NFL 2012 Week 13 Full NFLuminati Index

Perhaps we shall take an old school meander through our power rankings, which are called NFLuminati Index here at Armchair Linebacker, because we are a mystical bunch. And by mystical I mean we drink codeine cough syrup, although technically we “drank” it, not drink it, and use this altered state of consciousness to think about football on the metaphysical plane, because frankly this earthly plane is kind of a bitch ass. Here are your rankings according to the science of one Mr. Wildbird Lounger Raven Mack the man of One Thousand Feathers, which is an actual method using science and math, not just nonsense jibber-jabber like most NFL power rankings, which mimic the knee-jerk styles of college rankings systems. My shit is real motherfucker…
#1: HOUSTON TEXANS (10-1; up one from last week) – The Texans switch spots with the Falcons again, and these two teams are very much the top two teams by my methodology, though I’ll pretty much guarantee you neither one is in the Super Bowl at the end. However, if I were to pick one of the highlights of this NFL season, it would be following Arian Foster on twitter. I mean, him being interesting on twitter only makes him like the 47th most interesting person out of 100 on twitter, but that’s a pretty good showing for a celebrity, much less a football celebrity. But he is a wacky dude, and I would like to one day sit around a hobo jungle fire with him discussing the nuances of Farid ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds. Talk about epic poetry.
#2: ATLANTA FALCONS (10-1; down one from last week) – Okay, the fact that Mike Smith doesn’t even look like an NFL head coach but a guy who runs an independently-owned Ace Hardware store is eventually going to come back to bite the Falcons. They just don’t feel legitimate.
#3: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (8-2-1; same as last week) – The 49ers actually, through their QB controversy, add an interesting wrinkle to the concussion syndrome issue that feverishly boils just below the surface of the NFL. Alex Smith, though troubled as a starter, has earned his starting role the past two seasons. The only thing that took him out of starting was a concussion, and then having a back-up do really well now keeps him on the bench. The biggest issue facing the NFL – as well as the U.S. Army when it comes to blast explosures, which is a very similar condition – is having players admit to their injuries. Alex Smith is not being benched seen in a noble light right now, that he was a warrior at his position and it’s now time for the next guy to take a shot. No, he’s being seen as a slow-rolling failure who is finally being replaced. So when the next Alex Smith gets concussed, and it’s not as obvious a situation, how honest do you think that guy is going to be to trainers and medical staff? He could lose his starting job, and perhaps his NFL career, at least at the standard it’s at before this imaginary incident. And yet he only jeopardizes himself by putting himself out there to potentially get re-concussed while still recovering from the first. And the league doesn’t give a fuck about that. I mean, legally they do, and they’ll probably scribble off another meaningless $5 million check to some sort of brain trauma institute which will pay for a small handful of MRI sessions before the photo-op money is all gone, but they’ll also be aggressively selling $10 million worth of Colin Kaepernick jerseys in four styles at the same time. It’s business to them. It’s also business to the Alex Smiths of the NFL, who are just trying to maximize their earning potential. I guess the ultimate point here is our collective idea that making money through business is somehow this great Freedom Jesus that saves us all is bullshit. Business will fuck you up and spit you aside, and you very well might not have shit to show for that in the end. That’s the nature of Business. So shut the fuck up with this Freedom Jesus American exceptionalism bullshit.
#4: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (8-3; up three from last week) – In this year of mediocre sludgefests of games, where even the worst team can challenge the best (as in the Jacksonville/Houston game two weeks ago), it’s somewhat funny to see the Patriots just straight curb-stomping motherfuckers. And even funnier is how Bill Belichick is doing it with a wacky hodgepodge of offensive starters, almost as if he is consciously trying to be a dick to the entire entity of fantasy football. But when every team seems to play up or down to their competition, I think this college-style “Let’s run this shit up until it’s out of hand” mentality might actually carry them strong through the playoffs. It’s a completely different mentality that anybody else is able to express right now, and it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in stiffer playoff competition.
#5: BALTIMORE RAVENS (9-2; same as last week) – The Ravens seem good but susceptible, like you bought a brand new Audi and it’s clean and you dig it and shit, but something just doesn’t feel right when you get up to 80 on the interstate. And there’s nothing obviously wrong with it, and it’s got plenty of shine, but you don’t trust it, and in the back of your head you expect it to fuck up any day now. That’s the Baltimore Ravens.
#6: GREEN BAY PACKERS (7-4; down two from last week) – I used to hate Aaron Rodgers because he looked like my youngest sister’s ex-boyfriend who got addicted to crack and almost killed her, but then I started to like him somewhere along the time I was getting shot up with morphine in the hospital during the Super Bowl where the Black Eyed Peas were obviously alien conspirators in the enslavement of soulful humanity. But somewhere in the past two weeks, one too many of those insurance commercials makes me hate him again. At first I liked it because that wife was kinda cutesy in that green top and how she softly tapped his shoulder – she was really hot in a closet-freak soccer mom type way. But that’s worn off, and now I want Rodgers to die again. I mean, not literally die, just go away from being on TV die, which I guess I could cut the TV off, but that’s easy enough during Packers games. What about the commercials, when they sneak him in when I’m not wanting him? That’s why commercials suck. My kids are watching a sweet movie or ice skating or something and all of a sudden there’s a commercial where zombie militias are shooting holes in the bodies of humanoid brownskins committing unnatural sexual acts on each other in urban landscapes. I don’t need my kids to be seeing that shit.
