On The Ropes

Posted on June 30, 2013 by gumbywan

Today is kind of different so no goofing off. Hey you, sit down and pay attention. Unlike other posts where I’ve kept things back for your own good, or those posts that I told you not to read because they were too esoteric, well here we’re goin’ to school so sit down and shaddup. Don’t make me come over there! This is a serious topic, not like the Casey Anthony killing or Jon Benet Ramsay. What I want to tell you about is the sorry state of Professional Wrestling today.

Now I don’t watch much television but what I do watch I like a lot. On Monday nights I’m usually watching Naval Criminal Investigative Service, NCIS, on USA network. I love it, back to back episodes. That Goth forensic scientist Abby Sciuto is a hoot, and Gibbs, well, will Gibbs ever crack a smile? I’ll tell you someday why NCIS is the most sophisticated and intellectual drama ever aired on television, but not today. Think future. I don’t want to make your head explode. Anyway on Mondays at 8 pm ET my NCIS bliss is interrupted by that abomination that calls itself Professional Wrestling: WWE Raw.

Now WWE just sucks. John Cena and The Rock suck. Big breasted women holding match cards suck the worst. Half the time it looks like Cena is wrestling in capris which is a disgrace to both pro wrestling and our armed forces. The people who like wrestling now are retards and knuckle-draggers. The only thing worse than the current crap that pawns itself off as “professional” wrestling is reality television and MTV. Vince McMahon ruined professional wrestling. Wrestling today is 1970s Elvis versus 1950s Elvis. That pretty much sums it up.

Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. This rant has nothing to do with that so-called amateur sport (see above) where geeks (or Greeks) grapple on mats; that stuff they do in college and the Great Spectator Sport Swindle: The Olympics. Not that crappy amateur stuff. We’re talking Professional here not the stuff where nobody gets paid and nobody gets to wear the unbelievably ostentatious title belt. Nobody, but nobody, really likes watching that even if they say so, even if there seem to be certain doppelgangers that show up in both the professional and amateur “sports” from time to time. They have nothing to do with each other. Forget that amateur crap. Now that I think about it, it may be even worse (= more boring) than the WWE.

Pro wrestling now is expensive and sleazy. I liked it when it was cheap and sleazy. The classic wrestling era was the ’50s to the ’80s. After that it went downhill. Overshadowed by glitzy and expensive special effects, people forgot the true nature of the sport and worse yet, wrestlers forgot how to wrestle. Today’s wrestler is a poster boy for steroid abuse who cannot even master the basic “Claw” maneuver. Some of them actually think they can “act” and have fall back careers in traditional entertainment.

But here’s the real bombshell, unlike the classic era, today’s Battle Royales are staged! That’s right you heard it here first, the whole mess is rigged; fixed worse than a Las Vegas roulette wheel. Big money took over and the whole thing turned into show business with the outcomes as predictable as a Stephen King novel. Hell predictable, they’re scripted! Everyone except you, my microcephalic reader, knows what’s gonna happen in the ring.

So the current state of wrestling is essentially that of a big-buck crappy Broadway show (see above). A theater performance nightly, and we know where that leads. No wonder some of them think they can become “actors.” Now you don’t know this but I will enlighten you in a future post, you’re just going to have to trust me here now (you know you can): live theater is not worth talking about or watching because it is technologically inferior to movies and television. Hence the current “staged” state of wrestling is not worth a longhorn turd as far as sports or entertainment is concerned. Don’t you love how I bring logic into the mix to prove incontrovertibly the sorry state of things today?

Well what’s to be done? Here’s my prescription: first throw out the current WWE management and replace them with the likes of the golden era’s American Wrestling Association (AWA from now on), guys like Verne Gagne (see photo below) who could spot a real wrestler, not just some steroid pumped pretty boy. Clean house!

Verne Gagne

Move the matches to smaller venues. These big arenas draw graft and cheating like flies to a dead carp. Let’s use high school gymnasiums, church fellowship centers, senior centers, places that keep the mob riff raff and fixers out. Places where folding chairs can be substituted for “stadium seating.”

