The Ultimate NCAA Sports Video Game Project

It’s difficult to even know where to begin with this blog entry. Even though it’s many years in the making, it’s still difficult to put everything into words and try to lay the groundwork for an explanation. So this may seem long-winded and rambling but it’s the most important blog post I’ve ever written.

In late June I’m going to be walking away from social media and the Chicago White Sox. Yes, I know, I’ve said it before and did not follow through. This was a timing issue more than an issue of desire. I’ve been planning this out carefully, down to the last detail. And while I’ve been considering this move since at least 2011, the actual want to do this stretches back much further than that… 2001… 1997… As far as 1993.

I’ll begin with exactly what my plan is and why I want to do it. The plan part is easy, I want to play an entire college “dynasty,” or career, in the video game world. I want to play four seasons of college football, basketball and baseball. You may wonder what that has to do with the White Sox or social media, and I’ll get to that as I go on. The why, I can’t answer for sure. It may be a midlife crisis, it may be a longing for happier days, of which I’ve had many, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It may be a lot of things combined.

As a lot of you know, EA Sports stopped making college sports games in the 2010s (and at least one college franchise in the 2000s) due to the athletes not receiving any kind of royalties due to their likenesses being used in the games. The last college football game hit the shelves in 2014, the last college basketball game in 2010 (both on the PlayStation 3) and the last college baseball game (of which there were only two) in 2007 (on the PlayStation 2). So it is here that I made my decision to play the entire Dynasty on the 2007 games for the PlayStation 2. NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07.

Yes, they’re severely outdated (like 16 years outdated), but that means less than one might imagine since updated rosters are available not only for download but on memory cards that can be purchased from eBay or other online stores. So while the graphics will be extremely dated, the experience won’t be.

Now, I want to take a step back in time and explain how I got to this point.

I have a long experience as a sports video gamer. One of the absolute highlights of this came back in 1993, when my friend Calvin and I spent a weekend playing Baseball Stars on the NES.

Baseball Stars was the first video game to include a fully programmable option, you could create your own teams and your own leagues, even with the ability to make players male or female. This was unheard of at the time, and that game was, and still is, one of my all time favorites. Calvin and I had what might be considered a fantasy draft, selecting players for our teams, as well as one minor league team each. We then created ourselves and our entire teams and proceeded to play an entire season.

The idea of “creating” yourself in a game stuck with me. My next favorite sports game (chronologically) was Tecmo Super Bowl. This was the first sports game to feature not only real teams but real players, but the “creation” option hadn’t reached it’s point in time yet. At this point, my senior year in high school, my friend Joe Nunez and I played a complete season, just “pretending” we were the players in the game, as Joe played as the Cleveland Browns and I played as the New Orleans Saints. But I wanted to “be” me.

In the summer of 1995, I bought a copy of an old NES game called John Elway’s Quarterback. This game had neither real players or real teams, just a bunch of bland players and city names instead of teams. It’s at this point I began the “dynasty” concept; I would play four “seasons” of football on John Elway’s Quarterback and then I would start playing Tecmo Super Bowl as an NFL draftee.

John Elway’s Quarterback doesn’t have any kind of stat saving ability, so while I played I kept a spiral notebook in my hand, and every time I completed a pass or ran for positive yardage, I would write that number down in parenthesis in my notebook, and if I threw an incomplete pass, I’d mark that with an “x.” Then I could figure out my completion percentage and total yards, as well as my touchdowns and interceptions. I used the “Los Angeles” team on the game as the UCLA Bruins, and when I finished, I was “drafted” by the Cleveland Browns. I proceeded to play seven seasons with the Browns on Tecmo Super Bowl, winning three Super Bowls before I quit. For whatever reason, I didn’t keep all of my stats like I wanted to.

The next time I decided to do a Dynasty was 1997, and it was much more advanced and involved than the 1995 version. This time, I was using the Super Nintendo and was playing both football and basketball at UCLA, using College Football USA 97 and NCAA Final Four Basketball and when I finished, I created myself on Madden 97. This was leaps and bounds ahead of what I had done before, with College Football USA 97 keeping all of the important stats I needed and, while NCAA Final Four Basketball didn’t really have a season option, I made the best of it and played what amounted to four full seasons. When this was finished, I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers on Madden 97 but I never got around to actually playing for them.

This was not my least successful run, but it was definitely not my best. While College Football USA 97 was a million miles ahead of keeping my own stats with a “fake” team, there was still no option to create myself (however, on the Sega Genesis version of College Football USA 97, player creation IS an option) and the game play was so unbelievably slow, there was no real enjoyment to be had playing the game. But the fact that I was able to play football AND basketball was a revelation and really did change everything.

Fast forward to 2001. I had upgraded to a Sony PlayStation and the first thing I did was purchase NCAA GameBreaker 2000 and NCAA Final Four 2000, as well as NFL GameDay 2000. These games were all produced by Sony’s 989 Studios, and what a major improvement compared to my previous dynasty. I could play a full career at UCLA in both football and basketball with real stats, schedules, etc.

I enjoyed this immensely, and allowed myself to be drafted on NFL GameDay 2000 and ended up with the Carolina Panthers as a second round pick. I decided to run with it. A couple of games into my second season with the Panthers, it said my character had suffered a knee injury and I ended up being out the rest of the season. This was doubly bad when, at the end of the year, I was on the Panthers’ list of retired players. This bothered me more than it should have, and it would be nine years before I decided to try again.

I went on to pick up MLB 2000, and by 2004 I was completely off on college (and pro) football and basketball, and subsequently bought MLB 2004 and MLB 2005. Once the MLB The Show series started, I bought every game every year, including 2023. As I mentioned, during this time, EA Sports stopped producing college sports games, and at some point in the early 2010s I did buy NCAA Football 10 and NCAA Basketball 10 and eventually bought NCAA Football 13 and NCAA Football 14. They were never used and, in fact, NCAA Football 14 has never been out of the case. I just didn’t feel anything anymore for college sports, I was all in on baseball.

The problem with that is I have burned myself out beyond the ability to even function anymore. My life has been all baseball, all day, 365 days a year since 2004. I got on social media in 2005 (MySpace) and it’s been posting stories and lineups and transactions every day for 18 years. And I am ready for a change.

