Sports (un)Authority | Rugby is not Lacrosse on Horses

Most of you wouldn't be surprised to find out that I know nothing about sports.

And honestly, I don't really want to know about them. I think the names of sports are stupid. Football barely involves a foot from what I've seen, but the sport that actually involves feet almost exclusively is called soccer (futbol in places not called the United States). Baseball should be called Batball. Basketball is fine, but sometimes I feel like lacrosse should be called basketball and basketball should be called hoopball or dribbleball or throw ball. Dodgeball makes complete sense to me, because obviously. Volleyball should be called netball or something. Tennis should be called racquetball, and don't even get me started on actual racquetball or as I call it WALLBALL.

But listen, when people stop trying to learn about things - even especially those things which they couldn't care less about - we end up with orange idiots running for president. I don't want to be an orange idiot.

And so I bring you Sports (un)Authority, a maybe-every-once-in-a-while segment where I try to learn about sports. How did this come to be? Good question.

A group of coworkers and I were signing up to see "Ray McElroy of the Chicago Bears" speak about something maybe-not-sports-related-but-maybe-sports-related (I didn't really read the whole email or listen to them explain it to me twice), so I asked the obvious question:

Ryan: Do you have to like soccer to see Ray McElroy?

If I had known the storm I was brewing, I would have just kept my mouth shut or googled before I asked. 

How I Became the (Third) Author of a Textbook

...chapter. Textbook chapter. Sorry for the click baitish title.

ANYWAY. You guys. Something 'uuuuuuuge has happened. 

I debated on even writing about it, because I'm not super into the whole ~humble brag~ thing, but this is exciting and semi-related to a macguffolution (and also basically a back up solution in case I get too lazy/scared about one of those macguffolutions). But it's mostly exciting and, damn it, I want to share exciting stuff with all of you. 

And I also kinda wanna humble brag. Sorry for lying earlier.

Y'all. I got published in a textbook. NOT KIDDING.

Unity

We are a country no longer defined by unity, but by divisiveness. Somehow, we are still divided on race. We are still divided on gender equality. We are divided on what constitutes violence. We are divided on what constitutes as terrorism. We are divided on what hashtag we should use when advocating for the lives of all people, going as far as to take sides on whose lives matter more, when that wasn’t the intention of the original hashtag to begin with.

Horrific things keep happening, but all we can do is divide. People are living in terror in other countries. People are living in fear and isolation at home. People are living lives contrary to who they truly are because they don’t want to offend anyone or risk their life for being themselves – they don’t want to be divided from everyone else, so they divide from those they identify most with. And when we explain why we’ve divided, we say it’s because the other side divided first. We are so quick to respond that we fail to listen in the first place.

Fear, hate, anger, sadness, and grief have engulfed us. I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of darkness in world that has so much light in it. The most heartbreaking thing we can do is to use that darkness to shroud out the light, and yet we continue to block out the light.

Listen, I get it. I am so proud to see the passion so many of my friends have for the future of this country. I am glad you are worried – I am, too. I am so happy that you are all able to and feel free to express your views and opinions. And I am, in a sense, as disappointed as you are – jaded with the political process of this country.

But I am also scared. For the first time, I am scared of my fellow Americans. I am scared for my fellow Americans. I am scared that this period of civil unrest is going to lead to civil war. I am scared that no one seems to care about that – they only care about their opinions on weapons and whose lives matter more. I am scared that we have lost our humanity. Even as a gay person in this country, I’ve never felt true fear until now. What do we do when we, the people, fall victim to our prejudices and fears and instead resort to violence? The answer, of course, is disorder. Unrest. Anarchy.

So when two candidates come together in the face of adversity to fight against tyranny, it is heart wrenching to see so many respond divisively. Don’t stop reading: I am not about to campaign for anyone. That’s not what this space is for. I'm not here to further divide. I don’t care what your political affiliation is, seeing politicians come together on the same stage to stand together in unity against a common threat is something we ought to value. It is something we ought to aspire to. It is something we ought to use to demonstrate that we can unify. It is evident that we ought to unify.

What I saw on that stage today was not one candidate giving up. I did not see the establishment overtaking an unsuspecting old man. I saw a united front in the face the common threats to our rights not even as Americans, but as a global community. A united front toward a threat to the common good of humanity. I am proud of my country. To survive, we have to remember the central intention for why we came to this country to begin with: to unify against those who seek to divide. We are greater than those who seek to divide us. We are the prophets of tomorrow.

I cannot be sad in the face of unity. 

Cat's Outta the Bag: Dogs are Peasants ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

COME AT ME, I DARE YOU.

Let me just forewarn you: this entry looks way longer than it actually is, but it's mostly pictures of mine and Craig's dog and cat. Listen, if we can suffer through thousands of identical photos of your children, you can take a minute to suffer through the photos of our offspring.* 

It's come to my attention that I am putting a certain ~image~ out there on the Internets. How did it come to my attention, you ask? Well, allow me to demonstrate:

You bet your sweet tooshie this made you think of me.

Pokemon Go

C'mon, you guys. You had to know this was coming.

Everybody's saying, "Oh, but I walked 100,000 steps today trying to find Charmander" or "my child walked 2 miles away from home and didn't even realize it just to find Alakazam" or "Pokemon Go will cure childhood obesity." Okay. You guys. Let's just simmer the hell down for a minute and think about what is being said here. Fine, you're getting your steps in and little Sally and Bobby are finally off the couch not picking their noses, but only because you/they ARE LOOKING FOR FAKE ANIMALS(?) and wasting hours upon hours of their previous lives AND POSSIBLY GETTING LOST IN THE PROCESS. You know what happens when people get lost? ALMOST ALWAYS NOTHING GREAT.

Manual Laboring

Confession that's gonna BLOW YOUR MIND. I'm not greeeeat at the whole "manual labor" thing. I also use the term a bit more liberally than I probably should. It's become a synonym for "things Ryan does not want to do." More accurately, "things Ryan does not know how to do and does not see the point in learning how to do since 1/3 of his life is already over." Even more accurately, "things Craig does." 

To give you a better idea of how I react to manual labor, I maybe related too much to this guy's Snapchat story, because mowing the yard is the most absurd and infuriating chore ever created. Who was THAT bored that mowing became a thing? Why can't we all just agree that the world we all want to live in is one where we all keep goats or sheep or whatever animal eats grass like I eat pizza in our yards at all times to keep the grass as levels where sad boring peasant neighbors won't gossip about you and your non-conforming yard. 

Neighbor: "World peace? Nah, let's make sure we talk about how that guy does not mow his yard. That's the real issue." 

But seriously I think Ricky aka Snapchat story guy and I are like shade twins or something, though he admittedly took too long to bring Beyonce into the story. Not throwing shade, just saying I would have drawn a comparison between myself and Queen Bey long before he did NOT THAT I THINK I AM AT ALL EQUAL TO BEYONCE, ILLUMINATI.

I HAVE FORGOTTEN WHERE I WAS GOING WITH THIS POST.

'bout dem 'lutions (and other updates)

Remember that one time when I threw shade at everyone who has made New Years resolutions? Remember that one time when I made a list of macguffolutions (which is just my loser way of trying to brand my New Year resolutions) and said GOSH DARN IT I'M GON' STICK TO 'EM (...in the same post where I proclaimed resolutions were stupid)? Remember when I sounded super confident about it? Remember when I said that I would scoff with all of you on December 21st, 2017 if I didn't stick to them? Remember when we all collectively decided at that moment that we would schedule an all day event on December 31st, 2017 to scoff at my failure to stick to these macguffolutions?

Good times.

And then remember how I never talked about those macguffolutions again?