Of course, this brings to mind the inevitable and persistent question of WHY I wasn’t told this- all of it- sooner, when I could have used this knowledge to at least know myself better, at an earlier age.
But we’ll get into that some other day.
AUGH, lol.
Good lord, people.
Okay, so I AM Calvin, then.
I mean it’s all there, everything. I think “Hobbes” is probably my old stuffed animals, imaginary friends and my… supercomputer, all rolled into one being.
And I’m the kid.
SO MUCH of that strip just seems to be me, that there’s just no way it can’t be. Of course, that is assuming that it’s based on a real person, and not just the cartoonist’s fantasies. Which it might be- but why would it, when EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD isn’t?
It’s finally like I get it, now. When I was a kid I had the first few books and read them often, and I found them funny, but not as funny as most. Mostly, they felt familiar to me, and I wondered why others found the material so… different. I mean, doesn’t everybody think like this? So why, then, is it so interesting?
Well… I get it, now.
Wowwwwwwww.
What a world.
Don’t think I don’t see EXACTLY what you’re doing, Miss Costanza. Because it’s OBVIOUS.
I KNOW that you know that I know that we all know what you know.
Releasing this? Jump? The DAY the Olympics started?
———————————–
Why you so afraid to face it?
Why you so okay with wasting time?
Bitter happy and you’re faking
Lost inside that black hole
So if you wanna run away
Tired of dreaming what it’s all about
And every time you get close
You try to change but you choke
Don’t be afraid to let it go
So just jump
What are you waiting…
What are you waiting for?
Don’t be afraid of wanting something more
Jump
Into the deep end
To find your way back up
Don’t be afraid of wanting more
Just jump
You only miss it when it’s all gone
It’s hard to see it ’cause you sunk so low
You keep on saying that the sun’s gone
Lost inside that black hole
So if you wanna run away
Tired of dreaming what it’s all about
And every time you get close
You try to change but you choke
Don’t be afraid to let it go
So just jump
What are you waiting…
What are you waiting for?
Don’t be afraid of wanting something more
Jump
Into the deep end
To find your way back up
Don’t be afraid of wanting more
Just jump
What are you waiting…
What are you waiting for?
Just jump
What are you waiting…
What are you waiting for?
So just jump
What are you waiting…
What are you waiting for?
Don’t be afraid of wanting something
Jump
What are you waiting…
What are you waiting for?
Don’t be afraid of wanting something more
Jump
Into the deep end
To find your way back up
Don’t be afraid of wanting more
Just jump
———————————–
What you need to know, Miss Costanza, is that I do things MY way, on my OWN schedule.
Not by yours. Not by others’. Not by ANYONES.
By mine. And mine ALONE.
Not that it isn’t… poignant, but still- it’s the principal of the issue, I suppose.
Yeah…
Right.
You know- I need to be more assertive.
RIGHT, then. Fuckit.
Right.
Ok, one more thing: keep all the sailing sports. Those are the perfect thing to just put on and just… IDK, vibe to, with the gradual movement of the boats and sounds of the wind and ocean waves.
I like those, although since they are long, I will be saving those for later as well.
I wasn’t feeling well the last few days, so I didn’t watch as much as I wanted, instead preferring/needing to do other stuff. Some idle notes, tho:
1) I think I got my girl of the games, lol. Bombette Martin. Wow she’s fucking cute. She’s another one of those that kinda seems… I don’t know, almost designed to specification, or something. The tells and symbols are really something else.
2) Having no audience makes for an interesting watching experience. In some ways it makes things much better, in others, no. Baseball is actually fun, now. Removing the audience and all the MLB baggage from the equation makes for a much better viewing experience, IMO.
One reason I dislike “Pro League” sports is that they have become a sort of quasi religion for much of the fanbase. Whereas people used to go to church, now they watch football every Sunday, etc. And gawd damn, does this bring a shitload of baggage into any sport. You can hardly “casually watch” pro games. Everyone involved gets wayyyy too invested. It’s not even about who wins, it becomes about the history, the players and coaches lives off the field, the commercials, the salaries, the politics, and mountains of other stuff. It becomes wayyy too much for a casual viewer.
There’s something really refreshing just watching two teams made up of people who like playing baseball just… play baseball, for the fun of it, and to just win a game. It’s fun. And the lack of an overwhelming audience of tens of thousands makes everything seem so much less… overwhelming, I guess. Certainly it becomes less noisy.
In a way it reminds me of the games I used to play as a kid. I have fond memories of playing and practicing baseball in the old summer nights, under the bright glare of the field lamps. It was fun, back when I was young. A lot of fun. I still have my old glove. It doesn’t fit anymore, but I guess the memories have earned it a place in my closet, next to a few other things.
