Hello there, SitCombat. It’s been a while.
It is nearly December, and, in these virtual pages, SitCombat makes a return that I can only assume will be triumphant. A combination of some downtime for the shows, plus a week in which I didn’t write an article thanks to my political yammering, leads to this: “Dark matches” or not, The Office has won two in a row for the first time since . . . well, maybe ever.
Now, SitCombat is back in earnest. Will Jim, Pam, and the gang be able to take a third win in a row? Or will the pressure of actually getting the full write-up treatment be too much for the venerable NBC sitcom to bear? I ask, of course, because my creeping mental illness causes me to believe that my nearly-anonymous writing affects the performance of television writers and actors on shows that were filmed months ago.
But enough about me and my wacky brain! Let’s make with the comedy!
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When last we “met,” I discussed the 
That’s why I think it’s important to evaluate what happened in last week’s election with the benefit of rational perspective. It may be possible that the election results were neither the end of the country as we know it, as many at Fox News seemed to intimate, nor were they something to be compared to Ronald Reagan’s 525-13 
So, thanks to that 
Of course, all is not lost for the “other” NBC show. The Office showed great promise early on in its final season, and the fact that this is the end may ultimately be as “freeing” as I had hoped several weeks back.
The Axis of Ego 
Good Cause, Bad Slogan
The burden of being Tom Garrett extends beyond my profound lack of social interaction, incompetence at parallel parking, and maintenance of an inexplicably-large retro video game collection (although it occurs to me that the former and the latter points may be hopelessly intertwined).
You see, I am nearly incapable of suffering fools. I feel compelled to fight a lifelong war against stupidity, even to my own detriment, and even if the stupidity is unquestionably well-intentioned. A picture posted by our local CBS affiliate on Facebook provided a helpful example of this peculiarity of mine. The image was a promotional design crafted by the Salvation Army (a very worthy cause) that included a slogan that irritated and perplexed me.
Here it is:
Ok, so, let’s talk about the problem with this.
The slogan says, “This is one bucket you don’t want to miss,” or, as I prefer to read it, “This is one bucket you don’t want to miss.”
There are two issues right off the bat. One, it’s not readily apparent that this is a reference to basketball. The Harlem Globetrotters logo is fairly small, tucked away in the lower-right corner. Being a sports geek, I assume a basketball connection when I see “buckets,” but I don’t think most people would. Still, this is a minor concern compared to the other issue.
The slogan is based on a false (or at least illogical) premise. Namely, that there is a kind of “bucket” that one would want to miss.
The slogan is saying, implicitly, “There may be some buckets you want to miss, but not this one, because it’s for charity! Missing this bucket would mean that your money wouldn’t get to the Salvation Army!”
As opposed to what? Missing another kind of bucket that costs your team points during a basketball game? Not missing that bucket is the object of the sport.
Stupid.
I’ve wasted enough time on this, and the fact that the imbecile who came up with the slogan probably makes two-to-three times my annual income is certainly little comfort. But I’m happy I could provide you, my adoring public, with yet another glimpse into the dark chasm of my soul, and my undiagnosed autism.
And, of course, this all naturally reminded me of this:
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