Bring back real international athletes. That’s right: Crushers, Bruisers, Chechens, Nazis, Bolsheviks, titled nobility, Sheiks, ethnically stereotyped berserkers, throw in a few Al Qaeda athletes for an international terrorist flavor. It is essential to get not just talented athletes but ones people can hate without a second thought. How can somebody possibly get worked up about someone wearing makeup called “The Undertaker,” “Triple H,” or guys with monikers that sound like rapper’s names?

Titled Nobility

Impose mandatory drug tests. The current crop of steroid crazed thespians need to be weeded out. No more steroids. No more performance enhancers. No more athletes that trained with Lance Armstrong. I favor a one strike and out philosophy. None of this namby-pamby rehab and second chance stuff. You’ve brought disgrace on a time honored sport and you need to be degraded and humiliated for it.

Make the rules stick. For crying out loud, a lifetime suspension should stick for at least, say, two weeks minimum. Suspended athletes should not be allowed anywhere near the venue until the Commissioner has lifted the suspension. Foreign objects (see brass knuckles below) in the ring should never be larger than a folding chair. Coming off the top rope should only be allowed when the referee’s back is turned. You know, put some common sense back into the rules and enforce them.

And finally, keep the big money out. That’s what ruined the NFL and NBA where rigged games are now considered the “norm.” Once the big money is in then the mafia moves in and before you know it so-called athletes with a trumped up college transcript are making millions of dollars to take a dive, drop a ball, or throw an entire game. That’s one of the reasons I don’t “participate” in today’s spectator sports. They’re all staged, unlike the classic era of professional wrestling where you could count on a generally good clean match with athletes you could really look up to.

Maybe there is hope. Ring of Honor Wrestling looks like it might have all the elements that made the classic era so great while still being updated for the 21st century. We can only pray and count to ten.

Pessimism

Posted on June 27, 2013 by gumbywan

As I said in my next to last post you are probably becoming by now the poster boy or girl for this blog. If you can send a picture of you in your new carefree, and most of all, leisurely lifestyle I might feature it here, anonymously of course (see below for what you should really expect to happen).

I really struggled with the title for this post. Should I call it pessimism, optimism, hope, or despair because we’re going to hit all of these here? I decided on the straight forward approach instead of the facetious one, again for reasons that will become evident.

But onward in our journey to nirvana. The subject for this day is Pessimism, pure and simple, and I’m going to show you how to apply this little word to your outlook about everything. It’s so simple: always expect the worst. That’s it, see what I mean? We’re trending towards the Zen of life. Life is so simple really that the truths about it are almost self-evident, but really expect life to be so complicated that you are never going to understand anything. There, we’ve already applied it. Always expect to be disappointed. This is the only way to never be let down: always expect to be disappointed, then in the rare circumstance that something good does happen, you’ll be ecstatic, however when the more probable opposite occurs you won’t EVER be disappointed.

What a great way to live. If you can apply this along with the Dminus principle (see my earlier post) then life will become unbearable but essentially worry free.

Let’s see if we can find how you can apply this to a more practical situation. At work, always assume, even with a lack of evidence, that your co-workers are sniveling, back stabbing, over-ambitious weasels who are going to take the credit for all your work and get promoted a lot faster although they never deserved it. Now you cannot imagine a day when you are going to be let down in your expectations by the behavior of your co-workers. In the rare event that you are in a meeting and someone says: “Oh no, I didn’t do all this Shirley did some of it,” you are going to be on cloud nine. I would say happy enough to take the rest of the day off, go to a bar, and call in sick the next morning (again, see the Dminus principle). If the opposite happens and they take all the credit for what was mostly your work, well you expected as much and can’t really be disappointed. Either way, you weren’t disappointed. Voilà, life is actually the dreary drudge you thought it would be. This applies to everything in your pathetic life: your spouse, your job, your physical fitness plan (again, see earlier posts), your health, your finances, your family, your so-called friends and on and on. The areas for application are endless.

However, there are a number of hazards in this lifestyle: optimists and an attitude of hopefulness. Optimists are to be avoided at all costs. Assume they are possessed by a demon that wants to knock you off your currently successful downward slide and take advantage of you at the same time. They are never to be trusted. They will get you to read books by Norman Vincent Peale, Tony Robbins, and their ilk. They will tell you about the failed philosophy of positive thinking and that you are a good person with talents that are yet untapped, and we all know none of this is true as shown by past experience. What you do know is that they are waiting to swindle you and put you on a path that will leave you circling the drain without hope.

