I'm a damn ghost!

What do you want with me?

Oh, we got lots to talk about.


You won't get much from me.


I recollect you owe me some damn money!


I don't owe you anything. ... Can you sit?


Hell yeah, I can sit. I can do 10,000 situps in my damn driveway.


Well, sit then. You're all blurry.

I'm a damn ghost! Of course I'm blurry. ... You don't believe in me do ya?



Well, no.


What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your damn senses.


I'm probably drunk. I think there was some kind of English fungus in that beer that made me hallucinate. Or it coulda been that moldy old cheese or some virus I picked up from that waiter's dirty hands. This town is filthy! There are dead people everywhere. I could have the plague!


Damn! Step the hell back!


See this toothpick?


I see it.


You are not looking at it.


I see the goddam thing, fool!


Well, if I swallow it I'll be persecuted for the rest of my days by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. No amount of Prevacid or Tums will help me. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!


What the hell's a humbug? ... Listen, if you don't start believin' in me right now I'm gonna read "Little T Learns to Share" from cover to cover right here out loud.


Oh, Jesus! Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?


Do you believe in me or not?


I do. I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?


It's your damn blog, Sluggo. The way I heard it is it is required of every man that the damn spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and goddam wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death, all the way to goddam Buffalo and back. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe the hell is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to damn happiness! Hell!


You are fettered. Why?


I wear the damn down-marker chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; in San Francisco, Baltimore -- almost -- especially in Philly and Dallas and freakin' Buffalo. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Cause you wearing one bigger than this. It was as heavy and as long as this seven Christmas Eves ago. And you been workin' on it since.



You were always an asshole, but you could play ball like nobody's business.


Business! Mankind was my damn business. The common welfare was my damn business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my damn business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! Damn!



Ooooh. Fancy talk. Hey, don't be so hard on me. We were blogging teammates. Remember?


Hell with you. Oh, you loved me when when McNabb was throwin me the damn ball. Then when McNabb got sick and the Eagles wouldn't give me my money, you kicked my off your blog. Then you and your damn cats killed me.



Karl killed you.


Look. You got one last damn chance to escape my fate. A chance of my making. Well, actually Jesus is makin me do this cause I'm on probation. He's still pissed at me even, though I was right about that damn Newman a-hole.



A chance ... ?


You're gonna be haunted by three damn ghosts.



Not me, pal. I'm gettin outta here in the armoire.


The damn armoire don't work, clown, till I say so. Without the ghosts you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.



Tomorrow? How bout we do them in one shot.


Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own damn sake, you remember what has passed between us! Son of a bitch.


What, are you gonna jump out the window?


Look out there!


Oh my god. More spirits ... all wearing chains. Steve Young, Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, Tony Romo, Trent Edwards. They seek to win championships, but they can't. ... You won't catch the ball unless they give you more money. ... Oh, the horror!


Damn right. That's what I call pay to play. I still want my damn money!