Last-Minute Fantasy Football League (Not Meh Official)

@f00l Yeah, we’re hoping to fill it with people who can do the live draft. But… if we’re still missing people an hour before the draft, I might become very flexible with that.

@f00l PPR is point per reception. It makes the wide receivers and tight ends a bit more valuable. Even impacts the scores of some of the running backs. So… Every time someone catches a pass, they get half a point (added to the receiving yards).

@christinewas If you get desperate sign me up. I’m available at 10 but don’t know enough about players to pick wisely. I’ll check back later.

@sammydog01 Picking wisely is not required.

@christinewas OK, I can make everyone else look good. Do you still have availability?

@sammydog01 Yep!

@christinewas I just joined! See you at 10.

@sammydog01 Yay!

@f00l Last year I didn’t know much about the players, but I managed to draft a decent team with the number 12 draft spot. I pretty much let the draft do itself, picking whoever they had next in line. When it was all over but the shouting, I ended up winning the championship with a team that was primarily made up of 7 of my original draft choices. If I can do it so can you.

@Teripie I have never drafted- does it just give you a list in order of who’s best?

@Teripie
Have issues with being free at that exact time.

@sammydog01
ESPN is v helpful

Just pay some attention to what roster spots you need to fill.

@sammydog01 It does. I believe they are even ranked according to our league’s scoring settings.

@f00l Both true. You have that handy little list of available players and a list of your current roster so you know what you need. So, uh… Why not half-heartedly draft with us (on your phone, perhaps) while you indulge that insanity thing?

@f00l Oy. Yeah… please don’t try to draft while driving.

@f00l OK… We’re down to the wire and we’ll take your auto-drafting over our draft being rescheduled. Can you join in the next 10 minutes?

@f00l Thanks!

@f00l Oops. Took longer than I meant to take to get over here and tell you… Draft is done!

@sammydog01
Just dump your best two players and I’m sure we will be fine.

Am Contemplating Now.

/giphy deep thought

@f00l Yes. Your second round draft pick and quarterback are suspended. Congrats!

@f00l Well, you beat me by one point in pick em and I beat you by 35 in fantasy. If you want to call that a wash that’s fine.
/giphy delusional

@sammydog01
Ok then I will whup your ass n whining over the season.
/giphy whining

@f00l Watch out. @sammydog01 won ALL the things last year. fantasy league… Pick 'em… fantasy playoff bracket contest… Most-incredible-prize-sender award… All the things.

@christinewas
I’m too far away from @sammydog01 to do a good kick in that direction. Are you in range?

@f00l I like knowing things, so this is cool.

I’m Team Was in this league. I plan on changing that and my meh team name (christinewas) and logos when I have more time. I’m also filling in for mfladd as interim LM of FESUSGL where my team is the Katmai bears. And I’m in a stupid NFL league I didn’t mean to join. Which is fine, because I did 4 leagues last year, so 4 this year will probably feel normal.

I mostly love fantasy football for the math, so I do like to spend some time looking at stats, comparing rankings, and working out probabilities. But I base a lot of my decisions on players I actually like or random whims, so I don’t always follow the math. I just like to play with it.

My husband is the Incomparable something-or-others. He says he doesn’t have much energy for being active in the forum, so it is unlikely that he will notice this. (@bfb62185)

Team Hansen is the only team that isn’t from meh. He was LM of a league my husband and I did for a couple of years, and I invited him to join this one because he didn’t have time to put a league together this year. He likes to trade. (If it makes you feel better, I also failed to respond to one of his trade proposals before it expired. Oops.)

@f00l I could tell you more about each of these people, but I will just tag them and give them a chance to say something, instead.

@teripie, @soomass, @rareluck, @sammydog01, @joelmw, @stardate820926… want to identify yourselves?

(In all, I’m related to two people in this league and another is like family. But I won’t force any of them to claim me. )

@christinewas Oh! And lest you worry about collusion (given my connections to so many of these people)…

Collusion is cheating, as far as I’m concerned. And cheating is stupid. It defeats the point of competition and I am way too competitive to even consider something that lame.

@christinewas
Not terribly worried about collusion. I’ve seen you and your relatives in action here.

A bit more concerned that since you all know where each other lives, you might make the trashing very up close and personal.

"I see competitiveness."
Just make sure we get thru the season with no:
“I see dead people”.
Esp no:
“I see dead family members.”