Which brings me to my second hazard: hope. Never ever hope for anything to get better. It won’t and you already know this. Hope leads to the ultimate disappointment unless it is hope for the worst to happen. If anything gives you even an inkling that things are going to work out, get as far away from it as possible, mentally and physically. Again, avoid at all costs.

I apply this principle of unbroken pessimism as often as possible in my own life. If you look at some of my earlier posts, I expected the worst outcome in both the Dunbar and stock market situations. Was I disappointed? No way the worst outcome I had expected happened. I could go along in my already depressed state knowing that only something worse could still happen. There you have it.

Oh, and have a lousy day.

In my next to last post I told you I was going to tell you about Chicago Nice. Well I didn’t and you were on the edge of your seat waiting for what I was going to say. Now you’re disappointed. See how it would have been so much better to assume I was lying or forgetful and not have anticipated that I would reveal this other principle of a nirvana-like life. I promise I’ll get to it in a later post, but you know what? Don’t be disappointed if I don’t.

Booksellers

Posted on June 25, 2013 by gumbywan

Another quickie, this time more serious but still delivered in my always erudite yet entertaining style. Barnes and Noble (B&N from here on out) looks like it is on the ropes and may even go the route of Borders; big losses and a prediction of more big losses. Not good. However there might be a silver lining to this which I will elucidate later.

B&N has made all the wrong moves IMHO, some of which I will speak of here. First, the Nook Tablet: B&N failed to capitalize on it when it was ahead of Kindle Fire in the e-book market. Also, although nobody else seems to pick up on this, Nook Tablet lack of apps versus the Kindle Fire and lack of ability to load third party Android apps on it (Kindle could do this, at least at that time). To a techy like me this was a killer for B&N’s tablet reader (I actually own both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet so I kinda know what I’m saying here). There was no way the Nook was going to catch the Kindle even with B&N’s in store presence.

Second, Nook’s more limited e-book catalog and B&N’s clumsy and unattractive site. These are additional killers for me although from time to time I find Nook titles ahead of Kindle and some books on Nook that are not in the Amazon catalog (weird).

Third, too much floor space dedicated to non-book crap (see above) and Nook without compensating for the more limited book floor space. A lot of investor and marketing types would disagree with me but I’m right even without the MBA. I’m a real customer. I love books, especially real ones. The only advantage B&N has over Amazon is brick and mortar stores. You simply cannot browse books at Amazon despite the “Look Inside” feature. Some people, the kind that go to bookstores (dummy MBA), like to touch books; like to smell, feel, and peruse a few of the tomes. B&N corporate types think that by putting more non-book and Nook crap, and fewer real books in the stores they will boost sales. Readers shun most of this crap and non-reader knuckle draggers don’t go into bookstores unless they are those idiots in the cafe with laptops and tablets that pretentiously pretend to be writing the next Great American Novel (they only ever buy one drink and take up all the good tables all day). But I digress… Even the readers who do the “browse, scan, and switch to Amazon” usually can’t help leaving the store with something if they could find anything they might be interested in. Book lovers are suckers for the impulse buy.

Fourth, I think B&N devotes too much space to the wrong genres, not because I hate those genres but because they don’t sell in BOOKSTORES. For instance, I know Paranormal Romance is supposed to be a big thing with teens and young women (I think some older women are sneaking these in too). I never see anyone browsing this space in the store. They must be getting these books elsewhere, probably WalMart or Target or Sams. At the same time I always see someone (or two) in the Graphic Novel section which they have squeezed down to two shelf columns. Now I’m no fool, unlike B&N merchandising types; B&N is trying to appeal to the wrong demographic. The average (and remember 50% of the people are ALWAYS below average for anything) WalMart customer never sets foot in a bookstore. I know I have two B&Ns and many WalMarts in my metro area and I have utilized both. (I hate WalMart. It has to be the grimmest shopping experience on earth. I have more fun at Sams Club.). Just scan the crowds, you’ll see what I mean. But the dummies at B&N just look at sales numbers from publishers and “the buzz” in the business. They are ultimately too lazy to go walk around in stores and do a POS stint to absorb the obvious.

