

Double.

Fucked.

And here is where Cleveland remains the double-fucked end of God's dead horse–beaten joke: If LeBron James, one of us, a yipper, wins a championship with the Miami Cheat, it means the only way he was capable of achieving his goals was to admit that he's a loser like the rest of us double-fucked Yiplanders and needed help from natural winners. And if he doesn't win a championship, it means he's a loser like the rest of us, and that all of the talent in the world can't overcome our unfortunate, undeserved, bizarre, loser's birthright.

At this point, I've started to distance myself from any emotion whatsoever involving LeBron James: no matter what happens, unless he comes back and wins it all here, it's just more bad news for goddam double-fucked Clevelanders.

Daniel Donatelli is the author of two marginally competent, unrecognized novels and a forthcoming collection of essays and short stories that absolutely nobody in the world asked him to write.

The Drone Wars

Don't Mind Us—We're Just Making New Friends

You can't really plan a paradigm shift—paradigm shifts are usually triggered by unexpected catalysts.

When he designed the earliest form of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee thought he was creating something that would allow government agencies to more easily share files. And he did just that, but consequently he also almost completely undermined the music, movie, newspaper, and book publishing industries. Even with the best intentions, the decisions we make can have deeply profound effects in areas we didn't intend to be affected.

It is with that idea in mind that I'd like to briefly discuss the American government's love of drones.

The American defense industry (aka the Military-Industrial Complex) has now combined some of our most recently emerging and important technologies—scaled-down size, data-gathering, weapons-firing, and energy efficient capabilities (now capable of nearly endless sorties)—and turned them into a game-changer. Today's predator drone is a marvel that has changed the way we approach conventional warfare as well as domestic policing.

And therein lies the potential danger.

For the former, the military has always been looking for a killer edge, and since the majority of the literature ever written about warfare concerns the idea that army generals simply wished to know exactly where the enemy was currently gathered, the paradigm has shifted: thanks to drones and satellites, it's much easier than ever to locate and destroy conventional armies.

But just as you can't grab one side of a half-inflated balloon without all the air rushing into and asymmetrically filling the other side, contemporary enemy combatants aren't simply amassing stupidly on the other sides of hills to await their conventional slaughter—they've started fighting a whole new (and by that I mean very old) kind of battle. Because their enemy—America—has a million eyes and a billion megatons of potential, they've stopped playing chicken with us and started slashing our tires and cutting our lines and disappearing into crowds of noncombatants. 

So that's the military side of things, and what we're seeing is that our drones, despite the stellar reputation they've garnered, aren't even all that useful in the way that they're supposed to be used. (Recently a drone succeeded in wiping out a perfectly peaceful wedding in Afghanistan, and I have to wonder how many of the survivors now harbor a deadly ill will against America, how many new terrorists were born.)

Nevertheless, what I'm most concerned about is the recent and disturbing escalation of drones being used here in America as a "security measure" against crime and terrorism. Does our government simply think that by taking two handfuls of one side of the balloon that the air won't simply go somewhere else?

By which I mean this: there are many people who refuse to balk at America's constantly growing "security" measures, based on the oft-cited idea that, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, and therefore these measures shouldn't be a problem for you."

With Tim Berners-Lee and the Internet in mind, here I question the unraised, unspoken absurdity: how can these legislators know what kind of deep psychological damage might be wrought when they basically declare, through overzealous security measures, that American citizens are not entitled to private lives and private thoughts? If all of these technologies are legally allowed to record everything I do when I'm outside my home, while at the same time using existing technologies to spy on me (I'm sorry, collect my data) within my own home, then I and others might undergo a profound paradigm shift of our own. 

I'm not exactly sure what will happen, but something will inevitably result from these decisions, and I can imagine a few possibilities: I and those like me might simply "shrug" and refuse to offer (or become incapable of offering) America or humanity another single shaft of light from our now-completely-public minds, which the government claims not to own but which acts like it owns all the while; or I and those like me might simply begin to harbor a violent resentment against the people who stole virtually all freedom and privacy from American citizens in order to try to preserve those people's lives' quantity; but all I know for sure is that literally everything is connected, so if our government wants to keep heading down this path where the security of America becomes more important than what America fundamentally stood for at its conception (the first nation to declare that the government exists to serve the citizens, and not the other way around), then I hope those legislators have some sort of solution in mind when the American psyche finally and completely breaks.

