on non-writing
my descent into the dark web
Lately I’ve been doing what any non-writer does best … not write. There are several reasons for this and I feel no guilt about it, but it has made me think about how I need to use this blog to push my projects forward, beyond just learning how to create a writing style. The blog has helped me immensely with this latter point, but I need to make more progress on the book projects, so I’ve been using my non-writing time to think about this (among other things).
So let’s talk about those other things first. Every day I wake up with a list of interesting and fun things to do. Recently added to that list is the NHL playoffs. If you know me, or have been reading this blog, you know about my passion for ice hockey. The NHL is the only major team sport that I follow, and some of you may argue about its status as a major team sport. Frankly, I hope it never joins the likes of the NFL or NBA (forget about MLB, that’s not even a sport in my book, it’s a past time), where big money has led to rule changes to accommodate advertisers and slow down those games that were once interesting and fun to watch, to finally making them tedious and frustrating to watch … especially if it’s a close game. I have long feared that the same thing will eventually happen to the NHL. Every year they make some rule tweaks, but so far they’ve avoided the pitfalls that made me lose interest in all the other team sports. And here I am again, in the middle of the NHL playoffs … the second season as they like to call it because the NHL season including playoffs is ridiculously long -- 82 games plus at least 16 playoff game wins in a normal season. This was no normal season due to Covid, and the last season was even weirder. I don’t want to bore you too much with the details, but this shortened season was better than most “normal” seasons IMHO, BECAUSE it was shorter AND they divided the teams into divisions that would only play each other within those divisions, thus creating great rivalries and intense game action as the season went along. And now those teams are fighting each other (sometimes literally, it’s hockey after all) in the playoffs to be the winners of those divisions so they can go on to play the other division winners for the ultimate trophy in sport: The Stanley Cup.
With 16 teams entering the playoffs a couple of weeks ago, there have been 2-4 games PER DAY that I have been trying to follow. It’s exhausting to be a hockey fan at this time of year, but somebody’s got to do it. And if that weren’t exhausting enough, I decided to spice it up a bit this year because of the weirdness that Covid has thrown into the playoff mix. It seems to me that this is such an unusual year for the NHL, that it will surely benefit the underdog teams in the playoffs. When I heard that one of my favorite underdog teams had 20:1 odds at winning it all, I opened an online sports betting account. Welcome to the DARK WEB (hear those words echoing with spooking music playing in the background?). I’m just going to give you a teaser here because I plan on writing an entire blog entry on my experience with this; suffice it to say that I wanted IN on those 20:1 odds so I opened a sports betting account after reading some undoubtedly reputable reviews about these mostly offshore sites operating quasi-legally in many US states including mine, and I soon found out that if I wanted to be paid my winnings in a timely manner I would need to open another account that would accept … wait for it …. BITCOIN. Three days after I opened my bitcoin account I started getting spam voice messages on my home phone number (which I didn’t give out when I opened the account -- they only wanted my cell phone number of course) announcing to me in a well articulated female robo-voice that my bitcoin has been locked and I will need to call them immediately to unlock it. They called back every day for about a week. My bitcoin seems to be fine, but I’ll let you know when I try to actually use it. So far the betting and bitcoin seems to be working out, so maybe this part of the web is less dark and more gray, which is a metaphor that also fits this user.
Getting back to the non-writing -- around the time of my last blog entry about a month ago, I started experimenting with ideas about how to use this blog. Like a lot of experiments they were not very successful, but I learned something and made some changes and tried again. I’m still doing that. Eventually some of that work will see the light of day. And you, lucky reader, will be the first to see it.
In the meantime, continue to give me suggestions and feedback. All have been tremendously helpful so far. And please be patient with me …. at least until the end of the NHL playoffs.