Author: ethomasparham

LOW LIFE

On By ethomasparhamIn K. PHILOSOPHY, M. POLITICSLeave a comment

At one point, a fighter took the mic and made a nasty joke about Michelle Obama while standing in front of the house she once lived in with her husband, daughters and mother.

Even for a president with a lifelong penchant for P.T. Barnum-esque gambits, this one was in a league of its own. (NEW YORK TIMES )

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Raylan Givens: Sometimes, we have to make deals with lowlifes because we have our sights set on life forms even somehow lower on the ladder of lowlife than they.
(JUSTIFIED )

HACKALOOSKI REVISITED

On By ethomasparhamIn C. COLLEGE TENNIS and INSTRUCTIONLeave a comment

“I learned to listen to an old man, who had been there, even though I didn’t think he knew much. ” ( Thomas Linne, 1984 ).

This was a comment from one of my players after our team won The NAIA national championship.

My son and I discussed how to advise his 10 year old tennis aspirant. Recently I reminded them of two suggestions I felt were very sound for any level of player:

!. Hit your first serve UP enough.

2. Play AHEAD. 40-15 and 30 -0 points. Up a break. Up a set and a break.

Play ahead, Stay ahead.

Often players grind out a tough point to get AHEAD. Winded or tired they then take an unwise shot.

****Develop this better thought : “Okay –I may be tired but they are too. If I grind out this point too, the odds go way up in my favor.

Believe an old man.

HACKALOOSKI–WHEN A LIMITED PLAYER TELLS A GOOD PLAYER WHAT TO DO.

Even the great players often play these “aheads” too loosly.

Believe an old man.

THE FAMILY NAIA FRENCH OPEN

On By ethomasparhamIn HUMOR/ ODDS AND ENDS, S. FAMILYLeave a comment

My Grandson just won the Family NAIA French Open .

  1. We have a spin wheel for order of the draft. #1 gets first pick. The one who draws last makes their pick and also the next pick, with the draw order in reverse back to #1.

2. Any event is okay. If you pick Men’s Singles, coaches continue the draft of the total field until you have selected SIX players for your team.

3. Once the tournament begins, your team gets one point for each match your six players win. The six with the most wins is the Champion.

LENNOX WON THE FRENCH

“GRAVEN IMAGES?”

On By ethomasparhamIn Wilson, RaceLeave a comment


2) “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” This command is against making an idol, a visible representation of God. There is no image we can create that can accurately portray God. To make an idol to represent God is to worship a false god.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTLESS

On By ethomasparhamIn E. SPORTS COMMENTARY1 Comment

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTLESS

I chose the history of football for my first term paper topic.  Early 1950’s. 

FOOTBALL by Chuck Klosterman (2026 ) is available.  He adds a lot to “kicking the head of the Dane.”

 Mr. Klosterman’s work is unique, well written, thorough, and entertaining.  And frightening. 

He covers sports history, great players and coaches, teams, and fans.

He covers controversial topics (CTE and injury, Gambling, NIL and PORTAL dangers, Salary,  owners, TV limits. Plus others. ) 

Here are some samples:

 HIS GOAL ( page 11 )

*“This is an expository obituary, published before the subject has died, delivered by someone who wants to explain why the victim mattered so much to so many, despite so much evidence to the contrary.”

 On the future of football:  People will always need to watch football.

*“This,  I must concede is true—if the scenario I described were happening today.  But it is not happening today.   It is something that will happen in the future, to different people, and those future people will not be like you.  They will live in a version of society where football stops and no one  cares.  And that is inevitably why I wrote this book.”

NOTE–Klosterman describes this “future scenario” in detail, later in the chapter entitled NUCLEAR  FOOTBALL.

CHILDHOOD ( page 57)

*“ In the summer after fifth grade, I spent a lot of time imagining me and my friends playing football and winning championships. These daydreams were not just mental visions”

Deja Vu. *My small high school played 6 man football.  Mr. Klosterman comments on this 

wide open variation of a game that was fun.  ( Page 77 )

“But 6-man is its own animal, too arcane to be seen as the bastardized version of anything else. It’s structured bedlam with jankier rules….

