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.

Up until now, I haven't written much about NASCAR. But with the added attention given to the NASCAR offseason because Toyota is coming to the circuit and every body in motor sports seems to be in a panic and the sport's growing popularity, I figured I'd say something about it. Don't worry, though, this isn't a shameless attempt to generate more readership for this site. I think the rest of the post will bear that out.

I am glad Toyota is coming to NASCAR. I am not very interested in globalization or the diversification of the whitest sport on the planet. Those are issues for people who are less self-involved than I. I am hoping that Toyota will bring the same magic to the NASCAR circuit that it's brought to the other racing formats it has entered in the past.

A lot of attention was paid to the owner of the Rousch Racing team whining about what Toyota might do to the current paradise on Earth that is the NASCAR circuit. Apparently, Toyota frightens NASCAR fans who feel that the corporation has had a history of entering a racing circuit and outspending the competition until they dominate, then leaving the circuit high and dry.

Could you imagine a world where NASCAR is dominated by Toyota in five years, then in ten years it's a ghost town like Tombstone (minus the colorful characters and valuable icons like Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp)? That is easily the worst thing that could happen to American professional sports. NASCAR is more than a professional sport. It is a public trust and must be protected.

I wake at night in a cold sweat thinking Dale Jr. might leave DEI. I am delighted that a racing league calling itself the National Association of Stock Car Racing no longer drives stock cars in the original sense of the term. I think Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are probably our two best athletes. After all, sitting in a chair and banking left from time to time is much harder than rushing off the edge like Dwight Freeny, going across the middle like TO or taking it to the hole like King James.

As, I hope, you have inferred from my tone, the preceding paragraphs have been sarcastic. I hope Toyota does come in and spend NASCAR into oblivion. If the circuit lies in ruins in ten years, I won't shed a tear. If Jimmie Johnson should fall off the roof of a moving golf cart ten years hence with NASCAR exploited and left for dead by Toyota, would any one hear?

America's ever-increasing obsession with NASCAR is just one of the things that continually amaze me. Car racing is boring to me. They could drive 200 mph, 300 mph or the speed of light (if the physics of light speed had been worked out) around the track and I still wouldn't care. I am not ghoulish enough to look forward to crashes. And where is the surprise? Maybe if there were a little more to this racing thing than following one defined course with four left banks, I would want to watch.

I know that there is a strategy to NASCAR racing. Making pit stops, managing fuel consumption, whether to pass high or low, bump drafting and all the rest require conscious and rational thought. So does cricket. And I'm sure advocates of lawn darts or horseshoes could make the same claim. It just doesn't do it for me.

What's worse is that I can't see why now of all times it should become more popular. I think, in part, it has to do with the demise of boxing and hockey as major television sports. Golf hasn't quite grabbed the spotlight as well as NASCAR because golf is boring as a spectator sport and whispering announcers waxing poetic don't enhance the experience. Baseball and basketball are slowly strangling themselves by mismanaging their labor pools and constructing crushingly counter-intuitive economic structures (every team eventually suffers when only 6 or 7 teams are any good).

If we are that bored as a society,maybe people should look into reading, or writing half-assed blogs when they can't sleep or are intoxicated. Maybe Americans could start a letter writing campaign directed at David Stern so that he stops torturing Mark Cuban who is the most intelligent person in recorded human history, just ask Mr. Cuban and he will tell you at great length. Maybe NASCAR fans could simply look at a blank wall and not lose the life-affirming, intellect building experience that is watching stock car racing.

I might seem excessively antagonistic to the good people who watch car racing, and that's probably true. But I have another painful task to get to before the evening is over. We have the first two time honoree for tool of the week. It is I. Tonight, I learned that the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony sampled the symphonic version of The Last Chance by the Rolling Stones, not You Can't Always Get What You Want as I had said. I should have done a bit more due diligence rather than going with something because it amplified a point I wanted to make.