A Good Day for Baseball

              It’s the bottom of the seventh. The home team, the Longville Sluggers, are up 3-0 over the visitors, the Carson Bulldogs. The Sluggers’ shortstop, #9, Jonesy stood at the plate, his black maple bat hanging laid on his shoulder, pressing into the sweat moistened fabric of his uniform. It was a hot day in Poteet, Texas, which was nothing unusual, It’s always a hot day in Poteet. Jonesy looked ahead at his dugout, scanning over the blank expressions on the their faces, down to the mounds of cracked sunflower seeds at their feet. The seeds had piled up so high it was impossible to reach the floor without using a shovel. Jonesy looked behind him, to the opposite dugout, and found the Bulldogs had seeds up to their ankles. His ears perked up at a rustling sound to his side, Jonesy turned and found the Umpire and the Bulldogs’ Catcher sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the ground, picking at the loose blades of grass that stuck out of the tan dirt. Jonesy sighed and turned his attention to the single cloud in the sky.

              It, like the rest of this at bat, drifted slowly. He turned his attention back to the two men behind him, who had used up all of the grass around him and now turned to flicking small pebbles. Jonesy sighed again.

              “Here it comes!” shouted someone from the Sluggers’ dugout.

              Both Jonesy, the Umpire, and the Bulldogs’ Catcher snapped into attention, the Umpire and the Catcher hopping to their feet as Jonesy spun around to face the plate. He could see it, way off in the distance, something was coming towards him fast. It was about a mile away now, but over the flat desert area, it was easy to make out. It being a small white ball, 9.25 inches in circumference, 2.94 inches in diameter, made up of a yarn wrapped cork covered in two strips of white cowhide, stitched ever so tightly with red string. It was a baseball, and it was heading directly over the plate Jonesy was standing at. After the five hours it traveled after the pitcher threw it in Meers, Oklahoma, it was finally here.

              Jonesy got in his stance. Half a mile away. The Bulldogs’ Catcher got into his stance. A quarter of a mile away. The Umpire got into his stance. The Baseball was hundreds of feet away now. Jonesy was locked in, eyes fixated on the white blur speeding towards him.

              A hundred feet.

              Fifty feet.

              Twenty.

              Ten.

              It was coming right at him, right over the middle of this plate.

              Five.

              Jonesy was going to send this ball to Kamloops.

              One foot.

              Jonesy swung, all the muscles in his arms exploding with power, slicing the black maple bat right over the meat of the plate, only to find air where a baseball should be.

              He missed.

              “Strike two!” screamed the Umpire. Jonesy turned around to find the catcher's mitt firmly on the dirt, the baseball snuggled in it.

              “Fuck!” exclaimed Jonesy “That goddamn curveball!.” He tossed his bat to the ground in anger, which resulted in some loud grumbling from the Umpire, who had returned to the ground began flicking pebbles with the Bulldogs’ Catcher. Jonesy turned back over the plate, jabbing his index finger in the direction of Meers.

              “You throw that shit again, and I’m jacking it all the way to Atikameg!” Jonesy stood there in his anger for a few more minutes, sighed, and picked his bat back up. He walked over to the left side of the plate, black maple bat resting on the sweat drenched wool covering his shoulder, and waited for the next pitch.

Goku Bores The Shit Out of Me

By Willard S. Squire

I'm going to start this one off with a disclaimer: This is going to sound a lot like I'm hating on Dragon Ball. This might be because I am, but only just a little.

That's it, disclaimer over.

I have never liked Dragon Ball.

Not as a kid when I watched every single anime that came on Toonami. Not now as an adult when I enjoy more high class animes like Berserk and Neo Yokio.

It just bores me to no end. I almost fell asleep during my research for this article because I delve too deep into the fan-made Dragon Ball wiki.

Now you might have already labeled me a snob in your mind, I most definitely am one. However, I’m a snob who loves Hype Shit.

“What is Hype Shit?,” you may ask?

Hype Shit is watching Godzilla punch King Kong in the face.

Its watching John Wick shoot up a bunch of Russians because fuck yeah!

You have high quality Hype Shit like Mad Max: Fury Road.

You have low quality Hype Shit like any movie Michael Bay directs.

I think a lot of people see the super strong men throughout Dragon Ball touching each other really hard, blasting each other willy-nilly, and think “This is some Hype Shit”.

And it could’ve been if it hadn't committed one cardinal sin:

The Sin of The Infinitely Scaling Character.

Superman. The Hulk. Goku.

Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.

The Infinitely Scaling Character is a lazy writing device in which an author creates a character that no matter what obstacle he/or she faces, they will always have the ability to power up even more and beat the shit out of said obstacle.

Why is this a bad thing? Because their is no drama, no tension, in any of the majority of the story lines that feature an Infinitely Scaling Character (save for when a talented author gets their hands on one of these characters)

Are you really on the edge of your seat when The Hulk fights Abomination? Or when Goku battles the third buff alien boy of the month?

Of course not, because the good guy always wins in these situations. Even if said good guy gets the pulp beaten out of them, they’ll power up, enter a new form and win.

Boring.

Boring and poorly written.

