Hitting the Wall....

SO it appears that I've hit the wall, run out of things to talk about, and its such a fine morning for it too with the downpour washing over the city of New York. This was bound to happen eventually, that's the price when you're a one man gang, trying to bring something new and fresh every day even when nothing new or fresh is happening.

No, that's not the wall I've hit, though I HAVE been thinking a lot about baseball the past few days. This is one of the more disturbing sights that's come out of the game I love though. I just found this photo this morning, and I'm pretty positive that's Gary Sheffield pinning Bubba Crosby to the wall there.

I'm not sure which is more upsetting.... the fact that I can recognize that its Crosby smashed in there from the look on his face, or that it looks like Shef is doing this purposely.

Most of the time life feels like this right here, pushed up against a glass barrier that isn't going to move, yet forces and the places you want to go push you right up against it anyway. Right now I'm just glad I blew this picture up.... don't lie, it caught you too, I think its that eye of his staring at you that does it. This is what Poe was talking about, what drove ole boy to cut up that old man and stuff him under the floor boards.... its that eye....

Sometimes life takes it all out of you, or you give it all you've got until you're brought to your knees. I'd bet this woman here left it all out on the field, pushed until she had nothing left. Those are the ones I admire, not talent, not winning, it's that drive, the WILL to win....

I used to have that once. The real difference is passion.... that desire for something so deep that you can't live without it, that you put everything into getting it. For the first time I really saw what that meant this week.

When I die, all I want is to be able to look back and honestly tell myself that I gave it my all, life that is, that I left it all on the field. I haven't been doing that though, not really. That's going to have to change.

That sounds like some good advice, doesn't it? Some real inspirational stuff right there, the stuff that drives you, gets you going. My father came from that school of thought.... FIGHT THROUGH IT!!!

Except that its counterintuitive. Much of life is that way, our natural instincts tell us to do the exact opposite of what the situation actually requires. When you're about to get hit you naturally tense up, brace for impact, but its that tension that actually causes you to get hurt. Being loose and giving yourself the ability to absorb the blow is what gets you out of there in one piece. Again, that's the balance of the universe, the yin and yang of it.

This is what happens when you use raw power to try to smash through barriers.

I had just finished reading the 33 Strategies of War, another by Robert Greene. I've become a big fan of his. While it wasn't as good as the 48 Laws of Power, and that's possibly because much of it is based on The Art of War, which I know well already, its still a great read with a lot of lessons for everyday life.

These are the exact type of challenges that the book deals with, knowing WHEN to tear down walls and when those walls are keeping the bad men out. It deals with knowing when to use will power and brute force, and when to use speed and finese.

Speed and finese didn't work out so well for this guy now, did it?

Those last two shots were people trying to get passed that wall with the benefit of the best that money can buy, and they still didn't have what it took. When you're driving an old jelopy its an entirely different ballgame, you can't rely on pure performance... things have to fall your way...

Or this is what you get. Yeah... I've ended up here too many times. And you have too from what I've been hearing. Haven't we all?

This is the exact kind of treatment I try to avoid, and the more I try to avoid it, the more it seems to find me. Again, counterintuitive.

That's why it may be a good thing that I'm at the base of the wall. Maybe its time to focus on the important things in life....

That's Candice Swanepoel, now that I know she's a Yankee I think she may be the perfect woman.

With all this talk about Jose Reyes leaving the Mets for the Marlins its gotten back into looking into the game. I ended up buying Moneyball yesterday and started to read it finally, and its been great already.

If you're a baseball stat guy (and I am) you have to look at Slugging percentage. Last year the top 3 teams in Slugging in each league all made the playoffs. The other team that made it to the dance in both leagues led the pitching category in slugging against. OPS, or slugging plus on base percentage.... its the only stat that really counts. You can predict who will win based on that alone.

That there is Jose Reyes, formerly the Mets best player. I hate the Mets, but not because of the team itself, but their fans. They're the type of ignorant asses that are so obnoxious that they make you hate everything that they associate with.

I'm a huge Buffalo Bills fan, and they went to the Superbowl every year that I was in High School. At the time a Jet fan told me that the Jets were better because they had won a Superbowl in 1969, some 25 years before said statement was made. I bring this up because Jet fans.... Met fans.... they're the same people, and this sort of statement is the rule with them, not the exception. I kid you not.

For that reason I can't deal with them, because they are UN-reasonable.

