This Week in JPEGs

Welcome to This Week in JPEGs! To those of you who are unaware of what this whole thing is all about, I draw pictures of things that are going on in Reds baseball.

Hmm. Yeah, I guess that's all this is.

Last week's winner was The Returnening. It earned 55% of the vote.

Johnny Cueto and the Poetic

I'm a big fan of Martin Heidegger. He was a fascinating guy, and not just for his many brilliant insights in philosophy. But among these many brilliant insights is his critique of language usage in the philosophical tradition. Check it:

We must admit that language in it's daily usage appears as a means of comprehension, and these means are used for the usual relations of life. Only, there are still other relations than the usual ones. Goethe calls these other relations "deeper," and says of language, "In ordinary life we scarcely get by with language because we only indicate superficial relations. As soon as speech is made from deeper relations, another language immediately appears: the poetic."

See, in our regular ordinary lives, we use language as a tool for getting by. Language is necessary for communication, and communication is necessary for me to get my cup of coffee from the cute barista with the interesting hair that always makes me smile (God bless her for that). But regular old ordinary language isn't all there is. Indeed, it can't be all there is. Being is a way richer experience than what ordinary language can relate. So to adequately communicate these deeper, richer experiences, we need a deeper, richer mode of language. Heidegger was partial to poetry.

Right now, regular old ordinary language is wholly incapable of adequately relating the richness of what Johnny Cueto is doing. If we want to say something about something so extraordinary, we need extraordinary language. It's not enough to say he's "awesome" or "great" or "OMG" or "I'm speechless."

As such, a regular old ordinary JPEG just won't cut it this week.

Many people accused Heidegger of just making shit up, too.

BP Punches Ian Kennedy's Ticket to Pranksville, also Home Run

In case you missed it, Ian Kennedy was interviewed on MLB Network before the rained-out game on Wednesday. He was blabbing on about whatever the hell, and Brandon Phillips  totally pranked him good by making silly faces behind him. Then, on Thursday, BP clobbered a slopper-whopper off of Kennedy to give the Reds the lead. Two pranks!

#LetCharlieClose

In case you missed it, the Hero Cat will be throwing out the furst (get it?) pitch at a Bakersfield Blaze game. I think the real Charlie Scrabbles should be throwing out the last pitch. The Reds could use some help in the bullpen, right? PURRRRRRRfect game!! No Kitter!! What's the matter, Carlos Gomez? Cat got your tongue? I mean, uh ... cat got your slider in the dirt, or something. Maybe that one isn't as good.