oblong

Sounds like timeshare salesmen. I sat thru one in 2016. I had to do it as part of a family reunion at a resort. I had absolute zero intention of getting one. The guy was relentless and played the sympathy card. He called his boss over. Tried shaming me financially because to not do this wpuld be “stupid”. That was enough. I told him he crossed the sales line and that “you are in your 60s selling time shares. Don’t lecture me about financial planning”.

Too many people here think baseball is stratomatic where outcomes are binary. There’s strategy, philosophy, long term goals, internal processes. I guess you are all right. Scott Harris sucks donkey balls. You can go back to the glory days of Randy Smith and Jose Macias. At least he had a plan. Quit listening to talk radio and twitter. Those folks don’t know ****

How do you know Harris didn’t have any input? They literally said, at the time-not after the fact, they got together to plan out the rest of the years pitching plan due to the shortages. Sure it was some luck but it happened and they won the games. I don’t have the secret decoder that tells me which wins and losses a POBO is responsible for and which are not. All I know is since he’s taken over things have been a lot of fun at Comerica Park. Some people don’t like his hair or something like that.

Either way. I’m in favor.

For me it’s a variant. I wouldn’t use the term dishonest directly because it’s harsh but more about people always trying to game the system. A friend of mine is into therapy and all that and she told me most fall into two categories. Rule followers and rule breakers. I’m a rule follower. If everybody would just follow the rules and policies then everything wpuld work out. But too many think it’s ok “if it’s just me” here idling in this no parking/standing zone in front of CVS. and I have no problem stating that I live in a community with a culture where “everything is a suggestion”. That’s how I phrase it. We have to put lights around our stop signs. Speed humps. Cross walks have signs explicitly saying you have to yield to pedestrians. Nobody wants to wait in line or get proper license plates. You will see houses with 4 cars all marked with “Dealer” plates. Or “ln transit -repair”.

I thought MTV was getting rid of their music channels? I have their Live and Classic channels marked as favorites and they are still showing stuff.

I remember at the time, like August of 24, reading about how the two of them had breakfast at a place in Birmingham and mapped out a plan for the rest of the season. It worked.

You can’t not give credit to Harris for the end of ‘24 and pretend it’s all due to Hinch and Fetter. That’s now how modern orgs work. The front office doesn’t just hand off the players and keep their nose in the spreadsheet.

No. I need to. Haven’t been in the office since, what seems like 3 weeks ago. Then I got Cameron Crowe’s memoir and have been chasing up some stuff he’s mentioned. Great book by the way.

Yes. I forgot specifically which book it was in but the anecdote was shared when discussing his move to Boston. He said MN was very specific in how they wanted his approach to be which wasn’t effective but Bill James saw something there.

“You want me to hit like a bitch?” - David Ortiz to his MN coaches.

I’ve really taken advantage of Prime’s “on now” section. It’s like channels. At any given time you can find breaking bad or BCS or a Ken Burns episode. I watched missing in action 2. I like that method better than finding something. Feed me. I don’t want to decide.

Further to that why would a loving and merciful God who loves us create us in such a way that deception is part of the deal? We are gifted with knowledge but according to the creationists that contradicts things. And why would our eternal life be subject to birth lotteries? It’s the trap of absolutist theology.

My belief is there is a diety of some sort. I can’t explain it and more importantly I don’t have to explain it or understand it.

Remember though, it was pro life people who did this, voted for it, and cheered it on.

We watched the first episode of this new batch and honestly with the holidays and other things, and Pluribus, I forgot all about stranger things. It felt like the walking dead to me, watching became a chore. When they go so long between seasons it’s hard to still care.

I think there are a lot who would have identified as “Christian” in 1980 but today do not because of what’s happened since Falwell and company bastardized it. Their beliefs are generally the same.

Bridget Bardot died. That’s for another thread. But courtesy of Simon Shows you Maps… Only Chubby Checker, Dylan, and Bernie Goetz (which in high school I thought was Burning Jets) are still alive

I think this is something actually well known as one big gripe among the right wing religious kooks is the closure of churches. The Loomers of the world lament that many old church buildings and being bought up by Muslims to be turned into Mosques or other kinds of Islamic cultural centers. The Vance’s of the world twist that slightly and view it as another reason we need to maintain our racial purity. “They’re taking over”. The lack of religion is the very reason we need them to save our white asses.

I guess it’s worth pointing out too that when I went to the cousins house last year there was a corvette outside. I thought nothing of it. They live in one of those McMansion subdivisions in NW Macomb County. Then I was told the daughter was there, she works midnights (she’s a nurse) and her fiancé often sleeps there with her during the day. They stumbled down to see us. That was his vette. They are mid 20s. “His family…. Old money”

They’re very expensive now. A cousins daughter got married in April. I was told the cost was $75K. They rented out an old bank building that was converted to an event space. It was a nice wedding but nothing crazy. My wife’s family is huge and I’ve been to dozens of them. Ours in 1998 was about $10K

In my situation this person is an attention whore. They thought it would be great to have a Christmas wedding and that the extended family would love the opportunity to see each other. We tried to suggest waiting until the middle of winter when things are boring. The wedding had 300+ people. Half of the invited family didn’t show up. Those that did were shoved into tables in the corner and they left early. Not a single family member was happy about having to do this. BTW, this was the third wedding for this individual and all 3 were large. One involved going to Rochester NY. The previous 2 were over within 18 months. That’s the context. And the couple are both over 50 so it’s not like it’s young people who don’t know any better.

My doc always tells me I have a lot of wax. I got the solution and syringe and messed around with it. It made it worse until it resolved itself. There is a technique to it. He explained it again. I just haven’t followed thru with it. Sometimes if I turn my head a certain way it changes things for a little while.

I spent a lot in 2025. Decided to remodel some stuff in our house after talking about it for 10 years. Then Our dog got sick (3K lighter). Went on a more expensive than usual vacation because it might be our oldest’s last time so we let him pick. (Then he went and got a job and couldn’t go so we had plenty of room). I just cut a $10K check for his last tuition bill because somehow he missed a deadline for loans and he was graduating. He moved out and is learning life so I guess an interest free loan is his gift. A close family member got married in December which meant my wife had to spend money on a dress she will never wear again along with the other bull****. (That made me more upset than the surprise tuition bill. Who the **** decides in early November that a mid December big wedding would be a great idea).