Month: October 2016

My middle kid just quit soccer. It was a snap reaction to my choice not to let the kids do youth sports for the next few months. He was planning to play club soccer on a developmental team, prepping himself for tougher league play. His brothers were about to do a club flag football season and I pulled them as well. I needed the break. It is the first of many steps to redefine (read: create) my life. Sports have been the largest part of our lives for as long as they’ve been able to play. The break affords us an opportunity to figure out what we really want to do outside of sports.

I’m guessing it involves more outdoor stuff and more running and playing and jumping off of dangerous things. Just on our timetable this time.

Some Thoughts:

1. I applaud Chicago Fire for its portrayal of women. The women are strong and forceful and remain completely feminine in what is traditionally viewed as a masculine world.
2. I believe that Minecraft–games in general get a bad rap. A recent article on screen time explained new recommendations from doctors on how much screen time a young person should get. It leads to a larger conversation about how we interact with each other and how digital tech continues to change that. Minecraft is legos writ large. I could be playing with legos and be seen as just as much of a nerd and time waster, but your waste of time is my meditation–my safe space.

You ever hit that point where every love song seems to be about you? haven’t felt that way since college, but here we are again in that same space but with considerably less swagger… and hair. It points to a mindset–being receptive to what the universe is spinning in your direction. Lately the universe has been thumping out the cadence of ‘change or die’. That or the algorithms that govern my digital interactions have picked up on something and are steadily reinforcing that message.

Funny thing is, both options are equally possible. It is not a stretch to believe in God. It is not a stretch to believe in a higher electronic power either–one which gently nudges the complex codes that govern what we see on the web in order to tell us a message we would otherwise overlook. Perhaps it is even more simple. Perhaps said algorithms pickup on your surfing and viewing habits, painting a picture of the type of content you are unconsciously pushing towards and delivers that content, reinforcing the emotions that lie below the surface of our understanding.

Whatever it is, Pandora is all up in my head.

Some Thoughts:

1. Self-confidence is the sexiest thing on the planet.
2. I always wanted a daughter. I would have named her Patience and required quite a bit of it myself.
3. I want my own personal AI. My experiences with Siri, Alexa, and even the GPS in my car lead me to believe a cross platform AI would be supremely beneficial.
4. Yeah, I got the Echo dot. Yeah, it is that dope.

It can be of value to lose yourself in something meaningless at least for a moment. I’m taking advantage of this moment to talk football. I have not been doing very well in my solo leagues. My partner team is outstanding, which largely falls on the shoulder of my partner. I, on the other hand, have lost a great deal of the thread of what I am talking about when it comes to the sport. Still, I’ll give it another go. After all, I was right about the Giants.

GB over CHI
Even without a legit run game I give the Packers line credit for holding of the CHI rush long enough to make it count.

NYG over LA
This is my early morning game. I love it. The Giants overseas against a LA team that still has not gotten it together. Maybe the line gets it together this week. Maybe.

CIN over CLE
Really, why ask?

DET over WAS
I’m not a WAS believer. In fact I think the magical glow from beating NYC has worn completely off. They rubbed out the last of it beating the Eagles.

OAK over JAX
Maybe next year Jax will be relevant. Lots of young talent.

KC over NO
NO is over for a while.

BUF over Miami
No shady worries me, but Gillesie and Bush ought to team up for some fireworks.

MIN ove PHI
Hello, Philly losing streak.

I’m done here.

The website is down right now, so I am constructing this post in an email that I’ll send to myself and post when IXwebhosting gets their crap together. Tonight has me thinking about the Snowball effect, or as it is better known, Newton’s first law. Inertia is the ability for an object forced into motion (generally through an expenditure of activation energy) to remain in motion. Likewise, A body that comes to rest tends to stay in that resting state unless another trigger situation fires it into life. I can apply this to all sorts of stuff. It works for the explosive violence people are capable of and tend to sustain through the duration of their anger and or stress condition. It works for exercise in that once you get moving and into a good flow you tend to be able to continue. It works here at the 10 minute rule as evidenced by 2500+ posts (I have to go back and check the numbers as I indicated in that sleepy post last night.

Straight to it then. Long day. Sick day.

Some Thoughts:

1. Last few posts have been under the 2900 series, which is nowhere near where I actually am. The problem is being corrected.
2. Geno Smith saw the huddle a few times today. He looked good. Then he slid when he could have fought for more yards. Then he threw a pick. Yep, we saw every Geno.
3. I’m already slipping in and out of consciousness as I write this. Clearly it is one of those posts.
4. I’m up to 86 six words. Record low.
5. Going back to #2, I had the opportunity to go to the Jets game @ Cardinal stadium. It turned into a bloodbath early on. This in turn made my night interesting to say the least.

Over the weekend a GOP office in Hillsborough, NC was firebombed. This action set of a tirade of angry articles, interviews, and emails throughout the Republican establishment. It (pun intended) dumped more fuel on the fire that Trump is stirring up about the election being rigged. This is not a new argument. This is one formented in the crucible of southern cases and laws erected in the pursuit of limiting minority votes. These cases, based around the falsehood of voter fraud, play on the idea that there are thousands and thousands of ‘criminals’ stealing votes. They even go to the trouble to misrepresent evidence from the Pew Research Center, assuming their audience either won’t follow up or won’t understand the actual evidence. All of it pointing towards one clear message:

The vote is rigged and if we don’t get out there and vote ourselves, we have no chance of stopping these anti-American liberals.