And I’m ready to take a step back in time to happier days and even though I know the experience won’t be the same, I still want to take the time and do this one more time, a little better than the last time I did it, because now it’s time to play college football, basketball and baseball. The complete experience.


I have procured brand new, unopened copies of NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07 as well as updated rosters for each. I’m going to create myself and play all the way through, all three sports, until I “graduate.” After that, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I may “get drafted” on Madden 07 or I may buy the newest Madden (whenever that may be) for the PS5 or I may break down and play Road To The Show for the first time on MLB The Show. I’m not worried about it right now. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Right now, my focus is on unfocusing on the White Sox.

I’ve not yet decided if I’m going to do this dynasty with the WVU Mountaineers or the UCLA Bruins but at the moment it’s definitely 90% UCLA. That decision will come within the next month. The other decision I’m battling with is what to do with social media. I know the vast majority of people who are friends or followers on social media are there for my White Sox posts, so my plan at the moment is to just create new social media accounts strictly for college sports. I’ll keep my other accounts in case this idea falls flat or something happens to hasten my return to the way things are now. I’m hopeful that doesn’t happen and I hope my friends who enjoy college sports will follow me to my new platforms. That decision will also be made in the next month.

So, in closing, as I stand right now, I’m fully planning on making this project a reality. And while I’ll be using PS2 games, I have a backward compatible PS3 that does upgrade the graphics slightly. Once I’ve made the decision, I’ll be boxing up all of my White Sox memorabilia and putting it in storage. I figure this project should take roundabout two years to finish completely, at which a White Sox return is certainly possible.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

Riding Off Into The Sunset…

It is with mixed emotions that I present this blog entry, as I have spent the better part of two years deciding exactly how, and when, I would need to write it.

After much thought and discussion, I have decided that the time is now for me to walk away from social media and the Chicago White Sox. The reasons for this are varied but it all comes down to needing to do what’s right for my mental health and well-being.

Regarding the White Sox, I have reached a low point in my fandom, after 32 years, I just don’t have the desire to continue watching this clown show. Most everyone knows I’ve dropped tens of thousands of dollars right into Jerry Reinsdorf’s pocket over the years, in addition to paying $150 a year for MLB.TV, just for the pleasure of being disgusted and aggravated.

For over 20 years I’ve wanted to redo a little project I did back in 2001 (and once previously in 1995-96) that requires my full attention and I have decided that the time to do it is now. I have to remove outside influences and that means spending my money elsewhere, not on the White Sox or MLB, in general. It requires spending my time elsewhere, as well.

Which brings me to social media. I first joined MySpace in September 2005, and I’ve been completely connected ever since. This has been both a blessing and a curse, and while I love all of my White Sox friends, I need to take a step back and isolate myself for a while. This is not to say I’m going to go away forever; in fact, I’m not closing my accounts, I’m just removing them from my phone/tablet/PC and letting them sit. I don’t want to oversell what I’m doing, this is a mental health break, and if my project goes to plan, it should take around two years to finish.

I don’t expect this to be easy, but I’m going to give it everything I have. And until I return, I hope the White Sox find some way to turn things around and I hope everyone has happy, fulfilling and productive lives, myself included. Thank you for being a friend.

Peace.

CAN 2023 BE THE YEAR I WAS HOPING 2020 WAS GOING TO BE?

This is going to be one of my shorter blog entries, because I don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on 2022 (or 2021 or 2020 or any of the past 18 years) or over-hyping what may be another year in a long line of really bad years.

If you roll back in my blog to December 2019 you’ll see how much I looked forward to the 2020s beginning and the miserable 2010s finally coming to an end. Not much in my life has gone well or been pleasant since around 2004, and I know most of this is due to the fact that I got home internet service in 2005, and life has gone downhill ever since.

While the first six weeks of 2020 were amazing, the second week of February brought about a lot of things I don’t like to even think about (COVID, people I had discarded returning to my life) and 2021 and 2022 would prove to be even worse.

I’m not saying they were 2010s worse, because I really don’t know how life could have been any worse than it was during the 2010s. I wouldn’t wish that decade on my worst enemy, and I’m hopeful things will never be that bad again.

The main difference between standing in 2019 and looking toward 2020 and standing in 2022 and looking into 2023 is at least I had a plan for 2020. It may have crashed spectacularly in a mere month and a half, but I still had a plan in place.

I have no plan for 2023. I have some contingencies in place, in case whatever I do decide to do doesn’t work out. For example, my baseball burnout is so extreme I’ve been trying to decide what to do when it finally engulfs me. I am 99% sure at that point I’ll begin following either UCLA or West Virginia University sports.

As everyone knows, I love my White Sox and I’m trying as hard as I can to focus myself on it but things that have happened this offseason have hampered that, not the least of which was my loss of my MLB The Show 22 roster files I had been working on for seven weeks. I have since restarted my work using my previous year’s files from MLB The Show 21, which I preferred far more than the 2022 version anyway.

I want to do all the things I wanted to do in 2020. And 2021 and 2022. And while I did a few of them (specifically my two trips to Chicago in 2021 to see the White Sox in person) I have yet to “turn the corner” with my life. All I’ve done is waste it. And feeling the way I do (lack of sleep, lack of eating right, lack of exercise, etc) has done nothing but cause me more issues than I had before. Things have got to change.

And while I know there’s nothing special about another trip around the sun I do still want to improve my situation. I’m 45 years old and have a number of contemporaries who have passed away due to heart attacks and other issues I could be just as susceptible to at my age. If that happens, so be it. But I want to be better than that.

It’s time to leave all the trash in the past. Not just the trash of 2022, but all the trash since 2005. And there has been a landfill full of it. I just want to be happy. For the first time in almost 20 years, I just want to have an extended period of happy

Peace.

2022 A personal Retrospective

Normally, I would hold my yearly retrospective until closer to the end of the year, like I did in 2020 (which was published on December 18, 2020).

However, it wouldn’t matter if I won the lottery every week for the rest of the year and if Paige Spiranac showed up at my door and asked me to marry her, I don’t think this trainwreck of a year could be saved. It’s been that bad.

It’s amazing to think that three short years ago I sat here and penned a blog about how good I thought the 2020’s would be. I suffered through a miserable decade in the 2010’s, I wouldn’t wish a decade like that on my worst enemy.

The 2020’s have been worse, so far.

