Well, there still will be a Texas OU game

 Not a big fan of the news Texas and Oklahoma want to join the SEC. Yes some paid commentators on ESPN think it is a great idea and say NCAA sports will be better for it. Nope!

First it will mean less players will get to play in meaningful games because the NCAA football championship will become diluted. Instead of more conferences vying to include teams we will have less conferences where only the top teams year over year will play. The more you consolidate the more the best players will only want to go to fewer and fewer schools so they have a chance to play in a playoff to championship game.

Many other football programs will be dropped which will mean less money for those schools for other sports or other endeavors. Sure the football team picks up the lion share of money from games, but in the long run school recognition helps them to raise money in other areas. If alumni are engaged then they donate more, but if there is nothing for them to get excited about they drift away from their college experience.

I am not going to get into Universities are big businesses anyway so it won’t matter because some of that is true. Yet if you talk to many students who had a good experience their four years they will tell you some of that involved cheering on one or more sports teams while in school. And if colleges and universities build that rapport with their students it does help the institution long term. 

Cutting back on the smaller schools or schools in the newly forming large conferences that get caught behind with recruiting and the experience for the students is diminished when there is nothing to get excited about. Sure they may have a team, but once power is consolidated to a few schools then interest and attachment dry up for alumni. 

And some of you may cheer that it should be this way since they are institutions of higher learning. They are also institutions of social indoctrination, friendships, lives explored, adventures and so on that add to a person’s overall persona. Sports is not the end all, but it is a part of this developing experience. And not all students will be into sports and that is fine, but they may be into art, music, history, politics, math, science, languages, which benefit from a strong alumni base. 

Universities should have their primary focus on education and if you look around nowadays you know we need it, but the universities need activities to make the experience for their students something they remember. In talking about this with someone today, they related a story that just personified being part of a rivalry and was funny as heck. If there ever was a moment to make fun of the other team, this was it. Good fun, of course, and it was. 

And it is stories like I heard that bond people and they tell it for years. And this is important, maybe not as much as their education, but important to their lives and their life long friendships. 

Again this is the United States and money triumphs over what is actually best.

No cheers tonight. 

The problem with evolving problems, yet

 The obvious observation is they get worse. Yet they are still a problem and finding a way to stop or resolve the situation would be great. Then again putting a genie back into a bottle hasn’t developed too many success stories.

However for all Donald Trump’s talk, we ain’t so great right now. And okay truly we are in areas not getting any press, but that is another story

The particular complaint of the day is assholes getting paid money to be assholes. The obvious example is Tucker Carlson. The issue is he didn’t just appear out of blue. We have been building up to him for decades.

And there are more examples that permeate our society right now. Millions are online trolls because they have nothing better to do and here is the important part they haven’t been taught any better. And yes I said and meant that. Call me old I don’t care, it is the truth.

The major issue is the jerks getting paid. This occurs on TV, radio, the internet, and anywhere else someone can cram an ad in your face or ear.

It happens in sports, politics, fashion, music, theater, movies, art, food, news etc... and all this came about because we started paying people to be critics. And quite frankly I am okay  with a critic who actually breaks down the endeavor, discusses what works and doesn’t work, even offers an alternative or something to improve etc..so that by the end of the discussion or article you have a fairly good idea of what to expect. This can be good, not always but can be good.

Yet us Americans can screw something worthwhile up rather quickly. Soon the critic became a “critic” then it just kept devolving from there. You had to sell your criticisms and to do that you had to make noise and because by and large Americans do not like to make the effort it became easier to denigrate, destroy, disrespect and generally get stupid so people would want your opinion. People love train wrecks so when people started getting paid to create train wrecks it generally lead to more and more people wanting to create train wrecks. 

Sure they couch it in opinion articles or talk radio or TV shows, but it is still out to create a train wreck so someone can make money. 

Decades of this devolving medium and now we have Tucker Carlson or sports writers marching Simon Biles to internet hades or Congress people trying to create rock star tours all without filters and accountability. 

And on top of all this are corporations  or organizations making an inordinate amount of money.

