Ray Guy

Hearty, neon-lit, back-slapping congratulations to newly-minted Hall of Famer Ray Guy. He's the first player admitted to the Football Hall of Fame as a punter, and it's an honor as deserved as it is overdue.

I'm mystified why it took fifty-plus years for the Hall of Fame to recognize a punter. It's ludicrous that the National Football League would establish the position and then ignore those who excelled at it.

If you've ever been a football fan and watched the game, the notion that kickers and the units they perform on (called special teams) are inconsequential is ignorant. I've forgotten how many times I saw momentum shift after a well-placed punt pinned the opposition behind its ten-yard line and saved a stalled offense's bacon.

It's a game-changer in the same sense that an interception, a fumble recovery or even a touchdown is. And Ray Guy changed a lot of games.

Don't think a punter or special teams are important? Ask the coach of the team that struggles in those areas. None other than Hall of Fame coach John Madden said Ray Guy was often their “best defensive player—by far.”

It's no coincidence that the Chicago Bears 2013 defensive woes occurred after losing special teams coach Dave Toub. Under his tutelage, the unit was regularly one of the NFL's best, and masked many weaknesses.

But this is about Ray Guy, not the Chicago Bears.

Knowing the worst outcome of a failed drive was a Ray Guy punt left the Raiders offense free to operate wide-open, in the same sense that a basketball guard can gamble on defense when he knows there's a powerful, shot-blocking center behind him.

On a team as dominant as the nineteen-seventies Oakland Raiders were, that was not insignificant.

Now that the Football Hall of Fame has finally addressed its arrogant and exclusionary history of denying punters (and while I'm at it—place kickers) admittance, here's hoping it can look back and give those who contributed to the game it celebrates their rightful due.

Getting Concealed Carry-ed Away

People buy guns for two reasons. They want to kill or be a hero. Sometimes they want to be both.

They fantasize about home invaders, preferably minority ones. “I was defending my family!” they rage in response to some vile court-appointed defense attorney's questioning as a sympathetic jury of their peers looks on.

Afterwards, they are found innocent by reason of self-defense.

Of course, the reality is far different. Kindly ignore the fact (and it is a statistically-verifiable one) that as a gun owner you are more likely to have that gun pointed at you than you are to point it at a drug-crazed home invader intent on raping your daughter.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, twenty-two times more likely.

But the Brady Campaign probably strikes you as a bunch of knee-jerk libtards spouting off about the same crap they always spout off about. But analysis after analysis tells the same story. A gun in the home is more likely to be used on you than by you.

Unfortunately, fantasies are like Bruce Willis. They die hard.

And thanks to the fear-driven campaign to permit concealed carry, those fantasies now have a new stage upon which to play: everywhere. Why limit your role-playing to the bedroom? Why not take it out in public where it belongs?

I mean, shouldn't a population that becomes murderously angry at being demoted or not getting laid or even being cut-off in traffic not only be armed to the teeth but have unlimited freedom to squeeze off a round or two if these touchy feely types feel threatened?

Sounds like a considered and sober strategy to me.

Here's a hint of what's to come.

In Crestwood, IL., a customer approaching an AT&T store noticed an armed robbery in progress. He was able to alert potential customers behind him and keep them from entering the store.

So far so good, right?

But instead of dialing 911, our wanna-be cop (who is fully licensed and approved for concealed carry) decides to play hero. He watches the felon exit the rear of the store and gives chase. He fires his gun, unaware that a police officer has responded to the scene. The officer consequently has to abandon his pursuit and take cover, unsure of whether the felon has an accomplice.

You can see where this is headed.

Live crime scenes are by their very nature chaotic. Even the best and most well-trained professionals get confused and disoriented and make mistakes. Imagine what untrained-and-armed amateurs bring to the table.

If you need a recipe for disaster, here it is.

Instead of just one bone-headed wanna-be cop, imagine six. As the false sense of security offered by concealed carry drives its popularity in our frightened and twitchy population, this is what law enforcement will confront. (Assuming, of course, police are even summoned. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see the concealed carry set eventually assuming the role of jury as well.)

Thank god for the Affordable Care Act. We're going to need it.

Sometimes You Just Can't Win. Even When You Do.

Poor Ivory Mitchell.

After buying lottery scratch-off tickets since Richard Nixon's second term, he thought he'd finally hit the jackpot. After buying five of the things July 20^th, two indicated he had won $1,000. Nice payoff after forty-two years of playing, isn't it?

But wait. The agency that runs the Wisconsin lottery is claiming that the tickets are defective. Misprints that aren't worth the cardboard they're printed on. In a show of bureaucratic benevolence, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue has offered to reimburse Mr. Mitchell the ten-bucks it cost him to be a kinda sorta but-not-quite winner.