The year 2020 brought us COVID and the subsequent illegal lockdown. As bad as that year seemed at the time, it would pale in comparison to what was ahead for me. In 2021, I nearly lost one of my closest friends over personal nonsense, and she and I barely spoke the entire year. I got into a relationship I had no business getting into (the “personal nonsense”) and in September I lost my mother after a battle with dementia.

Which brings us to 2022. And the downhill slide continued.

The nonsensical relationship I was in dominated the first nine months of the year. Even though it was of the long-distance variety, I felt like a prisoner. How to explain what it was like? I cringed when my phone went off, whether it was a text or a call. I cried myself to sleep many nights, which in itself is completely pathetic. I could have walked away at any time, but I didn’t. It’s the same story I’ve lived 15 times before, I’m in a situation that makes me want to die but I don’t have the good sense to walk away.

Mercifully, she walked away in late September, and a weight was lifted off me. But a new one quickly emerged. While I was happy that miserable experience was over, it reinforced something that had been bothering me for some time; I have a 100% failure rate when it comes to relationships. I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog, and it’s something I just have a hard time coming to grips with it. A success rate of 0% over 35 years. I don’t know how anything could be more pathetic. And it will never improve.

Having that black cloud of misery hanging over my head for almost 10 months, I also got to experience what may well be the worst baseball season for the Chicago White Sox I have ever seen, and possibly the worst ever for the organization.

While an 81-81 record doesn’t sound as bad as, say, the Pittsburgh Pirates season (62-100), the Pirates went into their season knowing they were likely going to finish in last place. The White Sox were expected to make a run at the World Series. Instead, they finished 11 games out of first place and failed to make the playoffs.

I preached the entire season that this team wasn’t good enough to contend, but I was met at every turn by fan boys who insisted they’d be just fine and just to wait. I waited, and it went just about like I had predicted it would.

Speaking of fan boys, I have begun to wonder lately if every sports team has fan boys, who refuse to criticize the team no matter what happens. I just don’t understand how anyone could support every move a team makes even when they know it’s the wrong one. A real fan wants to see his team succeed, not just kiss their collective asses every time something happens, good or bad. Do all teams have fans like that?

The stress of that stupid relationship and this stupid ball club got me back into stress eating, something I hadn’t done in over a decade. Now I’m even more overweight and even more miserable, and I’m sitting here again placing all my hopes and dreams on the turning over of the calendar to make everything right again.

I’ve started laying out plans for 2023. I’m once again updating the MLB The Show rosters for next season because I hope to start a franchise next spring with the White Sox. If that fails (again, for what would probably be the 23rd straight year), I have made the decision that it may be time to cut ties with the White Sox, and Chicago in general and bring my world closer to home. I may start following the WVU Mountaineers.

So much time has been spent thinking on this situation. I would be walking away from a lot, friends, important connections, an excellent network of fans and a social media presence. I’d be giving all that up to start again at the bottom, going from Major League Baseball back to the college ranks and a university I’ve barely followed at all since the mid 1990s. But if baseball fails me again, I am truly ready to make the move.

I have also made the decision that, if this happens, I will be ready to completely start over with new social media accounts, email accounts and maybe even a new phone number. This is a move I should have made before 2020 began, but I decided to just push forward with where I am now. I won’t make the same mistake twice.

It’s also time to get back into physical fitness. I bought a new weight bench which I plan to put together over the next several weeks, and starting in January I plan on putting my broken, swollen and disgusting body back together again.

The thing that has made this year so much worse than the previous few is that I have completely lost my desire to do anything. I’ve had to force myself to work on the baseball rosters even though I have wanted to do a franchise on MLB The Show for as long as that has been an option. I want to get back into watching The “Chicago” shows (Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med). Can’t seem to do that either.

But I’m finally at what feels like rock bottom and I’m ready to start making the climb back up. And I hope that finally, when that calendar turns from 2022 to 2023, things start looking better than they have lately because I can’t deal with much more of this. I’d rather have another 2020 than another 2022. This year can absolutely fuck off. If I could, I’d wipe it from my mind. While admittedly it wasn’t as bad as 2017, it was still bad enough that I’d rank it in the bottom three years of my life (2017, 2022 and 1996).

So, we’ll see where things go from here. One thing is for certain, there’s nowhere to go but up. But I’ve also said that in the past and was wrong. I just want to be happy.

Peace.

IT’S OVER: MAKING THE HARD DECISION I COULDN’T MAKE BEFORE

I knew this day was coming, I’ve known it for years.

Technically, it had come once before, in 1996.

But in 2005 I made some stupid decisions that have haunted me since then.

At the age of 19, I knew my dating life was over and that I wasn’t someone who should ever be in a relationship. I wasn’t built for relationships. I’m too independent and I don’t know what love is. It’s not fair of me to waste anyone’s time or to have my time wasted.

At that point, I embarked on the happiest period of my life, by far. I didn’t date or talk to girls in any way, and it lasted for nine glorious years. It just went to prove the point I had known all along. The only way I could be happy is to be single, and anyone I get involved with I’m going to make miserable, and no one deserves that in either direction.

In 2005, I stepped out of the shadows and let the internet start introducing me to women.

To call that a mistake doesn’t even begin to cover just how much of a mistake it was.

I would spend the following 16 years in one bad relationship after another, one in the mid to late 2000s with the most horrible human being I’ve ever known. One that lasted seven years with a piece of garbage I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. One that lasted 10 months with a girl 600 miles away who changed personalities so overwhelmingly that it felt like the girl she was at first had passed away and I was left with a mean, hateful, loveless replacement I didn’t love or want. One that lasted six weeks before she left me for her ex-husband. Who didn’t want her back. One that chased me for four years and I couldn’t get away from fast enough.

Now, before anyone says it (or thinks it), yes, I take responsibility for my part in this whole situation. I should never have been in any of those relationships. I should never have been in one at any time in my life. My failure rate is 100%, and the law of averages says that should be impossible. In 35 years of having one girlfriend or another, one of them should have worked out instead of every one of them being failures of ultimate dimension.

But they have all been ultimate failures. Some were at least 75% my fault. But I’m not putting “fault” on anyone because I never should have been in those situations in the first place. They were doomed to fail so putting “blame” on anyone doesn’t make sense.

