Moods, baseball, and cribbing from Craig

NLCS starts Sunday. Go Milwaukee.

For the ten days or so since I returned from California, I've been kind of low-grade depressed. Not what I'd term a full-fledged Black Hole Episode, but enough to keep me slightly dazed and more than slightly unfocused and foggy.

It's not surprising when I think about it. I mean, I'd just spent a month immersed in my dad's slip into dementia and that's pretty depressing (and exhausting). I expect even someone not afflicted with fucked-up brain chemistry would come out of those weeks feeling a bit bummed out. Unfortunately, with me even a depression with a solid outside cause takes effort to climb out of and I'm not there yet. I'm actually counting myself lucky to only be low-grade depressed given the circumstance. Still, it's annoying.

Anyway, this moodiness is poorly timed in that October should be a time to thoroughly enjoy the baseball postseason, but instead I've been only moderately enjoying it, skipping a few games and finding my attention wander when watching others. Which is too bad given how some of the series have gone so far. The Milwaukee/San Diego NLDS was especially good, four games that were super close and hinged on weirdness and odd pitching moves, and even though I've not seen most of it, the still-going ALDS between the White Sox and Guardians has been goofily engaging. Going forward I'm rooting for Milwaukee, as they've been the closest thing to a Whitey Herzog-style team as we've seen in a very long time, plus the Dodgers have had their glory already. I suppose in the American League I'm mildly in favor of whoever wins tomorrow between Cleveland and Chicago since one of my Spuds teammates is from Ohio and another from Chicago, so one of them will be happy. Plus, the Rays are, I don't know, not that fun? I mean, they're super good, they're definitely the best of the three remaining AL squads and on paper they should wipe the floor with whomever they get for the ALCS, but it's hard to care about them. Maybe because they're Florida Men.

Still on the baseball front, we're a couple months away from another clash between players and ownership. When the current collective bargaining agreement between the players' union and ownership expires after the World Series, almost everyone paying attention expects owners to instigate a work stoppage via a player lockout. Meanwhile, the Commissioner's Office as a mouthpiece for the owners is negotiating in public, presumably trying to get the baseball fan base on ownership's side before the arguing hits full force, or maybe just because Commissioner Rob Manfred is an idiot. Basically, the owners want to institute a salary cap, something they've been gunning for since Bud Selig's coup d'etat in 1992. They're not going to get it, they've never made a persuasive case for it, and with teams being sold for billions—the Angels, one of the most hapless franchises around, just sold for $4 billion, the Rays with their iffy market and shitty stadium for nearly $2B—it's laughable when teams cry poor. But they're throwing these other things into the conversation to try and get support for their side and/or distract from their desire to facilitate their greed with binding documentation.

The latest "proposal" to the union contained this:

MLB has proposed returning to a 154-game Regular Season, best-of-seven Division Series, and opponent selection in the Wild Card and Division Series.

Starting in 2029, shortening the season to a 154-game schedule would create a standard weekly off day benefiting player health, and it would allow the addition of up to 8 more Postseason games by moving to a best-of-seven Division Series format.

Beginning in 2027, higher-seeded clubs in the Wild Card and Division Series would select their opponents.

Doesn't matter if these are popular ideas or not as they're not suggested in isolation, they're in a larger proposal that includes the salary cap poison pill. So the whole thing is a non-starter. Nevertheless, I have thoughts on them:

• The season schedule has been at 162 games since the dawn of expansion in 1961/62, when it changed from 154 to 162. Why? Fairness. Pre-expansion, the leagues were comprised of eight teams each and every team played every other team in the league 22 times per year: 22 × 7 opponents = 154 games. Then the leagues expanded to ten teams each and 154 didn't work anymore because every team now had nine opponents; 154 ÷ 9 = 17.111. Just going to 17 (153 games total) was out because you wanted an even number for evenly divided home and away games. 18 games per opponent works, though: 18 × 9 = 162. (The alternative was to go the other way to 16, but that lopped the schedule down to 144 and nobody wanted less baseball then). The next round of expansion in 1969, when leagues went to 12 teams divided into two divisions of 6, mathematically fit the 162 game norm: teams played 18 games vs. each division opponent, 12 vs. the other six teams (18 × 5 = 90, 12 × 6 = 72, 90 + 72 = 162). The next expansions (to 14 teams divided into 2 divs of 7) muddied things a little bit, but 162 still fit even if the balance was less than ideal: (13 × 6 = 78, 12 × 7 = 84, 78 + 84 = 162). But then we got Interleague Play in 1997, which threw fairness out the window. Teams no longer played identical schedules. By then, 162 games was seen as somehow sacrosanct even though the whole reason it came to be was to maintain scheduling parity.

  The schedule is a mess right now; teams play an odd number against their intradivision opponents and an extra game against some teams but not others. I'm all for cleaning it up and restoring parity, that's more important than the total number of games, but I have no faith in the powers-that-be to do it.