I couldn’t keep playing for two reasons: 1) I have severe seasonal allergies, and 2) It got too “serious”, meaning superficial, mostly because of parents losing a proper sense of boundaries and becoming pushy and irritating, and thus injecting too much stuff into the sport that really doesn’t belong there. In my case, these two things collided; my parents are very much the type of people who get wayyyy too invested in the junk surrounding sports, and thus kept pushing me out there despite how sick I would get sometimes, with the longer games and such. Ick, yuck. Just yet another symptom of the cancer that is “pro sports”, I guess.
In my case, I much preferred indoor sports, due to the allergies. Sports like the TKD.
3) Speaking of which, the Karate on display this year looks much more like what I did as a kid then the TKD. They actually have punches there, lol. It looks much more physical, with some pushing / throw-ish moves and actual blocks and things.
That’s a complex issue, I guess. I think that what I was taught was a kind of mix of the two, with bits from each. Of course I went to multiple dojos too, and each teacher had their own style, with each emphasizing different things.
This was back in the 80’s and 90’s, back when I think there was a bit more fluidity amongst the styles, and I think less rigidity in the rules.
Some teachers I had did in fact have a karate background. Others didn’t.
I wound up getting two black belts, one from a dojo that taught I think mostly TKD type stuff, and the other from a more Karate inclined dojo. The styles were in fact quite different, thus needing me to get two different belts. This is even though both were advertised as TKD dojos.
Maybe it’s just that TKD sold better in my area than Karate, IDK.
But… there you go.
4) Volleyball I missed, and in this case, an audience would have been appreciated. I saw the gold medal match, and I might go back and watch some other matches after the games are over. Some sports I think benefit from an audience.
I think it’s like… does the sport allow the audience to overwhelm the athletics? If it does, then IMO the audience becomes toxic. If it doesn’t, than the audience is a good thing, a net benefit.
The NFL isn’t even much about football, and I think that that’s really why I hate it. It really does appear to be some kind of massive cult, or weird, postmodern religion, or something like this. It’s so difficult to watch any of this stuff and not get drawn into all kinds of extraneous, frustrating, and inappropriate crap. To become a fan of that stuff is to get pulled into a virtual lifestyle, where your whole identity gets reformed around “your” team.
Not that you know any of the people on “your” team, or that they have anything to do with you at all, on any level, in any way. Or that they even know you exist. But you still need to support them with your time, emotional resources, and money. Kind of like paying a tithe to the Vatican.
Unhealthy stuff, and not something I would ever want to be a part of.
5) The skateboarding and BMX audience environment is a healthy one, clearly. The ambiance of those sports seems to be more about support of everyone- athletes and audience alike, and becoming the best version of yourself, rather than slavish, embarrassing devotion to some city “team” made up of people who hate you from other cities.
3×3 basketball is fun, too. Very fun, actually! I would much, much rather watch that stuff than the NBA. It’s a revelation!
I haven’t seen an NBA game in eons. And outside of the Olympics, not a single basketball game in decades. But this 3×3 stuff is just golden. I like it, and I will be looking out for more of it.
Well, that’s enough for now. Might talk later.
CLIMBING?!?!
Sport climbing? Like people actually climbing stuff like walls and boulders in actual competition?
Fucking A!
Dawd damn!
Neat.
Fucking A, the Olympics rule.
THIS is what sports are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be inspirational, and fun. And enlightening- I think sports at their best teach as well as entertain.
This time around I’ve been watching some new-to-me sports like BMX freestyle, surfing, rapid fire pistol, skateboarding, and a few others, and god damn, these sports fucking rule. I’m learning SO MUCH this time around. I’m seeing new things and it kicks ass.
Unfortunately this also means I had to miss out on some swimming. That sucks, although I’ll try to at least see the best parts of what I missed, even if it’s after the games are over.
There are some great things coming up, I know, so I will need to prioritize them. Like trampoline. Fucking A, trampoline rules. Or rhythmic gymnastics. Or the marathon.
Last night at the track was great, such wonderful sportsmanship and drama and talent. Just awesome. THIS is why I fucking watch.
And there wasn’t any of the reprehensible crap on display that you get from, say, the NBA or NFL or UFC with any of their embarrassing trash talk nonsense or whatever other infantile shit they do to stir up needless controversy. Those leagues seem to go out of their way to appeal to the lowest common denominator sometimes. Fuck ’em, they suck.
The Olympics do sports right, I think, not to mention their athletes are better athletes. The olympic rings are probably the best display of athleticism of any sport. They display not just strength, but endurance, balance, coordination, and concentration better than anything else I’ve ever seen. Pro gymnasts are the best athletes on the planet.
Other notes… the US anthem sounds the best instrumentally, I think, of all the national anthems. So glad we went with Star-Spangled Banner over America the Beautiful.
