If you're anything like me, Texans fans, then the only real impact this lockout will have on you is where you'll be sitting and drinking beer for the next several months. But suppose you have a special, deep-seated, contempt for one or both parties involved in this lockout? What do you do then?
You curse the names of everyone involved with keeping football off of our televisions. You revel in mocking the stupid comments made by both sides in the labor fight. And you laugh like a hyena whacked out of its mind on drugs when either labor or ownership embarrasses themselves on national television.
In short, you become a hater. And between the lockout, the Mavericks playing against whoever that other team was, and my idiot neighbors upstairs having a who-can-jump-hardest-on-the-floor contest, I have no shortage of hate in my heart with which to offer this Hater's Prayer for the lockout.
Click on the jump to read who will face the judgment of Gozer for their parts in the lockout.
O mighty Gozer the Destructor, there is little time left in the off-season, and we need these self-important twits to agree to a deal before I am deprived of potato skins and Red Hook next season. I beseech you, patron god of haters, to bring down misery and suffering unto those I have listed here.
May Jerry Richardson find dozens of live squirrels getting frisky in his bed. May the stereo in his bedroom be playing a Barry White, Marvin Gaye, and Luther Vandross mix tape. May he require the most expensive brain bleach money can buy to get the sight of sexually aroused squirrels out of his mind; and may the dry cleaning bill for his sheets be through the roof.
May the ghosts of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman swoop down from heaven and take turns kicking Adrian Peterson in the groin for comparing the NFL to slavery.
May Ray Lewis become personally involved with "the evil, which we call crime" while the lockout continues. May this evil take place at a party in Atlanta. Oh...wait, never mind.
May the phrase "non-binding mediation" be phased out of the English language. May there be only one option for the players and owners to resolve their differences once and for all: Thunderdome. May the contenders be given only lethal weapons, live ammunition, whiskey and crystal meth while inside Thunderdome. May these "mediation sessions" be put on camera and slotted between episodes of "Jersey Shore" and "Teen Mom."
May pictures arise of all three judges of the Eighth Circuit appellate court. May it show them wearing lederhosen, offering sacrifices to their god (Joe Pesci), and doing sexually immoral things with livestock.
May it be discovered that Jerry Jones' parents were, in fact, Richard Nixon and an exceptionally unattractive warthog. Not that this has much to do with the lockout. I just hope it happens.
May Enron's former accountants swindle the NFL owners out of all their money. May these indigent owners find themselves living in the streets and fighting off Randall and Mortimer Duke for food in nearby dumpsters.
May the players be forced, under court order, to go crab fishing in the Bering Sea, so they can learn what it's really like to have a tough job. May the crews on each of these crab boats force the players to dance the can-can in 40-foot seas and 30 knot winds.
May Ben Roethlisberger, before his first day on an all-male crab fishing boat, find himself at a party in Atlanta where hilarious hijinx will inevitably ensue.
May the Players Association finally wise up and realize that an effeminate-looking man in Uggs, who squeals like a little girl when he goes down a waterslide, might not be the best candidate to represent you in a lawsuit against the owners.
May low-paid underling to the owners, Roger Goodell, be repeatedly slapped in the face with a herring. May this herring have some weird, though inconceivably horrible, fish-to-human venereal diseases.
Finally, may DeMaurice Smith be repeatedly dropped head-first into a sewage treatment pond. May this happen on national television and may he be dunked quickly enough that he can't say anything in front of the television cameras. Also, may someone get him some Maalox or bran muffins, because in every picture, he looks like he is battling a very serious case of gas.
If you have any additional prayers to Gozer you'd like to add, list them in the comments section below.