I recently read a book called Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior that mentioned how the people who are actually best at self-evaluation are usually depressed. Most human beings are optimists because otherwise our species never would have gotten this far. It reminded me of the overthinking, doubting mindset of prospect Billy Beane in the book Moneyball, which left him at a disadvantage when compared to the headstrong Lenny Dykstra. I’ve always been Beane when it comes to writing (or women) and it becomes difficult after a while to write knowing you’re not really bringing anything original or exceptional to the table. How much writing is out there on the internet? There are countless movie blogs manned by teenagers, manchild 20-somethings, and hipster 20-somethings. There is an almost depressing amount of smart baseball writing — both sabermetric-focused and not, but all adhering to that movement’s basic truths. There are half a dozen reviews of every goddamn television show that miserable people watch. Even animated .GIFs are everywhere now, although sadly mostly in shitty Tumblr form. What is a regular dude supposed to blog about?

I had a conversation with NeoGAF and Twitter buddy @m_scoular a few months ago and it’s as if he had the opposite effect on me as he hoped. He said how pouring himself into movies and classic books and writing about them (mostly privately) had helped him make some sense of, or at least come to peace with, his current lot in life. And he said he enjoyed reading my thoughts on movies, and suggested writing constantly — if not on this blog — in a personal journal. But this conversation came at a time just as baseball was starting up, and I fell into the usual mode of being obsessed with grown men playing a game.

I’ve questioned my commitment to watching the Mets — and baseball in general — many times. I’ve mentioned on this blog (by linking to a Flip Flop Fly Ball infographic) how much time is sunk into following an 162-game season. I’ve thought many times that I enjoy talking about baseball more than watching it. What am I getting out of being such an intense baseball fan?

Then something like being in attendance for the first Mets no-hitter happens. There are movies that can really get to you, making you either cheer or cry, but this was real. This was watching something almost miraculous. Down to the very last batter I had lingering doubts. Tom Seaver had three chances in the 9th inning to close out no-hitters for the Mets and never did it. Johan Santana was less than two years removed from shoulder surgery that has ended lesser careers and had a pitch count greater than any game he had thrown before said surgery. With two outs, with his 131st pitch, he went 3-0 on David Freese. I thought it was over. Either Johan would walk Freese, requiring a bunch more pitches, which would add to the already ridiculous burden on his recovering shoulder, or he’d lay a very hittable pitch over the middle of the plate. Johan chose option C by striking out Freese with a devastating changeup.

After witnessing Johan’s short-rest shutout in the penultimate game of the 2008 season, I didn’t think anything less than attending a Game Seven playoff win or World Series clinching-game would top that baseball experience. But I wasn’t hugging my friends after that game. Or high-fiving dozens of strangers all around me. Or calling my dad after he watched it along with his dad. This was baseball — as cliche as it sounds — as religious experience.

Feeling that way about baseball brings me back to the conversation I had with @m_scoular. He was curious about my thoughts on This Is Not A Film, an Iranian documentary about a filmmaker under house arrest awaiting the results of an appeal for a jail sentence and a 20-year ban on directing. I fell asleep during it. Meanwhile, he detailed how and why it affected him unlike any other movie and how he wished I could have felt like he did. And I wish I appreciated the passion and humor on display, and maybe I would have a bit more if I didn’t fall asleep or watch it in a very dead theater, but I’m still a budding movie buff and even then that feeling doesn’t compare to my passion for baseball or even sports in general.

Perhaps it’s not a perfect analogy, because even a casual baseball fan can appreciate a no-hitter, but someone who watches countless Mets games is going to understand the significance behind it on another level. After the no-hitter, as my two friends and I sat in an Astoria beer garden, I rattled off the great Mets pitchers who had gone on to throw no-hitters for other teams: Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, David Cone (Philip Humber’s perfect game was just a cruel joke). And then there are the good pitchers who could have easily thrown one if everything lined up right. Finally, the Mets were the recipient of a great pitcher with enough left in the tank to do what hadn’t been done in 51 seasons of Mets baseball. It was enough to make a man get so drunk that he gets unidentified stains on his Santana jersey while black out drunk.

It’s that feeling that spurs me to write something. It’s watching a Game Seven between the Heat and Celtics. It’s watching a Nadal-Djovokic French Open final. But even more, it’s watching El Clasico in a packed NYC bar among people who obviously care about soccer a lot more than I do. And I do occasionally get that feeling when watching a great movie, but there’s nothing like the communal experience of watching sports history. Something like that is enough to get a person to blog again.

The idea of our brains being rewired to acclimate to the internet probably isn’t a surprise to anyone who can’t go a few minutes without checking their e-mail or Twitter or Facebook or forum of choice. We (I say “we” since I’m one of these people) want everything as quickly as possible and without that constant flow of information we feel disconnected from the world. Even while reading this book, I probably checked my iPod Touch at an average rate of two times a chapter. (Yes, I carry around my iPod Touch because I’m too poor to want to pay $90/mo for an iPhone and I live in the city now and there’s always a hotspot nearby even if I’m not on campus.)