Every action has a reaction. If you say I'm no longer allowed to have a private internal life, and that everything I do is subject to public record, then there will be a reaction, and I for one hope it turns out to be overwhelmingly violent. If you think that's harsh, consider the fact that our President authorized the unprecedented killing of an American citizen without trial, and the orders were carried out by a drone.

Here's a theory: maybe Al Qaeda hasn't attacked American soil in eleven years because they haven't needed to. Maybe they've seen that all it took was a push, and we jumped off the cliff ourselves, because our leaders are spoiled, stupid, narcissistic, rotten cowards who deserve the enmity of whatever a true American used to be.

Here come the drones.

Drones, indeed.

English Grammar: William Safire, Pootie Tang & David Foster Wallace

Something important needs to be said about today's endless online disputes over grammatical correctness, and it looks like I'm the man to finally say it.

I've been a professional proofreader for the past eight years, and I'm also the author of two novels and a book of short stories. I'm not saying I know everything about grammar/usage, but I know enough to know what I'm talking about. (For instance, I know that these days it's perfectly acceptable that I finished the previous sentence with a preposition, and anyone who insists otherwise is merely clinging to his or her own outdated pedantry.) And I'm writing this now because I know the core reason of why arguments over grammar/usage on the internet turn out to be such a massive waste of time and life.

You see, the TV show South Park helped me understand an important life lesson: 

Beware the false dichotomy.

I'll use an example from one of my favorite episodes ("I'm a Little Bit Country"). In the episode, the boys are tasked with writing what they think the Founding Fathers would say about America's second war in Iraq. In the show, the conservative townspeople approve the war, and the liberal townspeople protest it, and in the end Benjamin Franklin tells Cartman that the beauty of America is that it is a country that can at the same time fight a war it is also simultaneously protesting.

Instead of giving in to the false dichotomy, America shattered it and became a much more politically savvy country.

There are other examples from the show, but I think that illustrates the idea of a false/forced dichotomy rather well.

It is with that in mind that I'd like to introduce you to the two prevailing combatants in the war over English usage.

In the first corner, we have former New York Times columnist William Safire, who represents an approach to grammar known as prescriptivism, which believes that proper communication requires rigid rules and precise definitions to facilitate ever more communicative precision. William Safire and other prescriptivists, in online comment threads, are the people who consider a grammatical mistake to immediately equate to an invalid argument, and they point this out with abandon (to quote a former snooty professor, "Muddled writing is indicative of muddled thinking.")

In the other corner, we have Pootie Tang, who represents an approach to grammar known as descriptivism, which believes that language is constantly evolving and that rigid rules only get in the way of the real translation of ideas in this dynamic life. These are the people who are making all of the mistakes and not giving a shit about what the prescriptivists have to say (to once again quote my old roommate Aaron 'Smern' Smigelski, "Dan, I don't read books; I do shit people write books about!")

Internet comment threads are a powder keg between these two fiery camps, but the problem is that both sides are inherently incorrect by virtue of the fact that prescriptivist arguments never work against descriptivist thinking, and vice versa.

Blow up the false dichotomy!

Ben Franklin might say that prescriptivists need to understand that an uninhibited descriptivist flow sometimes quite effectively catalyzes the evolution of the language that consequently results in said prescriptivists' love of an increase in communicative precision, and descriptivists need to understand that nobody watched the movie Pootie Tang because it was absolute nonsense.

Ultimately, I believe grammatical enlightenment can be found in the compromise provided by American prosemaster David Foster Wallace, whose writings directly and indirectly introduced me to these ideas. The Wallace compromise represents the understanding that if we are going to take communication seriously we should endeavor to learn all of the prescriptivists' rules, and we should then begin testing them for weaknesses, and bending them, and hardening them, and discarding them if our own homespun descriptivist innovations prove more effective.

The Intended Morals Here:

-Beware the false or forced dichotomy: instead of either/or, it might actually be neither/both.

-If you lean more towards descriptivism, endeavor to precisely learn the rules you're horrendously breaking, in order to be able to better share your message with a wider audience, and if you lean more towards prescriptivism, chill your grill and let your goose loose just a little, in order to let your audience know that you don't have a splintered spindle up your tightest hole.

My Publishing Company

Enjoy things? I launched a book-publishing company recently (e-books and printed books), and I've published two novels I wrote. Good stuff, and affordable! All that and more can be found at hhbpublishing.com.

The 2011 Cleveland Browns: Another Slap In The Face From The Men We Love, Who Swore They'd Never Do It Again

Please pardon this brief, not-very-funny diatribe, before I get into my positional review:

First of all, they shouldn't even be called the Cleveland Browns. The team is named after former Coach/General Manager Paul Brown, who DIDN'T want the team named after him, but they did it anyway, and then a few years later THEY FIRED HIM.

