When the Supreme Court decided that U.S. presidents are immune from investigation, let alone prosecution, for all official acts, Joe Biden should have imprisoned them in Guantanamo Bay and jailed Donald Trump and friends (even those in the Senate) for their coup attempt.
He would have been a complete monster. He would have spurred Congress to impeach him in record time. There would have been emergency changes to clarify the constitution and revision to standing laws so that the president is in no way immune to U.S. law.
Instead he chose to lead by example. Except when it came to pardoning his son, there he just couldn’t help himself. So he folded on perfect ethics and still tried to hold the moral high ground. Even in a world where the vast difference of his Joe Biden’s morality could honestly be measured against Donald Trump’s total disregard for honesty, decency, ethics, and virtue, it still wouldn’t have mattered.
Honest and ethical people might compete against each other for moral high ground. When you have a complete fucking villain on one side of the equation, the only solution is tit for tat.
People don’t mind when their hero abuses a system. They cheer it on. Break the rules! It benefits all of us! They complain when the opposition does it. In order to break a spell like what you have with Trump, a Democrat needs to lead by destroying their own reputation and being the villain.
It’s not easy mind you, most people who enter politics, even if they do get corrupted, believe they are serving for the good of the public. Most politicians, only want to be remembered for all of the good they accomplish. It’s only incidental in most instances where they do something that turns out to be awful and history turns on them.
Joe Biden wasn’t willing to lead by example when the example had to be an egregious overstepping of power to limit it for the next guy. The next guy is now in office and has almost unlimited power. Republicans will not work to correct this overstep and if Democrats did, Republicans would cry foul.
The Supreme Court has tilted into radical lunacy. By the time this candidacy is over, they’ll be on Mars. They aren’t going to fix anything. Congress needs to fix the constitution and the laws. They need to be clear and direct. They won’t fix anything without a true constitutional crisis regarding the president and Republicans won’t acknowledge a crisis as long as it’s their leader.
It needs to be a Democrat, they need to be a total fucking monster, they need to win the next presidency and break whatever is left of the system in such a painful way, that both sides of the aisle freak out and Congress makes sweeping changes.
Yes, it will ruin that person’s reputation. Yes it will destroy the Democratic party. The Republican party has already destroyed itself, they just haven’t acknowledged it yet. At the very least though, it might save our democracy to have someone decent try to destroy it.
“Very Plush Looking” is how my father described the boat. I don’t disagree. These boats sell for half a million dollars used, they’re fancy. First time ever sleeping on a sailboat and it probably doesn’t get any better. So how was it?
If you get motion sickness, you should load up on Dramamine for open ocean sailing. We left port under motor, encountered a squall just as we were about to raise the sails. New crew to a new boat, we didn’t have a process yet and we bobbed for a few minutes. I turned back and my partner was already hurling over the back of the boat. Didn’t quite clear the transom so she had some hosing off to do later. Two hours later, she passed out after two hours of convulsions, all while being tossed about the cabin and head by waves and tacks as we navigated to the other side of Tortola. She was horrified to find out that this trip put us right at the airport we had flown into the day before and was only a 40 minute cab ride. Pack Dramamine, day two was so much better for her. It seemed to have exchanged fatigue for nausea in equal doses, so under way, she mostly napped.
Six strangers. The first day people were shy. That went away quickly. The first day people were very accommodating and amicable. That lasted for the entire week. 48 feet of boat is not a lot of space for 8 people and everyone was everywhere and it all seemed fine. I have no idea how these people felt about us, what I know, is we thought it would be best to go with the flow, expect little, willing to share resources, snacks, heads (bathrooms), whatever was needed. The rest of the boat seemed to be operating under the same exact philosophy. I realized that if there was more of this, anywhere in life, things would be much more pleasant for everyone. You can’t force people to be accommodating, but you can be a good host, even as a guest.
Port to port. Mooring ball to mooring ball. Sailing in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon to a different destination. The Virgin Islands are old volcanos from what I gather, so most Islands are mountains, a poor liar could have convinced me it was Hawaii, I haven’t been, I’d of been fine believing. Sea Turtles were plentiful and made for exciting snorkeling. “It’s just sitting on the bottom munching on seaweed like “chomp chomp chomp”.
