On the Yankees

The Yankees were eliminated in four straight games by the Detroit Tigers. Four and out and into the off-season, pitchers and catchers will report to Spring training in February. I am both fascinated and repulsed by the Yankees as a team and as a sports phenomenon. If you had all the money in the world so you could buy all the best players, who would you get, and how could you possibly lose? Well, this year the Yankees didn’t lose very often, and they won the Eastern division. Baltimore pressed hard during the final weeks, but the Yankees can always find a way to win–the best hitters, the best pitchers, the best fielders in the league. I suppose that all leagues need their bullies, their high class hitters in their tailored uniforms and luxury club house. The Yankees create conflict, drama, suspense, romance, comedy, pathos in a continuous narrative of wins and losses, mostly wins, highly charged in a mediatic circus that runs 24/7 during the baseball season. Even when the Yankees lose and get eliminated, the media will make a bigger deal out of that than the fact that Tigers are going back to the World Series. In other words, even when they lose, they are a bigger story than the team that beats them. No matter how they play, they always get coverage from the national media, and they are the object of speculation and analysis, interviews and opinions, and the highlights always feature both their triumphs and their failures, making no distinction between either. When one of their players is injured, dates a movie star, hits for the cycle, or makes an ad for underarm deodorant, it’s national news. One gets a little tired of always hearing about the Yankees, who is playing well, who is going to disappear, who they are going to buy next. Today the Yankees were eliminated by the Tigers, but no one was interviewing the Tigers, they were listening to the Yankees manager talk about the loss. The Yankees are a good team, they should win, so it’s surprising when they collapse. I guess that’s why they play the games because you never know how they might turn out on any given day. The Yankees are supposed to be the heroes of the narrative, the knights that always slay the dragon, that always overcome the opposition. They always occupy the head of the table, get fed first, always get the girl, always ride off into the sunset at the end of the season. All of the rest of the players in the league are just a bunch of also-rans that carry the Yankees bags and act as patsies and victims for the heroic men in pinstripes. The problem with these expectations and hyper-narratives is that they don’t always jive with reality because in the end the Yankees are just men, fallible, weak, tragic, just like all the rest and deserve no more respect than any other team or player in the leagues. I imagine, though, the media is pissed because they won’t make as much money off of a non-Yankees World Series because now the New York area won’t tune in to see Detroit and St. Louis. The commentators will continue to discuss the Yankee “collapse” and wring as much blood out of that stone as they can even while the season goes on without their heroes.

On the Yankees

The Yankees were eliminated in four straight games by the Detroit Tigers. Four and out and into the off-season, pitchers and catchers will report to Spring training in February. I am both fascinated and repulsed by the Yankees as a team and as a sports phenomenon. If you had all the money in the world so you could buy all the best players, who would you get, and how could you possibly lose? Well, this year the Yankees didn’t lose very often, and they won the Eastern division. Baltimore pressed hard during the final weeks, but the Yankees can always find a way to win–the best hitters, the best pitchers, the best fielders in the league. I suppose that all leagues need their bullies, their high class hitters in their tailored uniforms and luxury club house. The Yankees create conflict, drama, suspense, romance, comedy, pathos in a continuous narrative of wins and losses, mostly wins, highly charged in a mediatic circus that runs 24/7 during the baseball season. Even when the Yankees lose and get eliminated, the media will make a bigger deal out of that than the fact that Tigers are going back to the World Series. In other words, even when they lose, they are a bigger story than the team that beats them. No matter how they play, they always get coverage from the national media, and they are the object of speculation and analysis, interviews and opinions, and the highlights always feature both their triumphs and their failures, making no distinction between either. When one of their players is injured, dates a movie star, hits for the cycle, or makes an ad for underarm deodorant, it’s national news. One gets a little tired of always hearing about the Yankees, who is playing well, who is going to disappear, who they are going to buy next. Today the Yankees were eliminated by the Tigers, but no one was interviewing the Tigers, they were listening to the Yankees manager talk about the loss. The Yankees are a good team, they should win, so it’s surprising when they collapse. I guess that’s why they play the games because you never know how they might turn out on any given day. The Yankees are supposed to be the heroes of the narrative, the knights that always slay the dragon, that always overcome the opposition. They always occupy the head of the table, get fed first, always get the girl, always ride off into the sunset at the end of the season. All of the rest of the players in the league are just a bunch of also-rans that carry the Yankees bags and act as patsies and victims for the heroic men in pinstripes. The problem with these expectations and hyper-narratives is that they don’t always jive with reality because in the end the Yankees are just men, fallible, weak, tragic, just like all the rest and deserve no more respect than any other team or player in the leagues. I imagine, though, the media is pissed because they won’t make as much money off of a non-Yankees World Series because now the New York area won’t tune in to see Detroit and St. Louis. The commentators will continue to discuss the Yankee “collapse” and wring as much blood out of that stone as they can even while the season goes on without their heroes.

