Rush Limbaugh, Viagra, Dominican Lady Boys, and the NFL

I’m writing about this so I don’t forget it, because I’m sure it’s going to disappear to never be heard of again – unless I start listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show. The man with talent on loan from God is part of a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams. I think this is made of pure unadulterated fail for a bunch of reasons, some of them I will get into. My favorite sports writer, Jason Whitlock, thinks the whole thing is a publicity stunt, which I hadn’t thought of but wouldn’t surprise me if it was true. Limbaugh bids for the team. He gets rejected. He pretends to be all butthurt about liberal drive by media bias and reverse discrimination, while he doubles his ad revenue for his radio show.
I see ya working. The main reason I think he’s going to get rejected is because Rush would be bad for the NFL from a business standpoint. News of the bid was barely announced before everyone and their communist brother was protesting. That would be good if Rush was premiering a movie, but it’s bad because NFL owners don’t like being hassled. They want to run their teams and collect their money, and the controversy that follows Limbaugh would interfere with that. The reason controversy follows him is because he can’t – physically can’t – keep his mouth shut. The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the players is going to expire after next season, and the way these things go in the media is that the players run their mouths, digging a public relations hole as a bunch of millionaires complaining about not getting paid enough. The owners are silent, and usually win. The chances of Limbaugh screwing that up would be infinity percent. There’s also a subtle cultural difference and Limbaugh wouldn’t fit in. The NFL owners are all industrialists or the children of industrialists, while Limbaugh is an entertainer. Money, in this case, is irrelevant. Rush Limbaugh wouldn’t fit in. Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank started Home Depot. Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen started Microsoft. Wayne Weaver started Nine West. Rush Limbaugh is an extremely highly paid employee of the Premier Radio Networks. There’s a difference no matter how much money is involved. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is slamming the door shut on Limbaugh as I write this. We’ll find out in the next week or so if the whole thing was a publicity stunt or not.

Caught In A Web-Nado

Another day stuck in my office being forced to participate in ridiculous “training”. I get it. Fraud is bad. I can’t complain too much though. They could have made me go to some classroom somewhere, and I wouldn’t have been able to search the internet while they teach me how not to get caught laundering money. I got caught in a pretty good web-nado. I started with the lyrics to Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper”, which I had always thought was about cops, but I started thinking about it and I don’t think the British call any of their police troopers. I was right. The lyrics aren’t about police. They’re about British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War, which lead me to the look up the Crimean War. I didn’t know anything about the Crimean War other than the British and Russian were involved. This knowledge came from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels. The Crimean War was serious business. It was almost like a dry run for World War I with the British, the French, and the Ottomans fighting the Russians over who was the rightful guardian of the Holy Land. It was the first war that used the telegraph and railways, and it also made Florence Nightingale famous. The fight over the Holy Land lead me to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which are a lot more groovy and chill than I had thought before. I thought the Eastern Orthodox Churches were like the Roman Catholic Church with witches and vampires and active dark magic. I was wrong. They’re like the Roman Catholic Church, but much less concerned with concrete explanations for Christian mysticism. They’re much more comfortable making leaps of faith in matters of Mystery. They don’t have a long-winded explanation of transubstantiation, although they do believe that the bread and wine consumed during the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of Christ. They also don’t believe that Jesus asked anybody anything. He died for man’s sins and in doing so redeemed man, believe it or don’t. The only Hell is the active rejection of God’s love. I could get down with that, but for one thing. Fasting. No, that’s a deal breaker. I’m not giving up meat for half the year, especially during gravy season. God understands. If he didn’t, bacon wouldn’t taste the way it does. My “training” ended at some point. I noticed only because my computer sped up. I had a history lesson and a near religious conversion. I’ll call that a pretty good web-nado.

