thewingnut.com A.J. Hunt’s dusty little corner of the web…

The irony of ‘sports’…Posted by The Wingnut on June 30th, 2011

I’m amazed at the number of people who live vicariously through sports teams.

On one hand, I understand that it’s a part of identifying with where you’re from, having pride in your home team, so forth.  On the other hand, consider this:  You’re watching multi-millionaires being paid to play.

Allow that to sink in.  Nearly every person on the field in a professional televised ball sport gets paid enough in ONE game to support a family of four very comfortably just about anywhere in the United States for at least a year.

I’m not going for the class warfare angle here, really, I’m not.  I’m trying to point out that what we consider sport really doesn’t benefit anyone but the players, team owners, sponsors and the surrounding structure that they’re a part of.  Other than entertainment, what do you get out of watching a bunch of multi-millionaires spending the afternoon doing something everyone watching could enjoy doing themselves?  Why not go out and play the game yourself? There are some obvious answers to that question, ranging from disabilities to available time or other circumstances, but consider this;  you can do the same thing the pros are doing – granted, nowhere as well – for free.  Meaning it costs you nothing and nobody is paying you, either.

If you attend a game, it’s much more exciting, you’re there with the rest of the crowd.  It’s more of a group experience, you get caught up in the excitement.  That’s understandable.

Are we much different from the Romans watching the gladiators?  Sure, there’s no gore, and the gladiators were mostly slaves and prisoners, other than the occasional champion.  Is there really much of a difference?  People watch football for the hard hits, baseball for the spectacular plays, hockey for the fights, and…whoops, UFC is very Romans-in-the-Colesieum, isn’t it?

Why do we pay into a system that makes people who play millionaires?  We wear their colors, their jerseys,  we cheer their team, we have ‘pride’ in something that costs us money…for what?  This goes beyond being proud of your home team, especially in more recent history, since teams are increasingly changing their home cities.  There’s talk of the 49ers going to San Jose.  Numerous ball teams over the years have changed hometowns, some all the way across the continent.  Would you still be a Giants fan if they traded places with the Yankees?  The Giants came from New York, after all. could you bring yourself to become a Yankees fan if that’s the only baseball you could see at AT&T Park? I’m inclined to call it McCovey Park, it’s on McCovey Cove…a corporation paying to have their name put on a sports venue seems rather blasphemous, or at least unashamedly money-grubbing.  It’ll always be Candlestick to me, no matter who paid to have their name on it.

Point is, why have our pasttimes become something that we watch, and pay a lot of money to watch, to the point of the participants being obscenely rich?  We can play the sport and watch it for free.  Are we so desperate to be a part of something bigger than ourselves that we’ll ignore the irony of a bunch of millionaires running ’round in a multi-million dollar venue on perfectly manicured grass, or really expensive fake grass, for that matter?

I’m getting tired of ‘sports fans’.  ‘Fan’ being short for ‘fanatic’, maybe there is something to it.  Fanaticism makes people do funny things.

I’ll say this:  I will pay good money to see multi-milionaires do something I’m incapable of doing, and do it with something that cost millions, and proves it. F1, air racing, LeMans, rally racing,power boats, jet dragsters,  you better believe that if there’s millions of dollars flying around and the machinery involved soaked up a lot of that money, I’m going to be interested.  They’ve added a jets class at the Reno Air Races in recent years, it’s going to get really interesting 20 years or 30 years from now when afterburning ex-military hardware starts blasting around the pylons at 500 feet off the deck.

I don’t get ball sports.  I get motorsports.  Maybe that’s peculiar to me, but if  I’m really only interested in multi-millionaires competing against other multi-millionaires when there’s a danger of destroying millions of dollars in equipment.  Crashes are spectacular when one good hit wipes out $20 million worth of racing equipment.  Yeah, the drivers and owners and a lot of the team members all have massive bank accounts, but man, if the driver sneezes on a particularly difficult chicane or a nasty off-camber decreasing radius sweeper, those overstuffed pocketbooks are going to be cringing a lot more than the audience.  At least one small mistake will ruin those millionaires’ day and their bank account.

Keep wearing your jerseys and ballcaps, I’m going to the track…and I’ve been on the track, in a car, wearing a helmet and a firesuit, surrounded by a cage and telemetry equipment, wearing a harness, going faster than you’ve ever gone on a public road, all the while mere inches from other cars doing the same thing.  Now THAT is sporting.  Care to sit in front of the TV or in a stadium still?  If I’m going to pay money into a sport, I want it to pay back.

…but, I did it for free, sans the cost of driving to the track.  I have some people I’m very grateful to.

Burnout on the network…Posted by The Wingnut on March 23rd, 2011

I may not be alone here: The information age offers too much.  In the world of text messages, ever-present wireless access, smart phones and the ability to plug in just about anywhere, it’s almost a luxury to go off grid.

We’ve become a society of social animals, the problem is, actual human contact is reducing.  We’re content to text away mercilessly instead of actually picking up the phone and calling someone.  Heck, instead of walking next door to talk to your neighbor, just drop ‘em a line on Facebook.  I know couples that IM each other while on laptops in different rooms of their home.

All this for…convenience?  I’m not exactly an extrovert myself, I know I’m naturally inclined to entertain myself without the company of others, but isn’t there something intrinsically wrong here?

We have devalued human contact to the point of being content with tweets, texts and posts.  Human contact now is no longer worth the effort to go see someone when you can just spew some binary at them.  We’ve fostered a culture of laziness.  Let your thumbs do the talking.  By increasing the number of ways which we have to contact each other, what’s actually being said has reduced in value.  Talking to a friend is no longer meeting somewhere for lunch, it’s a few quick dashed-off texts in between spurts of work.  It’s considered a conversation to exchange a few posts on Facebook…and what are we exchanging?  A few funny photos, the occasional link, something funny that someone else said.

What happens in a power outage?  Hypothetical situation, the power goes out for a week.  Do you know your neighbors well enough to be supported by them and trust them with your safety?  Do you trust them enough to help them without fearing they’ll take advantage of you?  How long could you go without a computer, your cell phone, a TV?  When was the last time you sat down and enjoyed a book from cover to cover?

I’ve backed out of Facebook for a while and I’m writing more here in an effort not only to improve my literary skills, but in the hopes that a few of you will join me.  This is really just using another facet of the overall problem, but it’s a step toward quality instead of quantity.

- A.J.

Few and far between…Posted by The Wingnut on January 7th, 2011

I know I don’t put much up here, but so much has changed in the past year or so that I feel compelled to update.

I’m currently on long-term activation with the USAF, which essentially makes me active duty.  I’m at a turning point in my Air Force career; positions will soon open in my squadron for full-time civil employees.  I’m jockeying for one of those positions.  If I get one, I should have my career locked in until retirement, which will allow me to improve my education and experience as a crew chief / mechanic many times over.  I’ve got a goal of starting my A&P certification / training in the next two years.  Ultimately, I’d like to work on vintage warbirds, either maintaining or restoration, or perhaps both.  Who knows where my current career path will lead.

I’ve moved yet again to be closer to work; I’ve got a great apartment built in 1941 that fits all of my needs and then some.  I’m in Suisun Valley, which looks like a Steinbeck novel.  I’m loving it.

Life is good.