You know what isn’t boring though? When your characters and the foes they fight both have limits and boundaries that they need to work around to win. Add in the real possibility that either one of these characters can beat the other one, good or bad, and you have an interesting story.

You have successfully achieved Hype Shit status.

The best example I can give is Part One of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood. There are spoilers here, but it’s literally the first nine episodes of the first season and the shortest part in the 30 year history of JoJo.

In Phantom Blood, the titular character Jonathan Joestar is facing off with the head (yes the head) of Vampiric Dio Brando for the last time in the engine room of a ship. Jonathan can energize his blood with the power of The Ripple, which, through breathing, gives him sunlike energy that allows him to hurt Dio, but is still a mortal human. Dio is a head, which is surprisingly deadly in the world of JoJo, but does have the help of a powerful zombie henchman. Dio is there to kill Jonathan, and attach his vampire head onto his body. Jonathan is there to stop that from happening.

The stage is set. The parameters for each character is put in place.

Both Dio and Jonathan have ways to win and lose this fight.

And guess what? They both win AND lose.

Jonathans victory is pyrrhic at best, as he dies cradling Dio’s head as the ship goes down in a fiery blaze, his pregnant wife escaping to live another day.

Dio’s victory is less imminent, but will come into play in almost every single part to follow.

Part One of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is arguably its worst (especially in comparison to what follows it, which isn’t fair to it), but it was still more interesting than almost any story involving an Infinitely Scaling Character, because it’s characters play in and around the boundaries set for them. This creates tension, it creates drama, and most importantly it creates an interesting story for the viewer.

Be a good writer, don’t use Infinite Scaling.

You need to shut up with the conspiracies

Las Vegas

Sandy Hook

San Bernardino

9/11

After all of these horrific events, we as a country struggle to comprehend how and why they happened.

This is just human nature.

We can’t wrap our brains around the true evil and insanity that make up these tragedies, especially when they happen so close to home.

It's not logical when a man fires an automatic rifle into a large crowd of concert goers, killing 59 and injuring hundreds more.

This lapse of logic leaves our heads filled with questions as we try to make some sense of this unthinkable act.

How did he get all of those weapons?

How did a 64 year old man get all of those weapons past people in the hotel lobby and into his hotel room?

Why on earth would someone do something like this?

These are all valid questions.

What isn’t valid, what isn’t right, is when you take these questions and twist them into something else. A lot of people will jump on the politicians who will take an event like this and try to politicize it. Whether this is right or wrong is a matter for another debate at another time, but as morally gray as it is, its politicians job to create the laws that would prevent these types of disasters from ever happening again.

Or at least it should be.

That is not who I’m condemning today.

Who I’m calling out are the people who twist these questions into a conspiracy theory.

From the toxic mouthpiece Alex Jones to the people on your facebook timeline sharing shakey phone clips vaguely showing nothing. These people are manipulating your anger and confusion about the atrocities of the world in order to warp your perception. If you believe their one conspiracy, you’re more likely to believe them down the road when they tell you to buy their super supplements, or go investigate a pizza shop.

This is a very dangerous path to go down.

It's also an incredibly disrespectful one.

When you feed into the craziness of these conspiracy theories, you disrespect all of those involved in the actual tragedies you’re just glossing over. These are people with families, friends, people who cared about them, and you’re reducing them to nothing more than a pawn in a plot against you.

Even worse is those of you who try to “take actions into your own hands”.

Could you imagine the horrific scenario of losing your child to the bullet of a crazed gunman, only to receive death threats in the mail because of this loss.

That’s the despicable reality people live in because of these theories.

I understand why people fall victim to these lies, I do.

We can’t comprehend that the world can contain such uncomprehendable and unneeded losses of life. So we create a false reality in which 59 paid actors laid down and pretended to be dead. How much better would it be if we didn't need to bury so many innocent American citizens.

Sadly, that's not the world we live in.

We live in an illogical world where horrific tragedies like these should be prevented, but aren't.

So instead of attacking those immediately affected, struggling through the grieving processes that no one should have to go through, be mindful and stop feeding into these conspiracies.

The Disloyalty of Man's Best Friend.

As the moonlight danced along the surface of the still lake, Harry lit his first cigarette in fifteen years. The first two puffs sent him into a fit of coughing, hacking, wheezing, but that third puff, oh that third puff, was nothing but nostalgic bliss.

Harry sighed with satisfaction.

She was the one who forced him to quit all those years ago.

She was the one who forced him to quit a lot of things.

She was the one was the one who forced him to stay in more, to stop swearing so much.

She was the one who told him to “focus” on his job at the company and to put aside his writing.

It wasn’t all bad though, thought Harry, reassuring himself, take this lake for example.

He smiled, his eyes dancing along with the shimmering reflection of the moonlight, this lake, this spot, in that shitty impala he had for so long.

They did it here for the first time.

Harry loved that car. Harry loved that sex.

Sadly, those were just two other things she forced him to give up.

The red glow of that cigarette grew dim as Harry’s mind stay caught in the revolving door of nostalgia, constantly entering good memories and bad.

One thought though, stopped the constant spinning to a halt.

“Oh my god” Harry thought.

“She's going to take my dog”