On dead batteries

Is this the most annoying thing to have to do on a regular basis? Our lives are filled with electronic gadgets that need batteries: flashlights, remote controls, garage door openers, watches, security systems, cars, smoke alarms, hearing aids, cameras. What is annoying about having a dead battery is pretty obvious: the car won’t start, the flashlight is dead, the garage won’t open. Murphy’s Law of Dead Batteries suggests that when a dead battery event occurs, you will not have a backup at your location. A corollary of that axiom suggests that the event will occur when it is totally inconvenient and will cause the most trouble. You will, for example, have a dead battery in your flashlight when you get a flat tire at midnight on a lonely country road on a night with a new moon–dead blackness. Your garage door opener will go dead on a very rainy day when you are wearing a new suit and new shoes. You may never know that your smoke alarm battery is dead. You will find out that the backup battery in your alarm clock is dead that day when the power fails and you oversleep for work. When the remote control fails because of a dead battery, you are trying to watch two things on two different channels at the same time. Since you don’t have replacements at home, you have to get in the car and go get some, but your car won’t start because the battery is dead. After you appeal to your neighbor to give you a ride, you find out that the store is fresh out of the batteries you need and won’t have any new ones until next Tuesday. You check your watch to find that the sweep second hand has stopped moving and is no longer ticking. They are out of those watch batteries as well. You ask when they might get those again, but the old guy helping you can’t hear because the battery in his hearing aid has just quit on him. So you do finally get a new battery for your car, but the fittings on the battery are metric and your tools are standard American. You put two new double AA’s in the remote only to find that the cable is experiencing a temporary outage, and you can see nothing but snow. You call your mother to complain, but the battery in your cell phone is dead, so you plug it in and charge it. Your car with the dead battery sits in the driveway, motionless, in front of the closed garage door. The smoke alarm chirps a weary warning that it’s battery is about to die as well. You rummage through a drawer filled with dead batteries, a cemetery of unfinished projects, hoping to find a good one you might have overlooked. Your flashlight sits on the counter, waiting for you to re-install its energy system, but you are out of D cells. You drop two old batteries into the flashlight, and a pale yellow light shines in your hand.

On dead batteries

Is this the most annoying thing to have to do on a regular basis? Our lives are filled with electronic gadgets that need batteries: flashlights, remote controls, garage door openers, watches, security systems, cars, smoke alarms, hearing aids, cameras. What is annoying about having a dead battery is pretty obvious: the car won’t start, the flashlight is dead, the garage won’t open. Murphy’s Law of Dead Batteries suggests that when a dead battery event occurs, you will not have a backup at your location. A corollary of that axiom suggests that the event will occur when it is totally inconvenient and will cause the most trouble. You will, for example, have a dead battery in your flashlight when you get a flat tire at midnight on a lonely country road on a night with a new moon–dead blackness. Your garage door opener will go dead on a very rainy day when you are wearing a new suit and new shoes. You may never know that your smoke alarm battery is dead. You will find out that the backup battery in your alarm clock is dead that day when the power fails and you oversleep for work. When the remote control fails because of a dead battery, you are trying to watch two things on two different channels at the same time. Since you don’t have replacements at home, you have to get in the car and go get some, but your car won’t start because the battery is dead. After you appeal to your neighbor to give you a ride, you find out that the store is fresh out of the batteries you need and won’t have any new ones until next Tuesday. You check your watch to find that the sweep second hand has stopped moving and is no longer ticking. They are out of those watch batteries as well. You ask when they might get those again, but the old guy helping you can’t hear because the battery in his hearing aid has just quit on him. So you do finally get a new battery for your car, but the fittings on the battery are metric and your tools are standard American. You put two new double AA’s in the remote only to find that the cable is experiencing a temporary outage, and you can see nothing but snow. You call your mother to complain, but the battery in your cell phone is dead, so you plug it in and charge it. Your car with the dead battery sits in the driveway, motionless, in front of the closed garage door. The smoke alarm chirps a weary warning that it’s battery is about to die as well. You rummage through a drawer filled with dead batteries, a cemetery of unfinished projects, hoping to find a good one you might have overlooked. Your flashlight sits on the counter, waiting for you to re-install its energy system, but you are out of D cells. You drop two old batteries into the flashlight, and a pale yellow light shines in your hand.