#7: CHICAGO BEARS (8-3; down one from last week) – Okay: reality show pitch. You trick out an old Greyhound with all sorts of ominous looking Mad Max shit, paint it matte black, but slap a Bears logo on both sides in big orange C. Then you have Jay Cutler, Jim McMahon, and both their girlfriends/wives/whatevers live on it as they drive from the far tip of Argentina, up through South America, through Mexico, back through the Midwest, to Soldier Field. That’s it.
#8: NEW YORK GIANTS (7-4; up two from last week) – The Giants looked sharp after their bye week, which is unfortunate for them because they usually win the Super Bowl when they hit that sharpened look starting in the 17th or 18th week of the season. Might be peaking too early, as Tom Coughlin teams usually only have a window of about five weeks to be on top of their game each season.
#9: DENVER BRONCOS (8-3; down one from last week) – Peyton Manning is really Peyton Manning it up and man John Elway really saw enough Peyton Manning left in Peyton Manning to John Elway him to Denver. They’re both so great, and so is Colorado, and it’s all just so great and plus doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all because they’re both white. Not only are they both white, they both smile and cut their hair like they’ve never heard a rap song in their life and I can really feel comfortable about that.
#10: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (6-5; down one from last week) – Look man, I will not get off the subject of how awesome those striped throwbacks were until all you bitches on the internet stop complaining. You guys are so knee-jerk, not even thinking for yourselves any more. You see something crazy, and even though it’s a million times better than the eurotrash cyber uniforms everybody has now with robot numbers, or even worse yet the stupid fucking faux Elizabethan collars Nike has on the uniforms now to obviously distinguish them from Reeboks, you guys see something that doesn’t register as completely monotonous and you go “HAHAHA THOSE THINGS ARE STUPID!” Then you stuff your fat fucking face at Applebees or Olive Garden or one of the same nine restaurants sprawling like pancreatic cancer around the edges of every fucking city in America, and you vote for Democrats or Republicans and pretend they’re so goddamned different it’s worth getting excited about, and you fucking make this world a horrible, sterile, boring, pathetic place. Fuck you.
#11: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (6-5; same as last week) – Somehow between Beast Mode Marshawn Lynch and the lime green accents in the new uniforms, I have been brainwashed into actually not disliking the Seahawks for the first time in my entire life. In fact, I think I might actually root for them a little bit inside. The NFC West leaves me feeling terribly conflicted, as traditionally both the 49ers and Seahawks have always been hated by me. And yet, here I am, thinking I might like them both. This all started happening when I accidentally downloaded that bisexual porn.
#12: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (7-4; up three from last week) – Perhaps I dislike the Colts because they are still wearing their uniforms from 1947. I’m surprised their helmets have facemasks even. I’m not surprised that Andrew Luck has sold a ton more jerseys than Robert Griffin III. Motherfuckers are racist.
#13: MIAMI DOLPHINS (5-6; up seven from last week) – I’m still upset by the logo depiction of Dolphins in football helmets, as diatribed about last week. I’m on Fidel Castro’s email newsletter list, and he’s been talking a lot about hanging out with dolphins, and what amazing creatures they are. Don’t get hung up on the politics – Castro’s a solid life scientist. Wouldn’t surprise me if the football helmet militarization of dolphins in Miami is part of the larger conspiracy to ruin Castro’s life’s work. Could you imagine having a social dream, almost making it come true in an island nation, and then some imperial power builds a prison at the edge of your island where they torture stolen humans in the Crusades 2: The Electric Boxtop Boogaloo (that’s what that one dude in the hooded thing was doing I think)? It would be fucked up.
#14: DETROIT LIONS (4-7; up two from last week) – I feel like a brother-in-arms with the Lions fans who visit ACLB, but more specifically with my brother-in-gonzo Neil. Honestly, it made me sad to see all that go down the way it did on Thanksgiving Day. But then Robert Griffin III started being awesome, and I had to monitor the turkey, plus the crazy buttermilk cornbread stuffing I made for the first time ever (which was good as fuck, thanks for asking), and I forgot all about it. But at the end of the day I remembered it, and I thought to myself, “A chink in Jason Hanson’s armor even… this thing is going to turn ugly quickly.” I’m sorry Lions bros. Start performing sigil magick for whoever you might want for your next head coach. Honestly, and this might seem like blasphemy to you, I think Mike Singletary would be a good choice.
#15: WASHINGTON REDSKINS (5-6; up eight from last week) – I have two Redskins friends where we email regularly about this shit. In the past week we strolled down RIP Sean Taylor memory lane, and also attempted to convince each other how the Redskins actually did stand a chance to make the playoffs. Then we all agreed that the biggest flaw was expecting them to win the three remaining games that they should win, because the Washington Redskins never win more than 50% of the games they should win. That’s why they’re the Redskins. Still though, that Dallas game on Thanksgiving was a glorious moment.
#16: TENNESSEE TITANS (4-7; down four from last week) – I have been listening to a lot of early Three Six Mafia where they switched back and forth often times during the same song from calling themselves “Three Six” or “Triple Six” Mafia. It’s made me very afraid to get high and take my time machine back to 1994 Memphis though, so mostly I’ve been going to 1983 Atlanta, before it got all built up. Kinda nice, still small town feeling. I never take my time machine into the future any more. Always ended up just killing myself.
#17: MINNESOTA VIKINGS (6-5; up one from last week) – With my love of both Scandinavian mythology as well as screwed hip hop music, you’d think a purple Vikings jersey would be hanging in my closet. You’d be wrong as fuck though.
#18: NEW YORK JETS (4-7; down one from last week) – I will have a more thorough expounding upon the New York Jets in the next day or two, as a special request, so let’s save the lolols for then.
