Lose/Lose situations
First of all, for those of my readers who didn’t see the link yesterday, my brother, Ben Miller, has begun a movie reviewing blog. Check it out here: The Mlog Experiment.
Last night the Yankees won the World Series. I watched the game (as well as the other five games of the series) upstairs with a few diehard Yankees fans. Also with me was a lot of moderate disinterest. See, as an Astros fan, the Yankees versus the Phillies was the baseball equivalent of the 2007 Oscars. I guess I understand why The Departed won Best Picture, but no matter which film won, I would have walked away thinking, “well that was crap.”
That is, a Yankees/Phillies WS, to me, was a lose/lose situation. No matter who won, it would be unsatisfying for me. The Yankees won their 27th championship, but with a two-hundred million dollar payroll (fifty million more than the next highest team), who would be surprised? And if by some surprise the Phillies had won, well, who wants to have to meet a Philadelphian bragging about back-to-back? One championship was already enough, as evidenced by this clip of Chase Utley from last year’s celebrations. [Warning: contains expletives.]
This is just one in a life full of lose/lose situations. I’d like to briefly discuss some other examples that I’ve found recently:
- When the alarm goes off in the morning after a late night. There is no way to win in this situation. Either I wake up and groggily face the day, or I try to sleep longer, only to realize that I needed to get up for class or work or whatever, forcing me to get ready in less time.
- Trying to get from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side using public transit gives you two options: take a cross-town bus (will be crowded, the wrong temperature, and painfully slow as it stops at every single avenue) or take the subway all the way down to Times Square to then take it back up.
- “Paper or Plastic” at a grocery store. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but in NYC, it certainly is. Perhaps if I had a car, I could choose with ease. Instead, I have to carry all of my groceries a far distance, so I face a dilemma: paper has a risk of ripping while plastic carries too little in each bag.
Finally one more sports lose/lose situation, with a more upbeat conclusion, from the world of college football: Florida and Alabama are both facing a serious lose/lose situation in the coming future. They will play a game with each other, and assuming they are both still undefeated (very likely), the winner will go to the BCS Championship Bowl against the Longhorns, who will win. Thus for both the Gators and the Crimson Tide, they face a lose/lose situation: lose to the other team and never make the chance for the national title, or lose in front of a larger international audience as the Horns take said title.
And since I’m a UT fan, this will be a game worth watching, as opposed to one where I sit with my head in my hands wondering how a MLB postseason can be so saddening.
So I know you don’t really like the environment, but….you could try a reusable shopping bag. …could help you with your paper/plastic dilemma
Well I usually buy enough groceries to fill multiple bags. Also those reusable shopping bags are basically the same as plastic, in that they hold very little. I also reuse the plastic bags as trash bags.
I use a backpack! Holds a surprising (to everyone in line and the cashier) amount of groceries. Also, your hands are free so if you don’t need to deal with the hassle of placing down and regathering a bunch of bags to get out a train pass or keys.