And this will be the last post hawking our shizz probably until March when everybody will really be Cub crazy.  Anyway, in the ShoutBox Goat Reader John says "damn you and your prices!!" To which we reply "no, damn Cafe Press!"  However, I hear what John is saying - things can be a little pricey on Cafe Press.  Therefore, I'm going to make this post, a list of the most inexpensive items we sell.  Hopefully you will find something which grabs your eye.

Oh, and P.S. All but 2 are under 10 bucks.

Woman's Goat Riders Tank Top $15.99

Ladies of GROTA, this is the least expensive shirt Cafe Press sells for you.  Yes, just like when you get a haircut, regardless of the length you wind up paying more (sorry about your luck, just remember that you not-so-secretly rule all us men).  Imagine a warm May ... well, July day in Chicago.  You're walking down the street toward Wrigley, and all the men - and women - can't stop staring at your chest.  Yep, that's what will happen if you wear this tank top.  And it can be yours for just $15.99 plus shipping.  Can you resist?  No You Can't!

Yes They Can Value T $9.99

Friends, this is the most inexpensive shirt in the GROTA store.  If you believe the Cubs can win the World Series in 2009 and if you want to show your dedication to GROTA, then this shirt is ideal for you.  Get it now for just $9.99 and if you call in the next 15 minutes, I'll throw in not one but two autoplungers for free.  That's right, keep those toilets clear of blockage with the autoplunger!

This is the Year Wall Clock - $12.99

What time is it, you ask?  It's time to win the World Series!  With this kick-ass Wall Clock, you'll never forget that it's time to win.  Also, don't forget that it's ambiguous so you won't have to buy the 2010 model if the Cubs fail in a despairing act of heartbreaking misery!

Yes They Can 3.5" Button - $4.99

Perfect for coats, shirts, backpacks, and dreadlocks, the Yes They Can 09 button is a perfect way to demonstrate not just your faith in the Cubs, but your enthusiasm for GROTA.  And at five bucks, it's a deal that just can't be beat!

Yes They Can mini button - $1.99

If the big whopping 3.5" button is too garish for your tastes, then perhaps this mini button is more up your ally.  Not only is it small, but it's affordable!  Besides, if ever attacked my ninjas it could be a tiny weapon of self-defense!

Yes They Can mini button 10 pack - $9.99

But wait!  More buttons!  If you want to share the love with your friends while spreading the word about GROTA, these mini buttons are an awesome bargain.  Think about it - 10 people, 10 gifts, only 99 cents per person!

This Is The Year rectangle magnet - $4.49

Do you own a fridge?  I do!  Know anybody else who does?  Like a Cubs fan, for example?  If so, then this rectangle magnet is a great gift!  And hey - if you have some crazy-ass friend who doesn't believe in modern day conveniences, you could always give it to him as cruel gift.  One look at it and he'll wish he was cool enough to own electrical appliances - and yes, this is exactly what I give to the Amish folks who live back home in Western NY.

Yes They Can 09 magnet - $3.99

Hey, if you don't love my propaganda poster image and would rather I bite off Obama, then buy this puppy.  By the way - a conservative friend of mine assures me that after the first three or four months of 09, nobody will want to buy anything associated with our new President, so buy 'em up before you turn on Obama!

Yes They Can mini poster print - $7.99

These cool posters measure 11" x 17", and are perfect for dorm or cubical walls.  Besides, they're my first real piece of digital art.  Buy one.  Own it.  When I die, it'll be extremely valuable!

Yes They Can 09 rectangular sticker - $4.99

Perfect for a piece of luggage or a White Sox fan's car.  It's either a perfect expression of your feelings for the Cubs or a cruel joke that will leave your Sox fan friend angry and annoyed.  How can you beat that?

Yes They Can 09 oval sticker - $4.99

I'll tell you how - with an oval version of the same sticker!  This sticker was specifically designed to celebrate the female form.  Oval sticker.  Ovaries.  Boobies.  Think about it.

