tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60387585660354881392024-02-19T03:59:05.969-08:00Richmond Football DadAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-25405111425504138112018-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:002018-10-25T11:32:37.754-07:00Fox News Just Declared Literal War on the American People<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
On October 18th, 2018 Sean Hannity, while introducing Rush Limbaugh declared that “Democrats and the destroy-Trump media” were “cheerleading for dangerous mob-like behavior.” Over the course of the hour-long segment Rush and Hannity agreed that Democrats and the mainstream news organizations were part of a plot to destroy America that would likely end in violence. Less than a week later, bombs began showing up addressed to Democratic politicians and mainstream media figures.<br />
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The "Fair and Balanced" news network was not shamed into apologizing for Rush and Hannity's shockingly irresponsible yellow journalism (what are you, new here?) On the contrary, Fox News instantly doubled down, presenting a breathtakingly unified message. Not only are these victims of terrorism responsible, due to their uncivil rhetoric, for these attacks against them, but the anti-American statements made by these nefarious malefactors - again, we’re talking about the people who received the bombs, not the people who sent them or the people who are cheering them on; please try to keep up - constitute a legitimate causus belli. If the Democrats, CNN, and the rest of the Trump-hating left don’t stop criticizing the President, who can blame the fed-up everyman who might be moved to send a few mail bombs to reporters, shoot down a couple Democrats in the street, or ram his car into a crowd of hippies?<br />
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Fox News just declared war on the Democratic party, the news media, and ANYONE who is standing up to the administration. This is not a drill. It is not a metaphor. Have you retweeeted a message that used the #RESIST hashtag? Liked an anti-Trump Facebook page? Checked in at a Democratic party event? You are now a legitimate target for right-wing violence. So says the President and one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, using obviously coordinated language and imagery.<br />
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One perfectly rational response to these attacks is fear, but we must not allow ourselves to be cowed by fear, for that is what these terrorists want. Fortunately for us, many in our country are used to this fear. Their bodies have been on the line for years. It is white people, who have operated too long in a mistaken belief that our whiteness would protect us from white supremacist violence (a fantasy that somehow survived Oklahoma City and a host of other "colorblind" right-wing terror attacks), who must now find within us the reserves of bravery required to truly join the struggle.<br />
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No, we don’t get to lash out in retaliatory violence just because we may finally bear the sting of white supremacist rage the way our black and brown brothers and sisters have borne it for hundreds of years. We cannot fight back with violence because we cannot win with violence. They have the knives, the bombs, the tanks, the guns. We only have our voices, our bodies, and our votes. It’s not much, but these are the tools of the resistance and they have always been enough to carry on.<br />
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We must march forward, together in peace and solidarity, toward what future may come. The rest is out of our hands.<br />
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See you on November 6th.
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-2286207965330252182017-07-20T06:47:00.000-07:002017-07-20T06:50:27.986-07:00The Top Ten Most Soul-Crushing Sports Injuries<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqIjhn2cdv-cY7a7AiyEOLo8PtyPRA7QFHiDZzgOvdN0PO6jPlx_EOrC1i6T7zm6XY2wK2LEvnQORRIHMAFu-wdjTcswd7J3XvUzlviT-mPcXtnhL-h5tHkf9C8ozGnLxwVkEugdXUCc/s1600/kawhi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="620" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqIjhn2cdv-cY7a7AiyEOLo8PtyPRA7QFHiDZzgOvdN0PO6jPlx_EOrC1i6T7zm6XY2wK2LEvnQORRIHMAFu-wdjTcswd7J3XvUzlviT-mPcXtnhL-h5tHkf9C8ozGnLxwVkEugdXUCc/s320/kawhi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10. Andrew Bynum 2008</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With some of these star-crossed players, the hard part isn’t deciding to include them on this list but deciding WHICH of their ridiculously disappointing injuries to highlight. In the case of Andrew Bynum’s injury-riddled career, one stands out: the dislocated knee he suffered on January 13th, 2008 against the Memphis Grizzlies.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bynum’s sophomore NBA season in 2006-2007 had been a promising one. Drafted 10th overall by the Lakers in 2005, Bynum struggled to make an impact as the youngest rookie in league history, but by the middle of 2006-2007 Bynum had started to turn heads with his explosive, athletic play at the center position, something the Lakers had sorely missed since Shaq was traded to Miami for spare parts in 2004. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately for the Lakers they became one of the first victims of the modern era of ubiquitous amateur surveillance when video emerged of Bryant apparently telling persons unknown that he felt the Lakers should trade Bynum. The embarrassing leak threatened to damage Lakers chemistry just as they were starting to pull things together, but Bynum appeared to take the negative publicity in stride. He opened the 2007/2008 season on a tear, averaging a double-double and establishing himself as one of the game’s best young big men. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then one night it all came crashing down. Bynum landed awkwardly on teammate Lamar Odom and was helped off the court holding his dislocated kneecap. Initially it was thought there was little damage, and the Lakers we riding high on their longest winning streak since before Shaq left, but eventually it was revealed that Bynum was lost for the season to arthroscopic knee surgery to repair the damage from the dislocation. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those Lakers would go all the way to the 2008 NBA Finals without their seven-foot phenom, losing to the Celtics in six games. Bynum’s absence was particularly glaring as Laker big men Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom struggled to match the intensity and athletic ability of Celtics all-world power forward Kevin Garnett or the grit of dirty-work specialist Kendrick Perkins. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Lakers would get to the promised land in 2009 and 2010 with a healthy (er, healthier) Bynum, which blunts the trauma of this injury somewhat. But at the time losing to a hated rival without their best young player must have been a bitter pill for Lakers fans to swallow. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9. Miguel Tejada 2015</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 2015 New York Mets were in fine shape entering their National League Division series against the LA Dodgers. Their pitching staff was a who’s-who of rising stars (and Bartolo Colon), and while their offense had struggled for most of the year, they had made a sudden turn midseason when they added </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">La Potencia</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Yoenis Cespedes, who upon putting on a Mets uniform had suddenly transformed into Willie Mays. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They would lose only one game in the NL playoffs en route to a showdown with the Royals in the World Series, but that one loss would prove devastating, not because of the result of the game but because of the result of a slide. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With his Dodgers having lost Game 1 and now down 2-1 in the seventh inning of Game 2, Chase Utley went out of his way to make sure Miguel Tejada, the Mets starting shortstop, couldn’t make the relay throw to first base in order to complete what would have been an inning-ending double play. Utley executed a chop block on Tejada, cutting his leg out from under him and instantly fracturing his fibula. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The play hurt all the more because it resulted in the Dodgers eventually winning the game, but the Mets would win their next seven games to sweep their way into the World Series. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately against Kansas City the Mets’ felt Tejada’s absence most acutely as beloved-but-overmatched backup shortstop Wilmer Flores failed to make an impact on offense or defense in the Royals’ five game dismantling of the first Mets pennant-winner since the 2000 Subway Series.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further injuries to other crucial players would send the Mets into a tailspin in 2016, one from which they have yet to recover. Utley’s aggressive targeting of Tejada seems, for now at least, to have derailed one of the more promising young teams in Major League Baseball.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8. Steve Nash, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 2012 Lakers, coming off two disappointing seasons since winning back-to-back titles in 2009/2010, decided to overhaul their roster to bring in two of the league’s top stars to complement their MVP, Kobe Bryant. One was Dwight Howard, a reliable low-post scorer and the best defensive center in the league. The other was Steve Nash, a man with two MVP trophies of his own, albeit from more than half a decade earlier. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite Nash’s advanced age he was still one of the best offensive point guards in the game, routinely zipping eye-popping passes through tight lanes created by his uncanny ability to score from impossible positions all over the court. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Preseason expectations for the Lakers were sky-high, as every member of their starting lineup had made at least one All-Star Game. But in the season’s second game Nash collided with Damian Lillard and suffered a broken left leg, knocking him out for an extended period. When Nash returned, he was not himself, struggling to run the pick-and-roll (a play he had done more than anyone else to revitalize) and seemingly unable to stay in front of ANY player on defense, even the most harmless of plodding bricklayers. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the next two disappointing seasons it would gradually become clear that Nash’s useful life in the NBA was at an end, as nerve damage in his hip and back would worsen and send him into retirement. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lakers fans, used to deep postseason runs, quickly started grumbling that Nash was goldbricking, content to sign a late-career deal and then spend his afternoons hanging out on Southern California beaches.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When photos of Nash hiking and playing golf leaked in 2014, the animosity reached such a crescendo that Nash was moved to send a heartfelt letter to Lakers fans explaining that while he was indeed healthy enough to hike and play golf, he could not longer play NBA basketball, as much as he might want to. Fans weren’t particularly placated, and the entire affair left a foul odor hanging over the franchise in the twilight years of Bryant’s own career.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7. Joel Embiid 2016</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The last time the Philadelphia 76ers had a winning team Allen Iverson was the league’s scoring champion. If that feels like it was a long time ago, that’s because it was - twelve years, to be exact. Since then the Sixers have been mired in various phases of what Sixers fans now sarcastically call “The Process” - a vast, seemingly endless rebuilding effort that saw the team go 10-72 in 2015/2016, their worst record since the depressing post-Wilt era in the early seventies that saw them field several of the worst NBA teams of all time. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No player has exemplified this dark period in 76ers franchise history better than Joel Embiid, the third overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft. Embiid came in with an extraordinary fanfare - the team infamously touted him as possibly the best player ever - but the hype quickly dulled when a series of foot injuries saw The Process derailed for his entire first two seasons. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, in 2016, all seemed to be well as Embiid finally took to the court in a 76ers jersey and instantly showed the world what all the fuss was about. Embiid’s agility was shocking for a center, but the real story was his shooting - in his first 31 games in the league, The Process shot a quite-useful 36.7% from behind the three-point arc. In a league where “traditional” big men were quickly being replaced by rangy shooters, Embiid looked like an evolution: a center with old-school size and post presence combined with a shot deadly enough to draw opposing bigs out of the paint. With Embiid on the court, the formerly woeful Sixers suddenly looked like a playoff team, and the team even embarked on some lengthy winning streaks. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then Embiid started missing games with what the team termed a “bone bruise” of the kneecap. When Embiid went out against the Portland Trail Blazers in January, rumors began to swirl that Embiid had a more significant knee injury. The team soon admitted that Embiid had a torn meniscus and would miss the rest of the season. Ironically, the team’s Embiid-fueled midseason run hurt their chances in the draft lottery and they were forced to trade up into the top 3. Joel Embiid, the team’s representative at the draft lottery, assured fans without apparent irony to once again “trust the process.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. Kendrick Perkins 2010</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though oft-injured players are allowed only one slot in this list, Andrew Bynum found a way to work his way onto the list a second time when he unintentionally kicked Kendrick Perkins in the back of the knee while going over his back trying to prevent Perk from grabbing an offensive rebound. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was Game Six of the 2010 NBA Finals, and Perkins’ Celtics were up 3-2, needing only to win one of two to capture their second championship in three seasons. Though he was the only starter not considered one of the Celtics’ “big four,” Perkins’ toughness and veteran savvy was crucial to the team’s success. The instant he went down, the series completely shifted. The Celtics were blown out on LA’s floor in game six and were forced to return home to try to close out the series on the hallowed parquet floors of the Garden in Boston. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even without Perkins, the Celtics played inspired basketball, holding the Lakers to a cover-your-eyes-awful 32.5% field goal percentage. Unfortunately another ugly stat wound up being the story of the game. With Perkins out and neither Rasheed Wallace nor Big Baby Davis able to hold his own against the Lakers’ merciless pounding of the offensive glass, the Celtics gave up a shocking and uncharacteristic 23 offensive rebounds on the way to a narrow 83-79 loss. Securing any of several loose balls - a Perkins specialty - would have undoubtedly allowed Boston to clinch the title. Instead they watched the hated Lakers celebrate on their home floor. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be the last chance for that version of the Celtics as their core would break up over the next few years without ever reaching another NBA Finals. The only one of the Big Four to win another title was Ray Allen, who bolted to the Miami Heat before their 2013 title run, a move which irks Perkins to this day. