And the Band Played On

Heeeeeeeeere's Neil

When Matthew Stafford’s desperate 4^th down pass to Tony Scheffler was batted out of the air and the Lions went 3 and out (well, 4 and out . . .) only moments after the Packers had all too predictably yanked the lead away which itself came only moments after the Lions were forced to settle for a field goal to go up only 6 rather than a touchdown that would have put the game on ice, I just sat there and I laughed hysterically, like a goddamn mental patient, and I couldn’t stop laughing such was the stark naked horror of the moment.  Yes, the Lions caused me to suffer a temporary mental break.  It has finally come to that.  But honestly, what in the hell else was I supposed to do?  How was I supposed to react?  With anger?  Been there.  Sadness?  Like an old friend to me.  Righteous indignation?  My whole fandom is one built on a pile of righteous indignation and the skulls of those fans who have done the only reasonable thing and put a goddamn bullet through their brain after drinking a gallon of Drano and then putting their heads in the oven.  I have no room left for righteous indignation, for anger, for sadness.  The only thing that’s left is that grim sort of macabre idiot’s laugh, the ghoulish howl of an insane man.  Oh Lord, why???

I could sit here and bitch about this team, to dissect the whys and the what to dos, just like I have way too many times this season but by now what’s the point?  We all know the deal.  Trying to desperately find some sort of reason, something, anything to desperately cling to just sort of has the air of frantic Titanic passengers listening to the band and trying to pick out the occasional sweet note in between the terrified shrieks and the sound of the ship breaking apart while that bastard iceberg floats on by.  It doesn’t really matter what the iceberg is.  It just matters that the ship is sinking and I don’t know if I can squeeze myself into a lifeboat yet again and I can sort of empathize with ol’ Jack right about now because it’s so very cold and if I just let go then. . .

I’m getting maudlin.  Clearly.  But I don’t know how to deal with this like a rational fan and goddammit I shouldn’t have to.  After all, the rules are different for us, aren’t they?  A 4-6 team is just a 4-6 team and hey, half the league is hovering around that mark but a 4-6 team suddenly becomes something completely different, something infinitely worse and unfathomably more terrifying and gross when it has a fifty plus year weight, an immense weight burdened with the terrible, terrible fears and disappointments of fans who have had to put up with this madness for an entire lifetime, hanging around its neck, dragging it into the abyss where not even the devil can hear you scream.

The Lions are a shitty football team.  Again.  Anyone trying to deny that at this point is just a gibbering lunatic broken by reality, a mental patient claiming to be Napoleon standing before a mirror and barking out proclamations with a grandeur and pride that ignores the fact that he’s wearing a diaper and his aide-de-camp is actually a senile old beast with no teeth with applesauce running down his chin and piss down his leg.  It is unseemly.  And so yes, the Lions are pretty undeniably a shitty football team.  What in the hell am I supposed to do with that?  How am I supposed to face that when I had to summon everything I had left as a fan to pick up the pieces after 0-16?  That season was a savage, damn near mortal blow, and it took ungodly strength for us to crawl out of that pit of despair and try to move forward again as something resembling real live human beings.  I needed this team to carry me, to take up the fight for me because goddammit, I just didn’t have anything left. 

And now here we are, living in a world in which every goddamn professional football dream has blown apart, in a world in which Matthew Stafford has regressed to the point that I’m worried he’s going to be wearing diapers and shaking a rattle by the end of the year and crawling back into his mother’s vagina by March and a world in which Shawn Jefferson openly screams at an impotent Scott Linehan on the sideline while the world watches and it’s both awful and all too familiar and please just make the bad man stop.

I gibbered on a lot in my last post about the return of the dreaded Lions disease and goddamn, that scene was about as stark an example as you can get of that heinous beast.  That right there is the epitome of Lions disease.  That is an echo of Jon Kitna screaming at the sideline in the early days of 2008.  That is Dre Bly sneering and telling everyone that Joey Harrington sucks.  That is Dom Raiola challenging the fans to a fight.  That is . . . everything.

