Baseball: Those Saint Louis Cardinals

Montreal has some new spring training baseball games coming in March of next year. I like these games, I go to 'em ... to be honest I like the pre-game ceremonies better than the exhibition baseball (where 3rd stringers tend to enter the lineup at the 4th inning mark).  A lot of old favorites have cruised on in over the last few years from 70s/80s Expos stars, to 90s Expos stars, and other key figures to take part in the opening ceremonies.

I don't have that many ideas left to write about anymore, but writing is a fun exercise and a cool mental tool to exercise. There's certain times of the year, probably because they are topics I've done annually, where I get a sort of writin' bug. I wrote about the previous MTL Exhibition games over the last 4 or 5 years and it's becoming a yearly routine for me. I really liked the format of the Cincinnati Reds article I did where I focused on the Reds and my memories of 80s/90s baseball surrounding them. I tried to mix it up and go a different route with the Pittsburgh one last year ... and do modern "memories" of now-a-times stuff ... but who am I kidding? I'm a Nostalgia Man, I love the past pretty well.

I'm gonna go back to the Cincinnati-one format for this where I think it had the right mix of Comedy, Baseball History, and Montreal Baseball Return Promotion (45% Comedy, 30% Baseball History, 25% MTL Baseball Return Being-Down-Withness).

In the meat of that one, I talked about the Best Red, and My Favorite Red. So, let's do that but for those Old St. Louis Cardinals this time who are venturing to baseball-less Montreal to play some friendly old baseball games in March (these are like Monday and Tuesday I think not Friday and Saturday like the previous four times).


Cardinals!

I know the Cards got into some murky water last season or two ago with something about attaining some informations in a "by hook or by crook" format ... but that's not the Cards I know and like ... my main thoughts of that team that come to mind when I think of them are from the "Whitey Ball" era (no that's not a bad term for white people playing baseball, it's based off the stratagems of one Whitey Herzog ... who was the main tactician for the Cards for many years).

Note the Napoleaning of the hand.

Baseball now a days thinks the fans want homers or strikeouts ... and they are kind of altering the game (for what they think is better) to achieve more HR and K ... but I loved Whitey Ball, baby.

I remember in Earl Weaver's book, the man who basically was the key influence on wanting walks and home runs ... he said the reason he set up his lineup for the "3 run homer" was because he coached in Baltimore and hitting homeruns out of Memorial Stadium was particularly easy (the corners of the fences for example stood at 309 feet out which is ludicrous). Weaver says in his book that if he coached in Kaufman in Kansas City (corners there were 330 feet out) he'd load his lineup with speedsters instead of power hitters.

Basically, how you design your stratagems is dependent on the battlefield in baseball. What was Whitey Herzog dealing with at Busch in the 80s? He had 330 corners like at Kaufman (I guess Missouri likes far out corners) so he designed a strategic deployment based on vicious unrelenting speed and thus Whitey Ball was born.

Let's do a leaderboard of stolen bases for the 1985 Cards (this is ONE TEAM mind you, not the entire league leader board):

1985 Cards Stolen Base Leaders:

Vince Coleman 110
Willie McGee 56
Andy Van Slyke 34
Ozzie Smith 31
Tom Herr 31
Lonnie Smith 12

In 2017 that's not even the combined NL/AL leaderboard let alone the leaders of a single team! Whitey Ballers weren't just running .... they were RUNNING THEIR DICKS LOOSE!

When the Cards won the Trophy in '82 you know who had the most homers on the team? One George Hendrick and you know how many he had? A whole 19 of them. They didn't even have one 20 homerun hitter when they went all the way in 1982.

Look at ol' Whitey in that photo ... with his hand all Napoleoned in his pocket like that. There's only one sort of very specific person who comports themselves in that fashion ... only Dynamic Strategists comport themselves as such. When you see a dude nonchalantly looking about the place with a single hand in the pocket and one hand flappin' loose ... he may seem to be nonchalant as shit but that person has a myriad of scenarios being calculated and re-calculated in his mind. Yes, a person who comports themselves like that are always Dynamic Strategists.


The Best Cardinal

Lots of choice here with a team that was founded in 1900 ... you've got quite a lot of names to chose from but I still think the choice isn't that hard. From glossing over historical stats only briefly it's not hard to settle on this name as the Greatest Cardinal of Talent-Wise of All Entire Time....

Bob Gibson. 

He was 251- 174 for the Cards in his career with a 2.91 ERA and 3117 strikeouts. That's some amazing numbers for a pitcher. His best year is almost unreal ... in 1968 he was 22 and 9 with a 1.12 ERA over 304 innings pitched!! That's the closest thing to total Absolute Ultimate Dominance that there is for a pitcher.

