No, I'm not talking about the Rhianna song that makes my skin crawl worse than being dipped in honey and laid on a bed of ants...I'm talking about Brad K's statement in regards to the whole 'supplement' issue within NASCAR's drug testing program...as in, 'Drive The Damn Race Car.'

I'm twisting this to fit the purpose of this entry, quite frankly, because I can.

Here's what I'm getting at...

Griping. Constant, non-stop griping. We seem to hear more of it now than ever. If I had a penny for each gripe I heard from drivers, I'd have more pennies than Justin Bieber has prepubescent female followers. From the classic "I didn't hit him, he hit me" scenarios to the Goldilocks-on-porridge "It's too dry-It's too wet-It's too fast-It's too slow-He beat me, so he's illegal-I beat him, but I'm not illegal" to "15th place doesn't pay enough"...if my head starts spinning any more, I'm going to attach a windmill turbine to it and power all of New York City.

It's a free country, so you have a right to gripe...but I also have a right to call you out on it, so don't mind me while I play my card.

Are most drivers an incessant bunch of whiny, moping, dissatisfied types who just don't plain like anything? Nah, that's a gross overgeneralization. The problem is that the quiet ones are being drowned out by the gripers like a whisperer trying to deliver the Gettysburg address standing next to a fired-up F16. We hear you all, too loudly and too clearly.

Ever notice how there's that classic double standard with gripers? They've got the TDIBID Syndrome, as in "they did it, but I didn't". Somebody else needs to be torn down because they're illegal, but put them on the spot to match that teardown and they back off faster than any girl who Charlie Sheen invites to a hotel room for 'causal conversation'. They'll recite a soliloquy on how rough driving has cost them money, wins, and brought them much personal distress, yet if they use someone to get around a turn and you so much as twitch a black flag in their direction, they react as if they're the defendant in the OJ trial.

One of the other things these gripers love to do is play armchair promoter. I guess they learned that "new math" in school, you know, the one where you have 10 cars in the pits and 100 people in the stands, so that means the purse should be $1,000 to win and drop by 10 dollars per position. Hey, number crunchers, unless you can all equate the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest Champion's totals individually in shoving Oscar Meyers down your gullet at 10 bucks a whack at the track concession stand, I don't see where the promoter's going to find the money to pay you unless he sells the track to Donald Trump, who will probably close it and build another casino with a rooftop shaped like his hairpiece.

Now that I've jumped onto the tangential superhighway and floored it in the left lane, let me steer this into a point or two of clarity. Brad K hit it dead nuts with the "Drive The Damn Car" comment...I often think that if a griper spent as much time working on their race car, doing their part to promote our sport, and did more for sponsors than show up cap in hand hoping for someone to pay the bills...that there might not be as much for them to gripe about. Racing may be a sport where the individual gets primary recognition, but we're all on this boat together, and we can't get it to steer clear of that big ass iceberg ahead if we're too busy sniping at each other over where to put the fingerbowl on the head dining table in the grand ballroom.

I'm not advocating that we don't point out concerns about safety, tech procedures, track conditions, and purses...it needs to be done in responsible, intelligent fashion, not like some 2nd grader who had the ball taken away from him on the playground...and remember that whatever you propose has consequences for your fellow competitors, crew members, promoters, officials, and the fans that plunk down their ever-decreasing disposable income because they find our form of ENTERTAINMENT (yes, I said the 'E' word) to be worth it. Just because you think your idea is good, doesn't mean it's a comfy onezie everybody can get their Snuggie on with.

And for the sake of all that's good in the world, if you're going to spray your gripe on the Internet like Lindsey Lohan laying on the breath spray after she gets busted for a DUI, do me a favor...either stop, or get a blog like this one... ...so I can, like others, choose to ignore your ranting and focus on accentuating the positive, not amplifying the negative.

Rant out.