every Christmas night, I pray that the gifts are sittin' right

 babygirl in control

lives at the North Pole

last bean theory

 Every Tuesday I dump out a can of black beans into a pan to make burritos and every Tuesday ONE bean sticks to the bottom of the can and won't come out with the other beans no matter how hard I shake the can. 

Why can't this one bean do what all the other beans do? Why must it be defiant? Surely this points to a deviant and criminal nature.

BUT

If it's every can of beans. Every time. Then we cannot ascribe a miscreant nature to the singular bean. It must be a function of the can and/or the entirety of the beans. 

It is an act of laziness and spite to persecute the singular bean that is at the mercy of forces beyond its control. 

Also just have a knife ready and stuck it in there to knock it loose. It's not hard. 

 it's annoying to be critical of institutions and leaders because they have power and power is sexy and justifies itself. we love power. we love anything that symbolizes status and power. 

unrelated thought but possibly related: this weekend I coached at a climbing competition and the first section was jam packed with people. it was entirely overwhelming, it was loud. it was smelly. everyone was packed in like sardines. and these kids, these young kids have to step out of the crowd and onto the mats in front of everyone and try these physically demanding climbs that are scary enough as is and at one point I look over and this girl is in tears and she thinks she's hurt her shoulder and instead of calming her down or taking her out of this pit of people he's in her face just like, telling her to calm down and explain what's wrong and it's like, "WHAT ARE WE DOING?!" it was insane. I felt so bad for her. Eventually she calmed down but with some of these bigger teams they don't even know their coaches so this girl was probably completely overwhelmed and this guy who is basically a stranger is not helping at all and her dad eventually got to her and was able to talk to her.

and then! this girl who won the comp was climbing really well, I think she did all of her climbs first try, she had a phone in her hand and had the results pulled up and I don't blame this girl for this because she was too young to do anything different but the look on her face when she read her name and when she turned the phone around to show her friends was like Gollum holding the ring. It scared me in a way I don't want to put words to.

My team's great though! Bunch of scrappy champions and they're so cool and it was an honor and a privilege to coach them. Could not be more proud. 

But there's a sickness at those comps, man. I saw it at the first one I ever went to and it's still there. Gross gross gross

I think I love the smell of alkaline water

 I get this stone-ground yellow corn tortillas from Wegmans and they have an aroma to them. I looked at the back of the packaging and it says "Traditionally corn is processed with alkaline water which creates an aroma upon opening."

It smells so good to me. Top 3 favorite aromas. Truth be told, I keep buying them just for the smell.

coached today

 good comp

good job rocky toppers

got a find a new poem to analyze

oh but also, on my drive up to the comp in Alexandria I listened to Brandi Carlisle's The Joke. Holy freaking cow that song is powerful. When Brandi sings the chorus, oh my god, her voice. Her voice is like if you were a tiny bug and she picked you up with her massive hands and said, YOU MATTER!

The Pulse Pounding Conclusion of The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe

 To recap:

It's a happy sad party! Everyone's dressed up nice but also crying and the band seems kinda...off.

There's a play and there's mimes and also Invisible Wo!

They go round and round and it's just spooky sad wicked vibes all the way down.

A big monstermin comes out and eats everyone! oh no! Blood icky.

And now, the final stanza:

Out — out are the lights — out all!

And, over each dying form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

And the seraphs, all haggard and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy “Man,”

Its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Once again, as is the case in every stanza, we get another em dash aside from Poe.

Stanza 1: 

Within the lonesome latter years —

A mystic throng, bewinged, bedight

Stanza 2:

And hither and thither fly —

Mere puppets they, who come and go

Stanza 3:

That motley drama — oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

Stanza 4:

It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs

And now, "Out -- out are the lights -- out all!

For me it draws attention to the theatrical nature of the poet/poem. One point that Crab made that I thought was very good was that everything that happens in the fourth stanza is under the conceit of a play happening. That could explain the discrepancies I was talking about. But that got me thinking about how many layers are between you, the reader, and the world in which the poem takes place in.

There's you reading this, there's me telling you my reading of it, there's the poem itself which I feel like is drawing attention to the reading of itself. Does that make sense? 

Like, sometimes text tries to get out of the way, you know? It's trying to convey information to put the thoughts into your head as seamlessly as possible. To immerse you. Any sort of affectations or embellishments would come from the reader. This poem isn't doing that. The heightened drama is baked in. 

Anyway the poem is describing a play that is a world/scene within the world established in the first stanza. 

I'll see if I can land this plane when we get to the final lines but first we have to talk about what happens.

The play ends! Abruptly!

All the dead bodies are covered and put to rest by the closing of the theater curtain with the rush of a storm. 

I think there's a reading of this play that would be pretty funny to watch. All these mumbling mimes dance about and then horrifically devoured and then the curtain slams shut with the force of a storm. 

And then we get these tired looking angels, the seraphs, all haggard and wan, who perhaps triumphantly or at least conclusively deliver us the moral of the play:

That the play is the tragedy “Man,”

Its hero the Conqueror Worm.

What to make of it? I think it resolves the two ideas established and developed in stanzas 3 and 4. In stanza 3 we get see the sorry cycle of mankind, doomed by the Invisible Wo of the higher powers. And then we learn that the mayhem of stanza 4 was actually "the good ending". 

I don't think Poe is trying to tell us that this is what he actually thinks. Fully. I think the plot of the poem is in service of the main goal and shocking and exciting people. He's being a provocateur. 

He kind of reminds me, in a way, of Tony from Crimes Pays But Botany Doesn't. Tony often talks about "the death cult" that actively destroys native habitats and puts up cheaply made overpriced developments that can't sustain life in the name of profit and growth. The poem is meant to shock the reader but I think in the world it takes place in, it's what this tired, slowly dying society wants. They want this swift end. 

AI singularity doomsday??

I don't know. I definitely haven't made up my mind on this poem but I hoped you enjoyed reading it with me and I appreciate you following all my asides and meanderings and I hope you are also equipped with the knowledge to think about this poem and also appreciate it. 

My favorite thing about Poe is he's so dreary and ghoulish but also entertaining at the same time. He's having the most fun when he's telling you the worst stuff he can imagine.

a new thought on batomon showdown

 it's that game I played and freaked out about.

I'm still playing it but everything is dialed way down now. But it's fun.

One thing that I think playing this game might help with is choosing things quickly. Something I've always hated as a coach and a camp counselor is picking teams or making groups. It's a very fraught endeavor that is, at the same time, often really important to how the experience goes and bound to make some people upset and disappointed. I've seen it done well. I have done it well in the past. But I never like doing it and any time I can pass it off to someone else I will. Especially if it has to be on the spot. 

In my mind there's almost no way to do it without implicitly making a value judgment about someone in front of everyone else. I have a lot of thoughts about it. 

Anyway this game is almost entirely making choices about building a team. It's silly but like one reason I would lose initially is I would get attached to a little batomon that I had chosen from the start but then it's abilities didn't scale as the game progressed and it became a liability. And I didn't want to kick it off the team because it had served me well. Maybe this game is turning me into a sociopath. But I think by nature I'm overly sentimental and could benefit from making more rational in-the-moment choices. 

There is that Maya Angelou quote though, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Well I've got bad news for you Maya Angelou, you're never making it to Diamond Two rank in Batomon Showdown if you're worried about how that level 2 Gildshell feels.