Tag Archives: Thoughts

Baseball series 5-8-21

This is my origin story for broadcasting.

When I was at Santa Monica College and looking at schools to transfer to, I saw that Cal State University schools required a speech class as part of the transfer requirements. The only Cal State I’d been considering applying to is Cal Poly, but the speech requirement was still something that I hadn’t yet completed, and I didn’t see room in my schedule for it.

I am not opposed to giving speeches, and public speaking isn’t a foreign thing to me. Not too long before I’d made a decision against taking a speech class, I had spoken in front of the Beverly Hills City Council in opposition to a parks plan.

My dad recommended against taking the speech class and instead recommended taking a broadcasting class. The broadcasting class would not qualify for the speech class requirement, so it was an interesting idea but I’d have to put it into my full schedule, so… pass!

The summer after transferring to UCSB, I decided to take broadcasting class after all. It wouldn’t help my graduation units–my transfer credits were capped already–but I was interested in it, and it was something to do during the summer for a little bit each day while I enjoyed my break from school.

The class was taught by the Ron Brewington, who advised us on what was not newsworthy (dog bites man), and what was (man bites dog). He also emphasized frequently that star is just rats backwards. I remember distinctly that he turned google into a verb by adding ize to it. That is to say that he recommended we “googlize” things. I always imagined googly eyes.

These.

We were also taught to write out our scripts in Courier New and mark up our scripts so we knew where the human speech breaks were.

I learned a lot in that class, but some of this type of formatting did not keep for very long when I went to KCSB.

At the end of the term, we had to write a script and record it. There were phonebooth-sized recording rooms where we had to record to cassette tape. We were in either the same building as or an adjacent building to KCRW, but there was no interaction between the real radio station and the classroom. It’s kind of a shame because they could have done something good with that.

I decided to save mine. And you can hear it if you’d like.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: A complete waste of time

I wrote this Friday afternoon, and any events that have happened since have not been incorporated into this post.

As I have done with many hearings, I watched the Marjorie Taylor Greene hearing in its entirety.

I started late, which is why the timestamp on this is about an hour after it happened.

I was worked up about how this was evening happening and how so many Republicans — and I used to be registered as a Republican — seemed to be in favor of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s prominence in the party.

When I’d heard that they’d discussed and voted on whether or not to remove Liz Cheney’s from a top post in the GOP but took no similar vote regarding anything to do with Marjorie Taylor Greene, I was incensed.

Comedy makes the situation a little easier to take.

But partway through I realized something that made me feel even worse: The only thing that matters to the GOP is that a day was wasted.

Here’s the order of what happened on Thursday to the best of my memory. If it’s not exactly right it’s close.

Part 1:

The house resolution was introduced.

A vote was taken on whether to discuss it. The Democrats have the majority and wanted to talk about it. The Republicans didn’t. It was clear to everyone that the Democrats had the votes just to discuss it.

The voice vote surely had enough yeas. But the Republicans asked for a record vote that requires each member to vote so they can count the votes. That takes a long time to do.

With the votes only along party lines, the Democratic majority meant that the house resolution would be discussed. Because duh.

Part 2:

Then there was a motion brought by a Republican to adjourn. You know, because they’d decided to discuss it, the way not to discuss it is just to go home.

The voice vote surely had enough noes. But the Republicans asked for a record vote that requires each member to vote so they can count the votes. That takes a long time to do. This is the second gratuitous record vote.

With the votes only along party lines, the Democratic majority meant that the house would not a adjourn. Because duh.

Part 3:

The Democrats said how Marjorie Taylor Greene is. And she is bad.

The Republicans came to her defense and said that she’s changed and that the statements were made before she was elected, so whatever. Also the Democrats also do bad stuff, so maybe just get everyone out who has done reprehensible stuff.

My take is that they should get everyone bad out. I don’t care about which party the bad people are affiliated with. Get all the bad people out.

It was in this stage that I realized that probably no one from either party really cares for Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Democrats don’t like her, and I don’t think the Republicans like her or even believe that she’s worth keeping around in a normal situation.

But it’s not a normal situation.

Biden is in the Oval, and the Democrats have the majority in the House and Senate.

The way to sink the Biden presidency and the Democratic party is to make them impotent.

Remember being in school? Remember how some people wanted to make the teachers ineffective? How did they do that?

They made trouble in a way that made the teacher have to stop. The way to do it is to derail.

So what did the Republicans do? They put school shooting denier on the education committee.

No sane person would think that freshman representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be on that committee.

No parent would want her on that committee.

There are a lot of sane Republicans and a lot of parents who are Republicans.

Putting Marjorie Taylor Greene on that committee is a guaranteed way to get people to react negatively and loudly.

There was nothing behind it but to delay.

This is unconscionable. Eating up an entire day for nothing.

I don’t know what the next time waster, but it’s going to happen soon.

Be safe, everyone!

Is today sunny?

They say today is supposed to be sunny. By today I mean tomorrow because it’s Friday afternoon for me.

According to the National Weather Service, it will be a sunny day on Saturday. High of like 60 and low in the 40s. Too cold for LA.

Now, the gamma squeeze for $GME is crazy. I don’t blame people for wanting to go after people who are going the wrong way in the stock market.

Short selling isn’t illegal. It’s kind of dickish because you’re betting something will fail, but to some extent, you’d normally sell stock you’ve purchased because you think it will drop in price. Someone else is a sucker for buying the thing you think will lose value.

Shorting stock is risky. If it had no risk involved, more people would be OK with doing it. Stigma schtigma.

But it’s risky and it’s expensive to do.

