Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities Author: Chris Kluwe | Language: English | ISBN:
B00B3VX3VS | Format: PDF
Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities Description
Hi. In your hands, right now, you hold the culmination of thousands of years of human intelligence, ingenuity, and brilliance. Now put your goddamn phone down and pay attention to my book.
What is in my book, you ask? (I'm really glad you asked, by the way, because now I get to tell you.)
Time travel. Gay marriage. Sportsballing. Futuristic goggles that DO NOTHING.
Tiny brags from my publisher, stuff like: "This is an uproarious, uncensored take on empathy, personal responsibility, and what it means to be human."
Excessive brags about myself: "An extraordinarily clever, punishingly funny, sharp-tongued blogosphere star, NFL player, husband and father, one-time violin prodigy, voracious lifetime reader, obsessive gamer, and fearless champion of personal freedom."
Oh, and also an essay on the Pope's Twitter account. Honestly, if that doesn't draw you in, there's no hope left for humanity. I also give my own funeral eulogy, in case you were hoping I'd go away and die now!
So please, join me in the glorious art of windmill tilting by reading this "collection of rousing, uncensored personal essays, letters, and stories" (I have no idea why that's in quotes).
Join the herd of
Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies.
(You know you want to.)
- File Size: 975 KB
- Print Length: 257 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (June 25, 2013)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00B3VX3VS
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,022 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #22
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Sports - #23
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Political - #57
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Political
- #22
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Sports - #23
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Political - #57
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Political
I am a Packers fan who decided one day to follow a Minnesota Viking on Twitter because Chris Kluwe told ESPN talking head and professional troll Skip Bayless on Twitter to “French kiss a flamethrower” when Bayless had the Montezuma’s Revenge of verbal diarrhea one day on First Take. This was well before that infamous, profane letter directed towards a Maryland state lawmaker posted on Deadspin that started all of this.
If you’re thinking that I’m betraying Packer fandom by following a player who was a division rival on Twitter, first of all, you don’t know me, and second of all, when the only item in the negative column is “he plays for the Minnesota Vikings”, it’s easy to overlook that part when the items in the positive column are numerous. Third, he is one of the few athletes on Twitter who say things other than “rise and grind” or other quasi-inspirational tropes meant to inspire the masses (but just inspires nausea and/or the urge to facepalm repeatedly in me). Plus I only had to pretend I disliked him for a total of 9 hours last season whenever my Packers played the Vikings. And now I don’t even have to do that because he’s now an Oakland Raider.
What does this have to do with a book review? Probably nothing other than it should be known for the record that Chris Kluwe has a lot of Packer fans who follow him on Twitter and a good number of them will probably read his book, like I did.
Being a Twitter follower of his stoked my interest in reading this book when I heard it was coming out. I’m familiar with Kluwe’s sense of humor, his blunt honesty, his inventive use of profanity and zero-tolerance for bull excrement. Plus he’s a nerd and I have an affinity for nerds. I’m married to a nerd.
Although I'm a big fan of pop culture and sports, I don't tend to revere celebrities. While there are certainly people whose work or abilities I enjoy or appreciate more than others, the people I admire most or even view as personal heroes are often those making a difference in our world or impacting people's lives.
Former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe (now an Oakland Raider) is one of those people. While as a football fan I knew of Kluwe's prowess on the field, I didn't become aware of his activism off the field until the middle of last year, when he wrote a public letter to a Maryland state delegate who had called on the Baltimore Ravens to curb the public pro-marriage equality stance of (now former) linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo. (I wrote about this last fall.) From that point on Kluwe became a vocal opponent of those who sought to ban marriage equality, in Minnesota and elsewhere, and he even filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the marriage equality cases argued before the Supreme Court earlier this year. And he did all of this not because he is gay, not because he has gay family members, or because he's getting paid. He did (and does) this because he believes all people should be treated equally.
Beyond his support for marriage equality, Kluwe is a tremendously intelligent, well-read, and articulate person on a variety of subjects. He's a big fan of colorful--even obscene--language (not that there's anything wrong with that), and even if you don't necessarily agree with his arguments, most rational people would have to admire his passion and his ability to communicate his points of view.
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