I had already read about a study cited in this book that revealed students did better on a reading comprehension quiz of a short essay when they were given a plain text version (or a paper version, I forget) as opposed to a version filled with hyperlinks. Clicking on a hyperlink has the effect of breaking your concentration and not allowing your brain to absorb the information in its entirety, even if it seems like you’re learning more by reading the content of the hyperlinks. The reason posited for this phenomenon is the limit of the brain for working memory. Possible long-term memory is practically infinite, but such retention is only attained after memories are allowed to be stored in the hippocampus for the required amount of time, which can apparently range from an a few minutes to years.

I was probably most intrigued when Carr went through history and talked about the effects of other technological advances on the workings of the mind. He writes about the invention of the book, the printing press, the clock, the phonograph, etc., citing reactions from prominent scientists and thinkers, and detailing where they were right and where they were wrong. It’s almost strange to think that a transition from handwriting to typewriters could have an effect on the content, tone, and structure of someone’s writing, but there are a few anecdotes mentioned that seem to suggest otherwise; one being that the flow of cursive lends itself to more meandering sentences compared to the staccato of a typewriter.

A theme running through all this discussion of technology and its effects on humanity as a whole and on an individual level is that there’s never any turning back (unless we bomb ourselves to hell, I guess). The internet is only becoming increasingly prominent in our lives and the trend in all likelihood will not reverse. When new forms of media were created, others were never done away with entirely. Newspapers didn’t kill books. Television didn’t kill the radio. The internet hasn’t killed anything yet, but it is the first technology that has been able to absorb and provide practically every form of communication the human race has created. And it has greatly affected every other form of media. Many magazines are now laid out more like webpages and there are television shows like Tosh.0 that live off YouTube clips.

But maybe it’s bullshit to worry about the internet-ization of our brains. It’s not like reading is an activity the human brain is particularly evolved for; a person needs to develop a love of reading, which in turn leads the brain to crave more of a similar stimulus. I feel as if I’ve had to work to get back into reading at length, or even watching full movies at home, but I like to think I’m almost there. And it does feel more satisfying to finish a book or watch a great film than it does to jump around reading blogs or watching 20 minute television show episodes. But is it efficient? When Carr posed this question to some very intelligent people, a number of them said they don’t even read books anymore because it’s just not worth the time and effort when the internet is so easily searchable — just Wikipedia it! Well, you probably indirectly Wikipedia it by googling it first.

I mean Google because there’s an entire chapter of this book dedicated to the search giant. The search giant that has attempted to get its fingers into every inch of the internet and subsequently our lives. They want to know everything and they want everything to be searchable. The ideas of Sergey Brin mentioned in The Shallows point to the idea of a massive internet cloud singularity in the future of humanity. Perhaps this is inevitable, considering the march of technological progress and the willingness of people to upload as much as possible. Just thinking about such a possibility reminds me of “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov, one of the favorite short stories. Try to read it without being distracted by the rest of the internet.

As written about by Carr, a move toward such a future would be scarier than the idea of our brains just being overloaded with too much data and not developing enough deep knowledge, as it would basically end all individuality. Although the two are linked — if you’re not forming individual thoughts through personal reading and writing, then it’s all external, which basically means the internet going forward. Already, people on the internet group together around similar interests, e.g., politics or sabermetrics, developing thoughts and worldviews alongside each other virtually. Sure, have a predilection for such behavior, but the internet only exacerbates the narrowing of experience. Imagine such an echo chamber effect across the entire human race. Or maybe just watch episode 2 of the British television series Black Mirror.

ALCOHOL

I was thinking before New Year’s Eve that perhaps I should cut down on the drinking in 2012. Then when I woke up the next morning to a text from my good friend saying I should probably apologize to his long-time girlfriend for calling her a “cunt” multiple times, I really thought it would be a good time to take a break. Important note: this is only because she’s awesome; if she were really a cunt, I wouldn’t have felt bad.

Of course, at 10pm the next day my roommate busts into the apartment and tells me to put some pants on (I had pajamas on, ok?) because “we’re fucking going out.” I wish I could say he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, but it was just me displaying my total lack of willpower. Insecurity tends to leave one susceptible to peer pressure. Luckily, since I got such a late start, I was able to contain myself fairly well. The next Sunday was a different story.

Holding a football party for a game that starts at 1pm is dangerous. By 6:30 or so (after everyone had left), I was all ready to stop drinking. Then my roommate and his girlfriend went into his bedroom to partake in an activity I haven’t experienced in a while which I know I can when I go to https://www.sexdatingapps.com/. Thus, it was time to go to Village Pourhouse to meet up with some of our earlier guests. Would I have heard them fucking if I stayed in the apartment with the Steelers-Broncos game blasting? Probably not. Have I heard them before? Plenty of times. But I wasn’t going to watch Tebow Time alone when I could be watching it in a bar among massive alcoholics — and I mean massive in both drinking quantity and physical size.

