Sighinide

Oof, I ate too much tonight. My bad, lol. So I need to do something while I digest, so here goes. LOL. Ow.

Well, I watched the debate. Well… I half watched it, really. Mostly I spent the time searching for new watch faces and apps for my smartwatch while kinda/sorta listening in on the shenanigans. TBH my watching the debate was more a way for me to bond with my mom than anything else, since the debate was really important to her.

Some initial thoughts: it’s really just the same old stuff.

I’ve haven’t cared about anything political in a loooooong time. But I mean… there was Trump, being Trump, and Kamala, being… whoever she is, lol.

IDK who won. Most people in the media seem to think Kamala won, I guess because they just… dislike Trump personally, lol.

I would call it a draw.

Trump came off kinda weird and illogical sometimes, and kinda obsessive too, but he did seem to be, IDK, interesting. Kamala was just there, being a democrat.

Kamala is reeeeally, I don’t know, boring. She comes off like any off-the-shelf democrat. There’s nothing… undemocrat about her, I guess, and that’s her appeal.

Honestly, you could have taken any democrat in congress or from any governorship in the country, put them on stage against Trump, and received essentially the same performance and the same talking points.

Yeah, Kamala. She’s very… democrat-y. I guess that’s her schtick.

A lot was made about Kamala’s reactions to Trump’s claims about illegals eating pets and such. IDK, any liberal with a room temperature IQ and rudimentary knowledge of English would have reacted in the same way to those statements.

When Trump pressed Kamala for an economic plan, Kamala responded by saying that she wanted to help small businesses and the working class and such. Woah! Help small business! Would have thought of that? lel.

I’m in my mid 40’s, seen my share of political stuff, and I can’t recall a democratic candidate saying anything else. I mean, she verbally attacked billionaires. *Yawn*.

*Yaaaawn*

I guess you could say that she was, though, personable. Perhaps moreso than Hilary, I guess, but not as much as Obama, or Bill Clinton, though maybe a smidgen more than Howard Dean, say, or Biden. So she’s… adequate, perfectly average, as a democrat.

IDK, Trump cares too much about himself to help the country, and Kamala is just relentlessly same-y.

A big deal was made about her choice of Tim Walz as running mate, a virtually unknown and unremarkable democrat governor.

People (Democrats) were impressed by this. Why, he’s just as good as she is! Well, yes, but stop to think about that, lol.

Trump is just… Trump. There is no reason to think he will do anything if he gets into office again that he didn’t do the first time around. It will be his first Presidency, just another four years of it. I’m not expecting much, but at least he’s entertaining.

I guess the question boils down to whether you find him threatening or entertaining. Those that find him scary will vote Kamala, those that don’t will vote Trump. I, of course, will be sitting on the sidelines and just watching, lol.

I watched the debate on MSNBC. Afterwards, there was a bunch of Democrat-related fluff. The commentators did what they were expected and paid to do and bashed Trump, promoted Kamala, etc. but they also spent like 10 whole minutes talking about a fucking instagram post from Taylor Swift and in addition to that nonsense there was the usual spate of commercials about this or that democrat-y thing. Big Pharma ads, etc.

There was a commercial being played then that pretty much encapsulates the sheer Democrat-y-ness of the whole thing. It was this commercial featuring a bunch of child actors who were pretending to be hunger-stricken kids in some third world country or the ghettos of America or something, with an overall message of like… “Please give, kids are starving all over the world, and especially in the poor parts of America or in such and such a place”.

IDK, all of these commercials are annoying, but this one especially so, because 1) MSNBC plays this fucking thing relentlessly, I mean I swear I’ve seen it off and on for over a year now, and 2) it implies that there’s some kind of epidemic of starvation amongst kids or something, when that obviously isn’t true, except in small, isolated and vanishing pockets in places like India.

It’s just… Democrat-y propaganda, disguised as a plea for charity. It’s so obviously designed to pull on liberal heartstrings that it’s shameless. It’s even worse than those charity pleas featuring the hurt dogs and such.

There isn’t a country in the world that doesn’t have a problem with obesity, most especially in the poorer communities, thanks to government “aid” and private charities showering these places with free and discounted food. Every nation on Earth now, except for maybe Japan, has a rising obesity rate, and in some places the figures are just jaw-dropping.

I once did some checking online and found a couple of studies that said that the underweight percentage of the world’s population had dropped into the mid-single digits, like it was at 6% of the world’s population or something, and it was falling fast. And this would include people in rich nations like the US and China, so it would include people who are just… naturally very thin.

It’s all just so… dumb, and echo-chambery, and ridiculous. Even the ads are fucking stupid. IDK, everything Democrats do just comes across as being merely tangential to real-world stuff. Not that the Republicans are any better, but that doesn’t excuse Democrats. It’s just the usual shit with them, a lot of posturing and “feel good” and nothing concrete, nothing real.

It’s the same song and dance that some people in our country have been seeing now for 70, 80 years.

*Ugh*. Yawn.

