Friday, February 24, 2017

Entry 369: Stick to Sports!

I read a lot of sporting news online, and then on occasion sometimes I make the mistake of reading the comments.  I know enough to stay away from the comments on the "big" sites (if you want to feel even worse about the state of humanity than you already do, read the comments after an ESPN story, especially one about race in sports), but even the comments on some of the smaller, "smarter" sports sites are getting to be tough to stomach.  Sportswriters, by and large, seem to be a mostly liberal bunch, and from time to time, since they are human, they might inject a small amount of their own personal politics into a story -- or they might keep politics totally out of their stories, but tweet about political things.  Whenever this happens there is a vocal backlash from both poles of the political spectrum.  Fellow liberals complain because they want sports to be a sanctuary from the constant barrage of political media, and conservatives complain because the typical sportswriter is espousing views contrary to theirs.  From both sides the refrain is the same: Stick to sports!

In different times, I might agree with this notion, but we don't live in different times, we live in these times.  And the following is a comment I put on a blog about this topic:
The problem with the “no politics,” “stick to sports” position is that when you have a president, as we do, who doesn’t cohere to objective reality, just being factually accurate becomes a political position. 
Trump constantly says things that are flat-out untrue — not exaggerations, not spin, not typical-politician wishy-washiness — but straight-up, factual falsehoods. And if you point this out (or use it as the intro for a silly story) then suddenly you’re “getting political,” even though you’ve done something (corrected falsehoods) that shouldn’t be controversial or political at all. 
As long as Trump continues to say things like he had the biggest electoral victory since Reagan, *everything* is going to seem political, because simply acknowledging reality is equivalent to opposing Trump, and a lot of people still wish to live in reality.
I thought that was particularly well put, as did the author of the article who said, "This is well-reasoned, insightful and eloquent.  Even with an allowance of 3500 words, I could not have said it better myself."

It is weird that one of our two major political parties is effectively willing to concede truth to the other party, but so it goes.  Republicans had a choice between reality, and Trump and they overwhelmingly chose the latter.  It's working out for them quite well in the short-term; the long-term is still an open question.  I'm a glass-half-full guy by nature, so I definitely see the path by which this Trump lovefest could backfire on Reps in the future.  But I'm also not naive.  One thing I've come to realize is that a lot of people don't want to live in reality.  It's much nicer to create you own reality that conforms to your political views, instead of vice versa.  And now with the "niche-ification" of news and social media echo chambers, it's quite easy to do as well.

Then there are others who aren't anti-reality per se, they just don't think reality is something to get too hung up on.  Living a lie is just the price of admission sometimes.  This includes most "mainstream" Republicans -- the ones who were against Trump before they were for him (over the course of a few weeks).  I don't think Paul Ryan, for example, actually believes millions of people illegally voted for Hillary Clinton.  It's just that the truth isn't that big a deal to him.  He has different priorities, and if he has to pretend that 2 + 2 = 5 to pursue those priorities, then so be it.  In Ryan's view, it's better to have a lying president who will cut taxes for the rich than a truthful one who won't.  (Jonathan Chait has a good article about Ryan's priorities.)

Finally, there are the people who don't (or can't) pay attention and just vote for the candidate from their "tribe."  I think this covers most people actually.  On a podcast I can't remember, a man whose name I can't remember (great sourcing, I know) studied exactly what were the criteria people used when voting, and it was shockingly simplistic.  Almost all of politics is identity politics.  People identify with a group, and then they vote for the candidate who best represents that group.  And once this candidate wins over the group, it doesn't really matter what they do or say after that.  If Trump has any political acumen at all (other than just getting really, really lucky), it's that he understood this much better than everybody else.

Anyway... I gotta go, but before I do, I wanted to post something.  Remember how I said that reading Trump's remarks was comedy gold?  Here's a perfect example:


Until next time...

Good soup!

Friday, February 17, 2017

Entry 368: A Doctor's Appointment and Other Stuff

S went away for the weekend to visit her sister in Atlanta, and she took Lil' S1 with her, so it's just me and Lil' S2 for a few days.  I considered going as well, but decided against it for a few reasons: (1) I'm just not as into traveling as my wife; (2) If I go then Lil' S2 has to go too and taking him makes the difficulty of traveling go up tenfold.  Lil' S1 is a pretty good traveler; his brother, not so much.  The flip side of that is that Lil' S2 is much easier at home than his brother, so we've allocated our children efficiently.

