Talking Baseball

  .  1. When you make yourself available -- the information you need in order to take the next indicated action -- will always arrive.  If it doesn’t, try not to shit on yourself.  I’m big believer in “try”.  We all recall Yoda’s famous words, “Do or do not, there is no try.”  My response to that is: take that advice. Live that way. If a couple of decades pass and you fail again, and again, and again.  Chuck that philosophy and try what worked for me: I tried. I got better at doing what I tried to do, one by one, little by little. If you’re short on time and you need massive change, I’m not trying to stop you. It didn’t work for me, is all I’m saying. I’m saying if you’ve just bottomed out after yet another attempt at massive, universal change?  Try trying.

I've got some musings again. You see? We are now teaching via "Distance Learning" because of a once-in-a-century style pandemic. I want to comment on it but I've got to send a cover letter to an AP at some shithole school.

The NBA Playoff started on Saturday. I watched a little of this and a little of that, then I watched all of the Warriors hosting the Clippers. The only event of note is that the referees, once again, fucked up royally. They tossed Patrick Beverly, a clever guard who compensates for sucking at basketball by goading and harassing players with superior skill. When I say that Beverly sucks at basketball, I'm exaggerating a little. I don't know the numbers but Beverly is probably an average or slightly below the average offensive player. He can handle the ball, seems to make decent choices, and isn't a terrible shooter. It's his use of his body and mind that makes him extremely valuable. Saturday was a perfect example. Patrick Beverly is valuable to the Clippers when he is on the floor. However, Patrick Beverly is MUCH more valuable to the Clippers from the locker room. That is if he can get a Warrior such as Kevin Durant tossed from the game on his way there. Beverly play...

It's true. When you're a guy like me: consumed with your own importance in other people's lives and use your obligations to others as a means of distraction. When you use worry as an anti-anxiety medication. When you obsess about the details of work not yet started. When you do those things, the discipline and focus to show up at the page every day to address you, dear invisible reader, is scant available. I've been away so long I forgot the bloody name of this thing. The title is my lodestar: Talking Baseball. Fitting that I should be inspired to write my blog the day Joe Biden throws his clacking dentures into the ring. His speech slurred form plastic surgery and a looming and inevitable stroke, he tossed his fedora into the ring. I'm not sure which candidate I favor. We elected a black man a few years back and the backlash sent us into hack tv personalities. Do I dare hope that Kamala Harris wins the nomination? Bernie Sanders has never uttered a policy message...

The more I read about Existentialism (I read ABOUT Existentialism more than I read the source materials), the more I'm confused about the stereotype of the black turtlenecked smoker, world wearily counting their grey days before the welcome annihilation of death. The way I interpret every interpretation of Existentialism that I hear, the more life-affirming and wonderful it seems. I don't get the criticism of Sarte, Camus, and others. I also find what I've learned about Nitsche in the last few years points to him being a genius and misunderstood in the popular imagination. I don't get that he was a Nazi forerunner. He was appalled by the anti-semitism in his one-time hero, Wagner. Or so I'm led to believe. I'm reacting to some recent reading I've been doing in Sarah Bakewell's fascinating book: At the Existential Cafe . I highly recommend it. It occurs to me that this is not a blog post. This is a man musing on his couch at ten o'clock at night. Wh...

I've noticed that the students in my classes don't seem to be aware of some of the latest data on attention and the brain vis a vis multi-tasking. They cannot guess that there could be anything wrong or harmful with using their phones the way they do. Their only awareness is that grown-ups discourage them from using them. A brief digression about grown-ups discouraging cellphone use. I feel within myself, and I hear from others a harsh judgment of children and their use of phones, social media, and games. I notice this in myself and try to keep it in check. I too am addicted to my phone. I have quit social media. I have an apple newsfeed and safari on my phone, but that's it! And yet I compulsively text, check the "news" and otherwise stare at my phone. It seems a tad shitty to judge kids for doing exactly what I do. It's extra shitty if I judge them for using products that are way more addictive than the ones I'm addicted to. I am grown up. I can recogn...