For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends.

Sometimes, kid, the road will end before your feet are tired. This is the best part, the part where you make your own path. The part where you explore something new, somewhere unique, and see the world for what it really is. Not what those before you wanted to show you it was.

Relish in that moment of panic that hits when you discover you’re on your own. It’s called being alive. It’s called not being shoved in some pre-marked cardboard box of a direction but having enough respect for yourself to break out. Sometimes there’s no one to show you where to go, sometimes there are no more concrete slabs marking out an easy way that has been trodden for years by followers and sheep.

Take your sheep suit off, kid. You’re a wolf, you know, the world’s yours for the taking. And what’s the worst they can do to you for finding your own way? How badly can they hurt you? Don’t fear the end, kid, everything ends. But a lot of things never begin. Begin something. Begin your own path. Write your own story. Sing your own song, dance your own dance, live your own life!

Tell ‘em, Charlie: “Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!”

Make mistakes, they can be rectified. Take risks, don’t calculate them. You have this magnificent human power to think for yourself and discover this small world from your very own point of view. So keep walking when that path they made for you ends. That’s when life begins.

“We can but try.”

I know. I haven’t done this in a while and you hate me for it. You think I abandoned you, blog. No, I’m not gone. I’m right here. I still exist in this moment and on this world.

Geez, Alyssa, where’d you get all existential?

Just shut up, blog. I came back for a reason.

I forget what you looked like sometimes. The only time I can remember what your voice sounded like was when I imagine you, mischievous smile on your face, as you yelled “aww, geez!” I sometimes try to reason with myself, decide whether you were ever really real. You existed once, but you don’t anymore. The only place you exist now is in my mind. You are what I make you. I’ve made you the best friend I ever had, and maybe you were.

Remember the time Corey Lang wouldn’t go out with me in 6th grade, and you felt bad for me? You asked me out and stayed with me for a month, just to make me feel better. I was 11 then. I’m 19 now. If you were still here, that would only be a difference of eight years. But you aren’t, and it was a lifetime. I was older at 13 than I will ever be again, because of you. No, I’m not mad at you for that. I thank you for that. I miss you to death, but I thank you.

I’ve grown so far apart from everyone I considered a friend in 8th grade. I didn’t want to, Matt, honestly. I miss them all so much. I miss them almost as much as I miss you.  It’s like they don’t exist anymore, either. I want them to exist, I want you all to exist. I want eighth grade to exist, not just be part of my imagination.

But the question must be asked: If you were here today, would you still exist? Would you be hours away physically and galaxies away mentally? How awkward would the silence be if we tried to chat? Who would you be? Who would I be? Would you still have that mischievous smile? Would I still be clueless about what it obviously hid? Would you still be my hero?

My theory is that you were the smartest person I have ever met. You figured it out, Matt. At 14, you figured it out. You figured out that the past stops existing. Everything that ever made us happy stops existing. The best moments become figments of our imaginations. You are a figment of my imagination. My friends are all figments of my imagination. Tangible figments. Living memories of how wonderful things used to be. At 13 you knew this would happen, and you made sure it didn’t. You became the happy memory, you didn’t let them pass you by. You were never going to sit up, at 2:30 a.m. in a dark dorm room, looking at pictures of the friends you once had.

You’re so young. You’re 20 years old in this instant, but you’ll only ever be 14. You’ll always remain in the happiest time of all of our lives. You genius, you. I’ll never get to be an 8th grader again, you’ll be one for life. You lucky devil. You damned smart, lucky devil.

You child. You bright eyed, smiling child. I miss you so much. You’re the best friend I ever had, the best friend I’ll never see again. I used to think I’d see you in heaven, Matt. I used to be an idiot. We’re all in hell here, you were the last of us to get away safely. Tantalus never had it this bad, buddy. The happiness is only a few years past, dangling there in our conscious thoughts. The ones that are only real because we think they are. You, you’re there. Donnie is there. Zane, Kristen, they’re there. They’re perfect there. Perfect and unattainable. Figments of our imaginations.

I remember the time you broke the popcorn sponge. The time you snorted sour Skittles powder. The time you broke the blinds trying to get Cassy light to cheer her up. Do you remember? Would these all just be blips in time if you were still here? If memories of the person you were weren’t precious commodities?

Sorry for all of this. I stumbled upon a picture of you and Donnie and your other brothers. You’re just so young. Can we really have only been in 8th grade? Can I really have only been 13? How do you tell a 13 year old that her friend didn’t want life and nothing could be done about it? How do you make a 13 year old understand the permanence of life and death? How do you make a 19 year old understand the permanence of life and death? How do you make anyone understand that a 14 year old child can decide he is done with life? How do you make anyone understand he was a genius for it?