Expect a lot of store closures. I know in my town where there are two B&Ns one has gotta close soon. A good feeding frenzy for book buyers who want short term bargains and all that crap in the front of the store.

I promised you a silver lining and I’m not here to disappoint (heh, heh, heh). Independent bookstores, the ones that managed to stay open, should get a boost from a B&N demise unless Amazon decides to get into bricks & mortar in a big way. I don’t think the latter is likely once they knock off B&N. The independents will be the only place where the real book lover can go to handle a real physical book (besides the few BAMS). Now independent bookstores have their own set of problems, like lack of focus on small presses and/or regional printed matter and an over-reliance on big publishers. Most of these problems are caused by bookstore owners with blinders on or an old notion of the market. Most should have some on-line presence in addition if they are going to survive.

Man Oh Man look at where we are! I said this would be quick and it wasn’t but you are getting used to me disappointing you (heh, heh, heh). Since it’s topical, soon to spoil like rotten fruit, I’ll publish it now. I usually sit on these pearls for awhile and I actually have a few, okay one, in the hopper so I can hone what is already an almost perfect blog post, but your brain will explode if I unleash too much profound knowledge too fast.

Go buy a real book from a real store before it’s too late! Oh, and the Blackhawks won the Lord Stanley Cup!

Physical Fitness

Posted on June 24, 2013 by gumbywan

By now you’ve probably started to model your life around this blog. That’s what I’m here for. Between my Grandfather and myself, we know pretty much everything there is to know, so relying on this blog when making big life decisions is a good thing for you to do. That’s what I’m here for. Ooops, already said that. Well you know what they say about repetition being the…

Let’s now turn our weary heads to look at something I’ve begun to notice: those little oval stickers on cars that say “13.2” or “26.4.” It’s a secret code between a secret society of fitness nuts that we, the slovenly, are not supposed to know. Except they really do want us to figure this out so we can ask them: “When did you run your last half-marathon?” or something like that. For some stupid reason these people put this magic number on their car or t-shirt and we are supposed to be clever enough to break their code and realize that 13.2 is how many miles are in a half-marathon. So what? Why didn’t they just put a sticker on their car that said “Ask me about how I ran my last half-marathon?” No, I’m supposed to play dumb and say: “Hey, What’s that 13.2 sticker for?”

First, yours truly has zero interest in your current jag of ego-stretching self-torture that you like to call fitness. Second, I know nothing about it. I don’t know or want to know anything about your shoes, your special running shorts, your iPhone running app, your running social network, your training regimen. Remember you are talking to someone who has zero interest already in spectator sports where they actually keep score, so watching, hearing, thinking about a little thing like running faster has no appeal; especially listening to your self-torture sagas, isn’t on today’s to-do list.

I used to try to run. Actually ran a few races but I found I hated it. I have some physical debilities which we won’t go into here that makes running a pretty painful and unrewarding experience anyway. Let’s call it a physical limitation. That got me thinking about exercise and physical fitness in general.

Exercise is always painful. It is always harder to do than not do, as Hamlet or Yoda would say. I mean what’s so bad about being lazy? Why are we so crazy about exercise? We take the idea of a pleasant walk hither and yon to some extreme painful sweating, pounding, breathing, agonizing speed obsession. There you have it. “I can run a Marathon just like some Greek messenger with a Post-it Note did a coupla thousand years ago.” Big deal! They didn’t have cell phones back then so this was pretty much the only form of speedy communication. Pick up the phone! Why do we imitate this poor sucker who probably had to do this or he wasn’t getting any dinner?

It makes me feel better…

What? You felt better while you were trying to come up that steep hill at 10 mph than you would have if you had been sitting with me having a few watching Spongebob Squarepants? I don’t think so. Oh you meant afterwards, like when you puke your gravy at the finish line and have to drink only Gatorade for two days straight to get rid of that headache and the trots. That feelin’ better. I tell you what, I feel a little winded when I get up to get another cold one from the fridge, so why don’t you put on those fancy shoes you just bought and get me a brew and then we’ll both be feelin’ a whole lot better.

So now we have established the universal rule that all exercise that’s going to be “good” for you is also going to be painful and boring while you are doing it.

