(Personal opinion, but--COVID just exacerbated live sports' tendency to resemble "reality TV" shows. Stadia that resemble studio audiences; costumes instead of uniforms; scripted heroism/villainy; sponsor product placement everywhere.)
Thanks for a break. I'm sure you needed it too. Football has always depressed & disturbed me ever since the night I watched my mom & her second husband come to blows the night Doug Williams disembowelled the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl Who Gives a Fuck, and I realized that its violence is not always sublimated. Watching its ghostly shell on the TV now just looks like a rotten corpse of straight male entitlement refusing to grow the fuck up, taking as many folks with it as possible.
I was watching the Packers pin back the the Falcons’ ears and realized how much I’m going to miss sitting in Lambeau in the snow in December. I miss going to our local art museums, too (and no, it’s not just paintings of cows) and I’m as far from being an artist as I am a pro athlete, but I salve my wounded spirit by reminding myself I’d like to be around next year - or the year after - when these pleasures will again be available.
'...anti-social people who nonetheless like crowds more than it does genuine philanthropes; if you like to stand among them but not of them, it helps to be able to slip in and out of their company unnoticed.'
boy does that nail me. i don't like people, but i like having them around, you know? i said since the beginning of this nightmare that i'm a social distancer by nature, and i'm no outlier in this. even at 6'4" i've become a master at gliding in and out of social gatherings. if you do nothing to bring attention to yourself, people often fail to notice you. a skill more people on the right could attain with no opposition from me.
I live in L.A. I'm from Baltimore. I therefore have every reason to follow the championship-bound Lakers and in-the-running Ravens, as I have in the past and last year. But I just can't "get it up" to do so. I even *forgot* that the Lakers are in the finals (with AD and LeBron). Why? It's not as though I tuned in to hear the crowds, right?
Then again, when I do watch, I'm aware of something hollow at the core of it all. It seems to matter less, the way the conflicts in a video game matter less than real conflicts in the real world. A thousand masters theses will be written about the absence of a (real) audible human element affects professional sports. And--this is cool--there's something of the Copenhagen Interpretation in physics about it. According to that lot, a quantum event doesn't even actually take place unless it's observed. So there you have it.
I live in Atlanta and am a Chicago Cubs fan (another short October), but really couldn't find myself able to root for them this year, for the same reasons you mention. They shouldn't be playing. None of them. A killer still stalks the streets, silent, contagious and so far incurable. The Government of which I am a small cog seems unable or unwilling to understand, let alone act. Et cetera.
Having a garden helps. Nothing like sticking your hands in dirt to get a real relationship with the physical universe. Also, too, the mountains still want me to walk on them.
I'm simpler: I hate all crowds, regardless: too many potential assailants, their speech tends to overwhelm me in my attempt to process all of them at once, and they tend to think nastily.
(I can—just barely—stand crowds in Chinese-American neighbourhoods better because 0.) I'm generally taller than most of the people making-up the crowd and so can see further and 1.) I'm bigoted and don't see them fully as people—or, more charitably, I understand very little of any of the Chinese languages so I don't even try to understand them, and no gaggle of Chinese persons ever screamed 'faggot', 'retard', or 'professor' and at me ten times per week and occasionally committed minor assault on my person for five years.)
(Note: I hold that people screaming 'retard' and 'professor' at the same child on the same day should be a legally-admissible diagnosis of autism. See also _attempting_ to process everyone's speech at once when I can only handle three at a time.)
Some pretty great phrasing in here, in keeping with starting with a Byron reference and naming the piece after a Shakespeare play. The final sentence, for some reason, reminds me of "He pried from the insect jaws the bright crumb of steel" that ends "Metropolitan Nightmare." I also really like the careful use of "philanthrope", "like-mindless", etc. A nice evocation overall of this year's October country.
(Personal opinion, but--COVID just exacerbated live sports' tendency to resemble "reality TV" shows. Stadia that resemble studio audiences; costumes instead of uniforms; scripted heroism/villainy; sponsor product placement everywhere.)
