People need to stop hatin’. For those who may not be hip to hatin’, let me explain. Hatin’ is not so much the vile dislike of someone or something, it is four of the seven deadly sins rolled into one. Hatin’ is anger, envy, lust, and greed. It occurs when an individual or groups of individuals attempt to prevent the success of another because of jealousy or dislike. Hatin’ on someone is the desire to see that person fail.

Hatin’ has been around since the beginning of time. According to the Biblical story, Cain may have been the first ever hater. Cain, jealous that God accepted his brother Abel’s sacrifice and not his, killed Abel in cold blood. So began a long line of haters that has continued to today.

Oddly enough, religion and hatin’ seem to go hand and hand. Whenever a martyr has been killed, it was probably because of haters- haters who prevented the martyr from doing his or her thing. In history’s most infamous display of hatin’, Pilate had Christ crucified because Christ said he was the “King of the Jews.” Greek mythology is also full of hatin’, with jealous and angry gods holding down mankind and other less powerful gods out of spite.

Hatin’ is not confined to ancient times and religious stories. In the 1800s, John Wilkes Booth was definitely guilty of hatin’ when he shot Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, wrote the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and saved the nation after the Civil War. Still Booth showed no love by putting a bullet in the back of Lincoln’s head.

Also on the list of historical haters is Adolf Hitler. Hitler and the Nazis hated on anyone who did not have blond hair and blue eyes. Their quest to wipe out all non-Aryans and impose their will on the entire world was the most blatant case of hatin’ ever.

Currently, three decades removed from Woodstock and the Summer of Love, we again have a world full of haters. Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist cronies are an excellent example of modern day international haters. Even our own president, George W. Bush, displays hatin’ tendencies. Bush and his administration have made Saddam Hussein the victim of pure hatin’. Almost daily, Bush discusses war and removing Hussein from power. As a display of his own power, Bush threatens to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age every time Hussein strives to achieve something Bush doesn’t like. That’s hatin’ if it ever was.

Although there is hatin’ in politics and other serious aspects of the world, it is most prevalent in entertainment. Hatin’ has become a favorite pastime of many who are not in the spotlight. How long this hatin’ has gone on is a question that may never be answered. Were there jealous playwrights in Shakespeare’s day? Did other composers hate on Mozart or Bach- “Why does his majesty always have Beethoven play in his chamber? My symphonies are much better.”

Speaking of music, there is a recent trend that hatin’ be discussed in song. One of the earliest documented examples of lyrical hate is Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” Lynyrd Skynyrd responded to Young’s hatin’ on the South in their classic “Sweet Home Alabama.” These lyrical tit-for-tats have continued through to today (see Nas vs. Jay-Z, Eminem vs. The World). Sadly, as shown in the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., there are instances where lyrical hatin’ has lead to unfortunate real-life tragedy.

So as the calendar turns towards this holiday season, maybe people worldwide need to make a conscious effort to reduce hatin’. Anyone found hatin’ should be rounded up, forced to hold hands with those they are hatin’ on, and made to sing Kumbaya until their hate disappears. Maybe then can there be a chance of peace on earth.

Then, on the other side of this great land, we have an infestation of foreigners swarming through each and every crevice of our terribly porous border and attaching themselves to our neighborhoods, towns, cities, and public support systems. These leeches from the lower latitudes are unfairly suckling off the bosom of Lady Liberty and milking her dry.

To defend us against these two great plagues we have a bastion of public servants, many eager to pass laws that put the immediate and unrepentant stop to the floods debilitating our fair way of life.

In other words, from what I can gather, one political party is all for banning offshore drilling and the other wholeheartedly supports local rule of law on immigration.

And both are willing to go to court to ensure their way is the only way.

Yikes.

What happened to compromise, that ol’ great American tradition of giving a little to get a little? Where went the skill of bartering in public policy? When did politics become a zero-sum game?

That’s sad.

Ok, here is what I would like to see happen:

I would like to see one political party acquiesce to wholesale acceptance of their ideals. To bring back the days of  compromise seen during the 19th century. Sure, our most famous compromise,  The 3/5 Compromise, made a race of people less than whole, but as an ideal, compromise is a good thing.

