Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
Except of course me and probably a lot of the women.
If you are a wife this means of course that you have an increased chance of being the victim of domestic abuse, or at the very least will have to listen to your man yell at his TV like a freaking psychopath.
If you are a female who likes football then more power to you, I think you must have accidentally received my football lovers gene by mistake. Cause mine is missing.
If you have been a visitor here in the past then you likely know that I ONLY watch one football game a year, and this is it.
(This is no joke I only learned which teams were playing yesterday afternoon.)
I know very little about the teams, except that I fucking hate the Patriots and damn it this year they need to lose, and lose big!
I really mostly like the cool commercials and previews to upcoming movies which always premiere on Superbowl day.
And of course the best part may be that we do not have to listen to any Trump lies today.
I will update this post with tweets and perhaps a few of those cool commercials as the day progresses.
However be warned that today is also the only day that I drink beer and the effect that beer has on me is that it lowers my IQ and allows me to enjoy watching a bunch of grown ass men playing a children's game for obscene amounts of money.
That also means that my updates can be a little nonsensical and even odd.
Anyhow here is your open thread, do with it as you will.
Update: Maybe for their next Superbowl Tom Brady will not walk into the stadium like the biggest douchebag on the planet.
I will bet you money that someone, somewhere has just launched the LeBron for President in 2020 website.
And his points in this tweet are right on.
People can put their politics aside when they are rooting for their favorite team, and Trump just tried to sabotage that.
Personally I think that when all of this finally blows over that LeBron James will have earned a few thousand more fans, while Donald Trump will see a dramatic drop among his number of supporters.
Update: By the way Trump still thinks he is killing it on this thing.
At WH dinner, Trump said the NFL issue has “really taken off,” per source. “He was happy—he feels like he’s clearly winning that exchange."
It is almost impossible to put politics aside these days, but I am going to try for at least the length of this one game.
As those of you who have been visiting here for awhile know, I really don't watch football.
Ever.
Except for this one game, which is a tradition I started way back in my early twenties. (I don't remember why.)
Typically I would be spending the game eating greasy fattening foods, drinking beer (Another thing I only do during the Superbowl.) and arguing with my brother about who was going to win and why Mom loves me most. But he recently moved out to Palmer and apparently it is too far to schlep his candy ass into town to watch it in the comfort of my luxurious office.
His loss.
Anyhow like I said before I have not been paying much attention to the game, but I have decided to root for the Atlanta Falcons because....you know.....fuck Tom Brady.
Anyhow I am mostly watching for the commercials anyhow.
Of course this did not exactly fly with the military.
Courtesy of Military.com: Intelligence Specialist 2nd Class Janaye Ervin, a reservist on active duty within U.S. Pacific Fleet, is subject to administrative actions, still under review, for refusing to stand for the national anthem while in uniform Sept. 19, Bill Doughty, a spokesman for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Public Affairs told Military.com. According to activist and New York Daily News reporter Shaun King, who publicized Ervin's case on Twitter along with a Change.org petition supporting her, Ervin said she lost her security clearance and was threatened with jail by the Navy in response to her actions.
Okay that takes guts to take a stand like this while in the military and knowing how it might affect your career.
In the world of sports of course the Kaepernick effect is spreading like wildfire despite attempts to punish players and attack their motives.
Personally I am thrilled that people are breaking from the herd and standing up for their beliefs.
As a progressive I feel that the more people stop and ask the hard questions about traditions, religion, and patriotism, the better for all of us in the long run.
We should always think before we do, question before we accept, and learn before we decide.
An ugly thing happened at a high school basketball game in a suburb of Boston on Friday night.
It occurred at a division title game between the all-boys Catholic Memorial School and the public Newton North High School, which has a large Jewish community of students. The game was held at Newton South High School, where an estimated 100 young men sitting in the student section cheering for Catholic Memorial shouted, “You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus,” according to several witnesses who asked not to be identified. Most of those chanting fans wore red shirts as a display of support for their team. Some of the witnesses, who were Jewish, said they found the chant alarming.
