Might Makes Might

So, Thucydides...

He wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War.  There's this part in it called The Melian Dialogue.  It's where Athens is about to attack the island of Melos.

The Athenians have a huge army and they're about to stomp all over Melos with it.  In the dialogue, Thucydides imagines what the conversation was like when, before battle, representatives from the two sides met up to talk things over.  The Melians were like:

And the Athenians were like:

And:

...why is it always like this:

...instead of like this:

Maybe the Athenians were right.  Maybe that's just how things go.

Remember that scene in season 4 of The Wire where a security guard at a quickie mart steps to Marlo to complain that he, a man who lives by the rules and does his job, is stuck in a lowly position while Marlo, a man who deals in violence and vice, lives well and does as he pleases?  Remember what Marlo said to the security guard?

The same thing applies in this case, the case of might makes right.  I'd like it to not be so, but it is.

...or maybe it isn't.  Because might doesn't make right, not truly.  Might just makes might.  And if it's wielded by someone lousy, might just makes things worse for everybody.  In fact, it usually makes everyone wish for the right that much more.

I don't guess any one person can turn the whole world back from being upside down, but one person can do his best to walk rightside up in this upside down world.

And maybe, whenever the world is flipped back to being rightside up, he'll fit right in.

Cheers.

...Melos was defeated, by the way.  It was 416 or 415 BC.  The Athenians killed every adult male in the city and sold the women and children into slavery...

Folks, It's Shamgar. There's Going To Be Some Killing.

"...and after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel..."
                                                                        -Judges 3:31

Okay, so we know Shamgar killed 600 Philistines, but suppose he didn't do his oxgoading all at once...  Suppose he did it over a period of time...

Today, Shamgar kills Philistine #43 and Philistine #44

...sorry for the confusion, folks.  Turns out the guy on foot was a Hivite, not a Philistine.  My mistake.

Cheers.

"Creeking More In The ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)" Episode #86

I'm not from Atlanta, but I live here, and (because I live here) people who don't live here ask me, "Creek, what's Atlanta really like?"  I don't know what Atlanta is really like, but if you'd like to know what it's like for me, I invite you to sit back and enjoy another episode of "CREEKING MORE IN THE ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!!!

[Doleful Fandom]

In the city of Atlanta, you should probably get out to Philips Arena to see the Hawks at some point.

Look, they're not the best team in the NBA (technically speaking, they're the very worst team in the NBA), but they are in the NBA, and the NBA is one of my very favorite things.

I first became a fan of the Atlanta Hawks in those Tracy McGrady days of yesteryore.  That was back when they had Josh Smith and Joe Johnson and the team marketed itself as "The Highlight Factory".

Remember a few years ago when the Hawks won 60 games and were the #1 team in the Eastern Conference but the front office was in turmoil because some racially insensitive emails and ill-advised comments were made public?  Ever since then, the organization has been going out of its way to apologize.

If you don't mind sitting up in the rafters, tickets are not too expensive.

There are a few different ways to get good tickets to a Hawks game.

1.  Be the friend of a friend who has a friend who has a rich friend who has season tickets but doesn't always go to every game.

2.  Be personally rich somehow.

or 3.  Do what I do:  go to the games where the Hawks are playing against teams that no one is particularly excited to see.  If you're trying to get some Hawks vs. Lebron tickets, it's going to cost you two arms and a couple of legs.

But if you're going to see the Hawks vs. Sacramento, you can practically sit on the team bench for about $40.

The only sport worth watching is basketball because basketball is the only sport where people dunk on other people.  The Hawks do not have a history of being a great basketball team, but they do have a history of having players who will dunk on you.

It is appropriate to clap and cheer when someone dunks on someone.

Or when someone crosses someone up.

Or when someone is collecting buckets.

Cheering really gets the players going, it gets them hyped.

Sometimes, as I sit watching the games, I wonder what would happen if we cheered like that for other good things.  Like, what if we cheered when we spotted someone giving some food to one of those homeless guys with the handwritten signs?  Or when we saw a smoker put his spent cigarette butt in an ash can instead of just throwing it on the sidewalk?

I mean, I know we cheer for basketball game buckets, but what if we cheered for life buckets?

This is the kind of thing you think about when you're faced with the prospect of cheering for the 2017-18 Atlanta Hawks.

Sheesh.

There you have it foks, another exciting episode of "Creeking More In The ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!  Be sure and come back for the next installment wherein we reminisce on all of the great players who could have been Hawks but were not. 

LXXXII (82?) Caesars

One of the things that stands out to me as I read about the history of Rome is the way Rome embraced its dark foundation stories.

Rome is founded on a fratricide, it is populated by outcasts from surrounding people groups, they get their wives by kidnapping young women from their neighbors... this is what they told themselves about themselves.  I guess it makes sense when you're in a nation that worships war and finds its glory in the strength of its armies.  But when you're in a nation that worships war and finds its glory in the strength of its armies yet wants desperately to think of itself as Christian, the candor of Rome is jarring.

I'm going to think on this some more...

But, in the meantime, I've written a book!

Get it?  Creektonius?  Suetonius?  And look at that font!  Hand crafted artisanal lettering!

Technically, it's more of a long poem than a proper book.  I drew up a list of all the emperors of Rome starting with Julius* and ending with Romulus Augustulus and I've given each one of them two lines of rhyming verse.  Here, I'll show you what I'm talking about:

Caesar, the tyrant, wreaked havoc in Gaul

And later was stabbed by the senators all 

Augustus laid marble to make Rome look grand

He laid the foundation on which she would stand 

 Tiberius Caesar was dark and morose

He spent his last days at Capri being gross

 Caligula followed, his reign full of scandal

His villainous actions were too much to handle

 How very unlikely that Claudius would reign

Folks largely assumed he was soft in the brain

Most people know Nero, that fiddling fiend

He caused lots of grief, suicide intervened

When Nero was finished, egad, what a mess!

Four men vied for power and caused much distress

 First up was Galba, a hardened old miser

Betrayed by supporters, he should have been wiser

 Next we have Otho, once Nero's good friend

He lasted three months till his violent end

 Vitellius the glutton, a wanton imbiber

Defeated, dismembered, and thrown in the Tiber

 Vespasian, the fourth guy, destroyed Judea

A capable leader, killed by diarrhea

 Favored son Titus, he'd torn down the Temple

Volcanoes, pandemics, his reign was not simple

 Domitian insisted that he was divine

His despotic nature led to his decline

...and on and on until you reach the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus.  I've also included the years of each ruler's reign and additional, supplemental illustrations. 

I put this book together so that I could remember the basics of who and what and when, and so that I can orient myself as to what was going on during a given period of time.  Like if I'm reading about Cyprian and I see that he was born in 200AD and died in 258AD I can take a look inside my book and see that he was born under Septimius Severus and died under Valerian, then I'll have some context for what was happening around him in the greater Roman Empire.

So, if this kind of thing interests you, you can pick up a copy here:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/8489991-82-caesars

And look at that!  It's only $9.99 !!!!

Operators are standing by!

Cheers.

*technically, Augustus is the first emperor of Rome, but Suetonius included him in his "The 12 Caesars" so I put him on my list too.

...are you guys tired of all of this Rome-centric content yet?  Well, come back next week.  I'll try to come up with something Romeless.