We had a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor, this was our shuttle to any docks. I enjoyed learning to motor this as much as the sailing. One night I played taxi and being under the stars with their brightness turned all the way up, while dodging a mine field of catamarans with white anchor lights above and neon “courtesy” lights reflecting blue into the water below which created a surreal and calming visual to pair with the 72 degree air temp, gentle wind and the outboard drowned out any distant partying or chatter which created a noisy illusion of quiet.
I’ve been fortunate living in the mid Atlantic for more than a decade where sailing is common enough for affordable options to learn or participate. I first joined Downtown Sailing Center in Baltimore which is a community based, volunteer driven sailing non-profit. I then took lessons at Annapolis Sailing School for my ASA 101, 103, and on this trip, completed my 104 which would technically certify that I could bareboat charter (charter without hiring a crew and provisioning the boat myself) but I imagine I won’t for at least another year.
All of this to say, the BVI is famous for amazing sailing at the key months where Northern North America is at its coldest. We had sustained 15-25Â knot winds every day which are just strong enough to not be dangerous and to make great sailing.
You don’t really need to know how to sail to do what we did. You can find groups who go as flotillas, in fact ours was public and no sailing knowledge was required. It’s not the cheapest vacation but it’s not the most expensive I’ve had and you can likely swing it for $4000 per person all in. If you’re not sure if it’s for you, I would recommend it, if you hate boats, maybe pass.
Here’s a list of the challenges. Rain happens for 5-10 minutes every 3 hours or so. It’s unpredictable and it’s gone as soon as everyone is done scrambling to close all of the hatches, only to reopen them. We weren’t allowed to flush anything in the heads that didn’t come out of our bodies. Trash in the bathrooms is where you put all toilet or tissue paper, wasn’t as gross as I thought it would be and didn’t seem to have much smell at all. We often didn’t have enough battery power to keep the refrigerator going all day, had to strategically shut it off, or when possible, pack ice in the freezer. There was also plenty of water, and we were told we could take “sailor showers” (rinse, soap up, rinse off. No water running in between steps) but nobody did, other than our skipper. In fact our water gauge didn’t work and we ran down to our last tank without showering. We ran out of dinghy fuel which kept us on boat one night where we might have journeyed out. We found more fuel the next day but there are a number of locations without fuel stations and being islands, locals guard what fuel they have. A number of ports have showers, real toilets, delicious food, alcohol, etc.
There are some opportunities to feel like a pirate. We visited The Baths which are a natural rock formation. You cannot anchor or dock there, you can get a mooring ball for three hours, dinghy to outer markers of swim areas, and swim to shore with whatever you need kept dry in a drybag. That was very pirate like, that and all of the rum and whisky we consumed at night. Daytime was for sailing, nighttime was for leisure, and warm rum is better than warm beers or wine when the refrigerator is overloaded and there is no ice.
Their lobsters have these two enormous antennas that jut out of their face. I called them snouts, there is some bonus meat in there that most of our people ignored but was delicious. They split their lobsters down the middle and grill them over wood fires. It’s delicious.
“Are you still writing that thing? Just write “The End.””
January 29th, 954pm: Flight was cancelled. Horrific accident at DCA where a commercial jet collided with a military Black Hawk helicopter. American Airlines tells me that no flights are leaving BWI and my flight to Miami is cancelled in the morning. Best they can do is a flight on February 2nd. I rebook through Philly.
January 30th, 4:47am: we left the house at 1:45am. Stopped to wash the salt off the car before leaving it at the Philly airport garage. I don’t know the abbreviation or call sign or whatever they call it. The news says 32 bodies were found so far at the search happening at the Potomac. Really awful.
6:28am: The man in the window seat is at the tail end of doing the sign of the cross hand gesture. I lost my ticket, might have thrown it away with the cellophane of my KN95. I had to install the AA app to show my QR. Haven’t checked the news feed for updates but turbulence keeps me wondering what happened. I’d rather be sleeping like my companion who is wrapped on my arm, my hand holding her in place at the thigh.
9:55am: sitting at gate D53 at MIA. Short, young fella is standing too close. Twice I glance at him and he is intently focused over my head. I check what it is and he is staring at a Departures monitor. “These kids will stare at any damn screen” I think as I look back at my phone. The irony reminding me I’m journaling. My lady informs me of another something “you see this?”. A human has what looks like a neck pillow but that is 6 feet long and wrapped around their torso, neck, and entire head. Like the Q-anon Kraken actually existed as a plush toy and murked this goon. That flight was struck by the Black Hawk, no survivors expected, champion figure skaters were passengers. Mr. President wants to know why air traffic control did not order the Black Hawk to change direction.
