HH) Champions

[tommyb]

(a chapter)

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(Monday, 5OCT2020)


(morning)


... 'Got these usual suspects around, mostly menfolk. 'Jew whistling and humming all over the place. Driving themselves insane, obviously pained, especially their women, but they earned their dead fish eyes themselves, and 'know it.

None of them are good at sex; 'can tell by ... 'anyway. 'Can tell by their voices alone they lack character and intellect. 'Don't know more of which. 'Know they had to buy their Americana from shopping centers, and were sadly proud of it. 'Most, obviously, story-tell constantly, whether to themselves or others to nurture the ego they have in place of self-esteem or confidence.

'None of them have security clearances, or at least nothing like ... 'the kind that would be sent into play. So there's little point in conversation. 'Sorry they're not apart of the intelligence community, but they've been walking around unimpressive. 'Most went to some place called Middle school, High school ... there's one in between ... Junior high. 'So they're vastly higher educated than me.

(On the second Tuesday of November, they're going to Jew whistle. They're gonna underhandedly heckle. They're gonna voter intimidate. While you 'in line, while you 'in the booth. Voter suppression is not a conspiracy theory. Well, it is ... These are sinister people. Who don't want you to vote. Every year it's like this. Those dukes and duchesses in the House and Senate: Don't want you to vote. 'Neither party wants you to vote. The White House: Doesn't want you to vote).

... What am I supposed to do with these guys ... You raised them to be this way. You market to them. 'Don't want to hurt their feelings ... 'They're losing their minds on their own. It's sad to watch. 'While the pre-World War II era shines all around. Their mental, emotional state seems worse than usual. The president has Covid. 'Wait til they find out he's Russian.

“Maybe not from a moral standpoint,” Michael Che says on the latest SNL. “But mathematically, if you were constructing a joke, this has all the ingredients you need. The problem is, it’s almost too funny. Like, it’s so on the nose. It would be like if I were making fun of people who wear belts and my pants just immediately fell down.”


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[tommyb]

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(lunch)


He doesn't tolerate religion because of a Mormon streak in his family history that haunts. He has little interest in the library, though he's obviously smart, only in a different way, a first-Borderlands meets a nice trailer park kind of way. He has little interest in sports. Youngin' now owns an over-the-door-frame, pull-up bar, thanks to the general store. He assumed 'worked out, due to changing in the locker room. 'Really do one set of pull-ups a day. The legs are too busted up for much work there. He is definitely civilian. 'Can barely get him to do some PT and some scholastics everyday, even when I allow a live episode of Saturday Night Live to be considered scholastics. He works all the time in the workforce, somewhere or another. Sometimes there's these new, if comfortable enough, silences.

"Football can have different cultures," 'am telling him. "Or it can seem to. I come from Friday Night Lights, but the memories are haunting due to ... what went down. The Blind Side, with Sandra Bullock, 'suppose is the go-to, for the PG version. Sometimes football -- not the actual game -- can look a little, too ... Frat-boy rapist. Or even just Frat-boy. It can lean too far away from ... Anyway. Here, in Ashe they acquire visible tattoos, like that'll throw anyone off. They think soldiers are suckers and losers because while we were in war zones with the ability to have good sex, they were stateside having bad sex regularly ... Not to mention all the domestic violence scandals, viral videos, even concerning some coaches. The Cowboys during the nineties ... They partied hard; 'came across as arrogant. I think Chris Kyle may have gotten into a bar fight with them once, and won. But I like to watch Sunday night football. I watch these hour-long documentaries on Sportscenter. The Hero of Goodall Park. The basketball ones bring me back to neighborhoods 'was in more than I say, during my upbringing. Sad subject matters all around. 'Think they used the only white kid around as protection. 'Was always protected. 'Watched the Dwayne Wade one. Lebron's decision to go to the Heat. Last night 'watched the basketball game --"

"--Why do you live alone?" he says, as we eat freshly fried chicken, his with fries, mine with coleslaw. "For no reason ..."