Our next hurdle:

You’ll live longer…

Yeah, so you can torture yourself with more marathons. Here I introduce the science of the “life extension equation.” The principle is simple: exercise effort time (feelin’ bad time) has to be less than life extension time for exercise to be a net gain in life. So, say I run a marathon in four hours (what is a reasonable time? doesn’t matter just for example), if my life is extended by only four more hours I want my money back. See 4 hours of pain = four hours longer life is the game breaker. If I can’t at least get more life extension than time I’ve spent in exercise hell then I’m a loser.

Well this is easy, sure you’re gonna get more than four hours of life back for running that marathon (versus Spongebob + Beer). Now wait a minute. The devil is in the details. How do we define the feelin’ bad time, the torture time? Is it only the actual exercise time, or is it something else? Maybe we should include the training time, or the warmup time, or the time it took to drive, fly, bike to the event. But hey, those were all “feel good time” life wasters, weren’t they. Yeah sure. But were they as good as they could have been? (Spongebob + Beer) To be fair you’ve gotta include all the time you spent jogging, preparing, training, shopping, etc. for the marathon as bad feelin’ time. No way were they as fun as Spongebob+Beer time.

I’m pretty sure when you total it all up you would have been better off in the old life extension equation spending your time with me watching Spongebob and drinkin’ beer.

So I don’t run, I don’t go to any gym, I don’t own any exercise equipment (=clothes racks). When I go for a walk it’s to get somewhere, or listen to the tweet tweets (Mother Nature), or an excuse to listen to an audiobook or some loud music my family hates. I don’t wanna live longer if it includes some self flagellation ritual I have to exchange daily for my life to be extended.

Because I figure when I go there are going to be three options: nada, Spongebob+Beer, or a Treadmill machine and I won’t get to pick when the so-called inevitable comes at whatever time of life. I’ll know when I get there if I’ve been good.

I Told Ya So…

Posted on June 20, 2013 by gumbywan

Just a quickie here. “Ethics” was kind of a special edition because of some muckraking and yellow journalism that just couldn’t wait. I’ve gone over this post four or five times and every fact is dead true. There isn’t a lie or exaggeration in it. Pretty good for one of my posts, huh?

Well I’m feeling pretty good today. Why? For one the Dunbar thing went down just as I predicted. “Willy” is the “monthly read” from now ’til August something in Literary Darkness on GR (lends a new meaning to darkness). So I’m only one for one you say. Oh no effendi, I’m batting two for two today. Go back and look at “Suckers” from a week or so ago, then look at the DJIA today, then look at your 401K. Was it chicken day at your house? The farmer didn’t bring any chicken feed today did he? And your investments are also going to look like chicken feed if you don’t do something about it real soon. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so. BTW I bailed out last Friday. I’m feeling like the cat that ate the canary.

Ethics

Posted on June 19, 2013 by gumbywan

Robert Dunbar is a really good writer. Most people would categorize his writing as horror but he would chafe a bit at that. He is a genre bender and his prose is on the literary side along a sort of Hemingway path. Good Stuff. I think his novel Willy is brilliant. I liken it to A Catcher in the Rye. His short story collection Martyrs and Monsters is excellent. Buy it. Buy both of them right now, you won’t regret it. I own all of his books.

Now I come to the theme of my present post. Mr. Dunbar and I have had a little disagreement, let’s call it a matter of ethics. Nothing illegal going on here, let’s get that straight also. Mr. Dunbar is a moderator for a little group called Literary Darkness on the ego-driven biblio-social network GoodReads, which is now owned by Amazon I might add. Now this group has a monthly book reading. The group sort of nominates a book and we sort of vote on it and read it and discuss it that month. Kinda cool for a swell-head like me. Some time ago the group read Dunbar’s story collection Martyrs and Monsters. Well and fine. This month the chattering in the monthly reading thread was trending towards picking another of Dunbar’s books, a brilliant novel entitled Willy.

There is a little “cult of personality” going on in this group as well. Robert doesn’t encourage it but he doesn’t discourage it either. He’s a big time, okay not Stephen King big, but bigger than all of us are, writer and pretty good. It’s not his fault that the masses don’t go for class. But on the other side intelligent members of this group do fawn just a bit at Mr. Dunbar’s feet. He’s polite, responsive, a good moderator, and answers all queries which is a big deal to fans of a real talented writer.