On a purely jingoistic front, I do kinda wish I had kept up with the swimming. US crushed everyone there. It was kinda amazing to see the last day of swimming (which I actually just finished up). US lost one gold, and there, only by a fraction of a second. Amazing.
Jade Carey kicks ass.
Other stuff…
Yeah these sports are inspirational, at least to me. They make me want to be a part of what’s going on, even if only tangentially.
Now that I think about it, I probably should have tweeted Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, like I did Nastia and Shawn. I’ll probably do that.
That was a nice shout out that Michael gave me during the start of the swimming program. Thanks bro.
Yeah, you know, this is some great stuff. It’s like the best parts of a party, an enlightening lecture, and… I guess a series of championship games, all rolled into one. And it’s great.
On the personal front, I’ve started doing TKD again, even if only in my house, with a couple of leg weights attached to each leg. 4 different weights in total. I also do pilates like this, now. Nice. My daily dumbbell routines have built up quite a bit of speed and endurance in my upper body. Neat, that’s what I wanted. I don’t work out for size, or honestly even for strength. Just balance, speed and endurance. I guess I lift differently than most, but it works well enough for me.
Speaking of TKD, wow, the sport sure has changed. Nobody punches anymore. Or even blocks or guards, it seems. Maybe I was just watching the wrong matches, but IDK. It’s… different. Do punches not count anymore?
I was always trained to keep my hands up at all times. Yeah, I don’t know.
This is fun. Yeah, I might actually watch some of this after the fact. I can see almost no way to fit all of this in, with all the other stuff coming up, and especially now, since I can see entire events uninterrupted. The primetime highlight reels I used to watch in years past skipped over quite a bit of stuff, it seems.
So yeah, cool.
This is good stuff. It “works” in that it does what sports are supposed to do. It’s not like the NFL, which seems to almost encourage sloth and mindless, empty consumerism.
Neat.
Fun, when Comcast decides not to suck.
Take a look at these four screenshots.
Every day, I get these fucking “8100” errors. Google provides no help. These are the same errors I was getting back in the beginning. They’re still happening, daily. Look at the date in the lower right corner of the screens, here.
I also get these “TV GO” errors/messages/things with the broken images. What the fuck even is this? I’ve gotten three of these this morning.
I also have problems access certain events because of “licensing issues”. What? Then why are these even recommended to me?
And take a look at the last screenshot. There, the scroll bar on the window has dissapeared(!) preventing me from navigating, searching, etc. This only happens with Comcast.
Christ, guys. What the fuck is this shit? Fix your fucking issues!
It might be wise to spend more on quality assurance here. Just saying.
Today, I watched surfing, and canoeing, and skeet shooting, and a few other sports.
I liked them; they were fun. I want to see more.
These new HD feeds with the new camera tech featured by modern Olympics are a revelation. I could actually see these sports. I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and not being able to figure out what was going on during these events, if they were even televised at all.
Now, though- I can see the action, and understand the sport, and I can generally appreciate what I see so much more.
It’s fun, and I find myself wishing that I knew more about the athletes and the stories that drive them.
Honestly- that would be very nice, I think. Can we do this? Really, it would be to everyone’s benefit. Part of the problem the Olympics have had in retaining an audience in recent years has been the reluctance on the part of NBC to care about the many thousands of athletes that aren’t a part of the “major” sports, like gymnastics.
The appeal of gymnastics over the other sports was obvious, once: it was easy to watch on those old TVs. Lots of open action, no water getting in the way of the picture, easy camera angles, easy abilities to quickly zoom in on the athlete’s faces, etc. Gym couldn’t be better made for TV, and, perhaps not coincidentally, so are the rest of the primetime sports.
But now, though- what about the rest of them? Track and Field beyond running, for example. Or anything water based. And I’m not just talking Olympics- how about the other years, too? It would give people a much needed breather from the usual stuff.
Hearing my parents talk, it seems NBC primetime is going to be the Simone Biles show. And I’m not disparaging her here, but what about everyone else? Like the dozens of men who ran the triathlon. Each one of them is every bit the athlete that Biles is, and surely there must be some stories there that are being untold. I can’t believe there wouldn’t be.
Maybe this is a moot point these days, but man, would some changes be nice in the way our media treats sports. I mean I really, really don’t like the NFL, or baseball, except for those rare moments when it becomes interesting to people who aren’t really fans of that stuff.
Football is honestly boring to me. It’s an incredibly menotenous sport, I think. Rugby is so much more fun to watch. Baseball is boring, and too long.
Canoeing- that shit is intense as hell, lol. It’s awesome. I would watch more of that, were it available. Surfing is awesome. It’s the perfect sport to zone out and just chill to. Archery is fun. Equestrian I don’t understand, but I’m learning, and that is always a gift. Badminton is just plain fun.
