Kaplan572 Returns After Long Hiatus

Hear yee!  Hear yee!  The lord Kaplan is back!!

To what do you owe this sweet pleasure you ask?  Well after reading piles upon piles of fan mail and hearing the praises of so many of how I changed the world and made their lives better, I then knew that I must continue on my journey towards enlightenment.

   

 

And what better way to kickoff my come back run then to rant and complain about all things that come to mind.  I must say, personally although my ranting and complaining really holds no water (because honestly I couldn’t care less one way or the other, or could I?), I’d like to credit LWN (my ranting and complaining mentor) for my superior and highly developed, ranting and complaining prowess.

   

I’ll start with my “job” if you could call it that.  I have no boss, I come and go as I please, I’m guaranteed no salary, and I have to be great all the time or I fail.  Sounds terrific I know.  Let me go further and relate what I do to sports, for all you sport lovers out there.  As in any sport that requires a skill, at first no one is any good.  A skill must be developed over time.  Even for those that are naturally talented in a particular area, one must still progressively work their way thru the amateur leagues where their talent and skill can be refined against a lesser competition.  Then still there are many barriers and obstacles that one must overcome to then hopefully, if all pieces fit precisely, become good enough to become a professional athlete.  Just try to imagine what would happen if this were not the case, seriously, people would get hurt.  What if a guy decided he wanted to play football and suddenly Brian Urlacher was in his face?  

It’s ridiculous right? He would not stand a chance.  Well that’s what I do, I have no experience yet from day one I’m up against competition that has been refining their skills for 10 – 20 years and more.  To make it even better not only am I up against these behemoths but I also must attempt to beat computer programs that react in nanoseconds and are there for the sole purpose of stealing my money.  Perhaps to my demise, but I love my job.  Shit I’m screwed, I trade stocks, lord help me.  I’ll tell you one thing though, when you lose large chunks of money as I have, it’s really hard to find a reason not to be nice with cash, I mean tip workers, or buy people gifts, or overall just be more willing to spend money and be generous cause you know if you don’t spend it now you might just lose it tomorrow anyway.  Not that I do that, I’m still pretty cheap, but it makes me think.

Yet I digress, let’s move on to another love of mine, Chicago sports.  Ha! Yes I know, 2007 was a tough year.  The Cubs signed some names, Soriano was going to lead us to the World Series, low and behold we’re swept in the first round of the playoffs.  I still cringe when I replay that disappointment in my head.  I mean we couldn’t win just one game… really? 

Though truth be told, the second half of the season we played well, it was exciting and looking forward to 2008 (the 100^th year anniversary of our last World Series win) I can’t wait to hear how our new “star” has his name announced… Fukudome!!!  Love it.  Oh and Kerry Wood as a closer, sure sounds sweet and that Marmol guy, well it’s possible he might be awesome.  Come to think of it, did we get Lieber back and keep Lilly and Zambrano?  Damn, could we actually have good pitching this year to back up our bats??  I think I’m getting excited again, this is our year!

Next came Da Bears, man, and what the hell happened there?  It sure looked like we could dominate a weak NFC.  I’m still in shock I don’t even know what to think about it, baffling.  Could it have been that our “veteran” offensive line was actually just “old”?  Or maybe Ron Rivera actually knew what he was doing?  Perhaps Thomas Jones was indeed a great leader?  Or maybe just maybe it was a mistake to bench our Super bowl QB so early after just 3 games was it?  Perhaps Tank Johnson is awesome?  Maybe it was injuries to Brown and Dvoracek?  I honestly don’t know, I’m just full of questions, and would someone please tell me why Hester is wearing Eagles gear???  Man, I had a rough day and I hate the freakin Eagles!

See 1 minute and 10 seconds into video:

http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d8069fbb3

Should I even mention the Bulls?  They were supposed to be awesome this year.  I watched them on the Tele last night and I was just ecstatic that they were able to beat the last place Heat.  That’s a little sad.  I’ll say this though, at the beginning of the season I was really pro Gordon and Deng, I thought these were our 2 superstars, but ya know, now that they’re both injured, and hey take out Wallace too (he was out last night).  And what do you know the team doesn’t look that bad, and think of what we could get if we traded those guys.  Joe Smith is long and he’s consistently good, Tyrus Thomas looks great at times, he maybe the best shot blocker in the game, Sefolosha is great recently he’s another young guy, also long and he gets rid of our “small guard” problem. 

Then look what we have in Duhon, when our top 3 scorers were injured he got a chance to shoot and look what happened he put up over 30 points and we scored 114 to win in Golden State.  Certainly nothing to scoff at.  Thankfully we are in the Eastern Conference where under .500 teams can make the playoffs and when we’re there I have a feeling we’ll make good, hopefully we’ll meet the Pistons again and this time it’ll be different.

That’s all for now, hope you enjoyed, signing off…