A starting pitcher of today would not even fathom pitching 300+ innings let alone while maintaining a 1.12 ERA throughout. People think Nolan Ryan was the pitcher who came the closest to Absolute Total Ultimate Dominance on the mound but Nolan never put up anything like that in his career. Nolan did get under 2 in ERA one year but in the strike shortened 1981 season where he had a 1.69 over 149 innings pitched.

1.12 over 304 by Bob Gibson .... is just .... Dolemite-esque in Nature. It's As Bad as Can (be). He was basically a Human Tornado in 1968.

I never saw him pitch other than in archived videos but I don't need any live-scoutage under my wings of analysis to proclaim Bob Gibson as the greatest Card talent-wise ever  ... I mean great googly moo this man was a House of Utter Pitching Fire, truth be told.

Runner Up for this Award: Stan "The Man" Musial


My Favorite Cardinal of all time

Now, this section is where I let my personal bias seep into the mix and I gently toss my analytical abilities out the old window, and relate to the reading audience who my favorite Cardinal was. As an 80s kid and 90s teen ... the 1980s and 1990s are my area of most nostalgia for baseball so the player will be from that 20 year period no doubt. 1900-1980 and 2000-2017 are not my area of nostalgic expertise.

The criteria to be awarded the championship of this section of the article isn't the same as the Talent portion where deep analytic thinking helped derive Bob Gibson for that honor ... this section is more "Did I like that dude's name a lot?" .... "Did the dude do a helluva lotta sick back flips before taking his position in the field?" .... "were his baseball card photos funny and/or cool looking?"

I had a shortlist but I narrowed the shorty down to two finalists. Al Hrabosky and Ozzie Smith.

The Mad Hungarian is a slight notch or two on the chronoscale ahead of my time ... but I'm not doing a Cardinals article without getting a quote of his in here. I mean, here, check out this one ... wait it needs set up. The Cards management asked Hrabosky to shave his iconic facial hair and after doing so his performance dropped off substantially and he claimed it was due to his now lack of facial hair and explained the need to have it to compliment his "psyche":

lookin' guuud.

"To be perfectly honest with ya, I feel that, I maybe have average physical ability, but when I get my psyche and my self-hypnosis goin', then I can compete with anybody and anything..."

-The "Mad Hungarian" Alan Thomas Hrabosky








The man's whole modus operandi was being wickedly wickedly pumped. Now, I'm gonna just go out and say it .... That is COOL. I would really like to know the procedure he used to self hypnotize himself into the Zone. For some reason I have a feeling it might have involved listening to the Doobie Brothers whilst drinking semi-warm Schaefer beer ... but that's just speculation on my part at this juncture.

  
Nextly, the Wizard of OZ! Ozzie Smith .... complete with GIFS OF HIM DOIN' FLIPS EVERYWHERE!!!!!

Wut the .... OH MY GOOOODNESS!

What is gonna ... OH WOW!

SLOOOO MOOOO SHUUUUNNNNN!

Ozzie don't, don't you're gonna get .... HE DID A BACK FLIP!!!

Sorry Al Hrabosky but you lose. Ozzie Smith is one of the mainest mainest mainest men of the 80s/90s. I, over the years, have equated happiness to doing back flips and Ozzie Smith would take the field by doing back flips. It's almost too much. It's .... the greatest thing.

So the award for my Most Favorite Cardinal of all time goes to ... Ozz....


......A CHALLENGER APPEARS!

OH NO!

Oh no, Willie ... no. No, I can't. I can't. I wrote a pretty long article about Willie McGee back in the day like five or six years ago. It was one of the first articles that got a lotta hits on my blog. It was a pseudo art review of photos of Willie McGee that went on for, I dunno, like 2000 words. It had a complete fictitious backstory, copy-pasted french poems, and everything else. I'm sorry, Willie, I can't include you in this one because I've done like thousands of words on the Subject of Willie McGee already. 

I can use the remainder of this space to work in a Dane Iorg joke or something .... Who am I kidding? Let's get Willie in this article.

People might have thought back in 2012 that I was making fun of Willie McGee in that "The Highest of High Culture: The Appraisal of Photographs of Willie McGee" piece. I wasn't. As a kid in the 1980s, photos of Willie McGee when found in various packs of baseball cards genuinely confused and intrigued me. I'd open a pack and flip through the cards and I'd be like ... "Oh a rookie card, cool", "YEAH! AN EXPO! YES!" ... and then ..... "????" .... total bewilderment and confusion.

