Unpopular Opinion: I'm Tired of the Mannings

What do the Mannings and Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" have in common? 

Oversaturation. 

I'm a big fan of Pearl Jam, but back when music videos were a staple of a young person's life, the constant airing of the music video of "Jeremy" ruined the song for me. 

It's a great song. However, Mtv at the time had that video in heavy rotation. It seemed like it played once an hour. 

It was relentless. 

To this day, it's not a song I enjoy much from one of my favorite bands. 

As much as it's clear the both Mannings were hall-of-fame quarterbacks in the NFL and had strong college-football careers [a little overhyped in my opinion, but I'm an Alabama alumnus], I cannot take the constant onslaught of their long faces looking at me from the TV screens. 

Whether it's the various damn commercials in which they're shilling for this and that or whether it's their Monday Night Football watch-along show, I've had enough. 

Oversaturation. 

I thought once their careers were over that they'd get less air time. 

I obviously guessed horribly wrong. 

I've seen enough of them for my lifetime. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I am against a verbal trend among sport broadcasters. When a player suffers an injury, many of these talking heads leave off the word "injury" in their reporting. For example, a broadcaster could be talking about a player who has an ankle injury, and the person says the player has "an ankle." Of course he has an ankle. In fact, he has two of them. What he has is an ankle injury, not an ankle. 

I think I've also complained about how sports commentators like to use the term "washed" for the extra syllable phrasing of "washed up." If someone is washed, that term means they've undergone some kind of cleansing process. Washed up means that a player is no longer playing at the level of play he or she is accustomed to. 

Tottenham Hotspur sacked Nuno. I liked Nuno because he was not a bullshitter, but he was not the right man for the job, unfortunately. It sounds like they're in talks with Conte. 

The debacle last night in the Twin Cities makes me question why I ever became a Vikings fan. They lost to a team led by a QB who had only thrown three passes in the NFL. Zimmer better start winning, or he's going to be out of job like Nuno.

Random Notes from a Crank

We spent over a week in Panama City Beach, Florida for a travel baseball tournament. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we caught the end of a tropical storm, so many of our games were delayed and moved to later days. 

We went to a tournament that had teams from over 20 states, but every team we played was from Georgia. How annoying. 

With one team we played early on, their head coach and fans displayed the worst sportsmanship and fan behavior I've ever seen. The head coach should have been ejected. He was constantly bitching about balls and strikes and was a whiny, mumbling mess when he was coaching at third base. 

They stopped the game for a while because they thought our team were getting strikes that weren't strikes. But they were legitimate strikes. And he mumbled something about our team having the umps "in our pocket."

Yes, that's it. Prior to driving 12-13 hours, we somehow found out the refs we would have in pool play and paid them off. We paid off refs from Florida when we're from east central Illinois. Yes, that's the ticket. 

Thankfully, that band of assholes got bounced out early from the tournament because they lost their next two games in elimination play. 

Jackasses. 

If you're from Georgia, you should really be worrying about the state government curbing your voting rights - not balls and strikes. 

Driving home through the Florida Panhandle was annoying with so many clowns still having their Moscow Don signs up. Whenever I see campaign signs for that clown, all I think is "Losers." 

After a long delay, Tottenham finally a new manager, former head coach of the Wolves, Nuno Espirito Santo. 

Nuno wasn't obviously the first choice of the Spurs, but he might be the guy they actually need. 

Having watched the Wolves for a good while, his teams didn't exactly have the "free-flowing" acumen that some of the other possible managers' squads epitomize. But we'll see how he adapts to the squad the new managing football director (Paritici) puts together. 

The transfer scene will be full of speculation for the Spurs. The biggest question mark is what happens with Harry Kane. Man City have already offered 100 million for him, which Tottenham rejected. But I'd take a sweetened deal for Kane for that money with Sterling and Stones thrown in. 

The more interesting movement to watch is which players move to other clubs (Aurier, Winks, et al.) and which players they bring in. From what I read recently, Paratici has already been hard a work trying to find center backs and a striker. I'd like to see them sign Connor Coady from Wolves. 

Hopefully Nuno will get Doherty playing like he has in the past for him. And I hope Nuno gets Dele Alli back to being the player he can be. 

Nuno is known for working with what he's got and not bitching about what he doesn't have. I want to see Doherty, Rodon, Dele, Bergwijn, and Tanganga improving in a significant fashion. 

And for me, I want to see Lo Celso and Ndombele working together well in midfield. 

Random Notes from a Crank

The other day a friend on Facebook shared a listicle about left handers. One of the few surprises of that click bait was that only 10% of the population is left handed. That's astonishing to me. Only 10 flippin' percent. How is that even possible? I know back in the bad old days, people would "turn" lefties into righties for various stupid, inane, and insane reasons. But you'd think so-called progress would catch up and produce more lefties in this world. 

As you can tell, I'm a southpaw. 

It's not surprising the Raiders got approved to move to Las Vegas. Not soon after the news hit, there are various articles featuring a businessman who is providing the Pirate's Booty Sports Brothel. 

I need to start reading Informed Comment by Juan Cole more often. I've now put it on my "Blog Roll." Check out "The Simple Number That Will Defeat Trump's Attempt to Roll Back Obama Energy Policies." 

In the March issue of Harper's, the magazine has an excerpt from Simple Sabotage Field Manual put out in 1944 by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, which is a manual intended for people living in "enemy states" at the time. What I find darkly humorous about the manual is that many of the recommendations I see happening in organizations -- both public and private, both government and industry -- all the time. Here are some juicy snippets related to to the behavior and actions of Employees, Managers and Supervisors, and Organizations and Conferences (which I quote in full):

• Employees: "When you go to the lavatory spend a longer time there than is necessary." 
• Managers and Supervisors: "To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions."
• Managers and Supervisors: "Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done." 
• Organizations and Conferences: "Make 'speeches.' Talk at great length, illustrate your 'points' with long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. Haggle over precise wordings of communications. When possible, refer all matters to committee for 'further study and consideration.' Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible." 

Random Notes from a Crank

The July-August issue of Mother Jones has a solid trio of articles people should read. 

The first, "This is Your Brain on Smog," relates the scientific studies that are linking air pollution to dementia. 

The second, "The End of Punishment," provides a different take on the bad kids (or just kids in general) and how educators and other folks should deal with them. It's possible the type of punishment schools have been using just makes things worse.

The third, "The Natural," details the exploits of Allen Hershkowitz, the NRDC, and Hershkowitz's Green Sports Alliance in getting sports franchises and whole leagues to be more sustainable and thereby save money. 

Today is National Left Handers Day. Being a southpaw, I'm happy we have our own day amongst the tyranny of a right-handed world. This article explains seven points most people don't know about handedness. To celebrate southpaws though, check out this article from USA Today about fourteen of the greatest lefty athletes.