Responding to Some Criticism

Many of you that come to Stain Club are coming here for one of two things: Politics OR Philadelphia Sports. We are aware that many of you have no interest in the Phillies, or conversely, you only come because of your interest in the Phillies. Therefore, to attempt to please everyone, we've added something to the top right of the site: Adjust your stain. From here on out, we will attempt to label all our posts as either Sports or Non-Sports, and therefore, by clicking on your preference on the right side of the site (Sports or No Sports) or linking to it, you can avoid all the junk you don't want to read about. Of course, should you want to read EVERYTHING (you are to be commended, brave souls) you can still just come to the main Stain Club page. We're hoping this responds to some of the suggestions/criticism we have been receiving of late, and if anyone has any further suggestions, please let us know, as we truly appreciate it.

Sports Theory

There are a lot of theories about dating and relationships out there. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Girl-Face Girls, He's Just Not That Into You, are few that come immediately to mind. Sports Theory isn't like those listed above. It's main tenet is a remarkably simple one: Guys willingness to start dating or look for dating opportunities is inversely proportionate to the number of major sporting events currently happening.

Our three female readers might think that's crazy (arguably they all stopped reading after they learned about GFG's), but think about it for a second. Right now we're in one of the most open dating times in a guy's calendar year. The Super Bowl is over, even spring training seems far away and its too early to get out your Bracketology textbooks. Sure the NBA is going on, but the NBA is like that the ridiculously popular and hot girl you quietly worshiped in high school. You would've done anything to get her to speak to you then. This was like the Michael Jordan era. Now that you're back from college you run into her a bar and realize she was just the first one to figure out how to do her makeup well and isn't that bright. The fall from grace is a long one. But I digress...

Hallmark wisely chose to install Valentine's Day right in the heart of this sports quiet. Does anyone seriously think that your average guy would remember to buy a Valentine's Day gift when he's working on his playoff picker? Doubtful.

Sports Theory is a flexible sort of doctrine. It's not just about football and baseball. Those are the sports of most guys. But maybe you're really into MLS or the NHL (remember when the NHL was part of the Big Four American sports? Yeah me neither), then your Sports Theory would adjust accordingly. The big dating periods according to the generally accepted principles of Sports Theory are from the Super Bowl to March Madness, from the conclusion of March Madness to Baseball Opening Day, usually about two months into baseball season you have a pretty good sense of how your team is doing (remember kids I'm a Reds fan... we mail it in around late May. We had to evolve some sort of defense mechanism so don't judge me) to the start of football season. Then after the Super Bowl you just have football season and despite ESPN's best efforts to get me fired, I really don't think there's enough football news to fill a week.

Some of these periods are stronger than others. For instance, I think we're in the midst of the largest sports dating period of the year. If you're not convinced, I suggest you look back and start thinking about when you started pursuing / dating girls. I think you'll find that a lot of your past dating started during the aforementioned periods. If not, I think you should strongly consider being ashamed of yourself.

New Stain Club Vocabulary

As LL Cool J once said, “Like the prodigal son, I’ve returned.” Cheesy, yes, but unfortunately, I have not posted anything over the past two weeks on Stain Club—quite a huge stain on my part. Through a combination of my laptop freezing when I was actually trying to post, arranging efforts to help out a charity, and working on a thesis, there has been little time to tackle anything within my realm of expertise, which, I assure you, is quite little.

Despite this unfortunate sabbatical, I am back, and I have been contemplating what would be my return post, and I figured, why not make an addendum to the Stain Club vocabulary. I have always been interested in how people in older literature insult each other. Shakespeare, for example, always had a unique play on words that he would have a character say to another. It wasn’t as simple a statement such as “Screw you ass-clown!” or “Eat shit douchebag!” The play on words would absolutely insult people without having to utilize curse words or the like.

I recently came across an Italian phrase that has been uttered on a few TV shows. In Italian, it literally is “Va fa Napoli,” which means "Go to Naples." However, this is aactually slang that means “Go to hell” or something of that nature because Naples because it is not a desirable place to be.

I would like to revamp this expression for the use of Stain Club. I propose that Pittsburgh is used in place of Naples. As a person who resides on the Eastern side of Pennsylvania, I have always felt a real disdain for Pittsburgh and all that it stands for: Sandwiches with french fries in them; Ben Roethlisberger; the Steelers and their terrible fans and the Terrible Towel. In fact, people have been leaving Pittsburgh since the 1990s. Does this sound like a desirable place to be? I don’t think so.

I also don’t want this to be a metaphor for going to hell. It should have different kinds of connotations as well. Pittsburgh can be the place where stains of all kinds should go because well, they are stains and they need to congregate with their own kind. As a result, anyone you think is a stain, has stained you up, or has really pissed you off, tell them to “Va fa Pittsburgh.” Another way of saying it would be “Get thee to Pittsburgh” or “Go thy ways to Pittsburgh.” This phrase can be used in so many ways at some many times, I hope it catches on. Otherwise, anyone who doesn’t like this post can va fa Pittsburgh for all I care.

