PicoBlog

“You can't tell the players without a scorecard.” ~ Harry M. Stevens I don’t know about you, but the first thing I purchase inside the ballpark, any ballpark, is the scorecard. I have kept score at every major and minor league game I’ve ever attended since I was about 7 years old, (which is when my grandfather taught me how to do it) except for one game when it was just too cold to hold the pencil.

Field Trip is a homebase for the research and references that inform the work and life of designer Lauren Scarlett. [RESEARCH ©FT]Sometimes it’s sitting comfortably on a plane, in awe of the world and what you’re about to do. Sometimes it’s eating good food, going to bars and wandering the streets of a city you can’t believe you’re in. Sometimes it’s getting overwhelmed in stores that don’t stock brands you know.

The apostle Paul, in the closing section of the epistle to the Colossians, makes a passing reference to a lady called Nympha and the Laodicean church who met in her house. Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house (Col 4:15). So many questions! Who was Nympha? What role did she have in the Laodicean church? Was she something like the leader, overseer, pastor, or elder?

I have Covid. I’ll be OK, but as you can imagine Covid puts a damper on writing Situation Normal. For one thing, I’m quarantining, which limits my interactions with the oddballs, scammers, kind strangers, and dip-shits I rely on for inspiration. Another thing, I feel like crap, and it’s difficult to write when you feel like crap. My plan was to call in sick, but then the drugs got the better of me.

A note to Fight Freaks Unite readers: I created Fight Freaks Unite in January 2021 and eight months later it also became available for paid subscriptions for additional content — and as a way to help keep this newsletter going and for readers to support independent journalism. If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription please consider it. If you have already, I truly appreciate it! Also, consider a gift subscription for the Fight Freak in your life.

Just so we’re clear: “dowsing” — the act of using a stick or rod like an antenna to divine the location of underground water and other hidden things — is pseudoscientific nonsense. The very notion of dowsing — that an above-ground stick will react to the presence of something hundreds of feet below — breaks the laws of physics. Every single controlled test of the practice has failed, yielding results indistinguishable from chance.

When anti trans activist Posie Parker, also known as Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who famously has Nazis turn up to some of her Let Women Speak anti-trans rallies, went to Auckland there was considerable backlash from “gender critical” activists about the way that media reported on her visit. Crucially, there was quibbling about the accuracy of the terms used to describe her, and the media’s dogged insistence on reporting on the Nazis of it all.

This weekend we celebrate the life of an actual Southern California legend, Otis “O” Barthoulameu. And, Legend is the correct title. Not just a Music Legend, or an Artistic Legend, or even a Skateboard Legend, even though he is all those things, but pure, free of descriptor—Legend. But, let’s be honest: that’s not really true when it comes to O. He does need a descriptor. I’d offer up a Confusing Legend, maybe Mythical Legend?

***Folks! I’m planning a podcast next week about reactions, respectful disagreements, and not-so-respectful disagreements to this week’s columns. So, if you’re dying to tell me off — and research shows that most of my readers are — please send an e-mail to hereswhyyousuck@gmail.com. All thoughts, questions, and soul-destroying insults are welcome!*** O.J. Simpson, the last comedy reference that everyone got, died yesterday at the age of 76. The cause was Norm Macdonald’s mean, mean jokes.