Yes They Can bumper sticker - $4.59

The final item of our Cafe Press shopping spree is the Yes They Can 09 bumper sticker.  Imagine a conservative Cub fan driving behind you.  Imagine the rage he'll feel when he recognizes that, no, it's not an Obama logo - it's for the Cubs!  Oh, the bitter irony!  And then, imagine that somehow, someday, President Obama sees the same logo.  He, a White Sox fan, forced to see his immortal image perverted for the Cubs!  Could it happen?  Yes it can!  Be a part of the movement!  Buy this sticker today!

And with that, my friends, the sales pitch ends for a few months.  I hope we have something that interests you.  And with our least expensive item coming in at $2, I'm sure we have something you can afford.  Thanks for the patronage, and keep on keepin' on!

Right, then!  So as you have probably seen by now, I've designed a couple of images this weekend that I've decided to stick on t-shirts and sell to the public at large.  Now, I'm not expecting you, the loyal Goat Reader, to throw down money on these things - especially in the tough economy we live in - but I'm hoping some of you will mostly because it's a cool way to promote the site.

However I'm at a crossroads in the designs.  It originally started out with these bunch:

My propaganda war poster, I took a photo of this scene and digitally recreated it.  I then erased the original photo and this is what I got.  I think it's one of the coolest photoshops I've ever done, and without a doubt the most original.

And here is the image concept I stole from the Obama campaign.  It should strike a very similar chord to this image. The basic idea is that I took the Cubs logo, turned it on its side, and placed it in the backdrop of the city of Chicago as though it were a rising sun.  If you look at the oldest version of the image, you'll see that I've worked on it a lot since then to make it look like I want it to.  I've made the blue border of the logo much thicker.

Since then, I've worked on a few varations of these two images, particularly the "O" image.  Here's what I'd cooked up:

At this point, realizing that I'd struck gold, I began slapping these images on t-shirts, buttons, magnets, posters, you name it.  But I've done some further tinkering, particularly with the slogan.  I mean, I like "This is the Year" but since I'd already bitten so hard on Obama, I thought maybe I should kick it to the next level and steal "Yes We Can."  Here's the latest:

And here's where the need for feedback comes into play ... basically, what do you all think of these?  Is "This Is The Year" better or worse than "Yes They Can?"

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

I wouldn't be surprised to come back here later and write a much longer article today if only because I can't help myself.  But in case this is it, I'd like to wish everybody a happy new year.

It was an interesting 2008 for Cub fans in general and the Goat Riders in particular.  As our Cubs played the best baseball we've seen since 1945, various members of GROTA were invited to participate in all sorts of cool things, from a wine tasting ceremony with Ernie Banks (who loved us) to an NPR interview, scores of newspaper interviews, and finally the ESPN article that stepped up the plans for our successful site redesign.

We had infights, we had arguments with other blogs, we managed not to get banned by Al Yellon, and on average our readership more than doubled.  But while you can't understand how happy I am that GROTA is doing well, it obviously pales in comparison with how the Cubs did last year and how they do this year.

So.  May this be The Year.  We've suffered enough.  The sooner they win the Series, the sooner we can move on to more important things to worry about - like staying competitive for years after.

Have a good one, be safe, and I hope nobody is too hung over today.  Cheers.

I can't help but feel warm and fuzzy by our reader base.  Even though it's December - aka the slowest damned month of the off season so far - and in spite of the numerous days off that cut into peoples' work-time browsing of this website, we have surpassed November's numbers in terms of unique visits and page views.

The likely final tally of unique visits we'll have by midnight of Dec 31st will surpass all but 2 months of 2008, August and October.  We are also at more than double the total number of hits we had last December and we have the 2nd most total page views in the history of this blog.

So ... thanks guys.  Thank you for reading the blog.  Thanks to Colin, Rob, and all the rest for keeping us fresh with daily content.  Sometimes we argue, sometimes we debate, and sometimes it is a vomit-inducing love-fest, but we'd be nothing without the loyal readers.  I anticipate we'll continue to grow into 2009, and I hope you all stick with us throughout the coming months.