First Annual 2006 Stain Awards

Okay, it's maybe a little late for a 2006 tribute, but fuck it, no one has ever done Stain awards before. In order to hit the BPAS on an entire year we're going to need some help from our loyal Stain Club readers. These are the First Annual Stain Awards after all so we haven't come up with a full list of categories or even events that we'll make up categories for in order to properly honor their stain. Depending on how strong we feel... there may even be hilarious predictions regarding 2007 stains. I'm going to toss out some examples so everyone can get a feel for how huge we're going with this:

Most Glorious Moment of 2006
Stainiest Moment of 2006
The Towering Monument to the Glory of Stain Award (for the stainiest person of 2006)
Biggest Use of the BPAS (Think St. Louis Cardinals World Series victory, Ryan Howard winning the MVP)
Biggest Failure of the BPAS (Think Detroit Tigers World Series flop, Isaiah Thomas' life)
Most Dominant 3 Man (Personally, I like Tony Hunt here, then again I own his jersey, Jack Bauer would also be acceptable)
The Plumpy Award (George W. Bush, the guy Cheney shot, John Kerry, Ben Roethlisberger, lots of choices here)

We'll also do awards for music, sports, video games, tv, and anything you think of. So hit the comments link and throw out some ideas. Extra points for using official Stain Club vocab.

3 Man

Since it's a new year, we at the Stain Club are going to ring it in with some new Stain Club vocabulary: 3 Man.

Everyone has been in the situation where they're out with a friend who just doesn't have it. Maybe the friend is going huge because they thought they had it, maybe they're pushing down on the BPAS a little too early, or maybe they just never have it and probably never will. Sometimes you'll get swept up in their grisly defeat simply because you're hanging out / live with them. When this happens once or twice, you chalk it up to bad luck. When this happens everytime you're near them... you need to be the 3 Man.

In order to be the 3 Man you have to be 3 men. The first man is yourself, the second allows you to break even because your friend is that awful, and the third brings you back to your original starting point; two people who are enjoyable to hang out with. Bystanders are always encouraged to invoke this power by telling a good friend he's being thrown under the bus (also known as getting Plumpied) by the terribleness of others and can only escape by becoming the 3 Man. Ways to do this usually entail holding up 3 fingers (in the "okay" or "three-ball" style) or simply shouting "3 Man" so all may here. Often times, when you're only one man its easy to get swept under that bus and get run over by a torrential downpour of awful and stain. 3 Man's everywhere avoid this and carry their teammates back to glory against impossible odds. The kind of odds you need 3 men to beat.


Some real-life examples of the 3 Man phenomenon:

Allen Iverson in every game the Sixers ever won with him.
Brian Westbrook in the second half of the 2006 Eagles season.
Curt Schilling in the "bloody sock" game.
James Carville running Boris Yeltsin's Presidential campaign.
John Elway in "The Drive"
The 2003-04 Penn State Defense (they would've been 33 men because the offense was that bad and their were 11 of them).
Bill Clinton winning in 1992.

Getting Plumpied

Here at Stain Club, we take great pride in improving your vocabulary. For proof, take a look at the Stain Club Business section of the blog. Today’s new terminology comes from a famous childhood game, Candyland. Those of you who played Candyland in those woebegone days of your youth may recall a certain heavily mustached green figure named Plumpy (pictured here for your convenience).

Plumpy is the last of the Plumpa Trolls, but no one much cared about his origins. Instead, everyone cursed his name when they drew the Plumpy card from the deck, as a player is almost inevitably further along on the board than ole Plump-Stain. You probably thought you were pretty damn awesome when you got the Queen Frostine card and thought you could coast to victory while your buddies got stuck in the Molasses Swamp, but then you got the Plump Man and it was back to square one. And thus, the new Stain Club Term is: Getting Plumpied.

Getting Plumpied (verb):

(1) To be destroyed in the face of inevitable victory.
Ex: The Phillies were Plumpied out of the playoffs the last two years with critical losses down the stretch to such note-worthy foes as those rough and tumble (ahem) Washington Nationals.

(2) To be returned to “square one.”
Ex: With the turned down deals of trading for Mike Gonzalez or Derek Turnbow, Pat Gillick has been Plumpied in his efforts to find bullpen help.


Stain Club: Not just a sports blog, but also a whole lot of nonsense.