Let’s get back to Stafford for a moment though.  For once the Lions didn’t lose this game because of penalties or because they were acting like a bunch of jackasses.  They lost because Stafford was terrible.  He just was.  In a season in which he has been teetering on the brink, he finally fell, deep into the canyon and I fear that he is still falling and that when he goes splat we may not be able to save him.  He basically kept the Packers in the game with his rickety arm, throwing interceptions and missing wide open receivers over and over again.  Even his one touchdown pass should have been intercepted but St. Calvin swooped down from the heavens and snatched the ball away and gave Stafford – and all of us – a temporary reprieve from the horrors that Fate had in store for us.  The argument about his mechanics has ceased to become an argument and has become more a gigantic farce.  Early in the season, folks liked to gibber about how it was just evidence of that Favreian playmaker GIT ER DONE LOOKIT THAT BOY HAVE FUN bullshit.  It was excused and the coaches publicly said that they weren’t worried, that they believed in him, that it was cool.  It’s a refrain we’ve heard far too much of, that JUST STAY THE COURSE AND EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY horseshit, a ballsy load of drivel which has only managed to drive the team further into its own degeneracy, codifying its weaknesses, solidifying them and then feeding them like some treacherous cancer until soon they’re not just idiosyncratic little blips and bumps in the team’s road to success but its entire identity, the very essence of its being.  And because of that Matthew Stafford isn’t just making the occasional playground play.  No.  Instead, he’s damn near throwing the ball underhanded on every other throw, rocking off of his backfoot and watching as the ball is either turfed or sailed away into oblivion – that is when he’s not turtling on the turf after having run himself into yet another sack with his almost nonexistent pocket awareness.

The absolute degeneration of Stafford has been the worst part of this whole damn thing, the one piece of evidence that has made me understand, with a depth that has left me utterly bereft of anything worth hanging onto as a fan, that this thing is headed in not only the wrong direction but a catastrophic one.  And the entire time, Jim Schwartz stands there, impotently, and gibbers on about keeping the course, confidently riding on the coattails of the last vestiges of barely earned credibility, a hee-hawing fool pretending that his team is anything other than a 6-10 ship sinking, sinking, sinking to a black death on the bottom of a sea of failure.

I don’t like having to say such things but the time has come to say them.  Saying anything else, pretending that anything else is the reality, only makes the situation worse and rewards this team for its all too obvious failings.  I have seen a lot in my life as a Lions fan and right now I have seen enough of this horseshit.

I’ve said it over and over again this year: when it’s always something, that’s everything.  Sometimes it’s dropped passes, sometimes it’s penalties, sometimes it’s special teams breakdowns, sometimes guys simply don’t put in the effort, sometimes the offense breaks down and then when the offense gets going the defense falls apart.  Today, it was Matthew Stafford just saying fuck it and throwing the goddamn football like he was bowling.  Today, it was 17-39 with 2 INT.  When it’s always something, that’s everything.

It’s a goddamn shame too because there is one dude, a certain sainted wide receiver who is performing like an absolute warrior, a hobbled thunder heart who is rising above all the bullshit and having himself a damn near heroic season.  Forget good, we should be composing sonnets and epic poems about Calvin Johnson.  His performance in spite of a body that is practically decomposing on him is awe inspiring.  But we don’t write such things – we almost can’t write such things – because while he tries so valiantly to hold the world together for us and him and his teammates and an entire city and state which is just sick of this bullshit, that same world catches on fire and burns, burns, burns.  In the end, his heroism is tragic and if I think too much about it, I will just get even more pissed off at his asshole teammates and I don’t want that.  Hell, I can’t afford that.

I don’t have any answers for you.  I wish I did.  Frankly, no one has any answers right now.  We’re all just watching with a combination of horror and revulsion, naked and gibbering while the bombs drop all around us.  We don’t even have the strength left to run for cover.  We’re just waiting for that direct hit to finally put us out of our misery or for some magic wizard to show up, tap us with his wand and transport us to some faerie land where this season never happened and where we can just pretend that everything will be alright.

