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Once again I am out of things to say. So, I am filling these ten minutes with lots and lots of nothing. The empty is an important part of the process. The only thing that keeps filling that emptiness are these thoughts about video games and breaking down the last frontiers in developing leads that are not default white male.

Strange topic, I know. It wanders back up into my consciousness every time I see a commercial for a game and the character is a version of that guy. Of course, that means every time I see a commercial for a game. In fact there are more non-human protagonists in games made in 2015 then there are black protagonists in the history of gaming.

Its a problem. Unfortunately not one that is going to be solved in my fragile state of consciousness.

So, tonight I watched a mom get really upset about spending a lot of money only to see her kid get the minimum number of snaps in a game. I tried to explain that it does happen time to time and given the size of the squad, we cannot give 28 kids equal time an remain competitive. HC said it better. He talked about the league and improvement being about what you do at practice and the kid in question had not been to practice recently. This all resonated with me and reminded me of how it felt as a parent to spend a ton of money on football and watch my kids not only not play but be in a situation where practice wasn’t making them better. In this situation practice is making the kid better. I know because I watch over him like a hawk. I recognize in him what my son went through, so I talk to him and make sure he is engaged. The one thing I wanted to ask his mom is if she’d asked him if he is having fun. I asked my kid that and the answer was no. That is why we left. I don’t think she should leave unless he is not enjoying his time there and his hard work in practice.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Handful of teaching weeks left. Ahh…
2. Yeah, night blogging–I know.
3. What is the point of drug commercials. All they focus on are the side effects of use and mention at the end that you have to ask your doctor–who will likely say no.

What if Superman stayed in Smallville?

Odd question to ask, I know, but I’m living in what is technically a small suburban town and quickly realizing how and why I settled so quickly here. Quicksand. See, I’ve been watching the small town superstar mentality flourish here and it is really beginning to grate on me. Sadly, it took me this long to break away from the quicksand and understand what it is I’m not liking.

My kids play sports. We win games sometimes and we lose sometimes. The boys get straight A’s and generally seem pretty wonderful at most things. They are superstars. When it comes to sports there are a handful of ‘Superstar’ camps. You can sometimes recognize them by the color they wear or the team they like. I’m the Giants guy. None of that identification is terribly important in of itself. What makes it relevant is the fact that it does exist. See, we have these factions and divisions of stardom within this little town, because it is usually one faction or the other winning our parks and rec youth championship.

Here’s what it took me so long to realize: I was allowing stuff like that to matter. It doesn’t. Just like I was allowing a GYFL tackle football or AYSL tackle football championship to matter. It also does not. All of these things are ways to recognize kids for minor achievements that show how they are superior to people who are either inexperienced and poorly coached or simply do not care. Yet we walk around with a great deal of swagger about relatively meaningless accomplishment. I have one friend/coach who raved about his local parks and rec flag team being unbeaten in 5 years.

Parks and Rec Flag.

Sure, it is cool to feel good about your accomplishments but my point is that the small town mentality over these things limits your ability to go further by, for one, limiting your reasonable understanding of your skill level. You might be the king of Maricopa, but what does that actually mean? It isn’t the same as king of New York or King of AZ (which has less people than NYC–not state–CITY).

It is easy to lose that relativity and toot your horn egregiously. Once that thing starts blaring you need to get out of the town and go find real opportunity, challenge, value, and worth. That, my friends, is why I am done hiding behind this white picket fence.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Yesterday was horrible for writing and here I am near the end of the night again, ready to throw up (hoping I don’t) and trying to squeeze in another late night blog. You’re supposed to learn from your mistakes, not dive headlong into the path of stupid again and again. I’ve heard that Einstein defined crazy as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Perhaps I am crazy. Or maybe I’m just loaded on coffee tonight.
2. Its weird that auto-correct changes my misspelling of crazy to ‘cray’. Thanks, Kanye.
3. Goodbye Will Smith the football player. Another senseless, testosterone driven death. Neither you nor your family deserved this.

