Give the people what they want!

Here we go again, yet another sports figure being investigated for using a banned substance. It makes me shake my head in absolute wonder. When will the sports governing bodies realize that the average Joe sitting on the sidelines simply doesn’t care if the athlete is a roid-enhanced machine? They simply want to see the athlete perform in such a manner that is amazing.

DENVER (AP) -- The NFL says it is conducting a comprehensive review of allegations that Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning had human growth hormone delivered to his house.

When football players collide, those of us watching want to hear our guy smash the bones of the other guy, Dick Butkus style. Of course, after the Sports Medicine people finally get the guy on his feet, we want to cheer their bravery with giddy abandon. Geeze, we don’t want the guy to die, you know what I mean? We just want him out of the game and if he’s on the other team and really a threat to us winning, we want him out for the season… unless he’s one of our fantasy footballers!

“I'm not so mean. I wouldn't ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.” Dick Butkus

To me the real issue with Peyton Manning isn’t his (supposed) human growth hormone use; it’s the threat of him losing his lucrative advertisement deals. Talk about a hit below the belt! Geeze, that could be catastrophic! What? You didn’t know all these organized sporting events are about money for investors?

All of it is money driven, so why not give the audience what they want? Bigger, faster athletes who hit harder, jump further, throw longer, and can do feats worthy of our dollars, because that is what we want to see. We crave icons to worship and discuss our heroes ad nauseum at work and in the sports bars. As a sidebar, I used to listen to the guys at work spew out their intimate knowledge of players, games, and strategies and wonder why they were wasting their time only making a hundred thousand dollars a year at a chemical plant.

I say level the playing field and reinstall the 300 plus world class athletes who have been banned for “performance-enhancing drugs” that many of us take every day. Yea, that nose-inhaler you must have every day would bump you onto this list. That over the counter drug you bought last week to help open up your lungs so you can breath? Blam! You’re out and… disgraced!

Here it is and it has disqualified a number of athletes: Pseudoephedrine is a sympathomimetic drug of the phenethylamine and amphetamine chemical classes. It may be used as a nasal/sinus decongestant, as a stimulant, or as a wakefulness-promoting agent. 

When Lance Armstrong was dethroned, I asked my cousin in law, who is a Nordic cycler from Denmark about it and he told me straight-up that “they all do it in one form or another, or they can’t remain competitive at that level.” I say open it up.  Let them all do it. Of course, that would put many people out of business, as sports is a big business – but –it would open up new avenues to make money and just think about the toy industry action figures that would come out of this new phenomenon!

Mixed martial arts and Wrestle Mania type venues have proved that people want to see monsters in sports. They don’t care if they are good people; nope, not one bit. They want to see violence and in excessive amounts. That’s why the program America’s Funniest Home Videos is so popular. People doing stupid things in such an excessive manner that they get hurt. The more violent they fall, the higher the pleasure meter goes it seems.

Take the recent K/O of Rhonda Rousey as an example. There she was, queen of the Mixed Martial Arts Octagon until she got her hiney handed to her by Holly Holm in about 15 seconds. All the Rousey worshipers dropped her faster than Holm’s did. People don’t care about these athletes when they fail; they just want to see dramatic action. If steroids will bump up this action, bring it on!

The day when JJ Watt can no longer perform, he will be just another failed athlete and folks will be looking at the next super hero. Would it make a dimes worth of difference if all these athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs for the last 3 years? I say no. Not a dimes worth. As long as they can amaze people with their athletic skill, people wouldn’t care.

All these disqualifying substances are so last century anyway and doomed when neural implants begin to be introduced into athletes and the general population. Remember when The Matrix’s Neo learned karate, kung-fu, jujitsu, boxing, etc in about ten seconds? All he really needed was the conditioning to pull it off. When a baseball batter knows every pitch that is coming at him and can calculate his reaction, the idea of a performance-enhancing drug giving him an advantage sounds pretty silly and antiquated.