Make no mistake, this is a 6-10 team.  And it’s a 6-10 team because it’s essentially the same team as it was last year, only without the absurd, charmed magic that turned that team into a 10-6 team.  The thing is, is that you can’t rely on magic, and you’d have to be especially insane to even consider relying on magic when the world of magic we’ve seen in the past half-century has been black and foul magic.  In the end, this 6-10 team is just like last year’s team, which was basically a 6-10 team, one that we forgave and even celebrated because we were seduced by magic, forgetting that magic has never been our friend.  We overlooked the cold, hard realities, the brick and mortar of the team, in favor of wizard’s spells and we told ourselves that once that magic went away that we wouldn’t need it anymore because by then the foundation would have been repaired, the brick mortared, but it turns out that the dudes who were supposed to be doing all that work were content to just get caught up in the same spellbound idiocy as the rest of us.  And now the magic is gone and all we’re left with is a crumbling house and a bunch of dudes with no clue how to fix it.  No, even worse, what we’re left with is a bunch of assholes unwilling to even admit that the house if falling apart.  They’re talking about adding on and building an in-ground pool and meanwhile the toilet just start spraying shit water and the chimney just collapsed.

And so what we’re left with is a 6-10 team, and it’s been a 6-10 team for the majority of the last three seasons.  You can’t take away the 4-0 finish to the 2010 season and you can’t take away the 5-0 start to the 2011 season that followed it.  You just can’t.  Those things happened and they were good.  But it’s become increasingly obvious, appallingly obvious, that that weird streak was the exception, not the rule.  In fact, the best the team looked during that run was probably the 4-0 finish to the 2010 season, when they just ambushed people with a monstrous defense led by an all-in Ndamukong Suh and a grit-merchant quarterback named Shaun Hill.  Even the 5-0 start felt more like an insane roller coaster ride than any sort of dominant bit of asskickery (the Passion of Jay Cutler Monday Night game aside which I’ll happily admit was the absolute highlight of this whole tragicomic era.)  But I have said all this before, in varying degrees of breathless bitching.  These are not new revelations but they remain important ones, and they sit firmly as the foundation of a new and despicable truth, which is that the Lions are a shitty football team, they are not the team we thought they could be, the team we needed them to be, and as of right now, it doesn’t seem like they ever will be.  And in the face of that, the mind reels and all that’s left is the insane laughter of the broken fool.

The Detroit Lions: An Astrological Explanation

My dear friend, the one who goes by the sobriquet "She-Geek" along with a variety of other "Geek" related names (and who can be found on Twitter here: @Geekized) sent me this and my dear lord, how could I not post this?  Some might say this is witchcraft of some kind but those are the bleatings of patriarchal dogs.  We, however, are more urbane.  We are spirit travelers on the great spirit road and are not afraid to step outside of our comfort zones in the search for truth.  Besides, where in the hell else are you gonna find shit like this?  This is right in our wheelhouse.  It is with that in mind that I bring you this . . . this awe inspiring piece of brilliance.  Okay, take it away Madame She-Geek:

Astrology is a hobby of mine, so a while back I did the Lions chart. Since there is no definitive date of the team's beginning, I used the date of their very first game.

1. The thing that jumped right out to me was the position of Mars. In a team chart, Mars represents the male energy of all the players. In this chart, Mars, circled in red, is at 15 degrees Leo (which is the Lion, no less). 15 degrees Leo is considered to be the unluckiest aspect in the entire zodiac. If that wasn't bad enough, Mars is placed in the eighth house of death. 

2. The sun, circled in blue, which in this chart is nicely placed in the 10th house, is not-so-nicely stuck at 29 degrees Virgo. The 29th degree of any sign is the weakest point. The sign of Leo is ruled by the sun, and the sun also acts like the spirit of the team. Having this aspect is basically like an endless spinning of wheels, a block to any sort of forward motion.

3. The ascendant, circled in green, is directly opposed by Chiron, which acts as either a healer or emphasizes some kind of wound or weakness. In this team chart, the ascendant represents the physical body of the team as a whole. Being that it is opposed by Chiron, this would indicate an ongoing weakness, or perhaps injuries and lack of cohesion or simply a lack of direction.

So there it is. Take what you want, leave the rest. And if you don't believe in this stuff, well..fuck you. :P

And, well . . . there you have it.

Purgatory Sucks

I have no idea what to expect on Sunday.  None.