Another day of standing in the hot sun for more hours than is rightfully right for  my brain. Four minutes into the post and battling consciousness the shoe way I realize that if I’m going to do something like that then I have to do it without expecting to be awake and writing that night.

The day went well for the boys. Their teams won in soccer and then in football too. They had fun doing it. I think winning has no value if it cannot be enjoyed, so I encourage them to live up the moment then get ready for the next game. That one is monday and I am not ready.

I was in the division meeting this morning and we decided to do a warmup writing exercise (odd meetings, yo, but you gotta love it). The query was: choose an admirable character from a show, book, play, etc. What do you admire about him or her? I chose Buttercup. I will always choose Buttercup. Well, until I choose Clarence. She represents the best of what is possible in ‘rage-cool’

I first fell into my Buttercup phase in season one. I think the writer (Craig McCracken)  really keyed on three basic differences in personality which are completely conflicting and totally archetypal but fun as heck. Buttercup is Rafael is young Annakin is all of these things and sweet and wonderful and cray deadly. I tend to gravitate towards that sort of character, because that is kinda who I am on the inside–full of energy and potential which is most likely activated by vengeance. I’m also the guy who wants to lead but often seems a bit too direct/hot-headed to do so.

There isn’t a lot more to say or write about this particular query except that reflecting on it I realize that I haven’t changed all that much since 1990. This is a great and terrible thing, because it also means that I haven’t achieved a certain number of goals I set for myself 26 years ago. I ought to get right on that stuff.

Some Thoughts:

1. People who are sick need to get better. You know who you are…

I’m teetering on the edge of ridiculous fatigue. I’m talking take a nap on the way to the couch and wonder how you never made it to the couch tired. Yep, that actually happened. I suppose that also validates the suggestion that I have way too much going on in my life and approximately no time for any of it. Yep, that is real too.

I think I’ve learned a great deal about what I can and cannot do as I’ve tried to navigate this school semester. In doing so I learned about what I really want out of life and what I think I am capable of and need to do in order to enjoy life the way I would like to.

Some More Thoughts:

1. I think that the reason this particular presidential campaign cycle is so jacked up is because there really is not anyone who is so charismatic and clearly made to be the president–in any party–for us to rally behind. We appear to be looking for the best of the worst.
2. Maricopa, AZ won the Battle of the Burbs for the third straight year. How does a small town like the ‘Copa beat out every other burb in Phoenix? 3 yrs in a row?

I’m back at this Waiver thing again. I think I hold on to the Wednesday spot in hopes that something interesting and influential will happen in football. It doesn’t and my interests wane considerably. One thing I am interested in is the reemergence of RG III as a viable QB option. I have a theory about III. I don’t think he sucks at all. I think he was in a system that was not designed for him with an offensive coach who remains completely inflexible in terms of how to use the talent he has. That points to a larger question, which I have addressed before: Is it about the system or the players?

I coach youth football. Our head coach has a system that works very well and highlights the skills of some players. It is in some ways similar to the system another one of my boys was in that highlighted the skills of players other than himself (as I continue to complain about, his 60lb butt was a lineman against 120-200lb boys). Both coaches, though completely different as individuals, are tied to their systems and their success is therefore tied to having players capable of operating in that system. I can likely say the same of Belicheck. I can say that of a lot of coaches, which means that it is clearly then up to the players to wind up in a system that fits. I think RGIII was in a bad situation and now he is well on his way to a good one. He is in a system that was starting to be readjusted to fit a mobile, accurate, sort of short armed QB and that is who he is in a nutshell.

I think RG III will be as good as he can be within the constraints of the talent around him.