/ego tickling

I'm probably not going to make "of the Apocalypse" a part of every post, but I'm amused to do so at this moment.

South of where I live right now, millions of families are digging into large turkeys covered in gravy, with gratuitous quantities of stuffing piled nearby, buried under heaping spoon fulls of mashed potatoes and corn, while a shelf full of pies await to be eaten.  Unfortunately, I won't get to join in the festivities until Saturday.

But while I sit here, I thought I'd share with you some of the many things that I am thankful for.

• I'm thankful that the Cubs are headed in the right direction for once and aren't painful to follow
• I am thankful that our readers are intelligent, mostly cordial people happy to get involved in a debate regardless of how illogical I make the premise
• I am thankful for the GROTA staff.  If the internets was a real place, the act of them "coming to work" would be seen as five beaten, broken men shuffling into a dank, dark room, where they then hunch over to slave on stories while I crack the whip and promise to pay them with pain.  Well, maybe it's not that bad
• I'm thankful for the opportunities we've had in the past year.  As I've already mentioned, we've grown massively in readership, we've been covered repeatedly by the national media, I got inducted into a society of 700 Cub fans including Dick Cheney, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and our website got a kick-ass design that has apparently inspired many other Cubs blogs to follow suite.  Yep, that's us, leading the way ... ya followers!  Hah!
• On a personal level, I'm thankful for my fiancee, known in some circles by the name She's Canadian I Met Her At Niagara Falls You Wouldn't Know Her, or C. for short.  Hey, anybody worth immigrating to a new country for is special, right?
• Most importantly of all, I am thankful of my immense talent to write.  Someday I'm gonna be famous and you'll all be choking on my dust trails, motherf***ers!  That's right!  I said it!  Because although the turkey's not here in Canada, the Wild Turkey is and I'm right where I wanna be ... at the top of the heap!  What'reya gonna do about it?  Huh?  Huh?  You wanna fight me?  You wanna fight me?!  Bring it on!

...ahem.  Sorry about that.  Got a little out of control with that last one.  But in all seriousness, we've all stumbled across those blogs precociously written by people with 5 readers in total, and there's nothing quite as depressing as those... which isn't to say that I don't have other blogs with 5 readers in total.  A blog is no better than the company it keeps, and you guys are awesome.  I give thanks for that.  So ... who wants to trade DeRosa and Lilly?  C'mon, don't be shy, step up!

I've got nothing particularly exciting to report, except for one thing that I've noticed ... although November has been a very slow month for baseball news, it seems as if GROTA readership is continuing to grow.

It's true that we are unlikely to match our hit figures from October, but with 5 days remaining in this month we have more than doubled our total hits from last November, and we're close to tripling our total page views.

For a sense of perspective, it looks as if the only 3 months of the past year in which we'll have had more hits were August, September, and October.  For a nothing-happening month of no baseball news, we're on our way to get more hits than what we had in the months of April, May, June, and July.  Y'know, during the baseball season.

I can't help but feel thankful to you guys, the readers, for making us a destination on  your daily regimen of blog-reading.  We'd be nothing without you, and I hope you stick with us through the long haul.  So, thanks.

I just want to throw this challenge out there ... as expected, my "what I'd do" post is getting a little bit of flack, ranging in "I think you're joking" to "no way do the Cubs only have a $130 million budget."

So, here's what I want from you guys ... either in the comments of this post, or in the Reader Blogs Section, give us your moves, trades, and signings, but force yourself to have the 130 million budget.

It's easy to say "well, I'd sign Dunn and give away Marquis for a bottle of rum and sign Randy Johnson to replace him" but if the money isn't there, none of that will happen.  And based on how Kerry Wood will be wearing different colors next year, the money isn't there.

I'm going to play the Commish in this exercise.  For example, if you say "I'll trade Derrek Lee for Player X," I will step in and say "Derrek Lee loves Chicago and enjoys playing for a first place team, and he will not void his no trade clause.  Try something else." Similarly, no, the Yankees will not take Cedeno for A-Rod, even if you could magically find a way to make that money available.

