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		<title>High-Pressure Spanish, by Paul Shirley</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/16/high-pressure-spanish-by-paul-shirley/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/16/high-pressure-spanish-by-paul-shirley/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 May 2012 15:15:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>pshirley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Life & Love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Shirley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fears of speaking spanish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[playing doom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[playing wolfenstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spanish speaking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speaking a foreign language]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speaking spanish]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6218</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I recently spent two weeks in Spain promoting the translation of my book, Can I Keep My Jersey? (Me Puedo Quedar La Camiseta?,  thanks for asking.) On the trip, I shook hands, I signed copies of the book and I did interviews for newspapers and radio stations. I did all of those things, mostly, in Spanish. I speak Spanish with the same level of expertise and craftsmanship that Dodge used when it built the Aries K. My relative inability to speak high-level Spanish bothers me almost as much as the Brooklyn Nets logo. (Simple is good. Drawn by a third-grader is not.) Having lived and worked in Spain, I should speak the language better than I do. But I don’t. I try pretty hard – in fact, I spent a month prior to my trip to Spain making daily Skype trades of my English for their Spanish with two different Spanish women now living in Australia, but that’s another FlipCollective story entirely. I just don’t have the knack, as they say. This is in part, I think, because I wasn’t raised around other languages, but it is more for the same reason that I don’t like the video games known as first-person shooters. Allow me to explain. In English. I have a penis and am a child of the Nintendo era, which means that I was a prime target for the advent of the first-person shooter: those video games wherein you, the user, pretend that your television screen is your field of vision – a field of vision occupied mostly by enemies that you must kill by shooting them with a gun. Wolfenstein came out when I was in middle school, Doom when I was in high school…you see what I mean. They’re fun enough, these first-person shooters. You get to pretend that you’re ridding the past of Nazis or the Earth of aliens or the galaxy of genetically-engineered monsters that might have arisen from the love child of Heironymus Bosch, absinthe, and whomever designed the cover for Molly Hatchet&#8217;s Beatin&#8217; The Odds. The investment is low: a bit of your time and a few brain cells. The reward is relatively high: you don’t actually have to fight barbarians for a king or a lord or a baron; you can discharge your testosterone-induced rage on a foe that exists only on your television. Except for me. Those first-person shooters make me nervous, and it’s not because I can’t handle pixilated explosions or computer-generated shrapnel. It’s because I have a habit of always getting lost. I’d like to think of myself as a man with a good sense of direction. I know where the sun rises and sets. I give directions using North and East and South and I try to use miles instead of minutes whenever possible. I don’t rely on homespun, largely ineffective Americana such as a left here and a right there and, “Oh, it’s just past the old Fitzsimmons place.” I even have an orienteering merit badge. (Well, I don’t still have it, but I did earn it once.) But if the ease with which I get turned around in video games is any proof, I am not the man I’d like to be. Put me in a game of Doom and I’ll show you all the dead ends. Throw me a joystick and immerse me in Call Of Duty and in no time at all, you’ll find out how easy it is to sneak up behind me and remove my entrails with a knife. This, I think, isn’t entirely abnormal – I have to assume that others struggle with the bizarre, unreal proprioception required by video games. It’s my reaction that’s strange. I panic. I begin to believe that it is possible that I will not find my way out of this situation soon and that I might not find my way out of this situation EVER. This is how I feel when I speak Spanish and something goes wrong – as if my options are the four-headed zombiemonsters behind me, the brick wall to my left, the other brick wall to my right, and the pit of firegoo in front of me. In my mind, if you and I are speaking Spanish, and we come to the impasse I’ve created when I launched into a discussion of the Spanish financial crisis, because I knew how to say “La gente penso que sus casas&#8230;” but don’t know how to say, “…would always rise in value.” Well, if that happens, I don’t think, OK, deep breath, you can figure this out. I think, OH HOLY SHIT WE CAN’T COMMUNICATE AND I’VE PROBABLY MISSED SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO THE CONVERSATION AND NOW THIS PERSON KNOWS I’M AN IDIOT AND THAT ANY INTELLIGENCE I HAVE IS MERELY A FAÇADE, A SHAM, A PATCHWORK OF SHODDY MASONRYWORK THAT COVERS WHAT’S REALLY BEHIND IT, WHICH IS A ROTTEN SHEET OF DRYWALL THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN THE WATERPROOF KIND BUT THE CONTRACTOR WAS TOO LAZY TO MAKE ANOTHER TRIP TO HOME DE… You get the idea. My mental conniption fit is unreasonable for many reasons, of course, not the least of which is that, in this hypothetical conversation, we could decide to drop the subject and move on to something else. Or we could rely on your English (where you are, in this hypothetical instance, at least partially bilingual) to lubricate our conversation. Or I could have a little patience and wait until my brain recalls how, exactly, to use the past conditional tense, or whatever the fuck it’s called. But these things do not occur to my brain. What does occur to my brain is a giant, red Eject button. “Get out of here now!” it says. “You’re in over your head!” it screams. “Next time you’re going to be in Spain, get a tutor!” it yells. What I’ve learned about the video games that make me feel like a blind man in the Minotaur’s maze, is that the only way I’ll have [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>An Open Letter To A Hazing Advocate, by Scott