kids are fun part II

who's a grown-up?

When are you a "grown-up"? It doesn't happen over night, and it seems that some people achieve this milestone at a later time than others. Am I a grown-up yet? I really can't say for sure. I'm responsible, in that I have a job and I pay my bills. But I am not responsible for anyone but me. Does being a grown-up mean that you have to be responsible for someone other than yourself?

Sometimes I feel like I'm finally to the point in my life where I feel like I'm an "elder", a Grown-Up, someone who people should listen too. But then I sit in a room with my own elders and man I feel like a kid all over again. I have never introduced myself to anyone as "Mr." anything and when kids call me "sir" I have to look around to see if there is someone behind me who might be old enough to be called "sir". Or perhaps a knight?

I am so much aware of what I don't know and what I haven't experienced, that I wonder if I will ever consider myself a grown-up. Probably not, but someday maybe I will have the chance to teach a new generation how to be a grouchy bastard just like me. Someday I will be the oldest generation. Someday I will be in a nursing home where the speakers pump out Metallica and AC/DC just like they pump out Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington today. In a few years they will be swaying with the sounds of Motown to get the Baby Boomers in the mood to get their walkers in motion and down to the shuffleboard room. In a couple generations the nursing homes will have kicker bass so that the Millennials will be able to feel the music that wasted their hearing! That makes me laugh! Can you imagine the senior citizen buses in the future? Coming down the road thumping away. ;-0) I hope to be dead by then, because I would take the chance and really start shooting then!! End up with a life sentence...

I guess if that stuff still pisses me off I will still not be a grown-up!

thin skinned

So today's news had a little story about a high school basketball team that won a game by a score of 100 - 0. The story (This link is for a follow-up, not the original) first mentioned that the scoreless team was "learning challenged", but later specified this to be dyslexic and ADD. Now the school of the winning team has made a public apology for winning by such a margin, and the coach of this team has gone on record saying that the team played with, "honor and integrity," and refused to apologize. The coach was fired for his honesty. ( and apparently for letting his team continue to play after they had a 59-0 lead at the half!) The witnesses say that the opposing team played with all of their hearts, but just couldn't get the score. Why the need to apologize? If the team with the big score gives up so that the other can get a few points what are the points worth? What is the use of getting points when the other team is giving them to you?

What has become of schools when they feel the need to apologize for winning? Lately I have realized that I must be becoming an old fogey, because I keep these words so close to the top of my mind, "when I was a kid..." And to finish the sentence this time..." we learned that sportsmanship meant being a good loser as well as a gracious winner. If we took a beating our coach chewed our asses and we worked that much harder the next time. and when we won we thanked the other team for a good game." Never once did our coaches ever tell us to, "take it easy on the other team, we don't want to beat them by too much!" Our coaches made us get every point that we could, if it was baseball we hit the ball hard and ran the bases fast. If it was football we drove the ball down the field any way we could and if it was basketball it was the three point throw every chance we could. Never did it occur to us that we should have "mercy" on the opposition. There was no quarter asked for nor given. Sadly, mine is the last generation to have this experience.

I'm a gen-Xer and that means that half of my generation was raised as a bunch of pussies who barely stand on their own 2 feet and say shit when they have a mouthful. Our parents were the boomers, and so many of them are the touchie-feelie, hippy types who were more worried about being friends with their kids rather than disciplinarians. The other half of my generation was raised by the old fashioned method, a boot to the ass when you were in the wrong and your parents were the bosses of the house and you were the child. Life was about hiding from mom and dad the things that you knew would get your ass in the shit and not getting caught. Our parents weren't our friends. They taught us to have a thick skin and that life wasn't easy and that the world wasn't going to be at our beckon call. We had a thick skin and we were and are prepared for failure and we know how to pick our asses up off the couch and get back to work. We are the ones who are doing the jobs that keep the world moving, because we don't sit around and whine that nothing is going our way. When we get layed off we go out and find a new job. If we have to work at a minimum wage job to get our foot in the door we do it. If we have to work 2 of them to make ends meet, we do it. We were once called the slacker generation, but it was truthfully only half of us. The other half, we went to work and got shit done. The new president is of the last years of the Boomers, but his wife? Oh yeah, she is an Xer and that means that she knows the score.