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[tommyb]

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(night)



'Remember Joey Taylor... My birthday is in October. 'Was showing up to Parochial school with my books in a paper Food Lion's bag. 'He had some sort of judgement concerning the other upperclass students. His father is a cop with a German Shepard. His young Dad shows up for career day. Strong sons are born young. 'They came from the same neighborhood. They were the relevant third graders. 'Bout fifteen of us, in all, concerning the third grade; there is no other third grade class.

'So on my birthday, 'am presented with a Jordache bookbag. By all of them. We 'just kids. 'Kind surprise.

'Only ours look alike and they get switched. Me end up with his, him with mine. 'Being the natural, non-violent, verbal ... Smart ... class bully. He finds my self-written daily schedule.

"Who ARE you ..." Joey says.

'Paid him five dollars, saved, to teach me football.

"What is going on ..." Derek Bradshaw says, while on the field. Bradshaw is Joey's latest go-to, though Joey can take care of himself. Joshua Harris used to run the bully-pack. "What is this ..."

Why did the old people think they had us figured out ...

"Do you like Missy?" Joey says on the first day of school, as 'choose books.

'Have no idea whom Missy is.

"'Cause she likes you."


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[tommyb]

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(Sunday, 11OCT2020)


(NBA finals have ended)


'Watch football now. 'Know they're not Druid. 'But these hand signals are hilarious.

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[tommyb]

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(Monday, 12OCT2020)


If you’re not ready for tonight’s football …

There are eleven players per team on the line of scrimmage, where the ball rests. The offensive line is usually made up of the biggest, strongest players on the team. Those in the wide receiver position normally have a combination of extra speed and strong hand-eye coordination. Sometimes their height helps in making the catch over the opponent’s head. Cornerbacks are usually the fastest player on the defense.

"The down" is synonymous with "the play." The offense has four tries to gain 10 yards. Four plays. There are only four downs to gain the ten yards. The quarterback only ever has three options: hand the football off, make a pass, or run with the ball himself. The pocket is wherever the quarterback happens to be standing with the ball. When it comes to the fourth down, 'one must think landscape, like in the Middle East, how vantage points, ports, matter, and agreements and treaties, or otherwise, are drawn up accordingly. Sometimes good field position trumps ten-yard-gain attempt.

A drive is a series of plays by one team. Rushing, on offense, is running with the ball when starting from behind the line of scrimmage with an intent of gaining yardage. Running the 'dang ball' is the ball carrier, (halfback), taking a handoff from the quarterback and running parallel to the line of scrimmage, waiting for his blockers to lead the way around the end. It's also known as a running play. The run is designed to attack the defensive end, outside linebacker, and cornerback on a specific side. The halfback is the position of the primary player who runs the ball for most offenses. 'Often referred to as the "tailback". The fullback is the player on the offensive side of the ball who typically lines up behind or beside the quarterback. The main objective of this player is to run block for the running back, or pass block for the quarterback. The running back is a member of the offensive backfield. The primary roles of a running back are to receive handoffs from the quarterback to rush the ball, to line up as a receiver to catch the ball, and block. There are usually one or two running backs on the field for a given play

Outside linebackers are generally used for playing North to South. They are lankier, taller, bulkier and more powerful. Four-three OLB's, as opposed to 3-4 defense, (how many linebackers are on the field), generally are expected to move East to West (sideline to sideline) more often and therefore are usually players more adaptable in their coverage. Linebackers generally align themselves before the ball is snapped by standing upright in a "two-point stance," as opposed to defensive linemen, who put one or two hands on the ground for a "three-point stance" or "four-point stance" before the ball is snapped. The OLB is also expected to execute a blitz, to sack, or at least hurry, the quarterback.

