Contradictions: Sports Lovers Who Espouse One World

A Prius rolls up to the local food co-op. A bumper sticker in the bottom left corner of the back window brightly blazes the words "ONE WORLD." On the right side of the window, a die-cut football helmet with a particularly aggressive team logo proudly declares who the vehicle's owner supports. The driver steps out of his hybrid. His hair is cut short, bleached and angrily spiked with so much gel it's flaking in the breeze. He wears a football jersey that matches the team sticker on the back of his window.

He runs into his neighbor in the meat section. His fence mate attempts to spark a conversation about how great it is that the co-op provides nothing but locally raised, free-range chicken. The jersey-clad man stops his neighbor mid-sentence to rib him about the neighbor's football team's surmounting losses on the field. The neighbor rolls his eyes, dismisses the sporty man's derision and resumes his original topic of conversation. The sporty guy waves off his neighbor and exclaims for all to hear that he wouldn't want to talk about football either if he rooted for losers.

Flash forward to a day of the week in which none of the man's favorite sports are telecast. The man is now at the local gym. He's now sporting his favorite basketball team's jersey. He resists the urge to dribble the basketball he carries as he scans the workout room for someone he knows. Then he spots him. His workplace's sole "black" man. This man is in the middle of an intense set of bench presses as the sporty guy approaches him.

No, the guy doing the workout is not interested in playing basketball. He's in the middle of his workout routine. The sporty guy doesn't buy it. The workout guy is just afraid he won't live up to the hype that his skin tone conveys. That's what the sporty fellow spews as he dodges and weaves around the guy working out. The guy with the barbell rolls his eyes at the accusation. The tank-top jersey guy chalks up the other man's refusal to play as a victory. His coworker knows a winner when he sees one. Then he proceeds to hit the court to play a game of one-on-three against some middle schoolers. When he beats them, he declares another victory. This time it's a point for the "old" guy.

Everywhere he goes, this sports lover creates divisions. If you root for the same team as him, play the same games as him, talk about the same divisive sports as him, you are part of his "us" clan. If you don't like sports, if you don't accept his challenges, you are one of "them." The lines are clear with him. There is no gray, only black or white, only with him or against him.

He spews this your team/my team attitude, mostly under the guise of good clean fun, but always while in close proximity to some piece of media that exclaims "one love" or "one world." Never does he recognize the contradiction. It's difficult to call him a hypocrite, because he's unaware of what he's doing. He wants to believe that a world can be at one with each other, but he loves sports too much to look deeply at how fully it contradicts the very message of unity that his bumper stickers and occasional t-shirts espouse.

His favorite sport makes this contradiction all the more stark. He's always ready for some football. The months between the Pro Bowl and preseason play make life seem less vibrant, less worthy of his exhilaration. There's no strife, no division to spur on any excitement. Sure, there's baseball, but that sport's so dull and so devoid of any hard-hitting action that the very notion of its existence seems ludicrous to him. He needs it brutal. NASCAR fills that void on occasion, when the driving results in some nasty pile ups. Still, it's not the same. He needs something reminiscent of battle, and football fulfills his need without fail.

For him, nothing quite beats jumping up and down screaming at the altar of his television. His tie-dye Bob Marley tapestry sprawled wide as a backdrop with the words "One Love" beaming down upon the clash of helmets and grunts.

Services That Come with a Free Lecture

Most industries provide some unexpected services. Three such types of industry include haircuts, bicycle repair and auto repair. Whenever you utilize any of these three professionals, you can bank on receiving a lecture.

Lectures from the Stylist
"Who cut your hair last?" says the woman wielding a set of shears near your ears.

It doesn't really matter how you answer the question, the response you receive will always come in the form of a lecture about how you should only allow a professional near your head. What happens if you inform the stylist currently hovering about your locks that your last cut came from her? Well, you must have seen someone else in-between your cuts with her, because she would never cut your hair that poorly.

"What shampoo and conditioner are using?" That's another common lecture-inducing question. The only way to shut the stylist up is to agree to buy the insanely priced hair products she recommends.

Lectures from the Bicycle Mechanic
"Where did you buy this bike, and how much did you spend on it?"

Ever take that bike you bought for $150 from the closest chain box store (Walmart, Target, et al) in to your local bike shop for a tune up or repair? Then you likely received a long talk about how cheap bikes equal cheap parts equal frequent repairs, or worse, injuries.

In all likelihood, you rode that bike for a few years before it needed anything in lieu of repairs. Still, the repair person will invariably spend more time lecturing you on how you need to spend at least $1000 on a bike than actually repairing the one you brought in to get fixed.

Lectures from the Auto Mechanic
The types of questions auto mechanics unleash depend on your vehicle's condition, as well as make and model and age.

Here's the thing about auto mechanics: You will always receive a lecture, no matter how excellent your car is:

• If your car is old, you'll be lectured on how you should consider scrapping it.
• If your car is moderately new, you'll be lectured for having not opted for a particular upsell, or if you did opt for the upsell, you'll be lectured for having idiotically chosen to accept the upsell.
  
• If your car is new, you'll be lectured on the oil weight or brand of parts that you use.
  
• If your car is new, you'll be lectured on how you should have bought another make or model.
  

More than any other industry professional, the auto mechanic is the most brash with his lectures. He's not afraid to unleash a battery of insulting remarks meant to make you feel as stupid as possible. Think going to see the dentist is bad?

What to Do if You Get Lectured
You don't have to listen to anyone lecture you in the service industry. Too often, people in service industries forget that you are the boss. Without you, they have no source of income. They need to show you some respect, and not assume that you want them to browbeat you.

