sports addiction

So, like, when did sports take over the nation?
You turn your back for just a few years and...

Professional sports, I realize, has been popular for a long, long time;
but it seems like, lately, it's gotten ridiculous.

We're a nation of sports addicts, which would be okay if we were participating, exercise being good for us and all. But we're addicted to watching--while drinking alcohol and filling our faces with unhealthy foodstuffs.

And we've [okay, I'm going to stop using the 1st person plural here, because I am definitely not a party to this madness] vested huge amounts of cash and resources into the effort, and not only at the corporate level, which is somewhat understandable, given the fact that the country is hardcore corporate capitalist.

I disavow all of it. It's insanity disguised as normal social engagement.
The country has gone over the top.

[This diatribe has been prompted by a daily Pittsburgh Yahoo! e-mail alert that I get that is supposed to report news but is filled with sports news with an occasional actual news items included (maybe); so, maybe this is more of a Yahoo! problem than a national one. Nah.]

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groundswell

While I was online tonight, because it just happened to pop into my head, I did a Google search on "fuck Comcast" to see what I would get. Apparently, there are a lot of people who feel the way I do about the company. With this kind of groundswell, how do they stay in business? Obviously, like Netflix, through dishonesty, by lying in their tv ads about how great they are and what they will do for you that they will not in fact do. Promises unkept.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that I could probably get similar results by Googling "Fuck [insert the name of any corporation here]." It's not Comcast specifically, but corporations in general that suck.

Support Corporate Dismantlement.

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the dark side of society

A sincere and well-intentioned lady, Kathleen Seidel, the mother of an autistic child, has been subpoenaed by a lawyer working for the Rev. Lisa Sykes, who recently won her suit against the government, claiming that vaccines caused her child's autism. So, now she's got her attorney canvassing the net and sending out what amounts to subpoena-bullying to anyone and everyone who has even the slightest cyber-connection to the case; that is, if you happen to have said the wrong thing, look out, they may be after you.

It would be bad enough if this woman "of God" were simply pursuing a libel ruling; but, apparently, she has gone much further than that: she (or rather her lawyer) is attempting to intimidate legitimate criticism and opinion in order to suppress it. It's the same tactic that the government (FBI, et al.) uses when people on the net get too many hits and become a nuisance when criticizing...whomever, whatever influential politician or bureaucrat happens to be offended at that moment.

Free speech? Sure, you got it. But don't you dare to try to exercise it effectively. Seidel is a lawyer herself, so she knows how to defend herself, and does so effectively. Not so, most of us. We plod along in relative anonymity and seem to do just fine; but if we manage to gain a bit of an audience, then someone, somewhere is going to take exception, and some people being what they are, incapable of accepting others' opinions as being as legitimate as their own, will go out of their way to shout you down or, failing that, rally quasi-legal forces against you. This is the dark side of society, the force that demands that you join the consensus, or else.

Support Lawyer Disbarment.

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