Opinion

"It's a mess ain't it Sheriff?"

I am never 100% sure that my opinion is necessary. In the larger picture, me wasting your time with my point of view, keeps you from doing research on your own to form opinion. It would be like me running your race. The issue gamut spans from simple sharing of experience to outright biased and bombastic preaching. I again apologize for the latter but will likely continue with the former. I try to limit subject mater to things I am familiar with but often step blindly into the trap of the fictional. Sometimes it is objective, but the vast majority of the time it all too easily slides towards the subjective, the gray, the 'could go either way' route. Or, as we saw yesterday, it hides somewhere in the details like a toothpick in a wood pile. I feel creatively weak when I cherry-pick easy topics. You all know that exercise is good and sloth is bad. You all know that a good diet will significantly reduce your dependency on drugs, Big Pharma and the .gov for balance. You all know that managing stress in a non-toxic manner is better than some combination of booze, drugs, meds, porn, poker or joining the local fight club.

Conversely, when I decide to two-step outside the comfort zone of the conventional and tackle a subject like an undersized linebacker, it gets scary in a hurry. Am I qualified? Am I an expert? Do I hold any bias? Do I have a new and unique perspective? Or, as some suggest, is it all simply entertainment and distraction anyway, so who really cares?

By now I am sure that you have already voted. Is it necessary for me to say again that I feel the incumbent to be the best man for the job? The San Francisco Giants won the World Series, do you need me to tell you that they were the first Pro team to extend me draft interest in 1968? Briefly, what this means is, a local scout follows your play and when he sees something in you that could possibly one day resemble a major leaguer, you get a card with which you fill out personal info and drop it in the mail-box special delivery to the home office where it qualifies you for inclusion to the team's scouting dbase. We used to call this getting to first base. After a particularly good game when I was a sophomore I got one of those coveted cards first hand from the local Giants scout. Dropped it the next day in the blue box on the corner of Manchester and Famouth.

So who cares? What does this have to do with opinion and editorial?

Because that was a big day in my life. As was yesterday. And although not nearly as exciting as live coverage from Brooklyn on HSandy, or the latest, last-ditch spin from Mitt on whatever he thinks you want to hear. Further, one of the main goals of this blog is to motivate, inform and inspire (if only me) therefore I try to find something big in the seemingly mundane. One of those pesky details that separate the ordinary from the outstanding. Maybe it's me, but this happens all the time. I am, as they say, easily amused.

Yesterday this piece from the Seattle Weekly was that for me. Got me to thinking. Challenged my preconceptions. Addressed issues in a way that I found both brilliant and courageous. It even managed to cross the batle-line from music and humor to politics and the future of civilization. In a word, WOW. That I am still wow-able is important to me.

Therefore to whatever small degree, that is the compelling point of debate. That is why I write. Maybe my opinions are valid, maybe not. I will take that chance and work everyday to find ways to improve. I'll keep my eyes and ears open. I will share my experience. I will try to frame all of that in an entertaining and colorful way. I will occasionally step outside of the batters box to try something new. I will fail often. Heck, if I succeed only four times of ten I could make the Blog Hall of Fame. And maybe then the Giants would call again.

I'll keep trying. Trying to make sense of this mess. Today's mess means another big day in my life, or as Ed Tom Bell replied back to Deputy Wendell in No Country for Old Men, "If it ain't it'll due till the mess gets here."