Arms, blown saves, Moby Grape, narrative, lemonade business, "term," "intention," AAV, standards, minimizing out

Sunday 7/28/24

My arms have become pretty big. It's just the push-ups. Or I should say, doing them correctly after not doing them correctly. Have to keep those elbows in--it's like pushing someone in the chest who was standing in front of you, except you're horizontal.

Kenley Jansen is killing the Red Sox of late. He's recently cost the team two games. If you show me save stats, you better being showing blown save stats just as readily. That's not the case with baseball-reference. Blown saves are a more important stat than saves. A save can be such an empty stat. Often you just need to keep your ERA under 9.00, 18.00, or 27.00 for that appearance. Okay, you come in with the bases loaded and nobody out and you blow the save without giving up an earned run, fine. But that's not how most blown saves go.

It is very rare that I think, "Oh, they might be interesting" regarding anyone, but I did see a woman yesterday who cited Moby Grape, which is itself interesting, at least.

When I was in college, I worked in a hardware store. It was my first day, and as I came in there was this guy who was in the middle of a story. It wasn't some idiot story. It wasn't this big deal, in terms of the raw parts of the story, but there was more to the story than those raw parts as if they were in isolation or a list on a page. They were telling this story about what had happened to them out on Cape Cod the night before. There was falling from a lifeguard's chair and a woman who tried to run someone over with a car. It was narrative, do you know what I mean? They were talking in narrative. It worked that I had come in somewhere in the middle of this story. And I thought, "This person is interesting."

I had mentioned that Amelia, aka, my buddy, had launched a lemonade stand business. Having learned about this, it was inevitable that my mom was going to drive over for Amelia's opening day, about which I received a briefing yesterday as I acquired some sunflowers (a really nice batch).

My mom gets there, and it was a dollar for a lemonade. I could tell my mom thought this was a little steep, but she said that it was a big drink--it came in a Solo cup.

My mom pays Amelia a dollar and then says that she she didn't need the whole cup, but Amelia insisted that's how it had to be. She's not cut out, I'd say, to following the whole "the customer is always right" model. Highly not cut out.

So Amelia fills the cup the Solo cup with lemonade and then she starts drinking it herself!

My mom says, "Isn't that mine?" and Amelia goes, "No." Then my mom asks, "Do I get any lemonade?" and Amelia responds, "Do you have a dollar?"

It is a mistruth that there are no stupid questions. Questions may be sufficiently stupid that you know everything about the person asking them. Mentally, but not just mentally. How dense, how limited, how simple, how weak, how cowardly.

There is no one with whom I will waste time or energy--any time, any energy. Work is different.

Everything here is A to B. I will not wait for someone to get up to speed, to work through their issues or insecurities. I won't abide temporization, any kind of bullshit, misrepresentation, machination. I will not admit any form of A to G to Y to Z to L to C to B into my life.

Meatheads like to use the word "term" to try and sound smart when talking about sports on the business side. More and more meatheads do this now, because in addition to their interest--and complete ignorance about--sports, our fantasy age encourages people to think they're Andrew Carnegie and/or an NFL GM.

"Yeah but he got a lot of term with that contract."

Meatheads love saying things like that.

Also: One meathead can blow the mind of another meathead by dropping in an "AAV."

"But what's the AAV?"

Whoa.

Similarly, many women use the word "intention" the same way on dating sites. It's one of those button words for dumbasses. "If I say this word, I will sound sound smart. As easy as pressing a button."

"I'm dating with intention."

In this case, there are those who kick it up to "intentionality." Really dumb people think something like an "ity" at the end of word is as deep and brilliant as it gets.

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday. That's where I got the sunflowers. Was thinking about the changes I made to my diet some months ago. Normally what occurs to me is the giving up of red meat, but I didn't eat a lot of it anyway. That wasn't really a big deal. Giving up pizza was a bigger one, and perhaps biggest of all was even giving up skim milk hot chocolates. I just went cold turkey on all of these things.

This bothers me: Shouldn't a park ranger, either at the end of every day that the Bunker Hill Monument is open, or in the morning right before the Bunker Hill Monument opens, go to the top of the Monument and make sure there's no trash inside? Each day, I'm seeing the same garbage. Should those floss things--I don't know what they're called; they look like football goalposts--on a stick really be littered throughout the Monument? And who the hell is choosing to floss inside of the Bunker Hill Monument?

This bothers me because 1. People are such lazy logs. Get your ass in there and go to the top and clear shit out and 2. No one does their job. This is as basic as that job gets. And some of these rangers are young, fit, healthy people.

On a similar note: It also bothers me when I hear a couple of people exiting the Monument saying, "Well, there's our cardio for the day." Have some standards. Why is everyone's standards for everything so low or nonexistent? You went to the top of this thing, and that's it, huh? You're good? Don't need to do anything else because you did this one thing the once? Time for some pie!

Here's something about society: It doesn't push you. Not with how society works right now. It coddles you, it encourages you to do less and be to be less. That then means that it's up to the individual to push themselves. And that's not going to happen. People don't max out; they minimize out.

It's like when you played a sport. Let's say it was hockey. You might have had these intentions in, say, the summer, that you were going to train on your own. You were going to run sprints, do push-ups, putting in a couple hours every day, really pushing yourself.

And maybe you got out there some. But it wasn't close to the same as when practices with the team started, you were out there with your peers, people were pushing each other, some crazed, verbally abusive coach was up your ass, berating you, possibly taking away your playing time, mocking you--I always appreciated these things; they drove me; I never took them personally. You got in shape so much faster. Then you kept getting in better shape. It was a lot different than if it was just you out there with you, relying on everything to come from you.

That's how society is set up now. The push has to come entirely from within. And there isn't one in many millions of people who are going to max out--or do much of anything--that way. People have no drive, no reserve, no will. They need shit to be handed to them. And they need to be encouraged, fluffed, coddled, even in this. Or they break. People can't push through a layer of mist.

Truisms: Losers can't wait to be done. Winners can't wait to get started. The biggest winners can't wait to push on with more.