Well your’s truly starts to smell something fishy in Denmark. I jump into the thread and say Robert’s a good guy and his books are good and all, but doesn’t it seem a little funny that another of Dunbar’s books (he only has 7) is coming up in this group as a monthly read. Now I don’t accuse Robert of priming this at all. He’s not pumping it. But he also is not politely bowing out. See where I’m going?

There are well over a thousand people in this reading group. It is not called Robert Dunbar’s Reading Group, it is called Literary Darkness. A group called Robert Dunbar’s Reading Group should read Mr. Dunbar’s books just like the Robert McCammon group reads all of Robert McCammon’s books. See I’m from Chicago and a big fan of calling a spade a spade and not messing around. No hidden agendas here.

Well, Dunbar deletes my post. It’s gone. Pfffft. He doesn’t tell me in the group or privately that he has done this evil thing. I notice it when I go back to the thread to see the new posts. It’s just gone. Now you know me, I never get excited. Mr. Dunbar and I have a terse private exchange of messages when I call him out, also in private. I ask what’s the deal? He basically says that the group has been clamoring for this for two years. So what, that is not the point. Taking the high road when both the high and low are offered is the point. Are we getting anywhere? There is also an intimation, no, more than an intimation, that yours truly is a little too negative. Hmmm. So the world of literary criticism and discussion is supposed to be fairies and rainbows (see below) especially when it comes to Mr. Dunbar’s creations?

If this goes down, as I think it will, and it will, it will (how much wood woulda woodchuck chuck..?) just be too bad. I don’t have any heroes anymore but I would expect an intelligent and talented person who certainly appears to not be a hypocrite to take the high road when it is offered. Start a separate group to discuss Dunbar’s books. Start a “Buddy Read” with the author as moderator on the side, but don’t intentionally or unintentionally hijack the whole Literary Darkness group monthly read when it smells of merchandising and not literary criticism.

Lighten Up

Posted on June 19, 2013 by gumbywan

Some people have taken umbrage at my musings about Bluegrass Music. Apparently these folks take life so seriously that they think my opinion 1) matters to anyone, 2) is to be taken as 100% at face value. Now seriously folks, the operative term here should be sarcasm. Bluegrass musicians are some of the most accomplished folk musicians in the world. I can appreciate their talent while at the same time I cannot bear to listen to them. It just isn’t my gig. I hate it. My apparently feeble attempt at humor in the piece was so lame that it was misconstrued as the ravings of a hydrophobic dog on Bluegrass music. Either I didn’t write things very well or you are not the sharpest tool in the shed. I know which one I’m going to bet on.

Now seriously, how can anyone take life so damn, well, seriously? Daily life is usually the most humorous thing imaginable. I mean unless the current situation in front of you involves death or you losing everything then it’s not fodder for tears. Make a joke. Have a laugh. Lighten up. People are always running up to me saying: “It’s a nightmare.” “We’re doomed.” “We’re porked.” I always ask: did anyone die? Did anyone go out of business. Did the ground just open up and swallow someone? No. I say: “Well this is just the first sign that the apocalypse is imminent.” The conference room goes quiet. Everyone in the immediate group is dead serious. About what? The world’s going to end! Again, I don’t think so. Lighten up.

There is enough grim news in the real world so your sorry insignificant little problems are a source of laughter for me and they should be for you. See the humor in the everyday occurrences. See the humor in your useless job. See the humor in your whacked out family, see the humor in the fact that you have no idea why you do 95% of the things you do, see the humor in that driver texting and fixing her hair at the same time. Bill Monroe (rest his soul) will still be there when you get back. In all seriousness folks, lighten up!

Comb Over

Posted on June 10, 2013 by gumbywan

What’s the deal with comb overs? You know those guys like Donald Trump et al that take a huge hunk of hair from the side of their heads and whip it over the top and then sweep it back so they can try to fool people they are not bald. Maybe if you asked them they would say that they weren’t trying to cover a bald spot but really want to style their hair that way. That’s what Trump would probably say. It’s the same thing with the rug-up-top (“Oh, it looks so natural I never would have known!”). Nobody wants the rug. Nobody wants the comb over.

And nobody wants to style their hair like a comb over. If they did then guys that still had a full mop would be doing the same thing: shave their heads except for one side and let it grow real long, like 16 inches, and then do the over and back thing with it. Did you ever see anyone with a full head of hair do that? I didn’t think so.