Muska</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/15/an-open-letter-to-a-hazing-advocate-by-scott-muska/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/15/an-open-letter-to-a-hazing-advocate-by-scott-muska/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 May 2012 15:59:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>pshirley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Politics & Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scott Muska]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drawbacks of hazing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hazing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[why hazing isn't okay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[why hazing's okay]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6211</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a response to an article by former Elon College baseball player Chris Papst in which Papst defends the spirit behind the ritual known as hazing. (Papst&#8217;s piece is not a very good read, but since this is an open letter to him it’ll make more sense if you do read it.) Quick summary: As a freshman college baseball player, Papst was hog-tied, sprayed with cold water and driven around in the back of a truck for 20 minutes in chilly winter weather. Then he was taken to a windowless room and made to sit with his feet in ice water until he correctly answered three questions. He was blindfolded during all of this. This brought his team together, he claims. Papst wrote that it is unfortunate that today’s youth won’t live through that type of experience, and that it taught him an important lesson (though he doesn’t specifically point out what this lesson was). *** Hey Papst, When I signed on to Facebook this week and saw a bunch of people sharing an article and making all kinds of perturbed comments about it, I assumed it was just some idiot writing a column about gay marriage being an abomination or whatever. So I was surprised when I read your headline: “Hazing isn’t all bad — it can bring teammates together.” I felt compelled to click on it because, well, I was intrigued at what your reasoning might be to publish something advocating what amounts to subjecting kids to group bullying in the interest of comradeship. I finished it, stared at my computer screen for a little bit and then asked myself, The hell is wrong with this guy? Hazing is wrong and it doesn’t serve a positive purpose. Adults should know that, and kids should be taught it by them. Hazing, to me, does not include making the young guys carry the shoulder pads or clean up the balls after practice, or having the underclassmen do something fun, like sing a karaoke song at a party (just don’t be a douche and chastise the kid on the team who has a crippling anxiety of unathletic public perfomances). That doesn’t count as hazing. It counts as the youngest, newest players doing normal things the upperclassmen don’t have to, because the older guys are expected to do things the younger teammates aren’t. Namely, provide leadership and guidance so the team can win more games. I don’t see how spraying another person with a hose is going to do that. The summer before my first year of college, my freshman basketball teammates and I went to campus for a week to run a camp with the upper classmen. We stayed at their apartments, and no hazing was involved whatsoever. It was an exciting week. Most of the guys on my team were great, and once the school year started they continued to hang out with us, always being nice and showing us how to juggle academics, athletics and the occasional kegger where real live girls would show up. Never once during my career there did I or any of my fellow freshmen experience any hazing. And even though I was on the team for less than a year, I formed a bond with some of those guys that has lasted. I’m still close with a few of them, one of whom is visiting me from 10 hours away next week, just because we haven’t hung out for a while. That’s because you don’t need to be hazed to follow in the footsteps of the older guys, or to fit in, or to bond as a team. To bond as a team, you hang out together, maybe eat some meals as a group and play the sport you all love. You don’t need to share an icy pedicure. And you don’t need initiation onto an athletic team, because your initiation should be nothing more than your coach deciding you’re good enough to be a part of the roster. Apparently when you were hazed at Elon, you became “one” with your teammates. By being hogtied. Then you transferred to Pitt, where there was no “right [sic] of initiation.” You said the team lacked a certain bond. Who are you? I thought the only person who would write about hog tying as a positive life-altering experience would be the lady who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey. Did you have Stockholm Syndrome? Would you similarly argue that there were rampant feuds amongst the Lakers when Kobe and Shaq were playing there because they hadn’t taken time out of their schedule to get together and teabag the rookies? Maybe your team at Pitt just wasn’t compatible. Maybe they just didn’t like each other. Torturing the freshmen wouldn’t have changed that. I used to be a jock, and I was kind of a dick. Part of the reason I played sports was because I wanted to fit in with the cool kids, the kids who were athletes. I probably lied to myself about that for years, but now I can admit that it’s true. Kids will do all kinds of things just to fit in, and that breaks my heart; sometimes the ones who don’t — children who don’t spend all their time trying to fit in — turn out the best. To assimilate and gain acceptance with the hazing upperclassmen, I might not have taken a stand. I may have let them do to me the things you experienced that could’ve given me pneumonia and totally disrupted my own training and in turn sidetracked the ultimate goal of the team. But come on. Grow the fuck up and confess to yourself you did it for these reasons: to fit in, to keep from disrupting the team dynamic, to get the older players to like or respect you. That’s fine. Just don’t continue to argue into your 30s that hazing was a positive experience that taught you some sort of life lesson. Note: the graphic in the [...]]]></description>
