It Is What It Is

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Sometimes, I just can’t seem to overcome gravity.

In my last posting about the first signs of spring. I wrote that we would soon be complaining about how hot it was. I forgot about allergy season. However, allergy season didn’t forget about me. I was laid low the past few days. The antihistamines are not my friend. though they do clear my head and replace it with fuzziness.

It seems like everything thing needs repair. The computer needed more memory to run a new program; the display monitor blew an inverter. The estimated repair is more expensive than a new monitor. A camera also went down. Those were just the big-ticket items.

It just seemed like one thing after another ganging up to make things difficult.

I know better than to say we’re through with that, but maybe we can move on.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

While I was waiting for my pickup to be repaired several weeks back, I was looking through a Sports Illustrated that had a short piece in the Newsmakers SI Players page on the use of the phrase, “It is what it is.”

The story was about Congressional testimony by Yankees trainer Brian McNamee’s taped conversation with Pitcher Roger Clemens concerning telling the truth about alleged steroid or growth hormone usage. McNamee said, “It is what it is,” euphemistically to mean ‘the truth is the truth,” according to the SI report.

SI goes on with other examples of sports figures who’ve used the phrase and speculates as to what the actual meaning might have been, “In other words.”

One of the examples was:

“New Mexico offensive tackle Claude Terrell, after the Lobos accepted a bid for the 2004 Emerald Bowl. ‘It is what it is.’ And we’ve just got to make the most of it. In other words: I should have gone to USC.”

Terrell was in my History of the Media class and was quit erudite. On the field, he was a very good strong tackle. Above, in the number 76 jersey, Terrell leads Sophomore Dontrell Moore, 22, to his single season school rushing record during the November 15, 2003 game against Air Force. Quarterback Casey Kelly, on the right, called the play and handed off to Moore for his record run in a game the Lobos won 24-12.

Terrell and the rest in the SI story may be right, as far as my lack of posting goes, “it is what it is.”