Here's some British idiot who likes to vacation in war zones, will surely be murdered soon

CNN - As millions of refugees flee the bloody chaos in Iraq and Syria, English builder Andrew Drury is preparing to make the opposite journey -- for a vacation.  Drury, 50, has a route traced out across the Kurdish-held territories, which runs close to the frontline with ISIS.  "It's a difficult question -- how much risk to take?" he ponders. "You can go right up with the Kurdish troops fighting beyond Mosul. I want to see the Yazidis again... to see if the tribe I met are still alive."

The Englishman has fond memories of Yazidi hospitality from a previous stay, during a previous war.  It was one of his favorite trips.

For more than 20 years, Drury has led a double life.  He's a husband, father and the owner of a successful construction company in rural Surrey, a short drive from London.  But his passion lies in visiting the world's most dangerous destinations, and his appetite is insatiable.  The flame was lit on a safari trip to Uganda, which took a strange turn when Drury accidentally crossed a border into war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, and was forced to flee a machete-wielding farmer.  Since then, the builder's travels have taken in downtown Mogadishu and the insurgent heartlands of Afghanistan.  He says he's dodged Russian soldiers in the bombed out ruins of Chechnya, infiltrated a Ku Klux Klan militia, played golf in Pyongyang and stayed with a former headhunting tribe in Myanmar. 

"It's risk and reward," Drury explains. "The reward is that you see more, and you learn more. We're not born to do nine to five jobs. You have to explore a little bit and try to understand the world you're living in."  There's an element of thrill seeking, Drury admits, but his attitude has changed over time. At first he would travel with a cousin and the two would dare each other to take risks.  But in recent years he has traveled alone, and become closer to local communities. 

He's now the sponsor of a basketball team in his favorite city, Mogadishu, and returns to watch it play.   Drury enjoys getting behind the headlines and takes every opportunity to set the record straight, as he sees it.   "People in England think Somalians are all gang members and drug dealers... not the people I know," he says. "They are loving people who do their best and put their life on the line for you."

It's moments like this that I think about how sick I am.  Because I know this guy is going to get murdered.  It's a matter of when, not if.  And when it happens I won't bat an eye.  He'll get captured somewhere on the Syrian border trying to start up a roller hockey team of displaced refugees and he'll get killed on live tv.  And I'll just sit there like "of course that happened."  I won't feel bad.  I'll have no empathy because I can't identify with a guy who takes vacations in the war-ravaged areas of the Congo.  Find me a guy who gets killed sitting on his couch watching MLB network because a truck drove into his living room.  I'll go to that guys funeral and eulogize him.  But I can't care about everyone who get's murdered by a machete-wielding legume farmer because they chose to leave America.  You made your bed.

PS - I found this picture fascinating 

These three guys are from the last headhunting tribe on Earth (had to google Headhunting and it's exactly what it sounds like).  Just consider that there are actually people in the world that live this way.  There's someone holding a camera phone in front of these three and they haven't the slightest idea what's going on because everyday of their lives is like fucking Apocalypto.  And I'm a little disappointed by these outfits.  You'd figure a headhunter would always be in some kind of cool bearskin garment that rides up their ass and barely covers up their dicks but it looks like they just run around cutting people's heads off in old Champion athletic shorts.

Girardi turns over the closer role to Chapman

Pretty much the least surprising news ever but now it's official - Aroldis is going to close and fucking Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances are going to be pitching the 7th and 8th innings of baseball games.  It's getting a little redundant but it can't be overstated how truly outrageous this situation is.  The decision for Chapman to close was never in doubt.  He's the best relief pitcher in baseball and has been for the last four seasons.  American League guys haven't really had the privilege of watching him since he came into the league but all you have to do is watch this guy throw one pitch and you'll fully understand what we're dealing with here.

All indications are that the suspension isn't going to be lengthy.  It's still unclear but we shouldn't be looking at anything in the vicinity of 50-60 games.  We're talking maybe a couple of weeks off while it's still freezing out and then sixty-plus innings of dousing opposing hitters with premium gasoline.  All we've got to do now is figure out entrance music.