I would like to see politicians create a policy that trades oil drilling privileges for states’ rights on immigration. Instead of holding tightly to their ideals for the sake of their party, policy makers could tackle two issues at one time.

For example, what would be wrong with banning 80% of offshore drilling in exchange for a state being responsible for 80% of categories of immigrants trying to get into the nation through that state’s borders?

I know that is an awkward comparison, but by going to the table and being willing to give on the issues, policy makers have a better of chance of getting something and avoiding their law going to court, where issues are seen as yes or no, guilty or innocent, black or white, or life or death. There is no compromise in the judicial system, and that is a good thing.

The problem is that politicians are scared to bend on issues because they fear doing so would alienate them from their core voters and their financial contributions. Politicians fear they will voted out or even worse, lose party funding. But compromise is what America is founded on. Without it, we have a flurry of continuous fringe-funded uncompromising jostling, law flip-flopping, and a general loss of an overarching American vision.

Perhaps one way to consider an “offshore drilling ban for states’ rights on immigration law” compromise would be to consider the affect on regional economies. To turn people to dollars. How many economic dollars/jobs would be lost with continued oil spills? How many jobs would be lost with a continued flow of illegal immigrants? How many dollars would continued to be spent on public services for there illegal residents?

Comparing dollars to dollars and bringing back the Art of Compromise. It sounds so simple.

Of course, such a scenario would mean policy makers would have to agree on the economic numbers. Which is a whole other bag of worms.

Using Cork’s example, every so often I am going to take a look back at what I wrote on my old site, The Serious Tip, on any particular day. For lack of a better term, I’m going to call them “flashbacks”. Of course, because I didn’t write everyday over there, I can only “flashback” on anniversaries of days I wrote something, unless I want to celebrate writing nothing. Sort of like an “un-birthday”.

Two years today for example, I wrote a post entitled “Hey, Wait, I’m Blogging Sports Complaints“.  Inspired by then-Deadspin.com editor and Nirvana fan Will Leitch, I compared many of the first generation of sports blogs to the grunge bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I postulated that both early sports blogs and grunge bands had similar do-it-yourself chutzpah and “revolutionary” tendencies as well as a desire to “stick it to” the way their interest (music/sports) was packaged by the mainstream.

Of course, after I sent the finished post to Will Leitch, he posted a link to The Serious Tip on Deadspin.com and my post was read by thousands of Deadspin readers, one of whom wrote possibly the best comment I ever received in nearly four years of blogging:

Anonymous said…

I think 99% of the time this blog sucks complete ass. This though, was spectacularly average.

So swing on by and check out one of my favorite posts from The Serious Tip:

Hey, Wait, I’m Blogging Sports Complaints

Quick summary: The article summarizes the recent research on wormholes and black holes and how matter may never reach a supreme condensed density as Einstein predicted.

(Longtime readers should know I am a huge Einstein fan. It’s been a while, but I tried my hand at talking physics at my old site, compared Einstein’s theories to The Dark Knight, and read an 800 page bio on the man. He is, in my opinion, one of the smartest men to ever live, and one of the few I think smarter than I could ever be. Him, Stephen Hawking, and Miles Davis.)

To quote the Nat Geo article:

According to the new equations, the matter black holes absorb and seemingly destroy is actually expelled and becomes the building blocks for galaxies, stars, and planets in another reality.

That means the basic building blocks of matter as we know it may live forever. Although it may get tossed and turned and flipped and bounced like a sock in a series of connected driers, it will never cease to exist. And since, of course, Einstein proved that mass=energy then neither mass nor energy can be created nor destroyed (law of the conservation of energy, yo). Something will be somewhere forever.

Another subject I have seen a little bit about in regards to my odd fascination with Einstein is any Discovery, Science, or Nature Channel show on string theory, that super micro particles, billionths and billionths of a centimeter in size exist along gravitational planes called “strings”. Most of this stuff is over my head, but apparently these strings containing micro particles vibrate, causing the molecules to move. According to the almighty Wikipedia,

On distance scales larger than the string radius, each oscillation mode behaves as a different species of particle, with its mass, spin and charge determined by the string’s dynamics. Splitting and recombination of strings correspond to particle emission and absorption, giving rise to the interactions between particles.

