Misery 101

Now that I've successfully removed the steak knives from my eyeballs and regained my vision, it's time to comment on Monday's nationally televised mass-murder in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Where do I begin? That's just it. There's nowhere TO begin. The Giants beat the Browns 37-34, but they were up 30-3 before Ron Jaworski could even say "National Football League." If preseason games are about how your starters look, then we're pro football's answer to the Elephant Man.

I can't possibly do our performance justice in a blog description. Just know two things: your football team has never played that poorly, and it was actually worse than what you're reading.

While I was watching the slaughter at work, I cycled through my mental rolodex of ways to summarize the Browns' Monday Night Fuckup. Lots of thoughts crossed my mind, from writing a 300-word post made up entirely of cuss words to comparing the Browns to a Star Trek episode I'd watched earlier in the day. I ultimately decided that we were so bad, there's only one thing to do:

Rank this debacle among the worst things in history.

Adolf Hitler

The trendy pick for "history's worst" lists, Hitler oversaw the murder of more than nine million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, POWs, Slavs, homosexuals, disabled people and dissidents over the course of a decade. The Browns oversaw the murder of 2.5 million fans' optimism in one night.

VERDICT: Hitler, by a lot

The Black Death

Specifically a massive case of the bubonic plague, the Black Death was responsible for the fatalities of anywhere from 75-100 million people in the 14th century. Warning signs (term used loosely) included bleeding extremities, nausea, aching joints and severe overall discomfort. Other than the bleeding extremities, I experienced all that Monday night watching the Browns.

VERDICT: The Black Death, by a good amount

Original sin

When Adam and Eve ate those apples, mankind was fucked. Kind of like the Browns' o-line against the Giants.

VERDICT: The Browns, by a hair

Transformers (film)

I was never into Transformers as a kid, but it wasn't hard to get excited for the movie. I mean, cars that turn into robots and beat the shit out of each other? Let's go! But instead of that, we had to sit through an hour-long teen drama before the Transformers even showed up, and when they did, it was lame scenes and cartoonish action sequences the rest of the way.

VERDICT: Transformers, by a lot

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

Better known as Caligula, it's believed that this first-century Roman emperor suffered from an inflammation of the brain stem, which characterized his gleeful cruelty, abject decrees, vainly expansionist policy, twisted sexual indulgences and total insanity. Come to think of it, "total insanity" is a great way to describe rooting for the Browns.

VERDICT: Caligula, because of the sex appeal

The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

That's a fancy way of saying "how the dinosaurs died." Here's what we know: approximately 65 million years ago, something happened that caused the mass extinction of a large percentage of the Earth's plant and animal species in a relatively short period of time. As recent as the mid-1990s, it was believed that a giant asteroid struck the planet's surface and caused a period of darkness that lasted about a year, which effectively destroyed the Earth's life cycles. Since the turn of the century, scientists have begun to theorize that it was a combination of multiple impact events, increased volcanism and marine regression, the perfect cocktail for geological obliteration.

Which must have tasted better than the cocktail I'm slamming right now.

VERDICT: The Browns, but dinosaurs are still way cool

50 Cent's sophomore album

You follow your instant-classic debut with this? I was a Penn State freshman when Get Rich came out, and I remember how every stereo on campus was blasting it. I also remember how great it was, and how great you were, and how it deserved a worthy successor. Instead, we get pedestrian party singles, uninspired penmanship and a feeble, overhyped diss track that was torn apart by superior lyricists like Jadakiss. If you're looking for G-Unit's first sellout CD, look no further.

VERDICT: The Browns, only because "I'm Supposed to Die Tonight" is a sick song

The sinking of the Titanic

More than 1,500 people died when the "unsinkable" ship struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912. But most of them were rich snobs who probably deserved it.

VERDICT: The Browns, who ran into similar disasters on the Giants' 10-yard line

Mount Vesuvius' eruption of 79

Most of us learned about this in second or third grade, under the chapter about Pompeii. The volcanic eruption completely wiped out the town of Pompeii and significantly damaged several neighboring communities, and recent research has suggested that an earthquake 17 years earlier contributed to the eruption's tectonic precursors. I dunno about Vesuvius, but lava and ash were nothing compared to what I was spewing Monday night.

VERDICT: The Browns, shout out to Morrison Elementary

Robocop 2 (film)

A sequel that's ultra-nihilistic, gratuitously violent, barren of imagination, retrograde in its visual effects, and thoroughly preposterous in its convictions. Without a doubt, the worst movie with serious intentions I have ever seen. No funny jokes in this paragraph.

VERDICT: Robocop 2, by a lot

DeShawn Stevenson

So awful I had to end a post by making fun of him twice!