2023 Creative Process

I started this blog on WordPress in 2013. Ten years later the world has changed in so many ways. My life has changed in so many ways. Based on the multiple endings and re-starts, many would’ve expected that Cat Lady Prophecy (of me) to have come to fruition. But as it sits today, just the two felines reside in my home. However, I’m simply a modest lotto win away from adding to that number to create a fluffy, spoiled Pride.

In 2013, many people read blogs on the daily. In today’s world, I think that practice is not very likely to be happening. It seems that everyday life moves too fast and no one has time to invest in reading a 8-15 minute piece about random riff-raff. Most digestible ideas and concepts need to be meme ready or reeled in by TikTok videos. Our society as a whole is so geared towards instant gratification that I fear at some point, the old ways will soon be lost to the current generation because the process(es) takes too long or there simply is an APP that does the task quicker (and better) for you. Some of the tasks made obsolete were perhaps better for our daily lives, but within those tasks sometimes there were life lesson on patience, discipline and attention to craft. Anyone, who ventures out into a public venue on a daily basis, should easily be able to see several examples of those three things being short-changed or short-cutted with regularity…and it’s a sad thing to behold.

I have always been stupidly optimistic. Ultimately I expect that quality will figure into my death somehow. Stay tuned. It took me quite a long time to understand my most effective internal process when it comes to being ‘creative’. Sometimes you have to release or put down what you’ve been holding onto instead of rolling it over and over in your mind. This can allow the next idea or concept to come along and not compete with the distraction of the other thing(s). Sometimes you may actually be able to get to the next level of an idea by purging the first phase that wasn’t able to cohesively come together. Just a little tip that has helped me decompress and get to new (better?) ideas and thoughts.

In closing, let me share with you, one of my favorite expressions over the years (one that I’ve used in many job interviews). It is:

If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I’ve left the person following me a map of how to pick up my work or what was still needing to be accomplished. This fatalistic scenario is utilized to infer that everything can change in an instant, for good or ill. If the world internet got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would we be left with and how would those left move on?

Make me the 11th Commissioner of Major League Baseball

Anybody wanna play ball?

Hello and good day. Here we are well into the month of February of the year 2022 and the start of the 2022 spring training has been delayed. In my estimation, Rob Manfred has failed to be the leader Major League Baseball needs and thus he needs to be replaced.

Let’s look at the man’s recent activities in relation to his job duties, shall we? Last year he spearheaded a political play to steal millions of revenue dollars from the city of Atlanta, Georgia (hey Denver, Colorado! Would you like 10’s of millions of dollars?) over a political play that was essentially none of Major League Baseball’s business. Eventually the city of Atlanta was able to recoup some of their losses by ultimately being triumphant in the fall classic aka The World Series. How did good old Rob parlay this great underdog story into momentum for the offseason? By not being proactive in the slightest and sitting on his hands for literally months whilst the franchise teams engaged in a lockout with their players’ union.

Strike one.

Manfred and his focus group of bean counters are worried about the length of games being 45 seconds too long. His fix-all solutions are to try to curtail mound visits and other insignificant rules that add about six minutes to a game. True baseball fans (aka baseball’s core customers) will watch a baseball game if it last 2 hours and 30 minutes or 2 hours and 45 minutes or 3 hours and 6 minutes. He needs to stop obsessing over the micro when the macro is fine. His agenda is letting the sponsors dictate how the game (product) is presented and portrayed. Does anyone remember when the St Louis Cardinals of the National League played the Minnesota Twins of the American League in a daytime World Series game in 1987? That was 35 years ago by my count. Stop making everything about primetime advertising leverage and trying to squeeze an extra 50 Cent, er…50 cents out of each telecast.

Strike two.

The farce that is the Hall of Fame selection process is EMBARASSING. Your all-time hits leader and all-time home run leader are not inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Regardless of the speculative circumstances surrounding a player’s accomplishments, if their stats are in the record books and acknowledged as the yardstick for the sport, then these players are legit and should be considered on their accomplishments (period). Case and point, recently the besmirched designated-hitter David Ortiz was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. In 10 category comparisons (seasons played, hits, runs batted in, home runs, walks, runs (scored), doubles, Gold Gloves (defense), stolen bases and strikeouts) between Ortiz and Home Run Champ Barry Bonds…Ortiz only is above Bonds in one of those categories (career doubles 632 vs 601). What is missing here is the ‘good guy’ double standard MLB and its coverage crusties employ. Ortiz, despite getting caught with his hand in the performance enhancing cookie jar, is a personable and likeable personality. Bonds on the other hand was viewed as kind of a ‘Richard’ throughout the sport and thus is not given the same chance to rehab his legacy. As far as the All-time Hits King in Pete Rose Sr…he should 1000000% be in the Hall of Fame as a player. If the sport wants to permanently disbar him from the Hall as a manager, I’d support that no questions asked. As a manager, Charlie Hustle was middling at best. But as a player, competitor and recordholder (for a record that was set three dozen years ago that will never be touched again), the now 80-year-old Rose deserves to be pardoned by Manfred and enshrined.

