october 14 etc
Happy Monday to everyone except for Blue Jays doomers. Yes the Mariners are kicking our asses, but I refuse to give up hope.
Click for more Jays talk, don't if you don't care
Yeah, we are going to Seattle down 0-2 in the ALCS after getting outplayed in back-to-back games at home all but negating the huge emotional moment that accompanied our first playoff series win since 2016... but I remember going down 0-2 to the Texas Rangers in 2015 with even less margin for error and completing the comeback in Game 5. I was at every home game in that series. I saw Bautista's triumphant homer from the fourth row behind the dugout. I believe in big, dramatic comebacks because I've witnessed them up close.
So yeah, the way the Jays have started this series is sub-optimal, and yeah, it is more likely that we lose the ALCS than win it, but unless I am mistaken the point of being a ride or die fan is to keep riding, so I'm staying in my saddle. Jays in 7. Giddy-up.
I used to think that seeing the world as it was, which is to say to acknowledge the injustice, cruelty, ugliness, and whatever else alongside all the sunshine and rainbows and puppies, was really important. Moreover, I used to think that people who saw the glass as half full were stupid and guilty of ignoring objective reality.
It took until my 40s, but I finally got it. I was wrong, they were right. They weren't ignoring reality. They were doing their best to survive within it. Focusing on the positive doesn't mean flat-out avoiding or ignoring the negative, but it does help you not get so mired in it you can't function.
I bit down hard on the "life is pain, get used to it" worldview before puberty because that's what I learned at home and from a lot of books I was smart enough to read but too young to actually understand.
Why am I thinking about this? I am currently trying to write a book and I recently wrote and rewrote a small section about the parts of our humanity we lose when we see can only see other people through the lens of our own flaws.
Bad people are inherently suspicious of good people. Liars expect people to lie to them, cheaters expect people to cheat on them, and thieves expect people to steal from them.
TL;DR if you internalize too much of the wrong stuff you won't be able to recognize the right stuff when you see it, and the right stuff makes all the difference.
On y va!
๐ต๐ญ RIP D'Angelo, who died this morning after a private battle with pancreatic cancer. (Variety)
๐ฅ๐ญ If you read one obit article about Diane Keaton, let it be this one by Scout Tafoya. (RogerEbert.com)
๐ซก๐ซก Happy belated Columbus Day to all those who celebrate! (Imgur)
๐ค๐ค I think about Poe's law a lot these days. (Wikipedia)
๐ฅช๐ฅช Every non-food brand has to do a tie-in with a fast food brand now, I don't make the rules. (The Onion)
๐๐ "A man who works for the people overseeing Americaโs nuclear stockpile has lost his security clearance after he uploaded 187,000 pornographic images to a Department of Energy (DOE) network." No seriously. (404 Media)
๐ฅ๐ฅ Someone on Twitter discovered a... certain subreddit and posted about it and, like, I don't know man. Look at this and then look at this and then, idk, do something offline. (Twitter/prismaticwhore; r/kitchencels)
HUGE CONTENT WARNING ON THIS LAST ONE.
IT CONTAINS A LOT OF STUFF THAT'S HARD TO READ.
I DON'T WANT TO SHARE IT BUT YOU SHOULD READ IT.
๐๐คฎ A lot of young men on the political right are comfortable saying horrible, racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, and misogynist things and Politico has the Telegram chats "spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders" to prove it. Some of this stuff is going to make your stomach turn and your blood boil but I think that everyone has to truly understand the current moment to have any hope of navigating it. (POLITICO)
๐ฒ gonna
๐ผ go
๐ฑ touch
๐ณ grass
๐ท now
Be good to yourself.
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