Kerfuffle, No More, No Less

As I write this, tipoff of the Big Game is about half an hour away. You know the Big Game, LeBron's return to Cleveland, the game we've been instructed to "circle on our calendars" for five months now. The one that "everyone's been talking about," the one that's brought "media from all over the globe" to Cleveland, the one where we'll supposedly see "how LeBron handles it," and whether or not the fans of Northeastern Ohio will "embarrass themselves on national TV" by "doing something bad." Piddle, all of it. Personally, as much as I hate to say it and depressed as I am by the mere micro-dusting of snow on the ground and temperatures holding steady in the windy 20-35 degrees range (and knowing full well in two months I'll be sacrificing small animals for such moderate climes), I wish a good old blizzard would be blasting these parts right now to really show all the far-flung media descending on our humble town what life is like here, with or without the Chosen One. Moreover, if I had my way, at the tipoff, all 20,000+ fans would silently file out of Quicken Loans Arena to show how much we really give a rat's ass about spoiled sports and the parasitic gawking media. But I suspect there'll be an ugly moment or three, LeBron will wind up with his usual stats-heavy game, and the Heat will win going away. Ho hum.

In the long run, this whole game will merely be a kerfuffle. And I don't use that word lightly because I hate the word. Now I have nothing against the Scots (they're responsible in one way or another for much of the music I love, Edinburgh is one of the greatest cities I've experienced, and their accents are killer), but I'm told that this despised word comes from Scotland where, with the accent and personality of the Scots, I can almost see the word working. But beyond the parameters of Scotland, the word stinks and should be eliminated from everybody's dialect. Why? Why such vitriol over a kind of fun-sounding word? Mainly because it is a fun-sounding word only employed by people who consciously want to use a fun-sounding word when they're usually talking about something not so fun--a disturbance or fuss--and because it seems to be used more and more often these days. All I'll say is that to me it's a Holly Hobby word; if you know what I'm talking about, nothing more needs to be said. If you don't, believe me, it's not worth the kerfuffle of looking up Holly Hobby. I hereby decree, the only time any non-Scots person anywhere, or any Scots person outside of Scotland, may use the word kerfuffle is when one is having trouble extracting one's handkerchief from one's ass pocket. That's it. You've all been warned.

Now excuse me, I have to turn my attention to a certain basketball game to see if I'll should be embarrassed or feel proud of myself come tomorrow morning. Though, with the usual qualifications of nobody getting hurt, something in me wants something truly asinine to occur tonight at the Q. Kerfuffle me not.