An analogy for strings’ modes of vibration is a guitar string’s production of multiple but distinct musical notes. In the analogy, different notes correspond to different particles. The only difference is the guitar is only 2-dimensional; you can strum it up, and down. In actuality the guitar strings would be every dimension, and the strings could vibrate in any direction, meaning that the particles could move through not only our dimension, but other dimensions as well.

So there many very well be a natural rhythm to each subatomic particle. Which means, going up in the matter scale, there may be a natural rhythm to each atomic particle, molecule, cell, and other building block of things. Maybe Obi Wan Kenobi was right when he said there was “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” Maybe the Force is rhythm.

A few years ago, I read an article in Scientific American on the “natural ambient sounds” of animals and how human life and technological advancement has altered and even threatened how animals communicate with each other. According to the article, birds, reptiles, insects, and many other land dwelling creatures have had to change their bioacoustics and outshout, outbuzz, or outsing cars, airplanes, chainsaws, cannons, and other human inventions to get their mates’ attention.

Could these bioacoustics be caused by the mass amalgamation of the frequencies of each and every subatomic particle in a living thing? Could all these vibrating strings be in any way related to how we communicate or what frequencies we acknowledge as good or bad?

At the top of this post I uploaded a picture of a bunch of kids dancing at a Rays game a few weeks ago. Ever watch a toddler dance? I am always fascinated by watching my two-year old nephew jump, bounce, and boogie to whatever catches his fancy. He dances to everything from “The Ants Go Marching” and other kids songs to John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” to the soothing sounds of cartoon death metal band Dethklok. He doesn’t discriminate.

From what I have seen, most other kids are the same way. They don’t care if it’s country or rap or swing or Bulgarian wedding music. If they can dance to it, they will. And they don’t care about steps or the number of beats, they just move. Although I have never done it, I would guess that trying to predict a toddler’s next dance step or movement is about as difficult as trying to create a unified field theory for the actions of subatomic particles. Which is what frustrated Einstein for most of his life and eventually lead scientists to the creation of string theory.

Which makes me think there maybe a natural rhythm for human beings. After all, every culture has created its own music in some way shape or form. In many cultures it natural for music to be part of religious ceremonies and a way to touch or feel the supernatural and the holy. Maybe babies are more “tuned in” to this natural human rhythm and are less corrupted by the everyday sounds of everything we grown-ups have resonating in our world. Maybe for children the ignorance of the different beeps, tones, whistles, bells, horns, alarms, shouts, screams, buzzes, hums, rattles, and yells is a good thing. They have the ability to “feel” music better than we can.

Perhaps the hippies and beatniks of the 1960s were on to something when they said “turn on, tune in, and drop out“. Maybe all that LSD Timothy Leary was pushing was getting people to feel rhythms the way children feel them. Or maybe they were on a whole other rhythm. Maybe there are multiple frequencies we can force onto our brain cells just as many cosmologists think there are multiple universes. Maybe an LSD trip is nothing more than tapping into a frequency of an alternate universe, one that the person taking LSD has no prior experience in. Maybe there are universes that are more hostile to our thought process than others. Maybe some are more peaceful.

Maybe this explains heaven and hell.

Wow, it’s getting deep in here. And my head is starting to hurt.

Before I go, I have a joke. A few years ago, one of my friends had a gay roommate who was aspiring to do stand-up comedy. He said the first thing he was going to do was go on stage and flamboyantly say “Hi, my name is Rhythm and I’m a dancer. (Pause) My parents knew.”

I thought it was funny.

With each new tool, website, or social network staying in touch gets more complicated.

For example, I have family members I can only reach via phone, friends I only talk to via email, Twitter friends, Facebook friends, organizations I follow only on MySpace, a boss who only reads my office reports if they are printed out, and folks I text on a regular basis.

As to be expected, the use of communication tools often varies on generation. Younger friends, family members, peers, other people in my age bracket or younger tend to be more online. I don’t expect my grandfolks to be on Twitter any time soon.