…
What are the rules and customs of trading? How long before a trade expires? Can I see a trade and try to evaluate it, and accept/reject within the app?

If I want to discuss a proposed trade with the othe party, is there a point to that, or is it a waste of time?

…
Do our waiver claims have to be made by a certain time before a game?

What other common rules should I be aware of that I won’t know?

…
Re math
Are you using a spreadsheet? Not trying to pry into your private advantages and strategies, but am curious to learn, so only answer what you are willing to make public. If that’s nothing, I understand.

So here are some elementary q’s you should prob refuse to answer. Which means, don’t answer unless you wanna.
What stats are you using to developer your projections? As someone fairly new to FF, with fairly limited time to stidy stuff, and not intending to become a viewer of games; wondering: are you using past performance as a predictor of future performance? If so, using only this season, or prev seasons? (Receptions, yards, completions, scores, downs, fumbles, sacks, whatever? Or are you messing w other data?

Do you calc in likely offensive and defensive strengths and strategies per team and per game, week by week? Things like who will be double covered, how many plays or what percentage of offensive plays a given player will be on the field? How many likely reception chances or carry chances a RB or WR will likely get given the specific matchup? What do you calc in that ESPN doesn’t already forecast - and that NFL.com and dozens of other sites don’t forecast? And that the teams don’t forecast? Do you just like doing it yourself and not being dependent on the forecast models of others?

If you use a spreadsheet or other math/db tool to keep track and automate, and you built a personal forecast model over time, you had to start somewhere: what was the easiest place to start?

…
Is there a way to persuade Hanson to sign up here so he can join this thread?
…

Thanks for tolerating me q’s whether you answer like a person or like a poker player. All good.

…
Speaking of math and poker - I have a nephew who use to be a superb coder. But he also did quite well in online poker. By the time that got shut down, poker was his mainstay. So he moved to Victoria, CA, and now plays poker for a living. It’s just math to him, so he’s steady. He will hunch sometimes for fun, but that’s just a mental vacation moment. He follows the numbers, he knows the game, and he wins. It’s not about risks and dopamine kicks for him - he tries to be as precise and steady as a surgeon.

@f00l @christinewas
So, I’m just zis guy, you know?

I will happily own the fact that @christinewas is my daughter and @bfb62185 is my son-in-law and @stardate820926 is like a daughter to me IRL.

I’m therefore “Team Dad,” the steak on a fork, WASI and, I believe, the only Joel in the league.

This whole business, as you know, was rather rushed, and I chose my icon, name, etc. rather hastily, but I’ll probably keep one or more of the three and/or keep myself identifiable.

I’m sometimes verbose. I was a goat. What do you wanna know? Sheesh.

This is my second year of fantasy football. @christinewas talked me into it and gave me some coaching (I hesitate to say that only because I still suck and I don’t want that to reflect on her) and I did two leagues last year. I got lucky in both and ended up winning a Meh beginner league (I’m Wasinger Prime Bad Ass Unicorns in a Meh Intermediate this year). I had a series of bad injuries in the last few games of the season in my work league and ended up about in the middle there.

I’m too lost to feel especially competitive, so my smack talk is not at all to be taken seriously. I don’t ever see myself reaching a point of actual competency with this and deadlines are rather fixed (my problem in many other games is that I take too long), so I think we’re safe from potential death by competition as far as I can see.

My teams in all three leagues I’m participating in this year don’t look great. This league might be my best . . . and I lost my first game. But who can say? I’m willing to accept what fortunate the gods may throw my way.

/giphy meh

@f00l I might miss a question or two, but I’m going to try to answer all of them.

I think actual conversations are the most effective way to trade. I find that a trade is much more likely to happen if I am sending messages back and forth with someone than it is when I just send or receive a trade proposal. Because… negotiation.

I believe trade proposals expire after 2 days. If accepted, they then go into a trade review period. During trade review, members of the league vote whether to allow the trade or not. This is a good time to jump in and stop unbalanced trades. Especially toward the end of the season when a weaker team has potentially stopped caring and isn’t worried about an unfair trade.

Trades are highly encouraged. I’m more likely to accept trades that are swapping players in the same position and find that those are usually my most successful trade proposals to others. Most trades I see go through are trades that lose value at one position and gain it at another. So something like a weaker RB and stronger WR for a stronger RB and weaker WR. But 1-1 trades are feasible since we all have personal preferences. I hate 1-2 trades with very few exceptions. Some people obviously don’t hate them.

