And how have they fared since tri-B’s exceptional trades? Let us recap:

8/1 Lost 0/1 to Kansas City 8/2 Won over KC 8/3 Lost to KC
8/4 Won Over Tampa Bay Rays 8/5 Won over TB 8/6 Lost to TB
8/7 Won Over Minnesota Twins 8/8 Won over MT 8/9 Won Over MT
8/10 Lost to MT 8/11 Won over KC 8/12 Lost to KC
8/13 Lost to KC 8/14 Lost to KC 8/15 Lost to Atlanta Braves

That’s 7 wins and 8 losses for an average of 0.466. That is the an average slightly above the Houston Astros, 4th in the American League West. Oakland is now only 1 game ahead of the Los Angeles Angels. Oakland will play the Angels 6 times before the end of the month. Care to project where the results will be by 8/31? I shudder to think. But what the heck – I’ll just put it out there and predict by 8/31, the Oakland A’s will be 3 games out of first place to the LA Angels. As I said before, they will be battling with Seattle for the Wild Card slot. Nice goin’, Bean Ball.

Dictionary dot com defines fever as an abnormal condition of the body, characterized by undue rise in temperature, quickening of the pulse, and disturbance of various body functions. So World Series fever would be a disturbance of right thinking in pursuit of a now likely unattainable goal. Like Napoleon in Moscow. Hitler in Stalingrad. King Arthur in Monty Python. You get the idea.

Post Script: Oh, this is the best part. The guy they ousted Chavez to make way for, Jason Hammel, the 6 million dollar man? He’s won 1 game since joining the A’s July 4th. His current ERA is 6.75 (that’s really bad). Jesse Chavez’ ERA is 3.33. His salary is $480k. So Billy has paid 11 times as much for Hammel as he was paying Chavez, and the man has won one game. One game since 7/4. It’s beyond comprehension.

There’s talk about bringing Jesse back. Not gonna happen. Billy’s going to ride this runaway train all the way to the station. Nice goin’, Bean Ball.

I didn’t watch Oakland lose to the Kansas City Royals last night. They scored no runs. Kansas City, a shot-in-the-dark team that is (was) of greatly inferior quality to the A’s won with 1 run. I find that highly emblematic of the situation that BB Boy has inflicted on what was the greatest team in baseball.

I predict Oakland will be duking it out with Seattle for the wild card slot in the AL West. The Angels now have it all to themselves. Why do I say that, you ask? Experience in building a team. When you break up a high performing work team, it takes a really long time to rebuild it. Longer than BB has left in this season. So he will have destroyed the team, with not enough time to build it for the World Series, which, as previously mentioned, he got the fever for. It is just too much.

No more MLB for me. I’ll have to find another addiction to fill my retirement evenings. More serious effort at writing than two chapters a week, I suppose.

Why did he do it? Why? Because he never really believed in sabermetrics. It got him some attention – it got him Brad Pitt as his avatar! But former players always return to their roots. The old way of doing business. And sabermetrics be damned. Burn that damn book! (Nod to Gavin McQuade@Realmoneybadger for that illustration). Let me be specific.

If you saw the film or read the book, Moneyball, recall the scouting coaches describing prospects as looking “right” or “not right”. It would appear that taking Jesse Chavez out of the rotation is an example of him not looking “right”. Or giving up Cespedes for another outfielder, just to get a pitcher to replace the pitcher that he got to replace Tommy Milone…I could go on and on. But BB has started the downhill slide that will end in a really bad outcome.

It reminds one of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. The golden fleece is just outside your reach, so you do what you think you have to do to get it, and sacrifice yourself and those around you in the process. The A’s are destroyed, and BB will lose his job for killing them. May they rest in peace.

Yoenis Cespedes, former Oakland A

Well, he’s gone, in exchange for a pitcher to compensate for the bad pitcher BB Boy (Billy Beane) bought from Chicago (Hammel: a pig in a poke if I ever saw one, and a slightly better pig in a slightly better poke in Smurza) and a batter that is past his prime and not anywhere near the calibre of Cespedes. Billy has World Series Fever in the worst way. That’s like going for broke at the craps table when you haven’t paid last month’s mortgage payment.