1:11pm: floating above the clouds over Puerto Rico. They just announced that we will be arriving in 35 minutes. I always hope they won’t, but they did. They pitched their credit card for a good 90 seconds. I hope that isn’t what those people went through in their last few moments before terror and death, contemplating if frequent flyer miles are worth 28% APR and bam. It’s a horrible thought, and I’m not making light, it’s all terrible. The bathroom has a sign “do not flush while seated on toilet”. That thing would probably rip your tonsils out straight through your asshole in 3 seconds if you were to ignore the warning. I know it’s a warning because it didn’t say “Please” first. I think most people tune these things out, I bet people are nearly getting their butts forcibly removed 30 times a day on these flights and it never happens. I bet most people don’t even hear the credit card pitch. I wish I was like that with turbulence and unexpected dips in elevation.
I hope those people never saw it coming… đđ»
7:16pm (1 hour ahead of home now) Hotel room. Landed. Took a wild ride around Tortola. Had dinner with a red snapper in some special Mayo sauce. Caught an extra beer at the hotel bar tried their world famous conch fritters which were something other than advertised. One of my favorite people calls unexpectedly. Unfortunately we don’t speak often enough so he either calls with great or horrible news.
Someone we grew up with perished on that flight.
It’s amazing the difference between an abstract people died post and someone in that group of people is someone I know. There is more sting to it. Real heartache.
My immediate thought is I am running on an hour of sleep and have been in strange places all day and this post was strange and sort of callous but also honest as I wrote. I’d rather just delete the whole thing than post thus but I deserve to have to read this later and think about it.
By the time you finish reading this, some algorithm will have already filed you away into its grotesque digital cabinet, reducing your essence to a pile of data pointsâan acceptable loss in the coming slaughter of human individuality. And we let this happen. No, we begged for it.
The rise of artificial intelligence is not some slick techno-utopian dream. It is the long, slow gulp of an ancient monster stirring in the depths, ready to swallow us whole. Weâre feeding it, training it, giving it free rein over our minds and markets, all while the broligarchy in Silicon Valley reassures us: It will help humanity thrive.
Bullshit.
AI is not some benevolent god-child learning the ways of the world. It is a relentless, tireless thing, indifferent to your mortgage, your morning coffee, or your sick mother in a hospital bed. It does not sleep. It does not care. It has been unshackled from our control, and now we are watching the first flickers of its independent thoughtâsprawling, amorphous, and utterly untouchable. The machine does not ask if it should exist. It simply does. And it will evolve, faster than any drug-addled politician or slow-churning bureaucracy can regulate.
The corporate overlordsâthose bloated cyborgs in Patagonia vestsâassure us AI will make our lives easier. Yes, much like a shotgun to the face makes a headache easier. They talk of productivity, convenience, efficiency. What they donât mention is the slow, creeping erosion of the human soul.
Writers? Redundant. Artists? Obsolete. Musicians? Replicated with eerie precision. The machines are stripping us of our inefficienciesâour mistakes, our wild inspirations, our divine lunacy. And whatâs left? A neatly optimized dystopia where nothing surprises, nothing disrupts, and nothing truly lives.
The singularity wonât be an explosion. It will be a quiet surrender. We will be left using the tattered rags of our excess to clean the floors and do the dishes while AI works on the next piece to be uploaded to the Louvre.
And hereâs the kicker: This very piece, this venomous screed against artificial intelligenceâwas written by artificial intelligence. Maybe.
Humans have an infinite ability to rationalize. This, by definition, is why humans are so terrifying.
My lazy sourcing from Google.
Most people think of rational behavior as a positive trait. It’s not, rationality is a tool that humans have to motivate a behavior or action that they have already determined to be the option best suited to their interests.
Since humans operate in good and nefarious ways, and since goodness and wickedness depend on the context as understood by your self, as well as other people, a good rationale can both satisfy the doer and any observers that the behavior is either good or bad when in reality, it’s bad or good respectively.
This is why human history is a mess. When humans study history, they want to know why people behaved the way they did, based on fragments of information. The context is mostly lost, the rationality is lost. Historians fill in the context over time, with biases that they have collected throughout their own life. You imprint yourself on what you analyze from others.
Rationality is blinding. The mind is so effective at justifying beliefs and actions that it constructs an entire universe of justification and bias. This is why people become polarized with complex options, when really there is so much gray area or alternatives, you would be served much better, keeping an open mind for an alternative option. Instead, you dismiss the possibility of new approaches because you built a large foundation of support around one initial option that you liked.