#19: ST. LOUIS RAMS (4-6-1; up six from last week) – Very much like the middle America it represents, the Rams sort of exist without the rest of us noticing. Sometimes they show up on our radar, like playing the 49ers to a tie, or busting a Zeta Cartel connected meth ring, or some crazy new fad where rural kids fuck baby burros or something, but for the most part, we never even remember they are there.
#20: BUFFALO BILLS (4-7; down one from last week) – Okay, okay, has enough losing taken place that we can stop pretending an Ivy League dude who grew a beard is somehow super cool and awesome and a wonderful thing? Because I think the Toronto Argonauts want him.
#21: DALLAS COWBOYS (5-6; down eight from last week) – Now that J.R. Ewing is dead, and Debbie Does Dallas is some teenager’s grandmother, there’s really no need for any of you outside of Texas to like the Cowboys. So let us all agree to enjoy their miserable shortcomings and unpredicted yet totally expected failures together.
#22: CINCINNATI BENGALS (6-5; same as last week) – The Bengals would be one of the worst 6-5 teams that existed ever if there wasn’t another one two spots down. Oddly enough, both franchises are their conference’s historically inept team.
#23: ARIZONA CARDINALS (4-7; down eight from last week) – At one point the Cardinals were near the top of this list. Now they are not. If you read the Football Metaphysics book, specifically the Coach-QB Quotient parts, you’d know that though Kevin Kolb was a sexier starting option, the Cardinals would’ve sustained more success with the far less sexy yet reliably okay enough John Skelton. If they had just committed to that choice for the year, they’d probably be 6-5 instead of 4-7. They still wouldn’t be that great, but when you have shitty options in life, you should always look to maximize the successes, no matter how limited a situation you were born into. It takes three or four generations, at least, before you’ll be one of the 1%.
#24: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (6-5; down three from last week) – Like I told you last week, the Buccaneers are not as good as their fantasy contributions would lead you to believe. That doesn’t mean they can’t make the playoffs; it just means they don’t deserve to make the playoffs. The new NFL is based on the new America though, and it’s not about deserving shit. It’s about getting shit.
#25: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (5-6; down one from last week) – Jay Electronica’s album will come out before the Saints make the playoffs again. Trust me on that.
#26: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (4-7; same as last week) – Haha oh man, both Andy Reid and Norv Turner looking to finally fall like Saddam statues this year. Hardcore Chargers fans are really weird because they are very enthusiastic fans, as if the team has actually been some sort of juggernaut at some point in its history, so this whole Norv Turner/A.J. Smith thing has shaved years off their lives. And yet from where I sit, the whole thing seems like textbook Chargers. Remember when there was L.T. and Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates on offense and the new Urlacher of Shawne Merriman on defense, and this team was going to dominate motherfuckers for years? They never even made a Super Bowl. L.T. is retired and semi-literate, Merriman might be dead from juggalo drugs for all I know, and I think both Gates and Rivers are still playing, but Gates star faded behind Tony Gonzalez as the Gronkowskis and Jimmy Grahams of the world took over TE limelight. And I’m guessing Rivers and his laser beam eyeballs are still all pissed off about everything and being a complete dick to everybody in real life, so whoever becomes the next head coach, we will get to enjoy that bad mix because Rivers is probably gonna think he is Peyton Manning. I hope they hire Marty Schottenheimer again. Schottenheimer/Philip Rivers would be great to follow as it slowly exploded through the media.
#27: CLEVELAND BROWNS (3-8; up one from last week) – As I worked through this, the Browns ended up being the last blurb I had to write. Sadly, I don’t have anything to say about them. So you get this instead.
#28: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (2-9; up two from last week) – The Jaguars have steadily been climbing up the charts for two weeks now, and are only the fifth worst team by NFLuminati standards at this point. And my man Cecil Shorts continues to represent for my fantasy football dreams. Word to Cecil Shorts.
#29: CAROLINA PANTHERS (3-8; up two from last week) – Quite a clusterfuck of 3-8 teams we have here this year, isn’t it? I like that little kid warming up his arm in that Cam Newton commercial though. That kid’s gonna smoke mad blunts when he gets older.
#30: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (3-8; down three from last week) – Jason Babin was sent packing this week, and a blowout loss against the Cowboys (Eagles are 10-point underdogs) might be excuse enough to can Reid early and try to salvage some competitive dignity out of this collection of veterans and kids that last year was supposed to be the Dream Team. Or was that the season before when Vince Young said that? Who knows man, internet-time has fucked up comprehending regular world time forever.
#31: OAKLAND RAIDERS (3-8; down two from last week) – If the Raiders can somehow find a way to lose to the Browns this weekend, that will set up in three weeks a wonderful game between the two obviously worse teams in the league – Raiders and Chiefs. An epic historical rivalry hitting a new low, which I hope to fucking God gets the Dan Dierdorf commentating team assigned to it, because I would love to watch that. I am not even joking.
#32: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (1-10; same as last week) – Worst team in the league, with no Andrew Luck to be happy to lose for. But rest assured, a new latest and greatest rebuilding of the Kansas City Chiefs shall start afresh, without any Belichick tree fingerprints at all I would assume. WHAT WILL BE THEIR HOT NEW PHILOSOPHY NEXT YEAR? Two words for you: Koach Kardashian.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Somewhere, in the midst of the broken place that is my idiot fan heart, there still lives that thunderous whatever the hell that was I wrote only a couple of days ago, when I dragged myself off of my little corner stool, mouth filling with blood, spinal fluid pouring out of my nose and I challenged the whole world to a fight.  The problem with doing that is sometimes the world answers the bell too and when it does it is often hideous and gruesome and, well . . . you saw what happened.

