Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Sallying

  • Is it tempting to sally forth, this Super Bowl Sunday, with intentional, grammatical grounding on the six ways one can use a gerund like “Sallying?”
  • Can one imagine Coach Reid or Shanahan in pregame pump up saying: “Listen up guys, I have some important gerunds for you?”
  • Maybe not, but sallying into the locker room would we hear: Winning, Beating, Hitting, Living Large, Playing smart, Grabbing the moment, Giving all you got?
  • So why not go sallying out seeking our own super bowl stimulations?
  • Rather than anticipating half time Usher, during pregame, switch off talk and switch on YouTube: Bernstein conducting the NY Philharmonic and Brahms Academic Festival Overture?
  • A promised 10 minutes of exhilaration and a perfect way to get ready for kickoff?
  • Just before kickoff how about a Superbowl Gameday Poem?
    • “The streets today
      were widow canyons,
      wooed away, the normal traffic,
      by something akin to black magic,
      and so to supermarkets at five P.M.
      emptied by a sorcerer’s spell,
      but I hear tell, on game days like this,
      the tide will turn
      as if the moon, by chance, had changed direction.”
  • Are neighbors coming over with no talking allowed during the game (and ads too)?
  • Giving them their choice of beer, wine, pop, popcorn, mixed nuts, venison jerky, pizza, blueberries and ice cream plus team pick for the $20 bet while we gun privately for the Chiefs?
  • If Kansas City can have the Chiefs, why can’t the fighting Illini have their symbol “The Chief”?
  • WOKE NCAA and Weak Trustees and Administration at U of I? Send no money?
  • Given the mental ‘to-do’, does that explain Presidential refusal to sally on out for the normal, pre-Super Bowl, press conference? Fearing a flag? Another one?
  • Is it redundant that Secretary Blink ’em, cannot not see the game….. because he’s on his LVIII Mid-East trip to plead, at any Israeli price, the Administration’ s, Palestinian, peace plan?
  • Is there Super Bowl rumor that the Lincoln Bedroom has been renamed the Taylor Swift Suite and now rentable with justification provided by 50 former Intelligence officials citing national security reasons?
  • Is Hunter, rumored Swift suite host, promoting: “Come on in for a Swiftie?”
  • Meanwhile, is it time to relent and drink Bud Light again because the Clydesdales and Dog are back plus the Genie and quarterback Peyton and star dancing Emmitt? Here’s to Bud being back?
  • Is it suggestion when the Ukraine reminds us: There’s a super bowl every day?
  • Do we sally away from big games when watching cheerleaders versus players?
  • Do fantasy football fans suggest a conflicted but favorite cheer: “Let’s Get Real People?”
  • Am I suggesting that we have sallied today, far from and close to, an Allegiant field?
  • So, trying always for effective offense, and, in defense, isn’t it just another Third Degree Sunday?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The actions and answers are yours.