Remember the story of Rip Van Winkle?

No, not the awesome cartoon version where Donald Duck oversleeps, but the original story by Washington Irving. The one where the Dutch villager with the awful wife misses the Revolutionary War and wakes up in a land that both scares and terrifies him. [ED: I was always partial to the "Digging Up the Past" episode of Wishbone, where the spunky little literature loving dog plays the role of Rip Van Wishbone.]

I include the shot at the wife only because she is one of literally half-dozens of people who have stopped reading this site. And I ramble about the short stories of Washington Irving because I just finished a week long trip to Iowa that has left me feeling like a man out of touch with the world in which I find myself.

Since I’m reticent to simply call a friend and ask what happened, I figured it would be more fun to just free associate on  a couple of news headlines and/or internet items that made me ask myself “What the bleeping bleep?” (HINT: I’m bleeping out the word “fuck”).

1. Rangers Madness

First of all, even through the Rangers’ ups and downs, my baseball weenie has always been at least semi-tumescent so far this year. But I left town after watching the Rangers meltdown against Oakland in the series opener last week with no idea if that would be the ender moment of the season.

Last year, I left for my honeymoon right after they had pulled six games over .500 only to hear they got destroyed while I was out of the country, so I had my doubts. I was shocked to see that not only did they win the Angels series, but they also got a huge reach-around from the Yankees to pull side-by-side with Boston. I figured things were going pretty well… And then… Donde esta Vicente Padilla?

As a long-time hater of this giant sack of crap, I was pretty excited to see he was gone. But the timing and the circumstances are just so odd. [ED: Seriously... Why wait until AFTER a guy brings swine flu into your clubhouse to get rid of him?] Still, despite his 1 in every 3 starts where he dazzled, I just can’t imagine that guy ever pitching for a winner as anything but a 4th or 5th starter.

I know some very good Ranger fans disagree with me, but I’m just as happy as Marlon Byrd and Ian Kinsler to not have to root for that sack of crap ever again. One more point - wasn’t there this same gnashing of teeth last year when Sir Sidney Ponson was kicked to the curb?

2. Josh Hamilton ditches Jesus for a night, gets shitfaced with some skanks

More disturbing was the Josh Hamilton relapse and fall-out. There’s no need to link to all the various local and national reactions the rest of the free world has had a chance to read and re-read. It was an odd and scuzzy feeling to see the pictures and think about what happened from the perspective of a husband (shameless anniversary shout-out) and a person who places a decent amount of emphasis on my own spiritual life.

Despite that emphasis, I am reticent to ever hold myself up as an example for anyone. I have a dirty mouth. I like fart jokes, I like sarcasm. And I do volunteer work and practice my faith as best I can and I hope that gets me in the door when I die. Hey, I co-teach a Sunday school class, but I feel awkward even mildly careening off-curriculum to talk about myself there to the little wiener kids.

Hamilton fell off the wagon in spectacular fashion, and it  just sucks. He was a player that  former co-writer Nappy and I embraced the second the Volquez trade went down, and we were really excited to be validated again this year. Sure, he started slow and looked painfully out of sorts, but then he got hurt and then he had to get his swing back and blah, blah, blah.

Now, it’s August and it all totally makes sense. Even if this was an isolated relapse in January as I so desperately want to believe, he didn’t just let himself or even his family down. He rebuilt himself around his seemingly too-good-to-true story and, to his credit, he did a universally media-lauded apology press conference. This is partially because no one in America wants to see him fail, but this really was a knee to the groin to read about - especially a few days late. One thing is for sure - Ioannis can probably shelf that post he’s been keeping in his pocket about how drugs are the new PEDs.

[ED: Tragic, even if I have been sitting on the concept and the artwork for over a year now. For the benefit of anyone who enjoys cheap shots at steroid users... Enjoy this GIMPwork for the now never-to-be-fully-written article about Josh Hamilton turning Drugs into the hot new Performance Enhancing Drugs:

Meth Mouth Sammy Sosa

Emaciated smack fiend Mark McGwire

And crack pipe-scorched Barry Bonds

ED: The final punchline was that Rafael Palmeiro had gotten a new contract... For $10, to blow a guy in a bus station bathroom. I now return you to the tormented ramblings of Ty.]

3. College sports discussion forum mandates members limit discussion to college sports

So, the Rangers were in turmoil… But still, here we are in freaking August and they are in a real playoff race. What have I missed? Sure, I’ll read my Newberg Report emails, Inside Corner, DMN Rangers blog, Lonestar Ball and all the others, but I had grown really fond of the small Rangers discussion threads on GoMeanGreen.com.