The Cleveland Browns are named after a man they fired. They HAVE to do something about that, because if you want to know the source of curses, perhaps you should find the place in the organization where there is a blatant philosophical contradiction. The Curse of Blanton Collier. 

And because the Cleveland Browns' organization isn't capable of recognizing what a stupid and embarrassing name the "Browns" has been since they fired the man who inspired the goddam synecdoche in the first place, they will forever be running in clueless circles, an embarrassment to themselves and the poor pathetic people who cheer for them. 

People like me.

Anyway, here's my Cleveland Browns 2011 Starting Lineup In Review:

FRONT OFFICE

President: 

Mike "Don't Come To Me For Playoff Tickets" Holmgrum

File photo: the fabulously wealthy Mike Holmgren

Arrogant. Appears to be here to collect money and do favors for his agent friend Bob LaMonte. If I'm mistaken, it's Holmgren's fault I have all these impressions, because I had every reason to want to cheer for Holmgren's history of success benefiting Cleveland, but honestly he looks like a man who found a way to retire for $10 million/year.

General Manager: 

Tom "We Like Our Receivers" Heckert

File photo: this might be Tom Heckert

He was a wash. Seemed to find good players in the draft, which is more than you can say for the last 15 Browns GMs, but the Browns fucking sucked this year, so he has to bear some of the blame for that.

Head Coach: 

Pat "Battling, Process" Shurmur

File photo: Pat Shurmur

This year, nothing short of a fucking weasely, uncharismatic retard. The players seem to support him, but my suspicion is that it's because he's so bad at his job that the players' jobs become very easy, and they get to make millions without having to work very hard.

Offensive Coordinator: 

Pat "Hand Off To The Backup Tight End" Shurmur

This year's Browns offense scored 1 more point than the year they were an expansion team in a league where the rules are continually turning in favor of the offense! You're fired!

Defensive Coordinator: 

Dick "Quick-Snap" Jauron

File photo: Dick Jauron

No hate here besides the fact that he ADHD-lost the Browns their first game against Cincinnati. After that, though, he put together a solid-enough defense. Seems like a wise old man in the right position. Doesn't get enough quarterback pressure, though, so I guess there's a little hate after all.

Special Teams Coordinator: 

Chris "Let Them Block/Return It!" Tabor

File photo: Chris Tabor

Should be fired immediately. No question or hyperbole about it. It would be difficult to have a worse year of playing special teams. Numerous field goals blocked and kicks returned against us. More like Below-Average Teams!

OFFENSE

Quarterback: 

Colt "The Backup" McCoy

File photo: Colt McCoy

Proved himself to be a perfectly quality backup quarterback in the NFL. Kid is tough, and he has "escapability," but he has the same escapability that you use when you jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. His throws arrive too late, and they lead to hits on the catchers of these featherweight passes that turn the receivers of them into walking brain-dead zombies (Mohamed Massaquoi). Perhaps it is fitting that McCoy's season ended by himself being hit brain-dead (by James Harrison, the biggest cheating pussy in all of football). McCoy's backup, Seneca Wallace, proved to be Colt's minority doppelganger, thus proving my suspicion that in the W.A.R. (Wins Above Replacement) stat from baseball sabermetrics, the Cleveland Browns have two Exact Replacement quarterbacks. All of which added up to a fucking miserable year of offensive football, but fortunately/unfortunately it wasn't the worst I've seen the Browns play in the last decade.

Running Back: 


Peyton "Contract Killer" Hillis

File photo: Peyton Hillis

Don't even get me fucking started. Get this overrated, dumb hilljack the fuck out of Cleveland. Even when he's good, he sucks. Great, Peyton, you boulder-rolled forward for an 8-yard pickup—where a normal halfback would have been able to, you know, score a long touchdown. If you ask me, they should have stuck with Chris Ogbonnaya, who had at-least-above-average speed and could block adequately. As for Montario Hardesty, someone needs to explain to him the idea that you're supposed to run AWAY from the defenders. Jesus Fucking Garbage.

Fullback: 


Owen "The Friendly Ghost" Marecic

File photo: Owen Marecic

Terrible.

