Month: September 2012

The dirty little secret of politics is that it is not possible to get anything serious done without a preponderance of social capital. The dirty little secret of science is that nobody knows why, if, and especially not how we are here. The dirty little secret of finance is that nobody knows what happens next. So how do all these things work together? The knowing is the only thing that can get us to escape the cycle of destruction.

I often worry about reality, wondering openly if it–we–actually exist, or if this is something else entirely. As I’m wondering I am watching Romney and Obama duke it out about how they intend to spend our taxes and somehow lower this deficit. Sometime this October I’ll explain what the deficit is and why we really shouldn’t be all that worried. I’ll follow that with a conversation about a little known act by the government that allowed banks to put us in this mess in the first place. Still, the reason why this is all happening is because we don’t know what else to do. Many of us turn to God, in whatever form we recognize, for our moral compass. What such a compass does is tell you what to do with your life. Not all of us use religion. Many of us use wealth as a compass. The only goal is to accumulate more wealth until we die. It isn’t even about the money, it is about having more of X than the person next to you. Money is X, the way to keep score in this game.

What if we knew why we were here? Some of us wouldn’t care and would continue these baseless lives. I believe that more of us would put ourselves to the task and we would be able to accomplish anything. The problem is, in this existence, the sole unifying factor seems to be war. We rally together to kill, but for little else. It seems we need an outside force to come in in order to get us moving.

Reading through inMaricopa, my town’s semi-regular news magazine, I discovered a hidden football league. Apparently there is a pickup football league every sunday morning only a mile from my home. The league is 10 years old, escaping my notice because it takes place at 7:30 in the morning. I don’t even think that early.

But I will play football.

I’ve been looking for some more pressing reason to get in shape. Football has always gotten me motivated to pop off the couch and put in some work. I plan to get up this sunday and go out for a pick up game. I only know one of the guys who goes out there. I’ve coached his son in the past. I am hoping that brief connection is enough to get me on the field. I need the opportunity to run, to want to run, to have a reason to get in the gym and work a little more.

At some point the dream of getting back in shape enough to put in two more seasons of AZFL died. Maybe it was killed by the reality of 3 kids and a wife in nursing school. With that death followed the immediate growth of my belly to a size bordering on dangerous. Bad choices swarmed in behind that, and over time I stopped believing that there was much I could do about being out of shape and unmotivated. I noticed how that affected my attitude towards life itself. I think about death way more than is healthy and eat so much fast food that I am likely speeding towards that eventual demise. This could be my chance off that emotional roller coaster.

It is important to know who you are and what motivates you. I am motivated by competition. Provided with the opportunity to play football every week, I will work my butt off to make the best of that opportunity. I need this.

Remember that thing I said last week about nincompoops? That happened big time. As most sports fans know, the refs blew several calls in a single play that led to an improbable come from behind victory for the Seattle Seahawks. Golden Tate (new member of my team) claimed to catch a pass that was already caught by the Packers DB at the end of a Hail Mary throw to end the game. It was ruled a TD and the rest is debacle. The silver lining? I picked that game for the Seahawks.

Going into Week 3, I was 18 – 14, 4 games over .500 and tied with several prominent pickers. Week 4 was supposed to be my go ahead week. How did it turn out? 10 – 5, bringing me to 28 -19. It was a good week. It put me ahead of everyone at ESPN save Mortensen (31-17), Wickersham (30-18), and Schefter (28-20). Only Mortensen had a better record than me last week (11-5). If I can keep this pace up I might be able to separate from the pack in a week or two.

The same cannot be said for the fantasy league. I scored my best game all year only to come in second in scoring that week in the league. Of course the person who won the weekly scoring crown for our league happened to be playing me. So despite 146 points, I have absolutely nothing to show for it. I’ve considered changing my team name to Jobbed.com, buying the website, and moving the waiver wednesday there. I might change the name at least, because what is an Energon Crew without Megatron?

 

Oh well, on to the picks…

BAL over CLE
CLE continues to struggle on both sides of the ball and Flacco is hitting his stride. Better still for BAL is the absence of CLE star CB Joe Haden. This prompted me to pick up Baltimore’s #3 wideout Jacoby Jones. He is primed for a big day.

ATL over CAR
Superman met Kryptonite last week in the form of the Giants pass rush. He’ll overcome that this week for a big game, but in this shootout, ATL has the better chance.

BUF over NE
Everyone is picking NE, but I saw something in Brady last week that I hadn’t seen before: Weakness. He did his thing for sure, but while BAL is built to battle teams like Pittsburgh and the Jets, BUF was strategically drafted and signed in order to overcome New England. I have to believe they will do that, no matter who ends up running the ball.

