Category Archives: Current Affairs

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it’s the most wonderful time of the year

It’s that time again! Here’s my 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs bracket, something that is always fun for me to write for the eleven people in the world who care about it. (Hi! I’m glad you’re all here!)

Round One

Campbell Western Conference

Vegas vs. Minnesota

As much as I very intensely dislike VGK, they aren’t pulling that IR bullshit from years past, so I grudgingly set that moniker aside this year. Minnesota is in the playoffs because of the ridiculous start to their season. The Wild (I almost typed North Stars, sigh) are hurt, and the last six weeks of the regular season were brutal for them. If the team that we saw at the beginning of the season shows up, they will give Vegas a serious run. They looked pretty great yesterday, and boy did they make Vegas work for the win at Medieval Times Arena. I still favor Vegas, though. They have most of a team has been here before, and they know how to win in the playoffs. I expect Minnesota to take at least one of their home games, and I think this one goes to 6 before Vegas advances.

Winnipeg vs St. Louis

The Jets have the best record in hockey for a reason that goes beyond Connor Hellebuyck. In the old 1 plays 8 days, I’d give The Blues a stronger upset chance, but I think they’re just outmatched here. This is the only sweep in the first round. Winnipeg in 4.

Dallas vs. Colorado

My heart wants to cheer for Dallas, because my dear friend Stepto (may his memory be a blessing) loved them the way I love my Kings. Colorado isn’t going to make it easy. Blackwood will steal a game for the Avs, and yesterday was not that game; the Stars lost that one all on their own. This series will go 6, maybe even 7, but the Stars are moving on to face the ‘Peg.

Los Angeles vs. Connor McDavid

This is our year. Fucking finally. The Kings have a team that can neutralize Edmonton’s line. The Kings are hot as hell right now, and have home ice advantage, where they had the best home record in the league (like, it wasn’t even close). Kuemper is locked in and Skinner has looked shaky. Edmonton has the best player in the world, another generational talent, and 24 other guys. For the first time in four seasons, the Kings have 4 lines who can score and a goalie who can keep them in it. Kings in 6.

Wales Eastern Conference Round One

Toronto vs. Ottawa

Brady, I’m real happy for you, and ima let you finish, but Toronto actually looks like a hockey team this year, and the Senators are just beginning to draw back the curtains, and open their Cup window. This isn’t Ottawa’s year, which is fucking crazy because it’s NEVER Toronto’s year. They have an incredibly rich history of finding truly creative ways to lose, but I’m picking Toronto because it serves a greater narrative. Leafs in 5.

Tampa Bay vs. Florida

Ah, the battle of America’s Wang. A playoff series for the ages that will live in the pages of hist– yawn I’m sorry I drifted off there thinking about this. These teams are basically even for me, but I freely admit I don’t pay much attention to them during the regular season, so I am absolutely missing a lot of nuance. But given the Panthers’ win last year by a team that they largely kept together, and the absolutely insane leveling up in Matthew Tkachuk’s play during Four Nations, I’m picking the Panthers in 5.

Washington vs. Montreal

Remember when the Habs were this unstoppable force? Remember when the Habs could score one and shut the door? This is not them. This team is mid af, just good enough to make it into the post season, but missing a lot of the parts it needs to go deep. I despise Ovechkin’s Team Putin bullshit, and for that reason alone I want them to get swept. But let’s be honest: the caps are a fucking incredible team who are going to be an autoaxe with legendary mods against Montreal’s weak feral ghouls. Anything can happen in this league on any night (the reason the NHL is the best league) so don’t count them out entirely, but I wouldn’t worry about having to change tee times with those guys in the beginning of April. Washington in 5.

Carolina vs. New Jersey

Hey, did you know the Devils are in the playoffs? Can you name one of their players? I just realized I can’t, and that means I haven’t paid attention to them at all this year. Meanwhile, after I retired Blaine Gretzky because the guy I named him after turned out to be garbage, I started a new create a pro game. My player wears #13, and his name is Johnny Marlowe. He plays for Carolina, and I have developed the same emotional connection to the real team that I had for the Kraken during Blaine’s career. I could come up with stats and reasons to support my choice, but where’s the fun in that? I’m picking Carolina for a silly reason, but it’s still a reason. Hurricanes in 7 because I presume New Jersey has some Dark Horse thing I don’t know about and that makes for good drama.

