Patrick Mahomes Is Definitely A Highly-Evolved Honey Badger But I Still Think Tom Brady Might Be An Immortal Humanoid Alien From The Future

Full disclosure: I watch one Pro Football game a year. That would be the Super Bowl. This year, I was swept up in a tide of confusion trying to figure out if the NFL had missed the class on advanced Roman Numerals, back in Grade Whatever.

All of us who passed Grade Whatever know that LIV is fifty-four in Roman Numeralese, right? So why did the NFL make the Super Bowl Fifty-Five logo so that it looked like it was the logo for Super Bowl Fifty-Four? And since you brought it up, why did they go and stick that football-on-an-obelisk thing in the logos for Super Bowls Fifty-One, Fifty-Two, Fifty-Three and Fifty-Four?

People have been walking around in early February for each of the last five years, scratching their heads and saying, “What the hell Super Bowl IS this, even? That dang logo doesn’t make any sense. Is that pedestal thing supposed to be the letter “I”? Is it one of the Silver Surfer’s high school football trophies? Or what?”

Mrs. Norrin Radd, spouse of Silver Surfer:

“Norrin! Put that trophy in the garage right this century! If I’ve asked you once I’ve asked you MMDLIX times! It’s been like 500 million years since you went to high school. Just because you’re an immortal humanoid alien who can throw a football several parsecs through space with pinpoint accuracy, it doesn’t mean you can leave your old crap lying around everywhere for the rest of eternity. And why are you even in the kitchen right now anyway?”

OK, now that I’ve got this logo thing off my chest, here’s another thing I’ve noticed: honey badgers went viral in January 2011, and they have remained popular ever since!

I spent a good part of my childhood pasting animal stickers from the A & P grocery store into this big book they would give to kids. There was no honey badger sticker: of this I am certain; however, now there is a huge family of honey badger-themed products including evening wear, power tools, self-help books and performance supplements.WT*!%(LV+10i)&~#^ !!!

You actually thought I was kidding about the supplements!

Anyway, honey badger stock began trending upward after the creatures appeared in a hilarious video monologue (“The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger”) made by a guy named Christopher Gordon. Christopher goes by the moniker “Randall” for some reason. “Randall” is a bit of a potty mouth but who am I to cast out the first %^!#@** stone? Honestly.

Sometime in 2012 Steve Bannon adopted the tenacious cobra-eating critter as his new totem animal and that was that. Here we are in 2021, guzzling honey badger peach melon-flavored performance drinks.

I don’t even know what a peach melon is, nor do I know what Steve’s totem animal was pre-2012. I feel like my totem animal is an owl, for what it’s worth.

I belatedly and accidentally discovered the honey badger in 2020 after belatedly and accidentally discovering Ozzy Man, smack-dab between the “2020 New Year’s Resolutions” post (starring Quokkas + Ayn Rand) and the “Florida Wood Rat Crisis!” post (starring Florida Wood Rats) and right when the Covid situation was unfolding. Coincidence? I think not!

Clearly, I was a late honey badger adopter but there is still no doubt that the honey badger deserves all the attention it is getting. It is one tough mustelid. (Think otters, Navy SEALS. weasels, ferrets, minks, wolverines, stoats, regular badgers, etc.)

For starters, it resembles a small, hairy monk:

It will fight, and try to eat, anything that moves, including lions, Sasquatch tigers, giant squid, Nancy Pelosi and even Nancy’s older, tougher sister June “The Spartan” Dinsdale. In battle, it will wiggle, scramble and scrap for hours and almost never gives up. It has thick, tough, loose skin. It refuses to wear a mask in public. It will thrust its snout directly into a beehive and remorselessly consume the helpless larvae. It has a reversible anal gland that exudes a suffocating stench. It has nice teeth. It is immune to cobra venom. Knocked out cold from a cobra bite, it will awake seconds later, shake its head and proceed to eat the cobra. It is able to use tools. In the wild, honey badgers have been observed to playfully throw rocks at other honey badgers employing a unique sidearm delivery. In captivity it will team up with its cage-mates to escape. The Spartan soldiers of antiquity trained against teams of honey badgers prior to their (the Spartans) epic battle of Thermopylae. A honey badger (minus its reversible anal gland) will make a great pet if you can survive the first week. It is extremely loyal but harbors deep, violent loathing for long paragraphs.

For these reasons and many others, I feel like Patrick Mahomes is definitely descended from a long line of honey badgers who somehow evolved to walk upright and throw footballs sidearm while being swarmed by lions and/or cobras.

In fact, Mahomes spent a good part of last week’s Super Bowl game scrambling for his life in the backfield, shaking off tackles like a honey badger shaking bees off its snout, twisting, turning and generally evading capture before tripping and skimming low over the playing field like a human B2 Stealth Bomber before somehow still managing to launch his football payload: with near-deadly accuracy, I might add.

I’m almost certain that Mahomes has a stellar(!) career ahead of him.

At the same time I still think there’s a chance that Brady might be an unstoppable, immortal, football-playing humanoid alien from the future. After all, Norrin Radd can’t be the only one. It’s a big Universe.