It is fitting and terrible and gross and maddening and all too preciously perfect that the game turned on a play so heinous, so absolutely and slavishly devoted to the worship of the Necronomicon the NFL calls a rulebook, that 9,000 pound leviathan that hill trolls bring out of storage, rampaging orcs riding them and whipping their backs as they trudge and drag that monstrosity to the field anytime there’s a replay or a challenge or any other decision a referee has to make besides whether or not he is confident that he can make it to his car before he’s lynched by outraged fans.  And it was appropriate because after all that blathering I did about the New Americanism, there could be no more perfect moment to illustrate that the NFL, with all its corporatized double speak and Orwellian “No, the sky is not blue, it is electric green just like we tell you it is and no that knee was not down even though it was and everybody knows it was but argle bargle argle bargle and so on and so forth” inane bullshit, is the ultimate league of the New Americanism.  It embodies everything gross and stupid and asinine about that world, and that play and the hideous aftermath, itself gross and stupid and asinine, drove that point home more clearly than just about anything else I can imagine.  And in the end, it made me feel stupid for tricking myself into believing that real things matter, that what actually happens matters, that when a dude’s knee touches the ground and everyone sees it and knows that he’s fucking down that it matters.  My mistake, I guess.

Of course, it wasn’t just that.  The entire game felt like one that the Lions should have won, and for the second straight week they had the game pretty well in hand and then pissed it away in the final minutes, which is a new and oh so precious wrinkle that Fate and the Failure Demons have decided to send our way in this, the year of our great cornholing at the hands of the universe.  Like last week, the Lions had a chance to go up by ten points with only minutes left in the game, and just like last week they failed in that way that is far too familiar to all of us by now.  Last week, they settled for a field goal when a touchdown would have put the game out of reach.  This time, Matthew Stafford took a bad sack to take them out of field goal position and keep the game in reach for the Texans.  (God, I hate that senseless name.)

What followed probably deserves its own chapter in the long book of shame that is the story of the Detroit Lions.  Nick Harris managed to pin the Texans deep in their own end (something he managed to do a few times in this game so, uh, yay Nick I guess.) and then, naturally, the Texans drove the length of the field to tie the game at 31.  By the time they scored I was actually relieved that they did it fast enough so that Matthew “Sidewinder” Stafford could lead the Lions down the field and kick the game winning field goal because goddammit, in a just and fair world that is what is supposed to happen.

But this isn’t a just and fair world and you would think that I would have learned that terrible lesson by now.  No, instead the Lions drive stalled out and they were forced to take the game to overtime.  But, lo!  What’s this?  The Lions won the toss and continued to taunt my idiot heart and make me believe that they were going to finish what they started and finally win a goddamn Thanksgiving game.  They moved the ball with ease, taking it into Texans territory and . . . and then Brandon Pettigrew remembered he was Brandon Pettigrew and decided to reenact the heinous week 3 fumble against the Titans. 

And so it goes.  But Fate wasn’t done with us.  No, not by a long shot.  The Texans painfully and depressingly moved the ball into field goal territory of their own but the Lions defensive wall stiffened and drove those sons of bitches back just the extra yard necessary to force Shane Graham to put one just wide of the uprights.  And in that moment, despite the years of failure, the incessant misery, the constant pain, the misguided Charlie Brown optimism, I lined up, smiled at Lucy, got ready to kick that fucking ball one more time, more sure than ever that the Lions were going to win the game.  Again, it was the only just and fair outcome, and besides, a way of life, proud and hard Detroit vs. soft, carpet-bagging New America Houston, was at stake.

And then Jason Hanson did what Jason Hanson never does and missed the game winning field goal.  Dom Raiola was the picture of perfect failure on the sideline, squeezing every last drop of hope he had left in his idiot body into a desperate prayer, a prayer that fell deaf and dumb on whatever football gods were hanging out at Ford Field, ready to bend us over and break one off in our fool asses.  The ball went up and it hit the upright.  It hit the goddamn upright.  One inch to the left and we’d all be celebrating the Lions triumph – and Detroit’s – over the Texans and the scions of the New Americanism.  But it didn’t go one inch to the left and Dom Raiola winced and felt the gods slap him upside the head just as they have for more than a decade and in that moment the Lions and their fans and everything about us was utterly broken.

Predictably, the Texans cruised right on down the field and Shane Graham kicked the game winning field goal while Ford Field turned into a half-living tomb, a sarcophagus filled with slack-jawed zombies stumbling aimlessly towards the exits while the players and coaches milled about the field like lobotomized cattle, lowing at the fates, tongues lolling idiotically out of their mouths, and in that moment the Failure Demons all laughed and if there was any justice in the world, the giant foot from Monty Python would have taken that moment to make its triumphant return to pop culture.

But it didn’t and so everyone in that goddamn stadium, zombie and cattle alike, were forced to try to come up with something, anything, that would both explain just what in the fuck just happened and give them all a reason to believe there was a point in continuing on with this mad charade, this chimera of the soul masquerading as belief.

And that’s where we find ourselves right now, looking for answers, for people to blame, for something, anything, that we can do to justify the heinous bullshit we had to experience today.  And the truth is, is that you can blame everybody and everything.  It was just that kind of a game, a hideous amalgamation of everything that we have come to fear as Lions fans.  The refs boned us and didn’t even bother to lube up or wear a goddamn rubber (let’s not forget that aside from that horrendous non-review was the earlier review in which they refused to acknowledge what was a clear fumble by the Texans – or rather a ball that bounced off of a Texan knee on a kickoff and into the hands of a waiting Lion), Matthew Stafford continued his decline into outright boobery, throwing damn near every pass with that side-armed, back-footed DON’T MIND ME I’M JUST SKIPPIN’ ROCKS FELLAS way of his, missing open receiver after open receiver, there were the ill-timed fumbles, the lead-blowing, the coaching nincompoopery, and the beating of the hideous heart.