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		<title>An Honest Commencement Speech, by Stephen Mayer</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/14/an-honest-commencement-speech-by-stephen-mayer/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/14/an-honest-commencement-speech-by-stephen-mayer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2012 17:15:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>pshirley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Life & Love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stephen Mayer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commencement speech examples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[graduation speech examples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[graduation talks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mock graduation speech]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6207</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thank you to the president, the board, and the distinguished faculty of Generic State University. It is my great honor to stand before you and the Generic State graduating class of 2012 and their adoring families. Many commencement speeches begin with a thematic quotation from a great American thinker, business tycoon, or poet. These speeches are often forgotten about as quickly as it takes to give them. Instead of telling each of you about how to tackle the wild world that you are about to encounter or handing out due credit for your completed collegiate journey, I am simply going to be honest: The world you will meet after today is dark, hard, and full of cruel realities. First – and this is no jab at the team of pros that decorated this place, it truly looks stunning – I never understood why graduations are not treated more like a funeral instead of a jubilant celebration. A commencement ceremony is where your consequence-free mistakes are laid to rest, never to appear again. If you miss a few classes because of martini-and-mescaline hangovers, your professor won’t even notice. At worst, your inconsequential grade may drop a letter. Miss a few days of work for the same reason and you’ll quickly make acquaintances with an unemployment queue. Second, don’t try to keep intact the same friendships that you have today. Identify the important ones – the ones that add value to your life – and keep those steady. For the rest, let the wind take them where it may. This naturally happens within a few years anyway, so why not get the ball rolling early? You’ll end up saving yourself and many others a lot of time, frustration, and needless wedding expenditures. My third point: Live somewhere you like because you’ll probably spend the rest of your life there. Your first city after college is often where your kids will grow up and your first job after college will most likely turn into a career and provide the means to pay for said kids to attend college themselves. Don’t live in a place if you wake up each morning and mutter on your way out the door, “Why the fuck do I live in Phoenix/Minneapolis/New York/Cleveland? It’s so goddamn hot/cold/expensive/terrible.” Unless you plan on living for 10,000 years, those places aren’t going to change much during your lifetime. Phoenix will stay hot and Cleveland will stay terrible. You have my word on that. It might be a little late in the game, but do something with your career that you at least partially enjoy. You’re going to spend more time each week going to, being at, or coming from work than you’ll spend with your friends and family combined. So, try your best to find a job you don’t hate. If you have worked at a place for a year and can’t stand it: leave. Unless you’ve already been drafted by an NFL or NBA franchise – in which case you’re not listening and shouldn’t even be here – your dream job does not exist. Just find a job where you spend less of your time dreaming about hurling your body through a 20th story window than you do spend picturing that sequence. Work life is less about finding your perfect career path and more about the avoidance of choices that would render you miserable. Never show anyone that you’re good at something if you wouldn’t enjoy doing that one thing, all day and for the foreseeable future. That would be like running after a pickpocket only to tell him the PIN to your debit card after he robbed you. In closing, I want to acknowledge that a few of you are special. A handful of you have the perfect blend of talent and ambition and courage that combined will yield fame and fortune, awards and accolades. Some of you will truly change the world that the rest of us occupy. But most of you won’t. Most of you aren’t that special at all. In fact, with more and more people graduating from universities within our now global economy every year, you’re becoming increasingly less special. If you think that a bachelor’s degree from Generic State is redeemable for real estate and Range Rovers, then the portrait I painted of the world today was not dark and hard enough. Try not to think of yourselves as something special and life won’t seem so disappointing. I want to thank you for your time today. I wish all of you the best of luck as you embark on your new careers. …Ehem…I’m done. Seriously, you can start applauding now. Follow FlipCollective on Twitter. For more from Stephen&#8230; Past work on FlipCollective.com. To follow him on Twitter. To send him an email. Consider supporting FlipCollective and its writers by purchasing Machine Wash Warm, the FlipCollective e-magazine. Featuring all-new works by your favorite FlipCollective writers, it comes in an easily-downloadable .pdf and includes an accompanying audio recording of the magazine. And the best part: it only costs $1.]]></description>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Dear Josh Beckett, by Tom Dinard</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/14/dear-josh-beckett-by-tom-dinard/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/14/dear-josh-beckett-by-tom-dinard/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2012 16:05:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>pshirley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Sports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tom Dinard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[athlete salaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[josh beckett overpaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[josh beckett salary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overpaid athletes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6199</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dear Mr. Beckett, I am 8 years old and you are my favorite baseball player. I love the way you look all serious all the time and throw the ball really hard to get the guys on the other teams out. The beard on your chin is really cool, too. I hope someday I can grow one just like you. If