Why I love baseball so much.

Read this, but only if you think you might love baseball as much as I do.

Because I just don’t feel like doing any work right now…

Top four toys/tools from childhood, in no particular order (feel free to add to this list):

1. Legos. Hands down the greatest toy ever invented. Justin and I used to try to build the most robust (and, I should add, stylistically innovative) battering ram cars possible, then slam them into each other as hard as we could to see whose would hold up the longest. Justin usually won— he was always the better engineer. I can remember a couple times when his car escaped with nary a scratch, and mine exploded like a supernova and sprayed legos across the room. One time he built a car so tough we slammed it into the wall about thirty times just to see what it would take to break it. I think I put about 10 of my own cars up against it before giving up and crowning it the all-time lego battering ram car champion.

2. Crayons. I don’t care how old you are— coloring with crayons is still fun. And what is it about the way they smell that makes them both repulsive and irresistible? The world may never know.

3. Matchbox Cars. They varied so much in size, shape, make, model and (most importantly) rollability and jumpability that each time you got a new one it was an adventure. Another game Justin and I used to play: Set up a ramp (one that sloped steeply down first, then up) and roll each car down it to see which one would leap the farthest. We were very scientific about it, too. We’d take the top five and then have a 2nd round of jump-offs to determine the winner (sometimes we’d even go to three or four rounds if there were disputes).

4. NERF Basketball hoop & ball. One of the simplest toys ever made, and also one of the finest. Justin and I spent hours playing fantasy basketball games. We made our own league, designed the logos, named the players, even gave them heights and weights, and then we’d act out the games in tournament fashion. Man, we were nerds.

The curs-ed life of instant regular flavor oatmeal

We’ve all seen it— maybe even eaten it a few times. But we’d never dare to eat it the way it came out of the box. It’s called “regular flavor” instant oatmeal, and I feel sorry for it.

I can’t help but personify inanimate things. Ashley does this, too— even more than me— but I won’t go into detail about her odd ways. I’ll just say that I tend to think of everything as possessing a soul… don’t know why. Because of this, I have to feel a little bit sorry for the regular flavor when I’m selecting one of various other delicious flavors from the variety pack of instant oatmeal.

I can’t understand why regular flavor oatmeal is included in this pack. There’s nothing instant about it, as I can guarantee you that no sane person would eat mushy cardboard, especially when given the choice between that and the scrumptious strawberries and cream right next to it in the box. If you’re going to eat the regular flavor, you have to put something in it— maple syrup, sugar, butter, bananas… something. So it’s far from regular by the time you eat it, and it certainly isn’t instant.

This poor, wretched creation will never be accepted as it is. Always dolled up, its true identity concealed…  and that’s if it even gets selected at all. More than likely it will end up in the trash, its potential having never been realized. It’s a shameful existence. No wonder its label is blue.

I’m going to write the folks at Quaker and ask them to put it out of its misery and stop including it in the box full of other magnificently-flavored oats.

My run-in with the counter help at Sunoco

This began as a comment on Whitney’s blog, but I decided it was important enough to get its own post (with a couple small embellishments).

The other day I asserted myself more than usual (I’m getting better). And even though it only involved exchanging a dollar for four quarters, I was a little proud of myself.

I needed quarters for the air machine so I could put air in Ashley’s tires. So I go into the gas station, and I select an air pressure gauge (because we needed one anyway), and hand the dude at the counter a fiver. He rings me up, and as he’s getting my change together I ask if I could have four quarters instead of a dollar bill— not an unreasonable request, if you ask me. So he mumbles something about quarters (I couldn’t understand him because of his thick accent) and hands me 2 dollar bills and some change, apparently hoping that I’d forget I needed the four quarters. I stood there, a little annoyed, and said, “I asked you for four quarters.” He pulled four quarters out of the drawer and held them up, looked me in the eye and said, “This is all I have.” First of all, I refuse to believe that a gas station that handles billions of transactions a day has only four quarters available. I guarantee that ass bag had a whole gaggle of those little paper quarter tubes just waiting to be cracked open— he just didn’t want to go to the trouble. Second of all, I am currently in line… I am the customer in need of those four quarters… if you don’t give them to me, someone is going to get them— right? So why the fuck not me? I need them NOW. I didn’t even speak to this man. I simply stared at him and put on my best “I don’t give a fuck if those are the last two quarters in the state” face.

He totally crumbled. I could almost taste the defeat in his heart as he was dropping the quarters into my hand. On my way out the door I held my head high, and if I were a lesser person I might have made audible the word that was resounding inside my head: BITCH.

Gotta love Lou

When asked about how it feels to win an ugly game like today’s:

“I’d rather win ugly than lose pretty.”