My plan was to grab something to eat immediately after the end of the Steelers-Broncos game. As it turned out, I was abandoned by four girls who had walked up into my general area right before the Tebow Miracle. In my despondence, I was sucked into stepping foot in another bar. Minutes later, the 35-year-old, 6’5″ Russian alcoholic I was hosting a couple of hours earlier ordered 10 tequila shots for three people. One of these three people was a 40-year-old woman (estimating) who didn’t want to drink any of the shots. As a result, I ended up downing three or four of the tequila shots.

After reaching a transcendent level of drunkenness, I figured it’d be a good idea to harass the cute bartender who had just gotten off her shift. I even tried to make light of the incessant drunken wooing she must encounter every day she works. It seemed to work, because I do remember talking to her for a significant amount of time. What I don’t remember is anything after she plugged her phone number into my phone. It was as if my brain decided to turn off the second it knew it had done its job. “Welp, you got an attractive female’s number? Time to shut down for the night.” I later arrived at my apartment unable to open the locks with my keys and cursing out the door for not letting me in and then screaming like a possessed person while I lay in bed.

The bartender never responded to my later text.

WOMEN

I’m not sure how much I need to expand on this topic, considering the initial section of this blog post. I did get the number of another bartender on Monday night, though. Unfortunately, it ended up being the wrong number. I figured this would happen after I asked the girl for her number, I typed it into my phone knowing it was wrong, asked her if the last four digits I had typed into my phone were right, she said they were wrong, and I typed them in half-heartedly knowing they were wrong yet again but didn’t want to ask a third time. Fuck. Me.

I also have replaced one unhealthy online obsession (which existed in the real world for a short period of time) with another unhealthy online obsession. Is this progress?

BLOGGING

I took a three month break between posts. It has been about an additional month’s wait for another post. This is obviously unacceptable. And while I haven’t made much progress on this individual blog front, I have created a baseball blog at Second Squad Sorrows. I credit former Roto Hardball colleague and fellow long-distance relationship sufferer @scottskillings with pushing me to create the blog. Mets and White Sox fans together to wallow in the patheticness of their respective teams. Wonderful.

INTERNET

I want to spend less time on the internet; I assume most people nowadays feel the same way. I have not improved at all since the calendar flipped over to 2012. I feel comfortable in assuming this is the case for most people who try to cut internet social interaction out of their lives. I know one person on NeoGAF who has just replaced his NeoGAF forum time with tweets and YouTube comments. YOUTUBE COMMENTS. It doesn’t get any more desperate than commenting on YouTube. That is like when Josh Hamilton took whatever painkillers he could to simulate his Oxycodane addiction (note: I have no idea how accurate this is).

EXERCISE

It took me about a month, but I finally did some intense exercise in 2012. And it was only due to the insistence of my roommate’s girlfriend. And it was only for 15 effective minutes out of a total 30. It was the P90X Ab Ripper X video and it’s four days later and my hip flexors still hurt. Goddamn it. I better take at least a couple of runs this week or else the indoor soccer game I have next Friday is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

Remember last week? That was pretty cool, huh? I haven’t even been paying all that much attention to the playoffs due to a combination of busyness and the knowledge that nothing will top last Wednesday night. The simultaneous collapses of the Red Sox and Braves, along with the all-but-impossible comeback by the Rays, have been discussed endlessly already, and I feel like most people (other than Red Sox and Braves fans) have moved on. So while the framework of this post will be the events of the end of the regular season, it’s really just about how freaking awesome baseball fans are. I guess “people with the same interests as me are the coolest” could also work.

Baseball lends itself to absolute obsession. Something like football — or even soccer over in Europe, from what I know about the schedule — is more compatible with, you know, having a life. Football allows you to set one day of the week away (and ok, Monday night, too) to turn into a worthless slob on the couch and watch either your local games or the Red Zone channel if you an ADD-addled fantasy player. Baseball is there almost every night you come home from work and on the weekends, too. This constant availability aligns perfectly with platforms like สนุกกับการเดิมพันกีฬาที่ยูฟ่าเบท, enticing fans to elevate their engagement through sports betting, adding an extra layer of excitement to each game.

Please direct your eyes to the chart on the right. Look at that time commitment. So try to imagine what it’s like if a person is a baseball fan in the sense of attempting to follow all 30 teams — usually for fantasy knowledge purposes. I know that I became a better and more intelligent fan once I delved into fantasy baseball head-first a few years back. The result is being able to talk to any other baseball fan for practically an infinite amount of time. Not that I wasn’t able to do that already, but now I can do it with fans of any team almost as well as with Mets fans. I would joke about the Astros possibly being an exception, but past Tuesday night is evidence against this.

After a Sunday where I had a great time hanging out with fellow Mets fans during a Fangraphs (and River Avenue Blues and Amazin’ Avenue) meetup that turned into a middle school dance where girls and boys were replaced with Yankees and Mets fans, my hunger for real life baseball discussion had been whetted. While our Mets fan contingent did talk a bit about the depressing topic of our chosen team, there was also plenty of discussion about the on-going football games and good television shows. If I truly wanted to immerse myself in baseball, I would have to watch teams that still actually mattered, so Tuesday night on my home after a late class, I decided I should go to Foley’s NY to check out the four games that would help decide whether the Red Sox and Braves would provide schadenfreude for the rest of the country.

