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1. Biscoff cookies stand as reason enough to fly Delta Airlines. I could live off these things. I would get very fat and die very quickly, but it would be a good death.
2. Death is a terrible thing for the living. This last brush with the beyond is no different. My moment of absolute heartbreak was when my father-in-law’s apprentice saw the body for the first time. Seeing a grown man break down like that removes every shred of composure you have left. He expressed the pain we are all feeling and I thank him for that.
3. Kids are always going to act like kids. When they stop acting their age, you have a problem. When my middle kid hit six he started acting like a six year old, which I found completely unacceptable for someone who up to that point had been doing 2nd grade level school work and behaving like an 8 year old. Eventually i remembered that he isn’t 8 he is six. As such, the ‘I’m testing you’ and rebellious behaviors he exhibits are in keeping with his age and energy. I can’t get mad at that. Sure, it is annoying as hell, but what are boys supposed to do, be silent little gentlemen who do nothing wrong?
4. The media coverage post-Zimmerman is despicable. We’ve gone from a news cycle debating whether or not the case is about race, to assuring us that race plays a major role, to whitewashing the fact that race was even a factor in the case. Did race play a role? Yes. Would Zimmerman have chased a young white kid  in shorts and a collar shirt? Unlikely. The fact is we have a national profile for criminal youth. That profile is socially black. This means rap culture. This means hoodies and baggy jeans and all of the looks that point to a kid being ‘hood. In truth the idea of ‘hood in America is almost uniquely black. Kids are said to aspire to this ‘black’ ideal. Our race problem has morphed into a cultural and ideological one.This is so prevalent that African Americans that don’t ascribe to this culture are accused of ‘crossing over’.
5. With some more planning, my pistol offense should be unstoppable, no matter the skill level of the players running it. The offense is designed to minimize the weakness of individual talents while maximizing the talent of superstar players. It will make zone defenses useless, leaving coaches to figure out how to man cover against a quickstrike QB who lives on crossing routes.
6. The amount of farting on planes surpasses the allowable methane limit by almost 80% No wonder smoking isn’t allowed.
7. It occurs to me that I have a number of school projects still in need of completion. August will be busy, busy, busy.
8. I think some people equate community college with sub par academics and poor teaching. I also think that those same people consider summer classes to be joke classes, so when they sign up for summer classes they do so with little to no expectation of hard work. When confronted with actual hard work those students are shocked, dismayed, and angry all in that order. It often becomes the teacher’s fault and then the grade is a thing to be litigated vs. legitimately worked for.
9. I think humans should never ever stay in the one motel in Nevada, IA. The managerial team is basically a husband and a wife living on site and treating their customers with less regard than they do the golden cockroaches that can be found on motel grounds. I was treated rudely by both of these so-called managers and one morning awoke to find their car parked in the middle of the driveway being washed. This business wouldn’t fly at any other motel or hotel. When I checked out the lady stared me down. She said nothing at all, not even thanking me for my stay.
10. I think I am grateful for the family and the life that I have. I’ve done well for myself personally, and I hope I can match that personal success with professional success in the long run.
11. The fart count just went up to 83% I am starting to suspect that my kids are involved…

I suppose you could say justice was served. In one sense, the letter of the law won out. In another sense the spirit of the law was pillaged. An armed man followed a boy into the darkness and when that boy defended himself the armed man killed him. As I said long ago, had the victim been a woman, this wouldn’t have gone to trial at all. However, it was a boy being killed. It was a black boy in a neighborhood where there had been break-ins and home invasions, thus this individual felt empowered to protect the night and ended up killing someone to protect himself.

I admit that he was protecting himself. For all intents and purposes he was losing the fight. He was being beaten up by the kid he’d been following and may or may not felt like his life was in danger. He retrieved his weapon, suddenly raising the stakes of the conflict, and at that point I completely believe that he needed to shoot Trayvon Martin in order to stay alive.  I also believe that had he not brought the gun into play, both individuals would be alive today. I cannot believe the teen intended to beat this man to death. However, this isn’t even the question the law asks. The question is about Zimmerman’s intent. There was no clear way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman killed the boy out of spite, willfully, or intended to do so from the moment he left his vehicle. The fact he left his vehicle to pursue someone he considered a suspect is irrelevant. It shouldn’t be irrelevant, but the law makes it so.

I believe Zimmerman is responsible for wrongful death, and perhaps a civil case will exact some measure of justice against the man. As it stands he is free to live his life and free to pursue and kill again should he so chose. What scares me more is that anyone else who decides that a someone looks suspicious now has a green light to follow that person and defend themselves should their potential victim decide to fight back.

We can call it the Punisher rule, because being a vigilante is okay in some parts of our country.

Some Thoughts:

1. My 6 year old left his Kindle on the plane. I am trying to figure out a way to brick the device so whoever found it and decided to keep it won’t be able to use it.