Outside linebackers who play in 3-4 defenses are consistently among the sackleaders in the league due to their vastly different responsibilities (primarily pass rush) than outside linebackers who play in a 4-3. Middle linebackers, sometimes referred to as inside, interior or mike linebackers, regardless of whether in a 4-3, 3-4, nickel, dime or other package, primarily are responsible for stopping runs up the middle and short passes within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage in the middle of the field. Because of the nature of this position these linebackers are referred to as "thumpers" or "downhill backers" due to the frequency in which they are required to attack the line of scrimmage in defense of run plays.

Linebackers are often regarded as the most important position in defense.


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[tommyb]

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(Tuesday, 13OCT2020)



“President Trump made claims of voter fraud and suggested he wanted to delay the upcoming election,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, observed. “Does the Constitution give the president of the United States the authority to unilaterally delay a general election under any circumstances? Does federal law?”

(Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”)

“Well, Senator," says Barrett, the Supreme Court nominee. "If that question ever came before me, I would need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process."


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(later)


Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) says: “Under federal law, is it illegal to intimidate voters at the poll?”

(U.S. Code (Title 18, Chapter 29, Section 594) calls for a fine, imprisonment or both for “whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote.”)

“I can’t apply the law," Barrett says. "To a hypothetical set of facts."


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For decades, 'have played this game: Spot The Lobbyist. 'Old people call it: Reading The Newspaper. After awhile, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal ... 'could barely get past the front page, to be honest. So 'paid my fifteen a month for the Washington Post. The New York Times will always have photography, font, beauty, art, going for it. The Wall Street Journal, numbers. Don't get too much into numbers. You'll end up Dicken's Scrooge at Christmas. 'Yeah he was redeemed. 'But he was already old. With the pandemic, the election, and the economy, even the Post requires a careful eye; they remain vettable due to Amazon, numbers instead of letters. Twelve point six million Americans are now unemployed; nine point thirty-three million Americans are positive for the virus; and two-hundred thousand and thirty-one Americans have died from it, conservatively. The Post's articles are longer, more in depth; they're following a different set of rules than the others -- more old school, thorough. Sometimes, the last quarter isn't necessary to read, it's so ... thorough. Their articles are not as long as New Yorker articles, but New Yorker articles earn themselves full-read. The New Yorker remains so old-school they do not allow photography. Usually 'can tell what's going on by the reading level the writer is writing at. Going on a year in, how we earned this pandemic still worries.

'You think Vietnam was bad ... World War I and Vietnam aren't particularly comparable. 'Cept your American oligarchs treated American soldiers ... badly. So badly, it earned us the 1918 pandemic, 'cause God don't play. That's what one can never forget. They will kill you in a heartbeat. And you 'all honorable, and good, 'in uniform, and you said to them, so wonderfully patriotically: "What you need me to do?" Then the American people sent you to slaughter, like you were nothing, their own sons. Like they were cannibals. They wouldn't admit to you they'd made a mistake, 'so now they're gonna be just short of cannibals. 'Really, even if you knew they'd made a mistake, you still would have gone to the valley of death, as they'd asked of you, and you'd of done it for them ... 'Know that due to the Civil War... 'Why 'you think the South 'so proud ... The other regions assume Southerners are dumb conservatives with a Bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Really the South knows the other regions of the United States have no idea what actually happened. And they do what I ... did. They pulled a Southern out of a Faulkner. They left the other regions ignorant of the South. They allowed the propaganda that they don't want Blacks to vote, because they know those in power want as few people as possible to vote. Once they suppress the Black vote, next they'll go after the poor white, the working-class white, then the lower middle class, then the middle class ...

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(later)


"Still kind of like her," 'say to him.

"Yeah," he says. "Me, too. And I'm not Catholic."


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[tommyb]

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(Wednesday, 14OCT2020)


(morning)


'Annual physical day, work-wise.

"'Get the pros. They're making millions," 'say to the nurse. "But what parent sends their kid to play college football during a pandemic ..."

"Dude," he says, a Covid survivor, maybe twenty-five.

