Keeping up with the Joneses

Post #37 Topic: Mr. Jones and Me

Call me stubborn, perhaps ignorant…maybe you could even go as far as to call me a jackass. But wrong is one adjective you would be hard pressed to find in any descriptive fashion when analyzing my anylsissssss.

Dear Marion Jones, I DO NOT FORIGVE YOU. Well that might be a bit of an overstatement. The truth is that I really don’t care about you and your sob story. I don’t want to hear your excuses, or the moral lessons you’ve gained since encountering this self-imposed adversity. Marion Jones should not be forgiven.

As far as I’m concerned it’s a low down dirty shame that dignity doesn’t come in metallic form because it was her dignity, not her medals, that Mr. Jones should symbolically have been stripped of.

Here we have a woman that accomplished an amazing feat. Mr. Jones won 5 medals in one Olympiad… a record often targeted but seldom realized. Strangely, shortly thereafter, Marion’s Beefmaster (husband) was charged with steroid use, and similarly stripped of his Olympic accolades. At the time, one would have thought that Marion was frighteningly appalled as she immediately cut off her reasonably long relationship. Good for you Marion. Way to stand up against the hypocracy that has engulfed professional sports. Athletic competition is intended to be a contest of people with equal access to training competing against one another. Now, what we have come across is a strange paradox… we have the naturally competing people compete against each other while the cheaters (and there are a lot of cheaters) compete against each other. Marion Jones was the first to vocally express his (or her depending on what angle you look at IT from) distaste for cheating. As far as I’m concerned (and by “I”, I necessarily mean the entire world), Mr. Jones had some serious brajoules to dump her husband… but of course we already knew that medals weren’t the only things swinging between her legs.

This paragraph is edited in due to astonishing information I compiled after finishing writing this. Jones met former Shot-Putter husband (uhhh, how do you spell DEAD GIVE AWAY) at the University of North Carolina. The two then began training under Trevor Graham. Name sound familiar? Graham was one of the heads of the BALCO controversy. When news of Hunter’s “indiscretions” surfaced… Jones went as far as to, get this, WRITE A BOOK DESCRIBING HOW HER HUSBAND’S STEROID USE TARNISHED HER REPUTATION AS AN ENHANCEMENT FREE ATHLETE. To think that Queens of England have had their heads cut off for not calling their husband King… By Olde English standards, Jones should be publicly stoned, tarred, feathered and then beheaded.

Fortunately for Jones she was able to replace Hunter with another athlete husband, Tim Montgomery, after whom she named her first child. Shortly thereafter, Montgomery was DISMISSED from Olympic trials for failing drug tests (notice the theme?).

But something wasn’t right. Not only did Marion win a majority of her competitions; she often did so comfortably. Questions surfaced about whether the track star could possibly have cheated, and with a Palmeiro-like feign of honesty, Dr. Jones vehemently denied the accusations.

Apparently the statute of limitations on feeling bad for lying to the whole world expired as Marion recently went “on tour” explaining the rational behind her deception and lying. Marion went on Oprah, (the worst thing to happen to daytime television since sliced bread) to state: “I realize that what I did was wrong, but people make mistakes. People do things that are wrong and when we find out that we did wrong things we learn and can therefore avoid doing them again” Wow, that’s almost intelligent enough to serve as the foreword for my favorite piece of American literature: “Everybody Poops”.

But historically, Jones doesn’t care who she harms on her path to riches and fame. Lets see: two husbands, a child, oh and an Olympic relay team that unfortunately but fairly will inevitably be forced to forfeit their team medals as a result of Jones’ cheating.

Our country has a major problem in the form of a chain and it goes something like this. People make mistakes; people get lauded for their mistakes; people refuse to acknowledge the mistakes; people become hated by the public; people look for ways to restore their reputations and finally, PEOPLE GO ON OPRAH. Going on Oprah is not a free pass. Telling Oprah your sins is not equivalent to going to confession or fasting or praising the aliens that live in the Pyramids (Tom Cruise you are a crazy son of a bitch). WE CAN’T GIVE PEOPLE FREE PASSES BECAUSE THEY GO ON OPRAH.

I watched the highlights of Oprah (and only the highlights) and discovered that there were actual real people, not made out of plastic, CRYING AT MARION JONES’S REFLECTION ON HER ACTS. We’re talking about a woman who was indicted on federal counterfeiting charges: save your sympathy for someone who deserves it.

Jones even lied under oath about these fraudulent acts. Why on earth should we accept an apology from a person who is known to lie ABOUT HER LIES. Shit this is so ridiculous. I can’t possibly believe that there isn’t a South Park episode on the topic yet… this woman is crazy.

Enough about Marion Jones. Seriously this woman makes me naugheous (for some reason my spellcheck highlighted the word naugheous and didn’t suggest a replacement… but I think spellcheck is a fascist governmental instrument).

Allow me to address all professional athletes: Stop doing steroids. It really is stupid. I personally couldn’t care less if you cheated or not, but I do care about the impact that your cheating has on the game. Athletes should be people that love the sport. People that love the sport shoudlk be athletes. THESE TWO RELATIONSHIPS ARE EXCLUSIVE. If you don’t love the sport, don’t play it! How do we know who loves the sport? Look at Lenny Harris (formerly of the NY Mets). Lenny set the all-time record for most pinch-hits. Translation: Lenny Harris was not quite good enough to be a full-time player. But still, Lenny had to have competed (passive voice is making a comeback... but don't call it a comeback) for many years to solidify such a unique record, and to me this demonstrates that he loved baseball.

If Lenny was concerned with home runs or stolen bases or Olympic gold medals, he could have easily obtained the cream and the clear from those dispensers that MUST have been standard in all professional locker rooms. But Lenny resisted. Fools would believe the extra money to be earned from doping didn’t appeal to Lenny. But Lenny knew his role in baseball and executed it nearly artistically.

For me, baseball isn’t the best example. Rather, imagine that we discovered that Mark Messier had been cheating. When I think about all of the time I’ve dedicated to supporting the Rangers, largely as a result of Messier’s emotional charge to a 94 cup championship, it frightens me to think “what if he cheated?”. It frightens me so much that I just peed myself a very very little and insignificant bit. Afterall, if I took all of the time I spent watching hockey and refocused it I could easily have cured world hunger… TWICE!

Then there are the Marion Jones’ of the world. To give credit where it is due, Jones set various state records in high-school track and field and was at one point considered a dominant basketball player. That past sentence would be how I would like my biography (being written by a descendant of Shakespeare) to begin.

DC wrote a blog, but was later determined to have obtained the capacity to be so witty and handsome from the periodic injections of intelligence he received from his local witch doctor. In my opinion (obviously, as everything contained herein is necessarily my opinion), this would be a shitty preamble. Well… then again I guess my fate wouldn’t be sealed. So long as I could fake a tear, reek of regret and humility and speak in front of a national audience, I guess I could always ask for forgiveness from Oprah, lord of the pies. In that case, pass me the juice.

MARION JONES BEFORE STEROIDS

MARION JONES AFTER STEROID USE

Other Notes

I went on a diet for a day. I stopped after I caught myself eating my backpack in an act of unconscious desperation. Dieting is so awful, I think its just better to eat nothing… or everything.

If you’ve never sat down and rocked out to some Elvis… you’re missing out.

Pirates are making a comeback. Watch your boats and other sea-vessels. Pirates are typically no non-sense types of people and will steal your treasure.

You must be this tall _______________________________________________ to read this blog.

Waterslides!