Morning folks,

If you are catching this as you sip the coffee or digest the oatmeal before work, hopefully it will fire you up. Back in the day, a college professor told me writers are needed to inform others not only how to think but to slap some sense into them. We are 90 percent blabbering morons but sometimes a pulse is clicked and a vein is pierced. Here are a few things I need to get off my chest. Call it a bullet round. A head clearing. A roast. Give it a name and I’ll turn it into a stamp.

The Bullshit Police

More like the gossip fucks. The people who must stick their large fucking heads into other people’s business because guess what…their life sucks like spoiled rotten egg nog. Why not? You’ll find these people on social media, in the neighborhood Walmart or at your workplace. They like dirt so much that National Enquirer is their middle name. They don’t care about good things. It bores the shit out of them. All they want is bad dirty info they can spread around to other people and hopefully start a storm cloud of shit. People reading this will know instantly what I am talking about. Others will just think I didn’t get the right amount of coffee this morning. The answer is easy. I’ve always hated people who can’t mind their own business. I ask myself every time I see this happen, what do they have to gain by sticking their fat beaks into other’s lives? What are they getting out of this? Satisfaction? Glee? Misery relief? At the end of the day, it doesn’t make them any less uglier or full of shit. I look at these people a lot. Through their words or right through their temples. I want to know what their purpose is. Are they replacing something they are missing? Gossip hounds are lawyers without a suit or a law degree. They want to investigate but their cases would fail straight up in court. They stink like the shit they dispense. Next time you see one of these people, tell them the next time a person asks about someone else’s personal or wants to know about a matter of business that isn’t privy to their needs, recite these three wonderful words. I DON’T KNOW. Those three words are a godsend. They save you from fucking yourself up and from fucking up lives. If someone asked me about biology or how to fix an engine, I’d tell them I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to lead them down a path that ends with our heads stuck further up our own asses. What good is that? I would tell them I have no clue. It helps. It keeps life moving. It presses go on the escalator. It cycles the bullshit out faster. Next time you feel like leaning into someone else’s business, do everybody a favor and fuck off. (more…)

Since I can’t literally fight for the causes I care most about, I write about them. If I led with my fists, I would spend time in jail and that doesn’t help anyone. I want to talk about a few things I care about here today and spread this post as far as I possibly can. Words can travel far with the right tools and they need the right push. Social media helps. So when I am done here parading for powerful cool shit, I am going to post it there. If you know of another way to make words fly fast, let me know. I’ve always said if you take the time to write about something or talk about it, that means you care.

Striking Out and Kicking Cancer’s Ass

Diseases suck. What sucks more? People dying young from a disease. People dying old dying from a disease. You know what really fucking sucks. A kid dying from a disease like cancer. My parents work in hospitals and I’ve had the privilege(if that is the right word) to spend quite a decent amount of time in them. Nothing shrinks a person into a human raisin like seeing a kid with cancer. A bald, lifeless, doomed and completely sad kid. I’ve seen it and it made me mad. The kind of mad where you need to take a walk or else you will punch shit mad. Enraged and full of fight. It isn’t right and never will be.

Former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jason Motte gets this. He started a foundation to help children with cancer in 2013. You may have seen the shirts…

Motte met and befriended many kids with the disease and used his name, money and time to start something truly special. You can buy a shirt(they are cool and super soft) with a portion of the proceeds helping kids with the disease.  (more…)

Greetings from Little Rock(that still hurts to say),

To your left is a fine picture of Vin and I during his last week at preschool in St. Louis last month. It felt good to throw in a pic of the Buffa’s for this end of the year post. A dose without pictures would only leave a lot of lonely words.

It’s time to let it all hang out. Grievances, surprises, good, bad, ugly and the rest of the things that rattled around my head. You won’t get a lot of sports or film here. I spread that around often in other places that it would be rather predictable for me to talk much about those two lovers of mine here. For the most part, I’ll choose the scope that turns around and reflects on me and the world I live in. The things that happened. Things I learned. The things I need help learning about. So here we go. Don’t expect a well established order to the following topics. I’m going old school here and just unplugging the drain. Shedding the dead with a few ounces of lead from the head.

(Warning-There may be spelling or punctuation errors in this dose. It is a rant after all. Apologies to the keyboard mafia in advance.)

Working Overnights Isn’t Ideal

In February, I worked overnights at Conway and hated it. I lasted four weeks before throwing in the towel and going back to Ronnoco. Why? Well, Conway is located in EASSTTTTT St. Louis city. Like “The Wire” of my hometown. It’s not safe and the farther you drive down on Hall Street, you feel like Rambo should be riding shotgun. It’s a dead end job full of tedious paperwork and robotic like movements. This confirmed the fact that overnights aren’t great unless you are a zombie who likes to function outside the house at night in a working environment. I am a night owl unlike any other, but this job made me realize that when it comes to making money in a 9-5 fashion, overnights aren’t cool. Yeah, and Conway sucks.

Writing Exposure’s Ups and Downs

This year, I wrote for a total of 5 websites. I wrote over 220 articles on the Cardinals this season. I wrote for Arch City Sports the most, and by November, I would be separated from them for one simple reason. Integrity. There was a time and place where everything(sports, movies, ramblings) went out of this site. In the past year and a half, I joined a few new sites. I became serious in social networking on Twitter and Facebook. I broadened my horizons from my personal friend list to people across the world. In that time, I got serious backlash, found good readers, and also learned a lesson about where to put your work. Arch City Sports broke a few ethical rules in my book. I was called out for patting myself on the back when I wrote about it here last month. In reality, I was clearing my head and trying to instruct other young writers that a scribe should never fall in love with page views and forget about ethics. I’ll admit. I got lost in the page views this past year. It’s part of dipping your abilities in deeper waters. At the end of the day, I was able to realize that ACS did things I didn’t like and I had to separate myself from there. There are good people at that site but you have to choose wisely where you set up shop in this internet driven journalism world. (more…)