Author: admin

You know what’s odd to me? How people’s perspective and point of view–as limited as it honestly must be–becomes worldview. Call it a tide of circumstance, better airtime, what have you. We, as a race of humans, flock towards popularity and that in turn creates popular opinion. We are influenced by influencers. This is as it has always been. Joan of Arc, a 5’2 inch fireball of a peasant girl, who may have been clinically insane, became one of the most important figures of her age by sheer perspective and point of view. You see it everywhere. We, as individuals, often misinterpret the power such things have and whom they have power over.

Last week a Drake football teammate of my son make national news because he did the ‘Trump Dance’ as a football celebration and credited the dance to Trump. Last night Jon Jones did the same thing. This dance, wildly criticized by the media as evidence of the once and future president’s mental decay, has become a celebration that is catching hold.

I’m really done trusting promoted perspectives. Most talking heads don’t have a bleeding clue what they are talking about.

Some Thoughts:

1. Drake lost. It was a terribly lackluster performance by the offense that truly hid the fact that my boy had his best game ever. He gets another shot to shine next week and I really hope he can show out.
2. I’m feeling lackluster myself these last few weeks. I am not getting enough sleep and that is dimming my awareness and my energy level. At least I’m walking a mile almost every day.

Well, Drake fell apart.

It was only a matter of time before the wheels fell off that offense. When you play a good defense and, on the other side, you don’t get the calls it puts you in a bad position. Drake is now in a very bad position. By losing this game they are now a one loss team in the PFL. A win against Stetson on the road still guarantees a PFL championship and an Automatic Qualification to the FCS Tournament. The problem is, again, the offense. These guys have to get a flow going again. They don’t have it. They are struggling with it a bit in all phases (a missed field goal –that may not have been a missed field goal– early in the game was the literal reason they lost).

Draining. Watching them is draining. Caring is draining. I am drained. Well, at least Colo won–convincingly at that. On to the next week.

Some Thoughts:

1. I need some real alone time. I don’t live in a space where I get that. There is always someone around. I want some real time. Real quiet. Not a bunch. Just a few hours to really reset and get my mind right. I’m tired of feeling that someone is waiting on me, either to do stuff or to get out the way. I just need a moment to be still.

I am writing this in quick draft mode because I just updated to the newest version of wordpress, and that is not working out too well. I felt it when I hit update. I read the thing about backing stuff up, didn’t, and knew immediately things were about to go sideways. Not like USA 2026-7 sideways, but sideways nevertheless.

So here I am in this small quick draft window trying to put a Friday blog in place before the Tyson fight. Funny how priorities shift in life. I should be building up to a moment of writing and not trying to get it done so I can watch something on the telly. I’d argue that device and the smaller cellular versions have created a wealth of ills in our society or, at the very least, exacerbated them.

This was going to be a post about this idea of the imaginary LEFT and how anyone not a card carrying Republican is being morphed into the enemy. I’ll write that one eventually. I think it requires a tad more research. I think a lot of things anymore, first and foremost being that I need to get my priorities back in whack. The truth of this blog is that I am blessed with the opportunity to even have this blog, and in that I have all the chances in the world to tell stories and spread the way I think and feel about the world. It is a pleasure. It is a freedom. It isn’t a burden or a thing to get through before the fight. It is what I need to dedicate time towards–yes ten minutes, but also want to be here in this chair all ten minutes doing this. If I can do that for the blog the way I know I can, I can do this for my other writing… The way I know I should be able to, but haven’t with any real regularity for the last, let’s be honest, thirty plus years.

It is habits of mind. It is focus. It is desire. It is what I need to work on the most.

I have to admit, when Trump won my first inclination was to say, “I’m out.” But then I realized that it made me like all the other fair-weather people who want to run when it doesn’t go their way. I mean, after all, how bad can it get? I realized days later it can get pretty bad. There was the nomination of Anti-vaccine pundit Robert F Kennedy to lead Health and Human Services. This is a man who thinks and advances the notion that vaccines cause autism. Furthermore, he isn’t quite sure that Herd Immunity is a real thing. So, we have a Health guy favoring feelings over science. We have a Attorney General nominee in Matt Gaetz who was recently under investigation for sex trafficking along with a host of other ethics violations. Then, he nominated a Fox News pundit with limited military experience (and then as part of the national guard) as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fortunately, his power is limited to being able to “transmit communications to the commanders of the combatant commands from the President and Secretary of Defense but does not exercise military command over any combatant forces.”