Another genetic defective that ought to be beaten with a hammer and left bleeding in the moonlight

Ok, so I stole that line from George Carlin— but it’s fitting.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of more animal cruelty news, but this is the world we live in and we need to be aware of it.

A $3000 fine and 2 years in prison just don’t seem like enough to me. This man out to be beaten and have his teeth filed down. He’s a disgusting excuse for a human being, and I hope he endures the same suffering he made that dog go through.

If you ever see anyone treating an animal this way, PLEASE call the police or humane society in your area. That’s the only way people like this will be stopped.

Call me crazy, but I think some people just need to be killed…

When I read Slaughterhouse Five, I was so appalled by Lazzaro’s story about how he had killed a dog that bit him by feeding it a steak with pieces of scrap metal hidden inside that it made me sick to my stomach. I got the same feeling when I read this.

There is no possible explanation for this behavior that could convince me that there’s any shred of a reason to allow this person to continue living among the rest of us. If this person is found, he/she should be shot in the forehead. Quick, painless, and at a very low cost to the law-abiding, tax-paying majority. And there would be no chance that this evil, disgusting savage would ever harm another living creature ever again.

The Utah Highway Patrol is refusing to turn the description of the vehicle the assbag was driving over to police, apparently because “red Ford truck with a rack on top” is not enough information with which to start an investigation. Sounds to me like they just don’t want to waste their time pursuing justice for a dog.

Even if this person were caught, with the current state of our justice system an investigation, followed by a brief trial, would probably lead to the asinine conclusion that this person suffers from some mental disorder that causes them to occasionally fly into a violent rage and throw the first object he/she comes into contact with; lawyers would bamboozle the jury and somehow have the sentence reduced to a short probation, contingent on completion of a couple anger management classes. In other words, an absolute joke.

The sad thing is that if a human child had been thrown off an overpass, a full investigation with all necessary resources would have begun immediately— but because it’s “just a dog,” nothing will happen. Regardless of how a person feels about dogs, one can’t ignore the obvious reason to pursue an investigation— that this person would not only intentionally kill an innocent, defenseless creature but torture it by throwing it into oncoming traffic, which (quite clearly) would not mean certain death, but certainly horrible pain and fear. If this person had wanted just to kill the dog, a gun or a knife would have been sufficient. But no. Apparently that fate would have been too good for this one-year-old boxer puppy; so oncoming traffic was the method of choice. Furthermore, they showed obvious disregard for the safety of all the motorists on the highway that could have been injured or killed.

This person is obviously sick, sociopathic, demonic… just plain unfit for our society.

Seriously— something drastic must be done. We can’t let anyone else with this kind of sick disposition believe that he/she can do something so cruel and get away with it.

I’m just a bloggin’ fool these past couple days…

I really like this lamp.

Album Review

Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago (2007)

The story goes that Justin Vernon (who refers to himself on this project as “Bon Iver,” an intentional misspelling of the French phrase “good winter”) left his band and broke up with his girlfriend around the same time and, feeling a strong need to be alone, stowed himself away in a remote cabin in upstate Wisconsin for a whole winter. Some might immediately write this off as a trite, emo-chic tale born from the histrionic pining of some pathetic neo-beatnik. You be your own judge on that point; but Vernon claims to have begun this sort of hibernation with no intention of making a record. Here he discusses the experience. Luckily he brought his guitar with him.

The solitude, the wilderness and the snow seem to have been the right combination to unlock whatever was inside, needing to come out; it turned out to be a highly productive four months, and Vernon left with the base tracks of a 9-song debut, which he called For Emma, Forever Ago. It’s a short and delicate record, but holds so much musical weight that it only grows more dense with each listen. The songs were recorded only with Vernon’s acoustic guitar and voice tracks— additional vocals and auxiliary sounds were added later. The bare, organic foundation of the record shines through untarnished, but if it had been left at just this, it wouldn’t have nearly the impact. Vernon carefully refines the record’s tone with delicate harmonies and subtle guitar work, and a lot of clever, indiscernible noise tracks that sound more organic than instrumental.

The lyrics are mysterious and peculiar, but there is a comforting sincerity in Vernon’s sometimes haunting falsetto that transcends the words and brings the sentiments to life. His voice soars, sometimes with countless overdubbed harmonies, over the spare acoustic guitar, floating delicate melodies over steady, warm rhythms; aside from a few supplemental noise tracks, this is the sum of the record. Yet Vernon creates a sound so large with such a small arsenal and arranges the songs so concisely that the album spans far beyond the normal realm of what one might expect from this genre.