I can’t, I’ll probably just cut a piece off my black teddy bear and Krazy Glue it to my chin. Maybe I’ll do that for Halloween. My dad told me that you’re not really always mad, even though you look like you’re mad a lot. He said it’s just an act and you’re probably a really nice guy who just acts mad so the hitters will be scared to step in and face you, and I told my dad I thought that was awesome. Anyways, I saw on TV the other day that you were hurt and couldn’t pitch a game but you went and played golf the next day anyway and people like my dad said you probably shouldn’t have done that, but I think it’s OK. I mean, you deserve to have tons of fun every single day that you’re not playing baseball or that you’re not taking the four days off between each of your starts, since you only pitch every fifth day. And I know that you basically have a vacation from either late September or sometime in October until the middle of February every year, but it’s cold during those months, so I’m sure it’s not as easy for you to get out on the golf course and really have fun doing that, which you deserve, since you’re such a good pitcher and probably a really good guy. I didn’t explain all this to my dad because he seemed to have made up his mind already, but I’m telling you because you’re my favorite player. Unlike my dad, who all of a sudden got really mad when they mentioned you on the news the other night, I think it’s OK that you make $15.75 million a year. When my dad saw you on the news, he said it’s a crime that you make all that money while good, honest, hard-working people like him and my mother don’t even make in 10 years combined what you probably make in one or two starts. I thought that was crazy, but my dad told me it was true. He’s a teacher of special-needs kids, by the way. My mom works in the cancer ward at the hospital in my town. So I guess I’m not really getting to my point here, but that’s about it. I just wanted you to know that you’re my favorite player and if you could sign an autograph for me, I’d be soooooo excited. I’m enclosing your baseball card and would love it if you could sign it for one of your biggest fans. I’ll understand if you don’t want to do it, though. I know you’re busy. &#160; Your fan, Tommy Dinard Jr. Follow FlipCollective on Twitter. For more from Tom … Past work on FlipCollective.com. To follow him on Twitter. To befriend him on Facebook. To send him an email. Consider supporting FlipCollective and its writers by purchasing Machine Wash Warm, the FlipCollective e-magazine. Featuring all-new works by your favorite FlipCollective writers, it comes in an easily-downloadable .pdf and includes an accompanying audio recording of the magazine. And the best part: it only costs $1.]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>A Letter to Every Girl I&#8217;ve Ever Dated, by Matt Shirley</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/10/a-letter-to-every-girl-ive-ever-dated-by-matt-shirley/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/10/a-letter-to-every-girl-ive-ever-dated-by-matt-shirley/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 May 2012 20:10:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Humor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life & Love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matt Shirley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bad parts of dating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dating men vs women]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dating sucks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dating sucks for guys]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history of dating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[why do guys pay for dates?]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[why do men pay for dates]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6168</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; I&#8217;ve never really understood dating. And I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m alone. If you took the time to explain it to a 5 year old boy named Timmy, his response would probably be something like: &#8220;Wait, so I have to plan everything, pick her up, ask all the questions, AND pay at the end?!? F that!&#8221;  Me and 5 year old boys have a lot in common. Aside from the fact that we both like eating pancakes for dinner and aren&#8217;t too good at addition sometimes, we both firmly believe that dating can be extremely unfair. And so, on behalf of little Timmy, and any other guy who has felt gypped on a first date, I penned a short note to every girl I&#8217;ve ever dated. For more from Matt&#8230; Past work on FlipCollective.com. To follow him on Twitter. To befriend him on Facebook.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Dirty NFL, by Rosicky Jones</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/09/the-dirty-nfl-by-rosicky-jones/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/09/the-dirty-nfl-by-rosicky-jones/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 May 2012 20:44:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Rosicky Jones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dirty nfl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dirty nfl players]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[is the nfl dirty?]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nfl bounty scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nfl hypocrites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the hypocrisy of roger goodell]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6159</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The correlation has been evident. Ferocious disposition and football were allied in design. The assumption had been that the ferocious, the aggressive, the monsters of the midway chose football – but it seems that the assumption was warped; football wasn’t selected by the aforementioned. Instead, the sport created them. Anyone who’s paid a modicum of attention to the NFL over the last decade knows of the high rate of criminal activity amongst football players. Roger Goodell has reveled in his role of judge, jury, and executioner in an attempt to rid his league of its criminal element. But what he fails to acknowledge, and what may become self-evident shortly, is that his league isn’t a haven for violent athletes, it is the place where otherwise normal men are molded into violent athletes. Too often when confronted with a statistical anomaly we focus on the micro instead of the macro. The societal failures that lead to a shatteringly