Month: October 2014

What is Gloucester Googling For?

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Because of our intense journalism and elite hacking skills, the Gloucester Clam has echolocated all the data for everyone in 01930’s google searches for the past 12 months. We hemmed and hawed over our responsibility as journalists to publish or keep private these results. However, we realized the sociological exploration, as well as our community’s clearly necessary deep moment of introspection, outweighed the privacy concerns.

Here are the results.

“How do mermaids fuck?” – 1,209 searches, 400 from Rocky Neck alone.

“Fishing hook stuck in leg leave in or take out” – 510 searches, mostly offshore.

“Ebola coming to Gloucester” – 400 searches, all by idiots.

“When the fuck is Anmol expanding to Gloucester?” – 300 searches, mostly from the Brits and Marty DelV.

“What determines residency? Please don’t say an actual house where I sleep.” – 1 result, ward 3.

“When is next season of Wicked Tuna” – 3 searches.

“Is Fuller School’s re-use as a swing space a mathematically sound proposition?”- 1 search, 0 results.

Drone Recovery Tree Island Crossbow – 1 search, East Gloucester

“How to get marine epoxy out of pubic hair” – 6 searches, Magnolia.

“I think aliens and goverment workers have abducted me, fuck the police!” – 1 search.

“Cod stocks are coming back, right? Right? RIGHT?” – 3,520 searches.

 

 

 

 

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No Snark Sunday- Oh Shit, We Need to Stop Letting Kids Play Football

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Oh man, this is one I didn’t want to write. It feeds every elitist, latte-sipping, craft-beer-drinking, self righteous hipster stereotype rolled into one vegan organic burrito of preachiness. I’ve dreaded doing this column for a long time, but speaking uncomfortable truths is a sacred task, so here goes:

We really shouldn’t be letting kids play football.

Look, fine. Get angry at me. Spit on my Prius. I don’t have a Prius, but spit on one and pretend it’s mine if you have to. Burn an effigy of a thick-glasses wearing ironic t-shirt figure clad in corduroy. Do what you have to do to make yourself feel better, but when you’re done for fucks’ look at what actually goes on neurologically for kids who play football.

Take a step back: what would be your opinion of a school that featured the competitive eating of lead paint chips as a sport? You’d think they were pretty dumb, right? Now tell me how football is fundamentally different.

Screen shot 2014-10-19 at 10.10.58 AM

It’s not.

Ok, here we go. For the record, I know the following things:

  • I know that football produces “teamwork” and “camaraderie” and “gives people something to rally around, especially in these troubled times when we are questioning our very identity as a city, etc.
  • I know that you may have played football and turned out fine, or that your brother or husband did or whatever.
  • I know there are new rules/equipment now to supposedly make football safer.

When you’re done with the mental gymnastics and apologetics, will you just read the reports on the injuries and deaths and permanent damage being done to kids’ brains by the repetitive (repetitive, turns out is the key here, not just single, obvious concussions) high G hits that are the central component of the game? It’s not like other sports. It’s not like hockey or soccer. There is no other sport where you go running at the opponents with your head and then smash into them on every play (Also cycling without a helmet is crazy-dangerous, as I have said before).

Also what the fuck is up with college wrestling?

Also what the fuck is up with college wrestling?

All the arguments for keeping football as something developing kids do are subjective and based on things like “tradition” and “feelings.” We’re talking about medicine here, and that’s based on science and science does not give a shit about how anyone feels. It just reports the facts and the facts, in this case, are increasingly ugly.

Three years ago I worked on communications for new medical pump to deliver Parkinson’s medication. As part of the project I interviewed 30 neurologists from around the country. At the start of the interview I would let them talk for five minutes on the topic of their choosing. All of them, every last one talked about football or brought it up during the interview. Here is a typical response:

“I’m from Texas. I played football. My Daddy played football. Football around here is religion. There is no way in HELL I would let my son play football… in twenty years, when we look back at what we knew and what we did about it, we’re going to have to ask some hard questions about why we kept letting kids play as long as we did.”

That was not some effete essayist at Salon.com or an ideologically motivated NPR contributor. Neither was it a feminist blogger or some nerd who’d been subjected to wedgies in the locker room. That was a hard-core football fan who also happened to be the head of neurology at a major hospital and research center in Houston, and he’s right. We should not be letting kids play football.

