Category Archives: Uncategorized

A thing of beauty

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Nadal clay court practice

A video like this seems like the most mundane thing in the world. For someone who enjoys the game of tennis and wants to learn it, its one of the most enjoyable. You realize immediately how poorly served you are by television broadcasts of tennis. These videos are on a little YouTube screen on a little computer, yet to my mind you see more clearly what’s going on with a player’s stroke than anything you see on TV. All it is is some guy holding a camera for about half the video behind Nadal, then he switches to a frontal view. You get to see all the elites practice for 10 or 15 minutes. You get to watch the best players in the world close-up. You get to memorize their stroke. Their forehand, their backhand, their serve.

[As a side note, Nadal is a large part of the reason I refuse to watch tennis anymore. If you’ve ever listened to a match he’s in, when it gets real quiet right before the serve someone yells out, “Rafa!”. I hate that. These exhibitionists act like their excitement about the match is just bursting out and they couldn’t possibly contain themselves. So why doesn’t it happen when its noisy? Only when its quiet? The other one is Victoria Azarenka. She claims her “woo!” after every shot is necessary for proper breath control. That may be, but she’s going to do it without me.]

(a great comment I saw on YouTube about another video: “3 pixels less and this would be radio“)

Plastics

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Dustin Hoffman – The Graduate

54 years ago, not bad. I thought it was a throwaway line at the time. IMDB: “Brooke (as ‘Mr. McGuire’) reportedly confided to his nephew that had he known that his character’s line about plastics in The Graduate (1967) would become as iconic as it did, he’d have invested in them himself. The plastics market purportedly took off in 1968 due to the remark.” Funny stuff. As far as Hoffman goes, he’s exactly like the movie, love him and hate him at the same time. Considering the clowns that are out there, I’d have to say he was one of the more underrated actors around.

But having the occasion to do a little plumbing yesterday it struck me just how prescient the writer Charles Webb was. Any guy when he goes down the plumbing aisle of a home improvement store knows the site of all the copper pipes and fittings. That’s gonna change. Copper wears out, plastic doesn’t. With copper, past 50 years and you are on borrowed time. Plus, copper had to be soldered (at one time), plastic pipes you just push and forget. Industry doesn’t like permanent, they like obsolescence. Whether its PVC and glued joints, or PEX and push connectors, they’re the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll see on this planet.

With the advent of plastic plumbing, copper has been kicked to the curb like VHS tapes and film cameras. Copper still has a role in electronics and electrical wiring, but there’s no point to it in plumbing. And that is a lot of demand that just went ‘poof’! I don’t know though, that’s the way it should happen, but industry has a way of looking out for itself. Roofing and cars should have went to polymers long ago, they are two ecological disasters that do not need to happen. But they have people convinced asphalt shingles and steel cars are the way to go. When I realized yesterday just how easy it was to plumb with plastic, it just made me think I wouldn’t want to own a copper mine.

30 years ago when digital cameras made film obsolete, it should have put the hurt on silver prices, it didn’t (silver emulsifiers I think is the term used in film and prints). The other thing is that this plastic revolution over the past 50 years, our elites made sure we wouldn’t be taking part in it. To make plastic requires sulfur emissions. The EPA made it impossible for industry to operate in the U.S. in the 70’s, so they forced the manufacture of plastics to China, who has essentially no environmental standards. The Environmental Protection Agency, forced the disaster we have of plastics in the oceans. There’s irony there for those who care to see it.

A fascinating individual

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The 90’s when Andre Agassi was doing his thing was a time in my life when I really didn’t follow tennis at all. I maybe would catch the headlines on the sports page and that was it. I knew who Pete Sampras and Agassi were and that was about it. I looked at Agassi with the necklaces, earrings, mullet and wildly colored clothes and just thought ‘punk kid’ and that was as far as it got. It turns out he was a very deep fellow with a lot of issues.

In the video above they talk about a period in the mid-90’s where he kind of grew up. Got serious about tennis, life and being a man. Its a shame he and Brooke Shields didn’t work out, but he ended up married to Steffi Graf. It was a little sad in another interview when he was asked if he and Steffi ever go out and hit a few balls. Uh-huh. That’s when I found out he kind of hated tennis his whole life. That’s when I learned he had a psycho dad that like with a lot of child prodigies, became great and became famous, but whose dream was it?

