On January 11, 2016, I began a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day, called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from cancer treatment, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting them to the blog helped me hold myself accountable. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for August 31st
We grow up and become fans of a certain NFL team. Maybe it’s because we grew up in the team’s city, watched one of their magical seasons, or for another reason, like appreciating the uniforms or the mascot. The NFL team you are drawn to says a lot about who you are and how your future will unfold.
Before we break down each team, some of you will complain that you don’t have a team. Deep down in each human being is the fundamental concept of an NFL team that represents them as a person. It’s a lot like the concept of God; it is ingrained into us. Some of you will say you hate football, and that is just a mirror showing how much you hate yourself. If you like football but don’t really follow a team, you are too scared to know yourself. If you only like college football, then you are probably too primitive to have human emotional intelligence.
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks come from the rainy shores of Puget Sound. The sound of the 12th man, who most of the time are the loudest fans in the NFL, shows a fan who is making themselves bigger to make them look stronger, more important, and suffer greatly as the NFL’s biggest imposter syndrome sufferers.
San Francisco 49ers
Named after the gold rush in 1849, when people who hated real work rushed to the Bay Area hoping to get rich quick. The same people are still there in the Bay trying to get rich quick with some social app or AI.49er fans are greedy and will destroy everything just to be rich and powerful.
LA Rams
During the Great Depression, there was also the Dust Bowl, when banks made farmers grow cotton, destroying the soil, turning it into dust, and pushing many people from the Midwest to LA to work on farms there. This changed the culture of LA and all of America forever. But the team wasn’t originally in St. Louis; it was in Cleveland before it moved to LA, then to St. Louis, and then back to LA.
Ram fans are always moving to try to feel better, but wherever they go, they’re still there. LA fans are always trying to fix their geographic issues.
LA Chargers
Almost every team in the NFL has tried their luck in Los Angeles at some point. And at some point, a shinier, greener pasture attracts them away. Charger fans are always unhappy with what they have and will always look for a better option. After San Diego lost its luster, the Chargers came back with their tail tucked between their legs, and like them, the fans will also go back after they find the new shiny thing too challenging.
Las Vegas Raiders
Try to be an underdog and a rich asshole at the same time. Raider fans think the world is against them, but they are also the most privileged motherfuckers to walk on earth. They aren’t moving from city to city trying to fit in or leave something behind; they are going from place to place, sucking it dry of all its resources, then crying about it if anyone picks on them.
Arizona Cardinals
Like the NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, the fans aren’t real people. They do everything because they think it’s what normal people do, but they are just slightly off. Like the coneheads, they think they are fitting in, but it’s obvious they don’t. They try to act their way into seeming normal.
Kansas City Chiefs
Oh, boy, what do we say about these guys? They are from nowhere, and no one except people from nowhere like them. Unless they happen to be good or popular with non-football fans, then they are just a team for nobodies who want something to fit in somewhere. Someday there won’t be any Chiefs in commercials, and we will sometimes remember they are a team that sometimes plays the Raiders.
Denver Broncos
Denver is the terrible combination between what is horrible in California and what is horrible in Texas. Like a snowboarding cowboy who has lots of money. The worst aspect of everything American: Denver fans love it big and like to think they are a big deal. But no one thinks about them; they only see the New Yorkers and the Los Angeles people as big deals.
The Texas Texans
What a stupid fucking name. Why not something interesting like the Oilers? Before the Washington Commanders were the Washington Football Team, we had the Texas Texans. You will find these fans in those new housing developments named after trees and water sources like Oak Brook; all the houses are big, but they look the same and are just inches apart. One SUV and one sedan are in every driveway, and all the kids have some misspelled name like Jaxson, Braighdon, Ashleeigh, or Kortniegh—soulless people.
Dallas Cowboys
America’s team, I guess. It makes sense since they are fading into perpetual losing and trying to make everyone remember the good ol’ days. Still, not many people are alive to remember those days, and so we have this huge paper tiger that can’t seem to win even with a lot of money. Let it go. Nostalgia is the opium of the masses, and the Cowboys represent that more than anything. America is nostalgic for a time that actually never existed, and the Cowboys are nostalgic for like a few years in the early 90s.