Offensive Line: 


Joe "False Start" Thomas, Jason "Diarrhea" Pinkston, Alex "The Snap" Mack, Shawn "Personal Foul On The Offense, Number 66" Lauvao, and "Tony Pashos"

File photo: Your Cleveland Browns Offensive Line

I have neither love nor hate for this unit. On a terribly fuckhole shitty offense, they were the most capable part, which made them the winners of the Prettiest Girl In The Burn Ward competition. Joe Thomas had a below-average year for him; Jason Pinkston was the offensive line's diarrhea-spewing butthole, getting taken advantage of by basically every opponent the Browns faced; Alex Mack blocked our own field goal snap; Shawn Lauvao can't pull; "Tony Pashos" only gets his name in quotation marks because although it was the body and frame of a good lineman out there, he was only theoretically in the game, and if Pinkston was the diarrheic butt, then "Pashos" was the line's menstruating vagina.

Wide Receiver: 


Mohamed "Shitty Receiver" Massaquoi

File photo: Mohamed Massaquoi

Regressed terribly. Needs to be traded or cut. He didn't do his quarterbacks any favors (running bad routes, not playing offensive-defensive back/knocking down bad passes when necessary). I have absolutely nothing good to say about MoMass this year. Even his twitter account sucked. #boringflow #unfollow

Wide Receiver: 


Greg "Catches The Ball Like His Hands Are Really" Little

File photo: Greg Little

Has potential, but catching ability appears to be his deadtooth, which is unfortunate for a guy whose job title includes the word RECEIVER.

Tight End: 


Benjamin "It's A Shame The Browns Had To Destroy Him" Watson

File photo: most recent photograph of Benjamin Watson

Regressed terribly. Might have to retire because McCoy's throws resulted in Watson having three concussions this season. May God have mercy on his dead soul.

DEFENSE

Defensive Tackle: 


Ahtyba "Tank Fucker Mountain" Rubin

File photo: Ahtyba Rubin

A bad, bad man, and I mean that in the good way. He's got it all, high motor, rugged tenacity, low motor...everything! In fact, my great friends and I like to say of Rubin to each other, "This guy gets 'er done more than Larry the Cable Guy!"

Defensive Tackle: 


Phil "Hard Snap Count" Taylor

File Photo: Phil Taylor doing the opposite of celebrating

Huge rookie, played decent, showed promise. No hate, but I'm not blowing him or anything, especially after the Browns lost to the despised Baltimore Ravens at the end of the year after Taylor fell victim to a tactic that's not supposed to work after the sixth grade.

Defensive End: 


Jayme "Uniform Filler" Mitchell & Emmanuel "Gone In 60 Seconds" Sanders

File photo: Jayme Mitchell & Emmanuel Sanders

Clearly neither of these guys is an option going forward, as both have names like teenage girls. And honestly they're just not good. For the record, the starting DE at the beginning of the year ended up getting injured in the preseason while RIDING A THREE-WHEELED MOTORCYCLE.

Defensive End: 


Jabaal "I Like It On The Left" Sheard

File photo: Jabaal Sheard

Rookie who played really well. He's a very encouraging prospect, which makes me wonder at which point in the next calendar year his knee will sustain a career-damaging injury.

Outside Linebacker: 


Scott "Hey, Come Back! Slow Down!" Fujita

File photo: Scott Fujita

As I've said before, "Fujita" in Japanese means, "Not gonna be on the Browns next year."

Outside Linebacker: 


Chris "I Only Play Hard In The Last Four Games Of The Year" Gocong

File photo: Chris Gocong

He'll be on the Browns next year, but he's also way too slow and really isn't much of a playmaker. So of course the Browns signed him to a long extension this year.

Middle Linebacker: 


D'Qwell "The Dogfather" Jackson

File photo: the actual D'Qwell Jackson

MVP! MVP! MVP! Definitely the most valuable player on the team this year. Lots of tackles and good play, but still isn't a Ray Lewis–type hit-murderer. He'll make a stop, but he won't create a turnover. Winner, for the third year in a row, of the Best Name On The Team competition, for which he received a gift certificate to a Cleveland company that is now unfortunately out of business.

Cornerback: 


Joe "The Joy To Watch" Haden

File photo: Joe Haden

No ordinary Joe! Haden had a good year, but I think most Browns fans would agree that he didn't appear to improve as much as we thought he would between his first and second year. I don't think he had any interceptions this year, which clearly is troubling, but he had many pass-breakups. No hate here, but he better get better, or I'll kill his family and send him photographs of how I did it. And. I. Am. Not. Kidding.

Cornerback: 


Sheldon "Been A Good Run" Brown

File photo: Sheldon Brown

*Ring, ring* *Ring, ring*

Browns: "Hello?"