Ivory Mitchell is a sixty-four year-old retired welder who undergoes dialysis and is living off of disability, and who had planned to use the winnings to repair his roof, gutters and a fence.

It might just be me, but wouldn't it be cool if some combination of the Wisconsin lottery and the vendor who supposedly misprinted the tickets somehow managed to come up with the two-grand that would make such a difference at one end and barely register at the other?

I'm guessing that after forty-two years of purchases, all concerned have turned a very tidy profit on Mr. Mitchell.

Just a thought.

Thomas Jefferson - Reloaded

Thomas Jefferson's 'tree of liberty' remark was long-ago co-opted by conservatives as justification for stuffing every conceivable nook and cranny of our nation with as many guns as humanly possible.

(I mean, you just never know, do you?)

But Eric Zorn, in a typically-thoughtful column in last Friday's Chicago Tribune, responded to this misappropriation by putting a new wrinkle in Jefferson's quote to better-reflect the sad ideal prized by firearm advocates in even-sadder twenty-first century America.

Instead of finishing with “...the blood of patriots and tyrants”, Zorn put it thusly:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of innocent school children.

Which just about says it all, doesn't it?

Good going, Mr. Zorn.

Let Us Now Praise the Onion

Before there was a Jon Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, the task of presenting and parodying the news fell to a small publication founded by some college kids in Madison, Wisconsin in 1988.

The Onion took off fairly quickly, expanding its distribution to Midwest college towns and the great city of Chicago within a matter of years.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In its twenty-five years of existence, the Onion has routinely poked fun at the hapless, embarrassed the deserving and given those whose outlooks are perhaps infected with a touch of jaundice good, hearty belly laughs.

But in the wake of the tragic Isla Vista shootings, no media outlet better crystallized the event and the raging debate surrounding it than the headline in the May 27th issue:

'No Way To Prevent This' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

Yeah.

Just.

Fucking.

Brilliant.

The Cure for Sanity

Sometimes, I get really nervous. I think that somehow, the Second Amendment just isn’t there for me anymore. That the president or the government will burst through the door and take away my gun.

And then I won’t be able to breathe. And that anyone who wanted to could just get me. That I won’t be able to do anything to defend my stuff.

But then events like Friday night in California happen, and I know the Second Amendment is gonna be okay. Nothing like some retard going off half-cocked to make everybody paranoid and want to rush out and buy a gun of their very own.

It's too bad that not everyone is as well-balanced and responsible a gun owner as me, but that’s just the price we have to pay for being able to defend our stuff. And ourselves.

Life is war. Collateral damage is a fact. Get used to it.

I mean, I’ve never killed anyone with my gun. So why should I have to give it up? Do you have to pay for car insurance even if you’ve never been in accident? Of course not.

Oh wait. You do. Scratch that.

The important thing is that our right to own a gun has NOT been compromised by those goddamned liberal baby killers! That responsible folk like you and me can still arm ourselves against our oppressors.

And let’s admit it—who isn’t one?

The government. The president. Liberals. Vegetarians. Minorities. Climate change believers. Left-handers. That guy in the grey Prius.

You got a minute? He was looking at me funny—I’m sure of it. I'm just gonna circle round the block and double-check.

OK. Where was I? Oh yeah. Every day I realize I need to protect myself. That you need to protect yourself.

You just never know when someone out there has a gun.

Frozen

This isn’t about the latest hit musical from Disney. It’s about a life. A life on hold. A life, well, frozen.

U-Haul calls them rooms. I call them storage units. In them sits the difference between life before and life after the Great Recession of 2008. They’re three-dimensional barometers of the downsizing the long-term unemployed have absorbed.

Ours is filled with furniture, appliances, clothing and kitchen ware; the list goes on and on and on. These are the things my mate and I hold onto. The things we have invested with the hope that one day we will have use for again.

Call them objects of faith.

Putting them on e-Bay or giving them away or throwing them out would be to acknowledge that things aren’t going to change. And we can’t do that. Not yet.

So we pay a monthly storage fee equivalent to two tanks of gasoline (and this is with a discount from a friend who’s an employee at the facility) to indulge our fantasy. Or deny the future. I can’t figure out which.

I touch the sofa that used to be the centerpiece of our living room. Thumb the designer shirts which no longer fit because of my stress-fueled consumption of junk food. I gaze at the washing machine and drier we picked out, and wonder if they would even work after being inactive for so long.

I realize, ironically-enough, that I would actually enjoy putting a load of wash in them, if only to enjoy the significance of such an act. I also realize how unlikely this is to happen.  
Perhaps this is a tomb.

I retrieve the book I came for, pull down the metal door, secure the padlock and head to the front office where I pay the rent. 

Hope, for better or worse, springs eternal.