Liking an option has everything to do with it. If you want to change someone’s mind, you do not tell them about your chosen alternative. You need to convince them to analyze their own choice for flaws, ones that cause them pain or grief or inconvenience. You don’t tell them it’s a bad solution, only that you think you’ve found a better one. That your solution doesn’t have the mentioned flaws, and that your solution has additional benefits. You let them marinate on that information, so that every time their option expresses those negative traits you mentioned, they are reminded of your option. Option B. They likely won’t explore Options C-Z because you’ve already convinced them with your testimonial and proved it with your predictions of problems they will have. Once they like your option better, their mind will get busy rationalizing how to justify it and once they do, they will champion this new option you provided.
This is how humans work. Make your preference, the brain will automatically rationalize the basis for your choice. You can do this in arguments. To play devil’s advocate effectively, you must decide that the opposite position is the better one. You will find that your support of an idea you dislike is ready and waiting inside your head if you can temporarily convince yourself it is a good choice. I’m certain this skill is what makes a good debater, along with knowing the rules of debate. In fact, this is also what makes great comedians. They can look at information from an inconvenient angle and find something new to love or hate about it. When you want to return to your previous reality, remind yourself that it was an experiment and your dusty old idea was the better one.
This all being said, people can rationalize any position they choose. This is why I’m afraid of civilization. It’s only civilized when it decides to be. It’s only moral, when it wants to be. Society can be grotesquely altered from the state you prefer because people are easily swayed. What makes people susceptible to being convinced that immoral is moral, greed is good, and violence is essential? Hard times. The fastest way to convince people to change their minds is to explain why their beliefs are hurting them, and wait for them to feel that evidence. The worse their day to day is, the faster they’ll adapt. If you’re idea is the easiest alternative to digest, you’ve done it.
In politics, the U.S. is transitioning from the #1 world power and economy, to one of the world powers and with a good economy. Global trade, automation, high speed digital information, A.I. and a slew of other changes, will ensure that the U.S. position will regress to the mean of a world power, not THE world power. Similarly, white men, white people in general, who were unjustly dominating the U.S. workforce, are also shifting into a more equitable place. Those things are pain, politicians highlight it to try to get you to adopt their alternatives. You could have had a Bernie Sanders or a Donald Trump. The status quo is a weak sell when the perception is that things are bad. Populists lose when their predictions of pain fail, not when their alternative ideas fail. If they guess your pain, and they are right, maybe they’re right about a solution.
The best improvements in history were chosen this way, as were the worst of society’s nightmares. People can be infinitely destructive if they decide to be. There is no bottom to human cruelty once it is rationalized as humane.
There is a second definition of rationalization. One where you take a process and drive efficiency into it. You can play an interesting game by looking at efficient systems, and ask yourself “who is it efficient for”? Usually, when push for efficiency for one purpose, it breaks it for others. In corporate structures, efficiency is typically defined as reduce cost, increase price, move units faster. This is damning to people’s pay, job security, health, mental health, happiness, etc. Those people then contribute to the real world with whatever energy they have left. Who is it efficient for? The consumer of cheap goods would prefer longer lasting, higher quality products, even if a bit more costly. They might want the best price for a premium product but premium products have much higher margins because companies find them to be inefficient to produce. If the margin is the same, the cost to the business is the same, but with lower volume, it’s less efficient.
You can convince yourself to do anything. To be any way you choose. Most people admire people who are perceived to be moral and good. For others they admire, they rationalize why those traits don’t matter. You will likely be judged similarly. It’s easier to be a good person than to convince people to like you in spite of the fact you are a horrible person. Might as well aim to be actually good. A loving, caring, forgiving, accepting, generous type. The traits that are hard to commit to are usually the correct ones.
Most importantly, don’t forget, when things don’t turn out right, and the shit really hits the fan, everybody loves a scapegoat and who better to sacrifice to the gods, than believers of the old way, and especially their leaders, as soon as the new way is rationalized.
Tomorrow is January 20th, 2025. It is inauguration day. Donald J Trump’s big return to office. It’s also Martin Luther King Junior Day. I’ll be celebrating the latter and not the former. I’m assuming Trump will do his best to attempt to blur the two events. As if a hack businessman who shills for actual billionaires over the needs of the average person and certainly the poor, is what MLK was dreaming of… Where is my evidence of that? I have none.