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. Ken Griffey, Jr. 2005</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another player who has plenty of injuries that could be candidates for this list, Griffey, Jr. is undoubtedly an all-time great whose career is full of impressive accomplishments. He won ten gold gloves, seven silver sluggers and an MVP award, and is sixth on the all-time home run list. To call his career a disappointment would be an absurd insult to one of the best players of his or any era in baseball history.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet Griffey could have been so much more. Having come down from his amazing peak in the late 90’s when he hit 50 home runs with 1.000 OPS seemingly every year. Griffey was still putting up solid numbers despite a series of nagging leg injuries gradually slowing him down. Then in 2005 he won Comeback Player of the Year, playing in 128 games for the first time in several years and looking something like his old self. 2006 saw Griffey slowed again by nagging injuries, and during the 2006 offseason the team got terrible news: Griffey had broken his wrist while vacationing in the Bahamas. Wrist injuries are notoriously difficult for hitters to recover from, as timing and bat speed is highly dependent on strong, supple wrists. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2007 Griffey returned to the league and played well, but having been moved to right field to hide his declining range, it became clear that he was well past his best. He had lost too much time to injury, and his body had been prematurely aged by the litany of recoveries and surgeries that he had endured. His beloved Seattle Mariners resigned him in 2009, hoping he could revitalize his career in The House that Griffey Built, but when an embarrassing scandal erupted over Griffey allegedly napping during games, it was clear that The Kid was gone, and a tired old man was all that was left of him. Griffey left the team and abruptly retired in the middle of a series with the Minnesota Twins. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. Allan Houston 2004</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is a term that modern fans have come to dread - “microfracture surgery.” But in 2004 it was a relatively unknown procedure until Allan Houston unwillingly vaulted it into the mainstream consciousness after he underwent microfracture surgery in an attempt to resolve problems with his knee stemming from injuries sustained during the 2003-04 NBA season. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Houston had become one of the league’s highest-paid players after the 2001 season when he signed a max extension that paid him over $20 million per season. It was no mystery why Houston was considered so valuable - in 1999 he had helped carry a gimpy Patrick Ewing to the Knicks’ first NBA Finals since 1994 and only their second since they last won the title in 1973. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately Houston would never live up to the expectations that were placed on him after signing his huge extension. In fact, the signing of that contract would prove to be the Knicks’ undoing. Houston would never fully recover from the surgery. Neither would the Knicks; in part because of the burden of Houston’s massive contract, New York has won only one playoff series in the twelve seasons since first announcing Houston’s injury. A single knee injury derailed one of the premier franchises in basketball, and the end of the dark days that resulted do not yet appear to be in sight.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Tom Brady 2008</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s easy to scoff now that Brady and the Patriots have cemented their legacy as the greatest football team of modern times, but Patriots fans could have been forgiven in 2008 for thinking their franchise was suffering from some bizarre curse. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After completing a perfect regular season in 2007, the Pats had entered the 2008 Super Bowl as massive favorites over a Giants team that had suffered a near-fatal collapse in the second half of the season, sneaking into the playoffs as a 10-6 wild card after losing a tough game to the undefeated Patriots in Week 17. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then the Giants defeated the Patriots in what can only be called one of the most improbable upsets in sports history, with several crucial plays being decided on against-all-odds mishaps and coincidences, culminating in an almost indescribable play that has come to be known simply as The Helmet Catch. The best team in NFL history won the least-coveted crown in sport - the best team not to win the championship. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Undaunted, the Pats entered the 2008 season knowing they were far and away the best team in the league - they had the league MVP in Tom Brady, seemingly at the peak of his powers, and few if any of their rivals in the AFC looked prepared to challenge them en route to a return trip to the Super Bowl.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, it happened - in Week One against the Kansas City Chiefs, a pass rusher who had been blocked to the ground lurched forward to hit Brady in the left knee just as he planted it to deliver a long pass down the sideline. Postgame MRI confirmed the team’s fears - Brady was out for the year with a torn ACL. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though the Patriots went on to a fine season with the underwhelming Matt Cassel at the helm - there was plenty of talent, after all, on a team that had just gone 18-1 the previous season - they suffered yet another unlucky break when they failed to make the playoffs despite an 11-5 record. The Patriots, who just a year before had appeared to be on their way to the first 19-0 season in NFL history and the league’s first undefeated championship run since the 1972 Dolphins, were now facing an uncertain future, out of the playoffs with their 31 year-old MVP quarterback looking at a long recovery from a serious knee injury.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would all turn out fine for Brady and the Patriots, of course, which is why he loses out on the top spot in this list. But in terms of how it looked at the time Brady’s injury must be one of the most demoralizing a fan base has ever experienced.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. Kawhi Leonard 2017</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With so much ink having been spilled in this hot-take era over whether Zaza Pachulia is a dirty player for sticking his foot into Kawhi Leonard’s landing zone on a jumpshot in Game 1 of the 2017 Western Conference Finals, we may not have yet properly had time to digest the enormity of the misfortune that has befallen these Spurs.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a team that just saw Tim Duncan, its greatest player ever, ride off into the sunset, the 2016/2017 Spurs certainly didn’t miss a beat. They rolled to a sterling 61-21 record in an extremely tough Western Conference and managed to hold off a spirited challenge from a plucky Memphis Grizzlies squad before dismantling a Rockets team that some analysts thought was preparing to inaugurate a new era of analytics-based dominance, supplanting teams like the Spurs that still operate on old-school basketball principles. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spurs are alive and well, thank you, and in fact looked well on their way to doing what many thought was impossible - challenging the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. The Spurs were cooking on Golden State’s home floor in Game One and looked to be about to easily take a 1-0 lead and put the Warriors, who had been expected to cruise into the NBA Finals, into a situation where Game 2 already looked like a must-win. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead, the tables turned when Kawhi Leonard, who has struggled with ankle injuries for much of his career, took off for a contested jumper in the left corner as Golden State center Zaza Pachula hustled to close out on him. Pachulia, looking to cause maximum discomfort to the shooter, tried to snake his body into a small sliver of space - too small, it turns out, as Leonard landed on Pachulia’s foot and was lost for what appears at press time to be the rest of the series. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was a devastating blow to Spurs fans, but what makes this injury all the more devastating is its effect on the NBA Playoffs as a whole - with the Cavs putting a historic beatdown on the overmatched Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Leonard injury seems to have derailed what probably would have become an all-time classic Western Conference Finals between two of the best teams of the modern era. Instead it’s a walkover for the Warriors as the Leonard-less Spurs just don’t have the firepower or the perimeter defense to stay with the Warriors for 48 minutes. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What should have been a long, thrilling series was turned, with one awkward landing on one giant-sized sneaker, into a dull, predictable probable sweep. All Spurs fans - and fans of any NBA team other than the Warriors and Cavs - can do is wish Kawhi the best in his recovery and hope he can return at full strength next year. If not we could easily be looking at a fourth straight installment of Warriors/Cavs in the NBA Finals. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1,, Plaxico Burress 2008</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What could possibly be worse than your MVP candidate going down for the count while you’re blowing out the championship favorites on their own floor in Game 1 of the conference finals? What about having your title defense derailed by your star receiver blowing a hole in his own leg while illegally carrying a pistol in a crowded New York nightclub?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s right, it’s somewhat forgotten now, but the 2008 Giants were TEARING up the league after their amazing run to defeat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer and Steve Smith were open on seemingly every play as the Giants pasted opponents en route to a 10-1 record. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, a few days before a game with their division rival Washington Redskins, Plaxico Burress was hospitalized after accidentally firing a loaded handgun while it was inside his pants in a New York nightclub. The bullet grazed Burress’ leg, injuring him, but the physical effects of the injury turned out to be the least of the Giants’ worries.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Burress, licensed to carry a concealed weapon in Florida, was not licensed to possess a handgun at all in New York, making his discharging of a firearm inside a club in midtown Manhattan into much more than a painful embarrassment - it was a felony. Instead of leading the Giants to another Super Bowl, Burress would spend the next two years unsuccessfully fighting felony gun charges, eventually agreeing to a plea deal that saw him serve 20 months in prison. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such was the bad blood between Burress and the Giants - who fell apart down the stretch without their best receiver, losing in the first round of the playoffs - that Burress had to sue the Giants in order to collect a portion of the bonus he had earned for signing his contract with the team prior to the season. Burress did eventually collect, but his days on the Giants payroll were over. After his release from New York state prison, he would attempt a comeback with the crosstown Jets, but he would never again make a significant impact for an NFL team. He was out of the league by the end of 2013.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Giants, for their part, did go on to win a title without Burress, but Burress’ extraordinarily boneheaded self-inflicted career-ending injury must go down as the most depressing sports injury of the modern era. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-47689819761315190812017-04-21T06:40:00.000-07:002017-04-21T06:40:10.288-07:00Lebron, Cavs Break 70 Year-Old Comeback Record<a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201704200IND.html" target="_blank">Well, that was interesting. </a>Last night the Cavaliers certainly flipped <i>a </i>switch. Whether it was <i>the</i> switch or not remains to be seen. But before we get to the game itself, let's cover a couple things I was wrong about (and at least one I was right about) yesterday.<br />
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First and foremost, JR Smith wound up overcoming his hamstring injury and starting for the Cavs, which is a good thing because Iman Shumpert was pretty much awful in the thirteen minutes he did play. Shump had a role in the Cavs second-half strangling of the Pacers, but it was a small one, and he committed 4 fouls in 13 minutes which is, well, that's something that you expect from an uncoordinated 7-footer who just came back from a foot injury or something, not the sort of thing a "wing stopper" ought to be doing. So, sorry JR for doubting you, the team is not better when you are hurt, I am quite chagrined to have said that. For penance I will not wear a shirt today,<br />
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Second, I think it will be some time before I next allege that LBJ, Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson are "an excellent rebounding frontcourt." Love particularly is supposed to be an elite rebounder but he just isn't doing anything to deserve that reputation right now. He's slow to box out, seems to be mistiming his jumps, and just generally seems to lack the nastiness that is required to be an elite rebounder in the NBA. TT is awesome, and James is elite at basically everything when matched up against a 3 (he struggles to rebound against much taller men but that's pretty much how basketball works), but Love is trash at the moment. Not sure what's going on.<br />
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Then the one thing I got right; the Cavs finally benched Richard Jefferson (he played only three minutes and did nothing) and hopefully that is a sign of things to come. Shump's got to get it together though or we'll probably see RJeff back in the lineup as at least he isn't committing 46 fouls per game or whatever Shump is averaging right now.<br />
<br />
So, what happened exactly? Well, in the first half the Cavs were worse than ever on defense. They really looked lost and got embarrassed on several plays where the ball would swing to a guy who nobody was even pretending to guard. Some of those were three-point looks for Lance Stephenson, who is a bad three point shooter, so maybe you can live with those, but even a bad three-point shooter is going to make a useful percentage of shots when he's completely wide open with no one guarding him at all. Even I can make those shots from time to time and I'm one of the worst shooters who has ever laced up a basketball shoe. <br />
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So the Cavs gave up 74 points in the first half (that's bad!) and looked to be headed to a lopsided Game 3 loss and a couple nights of soul-searching before they came out in the second half and just absolutely demolished the Pacers with a strangling defense that was even better than the score would indicate (they gave up only 40 points in the second half) because the Pacers caught some lucky bounces that turned into offensive rebounds and other extra possessions. <br />
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What changed? Unfortunately I don't yet have the complete video of the game to review so I can't really say. One thing that happened in the fourth quarter is that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love didn't play, but they played almost the entire third quarter when the D was even better than the fourth so, who the hell knows? The narrative about the Cavs is that they only play well when they feel desperate, and while I am always wary of such narratives (usually these things are the result of statistical variability and not these psychological factors as we are so fond of assuming) I must admit the Cavs looked like a completely different team after halftime. <br />
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Maybe Lebron was right and they were just a half away from "flipping the switch" and finally playing some defense.<br />
