Pluck And Luck

That's me, lying in the snow.

I am not a fan of Drew Stanton. That much is obvious by now. Fate and the Failure Demons all know this. Fate and the Failure Demons clearly hate me. Therefore, Drew Stanton will be the starting quarterback for the Detroit Lions for the foreseeable future. And why has this horrifying reality been thrust upon us? Well, because apparently, a Failure Demon rose up from a hell portal located in Shaun Hill’s living room, smashed his finger with a baseball bat made of fire and our broken dreams, cackled maniacally and then disappeared in a puff of acrid, black smoke.

What’s left to do at this point other than to wail and then smash our heads against the wall until our brains are made of pudding? Sitting in a height chair made specifically for retarded adults, banging a dull spoon on the tray in front of us and screaming “Applesauce!” over and over and over again is surely preferable than having to stare in wide eyed horror as Ol’ Plucky tries to prove for the millionth time that he is anything more than a degenerate con-man trying to sell us defective bags of grit that he swears will cure our pain.

Jesus. It’s snowing right now outside, which means that everything is dead, or soon will be. Drew Stanton is our starting quarterback. Which means that everything is dead, or soon will be.

Matthew Stafford is engaging in some “light throwing”, which, uh . . . great? Just so you know, I’m considering saving that last sentence so I can cut and paste it into every post until the year 2020.

Look, I’m not sure what else to say. In a ridiculous season which feels like it was constructed in hell as some sort of living torture chamber meant to teach each and every one of us the true meaning of pain, this feels . . . well, this actually feels kind of appropriate, you know? I mean, Hell had to find a way to ferret out the tiny pockets of hope that were still left in the fanbase and then crush their fragile spirits, and what better way to do that than to parade down the streets with a clueless Drew Stanton waving and smiling and throwing Grit at horrified onlookers while the devil rides an evil sleigh made from the bones of Matthew Stafford and Shaun Hill? These may be strange and terrible times, but for fuck’s sake, this has gone beyond strange and terrible, hasn’t it?

Poor Al over at The Wayne Fontes Experience has been broken to the point where he is a ball of pure rage, throwing out F Bombs (Bolded F Bombs even), and while that would normally delight me, those are not F Bombs of joy. Instead, reading it kinda made me feel like a little kid watching his normally jovial and responsible dad lose his shit and start tossing F Bombs around because the car won’t start or he hit his thumb with a hammer. It’s vaguely traumatizing and I might need therapy.

Meanwhile, Ty over at The Lions in Winter did his thing the other day and set out to prove, via the power of statistics, two things: number one, that the Lions are indeed better than they have been in the past, and two, that they have also been horrendously unlucky this year. It was an inspired post which epitomized both Ty’s eternal optimism and his devotion to rationality. Of course, I can only assume that the head Failure Demon read that down in hell, laughed, shook his head and said “Boys! We got more work to do.” Cue the Failure Demon rising from Shaun Hill’s floor with the aforementioned baseball bat made of flames and our broken dreams and it was only hours later that Ty’s post felt like some sort of dark and twisted omen.

Steve at Detroit Lions Weblog, a good dude who I don’t mention nearly enough, hasn’t even posted anything for the last week, which I can only assume is a survival mechanism. I’m also going to assume that he is halfway to Tijuana with a duffel bag full of assorted small arms (and I mean literal arms, not guns), wearing a human head for a hat, wearing a dress made from human skin and gibbering wildly about Matt Millen and Rod Marinelli and muttering “Same Ol’ Lions” over and over and over again while the 1 percent of his brain that hasn’t been destroyed by the Lions tries to decide whether to drive the car into the ocean or to disappear into the Mayan jungle like Col’ Kurtz and live out his days ordering around frightened tribal villagers and accosting photojournalists from TIME sent to document his crazed new world.

We are all coming apart at the seams and Drew Stanton’s head is now just floating above all of us, disembodied and huge, sort of like some fucked up version of the Wizard of Oz, laughing at us and vomiting out horrible, horrible streams of Pluck. We have three choices: one, to give in and worship the darkness and it’s avatar, Ol’ Plucky; two, to dare to fight back and be drowned by a river of Pluck, a toxic river which will carry us straight into the heart of hell; or three, to cut whatever tether keeps us bound to reality and to start writing weird shit about time traveling with some degenerate version of Doc Brown. It’s not a pretty choice to have to make. Each possible path is undignified and terrible and should leave you weeping and begging for mercy.

I have no idea what else to say here. Perhaps it’s all been said. I don’t know. Perhaps we have finally reached a point where words are just a pale mockery of the cruel emotional torture wrought by reality. I could gibber on for another billion words about how terrible Ol’ Plucky really is, but what’s the point? Everyone knows already. At this point, the Failure Demons are just standing around our broken bodies and hearts in a circle with their hell dicks out, pissing all over whatever the fuck is left of us. We’ve already been beaten, whipped, shot, stabbed, set on fire and blown up, so why not, you know? I just hope my spirit horse shows up, throws what’s left of me on its back and furiously gallops away before they start shitting on us too.

Like I said, we have gone beyond strange and terrible times and we find ourselves in a world that is not bound by mortal rules. Up is down and down is up, the sky is green, cats bark, water tastes and feels like sand and Drew Stanton is the starting quarterback of the Detroit Lions. It’s snowing out and that means that everything is dead and I’m cold, so cold, and it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.