I’ve started ¾ of my posts like that this season and yeah, I’m sick of it too but that is the strange and terrible world we live in and so what the hell am I supposed to do?  This is a savage purgatory we find ourselves trapped in, neither lousy enough to double down on The Grim and start perversely entertaining ourselves with maudlin soap-operas about monkeys eating Rod Marinelli’s colostomy bag and wailing songs to soothe the rage of our idiot souls, nor good enough to press forward with an agenda of Hope and sunshine and rainbows and candy and blowjobs and puppies and puppies giving blowjobs.  There is nothing definitive about it.  It is neither heaven nor hell.  Instead it is just . . . purgatory.

I feel trapped.  I don’t like feeling trapped.  I have no idea if the Lions will beat the Packers on Sunday or if they will lose by twenty, and what’s worse is that I’m not sure it matters even if they do win.  I’m suffering from a goddamn existential crisis as a fan here.  This season feels like it is without meaning and there is a stark, naked sense of horror that accompanies that realization. 

I used to love this team.  They seemed like they were having fun, fighting the demons of the past with us, and as soon as they grew up and became men the world would explode with colors we never knew existed.  Today, I hate half the team.  They seem petulant, vaguely hung-over week after week and it has become clear that many of them will never grow up.  They will remain rambunctious little boys, their promise twisted into something gross and ugly, wastrels living off a barely earned reputation, squeezing every last drop they can from a tiny, tiny stone.  In short, they seem to have contracted the dreaded Lions Disease.

Yes, it’s true.  In my expert medical opinion  (I spent 7 years at an unpronounceable medical school in the Yucatan, treating natives two days a month for various blow-dart related maladies and the other 28 or 29, depending on the month, carrying on like Caligula on the beaches of Cancun and Playa del Carmen.  On Sundays we’d take a boat out to Cozumel and we’d have an orgy.  A native girl would be sacrificed to the old gods and we’d drink her blood and the knowledge of her family would thus become infused with ours and then on Monday morning we’d take the boat back to the mainland and heal the sick so don’t you dare question my medical pedigree.)  the current Lions have been infected with the same highly contagious disease that has plagued Lions Land for the last half-century.  Perhaps we needed to be more vigilant in our eradication efforts when we went in with a flamethrower and torched the place after the Great Plague of 2008.  Sure, we hacked the Millen host into a billion little pieces and then shot them into the sun but we allowed certain carriers to persist, the Raiolas, the Backuses, etc.  Perhaps it was out of some misplaced desire to be merciful, perhaps we were merely too naïve . . . who can say for sure?  All I know is that we failed and now that disease is spreading once again and once it starts there is nothing that can be done.

That is the closest I have come to declaring this whole thing a failure, and that might seem like a hysterical overreaction, but frankly I am not interested in justifying how I feel anymore.  We have been through this too many times before and I’m not going to pretend.  No sir.  This is all so much bullshit and it fucking stinks and anyone who says that it doesn’t is either an incurable optimist who will never, ever admit these horrible truths or they’re clinically insane masochists.  Possibly both.  If you’re one of those who is an incurable optimist, I tip my cap to you.  You are a good person and I wish you nothing but the best.  Your pursuit of happiness even in the face of madness is to be commended.  But most of us can’t take this shit.  Most of us believe that we deserve something better, that constantly moving the goalposts inward in order to justify Belief is not The Way, that we shouldn’t have to constantly recalibrate our expectations in order to remain upbeat and positive.

At what point is enough enough?  At what point do you just say no, I’m not going to do this vile shit anymore?  At what point do you stop breaking yourself into pieces and then reassembling it all into something grotesque and monstrous, a cruel mockery of something beautiful and pure and true?  Because even though Frankenstein’s monster walked like a man, breathed like a man and even occasionally made grunting noises like a man, he was not a man.  He was a resurrected corpse, hastily and monstrously stitched together and reanimated with insanity in order to fulfill the desperate needs of a mad scientist too broken to understand and accept reality.  Well, we are Frankenstein’s monster, hideous and broken, twisted and ugly, a horrible mockery of the real thing, staggering through the village, drowning children and grunting that we still believe in . . . in . . . I don’t even know what.  Certainly not the present.  The Lions will be lucky to finish 7-9 given the way they have played so far and the brutal schedule which awaits them.  Is 7-9 in year four worthy of our fake plastic smiles?

