Bypassing The Glass Joe Ceiling

Imagine yourself in a room with the length and width of a royal banquet hall and the height of "King" LeBron James. There are hotel-style bedrooms on the outside of the main room and nothing else on the floor where you are staying. The food could be worse but it could be a lot better and the same could be said of the people, but the environment as a whole is certainly better than the wintry weather and barren peoplescape outside. You feel content at times, but then you look up through the ceiling located mere inches above the top of your head.

The ceiling is made of glass and thus transparent, and the floor above you appears to be full of people who are generally much better looking and in much better moods than the people in your floor. It appears to be that way because it is, and you wish that you could get up there. However, there is one staircase going up and that staircase is guarded by a former A-list nightclub bouncer who won't let you go up them. You see people go up but you don't know what they did to receive permission to ascend, and they never stick around long enough when they come back down for you to ask them for advice. Any attempts to get to the next floor through the actual ceiling will result in at the very least public humiliation and there is potential for serious bodily harm. You've seen severely bloodied hands that recently followed a cerebral order to try to smash the Glass Joe ceiling, and unbeknownst to you all that had to be done is show your room key to the person at the reception desk in order to get the password to tell the bouncer. Going up is not that hard at all once you know what to do, which is why I call the most prominent barrier in this scenario the Glass Joe ceiling.

Glass Joe, in case there are people reading this who don't know, is the first opponent in the classic boxing game Mike Tyson's punch out and like all first opponents in fighting games and not the most skilled of fighters. The game included text of quotes from the characters between rounds, and Glass Joe expresses a desire both to retire as soon as possible and to take a nap. I never really played the game before about a year ago and I never played it much, but I've lost to Glass Joe. Repeatedly. This was apparently quite laughable, but I couldn't seem to be him on any sort of consistent basis. Mostly because I didn't realize how to stop punching high when high punches were being blocked. Quite simple, but I missed it and had to ask for help and the help allowed me to finally deliver a TKO to Glass Joe last night. Therefore, a Glass Joe ceiling is when not knowing or not knowing how to apply a simple piece of information completely stops progress.

There is no Glass Joe ceiling preventing me from finishing a novel. Writing a book is a long process that I believe I know how to complete as well as I ever will - it's just a question of putting in the time and effort to do it. Which I unfortunately haven't done much of since my last blog entry. But I do have other goals with a potential Glass Joe ceiling in the way. Like the Dream On entry from a few days ago - I honestly believe that if it is properly pitched then it could earn millions of dollars for a network and I wouldn't have to ask my parents for a few hundred dollars again anytime soon - maybe there's a simple way to make it happen that I don't know about. I want to start marketing my parody-writing ability on a freelance basis but I may have a GJC in my way for that too as well as not having ten spare dollars so that I wouldn't have to try to run the operation out of a blogspot domain. I want to run a weekly show in the city and have wanted to for a while but I haven't been able to - possible GJC there too. Finally, at least for now, upon reconnecting with fellow former community bloggers I've been reminded how fun and popular the games I used to run were and I'd like to start a site entirely dedicated to that sort of thing but don't know how to go about doing so - Glass Joe Ceiling again?

The tricky thing about glass joe ceilings is that they are much easier to spot in hypothetical scenarios than real life.

Back to the Book

Sometimes I am trying to write a novel, and sometimes I am not. Recently I hadn't been, in part because I had been discouraged by the similarity of part of my plan for this yet to be named novel and a significant part of a book that I read recently. That book, the 13 and a half lives of captain bluebear, had at least about a hundred pages about the title character working as essentially a stand-up comedian and I planned for a good portion of my book to be about a supernatural semi-mythical character pursuing stand-up comedy, and now I still plan to do so. Apart from the already stated similarities, the two story threads should be very different and making them so seems like a very attainable task.

Now that I'm writing again, the key is to actually write. I read a book called The War of Art a month or so ago which emphasized the importance of attatching utmost importance to whatever goal that one chooses to pursue if one wants to be truly successful. That's easier to do with plenty of money to pay the rent with while working on something guaranteed to bring in zero financial reward for the forseeable future, but the book never said it would be easy - it's a sort of personal war and war is never easy. I'm certainly not supposed to be using my energy on several different writing pursuits, but I can't see myself refusing to write what I feel like writing just because I'm just supposed to write one thing at once. If I'm blocked in one area then at least I should work on something else and then I might get distracted from the second thing by thoughts of the first thing. And vice versa. Until eventually, after a long time, I get both things done. Hopefully without using the word "things" quite so often.