This here is Sandy Alderson, who is a central figure in the book Moneyball, and now the Mets GM, so it all does tie together. I actually liked the moves that he made after the Reyes defection, which will turn out to be a blessing for the team, you'll see.

And now I really can't wait to delve deep into this book. I'm even excited enough to start that virtual baseball league I love so much back up.

Izabel Goulart has nothing to do with any of this. I just found so many hot pictures of her for the archives that I had to include her somewhere in here. Besides, it really lifts things up, doesn't it, makes the whole day more cheerful.

More things having nothing to do with anything, I caught Crazy, Stupid, Love and Our Idiot Brother this weekend for a buck each from the red box. You all know how much I love the red box. They were both great movies. Crazy, Stupid, Love was just real life, solid all around. Our Idiot Brother was on the dopier side, but a nice, uplifting tale. Then again, I like stories about people, and life.

That's all for today though.

Later People!

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Spirals....

Some days, some periods in your life, it seems like no matter what you do everything is going to fall exactly right, go precisely the way you had expected it to and every time.

For some lucky people, this has been their entire life.

Some days, some periods in your life, it seems like no matter what you do nothing ever falls the way the need it to, it all seems to fall apart around your ears and never goes right, or the way you want it.

For some unfortunate slobs out there, this has been their entire life.

The way that karma works, whatever you put out there always comes back to you. So many confuse that, they think that if you do good things good will come; do bad things, bad will come. Unfortunately though, that's not the case, rather, its all about how you feel.

A serial killer who feels good about who they are and what they do will generally fall into that top category, with everything falling the right way.

The person with that good heart, the one that would give you the very shirt off their back and often does, but always has that pang of regret in their heart for all the things they still can't do, all the people they still can't help, and feels bad about it.... they generally get the latter, things just don't fall right for them, do they?

We all know, or at the least have heard of, a real son of a bitch in every aspect of their life that always gets everything they want.

And people love them, no matter how horrible they are. They flock to them. Can you see that person in your mind right now?

We all know, or at least heard of, such a good person that they deserve every good thing in life that a person can have, yet nothing ever goes their way. They always seem to get crushed down by the world. And you wish they could just get one break, because then they would make the world stand on end in ways that can't help but make you smile.

Yet people try to avoid them as much as possible, no matter how special they may be, because they can't do the same things that we can, can't put themselves in a better position.... and no one likes a downer.... Can you picture them in your mind?

There's always a spiral, upward, downward, and one event ignites the chain that spins that life where it will go, doesn't it? When its going good its always going good, and even when its bad something good comes out of it. When its going bad it always goes bad, and even when something good happens, its tempered by the consequences or circumstances that arrive as a result.

Swirling up or swirling down, it creates a rift, a chasm between us. The two can't see the world the same way any more; they can never meet.

When you're always down, the life, the spirit, is sucked right out of you, to the point where you literally can't think of what to do next, or pick yourself up and get going enough to do what needs doing if you could think of it. There is a weight, the weight of the world, pinning you to your knees.

When you're up, you don't want anything to mess with it, so you just keep it rolling and enjoy it as much as you can with others trying to enjoy it as much as they can as well.

Both can drastically skew your perspective. Both can alter your reality to the point where you lose touch, lose your grip on reality, lose sight of how things really are out there.

What spirals, swirls UP in the world around us? Forces of nature do, and we anticipate their coming when we can because they change everything that they touch.

What spirals, swirls DOWN in the world around us? Dirty bath water, pools of your own filth swirl down drains. Shit swirls down toilets. And those things are cast out with all the other refuse we don't want.

Air pressure lifts you up. Air pressure pushes you down. Its all in the aerodynamics. Its all in how you spread your wings. Its all in finding that right angle so that the passing wind makes you rise above the rest, rather than creating friction that makes you crash.

But what do you do if no one's ever taught you how to fly?

How do you turn your shit into a force of nature?

We live in an exact Universe. There's a calculation for everything, otherwise none of the things we've come to know, television, cell phones, cars, airplanes... none would be possible without the magic formula. Manure can be turned into bombs. You can literally use your shit to blow things up.... even feces can change it all forever.... if only someone showed you how....

The best option is to always put yourself in situations where you feel good.

But what does a person do when they never have that option? What do they do to change their stars when that happens? Who do they turn to for help....

Downer today, I know, but its what I'm thinking about....

Later People!