Don’t you want to risk having your heart torn out, stomped on terribly, thrown in a pot, flavored using a rare bowel-evacuation reduction, and fed back to your dying body that is pleasantly yet capable of taste and psychic damage?

Hot damn! If that ain’t for me. Unfortunately…I’m an idealist…I love the underdog…I’m screwed. Yes indeed…I am a Philadelphia Eagles fan. Perhaps not only the Eagles – although they are the freshest and perhaps deepest wound – but really any Philadelphia team can serve as the greatest Sports/Politics metaphor…The Third Party Sports Franchise. Third rate at least…and yet I can’t seem to root for anyone else. This, even in light of the fact that they are perpetual losers in the grand scheme of things and both are run by management that would better serve the world as the sloppy mustachioed clerk awkwardly standing slack jawed in the middle of the “Women’s Intimates and Sleepwear” section of Walmart.

Oh! But you know a thing or two about sports and will point out the Eagles’ semi-recent appearances in NFC Championship games and one Super Bowl. Indeed, and every now and then a Ross Perot or Ralph Nader will pop up, give you a glimmer of hope, and fade in a very crashing and burning kind of way…just enough hope to make it hurt worse than previously imagined…yet not totally unexpected. But most of the time it ends the same way as Philadelphia’s season did this year. There were articles commenting, paraphrased, “How nice it is that the Eagles wound up 8-8 after a terrible start.” Yeah…that’s just dandy. Lets congratulate our fine warriors and keep our expectations at the same level for the next run for the gold. Why don’t we cut the crap and just “Wait till next year…” right at the start of each season? Maybe we’ll increase that 3% to 4% without even trying. And after that…perhaps we’ll reach our goal of 5% and be done with it. Hallelujah!

In either case, I’m not grasping for immediate, drastic results – alright, maybe with the Eagles as I very personally connect their losing ways with the occurrence of my birth – but you might do something different this season…cause the status quo or less than that ain’t making it.

Of course, there may just actually exist evil shadow-government forces at work against such third parties and their sports counterparts. But that should just temper the will to win even more…to taste that forbidden and impossible flavor. If such were actually to occur, I think we may just find that we would never have any need of want again…or at least a 4 years absence. And isn’t that a fine, fine gamble? As long as you’re not dumb enough to put your money into it, you can only lose your emotions and liberties and they don’t really have much value in the end anyway, right? But if they’re already on the table, why not play to win…instead of running your sweaty hands through your chips and getting thrown a free cocktail now and then by the friendly…too friendly, grinning bastard sitting across from you…whose gentle convincing smile makes you fold every time? Or maybe we are better off with both as purely spectator sports. “Oh you know…I’m just a fan of the league, really.”

…but I have certainly let myself fall into dumb hopeful statements of backhanded agitprop here…openly contradicting myself three or four times and proclaiming a bit too proudly these hypocritical fluctuations…overall losing sight of what’s really important…

…the Dallas Cowboys suck. They are the worst evil…ever. So let us at least rally against that. Texans will be forgiven if they repent properly and join the cause. Cowboys fans from Pennsylvania, however, will never receive forgiveness and were no longer considered Pennsylvanians the very moment they donned the hat, jacket, or jersey of the beast. There is no dumber image…except maybe Andy Reid repeatedly turning over his play chart, down 14 with 3 seconds left in the fourth…looking for that one play.

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.

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