Understand that it’s fucking Mordor.

It’s totally evil.

It really is.

Entertain for a moment the idea that the NFL might actually be nothing more than a flashy delivery system for gambling. The games are just accessories created to facilitate the exchange of a mind-bending amount of money. It’s impossible to calculate how much cash– both legally and illegally– is bet on the NFL each year, but it’s hundreds of billions of dollars. It might be a trillion. The NFL, and the owners of each of the the 32 teams that comprise the league, make pornographic amounts of money– so much so that even the pathologically greedy Donald Trump wanted in on the action back in the 80’s.

Working beneath these overlords are the players. About 70% of them are black, and the average length of a career is about 3 1/2 years. It is a brutal, collision-based sport, but beyond the mechanical failure of knees, hips and such, there is CTE, a brain disease that virtually every football player seems to acquire due to the concussive nature of the sport. And because the NFL is evil, they withheld this information from the players even as symptoms set in and raged amongst them.

Essentially, what the NFL does is hire people to engage in combat while America bets on who the winner will be.

It’s the bread and circuses we’re fed.

The game itself is about martial precision rather than athletic improvisation. The players are armoured and anonymous, strategically deployed by the technocrats on the sidelines, and whatever exuberance or individuality they bring to the game is swiftly crushed. When celebrating and dancing after a touchdown became a thing, the league outlawed it. It was considered “disrespectful,” ( but not in the same way that calling a team The Redskins might be “disrespectful”) which put another way means it was considered too black. In effect, they took an African-American product, subordinated it to the tastes of a conservative white audience, and profited obscenely from it.

Colin Kaepernick, a talented black quarterback, ( It was not that long ago that a black quarterback in the NFL was unheard of, the belief being that they didn’t have the “faculties” to perform the job) began the practice of taking a knee during the national anthem as a protest against against racial injustice.

He was subsequently black-balled from the league, even though his talents should have been in high demand. In his absence, others players stepped up to continue the practice, all of which came to a head when Trump started calling for the sons of bitches to be fired. This cynical and amoral manipulation of existing divisions in the nation forced the players and owners to respond.

Siding with those who are against racial injustice and for freedom of expression seems like a pretty obvious choice. I mean, this is a no-brainer, right? History is unfolding in such a way that it’s forcing people to make a choice, whether they want to or not, and many players took the knee. And the photographs–all so familiar, inevitable and urgent– were deeply moving. They gave me chills, and for a moment it was easy to believe that things might finally be changing for the good.

But then again, this movement was taking place largely within the pitiless machine that is the NFL, and so many sought a middle road that they hoped wouldn’t interrupt any revenue streams. The Dallas Cowboys, led by their owner, took a knee before the anthem, and then standing, locked arms as a team during the anthem.

It was a muddle of a message, one that managed to suggest the players had some sort of solidarity with ownership instead of a grievance with institutional racism, but that was the point. It was supposed to mean all things to all people. Ultimately, they co-opted the symbolism of Kaepernick’s protest to support the idea of “protest” without actually joining the protest. It was nothing more than damage control, a gesture as empty of meaning as a Pepsi commercial, and one more thing the NFL can add to it’s wall of shame.

The central feature of this work is just how much smaller I made Putin’s left eye than his right. It’s all scrunched up and sleepy, like a little deformity. Personally, I think he’s got something twisted inside him, a torturing secret that keeps that one punky eye twitching and moving all the time. He just doesn’t feel safe, like he’s worried someone’s gonna’ catch him doing something.

I know I initially said that I saw into his soul the first time I met him and that he was trustworthy, but that was bullshit. Politics is 95% bullshit, which is why I was so dominant at it– the Bush family, we’re like the goddamn New York Yankees of politics, something I think you can see reflected in my self-portrait. I look confident, like a powerful eagle that can just swoop in and have whatever lady bird he wants. I’m not really convinced that Putin likes the lady birds.

Why? Well, he made a big deal about his dog being bigger than my dog, like he was actually talking about our dicks. I don’t know what they teach you at the KGB, but when I was a cheerleader at Yale we learned that your dick is very different than your dog, and the cheerleaders that were always talking about how big their dog was, well, they were almost sure to be queer.

One of the guys that was a cheerleader with me at Yale actually became a dental hygienist. Imagine that! Only male dental hygienist I ever heard about. Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want another dude cleaning my teeth. Anyway, this guy, Anderson, when he was a cheerleader he was always talking about how big his dog was, so it just goes to show you. Over-compensation, that’s what the shrinks call it.

Oh yeah, the painting! I also made Putin pout a bit in the painting, like a little crybaby, and I wanted his eyebrows to look like caterpillars because I really don’t like the guy. He’s got no sense of humour, and he’s always wanting to show off his karate moves and flip you. Very touchy-feely, but in an angry way, you know?

Just a douche.

He needs an infusion of Jesus Christ in his life.

Stat.