I can’t believe that as recently as a year ago I still had this idea that maybe someday something would work out. Despite one failure after another, all my life, I still had the idea that I could love and be loved, too. That somehow I “deserved” it. Even though everything pointed in the same direction. And I knew that eventually the day would come where I would finally give up and accept things as they are. And that day is today.

Making this perfectly clear so anyone who ever finds this has no questions or qualms about what I’m saying: Never again. NEVER. I will never get involved with another woman again as long as I live, whether I die tomorrow or 50 years from now. I know, without a doubt, I was never intended to be with anyone. I can say without hesitation that any female I’ve been involved with in the past was a mistake and I’d take every one back if I could, there’s nothing in the past that’s even worth the memories I have left of them.

That 100% failure rate will stick with me forever. Guys who couldn’t tie their own shoes in high school managed to get married, guys who never had a girlfriend back then. But I didn’t know then that I would be the one guy who would never find a soulmate to spend my life with, maybe because I have no soul, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I know it and I accept it and I’m ready to go forward with no expectations and a “no” ready for any female who ever approaches me again.

I’ve been a single man again for 10 months and I’m not speaking out of anger or any need to get my rocks off, I just know this is how it’s supposed to be and I’m finally accepting of it. I’m glad I didn’t have to suffer any further before I finally figured this out.

It’s over.

WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?

As I enter the final quarter of 2022, my life hasn’t been this confusing in years.

This has been one of the worst years I’ve had to put it, between my personal life, my spiritual life, my health and my life as a sports fan. In fact, when you put it all together, 2022 may well rank as the worst year of my life. And I can’t wait for 2023 to get here and put an end to this.

To be fair, I need to put the blame where it belongs, right on top of my head. I’m the reason, my poor decisions have lead to everything that today makes my life very confusing and unhappy. But I’ll tackle all of that in my end-of-the-year blog entry. Right now, lets look at the road signs.

This Chicago White Sox season was miserable. A team that was supposed to contend for a World Series championship finished 81-81 and couldn’t even make the playoffs, let alone make an extended playoff run. And I watched all but maybe 5 of those games this season.

In the post season, since 2015, one of my favorite projects has been doing updates to the MLB The Show rosters to upload to the servers for others to use, then I can use it to build my own White Sox roster to play franchise mode on the game, putting myself in the general manager position and making the trades and signings I would make if I had the opportunity to do so.

But I don’t feel the excitement about that this offseason, due to the poor season overall as well as the potential loss of free agent first baseman Jose Abreu, who has been my favorite player on the team since he signed prior to the 2014 season. If he leaves, I am not even sure I want to continue following the White Sox, let alone putting months of work into updating rosters.

So, I look to what I used to do immediately after the season during the White Sox rebuild, I would completely immerse myself in the DC Universe, playing the Batman Arkham video game series, watching Justice League cartoons and The Dark Knight trilogy until the MLB postseason was over, also listening to old Superman radio shows and watching shows like Gotham and the old 1950s The Adventures Of Superman and the 1960s Batman series.

While I’ve started out by playing my way through Batman Arkham Asylum and I’m currently working on Batman Arkham City I don’t have the same excitement I used to have in the past.

Finally, a little project I’ve covered previously in my blog, is my NCAA project, which is basically me running through franchise mode on NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball and MVP NCAA Baseball on the PlayStation, and ultimately moving on to either Madden NFL or MLB The Show after finishing my “college eligibility.” I’ve done the project twice in the past (in 1995 using John Elway’s Quarterback and Tecmo Super Bowl on the NES and again in 2001 with NCAA GameBreaker and NFL GameDay on the PlayStation. At this point, I have everything I need to do the best job I’ve ever done but like everything else, I lack the motivation and desire to do it.

I should say I don’t lack the desire or motivation, because that’s not entirely accurate. I think I’m in the middle of a deep depression based on everything that has happened in 2022 and I’m just waiting for the next “bad thing” to happen. Basically, I’m dealing with a form of mental block.

I have decided, after talking to a number of people, that I’m going to basically take the month of October off before making a decision. I’ll continue playing Arkham City and follow it up with Arkham Origins and at the end of the month, I will make a decision. We’ll see how that works.

In a perfect world, I’d take this month off and focus 100% on the DC Universe and in November, when free agency begins, I’ll start updating my rosters on MLB The Show with a renewed vigor. And there’s every chance that may happen. But the stress of this year has beaten me down physically and spiritually and I need to make improvements there as well. I need to get back into a routine, including a workout program, eating right and finally sleeping again, which is something that I’ve been neglecting for close to 18 months due to my personal life.

On the flip side, I can see me having no desire to do anything when this month-long sabbatical ends. If that’s the case, I’ll know I’m in a deeper depression than I realize. And I’ll have to deal with that when, and if, the time comes. But for now, I want to focus on the potential positives.

So, we’ll see what happens in about a month, and I’ll go from there. Thank you for taking the time to read, I really am not one for posting publicly about my issues, but sometimes just laying it out there is the best way to get it out of my head. Whether anyone sees it or not.

Peace.

BACK IN THE CLINK: FACEBOOK JAIL 2022

Back in the clink.

This is my 11th trip to Facebook Jail, and I consider it to be just about as legitimate as the rest of my trips.

A friend of mine had posted a video on my wall, taken at the MLB All Star Game in Los Angeles. A group of kids were standing behind a fence waiting for a player to sign baseballs for them. At one point, a man with gray hair and a gray beard, forced his way into the line, shoving children in the process, to get a ball autographed. I commented that this man “should be taken behind a building and have a few of his bones broken.” Shortly thereafter, I was told that I would be going to Facebook Jail for 5 days.

My crime? “Inciting violence.”

To be fair, I had 2 prior warnings. In December 2021 I posted a meme featuring a scene from the film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In the scene, Clark and Rusty Griswold are hanging Christmas lights on the roof and the caption read “Rusty, like Jeffrey Epstein, these lights aren’t going to hang themselves.” This was a violation for “promoting suicide,” even though Epstein memes are strewn about Facebook like party favors on New Year’s Eve.

In November 2021, I committed the ultimate sin, which I’m surprised didn’t land me in Facebook Jail permanently, or maybe even in “real” jail: I posted that there are two genders and everything else is mental illness. That was removed for “hate speech.”