Glue Factory: "Hi, Cleveland Browns?"

Browns: "Yes, this is the Cleveland Browns."

Glue Factory: "Please buzz us in. Our truck arrived to take Sheldon Brown away."

Free Safety: 


Usama "I've Never Heard Of Me Either" Young

File photo: Is this humanoid avatar actually Usama Young? Who can know?

I don't know who this is.

Strong Safety: 


TJ "The Bodyguard" Ward

File photo: a missing hero

Missed most of the season with a foot injury. Browns really could have used him, but he was too busy taking bribes at car dealerships, knocking out the owners so the employees could give the customers great deals on their new cars!

SPECIAL TEAMS:

Kick Returner: 


Josh "Nothing Special This Year" Cribbs

Disappointment.

Punt Returner: 


Josh "I Hope You Weren't Getting Your Hopes Up" Cribbs

Disappointment.

Punter/Holder: 


Brad "Reaching Out To Embrace The Random" Maynard

File photo: Maaaaynaaaard!

I love this guy! First off, great name; second, he did an exemplary job catching and scooping Ryan Pontbriand's mental "snaps"; third, he had a great year of punting. Once again, the Browns' silver lining was its punting game, which is like being really good at getting punched in the kidneys.

Kicker: 


Phil "Please Don't Franchise Me Again" Dawson

File photo: Phil Dawson

Did a good job. Probably leaving team so he can go somewhere that doesn't span several chapters and rings of Dante's Inferno.
























Oh, well...AT LEAST THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING!

Oh, Internet!

I've spent a terrible amount of time in the depths of the Internet, and today I return to the surface with the following two sparkling gems.

2011 Cleveland Indians Review

They've been one of the surprising success stories of the MLB season, but are the Cleveland Indians any good?

No.

Let's take a look at their current roster's ideal lineup.

1. Michael Brantley, CF — "Who the hell is Michael Brantley?" you might ask. And you should. I've been assured by many people that he's "going to develop" but I've never seen him do anything but ground out.

2. Jason Kipnis, 2B — This guy is good, or he had a really hot month before his recent injuries. "Injuries?" you ask, and you should, because this is the point where I should mention that every one of these guys is a huge pussy who somehow gets injured playing baseball.

3. Asdrubal Cabrera, SS — This guy is also good. I like everything about Asdrubal Cabrera, a little too much. After this brief Kipnis/Cabrera respite, the nightmare continues.

4. Grady Sizemore, LF — I put Sizemore in left field because he has the knees, back, ribs, wrists, and vagina of a sour old grandwoman. He rose to prominence as a daredevil speedster, and now he's a power hitter for some reason. It makes no sense, except for the fact that he's the guy the Indians stuck with, so why shouldn't he completely fuck up everything that made him good?

5. Shin-Soo Choo, RF — Has one of those weird Asian swings.

6. Carlos Santana, C — Can't catch, and bats .215. Supposedly he has good sabermetrics stats, but you know what else (it looks like) he has? A bad attitude. He's either super chill or a totally dismissive dick.

7. Travis Hafner, DH — A big, brittle man who hits doubles and then gets thrown out later at third or home. Usually injured.

8. Matt LaPorta, 1B — This guy fucking sucks.

9. Lonnie Chisenhall, 3B — Average defender with a beautiful swing, which he uses to slap the first available pitch to a middle infielder.

Pitching Staff

Ubaldo Jimenez, SP — Terrible mechanics, location, ERA, and regressing abilities. Ace of the staff.

Justin Masterson, SP — A very good pitcher who has a shitty record because the above lineup becomes especially pathetic when he's on the mound. Probably because he's a bald white guy, and everybody hates us.

Fausto Carmona, SP — He's the farm-system version of Ubaldo Jimenez.

Josh Tomlin, SP — Crafty lefty. This guy's a real pitcher, but he doesn't have a real pitcher's size, so fuck him.

David Huff, SP — I heard this guy's good, but he's in the minors most of the time.

Who cares about middle relievers?

Chris Perez, Closer — This guy is going to get exposed one of these days. I can't figure out how he's not getting shelled repeatedly. Chubby white guy with long hair—not exactly intimidating.

Manny Acta, Manager — Gotta give him credit for keeping this collection of jerkoffs competitive, but despite that he also seems like kind of a shitty manager.

In summation, it's amazing that this team is competing for a division title, but that's probably more an indication of a rancid division than a worthwhile lineup.

Go Tribe!