Merica

Well it’s the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

President Trump is going to honor the fallen by correcting his bone spurs or calcium prods or whatever it was that kept him out of Nam and enlisting as Agent Orange.

Per law, everyone else if going to grill animal flesh and watch Saving Private Ryan.

It’s Miles Davis’ birthday today so we can all pretend to like jazz for ten minutes.

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to authorities. Which make one wonder, was he even on the lam? Didn’t someone slap him in a restaurant in Arizona? Yet the police can’t find this guy? Too busy tazing people with more melanin in their skin for parking violations I guess.

Lots of sales going on this weekend to help us remember the brave men and women of the armed forces. I know when I think about honoring a guy that died face-down in Guadalcanal for my freedom, I think about using that freedom to buy a new car and a mattress and a washing machine with bluetooth.  

Merica.

They are going to make an entire movie about Boba Fett. You know, the character in Star Wars movies that said all (AND ONLY!) these lines:

                As you wish.
                He’s no good to me dead.
                What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me.
                Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.

Somebody ram the splintered end of a baseball bat into my adam’s apple please. Let me guess he’s a good kid in the beginning and only turned to bounty hunting to save his dying mother who turns out to be a droid that got knocked up after a bender at that bar in Tatooine.

It’s also Mike Myers’ birthday today. It’s rumored he’s going to make Austin Powers 4. Do we really need a whole ‘nother movie? Can’t we all just buy the teeth from amazon and get on with our lives?

The NFL is NOT doing enough by fining players that kneel during the anthem. Hasn’t anyone read anything about conditioning? Besides Pantene Pro being the best, you also have to reward the behavior you want to see. Soooo all players that stand proudly with their right arm over their heart and their left hand gently rubbing their balls will get an AR-15.

Merica.

Competition Tatters, Competition Matters

I had a couple of sports related conversations with my father in-law (FIL) this past weekend.

1.       Pete Rose

Me: he’s a piece of shit that doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. He was a great hitter.

FIL: He was a great hitter who belongs in the Hall of Fame even though he is a piece of shit who bet on his own team.

2.       Golf Pro retires so as not to break a course record set by Arnold Palmer

FIL: knows a golf pro who is killing it one day on a course and the caddy tells him “by the way, if you keep playing well, you are going to set the course record.” So the pro asks who owns the record and is told Arnold Palmer. So instead of tanking his round, decides to retire as a pro prior to finishing the round…so as not to set the course record.

Now my FIL intimated that this really shows you the pro’s respect for Arnold Palmer.

I think it is just the opposite. And I reference the above mentioned piece of shit in my reasoning.

Now, regarding Pete Rose:

I asked my FIL, “why doesn’t professional wrestling earn as much as the NFL?”

The answer is because the fans, the people who shell out the dough, believe that there is genuine competition in the NFL; that men compete and that the men and team that want and work and toil and bleed and endure the most…win.

While the WWE and the NFL share entertainment value, the income difference alerts you to the fact that the belief in genuine competition, matters, a lot. Billion = a lot.

So this brings me back to Pete Rose, the piece of shit. Baseball, and all of its history, matters, for the same reason, that people believe there is genuine competition.

Pete Rose ensured there wasn’t.

He bet on his own team.

Please don’t be a sap and ask whether to win or lose.

Fair enough, what does this have to do with the golf pro?

Well, the reason a golf course record matters at all, be it held by Arnold Palmer or Saw Palmetto, is again, competition…one man trying his hardest against another man or woman or satyr or whatever.

But now you have Joe Blow “retiring” because of his respect for Arnold Palmer when in fact it is the most disrespectful act.

Imagine (like Kant would have us do) if every golfer that went up against Palmer, tanked or retired or half-assed it. We wouldn’t appreciate Palmer, we wouldn’t think that he was great, that he overcame nerves, that he had mettle or grit or determination or was a winner or anything like that.

Competition matters people.

The Pete Roses of the world and the golf pros who retire when they are about to break a record, do a disservice to competition.