You just don’t. You can’t. You “accept.” You “move on.” You do everything the school counselors tell you to do when they call you for assemblies to try to make you feel better about things you shouldn’t feel good about. You do it all and none of it erases the scar opening in your life, if you are lucky. Pray it doesn’t erase that scar, you need it. You need it to survive in this world. Don’t ever let them take that scar from you, they are liars. He’s gone and all you have left are memories. That’s all you’ll ever have of him. That’s all you’ll ever have of all of the friends you say goodbye to at graduation and see only in Facebook statuses. He was preparing you for the truth, the reality, the future by making that scar on your past.

A genius. A God-blessed genius. A God-blessed genius with those happy blue eyes, that smile. 14 years old. And now it’s 3 a.m. but he’ll sleep long enough for the both of us. This blog post is going to say what I want it to. If it takes a sleepless year it will say what I want it to.

You’re a happy kid playing Bop-It in your All-stars uniform on Halloween. You’re a body in a casket in a cemetery in Allenton, Michigan, gauze covering the place where the face you didn’t want anymore used to be. You’re the centerpiece of a funeral attended by 5,000 people, half of the entire town. You don’t exist anymore. My mind fights with itself daily, and I wonder if anyone else understands the confusion I have. Surely they must. Surely they must wonder if you ever existed. Everything we have of you is in our minds. The past stopped existing and you are the past. Did you ever exist? Was it ever real? I can’t be the only one that wonders if we ever really did spend science class laughing in the back corner. I have nothing left of you. How am I supposed to know you were real when I can hardly remember your face anymore? You left nothing.

And I’m convinced I’ll never see you again. I’m convinced we all made up heaven just like we made you up. You’re too good for us. Paradise is too good for us. I’m convinced what you became was nothing more than a body in the ground. That’s all I’ll ever be, too. I hate that. I hate this, this wondering what comes next. Some say it’s the best part of life, not knowing what the next day brings, what the end brings. I hate that I was expected to move on. I never did. I never left February 10th, 2004. I never will, come to think of it. I never want to. I want to remember forever what it felt like the moment I learned we are all just animals. Just animals with a finite time on earth and nothing to look forward to. I want to remember when I lost my immortality. Not innocence. I’m human, I was never innocent. I want to remember when I lost my friend. I want to remember where I failed to learn the lesson that one day I would lose everything.

Halloween, 2000. You’d just turned 11. 3 more years. What were you thinking in that moment? That smile on your face, were you really happy? Was it just a lie, a 3+ year lie? What was I thinking?  In less than a year, the towers would fall. In a year, you would ask me out in pity. In a year you would give me one of the best memories of what humanity could be like when it was good. One of the last memories of such. In 3 years, 3 months and 10 days, you would decide you were done. In 3 years and 27 days it would be your favorite number. 11:27. What was the significance? Anything? when I see 11:27 on the clock now I can still hear your voice. I imagine it is you talking to me. When I am having a rough day and I happen to see 11:27 I know you are there for me. When I don’t, I imagine you have better things to do. I understand that. You have so many friends, you can’t pay attention to all of us at once.

4 a.m. and I still haven’t found exactly what it is I want to say. I still haven’t made my point. I still haven’t found the words to make everyone understand what a picture of you from 2000 means to me today. I don’t have the words for the sudden feeling of numb that came over me when I remembered that I’d forgotten you. In 3rd grade at FFA day I saw a little black goat huddled in the back of a trailer, scared of all the noise. I told that goat I’d never forget it. I haven’t. But I’ve forgotten you, my last hope for humanity. How? How have I forgotten my little scar? Is it pretentious for me to say I feel ancient when I think of how I’ve forgotten you? Has everything I have said been pretentious, even if I meant all of it?

Look at me. Never learned a damned thing. Still pining for society’s approval. I’m only human. I’m not a 14 year old genius. I haven’t figured out how to break free. This was never meant for anyone else, anyway. It was meant for me. It was meant to explain how seeing your face in a still image, in a combination of chemicals and trapped light on a paper-like film, transferred onto a computer, made me feel. An intangible moment captured by someone intelligent enough to know you were one to remember. A memory. A figment of someone’s imagination. A…a word that hasn’t been invented. Something that cannot be described. You were there, right? You existed? Where are you hiding now? In your grave, underground? When will we see you again?

You existed in January, 1997. You were seven. I was in Florida. You’re in a shirt that’s too big for you. In 7 years and one month you’ll be in a casket that’s too big for you. Your Legos are in the background. Legos were my favorite toys, too. Our parents thought we were going to get married. They thought Karey and Donnie would be married, too. Parents are funny like that, they can’t see the future. You were always too smart for me. I understood school work, you understood the world. I’m in college now, you’re in paradise. You were always smarter.