One spectator who was shaken by the events — and who asked not to be identified — is a native of Skokie, Illinois, where in the mid-1970s, a controversy erupted when neo-Nazis wanted to march through the heavily Jewish town. Skokie officials tried to stop it but lost the case in court. This spectator, whose parents are survivors of World War II concentration camps, said, “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”
Nothing like religion to bring people together, don't you think?
So it is a Gryphen family tradition to put all politics on hold for awhile once a year, load up the table with artery clogging fatty foods, and sit down to enjoy the great American pastime.
Watching the newest and coolest commercials premiere during some sports game.
As anybody who has visited here for any length of time already knows, I am not much of a televised sports enthusiast.
But I DO take the occasional vacation from the ole intellect, down a few brewskies, and allow myself to enjoy what is essentially the modern day equivalent of the Roman Gladiator games. (Only with perhaps a little more violence.)
I must confess I did not watch a single football game before today and had to ask around to find out who is playing.
But now that I know it's the kittens versus the ponies I am all hopped up and ready to watch the kind of aggressive game play which guarantees that many of these players will suffer the kind of head trauma that will ensure that they have forgotten not just this game, but where they live and their own names by the time they reach their mid sixties.
If there broken down bodies allow them to live that long of course.
The NBA, alarmed by the death toll from shootings across the country, is stepping directly into the polarizing debate over guns, regulation and the Second Amendment with an unusual advertising campaign in partnership with one of the nation’s most aggressive advocates of stricter limits on firearm sales.
In a move with little precedent in professional sports, the NBA is putting the weight of its multibillion-dollar brand and the prestige of its star athletes behind a series of television commercials calling for an end to gun violence.
The first ads, timed to reach millions of basketball fans during a series of marquee games on Christmas Day, focus on shooting victims and contain no policy recommendations. The words “gun control” are never mentioned.
But the organization that paid for them, Everytown for Gun Safety, has a robust and controversial agenda: It was founded by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg specifically as a counterweight to the National Rifle Association, and the group also battles at the local, state and federal level to expand background checks for gun buyers, strengthen penalties for gun trafficking and ban gun sales to people convicted of domestic abuse.
Well this should get 2016 off to a rollicking good start.
And you know this one is going to leave a mark because most gun owners are guys, and guys LOVE the NBA.
If this Everytown Gun Safety group can sign up the NFL and NASCAR the whole gun debate might take a significant shift in a more liberal direction.
This week, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver tapped into the angst of the many American cities on the verge of losing their professional sports teams over stadium negotiations. Owners of football teams currently in St. Louis, San Diego, and Oakland are angling to make a move to Los Angeles, and they're leveraging the potential departure locally for taxpayer support of new or improved stadiums in their current municipalities. As Oliver makes clear, this strategy often leads to the comically vile scenario in which billionaires demand that cities provide hundreds of millions of dollars to appease privately owned teams that charge many of those same taxpayers hundreds of dollars for tickets.
Okay I have to admit that I did not know any of this.
Of course I live in Alaska and we really don't have any sports stadiums, or local teams worth buying a ticket to see. (And please don't bother mentioning the Alaska Aces or the Anchorage Glacier Pilots, because that would just be embarrassing yourself.)
And now that I have seen this report from John Oliver, I think not having a sports team worthy of building a stadium to see is probably a good thing for Alaska.
WFAA's Dale Hansen dedicated his "Hansen Unplugged" segment Tuesday to a controversy in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, where students were photographed last week holding up signs that read "White" and "Power" at a basketball game against a team from a more racially diverse school.
"Kids have to be taught to hate and it's our parents and grandparents, and our teachers and coaches, too, who teach us to hate," Hansen said. "Kids become the product of that environment. I was. And they are."