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One thing that hasn't changed is that the Cavs crater when Lebron sits down. He's only sat for 11 minutes in this entire series so this number has a lot of noise in it, but in those 11 minutes the Pacers have scored at a rate of 152 points per 100 possessions, which is a number so outrageous that it's impossible to even contextualize. It is indistinguishable from not playing defense at all. It's All-Star Game level defense. <br />
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The only thing that's saved the Cavs is that they've actually scored at a pretty nice clip in those 11 minutes, so Jordan help them if the scrubs start missing shots.<br />
<br />
The big looming issue for the Cavs, besides why Kevin Love doesn't seem to be able to rebound at his normal elite level, is what is going on with Kyrie Irving's shot. As we discussed yesterday, Irving is a bad defender most of the time and while he's a decent passer for a point guard and has great finishing ability around the rim, he's really not an NBA starter-quality player without his deadly three-point shooting. In the past two finals runs he's averaged a little over 44% shooting from deep which is a high enough number that he bends the defense and commands huge respect from opposing coaches when they are picking matchups, deciding swtiches, etc. <br />
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Right now in this series Kyrie is averaging 24% shooting from three, which is so far below a useful level that Irving, the Cavs' second scoring option, has actually recorded a negative Value Over Replacement Player in his first three games against the Pacers. That means that replacing Kyrie with a random warm body off the trash heap would have helped the Cavs in this series.<br />
<br />
Quite simply. the Cavs cannot win the title unless Kyrie is playing at an elite level, and right now he is playing at a sub-replacement level. The Pacers aren't good enough to take advantage of that, but the Bucks (currently up 2-1 in their series with Toronto) certainly are, and it's possible to imagine Irving having trouble getting minutes in that series since he might be too small to guard any Buck except Dellevadova. <br />
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Three point shooting is notoriously high-variance, but 6-for-25 is a pretty severe slump. Look for Kyrie to get it going in Game 4 or for questions to start surfacing about whether Tyronne Lue might need to get creative with his Round 2 lineups to give the Cavs the best chance to advance. <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-58533146647337511712017-04-20T08:43:00.002-07:002017-04-20T11:35:07.670-07:00Cavs Close, Says Lebron; Flip That, Says I<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we’re two games into the playoffs, and Lebron says the Cavs are close to “flipping the switch.” Maybe he’s right, and we should know better by now than to doubt the King. but so far the Cavs seem very much like the flawed defending champion they’ve been all year. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s get one thing out of the way first - JR Smith getting hurt is unequivocally good for the Cavs’ short-term prospects in these playoffs. I’m a lifetime Gold Club member of TeamSwish but facts are facts: JR has been TERRIBLE for the Cavs this season. I mean he is KILLING them. In 41 regular season games this year JR posted a GameScore over 10 (10 is the theoretical average for a starter) exactly nine times. The Cavs record in those games? 9-0. Meanwhile he posted a GameScore under 2 in fourteen games, and the Cavs are 4-10 in those games. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What does it mean to have a Game Score under 2? It’s not good; I can tell you that. It certainly isn’t something a starter for a championship contender should be doing more than a third of the time he steps on the floor. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem is that the Cavs probably need a healthy, engaged JR Smith to have a shot against the Warriors in the finals - he’s integral to their Curry defense strategy, which is going to be all the more important this season due to the presence of Kevin Durant, which takes away the option of slotting Lebron onto Curry in most sets. The Cavs probably don’t have anybody else who can guard Durant, so Lebron is going to have to do it most of the time. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But for now, yes, without question, the Cavs are better with Iman Shumpert starting in place of JR Smith. Shump is a “mistake player” who commits a lot of costly errors, but so is Smith, and Shump has actually been a slightly better shooter than JR this season. Shump’s defense has slipped over the past few seasons but he is still regarded as a decent backcourt stopper who can slide up and guard wings (which JR really can’t do.) </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, on to the rest of the team. First things first - the idea at the end of the regular season was that the Cavs and Tyronne Lue had some sort of secret plan to fix the defense. It looks like that plan is still under wraps because YE GODS the defense against the Pacers - one of the weakest, least complicated offenses in the 2017 NBA playoffs - has been atrocious. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 2017 Cavs allowed opponents to score about 110 points per possession. That’s bad! But they’ve been worse in the first two games against Indiana, surrendering over 118 points per 100 possessions. That number extended over an entire season would be substantially worse than the worst NBA defense. In fact the difference between the worst NBA defense what the Cavs have done in two games defensively against the Pacers (in Cleveland, let’s not forget) is about the same as the difference between the worst NBA defense (the Lakers, BTW) and the tenth-best defense (the Thunder.)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of this is some hot shooting from Indiana - they likely won’t shoot 43% from deep or 50% from the floor in this series, and Paul George certainly won’t continue his absurd 56% mark from beyond the arc (much of that on difficult, contested pull-up jumpers.) But just watch the games and you’ll see an absurd number of missed assignments, miscommunications on switches, sloppy rebounding and general confusion that is not going to fix itself just because the playoffs have started. It’s not an illusion. The Cavs are a bad defensive team, and historically speaking bad defensive teams just don’t win titles and certainly don’t successfully defend them.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But why are the Cavs so bad? On paper they shouldn’t be. Lebron is an excellent defender even if his effort and concentration do slip at times, and he can guard all five positions so you can slot him anywhere you need to in order to get the best matchups for your other guys. Kevin Love is much-maligned as a defender but he really isn’t terrible - he is big enough to guard most big guys and while he’s not your first choice to switch onto a shifty wing or backcourt player he CAN succeed in those positions, and together with Tristan Thompson and Lebron he makes up what should be an excellent rebounding frontcourt. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what’s left? Oh yeah - the backcourt. You’d expect this would be where the problem lies, and you’d be right. Kyrie Irving, who rehabilitated his reputation last season with some good defense in the Finals, and JR Smith, who has become thought of in the last couple seasons as a very good perimeter defender despite a prior reputation as lazy and uninterested, have appeared to revert back to their old bad habits. Basically any screen that involves one of these two defenders is an instant crisis for the Cavs defense, and the Pacers have treated Kyrie with utter contempt, swinging the ball to his man any time he’s matched up against someone with a shred of offensive ability. He contests horribly, doesn’t recover well, has bad timing on his help, it’s just a mess. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Behind those two guys they have Shumpert and then other atrocious perimeter defenders like Deron Williams, Kyle Korver and Richard Jefferson (who has been awful all year and hopefully will see zero significant finals minutes, but who the Cavs are relying on for big minutes at the moment.) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shumpert should help a little now that he’s been plucked from the end of the bench to the starting lineup, but he won’t help much and here’s why: bad defenses are as bad as the worst mismatch on the floor, and JR, as bad as he was, usually wasn’t the worst mismatch. That’s Kyrie, or Deron Williams when he’s on the floor, or Richard Jefferson when he’s on the floor. Korver should probably go on this list too, but he is SO incapable of guarding people that you don’t really see him that often when there isn’t some terrible Pacer for him to hide on. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So in the end a team full of bad defenders is going to be bad defensively. The Cavs just don’t have enough good defenders to pull together a good defense. They don’t have to stay THIS bad - far-worse-than-the-worst-NBA-defense-bad - but they aren’t going to suddenly become good. This is who they are. It’s depressing, but it’s reality. The Cavs need to outscore people. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, that said, a lineup of Kyrie, Shump, Lebron, Love and Tristan Thompson really ought to be able to stop people. It’s not a murderers row of fearsome defenders for sure, but it isn’t bad. Eventually it seems like this lineup is going to emerge as the only viable go-to lineup for defending opposing starters, and the rest of the rotations will adjust to reflect that. But the quesiton still looms as to what the Cavs are going to do when Lebron is off the floor. Right now they are getting absolutely crushed when Lebron sits (usually for Richard Jefferson who in case you’re just joining us is terrible), in fact his on/off splits are troublingly similar to what we saw from the 2009 Cavs. That was back when Lebron was still being blamed for the Cavs woes since he “didn’t know how to win” but 2009’s playoff run for the Cavs in hindsight was Lebron attempting the absolutely Sisyphean task of building a lead over the course of 20 minutes and then seeing that lead instantly barfed up in four minutes every time he tried to sit down and have a drink of water. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That same thing looks to be happening in these playoffs and it’s ominous. As good as Lebron is, he can’t do it all. The playoffs are too long and too hard and at some point he runs up against the limits of physics and biology. The Bucks especially are well-positioned to take advantage of a tired Lebron and force the Cavs to the wall, should they get past the Raps and into a second-round matchup with Cleveland. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Cavs should be starting a competent defensive unit tonight against Indiana, and if Kyrie plays well it could be a downright good one. They need to establish that unit, get everything they can out of it, and use it to build some semblance of a decent defense going forward. They also really need to sweep this series to get Lebron some rest, because he’s not going to get much while the games are going on, that much is clear. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-61129565783502950712016-12-21T08:48:00.002-08:002016-12-21T09:07:30.411-08:00State of the Association pt. 1Since the election (and since the Browns are bad even for the Browns) I've been mostly pretending that the only thing that exists in the universe is NBA basketball. <br />
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Given that fact, and the fact that I haven't been writing much, here's a post (or, fingers crossed, a series of posts!) about the state of the NBA, with a special focus on my beloved Lebrons, erm, I mean, Cavaliers. I thought about starting a new blog called The High Post based on my love of the Lowe Post basketball podcast with the great Zach Lowe, but The High Post is already taken as a blogger blog, and also I have enough fallow blogs. So here goes.</div>
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True NBA fans know that the "real" NBA regular season runs from Christmas day to the middle of March, a span of about twelve weeks. Everything before that is too early to worry much about, and everything after that (late March and early April - the playoffs start on Tax Day) is garbage time since a big portion of the league isn't really trying to win games but rather to jockey for lottery position. </div>
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Thus it's a good time right now to take a look around the league and see where things stand at the end of what we might call the post-preseason, aka the first third of the regular season when teams are still trying to figure out what they might have. </div>
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Part One: The Hopeless Garbage</div>
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30. Philadelphia 76ers</div>
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Fans of the Sixers will probably chafe at this ranking, and indeed it gives me no pleasure. The Sixers are fun to watch, and they have a lot of interesting pieces. But oh my goodness they are terrible. Their offense is basically what happens when you pick up a new basketball video game for the first time and you can't really figure out how it works so you're constantly making the wrong pass, jacking up bricky fadeaways with 15 seconds left on the shot clock, and dribbling out of bounds for no reason.</div>
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The Sixers are super-young, and they will get better as the season goes along and Joel Embiid works his way into a full-time job. As many jokes as we've made about Embiid during his two-year odyssey to return from foot problems, he appears to be as good as advertised. He's far and away their best player and if he stays healthy he's a lock to become an All-NBA fixture. </div>
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That said, this team is a major mess, and it's hard to imagine them winning a playoff series with anything like this configuration. The Process continues.</div>
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29. The Phoenix Suns</div>
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Oh, the poor Suns. Once the Moneyball A's of the NBA, the Suns pioneered many of the modern pace-and-space concepts that are now the accepted model for constructing an offense. Then all those guys retired and left this... thing. I can't say a ton about them because I don't watch them. Neither should you. Their niche is that they are a smallish team that doesn't shoot the ball very well and doesn't play very good defense. That's not a niche you want to be in. </div>
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Like the Sixers, they have a lot of young players who will get better. Unlike the Sixers, they don't have anyone who particularly seems like a transcendent talent. No franchise has a bleaker outlook at the moment, except maybe...</div>
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28. Brooklyn Nets</div>
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Suns fans may be howling "how can you put us lower than the Nets?" Honestly, you're probably right, and the fact that is the best thing that can be said about your team is a sign of something very, very sad. The Nets STINK. Worse, they're not even young. Their situation is utterly hopeless, stretching endlessly out into the future. They have been terrible for years after trading away their draft picks, meaning they haven't even gotten any young talent in exchange for their awfulness.</div>
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The only reason I can't put them lower than the Suns is that the East is so bad that it's possible the Nets could somehow stumble into a playoff appearance in the next couple of years and maybe even give some 3-seed trouble. That will not happen to the Suns. </div>