But Edgar Allan Poe references aside, let’s talk about that coaching nincompoopery for a moment, okay?  Coach bashing is a sacred rite of passage for all Lions fans and God only knows that I have wielded a bloody club myself from time to time but for the most part – certain misgivings aside – I have stuck with Jim Schwartz and the general gameplan even as others began to turn on him like a savage cannibal army.  But today was unforgivable.  It just was.  It was the sort of bullshit we’ve come to loathe about this team all wrapped up in one petulant idiotic gesture.  And what’s worse is that Schwartz knew it and did it anyway.  This wasn’t a case of a dude who simply didn’t know any better and threw the damn flag anyway.  No, he knew what he was doing but he did it anyway because he was pissed off.  Hell, he even admitted it in his press conference after the game!  He knew and he did it anyway, just like his goddamn team has done time after time after time the last couple of seasons.

I mean, what can you say to that?  What can you say that will make that okay?  This was his moment, that one horrible, shameful, clownish moment that strikes every man who dares to try to coach this insipid franchise.  This was the moment that Jim Schwartz went from embattled savior to just another punchline.  This was the moment he lost Lions fans, the moment that he became Wayne Fontes, Darryl Rodgers, Rod Marinelli, Marty “Take the Goddamn Wind” Mornhinweg.  This was the moment he was struck down fatally by Lions Disease, and it happened on national TV with every Lions fan – even the casual, casual ones who only watch on Thanksgiving – watching.  This was the moment that crystalized who he was, for better or worse, in the minds of all of those fans and naturally, it was for worse, and when I say worse I mean it was about as worse as worse can get.  He could have shit his pants, sat down and started weeping and his reputation wouldn’t have suffered as much as it did following that descent into petulance and madness.  When people talk about him years from now, this is what they’ll talk about.  This was his Take the Wind moment and hey, that might not be fair – it almost certainly isn’t given how damn miraculous is was that he dragged us from 0-16 to 10-6 – but that’s just the way this turd disguised as a cookie crumbles.

That sucks but it is what it is.  It is what it goddamn is.  And while that was just one moment in an admittedly exciting game, a game the Lions should have won a thousand times over and a game the Lions managed to lose a thousand and one times over and in a thousand and one different ways, that’s the one that everyone will remember.

There is a lot that people can be happy with in this game – the Lions led the whole way against a 10-1 team, they were physical, they broke out the big plays, St. Calvin nearly rose to heaven, and when Matthew Stafford wasn’t flipping it underhand while falling backwards to a wide open expanse of nothingness he was making the plays that make people coddle him and overlook and enable all of the aforementioned bullshit.  Everything that we love – or want to love anyway – about this team was on display.  But everything that we hate was there too and in the end, that outweighed everything else – yet again.

People will nitpick this shit to death, because that’s just what fans do, especially hyper-obsessive internet fans, but really what’s the point?  We all know what the problems are, they’re pretty damn obvious by now, and now it’s just a matter of whether or not you have faith in the dudes in charge to fix it.  Unfortunately the dude we’re supposed to have faith in just entered the Mornhinweg Zone and shit, that’s almost an impossible place to come back from, you know?

In the end, I’m just sort of sad, not necessarily because the Lions lost (after all, what’s one more loss in this lost world of a season?) but because this felt like the type of game that represented a tipping point, a “there’s no coming back from this” point, because the symbolism was just too perfect, the fuck-ups crystalized in a way that will hang over this team’s head until they either obliterate them in a way we’ve never seen a Lions team do or until somebody else comes along and fools our idiot hearts into believing in something better one more time.  This was the type of game that defines a team, not just in the present but for the future as well.  This is the type of game that becomes a ghost and follows the team around, a ghost that howls and whispers terrible things in their ears at the worst possible times, a ghost that ultimately breaks them and us and everything and everyone involved with this accursed franchise.

It’s been a hard season, a miserable season, the sort of season that puts fans down for good, but on Thanksgiving, one more time, I dragged myself out of the corner, mouth filled with blood, spinal fluid pouring out of my nose, and I dared the world to knock me out.  And the world rose up before me, toyed with me for a while, and then it did.

This is Detroit and This is OUR Game

Well, it’s Thanksgiving and as usual various writers and cretins have popped up and written their annual dirge about how disgraceful it is that the Lions have the honor of playing on Thanksgiving every year.  I feel like I write this same thing every goddamn season and so I won’t hammer it home too heavily this time (okay fine, I am going to lay it on THICK this year) but I will say that we invented the Thanksgiving day game, it is ours, it is the only thing that is ours (other than soul-crushing ennui) and to try to take it away from us is both unconscionable and disgusting.  It is the act of a soulless monster, a heinous lizard man who speaks in perverted maths and worships the New Americanism and I have no time for your heartless bullshit.  No sir.

It is perhaps appropriate then that the team that is strolling into our den this year is an icon of the New Americanism.  Yes, the Houston Texans, with their corporatized and shameless red, white and blue veneer, their senseless name meant to convey some sort of dumb tribalism, the worship of the mad sunbelt capitalist living in the unfettered oil dystopia of Texas, bathing in both black gold and the blood of anyone born with a soul, chasing the dark heart of the perversion of the American Dream, wide-eyed with a fervor unique to the greedhead, driving on and on and on into a senseless and soul-withering end, a dead-end street at the end of a subdivision in which every house looks the same, white men in khakis and polo shirts harangue the paper boy and fuck their plastic wives while they just lie there in their Barbiturate haze and wine comas, numb to the horrors of their enslaved existence.  Yes, that is who and what the Houston Texans represent and it is our duty as Americans and human beings and preservers of a truer and nobler ideal to smash them into their base particles, snort them and get high on their misery and shame.