Waiver claims, free agent acquisitions, and roster changes need to be completed before the scheduled kickoff time of each player involved. You can’t activate, bench, drop, or add a player after his game has started.

As for the math fun, I don’t really know enough about the sport to create my own projections without leaning heavily on a few experts. I will compare a player’s projections to their stats and the strength of their opponent to try to… deconstruct an expert’s projections. Sometimes I will just compare several projections to decide what I think is reasonable, giving more weight to projections that are based on what I perceive to be more logical criteria. I do use spreadsheets. I also do quick calculations on scrap pieces of paper. Or just scribble down a bunch of numbers and roughly evaluate them at a glance.

I have a few fantasy experts I like more than others. And those preferences change a bit from year to year. (When an expert says too many things I think are ridiculous and then ends up being wrong, I kind of start to ignore them.)

Fantasypros.com is one of my favorite sources. It’s a great place to see a bunch of data without having to fish for it all over the internet. It’s also a nice shortcut when I don’t have time to play with the numbers, but I want something a little mathy influencing my decisions. You can choose the experts to include in an Expert Concensus Ranking. (It’s really nothing more than an average of a bunch of rankings.)

This year, I haven’t really had any time for… fantasy football fun with math. The only thing I actually did was compile a bunch of expert draft rankings (by position, including which round of the draft those experts would take someone) and then use the data to decide my own position rankings and in which round I was willing to take someone. (And then I determined priority within those rounds.) Basically no math. Just a plain spreadsheet for sorting, with a tab for each position.

Since I really am just playing with it, it’s all very informal. And, like a said… I haven’t really done anything truly mathy this season. No time for that kind of fun.

@f00l You can do most of the trade stuff in the app, but I know I’ve had to use my browser for a few features. And a lot of it is easier on a computer

I have played with all of the criteria you asked about. At least a little bit. Mostly because those things are typically involved in expert projections. And I’m usually trying to understand expert projections more than I’m trying to become independent of them. It’s more about… factoring my opinion, understanding, insight, and priorities into my decisions than it is about making fully independent decisions. Because I know I’m not an expert. I just like figuring it out to help me decide how much I will let a projection influence me. I usually don’t have enough time to really create my own projections.

When it comes to my team (Denver Broncos), I have found that I can frequently make better educated guesses than a lot of the fantasy experts that are doing this for 100-200 players each week. Because I’m looking at the same data, but it’s the only team I’m spending any significant time watching. Even though they are generally better at comprehending the data and know the game better than I do.

And, again, it’s all just for fun when I have time to play with it. Hopefully I will get to play with a few projections this year. I have a new favorite expert I haven’t dissected yet.

@christinewas
How do we communicate w Team Hanson?

If a trade is proposed and you wanna discuss it with the other party, do you discuss here (leaves out Hanson and makes it public) or on ESPN (is that public or not? Not sure?). Or where can you discuss in private before you offer the trade to the league at large for a protest or whinefest?

Technically, is there a difference between a player on waivers and a free agent?

What about an IR spot? Does our league provision for those?

For next year, do we have keepers?

Re My Team
When Brady and Bell come off suspension, what is the best way to start being effectively loud, obnoxious, tiresome, and generally horrible as a human being?

@f00l No IR. No keepers.

Waivers v Free Agent:
If a player is a free agent, you can instantly grab them and put them on your roster. I’d a player is on waivers, you can only put a waiver claim on that player.

Waiver claims all process at the same time in the early, early morning of whatever day it says the player comes off waivers. Picks are based on waiver order. (Waiver order resets weekly to inverse standings. So the worst team gets the first pick.) When all of the teams before you have gotten their turns, you will get highest priority player still available from your waiver claims. After it goes through all of the teams, it cycles back to the beginning of the waiver order list and continues until all claims are fulfilled that can be fulfilled.

I think ESPN might give you the option of emailing a team manager. If not, this is probably your best bet. And simply proposing a trade is always an option if nothing else works.

In FESUSGL, we use slack for league communication (and random conversation throughout the season). I can set up a slack team for this league if people want it. Participation would be voluntary, so I can’t guarantee that it would give you a way to communicate with everyone. But it might.