Before leaving, S pulled a fast one on me and scheduled a doctor's appointment for Lil' S2 this morning knowing that she wouldn't be around to take him, so I would have to do it.  I doubt she would frame it this way; she would probably say it was my turn or something to that effect.  It's an on-going "discussion" between us that she does the bulk of the appointment stuff (dentist, doctor, haircuts, etc.), so I think in her mind it's pretty much always my turn.  I don't completely disagree, however, I think I do it more than she realizes, and the reason she does more than me is because she wants to do it -- or rather she wants it done her way.  That's my thing: Either you do it or you let me do it the way I want to do it.  S will often want me to do something with the kids, but then she will rattle off a list of instructions I'm supposed to follow.  It drives me crazy.  It's kinda insulting, actually, because it implies that I can't take care of my kids on my own, and I'm going to bungle everything up left to my own devices.  I mean, it doesn't hurt my feelings, because almost nothing hurts my feelings, but if things did hurt my feelings, this would be one of those things.

Today was a bad day for it to be my turn.  We arrived on time for an 8:30 a.m. appointment and didn't actually see the doctor until 9:20 a.m.  I didn't get home until 10:15 a.m. and the doctor's office is only a few blocks from our house.  So irritating.  The thing is, if you are running that far behind schedule just inform your patients somehow before they leave their houses.  Send me a text alert to come 45 minutes later.  We have this technology now.  Imagine a computerized system that checks people in and out, and then automatically sends out alerts based on how many people are in the queue to see the doctor ahead of you.  That would be such a nice feature.  But considering our pediatrician's check-in system currently consists of writing your name and arrival time on a sticker.  I'm not holding out hope for this anytime soon.  Well, at least we like the doctor, once she actually is able to see our kids.

Although I didn't like what she had to say today.  The primary purpose of today's appointment was to get Lil' S2 some vaccination shots, but naturally the doctor wanted to ask some questions about his general state of wellness.  Everything is totally great except for one thing: He's still not talking.  He sometime says syllables, like if you say "hi" or "bye" to him, he will wave and say "h-" or "b-" back, and he will say "m-m-m-m-" when he wants "more" of something.  But he's only said full words a few times, and even then we couldn't get him to do it again, so it's not clear if it was on purpose or not.

I'm not worried about it yet.  I would be if I felt like his growth was stunted in other ways, but physically he's on pace -- ahead of pace, probably; he can already climb out his crib, which means he beat his brother by five months, and I thought his brother was fast -- and comprehension-wise he's also on pace.  If I say "daddy" he points to me; if I say "get your shoes" he runs and gets his shoes; if I say "brush your teeth" he goes to the sink in the bathroom.  Everything is clicking.  In a few months he's going to start talking, and then he's quickly going to catch up with all the other kids who can already say a handful of words.  I'm like 75% sure that that's what's going to happen.

And this is basically what the doctor thinks as well, but she still wants him to see a specialist.  She said that she doesn't like to wait until they are two before taking action.  She likes to be proactive about it.  S already was leaning this way, so now that the doctor agrees with her, she's all in, and so we almost certainly will take him to see a specialist.  I don't really have a leg to stand on in opposition.  And it's not like I don't want to help the development of my son.  It's just that I want to wait.  I think it's premature to get special help right now.  But I suppose it won't really hurt anything (other than it will cost time and probably money), so it's fine.  I'm certainly not going to take a stand against my wife and our pediatrician on this.

[I just found out George "The Animal" Steele died today.  RIP to the greatest green-tongued, turn-buckle-eating entertainer the world will ever know.]

Anyway...

In other news, how about that Trump press conference, eh?  This article made me laugh -- legitimately the funniest thing I've read in a while.  I know Trump's presidency affects a lot of people in a negative way, and there is nothing funny about that, but sometimes you just have to laugh, right?  I mean, we are all going to die relatively soon, anyway -- that's the biggest joke of them all -- and with that in mind nothing is too serious.  Plus, Trump just says some funny-ass shit.

One thing I found about Trump is that when I actually hear him speak, I don't think he's very funny, in large part because he sounds less ridiculous than the words he's actually saying.  He still sounds ridiculous, but he moderates it somewhat with cadence and intonation.  Judging him solely as an orator, I don't think he's awful, and he's able to mask his madness to some degree.  But when his words are printed -- oh my! -- the absurdity just pops off the page, and it's hilarious.