I wasn't making fun of Willie's appearance in that 2012 piece, I honestly think Willie McGee baseball cards are art. They are. I would look at them and really wonder things like "What the heck is this dude thinking about to be making a face like this whilst getting his baseball card photo taken?" ... I mean if you made me choose what is the greatest baseball card of all time I'd say with perfect aplomb and genuine honesty that the 1986 Topps Willie McGee is the greatest baseball card of all time.

Players wanted to look cool, tough, professional, or snapped doing an interesting action/play in these cards ... but not Willie McGee. He wanted to take these photos with the most confounding facial expressions possible ... and they are just that ... confounding. I still think to this day that what Willie McGee is thinking about in his 1986 Topps trading card is ..... "Gee whiz .... that's a funny lookin' dog over there."

Ozzie Smith, I apologize, you're the greatest .... but the award for my Most Favoritist Cardinal of All Time goes to...

Willie Mcgee.

Conclusion

I like this article, it's pretty good.

Robots

In the last blog thing I wrote, I talked pretty highly of our steel-girded friends known as robots. I was saying that robots are gonna take over politicians jobs and it'll be really cool in like the 3000s .... but people shouldn't take that statement out of context.

The crux of the pudding of the last article was like to cheer people up because the political scene is getting all wonky lately. I re-read it just now and it's pretty dark at some parts for a cheer-up article ... like the kool-aid stuff and whatnot ... but the end was like a humorous sort of pick-me-up along the lines of "Don't worry gang ... robots will be our presidents soon ... so chin up y'all!"

A Robot

I don't want people to think I'm some sort of dirty robot-lover though. I actually in all personal-honesty don't even really like those cold-steel synthetic sons-of-whores and of bitches. I mean, those robots are stealing everyone's jobs with their cold uncaring robotic hands!

I guess I don't really hate robots though, I just wanted to clarify the last article where it probably came across (assuming anyone actually read it) as if I was looking forward to the collapse of humanity and the rise of the Ungodly Era of Murderous Machina ... which I'm not. I don't ever want humans to die ... I love humans.

I don't even hate all sorts of robots either just the dumb ones. Okie-doke, let's define some types of robots now.


Term Define
 
1. Automaton: These are fake humans that are just like puppets ... they can't like do stuff or think about stuff but they are made to look like real-ass humans. Sometimes they can achieve Uncanny Valley where they look so real that when real people look at them they get really freaked out.

The only time in my life I ever felt the effects of "uncanny valley" wasn't for a robot though, the only time I ever felt this was over a cat. I was delivering something, like a couch or something, to a house and they had this cat on the couch .... and I was looking at it and something was up with it .... I kept looking at it and then slightly approached it but it didn't budge or make eye movements .... then the customer told me it's a stuffed animal .... and I was like "it is?" .... and they said it was from a company that makes life-like replicas of people's departed pets and boy-oh-boy was it life-like ... like really life-like.

As my mind was transported in that moment to the Valley of the UnCanny ... I really thought to myself ... "Gee whiz, that cat is TOO life-like!"

So yeah, automatons are just like gimmick puppets ... they can't hurt nobody so who really cares about them?

Yes, Worker 8 was a faithless killing machine ... but he was also my friend.

2. Machines: Machines aren't really robots they are just serieses of mechanical components that can execute procedures. They can't think, feel, love, hate, or be alive ... they are just cold lifeless drones. The Russian word for "Work" is something like "Robota" .... to work is to robot and to robot is to work. I'm not Russian though ... and I don't think robots are work-machines ... to me robots are the fun friends from movies and video games who not only can execute procedures in an orderly fashion .... but who can also become your Best Friend. Those are only in the fictions though ... real life machines have no rhyme or reason and are just faithless steel giants.

Machines are super dangerous because they can be programmed by humans to execute a variety of pre-conceived functions ...  and as we all know ... humans can think up some really really fucked up shit for machines to do .... from killing to very badly killing to very very very badly killing like everything.

Oh no, not MORE ANDROIDS!?!?!

3. Androids: These are just fiction these ones. They are synthetic humans. Like say someone somehow thought up a way to re-create a human from scratch out of common shit on earth (i.e. not frankensteining other humans together or altering an existing human) ... as of right now we can make skin-like polymers and shit in real life, bone like shit, hair like shit and other shit .... but there's one thing that science hasn't even come close to creating from scratch yet and that's the human-ass BRAIN. The brain is so intricate and took layers and strata of millennia to achieve. Those millions upon million of years of evolution can't be re-created from scratch by anyone at this juncture. Even a chicken's brain is more intricate than any synthetic brain out there.

Are Androids dangerous? No, you silly goose, they don't even exist and won't for a few thousands of years so who cares about them?

(Frequently Asked Question: Is Frankenstein an android because he's a synthetic human? No, Frankenstein/Frankenstein's Monster is a MONSTER cobbled together from various parts of other humans ... he's like a Hybrid Human ... but more specifically Frankenstein is a big scary Monster and not a robot.)



