Bent Words

Bent Words

November 08, 2009

I love Brett Favre.

I know that such a statement is virtually a sin in Wisconsin these days but I just can't help myself. I love him. I do. And I probably didn't even realize it until I heard 70,000 Green Bay Packer fans (total shot in the dark number) booing him as he entered the field Sunday afternoon.

It just seemed ludicrous to me that so many people could be so unforgiving to a man who spent 16 years doing what he loved, with his whole heart and soul, for one team. So he didn't dig retirement. So he didn't go about things quite as well as the rest of us surely would have done had we been in the exact same circumstances under the exact same pressures. So what?

That's what we sometimes do with the very things we are most passionate about -- we trip over them.

And, to me, it's just like any other job. You love the industry and you don't want to quit but who wants to work for someone when they don't even feel welcome?

It's just like the vet class rider in moto. He's had four surgeries due to massive crashes in the last five years, he's getting up there in age and he's just not quite as fast as he used to be -- for all intents and purposes it seems logical that he should just hang up his moto boots and call it a good ride. But you try to tell him to quit. You try to convince him not to do what he loves. You just can't. You just shouldn't (Ted).

So I admit it. I cheered amidst the booing when Favre walked out onto the field on Sunday because there's nothing like watching an old friend do what he loves to do.

Especially when he's still got it.

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I just received an eleven-point instruction pamphlet which outlines how to properly navigate through roundabouts.

Fuck roundabouts.

It's difficult enough to enforce people to drive correctly with only the basic traffic rules (stop, go, yield, no passing) let alone throwing them a giant Circle of Death. Whose brilliant idea was it to toss in the equivalent of an obstacle course amid 5pm rush-hour traffic in a town like Whitewater? Do you really expect Mini Van Mom to put down her cell phone long enough to "yield to traffic on left already in the roundabout?" Do you truly believe that a bunch of drunk college students can maneuver properly down a straight and narrow without hitting the curb four times, let alone a loop-de-loop which is essentially one giant curb?

Didn't seem that way Saturday night...

I know, I know... statistically speaking, roundabouts are safer, which is good. But we wouldn't need them in the first place if people didn't speed up at yellow lights or pull halfway out into intersections hoping to turn left on a red light in order to gain ten seconds in their travel time. People, ya just need to chill out and relax on the road. It'll do wonders for your sanity. I've been there. I've raged. I've raced. I know.

I guess I'm not really opposed to roundabouts, then; I'm just not a proponent of stupid people.


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Self-checkout pisses me right off.

I mean, what's wrong with employing actual people?

"I'm sorry, Sir, we are no longer hiring because the economy is pure CRAP and we already have four highly skilled computers working the check-out lanes for us here at Home Depot." Sure, computers can't get the H1N1 and rarely call in stupid to work but still...

I don't get it. Isn't that why God invented the internet -- so you wouldn't have to deal with actual people? Why throw in four self-checkout zones when there's a perfectly useless cashier texting her boyfriend only twenty feet away?

One or the other people. One or the other.

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One of my goals as Bum Extraordinare is to become an expert Dartista (Laura Land, it's a word).




It's working!


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I feel like swimming. Wish I had a friend with a pool.

I suppose it would have to be a fairly rich friend seeing as an outdoor pool just wouldn't do at this time of year but I suppose I could settle for a friend with an outdoor pool as long as it was insanely heated.

Oh! Or a really big hot tub.

I see the condo in Florida coming early this year...

Written at 8:44 a.m.