The NCAA tournament is easily one of my favorite times of the year.  College basketball is unequivocally my favorite sport, so naturally any time nearly a whole month is focused to it, I’m going to be as pleased as punch.  However, I hesitate to call it March Madness, because that symbolizes the adoption of interest in college basketball by every mouth breathing halfwit in this country and the tempering of my enjoyment of this most splendid of tournaments by their nonsensical bullshit and motivated commentary fueled only by their hastily filled bracket.

Much like NFL games can be ruined by that one jackoff who won’t stop screaming at the TV that they should throw it to Calvin Johnson because he needs the Fantasy Football points, euphoric NCAA viewing can, and is, easily ruined by front running assfaces yelling about a team because they picked them to a certain point in their bracket.  I fill out a bracket every year, cause bracket pools are fun and give you an extra incentive to gamble, always a win win.  But its still secondary to actually enjoying, you know, the basketball portion of it all.

For example, last weekend, the opening 4 days of the tournament, arguably the most fun, I dealt with a pair of my pet peeves.  First, I am a DIEHARD Marquette fan.  As mentioned in previous posts, this collection of 18-22 year old student athletes has ridiculously provoked me to both item breaking rage and despondent, my middle school gf just broke up with me, tears…yes tears.  (Don’t you fucking judge me).  My friends, coworkers, and really anyone within a 100 foot radius during an actual Marquette game, knows this.  Yet I had 2-3 different people, from friends to acquaintances actively rooting against them around me, cause they had chosen differently in their precious bracket.  Listen douchelord, chances are you assembled your bracket based on mascots, school colors, or where you would rather live so don’t actively root against my favorite team IN MY PRESENCE just for the chance to finish 1 spot out of last place in your damn office pool.  I don’t come to your home and root for the hottest yet bitchiest Bachelor hopeful and piss you off in the process.

Second, and tangentially related, are the idiots I heard rooting against upsets cause it would ruin their bracket.  Lehigh was beating Duke, and people were tearing their clothes and gnashing their teeth cause GASP, THEY HAD DUKE IN THE SWEET SIXTEEN!  NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!  THE WORLD REALLY IS ENDING IN 2012!  Get a fucking grip you cretins, the only time you say “F my bracket in its pathetic face” is when something awesome like this happens.  And it was Duke!  Coach K’s rat face was constantly perturbed and Austin Rivers’ face got instantly more punchable!  Who cares about your damn bracket in that case.  Get bent.

Finally, maybe all my bracket related angst is related to the fact that the winner of the biggest of my pools last year chose her picks on what she thought was a nicer city.  She also was incorrect on the location of ~20% of those schools, making her method even more absurd.  Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

For all of you who actually enjoy the tournament cause its fun and college basketball rules…cheers.  Everyone else that falls into the categories above?  I hope Bo Ryan and Coach K both visit you in your dreams…

So people always talk about the joys of having children and the things they look forward to about it, and all of sorts of mature adult contrived bullshit. Having children is very cool, life changing, and incredibly rewarding, but I always enjoy how prospective parents gloss over the sacrifices and complete mortgaging of your cherished days of blissful alcoholic responsibility.  It always puzzles me how people in the early to mid 20s start having kids from the jump.  Like “we’re married, guess there is nothing else to do now but punt this box of condoms out the window, flush that BC, and start procreating!”  You fools have combined income and the relentless vigor of your 20s.  Be young turks, go bang in foreign countries, take turns caring for each other when you get completely black out, make fun of older married couples cause you have the marriage but still have all the fun.  This isn’t Depression-era Kansas, you don’t need 12 kids to defend your struggling wheat farm from dust bowls and boll weevils.

All that aside, there are 2 things that interest me primarily about my potential future Fatherhood.  First, will it mean that I finally stop acting like a 12 year old when I’m with my family?  I’m 26 years young, my youngest sister will be 16 in a month, so there really are no “young” children in my family anymore.  But this weekend, I still felt the need to try to buckle my sister’s knee when we were standing around or gross a different sister out at dinner.  I can be incredibly professional and mature at work.  A different kind of mature and, ahem, “cultured” with friends, but as soon as I get around my family, its devolution at once.  Once I have some babbling, diaper ruining dependent of my own, does this stop?  I’m not sure if I hope it does or if I want my familial immaturity to continue to perpetuity.

But more importantly, point #2, I want to know more about, and ultimately possess, the only actual super power I know truly exists.  Yes, I am talking about Dad strength.  The innate ability to be stronger than your children no matter what the task or circumstance as well as being able to calmly execute absurd feats of strength wherever your family’s well being is concerned.  My Dad is probably an inch taller than I am, and was always much stronger than me, naturally as Fathers are, but mostly because I was a scrawny runt of a child.  Now that I’ve spent countless hours honing my fitness level to that of, idk, a world champion decathlete, you would expect that to change.  But truthfully, I’ve worked out alot over the last few years, meanwhile my Dad has become obsessed with his glycemic index and walks miles upon miles and lost a significant amount of weight when he wasn’t large to begin with.  So now, I probably weigh as much, if not a bit more than him and have a more strength based approach to fitness.  Yet still, my father beasts me in basically everything.   Lifting objects, opening jars, carrying meaningless shit around the house, its mentally debilitating to be real with you.  To work out 4 days a week and take a box from your father, who hasn’t touched a weight since the Reagan administration, which he was carrying with apathetic ease and nearly drop it due to the weight.  I would rather have one of my insane dancing sisters outrun me in public or something less humiliating.  But all of this makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I too will become a covert Hulk once I reproduce.  Dammit Judd Apatow, where was that part of Knocked Up?  WTF?

So anger and temper are funny things.  I’m by and large a level headed individual…outwardly.  Inside I’m a tempest of percieved injustice, wild revenge plots, and simmering rage, but I’ve found it befitting of a modern gentleman to project an even keel.

Except when it comes to sports.  I don’t know what it is.  I’ve bombed tests I thought I was well prepared for, had exes cheat on me, been cut off in traffic, all of which register with mild frustration or maybe a slight bothered indifference.  But god forbid Marquette or one of my other preferred sports franchises loses a fairly inconsequential midseason game, my lips will utter profanity strings that would lead some to gaze in wonderment at my uncommon twisting of the English language.  I’ve been known to snap at my Mother who only wishes to offer her condolences (yes, i’m aware how fucking ridiculous it is to call them condolences, but sports are life or death, we all know this) and I feel her apology doesn’t contain the requisite gravity given the tragedy that just occurred.

As we now enter the Ides of March, my yearly insanity known as the NCAA tournament arrives.  Never again in 2012 will my irrational and unfounded anger be higher as I rant against 18-21 year olds who are under more pressure than I’ve ever felt, naturally except for the B league division championship I won 2 years ago in Broomball.  Pray for my sanity, my stress levels, and for my ability to concoct profane turns of phrase like a modern day Voltaire.

Tumblr?  Fine, lets do it.  For too long my writing was bogged down by a need to be both verbose, eloquent, and appropriately long winded.  Now, I have a new outlook, I want my writing to be great pop music, 3 minutes, full of catchy hooks, and oh so fucking tasty.

It’s an adventure out there, lets go exploring…