I didn't have the best day of my life yesterday but am pretty sure that, compared to the Brewers' right fielder, I feel good about myself this morning. Uff da. As a lifelong mediocre athlete, I think I can explain what happens in these situations. The guy is in the major leagues, which means he's had a long history of glittering successes in his baseball life. He's thinking he's going to gun down at the plate the guy trying to score the tying run from second, thereby getting his team off the field still ahead by a run going into the ninth inning. Because that's the kind of thing he's been doing his whole life. But there are two out, so the runners are off with the crack of the bat, plus the guy on second is a pinch runner, so better hurry, and—the ball skips past him, all three runners score, his team loses the big game, and he's the unambiguous goat. Someone like, say, me, worried about making bad plays instead of expecting to make great ones, would have smothered that ball, and the Brewers would have been in a tied game, still a good chance to win. That's what you get for being so good.
No I-94 World Series again this year.
After the ball game, I switched over to Colbert, whom I usually do not watch. (Whom, because I watched him, not he.) The opening monologue had just begun so of course he was going after Trump. Sort of amusing, but it made me think, again, that it requires no great comedic talent to be funny on the subject: just roll the tape of Trump talking, or Giuliani, or Barr, or Pompeo, or Kellyanne, or a segment on Fox "News," and then cut to the face of the comic looking baffled and bemused. The entire reality-based part of the population has the same look on its face so is Colbert really being "funny"?
Of course it was overshadowed by impeachment-related news, but, putting that aside, in the realm of presidential news yesterday was just another brick in the wall of absurdity, the New York Times reporting about Trump riffing to aides about a moat filled with snakes and alligators on the American side of his big beautiful wall:
Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That's not allowed either, they told him.
I know, I know, the moral/legal subtlety and overall level of mental functioning on display here is arresting, if not necessarily in a humorous way, but I just can't wipe from the humor-detecting part of my brain the idea of presidential aides making earnest inquiries about the price of reptiles for the border moat. Couldn't they just submit the invoice from the Costco of PetSmarts to Mexico?
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