I had already been there before and knew that it is baseball fan heaven, with every television showing a baseball game, signed balls lining the walls, and a Don Zimmer fathead in the bathroom watching you piss into the urinals. I sat down at the bar and saw that the four televisions situated along its length were showing the four relevant games. There was probably no place on earth I would have rather been. Oh, I’m sure the MLB FanCave had all the games on, but fuck that place.

The night didn’t get really good until an older Astros fan sat down next to me and started berating the Cardinals fans sitting a few stools down on the other side of me. I just laughed and told him that I was with those “pussy Cardinals fans” for tonight, considering I wanted the Braves to miss the playoffs. From then on, we talked about 1986 (even though I was born during that season), Roger Clemens being an asshole, Nolan Ryan being a steroid user, Carlos Beltran being a clutch player, “Harvard turds” ruining baseball with stats, and how much the Cardinals suck. All right, it was mostly him talking, but it was immensely entertaining. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to turn away at some point to talk more to the attractive girl with an Irish accent who had sat down next to me, but the Texan would not stop talking. He had now moved on to other things, like his brother who had written for SNL and had made some YouTube videos. By the time the siege on my attention had been lifted, it was too late to stick around any longer, unless I wanted to get home on the LIRR as the sun was coming up. I wasn’t upset though, as I was able to have a conversation with a fan of the terrible organization that is the Astros for the sole reason that we shared love for baseball. Sure, his opinions might have been all over the place, but sometimes you have to hear from people outside of the saber-twitter-blogsphere, right?

Sometime during the night, I overheard a girl ask about a Cardinals fan meetup at Foley’s. It explained the Cardinals fans strewn around the bar, and also made me think of God Save The Fan, which I had recently read (and I’ve been meaning to write a review of along with the book I bought it with on Amazon, The Postmortal). In it, Will Leitch talks about finding a bar in Manhattan to watch the 2006 NLCS with other Cardinals fans (this is where I stopped reading the book). I told myself I’d ask him on Twitter whether he was talking about Foley’s. But not before I was at Foley’s again the very next night to watch the same eight teams play four games on the last night of the regular season.

The bar was a bit more packed on Wednesday night, though. When I managed to find a seat at the bar after a little while, it was pretty much in the same spot as before. This time, I was situated next to a Cards fan. This might have had to do with pretty much everyone at the bar being a Cards fan. There were a few Red Sox fans, too. If you magically appeared in the bar, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t have guessed it was in NYC. This Cards fan was surprised that I was rooting for his team, considering 2006; I told him that the Braves were like a sadistic bully that beat on Mets fans for most of their childhood. Comparatively, I still remember thinking the 2006 NLCS would just be a bump in the road. Sigh.

We sat there talking about the state of the Mets, how much money Albert Pujols will get this offseason (and from which team), the young pitching staff of the Rays, the embarrassment that is Carl Crawford, among other things. Meanwhile, the Rays had spotted a huge lead to the Yankees, the Cards had crushed the Astros in the first inning, and the Phillies-Braves and Red Sox-Orioles matchups were tight games. I downed beer and beer, sharing a bucket of bottles with the Cards fan, while watching the drama unfold with hardcore baseball fans all around me. To be a Cards fan out to watch the game in a NYC midtown bar on a weeknight means you are most likely dedicated. And at one point, I turned around to see the very guy who I wanted to ask about his Cards fan NYC bar story.

As Leitch seemed involved with a conversation with a lady, I struck up a conversation with his buddy (who looked vaguely familiar and whose name I cannot remember now). But once I mentioned that I wanted to ask Leitch something, he introduced me as awkwardly as possible to embarrass me. I probably deserved it. The minute I mentioned God Save The Fan, Leitch apologized for it being out-of-date already. Even when I said the only reasons I bought his book were its bargain price and Amazon recommending it when I bought The Postmortal, Leitch was suitably self-deprecating. I guess that should probably be expected from a guy whose first book was titled Life as a Loser. Leitch was also surprised to hear I was rooting for the Cards, but I told him how I want Braves fans to feel my pain. I bet some Braves fans think they’ll be back in the playoffs next year and for years to come (like I felt about the Mets in 2006), but maybe Jason Heyward won’t become a Hall of Famer and maybe Tommy Hanson will have injury issues. Or maybe the Mets will become the best te. . . nevermind.

But once again, I was able to effortlessly strike up a baseball conversation with another person, albeit a much shorter one, before I returned to my seat and my original Cards fan companion for the night. Leitch really did seem like a nice guy (he even offered me a beer!), which makes sense considering the transformation Deadspin has made since he gave up his editing duties. Despite Buzz Bissinger ripping him on Costas Live years ago for lack of integrity, the site has only gotten progressively more grimy under A.J. Daulerio. But I know Leitch and other people support him, so whatever, I won’t make this about how Deadspin was better with Leitch was editor. I mean, it was, but let’s get back on topic. Is there a topic here?

