If you have read any of my previous posts, you probably know that I live in a very small world. It's basically a cocoon of bitterness and misanthropy. And it takes very little to get that bitterness and misanthropy turned in a given direction. Tonight we have several things that are currently bothering me, and since every day could be Festivus in Sedition in Red Sox Nation Land, it's time for some grievances to be aired.

First, the Scion Sheeple ad campaign is really bothering me.
There are so many problems with them I don't know where to begin. I don't know if the creators of the ads were informed of a salient fact about the Scion line of automobiles. These cars are built in a factory on an assembly line just like any other automobile. Purchasing one does not make you unique, it just makes you a d-bag.

While it is true that Scions are designed to be customized to each driver's order, it is also true that you customize your vehicle with components that are also mass produced. As unique as you may think your Scion is, there are probably thousands just like it all over this great land of ours. And the person who buys and customizes the Scion to suit his/her taste is perhaps a bigger sheep than a person like me who is inclined to purchase a car off a lot because the Scion is being marketed more aggressively to nitwits my age (27) and younger than typical cars.

And if you customize your Scion with parts and accessories that aren't factory approved, you void your warranty just as you would with any other car. So Toyota has you coming and going, selling you a car you can customize only within their parameters on the grounds that they are catering to your taste. It seems to me that car companies already do that with the options packages that can be purchased on various production models. Too bad they didn't think to jazz up their ad campaigns with animated "badasses".

I was stuck on the road coming into Cleveland Circle from Route 9 last night behind a Scion who let an MBTA bus enter the stream of traffic. Can you imagine that? Letting the damn bus go? A vehicle that is slow and makes frequent stops? But I'm a sheep for not purchasing the vehicle for Generation Y. What a world.

Another thing that is bothering me is the commercial for the restless leg syndrome medication. Those ads are usually good for a laugh when the voice over actor reads the list of side effects. This was no exception. Some of the side effects include drowsiness while driving and increased sex urges, which seemed fairly incompatible, but then I've never taken any prescription medicines to speak of so I don't know. But the one that really got me laughing was an increased propensity for gambling. I'd never seen anything like that.

But then I got to thinking, is the FDA asleep at the switch? How is it a good idea to let people who can't fall asleep because they have the jimmy-legs (a nice Seinfeld reference, even if it is the episode where Sarah Silverman guest-starred) take pills that will put them to sleep while they're driving to Vegas or Atlantic City or the nearest Native American gaming facility to blow all their money on the slots and hookers so they can't afford to buy the damn restless leg medication for a second go round? Doesn't that seem like a horrible combination of public safety menace and modern tragedy? If some victim of restless leg syndrome with a lady of the evening riding shotgun runs me down in the Mohegan Sun parking lot next time I'm down there, rest assured that I will be pissed (provided, of course, that I survive).

Another thing that is bothering me is a gossip column calling Zach Braff a cad. First, it's not the Roaring 20s. That word left the vernacular not long after Woodrow Wilson left the White House. What else did the thesaurus offer for that one? Bounder? Wolf? And I have to tell you that with a gun to my head and the demand that I provide a three letter adjective to describe Zach Braff, cad wouldn't be the first word that flashed through my mind.

I don't really care that the gossip industry is calling him names. I do care about people trying to revive words that were best left in the era of silent films. If people like me don't stand up for contemporary words, then next thing you know they'll be trying to revive mountebank and poltroon. It will be as though we were trapped in an endless loop of those cartoons where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck threw down with each other, only without the sparkling wit.

Finally, the Jerry Remy vs. Bill Simmons feud is grinding my gears, to borrow a phrase from Peter Griffin (I linked the deadspin version because the comments are pretty damn funny). While any kind of civil unrest in Red Sox Nation should theoretically make me smile, it bothers me because I didn't start it. It kind of makes me feel like Butters as Professor Chaos from South Park. It also annoys me because I find myself agreeing with the Remdawg, and that is never a good thing.

It was somewhat amusing that Remy shredded Simmons' application for president of Red Sox Nation (not that I considered the Sports Guy a threat to my candidacy, since his wife keeps him confined to LA). It was also entertaining to hear some one crush Simmons for being a hipster dufus, and a sycophantic hipster dufus to boot. Even if it had to be the Remdawg.

And it must have hurt Bill somewhere deep down in his heart to have Remy rip him, since I can't remember Simmons do anything but fawn over the current broadcast tandem. It also must have hurt the Remdawg, who loves to be fawned over more than anything else in the world, except maybe that garish green shag carpet-covered tool they call Wally.

You can listen to Simmons' heart to heart with Mike Wilbon if you can stomach his response to the Remdawg. The only consolation in this sordid mess is that I'm pretty sure Gus Johnson can't broker the peace between Remy and Simmons the way he channeled Art Garfunkel and served as a bridge over the troubled waters between Simmons and Isiah Thomas.

Which brings me to another point I hadn't really intended to make tonight. But am I the only person in the free world not under the influence of Gus Johnson. He sucks as an announcer. So what if he has a high energy level? A giddy dbag is still a dbag.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologize for the delay in updating this fevered dream I call Sedition in Red Sox Nation. I do have my reasons. First, this blog was recently subject to review by the site that hosts it. I did not discover that until I tried to post and my computer crashed. I hadn't saved a draft of the post on which I was working at the time, so I was a bit angry. I didn't get around to redoing it as I had more pressing concerns at the time. After that, I went on vacation for a while. I am back now, and ready to get back to subverting the confederacy of dunces that is the Boston Red Sox.