Strike three…YOU’RE OUT ROB!

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Can We Have A Little Debate? 02/14/2021

Riddle me this: Is Debate class even part of school teachings anymore? As someone who is (eesh) 31 years removed from high school, I am a bit out of the loop on whether or not Debate is taught in junior high or high school anymore.

For those who may be wondering, I had this topic settle into my brain probably about five to six months ago after mindlessly falling down an online thread rabbit hole. This topic should go hand-in-hand with the freedom of speech concept, which sadly that is all the notion of freedom of speech can be considered at this point…how can you have any sort of real debate without examining both sides to an argument? This is not to say there isn’t a third or fourth side to arguments, but in principle there are usually two stark opposition positions to a topic. I would have to think that there would have to be something along these lines because there are still thousands of students in law school and many newly licensed attorneys over the last two decades. But is this only something that occurs when students go off to college? Enquiring minds want to know!

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Looking ahead (01-31-2021)

Good afternoon to one and all who found their way to my tiny virtual blog corner of the universe. Here in Missouri (of the United States), the weather is dreary, gray, blustery and cold. Not the bitter cold of the extreme north or south poles, but cold nonetheless. By now some parts of the country and the world for that matter have endured literal feet of snowfall but within the St Louis region we have maybe had half of a foot cumulative. Some locally enjoy the snow (or at least the appearance of it) and on the flipside some loathe its very mention. At this time…there’s really not much first hand to report on that front so we shall move on.

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MLB Names – They’re All Offensive!

Good afternoon to one and all! Also Happy New Year!!

I have uploaded a project I started working on several weeks ago. It’s a spreadsheet of all the Major League Baseball teams. This spreadsheet contains their origins along with the status of how long their current nickname has been in use. To poke a little fun at my favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, (because they chose to cave into financial peer pressure) I set out to compile a list of why each and every other franchise should be forced to change their names as well. I hope you enjoy the post and as always, I look forward to your feedback. Have a great weekend!

blog_offensive12252020_oDownload

Peace. <<01-10-2021>> #33 https://scottlatta5000.weebly.com/ – Don’t forget to check out my website for links to all my social media and other projects!

Why don’t you write more?

Hello all. As I type this I am three days into a head cold, yes it’s just a head cold. This sucks. I’m not majorly debilitated in any way, I just have head congestion and a little scratchy throat. In years past, before the C word spread over the globe, I would’ve taken some Sudafed and boldly gone out into the world to carry on in spite of the sickness. Ah but this is the broken year 2020 and all the rules have changed. In the last 9 to 10 months, the old world has disappeared like the ice in a fast food cup sitting on the asphalt during the noon day sun of summer. Gone are the days of ‘toughing it out’. Replacing those sickly souls slogging along coughing and wheezing, are the devout hand-washers and toilet paper hoarders. We are sitting at three weeks to go until the end of this blasted year. I had remained virtually (ha, see what I did there?) sniffle-free for most of the year. Almost made it to the end. Oh so close.

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December 2020 Picture Purge

Good morning! It’s that time again to assemble a random assortment of images that have accumulated on my desktop over the course of the weeks. As you can see, some are personal and some are just memelicious! Hopefully you find something to suit your mood in this stew of snapshots. We are less than three weeks away from Christmas and less than four weeks away from 2021! What awaits us on the other side of that December door? Stay tuned…

Have a great week and rest of the month!

Peace. <<12-05-2020>> #33

You’ve got 35 minutes…

So when you’ve wasted most of the day and you have something you’re supposed to do in a little over an hour, how do you shape a thought process for a topic? Presently it is 3:55pm CST on Sunday, November 29th. I’ve spent the morning and early afternoon playing on my phone (Angry Birds 2), paying bills and surfing the web for Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/pre-Cyber Monday deals. This is extremely wasteful but alas I must own up to it as this is a true inventory of the day. One of the things on the list (paying bills) made one of the other things on the list (shopping for deals) essentially pointless.

Now I’m wondering if The Dollar General (store) sells wire cutters. Hmmm. I have a potential project in mind but it may hinge upon the availability of said cheapo wire cutters. Oh well, hopefully everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday (US version)…although I guess it’s OK to ask those north of the US border is they enjoyed theirs (October 11th)?