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Remember those pace-and-space concepts we were talking about? Yeah. The Nets two best players are Brook Lopez, who can't run, and Trevor Booker, who can't shoot. They're also giving major minutes to Anthony Bennett, who can't do anything. Do not watch this team. That is all.</div>
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27. LA Lakers</div>
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Another storied franchise that's fallen on some hard times, these Lakers, like the Sixers, are actually quite watchable. They have a few interesting characters (Metta World Peace! Jose Calderon!), a quirky, talented bench (Larry Nance, Jr!) and some veteran leadership (Timofey Mozgov! Luol Deng!) What they don't have is anyone who can credibly guard another human who is more than five feet from the basket. </div>
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The Lakers are the bizarro version of the Warriors - they give up points so effortlessly it almost seems like a different sport. Opposing dribblers get into the lane with such ease that someone watching their first basketball game might come away with the impression that it is illegal for the defender to be in the offensive player's way. Their attempts to defend pick-and-roll have the appearance of a team that wasn't told before the game that the pick-and-roll is a thing. </div>
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Brandon Ingram should improve, and that will make a big difference because right now he is absolutely KILLING the Lakers with a brutal 35/27/71 shooting split, and D'Angelo Russell seems to be developing into a nice shoot-first, pass-second, defend-last point guard in the Kyrie Irving mold, so there's some reason for optimism here. But it has to be a concern that the Lakers are trying to develop young guards on a team where absolutely no one plays defense. That kind of thing tends to be contagious. </div>
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26. Orlando Magic</div>
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By far the most talented of the truly hopeless teams, the Orlando Magic might be the most oddly-constructed team in the NBA. It's as if someone started collecting interesting puzzle pieces that had been cast off from other teams... and then just kept collecting those interesting puzzle pieces until the roster had 15 guys on it. Actually that is basically how this team was constructed, and it shows. </div>
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The Magic's best player is Serge Ibaka (and it's not close), who is a major asset because he can shoot and he can play the 4 or the 5 for short stretches (or longer stretches if the opponent goes small a la the GSW Death Lineup.) Also on the roster are Nikola Vucevic and Bismack Biyombo, neither of whom can shoot threes (Biyombio can't shoot at all; Vucevic has a nice midrange game) or play any position except center, thus taking away some of Ibaka's value. I cannot explain this. I doubt Orlando can either. </div>
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When teams let Orlando ground-and-pound with their bigs on the floor, they can beat you up and wear you down. But it's not too difficult to put Biyombo in situations he can't handle (and that's being kind) at which point this becomes a team with no ideas beyond Elfrid Payton's sometimes-nifty drive-and-kick game. The problem there is that other than Ibaka and Evan Fournier, the Magic just don't have the shooters to scare anyone away from just clogging the paint and forcing Payton to jack long jumpers that he has no prayer of making. </div>
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There are enough assets here that you get the feeling the Magic could become something, but right now they're locked into this Island of Misfit Toys act and it's pretty excruciating. </div>
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Next: The Hopefully Mediocre</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-56529830569500212892015-06-21T21:10:00.000-07:002015-06-22T03:44:02.876-07:00Inside Out<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some movies are like memories - frozen moments in time that define a character and the fictional world around her. Some are like ideas - lines of reasoning aimed at making sense of the world as it presents itself. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fe50b5a6-1975-3bf2-eff9-7411c8c75326" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inside Out is both and neither at the same time. It is a movie about how ideas, the tools we use to try to navigate the trials of life, affect our memories, and how our view of our memories affects our ideas about how to live.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Few children truly live the life of Riley, but most think they do until age ten or so, at least according to our cultural mythology. At the beginning of Inside Out we meet our Riley at the age of eleven and she’s just endured a setback that threatens to overwhelm her sunny disposition with sadness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it stopped there it would be a standard schmaltzy children’s movie (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Don’t say the D-Word!” - managing editor Fake Bill Simmons</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) but Pixar went above and beyond in this one, sacrificing some narrative zip for some real thematic breadth. The problem with Riley’s sadness isn’t how it makes her </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feel</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it’s how it affects what she might </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For the parents in the audience at least, the movie takes on its momentum at the instant we realize that Riley’s choices in response to her deteriorating emotional situation might really be limiting what she might be able to accomplish in her life. We are in danger of losing her.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amidst all this is a serious meditation on the finality of forgetting - the knowledge that when a little girl forgets a memory that bit of time is irreversibly discarded, used up. And we can rewind the movie as many times as we want but that yawning pit of forgetting is always there, disintegrating everything into dust as black as ink. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet rarely has a movie ever seemed so effortlessly positive about the state of the human condition. Everyone in this movie suffers, and none of it is meaningless. The terrifying trials the animated children of our childhood memories endured are the blueprints for houses we live in today, where we stuff coca-cola and twizzlers into our backpacks before taking our children to movies to learn important lessons about honesty. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pixar has put the entire universe into the mind of a depressed preteen girl and made the universe seem all the more limitless for it. A best picture nomination seems assured. Bravo.</span></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-14077448497948635452014-06-05T17:45:00.003-07:002014-06-05T17:55:24.864-07:00 My Quickie Take on the Series Right Before It Starts Because I’m a Procrastinator and Didn’t Do It Before Now<div>
Why The Heat Will Win</div>
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I’m rooting for the Heat so this could very well be motivated reasoning. But I think of boxing history, where we find many examples of an aging champion having a tough fight with a young upstart and losing a contest that could have gone either way. </div>
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In this situation the two fighters almost always rematch within the year, and the fighter who won the first fight almost always wins the second fight easier than he won the first fight. The reason is fairly straightforward - the aging ex-champion is older, slower, and creakier, while the young champion is about the same. </div>
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He may even be better. Lebron is having his best, most efficient playoffs since he tried to take on the entire NBA by himself with the 2008-09 Cavs. The Spurs gave Lebron some trouble early in the series in 2013, but he may be ready for them this time. His shot selection and relentlessness have been the Scylla and Charybdis that have sunk some excellent Eastern Conference defenses, while Tim Duncan’s minutes and production have been dwindling for years.</div>
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What’s Wrong With This Reasoning</div>
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Basketball isn’t boxing. They let you bring other guys on the court with you to help you win, and the Spurs are better than last year with the addition of Marco Belinelli and the continued development of Kawhi Leonard. It must have pained other Western GM’s to see Belinelli go to the Spurs - he’s the perfect bench shooter for them and he makes the series just a little bit more fascinating. </div>
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The Spurs’ role players are mostly young guys, and the Heat’s supporting cast is practically an AARP meeting. Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, and Shane Battier may all be too old to be expected to reasonably defend any position in the Spurs aggressive offensive scheme for more than a few minutes. </div>
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If that happens, the Heat don’t really have a plan B. James Jones can’t guard anyone either, so their other outside shooting option is Norris Cole, who creates super-small lineups when he’s on the floor with Chalmers, lineups the talented San Antonio frontcourt will be able to exploit. </div>
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Why the Heat will Win Anyway</div>
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Lebron James is very good at basketball. Kawhi Leonard had a decent time defending Lebron last year, but in the end James was too good shooting the jumpshot and lit him up in Game 7. There’s no real reason to think Leonard has James’ number. He has to prove it all over again, and it may be too much to ask a third-year player to be Lebron James’ primary defender in two straight Finals.</div>
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The even more important difference that’s easy to forget is that Dwyane Wade was a shell of himself last season. There’s a reason Spo created the “maintenance program” that saw Wade play just over half of the regular season. Wade wasn’t awful in last year’s playoffs, but he wasn’t Dwyane Wade - he was a solid two-guard, nothing more, nothing less. </div>
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This season he’s back and he’s killing teams with his ability to get EASY midrange jumpshots (and the death of the EASY midrange jumper is greatly exaggerated) and that little hook he uses as he dribbles across the lane out of the post. Not to mention the fact that Wade and James are still the most terrifying fast break force since Jordan and Pippen. </div>
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Chris Bosh, as always, will play a big role without necessarily needing to put up big numbers. The Spurs bench is clearly better, so the Heat stars will have to shine. But they will, and they’ll do it the same way they did it against Indiana - stealing one in San Antonio, winning both in Miami, losing game 5, and then closing it out in six. Game Six won’t be a blowout, though, and it’ll end on a controversial call. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-20616725841608095512014-02-24T06:39:00.002-08:002014-02-24T06:42:22.057-08:00Macroeconomics #1Originally I was trying to keep this blog very focused. But it turns out a lot of days I just don't have it in me to write about personal, stay-at-home-dad type stuff, and so I don't write, and it breaks the chain. So I'm going to write about whatever, and figure people can ignore the stuff that isn't their thing.<br />
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Which brings us to macroeconomics, and to this excellent (though long) <a href="http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/new-york-times-reporters-wont-read-krugman-austerity-will-read-brooks.html" target="_blank">post by William Black</a> on the topic of news coverage of austerity budgeting. I don't expect most people to read the whole article, though if you do bravo, but here's the key bit I want to highlight:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23.799999237060547px;">"It is not acceptable journalism to ignore the dominant economic view, 75 years of supporting events, and the empirical studies by austerians (the IMF) finding that fiscal changes have more powerful effects on the economy consistent with the dominant theory. It is not acceptable journalism to ignore unemployment and inequality and the role of austerity in increasing both. "</span></blockquote>
Allow me to clarify and expand on this point briefly. What Black is driving at is this - there is a dominant view in macroeconomics, which has held for over 75 years, that governments should not "tighten their belts" during periods of recession but should in fact spend more money and collect less money in taxes. <br />
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This view strikes non-macroeconomists as very odd and counterintuitive because people's experience with money suggests that when "times are tough" you have to cut back or "generate more revenue" as the common Newspeak phrase goes. Also, economics is somewhat like climate science in that while there is broad agreement on many points, there exists a small rump of mostly non-scientists who make a living trying to muddy the waters and make it appear as if there is controversy even on these points of broad agreement. <br />
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So it falls to humble bloggers to say this: despite what you hear from policymakers, think tanks, your Facebook friends, etc., <b>there is a broad consensus in macroeconomics that austerity budgeting in a recession does not do any good and in fact makes the problem worse.</b> You can argue with that conclusion but if you are a reporter or commentator you should begin with the acknowledgement that this is, in fact, the overwhelming view of mainstream economics. This is the meaning of the quip "We are all Keynesians now" that is attributed to Milton Friedman in the 1960's. <br />
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It's beyond the scope of this post to go into the academic research, which is voluminious, into the phenomenon of austerity budgeting. What we can do is address one extremely important misconception about federal (national) budgets. <br />
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FEDERAL DEBT IS NOT OWED TO ANYONE AND DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PAID BACK. <br />
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This is extremely important. Many lay people have a misconception that deficits mean that the government has borrowed money from someone - a bank, the Chinese, etc. - and that this money will have to be repaid by future taxpayers. In a system like ours (Europe is a bit different which is why their system is in so much of a worse pickle than we are), the federal government does not borrow money in order to spend. Bond issue is a completely separate consideration that has nothing to do with financing government operations. The federal government simply spends money into existence. <br />
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The situation of a federal government is exactly like the situation if you had a system of scrip in your home for motivating your children to do chores. You issue your child a piece of scrip each time he or she cleans up a room or takes the trash out, and the scrip is redeemable later for some privilege. <br />
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Since it's impossible to run out of scrip (because you issue it) and since you control the privileges your kids have, there is no level of debt that is "unsustainable" in the sense of not being able to "pay it back." You didn't borrow the scrip from anyone, and since from your perspective it's merely a notional extension of your police power over your kids, there's nothing to run out of in any case. <br />