4. Humanoid Robots: These are cool ones from fiction who look like tin cans or barrels but under those shabby tin cans they call bodies lies the caring and beautiful heart of a genuine human being. The Tin Man from Wizard of Oz is like the proto-type for this character trope ... the Tin Man literally didn't have a heart but by the end he learned that a heart doesn't come from some store or some shopping mall .... it was inside of him this whole entire time.

I love some of these robots, I cannot tell a lie, I really do. Pee Wee Herman had that Konky 5000, I have great respect for the Konkster, he brought joy and screaming to the Playhouse each and every Saturday. One time, Konky broke down and couldn't print out Today's Secret Word and Pee Wee had to call Jimmy Smits (before he was famous) to come fix Konky 5000 .... I was so happy that Saturday morn when Konky re-booted up as his old self thanks to Jimmy Smits's timely repairsmanship.

I like that swell-hearted Johnny Number Five as well from "Short Circuit" and "Short Circuit II" .... but my favorite humanoid robot is the main man himself .....

.... Robo.

Robo.... respect, brother. You're more than just a tin can, you're the best.

5. Cyborgs: Cyborgs are cool. They are regular-ass humans like me and you but with upgrades and decals and stuff. Unlike Androids these things exist. Like, do you have a grandpa with a pace-maker? Your grandpa is a fricken CYBORG. His heart is beating thanks to a machine implanted into his chest .... that's literally cool. 

Who says the legless can't have a foot race?

You ever watch those Para-Lympics where like dudes and chicks are cruising around the racing tracks with like bouncing-blades for legs? Man that's cool looking. In a sense, those paralympians are Cyborgs if you think about it. They had their legs replaced with the miracle of science's equivalent to legs. Those guys are amazing.

 Anyways, man I love Cyborgs .... they are so cool. One of my favorites is RoboCop. My heart gets filled with so much emotion and joy whenever I think of RoboCop. People think RoboCop was a Humanoid Robot or an Android but no .... RC was a Cyborg. 

RoboCop

I don't recall chronologically every piece of the RoboCop continuum but if memory serves me right, RoboCop was a Man until the dad (Red Foreman) from The 70s Show repeatedly shot him with a shotgun until he almost died .... but RoboCop didn't die .... he just got really badly shooted.

So what they did was, they put RoboCop's brain into the chassis of an elite crime fighting humanoid machine built for protecting and serving Detroit society. So, yes RoboCop was mostly Machine ... BUT .... the one component science can't create is the complex-as-shit human-ass BRAIN .... so RoboCop was still a Man. He was a Man with severe upgrades and decals made to his body but he still had his brain ... so RoboCop is 100% a Cyborg.

If you need proof that RoboCop is still a Man, look no further than the scene in RoboCop 2 (or is it 3?) where a gang of drug addicts and some 12 year old kid beat RoboCop with clubs and then jack-hammer him apart with a jack hammer. The remains of RoboCop are refurbished back at the precinct following the defeat .... and they install a new thinking program into RoboCop to make him a newer more better RoboCop 2.0 .... a RoboCop that is polite and nice and follows protocol to a tee .... and the audience is led to believe that the Man inside RoboCop was no more. Or was it?

RoboCop briefly regains control of his dying human side and walks to an electric transformer near the police precinct, tears it open, grabs the insides of the transformer with his bare robotic cop hands, lets a gajillion megawatts of power surge through his robotic veins .... and BAM .... RoboCop breaks free from his shackles of programming and regains control of his halcyon Human-Self and re-begins his mission to capture the elusive drug-dealing bandit known as Kain.

What a powerful film that RoboCop 2 (or maybe 3) was. Powerful film. I heard the RoboCop statue that will grace Detroit is coming along nicely. Building a monument to RoboCop .... outstanding. That's the smartest thing someone in Detroit has done since the Tigers drafted Jack Morris in 1976.

Ow! Ora Mantane! SUUUUU-PER! OW!

The Cyborgs portion is going on long but there's one more Cyborg I like pretty well and that's Franky from One Piece. He's a shipwright/leader-of-a-street-gang/rock-n-roll-singer/pirate who rules. His Japanese voice actor is soooo good (I can't in good faith say the English voice actor captures the uniqueness of the JPN voice actor in the english dub) ... the JPN voice actor inserts a lot of James Brown "Ows!" into the shtick that just fits so well. Most of what the Japanese voice actor says as Franky is English but like busted-up James-Browned-Up Engrish. Like, I would describe Mr. Kazuki Yao's voice as Franky along the lines of if the Godfather of Soul Mr. James Brown flew to Japan and drank all of the sake wine and then learned some Japanese to impress some Japanese chicks but only a bit of the language .... and it winds up sounding like this:

OOOOW! RITE REFF RITE REFF RITE REFF! PSYCHO!!!