4:30 and I feel a sense of calm. The rage and the sadness and the misery are passing and the storm is calling. I put your picture away. I can’t look at it knowing I’ll never be able to express what it means to me. I adore you. I often imagine meeting you walking around campus. I imagine suddenly seeing you walking toward me, coming out of your hiding place in the ground after all these years to greet me. I imagine leaping at you, wrapping you up in the biggest hug I’ve ever given. I imagine everything wrong in my life fading away and never coming back. I imagine regaining my faith. I imagine being able to believe again in miracles, hope, happiness, friendship, humanity, life…

But it is all a figment of my imagination. All intangible. I miss you so much, Matt.

It. And an announcement. But mostly It.

First of all, Imaginaries, I have started a new blog. Don’t worry, this one will remain active, too, so you can continue to loiter about in that little imaginary way that you do. Anyway, here is the link. http://www.sticksports.com/blogs/redexpress9/ Also, while there, play yourself a game of Stick Cricket. But only if you have healthy amounts of time to devote to it, because it is addicting as hell. Seriously. I’ve been trying to beat Scotland for about a week now. I get on such a promising run, then that damned slow bowler, that damned spinner! Fast in-swing? Get that out of here, I hit sixes off that all day! But that damned slow bowler… Oh, right, sorry…I was just…you know…yeah…

Alright. Now. On to the Russian exam It.

I see you, Imaginaries. I see you itching to ask how It went. Don’t. You are all important to me, I don’t want you to abandon me because I cursed you left and right for asking about It. It went poorly. It went as badly as it could have gone. It made me want to tear my hear out. It made me want to cry. It made me want to be in high school again. Let me repeat that: It made me want to be in high school again. Take that in, Imaginaries.

But you know what? It’s over. My hardest class of the semester is over and it is smooth sailing from here. All downhill, in the good way. Sure, my grade probably took a dive from an A to a C- in a matter of hours, but it’s over. I get to sleep in tomorrow, laze about and write a bit of a paper while everyone else takes their exams. I get good food Friday at my favorite restaurant and I get to go home Saturday. So through all the bad today, things are looking up. And you know…I think I’ll end on that for the night. Goodnight, Imaginaries, enjoy your Thursdays.

Too. Tired. For. Title.

Imaginaries, my dears…I’m quite concerned about your well-being. It seems you are becoming…less imaginary. And much more bored. 20 views to my blog yesterday, surely I don’t have enough to say to warrant 20 views? Ah, well, I thank you all the same, although I am certain you won’t return to see my thanks.

Regardless, I will continue. Today, Imaginaries, I imposed my will on two unsuspecting papers. I do not consider this cruelty at all, in fact I consider it to be quite the opposite. I will turn them in tomorrow to a person that wants them much more than I do, and perhaps they will find a wonderful home until they are recycled. Ah, the life of a paper. Despised when assigned, despised while being written, despised while being corrected, and then recycled.

What’s that you say? I’ve lost my mind, you say? I’m personifying inanimate objects and giving them a life story, then sympathizing with them? Ah…so I am. You’ve caught me, Imaginaries. But for the first time in a while, I found myself in a fantastic mood, despite the papers. Today was a gorgeous day, with a chilling yet bracing cold, with the kind of crisp air that reminds you to appreciate the simple things. Or maybe that is just me, perhaps? Well, all the same, the cold was refreshing, and when I have been refreshed from the constant stale monotony of everyday life I tend to talk to and personify inanimate objects. And write especially wordy, melodramatic blog posts, as evidenced here.

But I don’t care how silly I sound, Imaginaries, because today marks the first day the semester looks like it is nearing its resolution. The air is crisp, the mountain of homework is shrinking, and the holidays finally appear to be slightly closer than eons away. I am, for the first time in months, a happy college student. I am a happy college student because I am coming upon one of the few times of the year I get to pretend I am not, in fact, a college student. I’m sure there is some sort of symbolism or irony or other literary device there, but I’m too tired to look for it. I leave you with an apology for another substance-less entry and a sincere wish that whatever you do with your life in the next 24 hours you enjoy heartily.

Perhaps I owe you something, Imaginaries…Well, here are a few more random links, thanks to my Adventures in StumbleUpon.

An 8th grade exit exam from 1895:

http://people.morehead-st.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html

DamnInteresting.com. Enough said, right?

http://www.damninteresting.com/

Very cool place with graphical representations of different types of information, statistics, opinions, so on.

http://www.good.is/

Alright, that’s all you get. I need to be in bed two hours ago, Imaginaries. Have a great night, all of you.

