Crazy Man Loves the Vikings

Date: Sunday, September 23, 2007. Time: Sometime before noon. Place: Yankton, SD

Sunday morning, you noticed him if you drove on Broadway . Maybe your kids yelled from the backseat, "Who is that, Mommy." Maybe you thought to yourself... there's another release from the Human Services Center. He was there, just as he is every Sunday. To locals he is known "Viking Phil". To message board users he is know as "#1VikingFanGaryAndersonSucks". His real name is Philip R. Vega.

Philip devotes his Sunday morning routine to the Minnesota Vikings football team. He loves the Vikings so much that at 8:00 a.m. he completely abandons his trailer and 47 cats (all named after Vikings players), to "get his buzz on." He is out of bed at six, showers, and prepares "football feasts", usually while still intoxicated from the night before. Phil then makes his way to the closest convenience store to buy his beer. After that he gets dressed.

His dress attire consists of big fur boots, a heavy fur coat, and a helmet made of real leather, fur, and horns. It is after he is fully prepared to be a fan that he walks to Broadway, with wagon in tow. The wagon carries his food, drinks, and props. The props vary from week to week, but there is the one prop that remains the same, that is the Vikings horn. Phil proceeds to march up and down Broadway bellowing on the horn, singing "Skol, Vikings," and yelling various football statements. Through eye witness statements most of Phil's expressions consist of; "First down, Cris Carter", "Touchdown, Ahmad Rashad", "What a run by Chuck Foreman!", and "Carl Eller with another sack!".

At 11:30 he heads off for his friends house. His friend refused an interview for this article and wished to remain anonymous. Only saying, "You leave Phil alone, he's had a hard life." I was able to run into Phil leaving his friends house after the Vikings 13-10 loss at the Kansas City Chiefs. I asked Phil about the game while he sat on the curbside leaning to one-side, one eye closed, and trying to light a cigarette with a very unsteady hand. Phil told me the Vikings had won the game 48-3. He then attempted to get to his feet, he was successful on his third attempt. When he regained his balance he began to yell at the top of his lungs while jumping and stumbling around,"Vikings Win! Vikings Win!" It was when the neighbors started to appear outside their houses that I walked away from the scene.

After later investigation I was able to find out that Phil had spent that evening in the drunk tank at the Police Station. Seems to me like that is a harsh punishment for someone who was just expressing his love for his favorite football team. I mean isn't it punishment enough just being a Vikings fan? Next time you are driving down Broadway on a Sunday morning keep your eye at for Phil, if you see him honk.

Blog assignment 2

God damnit, the Hawkeyes lost. It was a good game,and should be a moral victory for a young Iowa team. They had their chances. Wisconsin is a tough place to play and they are a ranked opponent, The Hawks played them down to the wire. On the other hand, I did go see the Coyotes today with my six-year old son. Now, that's a team that can put some points on the board in a hurry. I regress, this blog is not supposed to be about football, it's supposed to be about our recent guest speaker.

I really did enjoy the lecture that Abhinav Aima presented to the class. As far as the first question of the assignment, I do believe that it takes someone within the media to have the balls to stand up to the government before others will follow. He cited 4 books that all made reference to that topic. Walter Cronkite, during the Vietnam War, shortly after the Tet Offensive, did just that. He came out and spoke about the fact that the U.S. was not winning the war. Just as Mr. Aima said, the media goes with the flow of American opinion. Someone has to be able to stand up and be unpopular, but usually public opinion starts to agree with the original unpopular thought. Unpopular thoughts and messages don't usually sell.

Which brings me to my answer of question 2....

I remember hearing during a lecture in a government class that there are five corporations in the country that control all the media. I think that is a sad state. It does not allow for a lot of unpopular reporting or opinion. If an author of a well written and documented report can get fired or reprimanded for writing unpopular facts and opinion, it takes away from our ability to get information from all sides of an issue. That is crucial in our attempts to become informed citizens.

Question number three.....

Because Sgt. Atwater will be unable to make it for his guest lecture, I think we could advance to the next topic of Micheal Moore and the current day events. You could possibly bring in a speaker from the media department again, or you could contact the on-campus ROTC and bring in someone who has been to Iraq or Afghanistan to make their comments to the class. Either or, it is too bad that he has been deployed, I wish him a safe return.

