/Kirk Gibson gimpy fist pump

Whelp, the Dodgers deserved to win.

I'm just thankful that a COVID-era World Series proved to be as entertaining as this one, despite my skepticism.

And once again, the Orioles have rushed out to a solid 0-0, .500 season for 2021.

Dostoevsky Works Both Ways

Not long after Trump got elected I wrote "everything is now permitted."  Referring to an attempted murder by a Q-Anon supporter, I meant it in a very general sense, that of accepted norms and standards being destroyed.  I meant in in a scary-sad way, a "we're well and truly fucked" way.

With Supreme Court justice Amy Coney-Barrett taking less than a day between swearing in and then filming a literal Trump campaign video, I am -- surprisingly -- a little more sanguine and a little more focused on what could be positives moving into 2021.

After four years of this unending avalanche of Republican-enabled hatefulness and stupidity, of dire incompetence, I mean "Everything is now permitted" in a much more Congress-specific sense: fuck the filibuster, fuck the sacred norm of only nine justices, fuck the banal congeniality of the U.S. Senate, fuck the fakey bullshit hypocrisy of a "neutral and apolitical" Supreme Court forever.

You don't need to read Dostoevsky (you should, but you don't need to) to understand this attitude cuts both ways.  It honestly hurt for the past four years.  But now it's time to redirect the pain onto those who actually deserve it.

Biden's first act as president, Spaghetti-Monster willing we also win the Senate next week, is to put up Merrick Garland for the SCOTUS immediately.

And that's just for starters -- DC statehood, Puerto Rico statehood, automatic registration of all US citizens as voters, voting day as a national holiday all come next.

All of that by the end of 2021.  Then we really get down to work making the necessary structural changes to maintain our Democracy, without a damn drop more of counter-majoritarian compromise with a GOP that stands for nothing beyond tax-cuts for the rich and white identity politics.

Is Biden up to the task?  Maybe.  Harris could pull them there.  The outrageous actions of ACB could.  Pelosi certainly seems game.  But if not, he doesn't deserve a hypothetical second term.  Fuck cowardly hypothetical Biden and fuck David Brooks too.

Too Much and Almost Enough at the Same Time

It took over a year, but I finally managed to finish Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games. And like the title itself, the book is simultaneously fascinating and yet maybe a bit much for its own good.

This thing is an absolute door-stopper of a tome -- 698 pages, with copious amounts of both footnotes and bibliographies.  It is dense and academic, in both the best and worst senses of those words.  It is incredibly well researched and easily makes the case for its own existence, i.e., the history of role-playing is worth this type of academic treatment.  The story itself stretches back to highly specific parts of 18th century military history, 19th and 20th century literary history (not just fantasy writers), 19th century applied statistics and probability, and more expectedly the rise of sci-fi fandom in the 1960's and 70's.

And yet, by the end of this virtual Everest of a history, I still felt like I knew less about the two main creators of Dungeons and Dragons -- Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson -- than I would have liked.  Sure, the story is there -- the various basements in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota  that birthed the hobby, the later falling out as the math- and business-minded Gary screwed the more wild-and-wooly creative genius Dave out of royalties -- but it also feels a bit more, well, academic than it should.  The personalities are there, but not brought to life as you'd hope in a history of role-playing itself.

What is of note is that Gygax was a devout Jehovah's Witness who was also a polymath of war, and specifically violence, who had a mind for charts and tables and rules, but Arneson was the guy who let you own and ride a dragon or swing a talking sword if you suggested it.  Their relationship was genuinely symbiotic for a while, but this account is more bloodless than I'd have liked.  (Interestingly, the idea of Gygax as proto-nerd also falls apart when you realize he was actually quite popular with the ladies throughout his younger and middle ages.  Dude liked to party, in fact, and had multiple affairs.) 

Also, it ends where it should more thoroughly culminate, with the rise of video games in the 80s and 90s.  (The MMORPG Ultima Online from 1997 is as late as we go, even though this book came out 2014.)  It's fine that Peterson didn't set out to chronicle the video game side of things, but also stunts some obvious momentum he has developed regarding the "gamification" of popular culture ca. 2020, and the future of virtual simulations using technology.

"replaced with a bullet casing, much too large"

"The enormous remaining boa constrictor will die in its cage.  I think it leans its ugly head against the wire and has a heartrending air such as you see only in the dying.  I thought it must be thirsty and carefully poured water on its mouth and head, but it merely stared at me from the depths of a loneliness that had little connection left with earthly things.  So we decided to release the boa.  Walter and I shook it out of the cage, because it did not want to budge.  The women watched from a safe distance, not looking happy.  The snake crawled right back into its enclosure, yet when I check later, it was gone, and there was a clear trail in the sand leading toward the jungle.  At night the place where the snake had disappeared was thronged with twinkling fireflies, and overhead a clear, starry night sky.  Andres, our mathematician, was playing chess with his girlfriend, losing most of the games, but he accepted that with mathematical decorum.  A white pawn is missing, and has been replaced with a bullet casing, much too large, which usually becomes the object of attacks early in the game.  For the first time in my life mosquitoes are leaving me completely indifferent, not that I have accepted the superior power of nature.  It is more of a dispassionate scorn with which I am leaving my skin and blood undefended.  God grant us one good day, a single one, amen."