I’ve long been enamored by products that offer a clear timeline of when to expect success. Novel in 90 days. Better Basketball in 21 Days. 30 Minutes to Better Sex. Okay, maybe I made the last one up, but it could exist. There is a market for books that offer clear and time delineated instructions on self-improvement. That market exists largely as a result of a goals-oriented culture that stresses the reward over the journey. We are all children of Phil Jackson who once said, “It is not how hard or much you train, but how smart.” I am paraphrasing here as the precise words are locked away on a network stream that only functions freely 20,000 feet below me. Yet as I cruise the skies on the way to my destination I am struck by the truth of his words. We work smarter, not harder, which is supposed to be the mantra of the generation just behind my own. I suspect this mantra is flawed. How about work smarter and harder. How about we take full control of the hours we have between birth and demise to make the best possible product of ourselves that we can in the most efficient, driven, fashion imaginable?

I spent 10 years arriving and trying to escape Iowa. The state, much like a black hole, has a powerful gravity that rebuffs all of your attempts to break free. I have good memories of the place. I met my wife in Iowa. I learned how to be a part of a football team in Iowa. Still, the place is humid beyond reason and presents fewer opportunities for personal and economic growth than any other state I’ve lived in.

Today was the wake, which meant I had to confront my fear of seeing the body. Seeing is indeed believing, and now I am force to admit that my father-in-law is really gone. I don’t know what that means to the family dynamic yet. We’ll figure our way over the next year as we deal with the holidays and vacations.

I may cruise Ames at some point tomorrow and see how the town has evolved in the (9?) years I’ve been gone. Quite a bit I imagine. 9 years gone, which means 12 years since meeting my father-in-law. It is funny how time works.

Some Thoughts:

1. You might have noticed the lack of a post 1160. I’m a bit disjointed out here, but I feel like I have a post sitting on my ipad waiting to be uploaded. I wrote one on the plane yesterday and never had a chance to post it.

I truly believe the short attention spanning 24 hr news culture of America makes it impossible for us to have real conversations about the country’s cultural and racial history. “That’s old news, so get over it” is so much a part of our culture now that we aren’t allowed to even think about the damage that has been done to groups and subcultures and how that damage affects us all even today.

Years ago Carson interviewed Richard Pryor and referenced Pryor’s use of the word, ‘Nigger’. Carson said the word almost conversationally–on late night TV–Pryor followed it with a joke and everyone laughed. It wasn’t a controversy. Just last month Paula Deen admitted to using the word, albeit in a different context, over a decade ago and lost her entire empire. We crack down now. We try to distance ourselves in order to reinforce the fact that we are supposedly a post-racist society. However, the quick reinforcement only shows that we are not past it. It is such a festering wound that is not being properly addressed that we are entering an age where hiding these proclivities is going to become the norm. That zero-sum game that is free speech has slowly eroded to a miasma of political correctness.

I don’t have any answers here, just reflections. The more I see us struggling to mask this idea that we still have deep seeded divisions in our country, the more I fear those divisions will fester and eventually tear us apart. I think the best example of that is the unwillingness of congress to engage on immigration reform. Republicans supposedly won’t engage, because it benefits democrats with votes and enrages their aging white base. Well, that sounds like the different sides are taking their ball and going home. That only points to more division in the long run, from which nobody will benefit.

I miss football. I miss it to the point that I’ve started prepping a playbook for the January season. The playbook prep led to research, which led to a deeper understanding of how to run the pistol, which led to understanding that I really don’t know the best way to coach a 5 man defensive unit of mixed skill players against a more talented group. That’s the flag coach dilemma right there, and a post for later on. This one is going to be about the pros.

I like pro football better than the college game, which makes me about as rare as a Red Panda. I’m extra excited about this upcoming season, because the Giants have a WR in a contract year. While the college theory suggests that college students play harder than the pros, that theory breaks down when it comes to contract year. This is the time where everybody plays like it matters, because it does. How you play in the contract year determines where you go (or stay) for the next few. Knowing the Giants have mercilessly released supposed pro-bowl caliber guys, Hakeem Nicks is going to play football like his hair is on fire. In fact it will be, because his buddy in the slot just nailed a huge extension. Nicks knows it is on.

Some Thoughts:

1. One should not write posts on little to no sleep. This usually ends badly and or incomplete as yesterday’s post suggests.
2. Big moment for me in the ‘back in the saddle of health’ drive. I was laying flat on my back watching bad TV and thinking about doing push ups. I did the push ups.
3. The amount of real numbers that can be squeezed into the space between two numbers–0 and 1 perhaps, is close to infinity, which means it is possible that our known universe occupies the space between 0 (nothing) and 1 (the next universe). Access to a black hole, the theoretical extra-universal pinhole, could prove this theory.

It occurs to me that there is little difference between magic and science; so little in fact that  noted sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once claimed, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Now there is where he and I agree. Magic is in truth no different from science. We laugh at magic, because we don’t see it or any evidence of the systems required to allow it function. However, the reason we tend not to laugh at science is because we can see those laws. We can prove that science exists. We see evidence of it in the circuitry that, these days, controls our lives.