Three kids have died playing the game in just the past month. Eight people died playing football in 2013, all of them high school kids. No one died playing any other high school sport. Football in the United States is more dangerous than Ebola. Knowing everything we know, how can anyone look those parents in the eye? “We were too invested in the idea of ‘tradition’ and our own nostalgia to protect your kid from an obvious and real threat made clear by modern medicine. Sorry.”

It's not this.

It’s not this.

I’m the first one to tell you there is an excess of gaspy “oh mercy!” over-protection of children in our culture. Too many of us wrap their kids up in bubble wrap and don’t let them out of our sight. I, like most people my age, grew up without wearing seat belts or helmets and people smoked indoors and in cars an all over the place. I hate how we’ve extended the infantilization of kids and all the bullshit about how people think predators and abductors are around every corner so kids can’t go to the playground alone. Read this blog and you’ll further see how I can’t stand what a nation of pants-shitters we’ve become over stupid, fake-ass things like the above-mentioned Ebola “threat” in the United States and how there is a general panic over anybody from another country wearing traditional headgear.

This is not that. Football is really, in-reality, absurdly motherfucking-ass dangerous and does long-term damage to kids’ brains and we should stop playing it as an organized and sanctioned sport. Oh, and on the “It provides camaraderie and teamwork for young males while channeling their inherent aggression to positive ends.” People, like, at the Wall Street Journal actually said that. Camaraderie? We’re fucking up kids brains for camaraderie? Really?

Baseball promotes teamwork. So does soccer. And a soccer ball will hit your head once in a game at a max of 20 Gs. Football players in High School take repeated hits (again, it’s the repetition that’s problem) from 20-300gs. Add that up to 200-2,000 hits a season and you’re talking some serious damage as discovered on MRIs of high school players by Purdue University. Read the study. It’s the study I linked to above. Here it is again. A lot of the previous studies have called for further research and these guys finally went and stuck high school-aged players in an MRI brain scanner after recording their hits on an accelerometer mounted inside their helmets. The research is clear.

Football fucks up kids’ brains.

This is not a culture war. This is not about liberals and conservatives. This is data derived from actual research. It’s like smoking: something people thought was safe and now has been proven by science not to be. We should stop doing this.

It’s that simple.

The Gloucester Clam’s Tournament of Crappy Intersections: Round 2 continues!

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Another day, another faceoff! We’re almost done with round 2, folks. Hooray.

intersections

Maplewood/Prospect/Railroad vs. Pond/Eastern/Witham

In news that will astonish no one, Maplewood/Prospect/Railroad got over 90% of the votes last round over Washington/High. Apparently only like 10 people live in Lanesville and read our blog. Or, the Maplewood/Prospect clusterfuck is really that bad. Spoiler alert: it is that bad. First of all, the random buoy in the middle of the intersection. Why do we do this, Gloucester? Does this mean the general vicinity falls under maritime law? I try not to leave a wake with my Scion, but I guarantee nothing. Next, the backup. Coming from Maplewood, it’s especially onerous, because no one approaching Prospect from Railroad will let you across. This leads people turning right to cut through Shaws, who apparently hated that so much that when they re-did the parking lot, they made it harder to cut through, but people still do, even using one-ways the wrong way to do so. And again, one idiot clogs the intersection, and the whole thing gums up and everyone is stuck there until next week, beeping morosely.

Meanwhile over on the other side of town, there’s the intersection where Witham and Pond meet Eastern Ave. This beat out the Joan of Arc statue fauxrotary by ONE VOTE. Usually one side wins by a huge margin, but dang. Anyway, there’s so many reasons this intersection is not only sucky, but pretty goddamn dangerous: the speed limit is high coming from Nugent Stretch, and people are FLYING. Turning left from Witham onto Eastern has made me stool my panties on more than one occasion. Turning left onto Pond is almost as bad, but at least you after that turn you can console yourself with amazingly-priced secondhand furniture from Second Glance. Either way, this intersection blows.

[polldaddy poll=8380429]

KT’s Wicked Tuna North vs South Recap: Episode 2, “Southern Discomfort”

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Hello again, ladies and gentlefolk who read this blog. I’m back again to regale you with tales o’ the sea, as told by the Discovery Channel on Sundays at 10. Mostly so you don’t have to watch this abysmal show. You’re welcome. I accept donations of cash, beer, or Chuck Taylors in size 8.5.

Last we left off, the Gloucesterfolk who needed more of a paycheck from Discovery and/or the Ocean headed south to bother some other fishermen who wear camouflage everything and literally shoot their guns at the ocean. Fun times.

