10 Minute Rule

Even Jay-Z is drinking the juice. On Khalid’s Major Key album he raps, ‘I perform like Josh Norman; I ain’t normal’ which is possibly more prophetic than he realizes. See, Jay-Z works really well within a certain BPM range and cadence. Within that range he is seen as one of the best–largely because the best are older or straight up out of the game. So we are left with Jay-Z to be the Scion of a budding generation. So too can be said of Norman, but there are other things to be said and other questions still unanswered, enough so that I am extremely suspicious of his ability to be the lockdown player he was professed to be in Carolina.

Here is a question: If Norman is Revis good, then why release him? I get not wanting to pay a player what they believe they are worth–heck the Jets traded Revis–but to let him go without getting anything in exchange points to a larger issue. A Nick Foles-sized issue. Remember Foles? Pro-Bowl offensive MVP Foles who had a ridiculously good season with the Eagles before the world (save for the Rams) realized he was a straight up fluke? That happened. Then the Rams released him and now he is a backup for the Chiefs.

This happens a lot. The media hypes up a player and they turn out to be less-than. I’ve watched the tape. Sorry, Jay-Z. Norman is normal. So are you, BTW.

Earlier today I posted a fairly cryptic facebook message. I said, in sum, that I finally understand the difference between religion and science. It goes like this: Science is about the How. Religion is about the Why. Science tells us to ask the difficult questions about how a thing works, how the universe started and how many times reality has been formed (probably 8) and how it all works. Religion is primarily concerned with why we are here, what our purpose is, and why we are meant to behave in a certain fashion. Religion largely leaves the question of how up to God and Faith.

God made the world. How? Seven days of complex hand movements I suppose. But none of that matters. He did it, we know it, and you ought to move right along. Science responds, ‘Not so fast, my friend. Even if God made the world, it used the complex physics of space time in order to do so, therefore we ought to try and understand how those work in order to gain a better understanding of our reality.’

So there you have the insane collaboration of how and why, which truly ought to be a collaboration and really was at some points in our history. Nowadays we are largely reduced to caricatures and stereotypes to group together large swaths of understanding and separate them from each other in a binary fashion. You are 0 or 1, but never both it seems and if both you are outcast.

Wait, my saddle is making me itch. Let me climb down off this high horse…

Some Thoughts:

1. Forza 6 is visually stunning and I am hooked. Race Night 2 coming this Saturday.
2. I remain thoroughly and utterly in love.
3. No, it isn’t a blonde. That was a typo.

A few short days from the first game of the new football season I find myself in the midsts of a very funny joke. It goes like this: The team my team plays has little batman logos on their helmets. In practice they wear the batman Under Armour gear. My team has a longstanding relationship with the idea of Superman and last fall wore Superman shirts specially modded to reflect our team logo. So, what you have happening Saturday is:

 

That’s what’s up.

Unless these kids come up with some Kryptonite quick, its going to end quite differently than the film.

In other news, that commercial with Jon Snow driving a Q60 coupe feels a heck of a lot like it feels to play Forza 6–for the next day or so until Madden arrives. We are going to do Racing night 2.0 soon in order to get into the Fast and Furious series.

So in short, it is taking a long time to hack out these handful of words and I’m tired and slowly adjusting to the revived work schedule. It will be a few days before the blonde gets back to normal.

Watching the Olympics I was struck by one strange fact. An overwhelming majority of the athletes were black. It seemed as if any country that could have access to black athletes did and did so in surprising numbers. Or is it a surprise at all? I am not going to be making the case that black people are genetically superior athletes. There is a case to be made for that in the USA as my people were specifically bred for labor. The issue here is one of socialization I think. Statistically speaking, blacks live at lower income levels that non-blacks almost everywhere on the globe. This is especially true in areas like South Africa where laws were created to preserve a social imbalance in order to keep the money in the pockets of those who already had it.

Which brings me to my point: Black athletes are in and lately dominate Olympic sports because of the poor conditions in which they were raised. In other words, athletics provided a way out and many seized upon that opportunity.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I don’t think I did a great job explaining the imbalance here, but I don’t have the time to go back and fix it. I’ll explain it: Need + Desire + Goals = maximum output. The need factor of the equation is what I try to work on…

Race night is going to become a thing.

I’ve started getting into these themed nights, but with this one I think we struck a bit o gold. Tonight’s theme consisted of a series of matchbox car races throughout the house. Between the races we played games of Rocket League and Forza 6. The movie of the evening is Need for Speed. This is an unabashed homage to Smokey and the Bandit that I did not really care for the first time around but now within the boundaries of theme the movie fits really well.

Food hasn’t arrived yet and we are snacked up pretty good, but in future iterations (there are like 700 Fast and Furious films to go through and then so much more) we are going to have to get better about the food and the guest list.

So what do we do next time? That remains to be seen and viciously enjoyed. Yeah, I said vicious.

Some Thoughts:

1. Do cats eat peanut butter?
2. City of Mirror’s fights to walk the line between fantasy and literature. I’m loving it. I won’t review it because it can’t be reviewed out of context just yet…

Twas the Friday before classes
and my mind was a mess
Would I be ready for Monday?
Oh my what a test

Excite was pouring like sweat from my pores
Would the students be ready for what I have in store?

The semester is one that I am looking forward to
A special Honors project holds it together like glue

Tis the semester of voting, of conferences, of fun
Tis the semester of me getting my shit done.