I feel like every day is another step towards WTF. The plan remains to begin deporting 11 million plus illegal immigrants day one and follow that up by slashing 2 trillion from the government’s budget with the help of Elon Musk and co. It is as if the human cost of these actions isn’t even being considered–let alone the financial repercussions. Consider this: most of the so-called cuts are likely to be people. He plans to revive his 2020 Schedule F executive order on day one. The plan is to shrink the government by reducing jobs at near Roman decimation levels. This doesn’t sound workable to me. What happens if all those people–who have families and lives and shop and contribute to the economy–lose their jobs? Short term? They go on unemployment and overburden that broken system to the point where Elon’s Team DOGE decides to tear it down as well.

I haven’t even started in on the Project 2025 stuff.

Here’s the truth: I want to stay. I want to document. I want to avoid a long future of Americans being gaslit by the power of media such as Fox News. I don’t know if I can. Some of the fundamental freedom’s I enjoy are being put to question in a government that has no checks or balances. The GOP controls every phase of national governance. They are going to remake this country as they see fit. They won. It is their prerogative. It is mine to decide if I want to still be here.

Momentous Wednesday! I won a game in my $$$ league. Yeah, it is only one. CMac returned to score less points than who I benched to play him. Honestly, I think it was just my time to get a W. Now the real work begins… Not really. I’m totally cooked in that league. A 1-9 start with four or five weeks left to the playoffs leaves me no chance to come back. I feel like the Jets right now. Still, I’ll try to make a run of it and spoil everyone else’s season. I beat a 6 win team last week and I expect to do the same this week. Out of 12 teams, exactly half are above .500. Hold my beer…

The $$ league is not my only Yahoo-based league. When I won two years ago I realized all the champions are moved up to a free entry prize league where you can compete for serious cash. To that end I have joined a H2H league with hopes of getting into the show. I am second in that league at 6-3 with a decent shot of getting to the ‘ship.

Meanwhile in the family league I’ve changed my name from Comeback Season to Dogpoo season. This is a more appropriate name for someone with a 2-8 record. I’ve lost 7 of the last 8 in an absolute free fall. This has to stop. Hopefully a move to Brock Purdy at QB helps me the way it has the Niners. The big decision is whether or not to start Goedert, Bowers, or Andrews at TE this week…

The biggest news is what I’ve been on about all week. The Morehead State game. Speedy WR Nate Garnett will be the matchup I’m watching for against my boy. Garnett, a sophomore with 4.35 speed, already has two 88 yard TD receptions this season. Expect a battle all the way downfield.

I’m on a plane! That generally means it is time to spend some time gathering up…

Some Thoughts:

1. Wedding bells are ringing for the Talis-family. I’m entirely stressed out about it because the moment is big and I want the moment to be right… and I have no idea what that means—not for me or us or any of the handful of people who’ll be in attendance. It has to be beautiful and outdoors. The moment should be wonderful. The pictures leading up to it ought to be amazing. I have thoughts of shots at a garden, in the woods, at the X-Mansion… All of that needs to happen. Where I get fuzzy is about where the actual event occurs and, more to the point, what happens after in terms of a celebration for the family and how we do that without all of the work falling on her and I as the Matriarch and Patriarch respectively.  I will get past the stress. I just need to do that faster.
2. The football stuff is becoming more and more of a daily interaction for me. Call it excitement. My football career was measured in numbers of practices… and losses. There was no real sense of having a chance to do something on a national level like my Drake kid is experiencing. I am happy for him on so many different levels. Let’s recap: He had four head coaches in four years of high school, receiving consistent position coaching for two of those years. Most notably he was forced to change to safety due to a lack of people able to do the job his senior year, further degrading his chance to get a scholarship. He winds up at Drake as a 17 yr old kid competing with 5^th year seniors. He is now one of two freshmen playing at all at his position and considered to be the #1 or #2 cover corner on the squad. Saturday’s game vs. Morehead St. represents a chance to be AQ for the 24 team national championship tourney.
3. Finally had a chance to closely observe someone ‘raw dogging’ a plane ride. For those who do not know the term, let me preface this by telling you it is stupid. In fact, stop reading now if you don’t want to be infected by stupidity…
4. No, you’re gonna keep going? Okay. To raw dog means to spend the entirety of the flight watching the digital readout of where the plane is presently located. In other words, you’re watching a digital version of the plane minutely creep across a map… like an idiot. My guy kept switching between the close up and wide view, as if this was at all relevant to his current situation. Mostly it is not. Once in a sardine-like plane, you’re committed. Watching the dang thing on a screen is a useless redundancy that merely reflects on how absorbed you are with memes and internet culture; not in the academic sense, but in the ‘give me purpose, meaning, and activity’ sense. Sad. Humanity is really not going to make it past this planet, are we?
5.  