I haven’t really communicated via ESPN before, so I couldn’t tell you much about that. But that might be your only option with Team Hansen. I can ask about joining the forum, but I know he has a pretty busy schedule right now, and meh itself wouldn’t be much of an added bonus, since he lives in another country.

@christinewas
WTF is Slack? And I am not totally anxious at add another site I have to check all the time. Don’t set up Slack whatever it is unless there’s some kinda serious need for it. I don’t know how diligent I would be.

Also you all moving your Goat League chat over to Slack-whatever means the rest of us dont get the entertainment from watching. A material loss, to my mind.

ESPN allows for some chat. We do a tiny bit of formal league admin discuss in our family league that way. But I am also not anxious to have to check that diligently. Also, dunno re ESPN and pm’s.

Most of my family league chat is group text message. But we already have the phone #'s, so no privacy issues there.

@f00l Since you asked, I’m Sammydog. I’m the one who kicked your sorry ass last week. Although I technically did win all the things last year I have no idea what I’m doing and it was a combination of not giving up and pure luck. I don’t usually do trades because the ESPN guy said if you don’t know what you’re doing you will get screwed. And I trust the ESPN guys. (How do you know if someone has offered you a trade? Do you get an email?)

@sammydog01
I know I was offered a trade thru some app notification I found way too late.

Re evaluating trades: I have nephews for a reason. It’s about time they earned back some of the travel costs I spent attending their weddings.
…
Would be really cool if Hanson would join Meh just for this thread. Doesn’t exactly cost much to fail to purchase anything.
…
Yeah last week you kicked my butt. Soon Brady and Bell will be starting for me. Them perhaps we can do a nice sweet rematch.

See you soon!

@sammydog01
Re asking for introductions - not everyone has a Meh name associated with their team and owner name.

So I was hoping to lure the Meh connection out into the open.

@f00l Not even gonna try and read that.

@sammydog01
Aw, I might that awful, but, I hear Shakespeare doesn’t entirely suck as a writer.

/giphy shakespeare

@sammydog01
PS. I understand if all you have time to do for the next little while is to get ready for my incredible team to lay waste to yours. My sympathies.

/giphy tom Brady

@f00l
/giphy yawn

@joelmw
Ok, go get some rest.

@f00l What’s funny is that I thought that I had the best draft (of three leagues) in this league. So far I’m a goose egg. And my first draft of the season that I hastily put together and haphazardly executed (meh intermediate), I’m 2-0.

Good win. I’m just trying to be indifferent. I do need some sleep though, so thanks.

@f00l Okay. I just read all of that. Maybe my least favorite Shakespeare (all of that martial shit).

Since you asked, I’m happy to share (and I’ll try to make it brief). I was raised in fundamentalist religion (Nazarene, then Assemblies of God), a good little church boy, with a great affinity for the Bible (amplified by my natural inclination to words, holy or not). We of course read the King James back in those days. And I memorized chunks of it (directly–and usually consecutively–but also more inductively, by incessant exposure). It’s actually part of how my mind works, I think (ha), in the King James. I remember when they introduced us to Shakespeare in school, thinking, well, heck, this is just like being in church, only the sex talk is more fun and less disapproving. I kind of fell in love with Shakespeare at first sight and sound.

FWIW, I also grew up with a great and enduring fondness for the lyricism of Dr Seuss. And an ear for his and certain other meters (e.g., what’s referred to as “hymn meter,” given its frequency in traditional hymns). My other favorite author was Ray Bradbury, who, I’ve been told and it makes sense, is a bit of a poet (not so much in form but substance) among sci fi writers.

In high school I developed great delusions of grandeur, believing I was destined to see through to the foundations of and thereby change the world. I toyed with math and physics (at the cosmic and subatomic levels), then philosophy and theology. I finally came to see that the most comprehensive (and, really, the funnest) of all ways of seeing things is literature. I favor what I’d call poetic prose. I’m the opposite of prolific (in terms of meaningful product; I can churn out this worthless shit days on end) and very much a frustrated writer and, I guess, philosopher. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I should have studied the Law.

It was also in high school that I was introduced to William Blake and quickly became a Blake freak. I eventually (in addition) landed with the British Romantics (Keats, Shelley, et al.) and metaphysicals (e.g., Donne, Herbert, etc.), and offbeat (ha, beat) poets like Ginsberg and Yeats and the like.