Yesterday I wrote two paragraphs of the book. That's two more than I had written in quite a while. I don't know how much of those two paragraphs will stick in the finished product if there ever is a finished product, but the answer is almost certainly more than if I had written nothing at all.

Fortune's Pendulum

Usually I feel very streaky with everything I do, including things that are at least in part not under my control. Lately, however, my luck has been much more back and forth that usual, with a good thing directly followed by a bad thing or vice versa. Mostly the latter.

I'll start with one of the more trivial aspects of my life - fantasy baseball. This morning I had an autopick draft (the site chose my team as I slept) in which I got a lot of the players that I wanted (good) yet my autopicker picked two backup shortstops and several backup outfielders before giving me any infielders that aren't shortstops (not so good). Hopefully someone will trade with me. I also considered myself lucky to have Curtis Granderson on my keeper league team and I autopicked him this morning, but I found out this afternoon that he just broke a bone in his hand. As far as broken bones go its considered to be fairly innocuous at least. Up and down, up and down.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my keys to my apartment fell off my keychain and I never got it back on. Last night, I kept my keys in the pocket of pants that are not conducive to keeping things in and they all fell out. I was at the Magnet Theater at the time and everyone there was very nice about helping me to look for them and we found the key that had fallen off of my chain. That was the key that opens my apartment door, which I would have had no way of getting to my bed without. We did not find the keys that were still on the chain, which was somewhat worrisome considering my upcoming after 2AM morning before Easter sunday arrival. I got to my apartment house and all the lights that I could see were dark. It could've been a long, cold, night. And within a minute I see someone in the hallway probably going outside to smoke a cigarette. I got in and now it's a little harder for me to dislike the tobacco industry quite as much as I do. Because it's Easter I can't get new keys now so I'll have to stay in tonight, but maybe I'll get something done that I otherwise wouldn't have.

Apparently I'm a Warrior

The person preaching in the subway station said so. Not to me in particular, but to everyone who woke up in the morning and brushed their teeth and washed themselves and went to work. This happened at one in the afternoon, so the amount of warriors passing the preacher may not have been as numerous as it would have been between eight and nine, but I for one was awake before noon and relatively clean and heading to work to fight the good fight of paying for part of my rent once the paychecks are finally processed some time in the future. Hopefully next week before rent is due. If it doesn't, and I was a different sort of person , I would have to resort to warlike activities to pay the landlord.

Robbery is a warlike activity. The main difference that in one case the decision is made by people with legal authority within the political structure that they inhabit and one is not. And one is done on a much greater scale than the other. The purpose of war is usually to take something from one group of people so that someone else, usually the taker, can have it. The character of Robin Hood may have had good intentions, but he was still a robber. If Sherwood Forest was a country, then Little John would have been a war hero. War is government-sanctioned robbery in which the intended victim fights back, and if I intended to make someone a victim that person would fights back and win because I'm not that kind of warrior. A career blue common criminal is a warrior because they ignore risks on a regular basis to do what they think they should be doing. Is being a warrior necessarily a good thing?

Last night I played a game of poker on facebook. I came in fourth and lost 5000 points which has a monetary worth of nothing, but that's not why I'm mentioning it. There were several people of Arab descent living in Western countries playing in the game, and two of them were siblings. Brother and sister. One of the other players made a relatively innocuous comment about the sister's facebook picture, and the brother got mad about it. Really mad. And the original commenter certainly could have used more tact, but the dialogue got disturbingly violent. There were threats (probably, hopefully empty) of finding the person who made the comment about the sister and blowing up his family all over some comments that were deemed offensive. Because that's what warriors do. Not make threats, but act on them.

I think the world could use a lot less warrying and a little more worrying, but it shouldn't be dominated by either.

My Fantasy baseball Season starts tomorrow

Opening day may be a couple of weeks away, but for me the real start of baseball season isn't that or the start of spring training but my first fantasy baseball draft. Maybe that means I care more about stats than results and am vicariously selfish, but there are worse things to be like a simultaneous Yankees/Red Sox fan which isn't a mere myth. Identities shall remain secret for safety purposes.

I side-tracked myself almost immediately, but anyone reading this might be able to deduce from this posts' title that my first fantasy baseball draft takes place tomorrow. This will be my second year in this specific league and I'd like to improve upon last season's 10th place finish. To do so, the first step is a smart draft. This one will be an auction draft conducted through instant messenger so I need to not overspend on mediocre players as well as not shying away from the occasional high-priced superstar but not paying for too many marquee players. It's tough and I wasn't very good at it last year but I should be somewhat better this year. There is no guarantee that I will be, but I should be.

