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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

One Hell of a Show

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Another repeat, but today is a bizzy day.  Besides, Week 6 is just starting …

Football is the most intellectual of all the major sports in the USofA.  Go ahead, laugh, but it’s true.  All those breaks between plays are more than time for wagging commentary and the occasional Bud commercial, they are a chance for the coach to send in a play that one side will attempt to execute while the other tries to foil it.  Raw athletic ability is often thwarted by a clever plan or a quick wit that sees past it.  Amid the changing fronts of trench warfare that form the game, a good General is what it takes to win.

But there’s a lot more to football than that.  What we’ve learned from the NFL in particular is how important it is to set up a system where everyone has a chance and the rules are evenly enforced.  It’s America at its best.

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Blown Call

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Sports analogies are a mainstay for business – both reporting and motivational development.  What is a company but a team, focused on scoring against the competition?  Nations also compete against each other far more constantly than the hardware counts from the quadrennial Olympics.  Business is a kind of sport, and as such some sense of “rules” applied “fairly” is the critical difference between an efficient market and exploitation.

That’s what makes the business of sports both fascinating and raw at the same time it is dreadfully dull.  While completing the obvious connections, the business of running a professional team drains the passion from the moments that make the highlight shows and endless banter worth watching.

Which gets us to the NFL Referee’s lockout– about the most boring story in the world until one seriously blown call.

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Idiot Diet

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We’ve been too serious lately – and I need a break.  This re-run is a fave of mine,  we’ll be back live on Friday.

People diet for a lot of reasons.  Some want to lose weight and others just want to be healthier.  Many of the big fads seem to be more of a social thing, something people do with friends when there isn’t anything good on teevee.

It’s hard to call yourself a real blogger if you don’t write about a diet at some point, so it’s high time for the Barataria approach to better living.  It’s called the “Idiot Diet”, and it’s very simple – never eat anything you don’t understand.

This can cause a lot of trouble if you know something about food already, since a little knowledge is often a dangerous thing.  But with time the harmony of mind and body will set you free with a developing sense of smugness that makes a good stand-in for health in a pinch.

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Surviving, Thriving, Realizing

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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)

Anyone who has been close to the edge knows what “survival mode” is like.  Small flashes of adrenaline propel you from one day to the next.  Each fitful dawn is a mix of dread and possibility, all of them taken one at a time.  Next week?  Worry about it when it comes.  Next month?  Forever away.

Many people find themselves in “survival mode” through this Depression, especially those without either work or unemployment bennies.  For them it is a slowly unfolding tragedy, but in great numbers they become a society, a culture, and an economy that is unable to function.  That’s because a free market only reaches equilibrium in the long run, actually running on small differences in the short term.  But in the very longest term the magic of market forces become something else altogether.

Everything has its own time.  When we start to understand that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” it helps to appreciate the short, long, and very long term that are all whipping us through each day and all of our days.

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Freebird!

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It was a crisp Spring day winding down as I drove to get my daughter Thryn at school.  She usually takes the bus, way cooler than Dad picking her up, but this day she had to be somewhere else.  I had parked and was wandering around the lot when she and her friends bubbled out in a small knotted mass of clumsily developing suave.  Thryn ran over to excitedly ask some question about The Beatles, which album a song was on or some other small fact.  I told her as her friends gathered around.  One of them asked me another Beatles question and I dutifully replied.  Then another came.

I saw in their faces a look of wonder as to how anyone could know all this as questions started boiling out of them.  I was the sage, dispensing wisdom vital to the ages.  And the horror rose from deep within me.

No, no, nonono, you can’t think your parents’ music is cool!  You can’t think your parents are in anyway cool!  This just isn’t right!

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