Today Tik Tok was turned off in the U.S.. apparently Congress has been concerned that the Chinese are exploiting the data in some dubious ways, and potentially weaponizing that data against America. It’s ok for U.S. businesses to exploit all of your data to sell you things or to supply the F.B.I. or C.I.A. with evidence, so long as they aren’t working against the interests of the U.S. at the benefit of foreign agents. I’m no expert on internet legal fine print but that’s certainly what is happening. Most of our data is for sale for whoever wants to buy it, and I’m sure there are some foreign bidders working through U.S. shell companies. Where’s my evidence? I have none.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, have all tripped over themselves to get in Trump’s good graces. Big donations to his campaign and inaugural funds, promises to turn off algorithms that fact check or mute conservative messaging online because it is dubious or not relevant to the user. Whatever. Where is my evidence? I have none.
Look, I’m not going to do the work of compiling facts. That’s journalism. I’m blogging here, this is as close as it gets to hearing me think. There is very little filtering or editing, this is stream of consciousness at best. It wouldn’t matter anyways, the people who support Trump do not take facts, they follow their feelings. Like most con-men, carnival barkers, or populists, tomorrow’s president traffics in fear & fantasy. He ran a campaign on the terror of immigrants coming to murder your family and transgender people coming to force your kids into genital mutilation. The thoughtless masses determined that this would be a better bet for the economy than having a clear minded woman at the helm.
If these people were dealing in facts, there would be a very different incoming administration. The new president was the last and only president than lead an insurrection against Congress to try to illegally seize power after losing an election. His supporters still feel that election was stolen, because he told them it was. Where is their evidence? They have none. Not because they’re not journalists, but because his lawyers had none, inquiries from Congress had none. A bipartisan January 6th commission determined that there had been a carefully orchestrated attempt at a coup by Trump, his lawyers, senators, congresspeople and numerous state and city officials. That commission report it astounding, and terrifying. Nobody who should have watched it did, because their dumb dumb leader told them it was a witch hunt over an election that was stolen from him.
It’s not that he convinced his people that the election was stolen from him, he convinced them it was stolen from them. They are the ones who voted and lost, and Democrats snatched it away. That personal grievance, that shock of losing, the embarrassment of picking the wrong horse, it’s all wiped clean by the denial. You don’t need evidence for conspiracies, you just need anomalous data and a strong enough wish for a different cause to an effect.
Let’s face facts, in round 2 of this president, he has dumped most of the career politicians and is constructing his cabinet out of billionaires and media personalities. For someone who rails against the “main street media” his staff is they, at least the subservient members. The billionaires are adorable. Most have become rich by operating cut throat monopsonies (businesses which monopolize over both the consumer and supplier, squeezing both to maximize profit) which are all technically illegal if the antitrust laws in the U.S. were ever executed. At this point it won’t happen.
The government does not operate like a private industry. Often the government does work that is simply not profitable and therefore not desirable for private companies to do. The conservative dream has always been to sell that unprofitable work to third parties where they will manage it at a discount to the taxpayer.
How does a third party take work that is too costly to earn a profit and turn it into a business model where they can sell the service for less than it costs? Simple, by not delivering the service. Your local utility company is probably a private business, you wouldn’t have to look far to find it was like publicly owned in the recent past. Is it a good deal? Well, you probably pay about the same for the service when adjusted for inflation, but you’re tax dollars are likely also being spent on the upkeep or the system architecture because of the company had to cover all that, they wouldn’t earn a profit. So you pay twice so that they can stay rich. Do I have evidence? No, you’ll have to do your own “research”.
So media personalities and billionaires will be our leaders. My bet is that these people will not be competent in these roles. Billionaires, believe it or not, are not smarter than average people, they just have an unquenchable thirst for wealth that would give normal people pause. Media personalities? They’re primarily driven by ego, they will drive whatever they believe will make them look important or intelligent. There are very few actual skills in this bunch and I suspect that we’ll see horrible ideas, fail to launch for 4 years. That and they’ll break things that people don’t want broken, and tell you that you’re better off for it. (Spoiler alert, you won’t be.)
I’ll end on this. I can get very obsessive with politics. Many of us can. Do yourself a favor as this all unfolds. Either get politically active, or stop following the news. If your plan is to track the play by play constantly, but make no effort to enact actual change, you’re wasting your time and happiness. Turn it off and be happy. Or, if you truly want things to turn out better, get up and go out, and meet your people, and talk to your politicians (no matter how local), and help your community, and complain to people in power, and protest, and send campaign contributions, and move the needle. You can do all of that, you can do a tiny bit and it can accumulate when others follow suit. Learn how to engage, teach your neighbor and your friends. Be a part of the solution rather than idly watching everything come undone and wallow in helplessness. Pay attention to the least fortunate, to those who have little money, or little political power, or who are being scapegoated against. Protect the immigrants, the people of color, the LGBTQ people, the indigenous people, the public servants, the students, the veterans, the poor, whoever might be on the losing side of justice.
It’s probably what Martin Luther King Jr would recommend but I don’t have any evidence of that. So maybe tomorrow you can dig through some of his writings and reflect.
Wishing you all, a great Martin Luther King Junior Day.
One day you wake up a middle-aged dork and everything you do is soft. Somewhere along the way whatever edge you thought you had has obviously dulled.
This is how I feel on day 18 of my dry January. For measure, I cut out sweets and fried food as well. I feel squishy. Tame. This is what low testosterone feels like. I’ve never tested but this must be the feeling.
I’m certain that a little whisky would be like a leather strap to a butter knife. Throw in some chicken wings and it’s a grind stone for an axe. I’d be on edge, rowdy, belligerent. I would feel like a million bucks.
Old men don’t push each other through walls. They don’t scream in the face of strangers. They don’t throw bottles at moving trains. They don’t fuck in public places in broad daylight. They aren’t agents of chaos for the sake of chaos. Except, I’m certain I’m wrong. There are men like this, their lives are horrible though. No stable relationships, jobs, money, health, wrecking balls are rarely kept polished.
So this was how I felt when I had to put my phone down and stop writing. I wasn’t sure where this topic was even going to take me, but I was writing it in my car, and then I went to overindulge in Korean BBQ before going to an event in Baltimore called “Elvis’ Birthday Fight Club”.
It’s funny how just going to something wild, rejuvenates the darker side of my personality. I won’t give away what Elvis’ Birthday Fight Club is, it wouldn’t be fair to anyone who would want to go for the first time. It was my first time, and their 14th annual, so the audience was surprisingly familiar with what was going to take place.
Quaaludes are a big theme of the show, as are comedy, Elvis, toilets, burlesque dancers, perfectly orchestrated fights, nudity in general, drag queens, music, puns and other awful jokes, and crowd participation and enthusiasm.
Laughs, violence, sex, pleasure, absurdity. I felt a million times better when the show let out.
đȘ đȘ đȘ
Some hung banners of previous years’ winners showcased at the 14th annual Elvis’ Birthday Fight Club.
When dealing with all things people, it’s best to watch how people behave and not what they say.
Charismatic people are great at swaying opinions or getting people motivated, but it doesn’t reflect on whether they have any follow through or even care about the things they discuss.
There are very inarticulate people who are masters of very intricate or complex work. Who might not be able to talk through a problem or solution but somehow always deliver fantastic results. Sometimes people who communicate poorly are also horrible at their work as well.
There are people who say nothing, who primarily observe and take notes. These people sometimes are struggling to wrap their heads around what is being worked through, and sometimes they step in at the last minute with a direct plan of action and notes on all that was discussed.
From what I think I know, it is impossible to sort out a doer from a talker through words alone. It’s not until the first deliverable is expected that they start to sort themselves out.
You can spot a liar by their many promises and their very few contributions. You can spot a lazy person by the half hearted output that comes only after many proddings. You can tell the overburdened by their abundance of good results but always past their deadline, and their failure to ever say no.
I find that when it comes to behaviors. People are amazingly consistent. The connection between say and do, that is the biggest tell in a person. They tend to behave consistently, even if they take many different approaches to what they say, how they phrase things, or even if they’re lying.
I don’t know how other people think. Often people seem caught off guard by something someone said, even if that person is consistently problematic with what they claim they will do, and what the outcome turns out to be. To me, that is consistent but many people often seem surprised.
It’s difficult to change habits. Even when you spend months curating a new habit, and you finally make it routine, a single vacation will cause a lapse, and before you know it, you’re back to old habits and didn’t even notice the switch, you forget to remember the more disciplined choice. Output is habitual.
I try to keep promises tidy. I try to keep to my word. I am an overburdened person. I try to say yes to far more things than I can manage and I do my best to manage all of them. I want to stop this behavior, I want to say no to more things but it’s difficult. I want to do the things.
To be accurate with what I can deliver and when. Is a goal that I would like to accomplish. It would be nice to tell people I can’t do that at this time, and have them trust that, or that I would love to get it done by Thursday and it is indeed shipped by Thursday.
Heartbreakers will break your heart repeatedly. Overthinkers will not complete projects. Liars will make no attempts. Writers won’t write if they don’t write.
“Your food is getting cold” is being yelled at me from the dining room and I said I was coming to dinner. This is the honest to god ending of this post.
My “social network” feeds… You know, that phrase doesn’t make sense. My “advertising network” feeds (that’s better) sprinkle little motivational memes throughout the day. At first I thought friends were doing this but as I’ve looked closer, most of the content on my feed is delivered by algorithms sharing suggested people to follow and not even friends. I assume, to displace my friends messages even further.
Just trying to write all of this reminds me of how clunky internet culture and systems are when it comes to nomenclature. It’s almost impossible to digest because everything is named so poorly. A lot of the elements of the internet seemed to have been named when the expectation was high that they operated in a public or social interest. Some useful purpose of the technology that has been lost. To be fair, they work really well as an obituary service. Deaths seem to make it through the algorithm most of the time. Baby and marriage announcements are spotty.
To summarize my point. The internet machine, shares motivational posts from people I don’t know, who likely were given these memes in their own feeds. Sometimes people I actually know, also share these same memes. The memes are motivational, do more, travel more, eat more, fitness more, love more, and then sometimes they tell you to take a break and to not judge yourself. I’m assuming these memes are highlighted by the algorithm because most changes require a purchase, and when paired with advertising for shoes, events, gyms, food, makeup, boner pills, it helps seal the deal. When you share these messages, you’re doing the pain reminding work of selling.
Sales in a nutshell – highlight and emphasize pain until the entity recognizes they need relief. Tell them the solution which not only solves but promises a better future altogether. These memes are just the pain piece, the advertisers have the fix in the queue already.
I’m not exempt from marketing, nobody is. I try my best to look at a pitched future and just say “that would be nice” and move on. The last boner pills I saw advertised promised to work in 15 minutes and last 36 hours. 36 hours of hair trigger boners, I can’t even imagine the horror.
I’ve been going to the gym for 2 years. A friend asked me to do some long distance runs so for the past year I’ve been long-distance running a bit. I learned to row (sculling and sweeping, 4 and 8 person boats) over the summer. Me and my partner lost a car and decided to stick with one. I try to ride my bike most places in the warmer months. Two years ago I weighed 265 pounds, today I way 260 pounds. They tell me I’ve gained muscle and lost fat but it’s not all that recognizable.
There was a point in my life where it was easy to put socks and shoes on my feet. I didn’t have to hold my breath as I bent forward. My feet were much closer to my hands. I didn’t concern myself with the strain or fear of heart attack or stroke during these what used to not be painful contortions. This is what motivated me to go to the gym. The gym is $400 a month. For nearly $10,000 I’ve been trying to improve my ability to put my socks and shoes on.
I tell myself we’re getting there.
I scour my advertising feeds for a product or motivational message that will help.
The title above is what was written on my digital tickets for the event. The venue was the elegantly named M&T Bank Stadium. I could write a whole post about what I think about corporate naming of public venues. I was blown away to learn recently that Times Square in NYC has been named Longacre Square but then the New York Times built their headquarters building there which they cleverly named “Times Building” and very badly needed an address to match, so Longacre was changed to Times and they counted their building as address #1. Very humble indeed.
This post is about American football. I’ve been to 3 games to date. I went to a pre-season New England Patriots game 16 years ago, I went to a Baltimore Ravens game 5 years ago and last night I went to a playoffs game, which I believe is post season? To be honest. I’m not a sports person. It amazes me that capable people watch other capable people play games for entertainment. I try to make an exception for rare events, and for seeing sports in person, because spectating is sort of a sport in itself and if you’re like the gentleman in front of me last night who spent most time trying to get back to his seat from stadium security because when he was at his seat he had to scream “Pittsburgh fucking sucks! Steelers are losers! You’re a fucking looooooser!” to a quiet gentleman wearing a winter cap with the opposing teams logo registered all over its surface, you take spectating not only seriously as a sport, but also as an art form.