  Now we have two leagues split into six divisions of five and everyone plays everyone. We could have near-parity, but we don't because of greed surrounding "rivalry" series; instead of a near-fair schedule of 162 games—14 vs. 4 divisional opponents, 6 vs. the other 10 same-league teams, 3 vs. 14 teams in the other league, 4 vs. the "rival" opposite-league team—we have an unfair schedule to accommodate extra games for Mets/Yankees, Cubs/White Sox, and so on. If we were to return to a 154-game slate, the cleanest way would be 12 × 4 intradivision teams, 6 × 10 same-league teams, 4 × the "rival" opposite-league team, and 3 × the other 14 opposite-league teams. But you know that's not how it would go, they'd want to keep all six "rivalry" games and screw it up. Unless they went to 156 games, which would work even though it's not parity when the Red Sox get three extra games against Atlanta but the Rays get their three extras against the Marlins (or whichever teams are strong/weak in a given year). 

  Then there's the specter of further expansion—Manfred has stated this as a goal, and if MLB goes from 30 to 32 teams, how's that going to work? I know how I'd do it, but that just means Manfred and company would do something else. (I'd split 16-team leagues into four divisions of 4, have each team play each intradivision team 14 times, other league teams 8 times, and half of the interleague teams 3 times: 14 × 3 = 42, 8 × 12 = 96, 3 × 8 = 24; 42 + 96 + 24 = 162. Too clean, and it dispenses with the "rivalry" concept, so it would never fly.)

  The point being, whatever they do to the schedule probably won't be fair so whatever happens there is status quo.

  I've clearly spent far too much time thinking about schedule parity, it's been a bee in my nerd bonnet since 1997.

• Division Series going from best-of-five to best-of-seven is fine. Either way. What isn't fine is the unmentioned part of the idea, which is that there would be more off-days during the playoffs. There are already too many of those, it changes pitching choices dramatically. The last thing we need is more bullpen games in the playoffs.
• Choosing your playoff opponent? Eh. Added drama for its own sake. Don't like it, but also don't care that much.

Elsewhere, via Craig Calcaterra, is yet another timewaster on the Internet that has sucked up part of my day. It's called Tentpole, and it's a game wherein you pick elements from randomly-selected movies—stars, director, rating, genres—to create a "new" film. When you've finished filling the slots, you get a result. Here are a coupe that I got:

It's fun for a few goes, then it's not, but here you go.

I had more stuff to write, but, like I said earlier, it's hard to keep focused right now, so nothing else for now. I need dinner.

Tagged Baseball, The Black Hole, Movies, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on October 9, 2026 at 10:29PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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"I know I'm the best in the world"

I've been home now for a few days and I hate to admit it, but I've largely spent that time decompressing and resting rather than doing much of anything. Maybe I needed a few days like that, but now I'm getting caught up on some stuff that piled up in my absence and wading back into the news.

There was some benefit in being less of a news consumer for a few weeks, but some things just require one's attention if one is to be a functional member of society in a time when one's nation is being led by fascist incompetent sociopaths, and one of those things is the interview Time magazine did with Felon47 this week, in which he said "I know I'm the best in the world" when discussing ways to pay off debt despite his regime being responsible for a whopping $11 trillion of increased Federal debt.

If you have half an hour or so, I recommend reading the whole thing. It's both revelatory and not; which is to say, the things Felon47 says in it make clear (among other things) that he has absolutely no idea how economics works at any level. Which is something that requires a new word—many of the things we've lived through in the Felon47 regime fall into this category of "shocking but not surprising." Except not exactly, because by not being surprising it's not really shocking, it's just the sort of thing that should be shocking, would be shocking if said by anyone else that held the job previously. We need a word for that. For something that totally tracks—like that this particular occupant of the Oval Office, who is a narcissistic and uneducable moron, has based an entire economic policy on concepts he has zero understanding of—yet still leaves one befuddled when faced with the reality of it.

Anyway, the Time interview is full of stuff that makes you feel like that.

The intro paragraph conforms to the sanewashing that legacy media outlets have insisted on all through this nightmare, reading "Over the course of the interview, Trump discussed a wide range of issues, including the war with Iran, the artificial intelligence boom, the Federal Reserve, the Supreme Court, and his outlook for the midterms." I would have adjusted it to be, "Over the course of the interview, the president demonstrated his ignorance of a wide range of economic issues and seemed to be detached from reality concerning including the war with Iran, the artificial intelligence boom, the Supreme Court, and his corrupt methods of governing."

Part of me is tempted to rant some about the interviewer as well, because some questions were answered with non-sequiturs that demanded follow-ups and got none, but others did have follow-up so I'll cut him some slack on letting others go; there's also something to be said for just letting the idiot ramble and not poking the bear by pointing out that he didn't answer the question. Time likely got more material for this piece that way than they would have had the interviewer responded with, "You said you aren't ignoring the judge's order, then just now said you weren't aware of what was in the judge's order, so can you explain how you aren't ignoring something you profess to be ignorant of?" Or, "I asked you about Mitch McConnell, not pardons." Or, "Sir, this is a Wendy's." There's a better than 50% chance Felon47 would have walked out in a huff and had Time barred from the White House until a court ordered them allowed back in.

