Lost: a spider-man sock, or a reason to exist?

When you become a parent, you realize very quickly that have been given a human blank slate with zero instruction.  It's tremendous pressure to be sure- another persons life is solely and completely in your hands.  If you don't realize what a big deal that is, you haven't been paying attention.

Possibly because you've been too busy cutting your own hair

It's also pretty exciting though, when you realize that you have also been handed a miniature 'you'.  This is your chance to relive childhood, to buy all those GI Joes that your parents would never buy you, to watch TV shows based on comic book heroes and all this can be yours- if you can make it through the first couple of years, when they're watching crap like Dora, and Max and Ruby.   Note: It ain't easy.  It's kind of like watching someone gouge out your eyes and then use them to scrape the chalkboard in twenty minute segments.

The problem is that one day, your kids will grow up and start to (gulp) develop their own identities.  And ideas about what is actually cool.  There's a chance (however small) that all those early attempts at socialization and personality shaping will backfire, and suddenly your household of Red Wings fans has yielded some Blackhawks bastard spawn and you're watching game 6 of the Western Conference finals wondering what the hell just happened.  That's why, as a parent, I have to make sure that doesn't happen.  That's why I bought Shane this pair of Spider-man socks.

Aside from being the coolest socks ever (I know, right?),  these socks are a symbol of the struggle that I have waged to make my children in my image.  Just like Spider-man battled with the alien symbiote (and also his baser nature) and reemerged as a more awesome Spider-man, Shane and Delaney have wrestled with the entertainment advances of their father and come out on the other side as little daddylytes.  Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about all of the awesomeness that I have been propagating.

Something happened a few weeks ago though that completely rocked my world, shook me to the core, and threatened my very existence.  We lost the socks.  Well, we lost one of the socks, but that's basically like losing both socks.  Socks are like swans- they mate for life, and if one of the mates is lost, then you throw the other one away because it's a worthless piece of junk.   

I held on to hope for the last three weeks, believing that the missing mate would turn up in the laundry or in one of the kids toy boxes...waiting for a ransom note or a call from the dastardly villain that stole that precious piece of my soul...but as we boxed up our belongings and moved to a different home, and gradually unpacked all of the kids things, I slowly began to come to grips with the fact that the sock was gone...forever.  Must have got teleported to Battleworld for some sort of Secret Sock Wars or something super important.  Obviously. (sniff)

I know it's stupid to get attached to anything material- especially something belonging to your children and ESPECIALLY socks and ESPECIALLY socks purchased from the dollar section at Target.  It's just...it was such a cool looking sock, cooler than either pair of Batman socks or the Ferb socks and almost as cool as the Perry the Platypus socks.  Besides the physical sock itself, there's a chance that as Shane grows up, he'll forget all about Spider-man and super heroes and grow up liking shows like Teen Wolf and reading books about knitting and just generally being as anti-me as a man can be.

Which means he'll probably grow up to be a, you know, man

I'm sure I could wax poetic about how throwing away this sock is symbolic of my children and how they're growing older, or materialism, or tie it into life and relationships, or even making the best out of a bad situation (like being bitten by a radioactive spider, for instance).  Maybe one day I will.  But right now, the grief is still too near.

Goodbye, Spider-man socks.  I'll miss you, old friends.

PIC- Brittney Spears- http://static.poponthepop.com/images/gallery/britney-spears-bald-head-shaving-head-photo.jpg
Stephen Jackson- http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/001/388/288/stephen_jackson_display_image.jpg?1317846729

Fantasy Football '11- The minutes before the masacre

Today, when I get home from work, I will go downstairs. I will use the restroom. I might wash my hands. I will get a snack. And I will then sit at the computer and begin what will eventually be three months of self-induced agony and torture. It is called Fantasy Football, and it begins with todays' draft.