I don't think I'll ever write on the subject of Japan and James Brown in the same breadth ever again so let's jam this in here while we'll charting down this obtuse course:

 YA! OW! SCREAM ABOUT THOSE NOOODLES JAMES!!! Good GOD! OW!

Anyways, in the English version of One Piece, The ENG voice actor plays the role as some drunkard ruffian. It's not even comparable to the original ... not even close. Comparing Franky's JPN voice to Franky's ENG voice is like comparing Sushi to ANUS.

We're charting way off course here in the section but, look, guys look, Franky is not some common thug drunkard bozo ... ok? Franky's voice is what you'd get if the Hardest Working Man in Show Business took a bath in a boiling roiling HOT TUB of MISO Noodle SOUP and soaked in there for a good solid week. How in the name of everything did the ENG voice actor come up with something not-even-remotely in the same ballpark as that awesomery? Who knows.

Let's get back to Cyborgory for a bit .... Franky's a Cyborg that's why he's in this section. He got hit by a train but then painstakingly rebuilt himself from shit lying around the crash scene... which is so badass. Looks-wise he's very reminiscent of Teddy from Mother (for the NES) who is another character I've always found very fascinating as well. 

If your character is like if Teddy from Mother 1 got hit by a train and self-rebuilt himself like MacGyver into Inspector Gadget and is voiced by a guy talking like a heavily sake-soaked James Brown ... you are speaking my language Japan ... you are speakin' my language, baby. Ow!

Man, both RoboCop and Franky fill my heart with a powerful zest for life. Yet, if I had a choice to become a Cyborg and you asked me to choose between being RoboCop or Franky ... I'd choose Franky. Why? Because he still has his dick.

Yes, it is demonstrably proven in One Piece that Franky's genitals are still his human-born dick-and-balls. There's a scene where his street gang steals his speedo and are playing monkey-in-the-middle to keep it from him when the sexy lady Nico Robin takes the opportunity to grab and clutch onto Franky's nards ... of to which Franky cries in terror and his two Square-Afro Groupies/Girlfriends cry along with him. He's got his full on dick .... it's not like a Robot Dick.

If I was to become a Cyborg .... there's only two human pieces I need in tact. My Brain, and my Weiner (oh and my balls of course). Franky is the ideal cyborg as his whole body is SUPER souped-up but he retains the humanity of his brain and his balls and his dick.

Where Am I Going With This?

I don't really know, but you know, sometimes though, like .... I think technology is moving too fast. I know this blog always promotes science, technology, etc .... but there's another side to every coin.

One hundred years ago do you think people were trying to figure out all the different kinds of real and theoretical robots of planet earth? Do you think people were signing petitions to ban killer robots 100 years ago?

(See: Elon Musk and 116 Experts Call for Ban on Killer Robots via The Guardian) 

Tech experts want to pre-emptively enforce a ban on killer robots hedged on fears that Robo Cops and Metal Gears of the future will go haywire and put the raw death on all our stinky asses? Well Son of Santo Domingo 'aint that some shit?

It's not just robots though ... all of technology is growing at a pace that I don't think humans really have the time to learn, grasp, and come to an understanding of. Is technology evolving at a pace that is outpacing us?

I wrote early on in this blog about the show The Prisoner starring the great Patrick McGoohan. That article explored the theme of Individual vs. Society which was the main focus of the Prisoner but another theme of the show was that technology was out-pacing humans. The end credits showed a wheel become a bicycle and then a bicycle becoming a flying bicycle .... in the old days people thought that was fast pace tech .... The Wheel to Flying Bike. Man, imagine if McGoohan was still alive .... he'd be freakin' out loose! And maybe we all should be?

No one had a name in the Prisoner .... they were all numbers. Number 6 tried and tried and tried to win his humanity back whilst on the Prison Island and in the end many still question if he did. Maybe he should have grasped onto an open electric transformer to win his humanity back .... it worked for RoboCop at least.

Conclusion

I don't know, I see the best of both sides of the coin I think. I still want to be an individual human with a cool zillion-years-of-wicked-evolutionary Brain ... and my weiner too.

But ...

I wouldn't mind having some Cyborg components. Like, shitting for example. That's so stupid and disgusting. Can't like we invent something where the shit tubes in the body output the shit to like a bio-plastic replaceable orb and you can open a component in like your buttock, remove the shit-filled orb, throw it in the toilet bio-degradable orb-and-all ... wouldn't that be so much better than actually shitting? Like I drink coffee often man .... I HATE SHITTING SO MUCH IT'S SO GROSS. Like, the first Cyborg component I'd be looking at if I was a MacGyver type person would be an alternate bowel expulsion method ... I mean .... the current method is honest-to-betsy and heavens-to-murgatroyd DISGUSTING AS HELL.