Is it the future?  Is that what we’re supposed to place our Hope and Faith in?  Because from everything I see and everything I feel the window to that future has pretty much slammed shut.  Call me hysterical.  Tell me I’m overreacting.  Frankly my dear I don’t give a fuck.  These guys just don’t get it.  They.  Just.  Don’t.  Get.  It.  Ndamukong Suh doesn’t get it.  Nick Fairly doesn’t get it.  Titus Young doesn’t get it.  And worse, Matthew Stafford might not get it.  Jim Schwartz really doesn’t fucking get it.  Here is something incredibly harsh left by Lord Anonymous in the comments section following last week’s shitfest against the Vikings:

“How about we not sugar coat this team anymore. I'll go to the old saying if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. This team is not that talented period. Suh is overrated, Stafford is regressing, and his mechanics are horrendous. Titus can't beat one on one coverage and if he does it's a 50-50 chance he'll actually catch the ball. There running backs are average, there offensive line is a pass blocking line that can not consistently run against 6 or 7 man fronts. Their secondary, I don't even need to comment on, but lastly the coaching. The Lions game after game continue to make the same mental errors. The scheme is predictable, and easy to game plan against. And I don't think they really coach these guys, I think there is a lot of atta boy, nice unnecessary side arm throw off your back foot with no defensive lineman near you. Instead of nice td but why the fuck are you throwing like Vince Young? This team deserves their record and will finish 7-9 the end.”

That’s brutal as hell but fuck, somebody had to say it.  And, well, I’m saying it now.  This is not senseless fear-mongering, the kind of chicken-little bullshit that some people pull out of their asses every chance they get.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  Fuck them, but fuck this shit too.  This is a response to everything we’ve seen, not just this season, but last season too.  I loved last season.  I’ve said that all along and I stand by it.  I loved it for what it promised, for everything that it hinted at.  But some people are retroactively using it like a goddamn live preserver, acting like that was everything we ever wanted all along.  And hey, maybe they did, but not me.  I always wanted more.  I loved it because it seemed like A Good Start.  But good starts don’t mean a whole hell of a lot if you trip two meters into the race and fall down and slam your face into the track, you know?  And that’s what the Lions have done.

What I am sick of is the coddling Lord Anonymous mentioned, the oh, it’s okay boys, just stay the course.  Fuck that bullshit.  You can’t be so easy on yourself.  You can’t allow yourself to get away with being anything less than what you can be.  That is a failure of spirit and if there is anything we value over all else here at Armchair Linebacker it is Spirit and the Spirit Warriors who embody it.  I’m sick of this shit.  Just fucking sick of it.  I’m sick of following a loser ass team that never fucking learns anything, that mewls and bitches at reporters and lashes out at its own fans and refuses to take responsibility for the fact that it is walking around with a load of shit in its britches. 

You won 10 games and made the playoffs.  You came back to life from 0-16.  Congratulations!  We’re all real proud of you.  But right now you sound a lot like the asshole who writes a modestly successful first novel, gets congratulated by the literati and then spends the next several years fucking around, getting high with friends, pissing away his advance for his next book, and then blowing up whenever anyone asks him what the fuck he’s up to.  “Leave me alone, can’t you see I’m a genius???  I wrote a fucking book!”  Yes you did, and now it’s time to write another and nobody gives a shit what you did yesterday because today you are just an example of wasted potential and people have no time for that shit.  You are a fucking has-been.

Again, hysterical overreaction, blah blah blah.  The world of sport moves at ludicrous speed.  If you don’t understand that then you simply haven’t been paying any attention.  You can be an up and coming team at the end of one season and a cautionary tale half a season later.  It sucks but that’s the way it is.  Whining about it and complaining that it’s not fair is fucking meaningless.   It doesn’t matter how it should be, it matters how it actually is.

But . . . but . . . but nothing.  No.  No buts.  The longer we continue to excuse this shit, to coddle, to give this goddamn team an exit strategy every time it fails in its simple task, which in the world of sport is to get the job done, to win the goddamn games, we perpetuate this disgusting and vile Lions Disease.  We feed into it.  Lions fans making excuses today sound like Lions fans making excuses in 2007.  They sound like Lions fans in 2002, in 1996, in 1986, in 1976, in . . . you get the point. 