The biggest waste of time entry you will ever experience.

It’s getting to be that time of year again, Imaginaries.

What, you thought I meant the holiday season? No, no. I meant exam season. I meant open season for students’ wills to live, fire at will my dear Imaginaries.

Am I being melodramatic? I have four papers, one presentation, and three tests in the next week. Ask me if I care whether or not I’m being melodramatic. Go on, ask.

Of course, you would probably ask me other things first. For instance: If I have so much to do, why am I blogging? Why did I just play Stick Cricket for two hours? Why will I twitter until 4 a.m. tonight? Denial. Simple as that.

I promise there is a point to this.

No…no, there isn’t. You can stop reading, unless you have nothing better to do. In that case, I’m furious with you. I’ve got something for you to do, one of the 80 gazillion assignments weighing heavily on my mind. How about you do that instead of coming here and silently bragging about how little you have to do!? Huh, how about that!

I’m sorry Imaginaries. I got carried away with my jealousy. It won’t happen again.

God…I have to give you at least a little substance, don’t I? It would be unfair of me not to…

Ok, here are some Dr. Seuss political cartoons, specifically anti-Hitler, from World War II. Enjoy.

http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Hitler.html

Oh, and here is one of the most depressing things you will ever see, the World Clock if you’ve never seen it.

http://www.shambles.net/worldclock/worldclock.swf

And here is what my life now revolves around, Stick Cricket.

http://www.sticksports.com/cricket/gametraining.php

And when my life isn’t revolving around Stick Cricket, it revolves around this.

http://www.shorpy.com/

And you know what? I’m going to go work on that paper now. So…sorry for the waste of time blog entry, my dear Imaginaries.

To you from failing hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high.

I will never watch Hobey Baker glide up the wing like the god people likened him to. I will never see Frank McGee lead the Silver Seven to glory, never see Lester Patrick take his place in the net for the 1928 Rangers. I will never see the Maroons, the Tigers, the Bulldogs, the Thistles, the Americans, the Wanderers, or so many others lace up their skates like they did so many years ago. I will never experience the heyday of amateur hockey, the rover, Olympia, so many things I would see in my greatest dreams. I am a hockey lover that missed the greatest days of hockey, the pre-commercialized sporting wonder it produced.

But I will live my life knowing that I’ve seen the greatest hockey team ever to exist play. I have experienced the wonder of watching the proudest sporting entity in North America take the ice, and I have seen a team rally a city like no other team can claim. I have seen the Montreal Canadiens play, and through them I have seen the proud history of hockey live on today. I never saw Morenz, Richard, Plante, Beliveau, Harvey, Vezina, and so many others play but the spirit of their game lives on today. May the memory of the history of the Montreal Canadiens never be forgotten, may our last connection to early history of our beloved sport never die out.

From a die-hard Detroit Red Wings fan, I wish the Montreal Canadiens 100 more years of legend-making success, 24 more Stanley Cups, and many more heroes. Thank you for your contribution to hockey, to the glory and history of such an amazing sport. May your torch always be held high.

Here's to 100 more years.

But no such winds blow hither.

I thought StumbleUpon would help me find something to blog about, because I felt like blogging. And it did. I found the most moving footage of 9/11 I have ever seen. No newscasters, nothing oozing with patriotism, just raw footage by a family from their apartment  500 yds away.  I include it here, but I warn you if you intend to watch it: It’s long, and it is gutting. Here it is: http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=47f7nkuk3x

I was 11 when that happened. I was a 6th grader coming back from spending agri-science class outside looking at trees. I was a kid who kept hearing every adult within range say that nothing like that had ever happened in the history of the United States. I had heard people describe their “Kennedy moment,” where they were and what they were doing when they heard Kennedy had been shot. This was my “Kennedy moment,” except bigger, more historical. I’m furious when I remember I was actually proud to be alive when this happened, so I could tell the next generation about my “9/11 moment.”  When you are 11, this sense of importance appeals to you. When you are 11, you think you understand everything, even if no one around you does. I told everyone I understood, despite their urgings that I couldn’t possibly. When you are 11, you think you don’t need anyone’s guidance. When you are 11, you’re blind.

When you are 19, you’re blind. You still don’t know a damned thing. But hopefully by then you know you don’t know a damned thing. The actual scope of all of the things you really don’t and never will be able to understand should be a bit clearer. When you are 19, you should know that you’ll never understand another human being completely, that you’ll never even understand yourself completely. When you are 19, you should know that there is no such thing as an innocent person, but there is no such thing as a purely evil person, but there are millions of different stages in between. When you are 19, you should know the events of the world are never black and white, they have millions upon billions of little things making them up.