-- Werner Herzog, The Conquest of the Useless

Spooky Daegu

Daegu, South Korea.

"You were chasing me through a dream / origami and gabardine"

 

Bob Mould, "Siberian Butterfly"

Yo La Tengo.  The Sea and Cake (plus side projects).  Bob Mould.

Siri -- name some musicians who are making albums into their 60's that are consistently good, if not sometimes great?

"proper 'worlds'"

"The virtual worlds hosted by Ultima Online [1997] and its many descendants are not real worlds, but they are worlds that can be experienced in a way that seems much more immersive than clambering through steam tunnels beneath a university.  Ultimately, computers largely resolved the dichotomy between realism and playability -- computers excel at the management of the enormous number of circumstantial modifiers that create a realistic game, but since the burden of calculating those factors falls on on human participant, the playability remains unaffected. . . .  This realistic playability does come at a cost -- a computer cannot improvise or innovate, traits that a human referee can leverage to craft a more engrossing world.  For many players, however, that trade-off is made happily.  In a multiplayer game environment, the computer can also fall back to the position of an intermediary, allowing humans to improvise and innovate with one another as players, which can approximate, and in some cases exceed, the imagination of a dedicated referee.  What makes these virtual environments proper 'worlds' is not so much their scenery as their inhabitants, the community that players join when they enter the game.  Like the real world, it is a place where individuals compete and collaborate as necessary to achieve their goals, and the interpersonal dynamics that this involves, as Chapter Four illustrated, lend a depth to the game that no system can model or simulate."

-- Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

"tucks them in with a duvet"

How is England handling the pandemic?  By growing huge vegetables!  To wit:

"But giant-vegetable-growing is about more than machismo; it requires the disciplined devotion of a medieval monk. 'There’s something therapeutic about it,' says Carre. 'You’re trying to keep the vegetable growing, and push it further, and wondering if you’ve done everything right. It’s like how I imagine nurturing a baby, almost.' Short spends two hours a day with his pumpkins, visiting them in the morning and again at night, when he tucks them in with a duvet, to alleviate any sudden temperature changes that might cause them to split."

I mean, why not?  ("I mean, why not?" has pretty much been my mantra since November 2016.)

Also news to me that summer county fairs along with plant- and livestock-contests are just not a thing in South Korea, according to my adult students.

Enter The G-Man

My World Series inclination is to root for the American League squad, but a few years back I adopted the Dodgers are my B-team.  However, Ryu Hyun-jin has moved on to Toronto, and I'm really intrigued by Tampa Bay's first baseman Choi Ji-man.

He's a total journeyman oddball.  Plays first as a rightie (which implies he's a natural rightie) but has until recently always batted as a leftie.  But now, he's also flirting with switch hitting.  (He's only 29, but that's way late to change an entire plate approach.)

Anyhow, I think I'm rooting for Tampa Bay now and hope Choi (known as "The G-Man") gets off at least one decent bat-flip.

Prosecute The Scooter Looter Freebooters

Last month  I was complaining about waves of rental scooters showing up and basically choking the street corners of Daegu.  Turns out I'm not alone in my distaste for these things:

"The number of complaints relating to the use of electric scooters this year reached 1,951 as of end of July, according to data from the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission. For full-year 2019, the number was 1,927, and in 2018, it was 511.

'We receive at least 10 complaints a day about electric scooters parked on sidewalks or at subway station exits where lots of people pass by,' an employee from Gangdong District Office’s transportation policy department said. 'When we actually visit the location, the electric scooter is no longer there as it has already been taken by another user. It’s really difficult for us to regulate them.'

Operators of scooter-sharing services are making efforts to tackle the backlash. Olulo, operator of Kickgoing, and PUMP, operator of Xing xing, established 24-hour-a-day hotlines for local district offices so that company employees can clear their scooters within two hours of a complaint.  

 Some critics argue that foreign companies have recklessly increased the number of scooters in pursuit of revenue, to the point that it has become nearly impossible for them to respond to problems."

If they are left on public streets or sidewalks, they are literally pieces of trash.  Treat them as such.

Fuck The Yankees, Fuck the Stros

The rabid hellscape of 2020 is the only possible timeline where I become a Tampa Bay Rays fan.