Monday, March 17, 2008

Written By Anonymous

So I have this anonymous commenter that has popped up a couple times now, always on posts that are months old. I deleted the last comment without writing it down but it went a little something like this:

Hether,
Your a tool. Never right anything like this again.


To which I say, dude, at the very least, could you spell my name correctly? It's over there on the right next to the picture of Hank and at the bottom of EVERY SINGLE POST!

Here's comment number two:

You guys all suck for jumping on the ban wagon shut up i hate him i hate that shut up already have you ever been in the nhl[tougher than it looks]So you dont know what its like GO BUFFALO

I see you decided to skip my name. Too tough, right, with the whole silent A? Well, I applaud you for at least recognizing your limitations although you really don't have much excuse for missing the hard "d" at the end of "band." Also? Brilliant job picking out one of three or four really negative posts I've written this season. Seriously, do you pay attention? I'm the hopeful optimist of Buffalo! I'm the one who excused losing Danny, Chris, Jay, Soupy and pretty much every guy ever! I'm the one who said the team would be fine without all of those guys! I'm the one who'd rather meet and chat with Darcy Regier than any hockey player in the league! I'm the one who only just publicly admitted LAST WEEK that the Sabres probably weren't going to win the Stanley Cup! And I didn't even really mean it! I totally think they're still going to win it all and I won't believe they're not until the season's over!

It's true. I have one guiding thought when it comes to watching sports in general but the NHL specifically: You never know. Once the playoffs start, YOU NEVER KNOW! A goalie or top scorer that goes hot or cold changes everything. An average team that strings together a bunch of wins can go all the way, a great team that struggles can hit the skids fast. It's awesome! It's amazing! And YOU NEVER KNOW! Why give up on your team when YOU NEVER KNOW?!

I'm getting off-track a bit, but I have to say, this is what I most don't understand about Buffalo. I get that the team is less talented than the two teams that went to the Conference finals. I get that the team has been desperately and frustratingly inconsistent. I get that it's pretty hard to have any faith that they're suddenly going to right that here and now, nine games before the end of the season. I get that for some people it's a defense mechanism, kind of I'm going to break up with you before you have a chance to break my heart kind of thing. I get that between the four Super Bowl losses, the No Goal, the Music City Miracle, and random things like goals scored through the sides of nets, the instinct is to be bitter and cynical and I get wanting everyone else to feel that way too.

Except I don't! I don't get it at all! What's the point of sports if you're going to be all bitter and cynical? Why watch players who you seem to think suck and are worthy of all your hate? Why not enjoy when the team you root for does win even if it is fleeting and hard to predict? And why - WHY - must you travel all over the internet and city spreading your pessimism to everyone who clings to a shred of hope? If I wanted to wallow in cynicism and hopelessness I'd pay more attention to politics. I don't watch sports for that stuff! I watch sports for all the good stuff - watching people in awesome athletic displays that regularly blow my mind, to cheer on people who I've never met and probably never will meet and don't really care if I do meet and totally feel attached to anyway, and to hope for those guys to triumph in the face of ridiculous odds. Not only do I want to be optimistic, I want to be STUPID optimistic. Okay, let me get back on course...

Look, anonymous commenter, I have no real beef with you. I'm a little offended that you're lumping me in with the ban wagon fans of the world but I can appreciate your GO SABRES! attitude. But come on. Look at the comment again. Am I really supposed to take that seriously? For the future, here are a few guidelines for you and the anonymous commenters of the world who might wander by:

1. Spell any and all names in your comments correctly. This applies to any players but it goes double for me. Seriously, my name is all over the friggin' place and it's not exactly uncommon.

2. Punctuate. If you're not sure where the period goes, just take a guess once in a while.

3. Make a criticism that actually makes sense. If you're going to attack someone's outlook, look around you first. Read more than one entry, maybe read something from the last two months. Respond to what the person you're responding to is actually saying.

4. Man up and leave a name. Dude, if you really have to, use a fake name. It's not like I'll know. But real names are preferable. If you're say... I don't know... Tim Connolly, just fess up. Anonymous comments are lame, yo.

(I am in no way suggesting that Tim Connolly can't spell, punctuate, or read. And I'm sure he's totally above leaving lame comments on the internet. I would never say that he's not that smart. Never.)