Round 2

Jets vs. Stars

This one goes 7 and Winnipeg wins in OT. Sorry, Stepto.

Kings vs Vegas

The Kings teams that won the Stanley Cup were built to grind down opponents over a 7 game series. Even when San Jose went up 3-0, the Kings were able to just check them into submission and come all the way back. This Kings team does not play that way, and the longer the series goes, the more it favors the other team. Sure, I could write a script where they do it again against all the odds and blah blah blah, but everything is terrible and I just want some excitement, so I’m giving this to the Kings in 4. Yeah, you read that correctly. Kings sweep Vegas in round two. Book it.

Toronto vs. Florida

In the second game of the second round, something happens in the second intermission. Down a game and trailing, a Toronto team that’s been struggling to keep up with the defending champions breaks through in that third period and never looks back. GG, Florida. Leafs in 7.

Washington vs. Carolina

Some of you may notice that I stealth edited this in, after weirdly forgetting to include it originally. This series is back and forth the entire time. Nobody has a clear advantage, beyond Washington’s power play which is really just Ovechkin on the left side. It’s not enough, and Carolina squeaks past in a series that goes 7 games.

Conference Final

Kings vs. Jets

In reality, this is where the Kings go home.

Yeah screw that. In my story, this is a seven game series. The Kings steal a game in OT, we see at least one goalie battle, but the difference comes from Los Angeles’ young players. Byfield, Fiala, Laferriere and Turcotte surprise everyone with their maturity and composure in big situations. Kopitar and Doughty have been here before, and their experience both leads the other players and neutralizes the half a step or so they’re behind due to age and injury. Kuepmer doesn’t quite give us vintage Quick, but what he does give us rhymes with vintage quick. Winnipeg fully expects to win this at home, not unreasonably. But they didn’t count on this guy over here being the writer, and the Kings win it at home in game 7, right in front of me.

Toronto vs Carolina

It’s a classic Leafs vs Whalers matchup, just like the old days of 2002! Eddie Shore! Old Time Hockey! This is the series where Auston Matthews finally gets the national and casual fan attention he has deserved his entire career. Attention that has eluded him, because, come on, it’s Toronto. The Whale does not make it easy for the Leafs to win the series in 6 games.

Stanley Cup Final

It is the match-up we have all needed since 1993: a replay of the last time the Kings and the Leafs went deep in the playoffs, only this time it’s for the Big One. Leafs Nation wants revenge for the high stick that was not called, while Los Angeles desperately needs a series win that encourages our toxic trait of pretending that never happened. The drama is off the charts for this final. It’s Canada vs. USA. It’s East vs. West. It’s The Past vs. The Future. It’s so much better than whatever is really going to happen (which to be clear will still be cool) because there is no other potential Final match-up that carries this weight. It’s a series for the ages. No game is decided by more than one goal, at least two games to to OT, including game 7. The game and series and Stanley Cup winner comes from a Kopitar snipe at the top of the left circle, short-handed.

Okay, that’s the way I want this to go. And, if we accept that there are an infinite number of potential realities, all of them just beyond our perception, this is the way it will go, in at least one of them. So maybe it’ll be this one.

What do you think? I can talk about hockey the way I can talk about Star Trek. Let’s talk about it! Who are you cheering for? Who do you want to win? Who do you think will win?

And am I the only one who feels like the Stanley Cup Playoffs are always cool, but absolutely taking a back seat to the Four Nations Tournament this year?

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on healing trauma by being the person i need in the world

Every day, I do my best to be the person I need in the world, the person who was never there for me when I was a kid. I do my best to be kind, patient, and gentle. I do my best to look for joy and glimmers, to create joy and glimmers for others. When I am working hard to be that person for myself, I am occasionally that person for someone in the world who I may never meet in person. And when I hear from those people, who bravely trust me with their stories, it inspires me to keep going. Because on those days when it’s REALLY hard, when I know I’m fucking up and not being the person I want to be, I can forgive myself and remember that everyone fucks up from time to time, but not everyone makes the effort to learn and grow. Time I spend beating myself up for fucking up is time I am not spending being the person I need, so I lose twice (like the Dodgers, yesterday!).

I sat down with Mayim Bialik to talk about surviving childhood abuse and exploitation, reparenting myself, and how I’ve grown and healed since we last spoke on her podcast, about three years ago.