While the overall pace of the record is quite slow, it is infinitely dynamic, both in structure and in melody, which keeps it interesting and makes it more than just a rainy day record. On “Creature Fear,” there is a slow-soft/fast-loud variation with a driving snare drum and snappy bass line that even gets the head bopping a little bit— not that it’s a rocker by any stretch, but it’s an interesting break from the even keel that widens the record’s appeal without ruining its fine, wintery motif.

“Blindsided” is the record’s highlight; nestled away in the middle, it holds the group of songs together like glue. Perfectly conveying the record’s overall mood, it opens with the smooth, almost hypnotic repetition of a singular guitar note and simultaneous thump of a bass drum, which evokes a mental picture of the sun climbing slowly over a snow-covered plain in the early morning. Then comes Vernon’s beautifully harmonized voice and secondary guitar track, in perfect sync. The song develops slowly and delicately, then builds to a louder climax, with Vernon cleverly balancing several vocal and guitar tracks, and goes out with a glaring three-part harmony vocal that ends abruptly as the background noise fades away— like a breeze that blows through the trees and then disappears.

For Emma gorgeously embodies the calm and melancholy of winter— not only the literal season, but the proverbial winter a person occasionally suffers through— while never feeling hopeless or desperate. It’s a sincere and poignant telling of an important story that, while not readily intelligible, can easily be understood by the heart.

On the Emperor Scale:

___________________________________

Legend:

no penguin = dismal; should never have been made

= one listen was enough

= I might listen to it again, but wouldn’t recommend it to friends

= pretty good, but I’m not in love with it

= a must-hear that I would highly recommend

= permanent fixture in my collection

brief habits

I know, I know… it’s been so long since I’ve blogged and your life has been more empty than usual because of it. Sorry.

I used to get upset with myself for starting projects and then leaving them by the wayside. I would even throw things away just because I didn’t want to be reminded that I hadn’t finished them. But I realized some time ago, with a little help from Frederich Nietzsche, that I may have just been misunderstanding my intentions. Maybe at certain times, a half of a project is all a person wants or needs. Consider it a brief habit. After all, has there ever been a project that has lasted forever? Everything has its end. Some things just end earlier than others. I’ve left hundreds of songs and works of art unfinished. So what? They were still experiences. Maybe I don’t have them in a tangible form, but they still happened, and still contributed to the person I am today. And maybe that’s all they were ever intended to be, whether I realized it at the time or not.

Nietzsche had this to say about brief habits:

I love brief habits and consider them an inestimable means for getting to know many things and states, down to the bottom of their sweetness and bitternesses; my nature is designed entirely for brief habits, even in the needs of my physical health and altogether as far as I can see at all: from the lowest to the highest. I always believe that this will give me lasting satisfaction now—brief habits, too, have this faith of passion, this faith in eternity—and that I am envied for having found and recognized it:—and now it nourishes me at noon and in the evening and spreads a deep contentment all around itself and deep into me so that I desire nothing else, without having any need for comparisons, contempt or hatred. And one day its time is up: the good things part from me, not as something that has come to nauseate me—but peacefully and sated with me as I am with it, and as if we had reason to be grateful to each other and thus we shook hands to say farewell. Even then something new is waiting at the door, along with my faith—this indestructible fool and sage!—that this new discovery will be just right, and that this will be the last time. That is what happens to me with dishes, ideas, human beings, cities, poems, music, doctrines, ways of arranging the day, and lifestyles.— Enduring habits I hate, and I feel as if a tyrant had come near me and that the air I breathe had thickened when events take such a turn that it appears that they will inevitably give rise to enduring habits: for example, owing to an official position, constant association with the same people, a permanent domicile, or unique good health. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect—because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred back doors through which I can escape from enduring habits.— Most intolerable, to be sure, really terrible, would be for me a life entirely devoid of habits, a life that would demand perpetual improvisation:—that would be my exile and my Siberia.

I think what Nietzsche is trying to say here is that there is great joy and freedom in brief habits, and there is boredom and isolation in permanent habits. Discovering new things is a way to keep the mind and soul feeling fresh and alive. We need to give ourselves things to look forward to, and it is liberating to feel that we have control over our own lives and can stop one thing and start another if we so choose. When we get stuck in a routine, we feel trapped.

I started this blog about a month ago, and it was a fun and interesting distraction— still is. But I don’t blog nearly as much as I used to. It fell by the wayside, along with so many other brief habits of mine. Taking its place were more frequent walks with the dogs, “insane” Sudoku puzzles with Ashley, a few new design projects, cleaning the house, and various other things that brought me comfort and pleasure on those particular days. It isn’t that I gave up on the blog— it just gave way to other brief habits.

Finishing projects is satisfying, but it’s also often satisfying just to have the option to start as many as you want—even if you only finish half.

If only my crappy job could be a brief habit.