I am not saying magic exists, but I think we need to look at it as another type of system. Perhaps we should see it in the same way we see electricity. When lightning lunges out of the sky, the TV doesn’t automatically turn on. No, we needed to create a circuit structure to take advantage of that. What if magic were the same way–another energy in need of translation and of people who know how to create the systems to put it into use.

This weekend all my kids’ basketball teams won their games. Like I said in an earlier post, that stuff matters. It isn’t because my kids are winning–losing has a much higher importance at this stage of their competitive development–it is because of who we are beating. Youth leagues are filled with coaches who don’t do things the right way. There are a slew of win first or look good first or even humiliate the opposition coaches who snap the fun out of a sport like they are wringing a towel. When I come up against one of these coaches I want to win. I coach harder, our whole coaching team bands together to squeeze every ounce of hustle out of our kids that we can. Sure, we want the hustle to become their mantra, but in those moments we also want to win.

Beating other coaches shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but it does. These guys come dressed in their matching outfits looking all the world like wannabe professionals and it bothers me when they beat my teams. It reminds me that shortcuts work. I says that if you find one kid who is extraordinary then you can ignore the development of the kids around them in pursuit of your winning. We don’t do it and sometimes we lose because of that. It serves as a reminder that there is always someone out there a bit cooler, faster, smarter than you are–someone who gets the job done better. Things like that push me to be more successful–even if less than they did before I had kids. Before the kids I was a lot more focused in mind, body, and spirit. Now it feels like I spend any free moments just trying to catch my breath.

Some Thoughts:

1. I think I figured out what hurts me most about the loss of my father-in-law. He is the last male father figure I have left. Sure, my biological dad is out there somewhere, but somewhere is a large place-especially when you don’t have any real interest in being found. So, that’s it. No more male role model to turn to and see what it means to grow old wisely. I need to figure out the rest of my journey on my own.
2. At some point I think I’ll take a pilgrimage to see the grave sights of my dad, Clarence and my father-in-law. It may be a journey I need to make alone, so I will need to figure out what to do about the wife and kids…

I’ve come to realize that my children are evil.

I’m not talking in the Dahmer “eat your face” or Damien “I am of the devil” evil, but a more subtle evil which masks itself as youthful folly and boredom. Kids in general are evil. We like to pretend they are sweet and cherubic, but they are trying out all the things life has to offer; all the manipulations and exploits they can discover. A child will lie to your face and, once caught, shrug it off as if it never mattered to begin with. Their quickly developing self-preservation instinct will lead them to manipulate and cajole at levels reserved for sociopaths and politicians. God forbid you challenge these antics. One small punishment becomes the line separating life from death–a line you placed them on the wrong side of with your actions, because kids no not responsibility or, often, guilt.

So, life quickly devolves into a stress-filled negotiation with these…minions. You learn to be strong and firm and stress to the point of exhaustion and none of it changes the way they behave. You spank and take stuff away and scream and listen to screams and fights and tattling and all the while you wonder why you put yourself through it.

Because you love them. They are the part of you that remains when you are gone. They are meant to be the best of you, even if they start out as the worst. They grow into adults and, hopefully, remember the time you had with them as some of the best days of their lives.

Some Thoughts:

1. The phone is still trashed. I’m trying to figure out the problem, but I believe I’ll need to go to the Verizon store tomorrow–after I go to Walmart to figure out if the fact that I purchased it at Walmart makes a difference. It turns on for a while and then drains immediately. I don’t feel safe making a 22 hr road trip with that phone.
2. After watching Amy Sedaris and listening to her brother, David, I am very interested to know what the rest of the Sedaris clan is like.

I have an Iphone. This is the first phone I’ve bought from Apple and twice now the darn thing has stopped working, claiming that a fully charged battery is dead. I know it is a software error; some miscommunication between parts of the device. I read about it on the Apple support site as well as blogs on the subject. However, my knowledge is useless when it comes to the hermetically sealed products developed by the technomagi at the Apple research department. You cannot open anything Apple without incurring a visit from the secret service, so while my often failing Droid X was a POS, I could tear out the battery for a hard reset. I can’t do that here, and that is where my story begins.

One of my handful of male friends called me and asked if I wanted to come over and hang. I said yes and had him text me his address (because I can remember nothing and I am tech dependent). Moments later the text came in and the phone shut down. It went in that bam, bam order. I plugged it in the charger and finished up dinner with the kids. Afterwards I checked the phone and it was completely dead.

It remains dead.

The toughest part of this transition to a totally wireless world is understanding what to do if your phone fails. I don’t have a back up, so without my phone I cannot reach anyone. That doesn’t mean it is time for a Casa-Talislegger home invasion. It means I couldn’t go see a friend, because I had no idea where to go or how to tell him I didn’t have a phone. So, I ended up stuck at home with angry kids and a whole lot of disappointment.

I could use a burner phone right about now.