We even had the Ticket’s own Sean Bass (mess your pants now, P1 drones!) joining our conversations and adding his Diamond Talk-quality knowledge. All this in a place where guys who read box scores once a week extoll the greatness of Ian Kinsler while people who actually watched 90% of the games tear their hair out. It was good stuff.

I fired up my computer and noticed a nice gray box with a message that let the world know that the entire Non-UNT sports forum was shut down forever because a bunch of folks couldn’t keep themselves from posting their latest political email forwards and trying to pass it off as debate.

It’s always odd when you know so many of the people posting and generally like them. But this was really like watching a couple of children play with matches in an old barn. Nothing good could ever have come of those postings. And now the fire not only took out the barn, but spread over to the hog pens and grain storage.

You all may be good dudes in person, but I hope you are forced to spend a night sandwiched between Della Reese and Wendy Williams with your junk covered in peanut butter as punishment for blowing up the board.

4. Let me illustrate how much I like and respect you by explaining why you suck and I think you’re all idiots. (Slight paraphrase)

Without a non-UNT sports forum to peruse, I went to the main forum and found some good news (new DE recruits who are Big 12 quality!) and some great national pub from ESPN (I think the team is improving, but there is only one fan base that would rip the credibility of all the major media outlets picking this team dead last in all of football and/or talk about how this is somehow a good thing. God bless the Mean Green Nation).

I also enjoyed the Mean Green Athletics site’s own special message from the SID for message board posters. On first read, it looks like an excitingly back-handed slap at the same folks we all enjoy teasing - with a pinch of “be positive, damn it!” - but it had a little bit more to it. First, I’m going to take this as a shout-out to Quoner:

There were some very funny and somewhat insightful posts, by people with screen names that were unbelievably creative and humorous.

This was the most obvious Athletic Department endorsement of his work since RV’s podcast endorsement of Sexytime. [ED: It's all but decided that Sexytime! is a dead feature, by the way. Mourn it now, so you're over the news before football season starts]

After a pantless celebratory lap around the couch, I sat back down and kept reading.

It made me wonder, however, why is this the only place I have heard these harsh opinions and suggestions on how everyone on the football staff and in the athletics department could be doing a better job?  Contrary to what some might think, very few of us at 1301 South Bonnie Brae actually peruse the fan message board every day to find out if we misspelled a word on the web site… or sent the Mean Green Club brochure to the wrong address… or ran out of hot dogs in the concession stand.

Trust me on this one, but Mr. Capper has a point. Very few AD folks do peruse the site — most of them are off working a siloed job function that will most likely never be appreciated by most of the folks consuming it. Some of those folks will read the site on their own time — mostly for a laugh.

If I did marketing/promotions stuff, I know I’d get a frustrated laugh over someone complaining about the inability to sell their non-licensed t-shirt at an official university event. If I was part of the stadium project, I’d laugh every time I read uninformed speculation from a kid in his 20s about how a project that is already at the point of picking out the handles for the urinals would “never get off the ground!!11!”.

But if I was a person dealing with media or the person running the whole thing, I’d want the pulse of the board. Sure, I’d have to put up with some idiots rambling about how my press release had too much spin in it (because if there’s one thing you want to do for your beat reporter or wire service, it’s craft a negative story for them before deadline) or talking about how I’m the worst thing to happen to this school since they caught some students at Bruce Hall playing the Richard Gere game with the corpse of the Albino Squirrel. But I would be able to get a quick alert on any rumors or hot topics — and probably some pretty good laughs to go with it.

It might be hard to read some slack-jawed doofus ripping apart something they might know 20-30% about. But not every person disagreeing with you is always wrong, either (rare as that might be). It has already been pointed out that the watchful gaze of the NT Daily and the Denton Record Chronicle hovers over the board like a retarded Eye of Sauron, and it helps to be ready for it.

So, in the spirit of not listening to Eric Capper’s advice, here is a summary I won’t be emailing:

Fight through the piles of horsecrap on the board, but don’t ever take it seriously.

Also, you guys might want to see about getting the big guy to pull back on the message board posting now that you have all the new social media tools going on your kickass new website.

We can’t stress that last part enough.

And after just over 2000 words later — we’re all caught up. Football season is almost here, and Ioannis and I are getting genuinely excited about writing meaningless free content for the masses again. I know we’ve been toying with your hearts for months, but please set up an RSS and stick with us. If you need a sports fix in the meantime, we fully recommend Pearl Snap Discount, co-authored by the previously hat-tipped Sean Bass.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to pick corn out of my crack and get some rest. Eleven hours in the car plus a one hour detour to get the perfect Wichita State Shockers t-shirt on a whim can drain a man. I’ll leave you with something fun: