Failed Essays
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I started to work on the medicated reality essay tonight, but ended up on a completely different tangent. It's like that sometimes; stuff just comes out. I ended up writing about walking with the ghosts of my past. I've been in my hometown a lot the last few days. I keep running into people I used to know. I imagine that if I had stayed, they wouldn't be ghosts, as I would have had 30 years of ongoing history with some of them. As it is, I am rarely reminded of those times, as I have very little in my current life to remind me, and don't often seek out those memories. I'm not sure where I'm going with the essay. It isn't finished and I may not come back to it. Although not completely so, the process is, at some level, painful for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I was such a jerk back then. (As opposed to now, when I'm less of a jerk and make up for it through increased pretentiousness. You know, as in "an ounce of pretention is worth a pound of manure.") The whole thing is infused with a sense of melancholy that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Most of the ghosts are impotent. I don't have a need to "catch up" on all the people I went to school with. I don't have a desire to look up old girlfriends (a rather short list) or the girls I had crushes on at various times. So I couldn't figure out where the melancholy was coming from, if it wasn't about the standard "what ifs" one expects when confronting the ghosts of one's past. What was more bothersome was that usually when I'm in this kind of mood, it plays out as sort of a bittersweet feeling, and not entirely unpleasant. This is different. This is just sadness. Then it occurred to me that the sadness comes from the slow realization that some of the ones who aren't ghosts are really dead to me anyway. I know that is needlessly cryptic, but I'm not sure I want to talk about it now. I'm not even sure I can talk about it. Maybe later, when I've returned to my regular life it will be easier. I will probably have lost the opportunity to write something true and honest and real, and will settle instead for something analytical and sterile, but I'm not even willing to try right now. (And one of my occasional readers who knows me in real life, is going to give me all kinds of hell for chickening out on this opportunity, but I figure that's OK, because if she wanted to read something she thought was profound or meaningful, she would have picked up Bradshaw, or someone like that.) On another subject, I've taken a look at the archives and decided I don't like the fact that there is no index. I guess I'll leave it alone for now, but I'm going to have to take a look at putting the two or three worthwhile things I've written in the essay section.by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, August 30 2003 12:00:33 AM

Udate and Link (not in that order)
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I'm fairly selective about recommending web sites, but I've been watching this one for a while and it is consistently just too funny to let go. IMAO is seriously rude satire. If you think political correctness is a good thing, don't bother taking a look. This picture should give you an idea what the web site is like. It goes on the sidebar when I get around to it. EPL Update Update: Due to some mid-week games that apparently counted toward last week's totals, I finished the week in 731st and am in 536th overall out of 1083. Marginally less ignominious than I thought. Now, if Liverpool could just score a goal or two... by Cziltang 
Posted: Friday, August 29 2003 08:33:51 PM

Perceptions of Death
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A friend of the family died over the weekend. He was one of the really good guys. So I'm off in one of those mental places where I'm contemplating death and life and how I relate to both. It seems to me that I'm more detached from the whole thing in general and in this case specifically than befits the situation. It just seems odd to me. Maybe I'm still numb, maybe the reality hasn't sunk in. I guess I'll probably know more tomorrow at the funeral. But it does at least suggest to me the rather uncomfortable topic of the nature of perception of reality while medicated. I've been toying with the idea, sort of nipping around the edges for some time now. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether the experience of reality while pharmaceutically altered, valid experience. Then that leads to the question of whether the experience of reality while under the influence of the chemical imbalance in the brain that one takes the pharmaceuticals for valid. Then the next step out is the question of whether the experience of reality and the things I thought I learned years ago while under the influence of non-pharmaceutical chemicals valid. On a different tangent is the idea that this might be normal perception of reality for one who has been working toward the Buddhist idea of non-attachment. To me, at least, these are profoundly interesting questions, but I don't have time to work on them tonight. I have to get up and go to a funeral tomorrow. And Ken, wherever you are tonight; I'm sorry I didn't do as right by you as I could have. I'll say goodbye tomorrow.by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, August 26 2003 11:03:40 PM

EPL update
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Well, I didn't do too well this week. I ended up 586th out of 1083 cumulative and 905th for week 2. by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, August 26 2003 12:38:38 AM