Spinal cords too ... we need more better cords, baby.

Okay let's Summarize: I want to be an individual person not a cold robotic number - but I want to move my bowels with a bio-orb implant component system and I want a more better souped-up spine cord.

That's what I'm all about.

My Politics

Retirement sucks. I think I'm gonna come out of retirement after like 4 days and write in my stupid blog thing again.

Writing a 7000 page small-text novel is REALLY DIFFICULT. No one really ever tells you that, you know? I can write really really fast after 7 years of training in this dopey blog ... but writing like a real-ass book is really hard. The characters have to be made to feel alive and really full of life ... it's not about how fast you can write a 7000 page small-text book it's more about knowing how to construct a novel.

I changed my blog address so now all of the stats are re-set at ZERO. It feels like I'm starting from scratch ... it's kind of a fresh feeling. I think my default persona is going to start from scratch too. The "D" character I believe kind of evolved into what I'd describe as Buckminster Fuller meets Morton Downey Jr. or say Carl Sagan meets Wally George or maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson meets Earl Weaver.

Basically, I think the "D" character wanted to be a popularizer of a science-based worldview yet with the dynamic audacity of a deeply aggressive and argumentative person. I wanted "D" to come across as a really really smart guy who swears and is mean. I thought it was an interesting persona.

(side note: I think I actually caught Carl Sagan swearing once in Cosmos. Because he speaks in such a broken-up pace ... there's an episode of Cosmos where he says the word "Constellation" and he pronounces it CUNT (loooooong pause) Stalation. The pause is too long and like he basically just walks up to the camera and says CUNT.)

I want to ditch the anger persona part of it. I still want to promote a rational world view but now I wanna be thoughtful and more better, you know?

If you were by some crazy chance a reader of Writings on Subjects 1.0 (which I doubt I had any repeat readers to be honest), you'll like Writings on Subjects 2.0 too. It's still got no-ads, and it's still just the babblings of a dope ... but if you for some reason liked its first incarnation .... you'll like this one too I bet.

Anyways, Politics is on everyone's plate these days so let us review and summarize my favorite song about the subject of politics which is My Politics by the 80s/90s/2000s rock-and-roll group Nomeansno. I first heard this song probably like 15 or 20 years ago but unlike other political songs which are locked in the time frame of the era they existed .... this song transcends eras and gives us a base-emotion view of the field of Politics.

It will serve as a quick guide to Politics and also give me a chance to inter-weave some of my own opinions about Politics as we go.

My Politics


Don't ask me what to do 
I get sick just thinking about you
 
And when I look at all we've done
I want to walk away just hang my head and pray
That you will, look at me, what do you see?
Am I the king of the hill, standing over his kill?
 
Well baby
The taste of blood is sweet and I'll lay this carcass at your feet
but only if you'll keep me company
 
This is it, my politics, this is it
I've learned to hate, it's much to late 
This is it, my politics
 
I stand before you, a simple man
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics 
This is it

I've seen more than I can stand
But in my acts and deeds I'm a political man
I'll give you, I'll give you all my worn out tools
Another brutal shot of my rhythm and blues
 
I need to
To draw you close, to take your hand
And in your shining face I see the promised land
 
Well baby
Maybe you can share with me the depths of our complicity
In these crimes of humanity
 
This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great 
This is it, my politics

(DISCO INTERLUDE: BOW NOW WUGGA DOOP DEE DEEE DOO!)

-(HEAVY PART!) -
Out on the edge between the living and the dead
I try to throw you off with a shake of my head
I try to drag you down and bury you alive
But when I fall asleep that's when you open your eyes
You gotta You Gotta You Gotta look me in the eyes
You laugh, you cry, you look me in the eye with your hang-dog face
That's when I put you in your place
Can you tell me... how will you survive?
You have to be the biggest fool alive
I lay awake all night but all that I can see are the vicious clever lies of my mythology
I'm beating my head up against the wall 
and on each single separate brick there is a picture of you all
This is it, the end, I'll tell you what I'll do
I'm going to pick you with a stick and look inside of you
But when you wander in the dark there is nothing to see
I'm on a desperate search for reality

-(END OF HEAVY PART!)-
 
(~Reggae Stylings~)
To tell the truth, you can all get screwed
I'd like to give you a kick, you little son of a bitch
Just let me Let me get my hands around your throat
And I will choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke
What is the bitter explanation for the violence of my indignation?
Well, it's as plain as the nose on my face
I am a member of the human race 
(~End of Reggae Stylings~) 

This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great
 
This is it, my politics
I stand before you, a simple man
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics
 
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate

Musically, I like this song because it's a heavy-enough ballad but unlike other heavy rock groups I can clearly understand word-for-word what the singer is saying. The pacing is really good too. Like it goes rock-ballad, weird disco interlude, HEAVY PART, brief reggae stylings, then rock-ballad again. I like the pacing and the fact that it can be heavy yet still have discernible lyrics.