And that genie is way out of the bottle. It wouldn’t hurt if we could go back to holding people accountable for what they said, or punishing people for their out right lies, but as long as someone can get filthy rich this problem will continue to roll down hill like the proverbial snowball getting larger and larger. One day that sucker is going to hit something and God only knows what that will look like. 

Solving the problem this far down the road seems impossible, but if we could somehow hold the money behind some of this madness accountable for what they are paying for, then at least we might be able to melt down some of that snowball before it is too late.

Don’t you hate it......

when you click on something and then there is all this madness happening on your computer screen and either you just liked half the world or your bank account is now halfway across the world. And you will never know.

When you get caught talking to either yourself or your computer in your office.Damn that open door policy.

Or you look up and realize your co-worker is about to go on vacation and you aren’t.

Or you find the best place to live in retirement and the cost of living etc is very reasonable and it is a virtual paradise and you still don’t have enough to retire.

Or that your better half is just now going back to “the office” for maybe three days a week and you have been full time in the office since well since you started and that was long before 2020. 

Or when you just bet big on the long shot superfecta and it came into play on the next race. And like it matters. (yeah I know, it ain’t the same horses, but it  is the principal of the thing, you know the fish that got away)

Or when you keep promising yourself you will read more and your better half just says I finished my book and you have to ask which one because the better half has read a few lately.

Or that your favorite sports team just got a new front office and free agency is less than a week away and none of us fans have a clue what they are going to do.

Or that it is the end of July and you haven’t touched a beach yet and things aren’t looking that promising at the moment.

Or when you are actually given house money and you still come out underwater.

Or for the 400th time this week you are waiting on someone else to get their work done so you can finish what you need to do and it is Tuesday. 

Or when you are in a piss ant mood and no one cares.

Cheers

And then don’t you love it when your sister in law publicly throws your brother under the bus...love you dude  (okay maybe it just appeared that way)

The Savior Dilemma - updated

 Let’s break this down into some parts, but first the random not serious comment to throw this off.

Everyone better wish the Catholic Monotheist Creator is the correct one because with the way we are acting on this planet we need all the forgiving we can get or we are all going to hades in a hand basket. 

The first part is some non standard theology musings. 

Everyone has heard of the serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. 

And if you do an internet search for acceptance in scripture you get an inordinate amount of different ways the concept of acceptance is viewed.

Then there are the arguments or discussions that we were created ten thousand years ago, or there is no God and we are a fluke and somewhere in this fluke the universe came about, or there is the idea that we evolved yet were still created, or you can find mysticism, or other random mythological creation stories or just do the internet search. To be honest I subscribe to the we are created, but it goes back to the beginning and the big bang is part of our creation. This is important to me because looking at it any other way and you discount creation and the power of our creator. Hold onto this thought.

Go back to the serenity prayer. This is not an ancient prayer, basically this is something written within the last one hundred years, but the concept comes from scriptures, yet lets put this in a different context. Suppose you are trying to communicate with man as the creator and you want to teach ancient man there are things you cannot control, but there are things you can control. This prayer would be helpful. Yet ancient man did not have the control of linguistics we have now. So how does ancient man learn to accept the fact Earth has tectonic plates and everything else that create a vibrant planet so life can thrive. Somewhat difficult of a conversation when science hasn’t been taught in third grade yet. What happens? Maybe some conversations are misunderstood. 

Now this ancient man though is dealing with weather, earthquakes, natural fires, tornadoes, heat, cold, wind, and all the other natural occurrences that make this planet work. Ancient mankind has no idea what is going on, yet over time slowly learns to cope, but needs to understand there are some things that can’t be changed and some that can be. Mankind evolves into a society.

And all the while events and disasters, natural and manmade affect the world and are part of the world as it is created. 

Now the second part:

Mankind is or has become obsessed with the idea of perfection. Yet who judges what is perfection. Oh we are so good at telling everyone what is perfect, shoot we have the number for perfect: “10″. It can be a movie or it can be a gymnast landing score, but somewhere something is perfect. And what you think is perfect is vastly different from what I think is perfect and this could be true even if we have general agreement on the subject at hand. 