But when you are 11, you never fully grasp the extent of the things you can’t grasp. You never try. You just plow headlong through the world and accept all things for face value. And I did that. The 9/11 attacks could be summed up by 11 year old me as follows: Terrorists attacked. A lot of people died. We should kill whoever did it.

I felt almost no sympathy for the people who were lost because it hadn’t really affected me. It was hundreds of miles away. Outside the sun was shining and it was going to be a beautiful day. We wouldn’t have to do work because our teachers are letting us watch T.V. How could today be so bad? It just didn’t make sense, not to a 6th grader.

I used to think that the world would make sense when I was older. It does, it makes total sense. We’re all just a bunch of fools. We’re all ridiculous fools. When we are 11 we are fools for thinking we aren’t, when we are 19 we are fools for knowing we are but doing nothing about it, and when we are even older we are fools again for encouraging the fool inside of us. We build gigantic buildings, monuments and testaments to the willpower and strength of the human race, of the human mind. And then we knock each other’s buildings down. We think up new bombs and new guns and new ways to destroy the things those before us devoted themselves to creating, and we’re all just damned fools because of it.

This isn’t about war, it isn’t about politics, or society, or anything like that. It is about humanity as a whole. It is about how deep down inside of us there is something unnatural. Competition is a natural thing, but we have crossed the line of being competitive, and we have crossed it running. We are our own worst enemy. We know this, yet we press on with our own self-destruction. A race hell-bent on suicide, explain that to Mother Nature. Let me  know whether she laughs or cries.

I hope it is the latter, but I wouldn’t blame her for the former. How do you watch such a ridiculous race without cracking a smile, even a smile at our hopelessness?

How do you watch people deliberately crash a plane into a building  in order to kill without finding yourself trying to rationalize it in your own 11 year old way? You don’t, you must rationalize. You must dumb it down, you must dilute the impact and the importance of what you see. I have studied so many tragedies since, and they have impacted me so much more than the one major human tragedy that I could consider being “close to home.”  But I watch it again now, and I cannot dumb it down anymore. It’s humanized now, and I’m glad. It’s one less thing, of the trillions of things, that I am completely blind or numb to. And the world still makes sense, we’re all still just damned fools.

May all of those people who were lost on that day, may all of the people in the history of the world that have been lost to human stupidity, rest in peace.

Just pin a target on my back. Never mind, I’ll put one there myself.

I’m going to be killed for this. I feel more confident this will be my doom than I ever was that calling American sports weak would. But I’m going to say it, because I’ve noticed something disturbing in sports, and it is gamesmanship. And by gamesmanship, I mean so many things. Today, however, I’m talking about the one thing, the one thing all sports fan can unite about. The referee. Three times today I have seen a game official blamed for the game’s outcome, so I’ve got something to say.

And here I go, if I never see the light of day again after this statement, I’ll know I was killed for standing up for the truth: The ref is not the reason you lost the game. The ref is never the reason you lost the game, unless you’ve gotten a ref that has somehow managed to slip by every test of officiating prowess, that blows the whistle and penalizes your team every single last time they touch the ball/puck/whatever. The refs may make it hard, oh they make it damned hard to win for you. You may have a glittering chance to win, and you are running around celebrating fantastically, and out of the corner of your eye you see the ref waving his hands and mouthing something through the deafening noise of the ecstatic crowd…what is that ref saying?

NO GOAL!? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN NO GOAL!? THAT WAS CLEARLY IN!

And it was clearly in, check any replay, even ask the other team! It was in! Two days later the ref will admit this and offer a prepared statement of apology, but for now he is waving off your goal! Well…if you lose this game, you decide, then it is the ref’s fault, no one else’s. Right?

No. Not right. Never right. You play this game for 40, 60, 80, 90 minutes, or more. One call should never, ever determine the game for you. Five calls shouldn’t. You are a professional athlete, this is your job, this is what you are paid to do. It’s what they are paid to do. If a team deserves to win a game, their fate should not hang in the balance of one referee’s call.

“But it was a handball, dammit!”

“It was clearly in the net, who gives a damn whether the ref had the intent to blow his whistle! “

“That was a penalty, ref, could you not clearly see the penalty!?”

“What the hell do you mean penalty, what game are you watching, ref?”

“Foul ball!? That was not a foul ball ump!”

