Tuesday, August 14, 2012

my Football Metaphysics book

For the past two months, I have been working diligently and deliriously on this preview of the upcoming NFL season, built off the Spiritual Warrior philosophy that has secretly been fermenting at the Armchair Linebacker site, and it sort of spiraled out of control into this book – Football Metaphysics for Enlightened Degenerates. On the surface, the book is very simply a preview of the upcoming season, with in-depth coverage of important players, games, and trends for all 32 teams. But anyone who is familiar with my Raven Mack styles knows that it’s also so much more than that (or less than that, depending on your outlook). The subject matter is not the only subject matter, as football and the players who play the game are used as a springboard for all sorts of philosophical meanderings, and I can honestly say to you that this book, if read even partially, will make you explode in “WTF?!?!” laughter. Seriously. There is nothing covering pro football that is anything like this preview manual, and for the price of a fauntleroy cup of coffee, you will be entertained for hours and hours and hours. Again, that is no lie. This shit is as thick as a Hemingway novel, but with all the gonzo insanities of a Hunter S. Thompson/Oscar Zeta Acosta tract, except it’s neither. It’s me – Raven Mack aka Raven McMillian aka 1000 Feathers aka The Confederate Mack aka Dr. Lounge aka the guy who wrote a ridiculously insane preview for an NFL season and is telling you that you will enjoy it but you probably are hemming and hawing and like “whatever, I’m just gonna go look at some other dumb crap on Facebook” when you should be loading this into your favorite robot device and turning on, zooming in, and cropping out.

FOOTBALL METAPHYSICS FOR ENLIGHTENED DEGENERATES at Amazon
FOOTBALL METAPHYSICS FOR ENLIGHTENED DEGENERATES at Smashwords

Amazon will have the necessary apps to make it work on all your devices of time waste, not just a kindle. There are versions available that work for your kindles and nooks and crannies and Sonybots and tabloids and even your iPads and iPhones (with the Stanza app), but you can even get a pdf at the Smashwords link and look at it on your computer or print to old-fashioned rolling papyrus if you’d like to put a fat binder clip on it and leave it on the peach crate by the toilet. It’s a good 140-pages printed out single-spaced in 10-point font though, so there’s no lack of content. Aside from a long-winded overview of the project where I explain how the NFL has only about ten years at most of actual awesomeness left in it, for each and every team, I cover the following items: an overview of the team, pertinent data regarding last season and this one, most important games, each team’s individual trendsetter and spirit warrior, the coach/QB situation, their team elders, and scrappy Rudy, and assorted other player info, which includes but is not limited to historical information on the team and the city they are located in. Additionally, you’ll get psychic analysis as to the metaphysical force of each team in relation to the NFL’s entire history, as well as the past decade, and I’ve deduced not only each team’s best case scenario, but have a solid finger on what will go down this coming season.
And yet, even if you don’t like football, even if you are a woman who thinks pro football is the dumbest crap that ever existed, you will find immense joy in this offering of mine. This is because of my traditional Rojonekku style of writing, which is designed as a decoy, where beautiful life truths are buried in what looks to be just some dumb football shit. If we revealed the truths about the society around us out and in the open, those who monitor our interactions would stifle the real talk. That’s why I affectionately call it “nonsense gibberish” because it is akin to speaking in tongues that the devils don’t understand, like when I was a little boy in a snake-handling Pentecostal church in rural Rice, Virginia. This Rojonekku style is a lol-heavy sugar-coating on deep spiritual truths, so that we can feel like we are moving in a better direction as a group, without being some super-serious asshole about it. You know what is serious business? Nothing, because business is a joke and money is an abstraction and how can you expect me to take an abstraction seriously when it can’t bite or burn me? Wait, I’m getting sidetracked here…
This Football Metaphysic for Enlightened Degenerates is also my first offering from the Workingman Books collective press chaos factory doohickey/donthickey thing that I have chopped together in the crock pot of various co-conspirators minds, and it is fermenting away as we speak, into something that will give us greater gut intuition to enjoy the world around us, and be healthier on the inside, where are brain funks and chest clenches are. That is the hope. And this is the first offering, and I hope that you will support it, and that you will find it abundant in bringing you joy and spirit inside a dark and crooked world.

10 comments:

SandyC said...

Ok, I just bought this and it is beyond awesome. Damn you Raven, a man has real, bill-paying, soul-sucking work to do and you offer him 519 pages of enlightenment for four bucks? Something's got to give.

The historical bits are the icing on the cake. To wit: "Then, after a few long years of fat, hog-jowled unemployed factory workers being pissed off, the Cleveland Browns were resurrected as an expansion team."

This is a Herculian effort, one I'll be coming back to throughout the NFL season. Props, strike that - mad props - to you for this.

Raven Mack said...

Thanks. Feel free to leave that review at wherever you bought it too.

SandyC said...

More than happy to oblige. I just pasted it with modifications into Smashwords, and added the following final line:

"I consider this ebook the football-loving degenerate's answer to the Football Outsiders Almanac."

Raven Mack said...

thanks a lot man. that is basically what I was shooting for. THE REST OF US NEEDED SOMETHING TO READ TOO.

Bubbalouuey said...

Damn good stuff Raven, at least you are using the quality dope these days, I'll be reviewing also good job.

Raven Mack said...

thanks man, I appreciate it. finishing it allows me to start drinking my Redskins Kool-Aid too.

Bubbalouuey said...

Looks like your Redskins may just have a quarterback. Perhaps my Lions meet you for the NFC Championship, I have yet to get over that last one in 92

Raven Mack said...

perhaps it's because I haven't drank my Kool-Aid but the Redskins aren't gonna be in any NFC championship game any time soon

Neil said...

My God, what an intro . . .

No, but really, Raven is of my tribe and I am proud of him. Fuck everyone else, we the bessssssst.

Neil said...

Also, I'd just like to say that writing the intro is what kickstarted the fire in my heart for this shit once again.