disproportional amount of minority inmates take a backseat to our microanalyses. This same method of evaluation is how the NFL and its media whores choose to tackle its high rate of criminal activity. But it is becoming impossible to ignore the macro analysis since it has been proven in multiple instances that an NFL career leads to diminished brain function, increased paranoia, and overtly aggressive behavior. It is time that we bid farewell to the carefully constructed narrative that the NFL attracts a higher rate of aggressive athletes and accept that the NFL increases the existence of aggressive athletes. In their book Pros and Cons, Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger pulled the NFL’s cock from its advocates’ mouths long enough to urge the league’s leadership to prevent criminals from playing in the sanctimonious Sunday games. The book contains detailed arrest records of football players beginning in college and extending into their professional careers. Benedict and Yaeger imply that the NFL attracts these “types” of athletes. But anyone who has played a sport knows there are only 2 types of child athletes; hyperactive little kids whose parents need an outlet for their verve and little kids who are the outlet for their parent’s desire to vicariously live and atone for some athletic regrets. Ignoring the latter, we know that the level of aggression, passion, and overall mind frame of an athlete tends to be similar across the sports landscape. The aggression, the whirling dervish nature, borderline bloodthirsty insanity found in a player like Ray Lewis exists in players like Russell Westbrook, Leo Messi, Derek Jeter and others. It is completely parallel and barely discernible. The difference is that only one of the aforementioned players is experiencing nearly a hundred impacts a game measuring at least 30-60 g’s, according to Virginia Tech researchers. From that same Virginia Tech study: &#8220;We see 100-g impacts all the time, and several over 150 g’s,&#8221; wrote Stefan Duma, director of the university&#8217;s Center for Injury Biomechanics. Benedict and Yaeger collected massive data on 509 players, which is nearly a third of the league. They found that 109 of them had been arrested at least once for something amounting to more than a minor brush with the law, totaling a whopping 264 arrests. The researchers beseech the NFL to rid the league of this wide-reaching and repeat-offending criminal element. At their inception, NFL players are no different than other athletes in mental makeup. There are mild-mannered (relatively) athletes in all sports, there are cerebral (usually the unathletic guys) players in all sports, there are hot heads, there are aggressive Ron Artests, there are corresponding archetypes in every sport – the difference is that once in their respective league, only one set of players is then subjected to an assault on his brain, on cognitive ability. From high school to college and into the pros, football players have had their cognitive ability diminished on a daily basis, with each drill and each hit. And yet people continue to write books and columns and complain with a straight face about the higher than normal rate of bad judgment emanating from NFL players. We don’t want to believe that our country has a deep and enduring problem with race, even as our jails are filled with young black men. We conveniently (and continuously) point the finger at the minorities and the poor even though statistics indicate that the problem is national and universal. How can we explain that a society comprised of 12 percent African-Americans can also have a prison and jail population made up of 40% African-Americans. It’s easier to blame the criminals. Otherwise we would have to engage in thoughtful debate and introspection as to how we could live in such a racially askew nation. As long as we ignore the epidemic we can then continue employing the cognitive dissonance it takes to pretend that we are the most progressive society ever conceived. It works the same way with football. If we pin the blame on the players then we can continue savoring the obliviousness it takes to watch a game that is literally retarding young men before our eyes. If we succumbed to the facts then we would realize that the NFL draft is tantamount to a dementia sentence. We would view Adam Shefter as a grim reaper, ESPN would be no different than the Faces of Death videos that turn our stomachs, and we would reevaluate our enjoyment of a game that leads gifted men to commit crimes at a higher rate, to abuse loved ones at greater tilt, and leads players like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau to commit suicide during the prime of their lives. But why would we take the time to analyze anything past the first layer? Why would we employ this clear retroactive continuity to explain what we have already blamed on the players? Why open this can of worms, when we could continue listening to the opinions of people cashing NFL checks in the millions and listening to the analyses of ex-players who [...]]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>The Shell of Things, by Jenny Bahn</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/08/the-shell-of-things-by-jenny-bahn/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/08/the-shell-of-things-by-jenny-bahn/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 21:16:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fashion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jenny Bahn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bad parts of modeling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cons to modeling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[modeling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[modeling horror stories]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6151</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Annoying bits of pistachio shells fall onto my skirt, littering the surface of my black tights like snow. Doug, the show’s “producer,” stands to my left, eyeing me in watchful disdain. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed that I am eating or pissed that I’m making as a lap-bound mess while waiting to get my hair and makeup done. I sit there, picking the little flakes and crumbs off my clothing and depositing them into the palm of my hand to drop in a trashcan – the only alternative being to brush it all to the floor, which, with Doug hovering over my shoulder, is no alternative at all. I came here last week for a casting, even though I’ve been working for the client for over a year. “There’s a new guy there,” my booker told me, which translates to: “Just because someone liked you before, doesn’t mean they’re going to like you again” or “They want to make sure you haven’t gotten fat in the last six months.” Beauty, thinness, and hireability are all entirely subjective. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. The saying pretty much encapsulates modeling’s ability to make you feel like the most confident, beautiful person in the world…and then turn around and kick you off of your high horse, sending you into a self-pity spiral of “I’m a worthless, unfortunate looking waste of a human being.” That day, I changed into a crocodile carcass that had been fashioned into a high-necked dress with accentuated shoulders and a center-back zipper. I put on shoes without checking for the size, because it’s not worth even asking for something that fits you anymore; you always get a person standing across from you with a face scrunched up into something attempting concern and apology. But you can see in their eyes that they don’t give a shit and you better get those goddamn shoes on or you’re out of a job. “At least you look beautiful.” People say that too, as if looking pretty is the salve for all of the world’s problems. Doug sashayed towards me with a flip camera at the ready. “Just say your name and then walk towards the white wall, then turn around and you’ll pose and pose again and pose again and again.  Then you’ll walk back towards here.” “Hi, my name is Jenny Bahn and I’m with _____ ______ Models.” I try to relay something akin to boredom and vague sexuality. I’ve got a pulse, it says, but there’s only cold blood coursing through these veins. Clients don’t want people; they want puppets. As I turned to walk, I could hear Doug following closely behind. “Slow down,” he said. “Take your time.” If he could, this guy would drive me like a car. First gear, second gear, third, reverse. When I got to the aforementioned white wall, I posed.  And posed.  And posed. “Don’t change position until I tell you to,” he said. So I’d stand there with my hand on my hip and my chin in the air and wait for an awkward five seconds for him to say “And pose” until switching it up, maybe putting the other hand on the other hip and turning my face towards the ground. All this for a job that will simply entail standing on a platform box amidst a sea of New York’s most fashionable 1%-ers, while I do my best to keep my eyes from glazing over. Based on my ability to behave like a proper mannequin, I am hired.  And, if the casting were anything to go by, today is going to be a massive pain in the ass. I sit in a chair while the stylist behind me sprays my entire head with a gel that “Really gives it that ‘wet look’” and then combs it back into a tight ponytail. Three twisted braids eventually swing behind me, roped into something that reminds me of the tiebacks of expensive window treatments. When I am done with makeup thirty minutes later – a washed-out concept with white eye shadow and clumpy mascara – I look like Pocahontas in space. Someone hands over my first outfit of six or seven: a pencil skirt and jacket combo made entirely out of the pelt (or likely, pelts) of an antelope (or three). I’ve worn fur on jobs before, but this shit is next level. It looks as though they’ve simply ripped the head and ass off of the animal and turned the edges in to sew, threw a couple zippers on there, and viola. I’ve got a fucking tail on the back of my skirt for Christ’s sake. “Throw these on,” someone says as they hand me a pair of seven-inch, no-platform-to-be-seen pair of stiletto boots with tufts of blue and green fur running down the sides. I pull them on and know immediately that the next two hours are going to be spent contemplating my existence on a grander scale. I can already hear myself on the platform out there, critisizing every vain choice I’ve ever made. You’re better than this. So much wasted potential. You need to go back to school. What the fuck are you doing with your life?  The nails on my big toes are thrust forward against the top of the shoe, giving me the distinct sensation that they are being peeled backward and off of my foot. “Do you have any bigger sizes?” I ask an intern, knowing full well what the answer to that question is. But at least thirty years from now, I’ll be able to tell my orthopedic surgeon, “Well, I tried.” Doug walks us towards the floor where the party is being held. He showed us earlier what we were doing, which was pretty much standing on a box and posing.  “Let’s do a run-through,” he said, after explaining how the lights from below would cast unattractive shadows on our faces, so we’d have to keep our chins raised. “Find your light,” [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Weathered, by Tom Dinard</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/07/weathered-by-tom-dinard/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/07/weathered-by-tom-dinard/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 May 2012 15:07:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>pshirley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Life & Love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tom Dinard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[do i look forty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[forties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[getting old]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weathering]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6146</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes all it takes is a tactless, overweight, blotchy IT guy to provide a blunt, indelible reintroduction to the power of words. There I was, walking into the gray-carpeted, barebones office of a software consulting firm with satellite offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad, clutching the Dell XPS 17 laptop whose screen had been cracked when toppled off a counter by my aggressive 4-year-old son. “Come in by noon if you can,” Josh had told me. “I’ll be able to squeeze you in.” Josh met me by the elevator and led me to his lair. Spread out before him on the table were minuscule screws that would soon lock stray hard drives back into place, snaking tiny colored wires that he’d soon route into the proper plastic corridors, and the sad skeletons of the recently blue-screened &#8212; now mother(board)less, orphans. “It’s a good thing I’ve got an extra screen for you,” Josh said with a nod of what looked like professional pride. “Otherwise I’d have to scour around on eBay, and that would cost the company a few hundred