Workout Progress

Columbus Day sucks. I hate half holidays. We either need to be on or we need to be off. Some stuff was open like the stock market. Some stuff was closed like the bond market. What kind of sense does that make? I couldn’t really get anything done. I was tired. I came home. I had some lunch, and I seriously thought about taking a nap. On one hand I wish I had. Naps rule. On the other hand I was able to get to the gym and get a quality session in, and since I burned a whole bunch of calories I was able to enjoy more spaghetti. I’m excited that I’m starting my third consecutive week of hitting it hard. This is where my body is used to the routine and the quality gains start. I’m also excited because I really didn’t want to go to the gym at all. Usually when I feel like that I have a sub par session, but I count it as extra because it very well could have been zero. Today however, I killed it. I didn’t even freak out about having to wait for a guy to finish screwing around in the squat rack so I could do my deadlifts. I did my pull-ups first, which I never do, and did the deads second. I used a weight belt because I’m serious about the safety first thing. I hate the weight belt with a purple passion. I can’t think of an accessory that’s more uncomfortable, but it makes sure my back is stable and I can continue to lift. I haven’t given in to the temptation to go super heavy just because I’m wearing it, which is a minor miracle. I doubt I would have gone heavy today, but there are days when I’m feeling it that I might do something dumb. I wore the wrong shoes – not paying attention – so I did the elliptical instead of running. There’s no reason to tear up my feet. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get some time in the pool and I’ll be ready for my first sprint distance triathlon.

Surf's Up! Ho Daddy!

We woke up late this morning and almost skipped the beach. That would have been the biggest mistake since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I spent the week whining and complaining about how hot it was. It’s the middle of October and the temperature was 85 degrees last night at 9pm, but the weather was 100% perfect today. We got to the beach this morning at about ten, found it all but deserted, and there was a perfect tidal pool for the baby girl. I have no idea how waves work, but they were huge today. I don’t know if there’s a hurricane in the Atlantic or the moon is at its closest point to the Earth and I don’t really care. The surf was as rough as it’s been all summer – even though were almost a month into fall. MJ was brilliant enough to bring both Boogie Boards so I grabbed one and headed out. I don’t normally play on the Boogie Boards a bunch because the waves are usually small and there’s a very small chance of me dying. If I’m not in fear for my life then what’s the point? Today is what I imagine it’s like off the coast of Southern California. The waves were so big it was difficult to get out past the breakers to catch the big juicy ones. MJ has just as much fun on the small ones, but she’s not as much of an adrenaline junky as I am. A big bonus to the day was that we were joined by the Fleming Island Crew, who may be on their way to becoming the Beach Crew. The last six weeks we’ve been expecting something different at the beach, some kind of signal that the summer is over and the autumn has begun, but it hasn’t happened. I really, really want fall to start. We’re way past Indian Summer. We’re into Sitting Bull at the top of Little Bighorn Summer, but days like today make sweating on my fifty foot walk from my car to my office on Halloween worth it.

Dogs And Their Owners

The Riverside Arts Market is an interesting event. I manned a booth for the Riverside Fine Arts for the second time in three weeks today at the market. It’s more of a bazaar than a swap meet, and that reflects its Riversiditiude. It’s held every Saturday underneath the Fuller Warren Bridge and the vendors range from a copper sculptor who I’m sure was in prison recently to upscale restaurants. I’ve been to the market as a customer and wandered around, but sitting there as a vendor is a completely different experience. When I’m there walking around, I’m usually trying to figure out how I can eat something from every food booth, so I miss what other people are doing. Strangely, no one serves alcohol. Someone should be selling beer. When I’m stuck sitting by myself at a table waiting for people to ask me questions I have time to watch what’s going on. There are a lot of old people and a lot of freaks in my neighborhood. I never see them en masse because I’m a home body and I don’t really care about them. When I say freaks I don’t mean the vendors with blue hair, tattoos, and piercings. I mean people and their dogs. That is a culture I do not understand. It’s a dogapalooza. Big dogs, small dogs, old dogs, puppies, it doesn’t matter. Two dog owners see each other and their dogs must meet. Butts get smelled. Leashes get tangled. The owners talk about how adorable the dogs are. Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs – well big dogs, anyway – but there are two kinds of dogs: nice and mean. I’m not talking about Dobermans or Pitbulls that eat children. I’m strictly talking about inter-canine relations. Some dogs are really happy to see other dogs, while other dogs see other dogs as threats to their time with their owners. What I don’t understand are the people who own mean dogs that take them out into public so they can be hostile to other dogs. They know their dogs don’t play well with others. Why bring them into public, and why do dog owners all look like their dogs? I’d never paid attention to this freakery until this afternoon, and I think there should be a study.