I know I promised a new feature in one of my posts. I was working on it at the time of the computer crash. Unfortunately, anger and laziness have conspired to delay it still further. I simply am not ready to run with it yet. It does exist, at least on a conceptual level, as I write this. However, in my travels, I got the idea for a new segment which strikes me as more interesting at the moment. WIthout further adieu (and with nothing more than a working title at this point), here it is...

RANDOM THING I HATE INSTALLMENT 1:

I hate a great many things. The overwhelming majority of them are, in the grand scheme of things, trivial. Among them, you might have noticed (provided, of course, that you have read any of my previous posts) the Boston Red Sox, Red Sox fans and Danny Ainge. That is just the tip of the iceberg. I am a small and petty person, a bastion of negativity seeking to make other people unhappy.

This particular segment exists under the working title "Random Thing I Hate" because I can't come up with something better at the moment. It is random in the sense that it is something I hate that is not related to the stated purpose of this site. Basically, every day in my life is Festivus, this blog is my version of the Festivus Airing of Grievances and this particular segment is my way of telling those outside of Red Sox Nation that, in the immortal words of Frank Costanza: "I have a lot of problems with you people, and you're going to hear about them."

The first grievance I have is with the Benefactor. I cannot stand Mark Cuban. He's a fraud. He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo at just the right time, which was quite lucky for him. I also have to give him credit for that. I will not believe that he's a latter-day JP Morgan until I enter the url for broadcast.com or broadcast.yahoo.com and see something. One cannot help but wonder where he would be if Yahoo held out just a little longer in the wake of the Broadcast.com IP, or he'd played a bit harder to get.

But I must temper my contempt for his business acumen by remembering that he did acquire Antoine Walker from the Celtics for what amounted to magic beans. I imagine that is a little harsh, after all, Raef LaFrentz is probably the best center to hover around the 3 point line and play defense once in a blue moon since Arvydis Sabonis retired. And Jiri Welsch was awesome.

His behavior in the crowd at games bothers me to no end. To put it plainly, I think he looks and acts like a jackass. He runs onto the court after playoff games to criticize officials. He flails and flops around his courtside seat each time a call goes against the Mavericks. For the most part, he conducts himself like a 3 year old in dire need of a time out.

As I watched him in this postseason, I kept remembering something I'd read. It took me a while to dig it up again, but when I did I think the author summed up Mark Cuban quite nicely. The author is George Orwell, and in his essay As I Please 6, he wrote about "the exceptional ugliness and vulgarity of the faces displayed" in the New Year Honours List (which as I understand it is, or was, a document issued in Britain to celebrate people who had recently been endowed with titles).

The particular quote that caught my eye in connection with Mark Cuban reads: "...I saw in Picture Post some 'stills' of Beaverbrook delivering a speech and looking more like a monkey on a stick than you would think possible for anyone who is not doing it on purpose."

I think that sums up Mark Cuban's deportment. He looks like a monkey on a stick. The question then must be asked: is he doing it on purpose? I think he is. After all, he has managed to become a B list celebrity. He had that awful show that ABC mercifully cancelled. He gets to hang out with George Clooney and produce movies that courageously stand up against McCarthyism 50 years after the fact. He reminds me of the little dog from the cartoons who is always yipping and yapping at the bigger dogs to attract their attention.

Personally, I don't care who is on the A list or the B List. Celebreality, in my way of thinking, is one of the worst TV genres to crop up in the last few years. I do not lose myself from my mundane concerns when I see the rich and famous acting with entitlement and avoiding responsibility. But I must confess, I did laugh like hell when I read that Mark Cuban got shut out of a trendy night club in New York. Apparently he even offered the doorman $1,000. Of course that is 3rd hand gossip, picked up from a New York tabloid via Wikipedia. It's not too hard to imagine the Benefactor trying to pass the bouncer a grand while 18 yr old Jersey girls who were on the list breeze past.

It might be possible for him to get in if his team wins the NBA title, but (as we know if we read his blog) the NBA conspires to deny Cuban the O'Brien Trophy. That is the only possible explanation. If the NBA allowed its officials to call the game as Dr. Naismith intended, Dallas would have 3 or 4 rings by now. Of course, based on the way he behaves in the crowd and "writes" in his blog, it seems to me that the only way to properly officiate a Mavs game is to have every opposing player start the game with 3 fouls. Perhaps the NBA could even work in a power play or two for the Mavericks.

I really don't know what to say about his grand gesture on fan appreciation night. It was awfully sporting of him and American Airlines to give the fans plane tickets. I know times are tough for the airlines, but you'd think the Benefactor could have done a bit better than a roundtrip to San Antonio, Houston, KC or St.Louis. Hell, he could probably have sent them all to Maui and not even have to think twice before asking for extra cheese on his next Texas Double Whopper.

I hate Mark Cuban. I am in a difficult spot, though, because I hate the Pistons and the Suns. For now, I draw some consolation in the fact that Antoine and the Heat are up 1-0 on Detroit who looks amazingly mortal. If Ben Wallace could get called for the occasional over-the-back and pick up a blocking foul when his feet aren't set, who knows what might be. I'm not enough of an optimist to believe that Prince will ever be called for 1 handcheck out of three. But maybe the Pistons will lose. There is always a chance.