Promotion and Relegation
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I'm a happy guy. It's football (Americans, read: soccer) season again. I'm busy following my favorite English Premier League team (Liverpool) and making changes to my fantasy league team. One of the other things I like about this time of year is watching the newly promoted teams. The idea of promoting the best teams from lower divisions and dropping the worst teams from the upper divisions is (pardon the expression) foreign to Americans. But I think it is absolutely fascinating to watch the newly promoted teams to see how they start the year and cope with the pressure of playing with the "big dogs." Of course, later in the year, I'm watching how they do over the long haul, whether they can stay in the top division, and if so, who are they going to finish ahead of that will get relegated. (It appears that promotion and relegation is standard practice everywhere else in the world but the US and maybe Canada.) This year's promoted teams are Wolverhampton Wanderers (also known as Wolves), Portsmouth (for some reason called Pompey OK, shoot me; I'm not up on my English team nickname trivia.) and Leicester City Foxes (see my entry on the attempt to change their name from Foxes to Fosse last year). So far: Wolves have lost 2, Portsmouth have won 2, and I forgot to check on Leicester City (I haven't seen any of their games or highlights, so it didn't stick with me.) A lot of English football support by fans seems to be local and very much a matter of local pride. Manchester is a good example. Manchester has two major clubs playing in the EPL: Manchester United (who are one of the best teams in the world and last year's EPL Champions) and Manchester City (who were promoted last year and managed to stay up in the EPL. They play in different parts of town and you hear commentators say things like, "joy on the blue side of Manchester" when Man City wins, or the red side when Man U wins. There just isn't anything like this in American sports (with the possible exception of college rivalries). I think probably the Giants and Dodgers in baseball were like this when they were still in New York, but that was before my time. The closest current example I could come up with would be something like the teams in the NFL central division, like Chicago and Green Bay. Due to proximity, they are sort of "arch rivals". Among sports fans, rivalries mean "bragging rights." You get to boast if your team wins. You can argue about home wins and away wins, who beat who on the other guy's home ground and by how much and which team is better because of all that. (Basically, cheap entertainment...) Now imagine the magnitude of the bragging rights issues if your team doesn't even get to play your arch rivals because they were so bad last year that they got dropped to a lower league. In the Man U/Man City example, Man City fans had to put up with years of teasing because Man City wasn't even in the EPL. The local nature of English football support is really driven home when a club wants to move to a bigger stadium. The fans get testy when clubs want to move across the street, let alone moving out of a local area. Last year Wimbledon started playing in a stadium that wasn't even in Wimbledon. The fans organized boycotts, held rallies and spent days picketing the team, even though the new ground was within fairly easy traveling distance. English fans are just very picky about the traditions that go along with their local teams. In English football there are 4 divisions. They used to be called the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th divisions. Now they are the Premier League, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd divisions. There is also something called the Conference, which, as I understand it is semi-professional, although conference teams can get promoted to the 3rd division. There are roughly 20 teams in each division. The top 3 or 4 teams in the lower divisions each year get promoted to the next higher division. The bottom 3 or 4 teams get relegated to the next lower division. (Actually it is not quite that straight-forward. The lower divisions have added playoffs. For example, in the 1st division, the top 2 teams get automatic promotion. The 3rd through 6th place teams have a playoff to see who gets the 3rd promotion slot to the Premier League. In the Premier League there is no place to be promoted to, but the teams at the top are competing for places in next year's European tournaments, the Champions League and the UEFA cup.) Relegation can be a real nightmare, as there is no safety net. Through bad luck, bad management, financial hard times, and/or any combination or causes, a team can be relegated year after year until they reach the bottom. Wolverhampton are a good example. Wolves were English Champions in 1954, '58 and '59. After that they pretty much finished in the middle of the upper division until the 80's. They were relegated from what is now the Premier League in 1984 and were relegated to a lower league each succeeding year until they played the 1987 season in what is now the 3rd division. They earned promotion that year and worked their way up through successive promotions until they got to the 1st division. They spent the 90's mostly in the middle of the 1st division and finally got promoted last year. As the English would say, "they spent 19 years out of top flight football." Or, as one fan's website says, they spent 6953 days playing in the wrong divisions. In American Sports, you buy a franchise and your team is in the league no matter how dismal your performance (with the rare exception of teams going bankrupt). Teams at the bottom of the standings have nothing to play for at the end of the season. I'm most familiar with how this works (or used to work) in Baseball. When I was a kid (before Free Agency) there were teams who were consistently good and there were perpetual "cellar dwellers". In the mid 60's the Kansas City Athletics (before they moved to Oakland) and in the early 70's the Kansas City Royals (an expansion team) were generally near the bottom. By the end of August, they would be 15 or 20 games behind the leaders (or more) with absolutely no chance of catching up. Year after year they would spend September bringing up prospects from the minor leagues, trying to get them some experience so the team would be better next year. I remember the KC radio announcers trying to put a positive spin on it every year with the same platitudes about building for the future. As a kid, it was heartbreaking to know that my team was just completely uncompetitive (again). With relegation, the bottom teams have incentive to play as competitively as possible all year. Aside from pride, relegation costs money. If I remember correctly, I think I heard last year that relegation from the Premier League meant the loss of something like $20 million in revenue for the relegated team. So while end of season games for the worst teams in American sports are often completely meaningless, end of season games by the worst teams in English football leagues are often the most intense and entertaining of the year because there is still something to play for. I guess that's enough about football. I promise not to get wound up about it too often, but I just really like the whole concept of relegation and promotion. It's kind of fun to speculate on how my world might have been different if the Class D Iola Indians (Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League, minor league baseball, late 40's and early 50's) had had some good years and gotten promoted. Or, for that matter, the AAA Wichita Aeros from my childhood might have gotten promoted to the Majors (except I don't remember them as being that good or ever winning anything. I could be wrong, but I haven't been able to find a list of the league standings from that era.) Now that I've spent a couple hours surfing for the baseball information I wanted for this entry, I accidentally stumbled across the United States National Soccer Players Association. Therein, I found an article explaining relegation more thoroughly than I did and an article explaining why relegation isn't part of American sports. According to the first article the figure is $15 million in lost revenue for a team relegated to the first division from the Premier League. UPDATE: Error corrections: I was wrong about Portsmouth. They've won 1 and tied 1. Same as Leicester City. by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, August 24 2003 12:11:19 AM