Yet even with this agreement of the subject we project our internal concept of perfection on others. And the more we think about it, the more we are right. This goes for the individual and it can expand to a group think. We find like minded ideas for perfection so we feel better about our definition of perfection. And yet if everyone in the group wrote down their definition of perfection separately the group would not be as cohesive as first thought.

So what happens when someone says God is perfect. You now have 7 billion versions of perfect and yet not one of those 7 billion know what is perfect. We know nothing of perfection in reality, but we sure know what is perfect in our eyes. We project a perfect God, but know not of God to know what is the perfection of God. Oh some will disagree with me, they have their Bible or what not, and it tells you straight up who is God and what we should do. Those people scare me and I believe in God. The perfect answer to God is to know you do not know God’s perfection. 

The third part

Life sucks right now. People I know who are way more devout believers than myself are struggling. Not with their faith, but with the world. Good hard working Christians that live by the creed you must have faith and yes you will not know everything and there are some things you have to accept because it is all part of God’s plan. And I am being satirical and thoughtful simultaneously with the above thought. I truly believe and understand we have to accept what is going on and there is much more than you or I can understand. And what the heck is God’s plan is way beyond any of us. And yes some people rely on this thinking too much. They live with this belief of accepting God’s plan of what they do not understand because they fear randomness may actually exist and bad things can happen because well life sucks. They need a purpose put upon them.  They also project this purpose to others.

So when someone who subscribes to the above creed says I need a visible sign they know they are not going to get one, yet they are desperately searching for one because we are human. They need something.

The Fourth Part

So here we are desperately needing an explanation as to why everything is upside down, what is it that we cannot change and what is it we can change, and why if God is perfect is nothing else perfect. 

And here is where it gets ugly. People will now start creating a savior. And yet what do we need this savior for? The Jewish people are still waiting on a King to rescue them as a people. Christians are waiting for a second coming. Muslims the Iman Mahdi, but be careful here, there is some conflict about the discussion of his coming and pre-existence if any. Again be careful. And my ignorance here is dangerous. 

And in general, someone on this planet right now is drawing or painting a hero, someone to rescue them, someone to show others how wrong they are and that there is a better place. We project saviors and heroes just as well as we do perfection. Shoot even the counter part to God is made into a hero. People nowadays take the ugliness of hate and draw caricatures of evil and try to make them seem heroic or even attractive hoping that this entity or identity is something special. 

We want to be saved, yet as with no understanding of perfection we have no understanding of being saved. Some Christians use the term once saved always saved, but saved from what. Their sins? From themselves? 

We call Jesus a Savior, but he did not save us from the Romans or any other tyrants. 

Jewish people want the Savior King, yet exactly what would this King bring to them. 

I will respectively leave other faiths alone, but in general people hold onto beliefs of saviors because they fear the unknown. 

And yet there is no Savior dilemma. We were saved the day the world was created because we are here. We create the dilemma of needing to be saved. 

So it goes back to understanding the difference of knowing what you can change and what you cannot.  You can build a house to protect you from getting wet. You cannot make it stop raining. You can understand that everything has been given to you, but you have no power to control it. You may know enough science to understand how the dynamics of the world works, but you do not know why God knows this is perfect.

We need a savior because we refuse to accept that we are not in control of this, we want those signs that validate that my beliefs are the correct beliefs.

We are given life and it is perfect as it is given. Why do we want to be saved from perfection?

Post script

I am a Catholic. I stand up and say the Creed every Mass. I believe in the Trinity and all that it entails. I pray rosaries. I know Jesus died on the Cross for our sins. I am human with frailties and faults. 

Some Catholics/Christians will disagree that I am Catholic or Christian because I will question my religion. I hope never to question my faith, but again I am human with frailties and faults.

Yet I write this post about the dilemma of saviors, not to question Christ, but to question ourselves. We fail God when we look for saviors. 

I saw a modern Catholic lecturer and Bishop once explain that God sees us how he sees us, not how we see ourselves. There is a perfection to us that is always created. Our own insecurity about who we are make us hide. To me this makes us want a savior. Perfection does not mean I have never sinned, and of course it does not mean my sins are part of my perfection, they are part of me though. I do not know what perfection is, yet it was given to me. 