So, before I jump into where I go from here, I just want to put a few things out there because I’m not ashamed of my beliefs and I will continue to hold them whether or not I’m able to mention them. There’s a fine line between free speech and a complete shutdown on same, so if this also gets me into trouble, well, I’ll talk about that later in this dissertation.

I hate Joe Biden with the fury of 1000 suns. If I woke up tomorrow and he had died from COVID, I’d consider it a national holiday. I think he’s a miserable, lying, good for nothing, worthless piece of garbage and he has been for as long as I can remember. I first became aware of him in 1987, during the 1988 Presidential race, which we covered in my 6th grade social studies class. This was my introduction to politics. Ol’ Joe was running for the Democrat nomination but had to drop out after it was discovered he was falsifying (i.e. lying about) his academic history.

Along with Joe, I hate his entire party, especially the far left liberals. The ones that Malcolm X very eloquently outed in the 1960s who have only become worse over time. The “woke” folks. The “trans community.” You people are all sick. Like mentally ill.

I’ve made no attempt to hide my feelings about these “people” on social media, and to be fair to the Facebook cocksuckers, er, “fact checkers,” it wasn’t my posts on this garbage that landed me in Facebook Jail. To be honest, I’ve had very few problems posting my thoughts on these subjects on social media, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

The issue at hand is that I was at a tipping point anyway. I’m not in a good place in my life. I’m burned out on baseball (I think), but I’m not sure if I’m actually burned out or if its being pushed at me by certain people in my life that I’m burned out. There is a person in my day to day life that is doing everything possible to change everything about me. I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t do that to anyone. I keep hoping it will subside, but if it doesn’t, I will need to extricate this person from my life. However, there’s also a possibility that she’s being honest, I may well BE burned out.

I’ve been trying to roll my life back as much as I can to the last time I was happy, which was anytime between 1995 and 2005. Actually, to be completely fair, I was happy from the day I was born until around May 2005. Since then, it’s been one disaster after another, more misery piled upon more unhappiness, so I’ve been trying to find a way to go back to happier times.

What has been at the center of my unhappiness for 17 years? Social media and the internet. I don’t beat around the bush about this, it’s been women on social media that have made me miserable for 17 years. Every unhappy moment and every aggravation can be traced to some female I never should have been dealing with in the first place. This is not hyperbole in any sense of the word. These are facts. Those who have been around me can verify that this is a fact.

So, part of what I have been looking at doing to try to turn back the clock is getting rid of social media. Beyond that, I have fantasized of getting rid of my smart phone. I recently got my dad a 4G flip phone (which I had no idea still existed) and this has made me yearn for one. I can’t get rid of the internet completely, as I have 2 internet businesses I run so getting completely off the grid is impossible. But it’s possible to remove myself from 90% of it.

However, I’m not positive that’s going to make me any happier, and a large number of friends have agreed that leaving social media isn’t going to make me any happier. One person, though, thinks its a great idea because, as mentioned, she would like to change everything about me. My theory up until now has been if I changed social media to fit me, I might be OK with it.

I’ve been active on Twitter for a decade, and I’ve had less trouble on there with my posts than I have had on Facebook, which seems to be the polar opposite of the problems most people have. I’ve had an Instagram account since around 2016, and my problems on there are pretty much equal to my problems on Facebook (which makes sense because they’re under the same corporate umbrella and are likely policed by the same “keystone cops” who fact check on Facebook.

Ultimately, I don’t think turning back time (or making a half-assed attempt to) is going to be the answer, it might seem novel at first but I think it would get boring very quickly. Yes, I was very happy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but I’m also not the same person I was back then. Everything has changed, including my mentality. I was naturally happy back then. Now I would be taking an angry and bitter version of myself who is 20 to 25 years older and trying to stick myself into a situation that is devoid of the few things that make me happy NOW but trying to recreate the things that made me happy THEN. Considering how much has changed, I just don’t think it’s possible.

When I look back 25 to 27 years ago, I was in college. I had a girlfriend across the county. I had one video game console, an original Nintendo. I watched Three’s Company and Perry Mason on a daily basis, taping them off television and watching the VHS tapes over and over and over. I had my cat, Bubbles. My mom was still living then, obviously. I didn’t have a lot, but I was so happy.

Fast forward to now. I have everything. PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 5 consoles which play games for every generation, as well as a Retron 5 to play everything else. A 55-inch 4K TV. Those shows I enjoyed? I have the entire series on DVD, not just the ones I mentioned but several others that were a huge part of the 2000s for me. I have more “stuff” than I have room to put it.

And it really doesn’t do anything for me. Back in those days I had a word processor that looked just like a computer from the early 1990s, complete with a full size CRT monitor. I was so happy. Now I have a $1000 gaming computer with a 25” monitor and it’s just kind of “meh.” The 55” TV instead of the 25” TV. A Blu-ray player instead of the old VCR I build out of parts from 3 broken ones. Multiple streaming services instead of cable. But I also have DISH Network. I have everything.

And I have nothing, because none of it is making me happy.

I know a lot of this, and by extension, my unhappiness on social media, is mostly in my head. I do things that annoy me. For example, if I would just completely ignore the news, be it on the radio, the TV or the internet, and I never saw Joe Biden’s face again, that would go a long way toward making me less angry. I need to stop listening to people who want me to change for their benefit. My life is my own, it belongs to no one else and no one else should have any say in it.

So at this moment, what I’m looking at doing is, when I return to Facebook on Tuesday, changing my entire presentation. Instead of anti-Biden memes and “woke is a joke” posts, I need to stick strictly to baseball, maybe a cat meme here and there, and not let politics so much as be a blip on my radar. All the news does is make me angry, and it needs to be cleansed from my life.

I also need to eliminate the people who cause me these problems as well. And there are several of them. Whether or not that means unfriending, unfollowing or just blocking, they need to be where I can’t see them and don’t have to deal with them. I am just at a point in my life where I can’t deal with such flagrant stupidity and mental insanity. Especially when it accomplishes nothing for them and nothing for me. I’m also going to go on Twitter and do the same thing.

Hopefully, this will work. If it doesn’t, I’ll admit I was wrong and consider my other options, including complete disconnection from the world and an attempt to go back to 1999 in 2022. Even though I know it won’t work, at least I will make the attempt. I hope I won’t have to, because it will likely hurt more than just knowing how much unhappier I am today than I thought I was.