So from now on, do yourself a favor, anytime Trump has a media event, read excerpts of it before you listen to any audio.  It's comedy gold.

Alright, I'm done here.  Until next time...

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Entry 367: Pinkeye and Socialism

Lil' S2 came down with pinkeye Wednesday night.  It wasn't too bad, actually.  S took him to our local doc in a box, and they actually had the drops onsite, so she didn't even have to bother with a pharmacy.  And by Thursday morning, after just two doses, he looked good as new.  Of course, we still had to keep him out of daycare for a few days, but even that was not such a big deal.  S and I both have sick leave, so she took off Thursday and I took off Friday and that was that.

Lil' S2 is a pretty easy kid to take care of also.  He's more independent than his brother was at the age.  Lil' S1 would be all up in your grill demanding you entertain him every moment of the day.  Come to think of it, he's still kinda like that (except, of course, if the iPad is on, in which case you, and the entire rest of the world, do not even enter his plane of existence).  His brother's more chill.  You can play with him for a few minutes to get him going, and then if you want to, you can sit down and read or work on the computer, and he'll mostly just keep playing on his own.  You will have a mess to clean up afterward -- his two favorite activities are raiding the shoe closet and strewing everybody's footwear across the house and pulling the books off the shelf -- but you will also have a stretch of relative peace, which is so nice.

While I was home, getting paid to not work and spend time with my son, I was thinking about how weird it is that something that for me and S is no big whoop, could have been a devastating blow to somebody else in worse circumstances.  I mean, if I was a single dad living paycheck to paycheck, working a job with an hourly wage, what would I have done when Lil' S2 got pinkeye?  He couldn't go to any daycare with other kids, and I imagine asking somebody already stretched to the hilt to take two days off work and forgo two days pay is a tall order.  So what does somebody do in that situation?

Naturally I started to think about things like privilege and upbringing and personal responsibility and luck, and I came to an interesting conclusion: I might be a socialist.  I've always been very liberal, economically and otherwise, but I've never really thought of myself as a socialist.  But I might be one, or at least a Scandinavian-style quasi-socialist.  My ideal economic system, the one that would be in place if everybody thought like me, is a system of free enterprise like we have now, but with stronger regulations, higher taxes, and more social services.  I don't necessarily want bigger government, but I'm not against it.  I don't think it's inherently evil.  I want smarter, more effective and efficient government.  I want government that helps make people's lives better.  If that leads to bigger government, so be it.  And if the cost of that is that people like myself have to pay another 5% or 10% in taxes, then so be that as well.

I've never really bought the argument that providing government services somehow coddles the less fortunate and leads them into a life of laziness and dependency.  But I might be jaded, because even if it does, I don't really care.  If my tax dollars allow somebody to be lazy and not work or contribute anything of value to society, oh well.  As long as these people aren't on the streets raising hell and committing crimes, it's not really a big deal to me.  Because it probably also means that other people, who aren't lazy, who are legitimate underprivileged or down on their luck, have available the resources to get help when they need it, and to me that's well-worth the trade-off.  Why are people such sticklers about the government not helping others?  I don't understand it.*

At the moment, however, I would take an Ayn Randian, libertarian asshole, like, say, Paul Ryan, in the White House in a heart beat.  Pretty much about anybody would be better than our current shit-show of a POTUS.  This week, I actually figured out my least favorite thing about him.  It's tough to narrow it down because he has so many bad qualities -- he's sexist, racist, corrupt, untruthful, and whiny as hell -- but the one that takes the cake for me: fearmongering.  He's a total fearmonger.  He wants everybody to be scared all the time.  He wants all of us to spend our lives looking over our shoulders thinking that somebody is coming to get us at any moment.  He wants white people to be scared of black people; he wants black people to be scared of the police; he wants natural born citizens to be scared of immigrants; he wants immigrants to be scared of ICE; he wants Christians to be scared of Muslims; and he wants us all to be scared of the next big attack that's just around corner if we don't acquiesce to his every command.  It's sickening.  It's utterly odious.  And sadly it works on a lot of people.

I'm out of time.  Until next time...

*Or maybe I do.  Maybe it's just good old fashion racism.  I mean, let's be honest, if the US was 99% white we would probably be much more like Scandinavia right now.  (A racially and culturally homogeneous population is one of the reasons socialism works there.)  We don't mind the government providing services to us and people like us; we just don't like the government providing services to them.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Entry 366: Does Anybody Really Care About Super Bowl Sunday?