With Trump the rhetoric gets even harsher: If we lose, we need to raise up and take control.

To his defense, I have never heard him say this. He is smart enough to merely inflame people to the point where they will do what they believe to be necessary and he will not be responsible and will, in fact, be the one person the US can turn to in order to quell the rebellion.

Apocalypse, wow.

Long weekend which brings the fall break to a (fortunate) close. As I type the kids are passed out in a pile in the loft, commemorating the end with a bit of a half-assed all nighter. In other words, they too are too tired to follow through on the glee. I’m personally too tired to string together much by the way of coherent thought. I’ll slide straight into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Tough weekend teeming with losses that seem to hinder an already narrowing sense of calm and perspective. I know things are getting to me when I find that I want to chuck my laptop through my TV or crush my phone in my bare hands. I don’t have a sense of what to do in these situations save for park myself in front of a singing bowl and hope for the best.
2. As for the game itself, my opinion is best heard in the voice of the late great Dennis Green. Or perhaps every one of these top ten. Number 3 feels damn accurate.
3. I’m pretty far past tired and run down. Where is the reset button?
4. You know the world’s gone crazy when the male presidential candidate is accused of multiple accounts of sexual harassment and his chief defense is that the accusers weren’t hot enough to garner his attention. Another gem from the country that brought you ‘affluenza‘. It is no wonder the majority of people I talk to seem pretty checked out on the society as a whole.

Late but not forgotten, here come the picks! I’ll start with a dose of honesty: I picked the Broncos. I had doubts because it seemed like a trap game and the coach was on his couch watching, but I still believed in the D. They did what they could… and still lost.

Jets over Cards
I’m going to be at that game all geared up in green. Don’t screw it up, Fitz. Yes, you. It all falls on your accuracy or lack thereof. You’ve been throwing like crap lately and without a valid secondary to make up the gap, you gotta throw better.

Giants over Ravens
I’m not going to give up on my team. They even played better last week, in spite of the loss. They fought hard, but without a run game the team floundered. It might be time for a trade. There is nothing in the backfield and nothing on the waiver wire.

BUF over SF
No coincidence that the Niner’s removed the injury clause from Colin K’s contract before starting him. The Bills are hitting out of control. They’ll continue that tendency this week. Trust me, mobile QB’s are not the plan against the Bills. They scrimmage against Tyrod Taylor…

CHI over Jax
One QB fighting for a job, one QB running for his life… Maybe it is the same QB. Either way he’s gonna win the game.

LA over DET
Rams need a win and are finally putting the pieces together. GurleyTrain is leaving the station and they are getting the ball to Austin in space. Things are looking up.

ATL over SEA
This is a tough one, but after ATL started playing like they did the last two weeks I cannot deny their ability. SEA still needs to show me.

IND over HOU
They just need it more. The teams are evenly matched, but Luck wants this win so bad…

No Contest Games
PIT over MIA
NE over CIN
CAR over NO
TEN over CLE
GB over DAL
OAK over KC

Some Thoughts:

1. It is impossible to deny the cool generated by President Obama. Dude is just on it all the time. Not because he is acting, but simply because he is that guy. Guess what? Nobody else is that guy. Not Hillary and not Trump. The former lacks any substantive humanity and the latter is just a privileged ass who never got punched in the face though he really should have many many times. Big league. He is who Jerry Jones would have been had Jerry not grown up tough. Thanks for not being an ass, Jerry.

To say TV is the devil is to give television far more power than it deserves. TV is in fact a tool of distraction as are video games and the plethora of other things that exist purely to occupy our time and offer us an idea of what a more exciting/interesting life could look like. The thing is, why aren’t we leading exciting lives ourselves? I continue to ask myself that as I sit on the couch with a mouth full of chips and a quickly aging body.

Part of if comes down to fear; part of it comfort. I know that I worked hard to get to a point where I had all the creature comforts of a good life. I have the games and the toys and the chance to do the fun activities, but doing and using all of that stuff prevents me from finding new highs. Achievement is, in that sense, a sort of failure.

Perhaps the failure does dwell in the inability to strike a balance between having and wanting. The two need to be a yin yang encircling daily life. Instead I have long allowed myself to remain out of balance. I’ve chronicled this in the past. I’ve chronicled chronicling this in the past and likely will do so again. The difference is I am really starting to wake up to the issues at play in my life that contribute to what I am going to call ‘prolonged failure’.

Fortunately this is neither a permanent nor fatal position by nature. However, it can be if left untreated. It is part addiction, part disease and it spreads through you infecting every essence of your being until suddenly you see yourself, as if from afar, as someone who is not ever going to go anywhere or do anything better. In that moment you know it is too late. You realize there were warning signs–even triggers–everywhere that you refused to acknowledge.

Good thing we aren’t quite there yet.

The youth tackle football season is moving into the playoffs while the NFL is still just getting started. Even still, there are some teams who might be done. The Giants might be done. The Jets just lost Eric Decker. Done-zo.

I’m not going to go into detail about the teams tonight because I’m burned out and need to get some much needed ZZZzzzs. Not much in the way of words tonight. Still some time eft to get in gear , so

Some Thoughts:

1. Existing drone technology makes a form of Quidditch possible.
2. I wonder what it is like in Tennessee right now? Big game this weekend.
3. Listening to Bryan Christy on the Daily Show reminds me that I still have a lot to do and learn.