And let’s be honest, it feels good to blame the official. It feels good to believe that your game, your series, your season even can come down to one call, and that if an official blows that call and your team fails to do what they set out to do, it feels good to believe it wasn’t their fault. It feels good to believe someone else blew it for them, and it had nothing to do with the way they were playing. But I’ve had my share of sports heartache and sports joy; calls go for you and calls go against you, and whether or not they are the right ones, they are the ones that have been made. Now pick yourself up and prove you are worthy of whatever glory you are aiming to achieve. The best teams will dust themselves off and try to overcome, the worst ones will spend the rest of their lives blaming someone else. And what good does that do anybody?

Maybe this is the part of me that yearns for the past speaking. The time before multi-million dollar contracts and inescapable corporate advertising, the time back when sports were a form of entertainment, not an all-consuming obsession. I miss the days I’ve never known, the days of Hobey Baker, a man who refused to play dirty, who was almost reduced to tears when others did; a man who became one of the greatest athletes in American history, yet never played a game of professional sport in his life because he thought it cheapened the integrity of the game. I miss the day when Clapton Orient left behind it’s footballing life and joined the war effort, because their country needed them. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Or Ted Williams, or Turk Broda, Maurice Richard, all those men who realized there was more to life than sports? Will we ever see the likes of Charlie Gardiner again, backstopping and captaining his team to a Stanley Cup while dying of an infection, the definition of a true teammate, true loyalty, true dedication?

No, I think those days are over. There is no honor in sports anymore, no integrity, only money. The love fans have for their team isn’t love anymore, it’s simply a demand for perfection. How many Blackhawks fans could you meet eight years ago, when the team was the joke of the league? How many will you find now that they are great? Not many more…showing up on the bandwagon doesn’t make you a fan. When there isn’t perfection, the fans most often will choose one of two routes, depending on their mood: Our team is pathetic and not worth supporting, or the other team/referees cheated. You don’t often hear anymore the phrase “the best team won.” But that is the reason sports are so special: on any given day, the team that plays best will almost always win, unless the two teams are so evenly matched that there hardly is a best team. Now you say “what about those games that one team dominates, but the other team just gets lucky and puts the ball in the net?” Well, what about them? How dominant is a team if they can control the pace of an entire game but never get a ball in? Their shots may be inaccurate, or their final set-up pass may just always be off, but in all circumstances if they can’t put the ball or the puck in the net, or the ball into the endzone, something was wrong about their game. And sometimes the best team doesn’t always look the best, sometimes the best team is simply the team that does enough to win the game.

I know..it is so damned hard to admit your team just wasn’t good enough. Trust me. I sobbed the night the Red Wings lost the Cup this June, literally sat in my room and sobbed. But the fact of the matter is the Penguins showed up to play game seven, the Wings didn’t. The refs seemed biased, but they did not decide a game, and they did not decide the series. The two teams did, and the decision didn’t go in the Wings favor. That tore me to pieces, but how pathetic does it look to run around saying the only reason the Wings lost is because of the refs, because of Gary Bettman? That’s just silly. The Wings lost because they didn’t show up. End of story.

I guess I want to end by summing up two points.

1. Every team in the world these days is guilty of some offense or other. In this modern society of sports, this pathetically flawed ideal of “gamesmanship” is instilled from such a young age that people of all ages and all talent levels believe if it helps your team, and you can get away with it, then do it. No team is innocent.  Now what did fans expect Henry to do, walk up to the ref and say “sir, I played that ball with my hand, it shouldn’t be a goal.” Name me one athlete of the 21st century you honestly think would risk his or her team’s qualification to the World Cup or other major event by doing that. Name me one. Better yet, name a member of your favorite team that you would want to deliberately erase your team’s chance at glory in the interest of fair play. And be honest, don’t just say a person to make yourself feel better, don’t just say a person so you can sleep at night. Your team just scored in sudden death of a championship game off an illegal play but didn’t get caught, how many can honestly say they would want the player to go to the ref and say the score shouldn’t count? Sure, it’s the right thing to do, but…that trophy just looks so good in our players hands, not the other team’s…That’s why this isn’t changing. If fans want this to change, then we must show disgust to cheating, universally. If a player does something cheap, call them on it, no matter what team they play for. This filthy play won’t end so long as we as fans support it with our double standards.

