A Cranky Post

I hate to say it, but hockey isn’t doing it for me right now. This shit is no good without the Sabres! I can’t get a good fix. The highs don’t last very long, and the lows leave me feeling irritated but without any of that satisfying “woe is me” emotional drama. Without the emotional drama, these loathsome non-Sabres teams are no good to me! They’re just genuinely annoying. Bah. Phooey. Flibberty-floo.

I’m looking forward to missing hockey when it’s gone. Missing it while it’s still here is upsetting.

Oh, and Blobby called. He says he’s changed. He finally got his accounting degree from University of Phoenix Online and he says he quit smoking. He paid his mother back all the money he stole, and he is trying to make things right with his blobfish children. He wants to “talk”.

Uh-Oh

So, last week I had to kick Blobby out, because all he was doing was sitting on the couch, smoking cigarettes and drinking malt liquor. I only started hanging out with him because the Sabres were being so lame, and when the Sabres got a little spunky again, I realized I didn’t need someone as toxic as Blobby in my life. I kicked him to the curb.

Well, Blobby must’ve heard about the game last night, because look who showed up this morning all, “Don’t waste your time on the Sabres. Take me back. Lose the zero and get with a hero.”

At least he brought flowers.

Now, this has been a pretty rough season to become a Sabres fan, but even missing the playoffs is not enough to drive me back into the arms of a Sabre-less existence. I’m new, not stupid.  Hit the road, Blobby.

The Mourning After

Animal representing what the Sabres have reduced me to:

This is my new BFF/confidant/possible boyfriend. He’s a blob fish.

Blob and I spent the afternoon, hanging out, talking about how much our lives suck, and alternating salty and sweet snacks. Blob’s a really good listener, and when I told him about the Sabres, he nodded sympathetically and told me I deserve better. I feel like Blob really “gets” me.

On an unrelated note, I would like to welcome everyone who is visiting TWC for the first time after reading my latest contribution to Hockey Night in Blogdome on the New York Times website. This post (starring Blob) is pretty typical of the high quality analysis you can expect from The Willful Caboose, so don’t hesitate to ask any questions if you can’t keep up with the furious pace of my hockey intellect.

Scoreboard Watching Sucks Ass

First of all, the Sabres haven’t played in, like, three weeks. Get off your lazy butts, boys!

I HATE scoreboard watching. I swear to Lindy Ruff that no team has EVER lost when we need them to. EVER! In fact, I’m fairly certain the no team besides the Sabres have lost a game all season.

As I write this post, the Flyers are ahead 2-1, and the Capitals are beating Nashville 3-0. Ew! Ew ew ew ew EW! Barring some sort of surge from the Predators, we are going to be in ninth place by the end of the night.

This is worse than the time when I was six, and I wet my pants because I was wearing roller skates and I couldn’t get up the hardwood staircase to the only bathroom in my friend’s house. This is worse than the time left my sunroof open and it rained all night. This is worse than the time I accidentally ate a big spoonful of spoiled yogurt.

This is the worst night EVER.

(I’m going for maximum drama in the hopes of impressing the Hockey Gods with my pitifulness. If these games don’t turn around, I might have start comparing this night to famous genocides and plagues. ex: This night is WORSE than the Bubonic Plague.)

*UPDATE* This is worse than the time I wrote on my blog that we were going to be knocked down to ninth after a catastrophic night of scoreboard watching when we were already in ninth! HOLY SHIT WE’RE GOING TO BE IN TENTH! WE’RE GOING TO BE IN TENTH! *running around in panicked circles*

*2nd UPDATE* We now appear to be in tenth place and the earth has not yet swallowed me up into a pit of eternal despair. Perhaps I was overreacting just a smidge. (But still, the official TWC stance on tenth place is: 100% OPPOSED.)

Beside Myself

You guys, how are we going to TOLERATE the next ten games? I’ve made my peace with not making the playoffs, but boy, it’s rough watching them skate around dispassionately. Real rough. I’m scared that in these last ten games Crunchy is going to decide he doesn’t want to be a Sabre anymore.

