You Mad Bro?

What an incredible game that was. It had awesome defensive plays, touchdowns everywhere, impossible catches, and brawl that made WWE start calling agents. Now everyone knows there has to be a loser in every game but how you handle losing shows the character have.

Seattle showed they have no character. Not only from this loss but with how they handle themselves in general. I can’t take the overrated Richard Sherman talking his shit all day. Yeah you make a couple plays here and there but I hear more about you running your trap than making plays on the field. Shut up and play ball.

Moving on to Marshawn Lynch. Dude, get a damn grip. No one is trying to fuck you over by asking questions. Every other player in the NFL sucks it up and answers questions because that is what the job calls for. Oh, don’t let me forget the shoe fiasco. There was no need for that distraction. Just play the game.

Now to the loss of the Super Bowl. Bruce Irvin, if you are going to be mad at someone and throw a punch, make sure you hit the right person. That would be your retarded quarterback.  Who throws the ball on 1^st and goal from the one yard line? What a way to ruin a great game by acting like some spoiled 5 year olds in Pop Warner. How about acting like you make millions to play a kids game for a job. There is no need to start throwing blows because you are pitching a fit from losing a game.

In the end, I have to give the Patriots a well-deserved congrats. They never stopped playing and did what they had to do to become four time Super Bowl champions. I do have one thing left to say. This is a little advice from a former middle school wrestler. Gronk, learn to sprawl bro.

Chris Kyle Should Not Have His Own Holiday

In case you haven't heard, Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent out a tweet that said, "I have declared February 2 to be Chris Kyle Day in Texas." If you've been living under a rock, Chris Kyle is the American soldier who the American Sniper film is based on. Kyle accumulated 160 confirmed kills out of 255 probable kills during his illustrious career with the Navy SEALs. Get your hate speech and rhetoric ready internet, because I'm gonna tell you why this was an ill-conceived idea.

I will preface this by saying that I am not anti-war or anti-military. I think war has its place when it is absolutely unavoidable. I respect the men and women who fight for our country. They're both American heroes and simultaneously just doing their job. I don't mean that to undermine their duty or bravery, but that will be further explained later in this post. I am also from Texas. So while the rest of the internet will surely have people on a particular side of the political fence that will say Texas is foolish and immoral for creating such a holiday, very few will be like me and residing inside of it.

Chris Kyle is an American hero. He did an excellent job as a Navy SEAL during our war with Iraq and he should be commended for that. Which he has been, by the military themselves, The New York Times for American Sniper's 37-week run on their Best Sellers List, and by Hollywood through the film that was made about his life. Not only has he been remembered, he's been glorified more than any member of the military ever was. I'm not here to argue for or against if he's earned any of his previous accolades. However, I do not believe he should have a holiday, in Texas or otherwise.

First and foremost, he's a killer. I do not say that to take away credit for the accomplishments he's made. I've stated my thoughts about the job he did in Iraq, but you cannot take only the good side of what he did and ignore the ugly parts. If you give a man a holiday for being an exceptional sniper, you're also giving a holiday to a man for being an extraordinary murderer. For all the lives he saved, he also took some away. The reason he murdered people is still relevant. That's not me painting the picture the way I want it to be seen, as some would say. It's seeing the entire canvas for what it truly is.

We have a Memorial Day for our fallen soldiers. That's not to say that some members of the military don't deserve a certain amount of unique praise, which they do receive from the military themselves and by those close to them. Hell, if they're good enough they may even get awarded by the President of the United States. There is no shortage of praise given for those men and women who put their lives on the line, but we don't have enough days in the year to handpick out every soldier who did a great job and give them all holidays. Is Chris Kyle more special to us than the 3,493 Medal of Honor recipients we've awarded for their dire moments of courage and bravery during battle? No, he's not better than them. We shouldn't put him singly on his own pedestal simply because he has a movie about his life. He was a great man, like many who came before him, and he should be honored on Memorial Day with them.