Oakland was a team with heart, brains, moxie, humor and love of the game. They are now a lop-sized agglomeration of strangers that will not be a team. The leftovers (with a nod to the HBO show) are already playing hurt, and they’ll stop trying as hard. They’re off today, but wait and see what happens tomorrow. Billy’s gonna get himself fired over these moves, and the firing will be generated by the fans who came to embrace sabermetrics. Sabermetrics – remember what that is, Billy? Guess not. Too bad.

Not sure if I’ll watch their demise. Depends on how the writing goes. I feel like I can wrap up Matryoshka in the next month or so. Then I will start working on a couple of projects. The outline for the flu story is one (already here in the Writing tab). I have another idea for a longer story that has a working title of “Who Killed Kitty Genovese?” Betcha don’t know or remember (if old enuf) who she is. Google her and see if there ain’t a story there. ‘Cause I’m gonna have plenty of time now that I don’t have to devote 18 to 20 hours a week watching Oakland struggle. Qué lástima.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: HE LOST ANOTHER GAME TODAY. BILLY’S GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE SOME TOUGH CHOICES IN THE NEXT DAY OR SO.
HEADLINE: READ ALL ABOUT IT. HAMMEL PITCHED BADLY AND THE A’S LOST LAST NIGHT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL TEXAS RANGERS. WHAT WILL BILLY DO? WHAT WILL MELVIN DO? THERE MIGHT, IN FACT, BE CRYING IN BASEBALL.

This is the last one, at least for a while. Writing two chapters a week about the adventures of Cecilia is usually all I can manage. But, as previously mentioned, these three things were bugging me. So I’ll get on with it and then you won’t likely hear from me, at least until I get riled about something else.

But before I launch into it (baseball), I find it astounding that I write my pieces, and within a day or two the majors pick up on the same points. The tunnels in Gaza? – one day lag and Anne Bernard writes about them in the NY Times, albeit insufficiently. Ukraine? Major media outlets and my favorite economic columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, discuss the economic symbiosis between the countries in western Europe and Russia. Always ahead of the curve.

Now, to the topic du jure – baseball. We’re well past the mid-point, which is really 4/7’s the season gone. The All Star game is done, won illegitmately by the American League with a ball called fair that was really a foul that ended up scoring the final two runs. Mike Trout was deservedly selected as the MVP and got a corvette out of the deal. Yuch. But at least my boys, the Oakland A’s, are still ahead of the entire pack. BUT (why is it there’s always a but?) the second place team in the AL West, the Los Angeles Angels, are hot on their heels. So yes, gentle reader, that means the top two teams in baseball are in the AL west. That’s good, you say? No, that is bad. And why would that be, you ask? Here’s why.

Billy Beane, the wunderkind GM of the A’s, Mr. Moneyball himself, pulled off a trade that the baseball media thought was a coup. He got Jeff Samardzjia and Jason Hammel from the Chicago Cubs, in exchange for some change and top minor league prospects. Great! New blood in the bull pen, you say? Not so fast. In both their initial outings, neither pitcher has been exceptional. In fact, I’d argue Hammel is a disaster and will likely be traded by or near the end of the season. Samardzjia was supposed to be the plum in the trade. But in order to manage the financial end of this, Tommy Milone had to go back down to the minors. That’s the bad part.

Tommy has been with the A’s, up and down from the farm team, for two years. I’d argue the team likes him, and he’s a decent, left-handed pitcher. Pulling in these two guys and sacrificing Milone has upset the balance within the team. They continue to win – sort of – but they aren’t on fire as they were. Oops – there I go with the emotional words. Let me rephrase that: their statistical averages have deteriorated since this bone-headed move was made by Bean Ball Billy. That’s better.

But, you’d argue, there’s time before the World Series for the new guys to settle in and start to perform at their potential – at least Samardzjia? BTW – that’s pronounced SA MAR JA. I pronounce it SMUR JA, as I’ve developed an instinctive dislike for this pitcher, this deal and fear the impact on the team, as you can read from previous words. Back to the point – there’s time for this to work out before it gets serious and important in October, right? But there’s a problem with messing around now: and that problem is called the LA Angels.