The Big Play Action Stick

We like to keep you up to date on our lingo here at Stain Club. We’ve already defined Quitting for Strength, Stain, And Going Huge Because You Thought You Had It. No comes the next term: The Big Play Action Stick. Originally derived from a baseball video game where you could press on the analog stick in a certain direction while fielding to attempt an enormous play, such as bringing back a homerun or making a diving catch, the Big Play Action Stick (or BPAS, for short) can be used in any and all areas of life. Two things can happen when thrusting on the BPAS. First, you can be incredibly successful, and the benefits will be glorious. Second, you can fail most embarrassingly, and your efforts will be mocked by your friends for weeks, and perhaps years to come. The only explanation for your failure is that you went huge because you thought you had it. Examples of using the BPAS in the real world would be approaching a stranger at a bar to talk to them, suggesting a drastic innovation at work, or telling a joke of questionable humor value to a large group of people. All can lead to triumphant glory or devastating defeat. Such is life when pushing on the Big Play Action Stick.

Going Huge, Because We Thought We Had It

While reading the earlier post about quitting for strength in Iraq, I realized that some people might not be aware of the "I Thought I Had It" theory of history. You see, every time people try to go huge, like Napoleon invading Russia, or Hitler invading Russia, or us invading Iraq, it's because they thought they had it. Of course, if someone asked Hitler why the hell he would try to invade Russia when that had proved to be the downfall of everyone foolhardy enough to try it, he probably would just have to shrug his shoulders and say glumly, "I thought I had it."
Going huge is normally admirable. We love the athletes who go huge on the field, we love our friends who go huge on the bottle. I can't speak for anyone else, but even though I was dead set against the war in Iraq from the beginning there was a small part of me that envied and admired the confidence of the war's architects. I mean, they were just going so very huge, how could you not at least applaud their enthusiasm. Sadly, as it goes with the drunken moron who tries to go huge and talk to the prom queen because he thinks he has it but then just gets mace in his eyes and beat up by her friends, we now have no choice but to quit for strength. We thought we had it, we went huge for a while, and now we have to quit. For strength.

Blog Wars

I've decided we here at Stain Club need a rival blog. Perhaps cleverly titled but that's not a necessity. If our rival blog was looking for a name I might suggest the Legion of Cleanliness or Captains of Awful... something along those lines. Our future rival would probably have to stand for good wholesome fun and would "abstain" from any drunken antics. If they liked sports at all, I would suggest they get really into the Pittsburgh Steelers or NL East and Central teams (not the Reds and Phillies obviously). They would also think the Yankees are America's Team. We would then post about their awfulness. If anyone wants to feel the wrath of our glorious stain, I invite you to step up.

Quitting For Strength

A couple days ago S.Q. Hagglepuss posted a definition of the word stain, a serious part of our lingo here at Stain Club. I’d like to introduce another term: Quitting For Strength. As human beings, there is nothing more important to each and every one of us than our strength. After all, it is when we are low on strength (tired, bored, upset, hungry, etc.) that all the problems start. So, oftentimes the need will arise to quit on any situation because of its significant ability to drain one’s strength. This can include, but is not limited to: dating, work, school, or even reading a nonsensical blog (or writing one). Quitting should be used when necessary, and not as a solution to all problems. Quitting is the greatest weapon we have in our arsenal. Some mountains weren’t meant to be climbed, and the sooner we all realize that, the stronger we shall be. The only people that should never be allowed to QFS are Superheroes (who aren’t actually real, so it doesn’t matter) and professional athletes. Bobby Abreu’s failure to run down fly balls is a blatant misuse of the QFS principle. Alright, I’m QFS-ing on this right now.

Pay Us To Live (PUTL)

I think I should be paid to live. I'm not going to do anything spectacular. I'm just going to live my life, and I think that's something that's worth investing in. I've heard of these people who want breast implants and start up a website to take donations and make thousands. I don't really think I want breast implants, but I would like to avoid getting a real job or a career ever, so if anyone wants to help me out with that I would appreciate it. Of course, I'm not going to show my appreciation in any significant way, but it's definitely there. I mean, if you give enough money to my cause I would definitely meet up with you and go out to dinner to thank you, but only if you make your own way here, and you pay for dinner. Think about it...

I know I'm improving your vocabulary, you're welcome

It has come to my attention that the term "stain" is somewhat difficult to comprehend without an adequate primer. This complex and multifaceted word will continue to grow and expand, but here's where it stands at the moment.

Stain
verb
to fail, to spill, dent, break, or ruin something: He stained his bumper in the fenderbender. He stained out the relationship when he forgot her birthday.

Also, the action of not doing anything positive, or anything at all: He was hung over, so he stained around on the couch all day.

noun
any person or object. Similar to the word "thing": While you're up can you grab me a stain?

A person who frequently stains: That kid is always sloppy drunk, what a stain.

The sum of a person's failures or laziness: My stain is huge


To be continued, I'm sure...

Welcome to Stain Club

First post.

Welcome to Stain Club. Don't have much for ya right now, but here's a list of five things that are great:

1. Nintendo Wii
2. The Bob Dylan song "Every Grain of Sand."
3. Mark Wahlberg's character in The Departed
4. Shane Victorino
5. Daredevil (the comic book, not the sleazy movie)

More on each of these in the next several days, for all of the people that aren't listening.