People will call Jesus a savior with a capital “S” and they completely miss the point on what Jesus did. Jesus is not the classic hero savior, but so many Christians attribute this to him hoping that one day he returns and makes all the bad go away. He already took the bad. We are the ones who cannot go forward. Sure one day there may a glorious return and all of us will be judged, but there will not be a savior. For again, we were saved the day we were created because creation was perfect. What exactly does a savior need to do?

Jesus did die for our sins and that is something altogether different.

Post post script

Going back to the belief we are part of a much larger creation, that somewhere we were created through a long evolving process does not mean any one idea is right. It just means none of us, and I mean none of us, whether cleric or scientist or in between, none of us know the whole story of how we came to be. We can speculate and I love to, but if anyone says they know the definitive truth, run. 

And finally I forgot after all this to say, no one as an idea of what is a savior or what exactly they expect one to be or what one looks like. Misguided dreams

Like everyone else, but still scary when said

 Why is it the party that use to be the champions of pro-life are now the champions of trying to kill themselves?

They use to be law and order, but now they are just “First Order” (okay Star Wars dig), yet seriously what happened to general respect for the rule of law?

What is patriotism anymore? 

Why are people so obsessed with putting their rights over others? Who died and made them king? Again what is patriotism nowadays?

Why are people able to bold face lie to people and get away with it?

The phrase a modicum of decency is now extinct.

Republicans use to say they were the party of religious freedom and supported Christianity. Now they support cultism and demand total adherence to their way of thinking.

How is it in one generation an entire group descends into a total embodiment of everything anti-American? Yet they will spit in your face(figuratively? literally?) if you point this out to them. Probably shoot you too, but I bet you do not have the right to have the second amendment protect yourself against them? 

What drives a human being to totally give up on working with people to solve problems? 

What makes a person think that being in Washington demands more celebrity status than being in Hollywood? You can be known, but known for what. There use to be difference in that Hollywood was for drama. Now drama rules the government. People spend more time trying to get on TV for their job instead of doing it. Yet our country is literally melting right before our eyes. 

How is it the so called leaders of our government, Joe, Mitch, Nancy, Chuck and Kevin are powerless to produce effective public policy? And don’t you say it is the other guy, that is all we have heard for four decades.

And is the above the iceberg or the tip of the iceberg? 

I just don’t know what to say anymore. You read similar to the above all the time, but then you wake up again the next day and the nightmare is still going strong. 

A person tries to hold on to faith and hope, but at this point they seem to be slipping into the darkness of a bottomless pit. 

What gives? 

No worries folks, just feeling a bit melancholy, the fight is always a good fight, but some days, a person would like to see us move in the direction to be the great people we were created to become. Right now, the road seems more rocky than it needs to be. 

That ridiculous work life balance phrase

Have you ever noticed you have solved all the world’s problems while driving in the car? Probably not a good idea to be that distracted while driving in Dallas nowadays. Apparently we recently won the worst city to drive in gold medal.

Anyway, some attempts at remembering what I thought about while driving yesterday.

And the reason I say ridiculous work life balance phrase is because in the general social media world, it tends to focus on middle class people trying to balance work and their home life when actually it is much more.

For example and this is a minority of people, but there are people who are very successful at one type of career and they are blissfully unaware of the world this way. And they cannot understand why people cannot stick to something and try to reach the highest pinnacle in that field or be satisfied with a modicum of success. And on the surface there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this thought, it just limits who you are as a person. This leads me to my point. When people limit themselves to one endeavor they not only limit themselves, but they are limiting society. And I would also suggest they are limiting their own happiness.

Have you ever noticed there are some people that are all over the map with what they do? They can never focus on one task or career or endeavor and in many cases, they never really reach what people who subscribe to the American work ethic as successful.

These two examples are outliers to the big problem. The majority of us in shape form or fashion, engage in a multitude of ventures throughout our lives and then attempt to balance. This balance has become what I mentioned above in the modern social media world. And this isn’t what my thoughts yesterday were trying to work out, but it frustrates me because it interferes with tackling the much larger issue.

And that is people need a much broader sense of who they are and what they do because it leads to a better society. Sure it helps if people volunteer at their local food pantry or church or other non profit along with working, but it is even more. 