Oh yeah, despite Evan Longoria going into beast mode, the Rays were still trailing the Yankees; the Phillies-Braves game had gone into extras; and the Red Sox were looking like they were going to win their game against the Orioles. Then the timeline of madness that I can’t remember nor be bothered to look up broke out, starting with the Phillies beating the Braves to knock the latter out of the playoffs, making the Cardinals fans go crazy. Then a little while later, Dan Johnson hit a 9th-inning, game-tying home run with two outs and two strikes. Then a beer later, the Red Sox choked away a 9th-inning lead for the first time all year. Then only a few sips later, Longoria hit another home run to send the Rays to the playoffs and Red Sox home. It was a blurry night of cheers and high-fives by then, as I guess everyone not from Boston was happy to see Red Sox fans suffer again. It’s like order was restored in the baseball universe, and I was in the NYC nexus of it.

- Apparently, two-and-a-half acres of land is the minimum required to be seen as a true homeowner in central PA. The way properties were split up with tree lines reminded me of some of the scenes in Band of Brothers. After a few too many beers, I started visualizing tanks rolling through the backyard.

- Since houses are spread out in what would qualify in my estimation as countryside (despite the locals vehemently classifying it as suburban), there are not many cab services around and none at all after 10 PM. So maybe friendly tanks and jeeps would have been appreciated. Also, there are students of the Wharton School who drive cabs — well, at least one.

- I had heard of Wawa and how it’s a souped-up 7-Eleven gas station, but I wasn’t prepared for touch screens to order sandwiches at three in the morning. I was impressed, considering I’m accustomed to just grabbing a buttered roll at that hour. I had also never seen so many coffee machines lined up next to each other.

- The reason I was in PA in the first place was for some memorial golf tournament held by some family that I’m connected to through about four people. But hey, I had two friends who invited me who said it was a good time last year, so how could I resist showing off my mediocre golf abilities in a best-ball (after researching, it turns out we played scramble) tourney? Oh, the thing I learned was that I can hit my driver relatively straight and far consistently now. So I have a step up on Tiger at the moment. BURN.

- That learning experience recap was just a segue to the picnic after the golf tourney at the host family’s two-and-a-half-acre abode. Remember when I said how everywhere outside of the northeast metropolitan corridor can be considered the South? Well, there was one cute girl at the party with a slight country accent — which I guess makes sense since she lives in Lancaster County adjacent to the Amish? — and after a few beers and filling my stomach with too much food, she was the only thing I was concerned with. But after consuming too many beers for her tiny frame during Flip Cup, the cute girl ended up disappearing and passing out upstairs in the house. As about ten people were seated around a couple of tables — younger family members, my friends and I, and some random girl — the cousin of the sleeping girl, in an attempt to keep us at the house overnight, said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Hey, you should sleep with [my cousin], she’s pretty!” I guess in Pennsylvania it’s cool to pimp out your catatonic cousin to a relative stranger when you want to fuck one of his friends, too. Maybe she meant literally sleep, but I feel like on some level that’s even creepier. Perhaps, at this point, I should be elated at the opportunity to just lie in the same bed as an attractive girl, but instead we all got the hell out of there because it was obviously getting strange. But not before one of the girl’s brothers got upset with a friend for hugging her a bit too hard, and said, “I don’t even get hugs like that,” to which my friend responded, “Yeah, because that’d be fucking weird.” With that, my friend summed up Pennsylvania west of Philly.

- Some driving listening thoughts after the proposed rape: I didn’t know I could like Ken Davidoff any more than I already did, but he was great on the Jonah Keri podcast episode he was the guest on. Anyone who answers a question with, “Because I’m not an idiot” is awesome in my book. Also, Louis C.K. stand-up passes the time extremely quickly. Especially this interview with Conan, which is for all intents and purposes stand-up (skip to 9:28 for best results, since I can’t embed and put the timestamp in).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqclnkM2gg

It seems like it’d be cool to write about baseball for a living, but you’d also be a baseball writer for a living. In all likelihood, you’d make garbage money, unlike investing in Best Day Trading Platforms UK, where you would make some real cash instead of struggling to cover the latest player drama. You’d be writing about overgrown millionaire children idolized for being able to hit baseballs really far or throw them really hard. Consider opening an islamic junior isa if you want to invest in your child’s future. Investors or entrepreneurs may look into portuguese investment funds to diversify their portfolio and potentially relocate to Portugal. Those who are interested in precious metals may explore our collection of authentic Australian gold coins.

Sometimes I wonder how I can even religiously follow and support such a farce until something awesome happens like Jose Reyes hitting multiple triples, or Tim Lincecum throwing a 14-K complete game shutout to win a 1-0 postseason game, or Shane Victorino getting beer poured on his head. I just enjoy watching athletes perform at the absolute highest level, whether it be baseball, football, or tennis. I don’t think there’s any shame in that, but sometimes you need to take a step back and realize this shit doesn’t fucking matter, even if their feats are impressive. Since gladiatorial battles and war aren’t held in the same regard as they were hundreds and thousands of years ago, perhaps seeing Justin Verlander throw 100 mph after 120 pitches while tossing a no-hitter is the closest we can come to seeing a chariot race to the death in our civilized society. Sure, there are still heroic soldiers, but the ongoing counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not exactly spectator sport — even if the U.S. reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden was one on par with winning the World Cup.