 

…

 

Okay that is about all I was able to generate in such a short time frame. I think a lot of it is lack of practice. When you become one dimensional as a writer then other forms begin to suffer.

That is all.

 

 

I’m gonna talk football. Digital football to be specific. According to UPS my copy of Madden 17 just left Kansas and is due to arrive by 8/24 end of day. The game comes courtesy of some scut work I did for a textbook provider I don’t actually use in the classroom. That is the beauty of such things: I can be real honest about the product I’m not beholden to.

I’m beholden to madden in a certain sense, because it is the only product on the market. That is likely why I was not honest about the level of utter suck last year. It was so bad that I failed to complete a ten year franchise and basically went back to the PS3 version of madden 25. At least the ads were good. They’ve gotten even  better:

The game looks better and appears to hold more promise for all modes of value to me. I may even try to do the game as a player. Couldn’t be better than the 2k modality but who knows how good it could be? The largest change is the joy my youngest gets out of the game, with him now being a QB/RB and wearing my one time #14. I’m a bit stoked to share the new game with him but more stoked to play it myself on those late thursday evenings when the game is on on screen and the video game is on another. #firstworldglee

Some Thoughts:

1. All this really means is that there is a madden 10 minute review on the way and it ought to be a doozy.
2. School is also on the way. Monday. Holy crap I’m not ready to meet 150 new students and be responsible for their academic success… I need another drink.

A few weeks ago I fixed my shower.

In the greater scheme of things this is not a big deal; the expected chores of masculinity. However, in my life it represented a tectonic shift back towards an understanding that I can in fact handle my business. My pride took a hit a few years back at the hands of a rough divorce and resultant financial downfall. Several other social situations conspired to feed into my near depressive state and drive my self confidence to record lows. It was noticeable. The teaching suffered. The writing dried up. The home life went to crap. The love life wobbled on the brink of oblivion, curling back and forth over the edge like a drunk ballerina.

I didn’t have any real wins. Then I fixed the shower. Like I said, not momentous, but for me it was a moment of revelation. I realized that if I worked hard enough I could actually achieve all that stuff I spent time acting like I could easily accomplish. Turns out its real, mostly. I can achieve whatever I set my heart to (within reason) but it takes a lot of hard work that I don’t always want to do. It is also a lot more than the typical writerly Butt-in-Chair philosophy. It takes the mindset and mental peace to use that time effectively. I’m learning.

Some Thoughts:

1. Got the kids to school in time to play in the yard before class. Also not a big deal, but it means we are back on track here at the TalisHouse. Maybe that means these blogs start tipping back up towards 500 words?
2. And then I noticed it wasn’t Tuesday but Wednesday… so that happened.

 

The boys asked me for a theme night. They’ve fallen into such things lately. They’ve been exposed to Harry Potter night (complete with a homegrown tri-wizard tourney) and Dragon Ball Z night (with an outdoor movie-style projection and associated gameplay). Now they feel the Need for Speed.

Race car night is set to happen this Saturday, the day before the older two take the court in Suns Arena for their final basketball game of the season and one week before the AYF Tackle Football season gets underway. In sum, this is our last gasp of a summer vacation-esque weekend. The festivities will include a first look at the Rocket League racing/automobile-soccer game and an epic hot wheels racing extravaganza throughout the house.

Now all I gotta figure out is what to feed them. I mean, what do racers eat? They never actually make a big deal of such things on screen unless you’re counting Ricky Bobby…

Some Thoughts:

1. I have been in programming hell for a few days now. It started with the effort to get the blog back to posting to facebook (not easy) after a brief flirtation with cancelling facebook. Seriously, reactivating after deactivating facebook is harder and more cumbersome than getting a new credit card number after a hack. Of course, nobody knew I was gone, so there’s that.
2. Then I tried to update another site I run and that whole thing collapsed and shattered in dramatic fashion. 40 bucks later I’m still picking up the digital debris.
3. On a positive note, this one ought to publish to the book of many faces. Let me know if it did, okay?

Entering the first week of my schools ‘pre-season’ I’m clearly rusty. I haven’t gotten the syllabi or content to where it ought to be at this time and I need to move it in that direction quickly in order to have the time to relax and reflect on the upcoming 17 weeks.

I’m not talking about sports here; not in the traditional sense. This is more about the way I try to hype up for what is essentially a mindsucking experience. I have to be ready to deal with the complaints and degradation and overall nonsense associated with student learning. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Today I had a student begin the process of filing a grievance against me, because I failed to grade an assignment she resubmitted. Two things here: 1. I let her resubmit the assignment though I clearly state in the syllabus how assignments ought to be submitted (she did it wrong) and late work will not be accepted. So, I was a nice guy and got screwed for it. 2. She earned an A in the class and still is pissed about the one assignment. Now add in a diverse group of students ranging from those with mental disabilities to near genius intellect and you get my average day.

For those who think teaching is easy work that anyone can do, I say try it. For those who think teachers don’t work hard or have a cushy job, I say try it. I admit we get a lot of time off but the time on is really about being on–like on stage–for a legitimate period of time every day. The time off the clock is still about grading and handling other responsibilities of a residential faculty outside of your limited office hours.

I’ll climb off my high horse. Yeah, it looks easy the way the good ones present it because we make it look that way. In other words, we put in the hard work when you aren’t looking and calling us lazy.