Competitors WANT to earn it, they want nothing handed to them, they need not ill-gained records and shun anything less than the best from their foes.

So don’t be a dick, try your best.

The Royal You

We asked, the Royal You answered

A live broadcast of The Wiz aired last night on NBC.

Did you watch it?

It was The Wiz or the Packers Lions game. And The Wiz was awesome! -Carl Cheffers, NFL Referee and NFL QB Fluffer

I couldn’t, I had to urinate. Get it? The Wiz? -Herb Tarmackill, Intestine Liner

I did but the fact that I was tripping on copious amounts of mescaline didn’t affect my IMDB rating of 8 shrooms. -Reginald Myersrum, Pedestal Operator

Baltimore and Football's Morality Problem

Thinking about Baltimore 

My wife and I were watching Real Time with Bill Maher and DL Hughely was talking about why people would set fire to their own community. His answer was in essence, hopelessness. One of my go-to questions is: what is the proximate cause of x? And what is the ultimate cause of x? Now you may think I am going to ask what is the ultimate cause of people committing violent acts or destroying property but I think the more interesting question is what is the ultimate cause for hopelessness? In talking with my big-brained wife, who is a psychologist and hears the woes of people for a living, she opined that hopelessness may stem from a failure to control one’s environment. 

So much of one’s environment is out of control when living in poverty it must seem like the sun could rise in the west and when supposed caretakers of the people in the environment turn out to harm, the sun does in fact rise in the west. And fires are lit. The fires may not prove beneficial except for what must be immense sense of control. There are no jobs, my physical well-being is at-risk, my options for the future are nil, much of what I see and hear is dysfunctional but right now I can light this fire and watch it burn, I can control that and I will.

The Rules of the NFL and how it relates to Morality

Are you a fan of football, more precisely NFL football? Were you born circa 1970? Do you remember when quarterbacks could be hit, more precisely, when quarterbacks could be maimed, clotheslined and in all ways crushed during the course of a game? Now you can’t so much as look at a quarterback’s cleats and they throw a flag. The rules changed. Did you hear me, the rules changed! What have we learned: NFL rules are arbitrary or relative if you like: it depends on the era, depends on the money coming in and that relates to positional importance, etc etc…it DEPENDS.

Morality, by definition, is about rules that cannot change. Did you hear me? Cannot change! Now of course the NFL is not in the morality business but the ire that is sent flying up every fall Sunday in living rooms and man caves across the country does lead us to ask, why are there rules in the first place if they can be changed? 

And so you’ll say I have a rule that can’t be changed. 

And I will say show it to me. 

And then I will say: what is the use of a timeless rule that has timelessly been broken?

NFL Coach Wanted

What if you could only talk with tautologies? 

A tautology is a statement that is always true. 

For example, “it’s either raining or it isn’t” is always true. 

For starters, you could probably get though any press conference as an NFL coach. 

“Our players really played out there today. Now they came up short and lost because we didn’t win. At the end of the day, the team has to win if we want to be in a position of not losing. Now as the coach who has responsibility for wins and losses, I take responsibility for this loss. This is not to say my coaches didn’t coach, because they did, they coached out there today. We just didn’t execute because we didn’t accomplish our plays and we certainly didn’t outperform the winning team, as far as scoring. This is certainly a tough loss for this team because it hurts, this loss, a lot. I’ll take some questions or interrogative statements now.”

Coach, to start the second half you took out the starting qb and replaced him with the backup. “I felt like we were dimming and needed a spark so I put Kurt in because he provides some flash off the bench. Look, Kurt is who he is and Sam is who Sam is. I would not ask Kurt to be Sam nor would I ask Kurt to be Sam. I want those guys to be who they are; that is my desire. What good would it do this team if Kurt was not Kurt and Sam was not Sam? We need our players to play and our quarterbacks to qb. This is not rocket science, it’s football.”