On that note, wouldn’t it have made sense to post my first blog update in months on 9/11/11? That should be a fun day to look back and see how the terrorists won (I can be this much of a dick in this post because it’s not 9/11 yet). Instead I’ll be posting about the usual bullshit until then. I just wrote condenscendingly about sportswriting as a career and I’m going to resume blogging about sports, movies, books, and games. I’m obviously jealous of people that get paid for it, right?

I really don’t know how much longer I’ll be updating this particular blog, though, and with what frequency. I’m still bitter about all the [bot] traffic I lost when I moved away from my previous WordPress.com URL and I’m also bored with this name and site design. For a little while, I thought Google+ could serve as a sort of blog, but that service looks DOA, much to my chagrin. Twitter is not enough to get my thoughts across, even though I’m on there way too much. There’s always Tumblr, I guess. Or focusing on writing pieces for Baseball Nation.

I can’t help myself.

What then followed were Obama’s official announcement/speech and crowds gathering across the country to wave flags and banners and cheer the death of their enemy — our enemy. But I still felt oddly uncomfortable watching college kids cheer and jump around in front of the White House due to some aging extremist Islamic terrorist getting shot in the face. As this tweet points out, it’s practically the exact same scene that took place in parts of the Muslim world after 9/11 that disgusted millions of Americans. While I don’t agree with making a direct parallel, since this is a death of a murderer (as opposed to almost 3,000 innocent people), I wasn’t the only person who thought the raucous celebration a bit unsettling. My father, a man who has voiced misgivings about Islam in general, even commented that he felt weird watching the footage on FOX News. Yeah.

I’ve also heard “the cost” of this assassination (if that’s the correct term) being described as possible retaliation in the coming days and weeks. No, the cost was $4 trillion over $1 trillion and over 100,000 civilian deaths. Sure, we’re cheering the “end” of what we originally set out to do, but in the process we’ve sabotaged ourselves financially, helped destabilize much of the Middle East, and killed a whole bunch more innocent people than Bin Laden ever did. But I guess it was worth it to prove a point?

Maybe this isn’t the right time to talk about this shit, especially after seeing an image like this:

Because, fuck, if anyone has a right to celebrate this news, it’s the men who lost their friends at the World Trade Center. But they know — along with anyone else who lost a loved one — that this doesn’t change much. America finally finished the job we set out to do 10 years ago, but no one is coming back to life, Al-Qaeda and its off-shoots are still very functional, and Bin Laden ultimately won since he changed our way of life since 9/11/01.

But at least the Mets beat the Phillies in 14 innings, right?

A Bad 9 Holes of Golf
I don’t even need to play a full round of terrible golf before I want to drive my golf cart into the Great South Bay. Multiple three-putts combined with sand traps equipped with golf ball tractor beams is a recipe for me snapping a club in half and cursing out any human being who dares open his mouth.

When An Answer To A Sporcle Quiz Is Kyrgyzstan
You really expect me to spell that correctly? I hate you and your stupid face, person who came up with that quiz.

Mets Fans Who Don’t Like David Wright
What the fuck is wrong with these people? Is this a Wire situation where its 5th season was maligned due to being obviously inferior to its predecessors, even though it was still better than 95% of television? David Wright from 2005-08 — while not quite as valuable as Albert Pujols or Chase Utley — was arguably the first player you would pick to build a team around; Bill James even said so himself on 60 Minutes before the 2008 season. And even though Wright’s taken a frustrating step back the past two seasons, he’s still been worth ~4 wins each year. He’s the only guy that’s been on a field consistently the past four disastrous seasons. But you want him off the team because he has been striking out more than you’d like. Ok, I’ll admit the throwing errors are frustrating. You still don’t deserve David Wright.

The Fact That American Idol Is Still The Highest Rated Show On TV
Do any of its viewers actually listen to the performers? This includes my parents, as they are the sole reason I am forced to acknowledge the show’s existence. Any time I overhear someone signing, it confirms my suspicions that the talent pool has been diluted to the level of a high school audition. I cannot wrap my head around the ratings this terrible competition receives.

Oh Wait, Jersey Shore Is Ten Times Worse
You are the reason The Situation makes more money than you. You enabled Snooki to “write” a book. If this is ever aired in the Middle East, al-Qaeda’s recruiters will have a watermark year.

Thinking One Of My Tweets Is Awesome Only To See It Not Get RT’d
Fuck all you people for not recognizing my momentary genius! Twitter is dumb anyway! *cries*

An Extended Death Streak in CoD/CS/DoD/Quake/Unreal/Halo/Any FPS
Is there anything that makes you want to throw your controller anymore than getting repeatedly murdered in the digital realm? If I’m going to die, I want to bring at least one virtual guy down with me. Re-spawning under airstrikes, getting killed by camping snipers, dying to a random grenade, or just being legitimately terrible are all grounds for rage-quitting while yelling “FUCK THIS”.

When A Favorite Streaming Porn Video Disappears
A part of my penis dies whenever this happens. And it’s not like I have an ample amount to spare.