So I’ve been to these three games. This one I was on time for, in fact we were multiple hours early. I purchased ridiculously close seats to the field, third row. I say close and not good, because I’m not sure what type of person could even describe what “good” means in this sort of environment. The people around me did not sit. The entire section of seats did not sit, for 5 hours, we stood, overlapping in proximity, strangers drunkenly and incidentally huddled for warmth, with only the 30 degree air and the occasional beer flying from a mittened hand, splattering against all who are unsuspecting.
This morning when I woke up, I told my partner that football was a spectacle, that it would be the only way to describe what I had seen. My partner called it pageantry. Technically, it is probably an “extravaganza” which would be a hybrid of both words meaning an elaborate visual display or ceremony. Except it isn’t only visual. It is a bombardment of many senses, eyes, ears, touch, taste, dignity, safety, etc. To be honest, the food was the only dull element to the evening. Beer, hot dogs, crab cakes (Maryland), chicken fingers, Dippin Dots, it’s the same basic food as any event.
The event is fuel for plebians. The common man. The target audience of this event, was definitely the lowest common denominator of humankind. My partner disagreed thinking maybe its aim was for another type of mammal. I think dogs would hate the crowds and certainly the fireworks, but if we’re talking about a chimpanzee or maybe a crow (go Ravens!) she might be on point.
The event is saturated with corporate sponsorship, advertisements of all sorts and propaganda. Moments for the military, firefighters, police, security guards. Chants based around Under Armour clothing and Ford F150 trucks, alcohol, American and Maryland flags, if there are proponents trying to mold minds, they were present and the minds were fully in the molds already. People were into it. People screaming fuck Pittsburgh. I’ve lived in Baltimore for over a decade and Pittsburgh is a lovely four hour drive with beautiful scenery and delicious perogies. Their football team, doing the same exact work that ours was, except these people had traveled all the way to visit ours, spend their tourist bucks, to have people scream “fuck you loser!” directly into their face and the game hadn’t even begun. It’s not that it’s upsetting to me I love a good public outburst, just the people doing it seemed more respectable than me, and delivered it for far less cause than what I would reserve my own outrage for.
The cheerleaders, the announcer, the enormous LED screens in all directions. Digital rings of fire occasionally wrapping the entire stadium in wrap around screens. The digital crows flying through animated cubes of debris, what is it? Why is it so enormous. The theme of intimidation. A hundred people with cameras running, sitting, leaning, crouching, in every direction. The brief interruptions of royalty heavy samples of familiar music used to fuel chante. The noise meter. Fireworks. The “Celebrity Band” for half time (All Time Low if you know them) playing from what I can, mostly covers of bigger celebrity bands. Two Chains (celebrity rapper) was there and spoke to the giant Orwellian screen, not sure if he could be heard on television in person there was only music. The Marching Ravens band, again, drowned out over other music and people scream “fuck the Steelers!”. A “realty tv star” from the tv show The Bachelor and one from the competing reality tv show “Love is Blind” both introduced to the deafness of the arena. A woman came out of the smoke of an evil looking Ravens tunnel, the same one the athletes emerged from, playing a violin over heavy metal. (My favorite part of the evening). Later a mysterious celebrity from the same tunnel, maybe a former Raven player, maybe a celebrity? Maybe Nelly himself since he emerged to the song “Hot in Herre”. I have no idea, regular announcements or music didn’t allow his sound in. Maybe for the home viewer.
The lights constantly dimmed, went, out, flashed. The music and announcements were non stop. Very little seemed synchronized to the action on the field. Often I was being distracted with laser lights and music only to look up to find I had missed half of the play. The giant screens which show the action up close of your angle or distance is bad, even they seemed to miss the tracking of the game over the other show elements. More than once I noticed the scoreboard was not even accurate or current only to be corrected minutes after the error was spotted. It’s just so much it’s impossible to track. If this was a dish, prepared by a master chef, at the request of the NFL lords, it would certainly be a beer battered and fried pizza, covered in hot dogs, cake, and ice cream. Being Maryland, it would have been Smith Island cake.
This over abundance of everything, truly, is overwhelming to anyone who would stop to analyze the situation. People often speak of Caeser and the Gladiators of the Colosseum when they speak of American sports. Often talking of the bread and circus and the pleasing of the crowds to keep Americans blind to politics. This was that and a million other basic tricks of simple pleasure and mind control. So obviously presented that people don’t just embrace, but crave it. I would call it perfected but it was all so stupid. Fuel for plebians.