On sugar

Why we are drawn to sugar is not really a mystery. Sugar is a high source of energy, and will ensure the survival of the organism in the face of almost any disaster, flood, fire, blizzard, tornado or earthquake. Sugar enters the blood like a steamroller and energizes the body in a way that almost no other food does. So we love sugar, it’s crystalline sweetness is a Siren song that cannot be resisted. Those who have eaten sugar and sugary foods have flourished and have passed on their genes, and those that passed up the sugar have long since been eliminated from the gene pool. Nevertheless, we have access today to more sugar than we should ever consume or need, but the desire for sugar which our ancestors left with us, is an ongoing legacy that is now getting us into trouble. We still desire sugar but we no longer need sugar because our dietary needs are much different than they were 100,000 years ago. We have become a nation of fatties because we cannot resist the sugar. Foods that no one should eat under almost any circumstance: soda pop, candy (including chocolate), breakfast cereal, ice cream, french fries, caramel corn. Even if we eat just a little bit of these things, we always sin by overeating, which is probably the real reason we are getting fat. Forget the sugar, we simply have too much food. No one should eat fast food, but fast food is everywhere, and most fast food has way too much sugar in it, the portions are growing annually, and we are more and more unhealthy. Yet, we make sugary desserts–pies, cakes, cookies, puddings, and we avoid healthier alternatives such as fruit, which has some sugar, but not quite as much as those other things. Eating less in general is a good thing. Eliminating sugar almost entirely is an ideal that can only be realized with an organized effort on the part of any given person. The sugar craving legacy of our ancestors is not only impossible to fight, it’s a fight that is killing us. Perhaps those who will live to pass on their genes to future generations will be those who do not crave sugar? Snack time!

On sugar

Why we are drawn to sugar is not really a mystery. Sugar is a high source of energy, and will ensure the survival of the organism in the face of almost any disaster, flood, fire, blizzard, tornado or earthquake. Sugar enters the blood like a steamroller and energizes the body in a way that almost no other food does. So we love sugar, it’s crystalline sweetness is a Siren song that cannot be resisted. Those who have eaten sugar and sugary foods have flourished and have passed on their genes, and those that passed up the sugar have long since been eliminated from the gene pool. Nevertheless, we have access today to more sugar than we should ever consume or need, but the desire for sugar which our ancestors left with us, is an ongoing legacy that is now getting us into trouble. We still desire sugar but we no longer need sugar because our dietary needs are much different than they were 100,000 years ago. We have become a nation of fatties because we cannot resist the sugar. Foods that no one should eat under almost any circumstance: soda pop, candy (including chocolate), breakfast cereal, ice cream, french fries, caramel corn. Even if we eat just a little bit of these things, we always sin by overeating, which is probably the real reason we are getting fat. Forget the sugar, we simply have too much food. No one should eat fast food, but fast food is everywhere, and most fast food has way too much sugar in it, the portions are growing annually, and we are more and more unhealthy. Yet, we make sugary desserts–pies, cakes, cookies, puddings, and we avoid healthier alternatives such as fruit, which has some sugar, but not quite as much as those other things. Eating less in general is a good thing. Eliminating sugar almost entirely is an ideal that can only be realized with an organized effort on the part of any given person. The sugar craving legacy of our ancestors is not only impossible to fight, it’s a fight that is killing us. Perhaps those who will live to pass on their genes to future generations will be those who do not crave sugar? Snack time!