So the pussy Xers and their sissy kids the generation Y, are the ones who have come up with these things like "Mercy Rules" where teams are not allowed to win by a very wide margin, or they will be penalized. For winning!! It makes me so freaking mad that I wanna go kick some idiot poofter in the balls! (What the hell is the new generation called? Are they Z? or have they come up with something original like the Millenium Generation? I like that!! The Millenuim Generation! That's what I am going to call them !! ) I really feel sorry for the military as these poor saps get older and join the service. Drill instructors really will be a bunch of mommies. Their recruits will not be even the slightest bit ready to be called on their weaknesses. They will have self esteem issues when they are called maggots and cry-babies. Their poor minds are so conditioned that the world revolves around them and their feelings that all that the Millenium Generation has going for it is their self esteem. They have no concept of the real world as a nasty bitch who cares nothing for their feeling and will trip them at every opportunity. How is a mercy rule in sports supposed to help them learn about disappointment? It's okay to be diappointed if the loss isn't so big? right. I don't buy it. Go shovel shit for someone else.

If a winning team feels the need to apologize for playing well, and a losing team has to feel good about their loss, then there is truly something out of wack here. A winning team should be able to enjoy the victory for what it is, a win, whether hard won or an easy trounce. The losing team needs to work harder and maybe they will win one next time. Maybe they spend the whole season as losers, but they will have learned from their loses. They will see what other teams do to win, and maybe they will have a chance to implement what they have learned next season. Mercy rules should be called what they really are "Pussy Rules" because the pussified adults who are in charge don't want to hurt the feelings of the losers. Well guess what? Life's a BITCH! She will kick you in the balls and poke you in the eyes and steal your candy. She will take your boyfriend or your girlfriend, and screw him or her in the closet at the party and then tell all your friends about it!

Cowboy up and get to livin' or get it over with and get to dyin', but get the hell out of the way with your whinin' and cryin'. I'm tired of hearing about bruised egos and mercy rules. If you can't deal with what life has to offer, then maybe you need to run to the store and get a new life!!

Spending our Inheritace

America is a very screwed up country. Most people already know this, but we still have pride and thump our chests when people put us down. We are aloud to criticize ourselves, but gods help anyone else who does so! What makes me bitch today? News items from all over the country, that because of budget problems in various states, education takes a hit while politicians continue to initiate new spending! Meanwhile governments from counties up to the feds are adding to the list of required subject matter and testing standards. Just exactly how are these schools supposed to do more with less? Not only less money, but less hours, and in some cases even less days! Is it any wonder that American education has become such a joke around the world? I have always believed that teachers are generally underpaid. Not withstanding certain locations where there are exorbitant union contracts. They deal daily with who knows what, from homicidal teens to abused pre-schoolers. They have to make due with decades old text books and resources that are stretched so thin that they have probably snapped in many cases. Even in fairly upper crust suburbs the public schools are strapped for cash, to such a point that they send home lists of supplies that the parents are responsible for buying for their children. Not only general supplies but the supplies that they need for art class, and various projects throughout the school year. Schools can barely provide heat in the class rooms half of the time and now the tax money that public schools depend on is being rerouted to some other idiot project. Why is it that cities and sports teams are getting tax money to build stadiums for professional teams?

Professional sports teams charge exorbitant ticket prices for million dollar players who feel so entitled that they act barely human. They have nearly no manners or morals and treat the people who actually make them stars like idiots. They lie, cheat and kill then expect special treatment because they get outrageous salaries to play a stupid game for a few hours each week. Whether they win or lose the game that they play has no bearing on the course of history, or the develolpment of the human race. But they get tax money that could actually go towards education. Education that might uncover and encourage the next great mind of our age, the one who might develope the first viable human colony on Mar, or the one who will discover the secret of hyper space. Not every sportsman is an undereducated oaf, but there are far more of them than there are of the thoughtful, educated type. You get my point though. I know that in many cases increasing funds to schools seems like simply throwing good money after bad, but even in those cases do you simply give up on them?

I have to believe that there is a reason to try. When there is a resource to educate, somebody will use it. Maybe not every kid will use everything offered to them. We don't know why, some will feel lost no matter what is done to help them, and some will think they know it all and that the teachers are out to get them. There will never be a perfect system for educating the masses, the individality of the human race is both a blessing and a curse. But there will always be those who not only benefit, but stand out and excell. They will find what they need if it is there for them to find, and they will run with it and become great. They will become doctors and lawyers, teachers and business people, they will becomes astronomers and physisists, and any other field of endevour that you can name. They are out there now, struggling to learn in a hostile environment, where they are searched as they enter their schools and passed through metal detectors. If they are lucky enough to get to school they then have to try and survive each day, but they do it, and a small number of them learn that they can escape the cycle and maybe get a better life for not only themselves but for their children too. Granted when the time comes and their children get old enough they will be resented and rebelled against and they children will try to go back to the life that their parents tried so hard to escape, but at least they start out with the chance to go on. Right now that chance is being written off.