I am still open to the possibility that this thing can get turned around, but it will take a lot of hard work by the coaches and the players, hard work that frankly none of them seem all that interested in doing.  It’s a hell of a lot easier to talk about your supposed dominance, to gibber about your potential and the way things should be than to actually look in the goddamn mirror and realize that you’ve still got a long ways to go.  Ndamukong Suh is an asshole.  He just is.  So is Dominic Raiola.  Quit acting persecuted because some anonymous GM has the temerity to call them out on their bullshit.  That persecution horseshit just continues to feed the beast.  That fucking GM is right.  These guys act like assholes and then whine and throw a hissy fit whenever anyone says they need to grow the fuck up.  That is quintessential Lions Disease right there.  It’s fucking textbook.  Grow the fuck up, shut the fuck up and just play some goddamn good football.

You don’t like what I’m saying here?  Well neither do I.  I fucking hate it.  I hate it with the power of a billion suns.   I want so very much to love this team but they make it damn near impossible.  I’m not sitting here screaming BLOW UP THE MOON or anything like that because here’s the thing: that’s not gonna fix anything either.  And that’s the horrible place we find ourselves in, this depressing purgatory.  There doesn’t seem like there’s a way forward and I’ll be damned if I’m going backward and so all that’s left to do is just sit down and bawl my eyes out I guess.  Actually, you know what?  That’s not entirely true.  There is a way forward.  It involves each and every one of these cocksuckers looking in the mirror, slapping themselves in the face and realizing that they have to get to fucking work, that they have to stop congratulating themselves because they pulled themselves and us out of the muck of 0-16.  You did good kids, now it’s time to take that next step into the real world.  It’s time to grow the fuck up.  You want to know how to fix this?  That’s how you fucking fix this.  Each and every player, coach, ball-boy, executive, janitor, Schwartz’s ball-washer . . . everybody, they have to take it upon themselves to be better than what they are, to stop forgiving themselves for being less than what they are.  It’s not working and it’s up to all of them to make it work.  Not us.  We can’t do it and I’m sick of people pretending like if we just keep a smile on our face that everything will end up alright.  It’s time for the Lions to man the fuck up already and everything else be damned.  This is not about drunk driving arrests or classless behavior or any of that horseshit.  I don’t care about any of that.  Let me repeat: I DON’T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT.  What I do care about is that these guys are a bunch of fuck-ups ON THE FIELD.  Act like a goddamn savage off the field.  Eat a baby.  I don’t care.  As long as you win.  Win, win, win, win, WIN.  That is the only thing that matters.  Everything else is just so much noise, and if you can’t do that, well . . . then you’re just a part of the noise, and Lions Disease, if nothing else, is exceedingly noisy.

So . . . do the Lions win on Sunday?  Fuck if I know.  And really, that’s what this whole damn thing has boiled down to: fuck if I know.  And that sucks, Beavis.  It really, really sucks.

I Thought It Was Madness, And Now I Begin To Fear It Is Disgrace

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll's Will and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household. This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.

"I thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, "and now I begin to fear it is disgrace."

With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. "If anyone knows, it will be Lanyon," he had thought.

The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other, and what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.

After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.

"I suppose, Lanyon," said he, "you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?"

"I wish the friends were younger," chuckled Dr. Lanyon. "But I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now."

"Indeed?" said Utterson. "I thought you had a bond of common interest."

"We had," was the reply. "But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias."

This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson. "They have only differed on some point of science," he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing), he even added: "It is nothing worse than that!" He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he had come to put. "Did you ever come across a protege of his--one Hyde?" he asked.

"Hyde?" repeated Lanyon. "No. Never heard of him. Since my time."

That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the morning began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and beseiged by questions.

Six o'clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson's dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor's; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer's mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well examined. He might see a reason for his friend's strange preference or bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of the will. At least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.

From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.

"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek."

And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr. Utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressed and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher's inclination. But he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home.

Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed. "Mr. Hyde, I think?"

Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered coolly enough: "That is my name. What do you want?"

"I see you are going in," returned the lawyer. "I am an old friend of Dr. Jekyll's--Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street--you must have heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me."

"You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home," replied Mr. Hyde, blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, "How did you know me?" he asked.

"On your side," said Mr. Utterson "will you do me a favour?"

"With pleasure," replied the other. "What shall it be?"

"Will you let me see your face?" asked the lawyer.

Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. "Now I shall know you again," said Mr. Utterson. "It may be useful."

"Yes," returned Mr. Hyde, "It is as well we have met; and apropos, you should have my address." And he gave a number of a street in Soho.

"Good God!" thought Mr. Utterson, "can he, too, have been thinking of the will?" But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgment of the address.

"And now," said the other, "how did you know me?"

"By description," was the reply.

"Whose description?"

"We have common friends," said Mr. Utterson.

"Common friends," echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. "Who are they?"

"Jekyll, for instance," said the lawyer.

"He never told you," cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger.

"I did not think you would have lied."

"Come," said Mr. Utterson, "that is not fitting language."

The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.

The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. "There must be something else," said the perplexed gentleman. "There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."

Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men; map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.

"Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?" asked the lawyer.

"I will see, Mr. Utterson," said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall paved with flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. "Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining-room?"

"Here, thank you," said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor's; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

"I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole," he said. "Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?"

"Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir," replied the servant. "Mr Hyde has a key."

"Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole," resumed the other musingly.

"Yes, sir, he does indeed," said Poole. "We have all orders to obey him."

"I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?" asked Utterson.

"O, dear no, sir. He never dines here," replied the butler.

"Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory."

"Well, good-night, Poole."

"Good-night, Mr. Utterson."

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart.


Excerpt from "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Hunting the Right Way

Hey look, a dead Viking, or at least a nerd pretending to be a dead Viking.  Whatever.

There is no reason why the Lions can’t beat the Vikings on Sunday.  Well aside from the fact that the Metrodome has become a despicable place for the Lions, full of the dull-eyed stupidity that runs rampant in that hinterland of the soul known as Minnesota, bovine beasts lowing while the stadium pipes in false noise to match their false hearts and Jared Allen dances around like a fake methhead, abusing poor Jeff Backus who just sits there and takes it and oh the horror, the horror . . .

Right.  There’s that.  But honestly, these are two teams heading in opposite directions right now and in a league in which momentum is everything that could – and I think should – make all the difference in the world.  The Lions have won two in a row and they looked better last week then they did the week before when they looked better than the week before that and, well . . . you get the point.  Meanwhile, the Vikings have lost two in a row, first to the perpetually mediocre Buccaneers and then to the Seahawks, a week after the Lions beat them, so . . . yeah.  A month ago the Vikings were a good team, headed up and the Lions were a shitty team, mired in the sort of demon swampland that we’ve called home for the better part of the last sixty years.  But now the Vikings aren’t any good, they’re headed for the oblivion that’s become increasingly familiar for them the last few years and the Lions are looking like the team we all thought they could and should be.  The NFL, like many things in life, is capricious and strange and these things just happen.

I don’t want to spend this whole post shitting all over the Vikings though – well, actually I do want to do that but I don’t feel like I should, because here’s the thing – it doesn’t do us any good as a people to constantly denigrate our foes, to pretend that they are all shit while we’re the kings of turd town.  We do that way too much and frankly it’s kind of annoying.  Look, the NFC North is the best division in football.  It just is.  The Bears are a really good team – don’t argue with me because you’ll only reveal yourself to be a slave to your own prejudices – the Vikings aren’t nearly as shitty as we all thought they would be and the Packers are still the Packers, even if they’ve struggled a bit this season.  It’s one thing to hate your enemy and to wish a pox on his house and pray to the old gods and the new for his destruction and the shame of his family.  That is the natural way of things and it is good.  But it is quite another thing to disrespect his abilities because then you just look like a fool and you end up getting your throat slit because you refuse to acknowledge Truth and the gods, both the old and the new, have no time for that shit.

I’m just saying, it does us no good to pretend that everyone else is awful and that we should never, ever lose because then when we do beat them, so what?  There is no honor in abusing a cripple.  And if we lose, we descend into either apocalyptic death spirals or we start making absurd excuses and slandering the fans of teams that are actually good.  Frankly, it’s kind of embarrassing and I wish it would just stop.

I say all this because I want you all to understand that there is a very real chance that the Lions could lose to the Vikings.  It would be absolutely insane and hubristic to the point of nauseating dementia to try to insist otherwise.  Yes, the Viking appear to be falling apart and their 5-4 record doesn’t exactly paint them as a powerhouse but shit, the Lions are 4-4 and have already lost to the Vikings once at home so . . . yeah.