As many of you know, Rob Ford and I were enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time, and it was there where we became last call drinking buddies. Over the years we’ve stayed in contact– usually messaging one another late at night when partying alone–and I’ve been lucky enough to have Rob write some letters for my family and I.

On behalf of my uncle, who was frustrated by his golf club’s new policy that forbid members from feeding any wildlife (squirrels) on the course:

To Whom it May Concern:

Cripes! What’s the harm in tossing a squirrel a bit of your hot dog bun?! A squirrel’s weight is a squirrel’s own goddamn business (LOL!!). What are you, a Soviet golf club? Do you make everybody use the same clubs, too, just to even the playing field so that a man of ambition and means is crippled? I tell you, its a disgusting example of over-governance, is what it is, and if somebody, like Lester Murray, wants to buy a hot dog he should be able to do anything he wants with that damn hot dog, including feeding it to a squirrel!

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to call my AM radio show directly.

Yours Truly,

Rob Ford

On behalf of my wife, who was unable to get on the recreational league ice hockey team that she wanted:

To Whom It May Concern:

This is Toronto Mayor Rob Ford here.

If Rachelle Maynard is not a first-liner on the Annex Assassins for the winter league of 2014, I will shut down Bill Bolton arena and fire all the assholes that work there. Make no mistake, I will do it–closing stuff gives me a hard on.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to call my AM radio show directly.

Yours Truly,

Rob Ford

On my behalf, as a reference for a job I was applying for at Riverdale Farms.

To Whom it May Concern:

I have known Michael Murray for nearly 25 years, and never in my life have I seen a man who is better with animals. Did you know that he once rescued a baby pigeon and then fed the thing frozen peas– one at a goddamn time– every four hours until it died of natural causes? He did. Jesus damn Christ, he did. I still get weepy just thinking about it.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to call my AM radio show directly.

Yours Truly,

Rob Ford

PS: Just a reminder, municipal funding for Riverdale Farms is coming up for review next year.

It was here, at a pub called Roosters, where we became last-call drinking acquaintances. Ever since that time we’ve maintained sporadic contact, usually in the form of late-night messaging whenever one of us is drunk and alone, but recently, as Ford’s problems have escalated he’s asked me to take on a more strategic role in the maintenance of his public image.

I just want to let everybody know that although I’m not a political or even personal supporter of Rob Ford,  I do have some sympathy for him, which is why I help out. I grew up around guys like him, boys who came from wealthy families but preferred sports to school. They liked to party, mostly, and as the years advanced a kind of self-loathing typically settled in right next to their sense of entitlement. Pressured by family toward a measured, presentable career they never wanted, these men hated the pretenses and expectations of the rarified culture from which they were bred, and soon enough felt victimized and angry. As if having tumbled from their family homes up on the hill, I would see them at last-call in marginal bars, places where their peers would never dream to inhabit, places where predictably being able to pay for your own drinks was sufficient to earn you a kind of social capital. Rob Ford is one of these men. He’s a guy who should have become a gym teacher, but propelled by an instinctive fury and a certainty of both his victimization and superiority, he’s lurched swinging into a job for which he’s completely over-matched.

It’s the sort of thing that simply can’t end well.

As the story of the video of Ford allegedly smoking crack cocaine was detonating the news cycle, I got this message from Ford:

MUR:

THE FUCKING SHIT IS HITTING THE FUCKING SHIT FAN!! THERE’S SHIT EVERYWHERE!!! IT’S SHIT STORM CENTRAL!! THE FAKE VIDEO OF ME NOT SMOKING CRACK IN LITTLE SOMALILAND WITH 5-STAR AND CHICKEN WING HAS TO BE DESTROYED. WE NEED TO BUY IT BEFORE THE SHITSTARTER ASSEHOLES DO! IT’S THIRD AND LONG!! GIVE ME A PLAN, LITTLE BUDDY, YOUR BRAIN IS LIKE A RUNNING BACK!!

ROBBER

Slobber:

This is what we do.

Remember that guy who used the Internet to trade up from a paper clip to a house? Well, we do the same thing. We’ll create a shell, a grassroots organization that just wants to see the people who report crimes punished rather than those who commit them. We will call it CITIZENS UNITED AGAINST BLACKMAIL, and we refer to ourselves as Cubs For(d) Justice.

The first item we put up is a Rob Ford fridge magnet, just like the ones you were running around putting on cars in a parking lot, when you weren’t high on coke, while that meeting you were supposed to be attending was taking place.

As the drug dealers you don’t know want $200,000 and to move to Calgary, I say our end game is to trade them an expensive home in Calgary for the video you’re not in.

I see the trading (which we will manipulate through CUAB) breaking down in this way:

Rob Ford Fridge Magnet = Hamster = Crack Pipe = Don Bosco Football Helmet (Collector’s edition) = A Vaporizer = Mobility Scooter (you still have the one from the cottage, right?) = Weekend In Niagara Falls= Probable Sex date With Toronto Argonaut Cheerleader= Seat on Toronto City Council = Senate Appointment = $450,00 Home In Calgary With Rental Unit in Basement That Is Near To Inadequately Defended Drug Territory.

