By Natasha

• Moe's Tavern Shopper
  
• The New Attitude Edition
  
• Brought to you by Patti LaBelle
  
• Is that song stuck in your head yet?
  
• Yeah, you're welcome.
  

And now for something completely different...
In a stunning turn of events that sent shock waves around the world, SportsMonster began the new season by screwing us over. Submitting yet again to the supersonic whining of the Legion of Goon (motto: "it's only a forfeit if we say so."), SM stuck us with a double-header. Plus, they made both games count toward our permanent record. And that never goes away, man. Every college we apply to will totally see that. That's, like, our whole future they're messing with.

How now, old foe?
We started off against Tom's team. Fortunately, we have evolved a sophisticated strategy for dealing with Tom's team: disable Tom. We executed said strategy effectively and, aside from a few nervous moments, earned a fairly straight-forward win. I need new goggles, because I totally didn't realize the ref was twelve until Sean told me. Tom knocked the snot out of me, so I'm already running away with the most-injured Moe title. Just make sure I'm seated near the front at this season's awards banquet.

Children, behave.
What can you really say about the second team? I would say they sucked, but I have too much respect for my vacuum cleaner. If suck were a color, their particular shade of suck would glisten iridescently. There was a thirty-second patch of the game where I stayed firmly planted in one place and still managed two poke-checks. I honestly believe a twenty-five pound sack of Idaho Gold potatoes would have beaten that team. I also believe that team would have accidentally mashed the potatoes through the sheer force of their suck-tinted ineptitude.

He'll always be Cuddles to me.
Now it's time to take a trip up the obscure nostril of academia from which I plucked my undergraduate degree, linguistics. The modern field of linguistics was shaped by Noam Chomsky, who declared -- among other things -- that it is possible to examine syntax (the structure and rules of a language) entirely free from semantics (the collective meaning of the words and phrases). In other words, it is possible to construct sentences that are syntactically legitimate but have no semantic value. As proof, he famously offered the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep violently." This sentence conforms to all the rules of the English language, but it is essentially meaningless. Something can't be colorless and green; ideas can't sleep; and sleep generally isn't violent. Additionally, it is impossible to establish a context that would make this sentence meaningful. Well, Mr. Chomsky, I have found that context. His name is Dan. If you would like to meet him, come down to the Lincoln Park High School gym any given Sunday.

Keystone Light Player of the Game
This may be my only chance of the season to give this award to Mike. Waaaaaaah!!!

Next game
When all is said and done, we couldn't have asked for a better way to start the season. Our two wins put us firmly atop the league rankings, where we are bound to stay at least through Easter. Please remember that because of the holiday, we will not play again until Sunday, April 18. Due to Venerable Old Pappy Julius' 75th birthday, I will not rejoin the team until the following Sunday. But I will have a TavernCon with Cate while I'm away. If anyone else will miss this game, please let Steve know.

Sub! Sub!
Of course, the venerable aging of Venerable Old Pappy Julius also means that I will relinquish my stranglehold on the Shopper for that week. So feel free to try your hand at this remarkable art form. Just remember, you can't mock Marty if he didn't play. Cuddles, however, is always fair game.

-nj out