Whenever I Think Of How Much (Spam) Traffic I Lost By Moving To Self-Hosting
“Hey, it’d probably be a cool idea to get some storage space on the internet for all those GIFs. You could self-host your blog, too. Maybe even try adding one of those Google ads just for curiosity’s sake. Nevermind that you got linked by Deadspin and Fark on the old URL. Ignore the fact that over a year later, you’ll still have a fraction of the traffic and comments you had before you changed that URL and moved away from WordPress.com. And you won’t ever bother with that whole ad idea because it was pointless in the first place.” I suck at the internet sometimes.

These Two Tweets
How is it possible for someone to believe this? Has anyone ever been more wrong in the history of mankind?

Myself
What a waste of a human being. I need to write a script about a guy who goes back in time to stop himself from being born, based on myself. The Abortinator. Can you imagine the paradoxes?

Also: What I Want Out Of This Season

Turn the clock back about two and a half years. The Mets, after a mediocre start to their 2008 season, had managed to build a small lead at the top of the NL East standings. But they are seemingly in the middle of another (albeit much less epic) collapse after the disastrous ending the previous year. Mets fans, including myself, can’t imagine having to endure the same heartbreak again yet also feel a sense of inevitable doom.

I remember hearing about the decision to pitch Johan Santana on three days’ rest in the second-to-last game of the season and feeling everything was over right there. Taking the one great pitcher in the rotation and forcing him to pitch on short rest when you’re going to end up pitching Oliver Perez in the final game anyway didn’t sit right with me. Granted, Oliver Perez wasn’t the worthless pitcher he became once he signed a 3-year, $36 million contract, but he was no better than average in 2008. On top of that, down the stretch he had been strikingly awful. He had just given up five runs in his previous start and going right back to him on three days’ rest was the best course of action? I can’t honestly say I remember which pitcher would have started the penultimate game instead of Johan, but I felt any downside would be mitigated by giving Johan normal rest.

Boy, was I wrong.

At the time, I was in my first job out of college — a job I might have gotten due to sharing Mets fandom with the boss — and we had a suite rented out for that very game. As apprehensive as I was about Johan, how could I not be excited to be in a luxury box for the first time in my life, even if it was the very last one in right field? Little did I know I wouldn’t get out of my seat past the fourth inning, making sure I had a good seat to witness the dominance. I watched as the Mets $137.5 million offseason acquisition put up zero after zero, managing to do more than anyone could have expected. I kept wondering if Jerry Manuel would pull him, ready to flip out if another pitcher walked out to the mound in the beginning of the 8th or 9th inning. I didn’t care about his ballooning pitch count; apparently, neither did they.

I have always remembered one at-bat in particular, and I was worried that going to BrooksBaseball.net to look it up would prove my memory incorrect. In the 9th, Dan Uggla stepped up to the plate with 1 out and a man on second. Josh Willingham had just hit a double, but Jerry was leaving Johan in. He had been the best pitcher in baseball in the second half and it was his game — and season — to lose.

The crowd had been on its feet from the beginning of the inning, and numerous suite denizens were bashing the advertising sign directly below their seats at this point. On the first offering, Uggla swung and missed at a changeup right down the pipe. Incredible. Johan followed that up with the same pitch and Uggla swung through it yet again. Hilariously awesome. On the 0-2 count, he threw yet another changeup, this time in the dirt. Uggla swung and missed the ball by a foot. Outside of Games 6 and 7 twenty-five years ago, I’m not sure Shea was ever louder than it was after that strikeout.

Here’s the at-bat in PitchFX form via www.brooksbaseball.net:

Beautiful.

The Mets were really going to win this game. We all knew it. Johan wouldn’t be stopped. A starting pitcher who’s only out on the field every fifth day shouldn’t be able to put an entire team on his shoulders and take them to the playoffs, but here we were watching it happen. And we didn’t find out until later that he carried the load with only one functional knee.

When the next hitter drove a fly ball almost the warning track, I think the entire stadium missed a breath. But when it was caught, it was pandemonium. Everyone in that moment didn’t care that Oliver Perez was slated as the starting pitcher the next day. I went home and immediately looked on StubHub for tickets to the last game at Shea — I was that excited and optimistic. The possibility of having front-row seats to the final depressing game in such an awful stadium did not enter my mind. Of course, once I saw the prices, I quickly came to my senses, but the point still stands: the Mets were faced with what was practically an elimination game with Oliver Perez on the mound, and I couldn’t wait to watch. That was the effect of Johan Santana for that one day. I also still believed David Wright and Jose Reyes had it in them to come through in that last game; I knew they’d be able to overcome whatever deficit Ollie left them with. Carlos Beltran’s legs were still under him, and Carlos Delgado had put together a monster second half. There was still confidence left on a very basic level. The Mets were a damn good team. They wouldn’t let the Marlins end their season yet again.

I think we know the story since then. I don’t need to delve into the hell that was 2009 nor do I have to go over some of the awful acquisitions. Sure, I started to think the Mets had a legit shot at the All-Star Break last season, but the quick fall to start off the second half brought me back down to earth in a hurry.

