Of Football, Jackass, and other tomfoolery...

Greetings,

First off, let me just say that I am currently listening to Sound of White Noise by Anthrax. I love this album. The lyrics are great, and John Bush did a fantastic job of delivering them. It's the only Anthrax album I own, but it ranks easily as one of my favorite heavy metal albums. Good stuff.

Ok, on with The Sermon. Thank you one and all for tuning in. Today is Sunday; it's December; and that means football. I am not a rabid sports fan, but I like to follow football, baseball, cage fighting, and I like to go to hockey games. My favorites, respectively, are the Seattle Seahawks, the Seattle Mariners, the Boston Red Sox, Chuck Liddell, and I really like Mack Danzig, who has recently made it to the finals on Spike TV's The Ultimate Fighter show. But back to football...

Seattle played Arizona today and spanked the snot out of them. The score was 42 - 20. It was sick. It had me thinking, though, and seemed to validate a couple of things that I have been saying for a while now. The first is that there have been a lot of teams over the years that have taught their fans to stick around until the end of the game no matter what. In the case of John Elway's Denver Broncos, that was because Elway could pull it out at the end, even when he faced seemingly insurmountable odds. In the case of the 21st century Seattle Seahawks, it's because we never know if they're going to fuck up a huge lead.

Seattle went into the half with a 24 - 3 lead over Arizona, but sure enough, they started to stumble a little bit in the 3rd quarter, making some bonehead mistakes and letting the Cardinals eventually score 17 more points in the 2nd half. Now I know it's the NFL, and a win's a win, but this brings me to the second point of mine that seemed to be hammered home today. A good offensive line seems to be the best kept secret of winning teams throughout history. Every time Seattle has done poorly, their O-line has been a big contributing factor. Today, that shoe was on Arizona's foot. Ok, obviously with Seattle scoring 42 points, Arizona's defense wasn't so hot either, but their offense still managed to put up 20 points in spite of an O-line that quite simply forgot there was a game going on. My point is that if Kurt Warner hadn't been beat to hell by Seattle's defense, and if Edgerrin James would have been given a couple of holes to run through, the game may have been a lot closer. There are so many teams out there who have talented offensive players that are just getting the shaft because their offensive lines are not up to par. I just hope that Mike Holmgren is starting to figure that out and will keep a fire under Seattle's O-line for the rest of the season.

Ok, enough about sports.

I was watching TV late on Friday night, and Jackass came on. I LOVE Jackass!!! I actually love just about any mindless comedy (Borat, and Superbad come to mind). There were something like four episodes on in a row, so I was in late night TV heaven. One of the stunts, however, got me thinking, so I thought I'd share.

Ehren McGhehey, or "Danger Ehren" as he is called on the show, was dressed up as the "Parking-Meter Fairy." McGhehey, dressed in a ridiculous fairy costume, walked up and down urban streets putting extra time on people's parking meters. He was continually harassed by parking enforcement officers, who informed them that it was illegal to put money into a parking meter belonging to a parking space not occupied by your vehicle.

This really pisses me off and fires me up. It perfectly punctuates my frustration with a lot of idiotic laws, including "Nanny State" laws. My frustration lies in the all too widely underestimated principle that city, county, state, and even federal governments DEPEND on people breaking laws. Why else would it be illegal to, essentially, give someone a loan to pay their parking fees. Or, for that matter, why do cops need to have ticket quotas? This sad reality flies in the face of "innocent until proven guilty," and it's stealthily unconstitutional.

The "Nanny State" laws to which I am referring are those laws designed to "protect" people from themselves. You know the ones: seat belt laws, helmet laws, etc. Any type of legislation that imposes a fee on someone for failing to protect himself is another way for the government to make money by squeezing its citizens' basic liberties.

I buckle my seat belt every time I get into a car, and I put a helmet on any time I get on a bicycle or a motorcycle - not because the law says I have to, but because I have enough sense to know that getting into a car or onto a bicycle or motorcycle is inherently dangerous, and a seat belt or a helmet will greatly improve my chances of surviving an accident. I am an adult with enough mental capacity to be responsible for my own safety (Children, on the other hand, should be subject to seat belt and helmet laws, simply because they do not yet have the mental capacity to be responsible for their own safety). If I decide that it is worth the risk for me to ride my motorcycle or bicycle a few blocks without a helmet, then that is my right and my decision. "Nanny State" laws allow the government to make money behind the rouse of being concerned with public safety.

My problem with this, however, is that I don't buy the notion of some state senator, or some city councilman genuinely caring about my personal well being. I think that they look at the bottom line, and realize that, with seat belt and helmet laws, they make a shitload of money, and that helps buy them steak dinners and fly first class. Public safety should not be confused with personal safety. The purpose of public safety is to protect the public from people who would do harm to others. Personal safety, on the other hand, serves to protect an individual from his own action.

The government in a free society has no business providing for personal safety. Every time a cop pulls someone over for not wearing a seat belt (I know that in my state one can not be pulled over for not wearing a seat belt, though it will carry a $101 fine if one is pulled over for another reason and then caught not wearing a seat belt - but, seriously, if you are a cop who is behind on his ticket quota and you see someone not wearing a seat belt, you're going to follow him until he does something you can pull him over for.) that officer is being distracted from preventing other, more serious crimes that endanger the lives of others. The person failing to wear his seat belt is only endangering himself - leave him alone and go pull someone over for speeding, or reckless driving.

I have been ranting about the "Nanny State" laws for years, now, but I never realized that the government's greed has actually pushed it to make laws outlawing generosity. Seriously, what's next? Will it be illegal to leave a parking space if there is time left on your meter? Or how about making it illegal to park in a spot that still has a few minutes left on the meter? Utter stupidity!! And we let them get away with it! I just wish that I had the time to fight City Hall over everything that pissed me off - but alas, I, like most other average schmucks, have too many other things to worry about. One thing's for sure: If I were in charge, things would be different - not necessarily better - but definitely different.

Wow. Ok, I think I'm done with that one. This blog has seemed kind of like a chore to write. Some days, the minutia just seems to flow out of me, but today I feel like I've had a really hard go of it. I hope that everything I've put down makes sense. If not, please let me know and I'll come back to it when I feel more up to the challenge. Until next time, keep stickin' it to The Man!

I am the Reverend Humpy and I've approved this message.