Indianapolis Colts
What? You are in serious trouble if this is your favorite team. How did it happen? Are you from Indiana? Why are you from Indiana? What kind of shit past life got you shit out in Indiana? Think about these things when you sit down and willingly root for the Colts. You might be a good person now, but sometime during your many reincarnations, you were a really fucked up person, or people, and you have come to the corn fields of Indiana to root for the Colts.
New Orleans Saints
These are gaudy, flamboyant people, fans of the Saints. I don’t know if it’s the influence of New Orleans or the French fleur-de-lis, but Saints fans will be overdressed, loud, and dramatic. A story of theirs gets more embellished every time they tell it, and their hand gestures get wilder as the night goes on. A New Orleans Saints fan is so scared of disappearing right in front of our eyes that they need constant reassurance that we notice them.
Tennessee Titans
If you got my joke from the Texas Texans, then you know this was the Houston Oilers, but they moved to Tennessee in the late 90s. They made the postseason several times in the early 2000s, but it is easy to get into the postseason in the NFL. Their fans are called flaimeheads, and that is because they are all addicted to crack. The Titans are the home of the most drug addicted popuation in the world, and they spend their games behind the endzone torching crack rock, trying to escape their intolerable realities.
Chicago Bears
Not many people know this, but during the off-season in the 80s, William ‘the Fridge’ Perry spent his time in an elite commando unit called GI Joe. Unlike Delta or the SEALs, GI Joe was specifically created to combat a world-dominating terrorist organization called Cobra. Perry went on many covert military operations in trying to root out and destroy Cobra’s organization. Chicago fans are mostly overeaters who try to eat their pain away.
Detroit Lions
One of the most manic depressive teams and fan bases in the NFL, we find these fans having huge mood swings. One minute they are winning and manic; the next moment, losing and depressed. Detroit is generally like that: once the financial foundation of mighty American manufacturing power, now a decaying city with no drinkable water. Maybe one day the city will see joy again, and it will probably come from a Lions winning season because manufacturing jobs will never return, and their baseball, hockey, or basketball teams won’t succeed.
Minnesota Vikings
These are Lutherans. Kind of cool for Christians, but really cold and dead inside. Vikings who have forgotten how to viking.
Green Bay Packers
While most Americans are individualists who think they have a personal path to freedom and liberty, the Packer fan understands this is a lie that the powers that be tell us to keep us from getting together and taking down the system that enslaves us. The Packer fan is a communist and wants to destroy the capitalist machine that eats us up and spits us out. When no one is listening, they don’t call each other cheeseheads; they call each other comrades.
Cleveland Browns
So, they are named after a color, the color of shit. Like the city of Cleveland, which may have had something to do with rock and roll, this team and their fans are just shit. Yucky, smelly, disgusting shit, and while they wish they weren’t, it has been accepted by most Brown fans. There is no lower to sink to, but the cooling, hardening shit is keeping anyone from moving up toward any success. You can always smell a Cleveland Brown fan.
Cincinnati Bengals
The Yacht Rock of NFL football, this tiger-striped, uniform-wearing football team is just some soft-ass mellow football. They are chill, but they are also in Ohio, a place that doesn’t have a lot of light. Made mostly a Republican breeding ground, Ohio is a disgusting place. The Bengals want to snort lines of coke and listen to some light AM radio rock that might have a horn section. These guys have hairy chests and beards, and love to cruise around in Saabs, but won’t stop partying for any responsibility.
Pittsburgh Steelers
A lot of people love the Steelers because we pretend we are still a tough blue-collar country that sweats over building our country, but this steel town no longer smelts steel for anything; most of that comes from Asia now. So the Steelers are just cosplayers. They cosplay hard work and that grim, stoic American philosophy, but underneath it all is someone who can’t change their own tire.