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The federal government is in the same situation. From the USG's perspective, a dollar is simply a voucher against future (or present) tax liability. Issuing too many such vouchers can erode their usefulness ("inflation") but there is no sense in which issuing too many such vouchers can lead to a "debt crisis" in the traditional sense, if a nation controls its own currency. <br />
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This is widely known and understood by macroeconomists, but unfortunately is known and understood by almost no one else, including policymakers. As long as that sad state of affairs persists, we will persist in these terrible, useless policies that are causing untold suffering and waste for no reason at all.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-26066980680033578572014-02-11T06:05:00.000-08:002014-02-11T06:05:13.751-08:00Why I Believe Dylan<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">As everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock already knows, Dylan Farrow recently published a letter in the New York Times describing her alleged sexual assault over 20 years ago at the hands of her adoptive father, Woody Allen. Immediately the world divided into two main camps - those who believe Dylan and those who think that she is suffering from a memory implanted by her mother, Mia Farrow. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have nothing to contribute to the facts of the case as I know none of the people involved and don’t have access to any information that is not already public knowledge. Those wanting to familiarize themselves with the facts should read what is available for themselves. What I do have, I think, is an interesting background and perspective on the case. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Twenty years ago I was a high school student in Richmond, VA. The “Internet” was something that almost no one knew about, and even fewer had ever used beyond connecting to one of the “portal” sites like AOL or Prodigy that offered a severely dumbed-down, barely functional platform for accessing what would later become the most powerful research tool the world has ever known. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was one of those lucky few, thanks to my friend Tim who gave me the credentials to his Virginia Commonwealth University dialup account. This account provided the same access most people take for granted today, albeit at a very slow speed (I think I was still using a 2400 baud modem, which is less than 1/20th the speed of modern dialup and about 1/5000th the speed of the connection I’m using now.) </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of what we now think of as “The Internet” - that is, the millions of HTML pages that form the World Wide Web - did not yet exist. There were web pages but they were mostly sad, silly little things that were powered by potatoes (OK just one was powered by a potato: </span><a href="http://totl.net/Spud/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://totl.net/Spud/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The real action was on Usenet, a decentralized system for discussion of news from around the world. Like just about everyone, I originally used Usenet for downloading porn, but eventually I discovered that you could read actual news on Usenet, and that there was some pretty interesting stuff. It was the beginning of news aggregation and comment threads - you could go into a newsgroup and find posts on a given subject discussing news from almost anywhere.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One topic area that was hot at the time was something called Satanic Ritual Abuse. This was a specific form of child abuse that was allegedly occurring in pockets of depravity all over the country. What was interesting, though, was that evidence was mounting that the abuse wasn’t actually occurring. It was a psychosocial phenomenon - people would become convinced that some preschool teacher or neighborhood weirdo was a crazed Satanist, and experts would be called in to interrogate children until one poor kid coughed up a story - the more implausible and insane the better. Then the other children would be presented with the “facts” gleaned from the first child’s story until everyone agreed that the accused had committed hundreds of shocking acts of child sex abuse.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Something about this phenomenon fascinated me, and I became an activist of sorts, lecturing people endlessly about how our standards of investigation of child abuse had to change, and how people were being railroaded and destroyed by accusations that were not the least bit credible when looked at objectively and dispassionately. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I devoured anything I could find on the subject, and after HBO aired “Indictment,” its excellent dramatization of the McMartin preschool trial, there was a lot to devour. I talked the ear off anyone who would listen, but I found that many people were extremely hostile to the idea that these accusations were witch hunts. It wasn’t so much that people didn’t believe what I was saying as that they were angry that I would say it. People asked - frequently - why it was so important to me to undermine the accusations of children who said they were molested. I was sometimes asked pointedly why I didn’t just believe the children - a difficult, albeit purely emotional, challenge to meet.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most difficult objection that I heard to my efforts to raise awareness about SRA witch hunts was that by spreading these stories of false child abuse accusations, I would undermine the credibility of accusers generally, leading to real child abusers getting away with their crimes. That contention struck me as not only beside the point (the truth is the truth, no matter what its implications) but preposterous - what I’d seen from these cases was that our society’s eagerness to believe absolutely ANY accusation of molestation, no matter how outrageous or obviously impossible, meant that there would certainly never be a time when an accused molester would gain an unfair benefit from public understanding of false memories and phony accusations. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fast-forward twenty years and imagine my surprise when, upon Dylan Farrow’s renewal of her 20 year-old claims of garden-variety sexual molestation by her adoptive father, suddenly everyone on the Internet was an expert in the science of false memory. Endless lectures poured forth in blog comment threads, on Facebook, and yes, on Usenet. “Don’t you realize,” these people told us, “how easy it is to implant false memories of abuse? Don’t you know these chlid molestation cases are so often witch hunts? People get falsely accused of molesting children </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ALL THE TIME.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” And then, the bitter irony as all the SRA cases that everyone had once tried with all their might not to accept were witch hunts - McMartin, Kern County, Cleveland, Nottingham, and on and on - now used as evidence that Dylan Farrow must be working from a false memory implanted by Mia Farrow, her witch of a mother. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Far be it from me to say that people aren’t entitled to their own opinion about these things. Farther still from me to say that people shouldn’t hold a certain view because of its implications. But if we disbelieve Dylan Farrow because of Satanic Ritual Abuse and repressed memory hoaxes, the fact is we must disbelieve almost ALL claims of sexual molestation. That’s because Dylan Farrow’s account of her experiences with Woody Allen bear absolutely no resemblance to classic SRA or repressed memory cases. Though I am not an expert in memory or in child sexual abuse, I have been studying these cases as an amateur for 20 years, and they have a few things in common.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Kern County case is instructive - not least because it involves, like the Woody Allen case, a period of over two decades. In Kern County, California in the early 1980’s, thirty-six people were convicted of participating in a child molestation ring involving over 60 children. Most of those convicted in these cases were exonerated by the appeals process, but one who was not was John Stoll, a carpenter who wound up spending 20 years behind bars. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stoll was only released in 2004, when four of the six alleged victims who had testified at his trial in 1984 returned to the witness stand to confess that they had lied under pressure from adults, and that the abuse they had reported had never occurred. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other two accusers - one of whom is Stoll’s son - have not recanted, but they make a claim common to many accusers who maintain that their now-debunked accusations are true. They claim that they do not remember details of the abuse. These are the two common types of false accusations in these cases - those who later admit they were lying under pressure, and those who cannot remember the abuse itself. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So isn’t this evidence that, indeed, Dylan Farrow may be in the same situation, of having been convinced by an adult (her mother) that her father molested her, even though it never happened? On the contrary. While we know that moral panic can often produce accusations of child abuse where none occurred, it is perverse to argue that because of Kern County we should not believe individual children who accuse individual adults of molestation. There is no connection between an SRA witch hunt and the Woody Allen case. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course when it comes to the human mind anything is possible. But if Dylan Farrow is suffering from a confabulation - a false memory - it is an extremely nonstandard confabulation because it involves specific details of a traumatic event that has remained stable over a long period of time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People do lie, and Dylan Farrow could be lying. The Leadership Council, an independent British group that promotes the application of reliable science to human welfare, estimates that a very small percentage, perhaps 1-2%, of child sexual abuse allegations are false (</span><a href="http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/csa-acc.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/csa-acc.html</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dylan Farrow could be part of that small percentage - we unfortunately have no way of knowing, and this case will probably never be resolved. But the popular, comforting view - that what Dylan Farrow reports having experienced could be a false memory, and that in fact this is all a big misunderstanding that can be laid at the doorstep of our favorite villain, the crazy, jilted mother - is very weak sauce. Chances are, someone in this case, either the accuser or the accused, is lying. People can and will make their own judgments about which one it is. But we should abandon the comforting illusion that this is a case of a witch hunt or a false memory. It’s not. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-14437532614992099542013-12-19T11:30:00.001-08:002013-12-19T11:30:18.899-08:00Love #1If this is the sort of thing you enjoy, then enjoy this. If it's not the sort of thing you enjoy, well, I guess I feel a bit sorry for you. But I'm rooting for you nonetheless.<br />
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She runs guns. There she go!<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-46420717609890485142013-12-18T07:09:00.001-08:002013-12-18T07:09:40.983-08:00Gundlach #1<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hrTfI3f_WLM" width="459"></iframe><br />
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There's a lot of debate out there about group exercise classes. I have no interest in participating in that debate, so I'll use my favorite dodge I got from a good friend on the Left Coast - I think group exercise classes are a wonderful thing and their critics are almost entirely correct.<br />
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I did a group exercise class for a few months when I was having trouble getting motivated to stay in shape. The big advantage of the group exercise class - SEAL Team, if it matters - for me was that it got me in MUCH better shape than I realized I could be in. It opened up a lot of possibilities for me because when I'm in excellent shape (as opposed to just "decent shape") I feel really 100% mentally healthy most of the time, which is a new experience for me.<br />
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One thing that rubs me the wrong way about a lot of fitness coaches is their relentless positivity. I'm not into the whole positivity thing. When someone is constantly trying to reframe stuff that sucks into something wonderful, or to redirect my attention away from what sucks, I find it extremely annoying. I want to kick them in the head and say "There! Enjoy that wonderful learning experience, did you? Why not focus on the positive? Think of all the people who DIDN'T just kick you in the head!"<br />
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As it happens my instructor for many of the fitness classes I went to was a big Australian named (I think) Gundlach, and I loved Gundlach and learned a great deal from him, including how to do positivity the right way. He wasn't a chipper guy; he actually had kind of a sour affect. But he had an optimistic worldview and the combination for me was perfect.<br />
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I thought of him today because I obviously failed to remember one of his constant refrains yesterday - "Hydration is not drinking a bottle of water in the car park on the way to your workout. You're sipping on water," and here he would pause for dramatic effect, "throughout the day." This morning I was very dry during my run and I'm sure it was because I didn't sip on water enough yesterday. <br />
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At the end of my run I thought of him again, because I had a weak time that wasn't very close to a new low, which I found dispiriting. The "positive" response would be to say "The important thing is that you did it!" or something like that. But Gundlach's answer would be more like this: "The faster you get the more runs you are going to have between personal records. So when I have a bad run I think "Good! I'm one run closer to that next record." <br />
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If you wake up sore, you say "Good! I can tell I'm getting stronger." And on like that. You don't have to talk yourself out of feeling shitty or "look on the bright side" in some superficial way. Just do what you have to do to keep going and reach your goals. That's the Gundlach way. Thanks Instructor!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-77981183914949303132013-11-12T08:31:00.000-08:002013-11-12T08:31:08.216-08:00Writing #1Short post today as I'm working on finishing a short story that I'm going to try to place in a quarterly. One of my readers will recognize it - it's a fictionalized version of a leisurely evening I spent in a park in the West End of Henrico County with a close friend of mine whose name begins with "R."<br />
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I've been more productive with my fiction recently as a result of a wonderful class I've been taking from the talented, kind, insightful, brilliant Valley Haggard, who maintains her own blog at <a href="http://www.valleyhaggard.com/">http://www.valleyhaggard.com/</a>. If you're interested in writing, especially writing from your own experience, I recommend you check out her Creative Nonfiction class as it's a great sort of splash of ice water for the mind. <br />
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For me it's been especially helpful in getting to the really difficult things that I need to be honest about in order to tell my stories in an interesting way, the things that you don't want to write about because you're afraid that it will reveal something about yourself that you'd rather conceal. But I think mostly the point of writing classes is to create a structure in which you know you'll be writing once a week and doing it with other people who can give you fresh ideas and encouragement. <br />