bucks.” He shot me a look that hinted at a glare, and I was seized by the need to remind him that I wasn’t 100 percent responsible for this horrible crime against the well-being of our beloved, overheated, internet-ready companions. “You know,” I said, shaking my head and smiling in mock surrender. “Four-year-olds.” He didn’t look up from the black plate he was reattaching to the underside of the keyboard. “Nope,” he said. “I don’t know.” “You don’t have kids, huh?” “Nah. No kids. Not married. How old do you think I am anyway?” I looked at his wavy hair, unstubbled double chin and plaid short-sleeved button-down shirt worn over what looked like a Hanes V-neck white T. “I don’t know,” I said. “Twenties?” He laughed for the first time. At me, not with me. But still, a laugh. Human progress? Perhaps. “I’m 29,” he said. “I’ll be thirty in twenty-six days.” “Well, Happy Birthday in twenty-six days,” I said, and he didn’t laugh again. He didn’t answer. He was taking the new screen and lining it up to finally attach it to my lonely keyboard. It looked like he was almost done with the repair, so I figured I’d test him out a bit before it was time to part ways, maybe forever. “So, how old do you think I am?” *** I’m 41. I haven’t had a particularly hard life in the physical sense of things for the last twenty or so years. I’ve been a professional journalist, so maybe I’ll get carpal tunnel and maybe my vision is deteriorating at a far more rapid pace than I’ve imagined and maybe the occasional pangs of upper back pain that I get when sleeping in a strange position will turn into some kind of chronic old-man injury. But somehow, any time in the past five years when someone has guessed my age, that person has always assumed I’m younger than I am. The coarse, light brown mop of hair on my head features only a few arbitrary gray stragglers, plus I still have most of said hair. That might throw people off. I have been told, mostly by my wife, that I am, for the most part, immature &#8212; this, I assume, translates to a first impression among strangers that I possess a youthful joie de vivre. I am tall and I somehow have remained thin, which set me apart from a great many male counterparts at my twentieth high school reunion, where I was greeted &#8212; by those who remembered who I was, at least &#8212; with the flattering, if faulty, quick judgment of looking “exactly the same” as I did as a 12th grader. So when someone asks me how old I am and I respond by asking them to guess how old I am, they often say “early 30s” or “35” or “I don’t know, 37?” Never 41 and definitely never older than 41. So what did Josh the humorless IT guy say? “Forty-three.” *** Forty-three? Forty-fucking-three? I didn’t say it, just thought it. I laughed, but it wasn’t an “I think you’re funny in a clever way, Josh” laugh. It was nervous. Uncomfortable. And then it got worse. “You really think I look forty-three? Why?” He finally looked up from the table, from my computer that needed maybe one or two microscopic screws put back in before he sent me on my way, and he reassessed his original guess. He sized me up, searching for the reason for overestimating my age by two years. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you look kind of … weathered.” Visions of a wooden-hulled battleship plowing through the roiling Atlantic in the dead of winter, bouncing up and down through the sea spray, shot through my head. Weathered. I thought of those brown, leather-skinned Jewish ladies I’d see in Florida as a 10-year-old visiting my grandparents and how they’d leave lipstick rings around their cigarette filters. Weathered. “Weathered?” I said, feigning shock. OK, not really feigning it. “Really!” He gave me a sly smile. “Well, not in the traditional sense,” he said. “Like, you don’t look like one of those guys who’s worked outside his whole life and been sand-blasted and wind-ravaged or anything like that. You just look like you’ve lived a little bit.” That’s when I thought of all the drugs I did in college and for eight years after college. And of the emotional difficulties my 41 years have seen. There have been a few doozies in that department. And of the fact that the 4-year-old whose boundless energy ended up making me travel to this cold, dead office in the first place has managed to exhaust me more than anything I did in my first thirty-seven years combined. “Maybe you’ve got a point,” I said. “Maybe I am weathered.” Follow FlipCollective on Twitter. For more from Tom … Past work on FlipCollective.com. To follow him on [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Whole Foods Honey-Do, by Hank Layton</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/04/whole-foods-honey-do-by-hank-layton-2/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/04/whole-foods-honey-do-by-hank-layton-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 May 2012 17:41:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Hank Layton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[honey do list]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[natural food names]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stupid food names]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[whole foods]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6115</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; Honey, Can you run to Whole Foods sometime today and pick up a couple of things? I have hot fencing and cold yoga today, so I’ll be back late. Thanks, babe! Check to see if Krissteena is out of coconut-skin diapers. If she is, add them to the list! Love you! See you tonight! &#60;3 XOXO &#60;3 Sincerely, Sincerely P.S. I figured out what I want for Christmas: Sneeze elimination surgery! January Jones did it when she was 2! We’ll talk! Kisses! WHOLE FOODS GROCERY LIST: -Black yogurt -Pilates sauce -Cloned bananas -Cloud bread -Sugar-free tarantula wafers -Jupiter lettuce -Salmon marshmallows -1/2 pound of caribou cartilage -Bismuth cheese (shredded) -Terrapin spit -Wyoming warbler eggs -Recycled pistachios -Plywood bites (if they don’t have them, go to Trader Joe’s) -Frogs/toads/hummus -Mars-scented candles -Avocado O’s and koala milk -Canadian trail mix (w/ twigs) -Licorice salt -Hiccup drops (almond or seaweed) -Olive water -Hay -New issue of Modern MILF (Julia Louis-Dreyfus on cover) -AND NO FLIRTING WITH THE CASHIER, BUSTER! Thanks, babe! For more from Hank&#8230; Past work on FlipCollective.com. To follow him on Twitter. To befriend him on Facebook. To send him an email.]]></description>
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		<title>NBA Playoff Preview: A Procrastinator&#8217;s Take, by Rosicky Jones</title>