There’s a huge logistical and psychological advantage to winning the division, versus being a wild card team for the playoffs. Winning the division gives you more rest time before you have to compete. Wild card teams are dragged from pillar to post, having to prove their worthiness in order to continue to advance. So you want to enter the playoffs as the division winner. If LA pulls ahead and stays ahead – even if by one win – that would be bad. So, the A’s don’t have time to monkey around getting these new pitchers settled in. They just don’t. And if Bob Melvin, the team’s manager, is forced out of deference to Billy’s Folly, to continue to use these two guys, I predict a bad end. And now I read that Tommy wants to be traded. Nay, I say, Nay! Billy: admit you blew it, move Hammel and bring Tommy back. If you fail to do this, you might not make it to the pennant, and I’m sure you won’t play in the World Series. So there…the soothsayer has spoken. Watch, wait and hopefully, don’t weep. Wait..no! Everybody knows: there’s no crying in baseball.

POST SCRIPT: Okay, so Smurja had a decent day yesterday. But I’m not ready to concede yet. Hammel pitches tonight against Texas. Texas has the worst record in baseball, so it should be easy, right? We’ll see…

Let’s do a Vulcan mind meld on the next topic: the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Ben Birnbaum has written a comprehensive assessment of the peace overtures undertaken by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, at the behest of the State Department representatives, Martin Indyk and John Kerry. It appears here in the New Republic.

Ben Birnbaum’s piece about peace

Clearly I am no expert on anything related to these two countries, their policies, attitudes and means of getting through life. But maybe that’s a good thing: the experts in all these areas have had no success whatsoever in getting these recalcitrant players to work together and stop killing innocents on both sides. So with that understanding, in I’ll plunge.

I know: by now you’ve become inured to seeing pictures of women and children in Gaza wailing about their lost loved ones. I get that, gentle reader. A naive person would ask, “Why don’t they just leave?” That’s likely what that same individual said about residents of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, in assessing the aftermath of Katrina. But if you are a refugee, a person scrounging for her daily living, or someone asked to leave their home containing multiple generations, it isn’t that simple.

First and foremost: where does she go? How does she get there? Travel is severely restricted in Gaza, because of suicide bombers and the justified fear of attacks. Even if civilians could leave, their hard scrabble existence would be eliminated, leaving them to the potential for a worse fate than braving Israeli bombs and now a ground attack. So I get that.

What about the other side? One can sympathize to some degree with their desire to root out Hamas from Gaza, eliminating the tunnels that allow them access under the wall built by Israel. The wall was built to insulate Israel from the mayhem brought to their homes, streets and shops by hapless, hopeless individuals willing to blow themselves up, rather than live in these current conditions. Apparently the wall strategy didn’t work too well. It never does, neither around Israel to keep the bombers out nor between the continental US and adjacent countries to the south. But I say, acknowledging the irony: the wall created the basis for Hamas to attack Israel. But not for the reasons you might think.

Here’s the point I’d like to make, that somewhat echoes yesterday’s post. Here it is, again: “Economics have been the true cause of every major clash of geographies, throughout history.” I think I’ll embroider a sampler containing that phrase, because it is so true, when you can get down to the heart of these conflicts.

Here’s a piece from a ‘down-under’ newspaper, reprinted from The Times of Israel with some good visuals added.

The Real Deal Going on Between Israel/Gaza/Egypt

The story details how Hamas has been surviving economically as a result of the tunnels dug under the wall, leading to both Israel and Egypt via the Sinai (see map below). According to the article, 40% of their income came from taxes and tolls on those tunnels, which apparently numbered between 350 and 400, with up to 1200 entrances on the Palestinian side. But then it was Al-Qaeda that screwed the pooch. They used the tunnels to infiltrate the Egyptian side and killed 16 Egyptian military officers. What was that all about? Later. Suffice it to say, that gave Egypt the justification to start addressing the tunnel issue and shutting them down. Then when Morsi and the Brotherhood were overthrown in a coup d’etat by General Sisi, the Egyptians went at it tooth and claw. So tunnels closed down: no money for Hamas, prices in Gaza begin to skyrocket, and you have all the makings of a violent confrontation.

While all this was going on, Kerry, Indyk, Abbas, Tzipi Livni, Erekat, and various others were negotiating a peace that they could not manage, not any of them. Window dressing, you say? No, I don’t think so. Kerry and the Americans were naive – maybe uninformed? But I feel sure Netanyahu knew, and played them. Then three Israeli kids get killed, and then a Palestinian teen dies a sordid death at the hands of Israeli vigilantes. Everybody jumps in, and then you see the rockets’ red glare.