With that in mind, if Chris Kyle deserves to have his own holiday, why was Johann “Hans” Breyer arrested in Philadelphia and held without bail until he died in a hospital bed awaiting his extradition hearing for Germany? Both of these men were merely soldiers during a war performing orders handed down to them. Both men were mass murderers and national heroes to their own countries during the time. The one difference is that Johann Breyer would have been killed by Hitler for disobeying his orders if he didn't act them out. So we live in a country that simultaneously sends the message that if you're a fantastic soldier who kills a lot of people for another country during a war, we'll seek out war crimes against you and ship you off to whatever country wants your head. However, if you do the same job for us, you deserve a movie deal, a New York Times best selling book, and your own holiday? Talk about mixed signals.

Eat What You Kill

I am not a hunter. I have never been hunting. That is important for me to preface this post with that statement, because I don't want you to be under the impression that I have a dog in the fight. I believe in big game hunting, under the right conditions. 

The liberal media and it's activist zealots will have you believe that every animal is sacred. I disagree. Unless you are a vegan, you eat or have eaten beef. Do you know where your beef comes from? Do you worry about the lives of those animals, or only the majestic animals that society deems are inappropriate for us to kill?

The hamburger you ate for dinner started out on a ranch. If he was in Texas or Arizona, some of his herd probably died from the heat. If he was in the more northern states, some of them froze to death instead. If they survived the temperatures, they were afforded the luxury of getting branded with a fire iron, getting their testicles ripped away, and their horns were cut or burned off. 

Once their beautiful life on the ranch has come to an end, they get sent to a feedlot. Feedlots are these wonderlands of pure enjoyment, where the cows frolic in the feces-filled holding pens and get chronic digestive problems from the foods they're given to fatten up. The air is always fresh with ammonia and methane due to the amount of manure. We give them drugs though, to keep them breathing.

These are the animals society has deemed it okay for us to eat. Not only that, these animals have to be raised in these conditions and fed to us in this manner if we don't all intend to hunt and we wish to sustain ourselves on meat. There are simply too many people with too high demand of beef for us to raise the amount of cows we need in a hospitable environment. However, there isn't a public outcry for the thousands of these cows every year that live an existence of torture and abuse. We instead focus on big game hunters who kill one lion in Africa and take a picture with it. 

First and foremost, the African lion is not endangered. That is a common misconception. The Obama administration has recently proposed listing the animal as threatened. If it is listed as threatened, it will still be legal to kill those lions even in America with the proper permits, but I'm not here to argue semantics. If it were to be listed as endangered or threatened and outlawed, of course I'm all for preservation of the species, but we aren't there yet. 

I don't believe in hunting these animals purely as a trophy. However, I do believe that as long as you eat the meat and it isn't illegal to hunt, I don't care what animal you kill. Why do we treat these predators as a majestic animal who deserve a more dignified death than the deer, cows, or pigs we kill regularly? I think the public has a delusion that the majority of the animals in the wild live a full life to begin with. While a bullet in the head is not the most humane way to go, the savage lifestyle of living as a free-range animal predominantly lends itself to dying either by starvation, weather conditions, or being eaten alive. They don't usually grow old and die like we assume. Darwinism is the most evident in these species. 

What is wrong with your balls?

The NFL has been in the news a lot this season. I already wrote about the Ray Rice issue. There are a ton of pressing issues in the league right now. A lot of players have addiction issue, there are PED’s being used, and more and more domestic violence claims unsettled. With all of this going on the powers that be are attacking the Patriots for deflating footballs during the game.

During the AFC championship game on Sunday January 18, 2015, between New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, the New England Patriots used balls that were under-inflated. They were not inflated to the league minimum. When a ball is under inflated it gives the players a better grip on the ball. The quarterback can get a better grip for passing the ball and the receivers can catch the ball better. From where I sit this did not cost the Indianapolis Colts the game.

The referee’s inspected the balls at half time. They noticed the balls were under-inflated and replaced them with balls that met the requirement. After this happened the New England Patriots still outscored the Indianapolis Colts 28-0 in the second half. If you are looking at throwing a game out because of an issue that could have impacted the game, then look at how the game went after the issue was noticed.

The other issue I have with this is people calling for a ban from the Super Bowl for the Patriots. You have got to be fucking kidding me. What happens when you do this? Do you just award the Seattle Seahawks the game? Do you make them champions on the count of forfeit? Do you put in the Colts who, after the balls were discovered as being altered, didn’t play well enough to win the game? If you want to fine the Patriots, suspend some people, take away draft pick, or all three then that is fine. Just think about things before you start handing out ridiculous punishments. Although it wouldn’t be the first time the NFL dropped the ball if they get this one wrong too. However, this is just the opinion of one asshole. It won’t amount to much in the long haul. It makes me feel better to get it off my chest though.

Remembrance Day

In Canada, Rememberance Day is today. It is the day that our nation honours the veterans who have served and sometimes even gave their lives for us. Last week I was at my childrens' school, watching the Rememberance Day assembly. My daughter's grade two class was doing the presentation. They read from some scripts and sang a couple of songs. I was very proud of my little girl. My youngest though, struggled to appreciate the solemnity of the situation. Forty-five minutes is a long time to be quiet and still when you're four. He wriggled, rambled, played loudly with his toys, and generally did the things a kid his age does.

Rememberance Day hits pretty close to home for me. My grandfather and his father-in-law before him both served during wartime. (My great-grandpa had a bullet scar on his butt cheek to prove it. Not that I would have asked him to...) My friend spent almost a year in Afganistan during the most violent part of that conflict. It took him months to adjust to regular life, or as much adjustment as he'll ever be able to have. I deeply respect what they and so many others have given to the rest of us. With that in mind, you'd think I'd be freaking out on my twitchy little man. I did my best to keep him quiet and calm, but I didn't take his outbursts as show of disrespect. I actually felt the opposite. 


The fact that, at that moment, my son's biggest problem in life was that he just dropped his toy was a wonderful thing. He didn't understand why we were all quietly gathered in that school gym. He doesn't know what war is, or it's terrible costs. He's never seen anyone get shot, unless he walks in while we watch a grown up show. Everyone he can ever remember meeting lives in peace. I can't describe how I felt when I realized what a gift that truly is. 


I know the world's far from completely peaceful. And yeah, lately, even Canada hasn't escaped the threat of terror. (RIP to our two home soil casualties.) But we live in an era that knows greater peace than any time before, thanks to the sacrifices of thousands of men and women. I know it's not nearly enough, but thank you. I'll never forget.

America's Healthy Diet of Fear

 As I hear of small towns in Texas and Oklahoma that have turned away children who have visited Africa due to a fear of Ebola, which is likely as fake as the story about the 17 schoolchildren who have contracted the disease, I am reminded that Americans especially live on an exceptional high amount of fear and hysteria. Before it was Ebola, it was Obama taking our guns, ISIS, creepy clowns who are taking photographs, the immigrants crossing our borders, or almost every other article any given news media outlet puts out in a given day.

The part of this I don't get is the people who act as if this hasn't always been the way we live. I see articles like this one, who say openly that Americans haven't always lived in fear. I disagree completely. I think if you look at our past, you'll find that there was never a time since America was established that white men didn't thrive off a heavy dosage of fear-mongering and scare tactics.

Our first and most brutal enemy wasn't Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden. From approximately 1622-1924 we were at war with the American Indian. While we systematically exterminated many of their forces and drove them from their lands, propaganda spread throughout America that the real terrorist was, in many cases, the victim. We ran them out of their villages, murdered them, made treaties and broke them. Meanwhile, we spread a message that the Indians were savages who would burn down your ranch, rape your wife, kill your cattle, scalp your head, and enslave your children. We were the ones who brought the smallpox epidemic and had more guns. We were the ones to be afraid of.

I guess they couldn't find the picture where he was cuddling babies?

We created a fear of the Indians, because even then we understood that if our people were afraid of our enemies, they'd allow us to go above and beyond the law to justify our actions. The same reason The Patriot Act went through and was allowed to exist in 2001 also entitled early settlers to drive out our original arch-nemesis in 1901: those pesky redskins.

After we decimated them, we needed a new nightmare to keep our people in check. Along came the Japanese on Sunday, December 7, 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered into World War II. By this time we were delivering our media in new and exciting ways. We had invented the radio. So much false reporting and misinformation was coming out of radio reports that CBS Radio came out with a counterpropaganda program called Our Secret Weapon, where Rex Stout would separate fact from fiction and also use the most exaggerated lies of the week to entertain the public.

Hollywood looked to draw money off the current agenda, so they replaced the normal villains in their films with Japanese and Nazis. Depicted as monsters without compassion, the films caused Hollywood to lose its foreign market. However, without the trouble of worrying about boycotts now, since those other countries weren't paying attention, they could paint other nationalities any way they liked without consequence.

