A Super Bowl Rant-Updated

May 2025
Why is this brutal sport allowed to continue? How many cases are undiagnosed? The hazards could not be more obvious, yet men are paid millions to destroy their brains. 
https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/cte-lawsuit-filed-by-family-of-1950s-player-results-in-140-million-verdict-against-ncaa?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us 

Deceember 2023
And so it continues. The football leagues are too concerned with the big bucks and the fans are too obsessed with violence to take CTE seriously. It's the families who experience the fall-out, all for the sake of the Heismann trophy.

From the Washington Post article: "...of the 1,035 brains of football players examined at Boston University, nearly three-fourths had CTE." 

How is this acceptable?

Super Bowl 52 (a/k/a SuperBowl 2018)
Viewership is expected to be down this year, from a peak of 114 million in 2015, 111.8 million in 2016, and 111.3 million in 2017. Blame it on audience fragmentation. Or maybe it's because Pink has the flu.

Super Bowl 50 (a/k/a Super Bowl 2016)
I couldn't find any stats on how many people are expected to watch Sunday's game (beyond Forbes' "about a billion worldwide"), but you can be sure they'll be eating a lot of guacamole. According to the Hass Avocado Board, 278 million avocados will be consumed, and according to the National Chicken Council 1.3 billion chicken wings will be eaten. Unlike half the country, I'll be doing anything but watching the body-slamming fest. And, sorry, I can't even get into the half-time show or Puppy Bowl or Kitten Bowl or whatever they do to try to suck in non-football viewers.
But here are links to only a few of the reasons I find this sport so detestable.     

Super Bowl 2015 
Bets are on that more than 113 million people will watch Sunday's salute to brutality. According to Nielsen the number last year was 111.5 million.

Super Bowl 2013
Can 100 million people be wrong? 

That’s the number of people expected to stuff their faces with junk food and watch grown men slam heads and bodies together in the name of sport.

It matters not that the chronic concussions experienced by football players may lead to early dementia and personality disorders. The NFL has graciously offered funds to research the problem.

It matters not that the administration of a powerful painkiller allows college players to play through painful, otherwise debilitating injuries. The drug, Toradol, led to a heart attack in a 20-year-old. It’s apparently in widespread use in the NCAA and professional sports.

If I ruled the world

Okay, there would be world peace, good jobs for all, a take-down of the Wall Street big-wigs and banks, a bipartisan Congress, spending limits and time constraints on the campaigning process… You get the idea.

But I’m talking about some basics here. Stuff that’s a part of everyday life and gives us major agita.

eHow declaw article: Bad information, bad journalism

It’s hard to determine whether this post should go to “Life With Sally” or to “ExclusivelyCats.” It discusses two topics close to my heart – good writing and cats.

A member of the Cat Writers’ Association Facebook group posted a link to an eHow article titled, “How to Declaw a Cat,” which immediately generated a major firestorm among the members. On the surface the message was that you could knock out Fluffy and systematically cut off her paw tips from the comfort of your home.

Manufacturers foist ugly cars on consumers

... who are either clueless or gullible 

 

Jeeps were always pretty ugly, but this
new model takes the cake.

Update: Dec.18, 2023. And so it continues. We’ve Hit a Grim Milestone We Haven’t Seen Since 1981. Why Can’t We Do Anything About It? 

 

The problems described when I wrote this article more than 10 years ago have only gotten worse due to the obsession with corporate profits and aggressive marketing. These vehicles have only gotten bigger and the technology even more distracting. Now they comprise more than 80 percent of vehicle sales.Needless to say my snark-o-meter is off the charts.

 

Update! Feb. 23. Jeep's new Cherokee might take the cake here. It's described in this article as "lumpier, angrier." You decide.

Car manufacturers are going out of their way to design ugly cars.

I didn’t think they could top themselves after SUVs became all the rage, but the marketing behind them blinded consumers into thinking they were buying a safe family vehicle that would take the kids to soccer practice, the wife to the mall, and the husband to the hunting lodge in the mountains. Or convince their neighbors that they were members of the Secret Service. SUVs and their newer kissing cousins, the crossovers, are a lame concept that sucks people into believing they’re the only thing to drive if they have 1.3 kids and a dog.

No, SUVs were not safe, until the tip-over rate led to stabilizer systems. They’re a must for winter weather? Sure, if you want to play cowboy and scare the living daylights out of mere mortals around you. And ice is ice: an SUV will skid as much as a sedan if there’s no traction to be had.

Grammar and Your Writing: Don’t Ignore the Basics

--> Back in the day, magazines, newsletters, and newspapers, and, if you were very lucky, books, were the primary outlets for your written words. An editor sat as judge and jury over every query and article submitted for publication, which meant that a writer crafted each adjective, period, and comma in order to please him or her, and thus, become published.

Fast forward to today. Editors and proofreaders along with their attendant publications are dropping like flies. Blogs are the new way of communicating. They’re easy to set up. Write something, post it, and bam! Instant gratification. Right?

Not so fast.

Good-by LeBaron, Hello, Solara

The LeBaron in July 2007. (Photo by Susan Braden)

When I was a little girl, not more than 3 or 4 years old, I went with my father as he took an old car to the junkyard. I think it belonged to my great-grandmother, a 1930-something Plymouth. As young as I was back then, I felt bad and cried at the thought of this old car being abandoned to rust with like castaways. 
  
Almost 60 years later, the emotions were exactly the same as I drove my 1992 Chrysler LeBaron convertible to the now-renamed “salvage” yard. It was always a pretty car, sort of a champagne color with tan top and the nice rounded lines. We called it our “mid-life Chrysler."

At 20 years old, it was either a classic or a clunker.

Lock me up until the election is over

Does it really take a year and a half to elect a President?

With 10 months remaining, we are already sick to death of the right-wing pontificating of the 1 percent. They are only ones who can afford -- or buy -- their way into office. I'm sure those on the left aren't far behind, but they are not as vocal -- yet. 

Post-Recession Reflections

Three years ago, I was licking my wounds after being laid off from my job as editor of two weekly newspapers and contributor to a third.

I was panic stricken and angry. For an entire year, I searched for a day job, search for freelance work, and worked my butt off at whatever freelance work came my way. I started writing for a local online newspaper, took on contract projects for my former employer, explored content mills, met with various people about start-up projects, taught a copy desk class as an adjunct professor. I interviewed for only a few jobs during that time. I had hoped to be able to earn a respectable living by freelance writing.

Sally’s Top Gripes for 2011

I’m feeling especially cranky today, so I decided to dust off and update my gripes from 2002, with a nod to the late Andy Rooney.

Occupy Wall Street: A vehicle to vent frustrations

Just over the last month, the frustration and anger felt by the "99 percent" has blossomed into a global experience, Occupy Wall Street.

Many have spent the last three or four years struggling financially and spiritually with effects of the Recession. Many think we never pulled out of it and the bipolar nature of the stock market is leading us the believe that prosperity is a very dim light at the end of a very long, trash-filled tunnel.