("It was like being hit by a truck," he said. "I have never been sicker in my life.")

"They want that NFL money."


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[tommyb]

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(Sunday, 1NOV2020)


"... It's a good day, gentleman, to ask yourselves if, on a personal level, you're willin' to accept that. If you're willin' to accept the responsibility you have to protect this team, this school, this town. And make no mistake about it gentleman, we are in the business of winning." -- Permian Panthers' Coach, Gary Gaines, during Friday Night Lights.

Football remains a simple game that wouldn't exist but for the defense. Its experts make the game seem complicated, and tend to go on about the offense, mainly the quarterback. Terms start to be normalized, many of which are synonymous with each other. Money gets involved, especially each team member's rating. Injuries are normalized; outbreaks during the pandemic minimized by the 'experts' selling you each match up. If you hail from a Friday Night Lights such as Kenley, you inevitably notice how much the adults respect football above all other sports.

Sports will live on despite how the boys play. The human dignity of the females is what fathers notice, how they socialize, on the bench, on the field, only amongst each other, just women being women ... only with such effortless human dignity.

Football, the most violent team sport, other than the Native Americans' Lacrosse, represents in America that ancient human value of protecting one's city-state, long before their were large tribes, or nations, and only some, if fleeting, empires. Back then, your city was your nation, and regularly one must go out with shield and sword, usually on horseback, and run the invaders off. The fundamentals of American foreign affairs remain steeped in the Peloponnesian wars. As football players near their fifties, they may start to show symptoms of having been hit too much, too hard. It is their wives who, periodically, appear before Congress to testify of their husbands' true conditions. The NFL is not known to protect their players. Universities and colleges are known to need the money so badly they'd hurt their players, regardless. Football remains definitely not a religion, though it has stadiums instead of cathedrals, playbooks instead of wisdom writings. Each team is assumed to represent its town's specific human and moral values.

"Gentleman, the hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders. You may never matter again in your life as much as you do right now."

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[tommyb]

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(Election Day, 2020)



(morning)


It's not true that North Carolinians require a state issued ID to vote. The local news got it wrong, maybe on purpose. Some North Carolinians do not require a driver's license because they can walk to work and to the grocery and to whatever restaurant. ... Also, all fifty states are equal. No one's getting rid of the electoral college.


(late morning)


'Get that there are no more menfolk doing television ... "journalism"(?), if that's what one has to call it ... Maybe the last one was Jim Lehrer. It's been like twenty years since my generation of young menfolk noticed they could see right through every male television ... "journalist"(?). After his retirement, Lehrer gambled that he knew more about the classic American boyhood and adolescence than I did. It was an unfortunate gamble. And I never really saw him again. All you have for television ... "journalists(?) ... are females, who are so bad at recognizing the truth in things they fall for the storytelling of some talking snake with an apple ... and weakling males wearing too much makeup. Only the young males know written word is the only medium relevant. Hopefully, that medium won't become so eroded that we end up with only the medium of markings on cave walls.

You should've aborted all your sons if you want the world as you present it. Not only can they inevitably see through their mothers, they can see through their fathers. Do you get why you hand the teacher an apple on Teacher's Day ... They can tell you by how you hand them the apple ... Everyone knows Harvard nickles and dime the American taxpayer out of educational resources. That's why teachers have to buy their own supplies from the general store. Harvard has been purposefully making the American people less competitive on purpose, for money. Everyone knows that. Your Ivy Leagues assumed he was gonna die during the railroad days. 'It was an unfortunate gamble ... 'Cause 'got all their intel and they got none of mine. That isn't News.


(noon)


Honestly, who cares which oligarch wins. You know 'am still going to have to coach him through international intrigues.

'Made me handle Putin. While 'stocking dairy at the grocery.

"That's a good question," they'll say, when they catch that you're looking at them like they're bizarre to witness, that determined pull of breath. "According to ... "


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