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So check out Valley's site, and sign up for one of her classes if you can; it's a great experience and you'll get a lot out of it. <br />
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Hopefully I can finish the R story tomorrow and get back to writing more substantive posts. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-88581886537026902112013-11-07T07:57:00.000-08:002013-11-07T07:58:35.062-08:00Football #1I have a lot of readers who don't like football and who don't watch any sports on television at all other than cultural holiday-type events such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics, and from time to time they will ask me some version of the question "What is good about sports exactly?"<br />
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That's a hard question to answer because a lot of what's good about sports is pretty ephemeral. And very often when someone is asking you that questions, they are not asking you that question from a position of neutrality; they have concrete experiences in their background against which they are going to weigh your answer. Experiences like the ones that Jonathan Martin endured at the hands of Richie Incognito in the Miami Dolphins locker room. <br />
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If you're lucky enough to be unfamiliar with this story, here are the basics: a successful, wealthy player named Richie Incognito carried out a campaign of systematic bullying and abuse of a lesser player on his team named Jonathan Martin. Martin did his best to tolerate the abuse, but after Incognito organized a "practical joke" of convincing the rest of the team to refuse to sit with Martin at lunch in response to some mistake Martin had made on the field, Martin's emotional state prompted him (thank goodness) to check himself into a hospital to be treated for an undisclosed psychiatric condition. <br />
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These stories, even more than stories about NFL players with post-concussion syndrome or baseball players using steroids to gain an unfair advantage, make life very hard on those of us who love sports and think they can be a positive force in people's lives. That's doubly true because, while the Dolphins organization has condemned Incognito's treatment of Martin, many football players believe that it is appropriate and even beneficial to treat teammates in this way.<br />
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This attitude unfortunately trickles down throughout sports even to the very lowest youth levels. Parents and coaches bully and berate kids and tolerate bullying of weaker kids by stronger ones. Many of them profess to believe that this makes the kids better at sports, but it doesn't. It's just an excuse bullies use to try to avoid being called on their behavior. In fact, this type of bullying can prevent kids from learning the most important lessons sports can teach. <br />
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Last Tuesday I played goalkeeper for a soccer team that needed a win over a superior team to advance to the spring tournament in a Richmond amateur soccer league. They were much better overall but our guys outplayed them in the first half and we went into halftime up 4-2. They made some adjustments at halftime and in the second half they came storming back. <br />
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If I had played adequately, we probably would have hung on to win, but I made several mistakes and we lost 6-4. On the sideline my teammates were quietly encouraging, thanking me for my effort. We all knew I hadn't played well enough. There was no need to needle me about it. <br />
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Over the course of the next several days I had to put the performance behind me. The most important job of a goalkeeper isn't to stop goals, it's to have a poor performance and let your team down, but walk off the field with your head up and get ready for the next game. Having an important job means that if you screw up, it hurts. But it's not the end of the world. It's a lot easier to learn that lesson when the people around you are helping and supporting you instead of piling on and making it worse. <br />
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So if you point to something like this and say "this is why I wouldn't want my son/daughter playing team sports," I unfortunately don't have a rebuttal. That makes sense to me. I hope one day we can get this crap out of sports so we can all play together and have fun. <br />
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Your assignment is to find someone who's down and help them up so they can try again. <br />
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I had a reader complain that she doesn't like the assignments because she doesn't like to be told what to do, so whatever I say to do it makes her want to do the opposite. For people like that here's an auxilliary assignment - spend thirty minutes thinking of all the things you're doing to screw up your kids and stunt their growth until you become so irritated and anxious that you snap at your spouse for doing something completely innocuous. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-60669461908065754982013-11-06T10:42:00.000-08:002013-11-06T16:25:58.355-08:00Attention #1<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://recipetools.gotdns.com/mags/CC/41/GreenBayBooyah.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://recipetools.gotdns.com/mags/CC/41/GreenBayBooyah.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This week I made a stew called Green Bay Booyah which has short ribs and chicken in it. It’s really fantastic, especially the third day which is what I’m consuming (sadly) the last of now. If you have a Cook’s Illustrated online membership (or are willing to sign up for one) then you can find it here: </span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.cookscountry.com/recipes/6796-green-bay-booyah" style="text-decoration: none;">http://www.cookscountry.com/recipes/6796-green-bay-booyah</a></span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s kind of expensive for a stew recipe but it makes a ton of food. </span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your assignment today is long, so pay attention.</span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before you do whatever exercise it is you do tomorrow, go get a writing journal of some kind, preferably handwritten but electronic is fine, open it up and write today’s date at the top of a page and then below the date write “Thursday Attention Exercise.” Close the journal and put it away. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go perform your daily exercise. </span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While you are exercising, pay attention to your attention; that is, when your mind fixes on something, simply try to notice that your attention is on it. Do this for your entire exercise period. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you return home, go to the journal and make a list (as comprehensive as possible, but don’t get wound up about trying to remember everything), of all the things you paid attention to while you were exercising. Don’t edit anything out even if it’s embarrassing or weird or disturbing. Just write a list of what you paid attention to.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you are done with your list, read it aloud to yourself. At the end of your reading, try to choose the one thing you think you paid attention to the most during the exercise period.</span></span></h4>
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<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During your next writing period, write a piece about that one thing.</span></h4>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-42839764416760830322013-11-02T11:14:00.002-07:002013-11-02T11:14:51.381-07:00Birth #1There comes a point, fairly early it seems, when you're writing a stay-at-home dad blog and you realize you're going to have to begin a post with a clause like "Once when my wife and I were in birth class together" and you panic because there is no way, with apologies to all the people who wrote the clause before I did, to write that clause without sounding like a James Spader-level douche. <br />
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The first problem I guess is the idea that you're in "birth class" together. You are in a classroom together. But it's your wife who's in birth class - you're confronting your art anxiety, or your abandonment issues, or your commitment issues, or whatever douchey bullshit you decided you were going to freak out about while your wife was preparing to grow a new human brain inside of her and then bring it forth and feed it and nurture it into a human being.<br />
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The pregnancy phase is a time when you become acutely aware of your own shortcomings as a man. Since you have no persistent connection with the reality of the baby, the pregnancy presents itself as "Wow, my wife has been acting pretty strange for the last forty-so weeks, HOLY SHIT A KID!" which is not conducive to being any kind of adequate partner to someone who actually realizes on a gut level (AIW, FS) that there is a baby coming and that the two of you are going to have to take care of it until it gets into a car and drives away. And then you still have to take care of it if it decides to drive back. <br />
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Yet things happen when you're in birth class together, and sometimes you have to start stories that way. Unfortunately I don't remember what story I'm going to tell. I got off on birth. I guess I'll just bitch about laundry for a few paragraphs and then call it a day.<br />
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I realized for the first time today that despite the fact that yes, you do separate by color (and I do!), you also have to make a some sort of effort to wash clothes on a "first in, first out" basis if you are ever going to tolerate more than a one- or two-day overhang in the laundry. Otherwise older clothes jump the line and you have important garments people need regularly languishing in the bottom of some hamper without anyone knowing where they are. <br />
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My beautiful, patient wife is probably clawing her hair our over this because I'm sure she's been telling me this for 20 years, but for some reason it took me until age 37 to actually notice the way my approach sort of conditions everyone in the house to have the same dysfunctional relationship with laundry I do.<br />
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Now the question is, am I actually going to do anything about it? Hopefully so, but I'll keep you updated Dear Reader; I know you're anxious to know more salacious details about the primitive laundry habits of the suburban male.<br />
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Your assignment is to thank your wife for providing you with the glorious gift of fatherhood, preferably not in a sarcastic voice while your five year-old is cackling in your bed at 9 p.m. and trying to rub his genitals on your iPad. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-37557968821416655082013-10-30T09:44:00.001-07:002013-10-30T09:44:52.655-07:00Sick DaysRuby was out sick from school yesterday and today I'm recovering from a collision I suffered in a soccer game last night. I'll be returning to posting tomorrow. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-9664377971710576452013-10-28T09:41:00.001-07:002013-10-28T09:41:33.475-07:00Filmmaking #1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Recently two people made related requests. One person asked me if I could do a post about filmmaking. The other asked if I could finally upload the movie I did for the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project this year, because it's only been seen at the screening and many of the people who worked on it haven't gotten to see it even though it's been months since it was finished.<br />
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Fortunately, these requests kind of go together because the 2013 48 Hour experience gives me something to go on in talking about making movies.<br />
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The first thing to know about making movies is that it is terrible. You cry. You shout at people who are trying to help you. You want to crawl into a hole and die. After you finish one, you get depressed and don't want to talk to anyone for weeks. How can this be? Isn't making movies fun? Also, if it's so terrible, why do you keep doing it?<br />
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I'm not sure I have the answer to these questions. They are certainly reasonable questions. I've never made money off a movie - not a dime. I've spent several hundred hours of my life making movies that range from fun-but-flawed to basically unwatchable. I've repeatedly become so weighed down by the obligation of producing a movie that I never talked to the person I was making the movie for again. It's been a more or less unmitigated disaster. Yet I do, in fact, keep doing it. It's rewarding in a way that's hard to describe. It's much easier to describe what's terrible about it.<br />
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Zero-budget filmmaking is a process in which you come up with an idea that you think will be really great and fun and exciting and then you slowly watch as that idea is ground down by endless logistical problems. The really significant part of film work is really just a bunch of list making and scheduling and paperwork, which are all things that I'm intensely terrible at. The "creative" part, which is the part everyone wants to be involved with and help with, occurs in short bursts and often seems to be largely irrelevant. <br />
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When you have a budget you pay people to do a lot of the logistical preparations for your shoot, and this works very well because film directors do not tend to be great at logistics. When you have no budget, of course you're relying entirely on volunteers and the logistical side tends to get neglected until everyone shows up the day of the shoot READY TO CREATE and then you realize you need some lists of things or else you're all just going to be standing around doing nothing all day. <br />
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The nice thing about 48 Hour is that you get one weekend to pack all this work in and once it's over it's over. Except. When you get done with the film often there is some aspect of it that seems completely unacceptable, and you tell people foolishly that you're going to fix that aspect of the film and then release a new cut for everyone to see and enjoy. In my case this is always as mistake. The new cut never gets done because once you get in to try to create it you realize there are real reasons the original film came out the way it did. <br />
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This year that particular detail had to do with a really great audio gag where we had two female voice actors come in and do various takes of distraught crying, which we were going to drop in over the beginning of three different funeral clips in the movie. The takes sounded great, the women were really patient and understanding of my limited technical abilities, and just generally it felt really awful that in the scramble to get the movie finished we didn't get the crying in the movie. <br />
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Well, it turns out that for whatever reason when you drop the crying clips into the movie it doesn't work - it crashes when you try to render it. I don't know what the problem is, and while I'm sure it can be fixed I am officially, today, declaring my involvement with The Death of Don Panini, Waterline Films' 2013 entry into the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project, to be concluded. The good news is that despite a bevy of technical issues the film is pretty funny and enjoyable if you ask me. I hope you like it. <br />