So what’s the solution? What’s the solution to any conflict? The people causing the mayhem must be listened to and their issues addressed. Everybody wants to earn a living, and the ghetto called Gaza, recently compared to the Warsaw ghetto, in some universe has a right to be upset. So does Israel. But both sides are so busy explaining why their rights trump the other’s, there is no capacity or motivation for resolution.

Here’s the really terrible irony in all this. While they’re busy fighting one another over a tiny piece of territory, the militant wing of Sunni Islam is taking control over the Syria/Iraq/Jordan geography, in an attempt to consolidate their holdings. They’re doing all this under the watchful eye of the Saudis, who keep their hands clean but tacitly acknowledge and support their efforts. At the end of their rainbow is a caliphate that has no room for either Shia Iran or Infidel Israel. The real boogie man is out there, taking large sums of money from Iraqi central bank branches in the Sunni Triangle, and dispatching or expelling non-believers like Christians from their territory. When they’re done with that, then it’ll be Iran and finally Israel. That day will arrive, and Israel will wish for the gold old days when it was just the Palestinians in Gaza they had to be concerned about.

POST SCRIPT: I did a little research regarding the relative sizes of Gaza and the West Bank, compared to Israel. The West Bank covers 2180 square miles. Gaza covers 139 square miles. Israel covers 8019 square miles. If you add them all together, the West Bank is 21% of the total. Gaza is 1.4% of the total. So the 1.4% is browbeating the country that’s 15 times bigger than it is. And Israel is smaller than New Jersey. So that makes Gaza the size of Detroit, and the West Bank about the size of Delaware. So Detroit is driving New Jersey to waste blood and treasure in a war that cannot be won by either side. Go figure…and now the citizens of the piece the size of Delaware are rising up against New Jersey in sympathy with Detroit. Makes you stop and think for at least a half a second, yes? Never mind…

HAPPY 46TH BIRTHDAY, MY DARLING SON!

Clearly there’s a lot going on in the world. What will happen next to Cecilia – currently bleeding to death on the floor in Olga’s room? That occupies a fair amount of my thinking. However, I’ve found time to concern myself with three other, important topics. I’ll write about each of them per day so as not to overwhelm you with information.

Let’s start with the what’s happening in Ukraine. I wrote about this a few months ago, but then with everything else going on in the world (Gaza and Israel, baseball, fictional impending nuclear world war), the topic fell off everyone’s radar screen, including mine. Then the Russians upped the ante by giving Opie a new slingshot to play with. Sure enough, the next day, he shot and killed a bird, leaving the babies in the nest to fend for themselves. Just wait ’til Andy finds out?

But apparently not. Opie learned a lesson from his mistake, but that’s not what is likely to happen with these dopey Opies. They are basically thugs and ne’er- do-wells. Rootin’ Putin has manipulated the entire situation to his benefit, and is now remaining silent on the topic. No life lesson for these dopey Opies. But to make matters worse, all the countries in Europe – including the Dutch whose citizens made up a preponderance of the passengers – are caught by the short ones with their economies dependent on Russia’s energy shipments. So they remain silent too. Remind you of another time in history? Fear and Loathing in Donetsk…and we are in no position to take a stand without Europe. Where’s Winston Churchill when you need him?

Since I like to make assessments and predictions, this is what I think will arise out of this debacle. There will be the usual speeches at the UN, a little bit of protest from Europe and Malaysia (bet their insurance rates will go up, eh?) and no action will be taken except by the U.S., and that will only be rap-on-the-knuckles sanctions that take decades to have any effect. So Rootie Tootie Pootie will have his way in the short term. Airlines will obviously avoid this area for the duration. And Poroshenko, the President of Ukraine and Chocolateer Extraordinaire, will be caught squarely in the middle between Russia and Germany, the only two countries that can make a difference in this situation. Is it a coincidence that Angela Merkel came from East Germany and is 61 years old, a product of the Eastern bloc? I think not, gentle readers. Germany and Russia had an unholy alliance until Germany invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa back in June, 1941. There now exists an unholy alliance between western Europe and Russia, as a function of their mutual economic dependence. Just like FDR, we have to watch and wait for another 9/11-scale incident aimed directly at American interests, vis-a-vis Pearl Harbor, linked to Russian adventurism. That will be a sad and scary day, but one that is most likely inevitable. Putin, like Hitler before him, has played the long game. His plan is to clear the chess board of all eastern and then western Europe. In the interim, he’s aligning himself with Asia – first China with a multi-billion dollar energy deal, and next comes Japan and Korea. Then he’ll come after Great Britain and the US, the Queen and King on the chess board of world geography. In his dreams, you say? Watch, wait, and take notes.