[There was an interesting little side note I almost forgot about. They talk about the chemistry between Andre and Pete Sampras, and how each needed the other to keep the fire in their belly to fight to win. I would have passed it off as I don’t understand it, but I was reminded of the exact same thing about McEnroe and Borg. Danged if I get it.]

Just tired of it

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Landlords have this little racket going here in Ames (a college town) where all leases (99%) are based on an August 1st timetable. You automatically lose $130 of your deposit to get your carpet cleaned. For some reason renting a carpet cleaner won’t do. So being an adult I schedule my cleaning with Pioneer a month ago for 1 o’clock the 30th. The gal at Pioneer calls me up literally the day before to change the appointment time to 11:30 am. Every part of the move out had been based on a 1 pm appointment. Obviously what had happened was some derelict discovered he was moving out in 2 days and thought, “Hey I ought to schedule getting my carpet cleaned!” So I get bumped by mister last minute.

Nobody can do their damned job anymore. Carpet cleaners, auto mechanics, roofers, plumbers, heating and air guys, everybody is a bunch of incompetent fucks and I’m tired of it. There would be hell to pay if I was late with the payment or something, but they can do a piss poor job and nothing happens. Rankin Construction out of Madrid did my roof. 4 or 5 sheets of plywood need to be replaced. Instead of replacing the 4 x 8 foot sheet, he’d cut out the worst of it, say 2 x 2 feet, and just replace a tiny section. Thus only using maybe 1 sheet over the entire roof, and weakening the structural integrity by having all these bits and pieces. Then around the vent he used silicone caulk instead of roofing asphalt.

Drain Tech did okay with the plumbing stoppage, but it was up to me to figure out the final solution. Converse Air couldn’t get the air conditioning fixed in the summer. Ben Franklin Plumbing turned a 2 hour job into an all day event. God knows how many auto mechanics have ripped me off. I’m just sick of it. Sometimes the “pro” does a better job, but basically they just don’t give a shit.

Coming to a country near you

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A fascinating little story of Roza Shanina who didn’t make it to her 21st birthday. She went AWOL not to get away from the fighting, but to go to it. 59 kills as a sniper made her one of the best. She was not above criticizing idiot Soviet officers when she saw it. She was also harassed to a degree that isn’t spelled out in the diary she kept that I could see.

That overriding sense of bleakness you get from tales out of the USSR are too common to be dismissed. It goes along with the report from a Christian missionary who was there some 50 years after the war. He said he had never been to a place so scary. Cold. The communists had largely endeavored to push Christianity from their borders, and according to this missionary had indeed done just that. He said it was the only time he had felt no presence of the Holy Spirit.

That sense goes with the brutal and barbaric nature of the Soviet military. What happens to a people when they have no conscience. Nothing to prevent them from carrying out their darkest nature. Probably the only thing that kept them from war crime charges, was that they were our “allies”. Roza died at age 20 when she shielded her commander from an exploding grenade.

My point of all this is that what’s coming to America. Now that the godless communists are unstoppable. Now they can cheat to “win” every election. Now that Christian principles are a “hate crime” to be prosecuted. There is nothing to hold them back. Abortion full speed ahead. They are even harvesting organs from live fetuses now. This goes along with their mutilation of the bodies of sexually confused children. The horrors that are coming are unimaginable. We are the Soviet Union.

Johnny Mac!

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John McEnroe

Wimbledon 1981. Classic. He won this match and in the final beat Bjorn Borg to become Wimbledon Champion. What a great time to be alive. We were coming out of the Rod Laver / Arthur Ashe (dignified) era, and coming into the Jimmy Connors / Bjorn Borg / John McEnroe (what the hell just happened?) era. As someone pointed out in the comments to this video, its ironic that “super brat” grew into one of (the) most well liked, thoughtful and entertaining tennis commentators. The dude could play too. In his peak year (1984 I think) he won 78 out of 80 matches.

