Oh! Gutenberg, could you imagine this happening? Standing atop a snow capped mountain. Kicking an ice cube down the precipice, Gutenberg, you started what is now an inescapable boulder of snow. Far from the apogee of the ridge where you stood, your printing press has Frankensteined. It is no longer on the edge of town, it now resides in the heart of the city. It resides in people’s laps. Flip on flip off. Spit it and we see it. Everywhere, anyone can publish their thoughts. And the ubiquity of the printed word does not diminish its impact. The pen remains mightier than the sword.
I, in my hermetically sealed existence, might not have realized all this until I left McCall School the past Saturday. After another week of feisty play ended, the gym slowly emptied of its AFBLers. President Excelsior John His Majesty Freeborn stayed late breaking down the extensive audiovisual equipment used to capture the AFBL for future generations to learn about the purest essence of purity that God has thus far donated to this mortal coil. I was wrapping up my post game interview with Nicky Santore, when the President gave me a light pinch on the toochis. It has always been his eccentric way of getting my attention. In any other work environment, law suits would be abound. I turned after his tiny squeeze and looked at President Freeborn. “I need to see you after you finish with Santore,” he said. I finished up with Santore and went to chat with the President. He had two words for me: Houser Watch.
In week 4, it became apparent that the afterthought to the weekly recap, the Houser Watch, moved to the forefront of the AFBLer brain. It lingered in the mind until it became manifest on the court. President Freeborn is quite concerned. The titular character of the Houser Watch has yet to ignite the torch. Jimbo plays calmly, doesn’t insist on having the ball at all times, takes wise, calculated shots. He knows when to pull up for a makeable jumper, he knows when to take it to the rim. Heck, he even acknowledged his arch nemesis’ defense caused him to alter a shot. This sounds well and good, but it makes for dreadful web diarying. Even more detrimentally, a reciprocal relationship is fomenting between AFBLers and Jim.
This week, the power of the blog, the end result of Gutenberg’s printing press revolution, reared its ugly head. The built up frustration of Housers placated play has forced others to find his torch and set it aflame.
Housers aforementioned arch nemesis got into a chesty exchange with a teammate accusing him of letting his team down by missing easy shots. He fired back with a missive accusing the accusor of lax defense. There were too many kicked balls to be counted, there was chucking, there were turnovers, in short all the things that define what the Houser Watch has come to mean over the past 200 years, yet, the Non-Housers of the AFBL performed these acts. Houser, again, coasted away early leaving the AFBL yearning for outbursts and irrationality. Rather than filling the void of irrationality by playing a coherent brand of ball, the AFBLers chose outbursts. Like children grappling with parents separating, the confused players began blaming themselves. This blame turned to projection and what the President called, “a Houser Watchification” washed upon the league drowning it in irascibility.
My only question is this: Johannes Gutenberg, had you known that this blog could cause the proletariat of the AFBL to emulate its league bad boy, would you have still invented the printing press?
–Brick James
Houser Watch: Week Four, Nothing Doing
You didn’t happen to read the re-cap?
AFBLog 