The truth is we are drug obsessed in this country. This latest news of Peyton Manning is just one more example of how out of touch with reality we are. Probably 75% of us would be banned from organized sports for something we are taking, either from the doctor, or over the counter. I say let em have em. The time has come.

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Is owning a gun really a bad thing?

Come and take it.

I grew up in a gun-owning family.  As far as I know, I am the only one of us 7 who has ever pointed a real gun at someone with the intention of pulling the trigger. My first firearm was a single shot 12 gauge Savage shotgun my Dad or Mom won at a turkey shoot in Woodstock, Georgia.  I was 14. My brother Gordon was one year younger than me and they bought him one identical to the one I got.

At the onset I want to clarify something. If you are anti-gun and agree that Americans shouldn’t have the Constitutional right to own a firearm or form a militia, then this column won’t change your mind. However, if you sit on that one inch of board and could fall to one side of the voting fence or the other, then read on.

Owning a firearm is an amazing right. It is not something that should be taken lightly.  A right by definition is a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way.

It’s a privilege also, which by definition is a special advantage, immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all. You see, if you are a convicted felon, you cannot own a firearm, albeit with a few exceptions. But for the most part, you have lost that right and that privilege.

But let’s say for arguments sake that for the most part you are a law-abiding citizen. Occasionally you drive faster than the speed limit or jaywalk, but within the scope of this line of thought, you are not a criminal. Our constitution allows you to own a firearm and this is in the second amendment: A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

The amazing thing about this amendment is how it addresses our future government’s possible ability to try and nullify it. "Any and all laws, rules, regulations, proclamations, etc., Pro or Con, which may be entered in the record, addressing these freedoms are unconstitutional". This was put into our constitution to protect us from a tyrannical government. What?

Indeed. We have finally arrived at a place where the government does not represent the bulk of voting America. Once in office, they do everything in their power to support the party they are affiliated with, regardless of what their voter’s desire may be. Donald Trump is gaining velocity because he will not align himself with this self-serving single party nonsense.

Hillary protected by men with guns, but is anti-gun for you and I.

On January 5^th, he is quoted as telling Hillary Clinton that if she feels so strongly against citizens having guns, then she should dismiss her bevy of secret service agents. She won’t do it because her life matters, but according to her, yours apparently don’t. I have stressed this same logic many times over.

Now here’s the real kicker.  All of this talk about gun ownership and whether law-abiding citizens can own and carry guns has no effect whatsoever on organized crime, common violent criminals, and people who are just angry bat crazy.  Tightening gun laws will have no effect on them and only serve to disarm those of us who want a first line of defense to protect our families and ourselves.

But let’s back up a bit.  As a long time martial artist, I want to bring out a point about resisting an attacker.  Owning a gun and having a permit to carry it is only half of the equation and the second half can’t be purchased or tested in a classroom.  This is the terrible truth of carrying a legal firearm or having it for home defense when confronted by an attacker.

The time may just come when someone will call your bluff and break into the house you’ve told everyone you will defend with a gun.  “I’ll blow them away!” may just be put to the ultimate test of taking another human’s life and folks; this is not something you ever want to have happen to you.  But if that time comes, you better make danged sure you can pull that trigger, or put that gun away right now and get a Rottweiler.

This cannot be taught and tested in a open carry, boxing, mixed martial art, or karate class.  You can either do it, or you can’t and waiting to find out when you need to do it is a might weak strategy.  Most of us live under a moral code of conduct which a crazed person or a criminal does not. In my mind’s eye I have envisioned bracing this kind of person so many times I cannot number them and I believe I can pass that horrifying test, but maybe not. I have before, but what about next time, or the time after that?

However, I still want the constitutional right and privilege to decide if I can own and carry a firearm. I do not want the Federal government making that decision for me. In the meantime I can keep my firearm safely on my hip or in my home and no one is harmed by my possession of the gun and it will stay that way.

*Quote from Wikipedia

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The Fickle Finger of Fate

Fate; the predisposition or predetermination of our life, or what some say is inevitability in or on our path.  “It is what it is and you can’t change it Becky.” 