MIN over DET
Detroit never sleeps on the Vikings, but if All-Day Peterson gets started, there is no way DET survives the rush.

KC over SD
KC has been doing okay against the pass, but they’ll be tested this weekend. I think they pull through on the power of a developing running game.

STL over SEA
Pick the team that isn’t giving up 200 yds passing a game. Did you pick St. Louis? You should have. I see Tate getting shut out this week, just based on what happened a few nights ago. This is going to be about defense, and away from home Seattle shall struggle.

SF over NYJ
Revis Island sank. Nuff said

HOU over TEN
Houston is still tops in the NFL, and I don’t see many teams putting an L on them.

OAK over DEN
I didn’t watch the Pittsburgh game, so this one is a bit of a risky pick. I’m going against every other game picker, but I am also going with my gut on how the team is trending right now. They lose this game and then, suddenly, they go on a massive tear.

ARI over MIA
Arizona is legit. Kolb is surviving. He’ll struggle, rely on the check down, and make mistakes. However, the D will cover up any deficiencies.

JAC over CIN
Cincinatti is not going to stop Pocket Hercules.

TB over WAS
Washington is not real. I continue to disbelieve, no matter how legit RG III is he still plays for the Redskins. TB and toughman Schiano is going to put the whump on em.

NYG over PHI
Vick is too exposed. Giants got faster in order to contain guys like him, and his line got much worse. He’ll be sacked often and Manning will take advantage of the turnovers, even if he does commit a few of his own.

CHI over DAL
No, I am not over week 1. I think Jerry Jones is. I think he sees how these easy games are turning into close wins and the result of that play will be CHI strolling into one of the world’s greatest football stadiums and laying the smack down.

GB over NO
I cannot believe the Saints are going to go 0-4. Yet here we are…

The difference between my generation and the one I teach is responsibility. As a student, I knew my responsibilities, and when I shirked my responsibilities I did so with the full awareness of what I was refusing to do. Nowadays the responsibility is no longer on the student–at least in their mind. Today’s student comes from a academic background of handholding and constant reward where students are rarely held responsible for behaviors and as a result, need to be provided very specific guidelines and can only operate in a razor thin window of independence.

My students often tell me they want broad, sweeping, engaging assignments that fire their creativity. Then when given that sense of creative freedom they ask for specific examples of what creativity looks like. In other words, when asking me not to constrain them, they look for constraints. I think this is a result of training. Watching my boys go through school it is clear that creativity is not a large part of the curriculum when it should be the core of the curriculum.

The way I teach is to provide the basic skills and create an opportunity for students to apply those skills to a specific (and sometimes general) context. For example, I will tell them to make an 11×17 poster advertising a website about Censorship. I’ll explain that this is about hooking the reader. I wont tell them what the poster should look like, and that is the problem they have. They want to know where everything should go and exactly what to say on the poster. If I say that, they’ll do exactly what I said, stripping away any sense of creativity. So, I include some basics, but that is never enough. They need hand holding.

I can’t do hand holding anymore. It does a disservice to the student and to the world, because I am then creating workerbees as opposed to powerful free thinkers. America used to be an industrial nation where everyone knew their role on the assembly line. That isn’t an option for our nation anymore. We need to create workers who can think and be creative.

Just finished watching a terribly officiated NFL game that may harken the end of the ref lockout. I feel good about that end. I feel good about the fact that my generation’s ‘Friends’ is starting up again. After 7 seasons of How I met Your MotherI am still intrigued to know how it all ends, while completely unwilling to reach the end of the story. That is good writing. They’ve introduced the mother character, but hid her face under an umbrella. I know she plays a guitar and isn’t the traditional super-skinny chick like Robyn–more of a sexy type like Victoria. Its a hint, a tease for the viewer to keep us going for another year at least. Like I said, good writing.

I am on my way to some good writing as even more good writing trickles out of my imagination. Fluff and Smoke is almost fully released, and that will be followed by an Anthology for the Shadowrun Returns video game (presumably). There are some other bits of writing in the work, so stay tuned.

Writing is once again taking the premiere role in my consciousness. I am also coming around to the fact that I might be a decent parent. It is a hard pill to swallow, because my memories of my step dad are unbelievable. My mom had a different approach. I am not modeling her or even him. I’m finding my own way based on a lot of what I’ve seen and read over the years and it might be working.

My mother-in-law told me my siblings were leaving AZ. I got the info second hand from my wife, so it was devoid of the tonal qualities that would tell me if the information was a taunt or a moment of sadness. For me it is a moment of sadness, but not just because family is leaving. For the first time I found myself defending AZ as a legitimate place to live.

