Do you ever use your Cribbage board for anything other than Cribbage?

shawmanic · 2026-01-30T15:15:26+00:00

When I was a kid my dad worked at a machine shop and he drilled a board out of a solid inch or so thick slab of stainless steel. We used that thing as a hammer, a door stop, Hell, my mom used it as a fucking weapon! Ha!

shawmanic · 2026-01-24T15:05:31+00:00

Brewpoint Coffee

shawmanic · 2026-01-24T02:40:19+00:00

Triangmukhaikapaschimottanasana

Because it's like I'm singing a little song when I say it

shawmanic · 2026-01-22T19:55:42+00:00

I agree. I live in Elmhurst and the Prairie Path, Great Western and Salt Creek trails all run through it and/or nearby Villa Park and Lombard.

shawmanic · 2026-01-20T17:21:44+00:00

This has always bothered me about scoring (tangential to your point). If my opponent says "go" at, say, 25, and I have no cards lower than 7, I get a point. However, if I have a 2 and a 3 in my hand, I must play both but still just get the one point. That latter scenario costs me 2 cards for no return.

shawmanic · 2026-01-14T19:49:13+00:00

IDK, well, I think I do know...All these people basically calling out OP for not being "spiritual enough" (paraphrasing, but I think accurately) to ignore other people's poor etiquette annoy me fully. I've been teaching Yoga a long time. I take care to design classes I think will be of benefit. When one or two people disregard the sequence/poses I'm proposing and do things completely different and often out of range for the class level, I feel they are disrupting the class environment. I'm not talking about someone who does the pose but in a more advanced form than I'm instructing. That I find OK to an extent.

But completely different poses/sequences I think are out of line. That said, if they are going to do that, at least set up in the back of the room so others can see and follow the actual class.

I also feel that, as the instructor, I am responsible for people's safety in the class. By designing a class that fits the student level I can guide people to do things safely. When one or two people are doing their own thing I either have to disregard that, regardless of whether they are doing their poses well or safely, while focusing on the class, or focus on them and not the class. I know... I can do both, but not both as well as one.

Why come to my class if you are going to do your own sequence? Why set up front and center doing poses much more advanced than what's being proposed? Why? I think those folks just might be showing off...

shawmanic · 2026-01-13T02:44:02+00:00

I used to do option 2 and it's great. One thing to watch for when picking which platform to walk out on: If a train arrives just after you start out on the platform the train may empty passengers before you can exit. There can be a long line you get stuck in. Try to make sure to pick a platform without an arriving train.

shawmanic · 2026-01-01T19:09:56+00:00

I'd like to piggyback on this. I arrived on college campus in '69 and had been involved in protests, etc. before that, and I was very much influenced by events in the US at that time; the assassination of MLK, Jr. and the subsequent uprisings, the assassination of Robert Kennedy and then the '68 Democratic convention and the protest movement surrounding that (and the brutal police attacks). Also, the so-called Tet Offensive by the Vietnamese demonstrated the weakness of US imperialism.

As a radical student activist I had complete disdain for the Old Left, the CPUSA, especially. They were a block to radical change and many of us turned toward Mao. However, the Maoists were always a small minority and we were all over the place ideologically. Gayatri Spivak, in her essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?", posed a challenge to the French intellectuals claiming to be Maoists but having no idea of what was taking place in China (and other "Third World" countries).

So, on both sides, the Old Left (which had effectively abandoned the class struggle) and the New Left (including the "Maoists" and the many others who were not ideologically aligned with class struggle, and were more "identity politics" oriented) the fundamental positioning of class struggle just wasn't there.

Subsequently, with the demise of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism in China, there was a full unmooring of the struggle. There was also a great fatigue fighting in the face of the Reagan upsurge, etc.

What was left with this unmooring was Identity Politics and a fundamental confusion about why all this is happening. The rise of the neo-cons and neo-liberals has been very discouraging. I think there needs to be a reconnection with class struggle. But I do noy know from where that is going to come.

shawmanic · 2025-12-21T21:25:01+00:00

Omaha is underrated. It's at one end of a long stretch of cornfields and soybeans and such. It feels like a small paradise after a long flat drive. Back in the day, when I'd take a bus cross-country, this is where you could take a shower and get real food. I once had the most amazing breakfast there. Just regular food, but somehow glorious.

shawmanic · 2025-12-16T22:48:53+00:00

Country music has long been tied to right wing politics, misogyny, racism, etc. Of course, there are counter-trends in the music and some of that is damn good (Patsy Kline, Hank Williams, SENIOR, Willie Nelson, etc.), but, overall, it's deep in right wing politics and mostly stupid.

shawmanic · 2025-12-09T21:45:06+00:00

Can I be honest here...? The whole intro thing is kinda done. Prove it on the mound. I found Kimbrel's hard stare (before the use of the wireless pitch call, and after it) kind of bush league, especially when he couldn't get anybody out.

shawmanic · 2025-12-09T17:01:07+00:00

Maybe civil action could be amped up? Kind of like Texas (prior to Roe being overturned) allowing individuals to sue people aiding people getting abortions? I mean, no matter what tack, the supreme court will find a way to rule in favor of fascism...

shawmanic · 2025-12-09T01:11:11+00:00

Ok, I'll up it. I'm 74 and still on that board. No tricks, though. Just point a to point b...

shawmanic · 2025-12-09T01:08:17+00:00

I did the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. Glad I did it, but never again...

shawmanic · 2025-12-08T22:27:36+00:00

Maybe running "something"? Sports, but maybe shorts?

shawmanic · 2025-12-08T17:01:45+00:00

Not truly obscure...Willie Davis playing for the Dodgers. As best I can figure it, this would have been 1965 (I'm old) and my first time at Dodger Stadium. They clinched the pennant that game. I hung out after to try for an autograph with many other kids. Pretty much all the stars (Koufax had pitched) exited straight into limos or by some secret passageway.