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To the two women who gave their time and talent only to see their work cut out of the movie, and to everyone else who helped on this very challenging project, thank you from the bottom of my heart. As always, I hope next time I can be a little better director, and that a little more of your work and talent can make it onto the screen. Until then, I hope you enjoy The Death of Don Panini.<br />
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Selah.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-78366171393640490232013-10-24T07:34:00.001-07:002013-10-24T07:39:48.708-07:00Running #1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Thursday means four miles. Chilly at nine when my soles hit the street. Starting out I know I'm overcooking it, I always overcook the first mile when it's cold. They talked about it during the Series last night, in the cold your hands don't work; your feet don't work. Nothing works right in the cold. So you overcook the first mile in the cold. <br />
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It's all right. I've overcooked it before. I cross the first of the two east-west arteries on the route in front of a trucker whose eyes get big when he sees I'm not going to stop, but I don't even have to sprint to beat him. Down along the quiet streets by the old boys' school, past the tennis courts and the manicured lawns, drifting down toward the college. <br />
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Now I'm really cooking, but this part doesn't count as overcooking it because the hill helps you. After I skip through the weird traffic on Three Chopt it's dead downhill to the lake so you just lean forward and spin your shoes like a pinwheel. "Free speed," my fitness coach used to call it. "Ain't nothing free," I'd always remind him, which he didn't like. He thought it was "negative" to think that way. I never did see eye to eye with too many a fitness coach. <br />
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There's no one on the road as I hit the campus; sundress weather is over so it's no great loss. There aren't even any geese to dodge as I round the lake, but I realize I'm starting to get tired. As I always do when I'm overcooking it, I had started to believe at the end of the downhill "maybe I am in this good a shape; maybe I can run like this forever" but that shit ain't the truth as we've discussed before. <br />
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I lose myself as I cross onto the bridge to the gazebo and for a while I am nowhere, nothing, a pair of legs skittering along the edge of a tiny lake in a tiny city, getting smaller and smaller as I ascend to the sky, not in any kind of esctatic way, this is no "runnner's high" just a feeling of being far away, unconcerned. <br />
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Snap back to reality as I run by some poor girl on her way to class and I see alarm in her face because she's glimpsed the man I don't show anyone, the sweaty-toothed madman red-faced and grinning and relentless and she begins to fuss with her phone, her generation's version of clutching one's books to one's chest, and quickens her pace.<br />
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I continue on but I can't help imagining how tired I'm going to be at the bottom of the hill, before I've even begun my ascent out of this hole in which I find myself, the price of Instructor Gundlach's "free speed."<br />
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By the time I hit the bottom it's as bad as I feared, and worse - there is a pain starting in my side. The price of too much coffee, too much breakfast, and not enough water the day before. "Hydration," I hear Gundlach say in his charming Aussie accent, "is not drinking a bottle of water in the car park on the way to your workout. Sipping on water," and here he would pause for dramatic effect, "throughout the day."<br />
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Which is what I did not do yesterday, it seems. And now I have a cramp. I realize now, in this moment, what I'm doing when I'm overcooking that first mile. I'm leaving myself an out, an excuse if it gets too tough. Now I've got a cramp, it's cold, and I'm out of gas. It's excuse enough to quit, so I do. Most days.<br />
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But not today. Ratatat's "Loud Pipes" is on and it's inspiring enough that I at least give it a go. I start up the hill, which really is a very steep hill, and try to think about soccer. I try to think about how running hard up this hill will make me a better soccer player by waking up my fast twitch muscles and all that crap, but it's not working. My thoughts devolve into imagery, much of it crudely, painfully Freudian. I am a giant pillar of rock being forced up out of the earth. The world is a woman lying on her back and I am standing astride her, sweating. <br />
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At long last I make it to the top of the hill and again cross Three Chopt. Now even the drivers are scared of me. I can see them trying to decide whether to ask if I need help or speed away as fast as their giant champagne-colored cars will carry them.<br />
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I'm on the bell lap now, and I look up at Karen for the first time. Karen is what I call the sun when I'm running. She is bright today but not hot, and I smile openly at her. In the fall we are good friends. I see now, just as I always do, why it is that I am so prone to overcook the first mile on this course - it starts out on a long, slow downhill, thus finishing on a long, slow uphill.<br />
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It doesn't feel uphill, and though there's a breeze in my face it doesn't feel into the wind. It's just one of those days. My smile broadens and I try to pick up the pace, to go into my kick, but suddenly the cramp is back and it's bad now, I'm doubled over, I'm done. I check the GPS to make sure I haven't perhaps already finished four miles somehow, but no, of course not, I have over a quarter mile to go. Well, three and three quarter miles is just as good as four.<br />
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I check the pace. HOLY SHIT. I can't believe it so I check the clock, but it's right. I put my phone back into my pocket and my earpiece back in. I start to run. The earpiece falls out and I leave it out. I say "I've switched off my targeting computer!" Then I realize that's a stupid cliche' from a kids' movie and I put my earpiece back in. It's "Clubbed to Death" from the Matrix. Of course it is.<br />
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I pound the pavement and it pounds me right back. My legs are done. My lungs are raw with the chill. The cramp in my side has found its voice and it is screaming, so I begin to scream too. My neighbors poke their heads out and make the "should I call the police?" face? The screaming starts to screw up my breathing so I have to stop. With every step I grunt like Butch going out to beat Marsellus Wallace's house fighter to death in Pulp Fiction. <br />
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The cramp has come to life now and is pounding on my liver with constant Mickey Ward left hooks. I can't go another step. I check the phone. 4.03 miles. 31:27. My goal of four eight-minute miles, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Done. Done. Done. Done.<br />
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Done.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-55618377490651200642013-10-23T10:55:00.001-07:002013-10-23T10:57:16.648-07:00Staying Home #2<br />
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/b4gwm_TrWtE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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“Cover the mirror, look to the sky”<br />
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Right now I’m sitting at my desk because I told myself I would, that I’d sit down and write even if I didn’t have anything to say.<br />
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“Saturn is orbiting nothing” is the phrase that usually starts to rattle around my brain around this time, that is when my wife has been out of town for a few days. It’s a mostly-nonsense phrase from an REM song, the natural habitat of many mostly-nonsense phrases. I’m not sure what the metaphor is supposed to represent in the song but in my own mind it’s me, the way my I spin off into darkness when I’m alone with my kids without her. <br />
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There is a concept in physics called entanglement, when two photons come into contact and become part of the same system. It’s tedious to try to explain why (and there really is no coherent arm-waving argument that can describe it anyway) but the entanglement of those two particles is the building block of what we call “time.”<br />
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Time does not exist until two entangled particles are observed separately by another observer. Until that happens, the system is static, unchanging. Once the observer becomes entangled with one of the particles, time begins. <br />
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This is all nonsense, of course. It is the hanging of a human philosophical concept like “time” onto things that are in reality nothing but numbers and measurements and equations. Nonetheless, it appears to be accurate, and has recently been experimentally confirmed. Go figure.<br />
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There is a picture on my wall that my wife’s mother drew, many many years ago. It is a picture of a man draped over the shrouded body of another person, a loved one. We cannot see his face but his posture tells us he is distraught, devastated.<br />
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The man is wearing a watch on his left wrist. His watch has always struck me as the point of the piece - his relationship with time has been changed forever. He no longer has the luxury that I have, to wait for his love in scattered anticipation, wondering what will be left of her when she returns. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-68779501628002504382013-10-22T11:00:00.001-07:002013-10-22T11:14:52.680-07:00Voice #1<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51B5Q3SHR2L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51B5Q3SHR2L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I bought this book. I'll let you know.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Wake up to your alarm. It is pitch dark and a voice is telling you "Don't get up; it's not even dawn." <br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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Get up, get dressed, go downstairs, make coffee. A voice is telling you "It's too much trouble to make breakfast; have some Honey Nut Cheerios."<br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE</div>
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Cook breakfast, eat breakfast, clear up breakfast, get the kids to school. When you get home a voice is telling you "You don't need to run today; your legs hurt, you didn't get enough sleep, you can run tomorrow."<br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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Start to run. A voice is telling you "This sucks, let's just go by the coffee shop and get a pastry."<br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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Halfway through the run you feel fantastic and a voice is telling you "You are invincible! Run faster! Run Longer! This feeling will last forever and there will be no comeuppance! You hear me? No comeuppance!"<br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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Run home. Sit down to write. A voice is telling you "This is a waste of time. You never finish anything. You're only pretending to be a writer to get out of getting a real job. Might as well just fuck around on Facebook."<br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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As you move the pen across the page, you wait for inspiration that never comes. No rising action. No spark. A voice is telling you "Look, you've wasted another hour writing something that's not worth reading. Bravo."<br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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As the evening winds down, your wife is going to bed. A voice is telling you "Stay up, have a glass of wine, watch a Tarrantino movie. You deserve it!" <br />
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE<br />
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Go to bed with your wife. Read a book. Fall asleep.<br />
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Wake up to your alarm. Somewhere in your house there is a paper containing what you wrote yesterday. Find that paper. Read it. On that paper is your voice, telling you, as best it can, who you are, what your condition is, and what may happen to you as a result. <br />
LISTEN TO THAT VOICE</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-80491505005427277702013-10-21T10:45:00.002-07:002013-10-21T10:54:00.230-07:00Death #1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhFIO39NEYbWWAByIWBVomMFj-2X0WTBqycsfhqcVzV0ASkWGdOl_NjRDlecM9lsbAfXUePjoZIG9FVDnkFssKIAh-dkbIt4G434ocz2VWYoVsCSE3yz-PJwpm5XY2knw3FhSJoie_z4/s1600/qmdj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhFIO39NEYbWWAByIWBVomMFj-2X0WTBqycsfhqcVzV0ASkWGdOl_NjRDlecM9lsbAfXUePjoZIG9FVDnkFssKIAh-dkbIt4G434ocz2VWYoVsCSE3yz-PJwpm5XY2knw3FhSJoie_z4/s320/qmdj.jpg" /></a></div>
A photo, downloaded from Facebook, of a piece of landscape art by Peter C. Allen of Bend, Oregon.<br />
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A few weeks ago an old friend of mine died in a house fire. I hadn't seen him in many years, but as I often discover when someone I once knew dies, his friendship had a great impact on me. In the days since his death I've thought a lot about the duty we all have to carry something of him forward into the rest of our lives. He was a brazen man, proud of his own quirky, self-destructive, passionate approach to life, and I know that it would have pained him to know how much I hide parts of me from the world because I feel ashamed of them.<br />
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In his honor here is something I want to get off my chest:
I have a deep, unironic love for Facebook.<br />
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I hate being available to people. I hate phone calls, I hate emails, I hate text messages. I hate my electronic calendar with its constant reminders about things I've named so lazily and sloppily that when the reminders pop up I know how long until I'm late but not where the fuck I'm supposed to go. I'm terrible at all types of correspondence and look at "keeping in touch" as the most crushing of Sisyphian tasks.
Yet for some reason I love Facebook. I think I love it for all the reasons that, objectively, I know it must be terrible. I think it facilitates the haunting loneliness that defines modern life by giving us a simulacrum of communication and togetherness and community that keeps us inside when we should be out building the real thing. I think it creates a disturbing temptation for middle-aged people to leer at young people, and that a byproduct of that temptation is a constant stream of guilt-tripping of the young by the middle aged for being too damn young and sexy for their own good. I think it makes it too easy to stay up late and reach out to your storybook lover instead of going upstairs and going to bed with the real thing.<br />
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I think I like all of that. Facebook is the dead skin and dust bunnies of human interaction, assembled in the middle of a big common room for everyone to see. The aspects of human culture that we would most like to pretend don't exist are all too apparent on Facebook - our narcissism, our greed for attention, our pettiness, our sanctimoniousness, our frustrated passive-aggression.