It has been a hard season, in many ways a lost season, and things have gotten . . . unpleasant.  All you have to do is witness my own descent into madness, my shameless self-pity and despair, the flogging of my own doomed fan heart, to understand just how truly dire the situation has become.  And yet, on this one day, this one day that is ours, that we invented and that we clutch to ourselves as the one perfect remnant of a once glorious, barely remembered past, none of that matters.  The present is meaningless and all that matters is the destruction of the infidels who come to take the remnants of what was once ours away from us.

Detroit is not Houston.  It is not a carpetbagger’s nirvana, filled with grotesque oil-men with thousand gallon hats and gaudy leather cowboy boots, strutting the streets, a sneer on their face while they eat the poor and shit out despair.  No, Detroit is a hard place, a real place, an American place, the promise of everything good and noble and true about America.  It has seen hard times, but hard times are what make men strong.  Hard times are what forge the iron of the heart, the steel of the soul.  Detroit built this nation, built it strong and tough and yes, a little grimy, a little wild.  Houston is the parasite that came to feed on what we have built.  Houston is the hideous beast that has nibbled and nibbled and nibbled until it seems sometimes as if there is almost nothing left.  Houston has perverted the American Dream, turned it into something ugly, something perverse, something to be leveraged and sold, processed and strip-mined.  Houston is everything we are not.  Houston is everything that has been taken from us.  Houston is the mockery of everything we hold dear, of everything we have broken ourselves to make, to be, to cherish.

They send their team, their fake red, white and blue soulless zombie team to break us further before a national audience.  They laugh at us and tell the world that what we are, who we are, our ideals, our identities, everything that we have done, everything that we have made, that we have forged in the furnace of America’s soul, this place called Detroit, where the sons of slaves came to find salvation, where the poor, the hungry, the tired came to shape for themselves an almost impossible dream, are meaningless and stupid.  They come to tell the world that our vision, our American Dream, is dead and that their perverted New Americanism, with its black, befouled heart is all that there’s left to believe in.

Well fuck that and fuck them.  They will not rest until the world is broken, poor, utterly without meaning, bereft of spirit and they will not sleep until the masses huddle before their throne of lies and worship, sorrowful souls wailing to a false god because the world has become senseless and cruel and that seems the only way.  But for one day, for one moment, our Spirit Warriors can pull their shit together and stand before them and say not today, say that we fight to protect not a mere endzone or a simple playoff dream but a way of life and an American Dream.

The Lions are in a bad place.  They have not won on Thanksgiving in almost ten years.  The world forgets us, they laugh at us, they mock us and more of them turn to the grotesque ideals of the New Americanism every day.  They blame us for everything that has gone wrong in this country, tell us that we are weak, that we are failures, that our people and our football team are embarrassments to everyone else.  They tell us that we don’t belong anymore, that this world, this place called America is not ours but theirs and that we should just capitulate, leverage our souls and buy into the false prophets of the New Americanism.  They tell us that we should shun our own team, our own beleaguered Spirit Warriors and accept a new order, an order which decrees that the Thanksgiving game should come to places like Houston, like Phoenix, to places bereft of spirit, sprawling metropolises spreading out over an endless horizon of depressing homogeny, home to broken people, wrecked people, who worship the darkness and make love to their own shame, hateful wretches who piss on everything good and noble and true about America, who sneer at brown people and greedily count their heavily leveraged assets and tell the whole world that they are proud of their own disgusting ignorance, that they revel in their own barbaric hatred of anyone who is not down with their insane sickness.

This is an important game because it is not about football but about the need to take a stand, to remind everyone that we are still here, that we cannot and will not be forgotten, that you cannot spit on us and ignore us with your sneering pomposity, and that there still exists a better way, a nobler way, a more American way.  We are the team of the dispossessed, the team of the hated, the pissed on, the marginalized.  We are the team of the brown, the black, the yellow and anyone and everyone not deemed pure enough for the New Americanism.  We are the team of iron and steel, the team of the people that demand more of ourselves and of our country, the team of the people who are tired of the leveraging of the American Dream, the people who go to sleep every night and worry about what those cocksuckers will do to rob them tomorrow, the team of the people who are sick and tired of taking shit and just want to wake up on Thanksgiving, turn on the TV and watch their team fight back in a meaningless, symbolic silly way that in the end means everything.

The Houston Texans are coming to town and they will be favored by everybody.  And we will spend every moment up until game time shaking our heads and wailing with despair because our team has seemingly let us down, because Titus Young has betrayed his brothers, because our dysfunction is just one more sorrowful reminder of how long we have had to try to fight and crawl out from underneath this avalanche of decay, how long we’ve had to slam ourselves, seemingly without hope, headlong into that savage tide of the New Americanism.  But once that game starts, we will remember who we are, and as disgusted as we are with the present, as broken and battered as we have been by the past, we will still fight and we will still smile a bloody smile and rage against the dying of our own beautiful noble light because we are the soul of America, we are where the American Dream was forged, and that is all we know how to do.  You’ll never take Thanksgiving from us and you will never win.

Lions win because fuck anything else.