One advantage that I have over last year is that I get to keep some players that I had last year for last year's price although they'd probably cost more this year. I'm keeping Curtis Granderson and Yovani Gallardo, which I am still very happy about keeping, but I'm not sure if Ryan Zimmermann was the best third choice. But he may have been and I'm stuck with him now unless I make a trade. The good thing about the keepers I chose are that they are all very cheap so I should have plenty of money going into the draft to use on available superstars.

Last year was a bit of a wake up call considering I had dominated all of my fantasy baseball leagues before then. This is a very strong league and dominance won't be happening this year, but I'm hoping for a solid performance. How I did won't be completely clear until October, but I'll have some idea by tomorrow evening when the long drafting session ends.

Got my own domain

This is my first post in this blog without the blogspot in the address, which cost me a small sum of money but I think that it will be worth it. I wanted to write something meaningful but that actually happening is unlikely because unforseen (although not totally surprising) events that transpired last night resulted in me not being completely awake right now at three in the afternoon.

Last night I spent eight minutes on stage, which was videotaped as were all of the "sets" over there. I expect to be asked soon if I want to make the video public, and I plan on doing so. I don't plan on watching it. I never like watching myself - the flaws are always so much more apparent than anything positive that happened. I forgot some words although with the subject of the song that I performed it's believable that that was intentional. I also apparently subconsciously swayed on stage according to a later performer who spent more time talking about me than about planned material, and I'd like not to do that anymore. Although consciously trying not to sway could make me look really awkward and uncomfortable.

I'm planning on seeing some improv shows tonight at the Magnet Theater where I'm taking classes. They have an improv open mic after the shows which I'm not sure if I'll do or not because of how tired I am. Such are the struggles of someone who refuses to use caffeine.

Bam Bam Slamming Tonight

Tonight, I plan on finally doing something to get a video of myself performing that will be put online without having to pay significant money to do so. This will be possible through the Bam Bam Slam open mic at Nightingale Lounge, which seems to be the only open mic that makes internet clips of everyone who performs there presumably as long as the performer gives permission. But they don't charge, which is great and why I'm doing it. Sure the video will have Bam Bam Slam in the background, but I don't think that's any less legitimate than performing in front of a brick wall to people that the performers brought to stare at said wall and possibly be enertained if quality entertainment is provided.

The reason why the provide free video taping is to promote and increase participation in the competition that is the Bam Bam Slam. More details can be found at their website, www.bambamslam.com, but basically anyone who wants to enter the competition pays a little bit of money to compete in a round against five other videos. If somebody wins the six video match I think that they can enter another match without paying, and if your video wins six times without failing to win more than three times then you win a lot of money. Nobody has done that yet. No video has won more than two rounds. But it is still a new site and maybe eventually that will change. Maybe not. But it's still good to get a video clip online.

There is one thing that I don't understand about the Bam Bam Slam that I might ask about tonight. The winner of the round is determined by the votes of fellow competitors ranking videos from best to worst, so voting could easily be dishonest. Voting down stronger videos and voting up weaker videos would give someone a better chance of winning assuming most people are voting honestly. Is anything being done to discourage this? I hope so.

Ashrita Furman: Greatest Athlete Ever?

If a reputable organization created a list of the top hundred currently active athletes, it would probably be dominated by stars of the NBA and NFL. Some baseball players would get on, probably even less hockey players, and at least one or two soccer players depending on whether the poll was conducted in the USA or not. There would also be some prominent Olympic athletes, a boxer or two, possibly even a pro wrestler, and the elite of sedentary sports such as Tiger Woods and Kobayashi and maybe even a poker player. But arguably the greatest athlete in recorded history probably wouldn't get any consideration.

Those considered to be the best athletes are generally the most solid performers competing against other great athletes with a sizable audience watching. Ashrita Furman doesn't display his athletic prowess in front of large audiences, which is probably because although what he does is extremely impressive it would probably make very boring television as well and watching him live probably isn't worth the travel by plane and foot necessary to do so. As for competing against other great athletes, the previous holders of records broken by Ashrita Furman were probably in amazing physical condition, but it is much harder to appreciate a competition in which the two competitors aren't anywhere near each other and most likely never have been. Also, he seems to have been too busy lately breaking records to spend time publicizing his accomplishments so most people don't know about them. But they should.