"The kids who hold the signs and chant their racist slurs — and it's not all of them. It never is," he said. "But their ignorance perpetuates the stereotype of all of us in Texas as a racist, ignorant people."
That was a thing of beauty.
Texas is lucky to have Dale Hansen, and it needs more just like him.
Whether it’s with a good luck dance, whispering a curse or prayers sent directly to God, half of American football fans believe supernatural forces are at play right alongside their favorite quarterback.
A study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that a full third of all football fans pray directly to God to help out their favorite teams.
With Super Bowl XLVIII just days away, the study forces the question: Will God be rooting for the Broncos or Seahawks?
No the study forces the question, how can so many people be so fucking stupid?
I always think it is such an insult to the athletes who trained so long and hard for this chance to believe the outcome is simply based on the whim of a supreme being who feels the need to meddle in the affairs of man.
After all if it is simply up to God to pic the winners why bother running drills, lifting weights, and taking all those steroids?
Well all i know is that I am looking forward to watching a bunch of over paid future Alzheimer's patients, playing a testosterone infused children's game, interspersed with expensive advertisements for products whose name I'll never remember, while drinking myself into a state of slobbering beer soaked euphoria.
And I don't want any supernatural interference to ruin that experience.
I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay.
I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand.
My journey of self-discovery and self-acknowledgement began in my hometown of Los Angeles and has taken me through two state high school championships, the NCAA Final Four and the Elite Eight, and nine playoffs in 12 NBA seasons.
I've played for six pro teams and have appeared in two NBA Finals. Ever heard of a parlor game called Three Degrees of Jason Collins? If you're in the league, and I haven't been your teammate, I surely have been one of your teammates' teammates. Or one of your teammates' teammates' teammates.
Now I'm a free agent, literally and figuratively. I've reached that enviable state in life in which I can do pretty much what I want. And what I want is to continue to play basketball. I still love the game, and I still have something to offer. My coaches and teammates recognize that. At the same time, I want to be genuine and authentic and truthful.
This is a pivotal point for the LGBT community. And Jason Collins is a very brave young man to take this one.
I have little doubt that after this there will be many more pro-athletes who will join him.
However he will always be the first that had the courage to proudly tell the world who he really is.
I have virtually NO sympathy for Lance Armstrong, nor any desire top give him a second chance.
This man lied repeatedly to his fans, and to the cycling officials who confronted him, and even went so far as to trash the reputation and try to destroy the careers of fellow cyclists who dared to tell the truth about him.
I have no compassion left for the man.
You know when I was young I had a brief career as a powerlifter.
I had started lifting weights as a freshman in high school and took to it immediately. By the end of that first semester I had doubled the amount of weight I could lift and was hooked. I became a gym rat and have trained with any number of powerlifters and bodybuilders up here.
I enjoyed it and when I found out there were actual competitions held that awarded trophies and prize money, I was all in.
My first couple of times out were very successful and I even set a new record or two for my weight class, which was 165 in those days. In fact I was actually only competing against myself, trying to improve my best lift and gain more muscle just to see how strong and big I could get.
But then at around 24 years old things began to change.
There was another competitive powerlifter in the gym that my buddy and I frequented that was also in my weight class. When he first started lifting there he was not nearly as strong as I was and I paid little attention to him. But after awhile, and not a very long while, he began to make significant gains.
I remember that in one month his bench press had improved forty pounds. At our level of competition that was unheard of. A beginner might see similar gains, but not somebody who had been lifting for a number of years.
I had already had some experience with bodybuilders using steroids and knew that they were becoming more an more prevalent. One day in the locker room I overheard this guy talking to another member and going on and on about the human growth hormones he was on and the other chemical help his doctor was helping him with.
I had worked all year to improve my lift by fifteen pounds and this guy was poised to make all of that effort meaningless. That really pissed me off.
My friend said that if I really wanted to stay competitive I would have to use the same substances this guy, and now others, were using.