There are plenty of wars on Facebook, but I think what we see most days is the process of our worst selves making peace with one another. And that, ugly as it is, is a beautiful thing.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-64900019377185377382013-10-18T08:12:00.001-07:002013-10-18T08:16:39.984-07:00Vimeo of the Week #1
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/24618757" width="500" height="375" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/24618757">Blue Season</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/katrinachristensen">Katrina Christensen</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
Woke up feeling like I never wanted to do anything ever again except maybe snap at my loved ones and sit on the couch watching Breaking Bad with the commentary on. <br />
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Fortunately on my birthday a prominent Richmond writing, theatre and film family provided me a gift of a $30 contribution in my name to <a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/starbucks-to-begin-sinister-phase-two-of-operation,416/" target="_blank">Starbuck's Campaign of World Domination </a>, so I was able to trick myself into going for a run to redeem my Victory Coffee rations.<br />
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I felt much better when I got back so I'm trying to capitalize by doing some laundry. In lieu of today's lesson, here's the Vimeo of the Week, Blue Season, which is a short documentary about the Vegas hip hop scene by Las Vegas independent filmmaker Katrina Christensen.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-83133958765391815052013-10-17T18:12:00.000-07:002013-10-17T18:23:24.491-07:00Cleaning Day #1Today is cleaning day, not in the sense that I clean but in the sense that I am one of the great shamefaced multitude of stay-at-home parents who pays other people to clean my house for me. <br />
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If you're unfamiliar with this phenomenon, here's how it works - you do a crappy job cleaning your house for some significant period of time, until you come to a decision as a family that it would be best for everyone if someone actually cleaned the damn house every once in a while, and so you hire four members of some marginalized socioeconomic group to clean up after your privileged suburban ass. <br />
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Which sounds great until you realize that the reason you never clean anything is that every surface in the house has a two-foot layer of debris settled on top of it, made up of, say, clothes that may or may not be clean, pieces of construction paper with a cat's face drawn in marker the same color as the paper, half a jigsaw puzzle spilling out of a box that can't hold a jigsaw puzzle because some hairy neanderthal stepped on it, not even really by accident but more out of depraved indifference to the fate of the box, that sort of thing.<br />
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So obviously when your house is in that kind of condition no one can clean it, not even very dedicated, hardworking poor people. So before the cleaners get there you have to clean up all the shit that is the whole reason you never clean (the cleaning part is actually rather pleasant once you get down to it, in my experience), and it takes hours and will show you exactly how out of control your entire living situation has gotten when you try to put away the fabric markers and you find that there are four separate bags of markers, each containing some part of three different sets of fabric markers, and also those bags contain things like pencils and hair ties and small bits of plastic that don't seem to do anything at all but are definitely an important part of some thing or other that little Daisy definitely needs in order to realize her potential as an artist or fashion designer or whatever the fuck.<br />
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So you get the picture, I would think. It's a hard day. A day of reckoning. A tiring day. And yet I care about you, Dear Reader. So I stay up after putting the kids to bed to bring you this blog post. And also to watch a bit of football.<br />
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If you're not a football fan, as I think many of the readers of this fine blog in fact are not, you may not even be aware of Thursday night football, which is only a few years old. There is a game on Thursday nights that's not on TV and features two teams that just played four days ago, so they're all injured and sloppy and the game sucks. <br />
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You can watch the game if you either have NFL Network (which most people don't) or if you go to NFL.com and watch it online. Except instead of actually showing you the horrible game online they just show you random bits and pieces of the horrible game and the rest of the time it's two guys just talking about the game in a cheap, tiny studio, or ads for stoner food like pizza and taco bell (that may just be my ads.)<br />
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So anyhow, I'm going to go watch that now, because I have no taste. Enjoy your evening. Your assignment is to not watch this awful football game. I mean, what are you doing with your life, Dear Reader?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-24371951381094325822013-10-16T08:31:00.004-07:002013-10-16T08:42:56.950-07:00Birthday Boys<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today I went for a long walk instead of a run to rest my knee and give myself a treat for my birthday. I very much enjoy long walks as they give me a chance to think things through without distractions intruding on what I’m thinking about.
Distraction is a terrible problem for a stay-at-home parent because there are always little emergencies happening everywhere all around you. Then if you get done with the emergencies for a moment there are a dozen little maintenance/drudgery items to take care of, many of which are things you’d rather not do. So you look for something to do that seems a bit more stimulating than scraping cheerios off a bowl with a fork, and you remember you need to pick a restaurant for your birthday dinner and follow up with the babysitter, so you sit down at your computer and suddenly it’s 2:30 p.m. and you’ve wasted the entire day having important cultural discourse about whether or not Hannah Montana should be allowed to go on television and pretend to fuck a giant foam “We’re #1” Finger.
Obviously this is a problem for everyone, whether they work at home or in an office or at the fire department or wherever it is. But when you’re a stay at home parent those things you were supposed to do are going to be staring at you for the rest of the day, and your wife is going to come home and see them, and your kids are going to complain about them, and your friends are going to see it when they come over and you’ll be embarrassed, etc. etc. It’s a very visible form of failure when you get distracted and get behind on your work.
This affects your self-image, obviously. One way to counteract this is to have a group of male friends you can go out with, who won’t care if you didn’t do the dishes and forgot to call the plumber and can’t even remember where you left the vacuum cleaner it’s been so long since you plugged the damn thing in.
Stay-at-home moms might be gasping a bit at this. I get the feeling a lot of them wouldn’t think of going out with friends when the dishes are piled up in the sink and there are legos everywhere and there is a load of sour laundry mildewing. That’s probably a healthy way to be and I applaud that, but I’m not that way.
It can be easy to sort of forget to have male friends as a stay at home dad, but you need them. Most of all you need people you can be honest with about important emotional matters that are hard to talk to your wife about, like which of the other moms at your kids’ preschool has the best ass.
Notice I say “other moms.” A lot of what I’m going to say on here presupposes something very important which is that you find your wife insanely attractive, miles more attractive than just about any other woman you’ve ever come into contact with. If you married someone who is not a “10” on your personal sexual chemistry scale, you’ve wandered into a difficult place and I don’t envy you. I certainly do not recommend becoming a stay at home dad. It will not end well.
So your lesson for the day - as you make your mom friends, reach out and make dad friends too wherever you can. Your friendships that will work the best are the ones where all the adults in both families are close and can talk to each other openly. If you don’t have that, problems can become very big before everyone who’s affected by them is aware of them, which is a recipe for resentment, mistrust, and worse.
Your assignment is to have dessert, call your buddies to set up a boys' night, and remember to look at your wife and say "damn that is one fine woman."
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6038758566035488139.post-75781635855197848602013-10-15T09:26:00.001-07:002013-10-15T09:36:02.485-07:00Staying Home #1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/malefeminism/images/Stay-at-Home-Dad-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/malefeminism/images/Stay-at-Home-Dad-01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Even if you weigh 300 pounds and have a face like Jerry Quarry, when women see you taking care of your kids they see this fellow right here.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--------------------------------</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other day at the pumpkin patch my friend Leigh (all names fictionalized) asked me if I had a blog, and when I said “not really” she said if I had one, she would read it. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-295fa68b-bce9-22fb-3ab7-c9c3130221a9" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I guess I should have asked her what sort of thing I was writing about on my imaginary fantasy blog, but it didn’t occur to me, so now I’m here with no real prompt. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I glance over at my friend Hunter’s blog to see what kind of things he writes about. He’s another stay at home dad/Browns fan/writer/longhaired deadbeat type like myself. He has three boys - one of them recently got his hair cut, it seems, but that’s no help to me. I’m not really into that sort of thing, as a writer. Also my wife takes the kids to get their hair cut and takes the lead on most hair-related matters. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I find the nuts and bolts of parenting, and life in general I suppose, to be pretty boring. I like writing about sex and pain and death and revenge and things like that. It would be a strange beat, the sex/pain/death/revenge/stay-at-home-parenting beat. I’m not sure what quarterly I’d submit my work to. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sex is a natural fit, I guess. I could be the stay at home dad who just writes about sex all the time. Sex, sex, sex. Sex in the morning, sex in the night, sex every single moment of your godforsaken life. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I might be able to get away with it because I’m not that guy who has sex all the time. That annoying fucker, the one who’s like “you’ve got to keep the magic alive with little touches like roses and massages and get her some nice bath lotion” or whatever the fuck. Eat a dick, asshole. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or worse, his wife, some successful novelist whose work the New York Review of Books says “simmers with the savory broth of greatness” or some gushing poppycock, who writes an Op/Ed in the Times about how to be happily married and make time for your man and keep the spark alive and blah blah blah. Fuck you, too, bitch. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This isn’t going well, I feel. I don’t think this is what Leigh wants to read. I imagine she was thinking I’d be writing about how to listen to your children and respect them as people and put your family first or some crap like that. I’m falling asleep just thinking about it. Let’s get back to the sex stuff.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sex is the key thing that makes stay-at-home fatherhood hard. The rest of it is really very easy. Not easy in the sense of, easy as falling off a log. I mean, it takes work. There are butts to be wiped <a href="http://staydaddy.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/diaper-days-cloth-vs-disposable-etc/" target="_blank">(h/t - Hunter)</a> and dishes to be washed and endless, endless laundry that never stops because kids like to wear four different outfits every day and shit their pants regularly and aren’t even embarrassed about it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s easy, though, in the sense that for cultural reasons there is a very low standard of success for stay-at-home dads. Where stay-at-home moms have this ceaseless passive-aggressive competition that’s constantly hanging over every aspect of their lives every waking minute of every day, stay-at-home dads are exempt. The shame that Kate Winslet feels having forgotten her kid’s snack for the 47th time at the playground in “Little Children” is not really present for a stay-at-home dad, at least it needn’t be. No one expects you to remember to bring a snack, or sunblock, or a change of clothes. The moms fall all over themselves trying to help you out, and trying sincerely to make sure you know that these things happen to everyone, and we’re all in this together, right?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A stay-at-home dad can walk out of the house, two kids in tow, with a diaper crammed into his back pocket and figure everything will pretty much work out ok. In fact not only will it be OK, he’ll be such a hero other dads start to hate his guts because their wives won’t shut the fuck up about what a great dad he is. And what did he do that makes him so great? Nothing. He talked his kid through some stupid tantrum about what color sippy cup he brought, and how whatever was in it wasn’t exactly what the kid expected. For this (something all stay-at-home moms do every day) women will build you a nine-foot marble statue and put it on the capitol steps if you let them. Which you shouldn’t because you won’t get invited to poker games. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So now, once you’ve settled in and gotten used to this treatment and made your first real stay-at-home-mom friend, you’re going to realize the situation you’re in, which is that you’re spending a lot of time with a woman who has an unaccountably high opinion of you during the day while her husband is at work. You’re developing nice wholesome relationships with her kids, which by the way if you’re ever trying to seduce young mothers is the beginning, middle and end of the playbook, and she’s opening up to you about the problems in her marriage and how she’s not sure it’s working out.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I slipped that last one in on you. DO NOT LET WOMEN DO THIS. There is nothing to be gained by listening to a woman complain about her husband. The way you do not want the conversation to go is as follows:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My husband leaves his dirty dishes all over the house.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">YOU</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, my wife does that too. It makes me feel so unappreciated.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">YES! It’s so nice that there is a man who understands.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is DEFCON-1 level seriously bad shit right here, my friend. This woman is starting a fight with her husband about this TONIGHT. Take it to the bank. And even if your name doesn’t come up, it’ll be hanging in the air like a stale fart. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s try this again, but with a slightly different response from our hero, the SAHD.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My husband leaves his dirty dishes all over the house.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">YOU</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah, I still throw my dirty socks at the hamper like a goddamn chimpanzee. Drives my wife crazy, makes her feel so unappreciated.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wow, I guess all men just fucking suck.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">YOU</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ll drink to that, sister!</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See what you’ve done there? If your excuse for the previous exchange was that you just wanted to be there for your friend, validating her feelings, well, here’s your chance, Romeo. Validate her in a way that 1) reaffirms how much you appreciate your wife, even though you don't always show it and 2) closes down any stray thoughts she might have about how maybe you’d be a better husband than the one she’s already got. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, my writing time for the day is up. Your assignment for the day is to Google “Hot Dad-on-mom sex” (in quotes like that) and look at what comes up. Yep. This page (once the spidering is done) and one other page that says “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It turns out that there wasn't much enthusiasm in the room for </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hot Dad-on-Mom sex</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> either. Go figure.” </span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go figure indeed. Til next time, Dear Reader. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829102073305209917noreply@blogger.com2