Think about the ultra successful that seem to work at their career till their death. Is it because they are a “type A” personality? They do not know better or have been shown better? They are fearful on attempting something new? Is it some combination of all these factors? Who knows, but they create a void in their lives that carries forward if society picks this up as a norm. And they may or potentially scoff at this thinking. 

The issue I somehow came to yesterday was this singular way of thinking permeates large portions of our society and it becomes a norm to focus on one undertaking and let someone else who has focused on a singular undertaking in another area be your resource and you have a misguided trust they dedicated the time to understand their world as much as you understand your singular world. 

We accept that others are as responsible as ourselves. We want to focus on what makes us successful so as not to have to think about other problems or concerns or issues. This give us the impression our insulated world is actually good. And throw in the fact most people are conformists by nature and it compounds the problem. Good hard working well intention people can be lead astray. And it allows people with singular purpose dictate to others or control others via an over reliance on the above discussion.

For example, lobbying in our country and the products of the Citizens United decision allow singular purpose to control how our legislation is written. If you rely on others for information, news or social content you are more susceptible to misinformation and social control. 

And being Republican or Democrat have nothing to do with the above, it is we allowing this way of thinking to help us manage the world, allow singular purpose people or organizations to manage us.

So how does this apply to that work life balance ridiculous phrase. It is because we, both as ourselves and then carry forward to society, do not see that there is a larger balance in life we need to achieve. And to make change it starts with the simple and obvious answers such as a successful businessman may need to change focus and start using their knowledge to manage a non- profit and simultaneously learn from the non profit while also broadening the intake of information and worldviews of themselves and the people they now manage or a professor taking their knowledge and applying it in real world situations in maybe a completely different field, again bringing their worldview and clashing it with other people’s worldviews and expanding both worlds. 

These are just two simple specific examples that draw together ideas to broaden people’s perspectives. You can work in a vast amount of scenarios to start to create this goal, yet it is this beginning hopefully that helps all of us understand the misnomer of the phrase work life balance. We need to broaden our attempts in creating new unbalances to make our work life balance more productive for ourselves and society. And yes the infamous, get out of our comfort zones phrase applies, but we need to address this with attacking this to look beyond our own goals,to not just give ourselves more success ie get out of our comfort zones to find a new comfort zone for many. 

And then we can see why Citizen’s United is a failure for this country, why social media is a failure for our country, not because the mechanism is a failure, but because we cannot see how it is failing us in its current application.We need to learn how the tools are being used because it is always how we use tools that define what is made.

Cheers

And all this made a heck of a bunch more sense while dodging cars at 70 mph crossing three lanes to exit. Gotta love entitled drivers. Maybe that had partially something to do with the above. Or what I was thinking at the time that created the hodge podge of thought above. 

It’s ten o’clock somewhere, do you know where your children are?

 Yep it is that kind of day or night or evening or whatever, wherever you are. 

Strange lackadaisical day, no motivation to work, no motivation to play, trying to do chores this evening, and now wishing I hadn’t started because I have a dishwasher to empty, dinner dishes to do something with, clothes in the dryer, clothes in the washer, and the better half is slipping off to lalaland after going to the grocery store after work so we had something to cook and eat.

Tomorrow for lunch, thank goodness for leftovers.

Aren’t you tired of having to decide where you are going to eat lunch. Every place around your work is old, tired and worn out in your eyes, except for that one place you will never eat. And not because it is a dive or anything, but because you ate there once or something and it just stunk. There is no elaborate description, it just stunk. 

The news is rotten to its core, nothing exciting on TV except, well nothing. Even the streaming channels seem cliche right now. All the movies are so rerun, you cannot find the energy to surf the guide menu on your cable system.

And then as I type this someone just shot off a large firework and outside of the dog looking up from where she is laying on the floor no one moves. It is just that kind of day.

Some will call this the dog days of summer, but I do not think we are there yet. No, this is just a mundane day with no real purpose other than it gets me to tomorrow where hopefully something will catch an interest.

