By: Kris Mead
Ever since the ever-popular Browns’ Chronicles took its end of season hiatus, I have received
numerous pieces of fan mail asking me, no, begging me to tell them that I will
be producing some periodical that will hold them over until the Browns’ Chronicles reappears. Don’t
believe me? Look at a few of the emails that I have received:
Kris, just because
football season is coming to an end doesn’t mean your writing has to take a
break. Please give me something!! – Charles Ackerson, 56, Des Moines, IA
My boss, at work,
asked me what I have done to become more productive. I immediately showed him
The CornerCube. His response? He fired himself and gave me his job. – Jillian
McCallister, 32, Jackson, MS
I thought my marriage
was in ruins, but then I found your blog – CornerCube. Now, my wife and I will
be renewing our vowels this Spring at Lake Tahoe. – Ta’Shon Wilburson, 45,
Augusta, ME.
So as you can see, and this isn’t an overstatement, I had an
enormous amount of pressure to make sure my next blog idea was not only going
to be entertaining, but downright addicting. Initially, I had absolutely no
idea, but then my sister called.
I appreciate my sister, she is not only my one sister, but
she is my little sister too. Typically when she calls randomly it means one of
two things. The first being, and the one I enjoy more, that she wants to go to
Bob Evan’s for breakfast and the second being a guy she was seeing has broken
it off with her. Typically when she calls about the latter she always starts
with, “Kris, I would like a guy’s perspective” and then proceeds to describe
how he won’t text her any longer, or doesn’t seem to be as interested as he
previously (i.e. the previous week) claimed to be into her. The first few times
I tried to gain these dudes’ perspectives, but each time I made that attempt, I
continually failed to understand them. Of course, the obvious objection is the
very fact that I have a bias towards my sister, so naturally, I will tend to
see her side better than their side. However, after about the third time I
realized that each of these dudes (and there were only like three that really
come to mind) had similar physical and personable characteristics.
The physical traits are quite easy – typically these men are
obsessed with their clothes and physique. In terms of physique I mean that they
work out twice a day (strength training only), worship their pre-workout
protein shake, routinely make an Instagram post about “leg day”, extremely particular about their clothing
lines (i.e. they seemed to always wear a shirt two sizes too small) and had
“tough guy” tattoos (Bible verses that they wouldn’t be able to locate if you
handed them a Bible, oriental language tats but they don’t know how to speak
any foreign language and there is strong reason to believe they hardly know how
to properly speak English. Furthermore, they most likely found the oriental
phrase, which is now inscribed on their left rib cage for eternity, on the back
of the fortune cookie they opened after consuming 40lbs of chicken fried rice
because it was “cheat day”).
As for personable traits there are two that come to mind.
The first is the fact that these guys quote Drake and Kanye lyrics as though
they are quoting moral philosophers such as Rawls, Bentham or Mills (which just
putting those three names with Kanye and Drake is a disgrace to the latters
intelligence and the formers lack thereof). The second is the fact that they
can’t cheer for losers. The best example is one dude, who has never been to
California and has lived in Ohio his whole life, decided that he was a Golden
State Warriors fan and not a Cleveland Cavaliers fan.
Lastly, they are simply indecisive and, honestly, cowards.
They can’t decide what they want because deep down, they don’t know what they
want. They routinely go through life constantly looking over their shoulder,
trying to desperately gain the approval of all those around them by inflating,
sculpting, and waxing their image. For their image is all they have and if you
were to dig any deeper, well, you’d hit an empty mass of nothingness because
they refuse to develop, or lack the ability to develop, anything further. They
have spent endless hours chugging whey protein shakes, asking their moms for
their credit card number so that they can get the latest Under Armor
compression shorts, and so once their date inevitably dares to ask them something
a little more meaningful, than the touchdown pass they threw their junior year
of high school, they panic because, and to their detriment, that’s all they
know. So frankly when the guy loses interest or refuses to contact the girl, he
most likely realized just how utterly boring he is and became scared and so
chose to run.
Now you may be saying this is an illogical fallacy and is a
hasty generalization. That’s correct. Not everyone who played a sport or goes
to the gym or wears extremely tight t-shirts or has tattoos is like this. If I were
to make an assertion with that fervor of absolutism, I would be as naïve as the
men I have just described in the previous paragraph. However, this personality, primarily in males,
is so prominent that the youths of today have defined this persona as a “Tool.”
Urban Dictionary
lists several definitions of what a “Tool” is. I have selected, what I think,
is the best definition:
1.) A guy with a hugely over-inflated ego, who in
an attempt to get un-due attention for himself, will act like a jackass,
because, in his deluded state, he will think it's going to make him look cool,
or make others want to be like him. The person may even insincerely apologize
later on, but only in an attempt to get more attention, or to excuse his
blatantly intentional, and unrepentantly tool-ish behavior.
1. A guy
2. with an over inflated ego
3. which causes him to seek
attention
4. because he believes it will
make him look cool or cause people to be like him
That’s what the next blog series will
be about, but in regard to the men who make up the NFL. I am not sure how many
installments there will be or how often the issues will be published, but if I
know one thing, unlike decent quarterback play, the NFL is in no shortage of
Tools.
So whether you read one or you
read all the installments of The Tools of
the NFL, please be sure to click on the ads…because, well, we all have to
pay rent somehow.
GO BROWNS!
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