Week 38

Disturbingly, I saw a couple middle aged men wearing masks all wrong in the store yesterday. One guy had his on in the below the nose style, the other was standing in the middle of a long aisle with his mask down on his chin. Had he just been talking on a cell phone? Was he just another jerk? I'd thankfully had no interest in going down the aisle these guys were in.

Frighteningly, I saw a YouTube video put together by an ex-Fundamentalist Christian, of several Televangelists predicting Trump would win the election because it was what God wanted, then after the election declaring the results wouldn't stand because God wouldn't allow it. Particularly disturbing was a minister/faith-healer who has been around a very long time, guffawing long and loud on the air when the news came out that Biden was projected by the networks to win the required number of electoral votes. Don't get me wrong. I understand why these men and women wanted Trump to win again. They rake millions off the donations "for their ministries" and if the Senate should happen fall to the Democrats, they are going to be paying a lot more taxes. Trump, seems mostly amoral, which ought to be a red flag toward Christians, but he acts more toward the fundamentalist view of the world these days, because he thought it was a sure way to win. At any rate these Televangelists loudly proclaiming that God didn't want Biden to win to the people who regularly watch them, scares me a lot. I figure Trump keeps up the law suits, insisting he won, because he isn't all there anymore. But some of these Televangelists have definitely gone over to the dark side.

On the bright side it was nice to see a capable woman got a chance to play, if briefly, in a major college football game. Her name is Sarah Fuller and she goes to Vanderbilt in Nashville. She was the goalie on Vanderbilt's league championship women's soccer team. She got her chance because of the pandemic. The guy who would have been the football team's kicker decided to skip the season to lessen his chances of catching the virus. His replacements either got the bug or have minor injuries. So the football coach went to the soccer coach and asked for help. The soccer coach suggested Fuller, a muscular woman, who stood about a head taller than all her soccer teammates. They let her try out, attempting to kick a few extra points. The football coach liked what he saw and brought her onto his team for last Saturday's game. It didn't hurt that announcing she was on the team was a great way to get higher TV ratings for a game between a mediocre Missouri and a really bad Vanderbilt. The rest of the Vanderbilt team was predictably bad on Saturday so Fuller didn't get a chance to try to kick an extra point or even a field goal. But she did kickoff for the second half, putting her firmly in the history of the sport. Vanderbilt's coach got fired the next day, but it was due to the lousy team, not Fuller doing the kicking. (If you see any gripes from naysayers that Fuller didn't kick the ball very far, understand she did exactly what she was told to do, an important thing in a team sport. Her kick denied Missouri any chance to set up a return, and gave her own team at least a ghost of a chance of getting the ball back for themselves!) Thanks to the virus there wasn't much of a crowd at Missouri's stadium. But what was there gave her a good cheer as she left the field after her kick.

I was kind of curious about Fuller's uniform when I heard she might play. There would be no problem finding a jersey and set of shoulder pads that would fit her, since a lot of male kickers are smaller than her. And given her size, her football shoes wouldn't be a problem. I don't know if powder-puff football is a thing anymore. But clearly the team's supplier had a pattern for women's football pants that size and got her a pair to wear in time for Saturday. She looked good. For the record, the answer to the trivia question of "what number did she wear" is 32.