There are various disadvantages to each chrome remedy; the lid can just blow away, then there’s the swimming and shower problems, what to do with it during sex, etc. At least the comb over is gonna stay put, sorta.

The technical problems with the comb over are fluid transport and gravity. At some point there is going to be a hurricane or a tornado or you’ll be getting out of a helicopter and then it’s either in your eyes and mouth or it’s trying to imitate old glory. Either way, it’s not a pretty sight. You end up looking like a Misfits fan with a devil lock hangin’ down in front.

Why not just embrace the cue ball? Either shave it so the leftovers aren’t weird or just shave it all. Baldo is cool now. All sorts of guys, even guys with a full crop shave their head. Black men have a real advantage here since they have the pigmentation to really pull it off well. White guys, and the paler the worse it is, have that funky pink, pasty, potentially spotty dome to deal with. However, it still grooves sometimes. Get a tan and it sits better.

Some guys do have a physical disadvantage here and for them the situation is hopeless; guys that were attacked by an ax murderer at some previous time or guys that ate too much MSG before we knew that it gave you swell-head, for example. They are doomed to wear some freaky scar on the top of their heads that looks like a second mouth or people start whispering about “The Hills Have Eyes” when they’re around. But nobody said the universe is fair and a comb over is not going to change that.

What do guys think they are doing with a comb over? Who are they trying to impress? Unless you have a lot of money you are invisible to teenage girls no matter what you look like once you pass the magic three-oh, so why bother with them? Chicks your own age are starting to have their own high mileage issues so you are better off there, but really when you get in bed they are not going to wanna see that huge hunk of hair hangin’ in their face. The pool is going to be off limits too. And kite flying.

Face it and go with it. Stop looking the fool when you try to fool everyone. Whatever little you’ve got make it so it doesn’t go berserk in a high wind and make you look like Viktor Frankenstein.

Faster and Louder

Posted on June 6, 2013 by gumbywan

It’s a well known fact that all music is better when played faster and louder, just like all music is better if it includes robot voices. From punk rock to opera to new age I listen to all my music at an ear shattering volume, always have. My kids tell me I’m going to lose my hearing to which I always reply: “What?” I figure at my age if I haven’t lost all my hearing by now it doesn’t really matter if I go partially deaf later. When I die I will either not care or get to listen to all the music I want to at an ear shattering volume.

My family hates my music. My wife used to share some of my interests but gradually has spurned almost everything I like. She moved on to the one music that almost nobody actually likes: Bluegrass. I hate banjos. I hate them in any kind of music not just Bluegrass but this probably is at least partially the reason I hate Bluegrass so much. For instance, I hate Bela Fleck. I wouldn’t care what he played, I’d hate it because it has banjos in it. I have extrapolated this to the generalization that nobody really likes Bluegrass music even though for some reason nobody will say so. I think it’s one of those things like asking a group of people where they want to go eat and nobody says anything even though they each have a place they really want to go. Somebody ends up picking somewhere that everyone else hates but nobody will say they don’t want to eat there because they think everyone else does. Does that make any sense? So people are afraid to say they hate Bluegrass because they don’t want to offend anyone even though they all really hate it.

I tried to give my children a good musical education with healthy doses of bands like The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Depeche Mode, The Toy Dolls as well as a side dose of classical music. It stuck for awhile. My oldest daughter still has tastes that are the closest to mine but I also find some of her music just noise and too avant-garde for my childish tastes. My middle daughter pretty much only listens to Asian pop music, K-Pop, J-Pop, etc. She’s in Japan now for study abroad so you can imagine she is in seventh heaven. My youngest daughter listens to Broadway musicals, Barbara Streisand, Judy Garland, you get the picture. I can stand these in small doses only. So you can see my comprehensive musical education had little to no effect on them, although my middle daughter once told me, “Nobody likes Bluegrass,” so some things were not completely ignored.

Faster and louder is the same way. Everyone really likes their music played faster and louder and with robot voices in it too, but are afraid to say it because they think everyone else will think they are stupid. If everybody would just ‘fess up, somebody take the first courageous step, then the music that gets played on the radio for instance would get a lot better when they started playing the music people really want to hear instead of say, singer-songwriter stuff.