Look, I know that contradicts everything I wrote only a few paragraphs ago but that’s only because I want everyone to understand that we need to live in reality, and not in some wizard’s fantasy because that way is the path to madness.  I think the Lions can and should win but the idea that they will definitely win is just dumb, okay? 

Like I said, the Metrodome has been a hell house for the Lions and the Vikings defensive line has spent the better part of the Schwartz era hideously abusing the Lions offensive line in a way that would make the most degenerate Catholic priest blush.  This will not be easy.

To make matters worse, the Lions aren’t exactly the picture of pristine health.  Louis Delmas was apparently the inspiration for Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable, St. Calvin is dealing with fucking nerve damage, and the defensive backfield continues to be a revolving door of madness and despair.  This is not a perfect team marching in lockstep with blessed destiny.  It is a team trying to fight its way through a jungle of poisoned vines and broken limbs and goddammit, we need to understand that and start paying that its proper respect.  Again, pretending isn’t gonna help anyone.

Every time I think about this game I picture Jared Allen flying by Jeff Backus, who’s flat on his ass, while Matthew Stafford turtles and some Nordic looking motherfucker blows a horn and fat ladies cling to their husbands who all look like Dauber from Coach and scream and it’s terrible and disgusting and then I have to lie down for a while.  But fuck that and fuck the Vikings.  Really, that’s what it comes down to.  Fuck the Vikings.  Fuck ‘em.  This is a game the Lions need to win because the Vikings are our enemy and they’re in our way and sometimes it is as simple as that.

Again, it doesn’t mean that we should piss all over their name and pretend they are the joke of all jokes, for that is the way of the fool.  We should respect them, fear them even, because the wise warrior understands that fear is good, fear is healthy, and fear properly channeled turns into victory and the death of your enemy.  There are many different types of fear.  I am not talking about fear of oneself or its master The Fear, both of which are paralyzing monolithic monstrosities that enslave us with chains made of our own pathetic nightmares and insecurities.  I am talking about the wary sort of fear that the good hunter carries with him, the fear of the beast.  The Fear is a hunter and when we run from it we become little more than mindless beasts.  But the good hunter harnesses fear and uses it to remain ever vigilant, ever wary, even as he stalks, and then when he finally corners his prey he can do so knowing that he triumphed because he faced reality with bravery and an open heart.  The hunter who just staggers noisily through the forest, like a besotted fool, drunk on his own bravado and stupid hubris will alert his prey and then his prey will turn on him, corner him and eat his heart.  We must hunt the Vikings with wary intent, careful, patient, measuring them, stalking them, until they are at the edge of a cliff and then we destroy them.  That is the way of the wise hunter, and that is the way to glory.

I have descended into utter gibberish again but that is what happens when you sit down to write with no plan.  Okay, give me a second and I will get back on track. 

Alright . . . so yeah, the Lions can beat the Vikings and we should understand this and cherish this, but we should also understand that the Lions might lose this game.  We must find balance in our own hearts and our own souls so we can stop crashing through the forest like drunken idiots, celebrating like fools whenever we manage to skewer a starving squirrel and collapsing in a heap of shameful tears every time our prey eludes us.  We must look to the example set by our own blessed football team, the balance with which they destroyed the hapless Jaguars last week.  That is the pathway to righteous enlightenment and we must embrace it and become acolytes of its Truth.

Clearly, I have become trapped in some sort of strange gibberish labyrinth and any moment now I expect to be set on by a Minotaur, and I have probably confused you all with my dueling sensibilities, in one paragraph defaming the Vikings and promising a noble and glorious victory and then in the next gibbering about respect and fear and hunting squirrels or some such shit and warning against overconfidence and I would apologize but that would make me look weak, weak like Jared Allen’s sense of dignity, and I won’t have that.  No sir.  So, instead, I will embrace the notion of simplicity and I will say, in unambiguous terms for a change, that I think that the Lions will beat the Vikings.  Because, really all it comes down to is that the Lions have to win this game.  They just do.  And if they are any kind of team at all, a team worthy of our love and a team worthy of their and our playoff dreams, then goddammit, they will win this game.  So I’ll say it again . . .

Lions win.