Now you pretty much know everything you need to know (I mean, if that all makes sense to you and you’re familiar with it, which I don’t blame you if you’re not) to understand my literary pedigree. I have other favorite and influential writers dancing in my head, but it’s probably telling that those are the ones that come to mind most quickly. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, etc. My position on Christianity is somewhat uncertain, but I consider the Bible to be among the greatest (and most misunderstood and misused and abused) literary collections of all time and I don’t mind that it’s maybe the ocean that roils in my conscious and sub and un mind(s). And its language is lovely and rhythmic.

And, yaknow, U2, Pink Floyd, The Police (Sumner was an English teacher, btw), The Talking Heads, Rush, Tom Petty, etc.

@f00l Re the trash talk. Yeah, I think I’m with you. I work with guys who spend way too much time on sports. I have better ways to waste my time.

@joelmw
Cosmic and evolutionary fact:

My having people around to Be Serious about spending hours and hours on fantasy stuff is why Nephews and Nieces exist in this universe.

Esp since I not only spent the big bux going to all their weddings, I gave them totally awesome boxes of gorgeous and fun wedding gifts. (Monster Block Rockers and Shun knives - my gifts get used).

So now they all owe me. And if I want not to do all that work that @christinewas and other serious fantasy people do, my nephews and my long-suffering brothers take my calls.

I seem to manage the “random publicly insane behavior” portion of being in a fantasy league without external assistance.

Will reply to the other stuff in a bit.

@joelmw
Oh - re Henry V

Picked that bit cause trying to get you in the mood for fantasy trash talking. Seemed to fit.

Oh - Re re Henry V

When Branagh filmed it, I loved it, but kept getting somewhat distracted by his clean and fresh and perfect layered haircut.

Kept trying to imagine the The King’s Stylist traveling to Agincourt with lots of L’Oreal and gel to keep Our Majestry pristine.

@joelmw

I have known some people who grew up Nazarene, and who grew up in, (as they described), Intense Nazarene. Their stories of what that was like could have been distilled and tl;dr’d down to “Hard Core” from those who spoke about that part of their growing up. Not sure, have lost touch, but believed they all chose far less immersive paths for their spiritual lives once they became adults.

Incessant spoken exposure to recited or read King James scripture - poetic scripture - does change the brain, I believe, esp for the young. There is a reason that we all speak our early childhood languages with natural grace.

I can’t usually tell from brief remarks or normal conversations, but if someone gets into a storytelling or discursive mode, I can hear whispers of the echoing candences, altho I don’t always know quite where to place the sources.

And I would presume that anyone who has the built in fascination with language and who grows up in lots of KJ (1611?) as a first poetic home will easily find familiarity and inspiration; a second poetic residence, so to speak; in the language of Shakespeare (active 1580-1616 or so).

Back in that horrifying past, when we did not have TV and devices and YouTube and smartphone games, in centuries prev to 1900, speeches and sermons were popular entertainment. People would come out for those the way people do now for Comic-Con. And those speakers could, with a few written notes, go for hours, since nobody was itching to get back to Pokémon Go.

Those speakers, in this country at least, found their rhythms, their references from their shared commonality of KJ scripture and well known hymns, and commonalities of patriotism.

And of course it could be infinitely boring; a speaker must know his/her audience. Edward Everett’s more-than-two-hour keynote speech, delivered just before Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is so-very-not-remembered now.

The best known, and classic, modern example must be the “I Have A Dream” speech. I ran across a textual analysis of it recently, in which the speech was parsed by echoing language, rhythm, repetition, call-and-response, thematic and focus rhythm, all leading to rhythmic, thematic and emotional crescendo. I suppose, for a young and attentive listener growing up in a recited KJ world, that stuff can get into your bones.

I heard a fair amount of KJ growing up, but not intensely. Disciples of Christ. I did, however, have Always-Right Grandmother. She lived 6 blocks away, and came over sometimes to deliver extremely conservative politics - (Did you know that Atilla-the-Hun was a bit pink?) - along with pieces of the Bible, Shakespeare, classic poetry, esp Milne, Tennyson, Longfellow, Twain, Kipling - and Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott - and along the The Delivering Of Dignified Judgment upon the events of those times.

My Mother, as a child, had this daily, intermittent-all-day, and had her limits. One day when Alway-Right Grandmother was going on about

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

And my Mom kinda snapped, and said, “Mother, just this once, can this poem ride right down into the Valley of Death alongside the Six Hundred?” Fortunately, Alway-Right Grandmother had a sense of humor. She agreed, for that day, and got out an OZ book to read to us instead.