Tribal Thoughts during Cowboys Week

Today was just another day for the Mack, giving rats brain damage all day long like Dr. Mengele until midnight, rumbling my ragged truck home in the stealth of the late night, dumpster diving behind a couple of spots right quick for my pigs in the morning, and getting home late - kids all long been in bed, wife down for the count, nothing to do but stare up at the sky and analyze my spot on this rock. My wife teaches a herbal class once a month, and the women do work study, meaning half a day they be doing shit on our land to better the overall direction of it, and the second half my wife schools them on the this or that of the wild plant medicines. But one work study day a couple months back, they cleaned out a nice hiking path at the back of our land. We don't really have but about a half acre of woodland on our property, but it's thick enough, and they did a great job of making a meandering path through part of that half acre. I like going back there and just walking the path in circles and letting words come at me. There's a couple of earthen mounds back there - from white folks of the past 100 years, not old school native mounds, though we've found multiple arrow heads on our land, including one given to me by a goat we had that was named Kesey - but that's a long story for another day.
Anyways, like I was saying, just another day for the Mack, so I got home and wandered through the dark on the path in the woods, because there's strange energy back there, and I've never really been able to figure out what it is. It feels slightly ominous and slightly supernatural, but at the same time we are so confused by our own techno-babble that surrounds, some straight up real shit from the old school angle - like a still-born child buried in the woods or something - can really tweak us out in strange ways. We've lost a lot in the electro-fog of all we've gained. But I was walking through that path a few times, just vibing on what comes to me back there, because even though it's ominous, I feel like the reason we came to this land and ended up buying it and why I put my pig pen back there and am called back there is my muse is hiding back there. That could be the ominous energy for all I know; maybe the words I was born upon this earth to write are dark and twisted and the nonsense gibberish from beyond I tend to write is not even scratching the surface of my ultimate purpose. I mean that makes sense from the prophesies my half-wild great grandmother used to tell my dad when I was a baby, but nobody really believed anything she said.
I am digressing, as usual. But the thoughts are pushing through my head rather rapidly. I've been working long painful in the soul days lately fairly regularly, and was sustaining myself with coffee but could feel the crash in my blood stream so have been nibbling on eleuthro root powder instead. But when I got home I was wired the fuck up so I drank a healthy shot of wild lettuce tincture and now my body is as mellow as half an opiate, but my mind is still racing, from the long day but also from the walk through the dark woods, as I was overwhelmed with a tribal wildness.
When I say "tribal" that automatically conjures up douchebaggian things like tribal tattoos or tribal music or wannabe indian hippies and shit like that. But I want to be clear here, when I say "tribal" I mean no specific thing or movement or philosophy. I am speaking strictly of the basic definition of a group of people banded together. We have made great moves to being a worldwide people, interconnected via social media and our smartphone robots to a degree we never knew before. We know a little bit more about so many different things it's really amazing, especially if you are an old people. But at the same time, we've become very removed from our immediate world, which is really a microcosm of the overall world, and we know so much less about thinking critically. Having a tribe gave us community in the immediate sense, one that could give us food or fire or make babies with us. I mean the interwebs tries to fill that void, but it does it in distant and emotionless ways that are completely fulfilling.
But what struck me most of all wandering through the woods after midnight on a Wednesday morning is the purity of tribal thought - the purity of loving what you are even if you had no choice in the matter and really don't know anything else, and the purity of hating the enemy of whatever it is you are. This is often replicated in modern man through nationalism, but really, politics is such an insidious beast on all sides, I can't get down with that. I mean, I love being American and shit, but I don't really see how I wouldn't love being a Ghanaian or Salvadoran or whatever if I was born there with the same genetic make-up.
You're probably like, "What the fuck is Raven talking about? I've read like 19 paragraphs of him wandering in the woods talking indian bullshit, and there's nothing about football yet." Well yeah, but it connects. You see, I was talking to my boy Mike Gee last week when we went to a local high school football game together about how his dad, who had always been a supporter of one college football team, switched allegiances to their state rival about five or six years ago. We both agreed this was a terrible and dastardly act on his father's part. You can't have a team you are a part of - emotionally always, physically as often as possible, and forever spiritually - and then jump to another side. That's switching tribes, and tribes don't take in enemy tribesmen, ever. It weakens the tribe. And really you never know how fucking shady and conniving the enemy tribe could be; they might be sending spy fuckers into your camp to create chaos and disorder in your own tribe. You just can't trust those fuckers. But Mike Gee told me his ol' lady was a Cowboys fan, and she told his dad, who is a Redskins fan, "What, are you gonna switch to the Cowboys too?"
I laughed at the story, but it was unsettling, because that's basically what we're talking about here. You can't switch like that, ever. As much as I hate Dan Snyder, he could have the entire team eat babies for team dinner and then they all raped innocent women from the town I grew up in, but I would still be a Redskins fan. It is my tribe at this point, and for better or worse, I am going to ride that until the end. And there is no more untrustable and evil enemy than the Dallas Cowboys. Which is why Cowboy week, even when it's at the beginning of the season, is such a huge deal. Always.
I do not like the Cowboys, obviously, but also do not like people who like the Cowboys. There have been many times where someone I was friends with for a while, I'd lose massive respect for them by finding out they were Cowboys fans. I even dated a girl one time who it ended up was a Cowboys fan, and we lived together, and I tried to make it work, thinking maybe I was being simplistic stuck in my ancient tribalism thinking. But she ended up being a crazy ass bitch who left me for another guy, and it didn't really hurt because I could see it coming, and I tried to be like, "Yo, you did this to another dude when you dated me, and now you're doing it again, so maybe you should just step back and evaluate yourself emotionally, and get your shit together. Not with me, because fuck it man, I ain't down with this bullshit. But for your own sake." I was being a bigger dude, trying to help someone I loved, but she couldn't do it, because she was a Cowboys fan. The dude that she left me for, they moved to Washington state, and then she left him for another dude, and he was stuck all the way across the country, so I guess I got off easy. Me and him are good friends now, which is nice considering I was high on mushrooms and Jack Daniels one night and called their house (which had been my house), saying they better leave my dog (which I left with her because I was homeless) on the side porch because I was coming to get him and go to Montana, and if he wasn't on the porch I was breaking into the house and killing every fucking body there. (The dog was on the side porch, by the way. I didn't move to Montana either, as I passed out drunk in a stolen van behind a K-Mart somewhere just across the West Virginia border.)
Cowboys are a vile organization, and when I think of their influence on my team, I think of two things: Norv Turner and Deion Sanders. Sanders was a buffoon of a free agent bust when Dan Snyder first bought the team and thought spending money on famous people made you famous too. But Turner was head coach when Snyder bought the team, but was also previously known as a famous offensive genius for the Dallas Cowboys. I have always felt that this was an insidious move to fill the Redskins franchise with mediocrity and football impotency. And Snyder tolerated that dude briefly, but also it seems to me, that was his first example of head coaching, so Snyder came in polluted by Cowboys-ness. Which is why that little fucker hobnobs with Jerry Jones, in Little Caesars commercials and on vacation trips, and in luxury boxes together during big Cowboys/Redskins games. Seriously, I read that Snyder and Jerry Jones have vacationed together. Can you imagine that? Hanging out leisurely with the leader of your sworn enemy? I think that's part of the reason Dan Snyder has been so unsuccessful is that he doesn't get it. This is not some little bullshit. This is the Cowboys. Fuck them. They cannot lose enough or feel enough pain to satisfy my bloodlust. Fuck them all day every day. The Giants and Eagles are division rivals, and I do not much care for them either, that is true, but they are not the Cowboys - a team that makes false claims to being America's favorite, and has a long history of drug-addled sodomites who are not even the good-natured fun kind of delinquents, like Dexter Manley or John Riggins, that you can feel great about. They are societal miscreants, great examples of why the death penalty was re-instituted in the '70s (which is about the same time this Cowboys franchise of demon hedonism grew to prominence).
There is a simple painful beauty in tribal hatred. It is pure. And I am thankful I get to exorcise this hatred this coming week, on the national stage of Monday night football. I know this 2-0 Redskins is a smoke-and-mirrors new NFL undefeated, where it means nothing, and we could end up going 4-12 just as easily as 12-4. Our tribes are not kept as pure as they used to be, which means all tribes have become more mediocre. I can accept this. But I also know that this is a hatred that the veterans, the former players, and us fans, all make sure is well-known.
Tony Romo may or may not play, having a cracked rib and punctured lung, and I guess it will be a matter of how well he can focus while on painkillers. I hope he can play. I really really hope he can play. Because you know who else is playing? Laron Landry. His hamstring has been hurt, and he's not hit the field since injury cut short his potential defensive MVP season last year, but when asked about playing this coming Monday, Laron said, "Of course." He knows the fucking deal, and feels the fucking tribal hatred. His tribe is Redskins, and there is no fucking enemy greater than the Dallas Cowboys. Like me, he will be drinking three drops of steer blood in his gatorade, to get the taste in his molecules for Monday night.

