Monday 12/4/23
Jim Leyland was inducted into the Hall of Fame last night. I'm ambivalent about managers being included in that sense of "He's a Hall of Famer." A manager only controls so much. It seems to me that the ceiling for a manager is competence, not greatness. Casey Stengel lost a lot, came to the Yankees, won a lot, left the Yankees, lost a lot. Was Casey Stengel doing anything differently when he won five championships in a row than when he was finishing well under .500?
There are made up jobs for all kinds of essentially self-invented problems that people should be able to solve on their own.
For instance, I saw one last night on Facebook from a woman who bills herself as a self-restoration therapist. Sounds like I'm making that up, doesn't it? Or that she comes to your home and teaches you how to reupholster your furniture.
Here was the job description:
"I help women stop overfunctioning and people-pleasing."
All of this shit is so mindless and exploitive. And of course there's money to be made, people being what they are. We've talked about all of these shitty writers without any talent or a clue or any actual achievements in their career, who get hired by these other broken people without any talent or a clue to teach the latter group how to write. It's up and down Facebook. Writing coach, creativity coach. People just want to be lied to and they'll even pay someone else to lie to them.
I saw another woman with four names--four names that she used, I mean, which is so narcissistic--and her bio read, "Book me to speak to your group about mental health and neurodiversity."
Right. I'm sure you'll sort out everyone else's mental health issues in no time and perhaps pick up a fifth name while you're at it. These weren't even hyphenated names. It was more like, "I'm amazing, so I have chosen to have four names because I'm way too amazing for the normal number. Double is more like it."
I find it both amusing and sad when people declare at the top of their various social media profiles that the views expressed therein are their own. Are you really this self-important? Did you think people would have otherwise concluded your highly original, cutting edge thoughts would have implicated others and possibly themselves in your fearless thinking and rendered them open to controversies in their own lives? What a hero you must be to step forward, alone, and say these things that must be said, that others lack the vision and courage to say. What a leader.
Then you look at these profiles and it's shit about the person's cats and the usual predictable political twaddle that you see millions of times over, in the same language, with the same filters, the same decals, the same memes.
Cardboard cut-out lives.
Who is real? Anyone out there real?
Clearly Florida State deserved to be included in the college football playoff and it's wrong that they won't be there. They earned one of those four spots.
The Bruins beat the Maple Leafs in Toronto and Columbus at the Garden. They have a nice record. And yet, I have little confidence that they wouldn't falter in the postseason. I'm not saying I should feel that way, in that there's reliable grounds to. But I look at them and I'm just not confident.
Ran 3000 stairs yesterday at City Hall. It was early--so that's why I wasn't at the Monument--because I thought maybe I'd take the earliest train to Concord, which left at ten of eight. I'd like to get out there before Christmas. But it was raining and it kept raining throughout the day. Forties, rain, and not the best idea probably to walk ten miles or whatever. Did walk a couple miles around here, and did my 100 push-ups. Yesterday marked 2702 days, or 386 weeks, without a drink.