Anyway, good luck to all as we are now less than four full weeks away from the Christmas holiday…

Peace. <<11-29-2020>> #33

Biden vs Trump – 2020 Aftermath Notes

Hello all! Happy days leading up to Thanksgiving!

As I did in 2016, I would like to do a little post mortem review of the now ‘completed’ presidential election. Why? Mostly because I love crunching numbers and secondly because I detest the out-dated concept of the Electoral College system of awarding ‘votes’. If you really are hard up for Saturday night entertainment, go back and read my post on the breakdown of the 2016 election results based on the data provided via the web at that time.

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Pocahontas & Rain Showers

To set the mood, I think we need to step back in time to 1989. If I could borrow from Skid Row’s I remember you:

Woke up to the sound of pouring rain…

Good day to all. Today is November 21st of the cursed year 2020. There are but 41 days left in this calendar saga and with a little luck we can make it through to see 2020 ousted like all of its brothers before. I was supposed to rise early today, which I did, in anticipation of playing a softball tournament in the adjacent state of Illinois. The city of destination in Illinois is/was Pocahontas – yes, like the Disney film and the Native American woman who was born just before the start of the 1600’s.

As you may have deduced, rising early to prepare to go play softball and ambient sounds of rain don’t generally go well together. Alas, the tournament was canceled and after a short amount of time I resumed my fitful slumber. This turn of event(s) allowed me to park myself in front of the laptop to post on my blog. Yes I could be writing this piece on the WordPress app but good gawd that would entail traversing a more difficult road, much like Pocahontas followed when she assisted John Smith (see guys can ask directions).

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Election Weak

Is this thing on? How do we do this again?

Thanks to my previous blog post pieces on All Saints Day and All Souls Day plus the piece I did on the post 2016 election mess, my hits for the blog this month so far have been pretty impressive. It’s also great considering I seem to jolt back to reality and realize that it’s been weeks upon weeks since I was last able to sit down and blog. As we sit today, we are looking at approximately 8 weeks to go until the end of 2020 (good riddance). But the real hoopla at present surrounds and is shrouded by the outcome of the 2020 United States presidential election. Our cliffhanger teeters upon whether or not incumbent president Donald Trump will be able to sweep the balance of the states still hanging in the balance…even multiple days after election day to try retain his title (WWE reference intended).

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September 2020 – What’s Next?

Hello and thank you for coming by to cyber see me. Hopefully everyone is doing well and avoiding the pandemic maladies that have crushed most things in this calendar year.

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Covid-19 Timestop

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  Early 2020 in a nutshell and substitute “The World is” in place of I’m.

So over the years of doing my blog, I have sometimes chirped in on trending topics or important occurrences. With the Election Year ‘lockdown’ of 2020 for the Corona virus, how could I not at least put down a bread crumb marker for later? Hopefully the events and tragedies surrounding this version of the virus (Covid-19) are a one-time, once in a lifetime happening. Obviously for those who lost their lives to the virus, it will be but for the rest of us let’s hope to never see this kind of sadness and selfishness again.

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Going Viral Down A Spiral

This is how the mighty human dynasty ends…behind a fortress of toilet paper rolls. Our defenses weakly fortified with catapults loaded with sanitized goo? Social media is causing the masses to yip and bolt like my cat Sadie when the house creaks unexpectedly. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

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SUNY University – New York: Make An Effort To Make It Right

So back on June 24th, 2019 (the day after my birthday) and twelve days before I had my heart attack, I wrote a piece detailing the horrific experiments done in the hollow name of science on living, breathing and AWAKE cats and kittens. Writing the piece and thinking about the psychopathic practices of a organization touting itself as an institution of higher learning, made me physically ill. I’m not exaggerating or joking one bit either.

Normally I can infuse some levity and silliness into my posts but there was zero to joke about on this topic. The facts pertaining to their experiments and flawed research was something out of a Mary Shelley novel…only cruelly worse. In this day and age of iPad simulations and medical Virtual Reality technology, the thought of so-called ‘educated people’ to still be bumbling along like researcher neanderthals is tragic and shameful.

Link to previous SUNY post

Yesterday I received an e-mail notification regarding an on-line petition I signed protesting SUNY University. The petition update alleged that SUNY University has finally ceased this abhorrent practice that they have been perpetrating for over three decades! I truly hope this is accurate. Now I can shift my focus to try to get the powers that be at SUNY to have a conscience and have them donate food and litter to shelters in need for their cat/kitten populace. I doubt they will have any remorse and aim to make any amends but all I can do it try.

Everyone please love one another and of course your furry friends as we approach Thanksgiving. Check back often for more posts or if you are so inclined, give my podcast (The Freak Show on Soundcloud) a listen.

Peace. <<<11-26-2019>>>