As anybody who knows me in real life, or who reads this blog regularly (and I'm guessing the latter is a subset of the former) knows, I'm a huge sports fan.  I have been since about age six.  Sometimes I legitimately don't like this about myself.  Because I'm not six anymore; I'm a grown-ass man.  And a grown-ass man should not feel bad about himself because his team -- which is not actually his team at all, but a multi-billion dollar corporation employing multimillionaire athletes, to whom he has no direct connection -- lost a game.  And yet the Seahawks and Mariners have sent me into days-long funks many a time.  The last really bad one came after Russell Wilson threw the game-losing interception from the one-yard line in Super Bowl XLIX.  I was despondent for like a week after one.  It still pains me a little bit to think about it now.

That's the bad side of sports.  The good side is that I derive a lot of pleasure from them -- they're a great source of cheap entertainment (if you watch on TV); they're a good distraction; and knowing about sports is a big social asset (you need to shoot the shit about something).  It might even be a big professional asset.  The vice president of my company seemed quite impressed with my probability-based algorithm that won our March Madness competition two years in a row.

[In 2001 the Mariners won 116 games and then lost to the Yankees in the playoffs.  It wasn't the worst thing that happened that fall.]

Also, I ask myself, what's really the harm of being emotionally invested in professional sports?  Yeah, it feels kinda silly that my mood can be affected by how well a twenty-something-year-old throws a ball.  But this just shows I'm passionate about my interests, right?  Isn't this better than being flat-lined about everything?  I mean, if a movie buff told you about how moved they were by a certain film, or a lover of literature talked about how much joy and sadness they derive from Milton's work, you wouldn't think this was a bad thing, would you?  So why is it any different with sports?  I mean, at least athletes are real people.

But, in light of recent events, even for somebody like myself the Super Bowl couldn't seem more trivial this year.  I wonder how many people really care about it.  I'll probably watch it with some friends, and maybe I will get into it then, but I don't know.  Actually, the thing I'm most curious about is whether or not the winner will visit the president at the White House in keeping with the tradition of past Super Bowl winners.  Bill Belichick, head coach of the Patriots, is a known friend of Trump's, and a "Make America Great Again" hat was once spotted in the locker of Tom Brady.  But since then both have been very evasive and diplomatic about their relationships with Donny Despot, so if the Patriots do win as expected, I wonder if they will go or not.

I hope they don't.  It would be a big slap in the face, and I think it would matter symbolically.  Anti-Trumpers currently have no mechanism in government to stop him.  Our best hope for the time being is to make it socially, professionally, and politically unacceptable to be a Trump supporter or apologist.  We have to make it clear that a large portion of the country -- most the country, actually -- is not going to tolerate Trump's bullshit, and if you do, you are going to pay a price of some sort, and you are going to be shamed.  That's why marches and boycotts and things of that nature matter.

Now, obviously this won't work on everybody -- hardcore Trump supporters aren't going to care (and possibly not even know) what the non-Trump-loving public thinks and many people and businesses have a direct financial stake in Trump's success -- but we need to try.  We need politicians, particularly Republican politicians with vulnerable seats, to see Trump and his minions being shunned, and think, "maybe I don't want to hitch my cart to this wagon too tightly."  I seriously doubt Republican congresspeople will ever openly revolt against Trump (partisanship is a helluva drug), but you never know, and it's not an all or nothing proposition anyway.  The less support the better.  The slower things move, the less Trump can do, the better.  Damage control is step one.  Step two is winning future elections.  But that's a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother post on a whole 'nother day.

In other news, more personal news, I started going to Krav Maga classes.  I felt like my lifestyle had become way too stagnant the past few years, and I needed to do something athletic and intense on a regular basis.  I could have gone the marathon route, but I don't absolutely love running, and I wanted to do something that would build muscle mass not just get me cardio conditioning.  Also, I've always wanted to get some basic self-defense training; if I ever get into a fight, I'd like to win it.  What I really wanted (and still want) to do is MMA.  But I settled on Krav Maga instead for one reason and one reason only: There's a Krav Maga gym two minutes from my office.  That was the deciding factor.

It's pretty cool so far, other than the fact I strained my side somehow and have to sit out for a little while.  It's super annoying.  Three classes in and already I'm injured.  It sucks being almost middle-aged.

Alright, that's all I got.  Until next time...