Woah, well, they’re over now.

This time I decided to not blog during the games and just… let them play out.

And, I decided to really make an effort to watch the Paralympics, too.

3 years ago I actually couldn’t. Comcast was giving me weird errors whenever I tried to stream them. But this time, it was smooth sailing.

Woah, what a learning experience.

Anyhow… too much to talk about in one post, so I’ll talk Olympics first.

A few thoughts… it was fun, although I deliberately saved some stuff to stream for later, like the surfing and sailing. That stuff I will watch eventually.

The gymnastics were fun, as I tweeted, though I did lament the lack of Russian athletes. I’ll spare any talk of political stances. I’ll just say that it’s a shame that Russian athletes, who are largely innocent bystanders in the global political arena, were punished for government actions that they obviously have no control over.

And beyond that, the gymnastics really lacked for a legit competition against the US. Traditionally, that would be Russians, natch. Their style stands as an effective counterpoint against the US’s.

Without the Russians and their expertise-not to mention their influence, women’s gymnastics teetered a bit too far in the US’s favor. There was a real danger of the competitions becoming “The Simone Biles Show”, instead of an edge-of-your-seat competition.

I get the appeal of Biles. And TBH I have no idea who the current crop of Russian gymnasts are. But still- in my mind there will always be an asterisk next to the 2024 gymnastics results. Maybe not in others’ minds, but in mine- yeah.

And overall, the lack of Russians really… took something away from the rest of the field. I don’t know what it is, maybe just a lack of Russian-ness, I guess, but I missed them.

And I found it weird, truly, that the lack of Russian athletes was never mentioned during any of the broadcasts that I saw. It was like… there was some kind of unspoken rule that they weren’t to be mentioned, at all, even in passing, like the country didn’t even exist. It was kind of creepy TBH.

Well… overall, tho, the Olympics were a fantastic experience.

One personal takeaway: I guess I’m not over being an athlete, myself. At one point, I guess probably 10 years ago, I had thought so. Now, I’m thinking not.

I guess I was missing something in my life and the Olympics and a few other things, like reruns of Liv and Maddie, re-awakened it. IDK. So now I’m thinking it’s probably a good idea to start thinking of myself as an athlete again, perhaps, rather than just some guy who exercises.

I guess what I came to is the realization that I’m not “too old” to be an athlete, at least in my chosen sports.

When it comes to something like TKD or Karate, it’s probably possible to be good if not competitive for a long long time. It’s not for nothing that Eastern Martial Arts flicks are filled with “Old Master” type characters. It’s much easier to be a good TKD practitioner in your 60’s than a good rugby or basketball player, for example.

Maybe it’s time that I started taking the martial arts a bit more seriously. Especially since it’s obvious that I age slower than most men do.

IDK, it’s a thought, and one worth a lot of consideration.

Speaking of exercise and gymnastics… I was stunned to see some of the Pilates moves I invented being performed on the floor by a few of the gymnasts (!), during actual competition! I’m not sure of how to account for this- maybe they were gymnastics moves that I retrofitted into my routine? Or, were the athletes taking queues from me?

IDK, I saw at least a few of them being performed on the balance beam, and more than once by Simone Biles herself. Obviously, she did them far better than I ever could, but I was gobsmacked just watching her do them.

I don’t know what to say about this, but I guess I’ll just… leave this here.

But I will say- I don’t remember them being performed in previous years. So… there’s that.

I may actually rewatch the gymnastics competition to get pointers on how to do my own moves better, incredibly. Absolutely unreal.

I still exercise, ofc. I continue to get stronger, doing the exercises I do and continue to invent. This year I’ve made more of an effort to cut, also. We’ll see about that.

Ultimately, I will likely need to start a running routine as well- as was pointed out to me several times by some of track and field athletes- um, thanks, though I want to continue to become stronger first. Also, I have an exercise bike that I use daily.

But yes, running is on the schedule, over time. IDK, I just find pilates… fascinating. I got some new ankle weights this year that I love. I will probably combine them with some of my old ones after awhile to really push things to the limit.

And I just love too much the other workouts I do. IDK, we’ll see. But someday yes, running will be a thing, and yeah, I’ll probably enjoy that as well, but there’s no reason to master everything at once, and probably good reasons not to.

But yeah, there you go.

It struck me halfway in between the “regular” games and the Paralympics that this was probably they real reason for the games. It wasn’t about… the athletes. Is was about the audience. It’s about popularizing movement, and athletics, in the world of the common man (i.e. me).

That’s the symbolism of the gold medals. It’s alchemy. Alchemy, like the name of Liv and Maddie star Dove Cameron’s album. Is about turning straw into gold, right? The straw being us, the commoners.

And I got sucked directly into it, without me knowing or realizing it was happening.

Well… this is not a bad thing to get put in the middle of. Absorbing the life energies of thousands of world class athletes has unlocked something inside of me, and I guess I’ll use it.

Well, that’s enough for now.

I will resume these thoughts later.