But I couldn't. To me taking a substance to enhance my abilities was cheating, period! In my mind there was no way to win if I could not win without taking shortcuts, and it was certainly not worth risking my health for the sake of a tin trophy and a fistful of cash.
So I just walked away. I continue to lift to this very day, but I have never even contemplated competing again.
Now I know that Lance Armstrong made significantly more money through HIS sport than I could ever have hoped to make through mine, but at the end of the day look who he has to see staring back at him from the mirror.
I don't have a shelf full of trophies (Well I do have a few.) but in exchange I get to look in the mirror and like the guy staring back at me, and I get to talk to kids about ethical and moral behavior without feeling like a hypocritical douchebag.
The choice to take the easy path to victory, or to put winning above everything else, is an indication of your character. If you are the type who cares little for how you win, than in my mind you simply do not deserve to win. And you certainly do not deserve to be admired by impressionable young people for your accomplishments.
In a world where it seems heroes are few and far between, this is yet another example of somebody who accepted glory and accolades that he KNEW he simply did not deserve. Personally I think he should be forced to return the money paid to him by his sponsors, hand back his prize money, and dedicate the rest of his life to lecturing young people on WHY cheaters never win, and winners never cheat.
On Thursday, Barack Obama invited Mitt Romney to the White House for lunch. The two shared white turkey chili and repaired to President Obama's man cave, formerly known as the Oval Office, for photo ops.
The transformation of the room became complete when, sometime in the past year, the president swapped out the fussy beige floral couches that formerly sat in the room for the possibly-velour tan behemoths you see before you. Though our sourcing is spotty on this, we suspect this is the only place Michelle would let the president put the furniture from his bachelor apartment. Or else they were the gift of an enthusiastic Ohio State fraternity, obtained during President Obama’s campaign travels in the state. The throw pillows, one can only assume, came free with a year's subscription to Sports Illustrated. The coffee table looks familiar: I could swear it's from the free section of Craigslist.
The couches simply make form follow function: the room is the most important bro-out zone in the nation.
Oh yeah, you can almost smell the testosterone.
And here I thought the President could not impress me any more. Turning the Oval Office into the world's most famous man cave? That is the shit!
Let me confess to a little something here.
The house that I currently live in was ONLY purchased after the builder and my ex-wife lured me into the deal with the promise of an addition not in the original plans, that addition has now become the Lair of Loquacious Liberalism. In other words MY man cave.
This is where I spend the vast majority of my waking hours. Where I think, where I dream, where I blog, and where I ponder the vastness of the universe. (It's also where I watch bad Netflix movies and shuffle through piles of purposeless paperwork, but that part is somewhat less inspiring.)
The wife is gone, the kids have grown up, but the Lair remains.
Every man needs one, and I am glad to see that the President has his. From such a carefully crafted command center he will accomplish great things.
Meghan Vogel, a junior at West Liberty-Salem High School in Ohio, won the state’s Division III 1,600 meter race, but she gained more attention for a race in which she finished last.
Vogel was running the 3,200 meter race and about 50 meters from the finish line when she saw Arden McMath, a sophomore from Arlington High School, collapse. Instead of passing her, Vogel stopped to carry her competitor across the finish line.
Race rules say Vogel should have been automatically disqualified for helping another runner, but the Springfield News-Sun says meet management took no action. They gave McMath 14th place and a finishing time of 12:29.90, and Vogel 15th in 12:30.24. Vogel made sure McMath crossed the finish line first because she had been ahead of her.
“Helping her across the finish line was a lot more satisfying than winning the state championship,” Vogel told the News-Sun.
“What a selfless act,” said Arlington coach Paul Hunter. “She could have just gone around Arden. But she chose to help. I’ve never seen that at a state meet. That’s real sportsmanship.”
Lately it just seems that all of us are at each others throats, especially when it comes to politics.
I think it is healthy for us to once in a while focus on the BEST of what it means to be a human being, instead our numerous faults.
