Here’s something that renters everywhere, especially ones in New York can relate to. On Thursday, the spout in my bathtub fell off and won’t screw back on. I cannot shower without that as the water just comes out the bare pipe. The part that prevents that is in the spout. I immediately texted my landlord. He texted back and asked if I would be home on Friday. I wanted to go out, but I told him that I’d stay home as it has to be fixed. When my roommate came home, I finally did go shopping as she was home. Of course, nobody came, and I didn’t hear back from the landlord. When I got back from shopping, I told him that I stayed home to let the plumber in, and nobody came. He didn’t respond. This morning I texted him again and he said that somebody would come today. I told him that I’d stay home even though I had plans as I need to have that fixed ASAP. It’s now 2:50 PM and of course nobody has come. I wish I could send smells via text, which might convince him to send someone. Nobody comes today and I make a complaint to the City. I will be making a complaint to the City. He is totally unreliable.
I’ve been at sixes and sevens. I have no idea where that saying comes from, but I have always used it. It feels like it should mean discombobulated; so does discombobulated. They are figurative onomatopoeia. The don’t literally sound like what they mean but the figuratively sound what my brains think the idea would sound like if it made a sound. Do they sound like that to you too? What brought this to mind was my therapy session. My therapist said that I was all over the place and that I’m not usually like that. I would not have believed my unverified self-evaluation. It’s too easy for people to fool themselves. That’s what Dunning-Kruger is about, people who are bad at something are bad at evaluating their ability at it. The lack of blind faith in your judgment is the hallmark of the scientific world view. If your judgment is not validated by something objective, it then it can’t be trusted. This comes up in my baseball groups all the time. Today someone said that Jackie Bradley was a better hitter than Brooks Robinson. He gave no evidence. Two of us pointed out how wrong that was, I used OPS+ the best simple measure of hitting ability, the other person used BA. Either way Bradley wasn’t close. The person who made the ridiculous claim felt no need to justify his opinion. It was his opinion and therefore right. If you make a statement without evidence, it’s a statement about yourself not what you are talking about. If you say that you like Jackie Bradley more than you like Brooks Robinson, fine. You obviously know your taste better than I do. If you say he was a better hitter, you better have some damn good evidence as all the obvious data says otherwise.
I am talking in terms of baseball but exactly the same thing happens in politics. Talking in baseball groups teaches me how people can believe that Trump won the 2020 election. They don’t care about the facts. They care about what feels right to them. It’s not just Trump supporters, I see it all over the political spectrum, just more frequently on the Trump right. It’s best to just ignore all statements made without evidence. The person making it doesn’t think evidence is important. Their epistemology is not based on empiricism. They seek truthiness not truth. The frustrating part is that you can’t argue against that viewpoint as they don’t accept evidence based arguments. One person, in a baseball group, flat out said, “Perception is reality.” If that is how you think than you can accept that Trump won the election.
Now for something completely different, music. On Thursday I sequenced the next Gord’s Gold. Yesterday I redid it. The original had great songs but not enough connections between the songs. I like them sets or at least songs that pair well with each other. Otherwise. I am musically pairing red wine with fish. As I don’t drink wine or eat fish, I have to take the world’s word for it that it’s wrong. Now I’m happier with the show. It is less at sixes and sevens. I hit one annoying snag. I couldn’t find a song on my computer that I wanted to play. I checked the album it’s on, the first six songs are missing from my hard drive. How the hell did that happen. I started looking through my CDS for it, but it didn’t show up. Most of my CDs are in storage in a friend’s attic. I will continue to hunt for it but if I can’t find it, I’ll have to contact the artist, a friend, and ask her to send me the missing files. This feeds right into my being discombobulated. Even without it I’m proud of this week’s show. I’m playing eight songs released this year. I am not one of those people whose musical tastes were set when they were 16-22. I still get excited by new music even though 90% of it is crud. That other 10% make it all worthwhile.
I just deleted a passage about a terrible song that was sent me. Know what? That’s pointless. I can’t make it laugh out loud funny, and it’s not going to teach anyone to be a better songwriter; so why write it and risk someone thinking I mean them and feeling bad? You know a job I’d love and hate at the same time? Evaluating songs just for the songwriter/performer. I’d love to be able to give constructive criticism. I do love to rave over great songs. Thing is there are times that in all honesty I’d have to say, sorry, there’s nothing here that I can see. If you believe in it try doing it another way. I hate it because I don’t want to crush someone’s hopes, I don’t know if I’m qualified, and I have my doubts that anyone is qualified. Perhaps someone will love that song I hated. I know I hate songs that other people love, and love songs other people hate.
You can judge my musical taste by listening to the most recent edition of Gord’s Gold. There’s a salute to baseball on it. Baseball is very much on my mind this time of year.
Wise Madness 