The current narrative is Sandy Alderson and his all-star front office. As a proponent of sabermetrics, I have no doubt that he’ll right the ship, as he has already started to do. But as much as I trust the guys now running the show, I want to have the same confidence in the guys on the field. And right now, how could anyone? There’s the injury questions for Beltran and Bay. There’s Wright’s schizophrenic hitting, and Reyes’ leg and OBP issues. Johan Santana, the man who once inspired so much confidence, might not even pitch this season.

But you can still have excitement without confidence. I can’t wait to see if Ike Davis can mash taters at an even higher rate, and to find out whether or not Brad Emaus is for real. I want to see Josh Thole develop into a solid backstop the Mets can depend on for years, and watch Jon Niese grow into the reliable workhorse we all want him to be. And I pray everyday that Bobby Parnell will take the closing job away from Francisco Rodriguez solely on merit. There’s plenty to look forward to this season — just most likely not a playoff race.

My hope for 2011 is that by the end of year, the state of the Mets will be easier to quantify and that the subsequent offseason will be that much better as a result. If Reyes’ fate is to be traded for prospects, and Ruben Tejada needs to take his place, then so be it. If Chrises Young and Capuano don’t work out, it’s not like the Mets have huge albatrosses to deal with going forward. All I ask for is a couple of things to go right, like Fernando Martinez or Reese Havens staying healthy for a whole year, or David Wright reverting back to the hitter he was pre-2009 — anything to keep me excited about the future, because that’s what this season is about. It may not be a rebuilding year in the traditional sense, but it’s no doubt a transitional and evaluational year.

Like I mentioned, I have confidence in the front office to do what’s right. I just can’t wait to feel the same way about the on-field product again.

The last time I posted, Cliff Lee had just become a Phillie. Maybe it’s just taken me this long to recover from that blow. Luckily, the Mets are pretty much in a reassessing mode, so over this year of Phillies dominance they can work on building towards 2012, especially with all the money coming off the books. I just look forward to seeing a healthy lineup of Reyes, Pagan, Wright, Beltran, Bay, and Ike for 2011. But enough about the Mets, as I can save that for another post.

While I’ve spent plenty of time putting together link posts for Roto Hardball, it’s not that blog’s fault that I haven’t written a blog post here in a while. Whenever I’ve felt like writing about something else other than fantasy baseball, it’s been a fairly personal topic that I thought was better suited to my hipster-worthy Moleskine notebook. I tried to work out problems and issues on the page, writing them out with a pen instead of typing them out with a keyboard — as if that would make a difference. Maybe I’m just preparing for the inevitable appointment with a shrink; instead of talking, I’ll be able to just give the doc my journal.

It’s funny when you worry about things blowing up in one way, and then having them blow up in a way you never thought would happen. On a related note, part of growing up is being able to deal with something not turning out the way you hoped. It’s also important to know when to stop giving, even if you think it’ll make you feel better. In the end, it only adds to a massive feeling of resentment. This reminds me of Blue Valentine — which you should watch as soon as it hits Netflix Instant. The independent movies are always on there much quicker than the big guns.

I’d go into Oscars discussion now, but, 1) I didn’t watch the ceremony, and, 2) I haven’t seen 7 out of 10 Best Picture nominees. I have no idea how to punctuate that sentence. I am listening to the winner of Best Original Score as I write this, though. I thought the Inception soundtrack was fantastically bombastic, but the work Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did for The Social Network is just so damn cool and much more conducive to writing. I’d listen to the Inception soundtrack while skydiving.

But yeah, the past two months. I’ve been meaning to look for a new job for the past month and a half or so. That hasn’t happened. The nearest equivalent would be applying to the MLB Dream Job of sitting in a room for seven months and watching every single baseball game of the 2011 season, while blogging and making videos about my experience. But one of the application questions asked if I was of legal drinking age, so I hope it involves imbibing alcohol as well.

By far the coolest thing that’s happened to me recently was attending a bloodbath between the Islanders and Penguins. A friend called me up the day of, and I said I’d be down for going to my first Islanders game this century. Like most of America, I no longer follow hockey, but I knew that the last game between the two teams had resulted in a broken face for Islander goalie Rick DiPietro. So I was expecting for fights. But I didn’t think the Islanders would a 4-0 lead into the first intermission, while also participating in a couple of one-on-one fights which only served as precursors to a full-out brawl. By the end of the game, the Islanders had scored 9 times.

While I complained earlier in this post about when things don’t work out as planned, this Islanders game was perfect. Each team only had a handful of players left on their benches by the end of the game due to the insane amount of game misconducts. In the final minutes, fights were breaking out after every face-off and chants of “We want ten!” were reverberating throughout the stadium. And I got to witness a mother yell out, “THIS IS WHAT WE’RE RAISING!” after she heard some vulgar taunting in the parking lot. It was a wonderful night, topped off by watching the highlights at the Hooters nearby; it was not until seeing the fighting condensed into a few minutes that my friend and I truly appreciated what we had just experienced.

If I felt more comfortable sharing my life details on here (a.k.a. GIRLS), I assure you this post would be longer and much more entertaining. I try to make up the difference with GIFs.