Gawd, I fucking dread going back to the same old boring, stupid shit after the Olympics are over. Two more years of an athletic drought before the next one. It fucking sucks.
When I was a kid, I was branded a sports-hater by pretty much everyone I knew because I didn’t like watching football or baseball on TV. It got to the point where I thought that they must in fact be right, and I started hating sports in general.
They were wrong, of course. Idiots. Christ, yet another example of how dumb and self defeating so much of the culture is that surrounds me.
For a dramatization of this, see the baseball scene in Wizard of Loneliness.
And you know- this- this problem I’ve just described here, might be at least part of the reason that this country has such a problem with obesity and inactivity. People, like me at that young age, sometimes equate physical activity with sports, which basically means “football”. Add to this the problem that gym teachers seems to believe this themselves, and you can see how a sedentary populace might develop itself.
PE classes in this country have little to nothing to do with actual physical education, and almost everything to do with teaching kids how to play sports. The end result of this of course is a public that is fat and sedentary, since 99% of the public stops sports by their mid 20’s. It’s dumb, so dumb.
Instead of teaching kids how to play basketball, how about teaching them how to burn calories? Or do “Physical Education” teachers not know that stuff?
Well, perhaps my experiences in P.E. don’t match everyone’s. But I’m sure it matches those of many.
But, back to the Olympics- it’s canoeing / kayaking is every bit as exciting to watch with modern tech as anything done in the gyms. Why not focus on those athletes more next time?
Or the other thousands of them that barely rate a mention in the primetime coverage?
Oh, I know why they aren’t mentioned. It’s because some people think they’re “boring”. Well, you know why people think that? It’s because they don’t know their stories, because nobody asks them their stories.
Next time, try asking.
Well, an interesting day.
I watched the triathalon. Holy shit, those people are fit. Un-be-fucking-lievable. Something like 45 minutes of hard swimming, followed by 45 minutes of biking, followed by 45 minutes of sprinting, with no chances to rest during any of it. Christ almighty! Every time I watch one of those I am utterly blown away by it. Unreal. Those athletes can’t be human, lol. And I say this as a cyborg vampire god, so you know I know what I’m talking about there, haha. Good Lord!
The kind of dedication needed to reach that plateau of physical ability is beyond what I can even conceive. Honestly, it’s just… baffling, lol. I’m a good athlete but that level is beyond anything I have ever seen IRL from anyone, ever. The ability to even compete in that kind of sport on a global arena must involve a combination of peerless genetics, a perfect environment, a world class support network, and a phenomenal amount of concentration towards achieving the end goal.
Well, incredibly impressive, to be sure.
Comcast decided to work better for me today, which was welcome. I only got a couple of “8100” errors, and those were only in the morning. So, nice. Nicer, rather.
Comcast? Get your shit straightened out. Thanks.
I saw bits and pieces of quite a few other sports. Neat. I’m liking the ability to stream what I want now, instead of just… taking what I’m given. It makes the experience I think deeper in some ways. It certainly changes things to not watch any of the athlete promos that NBC is so fond of running during their primetime presentation.
I think it makes the experience more global. No promos = less jingoism, it seems. It becomes more about the sport, and less about the fluff- the politics, the running tallies of medal counts, the omnipresent talking heads’ opinions about subjects that they are clearly not knowledgeable about, etc. In this case, less is certainly more.
More sports, at least. Less fluff means more stuff that is actually worth watching.
Not that the politics weren’t there, of course. They’re in all the commercials, for example. All those commercials for… the NWO, lol. You know the ones. All of them. As in every commercial, no matter the company or product.
The commercials this year are all indistinguishable, at least to me. It’s like they’re all make by the same people, literally. I don’t mean the same group of people, I mean literally the same individual people.
They’re all just variations on the same themes. They’re so similar they all just kind of blend together for me, like some kind of messy watercolor. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m legit struggling to even remember the products these commercials were ostensibly hawking.
There are a few conservative-oriented commercials that are run on xfinity, but even those are just the same as each other, too.
It’s all kind of… boring. Past Olympics had commercials that I remember fondly, since so unique and replayed over and over again throughout the games. Off the top of my head, like that Coca Cola commercial that advertised their sponsorship of the games set to that Sia song. Man, that thing was EPIC. And a few other commercials from past games that I still remember to this day.
These? They’re all kind of… blah. And I’m plastered over each one of them, I know, but still. I’ve done so much in my life- why not take some of the other stuff to make commercials? Something, IDK, comedic, or something? Or something from my college years? Why not?
I’m missing the John Williams theme. I don’t know if the TV production has it, but I wish xfinity did, that’s for sure.
Well, that’s it for now.