In this clip from an early round match, McEnroe hits one up the ‘T’ with that lefty slice for an ace. Its clearly in and the umpire calls it out. All the hubbub at the time wasn’t supporting Mac for being right, it was that he had the audacity to call the line judge an incompetent fool. He was. McEnroe had a wild ride for another 11 years as a pro. I think he attempted one comeback around ’96 that didn’t work out. He then began playing in the doubles and senior circuit. I liked how one guy described him. “He had none of the country club breeding or training. He was a street thug.”

I suppose someone knows how much of his temper was an act and how much is just being a psychotic individual. I can sympathize with him, and always found him interesting. He and I are the same age, we lived through an interesting time. He was born in Germany, his dad it sounded like was a JAG officer (lawyer) for the Air Force, so you wouldn’t think it was some sort of twisted / dark childhood. Who knows though, something was clearly up. The guy was looney tunes sometimes. Look at who he married, Tatum O’Neal. What was that about?

But, for all his ranting and raving there was one very positive outcome to it all, it helped lead to the Hawk-Eye replay system that forever ended the eternal ‘in vs out’ battles in tennis. Thank God. Like I say, it was an interesting time. In basketball you had chair chucking Bobby Knight in his prime at that time. Billy Martin was a bit of a nut case with the Yankees. I was going to say not like today with those whiny ass pussies Colin Kaepernick and Lebron James. But, who knows, maybe they have a point about some stuff too.

[It just occurred to me, if his opponent had been honest, he would have said, “Judge that ball was in.” It also just occurred to me, his brother Patrick might be the only one that could provide insight into John’s twisted psyche, and how much of it is show.]

The patter

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How on God’s green earth did tennis get replaced by “pickle ball”?

A game I’ve always been in love with (completely one-sided) is tennis. I always received the most horrible of instruction. Why? Having played it for 50 years now and thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I could teach someone the fundamentals in 30 minutes or less. Why have I spent half a century learning the ‘secrets’? Why the hell is it a secret? Because of the pay wall! You don’t get nothing for free when it can be sold. I could make one video and be done with it. But there’s no money in that. These YouTube coaches stretch it out into literally hundreds of videos on the most minute aspects of the game to get views! (revenue) Tennis camps are held in Arizona to sell lessons. You kind of have baseball camps and you kind of have soccer camps, but not like tennis. Tennis is where the learning never stops, according to them anyway.

20 years ago you could type someone’s name into a search engine and have their phone number and address, an electronic phone book. Pretty soon they said, “Hold on now! We could be selling that info!” The same here. I’d love to do a “Tennis for Dummies” video. As an example I struggled with my forehand for decades. There’s no reason for it! When the ball comes to your forehand, you turn sideways to the ball holding the racket slightly elevated with both hands. You release your left hand to hold it stretched out slightly above your waist palm down. You make a ‘C’ motion with the racket hand so that when its behind you about waist high the racket face is roughly down like the palm of your left hand. As it comes forward the head of the racket is slightly below your waist with the butt pointed at the ball.

As you hit the ball about 10 inches in front of you at about waist level with the racket face moving forward and up to give it spin. Because you started with a forehand grip (the top edge of the racket pointing towards 11 o’clock), it is close to vertical. On follow through the racket head moves from waist high to roughly shoulder height. Voila. Two paragraphs. Instead I wasted decades on the court fumbling around. The man in the video (‘Nick’), is too good, he gives away the whole game on a slice serve in one 10:57 second video. The shyster channels have a ton of patter and would have taken 7 videos to do it, and never would get to the point!

They have one video on the stance for a slice serve, one video on the toss, one video on the stroke, one video on the follow through, one video on where you should hit it to… Nick here with Intuitive Tennis just spills his guts in 10 minutes telling you everything! I doubt if he even has a video telling you the “Secret of the Slice Serve!” I like Nick. He’s not slick like the carny’s selling steak knives or siding, he’s just honest and provides you helpful information without all the patter of a conman. I bet he could do the same thing for the forehand and backhand, there you go, ready to play! And you didn’t even have to go through 50 years of agony!

