Football Has Turned My Friends Into Zombies - From a Former Fairweather Fan

I'm really starting to detest football, and not because I actually detest football. I've just reached a saturation point. Which is unfortunate because the damn season has just begun. It's bad enough that it begins in the fall and continues through the darkest, most depressing months of the year. I used to enjoy going over to a friend's house on Sundays, having some beers and congregating around the tv, laughing and cheering and bouncing kids on my knee. I've never been a football person, anyway, but it was fun to be included in the festivities. Even during the SuperBowl this year, which as a general rule I give less than an entire shit about. But it was fun to see your hometown team doing well and partying with the neighbors.

However, since the Seahawks won the SuperBowl, things have taken a turn for the macabre. We now live in a Seattle where if you're not a rabid “12 Fan,” then there is something culturally wrong with you. I mean it. It's a full-blown obsession; the kind some people get mental health counseling for. Game days are like the beginning of a zombie movie: town overtaken by a consumptive fever that makes everyone lose their minds, falling under the possession of the blue and green. The Legion of Boom says “scream” and they say “how loud??” If you go out to the store and have the unmitigated gall to not be decked out in full regalia, the cashier asks you suspiciously if you're from around here. If you go to a restaurant or a cafe, everyone around you will be shrieking and foaming at the mouth. If you stay home, your neighbors will be wailing from their homes, causing all the neighborhood dogs to become apoplectic, including your own.

I have to sit in my room with the doors and windows closed and the tv on just to get away from the goddam noise in the privacy of my own chambers. Heaven forbid I'd like to do something like sit somewhere quiet and write or read a book, because there is no place that's quiet. I have to wear earplugs or noise-canceling headphones or listen to the barking; barking dogs, barking people, barking mad, for three hours. They think it's hilarious. I worry about their well-being.

I set my social media filters accordingly. I unfollow certain friends during football season and unsubscribe from several publications. Sometimes I get away from it at all. Filters are not enough. If you live in Seattle and you haven't been infected by the Blue Fever, then that's too damn bad. So I'm on social media blackout. I'm all for social media blackout time if it's for a reason that doesn't suck. Football is a stupid reason. I'm just sick to death of hearing about it. I have this feeling deep in my gut that there is something happening somewhere in the world that would be interesting to know about. Unfortunately, I live in Zombieland. The Seahawks are playing. Nothing else exists.

Kansas City recently usurped the title of loudest stadium in Christendom. If the level of noise around me is any indication, The Legion is not happy with that. It sounds like they think that even though we live fourteen miles from the actual stadium that “we” can take that title back!!

You know what would be rad right now?? Laryngitis.

Oh, and GGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, GGGIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDDD SSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRIIIIEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I want to post that every five minutes and see how quickly everyone hates me, too, but I have other shit to do.

Of course people have every right to do as they please in their own homes and on their own social media. Conversely, if I have to sit in my own home and listen to it for hours on end, I have every right to comment on it. I think they're annoying, they think I'm annoying. I try to make it light and fun online when I can. Admittedly it was difficult the day I was in bed with a sinus migraine and surrounded, as I was, with barking dogs and fans wilding out, I was a bitch online. I'll own up to that. It's perfectly legal for your overzealous neighbors to make noise during the day. It just sucks when you're sick and there's nothing you can do about it. Y'all go ahead and make you noise and I'll make mine.