You also get to see me get triggered in real time, realize it, recover from it, and address what happened. It’s a little embarrassing to see myself fuck up like that, in public no less, and be reactive when I want to be responsive, but I feel like it could be a valuable teaching moment and that’s worth a little embarrassment, if it’s helpful to literally anyone else in the world.

I hope you’ll make some time to watch or listen to this, with the warning that I speak about being abused by my father, exploited by both of my parents, abandoned by all but one of my relatives (and even that’s barely there, only when I reach out), and how I’ve worked so hard to overcome all of it.

I also talk a little bit about It’s Storytime, which I’d love for you to subscribe to if you haven’t already. New episodes drop every Wednesday!

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slava ukraini

A raised fist in the colors of the flag of Ukraine, on a black background. Beneath it, between yellow horizontal lines, the words I STAND WITH UKRAINE.

Trump and Vance really put the tyrant in tantrum, didn’t they? Pathetic. Weak, cowardly, sniveling little bullies is all that they are.

I understand that I’m just one person who voted against all of this. I understand that this is just my blog. I understand that when the history of this is written, I will not even be a footnote.

But it is still important to me to go on the public record: The way Trump and Vance treated the President of Ukraine was despicable. It was a betrayal of an ally that is fighting for its very existence. As an American, I am disgusted with the rulers of my country. I am disgusted with their supporters, who ought to be ashamed of themselves.

To the people of Ukraine, I am so sorry. 75 million of us did everything we could to stop this. but there is a white supremacist cancer in America’s blood, and the 2024 election confirmed that it has metastasized. For what it’s worth, I stand with you, as I stand against the tyrants who disrespected your president yesterday.

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ur fascism by umberto eco

Four years ago, I recorded and released narrations of short material that I pulled from the public domain. I did my best to release one a week, as an experiment. I wondered if I could, one day, so something like this that actually paid some bills.

I had fun doing it. I picked pieces that were interesting to me, and didn’t spend any time at all trying to master perfect audio. It was a deliberately DIY effort. The audience wasn’t huge, but the people who listened to it really liked it. At some point, I even got a few requests, including this one.

This is Umberto Eco’s essential essay, Ur Fascism, originally written in 1995. It was shockingly relevant in in 2020, after four years of attempted tyranny, and it remains terrifyingly relevant after one week of ongoing tyranny.

I humbly submit this and ask for a bit of your time; I believe it’s an important, timely, essay.

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nothing but bluesky is such a predictable title for this post

When it was still invite-only, I grabbed @wilw and @itswilwheaton on Bluesky, just to ensure a scumbag didn’t yoink them before I could. I’ve never used them, because after I quit Twitter — long before it was fashionable (or a fascist propaganda platform) — I realized how much better my emotional quality of life was without the endless yelling and outrage from Extremely Online People, and the systemic, deliberate refusal by the “safety” team to do anything about it. We humans are not built to have that much information poured into our souls in a nonstop stream of trauma that never ends. I do not miss it.

But I’ve lurked around on Bluesky a little bit this last week, and I keep seeing things that remind me of Twitter’s first year, before the Nazis showed up and Twitter was like “it’s just an opinion [thumbs up emoji]”. What I see on Bluesky is a deliberate, coordinated, serious effort to slam the door in the faces of those dipshits the moment they arrive. It seems that Bluesky, at least for now, takes the responsibility of shutting down hateful rightwing trolls seriously. It seems that, maybe, it could be what Twitter was and should have always been, at least until some shitbag techbro fucks it all up.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for me and my mental health to be as involved now as I was a decade ago, but as an alternative to the toxicity, chaos, and destructiveness of Twitter, it has a lot going for it.

ANYWAY. The whole point of this little post is: I’m working on the verification system, which involves editing some files at my host, which I haven’t done since the very early blogging days. So I have some calls out to My Guy (I can not oversell how great it is to have A Guy for things) to help me not break the Internet (again).

I just mention this because though I am still on a break from public life, I understand some number of people were concerned that someone was building a foundation to impersonate me, and I wanted to verify that those accounts are, indeed, mine. There is no need to report them. But thank you for looking out for me.

Okay, that’s all. Have a nice weekend. Choose to be kind (except to Nazis. Punch Nazis. Always.)

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