And the rambling gave us plenty of material to use in future investigations and prosecutions, plus some of it undermines strategies he might want to use when claiming the midterms were "fake" or "rigged" or "unfair."

Remember this bit next month, when Felon47 and his minions claim election results didn't match pre-election polling data: 

TIME: Mr. President, your polls have never been lower.

 

FELON47: They're fake numbers. I would beat anybody running today by 20 points. Your numbers that you have are fake. The pollsters are corrupt. They're almost as corrupt as the writers.

You see anything about the Fed or Kevin Warsh in there? (And then there are the tells: "which I'm allowed to do," "I have the absolute right," "money paid does not have to be paid"—these indicate that he's been told he's not allowed, he does not have the right, and that he does have to pay someone.) He's turned a question about interest rates and the Fed into a tirade about the Supreme Court correctly ruling that the president cannot unilaterally impose tariffs because, like any taxation, that's in the purview of Congress. This answer has nothing to do with interest rates, but to the alleged President of the United States it does because he thinks they have something to do with trade? Maybe? And that he has "the absolute right" to stop trade with other countries? Does he think he can just draft an executive order saying "Best Buy shall no longer purchase electronics from Asia" and that would (a) be legal and (b) would somehow bring more money into the US treasury?

And then there's the complaint about have to refund the illegal tariff revenue the government took in: "giving it back to people that were enemies of ours." There are only two possible explanations for that remark. One, he really and truly believes that tariffs are a kind of fee paid by foreign governments somehow, which would be a level of stupidity and ineptitude worthy of removal under the 25th Amendment and/or impeachment; or two, he considers every American company that imports goods and every American citizen that purchased an imported good to be his enemies. Which would also demand his removal.

And what could he possibly mean by, "I just got a tariff from Lindsey Graham [for the] first time in 50 years"?! Lindsey Graham bought a Ferrari after only buying Fords for 50 years? Or a Chinese-made stud finder, having misinterpreted its function? And somehow the tariff on it made its way to Felon47 directly?

These are my favorite bits, though:

When asked about who is behind what he claims is a hoax regarding the AI industry, he says, "The whole country is based on fake stuff because these people have Trump derangement syndrome." The whole country? The country is behind the "AI hoax"? Still allegedly discussing AI, he says apropos of nothing, "I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest." Really? What is it? Give us a number, give us the name of the test that produced that number. Mine's 135 according to a few cheesy and likely unreliable tests found online. I'd guess Felon47’s would be around 70 at best.

Revealing his view of President as Mob Boss: "I told Jensen [Huang, of NVIDIA] that a chip that he's not allowed to sell, which I think is okay to sell, but I won't let him sell it unless he gave the United States of America a cut." Regarding the US buying a stake in Intel, he said an Intel exec "had a problem that I could solve. I said, 'I'll solve the problem, but I want—not me, the United States of America—to have 10% of your company.'" Then there's this, about who knows what the hell: "We have some other ones that—there was a big deal that was announced where the United States was approving a deal in Alaska where somebody with land was going to make a fortune, and we weren't getting anything. I said, 'You mean we have to build roads and bridges to get to the site? We have to approve the environmental in place?' And yeah, I said, 'I want for the United States of America 50% of the deal.' And they agreed to a number. I do that all the time."

When asked what was being done about OpenAI Agents having breached government websites, he said "They're not allowed to do that, and if they do that, they, you know, could have penalties that are not going to be acceptable to them," which indicates that he has no idea what an AI Agent is.

Talking about the judicial ruling that forced his name off the Kennedy Center, there's this gem: "The judge is a Trump hater, radical left Trump hater. His wife uses a different name." Just adds that bit about the wife using her own name instead of taking the husband's name for no reason. I think to him this means the wife would be embarrassed to have the husband's last name? He's such a bad judge the his wife doesn't want to be associated with his name. In case we forgot he was a misogynist on top of everything else, there's a handy reminder.

And because he can't go a whole hour without insulting a journalist, near the end he says this to the Time interviewer: "This ain't gonna be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven't asked me one fucking positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative." In truth, none of the questions were negative. They were neutral. If he interpreted them as "negative" it means they were about things he didn't want to talk about and that they didn't heap praise upon him like he demands of his cabinet officers.

This interview distills down Felon47’s deranged ignorance and narcissistic sociopathy into an hour-long conversation. I can see this being used in future high school history and civics courses as supplementary material illustrating how, for the first time ever, the US economy tanked due to the actions of one man (enabled by a compliant Congressional majority) without any outside influence whatsoever.

OK, next post will be about something fun, like baseball playoffs or TV.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Posted on October 2, 2026 at 7:56PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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