In closing, I apologize for the fact that you just spent 15 minutes reading the ramblings of a guy who just let his mind vomit out everything that was going through it and you won’t get those 15 minutes back. But if you happen to see this and you know of a way I can try to close my life off to things I don’t want to see or hear about in the digital age, and how to keep from voicing my displeasure on social media with everything that aggravates me, please fill me in.

Thank you for your time. Peace.

THE BREAK-UP I COULDN’T HANDLE: THE 2022 MLB LOCKOUT

I tried. Lord knows, I tried. I tried, and I failed.

Knowing there was going to be an MLB work stoppage as far back as 2019, as my friends and I discussed regularly on Facebook. I started taking steps to ween myself off of baseball and get into something else. But that was an exercise in futility.
Starting in the summer of 2021, I started trying to push myself toward other sports I had enjoyed in the past. The NHL, and college football, basketball and baseball. I figured if there was a baseball strike or lockout, I’d have something to do.

At first I started following the Chicago Blackhawks, as I had been a huge NHL fan back in the 1990s and early 2000s. I also tried to follow West Virginia University and UCLA football and basketball, but no matter what I tried, it kept coming back to baseball. Baseball has had a stranglehold on me since 2006, and it’s not letting go.

I basically stopped watching the NFL in 2004, the sport was changing so much I was losing interest on a weekly basis. I had been a fan of the Cleveland Browns since the late 1980s, and the Chicago Bears for several years before that. My college sports fandom hung around until the mid-2000s, and absolutely cratered during all of the conference realignment of the second half of the 2000s.

By that point my time was completely consumed with baseball, And for the past 17 years or so I’ve made a point of following baseball 12 months out of the year, whether it was spring training, the regular season, the post-season or the offseason, I was always involved and following the happenings on a daily basis, 365 days a year.

I’ve always had such an easy time letting things go. In 2005, after almost 25 years as a fan of professional wrestling, I had reached the end of my ability to care. At the time I had posters of Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock in my man cave, a VHS and DVD collection anyone would have been jealous of, a closet full of wrestling t-shirts and a massive action figure collection I displayed. I watched wrestling six days a week (WWF and WCW had their flagship shows on Monday, WCW Thunder on Wednesday, WWF SmackDown on Thursday, ECW on TNN on Friday, and syndicated shows from WWF and WCW as well as independent Pittsburgh-area wrestling shows on the weekends. My only day off was Tuesday, so I would spend Tuesday watching wrestling videos or playing wrestling video games.

You might say I was all in. And then I was all out.

Some people laughed and said I was such a huge fan there was no way I could walk away. But I did. I sold my entire video collection, donated my shirts to Goodwill and sold the vast majority of my action figures and posters. And I never went back. That was 17 years ago and I have had no interest in ever going back. It’s dead to me.

Football and basketball became nothing but thug sports over the years. I read more stories online about arrests than I did transactions or scores.

But I always had baseball. So I absolutely sunk my entire life into baseball and the Chicago White Sox. But don’t misunderstand; I first became a White Sox fan in 1991, when I was a freshman in high school. We’re talking over 30 years. This didn’t happen overnight. Overall, I’ve been a baseball fan since 1988, as I followed the Pittsburgh Pirates prior to jumping on the White Sox bandwagon. While I did follow many sports during the 1990s and early 2000s, baseball was usually number-one on the list.

But now I’m at a point where I can’t picture my life without it. By this point most people are thinking “just wait it out, there will be baseball at some point.” Which, yes, is true, but I’m at the point where I don’t want to hand my money to MLB anymore, they’ve already gotten thousands and thousands of dollars out of me. I was ready to start handing money over to anyone else. I bought an insane amount of Chicago Blackhawks gear (which I still intend to use in the future) as well as WVU and UCLA gear.

So when the deadline came to get a new collective bargaining agreement signed between MLB and the players union, I figured it was time to move on. I was able to do that for roughly 24 hours. And now I’m just physically ill at the thought of moving onto something else because my heart isn’t into it. I want spring training and regular season baseball. And I’m trying to figure out what I can do to fill that void.

I’m still willing to give UCLA sports another go, my favorite college team since the mid 1990s. But at this point, I don’t know how I can get myself mentally motivated for it. My best hope is March Madness, but I feel no real urgency or desire the way I feel for MLB spring training to get underway. I know part of this is because everywhere I look in my house there’s a White Sox logo staring back at me. That’s definitely not helping.

So if jumping ship to UCLA doesn’t work, I figure I’ll do a variation on what got me through the lost 2020 summer due to COVID: I’ll start on a video game. I haven’t played Grand Theft Auto V yet, so I think I’ll start on that. I will also watch Chicago Fire/PD/Med on a nightly basis and that should help me to pass the time as well.

Ultimately, I hope UCLA can extricate me from this mental prison, and I plan to start putting that in motion very soon. But if it doesn’t, all is not lost and at least I know, once and for all, that I won’t be going back to college sports or the NFL ever again.

I have decided, though, that it would be a real good idea to leave baseball alone as soon as the season is over and get back to following the NHL, the Hawks in particular. This should alleviate some of my problems and give me something else to do besides baseball every minute of every day all year long. It can’t keep going like this.

This lockout needs to end, but if it doesn’t I’ll get through it, one way or another.

Peace.

2020 A Personal Retrospective

You don’t have to scroll too far back in my blog to see what high hopes I held for 2020. The beginning of a new decade, and putting an end to the worst decade of my life. It felt like the right time and the stars were aligning to make 2020 a real direction-changer for me. It was going to be the beginning of something special.

Well, we all know 2020 wasn’t exactly the “best year ever.”

However, I’m also going to be the first to admit it was far from being the “worst year ever.” Yes, there were challenges and things didn’t always work to plan. But 2020 was still a far cry better than, for instance, 2018. And it was perfection when compared to any year between 2010 and 2017. So I’m not here to bury 2020, just to remember it.

I will say the first six weeks of the year were as close to perfect as they could have been. I was so happy. I was working on my MLB The Show rosters because I wanted to kick off MLB Spring Training on the actual date and play a full season on the game in franchise mode, so when the offseason hit I could make the transactions as I saw fit.

And this plan worked up until COVID-19 shut down baseball for almost five months.