Earlier today I read things that mattered, now they are distant memories. One item I do remember is that Iceland has decided that 4 9 hour work days is better for you overall. And this is news? The article touted people were more productive and less stressed. Seriously, someone had to do a study to determine this and then it lead me to think that everywhere people are happier or more productive is in a country that generally is cold. What gives with that? Why not happiness somewhere around the 20 degree latitude mark, where there are beaches and warmth? No, all the northern countries get the praise for the better work weeks, higher happiness scores, personally I think it is propaganda otherwise everyone leaves for more temperate climes. 

And now the better half is showing me young men for our youngest daughter. She met someone at the grocery store and is telling me she has to find someone that meets her criteria for our daughter. She didn’t say meets her criteria, yet that is what she means. And thank goodness she doesn’t read this blog. 

So the evening drags, from a day that wandered tediously, from a morning that has become a distant memory and all the while someone expected me to be productive. Luckily I was somehow. 

Tomorrow is another day and somewhere on planet Earth you will find my kids. 

Cheers

Get a damn robot to do it

Seems simple enough, cannot afford to pay people $15 hour, automate your services. Works until one of three things happen, some cyber criminals hack your system and take down the automated system until  you pay them millions of dollars, they break on their own and no one is educated enough anymore to fix the problem, or people are starving because they have no jobs and rob your store and destroy the automated system.

Sooner or later it will come down to how you treat people, individually and as a society. There are no simple answers and thinking you found one will only cause more problems.

Innovation is great and needed and beneficial, but at some point you have to deal with how does this benefit society as a whole and not just a few people because sooner or later people will demand you pay attention to them. And even the super wealthy cannot hide behind walls or government forever. You may think you can, but humanity has this eerie ability to overcome stupidity, greed and oppression. Sometimes it takes awhile, but it does.

I do have to admit people are fixated on $15 hour. Some geographical areas may need to have a larger minimum wage, some maybe a bit less. We need to get some perspective about cost of living figured in with how much a locale pays as a minimum wage. And for fun, lets lower the income tax rate on the middle class, slightly shift over a bit of this reduction into social security taxes and some back into the pockets of the middle class taxpayer. And as you shift some of the social security taxes to the workers, you can leave the current rate as is for small businesses so they are not burdened with the shift to a living wage. People who scream about raising wages are right, but getting it done requires looking at the larger or overall tax structure to make it work in general. And yes I know, how do we set parameters for what size is a small business to not have their portion of social security taxes raised.

And there was something else I wanted to say. I hate it when I lose track of it when I am mid sentence on the first topic. 

Hope your Fourth of July weekend was wonderful, safe and respectful of others.

Cheers

Quick comments on things going on

Liberals are over thinking the reaction of faux conservatives to the idea of Critical Race Theory.  Just add it to the curriculum, don’t give it a title, and just teach it. They won’t know because they do not open text books anyway, especially history.

Maybe some Republicans should “primary” all the elected officials that keep touting the lie about the stolen election. Don’t say anything, get in the primary and start calling Donald Trump weak and a sore loser and anybody that supports him is a sheep. That is how he primaried his way into 2016. Say it enough and sooner or later it will catch on. His whole success story is just lying enough times till people can’t argue with it anymore. Call him out with the truth, but just do it enough times that people cannot argue with it anymore also.

And everyone needs to sue the heck out of these so called election audits, or just show up in the millions and just stare at the people conducting it. If election officials can be threaten, why can’t we peacefully watch until the cows come home.

If one more fan website starts going off on this fairy tale that the Mavs might get Kwahi Leonard in free agency, I am going to explode. As a fan I do not want to hear anything until the ink is dry on any free agents; any free agents! Just go about your business, get it done then tell me. 

And stop saying the Mavericks need a second “star”. Some second “stars” in this league became second stars. Maybe it is time to look at many options, not just a second star. And do not get free agents just to sign people. Better to keep most of the same team than spend money on equivalent talent and start over. We have good players, we need to mix it up better. The ball did stop in Luka’s hands too much at the end. 

And someone send Mark Cuban into space with Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson until after the draft and free agency is done. Shoot, maybe till half way through the season. Jerry Jones can hitch a ride also. Probably best to keep both of them there till someone is ready to actually hand them the trophy, then they can come home and brag. 

Cheers