For those of you wondering if I am possibly suffering (again) from delusions of grandeur, the answer is 'no, I'm not'. I do actually know that I'm not a real football team runner-guy. The difference between guys that run real football teams and the guy that runs my fake football team (which is, me) is that the guys who run real football teams live and breathe this stuff. There is no 'getting home from work, doing the routine, and then sitting at the laptop to pick your poison'- these guys are living it. LIVING it. They go to workouts. They watch football all the time. They sit in meetings about football. They get paid lots of money. They probably get free team gear.

Me? I don't know the meaning of the word 'workout', I can only watch football when Dora isn't on, I sit in meetings about people that do not function within the norms of society, and I get paid lots of money. Oh wait, that's right. I don't get paid lots of money. But other than that- we have a lot in common. We both run football teams and we're both white males.

The point of all this is that real football owners put in lots of blood, sweat, tears, and time to make their football teams the best they can be. Now, you can't always tell this- trust me, I'm a Lions fan- but I have to believe they do. Because if I knew, or even suspected, that real football owners approach their teams with the same non-chalance that I am approaching mine this year, then I think I would freak out and move to the mountains.

To get to the mountains, you go over the glowing (probably radioactive or at least magical) and precariously placed wooden rope bridge, through the lake (because the idiots that made the road didn't think to make the road go around the lake...or at least finish the bridge), and then up the...wait, is that a mountain? Really? It looks like more of a foothill to me.

Obviously I'm not the real deal, because I barely put any time in at all. During some downtime at work this morning, I looked over the list of rankings at player position, made a few adjustments based on some whimsical beliefs, and tried to think about how I plan to approach the draft (do I pick RBs with my first two picks- or a RB then a QB? Should I even have a plan?), but by and large I really didn't pay attention.

I blame most of my apathy on the lockout. There was no offseason to speak of, no minicamps, no "voluntary" workouts, no real football news to keep me wired in during the months when all we have is baseball- and, as I pleasantly found out, women's soccer.

But the millionaires and the billionaires were able to graciously put aside their differences for the good of their wallets...er, the game, just in time to hastily put together some training camps and get some preseason games done. And now, here we are, on the precipice of another wacky up-and-down year where I spend Sabbaths with my eyes glued to the screen, pressed to the floor in fervent prayer- Lord, please allow Dwayne Bowe to score 32 points tonight against the Rams!!! And how did I prepare for this coming disaster? Simple- I didn't.

The kicker of all this is that we are a pay-to-play league this year- and I still didn't do my homework. Actually, this is probably the least prepared I've ever been for a Fantasy Football draft. And I'm paying money to do this. I'm paying money to show up unprepared. It's like college all over again.

This is not to say that I am just now realizing that I am a bad owner. I think the seeds of this idea were planted a few weeks ago.

During the back-and-forth to determine the weekly order for the waiver wire, one of my fellow owners accused the idea of resetting it every week based on record (that way, the worst teams get first dibs on the best players still available) of being Fantasy Football socialism. He said that bad teams were a result of crappy owners making poor picks/trades, and should not have the opportunity to take good players away from the deserving good.

And boy oh boy, I was ready to light up his Christmas tree. I had a well-thought out and exhaustively researched post written about all the factors that go into having a quality Fantasy Football team- your schedule, the schedule of your players, your opponents players schedules, placement of bye weeks, schemes, injuries...and in summary, I was able to condense all that into one word- luck. You don't need to be a student of the game- you just have to be luckier than everybody else.

Of course, all that is a moot point now that I realize I am, in fact, a crappy owner. Seriously, I am not any good. It's one thing to try and be poor at something. It's another to not try. And it's a completely different third thing to not try and be poor at something. Oh, what's this- I'll take bachelor number third please, for 500 Alex.

My team is going to hate me like the Cleveland Indians hated Rachel Phelps in Major League. At this point, all I can really hope for is that they come together under the common cause of hating me and go on to win the league. I won't even mind if they do the 'every time we win, we peel a section' thing, although it might be better if they did it in reverse. We're trying to win here, people, not create an army of Post Traumatic Stress Disorderites!

So with my first blog of the Fantasy Football season out of the way, I am ready to get my draft on. Go Snow Flurries!!!