At some point in mid-February it felt like everything changed. Where as everything had been so perfect those first six weeks, there was a negative connotation to everything and when we went on lockdown, it felt like everything had fallen apart. My new year/new decade triumph wasn’t a loss, but it was shaping up to be far from what I had anticipated, which I am sure was the case for everyone on earth, not just me.

One of the highlights of February and March was getting Doom Eternal for my PlayStation 4, as I was a huge fan of the original Doom games dating back to the Super Nintendo in 1996. And I was so happy with Doom Eternal that I also bought the Doom Slayer’s Collection, which covered several of the games for the newer consoles I hadn’t played before.

March, April and May were enjoyable because I played Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II all the way through to completion, back to back. But I played II before I because I wanted to play the games in chronological order in regard to the timeline of the games. I also was neck-deep in watching old western shows and movies.

Looking back, I wish I had taken that time to play my baseball season on MLB The Show and saved the Red Dead Redemption games for winter.

June and July are a complete blur. I have no idea what I was doing during that time. Clearly nothing constructive. I wasn’t even taking time to smoke cigars or watch Star Trek or do any of the other things I wanted to do even before baseball had been rescheduled. The very idea that I just threw time away like that annoys me to no end.

August brought “MLB Training Camp” and a sixty-game season. So I got a couple of months of baseball and that was enough to whet my appetite for MLB The Show, so when the season ended I downloaded the latest roster and began making all the real transactions (and a few of my own with the White Sox that weren’t made in reality but that I wanted to do) so that when Spring Training 2021 comes, I can do what I wanted last year.

I was also concerned when the season ended about what direction I was going to go in terms of entertaining myself for the winter. I used to play one of the Grand Theft Auto games to completion back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and in 2015 began a yearly tradition of playing a Batman Arkham game as soon as baseball season ended.

This year I thought about immersing myself in Spider-Man games, shows and movies. I bought several Spider-Man video games, as well as the early 1980s cartoon series and the 1994 cartoon series, as well as the original movie trilogy on Blu-ray.

Then, by a complete fluke, I happened onto the show Chicago Fire. And I realized I had my winter all sewn up. So I bought eight seasons of Chicago Fire, seven seasons of Chicago P.D., five seasons of Chicago Med and one season of Chicago Justice on DVD. I started watching them in chronological order, along with the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit crossover episodes. As of today (December 18), I am 111 episodes into a 448 episode marathon, with new episodes set to begin in January 2021.

Enjoying these new shows has definitely been the highlight of the year for me, because I haven’t watched a “current” show since Family Guy debuted in 1999.

So, as 2020 comes to a close, I can’t say I’m altogether thrilled its over, like a lot of people can, but all the same I’m ready for a new year. I’m also ready to do the things I neglected to do in 2020, like working on my White Sox franchise on MLB The Show, smoking cigars and just enjoying life. And working myself back into good physical shape.

In closing, on a scale of one to ten, I’d give 2020 a six. I can’t really complain but I did miss out on a lot of opportunities I’d hoped to take advantage of. The major positives (finishing both Red Dead Redemption games and beginning my fandom with the Chicago shows) definitely outweighed the negatives this year. And I guarantee no one on earth is looking at 2020 ending the way they had anticipated or wanted. Hopefully 2021 will remedy that situation and everyone can move forward with their hopes and dreams.

Peace.

Stop The World, I Want To Get Off.

YLMh9EJRPhmht9GWNhiN7G-1200-80


For the past few months, I’ve found myself debating about whether or not to open my mouth about everything going on in the world today, to the point that I’ve crafted blogs in Word only to just delete them and walk away. A lot of this is due to the fact that I know what I want to say will offend most everyone, in one way or another. I know if I share my feelings through social media, I’ll end up kicked off. Because people like me, with my “white male privilege,” have no right to say what I think in the world today.

But I finally decided that I don’t care what anyone thinks about anything. Today I reached my breaking point when I realized I can’t sit down and look at TV or Facebook or Google or Twitter or Instagram or anything else without getting angry. So now, I’m going to say what I think and let everyone else get angry for a while. This is payback.

There are a lot of things I’m sick of. I’m sick of three years of endless (and baseless) Trump attacks. Yes, I’ll be voting for President Trump again in November, without question. I’m sick of Joe Biden, because he’s a God damn, blithering idiot. I’m sick of Nancy Pelosi for the same reason. But don’t misunderstand, this is not a pro-Republican or anti-Democrat post, because I hate both political parties equally. That’s where I stand.

The Democrat party makes me sick to my stomach, which is to be expected considering I’m a straight, white, employed, functioning, intact, native-born male. The Democrat party can’t do a thing for me. Now, if I were any minority of any kind, I wouldn’t be writing this, I’d be a rank-and-file Democrat. And don’t misunderstand, I have nothing at all against any minority group (well, there’s a few, we’ll get to those). But I do have a real problem with anyone telling me that my opinion doesn’t matter because I belong to the majority. My opinion is just as important as anyone else’s. That’s how it is.

The Republican party makes me sick to my stomach because it’s nothing but a bunch of gutless pricks desperately holding onto any level of power they can. They don’t have the balls to stand up to Antifa or BLM, so why should I think they would have the balls to stand up to the Chinese or the Russians if they were to attack? I always felt like no matter what happened, or who was in the White House, I could depend on my fellow Republicans to fight the good fight. I was sorely mistaken. Gutless and pathetic.

I’m sick of COVID-19, as is everyone. But I’m more sick of these God damn idiots who preach “trust the science” until the science doesn’t agree with them anymore. The fact is, 90% of what’s being pushed out there is political, because the world we live in today has made us this way. We’re not Americans, we’re split up into our little groups so the government or that wrinkled up bastard George Soros can control us, all at once.

Yes, I wear a mask. That’s a personal choice that doesn’t jive with my Republican friends who have asked me, “do you do everything the government tells you to do?” Well, I pay my taxes, I drive the speed limit, I haven’t killed anyone, I don’t steal, so yeah, I guess I do everything the government tells me to.” Give me a break. It’s a fucking mask. I wonder if the young men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day whined and complained because they had to wear helmets? Man up and wear your fucking mask.