Jacksonville Jaguars
This is a confident white guy who has no reason to be confident. They walk around with false bravado but don’t have anything to back it up. They talk themselves into a lot of messes where they suddenly have to back up their confidence with action, and they don’t know how to do anything. (The author implores you to know that he is not a Jacksonville Jaguars fan despite the description)
Baltimore Ravens
These people embrace plastic surgery, shoe lifts, wigs, dyeing of hair, fake tans, and anything else to look better than humanly possible, even if it makes them look like a dead, bloated fish with a blonde wig on. The Ravens love to use any enhancement possible to look perfect, like what they imagine gods look like, but no one has actually seen a god, so it’s just a really bad guess.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
These are just fucking perverts. The team was created to boost the strip club industry in Tampa Bay, so it attracted a lot of lonely pervos.
Atlanta Falcons
Some people are born not knowing how to stay alive. They have accidents all the time, get sick really easily, have terrible and debilitating allergies, and are just physically useless. They have chronic pain, are chronically sick, and chronically whining. This is the Falcon fan. They will not shut up about all their pain and issues. They can’t work or do anything, and when they try, they almost kill themselves. If there is a god, god thinks this person was a mistake.
Atlanta has given us Coca-Cola and CNN, so they have a lot to apologize for.
Carolina Panthers
So special, they get to represent two states! These Panthers will show how unique they are by telling the most unhinged stories, even if you didn’t ask. If you show a scar, they’ll outdo you. If you smoked at 9, they smoked at 6. They had it worse and weirder than you, and they won’t let you forget it. They also won’t do anything to try to blend in, even if it means someone would like them for once.
Buffalo Bills
The cold, inhospitable city of Buffalo represents the cold, frigid heart of its fans. No one is more removed from their own heart and emotions than a Buffalo Bills fan. Maybe it’s because they have been ignored even during their best seasons, and can’t win the whole thing. So the best thing to do as a Buffalo Bills fan is to shut down and disassociate. Keep the ice from thawing around their heart.
Miami Dolphins
There is a moment in a young person’s life when they choose to stop partying and realize they need to start taking responsibility for their lives. They are done with college, and now they have to put having fun on the back burner and join the rat race. This is not the Miami Dolphins fan. They think the party will keep going, and jobs, kids, or whatever else won’t stop them. The Miami Dolphins will talk about some time in their past when they think they hit their peak and won’t stop bringing it up, and they wish that every night would help them relive that time, but it will just be an echo of a shadow of who they think they used to be.
New England Patriots
Just cops. That is all they are: those who are fans of the New England Patriots, and it isn’t that they are just cops; it is the whole culture of New England: donut slash coffee shop on every corner, a chip on the shoulder, and such an egocentric view of the world; they can’t believe that anything would be different anywhere else, and just in case, they won’t look. They’ll play golf, complain about cancel culture and woke culture, and while they are voting Democrat, are the most racist people on earth and wish that their small world was how the whole world is.
New York Jets
Let’s just be honest, nothing is going on inside the head of a New York Jets fan. They never wanted to learn anything, so their stupidity is their own fault; they’re obsessed with one or two things, and one of those things is rooting for the New York Jets, which has done nothing but give them heartbreak, and they’re too dumb to let it go. So they remain stupid and sad.
New York Giants
You know the totally normal guy who wears a fedora and says they are eccentric? Well, that is the New York Giants fan: a guy who is so dull but wants to be seen as a weirdo. They think they have an outside-the-box personality, but they are so much inside the box because they can only add a fedora and the borrowed personality of a Las Vegas magician to feel special.
Philadelphia Eagles
These fans are rage in human form. They are full of white-hot anger that can never be quenched. Like the New England fan, they’ve been geographically choked out of happiness, but instead of coping, Philadelphia Eagles fans are also choked by their shitty environs; they’re full of ire. Even winning a Super Bowl wasn’t good enough.
Washington Commanders
This is the performative person: they might have been a piece of shit before, but now they are completely woke. They try to make sure you won’t remember back when they were one of those people who found racist, sexist, homophobic, and whatever other punching-down jokes they used to find funny. Still, if you were to find their favorite group chat, you would find the most unhinged out of pocket fucked up memes and jokes possible. Probably a fan of 9/11 jokes. But outside their online persona, they latch onto any liberal talking point possible. They can’t erase the past, though, so they keep trying to make up for it by regurgitating New York Times and NPR talking points.