From the Mouths of Straight Ballers: Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies

Last September, angry, straight, NFL punter Chris Kluwe went vividly livid after a Maryland lawmaker asked the owner of the Baltimore Ravens to muzzle his pro-gay player Branden Ayanbadejo. The instant Chris's open letter strewn with its many creative profanities was released, it went viral, and a book was inevitable. It only took 291 days to get to today's release of his mishmash of essays and thoughts in Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities [Kindle].

He tells NPR: "I never expected to be an activist, but when Minnesotans For Marriage Equality, when they approached me last year to help defeat the constitutional amendment in Minnesota, I looked it over and I said, 'Yeah, this is something worth doing.' I don't think we should enshrine discrimination into a state's constitution. There's no reason that we should be discriminating against people in the United States of America considering how many times we've fought this battle before. We've fought this with slavery, we've fought it with suffrage, and we've fought it with segregation, and it seems like every 50 to 60 years we keep having that same stupid war over people who want to control other peoples' lives versus those who just want to be free to live and to love other people."

Kluwe listed his six favorite books for The Week, and no surprise he likes Slaughterhouse-Five and Neuromancer, along with Iain Banks' Use of Weapons, the Gaiman and Pratchett joint effort Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, and something called Air Force Gator which, yes, really is about a depressed, alcoholic alligator who flies airplanes and fights evil crocs.

Of his own writing style, Kluwe says, "One of the things I've found, is that if you make a logically constructed argument and then you throw in some very inventive swearing, they'll remember the swearing and then that triggers your point!"