If you want an incomplete list on what current Cubs will be making next year, go here.

Good luck.  It's not easy - I spent about 3 hours figuring out my moves.

Editor's Note: I recently wrote this EMail to ESPN writer Rob Neyer, who has displayed the terrible judgment of linking to Bleed Cubbie Blue on his ESPN column while ignoring GROTA.  I have sought to rectify this situation via EMail, which I have posted here in full.  Enjoy, and yes, my balls really are that big

Dear Rob,

My name is Kurtis Evans.  I am a well-known Chicago Cubs blogger who writes for the also well-known Goat Riders of the Apocalypse (www.goatriders.org).  You may have heard of us, we wrote the now groundbreaking story titled There Is No Curse, But We're Going to Name Our Blog After It Anyway. 

I'm writing to you primarily because I'm drunk.  No, wait, that's not right (or why). 

I'm writing to you because we would desperately like to see you add a link to our blog on your ESPN blogroll.  We are an established, compelling blog that mixes humor, analysis, and typos with ardant ferver.  We've received a lot of notice for our work - we were listed in 2005 as one of the three best Cubs blogs on the net by Deadspin.com, we've been recognized for our greatness by Chicago Magazine, we have been acknowledged as one of Chicago's Best Blogs by the Chicago Tribune and Trib writer Paul Sullivan, I personally was featured in an article written by your colleague Wayne Drehs, and do you remember that time the world almost secretly ended but then it didn't?  Yep, that was because of us.  On second thought, you probably never heard.

Now, I've written you about this before through your ESPN EMail tool.  I was shocked to never receive any kind of response, not even an "eff off, I don't got no time for this crap," which is usually the response I get when I EMail published writers.  I'm aware that at some point in the recent past, there was a bit of a hubbub because a blogger got all cranky and unprofessional on you because of a perceived slight when you refused to link them.

Let me just say, Rob, that we won't do that.  We're hardly not unprofessional.  (Wait, what?)  However, I AM posting this message on GROTA.  The world will know if you never respond, and ironically, I probably won't make a peep about it if in fact you DO respond. 

Regardless, because this has gone on for far too long, and dinner is almost ready, and because you must be convinced that I have in fact been drinking, I will conclude this message by saying one thing which is simply true:

You should link us to your blog because there is no other blog out there that is like GROTA.  Rather than give in and link us six months from now after being reduced to the shell of a broken man, you should stay in front of the movement and give us our props now. 

Also, if you'd like to improve your own visibility, we would probably consider interviewing you for GROTA.  We even have readers who aren't related to us!  Please keep that in mind.

Yours,

Kurtis Evans
kjsevans (at) gmail (dot) com
6xx-xxx-xxx9

I said it in the comments, but I also want to say it in a post that more people are likely to read - I am tremendously appreciative of our readers.  This blog would be nothing without the debates, disagreements, and even the occasional insults offered up by you good folks.

I want to remind all of you that if you are a registered user, you can post your own blog when you log in under "Create content."  Also, don't forget, we have a choice of 3 skins available to you by clicking on "My account" and we may be adding a 4th soon.  I only mention these two things because newly registered readers might not be aware of either.

Thanks again, you are all awesome, and I hope you stick around for the long haul.  Oh, and if you have a Cub fan friend, tell him/her about us.  We welcome everybody.

Loyal Goat Readers,

I know that for a lot of you, the Cubs are the last thing you really want to think about or talk about, as they disappointed the crap out of us all against the Dodgers.  However, I think a lot of you still have some thoughts that deserve expression beyond commenting our shoutboxing.

So, don't forget the Reader's Blogs.  Some topics you might want to write about may include:

• Jim Hendry's 4 year extension?  Good idea, bad idea?
• Bob Brenly and his potential departure
• The pending free agents, some of whom we are particularly attached to
• The greatness that is Micah Hoffpauir, and how Derrek Lee is holding him back

Just a few ideas for you. Me, I'll be back later tonight with some more content.  Oh, and thanks again for reading this blog.  We may disagree sometimes, but I'm glad you're here.