2. The best summation of today came from an anonymous contributor to the BBC’s live text commentary of France v Ireland: “Robbed? 17 shots to Ireland’s 6, club football when a team defends most of the game we say that’s not football, but Ireland do it and they were robbed, it was a mistake the ref made, get over it…” And that’s that. There are two sides to every game, and no matter what side feels robbed by the ref, there is always one thing to remember: sports governing bodies don’t really care about the opinion of the fan. They won’t change the outcome of a game because fans feel robbed, even if they are right in feeling robbed. Being mad won’t change a damned thing, I tried all summer and the 2009 Cup still doesn’t belong to my Wings, so I know from experience. The only thing we can do is pick ourselves up, be big about it, and realize one moment in one game, and our feelings about the moment, will never change a damned thing quickly enough to get the result we want. It’s part of sports and always has been. This new whining, this new inability to accept our teams’ faults and failures graciously though? This hasn’t always been part of sports, and it shouldn’t be anymore. So no more. No more of this blaming someone else, no more of this pretending it isn’t our own team’s fault. If we ever hope to restore the integrity of sports, we must stop expecting superhuman athletes and superhuman officials, the new (old) order of sports begins with us.

Now that sure got a bit ranty, didn’t it? Sorry about that, and it was so ordered for so long. Anyway, goodnight Imaginaries.

One of those late night rant things. Except it’s only 12:30 am.

I really like staying up late, wasting time, doing pointless things and watching sports streamed illegally on the internet. It is fun, relaxing, and really educational.

I really hate class. I hate class so much I didn’t even have anything to cross out in a jocund manner. It is boring, stressful, and hardly educational.

Do you know where I learned the definition and proper usage of jocund? Not class, no no. The internet. The internet taught me how the processes of nuclear fusion and fission work. The internet has taught me about world disasters, scientific breakthroughs, wars and other conflicts, political history, and so very much more.

Class? Class has taught me how to bullshit everything I do, and do only as much as it takes to get an acceptable grade. Class has taught me to cheat the system and not take pride in my work, because it is too easy to do well in a world dominated by the idea that everyone must pass, everyone must succeed or someone’s feelings may be hurt. And the internet has taught me that the world is way, way, way too sensitive about hurting other people’s feelings.

So my question is this: How on Earth did it become essential for me to (pay for and) attend an institution that serves no real purpose (at least for the first four years) besides wasting my time and improperly teaching me things that will not be relevant to my life? I’m going to be a history major…why do I need to take a fine arts/theater class? Why do I need two physical sciences? I value education, truly I do. But college isn’t education. The vast majority of it is the memorization and regurgitation of useless facts. I need to have 120 credits to graduate. 30 of them must relate to my major. That’s it. 1/4 of my education is relevant to what I want to do in life. Explain that to me, please. No, seriously, explain it, because I can literally think of absolutely no explanation myself.

Now I’ve gone and riled myself up. I’m stopping, if I continue I’ll be too angry to get to sleep. But think on that, Imaginaries. If you figure out the answer, do be sure to let me know.

This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.

Of the many things I should be doing right now, folding laundry and sleeping are foremost on the list. However, I’m inspired, Imaginaries. Today is Armistice day…or Veteran’s Day or Remembrance Day or what have you. The point is that 91 years ago today the greatest conflict the world had ever seen up until that time officially ended.

And you know what? Ask ten people under the age of 20 what Armistice Day is. It’s most likely that ten of them will have no clue. I’m ashamed to know that my peers have such little grasp of this event, that war. How sad it must be for the Lost Generation to look upon us now, wherever they may be, and find they really are lost…and forgotten.

Now I have a theory, and my theory partially stems from my bias, which is my near-obsessive interest with World War I. I contest regularly that WWI was the worst war this world has ever seen, for several reasons: The absolute complexity, the utter hopelessness, the lack of a unifying cause, the trauma induced by being shelled for days while hiding in a hole, the disease, the hunger, the gas, the conditions, the lack of any real progress or accomplishment…every force of man and nature seemed to be hellbent on destroying  not only the bodies but the minds of the men who fought in the war. Can you think of another instance, at least in wars fought by the U.S. or other major powers? The closest I came was Vietnam, but…20 million dead is so terribly hard to compare to, especially when you consider how many nations were involved simply because of pacts or arrogance.

But I have digressed majorly, so I return to my theory. One day, I plan to write a dissertation on this. I think it is entirely possible to successfully argue that everything major in world politics before 1914 can be traced to the Roman Empire, and everything major in world politics after 1914 can be traced to WWI. Now, obviously, I have not researched this too extensively so there are probably instances that you could stump me. Just a few examples of things or people that I feel I could easily prove would not have happened/come to power/been destroyed/etc… had WWI never happened: Hitler, Nazism, Stalin, The U.S.S.R., The Cold War, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the dominance of soccer, WWII, The United Nations, AIDS, Ernest Hemingway….You get the point, right?

