My reason, Mr. Camus: The Red Sox

In responding to Camus' famous existential question Why shouldn't I kill myself today?, I'm going to apply some Socratic Method:

Have you looked at the fucking Red Sox this year?

Let me preface my gushing---and the giddy girl-like giggling that erupts from me every time I think about this lineup---by the saying, as a lifelong Red Sox fan, I will never fully shake the feeling that the bottom could fall out at any second. I haven't completely written off the possibility of an earthquake in Texas on Opening Day, the ground literally splitting and devouring Alex [edit: I had a Freudian slip; I meant Adrian, although Alex was highly underrated at SS for the Sox] Gonzalez and Dustin Pedroia on a routine grounder to the right side. It's entirely possible that Jon Lester could spontaneously combust, or Carl Crawford could be flattened by a frozen turd dropped from the shitter of a 747 flying overhead.

Yes, I've thought about these things.

However, for the first time that I can remember, The Red Sox are going into the season with the swagger of being "the team to beat." Granted, they've paid dearly for this title, and guys like myself would have to take out a second mortgage on my house to afford tickets to Fenway, still it's a new and pleasant sensation.

For the first time that I can remember, I'm approaching the season not giving a shit about The Yankees. Usually, by this point, I've started my tirade of sophomoric homosexual jokes about The Yankee clubhouse, borne from the knowledge that the Yankees had the better team. Not this year, kids. And I am certain, in their heart of black hearts, Yankee fans know this, too.

Oh Cliff Lee, where art thou?

At this point, I only have two concerns. Barring any of the aforementioned scenarios, The Red Sox are up and down solid with the exception of the catcher position and the country of Japan. On a side note, I recently learned that Jarrod Saltalamacchia married his high school gym teacher, but it's not the fact that kid chases cougars that concerns me. It's the fact that he's unproven, and Varitek...well, he's better in the dugout. And the $50 million dollar cash dump we call Dice-K and his buddy Choke-a-jima make me uneasy. Otherwise, what else is there to say? The Sox are stacked.

So, Mr. Camus, I'm going to pass on Kool-Aid today. Baseball is right around the corner, and I'm feeling good about it. Vive le Sox!

Why Truck Day.

So Red Sox fans demarcate the date that the truck carrying the players' gear leaves Fenway Park en route to Fort Myers?

Yes. Yes, we do. We call it Truck Day, and it's coming on Tuesday.

For outsiders, I can completely understand how this might resemble lunacy, fanaticism taken to the nth-degree. But, really, it speaks to the winters in New England. Particularly this year. Granted, we don't live in Siberia, but The Red Sox still symbolize spring and another chance at redemption. For those of us who don't wear Pink Hats, pre-2004 (and, I should note, the biggest choke in professional sports history by a certain group of pin-striped shit-hounds), each spring carried the potential of being the year. Now that we've experienced the year, twice, it still signifies the fact that we made it through another winter, and the boys of summer will soon be taking another crack at the fall.

When the truck pulls out from Yawkey Way on Tuesday, there will be herds of rabid fans wrapped in their winter coats watching it leave, cheering it on, huffing the gas. Soon this ridiculous snow will melt, and we won't be scraping ice of our windshields each morning. Soon we'll be wearing t-shirts, clutching a cold drink, and listening to Remy and Orsillo as a warm breeze shoots through the living room. As I said, winter has been rough this year, and on Tuesday, Sox fans will see its first small hint of relent.

TS Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" that "April is the cruellest month."

To quote Kenny Powers of Eastbound and Down: "Mr. Eliot, you're fucking out!"