We will then trade the house for the crack tape that doesn’t exist, snookering the media elite and winning one for the little guy.

This is the link to the post I have created on Craig’s List:

http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/bar/3818830265.html

Scandal Scenario #1

A sex tape purported to feature Mayor Ford, his brother Councilor Doug Ford and an unknown prostitute has been circulating the Internet. The Mayor’s office wants to assure everybody that this is a hoax perpetuated by the left wing media in an effort to subvert the democratic process and defame hard working civic officials. The faces of the men in the videotape are not visible, as they are concealed by football helmets, and Rob Ford’s famous third nipple is nowhere in sight. It should also be noted that Rob and Doug are very common names, and the fact that they are repeatedly bellowed throughout the video in no way links the Ford brothers to this robust threesome.

Scandal Scenario #2

What the left-wing media has been describing as a Japanese Sex Doll– that Mayor Ford has been seen hauling in and out of his Escalade over the last week– is in fact a Football Tackling Dummy.

Although it certainly has some feminine features, this in no way describes a sexist or degrading attitude toward women. Far from it. In fact, Mayor Ford has been using the Tackling Dummy as an instructional prop in order to help educate his football players in sexual harassment protocols and in the proper treatment of cheerleaders.

Scandal Scenario #3

Mayor Ford, while generously playing Santa Claus at a Dufferin Mall charity event, did not ask a child present if there was black Santa Claus, too, as the left-wing media has been reporting. The boy who cited this story, Abdul Azeem Kazi, is clearly a Muslim and obviously does not believe in Santa Claus. There is just no way he would have been telling Santa what he wanted for Christmas. We have strong reason to suspect that this boy was working for the Toronto Star and that his parent’s are in the country illegally.  Stop the gravy train!

Scandal Scenario #4

Although the Mayor tried cocaine back in his youth in the 80’s, he has not knowingly used it in a freebase situation in quite a stretch. The Mayor regrets his youthful experiments (there was no sexual experimentation) with drugs, and hopes for a speedy conclusion to the NHL hockey lockout.

A big, heaving white guy, he’s the kind of man that gets all red in the face and pumps his fist in the air shouting stuff like, “the gravy train must stop!” He has tiny, receded eyes that make him look as if he’s spent most of his life underground, hair that’s thin, sparse and so absent of colour as to appear transparent and emits the general vibe of a defeated salesman. His life has been buckshot with the sort of Frat Boy controversy you’d expect from a guy that grew up idolizing Rush Limbaugh and the CFL.

He’s not really into the brainy, micromanaging of governance, preferring instead to “take the bull by the horns.” Very often he does this by calling in to talk radio stations or writing letters to his constituents. These are some of Rob Ford’s recent missives:

To a 17 year-old suspected of committing a recent robbery:

Dear Mister Winston,

It’s Rob Fucking Ford here, Mayor of Toronto.

You’re scum.

I don’t want you in my city. I want you to leave my city. You’re a loser and a disgrace to the honest, hard-working citizens of my city. You think it’s cool to hold-up a gas station? Well, it’s not. We need gas to drive our cars. Did you ever think about that? I bet you didn’t. It’s not a victimless crime. You’re a loser and I swear, if I ever hear of you doing something like that in my city again I am going to take you out on the football field and make you my cheerleader, you bitch.

To a militant cyclist who organized a protest on a busy street at rush hour to  bring attention to unsafe biking conditions:

Dear Ms. Hairy Hippy Chick,

It’s Rob Ford here, yeah, that Rob Ford, the Mayor of your city. Lady, it’s not the 60’s, shave your armpits, get a job and learn to drive a goddamn car! If I see you protesting on one of my friggin’ streets again I am going to run you over in my Escalade. I’ll enjoy it. I want to rid my city of people like you and the goddamn pigeons who shit all over the place. You’re of the same diseased flock, as far as I’m concerned. Look out for me, license plate reads  “Go2Hell” and I drive fast, faster than Batman.

To a store in Chinatown that is suspected of selling bootleg movies:

Dear Mr. Chang or whatever,

It’s Mayor Rob Ford and I you boss. You do laundry for me, understand? No legal-legal to sell Hollywood star movies! Very bad! I shut you down like Jackie Chan, unless you me give Big Man Me movies I want. Big Man Me like Jennifer Aniston and movie with fast car and crash, understand? Keep them coming or I on you like white on rice.

To a graffiti artist known as DMC:

Dear Coward who hides behind the coward name DMC:

What the hell does DMC stand for?

Dumb Moronic Candy-Ass?

I tell you what Rob Ford, Mayor of your fucking city, stands for, he stands for the rule of law. Got it? Just because I can’t draw I don’t take out my frustrations  by vandalizing the city, that’s what a coward would do. That’s what you do. You’re a piece of trash.

I demand that you leave my city.

NOW!!!

Go to France where they play sissy football, sissy!