Man, I didn't realize this was my favorite band of all time until they Retired last year or the year before. I've seen them live probably like a dozen times in my life ... and when they retired, I was like .... oh shit, Nomeansno's like done now. Wow.

Let's stay on topic though. I want to de-construct this song because I think it is pertinent to today's current society. The reason I believe this song is pertinent is that political elections fall into the Human realm, okay? We don't have self-driving elections ... we don't have robotic replacements for politicians yet like we have for virtually every other job out there ... Politics is a Job done by Humans.

.... and Human Beings are deeply deeply deeply flawed creatures.

Maybe in the year 3336 when Renex Greenbaum runs against Xerex Obama III we'll have a very orderly election process where the best Man, Woman, Robot, Cyborg, Android, Hybrid wins .... but as of 2017 this is not the case. When Human A runs against Human B it very quickly turns into a spiteful, angry, attack-ad laden, crazy-go-nuts festival of banality.



Alright let's look at the lyrics of the song more in-depth now,

"Don't ask me what to do  
I get sick just thinking about you"

We place these politicians on high pedestals and invest our hopes and dreams into them. The downtrodden, the humble, the sick, the blind, the lame .... they all place their hopes and dreams into their politician of choice. We know we don't have the answers to our problems but maybe some larger than life character has these solutions ....  but do these larger-than-life personas who run for high office have the answers we seek? Probably not ... and in their own hearts and minds these characters probably don't even really like you and don't want you to ask them what to do because they probably get sick just thinking about the weird poor people who voted for them.

"And when I look at all we've done
I want to walk away just hang my head and pray
That you will, look at me, what do you see?
Am I the king of the hill, standing over his kill?"

....great Mr or Mrs Politician ... you won your little election thingie. Good for you. You defeated your opponent. You're the Winner! Yay! You fought a long and hard battle of attrition where you attacked, beat down, and virtually destroyed your opponent and now you're tired. You're tired. The popularity contest took a lot out of you, didn't it? No time to rest though .... you didn't lose ... you won. You might wonder, after that brutal election when you lift your head back up and look at the people you are now the leader of .... do they like you? Are you the powerful king of the hill who slaughtered the evil opponent and is now the toast of the town ... or are you wondering if maybe a great portion of the people have a less favorable view of you after that long war-like campaign?

"Well baby,
The taste of blood is sweet and I'll lay this carcass at your feet
but only if you'll keep me company"

Throw your opponent's bleeding carcass to the feet of your fanbase. They like you. If I destroy my opponent ... will you people like me? Will you all really like me? Like Sally Field winning an Oscar type of "Like Me"? Please like me. Please.

"This is it, my politics, this is it
I've learned to hate, it's much too late 
This is it, my politics"

That's Human politics. It's no different for anyone. You destroyed your opponent and won. You tasted blood, you tasted victory ... and you liked it ... you really really liked it. Now you've learned to hate and it's much too late to ever go back. Hate always wins these things and not only do you now have a taste for it ... but you also have a knack for it.

"I stand before you, a simple man
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics 
This is it"

It's simple enough this process. There's no big secret to a big popularity contest. There's nothing really amazingly intricate or fascinating about the whole political process. That's it, it's politics. No big deal.

"I've seen more than I can stand
But in my acts and deeds I'm a political man
I'll give you, I'll give you all my worn out tools
Another brutal shot of my rhythm and blues"

The act must go on. Give 'em what they want. All those worn-out bits and beat-up shticks. Dust off a catch phrase you haven't used in a while ... give 'em a good shot of that rhythm and blues, baby.

"I need to
To draw you close, to take your hand
And in your shining face I see the promised land
 
Well baby
Maybe you can share with me the depths of our complicity
In these crimes of humanity"

You've now created this political character, this foolish simple being of a persona who promises great promises  ... and now you have a fan base ... who seem to really like you. Draw them close, take their hands .... they trust you .... just don't like bring them to Guyana and make them drink poisonous Kool-Aid like Jim Jones did, ok? Because that was like beyond fucked up, you know? They'd do it though, I mean Mr or Mrs Politician won their trust and they really trust you ... they'd probably even drink Jim Jones Kool Aid for you if you asked them nicely.

