ok. so, the world is probably going to end before 2012.


there is already a good deal of scuttlebutt peaking out from basements of the internet (and other media) about the idea that we are dreadfully close to the end of the world. i'll let you do your own wikipedia search if you are interested, but most of the foundation is built from the fact that the ancient mayans calculated december 21, 2012 to be the end date of their calendar, this date suggesting to them that there would be a significant change in world order (whatever that means). you could terrorize yourself and spend hours reading what folks are saying and predicting about the year and date in question, but i don't really have that kind of time. for all intents and purposes, everything that i read suggests that i am not going to be able to stop that which is going to happen, so i won't spend too much time worrying about it. the fact of the matter is, if i truly believe that we are not promised tomorrow for any number of reasons, then i should not live my life in fear of what could happen, even if i know the "when".

that's what i thought until last night...

when this happened.

a wnba fight? what. the. crap? i don't know why i am so intrigued by the idea of this girl-fight of epic proportions, but i truly am. for all the wrong reasons, i am sure. it's not that i didn't know that girls could fight, or could fight each other, or get bowled over by an enormous man. i am sure i could find hundreds of youtube clips that would prove that not only do those things happen all the time, but people get off on watching it. last night's fight had so many layers to it, though, that i am having a hard time wrapping my head around it this morning.

i think the thing that sticks out to me is the way the girl from detroit bows up to candace parker after she's thrown to the ground like she is ready for a steel-cage match. is this really what she wants? or, is it just posturing? standing at pose for a calendar that she can put up in her children's bedroom that proves just how tough mommy can be when some young phenom questions her worth. was the reaction to rush over and stand over someone getting up off the ground an instinctual chip that society had planted into her subconscious? had she seen too many rap videos? too much mma? too much jerry springer? make no mistake. many things happened during the melee that a lot of grown-ass, adult people are not going to be proud of, but the catalyst for everything escalating into world war three was ms. pierson standing over the top of ms. parker like she was back in grade-school playing king of the mountain. had she just backed off, waited just half a second for her cooler-headed teammates to come grab her, that would have been that. sure, they would have yelled bad things back and forth. but a grown man would not have ended up shoving a woman to the ground. a high-caliber female athlete would not have left in a wheelchair after hurting herself restraining her own teammates(!!!), and another night would have passed without me having to waste extra brain-space on the wnba.

but it happened. and penalties will be paid because of it. but i wonder how much attention will be paid to the "why". i wonder if these athletes will worry that they have now fallen into a stereotype more suited and accepted among their male counterparts or if they will just bang their chest and be proud.

come four years from now, i don't know if i'll put together my own list of "why the world is coming to an end". i am fairly sure i'll be hiding under a rock or working on pre-tan, 2012. if i do, though, the wnba brawl of 2008 will make the cut. i am sure of that. something...no, a lot of things were wrong with the pictures from last night.

i doubt we'll do anything about them.