“Or so the sweaty dreams tell us, and then we wake and shake them off, and go to the window and look out at the bright cold sun on the empty streets.“
Dat’s pure poet-ree right dere! (But seriously, that’s a really fine sentence!)
Thanks for a break. I'm sure you needed it too. Football has always depressed & disturbed me ever since the night I watched my mom & her second husband come to blows the night Doug Williams disembowelled the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl Who Gives a Fuck, and I realized that its violence is not always sublimated. Watching its ghostly shell on the TV now just looks like a rotten corpse of straight male entitlement refusing to grow the fuck up, taking as many folks with it as possible.
Wish I could give this many MANY more upvotes!
I was watching the Packers pin back the the Falcons’ ears and realized how much I’m going to miss sitting in Lambeau in the snow in December. I miss going to our local art museums, too (and no, it’s not just paintings of cows) and I’m as far from being an artist as I am a pro athlete, but I salve my wounded spirit by reminding myself I’d like to be around next year - or the year after - when these pleasures will again be available.
“constant nattering annoyance of hope“ [breaks down into hysterics of loss]
'...anti-social people who nonetheless like crowds more than it does genuine philanthropes; if you like to stand among them but not of them, it helps to be able to slip in and out of their company unnoticed.'
boy does that nail me. i don't like people, but i like having them around, you know? i said since the beginning of this nightmare that i'm a social distancer by nature, and i'm no outlier in this. even at 6'4" i've become a master at gliding in and out of social gatherings. if you do nothing to bring attention to yourself, people often fail to notice you. a skill more people on the right could attain with no opposition from me.
I live in L.A. I'm from Baltimore. I therefore have every reason to follow the championship-bound Lakers and in-the-running Ravens, as I have in the past and last year. But I just can't "get it up" to do so. I even *forgot* that the Lakers are in the finals (with AD and LeBron). Why? It's not as though I tuned in to hear the crowds, right?
Then again, when I do watch, I'm aware of something hollow at the core of it all. It seems to matter less, the way the conflicts in a video game matter less than real conflicts in the real world. A thousand masters theses will be written about the absence of a (real) audible human element affects professional sports. And--this is cool--there's something of the Copenhagen Interpretation in physics about it. According to that lot, a quantum event doesn't even actually take place unless it's observed. So there you have it.
I live in Atlanta and am a Chicago Cubs fan (another short October), but really couldn't find myself able to root for them this year, for the same reasons you mention. They shouldn't be playing. None of them. A killer still stalks the streets, silent, contagious and so far incurable. The Government of which I am a small cog seems unable or unwilling to understand, let alone act. Et cetera.
Having a garden helps. Nothing like sticking your hands in dirt to get a real relationship with the physical universe. Also, too, the mountains still want me to walk on them.
I'm simpler: I hate all crowds, regardless: too many potential assailants, their speech tends to overwhelm me in my attempt to process all of them at once, and they tend to think nastily.
(I can—just barely—stand crowds in Chinese-American neighbourhoods better because 0.) I'm generally taller than most of the people making-up the crowd and so can see further and 1.) I'm bigoted and don't see them fully as people—or, more charitably, I understand very little of any of the Chinese languages so I don't even try to understand them, and no gaggle of Chinese persons ever screamed 'faggot', 'retard', or 'professor' and at me ten times per week and occasionally committed minor assault on my person for five years.)
(Note: I hold that people screaming 'retard' and 'professor' at the same child on the same day should be a legally-admissible diagnosis of autism. See also _attempting_ to process everyone's speech at once when I can only handle three at a time.)
You keep hitting it out of the park like this Roy, we're going to have to retire your number. Thanks.
Roy, I see your prediction from yesterday about Miller getting the Covid panned out
Some pretty great phrasing in here, in keeping with starting with a Byron reference and naming the piece after a Shakespeare play. The final sentence, for some reason, reminds me of "He pried from the insect jaws the bright crumb of steel" that ends "Metropolitan Nightmare." I also really like the careful use of "philanthrope", "like-mindless", etc. A nice evocation overall of this year's October country.