Coming Together

Another interlude. The reviews will continue tomorrow; just pushed 'em back for a day.

Sunday afternoon I had a chance to watch the Seattle Seahawks clinch a Super Bowl berth for only the fourth time in their 50 year history. I've attended three of the four NFC championship games that they won, missing only the game versus the 49ers (when I was residing in Paraguay). The 'Hawks have had a great season, and man, that was a tough game...another time and on a neutral field, the results might well have been different. Skaven are a bad match-up for orks, and the Rams have often had our number since we moved back to the NFC West in 2000.

I haven't written much about the Seahawks (or Blood Bowl) this year, in part because I've been super busy (I don't think we've broken out the BB set since September) but ALSO because...as the writing was on the wall that Seattle was fielding one of the best teams in the NFL, I felt more and more that talking about it might, well, jinx it. And I didn't want to jinx it. I mean, I had to help keep the Pope's streak alive, right?

But now we're back in the Big Game, where I fully expect Mike Macdonald's ork squad to stomp the living hell out of the dark elves. It's not that Vrabel's not a good coach or that Drake Maye isn't a nice surprise this season. It's just that they aren't Bellicheck and Brady...and I trust that with two weeks to prepare Mac will have this team tuned and ready to tee off on the second year QB. This is not the McVay-Stafford-Nakua offense we just saw. Yes, the Seahawks might still lose...but if they do. it's going to be due to some catastrophic system failure. They're just the better team...this year.

I'm thinking something in the 27-9, 31-6 range?

REGARDLESS (that is, win or lose) the streets of Seattle will be mostly empty on Super Bowl Sunday. That I've experienced before. It's always fairly dead on this, our country's unofficial national holiday, but in the city of one of the two championship-vying teams...well, most people are going to be glued to their screens. Or, at least, engaging in some sort of party/celebration with fellow Seattle-ites, regardless of whether or not they have any interest in the game results. That's the power of sport: the power to bring people together. Common ground...a way of making connections with our fellow human beings.

Right now, in addition to the nation-wide blizzard/Ice Age that's wrecking crap all over the country, we've got this whole ongoing issue of federal agents MURDERING PEOPLE in Minnesota. I mean, the current presidential administration has been nothing if not an extensive exercise in corruption and criminality, bribery, kidnapping, lying, extortion, and murder (no, Virginia, the actions taken by our U.S. military in Venezuela and of its coast are not "lawful" no matter what lies the administration spins). But video of masked "law enforcement" officers pumping ten rounds in the back of a prone, restrained, and unarmed individual is FUCKING EVIL SHIT and kind of ANTITHETICAL TO EVERYTHING THIS COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO STAND FOR. 

I'd think most of us could find some common ground on that, too. 

Just so people know: I am paying attention. And while the gaming thing is all well and good as a nice little escape from the ho-hum mundanity of daily life (and fun to boot), it's NOT a great thing to use it as an excuse to check out and be apathetic when it comes to real life atrocities being committed in one's own backyard. Yeah, the stuff in Gaza and Ukraine and Iran, etc. are pretty damn horrific. But now our government seems bent on waging war against its own citizens? Any citizen that dares stand up to it? Anyone who interferes with ICE actions by protesting or filming with a cell phone is in danger of being pepper-sprayed, beaten, "detained," and possibly SHOT IN THE FACE. Yeah...no.

Can't stand for that.

However, sadly, unfortunately, the LAST thing, the WORST thing for folks to do, is to fight back with anger and hate and violence. I can already see that possibility on the horizon: revolution. Civil war. Guerillas. REAL "domestic terrorism" where anyone with a mask or a badge is dragged out and lynched and a well-armed America population starts pushing back with bullets. THAT would be the real end of this American Experiment. That would be really, really shitty.

Plus, Trump would just invoke martial law and set himself up as "Dictator for Life."

SO. Be brave. Be resistant. Be engaged. And most of all, be TOGETHER with your fellow Americans. Regardless of the differences you have with them. Build bonds; build connections. Stand and oppose, but do not give in to hatred and violence. If we allow grief and anger to consume us, then evil wins. 

That's it. Adventure reviews will resume tomorrow.