Kourtney Kardashian shows us how to eat a KitKat

This isn't an interesting video but KitKats are unequivocally the GOAT of chocolate candies so I just want to say one thing - If you have KitKats in your home or at work and you aren't keeping them in the freezer then you are a buffoon.  They're literally the only candy you can pull right out of the freezer and immediately eat.  You'll fracture your jaw trying to gnaw on a frozen snickers.  Milky Way, Hershey's Kiss, M&Ms, all the same deal.  But no matter how far the body temperature of a KitKat drops it's not enough to harden those three deluctable flakey wafers inside those frozen chocolate sticks.  You could sit there with a bag of frozen minis and eat them like fucking potato chips.  Leave it to a classy chick like Kourtney to be snacking on sloppy, melted KitKats all over her family's white Bugatti grain leather sofa.

Disgusting

Your premature Yankees winter wrap-up

It seems early to be wrapping up the offseason.  I don't remember the last time we sat here on January 11th and had as many big names still on the free-agent market as there are today but logic would dictate the Yankees are just about done restructuring for 2016.  And while it's never out of the realm of possibility for Cashman to make an unforeseen splash, I wouldn't expect the depth chart to look a whole lot different today than it will on April 4th before the rematch with Dallas Keuchel.

There were a few swaps made in the Bronx this winter but the pieces that moved around weren't necessarily the one's we'd expected going into December.  The market for Brett Gardner seems to have followed that of every other major league outfielder without a job right now...Ivan Nova is staying here while his value is low...and it looks like the Andrew Miller trade talks were just a ploy by Cashman to see what kind of haul he could get back while the closer market was booming.  

The Yankees mirrored their 2014-2015 offseason this winter; buying low on once highly-touted prospects who are still young, cost-controlled and with uncertain potential.  One of the most depressing fallouts from the wildcard loss to Houston was the realization that the 2016 Yankees were pretty much going to be the 2015 Yankees, just a year older.  But Cashman deserves a tip of the cap - I did not expect the dynamic of the team to change as much as it has since that abysmal night.

The first real move the Yankees made this offseason was bringing in Aaron Hicks in exchange for John Ryan Murphy.  JR really had himself a nice season and was fun to watch but he became expendable with Gary Sanchez's resurgence in Scranton and the AFL.  Hicks, a former first round pick who's just 26-years-old, will play the Marcus Thames/Andruw Jones/Chris Young role and stands to be an improvement in the field.

While the deal for Chapman garnered a lot of attention for many reasons (some good, some bad) the trade for Starlin Castro was the most impactful move the team made this winter.  He makes the lineup younger, gives them balance from the other side of the plate that they desperately needed and fills what was a glaring hole at second base.  He's a 25-year-old, three-time All-Star who's already amassed 991 career major league hits.  This guy can ball.  He may have baggage, he may be coming off an awful year but I think players like Starlin Castro can always be a change of scenery away from realizing their true potential.  I'll miss Adam Warren but he too became expendable.  Once he was relegated to the bullpen last year he became a ghost.  If they stuck him there again with this unit he'd be even harder to find.  I'm sure we'll all be clamoring for him when Pineda goes down with an oblique strain his third turn through the rotation but it's not unreasonable to think that Nova and/or Bryan Mitchell would be capable of stepping in and patching things together.

Trading Justin Wilson was curious.  To give away a top reliever who was essential to the team last year just to avoid his "money-making years" didn't sit well with a lot of fans but it hardly seems relevant now.  The Yankees have their big three and whatever money they saved on Wilson they gave to a better reliever and managed to enrich their minor league starting pitching depth in the process.  It goes without saying how the Chapman deal changes the entire complexion of the bullpen.  These are 6 inning games now.  The rotation, loaded with question marks from top to bottom is now prepared to go into each and every start with a massive safety net.  Three of the top five relievers in baseball back-to-back-to-back.  That's Brian Cashman just looking at Major League Baseball in the year 2016 and swimming with the current.

It seemed impossible to upgrade next year's team without mortgaging the future and/or locking into more longterm crippling contracts.  But Cash managed to make this upcoming version of the Yankees younger, more balanced and more talented and he did it all without carelessly throwing money around or trading any blue-chippers.  The Blue Jays are still scary, the Sox are on the upswing but there's plenty of reasons to think that the 2016 Yankees as presently constituted can go bumper-to-bumper with any team in the American League.