And how did we kids tolerate it? We were pre-schoolers. And we would only sit still for it if it were also funny, so we made Always-Right Grandmother declaim her fav poems to our Boxer, Duchess, who always seemed to enjoy it. Grandmother played right along with us in this.

Besides, if your rather theatrical and over-dignified Grandmother, recited this next to you and your pets even 10 times, would you ever forget it?

I’m with you on the value of lit. Read, and also read aloud.. Tho I have no breadth or training and no edu in it and suck and all that, and have zero conceptual framework or formal knowledge. So WTF? Those things are fine and sometimes I wish, but we all have our deficits. “You learn to live with what you can’t rise above.”

I did Husserl and Heidegger once. And some structuralists and logical positivists and Derrida and looked at some MLA stuff. Ok, it’s necessary, I spoze, and Someone’s Got To Do It - and all that must play out into the culture. But I’m going to let the Someone who worries over all that be Someone Else. And as for the MLA: I’m not up for that Style Guide. Just too damn lazy. And they remind me a little of what Esteemed Grandmother might have been like if she has been truly contemporary and PhD-literary, instead of coming from frontier aristocrats with educations - or - had lacked a sense of humor.

I believe you live in Texas - perhaps grew up here - and so you likely understand too well about the quality of literary and history educations in the public schools. They get you to read some stuff. You hear about some stuff. Most classes just get you thru - they illuminate nothing. If you want more, you’re on your own. I was intensely jealous of the literature and the historical knowledge dangled for those who went to private and boarding schools. But the HS I attended had its uses. I appreciate better now both what I didn’t receive, and what I did.

So yeah I know who Keats and Yeats and Blake and the Lake Poets are, and Ginsberg and Ferlingetti, and Corso, and William Carlos Williams and Snodgrass - tho my familiarity is quite beggarly. Soul On Ice, so to speak.

And have a smattering of post war SF and other lit, as I get to it. I dearly wish I had some of Tolkien’s brain. Not so much his story-telling brain, tho am v glad he had that brain. I covet his language-brain. Imagine being able is hear discrete and detailed history and culture in every word!

And then there is the other side of CS Lewis’s Two Cultures (always found Lewis to be a bit of a prig. “Hey Lewis, your view of trad lit culture lost!”)

The Two Cultures: hmmm. If one may twist Shakespeare so hard we can hear him scream:

“O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!”
(How 'bout a digital do-be-do-be-do? With a do-rag, natch.)

“O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!”
(So, need to update your device to this year’s, what?)

Ok, I take is back.
Sorta.

“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.

Science. Math. Someone wanna know what is behind all that stuff that is behind all that stuff that is…?
Well ok.

" ‘And thereby hangs a tale.’ When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative,
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear."

Uh huh. The Shakes wasn’t talkin’ 'bout me? Well I can fucking dream, assholes. STFU, all your snarks.
Or I’ll Hunt You Down.

I suss you found for yourself the path. “Dive In”.

/image Phoenix

@f00l That was a delight, my friend. Thanks.

I especially like your take on Lewis. He’s treated like a god in conservative Christianity and the pinnacle of “proper intellectuals” among those who tend to the anti-intellectual. He’s respectable, but not to be taken too seriously. Something like the Apostle Paul (though not quite all that), in my assessment: good, but not to be relied on exclusively. Though I have less and less use for him the further I get from that nonsense.

Now We Are Six is one of the gifts I most remember and quite fondly. My copy had a cover much like this, though I remember it being more muted.

Tales of your grandmother remind me of mine, whom I loved dearly and who was the source of much greatness in my life, despite her foibles (mostly religious). It’s testament to several things that I was taken aback at her great disappointment in finding a copy of Mad magazine in my luggage one summer. I earnestly contemplated whether its puerile satire (but I was still in grade school for christsake, Gramma) might be a sin and read it less than I should have thereafter. But I didn’t give it up. And she was a jovial and kind woman and fed us dessert for breakfast and always gave me a game for my birthday (and we played games almost constantly when we were with her). Ha: she never quite approved of Johnny Carson either, but I think she appreciated that I would sit and watch it with my grandfather, who was paralyzed and bedridden from a stroke. The show was very much his choice, btw, and one of the few things that made him laugh. Sigh. I can still see and hear that laugh and his grizzled face and hear her firm but gentle voice.

