Some of you may have noticed that i have been conspicuously absent from any karma thread the last couple of weeks. After the Dolphins fiasco, i thought that karma was dead. This was far from the truth. If only i had figured out in time, if only i had known.
I awakened this morning, my head pounding. It had been weeks since karma had last visited me. I shook the last four Tylenol out of the bottle on my nightstand and swallowed them all at once, washing them down with the remnants of the previous nights tequlia. I knew it wouldnt help, but i swallowed the capsules anyway. My head had been throbbing for a week now, with no respite. Nothing i did helped. I unsteadily rose from my bed and half stumbled into the bathroom, watching a person that vaguely resembled me in the mirror. Long uncombed hair, unshaven face, haggard eyes. Not for the first time, i promised myself that today i would end the pain, one way or the other. Once i had been a prophet, an oracle of karma and fate, a god of sports related prognostication and a messenger of what would come to pass. Now, a shell of that person stared back at me from the mirror. The person in the mirror was a man that had once glimpsed into the future, had once been gifted and cursed with the sight of things to come. He had once reviled that gift, had wished it gone on too many occasions to count. And only now that that wish had finally been granted, did that person staring back at me with hollow eyes reveal the one final ultimate truth.One grand irony. Karma was gone. Karma was gone and it wasnt coming back. Hope was dead. Life as we know it was over. If karma had been present, that would imply that there was hope. Karma was gone. There was no hope. Life teetered on a precipice overlooking a bottomless chasm. The universe hung by a fraying thread over a fiery pit of doom. Once, i had been a prophet. People had looked to me for answers, and i had revealed karma's message to them. Those days were in the past. Now i was simply a man. But a man with the heaviest of burdens. I knew karma was dead. I knew hope was gone. And, i knew why. It was my fault. My hubris had killed karma.
I was the man who had doomed us all. God have mercy on my soul. After years of being karma's messenger, it had finally tired of my fragile mind misinterpreting its message and left me one last terrible gift: A Patriots date with the San Diego ChargersVauntedRunningGame. Karma had shown me a future that was as bleak as a career in lower middle management. A future that was almost assuredly going to happen, unless an unprecedented string of miracles occurred. My gift had once again brought me to the very brink of insanity, left me dangling there for what seemed an eternity, and then snatched me back just a heartbeat before i was entirely consumed. Like it or not, Karma had chosen me to deliver its message. Karma was not amused that i had so thoroughly misinterpreted its last message. And so that there was no miscommunication this time, Karma paid me none of the niceties it normally did, spared me none of the impact of the impartation of its proclamation. Karma unleashed it full fury upon me, and all at once my world was pure agony and anguish. When it was finally over, after an eternity contained in a single moment, after a fountain of information had been poured molten hot directly into my very soul, when all i could do was cower in a corner and breathe, i once again found myself with the foreknowlege of what would become of us all after this Sunday. And that information terrified me.
I looked in the mirror and knew the future was coming. Four days until the speeding locomotive that was the San Diego Tomlinsons arrives. The DoomedPatriots are a stalled car on the tracks, doors locked and windows sealed shut. The single light of the engine car is bearing down upon me. I try the ignition again and again, and the doors are stuck, windows wont roll down. Panic builds in my gut. The whistle blows hauntingly as everything slows down. The impact is incomprehensible.Chaos. Darkness. The wail of the whistle, the screech of metal on metal, of braking glass fade from my perception. Unconsciousness looms. I dream of devastation, of a world in ruin. A world ruled with fear and pain by a race of lighning bolt weilding horses.
Here are some facts:
In 1974, John Marty Schottenheimer Schmidt (his name is my name too!) began not so much a coaching career with the Portland Storm of the World Football League, as a long march toward this inevitable meeting with the DoomedPatriots on Sunday. Coaching with a single purpose, Schottenheimer has often befuddled the experts, but every decision that he has ever made has been just a piece in the patchwork quilt that will be his masterpiece: Beating the three time Super Bowl champions DoomedPatriots. Belichick a coaching genius??!?! Pffft! Belichick has never even conceived of intentionally taking all those unfathomable losses to inferior teams in the playoffs just to foster overconfidence in an opponent. That, sir, is diabolical.
Their QB played in 51 straight college football games. Won 5 Bowl MVP awards. Atlantic Coast Conference Athlete of the Year in 2004. Drafted in the first round with the fourth pick and traded for one of God's own handpicked chosen, Peytons little brother. Studied under this years NFL All Pro QB for 2 full seasons. He is a young upstart, just coming into his own. Our QB shared time with Drew Henson in college, and is only even in the NFL thanks to the patented Belichick System.
Ladanian Tomlinson is hands down the best running back ever. Our running backs are a rookie only drafted because the FO screwed up and thought that Joseph Addai had already been drafted, and an over the hill malcontent that has been nothing but a clubhouse cancer and a drain on the DoomedPatriots psyche since the day he set foor in Foxboro. And dont tell me that everyone says he has been a model citizen. I know better. They are all covering for him. This is the week it all comes home to roost. Mark my words.
Keenan McCardell. Eric Parker. Vincent "T.O. without the emotional baggage" Jackson. All bona fide NFL WRs. Hell their third stringer is Az Hakim, who if memory serves caught 823 passes for 4300 yards one year for the St Louis Rams. Troy Brown. Chad Jackson. Reche Caldwell. Jabar Gaffney. Kelvin Kight. Bam Childress. None of these guys could catch syphilis from a ten dollar Panamanian prostitute in the cinder block whorehouse just outside the gates of the base where their National Guard unit was stationed. Yeah...its a long story. Four of these guys will be working in the service industry by next August. The other two will be playing for the Washington Redskins.
Antonio Gates didnt play college football. He didnt need to. And it wouldnt have been fair. Think Shaq playing a summer rec league for pregnant teens in Witchita. I know the DoomedPatriots have their own resident "didnt play college football guy" in Steve Neal, but seriously, you dont think there is a comparison here do you? Gates led his college basketball team to the Elite 8. Neal spent his college years hugging and grappling other dudes.
Shawne Merriman didnt take steroids. Steroids took Shawne Merriman. And they got so potent that you dont even need to inject them anymore. Just say the word "steroids" three times real fast, and your own Shawne Merriman level will rise, until you too are super awesome.
Rodney Harrison knows the truth. He is in hiding, not even showing his face at practice.
Junior Seau knows the truth. You think if this wasnt the San Diego Unstoppables that he wouldnt be getting ready to play right now?
Richard Seymour knows the truth. Bold predictions, but nothing to back them up with.
Steven Gostkowski....OMFG.....a rookie kicker. I just cant even imagine him having to line up for a last second field goal on the road, in the playoffs, in the elements of San Diego, and kicking us to the promised land.
Too many injuries. Too many players and coaches gone. Too much winning. Too much complacency.
I woke up in my own bed, and stumbled into the bathroom.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
The dreams were now gone for good.
Karma had relinquished its hold on me. I was at once thankful and terrified. Karma still existed, but it had abandoned me.
My head pounded as it had never before. I was as blind to the future as everyone else now, except for this one simple fact:
We are doomed.
blowup
Four days. Spend them well.
