Yesterday morning, conveniently as we were publishing a story on a breakthrough in the Quinn negotations (he signed four hours later), the power went off at OBR Central Headquarters nestled deep in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. Deep in the suburbs. BoringNormalLand, Ohio.
The power catastrophe drove me far away, or at least to a local restaurant (Yours Truly) with both power and a wireless internet connection. Naturally, since I whine about everything via the forums, I took the opportunity to whine about this.
I wound up spending a good two or three hours hanging out in Yours Truly in Mentor, where they took good care of me and kept feeding me enough drinks and food to keep my amazing musculature going through the crisis.
The tragic interruption in my schedule motivated tdc productions to come up with this image, which I got a huge kick out of:
The truly alarming thing is that this isn't far away from the truth, although I wish I had a desk this big to work on. I run two 19" monitors off my still-alive-knock-on-wood Gateway PC that I got a couple of years ago. They are generally accompanied by a laptop as well, giving me three monitors through which I try to keep up with the world of the Browns, which annoyingly refuses to pause so that I can just kick back, drink beer, and play Command and Conquer 3 all the time.
The only wild inaccuracy here is the glaringly obvious Photoshopping that nonee has done with my svelte form, distending it grossly, and his chopping off my long blonde mane of manly-yet-beautiful hair. I'm not sure why he elected to alter my ravishing good looks. I will assume that it's only the insane jealousy that most men feel in my vicinity rearing its ugly head once more.
The photo on the right is what I really look like, except surrounded by more chicks. Don't let my wife know.
He wasn't done yet, so he offered up this look at what my office looked like last year at this time:
Again, this is surprisingly accurate.
Of course, the water in OBR HQ was not the refreshing clear blue water of Lake Erie that nonee has pictured here. It was rancid stinkwater, which backed up through our sump pump, creating a smell that hasn't really been smelled since the Dark Ages. And only then by the very bottom of the peasant class.
The image makes me think back to what things were like last year at this time. During the Browns first training camp practice, as we all know, LeCharles Bentley got hurt. If you're like me, and the presence on this website indicates that we've got one at least one disturbing obsession in common, this news sort of sucked the will to live out of you, at least for the next couple of months.
Within the space of a couple of days, the place where I live was drowned in once-in-400-years torrential rains, flooding our house and destroying a lot of personal stuff that will never be replaced.
In other words, this time last year really sucked. Sucked hard, sucked long, and sucked aggressively.
The way I look at it, things can never get that bad for me or the Browns again. We're done. We've lived through that trial, and now it's on to bigger and better things.
Thanks to nonee for the images and for reminding me how much better this year is than last. For all of us, I hope.
- Barry