Entry 215: A Few Matters, Personal and Otherwise

A few things to talk about today.  Some of it is bullshit personal stuff; some of it isn't.

In the news of my life, Lil' S has inexplicably reverted back to his newborn days and has been waking up multiple times throughout the night.  It's awful.  We've gone through the same pattern four nights this past week.  He wakes up around 12:00 a.m., pitches a fit until we come in the room to calm him down (we usually give it 15 minutes), goes back to sleep for twenty minutes, wakes up, and then does the same thing all over again.  After the fourth or fifth iteration, he final breaks us (or I should say he breaks S who in turn breaks me) and S just sleeps in the guest room with him.  Once in bed with his amma, he stops crying, giggles himself to sleep, and snoozes peacefully through the night.  It's cute, but it's not practical.  It's really hard to get good sleep when you're sharing a bed with him.

We're going to try the Ferber method again.  It mostly worked before.  I don't think there is anything special about it, but at least it will give us a schedule to follow.  I think that's the most important thing.  It's like dieting; it's not so much the specific diet that makes you lose weight; it's the fact that you're systematically limiting your calories.  The diet is just the bookkeeping.  I think sleep training is the same way.  I say "I think" because I honestly have no real idea how any this stuff actually works.  S and I are mostly just winging it, you know, like every other set of parents in the world.       

OK, enough about sleep schedules of 16-month olds.

In other news, non-personal news, a very interesting article was published yesterday in Deadspin by former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, in which he alleges he was cut from the Minnesota Vikings in part because of his outspoken views on various political issues, most notably his support of gay marriage.  It reads a little like an excerpt from Jim Bouton's classic tell-all (and one of my favorite books ever) Ball Four, only about football instead of baseball.

The article is most pointedly critical of Vikings special teams coach Mike Priefer, whom Kluwe says treated him hostilely and frequently used homophobic language around him.  You should read the entire article -- it has the provocative headline "I Was An NFL Player Until I Was Fired By Two Cowards And A Bigot" -- but here is an excerpt if you don't.

Near the end of November, several teammates and I were walking into a specialist meeting with Coach Priefer. We were laughing over one of the recent articles I had written supporting same-sex marriage rights, and one of my teammates made a joking remark about me leading the Pride parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: "We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows." The room grew intensely quiet, and none of the players said a word for the rest of the meeting. The atmosphere was decidedly tense. I had never had an interaction that hostile with any of my teammates on this issue—some didn't agree with me, but our conversations were always civil and respectful. Afterward, several told me that what Mike Priefer had said was "messed up."

Priefer, as you might imagine, adamantly denies all this, and right now it stands as nothing more than a "he said, he said" type of deal -- a man-on-man oral confrontation, if you will.  But Vikings' owner Zygi Wilf -- who once commended Kluwe for his political stances and apparently had no prior knowledge of all this -- has called for an internal investigation, and there should be ample witnesses one way or the other, so we shall see.

Kluwe is a pretty interesting dude.  He is an NFL punter (or was, anyway) who advocates for gay rights, plays in a rock band, loves World of Warcraft (hey, nobody's perfect), and occasionally pens slightly hard to follow anti-Ayn Rand polemics.  Not exactly your typical jock.

[Chris Kluwe was a good punter, but he was no Reggie Roby, a three-time Pro Bowler who, as you can see, wore a wristwatch while he played.]

By the way, speaking of Rand, before I go, I just have to mention a story, which is simultaneously sad and hilarious.  As you might have heard, unemployment benefits for many Americans recently expired.  That's sad.  Libertarian dumbass Rand Paul supported the expiration using very specious reasoning in which he utterly confuses causation and correlation.  Specifically he has repeatedly cited a paper by a fellow named (coincidentally) Rand Ghayad.  The only problem with that is this in his study Ghayad draws the exact opposite conclusion as Paul, and he writes as much in an article in The Atlantic.  That's hilarious.

Although it's also kind of sad, because I guarantee you this will not change Rand Paul's mind on the matter one iota.  It should.  It would if it were me.  If I based an opinion on somebody's work, and then the author of this worked called me out by name saying I got it wrong, I would a) be utterly embarrassed, b) seriously rethink my position.  But that's not Rand Paul's style.  That's not the libertarian style.  They already have the world all figured out, with a bow on it.  If facts don't fit nicely into their neat little package, well, they didn't need those facts anyway.

Ugh ... I've asked it before (twice, actually) and I'll ask it again.  Why can't everybody think like me?

Until next time ...