One thing I’ve learned in old age is that whoever dreamed up the phrase It’s the economy, stupid for the ’92 Clinton presidential campaign didn’t realize the profundity of that phrase. Economics have been the true cause of every major clash of geographies, throughout history. History, as it’s taught in school – at any level – never really helps us understand that reality. An eye opener for me came from a book, A Nation of Deadbeats by Scott Reynolds Nelson. He explains every conflict in which America has become involved from the post-Revolutionary late 1700’s through the lead-up to World War II. I recommend you buy, borrow or download it as a precursor to understanding the current situation involving all the above. Then we’ll talk some more. And yes, there will be a test, so plan accordingly…ha ha.

So brother John called today, correcting one of my Spanish expressions, and also telling me he was confused about the numbering of the chapters. He thought there were only two written, because of the lack of titles. So I can put in titles in case anyone else is confused. Or I can tell everyone via this post that the chapters and subchapters are numbered as follows:

Part 1

1.1
1.2
1.3
etc

Part 2

2.1
2.2
2.3
etc

Get the idea? Please, somebody – advise if I should add titles, or if brother John is the only confused one. Thanks!

This past weekend, Emily, Poppy and I went to the movies to see Edge of Tomorrow. It was released on Friday, and we went to see it on Saturday. “The theater must have been mobbed” you said? Uh, no..not exactly. I’d say there were 15 people in the entire theater, you know theater #6 – the big one? The one where you can access the row from either side because it holds so many people? Go figure…

I’d read a review of the film in The Atlantic that was most complimentary. Had it not been for that, I assure you I’d never have recommended we go see it. But the well-written review made the plot of the film sound interesting, and since Emily was spending the weekend, hey – why not? Of course, we went to the 1:30 showing, being cheapskates as showings before 4 PM cost 1/3 less than the evening price. So we went. And ya know what? We all thought the movie was great.

By now I’m certain you’re aware of the plot. Cruise is a soldier that, thanks to his foolish mouthing-off to a General, gets himself sent to the front lines of a war between earthlings and aliens. Sounds ridiculous, yes? On the face of it, yes, but the plot really was well-thought out. The acting was quite good, even from Cruise who worked really hard as the poor guy killed so many times he should look like swiss cheese. Emily Blunt did a complete body transformation for this film, and it was gratifying to see her taking charge and making Tom her do-bitch. Never have a problem with that, eh?

Yes, the CGI was, at times, a little blurry, but the pace and novelty of the story more than made up for a few moments of ‘what the heck just happened’ because of fuzzy special effects. The crux of the plot is that these aliens from another galaxy, maybe? Uh, these aliens come to earth to take over, and have the capacity to anticipate how earthlings will respond to their every action. Emily Blunt’s character Rita (lovely Rita, meter maid?…ah hem..) is dubbed the Angel of Verdun because yes, a woman, defeats the aliens at that hallowed ground in Belgium. But despite the accolades coming her way, smart Rita, with the help of some Aussie scientist who I swear was the original manager replaced by Jimmy ‘The Tonight Show’ Fallon in Almost Famous…um with his help figures out that the aliens let us win that to fool us into believing an all-out assault just like D-Day could defeat them. Hah! When Tom dies a few times, he’s clever enough to figure out there’s something amiss here (hey, quicker than Bill Murray was…) and thinks he’d better go looking for this Rita Angel of Verdun person to ask her why this keeps happening to him, since she appears to be the only person to succeed thus far against the wicked alien species. He and Rita form a team and by gosh and by golly, the world is saved, no thanks to the general who in a previous film played Winston Churchill and just got a little fatter since then. Imagine…

So with that confusing stream-of-consciousness description, I suggest you go check it out at the 1:30 showing. Worth $6. Hey, you’d pay that for a pay per view, yes?