That’s what makes it so spectacular when it fails.

Bill Ackman famously shorted Herbalife and LOST A BILLION DOLLARS.

There’s more to discuss here. But that’s all for me for now.

Have great weekend.

And remember:

TO THE MOON!!!!!!

Hello from Friday afternoon!

This is the first weekend in a while when I won’t have all the screens up with news, and that’s a huge relief. I’m looking forward to what should be a sleepy, rainy Saturday.

Lunch today is chili that I froze earlier this month.

Happy birthday to Kevin Bebak. Shoutout to him.

I was looking forward to doing some woodworking things on Sunday, and there’s a chance that I still will be able to do it.

I haven’t posted the NYT crossword puzzle in a few days, though I’ve done Thursday and Friday. I’ll post those this weekend.

Definite high hopes for the Biden administration. I did have fun writing that letter as Trump to Biden. I used the font of his sharpie handwriting, and made it look like the marker was running out of ink a few times.

Remember how the world looked yesterday at about 3:40pm?

As usual for a Saturday post, I’ve written this Friday afternoon. If a ton has happened since time of writing that makes yesterday a distant memory, here’s what the world looked like then:

Tommy Lasorda passed away.

Betsy DeVos has resigned.
Elaine Chao has resigned.
Mick Mulvaney has resigned.
Hope Hicks will be leaving next week.

Ben Carson was trending because people are making fun of him.

Trump remains divisive.

Tucker Carlson has been abusing this audience with

Biden says he’s been saying that Trump is not fit to lead for more than a year. “That’s why I ran,” he said today.

Reported domestic single-day COVID-related deaths topped 4000 for the first time.

Kim and Kanye are splitsville.

No one knows where Melania is.

Ted Lieu announced that he’s bringing articles of impeachment on Monday.

This came after Nancy Pelosi has asked Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and later demanded Trump resign. Doesn’t look like either will happen.

But the impeachment articles on Monday and Ben Sasse saying that he is willing to consider convicting in the senate. We can’t forget that Mark Kelly has replaced Martha McSally in John McCain’s old seat.

Ossoff and Warnock may be sworn in next week.

They need only 66 votes because David Perdue of Georgia bounced a few days ago when his term expired. Kelly Loeffler is still the appointee until they certify the votes in GA.

I have all kinds of news feeds set up to inform me of developments throughout Shabbat.

Local:
KTLA

Domestic:
Los Angeles Times Left-Center
Washington Post Left-Center
New York Times Left-Center
Wall Street Journal Right-Center
CNN Left
Fox News Right

International:
Deutsche Welle Left-Center
BBC Left-Center
NHK Right-Center

Opinion:
Donald Trump twitter whoops! Just got suspended permanently! Not using this!
Newsmax

Commentary/Trump bashing:
Lincoln Project twitter

I wish you all a weekend of safety and health and that this weekend is pleasant and without any terrible news.

Reflections on blogging in 2020

We all know how hard 2020 was. About midway through the year I decided to start blogging as a way to feel like I was getting out of the confines of my home. While I had done crosswords over time, I decided that it doing them and broadcasting my successes and my failures would mean I’d have something to write about every day.

I then took on the NYT Spelling Bee to complement the NYT and WSJ crosswords.

I’d like to say that my blog has kept me sane from when I started in the summer, but that’s not accurate. For a stretch of weeks from late August to partway through October, I fell to a low point in through and couldn’t really get myself to write about the crosswords, even when I’d done them. I was listless.

I saw the world collapsing with political divisiveness that led to varying approaches to COVID-19 safety. With every event that caused a spike in cases, I saw my wedding date being pushed more into the future. Even when I was asked yesterday if I have a date for the wedding, I said the thing I’ve gotten used to: “Yes, I do. My date is Calah.”

I’m lucky to be surrounded by friends, even if not physically. Weekly board game night has long shifted to being Zoom-based, and that’s certainly done a lot for me. But it was Calah who told me that blogging had been a good thing early, so I should just go back to writing on the regular, even if I didn’t feel like I could.

And as you’ve seen, it’s certainly gotten back to fully chugging along.

I like that I get to write daily.

I like being part of the NYT Spelling Bee community.

I like woodworking projects I do and writing my weekly Tuesday blog about it.

I’m looking forward to a much better 2021.

Thanks for reading what I write. Thank you for your support. I hope you find it to be entertaining. I try to find something interesting to write about with the puzzles I solve.

Coming upon the woodworking blogs are a couple chairs and some more end tables! Should be good.

So much has happened since I wrote this post, right?

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Here are some thoughts from Friday afternoon but posted Saturday at 10am.

I have a clock that was given by my dad to his parents before the turn of the century. There’s no screen that goes all the way across; rather, there’s an arm that has some dots on it, and it moves back and forth. Persistence of vision makes it look like the display is there to read without issue.

I got this clock after they passed.

There is no daylight saving time setting on the clock because it just goes off the date.

And now I realize that the iHome I used to have made me flip a switch. So lame.

But there’s a problem that I hadn’t expected to run into with this clock or, really, ever.

The clock’s earliest date available is January 1, 1999, so we know this model was first sold in 1999. Back then, daylight saving time ended the weekend before Halloween.

Ever since 2007, DST has ended the weekend after Halloween.

So for this week, the clock has been an hour behind. Fall back happened too early.

It’s been a little jarring, but starting in the early hours, it’ll be back on track.

It’s a little after 4pm PDT on Friday right now. I hope things have gone well since then. I expect there to have been some developments since, but I’m hoping it’s uneventful.

Best,

Matt