I don’t buy it.  Not completely anyway.  I’m sorry if you do, but I just can’t; just like I don’t believe no matter what I do, I am going to step in that hot blob of grape bubble gum in the Ug-Lee’s Boudin parking lot.  For reasons I won’t bore you with, I simply believe a whole lot of my life is in my own hands.  If I put myself in harm’s way, why would I be surprised it that limb smacks me in the mouth? 

Sure, that fellow in the bright yellow lifted Ford F-250 running a red light is a very real threat, but does that mean I can’t avoid it, or that no matter where I am, I will get t-boned by one of many distracted guys because fate would make me drive to a particular intersection? 

Uh, no.  No. Nope.  However, when I am stopped by a train, or miss my turn-off, I have often thought it might just be the work of the Lord to keep me from harm’s way, so maybe I believe in fate more than I am willing to admit.

There is not a single day goes by that my macabre 6^th sense of mortality doesn’t question me if this is THE day.  I blame it on my years of “Do” training - the way of the warrior.  You see, way back when, when I began learning how to defend myself, I began practicing a method to keep myself from harm’s way.  “What?  You didn’t train to stomp the innards out of people?”  That is partially correct, but the truth is the path I chose was one of self-defense and in martial arts, this, to me, is the most honorable.

I won’t please many MMA followers when I say that I view mixed martial arts contests the same way I view cock and pit-bull fights and with the same lack of admiration.  Mixed martial arts have turned martial arts training into a vulgar form of entertainment reminiscent of throwing Christians to the lions or gladiators hacking each other to death.

There is no “Do”; no way of the warrior.  The Do of martial arts is a balance, a Yin-Yang of good and bad.  Fighting and healing.  If you know how to hurt someone, you MUST know how to heal them.  Bruce Lee was and still is the consummate example of martial arts fighting, but there is so much more to the man, than the guy who does a flying side kick in the current commercial.

Bruce Lee was a calligrapher, had a keen knowledge of healing herbs, an expansive library of books…and was a champion ChaCha dancer.  He had balance in his physical and spiritual training and skills everyone envied, but suddenly died by misadventure when he took medicine for a headache.  Was it fate or an accident?  I don’t know and I don’t care.  He lived life to the fullest until something happened to end it.

I want to live like that and I’ll be danged if it is something stupid that I could have avoided ends it all and thus my method of self-preservation.  It’s why I actually stop at a red light before turning right, or look both ways 3 times before entering an intersection.  It may also be the reason I’ve never caused a car wreck.  I don’t rubber neck because I don’t want to wreck.

I was actually the back seat passenger in a car one time where the driver was so caught up in his own story-telling and looking over the back of seat that he hit a kid on a bicycle.  Of the 4 people in the car, I was the only one who saw the kid, who incidentally was bumped off the side of the road along with his bike and rolled to safety.  We stopped of course, after the driver loudly questioned, “What was that?”

“It was a kid on a bike and you just hit him,” I loudly exclaimed and his wife, who was also in the front seat, but not watching the road, began to scream.  “What should I do?” he cried out.  “Turn around and lets go help him,” I commanded.  In the driver’s defense, the kid had suddenly rode out into the lane, but he never saw the kid one way or the other.  Was it fate or just distracted driving?

In today’s relaxed take on everything a whole lot of people blame fate for their own miserable consequences.  Like one guy I know who got his 4^th DWI and failed in his effort to buy off the judge (the first 3 times he was successful with $10,000).  His response in front of us was this:  “I don’t have a drinking problem, I am just unlucky.  Everyone else is doing it and I get caught.”  On any given day, his car looked like it had ran the Baja race.

Fate or bad luck or both?  Yea, sure.  I guess I do believe a little bit in fate, but in the meantime, I am going to continue on the path of my Do training to keep my body safe.  Note, this column does not include my spiritual training and that is a whole ‘nother level deserving it’s own 900 words.