[As a side note, one of the funniest aspects of tennis is the serve in relationship to professionals. Most games go like this. The server after a big production winds up and hits the ball really hard – into the net. He then hits his second serve (a kick serve at slower speed) which goes over the net. I looked up the stats for professional players. The Top 10 players in the world have a first serve percentage around 65%. After that the success of the first serve being in drops to around 55%. That’s barely better than half. And in a lot of games its not even that! Its crazy. They expend all that time and energy to hit it into the net. That’s nuts. It reminds me of professional baseball players when they are at bat sit there and watch the first pitch go by for a strike! That’s the best pitch you’re going to see and you sit there and watch it. You start your at bat down automatically 0 – 1. You now have 2 chances in which to hit it, when you should have 3.]

The most beautiful game I’ve ever seen in my life. Every game has its ups and downs, but this game with Simona Halep is special.

Why did MTV quit playing music?

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God knows what the business model was for MTV 40 years ago, evidently being “wildly successful’ wasn’t part of it. They were a big deal as far as I could tell. The answer of course is “follow the money“. A Google search turned up this answer below. I have no idea what the real reasons were that would cause a channel calling itself “Music Television” to quit playing music. Evidently kids watch it, God knows why. To this day I remember videos from the mid-80’s, there was some good stuff. And judging the videos popping up on YouTube, there are lots of people that miss it.

“MTV stopped playing music because of the ever increasing demands of the Music Industry for higher licencing fees. Their demands were too high so MTV moved the videos to their less popular sister company VH1 where licencing fees were lower and moved to less expensive but more profitable “reality: programming.”

Not everybody is going to like you

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What I’m trying to figure out, is why do you become a cop if you don’t want to enforce the law? Ames Police have never enforced traffic laws. They sit in parking lots beside major roads like they’re running a speed trap, but you never see them write tickets. I see Highway Patrol write more speeding tickets in Ames than the cops (they used to set up on Highway 69 on the south part of Duff Ave). All this came to mind while I was sitting at the major intersection in town, Lincoln Way and Duff (US Hwy 30 & US Hwy 69). I’m waiting for the left turn light to turn red for the oncoming traffic and our southbound turns green. My light turns green and I start to go. 3 vehicles come through on my green! I honk and am still creeping out into the intersection and they just keep coming!

It reminded me of last month in June when I witnessed 2 crashes on Grand from people running red lights. We only go north on Grand once a week for an hour on our walks. So 4 times in June, and we witnessed 2 wrecks. That’s a lot. People get used to doing what they get away with. So if cops don’t write tickets for running a red, by God they’ll do it! If on the other hand cops wrote tickets for infractions, word would start to get around and people would see them writing tickets, and there wouldn’t be so many scofflaws. When cops are lazy and let things go property damage and personal injury are the result. There’s a reason laws were written, and consequences when they’re not enforced.

Like with fireworks being illegal in Ames, cops have gotten it in their heads they get to pick and choose which laws they get to enforce. Got news for you cop, you get paid north of $80K a year with great benefits because you’re supposed to be working, not sitting on your ass all day.

[On an associated note, LA County recently re-instituted their indoor mask mandate for the COVID. The LA County Sheriff said ‘I ain’t enforcing that’ – further evidence of law enforcement telling the lawmakers to stuff it.]

The best thing about having a YouTube account…

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… is being able to click “Don’t recommend channel“. My gosh there’s some stupid stuff on YouTube. In this commercial the girl is changing her clothes in front of the “blind” guy, who is actually holding the cane for the guy in the next stall. I just grabbed it to represent all stupid videos. I was kicked off YouTube in the week prior to the 2020 election when Big Tech was purging all conservatives from their platforms. At the time I really missed being able to make smart ass comments on videos. That was my forte (for-tay). Low and behold my 2 year old computer crapped, and with a new IP address YouTube gave me an account.

Big whoop. Now that I can comment I don’t. Regrettably its self censorship. They want to shut you up, and you do it for them. Its the same thing on Facebook, after numerous suspensions I just quit going there. Its not worth it. The perverse thing I like about YouTube now though, is like I said, being able to click ‘Don’t recommend channel’. All that liberal crap they try to recommend to me, I can now say stuff it. A genre (jon-ruh) I get rid of quickest is movie clips! All these channels break up movies (that they don’t have the copyright to) into these 1:29 or 2:36 second clips just so they can get 80 hits on 1 movie! I ain’t playing that game.