I am wound up.
There have been some interesting Major League Baseball games as of late, between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox, as well as between the Bronx Bombers and the Houston Astros. It was nice to see the Yankees come up from behind to push it into a tenth inning and win. It was a lot less nice to see all the damned Red Sox pitchers hitting all the Blue Jays players yesterday. Fucking perps! This is baseball, notfucking hockey.
Speaking of which, the Las Vegas Golden Knights won the first game of the National Hockey League Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Washington Capitals. Now, everybody and his uncle is hyped up about the Knights' improbable/dark horse story. And this is why I have little use for the majority of gullible sports fans and the often con artist/huckster sports media that caters to them and their delusions.
Each sports game is a discrete entity, its outcome being entirely independent of the outcome of previous games and being entirely immaterial to the outcome of future games, as such. To think otherwise is what neuroscientist Dr. Daniel J. Levitin calls "gambler's logic" in his book A Field Guide To Lies/Weaponised Lies. Brain-dead sports fans and the opportunist sports media who whinge on and on about "streaks" are the type of people who look at all the action sequences of my beloved Fast and Furious franchise...and then think that these constitute driver's ed filims.
But that is not what has me wound up. No, that honour would go to the current big indaba about Roseanne's LATESTbit of dumbassery. Yes, you read right, I said Roseanne's LATESTbit of dumbassery. It is as if people a) were not around in 1990 (which, in many cases, is plausible), or, and this is my preferred hypothesis, b) are conveniently forgetting what Roseanne did in 1990.
In case you have not heard, earlier this week, Roseanne said something to the effect of comparing an official from the previous Administration to a character from the Planet of the Apes franchise. This has lefties/anti-Trumpers all a-huffin' and a-puffin' and a-Ima-ba-LOW-yo-house down demanding for Roseanne's head. This has righties/pro-Trumpers white knighting for Roseanne like she was some damsel in distress (but, unlike, Jim West, I DON'T want to see her outta that dress!)
Sigh...must we? I guess we must. OK, then. Here is what Roseanne did in 1990.
For thems who, like former Senator Jesse Helms, likes their arts to be simple, here is the short version. In 1990, Roseanne disrespected the national anthem by belching it out in the most deliberately horrendous, out-of-tune, fashion possible, then added insult to injury by grabbing (or, given the fact that, then as now, she is in gross violation of the Washington Naval Treaty, attemptingto grab at) her crotch. Now, for thems who were not around in 1990, or who were mere weans back then, OK, I a can possiblygive you all a mulligan. I say possiblybecause I found the above on the Intar-Webs which means all you yong 'uns could have done the same within minutes if you were inclined to dig deep instead of react like Pavlov's dogs to the outrage du jour.
For thems who were around and remember Roseanne in 1990, and for thems who were not but whose research brought them the above, y'all are a bunch of immoral damned hypocrites who are just milking the outrage when it suits your damned side. Thems who have a problem with what Roseanne did earlier this week sure don't seem to have a problem with what Roseanne did in 1990. Thems who are white knighting Roseanne as if she was some latter day Joan of Arc are selectively/conveniently amnesiac about what Roseanne did in 1990, which was worse than what NFL players did last year. I am not a fan of Colin Kapernick, but what he did, he did for something he believed in. Roseanne, by contrast, disrespected the national anthem just because she could. It is like Michael Caine's eponymous Harry Browne character says about the council estate dwellers rioting; "The terrorists were my enemies, but they, at least fought for something. This mob is violent for the sheer sake of being violent."
Roseanne was against the flag before she was for it. Just like James Woods was a liberal before he was a conservative. Just like Norman Podhoretz and Charles Krauthammer were hippies and Paul Wolfowitz was a draft-dodger before all three became Iraq War Hawks.
So, yeah, don't come at me all wound up one way or another about what Roseanne did this week, because, if you do, there is a more than even chance you are deliberately choosing to overlook what Roseanne did in 1990, which does not quite fit into the narrative you want to spin today.
The second thing that has me wound up is how Canada and Québec, their politicians' and news media talking heads' pronunciamentos to the contrary, are NOTfree market economies. Now, enter the terms "Alexander Hamilton" and "Otto Graf von Bismarck" into this blog's search function, and you will see that, in terms of economic views, I tend to be far closer to them than I am to Ayn Rand. But Rand did have at least parts of a point when she said that government should stay the hell out of business in a free market economy. I am not talking about Federal Aviation Administration rules like the Sterile Cockpit Rule, or about the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and its Forest Rangers here. I am talking about the unholy, incestuous alliances between the Canadian federal, as well as provincial, governments with failed businesses and cartelshere. Such as the federal and Québec governments recently stepping up to shore up the failing newspaper La Presse with taxpayer dollars. And such as the Québec government stepping in to shore up failing clothing retailer Simons this week, again, with taxpayer dollars.
Québec is one of the most highly taxed jurisdictions on this planet. Taxpayer dollars do not go, in sufficient enough amounts, to things like healthcare, roads and policing. Instead, they go into sinkholes like SODEC, La Presse and Simons. I have no problem at all with my taxpayer dollars going into necessary things such as the Federal Aviation Administration, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, policing in general, the military and healthcare. I have a HUGEproblem with my taxpayer dollars going to waste, such as Simons, La Presse, former Mayor Fat Bastard's Formula E, and the City of Montréal paying to bring Major League Baseball back when Golden Knights owner William Foley brought the team to Vegas all on private money, asking not a single cent from taxpayers.
For most of us, it is either you make it on your own or you fail on your own. It is time the Canadian and Québec governments took the exact same lines with corporations coming to them hat in hand.
Then, there was a story out of Formula 1 this week, a cautionary tale about pendulums and karma. Seems a waitress accused Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen of sexual harassment. Unfazed by Weinstein getting nicked, Kimi filed a complaint with police against this woman for extortion. The lesson of that story is that not everybody cuts and runs and hides, so be careful if you want to play the flavour of the month game.
And, now, I want to end with a couple of plugs.
I first heard of this group on TSN 690. They are called Hockey Helps The Homeless, and they raise money for homeless people by hosting hockey tournaments featuring National Hockey League players and ordinary civilians.
McLaren alumni Sergio "Checo" Perez is collecting money for the victims of the recent earthquakes in Mexico through his foundation.
Puerto Rico has been devastated by Hurricane Maria. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has set up The Empire State Relief And Recovery Effort For Puerto Rico.
On the subject of Puerto Rico, Los Angeles Chef José Andrés has set up an organisation, called World Central Kitchen, to help feed the hungry, not only in Puerto Rico, but in other bad-off places in the world. Please donate or help if you can.
I also want to plug the Patreons of a couple of superb folks. First, there is Jordan Owen, superb musician and content creator. Then, there is Sunny Megatron, Sex Educator and Podcaster. And there is also director extraordinaire and podcaster Holly Randall. They are, all three, highly entertaining to watch. They have the charm and magnetic charisma of The Kylie Ireland Show podcast of a decade ago, starring the legendary, one and only Kylie Ireland and Eli Cross.