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In my salad days, I had little interest in sports. I played in my fair share of junior leagues - baseball, basketball, tennis, golf - but one by one, they fell by the wayside and were replaced with more sedentary hobbies - trombone, guitar, piano, video games, primitive internet videos. During my college years, however, an amazing transformation took place. I rediscovered sports. Not by means of participation (unless you count intramural kickball, which I do), but from a spectator’s point of view. I’m not really sure what triggered it. Maybe it was my college basketball team’s exciting drive to the final four my freshman year, maybe I attached myself to Chicago sports to get the occasional scent of home while I adjusted to a new city, or maybe some kind of boy instinct finally clicked on.

Whatever it was, it eventually led me to start dabbling in fantasy sports. I’ve always been a big fan of games, and I once heard someone describe fantasy sports as “Dungeons and Dragons for Jocks”. That seemed like a line I was willing to walk, and later on that path would lead me to playing more sports and more Dungeons and Dragons. But as far as fantasy sports go, a handy rule of thumb I discovered is that no one cares about your fantasy team unless they are in your league or they are, in fact, you. I may have bent this rule in today’s comic, and I apologize if you find the subject tiring, but hopefully I’ve dug a little deeper than how well my teams are doing. You also may be surprised to discover that there is such a thing as fantasy golf and fantasy celebrity.

In case you’re not familiar with fantasy celebrity, as I understand it, you pick a number of celebrities and then you get points based on how many headlines, magazine covers, entertainment show pieces, etc. are done about them. I haven’t actually played, but if an opportunity arose, I’d give it a shot. It basically comes down to this - I like games. Also, if “pigs” is an option, you better believe they’ll be on my team.

Lastly, as far as flu pandemics go. I’ve lived through a few at this point. Swine flu doesn’t concern me too much. It sounds pretty nasty if you are unfortunate enough to get it, but it also sounds like there are vaccines and awareness is pretty high. My only worry at this point is that one day there will be an outbreak of something that isn’t so easily controlled and I will not pay any attention. The media has desensitized me toward pandemics.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.