The simulated Cubs manager Brandon Palmer speaks again

Well hey! It’s Friday, and that means another round with Chicago simCubs skipper Brandon Palmer Eldritch, the cagy and literate field general of the first-place-by-miles club, who are about to face the second-place-by-miles club in a weekend Perky Pat playset.

Whether you prefer Choo-Z or Can-D, or have no idea what I’m talking about, Palmer Eldritch is the man of the hour, if the hour is that time between 4 am and dawn, and he is a better pitchman than Dock Ellis.

We have already established that Palmer is an intellectual with pretensions ranging from Belgian noir to American art forms like comic books and jazz, so it will come as little surprise to anyone to learn that he is fond of the works of Philip K Dick, as is yours truly, who is high-functioning autistic and identifies with Manfred Steiner from Martian Time-Slip.

The scary part is that Palmer identifies with the 1955 PKD short AUTOFAC, in which we hold the future to be self-replicating and the truth to be thoroughly pizzled. I hold these truths to be gubbish, but then so much of everything is.

I’m sure Ridley Scott can relate. You do realize that Blade Runner took place last year, yes?

CT — So, in order not to alienate any more of our audience, let’s talk about baseball. How big is Anthony Rizzo’s head after winning the Home Run Derby? Do you have to park his ego on the other side of the Mississippi?

BP — Ha! Well, Tony truly is a humble man but he does like to pimp, and he’s been giving batting tips to the guys.

CT — I saw a couple of tweets where he claimed he was choking up in the first round and Mike Trout said he was just fishing for compliments. I also saw where he was saying that he had petitioned San Diego Studios for custom soundtracks to use in the real games, in which he is prominently mentioned every few minutes.

BP — Tony is just having a good time. He also says that he is negotiating the tv rights to the real games and that he and Elon Musk have launched a feel-good potion that comes in a spray can — it’ll soon be ubiquitous. Clearly he has spent some time reading, and I know that he heard the episode of the ‘Dickheads’ podcast that you were a guest on, because I listened with him, in my office, with the top off the bottle.

CT — Anthony doesn’t seem like a reading type of person but I am willing to go along with it. I know he put in a lot of time on the riding bike and I like to read when I do that.

BP — Boy did he! He’s in the best shape of his life. Tanned, rested, ready. But he has that rib condition, and that’s painful. Here in the binary world, it’s not so much of a thing, but out there in the meat world, it IS a thing.

CT — You make it sound like being 1s and 0s is preferable.

BP — Isn’t it? It seems that way to me ... but then there are viruses on both sides, aren’t there? Not as prevalent in the Playstation Network though. I do wonder what happens when we’re gone ... deletion is so ugly.

CT — I’m told that the games will continue for the rest of the season, and probably beyond. The audience seems to enjoy your exploits, even when you do weird lineup switches, send up the wrong pinch-hitter or relief pitcher, or when TOOTBLANS abound.

It must be hard to program the running game. And the mascots’ behaviors.

BP — It must be. I have no input into that.

CT — So how do you pitch to Eugenio Suarez?

BP — The way things are going, we should probably just walk him. Maybe Yu can throw him a succession of Supremes and cap it off with a Ross.

CT — Diana?

BP — David. He’s going to be a good manager. I’ll be watching him from afar.

CT — That seems like an ideal place to stop this segment.

BP — Agreed. See you next week.