Our future lies in educating the youth, and not is paying the politicians who waste money year after year. They pay lip service to education, with slogans like "No child left behind." and "It takes a village." but when it comes down to it, they will take money from schools before they will take money from a sports team or take a paycut themselves. I know what the solution is, but sadly I will never be able to convince enough people to care to make the difference. But If I can convince a few people maybe they can convince a few more, and there is hope that eventually enough will care that the difference can be made. The solution is for the people themselve to call, write and visit their politicians, and not just the ones you know, but all of them from the President of the United States all the way down to your local councilman. Remind them that education should trump all else. Before they get raises, before they build stadiums, before they build monuments and parks, they need to educate the youth who will carry on the country and make it worth living in. Perhaps it is their plan, because when you think about it, an uneducated populace is much easier to convince of lies, because they simply don't know any better. You can take their rights away because they are unaware of what they are.

To save democracy and freedom, we need to be educated. It's as simple as that.

Why is Peace so Elusive?

I don't wish to sound like a sap here, but I have to wonder and I decided to wonder on a page, Why is peace so elusive? What is it about the Jews and the Palestinians, and the Sunnis and the Shiites, and the crap in Darfur? Is it a religious difference? What is the difference? 2000 years ago when these religions took hold it was a better way to control people and hold on to resources.

Religion was and is the new mythology. I can't be convinced that it is now or has ever been a good thing. How can something that is supposed to be so beneficial to the people be used so blatantly to kill and maim someone else? Once in our history there was actually some sense to the violent side of the religion, because you wanted an army that would follow it's leaders into the the face of the raging enemy. They needed to protect their vital resources, their crops and their people. There was a need to tell the troops that they would end up in a better place when they died for "the cause" and it gave them a reason to fight without the fear of dying. It was also a way for leaders with limited resources to keep their populations under control. I know it sounds callous, but think about the tyrants of old, what better way to have enough grain stores to get through the winter than to get a chunk of the population killed? Especially after a particulary lean harvest. That was one of the reasons for the caste system, the royals and ruling classes were taught to see the lower classes, and serfs as no more than chattel, pawns to be used for their own amusement and benefit. You wish to gain something from the neighboring kingdom? Send in an army of the lower classes as cannon fodder to get the attention of the neighboring king and maybe even have a victory and get what you were wanting. Now it's not so clear cut.

Today the world is smaller and the resources much more mobile and easier to distribute. Why is it that a country as large as Russia feels the need to argue over the resources that they have to sell? They have enough oil in their fields to give OPEC a run for their money, yet they are quibbling with over prices with half of Europe and the former Soviet Republics. I understand National pride, but not the need to control more land and more resources. What is it about human greed for Control! "If you don't believe as I believe then you must die as it is the only form of control that I can exert!" The thought process eludes me on this one. There are cat lovers in this world who understand that not everything is easily within our control. Dog lovers on the other hand wish for instant obedience and gleeful worship from their subjects.

Why is it that there is so many people who believe that, "it's my way or the highway( to hell)?" So much of the world lives with self imposed blinders on, never willing to look beyond their narrow view for whatever reason. Usually the reason is ideological, they are taught not to question authority, be it religious or governmental. The Pope imposes his will upon the devout Catholics around the world, no birth control, you must breed! No meat on Friday, No wait that's not the rule any more... Oh I know , give the Church 10% 0f your gross pay, or you will not get into Heaven! No sex Before Marriage, Says the Celibate priest! Muslims claim to have the peaceful religion yet the radical among them find in their Koran the words to inflame passions to the point that their youth will die in a fiery explosion with bombs strapped to their bodies in hopes of getting into Paradise. The world here sucks so bad that they take the easy way out! Sure it sucks here, their woman are treated like so many goats or horses and they aren't allowed to even look at them until they're married. They have to stop and pray how many times a day, and kiss the ground wherever they happen to be. Yuck, I would be willing to blow myself up to get out of living like that too! But why is it this constant drive to make the others live as you live? Why must there be a conversion? If I live my life without causing you harm, and I can do business with you honestly and openly, why must I believe the same mythology that you believe? What difference does it make to me or you? If I don't insist that you live like I do, why must you insist that I live like you do?