I knew about Ashrita Furman, at least in the back of my head, ever since I read about him in the Guinness Book of World Records and was surprised would consciously try to set records to that extent which at the time was slightly less than a dozen. Then I was checking something in Wikipedia which led to checking something else and before I knew it I was at his home page in awe of the record setting tear that Mr. Furman has been on lately. About 50 in the past two years. Some are fairly ridiculous things that he can do better than anyone else who officially tried, but others are feats of endurance that make Lance Armstrong seem almost human.

What he's done seems worthy of a Chuck Norris-esque cult of personality, but his achievements would be hard to exaggerate when the truth is so mind-bogglingly impressive. Most people can't run a mile in less than eight minutes. Most people can't juggle. He did both at the same time. He also ran fifty miles while juggling (joggling) in less than nine hours. He ran a mile with an empty milk bottle on his head in under eight minutes, and I don't know if I could run a mile in that time with an empty milk bottle in my hand if I drank the contents of the bottle first. Maybe I'll try it someday. As for the records that he holds, I don't see any of them as being in reach no matter how much I train. He pushed a two ton van for a mile in about 20 minutes - I can't push a two ton van. The list goes on and on and on, and you can find it at www.ashrita.com . You may never look at pencils the same way again.

I played basketball with an ex-convict last week

Not the tax evading sort of ex-con, but someone who went to jail for a violent crime. According to what I overheard, it was robbery and assault. Probably beat someone up and took their money. At ten, if anything you're not allowed in school for a few days. At twenty, you're not allowed in a place that isn't jail for probably more than a few days I'm not sure how long I have better things to do than try to memorize the penal system. And then they are, to the horror of people who tend to vote Republican, allowed back on the streets. But I wasn't scared. I'm afraid of driving on mountains and to a lesser extent the dark, but not of convicted criminals who don't look or act (according to a reasonable person) like they're about to kill somebody. We were both at the courts for the same reason, and that reason was to play basketball.

The first game I played was not with a convicted criminal. Or maybe he was and he just didn't tell anyone within earshot. But if playing terrible basketball is a crime, then I caught him in the act. I won the game by ten points - it was to eleven - and I didn't shoot very well or use a lot of effort. Sitting, watching, and mocking my opponent for being terrible was the subject of my first paragraph. He had next.

If a casual observer looked at the two of us and assumed that my new 1 on 1 opponent was at least a decent athlete, which he was, then the observer would have probably concluded that this game would be as lopsided as the last one but I wouldn't win. I'm about six inches shorter and at least 100 pounds lighter. He is a very good ball handler for his size and whenever he decided to post me up near the basket there was nothing that I could do. But he didn't decide to do that every time, and he didn't play much defense. I made a bunch of three point shots and managed to be the first to eleven points. It wasn't over.

When nothing else is going on, I won't refuse an offer to continue a game. So we kept going. And my shots didn't keep going in quite as much and he took less free throws and dunked more. And 21 points came for him but not for me, and I was willing to concede defeat but after a little bit he offered to keep going. To 31. I accepted the offer and started shooting really well. Well enough to overcome defense from someone who could reach almost as high as I could jump and score 31 points before he did. Which resulted in an immediate request to keep going. Which we did. And my shooting touch cooled off and he finally started making some outside shots and I was way behind by the time he scored his 41st point. At that point I was exhausted and shook hands on a game well played. I lost in the end, but didn't feel defeated at all.

Why is it so hard to find a laundry bag?

This is not a sponsored post. At the time I am writing this I don't have any advertising whatsoever on this blog so until I change that I won't even get Google Ads about laundry bags showing up on this blog. I just need a laundry bag and have been unable to find one in any of the pharmacies that I searched while walking/running around Queens a couple of weeks ago. Walgreens has laundry bags according to their website but the particular one near my house was small enough that if I feared small places I might have had to buy claustrophobia drugs if such drugs exist but if they do that store probably didn't have those either.

What I have been carrying my laundry around in these days doesn't really qualify as a bag. It's not really qualified to carry anything in it either, and when it was functional it was more of a portable hamper than a bag. Now the flexible metal that held it together has broken and a part of it fell off and got in the way of the top of my foot somehow this morning which luckily didn't cause much bleeding and hopefully won't cause an infection. I'll probably post more on my health insurance situation in a different post, but right now I'm talking about laundry receptacles and wondering where I might find one.

I think I might find one at the department store near my apartment with a Spanglish name. I can speak spanglish if I have to and buying something there probably won't require speaking anyway. There is a 99 cent and up store that I haven't looked in either which may be a good idea. I'm not sure why I didn't try these places a couple of weeks ago as I spent over an hour in the cold or why I hadn't looked in them at some other time. Maybe I just needed a cut on the top of my foot as a wake up call.