EDUCATION/TEACHERS (page 120 )

**Here’s what I mean;Let’s say the salary of every public school teacher was tripled over night. A third grade teacher making $45,000.00 a year on Monday is now making $135,000.00 on Tuesday. In the short term, that change would  make little  difference in how well third graders are educated. A teacher doesn’t become a different person just because their paycheck changes. But the long-term impact this would have on education would be seismic. The realization that becoming a public school teacher was now a six-figure profession would change the type of person who decides to pursue teaching as a vocation.

*Every member of society would live a life conditioned to believe that becoming a public school teacher was a rarefied human experience, reserved for the elite and worth whatever sacrifice was necessary in exchange.”

*Triple the average U.S. teaching salary and the public education system is reinvented within ten or twenty years.”

CANADIAN FOOTBALL  (page 208,209 )  

*“ I Love the people of Canada.  They are self-deprecating, well informed, and open to drinking in the afternoon.”  See Joke by Donald Sutherland.

2040 -THE FUTURE (page 246-249)

  • “ College football becomes  a less interesting version of pro football, nothing more than a feeder system for the NFL. That’s the part that is visible.  The invisible part is the corrosion of football participation at the high school level.” 

*So this is how the future will go….

For the next 5-15 years, football becomes eleven more dominant than it is right now. This, incongruously, results from the mismanagement of college football.  ( i.e. the Portal /NIL impact).


*Football is now an exclusively professional pursuit, watched and supported by millions of fans who have no personal relationship to the game itself.The sport has progressed to its social and economic end point. This is where the plane hits the mountain.

Economic escalation has made pro sports fragile.

The NFL’s total revenue hit one billion dollars for the first time in 1988. By 2065 the number will be two hundred billion, and the face value for a ticket will exceed $3000.00 .

*For more than a hundred years the NFL only got bigger and richer.  It was designed only for imperial expansion, which is the only thing it did.  But now it has to somehow get smaller, and that is something it cannot do..

  • “Somewhere in the middle of the current century there will be a panoramic realization about TV advertising.  The realization will be this : It doesn’t work, at least compared to what it costs.”
  • ”…and when it happens the reaction will be startling, unsuspected indifference.” “ ` ` ` ` `***********************************

This is a timely book.  

APROPROS?

On By ethomasparhamIn M. POLITICS, N. RELIGION, WAR, P. BOB DYLANLeave a comment

May 25, 2026–HAPPY 85TH, MR. DYLAN

1962 ? 2026 ?

Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times, they are a-changin’

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You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

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Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore

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“…if God is on our side

He will stop the next war.”

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Quotes from Bob Dylan


War:
“If God is on our side, he’ll stop the next war.” (With God on our Side)
“And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.” (License to Kill)
“Alright – where do you want this killing done?” (Highway 61)
“Is your money that good? Will it buy forgiveness? Do you think that it could?” (Masters of War)
“Things are breaking up out there, High water everywhere!” (High Water)
“Let’s disconnect the cables, over turn the tables. The place just don’t make sense
to me nor more.” (Senor)
“And I’ll tell it, and think it, and speak it and breath it.” (Hard Rain)

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I’m trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others, But oh, mother, things ain’t going well

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May you have a strong foundation, When the winds of changes shift

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“Bury the rag deep in your face, for now is the time for your tears.” (Hattie Carol)

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Something is happening here, But you don’t know what it is, Do you Mister Jones.

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”Is your money that good? Will it buy forgiveness? Do you think that it could?

**********

Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.—

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“There’s a big gaping hole in my chest where my heart was,
and a hole in the sky where God used to be.
My American dream fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means. You tell me what it means.”
Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson

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Here it is in ascii text for pasting onto the digital refrigerator.

Bob Dylan, on 80 years old

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize recipient

The best thing

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move.

Here it is in ascii text for pasting onto the digital refrigerator.

Bob Dylan, 85

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize recipient

The best thing

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move.