Right off the bat, HERE COMES STONERBOAT. Aww yiss! My reason for watching! But, I don’t see his crew. Stonesy McGee then explains that he hired experienced help. That help is Paul Hebert. What could go wrong?

Tyler has already started yawning 10 seconds into his segment. This bodes well.

Tyler has already started yawning 10 seconds into his segment. This bodes well.

Anyway, they show up and immediately hook a fish on the way down. It is then that I notice their actual fishing line is yellow, red and green. This Bob Marley white folk shit is out of control. They lose the fish, probably smoke a bunch, and then everybody local all of a sudden notices they have arrived.

And then the one guy with the gun just starts shooting.

Literally.

Got problems? Shoot 'em away!

Got problems? Shoot ’em away!

I don’t get this fucking show, at all. I’m actually regretting my decision to recap it for y’all because I need to be drunk to get through an episode. Who the fuck shoots at someone else’s shit? Is this stereotypical redneck bullshit necessary? What the actual fuck does Discovery think they’re doing with this awful shit? Yes, let the guy shoot the other guy’s fake bird they use to attract tuna and cause $400 in property damage. What a good example for kids. For fuck’s sakes.

The next part of the segment is Nick explaining how in high school, he was voted “most likely to be paid to kill things.” We all have our strengths, I guess. His captain explains that shooting at other people is apparently socially acceptable in the Outer Banks. He also says such gems as “where there’s life, there’s tuna.” Amazing. It’s like Larry the Cable Guy goes tuna fishing.

The Doghouse is apparently the name of a boat on this show, and one of their particularly hirsute crewmates is able to catch a fish.

How much hair does one man need?

How much hair does one man need?

One of the other boats points out that the Hard Merchandise is “a complete rustbucket”, probably because of that time it sank and all.

Over on Stonerboat, they catch a fish, and something goes wrong (I wasn’t paying attention to anything), so they have to “hand line” it, which is Paul Hebert’s strong suit, I guess. He says “if this fish pulls all this line, I’m goin’ overboard!” MAYBE YOU SHOULD PUT ON A LIFEJACKET THEN? JUST SAYIN.

There’s High Drama Fishing and Tyler is all like “Paul’s life is on the line, this is a war!” Um, no. A war is a war, you’re on the ocean catching a fucking fish for ten thousand dollars. I hope some aging veteran kicks him in the balls. “Stay right in neutral, here come the squid!” “This is a battle right here!” SQUID ARE NOT A BATTLE WORTHY OPPONENT. THEY’RE NOT EVEN ARMED. HAHAH GET IT.

When the Hot Tuna in a completely not at all staged moment realizes the Pinwheel has joined them, TJ Ott laments how much he’s “tired of Tyler and his stupid little T-Rex arms.” Ha!

Back on Crazyboat, that first mate again threatens to murder a boatful of people with a gun and we’re supposed to think it’s funny or something, and there’s some woo-hooing, and wearing of camouflage, and they reel a fish. Am I seriously the only one terrified that this guy is one wrong Value Meal away from doing harm to the general public?

The Hard Merchandise reels one, and finally! Dave Marciano is smoking a cigarette for the first time this season. He went 1.5 episodes without one! C’mon, quit, dude! But it’s a small random fish, womp womp.

The Pinwheel ends up trying to get some other boat off a low-tide sandbar it had gotten stuck on. Paul yells “Even Einstein knows better, and he’s dead!” I can’t, with this.

They get the boat off, return home, sell a fish, and the episode is finally fucking over and I go to bed.

Nation’s Pants Shitters Gather in Washington to Strategize, Fudge Slacks

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The up-and-coming Pants Shitting Party met at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in the nation’s Capital this week to devise strategy around key issues facing trou-crapping voters.

Gonna wanna have these steam cleaned

Gonna wanna have these steam cleaned

Heading up the docket were Ebola, immigration, ISIS and the report from a highly reliable cousin of a customs officer that ISIS agents agents are smuggling Ebola-carrying immigrants over our borders. Besides these hot topics the over 2,000 attendees from around the country also sat in on seminars to hear speakers freak their motherfucking shit out over bullshit like GMOs, vaccines and teens getting hooked on ‘Krokodil.’

Stacy McGee who had driven 18 hours from Benton Minnesota in order to avoid airplanes where she fears sitting next to someone with the deadly hemorrhagic Ebola virus which has here at home thus far infected two health care workers in Texas out of 316 million total Americans. She says at the conference she’s found some terrific new ways to be irrationally terrified by absurdly remote, essentially non-threatening or entirely fabricated dangers.