How deep are those depths of complicity in regards to crimes against humanity? Was Jim Jones more at fault for giving his followers poison kool aid? Were his followers at fault for blindly trusting an insane person to the point where they moved to Guyana to live on some broke ass commune? Or do both parties ... leader and followers ... share complicity in those grievous crimes against humanity?

"This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great
This is it, my politics


(DISCO INTERLUDE: BOW NOW WUGGA DOOP DEE DEEE DOO!)"

Yep, it's fucking great.

"-(HEAVY PART!) -
Out on the edge between the living and the dead
I try to throw you off with a shake of my head
I try to drag you down and bury you alive
But when I fall asleep that's when you open your eyes
You laugh, you cry, you look me in the eye with your hang-dog face
That's when I put you in your place
Can you tell me... how will you survive?
You have to be the biggest fool alive
I lay awake all night but all that I can see are the vicious clever lies of my mythology
I'm beating my head up against the wall 
and on each single separate brick there is a picture of you all
This is it, the end, I'll tell you what I'll do
I'm going to pick you with a stick and look inside of you
But when you wander in the dark there is nothing to see
I'm on a desperate search for reality
-(END OF HEAVY PART!)-"

Oooooh it's the Heavy Part, time to lash out at the world. Lash out at the world who's against you. Come on baby let's get PARANOID for a change! Whadda we have to lose? Let's get all PARANOID and maybe a little CHRONIC SCHIZOPHRENIA couldn't hurt either. Come on, let's lash out and keep lashing. Slash, Slash, Whooossh, Crash, Slash. Lash out! Lash out at the church and the state, the rich and the great, and everything in between .... and when you're done lashing out ... take a breath and look in the mirror, re-read what you wrote, re-watch your show ... and wonder to yourself ... Who am I lashing out at? Is the whole wide world really against me? Because when you re-read what you wrote and re-see what you said .... all you're gonna read or all you're gonna see is your own voice or your own words. You are lashing out at You.

(~Reggae Stylings~)
"To tell the truth, you can all get screwed
I'd like to give you a kick, you little son of a bitch
Just let me Let me get my hands around your throat
And I will choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke and choke
 
What is the bitter explanation for the violence of my indignation?
Well, it's as plain as the nose on my face
I am a member of the human race"
(~End of Reggae Stylings)

Welcome to the jungle baby, it's fucked up out here. It's a dog eat dog world out here, baby. Rat eat rat, even. A jungle? The jungles of lions and tigers and monkeys are TAME compared to the humanized world. Lies are WAY MORE BETTER than Truths in this world, honey. Welcome to the jungle, baby? More like Welcome to the Human Race, there baby. Ya, you won the Human Race Contest .... but who the fuck knows what the prize is.

"This is it, my politics this is it
I love to hate, that's fucking great
 
This is it, my politics
I stand before you, a simple mask
A sly dog
A politician
This is it, my politics
 
[it's] Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate"

Oh wait, hahahaha, that's what the prize is that you've won. It is Hate and it's fucking Great. The prize for the big Human Race Contest was a big ol' bag of hot n' frosty Hate.

Congratulations! Congratulations! Tell him what they've won Rod Roddy .....

Well, you and a guest will be taking an all expense paid trip to HATE, you and a guest will be staying at the lovely Hate Estates in the Beautiful Peaceful Hate Valley! But that's not all you've won!

You also get to be the Leader of Your Fucking Country!

 

Yeeeeeeeeee Haw!

Conclusion

Politics lies in the realm of Humans ... and Humans are kinda fucked up. To expect a flawless leader is insane ... I predict the first flawless leader will be an Android built circa 3312.

To hold these Human Popularity Contests and be surprised that a flawed Human won is crazy, you gotta expect that these thingies are gonna end with some pretty whacky results sometimes.

Sometimes the one with the cheapest heat and the most acute demagoguery wins .... but it's not a flawless victory .... moreso than victory and spoils .... the demagogue usually walks away with a big heapin' helpin' of Hate as his/her parting treasure.

Look politicians and other wielders of influence .... do whatever you want, ok? The average person doesn't even pay much attention or cares about politics. I mean usually almost half if not more of the country doesn't even vote in these things. Do whatever you want you wielders of influence you ... just don't fly your guys off to Guyana and make them drink poisonous Kool Aid or some shit. Ok?

The bright side of politics is that just like every other thing .... robots are gonna take these jobs one day. We'll all be doing our super fun stuff by like the year 3333 .... like flying our flying boats and petting our flying cats .... and when we tune in to the year 3333 Election ... we'll finally see a civil, hate-free, election ..... of robots.

And it'll be cool.