@joelmw
Yeah good times.

My Dad’s family were respectable nobodies - survivors and workers. That grandmother was a farm girl would could raise, harvest, hunt, kill, cook, and butcher any legitimate food source on a farm. And scratch cook, never saw her measure or use a recipe, tho she was the best cook in her neighborhood and in the family, hands down.
That grandfather was a elementary school dropout who had fought in war (US Navy), sailed around the world several times by the time he was 20, and sailed on wind powered ships extensively. He worked his way into the engineering room, figured stuff out, and later because a roundhouse foreman and derailment specialist, without going back to school.
But they didn’t share their stories much. And I think they were a bit intimidated by my Mom’s family.

My Mom’s dad was a family lawyer and a fine one. But always a bit in his wife’s shadow. Everyone was, in Grandmother’s opinion, in her shadow. Grandmother had been the youngest, brilliant, favorite child of two warm, talented, but vain and “consciously superior” parents, and she carried this awesome self-certainty thruout her life. She said and did things that were mortifying, and sometimes horrible. But she had that quality that William Shatner has, of being pompous and yet somewhat aware of it, and somewhat able to laugh at herself.

And she recited poetry to us, never worried that we rolled our eyes, and read us the OZ books.

And wore a very un-ironic cheapie American flag pin every day if she went out. In spite of her being completely obsessed with all our supposed royal connections.

And during the depression, she spent all fall every year handmaking children’s toys for charity. And when she was in her 50’s, and my Grandfather was ill for a bit, she, never having worked at a job a day in her life, went out and got a job, and then a good job, and never complained. And was a success.

When I was in college, she sent me letters which always ended

“And Blessings From God, The Great Conservator”.

So I would reply
"And Blessings From God, The Great Liberal".

Or
And Blessings From God, The Great Commie".

This never phased her for a second. She would simply say, “oh, I know you don’t believe that.” And she had to be correct, because no one she cared for could ever believe anything other than what she believed. Not possible in her universe.

I miss her.

@joelmw
When I think on my family, what I really really regret is simply have been too young to demand and appreciate all their stories and life tales, and what treasures those would have been, and to really share their lives.

But I was as self-centered as your average kid, as into my own things: no one tried to illustrate to me what lives I could be sharing in more depth. And I did not see if for myself. Three of them were gone when I was rather young.l, a kid. Always-Right Grandmother lived a long life, but I, into my own projects after college, living elsewhere, was a bit too inclined to think of her in caricature terms, and didn’t take the time to hang out much. Our own lives are So Important as young adults.

And I blew it. As did others - my family has baggage, if not church-based baggage. Why is it that I “get it” and “wish I had” when the opportunities are gone?

/Stupid. Rueful.

@sammydog01
It’s hardly early in the season for Fate to screw with us.

@sammydog01 Way to ruin my perfect record.

/giphy thanks for nothing

@joelmw I tried extra hard this week because your streak means so much to you. I hope you appreciate it.

@sammydog01
/giphy gee, thanks

@sammydog01 Goddamnit, even giphy screwed me over.

@joelmw Crazy coincidence, I have Palmer and Ryan as my QBs in the beginner league. I chose Ryan last week. Not that it helped.

@sammydog01 At his point, my best bet may be a perfect record. It’s not in me to just throw in the towel, but I’m likely to stay at the bottom by trying harder to win.

/giphy big zero

Apparently that weird-ass white-boy dance is my thing now. It’s ridiculously embarrassing; I’ll take it.

@f00l
/giphy my brother!

@joelmw Same here in the beginner league. I will never hear the end of losing to the kid.

@sammydog01 @joelmw It’s just 1 week, right?
/giphy beating the parents

@joelmw
does “parenthood” = “moral hazard”?

@f00l If I add all my active players to all my bench players, including an extra quarterback, I still lost by 30 points. And that’s without a single bye.
/giphy sob

@sammydog01
Next week. I just might mention … might shuffle the lineup. 4 weeks. Suspension completed.

Wither Brady?

@sammydog01 The kicker I was counting on for 53 points a couple weeks ago did not deliver. But you probably have a better kicker.

@christinewas Definitely. He’s up to negative one point.

@f00l I may suck but at least I beat you. I’ll always have that to remember.

@sammydog01
I just bring joy everywhere!

@f00l
/giphy joy everywhere