Moments ago I spun up the CNN page only to discover that Blac Chyna is engaged to Rob Kardashian. Okay, wait. There is someone named Blac Chyna? I mean there are some strange things that go down in the world of celebrity nonsense, but come on! You can’t pluck your stage name from bad female wrestlers and a misspelling of your occasional skin color. Furthermore, what the hell are you trying to put over on this nation? For whatever reason you have the attention of America’s most powerful purchasing demographic and what you are doing with that power is straight up nuts. Lets recap:

Kim, you were dating a basketball player and decided to marry him. Your sisters soon followed suit, each apparently being connected to a different ballplayer at various times. Heck, Chloe even married one. It is as if you all were checking the pulse of American desire and doing exactly what you thought was the in thing at the time.

Once you decided to stop writing in your basketball diary you dumped the dude and found yourself a rapper. So what, I’m supposed to believe that chicks of a certain social popularity are to want to be with rappers? Not surprisingly your sisters followed suit, which brings me to this latest debacle. One of these kardashian-Jenner-kin, Kylie I believe, is dating the rapper Tyga who has a baby with… wait for it…

Blac Chyna.

I cannot make this stuff up. Obviously someone can and they are more creative and tapped into the cultural zeitgeist of young America than I am. Still, I’m not having any of it.

Kim et al, you are not progressive. Sure, there is a certain grin the finds my face when I consider that ‘America’s darlings’ are almost all dating black rappers. Then I look around and think, ‘crap now rap looks as bad as you do.’ I wish the rappers were in on the joke but clearly they are not. Of course, anyone who would adopt the stage name Tyga lives primarily on one side of the joke. Meanwhile, Kanye hasn’t been right since VH1 storytellers.

I think E! and whatever other channel lives on the lives of these fools ought to pull the plug. To quote Voltaire (and maybe Stan Lee) ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. These chicks and their TV station have the former but seem to have misunderstood the latter.

Once upon a time all of this social intrigue belonged to the british royals and we all followed them (Princess Diana in particular) the way we laud the Kardashian’s daily schedule (and incumbent soundtrack). At least the royals did it with a hint of class. Get off the air Kardashians. You’re making us look very stupid.

It isn’t diabetes. At least it isn’t that yet. A friend who is diabetic helped me run a test this morning and the blood sugar wasn’t as crazy as I thought. I once thought the number would be something like 300 and I’d be on the verge of death only now finding out what 300 meant. Well it isn’t, which is good I suppose. I’m not sure how I would be able to cope with losing limbs.

Beyond that moment of glee life is all fatigue. In fact I’ve been sparking this blog with nonsensical phrases and have had to delete bunch of stuff that made no sense. I need sleep.

I’m coming or you, sleep!

I ran into a friend at the grocery store this morning. I was buying the usual assortment of sunday junk: donuts, creamer, chips, etc. I stopped and asked he’d been doing and he let me know about being diagnosed with Diabetes. Let me give a little context here. I’ve been feeling awful over the last year. I’m struggling to think and speak as clearly as I have in the past and most recently have been dealing with strange shooting pains throughout my body. I webMD’d the heck out of it, trying to avoid going to a doctor and learning that I have like three days to live. Nothing really added up, but a few symptoms aligned with Cancer, some with vein issues, some with diabetes. I don’t eat very healthy and the last time I used my gym card for actual gym use was at the tail end of 2014. I’ve always been healthy-ish, so when he rattled off a list of symptoms that coincided with mine, I got very nervous.

Right before I wrote this blog I found a bruise on my leg that hadn’t been there a day or so ago. It could be something from the field trip I didn’t notice or the normal wear and tear of life, but I’m nervous now and I think something is wrong with me. I’m going to call a doctor tomorrow and try to get set up with an appointment. I haven’t had a check up in at least four years so I am long overdue for that. My fear is that I do have diabetes and I waited too long to do anything about it. On the bright side it would explain my inability to engage on the intellectual level I’ve grown accustomed to and the lack of energy in every aspect of my life.

Still, I don’t want it to be diabetes. I don’t want it to be anything. I want my health problems to be the result of abject laziness and the cure for that to be finally getting off my butt. Only, I know the world doesn’t work that way and real change always requires an inability to go back to what was comfortable. I have been comfortable for far too long.