Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Watching an NFL football game on television yesterday, I heard the analyst say about a running play where the team lost yardage, “He ended up with a negative loss.”
That spun my thinking. I’d never heard it before during a football game. Hearing it prompted me to wonder, can a football team have a positive loss? It seemed like a screwy way to express the results.
I can imagine some football fans trying to come up with a way to establish a negative loss. Like, not only did they lose yardage, but the clock kept running, meaning that they’re running out of time. That means, with the score as it is, they’ll probably lose because they’re behind and not much time to play remains.
That sounds like modern NFL football, convoluted and a little contorted, becoming more abstract by the week.
For instance, on a quarterback sneak, it looked like the player was stopped short of the goal line. It was fourth down, so that team turned it over on downs.
But wait, it looked like the quarterback fumbled the ball and another player on his team recovered it, so it’s a touchdown.
No, the referee explained: “Only the person fumbling the ball may advance it. Therefore, the ball will be placed at the point of the fumble, and possession has changed due to loss of downs.”
Got that?
That wasn’t the end. The team who didn’t score — the Eagles, BTW — threw a red flag to challenge the result. That ended with the Eagles having a touchdown awarded them. That’s because, before the QB fumbled, the ball crossed the plane of the goal line before his body was down. Officials in New York figured that out by using multiple sychronized television angles to determine exactly where the ball and the QB’s body parts were during which point of the play.
Yow. Watching resulted in a positive increase of confusion AND exasperation.
Imagine trying to use ‘negative loss’ in other ways. I know that in some emotional situations, people like to express positive loss and negative loss, trying to spin, for example, someone’s death in a positive way. I have done that: “At least they’re not feeling pain.” I think that’s positioning a negative event with a positive outcome.
Drinking my coffee. I suppose I could say, “I’m going to drink more coffee, which will result in a negative loss of coffee in my mug.”
I wouldn’t, though. That’s laborious. I’d just say the obvious, “I’m going to drink more coffee, so there will be less remaining in my mug.” I could even shorten that: “I’m going to drink more coffee, so I’ll have less remaining.”
Or, I could tell my wife that after shopping for groceries, we had a negative loss in our checking account.
I’m sure that would earn me a WTF look from her.
Why, though, would such a declaration be even needed? Isn’t it self-evident that there’s less coffee after I drink some? I think it is, unless it’s a magically self-refilling cup. As for whether it’s positive or negative, that depends on your outlook: is the mug half-empty or half-full? Are you a pessimistic or optimist?
I don’t usually think in terms of glasses and mugs being half-empty or half-full. I usually think, “I have some left,” or, “It’s gone.” Does that mean that I’m just a pragmatist? Or am I merely focused on the situation’s bottom line: I have some or I don’t.
I’m no doubt overthinking the turn of words, but I hope ‘negative loss’ doesn’t catch on. It probably will, the way that saying, “I literally died” is now acceptable to so many. Sure. Now that you ‘literally died’, you’ve returned to life. Are you undead or have you been resurrected?
I suspect some became zombies after they ‘literally died’. That might explain our state of politics. *rim shot* (Yes, that was snark.) The ‘literally died’ lost some brain cells during their experience, negatively decreasing their thinking skills. (See what I did there?)
It’s like hearing, as I so often do, “I was thinking in my head.” Well, where else would you be thinking? In your foot?
That’s like saying, “I was chewing in my mouth.” Okay. I’m glad you’ve mastered that. (Yes, that was more snark.)
Although, after drinking coffee just now, I had a positive gain in my energy and focus. BTW, I drink my coffee black, without cream. (Hello, it’s more snark.)
It’s kinda like saying that football team had a negative loss.
He enjoys writing, especially science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction. Been entertaining himself with it on computer since he first bought a Kaypro in the 1980s and installed WordStar. Many of those stories are trapped on old floppy disks stored in a container in a closet in his home office.
He still uses a computer but MS Word is now the program, and all is saved on a hard drive regularly backed up. One feature in Word both helpful and bugs him is autocorrect. Making up words, planets, languages, names, of course, is fun. Autocorrect usually marks it as wrong and tries ‘fixing’ it for him. What’s weirdest is when it takes one of manufactured words and turns it into a real word which he doesn’t know. Always sends him to the net to see what that word means.
Microsoft has done it again; they’ve “improved” their Word product.
Three features that I’ve grown used to are suddenly no longer functioning correctly after the latest MS “update”. As a writer, I liked the recently used files, pinned files, and the bookmarker that lets me pick up where I left off the last time that I was in a document. Stupidly of me, I like them so much that I trusted Microsoft to leave them as they are.
No.
I’ve been dealing with Microsoft products for over thirty years. Their updates and improvements regularly ripped up what I’m used to using, slowing me down, wasting time, and adding unnecessary aggravation.
My latest used files, according to MS Word, was in September of 2016. This is from a program that I use every day. The pinned files? All unpinned. Thanks, Microsoft. You’re a fucking peach.
After finding the files that I used yesterday, the bookmark for where I left off is absent. I know where I was working, etc., but what the hell?
Of course, I must laugh. I must release long, bitter peals of angry laughter because, while Microsoft taketh away and fouls things up, it urges me, “Look! Look at our bright, shiny, NEW stuff. We’re improved, not like the sucky old product that we used to be.”
(And yes, I recognize that the MS Word features that I’d grown accustomed to using were themselves new features, once upon a time. It’s great that they created an provided them. But can’t they see how it builds distrust when they do this sort of crap? It’s like good ol’ Charlie Brown trusting Lucy to hold the bowl. She always pulls it away, and he keeps believing that THIS TIME it’ll be different. Then, Lucy, like Microsoft proves, nope, we fooled you again.)
It’s the world’s way, innit? Don’t know about that, but it sure as hell is the Microsoft way.
GRRR.
Michael Seidel, writer 