SocraTease

This "diary" entry reminded me of the opening to Dostoevsky's *Notes from Underground*: I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well—let it get worse! I have been going on like that for a long time—twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!) When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I succeeded in making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the most part they were all timid people—of course, they were petitioners. But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not endure. He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left off clanking it. That happened in my youth, though. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way. I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was lying from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to that. I felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements. I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them, purposely would not let them come out. They tormented me till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and—sickened me, at last, how they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that ... However, I assure you I do not care if you are....

Palacio looked terrible today. He could have been taken down by a 90 year old blind grandmother on crutches.

Yes, "Alien Hour" or whatever it was called was the worst. I slid the play bar through that complete crapola. They do like to talk about hotels, food, weather, clothing, road trips, TV shows, and the proverbial price of tea in China. If it is in passing, short, and humorous, I'm okay with it. If not, it should be curtailed.

He also lost to Gomez (in folkstyle).

RBY wins 10-6 after a couple of cautions on RBY at the end. RBY used a couple of nice head and shoulder turns.

RBY up now. Mat A

RBY hasn't wrestled his quarterfinal match yet and they are skipping around in weights.

Zane Richards with the tech, 14-1. He was up 10-0; not sure why they continued action with the guy's reversal for 1.

Part of me thinks Gomez needed a breather and faked injury. I need to watch the replay.

Lee looked like he was on the way to a tech earlier. He was out-wrestling Gomez.

Something about Penn State and 65KG at Pan Ams ... Retherford lost here as well and didn't qualify the weight a few years back.

Ach!. Gomez makes a big comeback and wins 22-12. Nick uncharacteristically faded bad. Looks like 65KG will not be qualified here for the US. One last chance at the Last Chance. Disappointing.

Lee vs. Gomez now! Mat B

The big upcoming match in the quarters is Nick Lee vs. Austin Gomez. Winner goes to semis and very likely the finals for an Olympic berth. Lee wrestled Gomez at Worlds last year and pinned him after leading ... something like 7-3 but Gomez was and is dangerous. Lee can go upper body however and has some length on Gomez, which helps. Below is a link to their match at Worlds if you can access it: https://www.flowrestling.org/events/11049592-2023-senior-world-championships/videos?playing=11251702

RBY looks really sucked down. Thin. The cut must be really tough to 57kg

Yes, it's him. He looks bad so far after being down 8-0 ... but rallies with a pin. Dylan Palacio (now of Uruguay and former folkstyle wrestler) looked terrible at 74 KG. He lost 12-2 to a guy from Brazil. He didn't do much and kind of appeared lost on the mat. RBY took care of business quickly in his first match.

This thread reads like a few nervous Dads pacing and waiting for a child to be born.

There are masterpieces ... and then there are disaster-pieces. Centralia belongs to the latter category like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl but, hey, property taxes and rents there are probably pretty low, right?

"There will be Blood":

Reminds me of a remark by another former wrestler and also a piece of ______: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"

Falls Leaders thru 2/26/2024 NAME/INSTITUTION/WEIGHT/# OF FALLS/TIME DIVISION I MEN Wyatt Hendrickson Air Force 285 14 21:23

Most Dominant Leaders thru 2/26/2024 DIVISION I MEN Wyatt Hendrickson Air Force 285 5.5 Trent Hidlay NC State 197 4.77 Mitchell Mesenbrink Penn State 165 4.63 Dean Hamiti Wisconsin 165 4.6 Michael Beard Lehigh 197 4.43 Vinny Zerban Northern Colorado 157 4.42 Stephen Buchanan Oklahoma 197 4.42 Parker Keckeisen Northern Iowa 197 4.35 David Carr Iowa State 165 4.3 Taye Ghadiali Campbell 285 4.25

Seduced and Abandoned !! All the vacuous hype around 165 and 285.

Suriano seems to have stalled or regressed in his development. Don't see him winning the 57KG slot.

I think he's decided just to focus on the Olympic Qualifier next weekend. A big weight cut two weekends in a row probably isn't going to help him. He isn't ducking Lee. The goal is to qualify. He has a reasonable chance of beating Richards if they are on the same side of the bracket. If not, there is always a last chance Qualifier