P.S. I checked and yes, the actor named Noah Taylor was in fact the dumped manager of ‘Stillwell’ in Almost Famous. I can spot em, eh?
Oops! It’s not ‘Stillwell’, the band’s name was Stillwater. Stillwell was the fat kid whose mom played for the Rockford Peaches in A League of Their Own

I have the improvised plot twist figured out and will finish Chapter 2 tomorrow. In the interim, I’ve been thinking about the firing of Jill Abramson, who was the Executive Editor of the New York Times until last week. The media has been full of stories accusing the management of the Times of sexism in her dismissal. There’s also been a fair number of male apologists explaining why Arthur Sulzberger had to do what he did because of her ‘style’.

A woman in a position of authority is in a no-win dilemma. If she doesn’t get results, she is too soft, and will be let go. If she gets great results, but hurts some feelings along the way, her style is called into question and she has to go in order to restore the morale of those whose feelings she hurt. The guy taking her place, Dean Baquet, is an African-American man. Apparently he’s very popular with the staff at the NY Times. Will that popularity be enough for him to keep his job when the paper continues relentlessly to bleed red ink over its failure to keep up with digital competition? Not likely. Then it will be the opposite argument: Dean had to go because he just couldn’t get the results needed for The Times to stay financially healthy. More likely than not, he’ll be replaced by a younger, white male.

Back in the early days – the 70’s and 80’s – women were recruited just for the numbers. That’s the honest truth. And if she could survive the misery of the workplace where she was perceived as less qualified on the basis of her gender, subjected to harassment, both physical and emotional, then her reward in promotion was just to endure a more subtle form of sexism. Racism works in a very similar way. Did you ever hear any other president being chided for being aloof and detached, other than Barack Obama? Do results really matter, given the gauntlet blacks and women have to run? That is the question.

But here’s the real deal in a nutshell: the entire world is still controlled by white men. White men make up the rules and women and minorities have to try to figure out where the lines are in terms of behavior. It’s an impossible task, because there’s no instruction manual. It’s like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, doomed to roll a rock up a hill until just before the summit, where it perpetually rolls back down to the bottom. Read the background story of this myth, and it personifies what it means to be a woman in the world of business controlled by white men with their fear and loathing (yes, I said fear and loathing) of women. Check out this cartoon: I believe it says it all.

So what’s the answer? Two radical ideas. First: take a page from Ghandi’s methods to rid India of the Raj. Boycott the process. If all the women in business quit, can you imagine the impact? Even if for a day a month, an organized, focused, sit-down strike would at least get their attention. Second and no less radical idea: emulate the women in Aristophanes’ comedic play Lysistrata. Greek women on both sides of the Peloponnesian War agree to withhold sex from their men until the Sparten and Athenian men agree to a peaceful settlement. Young and old women work together to deprive the men of both sex and money from the treasury to buy material needed to carry on with their aggression. Of course, since it’s a comedy the strategy works and peace is restored.

In order to implement either radical solution, women have to band together. Sisterhood will only prevail when women see it in their best interest to cooperate toward a solution, rather than competing with each other for the scraps handed to them by white men. Will this ever happen? One can only hope. But since this has been the situation since 411 B.C., it won’t be easy to accomplish. Give it some thought, ladies – then, stand up and be counted!

Well, it’s happened already. I began to think about Chapter 2, and did a google search regarding visas to Cuba. Wouldn’t you know it? The only thing you need is an exit visa from the U.S.. Getting into Cuba is a simple matter of filling out a card and putting down your passport number. So that means I have to deviate from my outline already…drat.

But isn’t that the way life works, and doesn’t that illustrate the point of my story? Just about the time you think you have it figured out, living goes and throws you a curve and you have to improvise. So improvise I will…I have to get Cecilia to Cuba in search of something regarding her grandfather’s identity. It’s a key point of the plot. There’s no way I can suspend reality and just make something up – not in my nature. But I will go take and shower and think this through, and find a way to get over this tiny little sticking point!

Expect Chapter 2 shortly. Note that the illustrations give a nod to anime. Anime helped Emily help me develop my story. See? No coincidences…