Then there is the frequency of how often people check their communication platform. Although almost everyone has email, that’s doesn’t mean they check it. Same with voice mail.

Of course I make things exponentially more difficult by having multiple accounts on many of these platforms. I have four personal email addresses (I’ve only dropped two since I started emailing in 1996), four work email address on various servers and networks, two Twitter accounts, two MySpace accounts, and one Facebook account. And my phone, which has a Facebook and a Twitter app.

All I am missing is the firepit to send smoke signals.

Communication tools have also vastly changed the dating game. I remember back when an hour long conversation meant girl and I may have a few things in common. In the last two years, I haven’t dated a woman who didn’t rely heavily on text messaging.  I think the days of the hour-long phone call are long gone. I was getting good at that.

Calling now seems awkward. Like I have to really know someone first or they have to be expecting my call. Or maybe I have to text to let them know I am going to call.

Apparently, I am supposed to text a woman a lot sooner than I was supposed to call. There used to be a 24-hour rule on calling. Not that I was that great at following that, but do I text first now? What is the “correct” time I should wait before texting?

The last thing I want is to be this guy:

One of these days, I going to go Thoreau and be reachable only through mailed postage. Either that, or I am going to end up like the bad guy in Wes Craven’s Shocker and live in the grid.

Well, not really the Bible Jesus, but the Second Coming, Seven Signs, Apocalypse, and all that. Real wrath of God-type stuff.

What if Jesus were to come back and just show up today?

First, if His arrival was universally accepted as the Second Coming of the Son of God it would be a miracle in and of itself. We have too many cynical, opinionated, so-called experts, analysts, and other media prognosticators out there whose only job in life is to disagree and sell that opinion to the masses. Disagreement sells and debating the Second Coming would definitely move products and sell ads.

“Tonight on FOX, O’Reilly talks about the Second Coming of Jesus with a bishop of the New York Diocese and Bishop Magic Don Juan! It’s can’t miss viewing!”

But even if all billion Christians agree on the New Jesus, there are still 5-6 billion other people on Earth. Let’s say Jesus comes with the Mahdi, and many of the 1.2 billion Muslims support the effort, that’s still barely a third of the world’s population and less than the populations of China and India combined.

Good luck breaking into that market.

Of course, if Jesus arrived in a third-world country, people of the first-world might dismiss Him as at best a heretic and at worst a kook. There is no way He could sway the global opinion of the first world within the first few years of preaching and proselytizing. There is too much competing for the attention of the people in Western culture for them to recognize a new Savior.

“Hey, there is a guy in Nigeria who has supposedly fed 3,000 people with just a basket of fish.”

“Oh really? Did you see American Idol last night?”

“Yeah.”

(Kinda like Gil Scott Heron’s Small Talk at 125th and Lennox.)

Needless to say, Jesus would need to make a splash. Although I don’t think that’s His style. I don’t think He is the kind of guy who would try to jump to the front and toot His own horn.

But what about His disciples? Would there be disciples for the Second Coming?

With all we know about everyone these days, how would Jesus select new disciples? I don’t think He would go the game show route. I doubt there would be an American Idol-style selection show to pick the people to hang with the Son of God.

Maybe He would peruse Facebook for people who meet His criteria.

Here is another question: Would His new disciples be a collection of all the world’s people? I can imagine someone complaining that Jesus’s new disciples don’t represent them.  Imagine the editorials if Jesus’s new posse didn’t contain someone from a major ethnic group. Would that infer they aren’t going to be saved or that they don’t have the favor of God?

As the old disciples were basically Jesus’s public relations team, I wonder what the roles of the New Disciples would be. Would they be Jesus’s hype people, like religious versions of Flavor Flav? Would they create a Facebook page? Would Twitter be the platform of the new Hadith? You gotta wonder if Jesus would select New Disciples not only based on their ethnicity, but also on what public relations, advertising, writing, and marketing skills they bring to the table.

If that’s the case, yo Yahweh, I can blog.

(Image from the movie Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.)

I bet you knew all that already.