September 11 2001, video 2

The second video I viewed was a tribute video. It was done to Jewel's "My hands are small." I just typed in September 11 in the YouTube search box and it was the one with the most hits. I am commenting on this one because I had watched other tribute videos that were better.
This video had a lot of quotes from President Bush in it. Here is where I rant. Bush didn't plot and probably didn't know about 9/11, however, he played it. He saw the situation from the get go as his meal ticket to executive privilege. He abused his power. I feel it is a shame to use such a tragedy and a really pretty song to give him credit.
Therefore, I damn the maker of that video to hell (because I am going to abuse my privilege, of which I have none).

Just my thoughts.....

September 11, 2001, video 1

The first video I viewed on Youtube was one that was called "creepy facts of september 11" (he couldn't even capitalize it).
The video starts with pictures of the WTC on fire. It then shows a picture of a man on a balcony with a plane appearing to be ready to collide with the building. The video proceeds to show pictures of "Satan" in the clouds of smoke from the fire. I think that you can superimpose whatever the hell you please, I wasn't impressed with this "fact." As it happens I also saw a picture of a unicorn in the clouds of smoke....whatever.
The next part of the video is infatuated with the number 11. New York City has 11 letters in it.
Afghanistan has 11 letters in it.
Ramsin Yuseh (the person who plotted the first Trade Center Bombing) has 11 letters in it.
Bill Clinton has 11 letters in it.
Creepy or not?...I don't know...James Sabata has 11 letters in his name.

The video ends with the flight number of one of the planes that hit the WTC.
The number was Q33 NY, apparently you can enter that in all CAPS on a Word program, change the font to wingding, and it shows you pictures. The first picture is of an airplane, the next two are pictures that appear to me to be drawings of regular writing paper (I suppose they could look like buildings, but remember I see unicorns in smoke and clouds). The next picture is the traditional skull-n-crossbones. The last picture is of the Star of David. So when I interpret that I see " Plane, paper, paper, poison, Star of David." That doesn't mean much to me, and can anyone tell me what wingdings font really is?

I guess what I really took out of that video is that people can all sorts of stupid facts in anything tragic, and then believe there was a great big conspiracy theory. What the hell do all the facts in that video point to? Does it tell us in the video how we should have been pre-warned or how to find Osama? If anyone can answer this, contact me.

September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001 I was at work when I heard about the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. I was giving another person a ride to pick up a vehicle, and (if I remember correctly) the clock in my car read 8:17 when the news came over the radio about the first plane hitting. My first reaction was that it was simply an accident. There weren't exact details so I thought the plane was a little Cessna, and it was pilot error. I went back to work, where we didn't listen to the radio very often. My father owns a small trucking company and I was working for him at the time. I lived in Storm Lake, Ia with my wife and my seven month old son. My wife called me at work shortly after I had gotten back. She told me that a second plane hit the other tower and another one hit the Pentagon. I was shocked, America was under attack! I told everybody in the shop about it and we stopped what we were doing and turned on the radio. It was then we had heard about another plane possibly heading for the White House.
Because I worked for my dad at the time, I had a lot of leeway to come and go, I left to go be with my family for a little bit. I was at my house watching the events unfold with my wife when the first tower collapsed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when the tower collapsed, the loss of lives and the countless injured others was unfathomable to me. I sat with my wife and son for a while and after they had grounded all flights in the U.S. and the final plane crashed in PA, I returned to work. We resumed listening to the radio.
I watched everything I could during my lunch hour and listened to as much as I could throughout the rest of the day. During that evening I sat with my wife and son and watched a ton of coverage. The coverage that disturbed me the most was the live taping segments that happened when the towers collapsed. It really bothered me when you could hear the alarms going off from the air packs of the firefighters. I was a member of the volunteer fire department at that time and that sound just sends shivers down a fire fighter's spine.
It was reported that this was the work of Osamo bin Laden and Al Quida. That evening I began to get pissed off about the whole thing, I was ready to watch those that did that to us suffer. I seriously thought about joining the military to enact revenge. If I hadn't been a new daddy I probably would have, now I'm glad I didn't. The end of the day I gave my son a large hug and a kiss, I did the same with my wife. Eventually, I fell asleep.