Caveat Lector (Pinned)

 

This is not a blog.

It’s a website populated by fictional characters, whose writing should not be taken as expressing the opinion of any real person, company or organization.

It’s a work of entertainment. If you’re not entertained, read something else.

Even when the author of a post is a real person, fact and fiction are intermingled, and are not always clearly labeled, so don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.

Caveat Lector

If You Disappeared Tomorrow, No One Would Even Notice

 

If Megan Rapinoe Competed Against Males . . .

 

Bobby Cox

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Bobby Cox

 
Bobby Cox

I’m stretching “boyhood” a little here, but Bobby Cox had a long career. And my son was an Atlanta Braves fan growing up so now his boyhood sports icons are dying.

Cox managed the Atlanta Braves from 1978 to 1981, and then the Toronto Blue Jays from 1982 to 1985. He rejoined the Braves in 1986 as a general manager.

He moved back to the manager’s role during the 1990 season and stayed there until his retirement following the 2010 season. Cox led the Braves to 14 consecutive division championships from 1991 to 2005 (interrupted in 1994 when a strike ended the season early), which included a World Series title in 1995.

That 14 straight division title record is the most amazing thing to me. No other manager has won more than 6 division titles in their entire career.

Cox had 2,504 wins, fourth all-time among managers.

RIP Bobby Cox

Gorilla, You’re a Desperado

 

Big gorilla at the LA zoo
Snatched the glasses right off my face
Took the keys to my BMW
Left me here to take his place

I wish the ape a lot of success
I’m sorry my apartment’s a mess
Most of all I’m sorry if I made you blue
I’m betting the gorilla will too

— Warren Zevon, “Gorilla, You’re a Desperado”

This is Getting to be My Hottest Hot Button

 

A high school student named AB Hernandez won all three jumping events — high jump, long jump, triple jump — in the girls’ division at the CIF Southern Section track meet this weekend.

None of the events was close. For example, Hernandez won the girls’ high jump with a mark of 5’8″, quite a bit better than the second place mark of 5’4″.

Meanwhile, over in the boys division, the winner cleared 6’10”. Now if you’re a boy and you want to win the CIF Southern Section but you can only clear 5’8″, you’ve got a couple of options. You can train a lot harder or you can compete against girls.

The fact that the second option is available is a source of wonder to me, and I don’t mean that in a good way, because it would seem to appeal only to people who really hate girls.

The CIF Southern Section covers a vast area of Southern California, so to win an event, you’ve got to put in a lot of work and beat a lot of other competitors. It bothers me that biology is thrown out the window, but it bothers me more to think of girls putting in the work to be better than every other girl in Southern California and then being forced to lose to a boy of no athletic distinction at all.

I think it would take the joy out of training and competing to know in advance that you can’t win no matter how hard you try.

The Two-Parent Advantage

 

We have mountains of evidence that children from intact families do better on every conceivable success metric, so there’s no need to ask for people’s *opinion* on the matter.

Married Parents chart

But the answers are pretty remarkable. The blue bars, in particular. On the left, we have 70 percent of college-educated liberals who either don’t know something that I thought everyone knew, or they know it but for some reason would prefer not to acknowledge it.

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Garrett Anderson

 

Garrett Anderson wasn’t actually a boyhood sports icon. He was younger than I am. But I’ve always lived in Orange County and always been an Angels fan.

My son and I were at Game 7 of the 2002 World Series and saw Anderson rip a bases-clearing 3-run double down the right field line to give the Angels a lead of 4-1, which would turn out to be the final score.

Anderson played 15 seasons with the Angels and was the franchise leader in games played (2,013), hits (2,368), RBI (1,292), doubles (489), total bases (3,743), extra-base hits (796) and grand slams (eight).

Cause of death has not been announced, which is usually not a good sign.

RIP Garrett Anderson

The Gifts Reserved for Age

 

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
     To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
     First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.

— T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home: Homicidal Elephants

 

Homicidal Elephant Keeps Killing People In Tourist Hotspot, Official Says — dailycaller.com

This happened in Thailand, in Khao Yai National Park. Since my wife is from Thailand, I ask her,
“Have you heard of Khao Yai National Park?”

“You don’t want to go there,” she says. “Dangerous. It’s full of animals.”

“I just read that one of their elephants has killed three people.”

“Don’t go there. It’s for daredevils.”

Here you see the benefit of talking to the locals before taking a trip. If you just do your research online, you get this:

“Khao Yai is no doubt the best national park in Thailand for regular visitors where it is relatively easy to see some impressive animals.”

Granted, that site is intended to promote tourism so it omits any mention of the animals killing you.

What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. . . . It was born in the moments when we accumulated silent things within us. — Bachelard, Water and Dreams

Suffering consists in being unable to reveal oneself and, when one happens to succeed in doing so, in having nothing more to say. — André Gide

One Sentence in Our Lifetime

 

Some languages are so constructed — English among them — that we each only really speak one sentence in our lifetime. That sentence begins with your first words, toddling around the kitchen, and ends with your last words right before you step into the limousine, or in a nursing home, the night-duty attendant vaguely on hand. Or, if you are blessed, they are heard by someone who knows you and loves you and will be sorry to hear the sentence end.

— Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey

Pollock or Toddler?

 

On this date, January 28, in 1912, Jackson Pollock is born.

My son recently texted me a couple of pictures (see below) and asked “Which one of these is our friends’ 15 month old daughter and which one is Pollock?”

Jackson Pollock

Scribble

You can click the images to enlarge them if you think it will help you figure out the question.

“That’s a tough one,” I texted back. “They’re both pretty bad.”

It probably won’t surprise you to learn, after looking at his work, that Pollock suffered from severe mental health issues.

He died in August 1956 at age 44 in an alcohol-related single-car collision. I wonder what the inside of the car looked like. Maybe it should have been preserved as his final contribution to abstract art.

He also killed a passenger.

Song of Speaks-Fluently

 

To have to carry your own corn far–
who likes it?
To follow the black bear through the thicket–
who likes it?
To hunt without profit, to return weary without anything–
who likes it?
You have to carry your own corn far.
You have to follow the black bear through the thicket.
You have to hunt to no profit.

If not, what will you tell the little ones? What will you speak of?
For it is bad not to use the talk which God has sent us.
I am Speaks-Fluently. Of all the groups of symbols,
I am a symbol by myself.

— Mary Ruefle, “Song of Speaks-Fluently”

What Size is Your T-Shirt?

 

I’m buying a T-shirt online as a gift . . . now you might say a T-shirt is a cheap-ass gift, but trust me, it’s a cool T-shirt.

The point is, it’s available in multiple sizes: S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL. Only in America. I seem to remember a time when XXL was the largest size you could get.

What must a person look like to need a 5XL T-shirt?

YOU’RE EATING TOO MUCH FOOD! GO TO THE GYM!