As World War II came to close, America found a new fear of the Russian persuasion. The Cold War was upon us. Our country had just got out of World War II and needed a new reason to fear the Soviet Union, so word spread of the threat of nuclear attack. In elementary schools, students regularly did drills where they "prepared" for an atomic bomb. Communist rule threatened the very fabric of the American way of life in our country.

The point I'm making is that fear-mongering in America is nothing new. We've been afraid since the days when we were settlers out on the prairie. After the Cold War, segregation was the order of the day. While the Civil Rights Movement was taking place, the Vietcong were savage animals who wanted to eat our young during Vietnam.

The only thing that has changed over the years is how we ingest our media. Now it's all on Facebook. With the advent of social media, stupid people are allowed to spew nonsense at us constantly and repeatedly. This steady stream of bullshit gets regurgitated back at the public, because people are gullible idiots and the Share button is their best friend. Thus, fear-mongering is building because it isn't just the mass media trying to scare us, it's also your childhood friend who doesn't realize the satirical news site he's quoting is false. As long as none of us are doing research on what we're supporting, we have no one to blame but ourselves.


"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." - Dorothy Thompson

The Battle Will Rage On Forever.

I was sitting in Psychology class today and we were discussing bullying. This is a very sensitive topics these days with all the children committing suicide or running up in schools with weapons. We were all just talking about what makes a bully tick. Is it a broken home, abusive parents, were they bullied at a younger age, is there a mental issue, or do they just take pleasure in hurting someone else, physically and/or emotionally? This is a topic I think should be covered but that isn’t going to be in this article.

One of my classmates brought up the fact that things have gotten worse in school since they took the bibles out of schools. Now let me be perfectly clear on this, I don’t care what type of religion you practice. I don’t care if you have a lack of religion. You can practice and worship whatever you want. That is part of the freedom America affords you. That is why men and women die on the front lines every day. They die so that you can have the freedom to do whatever the hell you want at any time.

Now on to what I do care about. I care about the freedom to not have to be subjected to your religion if I don’t want to. I care about not turning the morning announcements into a situation that is going to make even one person feel uncomfortable. If you want to pray in school then I say fine. If you want to read a bible verse in school, fine. However, if you are going to read from one religious book then you should read from a book from every religion that has a member of that religion in your school.

Is it too much to ask that people respect others enough not to shove their religion or beliefs down someone else throat? A prime example of what pisses me off about this stuff is this right here. A local school wanted to have a prayer session before every sporting event. Alright cool, if no one complains about it then feel free. Well this is where the issue comes in folks. Someone felt uncomfortable that they were being subjected to something that they didn’t believe in and they complained. Was it a valid complaint? Hell I don’t know. That information never got released. I don’t know if they were being an asshole or if they really were offended because they didn’t believe in prayer or they had a different religion than what was being thrown around at this present time.

Well as all the smoke cleared around this complaint the school decided not to have prayer over the PA system and have a silent prayer on the track around the field. You would think that was a compromise right? Oh hell no it wasn’t. Someone at the event thought it would be a good idea to call the news and bring attention to the fact they were having prayer before the game and it was threatened by ONE person who didn’t want it to happen. Now I went to this school when I was in high school. This is an area driven on the idea of community. This is an area where people used to love each other no matter what they did. This is an area that used to lift people up when they felt down or were facing a difficult situation. This is an area I used to be proud to call home. Now I am disappointed to see this once great community reduced to making such a spectacle of this situation.

I said all of that to say this. Has it really gotten that bad in today’s society that we have to make people feel like an outcast because they don’t believe the same thing we do? Do we have to make people feel less than just because they don’t live by the same moral code? People say this nation was based on Christianity and call America a Christian nation. Is this how the good book says people should act? I don’t do a lot of reading through the bible these days but I do know this, God never turned anyone away. Hell when Jesus was hanging on the cross he was forgiving two criminals that hung beside him. People say they have Christian principles and some actually do. I find that most are just judgmental people who find happiness in making others feel like shit. If you are going to claim to be something then abide by the principles it is based on. Otherwise you are just a hypocrite. I know this one jumped a little all over the place but I had to get this one off my chest.