PIC: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/96/dora2.jpg/sr=1

Burden of insight

I remember talking to a (then) co-worker during my internship about the burden of insight. At the time, we were talking about it in a negative context- that is, a person was not functioning very well in their job despite numerous instances of feedback, critiques, and reprimands because they weren't able to deduce that what they were doing or the way in which they were doing it was wrong. The guy just literally could not understand the concepts of the correction- because in his mind, there was no wrong the be righted.

In recent weeks, I've been thinking about this concept, and applying it in a much broader scope- and honestly, sometimes I think that this would be a nice state of mind. It might be kind of nice to not really be aware of what is going on. 'Ignorance is bliss', it is said. And really, they might just be right.

I spend most of my days hanging out with my kids, so I admit that I may have a little bit of a skew to my perspective. I mean, I spend my days watching children's television, coloring pictures, and playing pretend. Forget the gray- it's all black and white, baby! And pink and powder blue, too!

I realize that life is, in no way, shape, form, etc., never going to play out like an episode of Dora. "Bad guys" (whatever that term means, seriously) are never going to cease and desist because we incant a plea three times. We don't get a talking/singing map to help us plan our journeys. We aren't administered a stock magic backpack that is sure to contain at least one item that we need at any given moment. And we certainly don't hang out with near-naked primates. (I am sorry if I am assuming anything about your pets)

But still- having insight can be such a bother. Because then we start to think about things, and we start to allow ideas and thoughts to take hold in our mind. I'm not saying thinking is bad- believe me, you won't find me burning books to suppress knowledge- but what I am saying is that often times, my thoughts can warp my perception and leave me vulnerable to hopelessness and despair.

I think about things in the world- the events unfolding before us, as we see entire governments thrown down in a state of worldwide unrest. Even on the home front, the cracks in the foundation are beginning to show. And I think sometimes, wouldn't it be nice to just live in a corner of the world somewhere, oblivious to what's going on? Just going about the normal day-to-day routine, just living and spending time with family?

I think about all the weights and cares that are superficially placed on us. We owe thousands of dollars to faceless corporations. We are not the masters of our own destiny- we are slaves to a system that survives on the sweat of our labor. Right now, we live in a primarily tertiary (service) economy. This is not a system that is building a better human being- it's a system that actually, in my opinion, reduces our humanity by robbing us of our base abilities to survive apart from the system. We may not be plugged into machines- but we're not all that far removed from being in The Matrix, either. And then I think, maybe the steak isn't real- but who cares? We're eating steak, right?

Look, I'm as big a fan of insight as anyone. Because of the nature of humans and the systems we create to naturally drift to homeostasis, insight can provide the spark that leads to meaningful change. Insight can help us to compartmentalize the world around us, and realize that while the big picture moves forward that we are still responsible to take care of our part of the puzzle. Having knowledge and a general sense of awareness (even one in the stages of genesis) is wonderful, and really I wouldn't trade it for anything.

But along with that comes the burden. The burden that we know that we cannot always trust the actions or words of others- no matter their rank or station. The burden that we realize that we have much less control of our lives than we are led to believe. The burden of knowing that many of the pillars our society is made of are made of wet cardboard, just waiting for a windstorm to come and blow them all down.

Look at the nuclear event in Japan. Here is something that completely blindsided those poor people because of a natural catastrophic event. The initial assessments were that it was "serious" but likely to be contained fairly quickly- definitely not the next Chernobyl, is what we were told. And then the situation began to spiral out of control, and radiation began to leak, and soon they were calling this the biggest nuclear event since Chernobyl, and radiation had got in the tap water and Tokyo was running out of bottled water. Hard to believe that mere weeks ago, lives were being lived in much the same manner as I live mind today.

Apologies for the ramblingness. Often times, I'm able to sort things out in my head before I blog- or at least during the blog itself. Right now, I'm not 100% confident that I've done that. I'm not even sure if I have a point. How's that for a conclusion?