(insert Tony Romo)

I feel sort of sad (just barely), because one reason Tony Romo lacks the respect he probably feels he deserves is he doesn't get it like he should. Sure, he gets great stats and is wonderfully magnificent according to whatever that new trumped up QBR bullshit ESPN is always pushing calculates by. But Romo stumbles in spotlight moments, in those shining incidences where the whole tribe is either rallied to euphoria by the collective adrenaline rush of pure victory, or the is decimated spiritually by the thoughts of what might have been, that can never be answered. Romo is a fun-loving, normal guy who somehow ended up in a prominent position in tribal warfare. It is beyond him to understand exactly what this means. But he knows that his tribe questions his heart, and he doesn't know why. He can't, he's not one of them in spirit. He's not a Cowboy, not even a football player probably. He seems like a natural born Seahawk or Cardinal or something, but not a Cowboy. And yet here he is. I hope the sadness of not being accepted by his tribe forces him to go against his better self-preservational judgment and throw on a flack jacket and go out there next Monday, for the Dallas season opener, on ESPN. Because Laron Landry will be lurking, and he is a football player, and he is a motherfucking Redskin. He gets it, and gets after it.
These tribal warfare battles are when legends are made, for life. Lavar Arrington, for all his shortcomings, is a Redskin forever. I know this because the concussive final hit on Troy Aikman plays in my head to this day. Mark Brunell to Santana Moss twice in a 4th quarter on Monday night has caused me to tolerate and love Brunell and Moss more than I ever would have had it not happened. These are the two games a year I need my tribe to win more than any other. I would take 2-14 with happiness if those 2 were against Dallas. And the game in Dallas, in that monstrosity of a football field that is a monument to the garish psychology of America, and a shining testament to why we are a nation in permanent not temporary decline? Oh man, it is still five days away, and already it's about all I can think of in my idle moments. Laron will be back, hungry for heads. And where both teams usually wore home whites, which matched with every other team's home darks, now the Redskins have taken ownership of the burgundy jerseys, wearing them at home both games this season thus far. It will not look odd those blood-colored tops coming out the tunnel to start the showcase game on the cable televisions, on the road, in the belly of the enemy beast's monument to commercialized football, in that obese self-important state that such a beast is perfectly matched with.
I know my tribe's owner will make friendly with that tribe's owner, and they will be pals of the upper financial stratus. But such indiscriminate mixing does not trickle down to my level. I am ready for destruction of the opposition, and if we can't win the game - which we may very well not - then let me at least see #30 get a scud missile shot on Romo. Or better yet, we have been teased by this pairing of Brian Orakpo and Ryan Kerrigan, who may blossom into a two-headed beast of a bull rush on passing plays. Let me see the two of them converge on that sorry, sad-eyed Romo, and crush the fighting spirit from this Cowboys team right before our eyes, to be replayed on those 900 foot Babylonian overhead screens, over and over, until silence falls over that ignorant populace, because not only have they been beaten, they have been crushed, and we will till their playoff hopes and sow salt into their barren dreams, and laugh from afar as they struggle to maintain relevance for the rest of 2011. This is what I want from my Redskins.