		<link>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/03/nba-playoff-preview-a-procrastinators-take-by-rosicky-jones/</link>
		<comments>http://www.flipcollective.com/2012/05/03/nba-playoff-preview-a-procrastinators-take-by-rosicky-jones/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2012 17:26:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Rosicky Jones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2012 nba playoff preview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2012 NBA playoffs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boston celtics old]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[miami heat championship]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.flipcollective.com/?p=6082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[San Antonio v Utah Prediction: Spurs in 5 The Spurs are Tim Duncan, and Anthony Davis, and Shaq, and LeBron and every can’t-miss prospect in the draft. If the draft were reversed we would analyze the Spurs the way we do those franchise-salvaging talents. In the same way we need the existence of busts to validate our cornerstones, we must have incompetence to confirm a label of “model franchise.” Taking this transmogrification a step further, we would also allow for players to rid themselves of bad organizations the same way organizations discard players like Greg Oden, The Kandi Man, Kwame Brown, and the immortal Kent “Belly Fat” Benson. If we concede that athletes can bust then so can organizations, and if we expect, and often clamor for, organizations to shed hopeless players then we shouldn’t grow disgusted when players do the same. But we do. We don’t want players taking matters into their own hands, and bury them when they do (see Anthony, Carmelo and Howard, Dwight). I believe this castigation is fueled with jealousy, since many of us are not offered the opportunity to rid ourselves of unpleasant work situations. This is why we glorify players who stick it out with organizations who have repeatedly proven their incompetence (see Nash, Steve and Garnett, Kevin). I worked at the rock quarry for 45 years goddamit! They can put up with (insert shitty franchise here) Unfortunately, the notion of honorable leaders and dedicated warriors has a much shorter shelf life than championship rings do. Garnett and Nash are two of the greatest players I have ever watched, two players who’ve defined the NBA for multiple years, but they have one championship between them, and that was only due to Garnett finally giving up on The T’wolves. Garnett and Tim Duncan are athletically indistinguishable, and if Garnett had asked for a trade they would be just as indistinguishable in number of championships won. This is why I don’t feel bad for Nash. This is why I don’t begrudge Dwight. There comes a point when Nash’s loyalty becomes fueled by naivety rather than honor. I love Nash in an unhealthy way; he comes from the greatest country in the world, he plays soccer, he replaced orthodox straight-line runs with crisp, angled cuts taking advantage of every square inch of the court. He is the wet dream for every floppy haired sub-six-foot guard playing at the Y, ahem; but if some blame lays at the feet of the girl who continually returns to her abusive boyfriend, then some blame has to be attributed to Steve for not getting away from Phoenix. Their moves are as close to abusive as an NBA team can get. For example: They let Amare walk and then paid 80 mill to Hedo, Josh Childress, and Hakim Warrick to replace him. This was the equivalent of passing on a filet with the hopes that a handful of assorted nuts would be as satisfying. Traded Goran Dragic and a 1st round pick for Aaron Brooks. Dragic has gone Jeremy Lin by averaging 18.1 points, 8.8 assists, and 3.5 rebounds as a starter. Aaron Brooks has also sorta gone Jeremy Lin by playing this season in the Chinese Basketball Association. With the best point guard in the league they hired Terry Porter to install a defense first, slow it down offense… 7 seconds or less was dead, long live 7 seconds or less! The traded Shaq for Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, and a pick and then bought out both players before they ever played for the Suns Traded disgruntled Shawn Marion for Shaq, who came in and destroyed the locker room vibe, stole Nash’s TV show idea and validated my theory that he knows nothing of desert climates They gave away Joe Johnson to the Atlanta Hawks in a sign-and-trade for Boris Diaw and two future first round picks. Joe Johnson became one of the better 2-guards in the league, and Diaw become the first fat French person in history. To replace Johnson they signed Raja Bell; which is sort of not the same. They traded Quentin Richardson – who was perfect in that offense &#8212; to the New York Knicks for Kurt Thomas- who was not perfect in that offense. Their draft day moves have vacillated between giving away their picks to save money and picking names out of a hat to save time. 2011 Draft They selected Markieff Morris, and while he has not played poorly they passed on the Manimal Kenneth Faried, they passed on Kawhi Leonard, and they passed on two backup points who would have allowed them to keep Dragic in Iman Shumpert and Isaiah Thomas. 2010 Phoenix traded their 1st round pick and Kurt Thomas for a 2009 2nd round pick in a cost-saving measure. With that 2nd round pick they could have had Greivis Vasquez, Landry Fields, Devin Ebanks, or Team Handsome Luke Harangody. But instead they chose the man, the myth, the Slovenian Emir Preldzic. He never made it out of Europe bee tee dub! 2009 With the 14th pick they snagged the talented but cray-cray, err, mercurial Earl Clark. He was in the D League within a few months, in China within the year, and he was out of basketball by 2011. They passed on Patty Mills, Chase Budinger, Daren Collison, Eric Maynor, Ty Lawson, Taj Gibson, Austin Daye, or DeJaun Blair. 2008 From the Joe Johnson trade they gained the pick that became Robin Lopez. I like Lopez, but not nearly as much as I like Roy Hibbert, JaVale McGee (who would have been interesting in the Suns offense), J.J. Hickson, Ryan Anderson, Serge Ibaka, Nicolas Batum, Nikola Pekovic, Omer Asik, Mario Chalmers, or DeAndre Jordan. Yea, they passed on all those guys for Robin Lopez… whom they acquired in the Joe Johnson trade. Fuck. 2007 At the time, I remember loving these draft picks. They selected Rudy Fernadez, who is Spanish and amazing and Alando Tucker who is Big Ten and solid – both in [...]]]></description>
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