So tell me, Imaginaries, how do we let this war slip our minds? How do we neglect to realize we have let such a generation of men and women go so quietly? It was labeled “The War to End All Wars” yet we fight on today because we are so quick to forget the lessons of the past. The literature spawned from it, the volumes and volumes of proof that war is not a necessity but a terrible luxury taken by the rich and suffered through by their subordinates, we took it all in and gasped with wonder at its beauty, picked up our guns and went right on fighting. We missed the message completely.

And don’t give me that “World War II was a completely justified war” spiel. It wasn’t, Imaginaries. Take the time to recover from your shock that I just said that and then listen to my reasoning: Do you have any idea how many chances Britain and France had to stop Hitler before he even had the chance to do what he did? Any idea at all? Even before Appeasement, that awful word that ought to be a curse word to any humanity-loving human, Britain was letting little ol’ Hitler do as he very well pleased, directly in violation of treaties signed by the Allied powers following the Armistice. World War II wasn’t justified because it was ridiculously, unbelievably preventable. I’m nearly overcome by both laughter and tears when I read about how simple it would have been to stop Hitler. and to think, New York gave him a ticker tape parade and Time Magazine named him man of the year…

But I have made a second major digression, Imaginaries. My point is that when the stories came back of the conditions in the trenches, when the film reels showed us shell shock and injuries from the gas, when the “weeks” it supposedly would take for the war to end turned to months that turned to years, humanity should have looked as deeply inside itself as it could and humbly admitted it was wrong. Instead we forget a war, this war, that plays out like a backyard preschool drama and screams of futility and waste:

The Archduke has been shot, so Serbia is attacked…but Russia is sworn to protect Serbia, and Germany is sworn to ally with Austro-Hungary, and since they are already fighting anyway the Kaiser sees the perfect opportunity to head for neutral little Belgium, that little hunk of meat he has had his eyes on for quite a while. France and Britain swoop in to protect (and don’t be fooled, France has had an eye on Belgium for some time, too) and since the Kaiser was offended by some previous minor infractions on the part of the French, he certainly doesn’t mind going to war with them, too. Britain calls in all of her colonies to fight under the flag of the King, like they all honestly care about Ferdinand or Serbia or Belgium, but what can they do? Well the Central powers aren’t to be outdone, they go rile up some places, among the Turkey, who run in screaming of Jihad (no better way to get people to fight each other than mentioning religion) and the U.S. has so many temptations to go to war that finally it decides it will just pick the next one and go to war over it, Britain probably had a hand in placing the proverbial straw on the back of the camel that was the U.S. so in come the doughboys once the war was mostly over, but hey, it’s war. Let’s cause pain and suffering for people from as many regions as possible, right? Now the war is over, Austro-Hungary collapses so who else can be blamed besides Germany? Heap the blame of a near-blameless war onto an already financially ailing country, and..well…you get a desperate population. Desperate populations will allow rule by maniac, and…well….the rest is even more history. That’s it, that’s WWI, summed up and dumbed down to the best of my knowledge. And to the best of mine, and almost anyone elses’ knowledge, the war was wrong. It was wrong, millions never came home because of it, but now because of that self reflection perhaps something so all consuming and terrible could be avoided in the future.

Instead we threw our parades and forgot. We are still forgetting. Am I so naive to believe that war can be eliminated from this Earth? Of course not, Imaginaries. We are all human, and so long as we maintain our primal survival instincts and continue to advance technologically, we will continue to have war. You can’t stop it any more than you can stop the world from spinning or the sun from burning. But honestly…humanity could at least think things through a bit more. No one wins, no one has ever won before. The fight rages on, just with different titles and in different forms, in different parts of the world with different people fighting over different things, and none of these people will ever win. Why, then, do we do so little to prevent war? If the Lost Generation had to be lost, couldn’t it not have been in vain? Couldn’t we have learned what they sacrificed their sanity or lives to teach us? That war is permanent, it can’t be undone. What we lose, we lose. And all of the consequences of war, we are stuck with. Some are fantastic, some are downright horrible, but we can’t escape any of them. We can only learn from them, and it frightens me to see we aren’t doing that. Please, Imaginaries, however you spend today, if you read this line, remember to do one thing: remember to remember. Remember never to forget the people lost, in any war, and remember never to forget the people they left behind. Remember never to forget the pain felt throughout all the centuries of humanity at the collective loss of all of the family and friends at the hands of family and friends, at the hands of fellow humans. Remember what is permanent and what is temporary, and fight always for the former; it will let you down less. Remember never to forget the Lost Generation, not the literature movement but the real Lost Generation. The millions who served in WWI, the millions who were lost and the millions who lost others. Remember never to forget the hell they went through, because if we forget them, we are doomed to repeat their mistake. Happy Veteran’s Day, everyone. I leave you in the capable hands of T.S. Eliot:

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

-T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men