Coach, the defense gave up 21 points in the 4^th quarter. Is the defense out of shape? “Well I think we should have played better because giving up 21 points in one quarter is not good enough. Was the defense gassed? They were on the field quite a bit because the offense had a lot of 3 and outs which means the defense has to go right back on the field after the punt, so really a total of four plays, if you count the punt, which is a play, it’s just a punt play. Look, I stand by my guys, just look at the replays, I am right there beside them. I believe in my guys, otherwise I wouldn’t believe in them at all. You just can’t expect the defense to play well for an eternity because that is too long for the defense to be on the field. We have Gatorade but at some point guys would need a full meal and a nap – look my point is that the defense was out there too long and that they were out there too long because the offense wasn’t out there long enough. All of us have to play together if we are going to do this thing, playing as a team.”

Coach, your record is now 4-9, do you feel you are on the hot seat? “I hold myself to a high standard, a standard that requires a lot from me if I am going to meet the standards I set for myself, which are high. This is a results league where winning and losing determines the results. I know that, you know that, the owner knows that, the players know that, the fans know that…this is known by everyone…and I don’t deny it. How could I, when everyone knows it? I get paid to coach, when I fill out my W2, I put down coach. And I’m going to coach this team until I am no longer coaching this team. The press doesn’t fire me, the owner fires me and if I’m fired, I’m fired. It is what it is in this league and it’s not what it isn’t. We all understand the facts that are understood by everyone. At the end of the day we are 4-9 as you pointed out and our record reflects our wins and losses. Right now I am the coach, this instant, now if you’ll excuse me, I need to leave because it is time to go.”

Turn That Superbowl Loss Into Lemonade

Leibnitz is alive and well. You don’t hear much about Leibnitz’ philosophy anymore but his was actually a very entertaining and mind bending one to study. In addition to kooky positions like pre-established harmony and monadism, Leibnitz tackled the age-old problem of evil. Leibnitz’ version of the problem of evil goes a little something like this:

There is a perfect and GOOD god who created everything.

Because nothing imperfect can flow from a perfect being, and evil being an imperfection, there is in fact no evil.

Humans, with limited vision, only think there is evil because they do not have the god’s eye view of events, or what Leibnitz’ contemporary Spinoza, referred to as sub specie aeternitatis.

            It could go something like this:

Love one gets cancer and dies (evil, seemingly)
Grieving relative vows to become doctor and help others battle cancer
Relative becomes doctor and goes on to help numerous people battle and survive cancer,
turning a seemingly evil into an actual benefit (or as Leibnitz, would call it, a Best-Of-All-Possible-Worlds)

So you can plug in any evil you like, let a little time go by, view things objectively, and the evil lemons will give you lemonade. Take your pick, cancer, The Holocaust, 9/11, the Browns…anything…and it is actually perfect, the best of all possible worlds.

Jump to 2015 and the pinnacle of sporting events, the NFL Superbowl. By now you know you know what happened at the end of the game. The Seahawks chose to pass when everyone and their brother and their brother’s dog walker, and his red headed cousin would have given the ball to their cross-eyed running back, nicknamed Beast Mode, Marshawn Lynch. 

So a few days have passed and listen to the Leibnitzian talk from a Seahawks player after the disastrous ending. 

His roommate, Robert Turbin, said he tried to soothe Wilson by telling him that this game, devastating as it was, would wind up as a positive because he would be able to use it to inspire kids.

“One day, you’re going to be talking to some kid, or talking to some high-school quarterback who may be low on confidence or struggling with his game,’’ Turbin said he told Wilson on Monday. “You’re going to give him the example about how you threw a pick on the last play of the game in the Super Bowl.
(http://seattletimes.com/html/larrystone/2025614047_larrystonecolumn04xml.html)

Lemons into lemonade. Now of course, no one is saying that an interception is evil, but you would have to think that losing the superbowl is far from the best of all possible worlds. Not so my Leibnitzian friends. That interception was glorious, that loss was glorious. Grieve not, rejoice, this is the best of all possible worlds. Just ask any Browns fan.