(But okay, doesn't that second comment sound like something a drunken Connolly might leave somewhere. "Have YOU ever (hic!) played (hic!) HOCKEY BEFORE? Haaave yoooou?! 'Cause it's really, really (hic!) (swaying back and forth) REALLY HARD! (passes out)")

13 comments:

S.A.M. said...

Killer rebuttal Heather. :) Anon is a bit of a dope, eh? It sad but kinda funny when someone tries to insult you but only ends up looking like a moron.

And, I have a gift for you! Should I mail it? (You can e-mail me your info if you wish- samthefunandcool@gmail.com)

twoeightnine said...

C)mon Heathor, HAVE YOU EVER PLAY IN NHL? Its' harder than you imagine. They skate fowerds and backwords.

Heather B. said...

Sam, EEEEEEEE! I'm emailing you as soon as I'm done here. Your ausome!

289, however... Dude, your a toool! GO SABERS!!11!

("Backwords" totally cracked me up for some reason. Well done!)

Anonymous said...

Without the follow up, I would've brushed that first one off as spam. There was a run of spam (now killed by Akismet, go wordpress) with basic, semi-relevant but very generic sounding comments. Some positive, some not so much.

You only have to look as far as the Edmonton Oilers making the Cup finals as an 8th seed to see that a little optimism is okay.

The Tick fan in me thinks that is what the Evil Midnight Bomber (what bombs at midnight!) sounds like as he cheers on some lame team like the Hurricanes.

karen said...

With all due respect to drunken Tim, hockey is not that hard to play. I can do it, after all, and with only the occasional broken bone! True, I'm not getting nearly the return for my efforts as young Tim, but I crack that up more to scouting (he got scouted; I didn't...) than to skill.

Speaking of broken bones, Heather, is your cast off yet?

Katebits said...

Hether yew ar a tewl. Dont ever tell me hocky is easy agin. I HAVE bone spers!

Anonymous said...

I read that as bone spears...and there is no way I'd bone Britney Spears at this point.

Was that out loud?

Anonymous said...

"Have YOU ever (hic!) played (hic!) HOCKEY BEFORE? Haaave yoooou?! 'Cause it's really, really (hic!) (swaying back and forth) REALLY HARD! (passes out)")

The only thing you forgot is that Timmy would undoubtedly get a concussion from passing out.

Hether yew ar a tewl. Dont ever tell me hocky is easy agin. I HAVE bone spers!

Timmy, Sidney Crosby played with a broken foot during last year's playoffs. He played through the pain. Why aren't you?

Though now that I said that, watch it come out that Timmy has a broken hip or something like that.

Heather B. said...

Timmy, on the off chance that you really are reading this, I have no doubt that you really are in a ton of pain and I do appreciate you sucking it up and doing what you can. (But you might want to avoid drinking and commenting in the future.) :-D

Tick, my little brother's fantasy baseball team was always the Evil Midnight Bombers for a while.

Anne said...

An average team that strings together a bunch of wins can go all the way

See: 1999 Buffalo Sabres playoff run.

On the Timmy commenting front, Amy brought up an excellent point in her latest Sabres alphabet: Who hasn't posted something that makes them kind of afraid that this would be the ONE post that player would stumble across and you said something mean about them that you didn't really mean? Ok, but Timmy does drink a lot, it's well documented throughout Buffalo.

TheSharpie said...

Eternal optimism is the right of every Buffalo fan. In hockey we all know that once the play-offs start anything can happen, we just have to get there. But beyond that we can look to the Bills. Even when they have the slimmest of chances Buffalo looks for the next savior of their team.

Although I'm not a football fan (including the Bills) I think the Bills management has made some good moves this off season to become very competitive, as they in the early '90s.

Oh, and your anonymous commenter should use Mozilla's Firefox browser which has a built-in spell check.

Mark B said...

Wow, I wonder if this is the anonymous dude who called me a bandwagon fan after I closed up my blog. Could be!

M.J. said...

HETHER Y R U SO MEEN 2 TIM?? cum on hether!!

Seriously, Anon comments like that are why I sometimes feel that one should possess a license to use the internet.

Also, what's sad is I REALLY CAN see Tim writing like that... and probably using the "frowny face" too...