So that’s why I’m here, to tell the truth in this blog. I have now taken that first courageous step. All you sheep can now feel safe jumping on my bandwagon and admitting what you really like.

I gotta go now and listen to some Teenage Bottlerocket.

Suckers

Posted on June 4, 2013 by gumbywan

We’re all suckers. Everyone of us; marks, dupes, half-wits, morons, dumb-asses, you name it. Why, because the universe doesn’t actually work the way we think it does nor the way everyone told us, even in academia, it does. The real why is outliers; unpredictable and profound ways the future does not resemble the past. And sometimes you cannot avoid it. That’s why we’re all suckers.

Take the chicken for example. For 1,000 days the farmer brings it food; every day food, and even more food each day as it grows bigger. The chicken likes the farmer, he even tries to get at the front of the line when he comes out to feed the other chickens because then you get even more chicken feed. Then on day 1,001 the farmer comes out and chops off his head. The chicken is a sucker, a mark, a fool. Why? Obvious right. In hind sight, even though the farmer never came out with a cleaver to cut anyone else’s head off in the past 1,000 days, he shoulda known this could happen. Right. We’re that smart. Suckers.

In fact the chicken should have been trying to escape from the coop those 1,000 days instead of being at the front of the line so he could be the first sucker, every minute of those 1,000 days, escape, at least when he was fat and happy he should have been trying to get out of that coop and get away. He shoulda seen it comin’ just like we would have. Right? Serves him right, the sucker.

We would have known better. We would have taken a lesson from the past and applied it to life today and avoided being the sucker. Right. Suckers.

I’ll give one example: the real estate bubble that popped in 2008 and took the world economy into “The Great Recession.” Everyone lost their retirement savings, pension fund savings were depleted, even world governments (Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain) went into the dumper. In hindsight we shoulda, woulda, coulda, avoided this. We shoulda known everyone wasn’t going to live in Las Vegas or Dublin eventually. We shoulda known those nebulous mortgage backed securities were potentially pretty shaky. Right. Suckers.

In fact, we had an advantage over the chicken, we actually had prior knowledge that this could happen. Remember the Internet bubble in 2000? Everyone’s gonna want to buy their dog food on-line eventually. Right. Look up “Tulip Mania” for an example a long, long time ago. Go ahead, Google it, this’ll still be here when you’re done. Alright, everyone (no one) back? Suckers.

Outliers, I finally get to my point. History, economics, politics, even science, just about everything is ultimately mainly because of the outlier (head chopping day), not the average (feeding day). Most of our hindsight is worthless. Those nice rising graphs about Pets.com stock. Worthless, all stocks tend to rise in a rising market. Tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday. The graphs tell us so. Financial advisors tell us so, politicians tell us so, historians tell us so, and even some scientists (THEY should know better) tell us so. When they make their graphs they omit the outlier, (That was just one day. Look at the trend, that can’t happen again, it’s too far out of the norm. Something was wrong that day. And the real kicker: The numbers don’t support it!) we can safely ignore it. If anyone says any of these things to you, get as far away as possible from them. They’re suckers and they want to make you one. Blood sucking vampires and werewolves that will change you into one of them overnight. A sucker.

History is the facts conveniently packaged where the historian decides in hindsight what to include and what to ignore (If you don’t believe read the basis for the criticism of most history papers) and combines them into a linear narrative and almost always they will ignore the outlier when predicting the future from that past history. Life isn’t linear, it’s real bumpy and dominated by the outlier. Numbers that work in the idealized realms of science (sometimes, be careful) and mathematics don’t work in the squishier realms of the real world. Suckers.

Why is this relevant now? Simple: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, DJIA. Look at the graphs and then throw them away. Don’t be a sucker. But most of you will keep on being suckers, the sheep herded every day by the media, advisors, politicians, city councilmen, the doom sayers. You’re gonna keep your mutual fund in the stock market too long. But don’t worry because even if it crashes things will get better, they always do, and it can’t happen again anyway. It never did before, sucker.

If you have the slightest interest in this and how to potentially not be a sucker please read

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He conveys it so much better and in a more entertaining style. I never had an original idea in my life so that’s where it came from.

Welcome to my dreary life…

Hide the razorblades…

Monthly Archives: June 2013