Not a lot to lock in on, so I will regale you with…

Some Thoughts:

1. The hardest thing about a trip is coming home. You always hope to come home to a house as nice or nicer than the way you left it. This is rarely the case. Tomorrow we return to a home left to the mercy of the first born male, an adult who is not much on the cleaning. It hasn’t been many days but I suspect an evening’s worth of cleaning to be my prize upon return.
2. This is the exciting part of the FCS season for me. The D1 Football Championship Subdivision has a 24 team tourney at the end of the season. If my Son’s Drake Bulldogs win over Moorhead State next Saturday they will make the 24 as an automatic qualifier. Presently they are listed as #30 in the league according to one measurement and 24 according to another. Neither seem to matter all that much to the voters who decide the tourney. According to current tourney rules, the top 8 teams get a by and the matchups for the rest are determined by proximity–400 miles away at the farthest. This suggests that Drake will play Illinois State in round one. Get your popcorn ready!
3. Getting to the end of another Shadowrun project. It may be time to finally write a bit of that fantasy stuff I keep going on about…

Being out here in the woods allows me to reflect on a great number of things. The principle of shared interests vs. The principle of Yin-Yang is one that comes to the forefront. The Lady Talis is a person of the woods, and out here the slow life and the idea of what matters and place for everything (more on that in a later post) really blossoms for her. She finds her purpose here whereas the desert brings all the emptiness that such a place is commonly imagined to manifest. There are no roots in the desert–not for either of us. Everything there came from elsewhere, and likely would come away with us when we left. Yet the deeper question is what is there here for me in the woods?

The principle of shared interests suggests that couples flourish by having things in common and working on those things and growing together. I feel like we do have some shared interests, but this is not our strength, as my primary interests are aligned elsewhere. I want to be able to focus on becoming extremely intelligent in the X’s and O’s of football–in a chessmaster fashion. That is my hobby, oft manifest through building offensive systems in games like madden and college football as well as watching those games take place. I lead with my hobby because my work–my purpose–doesn’t fulfill me as much as my hobby. That work is writing. Unfortunately, I have not been able to diagnose why that is… So, it leaves me thinking about the Yin Yang.

Ying Yang suggests we work cooperatively, filling each others needs and finding shared interests as well. In this fashion we have our own stuff but we also have stuff together. The combination of both makes us whole. I’m trying to figure out what works best and where it works best… It will mean everything to figure that out.

You lose track of time in the woods. I have these moments that serve as road markers (for lack of a better term) for the week, and they are usually locked to particular days. Friday is for high school football. However, it went down on Thursday this week, leading me to believe that I’d already blogged today, but it is Saturday and my road marker there is my kid playing at Drake. He played today. He played well–several big plays on special teams including being a part of two blocks. He covered their top guy expertly–not bad for a 17 yr old kid. He got called for a Pass Interference on a play where he shouldn’t have, and that cost the team some yards, but he made up for it in other ways–shining throughout his time on the field.

I am really happy at his progress. He’s been amazing. He is growing so much and learning so much. I’m deeply excited to see what it looks like next year. Heck, I’m excited to see how he performs over the next two games. His team is about one win away from locking up a division championship and a trip to the FCS playoffs–likely against a strong Montana team who put 42 on Cal Poly last week and is even (7-7) with UC Davis at the time of this posting.

Things are shaping up nicely. I’m looking forward to the days ahead.

I’m not going to get into one thing with any real level of depth. Instead the next 10 minutes will be a perusal of ideas and other things that I like to call…

Some Thoughts:

1. I got a text from a friend this morning who said, “I’m watching your boy on TV!” I replied with ‘huh?’ which is the appropriate response to being told that your kid is on TV when you yourself are over a thousand miles away making a pilgrimage into the backwoods of Tennessee. Turns out the kid’s game was on the local station and he did pretty good. He’s at the end of his sophomore year and this lost was the (adjusted) 10th of the season. They lose every single game. After a while of losing his performance dipped. I am thinking it might have raised back up for this last one…
2. Also started figuring out more about this Trump thing. In short: Trump is their Obama. Yes, that is as sad as it sounds. As the father-in-law put it, they spent a real long time putting together a media machine to right the wrong, and here we are at the results of it. We won’t know the true cost for another decade, but I can say this: his entourage is ready for this presidency, and they have the House, Senate, Courts, etc.. America as we know it is gone. So, what will the new one be like?
3. Being out here in the peace and quiet is a reminder of what balance can look like in my life. I definitely need more of this and less of the noise.