I don’t want to fret; in fact, if it’s possible, I wouldn’t mind enjoying these last few games. How can I make this happen? Why hasn’t Lindy put Sabretooth in the game yet? I feel like Sabretooth is the obvious solution here.

I am open to any and all suggestions that will help me not want to throw my television out the window while watching the Sabres. Any ideas? I love Crunchy in his shower cap, but I don’t want to start associating it with searing frustration. That image is too sacred, you know? That image deserves better than to be trotted out every time the Sabres lose. I need a back-up plan.

Loss of Perspective

While it’s true that you can’t win ‘em all, it’s also true that you never need to look quite that bad while losing. That was unnecessary, boys.

The highlight of the game was afterwards, when, in a misguided effort to commend the Sabres for owning up to the fact that they totally sucked today, Rob and Robi wound up calling out Roger Clemens and OJ Simpson(!) for being liars. Way to keep things in perspective, guys.

Crunchy had a bad day. Personally, I think he was trying to make Soupy look bad. In any case, he was very upset, so after he got pulled from the game I gave him some tea and Valentine’s red hots. He mostly just scowled for the remainder of the game, but he did eat a few red hots. That’s how upset he was.

The game drove Crunchy to binge on red hots. He must have had five or six.

In other news, I got the world’s largest playoff tracker in the mail today. It was a gift from Versus for putting their All-Star Game ad banner on TWC. I’m not sure why, but I thought the tracker would be more demure. I should have known that “demure” is not Versus’s style. I took a picture to show you how ginormous my playoff tracker is, and I put a red hot in the picture for perspective.

As you can see, the playoff tracker is quite large.

After the game, in a fit of frustration, I dropped the New York Rangers playoff tracker magnet into my tea. It was both cathartic and kind of gross.

Ew.

The Smell of Swedes

Call me crazy, but I think this NHL.com headline is pretty bad.

Here I am, minding my own business, checking out NHL.com, and suddenly through no fault of my own, I am thinking about the smell of a mid-game Henrik Zetterberg. Now granted, there are probably one or two hockey fans out there who enjoy pondering such things, but I would propose that these fans are few and far between. Not only is this headline disturbing from a hypothetical olfactory standpoint, but it’s really dumb to boot. I can think of ten better headlines:

How Swede It Is!
What a Bunch of Swedeies!
Swede Love To Beat the Blackhawks, But They’re Too Good!
You Bet Your Swede Bippy!
Victory is Swede
Don’t Fill Up On Swedes, You’ll Spoil Your Dinner.
Hitting the Swede Spot in Detroit

Okay fine, that’s only seven, and some of them are just as disturbing as the original. My only point is that this headline is very stupid and if the NHL is going to pay someone to write stupid headlines, they should just pay me.

Although, I warn you NHL, my services normally don’t come cheap. But because I love you, I’ll give you a Swedeheart deal.

Heh.

I Hate the Rangers

I haven’t been a hockey fan long enough to have solidified my hatred towards the Sabres’ rivals. Frankly, at this stage, I don’t really care one whiff about the Flyers or the Leafs. And while I don’t particularly want to invite them over for dinner, my dislike of the Senators is confined to the hockey arena.

Right now, the only team I loath is the New York Rangers. In joining the Rangers, Chris Drury revealed that it was his lifelong dream to play in New York. EW! Not only did he leave us, but he never even loved us in the first place! The Rangers are disgusting and I hate them.

Which is why I found this headline so delightful:

Listen, I wish Chris Drury well off the ice, but I’m not going to lie, I think it would be awesome to watch him suffer a few losing seasons in New York after he so narrowly escaped the horrors of Buffalo.

I know, I know, it’s the preseason, and it doesn’t mean anything, but I’ll take anything I can get. Captain Clutch is a loser (at least for today)! Heh.

Click here if you want to barf.