Show Me My Opponent: Alabama?

The light at the end of the tunnel can be the hardest to see. It can be a faint, yellowish light that’s hard to distinguish. On rare occasions, it’s bright and right there, but the uncertainty remains. The tunnel itself is a mental quandary: none of us know how far the tunnel goes or really how deep we are in it. How bright is the light? Do we know? Can we know?

What do we know? What is there to know? What capacity do we have to understand these events?

Why can we not comprehend more than we do? It is a question only the deity of your choice can comprehend, or understand, or answer. Answers are what matter. Answers fill in the blanks. Life isn’t like those math textbooks; the odd-numbered questions don’t have the answer guide on page 1305. Answers must come from facts, which come from vaguely-sketched-out ideas that don’t make sense to many and often confuse those studying. Rumors are facts’ drunk cousin at the bar hitting on women 17 years’ younger.

However, rumors are far more entertaining than facts: they can entice you into believing things you never believed possible. Rumors are the red pill. Rumors can open up a world previously unknown to those viewing. Watch them as they blow up your worldview and shift you forever. Watch as they damage you, your life, and your belief system. These rumors will kill you if you let them.

Do you own land in Jefferson County? Or does the land own you? The answer is out there, but so are the rumors. Sometimes there’s facts, too.

At this point, you should understand that we will not be previewing Tennessee’s game against Alabama on Saturday. Instead, we are discussing other topics more pertinent to our lives.

1. BEEF.

Balance, eyes on your target, elbow straight, follow through. It’s one of the simplest formulas in all of life, and it can be applied to numerous things (clean and dirty), but we’re discussing jump shots here. When I was a senior in high school, I idolized a goofy white Mormon kid who looked more like a computer science major than the best basketball player in America.

This curly-haired doofus pulled up from what we know now as Curry Range a solid two years before people knew what Curry Range was. Jimmer Fredette is the most exciting college basketball player of the last ten years, because he represented the most basic of pickup basketball dreams. Every white young adult in the last seven years has shot a basketball from 30 feet, because they saw Jimmer Fredette do it. This is canon.

2. CULVER’S.

You won’t have anything to do this weekend. There’s a new one that just opened near Cedar Bluff. Blow up your diet, grab the cheese curds, grab a Concrete Mixer, and pass out.

3. GET PAID.

Life is too short to work for pennies. Ask for the money you deserve. If they’re not gonna give you the money you deserve, tell them to shove it and find someone else that works 30% as hard as you do. I’ve seen minds and attitudes (mine included) ruined because those who owned them were overworked, underpaid, anxious, and stressed as hell. Stop this garbage, Corporate America.

4. TOP CANDIDATES.

At a former job, I did some mild work in the recruiting world. I envy those who get to do it full-time as it seems pretty fun once you get past the BS. Regardless, here’s something I learned: there’s never really a shortage of good candidates. If you’ve got four key criteria, plenty of people out there can meet two. These people will probably give you somewhere between an okay and good return on your investment – typical somewhat disengaged workers who can do some for your company but not a ton.

It’s the great candidates that meet three or even four. If you’ve got a candidate that meets all four, pay shouldn’t matter – your return on investment will more than make up the amount you spend. With any hire, there’s a risk, but someone who meets every key criteria on your list should, in theory, be the least risky. Who cares if they’re the most expensive? Pay them their dadgummed money.

5. ALTERNATIVE ROUTES OF ENTERTAINMENT.

You could watch CBS at 3:30 ET on Saturday. Alternately, I’ll be in the Nashville area (so 2:30 CT). Here’s some other things I might do instead:

M*A*S*H* marathon on WGN America (2:00-6:00 ET)

Cubs-Dodgers game 6 (if necessary) (4:00-7:00 ET)

Forensic Files marathon on CNN Headline News (1:00 PM-7:00 AM ET) (y’all ever watched this? It’s so stupidly watchable.)

3:30 showing of Blade Runner 2049

3.5 hours of Rocket League

Listen to the first five Lynyrd Skynyrd studio albums (2 hours, 58 minutes) – everyone knows they went to crap after the plane crash

Watch the first six episodes of American Vandal (3 hours, 31 minutes)

Watch all of season one of Nathan For You (slightly under 4 hours)

Go outside

Ride a bike

Cry into a pillow when thinking about things that could have gone better in life

6. THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS.

The best rock band of the 2000s got there not because they were the prettiest-sounding or had the best connections. They just rocked the hardest. If you can name another group out there that could have lost a talent like Jason Isbell and then went on to make the best album of their career (Brighter Than Creation’s Dark), I’m dying to hear it.

What DBT represents for small-town losers like me is something far greater: the ability to be something bigger while staying true to who you are. Like Skynyrd before them, they accepted Southern stereotypes as part of who they were while also fighting against the negative things people believed they’d be. (Somewhat.) Both Skynyrd and DBT are uniquely positioned to show that those of us from the South are just as smart (and probably smarter, considering many didn’t get Daddy’s Money) as the Coastal Elites.

Patterson Hood has never attempted to hide a very unique and telling voice. It’s one of the most uniquely American voices in all of music history. Same with Mike Cooley, one of our most underrated songwriters of the last thirty years. Few people on earth have this talent; even fewer are this badass when using it.

7. CONCLUSION.

I’ve never been good at writing conclusions. Every conclusion to an academic paper I’ve ever written goes like this:

A nice way of saying “As you can see, x, x, and x = y.”

Some variety of “These discoveries show that x and x can affect y in the long run.”

And then an abrupt ending.

As you can see, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark = One More From the Road, proper technique affects your jump shot positively, and pay the candidate you want. These discoveries show that music, basketball, and understanding who you should be can affect your happiness in the long run. Alabama 45, Tennessee 3.