Dear Tribune,

This morning I turned to your sports section (you're not "the bright one" so are you "the dim one?" oh wait, that's haugh!) when I needed something to distract me from the fact that I was taking a fairly heaving shit. Upon opening the paper I started with the Peppers article ('It all begins with THE END' -- well played) and then after reading a pageload of "ifs" it was on to my love in your paper, and especially the Sunday paper, the baseball writing. You know, the one sport always worth writing about except for those times that you want to tell me that someone's in the best shape of their life and they're ready to lose all of the suck (aka 'The Yearly Adam Dunn Piece').

Upon reading your article entitled "What's ahead for the Cubs?" by Paul Sullivan, I noticed that in the second column there was a rather frightening thing ahead for the Cubs: the term "R-Ren" to abbreviate new manager "Rick Renteria." Now I'll grant you that it's entirely possible that Paul Sullivan, nothing if not a weathered veteran of the baseball beat, is 'taking the piss' as the British would say in England with the terminology. In a post "A-Rod' world there have been many attempts to cannibalize that term into some cute little derivative that says 'hey look guys I'm creative!' with the requisite contemporary hipsteresque 'irony' that also says 'hey look guys I'm completely unoriginal!'

Since I'm looking to your paper for something to distract me from the fact that I'm moving a bowel in the morning, let's just go out on a far limb and assume that you're not trying to give me a quick lesson in the fundamental duality of existence, nor are you attempting to subtly hypnotize me into accepting any sort of "New World Order Uber-Meta-Religion" whose essential principle "As It Is Above, So It Is Below" which basically boils down to the whole "you know the snake in the garden of eden might have been on to something" point that serves as a sufficient starting place for exploring many of the so-called "ancient mysteries" ---- again, I'm reading about the dumbass Cubs while I'm signing my morning constitution, this isn't exactly a work in subtle en masse/societal programming.

So we're left with the prospect that the term "R-Ren" is being said entirely on its own merit, which I quite frankly (without Stephen A Smith, thank you) find both awful and frightening for its implications in the future. Dying or otherwise, the Chicago Tribune is still the print version of a media empire that's capable of programming the populace around me. Indeed, as my chosen medium for this message I post this message on score670.com, a place with many people nearing/middle-aged who quite frankly are some sort of self-congratulatory groupthink echo chamber (you know, just like Facebook and Twitter but with more of a more bag on the head in mandals style) who, whether they realize it or not, are going to be writing a pretty decent % of the text that I read throughout my normal life cycle/s this baseball season. And whether these people want to admit it or not, they are heavily influenced by the actions of you and your media group, as they are nothing short of the products of the sports media that they congregate daily to bitch about.... while they're being paid to work.

Tribune, you have all of the power in this relationship that we have. You and your sterling mouthpieces, like the man I once called 'that shaved-head alien looking smarmy as fuck douchebag asshole' Dave Kaplan (for one random example) are going to program a decent amount of the hearts and souls around me, and thus you're going to shape the sports-conversational-paradigms around me for the foreseeable future. I have no recourse but to beg for mercy at your feet akin to that guy catching the business end of the Monty Python foot (picture attached)



Which means that I realize the futility of my position here and thus I beg for mercy: PLEASE DO NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM PERPETUATE USAGE OF THE TERM "R-REN" IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. Sure, maybe when he's fired to make way for the real manager whose job it will be to lead your 2018 Chicago Cubs to World Series glory, then and only then we can look back and realize we never really got to colloquially know the guy that Paul Sullivan ***once*** jokingly referred to as "R-Ren" in a hitch-line between paragraphs on a cold February Sunday Morning, and we'll all enjoy a smile and laugh and hey I'll even try to not find a way around your horrible price raise that fucks over all of us remaining true believers in the world of the morning paper.

HOWEVER

If I am subject to the term "R-Ren" for an indeterminate length of time, which would imply any sort of consistent usage, then I'm afraid that I'll simply have to boycott your paper and just start taking my laptop into the bathroom when I have to take a shit..... and trust me when I say that we both really don't want that..... but I have to draw the line somewhere, and that place where I draw the line is "R-Ren" so with the indefatigable spirit of a guy with a Sharpie in the men's room stall.... of life, I would like to tag my name on your wall and perhaps register something that hearkens an iota of decency from you and your people-programming ways to put an abrupt end to the term "R-Ren" so that we're all a little smarter, a little more clever, and ultimately a little more better for not having to deal with yet another one of those stupid forced "A-Rod" derivatives that makes those of us with eyes to see a bit depressed as we sigh and realize that this is indeed the cantankerous clone age of memetics.

For just this one fleeting moment in time and space..... can't we aspire to be more? In the end of "All Good Things" Q told Picard that he'd be out there watching..... and for the love of god, if you don't think that the term "R-Ren" is akin to three inverse Tachyon Pulses being sent into the heart of the Devron system at three different points in time, thus causing a spatial anomaly of "Anti-Time" that's capable of going back to the beginnings of the evolution of humanity and wiping us all out, then I'm afraid you don't know the stakes of providing the words and thoughts that soothe our primal visceral beastlike souls while we take our morning shit/s, and there is indeed no hope for the future.

But I have hope for the future, Tribune.... and so do you. So let's hold hands and march towards our Neo-Communist Digi-Fascist Police State But-Hey-Theres-Legalized-Pot-And-Cheap-Brewtopia hand and hand smiling and singing a Banana Splits song cuz you're old and I'm cool, because dammit I believe in the best of you (without referencing Dave Grohl repeating that ad infinitum short of this one) and I know we're going to do this together.

We're going to end "R-Ren" like the collective embodiment of baseball inevitability will do to its namesake, because you are the Tribune..... and you're better than that, especially if that = the Ricketts.

Thank you, and please have mercy on my old jaded soul.

Sincerely,

# james

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