On my bucket list

What if I said that I have nothing on my bucket list? The whole idea of making a list of things one wants to do before one dies is absurd. I find the idea of a bucket list absurd because it means that you are doing something with your life other than what you want to do with it. There are no countries I want to visit that I haven’t already visited, but if I visit Japan and India, great, but no bucket list. Visiting Russia is a fine idea and if my path goes that way at some point, I will go with it, but no list. I have no great urge to bungee jump, no need to eat puffer fish. I know people that climb mountains, scuba in the Bahamas, kayak in the Amazon, sail the Pacific Ocean, hike through Death Valley, but I know who I am and none of those activities would complete me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve skied in a blizzard, canoed until my arms fell off, tried to swim in Lake Superior, come face-to-face with a real black bear, jumped into a frozen river (cut a hole first), hiked the Buffalo Mountain range, run cross-country in a snow storm, and driven a car across Spain. My heart has gone racing on more than one occasion. I’ve acted on the amateur stage, sung in five operas, spoken in front of hundreds of people and lead hundreds of students across the wilds of Spain. I don’t need to learn to downhill ski, make baked Alaska or install a new car engine. A bucket list suggests that I have lived my life wrong in some ironic and twisted fashion and that I want to make up for wasting the last fifty-three years. There is no one I would like to meet, and I especially do not want to meet any famous politicians or celebrities–they all have their own problems. Regular people are a gift to all humanity and those are the people with whom I now spend my time. There is no food I want to try, no mountain I want to climb, no person whom I would like to meet, no activity I would like to learn or do, no place I would like to visit. Sure, there might be a book or two, I would like to collect. There are still a few things I would like to write or I would like to write better–write the perfect essay, let’s say. I write poetry, but I have no intention of ever publishing any of my minor inventions. No bucket list for me because I hope that I can feel good always about all that I have done and not feel envy towards others about what they have done or accomplished. The grass is not greener on the other side, it’s just different. You cannot eat the scenery no matter how pretty the countryside is. My life will not be better or changed if I take up sky-diving, drive a race car, or do anything that is equally dangerous. I live each day as it comes, make the most of things as they develop, and always give thanks for another day of opportunities. Living where and when you are is one of the most important lessons I ever learned. Life does not start when you finish your degree and graduate. Life is what is going on around you all the time. The trick is learning that little secret and letting yourself be happy here and now. The bucket list is about failure, incompleteness, desire, and alienation. In the end, the bucket list is more about suffering than success, more about bad decisions and personal repressions. Perhaps the only thing on my bucket list is this: be happy in the here and now and not worry about when I will be happy with my life. At some point everyone figures out that waiting for Godot is just simply absurd.

On snoring

I snore. I also suspect that most people do at some point in their lives. The sounds that snorers make is on my top ten list of all time worst sounds right between vacuum cleaner and leaf blower, but still below garbage trucks, babies crying on an airplane, and car crash noises. Snoring wouldn’t be so bad except that you hear it during the night when you are trying to sleep. It’s probably not as bad as water-boarding, but waiting for the snorer to either snort again or shut up is pure torture. And not all snorers are created equal. I know one or two that can make the paint peel and the wallpaper curl from the sheer volume of sound. I’m a little surprised they haven’t damaged their own hearing or that they don’t wake themselves up. Some snorers are stealthy and wake you up, but then don’t snore again for awhile until you are just about to sleep again and they start up the chainsaw again. A full-blown, sonic boom snorer can drive you out of your mind. Murders have been committed in the name of snoring. Researchers tell us that excessive snoring is bad and needs treatment, and some snorers get help. Yet many snorers just grind away each night, snuggled in the arms of sleep, blissfully ignorant of the havoc they are creating. I knew of one fellow that was asked to leave a hotel because he made so much noise. Some people sound like they are drowning, while others gurgle and grown, creating a symphony of strange animal noises. I am unsure of what the evolutionary function of snoring is. I would think that snorers would have been eaten by large predators who one, would have found them easily in the dark, and two, would eat them just to shut them up. Animals need their sleep as well. I haven’t even mentioned the victims of snoring, who grab and blanket and pillow and exile themselves to the lumpy couch in the den out of sheer desperation and sleepiness. For some snorers, no amount of prodding or poking does a bit of good, and they can snore equally well on their stomachs as on their backs. Posture means nothing. The thunder continues, the chainsaw drones on, and millions of helpless sleepers spend their nights roaming the halls of the homes in search of quiet place to sleep.