And The Winner Is...

Barack Obama “won” the Nobel Peace Prize today for not being George W. Bush. I really had no idea how much the rest of the world hated W, and I’m not sure I really understand it. Does all this animosity stem from W not pretending to care about what Western Europe thought? That’s the only difference between his administration and every other presidential administration since the end of World War II in terms of foreign policy, pretending that we valued Europe’s opinion. Are they really this butthurt about his overt support for Israel? At the end of the day W’s foreign policy strategy was the exact same as every other president’s. He found some brown people and killed them. He let American corporations loot the brown people’s countries, and got his friends rich. When did this become a problem for Europe? As much as everyone vilifies Bush and Cheney personally for the torture and secret prisons, everything seemed to be turn key at best. There seemed to be a bunch of people qualified in waterboarding and stress positioning just when Bush and Cheney needed them. Did they throw an ad up on Monster.com? I don’t know if the techniques themselves are difficult, but I imagine finding the sort of people into doing that stuff might be. It suggests that these people were already well trained and in place. It’s either that or Bush and Cheney were efficient, precise, and thorough in getting Gitmo up and running. I find it much more likely that we’ve been torturing people for a long time. I find it unlikely that Obama has put a stop to any of it. The prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is still open. I don’t have a problem with it. What I have a problem with is devaluing an award that I still hold in high esteem. When I think of the Nobel Peace Prize I think of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Junior, Mother Teresa, even Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. They all did something. Barack Obama hasn’t done anything yet, and giving him the award because W didn’t let the Euros sit at the cool kids table justifies W’s snub. I guess it could be worse. They could have given it to Al Gore… nevermind.

I Heard He Left Her For A Nineteen Year Old

This time of year I really notice the time change and things get stuck in my memory more often. We were driving to LMJ’s My Gym class and a kid who may be the son of a guy I went to school with was crossing in front of the van as we passed Robert E. Lee Senior High School (GO GENERALS!). He looked so much like the guy I went to school with I had to stare at him. It wasn’t obvious or confrontational, but I needed a good long look because my first thought was hey that’s so and so. I had to remind myself that the guy walking in front of the van was seventeen at the oldest. All of this happened in less than a second. A couple of miles down the road, as we passed FCCJ (GO STARS!) or whatever they’re calling themselves now, this same kid passed me in a green Ford Expedition. He was straight ballin’, beatin’ up the street with his 18” sub-woofers. I remember doing that twenty years ago, and I felt nostalgic and jealous at the same time. Then I saw that he had his blinker on and didn’t know it. For some reason this made me feel better. I also may be more observant because I’m not tired like I was last week. I had a lot of fun at the My Gym class tonight because I had a lot of energy. I wasn’t looking for a place to sit down or staring at the clock hoping the hour was up. We had guy coaches tonight after almost all girls the past month. The guys are a lot nicer and much more concerned with LMJ’s feelings. The girls aren’t as concerned with what she wants and are a little more insistent that she tries new things. It’s a cool balance. I also noticed who’s a good parent and who isn’t. There’s one woman who I think is a recently single mom, and her son seems to have worn her down. She just can’t keep up with him. He’s got a little bit of a reputation with some of the other parents. LMJ may have a reputation but it can only be that she’s shy. We’ve been there long enough that the gossip is starting to trickle – good times. That’s why it’s important that LMJ is clean and well behaved, and that I have enough energy to be a good dad. I don’t care what people think about me, personally, but I need to reflect well on the baby girl. All politics is local and My Gym class is about as local as we can get.