Pants-shiitting or just a shart in the shorts? A panel debates.

Pants-shiitting or just a shart in the shorts? A panel debates.

She explained how she’d found her way to this growing movement:

“I was raised in a solidly Democratic household where we’d regularly drop a bomb in our hiphuggers over this or that. But as I got older I found myself more and more identifying with the specific elements of the Republican platform that made me scream at family members about the existential peril supposedly posed by gay marriage and Fox News fabrications like the ‘Knock-Out-Game.’ But even then I felt some party leaders like Mitt Romney weren’t fully pandering to my deeply unreasonable concerns. One day I heard Pants Shitting Party founder Newt Gingrich describe as real and probable a wholly concocted figment of his imagination regarding Iran disabling the entire United States with something called an electromagnetic pulse bomb. Since that day I’ve been a full-on Pants Shitter in mind and soul. It’s been so liberating to find an ideology that only requires me to become inconsolably terrified and then lash out without ever having to worry about solving real but boring challenges like our crumbling infrastructure or ballooning student debt.”

Pants Shitting Leaders say trajectories like McGee’s are common as the almost exclusively white, downwardly mobile, formerly middle-class membership flail impotently at dealing with the all-too-real perils of a complicated world.

“It’s much easier to blame brown people or convince yourself medical professionals are lying for some reason than to actually demand change from cultural monoliths like the financial industry,” said Pants Shitting Party Chairman Bud Radcliffe. “To do so would be mean seeking impartial information sources, demanding accountability from institutions that hold the public trust and other hard things. There is also the massive inconvenience of developing appropriately scaled responses, modifying damaging behaviors and realizing there is no such thing as a risk or harm-free life. No thank you!”

“We Pants Shitters have simply come to grips with the fact that it’s simpler to glance uncritically at something on the Internet, crap your khakis, and then generate enough hysterical online activity to cause any rational person to beg for the sun to go nova in order to burn  the stupid off our planet in a massive purifying barrage of powerful gamma radiation. We think of ourselves as pragmatists.”

Radcliffe pointed to his his lapel pin featuring the Pant’s Shitting Party logo, a keyboard caps lock button with the green light lit. “Caps Lock or Get the Fuck Off! Also: Benghaaaazi!” he shouted to cheers from around the crowded conference hall.

Media outlets have been quick to cater to this expanding demographic. No end of television segments, blog posts, social media engagements and a near epoch of talk radio time has been dedicated to help Pants Shitters take the massive drawer-dumps for which they’re known.

Attendees walk the floor between Docker Dookies.

Attendees walk the floor between Docker Dookies.

“We used to mostly cater to bullshit addicts,” said CNN Senior Executive and conference presenter Jordan Walsh. “But there are only so many royal weddings and disappearing planes, know what I mean? With Pants Shitters we can cram weeks worth of airtime full of vapid speculation and hearsay without fear of the audience getting bored and changing the channel. They’re like rats in a food pellet experiment. Better, even.”

Kiosks around the hall offered a variety products for committed Pants Shitters. At one sat sixty five year old former industrial arts teacher Gregg Gains of Shreveport Alabama, who cheerfully reports he’s been deucing in his relaxed-fit Levis since the attempted introduction of the metric system in the mid 1970’s. Arrayed on the folding table front of him were souvenirs tracing the entire history of the Pants Shitting movement from axes with “Anti Saloon League” burned into the handles to Y2K-themed hats and shirts. Anti-fluoridation souvenirs were his most resilient product line, with 60’s-era anti-communist “fluoride information” pamphlets selling as briskly as “NO!” buttons shaped like teeth, popular with activists who pooed in their skinny jeans all over Portland Oregon just this past summer.

Why do you think they called him "Goldwater"?

Why do you think they called him “Goldwater”?

Experts note that as the challenges facing our nation and even species demand a level of heightened consideration and subtly beyond what a significant portion of the electorate is willing to commit, we should expect Pants Shitting to offer an ever-more attractive alternative to constructive attempts at problem solving for the indefinite future.

This observation was borne out by this years schedule of events, which had originally included a truly chino-packing presentation from leading climate researchers. Conference organizers, however, elected not to allow it in a last-minute vote. From a prepared statement a spokesman revealed global climate change was not in the realm of Pants Shitters’ typical concerns and was at best something for their constituents to mire themselves in via a cockamamie blend of denialism and absurd, hastily-concocted conspiracy theories.

“That climate shit has real-live scientists soiling themselves all over the fucking planet,” the statement read. “It’s way out of our league.”