Of course, if the professional is someone who's service you prefer, you might want to keep your frustration with their proselytizing quiet. Instead, try sighing deeply and tell them, "You do great work and I appreciate what you're telling me, but you're stressing me out."

Sci-Fi Is Crucial to Our Salvation

"Science Fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to express the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said, 'Individual Science Fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of Science Fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.'"
— Herbert Duncanson as Grell the robot in a mock post-show interview conducted on the set of "Wormhole X-Treme!," a show within a show on the episode "200" of "Stargate: SG-1" Season 10.

Good Riddance Seth Godin

For months, I read in numerous sources that Seth Godin's blog is the shiznit. I started reading his book "IdeaVirus," and that clenched it for me. I visited his site, found his blog and subscribed via RSS. After nearly one year's worth of reading his tripe and after far more deliberation than it deserved, I've deleted my subscription to Seth's blog.

Why? Well, the reasons are numerous, but mostly I grew tired of allowing his usually myopic, reactionary and hackneyed postings to stir up negative emotions of audacity within me. I gave him permission to market his thoughts to me for too long. It was high time that I cut the ties.

Why did I continue to read? Well, he's not always so off-base. Sometimes he has great things to say, relevant things and astute observations. Mostly, I stuck around because I wanted to have common ground with the rest of the online marketing "tribe." Speaking of "tribes"...

Most of you Seth fans already know about his latest book, "Tribes." Hopefully not too many of you bought it and got the free copy instead. It irritates me that Seth would try to coin a term that was already coined when he first published "IdeaVirus." In his latest book, he's tried to positioned himself as the visionary behind the concept of online tribes. But fact is, his book is really only based on observations of activity that has existed for over a decade.

In "IdeaVirus," Seth thought he cleverly coined the term "hives." Now, he might argue that hives and tribes aren't the same thing, but at their core, they are. He was hoping that the term "hives" would catch on, but he neglected to think about the negative connotations associated with that term - lack of individuality and the association with a rash, to name two.

With the term "hive" never truly taking off, Seth must have made some conscious decision to capitalize on the term that organically surfaced: "tribes." My hope is that you will not be one of the thousands taken in by his latest opus. If you read "IdeaVirus," you should already know that articulation is not one of Seth's strong suits.

Some other reasons I've unsubscribed to his blog include the following:

• Seth doesn't allow comments on his blog. He is guilty of violating his own maxim of permission marketing. He markets AT us, not with us.
• Seth believes nobody cares about you. Sure, he had a point that there needs to be some commonalities, that a person has to feel a vested interest in knowing you. But he was dead wrong when he said that nobody cares about you. Just go visit YouTube, go read blogs with enabled comments, go join Twitter. You'll find that people do indeed care about you, more than you might even be comfortable with.
• Seth is reactionary. If he receives service he deems subpar or an inconvenience to him, he bags on the business without considering the bigger corporate policies at work. Seth is a something-for-nothing kind of guy who is always surprised and appalled when people don't drop everything to serve only him. It's painfully obvious Seth has never worked an entry-level service job. I have, and based on his tales, he is the worst kind of customer - one who takes out his frustrations on the help, who's main concern is following SOP so that they can keep their jobs. Don't beat down the employees for following their employer's rules, Seth. You just look like a jerk when you do.
  

Today in the US, millions of people are casting their votes for candidates and measures that matter to them. Today, I cast my vote of discontent with Seth Godin and expel him from the office of online marketing guru. His knowledge has been shown to be wane, and I welcome my newly acquired liberation from the tyranny that is the facade known as Seth Godin.

Join me, won't you? If you subscribe to Seth's blog and find it equally as irritating, unsubscribe and let your voice be heard.

Note: In case you hadn't figured it out already, this will be the last time you will have to read any Seth-related rants.

HyperLocalism

HyperLocal is Local redefined for our Internet-based age.

HyperLocal is perhaps more complicated to define than it is to experience. In fact, you're experiencing a moment of HyperLocalism right now.

I've written these words in my hamlet of Ashland, Oregon, and there you are reading my words in Singapore. You didn't have to buy the book; you just landed on my blog and read away. But that's not necessarily what makes a blog HyperLocal; it's the ability to comment. When once you had to snail mail a letter to an author, or even try to contact them via phone, you can now provide the author with feedback immediately via the comments feature.

So, what is HyperLocal? Think of it as “local” redefined.

Dictionaries always use the word “proximity” to define “locality.” Over the last half of the 20th Century, we noted a major shift in locality, as many places we now consider “local” once required significant travel time to reach.

Think of people living in large cities. At one time, those cities were actually lots of different towns and people referred to working out of town. Nowadays, people don’t tend to make the same reference. Now, they refer to how long it takes them to drive to work. It hearkens more to the idea of accessibility than proximity.

Back to the idea of “HyperLocal”; this term, as thus defined, refers to the way that the Internet has created a new form of locality. In the click of a mouse, we can now access those living on the other side of the planet.

The technical word for a web site address is “URL,” Universal Resource Locator. That URL helps us access, and thereby focus our attention, on a particular aspect of this planet previously restricted by “proximity.” With HyperLocalism, proximity fades out and accessibility takes over.

Here are some examples of HyperLocalism:

• Emailing friends/family—We are no longer subject to long distance charges, the hassle of having to write things out by hand, or having to decide which photos to send to which person.
  
• Social Networking Sites—Sites like MySpace, Hi5, Second Life, and LocalsGuide have created a space in which communities can form regardless of their proximity from one another.
  
• Information Databases—Sites featuring knowledge bases, no matter how "inaccessibly" the information is presented, allow us to access knowledge previously restricted by proximity to the center that houses it.
  
• Webrings—Similar to Social Networking Sites, webrings act like a tie to join together like sites, creating communities that could not have otherwise existed without the simple technology used to create these communities.