I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way first, AZ is a political cesspool. We are two governors removed from any major drama, though the current gov is doing her best to resemble Michelle Bachman. In truth, we are a state of very frightened Bachman Republicans who want to rid the country (and perhaps the world) of Mexicans (who many of us believe to be a race in of their own) and anything that resembles a union. This is odd, given that so many Arizonans hail from strong union states like Iowa and New York. Of course, they might have left because of the unions, or the weather, or the pace, or whatever.

As a result of the state exodus, AZ is a pace somewhere between NY and Iowa. We have unions, but they aren’t really appreciated. We have a class of people that feel deeply entitled and are, occasionally, jerks. However, when you ask them about entitlements, they’ll claim they are part of the 53% of the country that doesn’t get handouts. I guess they forgot about medicare.

So, that was the bad stuff. The good stuff is weather, weather, weather, opportunity. I feel like AZ is a place of growth where people are flocking to find new beginnings and bringing all of that energy with them. I feel Iowa is a place of death, where the population is constantly declining and people are not striving to be more, but instead are content with being. This is not who I am, so when I hear my family is going back, I get sad. I feel like it is an attack on AZ. I cannot accept that AZ is a place people want to leave. If I do, I have to accept that there may be somewhere else I should be.

 

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Had a chance to see film of Terell Suggs standing on the sideline. He’s hungry. This is a man that lives and breathes and believes football. The Ravens Defense is a calling for him; it is not a job. For him to be there patrolling the sidelines tells me he is anxious to be back at his calling alongside his preacher, Ray Lewis.

In the last few months of sudden beyblade overload I have learned a few things:

1. Beyblades are crazy popular. While not possessing the manic following of Pokemon, Beyblade exists below the surface as the Firefly of the anime gaming world. I searched the web only to uncover thousands of videos about customizations and battles. That brings me to my next point.
2. Beyblading is a weird form of Physics. I find myself wanting to sit down and do the math on how these silly metal tops work so dang well. Clearly the weight plays a role in the blading, because the heavier beys seem to do better than the 12 or so lightweight beys in our tremendously large stable. Why are those 12 so light?
3. Chinese Beyblades are crappy knockoffs. I bought some on a lark. I wanted to have that Beyblade party and give away beys and trophies. The chinese ones I bought are literally 5 grams lighter than their counterparts. That makes a huge difference in how they fight. The lighter beys get knocked around so much that they wind up losing energy a lot faster than their counterparts. Of course, weight isn’t everything.
4. There are an incredible number of customizations. This is just the recorded stuff. I’ve gone through a dozen websites and watched my boys pick through videos in order to find the best customizations. It all comes down to understanding how you rip and what sort of battle you intend to have, sorta like pokemon. Do you have an Attack type? Defense? Balance? Do you rip left or right? All of this stuff matters to a seasoned blader–which we are not. Were are enthusiasts and budding players who enjoy a good rip, even if we don’t know how to play with the big boys, which brings me to my final point.
5. Beyblade is fun for all ages. My brother in law wants to rip. My wife has ripped. I rip with the kids everyday. Even the 3 yr old is a ripping machine. We like the competition and the customization. It is a smart product that I never thought I’d get into. Yet, here we are.

I’ve been thinking about what to post. I want to make up for the debacle that was yesterday by posting something long and interesting today. The fact is, I am so drained by the events of the last month that there is little to publish at all. Still, the events of the past month have reminded me of my mortality. I know I cannot merely wait to tomorrow, because there are not an infinite number of tomorrows left.

Today I had 2 hrs to myself for the first time since mid july. You’d think I’d cash the time in on writing and video games. Instead I channel surfed, walked around the house, played with the dog, all the things I don’t ever get to do. I did all the things that didn’t take a lot of brain juice to accomplish. If there is a lesson here it is that the body needs time to recharge. I mean my goal this semester was to be whelmed. I’m overwhelmed–largely due to pushing one thing to the backburner to focus on the next, etc.

So, short of making a resolution I will make an observation. People are more effective when they recognize priorities.

One priority has been dreaming up new story ideas. I have a few stored up and I am close to putting up a wall board where I can show each chapter plotted out and ready to be written. That means I can begin principle writing by mid october. Very nice. Once the other projects are drafted, it is on to the novel work.

Some Thoughts:

1. A predominate number of the designers on HGTV fit the gay stereotype. I am not sure why that is. Perhaps being gay, at least in the TV sense means you are fashionable and can put a room together. I guess I am not TV gay.
2. Living with an ADHD kid is manageable, so long as you manage their moods and your moods effectively. Easier said than done.

I skipped my evening coffee. Staying up till two in the morning and freebasing caffeine all day will deter you from evening rituals. So here I am, tired and happy from watching the G-Men trounce the Panthers. What little fuzz is left in my mind is telling me to go to sleep and think about the problems of the world tomorrow. For the record, my present set of problems are all about school.