I’m sick of celebrities. I don’t give a damn how popular or little known they are, I don’t care what ANY of them think or say or feel. I’m as likely to read their opinions as I am for them to read this blog, and I don’t give a damn about that, either. The fact is, most celebrities are liberals, who love the idea of socialism. Because they figure they’ve made their fortune, no one will take it away. This is the same mentality that lead to these creatures calling for open borders while living in homes with six-foot walls around the perimeters. And if you don’t see a problem with that level of hypocrisy, you’re as dumb as they are.

I’m sick of hearing about George Floyd, because I don’t give a fuck about George Floyd. George Floyd was an ex-con, a garden-variety criminal. He is being portrayed as a martyr. If that’s the case, you got a piss poor concept of what a martyr is. He was being arrested for passing counterfeit bills, and the media was quick to try to hide his criminal past because it didn’t fit their fucking sickening narrative. If you truly wanted a martyr, Breonna Taylor was that martyr. My heart grieves for her and her family, because if anyone ever deserved martyrdom on ANY level, she did. That should have been the ultimate case against crooked cops and innocent blacks being killed, but the media and the idiots decided a failed rapper with a rap sheet was worthy? Fuck you, George Floyd. Fuck you.

I’m sick of hearing about the officers involved in Floyd’s death as well. They are the scum of the earth. It doesn’t matter that George Floyd was a worthless ex-con, the police as an entity doesn’t have the right to serve as judge/jury/executioner. Derek Chauvin, who committed the actual murder (and until someone can prove Floyd died from literally anything else, I’ll call it murder), deserves to die. Yes, an eye for an eye. Because both of them are equally worthless. Fuck you, Derek Chauvin.  Fuck you. The other officers should be charged with something in line with accessories before and after the fact, since they did nothing to alleviate the situation. If nothing else, their abject stupidity makes them guilty in my eyes.

I’m sick of hearing about the KKK, BLM, Antifa, ISIS and every other TERRORIST ORGANIZATION on the planet. They all belong under one umbrella. You just pick the color of your skin or the political movement you want to get behind and there’s a terrorist organization right there waiting for you. If you belong to any of those organizations, I have nothing but disdain for you, regardless of who you are. Period.

I’m sick of the government, or the “deep state,” or whoever is doing it making a push to split us into “factions.” We’re Americans, and we all deserve to be treated for who we are, not what color we are or what religion we are or where our ancestors came from. If you’re a murderer, you’re a piece of shit regardless of whether you’re white, black, Latino or any other race. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, it was about the content of one’s character, not the color of their skin. But that idea went out the window a long time ago because “uncle Tom” King and his teachings don’t fit the narrative of current times.

I’m sick of the media. I don’t care if it’s CNN or Fox or ABC or CBS or NBC or the Washington Post or the New York Times or The Blaze or anything else. If it’s a media outlet, there’s an agenda and it’s been proven that they’ll manipulate anything they can to push their agenda. American media is a cesspool that makes used car salesmen look like upstanding citizens. I find myself now avoiding the news altogether and what little news I do get comes from my local radio station, which I turn off when the national news comes on.

I’m sick of mother fuckers who shove their opinions in each others faces on social media, regardless of whether you are a conservative, liberal or independent. No one has ever changed anyone’s mind by berating them on Facebook. If you think you can do that, you’re a fucking moron. But I’m not one of these people who can post that “no matter what you believe, I’ll never unfriend you.” I’ve unfriended a LOT of people this year because I got sick and tired of their political posting. And I don’t have one regret about it.

I’m sick of Cancel Culture. You little bastards. Who the hell do you think you are? You think you can dictate to everyone else what is and is not acceptable in the world? You can tear down or deface statues or monuments and you think that’s OK because of your beliefs? I don’t give a fuck about your beliefs. They are worthless. Just like you are. When I saw a well-known (at least among those of us who are intelligent enough to know our American history) monument in Boston depicting the 54th Massachusetts regiment, the FIRST ALL-BLACK VOLUNTEER REGIMENT IN THE CIVIL WAR. But I guarantee that 100% of those “brilliant, learned college grads” who decided to destroy it knew nothing about that. Because you’re STUPID. Most of you can barely read, let alone comprehend.

I’m sick of social networking. I’m sick of the kind of people who use it and what they use it for. I started using Facebook in 2007 to network with other White Sox fans. I didn’t give a fuck about their backgrounds, we had one thing uniting us all, and that was our love for our ballclub. And for 13 years I never unfriended or unfollowed a fellow White Sox fan for any reason, until 2020 came and suddenly everyone had more important things to argue about. So I eliminated the problem and I’ve been happier since, in a minuscule way. But I find myself wishing for the early 2000s every day, before social networking existed.

And finally, I’m sick of feeling the way I do. I’m sick of the negativity that eats at me day in and day out. I never asked for much out of life, at this point I just want to enjoy a baseball game, grill, drink a Coke, smoke a cigar, talk baseball with the guys, go for a drive, share memes and get a decent night’s sleep. But it seems like I can’t do any of that anymore. While baseball may be coming back, I’ll have to get pissed when I see posers kneel during the National Anthem. I can’t grill much due to the insane heat, as it reaches 90 degrees almost every day. It’s too humid to smoke a cigar. I can’t take a drive and listen to the radio because it pisses me off to hear the news. I have to watch my memes because some dickhead might get his panties in a bunch and I’ll end up back in Facebook jail. And I can’t sleep for all of the above reasons. And I’m really, really sick of it.

At this point, I’m not sure that I’m going to blog again after this, or that I’m going to keep any of my social networking accounts. I’ve tried to fight the good fight, I’ve tried to let everyone do their thing and tried to be supportive of protesters, police, blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, you name it. I don’t hate anyone (except Antifa, Marxists, communists and extreme left-wing and right-wing lunatics). But I just don’t think I have it in me anymore. You want to elect a God damn, stupid jagoff like Joe Biden? Go ahead. You want to get a Marxist VP so you can put him out to pasture the day after he’s inaugurated? Go ahead. I just don’t care anymore. I don’t want to hear about it.

I just don’t care about any of it anymore. I’m laying down my sword.

I’m done.

PS – As I mentioned, I always share my blogs on social media as they usually involve sports or electronics or something that I know my friends and followers would enjoy. I’ll not be sharing today’s post in any way, not because I’m ashamed of one word I said, but because I’m not taking the chance that I’m going to end up in Facebook jail again. That would be the ultimate ending to my social networking career because when that day comes, I’m closing the accounts for good and walking away. And I may end up down that road anyway.