Breaking: Football fans argue about something
This week, National Football League (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the league’s owners have decided on a new policy that will require players to stand for the national anthem and “show respect,” or else stay in the locker room until the anthem is over.
The decision comes after dozens of NFL players kneeled over the past two seasons to highlight racial injustice and issues with the country’s criminal and justice systems. Two players, Colin Kaepernick, who started the demonstrations, and his former teammate Eric Reid, have filed collusion lawsuits against the league, claiming they are not being signed because of their free speech.
Football fans around the country took the news in good spirits, as it finally gave them something football-related to argue about with their friends.
Local fan Tom Richards says he posted the article to his fantasy football league’s group text, and in no time, two work acquaintances were yelling about Trump and calling each other curse words.
Two old friends in Longmont were heard drunkenly saying, “This is America,” and, “When Ben Franklin wrote the Declaration of Independence…”
An Aurora man was reportedly planning to wear a Von Miller jersey on casual Friday this week, but after the news broke of the NFL’s decision, he thought about how Rick Jansen would come over and, like, casually try to talk about police brutality, hoping that he would bite and they could get in a big argument, but dammit, Rick, the man thought, we work at the Department of Motor Vehicles. We can’t be wasting everyone’s time.
It’s the end of the world as we know it
We’ve been tracking Mount Kilauea’s continuous eruption on the Big Island of Hawaii, and it’s kind of like watching the Trump administration govern the U.S.: every time you forget it’s still exploding, you see a headline that shocks you into remembrance.
News of the eruption first exploded over Facebook as millenials and baby boomers alike flocked to the social media site to mark themselves safe. It reminded us of Nov. 9, 2016 — sheer panic reverberated in servers and airwaves around the world as news dropped that a reality TV star had just become president of the greatest country in the world.
But then, news stories and comments about the volcano quickly became less ominous: the lava had engulfed an R2D2 mailbox outside one home, many other houses have been swallowed up but no one has died, there are no reported injuries. Much like the months leading up to Trump’s inauguration, but after the election: “I think we’re going to be OK… we’re going to be OK, right? Is this the end of the world? This isn’t the end, right?”
Then came news that the volcano was setting to blow: spewing ash and volcanic rock, darkening the skies, prompting the apocalypse. Read: The last week of January 2017 when there was an executive action being handed down every day, protests at airports around the country abounded, and we mourned the loss of life as we knew it.
But a few weeks have passed and the news cycle has set into an uneasy rhythm — every few days new photos of fissures or steam emerge, reminding us the end could still come at any minute. We may be shocked for a minute or two, but quickly put our heads back in the sand, hoping the next time we look it’ll all be over.
