All the world's a stage, and all the people in it are merely retards

If it's one thing that can't ever be underestimated, it's people's capacity to act a fool, and not in the jovial Ludacris way.

One of my favorite dens of foolishdomship is http://www.metsblog.com/, a place where Mets fans, traditionally known for being stodgy and tempermental, gather to ridicule their favorite team for another awful performance.

Here's a nice, simple gem that sums up the mentality of the typical metsblogger commenter:

Second time this season that Manuel has opted not to bunt late in the game with a runner on and no one out. When is Jerry going to learn that he is not managing in the American League anymore? Instead of trying to manufacture a run he just seems to be waiting around for some big homer that never comes. Of course, none of this would matter if we had more than one starting pitcher that could get into the seventh inning and an offense that didn’t leave more than ten men on base.

You should understand that this commenter is used to watching NL baseball, which is basically like watching teeball. The National League is the home to some of the worst baseball strategies known to man, chief amongst them the magical bunt.

Bunting is stupid. It's been statistically proven to lower the chances of scoring a run in an inning. Bunting is the equivalent of Charlie Brown rearing back to kick that football when everyone knows what's going to happen. But he just has to keep trying to kick it because maybe one day Lucy won't pull it back in time.

Okay, granted, sometimes bunting leads to a runner actually scoring. And sometimes when you run a red light you don't end up being flattened by a moped. I'm sure managers are aware that bunting is more harmful and useful, but, come on man. The runner is on second! Now all you need is a hit. That's all. Just a single will do! It's so easy! Plus there's no chance for a double play! Oh my God IT'S RIGHT THERE JUST BUNT HIM OVER PLEASE

Not all Metsbloggites are dumb. A lot recognize their sorry lot in life, forever consigned to supporting one of the most managerially inept teams in the majors, a team whose identity is forged by two teams who haven't played ball in New York for like 50 years now. Do they see the Red Sox doing sendups for the Braves? Do the Yankees have Orioles paraphenalia in their new stadium? No of course not, they have their own identity and don't need to name shit after players who never played for their team because they cribbed a color from the team he did play for.

Baseball is plagued by all kinds of retardation, namely managers overthinking shit. Of course, maybe they have to overthink shit because they are inundated with mooks who don't actually belong in pro baseball, but that's a matter for another day. On the other hand, even at it's most esoteric, baseball is not nearly as thick as pro football. (Or gridiron, as they say in Europe. Way to fuck up another thing, Europe!)

I don't know if pro football became this stupid due to evolution gone awry or by coaches deliberately making everything as obtuse as possible. Every playbook is loaded to the gills with formations, movements, audibles, flag signals, smoke signals, morse code, flash cards, charts (pie, bar and scatter), encyclopedias, encyclopedia browns, connect-the-dots AND Monopoly trades. Can there really be more than 150 plays that can be called on offense? Really? REALLY?

I'm pretty sure that football plays are as complex as they are by design. Specifically, by design of the 50,000 coaches needed to implement them. Smedley Butler famously declared that war is a racket. Well so is football. An endlessly self-reinforcing cavalcade of coaches, devising increasingly complex formations, thus necessitating coaches to tell players how to master the daunting task of preventing a large, soon-to-be-crippled man from getting past you.

But if they're not careful, they can accidentally complexify their way to extinction. Yes, what'll happen when Andy Reid devises a play so magnificently stupid that only a computer can process it? What'll happen if this computer figures out an algorithm to design plays, plays that achieve complexity at a geometric rate? Coaches will become obsolete, no longer able to communicate with their quarterbacks how many audibles they need to yell before calling a timeout.

And with those plays so complex, will the puny brain of Tony Romo be able to comprehend them? Okay, bad example. How about... um... okay let's come up with a QB who is hypothetically able to read. Will he/she be able to comprehend these plays, so complex that putting them on a wristband would be futile? (The wristband would simply print out "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" instead.) Hypothetical QB (#1, Rams, from the University of Ohio (hahahaha okay that's too unbelievable even for me; let's say he's from Rutgers)) would not be able to figure it out, thus necessitating a computer QB. But as we all know, while computers are fairly decent at passing, they lack mobility in the pocket. So unless it had a good o-line, it wouldn't be getting far at all.

Eventually we'll see a world where only computers can play football. Imagine a draft where players are taken out of Hewlett-Packard and Sony. Imagine a training camp that is simply 30 seconds of downloading porn. Imagine a drug-testing policy based on tracking down warez. Imagine audiences being replaced by endlessly spamming spambots. I can tell you that this would be FUCKING AWESOME. I want this football singularity, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

But there is an ultimate downside to all this. As the singularity says, eventually computers will become so advanced that they will progress infinitely faster, until eventually WHAM. We hit a singularity and then a whole lot of UNKNOWN happens. Eventually, football games will be played in a matter of nanoseconds, simulated for our enjoyment and available at a spreadsheet near you. All league functions will be reduced to a few seconds of calculation, just like that episode of "Pete & Pete."

On the other hand, I'm not sure the football singularity will have any ability to crack down on helmet-to-helmet hits.

Our pursuit of stupid complexity will wipe us out as a species, I'm convinced of it. We are tearing down our own future, one bunt and one bootleg at a time. Won't someone put an end to this mad-- ah shit, hold on, I have to do this double switch here. What were we talking about?

Oh yeah, FUCK THE RED SOX.