Forget all that you see, it’s not reality, it’s just a fantasy (football league)

The first time I played fantasy sports was about 5 or so years ago. Why I don’t remember exactly is because I have to block it from my mind: not only did I suck at it, but it was a hockey fantasy league (apologies to the nation of Canada and Sarah Palin — obligatory political reference this time of year, sorry, every blogger must include one, it’s in the bylaws).

I didn’t completely understand the rules, plus the people with whom I was playing were– um, how do I put this politely, um, I don’t– douchebags.

The next time I played was last year in a fantasy football league with a group of neighbors. I had never played fantasy football previously, but I found an online site that helped me pick the right players and free agents, as needed each week.  This time I climbed my way to the top of the league, with the help of Tony Romo as my QB, which as a long-time Pittsburgh Steeler fan didn’t sit right with me at all, but hey, it was for fun, I told myself, and Plaxico Burress as one of my wide receivers.

At first, I was laid back about it, after all we weren’t playing for money, just for fun, but then I became — um…okay, no ums– a douchebag myself. I found myself in the championship game, which was played before the Super Bowl in our league and muffed it, picking the wrong combination of players for that week. No one felt any pity over my loss; I didn’t really understand why. I mean, it wasn’t like…oh, wait, yes, I was.

This year, I have signed up for the Humor Bloggers Fantasy Football League, with nine other members from Humor-Blogs.com (for complete list, see sidebar on the HBFFL blog). I don’t have Romo this year, but somehow still ended up with Burress, and one other player, T.J. Houshmandzadeh, who was pretty decent for me.

The rest of the team is a group of fairly unimpressive players, with maybe the exception of the Steeler defense and Willie Parker (and that’s just because he’s a Steeler and I’m a homer and oh, also I can’t drop him even if he does get lost in a backfield of too many running backs as the season progresses — STBM).

I’d tell you more about my team, but I’m saving that for a post on which I’m working for the Humor Bloggers Fantasy Football League. The main thing I’m trying to remember in all this is that I’m just in this for gits and shiggles, as The Wife says– and I don’t want to be…um…a douchebag.

In keeping with the whole fun thing, this is the avatar I’ve made at Yahoo, on our league page. If anyone thinks I’m taking this seriously after this, well, then, to paraphrase the great Rob Halford, they’ve got another thing comin’:

When it’s in Yahoo, it’s spinning and all psychedelic and stuff, but still you get the idea: Uber fun geek (I couldn’t figure out how to make the umlauts, sorry).

For more uber fun geeks (umlauts or not), visit Humor-Blogs.com.

And now what you’ve been waiting for since you read the title of the post (to show that I don’t hate all things Canadian; oddly, he later won a Grammy  as a producer for fellow Canadian Celine Dion):

Trying to duck the quack doctors on Twitter and BlogCatalog

What is it about me that draws quack doctors on Twitter and on BlogCatalog?

Okay, so far, it’s only two, but soon I have a feeling I’m going to have a whole host of alternative medicine types following me — and probably even more after I write the words alternative medicine over and over, alternative medicine, alternative medicine, click, click, boom! It’s going to explode in my face and all over my IP address.

I Twittered that I was suffering from allergy headaches. I didn’t realize what a mistake that was. Suddenly I had this “doctor” following me who told me he had the cure to all my allergy problems. I’m not going to give you his url address, because I’m not going to give the man more attention than he deserves and I don’t want to engage in “a dialogue” with him. I’m reading Great Expectations and getting enough dialogue there, thank you very much.

His system, though, is “a revolutionary paradigm shift.” I think I used the word “paradigm” in my profile page, so I’m wondering if that’s why we might have a “connection.” I knew I shouldn’t have used a highfalutin word like “paradigm.” He even has consultation fees which you can pay via PayPal– um, no.

The second “doctor” is a hypnotherapist from England. Again, I’m not giving you his url address, but he’s a practitioner of neuro-linguistic programming AND hypnotherapy. I don’t need to hear any more and I don’t need to read about how you’re not a quack, but it’s really legitimate– no, really. It’s been scientifically…blah, blah, blah…leave me the H-E-doubletoothpick (that’s for my mom and dad) ALONE.

Oh, wait, this just in…as I also found another quack doctor, perhaps the quack doctor of all quack doctors, as one of my friends on BlogCatalog, and I don’t want to leave him out:

DrBobby (name changed) who runs an “integrative medical clinic” and has SEVEN, count, them SEVEN blogs — “about unconventional, unorthodox, unproven, or alternative, complementary, innovative, integrative therapies and western traditional medicine as well.” Whoa! (If it’s unproven, though, why should I check out your sites?) Among his specialties are:

• environmental medicine, Ayurvedic cure, Panchakarma (regular karma not good enough)
• “candidacies” — no matter if Obama or McCain or if you’re like those who live where I live, still hanging on to the hope of Ron Paul (no I’m not kidding you), it’s not good for you, I knew it — ANARCHY!
• intestinal dysbiosis (ouch, that sounds painful)

He says he is “use to answer emails of” his patients, but is “new in building a blog community.” He also is new to the English language, I think.

Next time, I think I’ll share about some of the things I’ve been asked to hock and books I’ve been asked to review not just on this blog, but also on other blogs I have. Unfortunately, none of this has been as ahem, “cool” as Rickey on Riding with Rickey with his chess set. For more on that, and what he really thought of his free chess set, visit his post HERE.

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After checking out Rickey’s blog, visit Humor-Blogs.com to vote for this post and then check out other funny bloggers like Rickey and myself there.