(Except for the fact that I went to South Dakota. Unless you know me personally, in which case you are half of the people who read this blog.)

However, here are a few things I bet you didn’t know about South Dakota:

• Clark is the Potato Capital of South Dakota. Clark is home to the world famous Mashed Potato Wrestling contest.(from 50States.com)
• Milk is the official drink of South Dakota (FunTrivia.com)
• Hockey player Andreas Nodl, who Wikipedia claims is “widely known as the greatest hockey player to ever play in the National Hockey League” and who was “offered in a trade for the Washington Capitals hockey prodigy, Alexander Ovechkin” once played for the Sioux Falls Stampede.
• Methuselah the Tortoise, a  resident of Rapid City, is 128 years old. (American Profile.com)
• The State Sport of South Dakota is “Rodeo”. (Trip Advisor.com)
• The State Insect is the honey bee. (Food Reference.com)
• There is a Gayville and an Oral in South Dakota. (CoolQuiz.com)
• And finally, according to the almighty, all-knowing, and all-seeing Google Analytics, no one from South Dakota has ever visited JordiScrubbings.com

So if you know someone from South Dakota, tell them to swing on by. If you are from South Dakota, welcome.

Then his mother asked him if he would really be happy writing about junior high basketball in a two-bit town halfway across the country. She told him someone with skills such as his should be aiming higher. He took those words to heart, stopped pursuing journalism jobs, and went to grad school. Three years later, he landed a job close to home, one that paid him well enough to buy a new truck and go to a few baseball games.

To be honest, looking back, I am actually glad no newspaper did so much as offer me an interview. I am happy none of the 60 or so jobs I applied to took the even first look at me. Because no matter how much I may bitch about my job now, I am absolutely thankful I don’t work for the newspaper industry. I would probably be unemployed right now.

I don’t remember the last time I read a newspaper. I used to sit down every morning, pour myself a big heaping bowl of Crunch Berries, and dig through the Florida Today. First, I would read the Sports, then the Comics, then the Front Page section, then, if I had time, I would read the Business and Life sections. I was hip to the happenings of the world.

I have no idea if they still publish the Florida Today. If so, I would assume 90% of its readership is over the age of 65.

These days it should come to no surprise to anyone that the newspaper as we used to know it is going the way of the dodo. Last week alone I read three articles that called out the newspaper business for being less than responsive.

In the first, TyDuffy of The Big Lead asks “Why Do Newspapers Remain Slaves to the Games Story and Boring Quotes?”. Duffy challenges the status quo of sports writing and basically calls it less than inspired.

The next day, Tommy Duncan of esteemed Tampa-area blog Sticks of Fire called out the St. Pete Times and the Tampa Tribune for their hypocritical statements regarding disposable plastic bags. According to Tommy, articles in both papers have denounced the bags whether by calling for their ban or promoting alternative measures. Yet, both newspapers are delivered to their readers’ front doors in small, clear, disposal plastic bags.

Tommy again goes on the offensive a few days later blasting the Tampa Tribune’s advertising flyer. Apparently, the “Trib Clips” is delivered every week without fail, regardless of readership, interest, or occupancy. Kinda like the official newspaper of the mob in Good Fellas. Not home? F*** you, read me.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much good news coming out of the newspaper industry. They seem to be scrambling to find some footing during the information metamorphosis of the last 10 years. They are cutting even the most established staff.

Back when I wrote for the FSU newspaper, I predicted that five years after graduation I would be living in a cardboard box behind a WalMart with only my diploma and my Writer of the Year 2002 award to keep me warm. I’m sure if I was in the newspaper industry, that would probably be true.

I’ve always been interested in how different areas put their own twists on sports. A game played by the same rules can be played in totally different ways and interpreted in a completely different manner by different cultures.

But why? What is it about certain cultures that drives changes in the game?