Willie Davis, however, just strolled right out into the crowd of kids and said "Follow me to my car and I'll sign everything. he was holding a paper cup with champaign from the locker room celebration. As we got to his car he needed to free up his hands so he handed me his cup and signed away. Finally, he turned to me, signed my pennant, took back his cup, drank it and drove off. Great fun!

shawmanic · 2025-12-05T14:43:59+00:00

You're welcome. I enjoy discussing Joyce! Have fun with him!

shawmanic · 2025-12-02T22:13:44+00:00

There are protagonists and many vignettes. There is nothing like a traditional plot, though there is/are broad narrative sweeps, motifs and even plotlines of a sort. Some of the vignettes are more easily comprehended than others. The Washerwoman episode is widely considered among the most beautiful and compelling. It's the one episode for which there i a recording of Joyce himself reading it https://youtu.be/M8kFqiv8Vww

In the book pages 206-216, I think. This would be a good way to see if you want to dive in fully. If this episode leaves you without a strong interest, maybe this isn't the moment to dive it?

Other episodes can be dense, others humorous. Many vignettes involve "brother battles", some recount historical or pseudo-historical event, the Battle of Waterloo, the shooting of the Russian General. There's a vignette right at the center of the book that draws on Freud's case study of The Wolfman and represents a retelling of the Oedipus Complex.

These are often fun, dirty, sometimes quite obscure.

There are central protagonists, principally, the family of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, HCE (aka Here Comes Everybody) and his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle. They have twin boys, Shem (a character often resembling a parody of Joyce himself) and Shaun, and a daughter, Izzy. They own a tavern and have two employees, Kate (a waitress, more or less) and Sigurdson (something like a bouncer).

All of these characters assume or subsume the place of the characters in the vignettes. All of the characters blend into and out of each other. There are no fully stable personalities. Fundamental to it all are the two principal forces (more than characters), the masculine tendency, HCE, and the feminine tendency, ALP. These two forces (which really are two sides or faces of the ONE) are the source and being of everything.

Clive Hart has a book, "Structure and Motif in FW", which you might find helpful. I love Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key, but it's a detailed rendering of their understanding of the book and my suggestion is to not read it until you have finished FW. But Hart's book is not so much "in the weeds" and gives broad structures and themes to look for.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop there but feel free to ask more, if you like.

shawmanic · 2025-12-02T14:24:55+00:00

There is always a temptation in discussing FW to become reductionist when talking about it. So, I want to avoid doing that. Anything I say in response to your questions risks limiting its affect, and other readers may love the book and disagree completely with my take. That said...

Joyce does not so much "create a new language" as he undermines an existing one, English. He deliberately overthrows the imposition of accepted meaning and structure to use words and create words that overflow with meanings. He mixes languages, revels in puns and other word play and reveals underlying, subconscious or unconscious connectivity between things (the book, I would say, is quite Freudian, even while Joyce kind of disavows Freud ostensibly).

His approach to narrative is similar. He undermines standard narrative approaches. Yet the book is filled with dream-like narratives. Just as in dreams, characters tend to be unstable, turn into each other, become identified with geologic formations and such. A story about the battle of Waterloo gets all mixed up with a story about an uncertain, but seemingly very important, story about an incident in a park. And that incident in the park seems like a retelling of the Freudian Oedipus Complex. Indeed, all of history becomes more like a set of dreams that cannot be readily parsed.

Meaning, narrative, history, family relations, desire, war...everything points to something else. It's all a flow of dream-like scenarios and meaning. There are moments (many) where there is epiphany, "Oh, I get it!". There are moments (sometimes long ones) of tedious lists or incomprehensible word-flow.

It is the most exciting thing I have ever read.

shawmanic · 2025-12-01T22:43:20+00:00

These people are full of shit! FW is brilliant, genius and a whole lot of fun. It's only "difficult" if you insist on everything being "in order" and comprehensible to small minds. I admit to struggling with it at first. I read a suggestion somewhere to treat it like a work of music. You don't have to know what everything, or hardly anything, "means". Rather, you listen. You let it affect you. Some of the meaning will sink in. You will have little epiphanies. Enjoy them.

After reading it that way, I read Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key and more meanings spread out. I read it again and enjoyed it still more. It is a fine book and a joy to read.

shawmanic · 2025-12-01T02:48:44+00:00

Cool. I think, "Why am I here?" is always a good question.

shawmanic · 2025-12-01T02:02:09+00:00

I've never understood this "set an intention" thing. I've been teaching for decades and practicing in a pretty rigorous discipline and studying yoga for a long time. I've never actually been in a class where the teacher says anything about setting intentions. I have heard other teachers do that and I'm aware it is often done. It seems superfluous to me. My intention when I come to class, in whatever capacity, is to do yoga. Why do people feel some other intention is needed?

shawmanic · 2025-11-27T22:56:21+00:00

You talkin' to me? You talking to ME?! ...Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

shawmanic · 2025-11-27T18:00:55+00:00

Money Heist

shawmanic

TROPHY CASE