Is it okay for me to wear a facial mask?

So I was eating lunch with a girl I work with a couple of weeks ago and I was telling her how no matter what I do I can't clear my face up (this is how you socialize when you work at a school and none of the guys are normal).  So before Christmas break she bought me this exfoliating mask.  Aztec Healing Clay.  Apparently the internet was buzzing this summer about how it's a must-have for any pizza-face out there.  Now I don't look like Robert The Bruce but I do struggle with acne.  Blackheads, inflammatory redness, the works.  My skin's also oily af.  The grease runoff from my face should probably clog my shower drain.

Bottom line is I needed to do something about it.  I'm 25 and nothing I've ever done my entire life has helped.  Clearasil, neutrogena, proactive.  All garbage (I'm pretty sure accutane works like a charm but you can't drink on it for like two months).  I was a little dubious about accepting this gift but then I thought about it - it's 2016.  There's no doubt guys are getting more in touch with their feminine side and chicks dig it.  The days of inviting the hot, rugged guy nextdoor over to fix the sink in his pocket-T and stone washed Wranglers are over.  The days of falling in love with the guy down the hall who wears exfoliating masks on Sundays are just beginning.

In all seriousness, cleaning your skin takes a lot of discipline.  It's tough to will yourself to rub rough, abrasive cleanser on your face every night right before you go to bed.  Half the week I'm too drunk to remember to brush my teeth before I fall asleep.  That's why I can get down with this mask.  It's so easy.  Just add water and whip up a little paste in a dixie cup, spread that shit on, put on some football and let the chemicals go to work.  And it WORKS.  I mean I haven't seen any tangible results yet.  I've been doing it for two weeks and I still look like fucking Jake Coker.  But my face is PULSATING.  I'm talking like 200 beats per minute.  It got so stiff it felt like I was being frozen in carbonite.  That's how you know something is doing it's job.  Shouldn't be too long before people start accusing me of airbrushing my IG pics.







#Lush

Laces Out

 

I thought yesterday's Bengals loss was as bad as it gets.  That's as bad as it gets.  If I was a Vikings fan at that game I'm not kidding I think that would be the end for me.  I'd just sit there and die.  No feeling in my body, forced to chug my beers before they become frozen cylinders all to watch Blair Walsh shank a game-winning chip-shot field goal.  Cannot get any worse than that.  The sentiment going into this game was that no matter what happened this Vikings season was going to be looked at as a success.  Not anymore.  Not after that.  That's the kind of loss that sets your team back about a thousand years.  The good news for them is I think Blair Walsh has already assumed the identity of a missing female hiker and joined the Minneapolis police department.

Marshawn Lynch OUT tomorrow against the Vikings

Not really sure what happened here.  All week long you had Pete Carroll fawning over Marshawn Lynch, talking about how he looks as good in practice as he's ever looked.  He literally said "he's playing."  The OC was talking about giving him 20-25 carries.  Now he's out.  Not questionable.  Not a game-time decision.  Out.

I love Marshawn Lynch and I hate questioning the toughness of NFL players from my couch while I'm getting tummy-aches from mild wings and angry orchards but this is a total bitch move.  He didn't re-aggravate anything.  There weren't any setbacks.  He basically just decided he didn't want to get on a bus and spend the weekend on planet Hoth.  "Have fun fighting off diuresis guys.  Maybe I'll see you in Carolina."

But that kind of seems like Marshawn Lynch in a nutshell.  On the field he's always run like every play was his last but off the field he seems isolated from the team.  Like he's just there to play football, collect a paycheck and go home.  Ever since this spring when he inked what will probably be the last substantial contract of his career he just hasn't looked the same.  Between that and the Seahawks transitioning into a pass-happy offense we may have just seen the last of Beast Mode.

That shouldn't affect this game though.  In the absence of Lynch and Jimmy Graham, Russel Wilson has been playing with his hair on fire.  He's been the best player in football for the last two months.  Surely the weather is going to yield plenty of variables Sunday but I would be SHOCKED if Minnesota makes this a game.