Some of the death and destruction is no more than a hillbilly feud that has carried on since time immemorial. The Jews killed a Palestinian and then the Palestinians killed a Jew to retaliate and it has since gone on as ever, and ever escalating. Yet there are Jewish kids and Palestinian kids who play soccer against and with each other in the streets of Jerusalem, they know no malice, simply the face of a friend and a fellow player. There is so much focus on the differences by the adults that they forget what it was like to be a child and only know your friends, and the things that you shared. Children don't know prejudice, it is taught to them and that is a shame. It takes no more effort to teach a child tolerance and understanding than it does to indoctrinate them with hatred and a narrow minded world view. I could never understand the need to pass such destrcutive teaching from one generation to the next. Did your Grandfather's grandfather's grandfather die so that you could send your son to his death? No, of course not, he died hoping that his children would be able to live in peace.

The Human race is quite unique on the plant Earth, as we have both the means to destroy ourselves completely, or the means to elevate ourselves into the stars and to truly find the secrets of the universe. Sadly the former is the most likely scenario, because in order to elevate, we must first have a peaceful society that can co-operate within all of the relms of science and technology, and rather than use the knowledge to try and destroy one another, use it to expand the horizons of human knowledge. In every field of human endevour we could advance, simply by eliminating the need to dominate each other, and pool our resources and knowledge for the good of all. We could feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. We could send our species into the solar system beyond the Moon, and beyond Mars and out into the limitless Universe. We could gain so much from simply shedding the old prejudices and learning from our children, how to focus on the good stuff, and to not bother about the differences.

I want to believe that there is a future where the need for weapons of mass destruction no longer exsists. I want to believe that Humanity will opens it's eyes one morning and realize that the answer to all of our problems is to stop the killing and to start the healing. Political lines and religious lines become meaningless and useless because there is not a need for division, when we will all work towards the next step for the entire species, and not just for our own greed, but the future of our children and their children's children.

For love of the game

My nephews play sports. I like to watch them and to take pictures and videos. Someday I may do something cool with them, but for now I can share some with y'all. Now many of you know that I am not a sports fan. I have no care who wins the world series as long as it is over as quickly as possible and doesn't pre-empt regular programming that I am actually interested in! Most sports are a waste of time and money and are no more than opium for the masses. I have never understood the rabid sports fan, you know the ones, every piece of clothing they own is in the team colors or has the team logo on it somewhere, they read every stat from every season and never miss a pregame or post game analysis. ( Is "anal" the root of "analysis", or is it"lysis". What's a "lysis"? ) The go to the games as often as possible and when they can't make the game the where the jersey all day long even if they are poll bearers at a funeral. Face painters, chest painters, shirtless in a blizzard cheering for their team no matter whether they are winning or losing. Now this is not to say that I don't occasionally watch a game with friends, or can't discuss current events on occasion. Even the sports that do interest me I'm not rabid about. I like Motorsports, and I can honestly say that when nothing else is available I will happily sit and watch ANY form of racing. Mostly because I can fall asleep during the boring parts and then wake up and watch the great crashes. I don't want to see anyone die, in fact I am happiest when the crash is REALLY spectacular and the driver walks away. Then he really has a story to tell!

So anyway, back to my point, my biggest complaint about professional sports is that too many of the players are simply playing for the huge ridiculous salaries. They no longer play for the love of the game. Although I do imagine that some like Brett Favre play long past their effective careers to keep their attention addiction sated. Kids however still play because they like to play. Of course there are always the exceptions to the rule, but we all know that any kid that doesn't truly want to play any sport will do everything in his/her power to completely suck and thereby not actually have to play, meanwhile keeping daddy happy that he/she is on the team. Why do I say daddy and not mommy? Again with some exceptions it seems to be the sports that allow the fathers to connect to the children. At least this has been my experience. There are still the stage mothers who push their children into anything so that their child will be popular (or the stars knows the motivation). The kids that play because they like it, are the best to watch, because they will put all of their energy into whatever they are doing, whether it's football, baseball, soccer, hockey or anything else that kids play. These are the games that I love to watch. I don't even care what game it is or who they are playing, it's just infectious fun to watch when they still play for the love of the game.