A few years ago I noticed several articles that discussed a style of basketball being played in the American southwest by young Native Americans. Dubbed “Rezball“, it was basketball played at an extremely fast pace. According to ESPN.com,

Rezball is a smashmouth game of speed, aggression and stamina. Full-court presses and man D are applied relentlessly, but the transition game is the game. Guards often start a break after receiving the inbounds pass; set plays are rare. Rezball makes the 2007 Suns look like the 1995 Knicks. Squads with three guys taller than 6’3″ are rare, so even the short guys know how to play big, and all five positions boast guardlike handles and shooting skills. Watching the best teams will rivet you to your seat—from the way players improvise at warp speed to their sheer endurance and the dialed-in-but-carefree way they ball.

For some reason, Native Americans decided to add an extreme element of speed to their game. Granted, height is not a usual trait in Native Americans, so few teams would have the option to slow down the game by throwing the ball to a lumbering big man underneath the basket. But from what I know about Rezball, it is faster than the Philippines Basketball Association, a league known to impose height requirements to give domestic players a chance.

So why did the Native Americans tweak basketball in that way? Is running or sprinting a typical habit of the people?

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum is the southern style of professional wrestling, known in some circles as “rasslin’”. According to Wikipedia,

Rasslin’ – refers to a southern style of professional wrestling which emphasizes kayfabe and stiffness, with fewer squash matches and generally longer feuds. It was synonymous with the NWA-affiliated promotions. Rasslin’ included TV tapings at smaller venues, as compared to the larger and more well-known arenas utilized by northern U.S. promotions such as the AWA and WWF/E. The term is derived from a phonetic spelling of how the word “wrestling” sounds when spoken with a heavy Southern accent. It is also commonly used in a derogatory manner by non-Southern wrestling fans to describe that style of wrestling.”

(To be honest, although the description is correct, I have never heard anyone in Florida refer to it as “rasslin’”. Actually, due to the mixed population in Florida, I’ve been told the state is a very difficult place to wrestle in, because transplanted fans from different parts of the country look for different things in their wrestling performances.)

I’ve been told that “southern” professional wrestling is generally slower than its northern counterparts. In the definition above, “emphasizing kayfabe” means characters and stories have more of a role in southern pro wrestling matches. In order to build those stories and develop those characters, the action must be slower. No rapid, high-flyin’, biff-bang-boom-wham-bam-slam matches. In southern wrestling, each match tells a story and it is the story that is emphasized more so than the athletic performance.

So why is wrestling different in the South? What is it about southern culture that favors deliberate storylines over fast-paced action?

Having lived in the South for over 20 years, I can attempt to answer this. For the same reason country music is generally slower, and southern accents are not as fast as northern dialects, Southerners prefer a more laid back lifestyle. People are more spread out in the south and aren’t ingrained with the urgency of northern city folks.

There is also the notion that morals are more prevalent in the South. Whereas in the North, people are all jumbled together and no one knows which way is which, in the South, there are traditional codes of conduct – such as how a gentleman or lady should act. Pro wrestling storylines feed off of these ideas. Bad guys deliberately brake the codes of conduct and good guys get in the fans’ favor by giving these villains a helpin’ of fist-flyin’ justice.

Before I end, I would like to leave you with a few questions.

Questions: Could there have been at some point different nuances in baseball? Were there slight differences in baseball strategy when the game started its growth in America? Did southerners play a slower-paced game than northerners? Was the northern game the origin of homeruns and fastballs and the south the birthplace of off-speed pitches, setting up batters, and base-to-base offense? Could there have been a difference in regional pitching psychology? Also, was there a different style of game strategy in the Negro Leagues?

The best answers may win something from me, if I can think of a cool gift.

I don’t know why, but this bothers me.

(By the way, perhaps you noticed 73+25 = 0nly 98. I am not asking what the other 2% are. I’ll leave that between them and Facebook.)

Granted, I am a 25-34 year old male and most of my writing throughout the years has been on “guy” subjects like sports, music, and politics. I also don’t think it helps that my sense of humor is either extremely dry or utterly slapstick, neither of which I’ve noticed are the predominant sense of humor of the fairer sex. I also tend to be very random, which doesn’t help. From what I’ve noticed, most women prefer predictability, which leads to comfortability and connection. Most women want something they can relate to consistently, something they can identify with, and something, like Poison, they can believe in.

So besides following the advice of this article on marketing to women, is there anything I can do to make my writing more “female-friendly”?