Hammers and Strings

As the multitude of my readers will know I am a die hard Minnesota Vikings fan, and any of them that have not been under a rock for the last 24 hours will know that today just is not a good day to be a Vikings fan. Watching my team, quarterbacked by a bastard I have loathed for 18 years, fall in the championship game to a team they dominated was one of the saddest moments in my recent history. As my readers will also know that statement is a line that should be sad enough to make you cry. Less than a month ago, my father died, and yet I felt/showed more anger, denial, and other emotions when a fucking football team I support (albeit for 32 years) loses a fucking football game. I understand that American loves a winner (thanks Patton), and we love our sports, and take them to almost religious heights, but I am appalled at my own behaviour. Granted, I was not a fan of my father, and did not much care for him as a person, but he is still, one of, the reasons that I exist. Without him knocking boots with my mater, I would be non-existent. Of course, there does exist the chance that my mater would have given it up to some one else (perhaps a Rockefeller, or a Rothschild), and I would have still come into existence. But would I really be "me?" Would I be the same set of neurosis, and (dis)beliefs, with the same character traits and flaws if that had happened? There exists a school of thought that would give a resounding "NO" to that question, and I think I have to concur. I would be an asshole surely, but I believe I would be a different sort of asshole than the one typing these lines now. Who knows with a different sire, I might not be here typing these lines now. I might be in Federal prison, or I might have been one of the people killed in Hurricane Katrina, or I might be a minor league (left handed) relief pitcher somewhere. Or I might not be. I would like to say that I thank the bastard for that, and in some respects I do, after all I am alive, fairly healthy, and I have a job that pays the bills. I also, in my less deprecating moments, like to think I am a pretty bright boy. All or some of this I do owe to him, and it is not his fault that I am a Vikings fan (see the post about not knowing his favourite football team), that blame rests solely with the wolf that raised me, though to this day she denies it. Then again most criminals deny their crimes. I lack the words, and the talent to put the few words I do have down in any coherent form to tell you how disgusted all of this makes me. The fact that a tree in my yard is lacking a branch due to the anger I expressed over a fucking game of football appalls me, especially when I think back to leaning over my father's corpse and whispering for him to "rot." I am incomplete, lacking the human parts that most of you (I hope) take for granted. A football team! I can recount the last four times (counting yesterday) that the Vikings have lost, in my lifetime, a NFC championship game, and yet could not have told you, until I found it out at the funeral, the name of my father's father. Try that on for size, how does that asshole shirt fit? Perfect for you, right colour, right fit, and everything. All of this whining, and it is whining I know, is to say that maybe I have my own self to blame for being the fat bastard typing this for posterity. And today I accept that blame, I understand that long after I have shuffled off this mortal coil, the Vikings will still be the same fucking losers they are today, and that it does not matter. Knowing my father's father's name does not matter. Him rotting does not matter, and this post does not matter. I do know that the disgust I feel with myself for my reaction to something as trivial as a football game (gasp! the heresy), matters. It matters to me. It is not the anger I felt over a football game that causes me to ponder what manner of beast I am, but the fact that the anger, and sadness exists. It exists to such a degree that I had nightmares about the fucking game last night. I hope it exists because in that moment of breaking that tree limb, and screaming curses about how it is all just so fucking unfair, maybe I became just a little more human.