Monday, September 15, 2003

Quote of the Week (or so) "Guilt, I have said, is the spur, for it is my secret Calivinist fear that baseball will run dry on me someday, and I will find nothing fresh in the morning camps, despite my notes and numberings, or go newsless on some sun-filled afternoon, and so at last lose this sweet franschise.  Baseball saves me every time--not the news of it so much as its elegant and arduous complexity; its layered substrata of nuance and lesson and accumulated experience, which are the true substance of those sleepy, overfamiliar practice rituals, and which, if we know how and where to look for them, can later be seen to tip the scale of the closest, most wanted games of the summer.  Almost everything in baseball looks easy and evident, but really learning the game, it turns out, can take a lifetime, even if you take notes."  -Roger Angell, Easy Lessons, 1984 9:57:54 PM    comment [] Starhazing Name a Star? The Truth about Buying Your Place in Heaven (SPACE.com). At least half a dozen companies are offering to attach names to stars while making the designations seem official, providing a fancy certificate and directions for locating the newly named point of light. Their promotional strategies range from harmlessly playful to bordering on fraudulent. Meanwhile the night sky is being populated with unofficial names, at $49.95 a pop, one unsuspecting buyer at a time. In case you were ever curious.  I was.  10:40:33 AM    comment [] Your words are just a wall that's between you and everybody else I'm a single guy.  I try not to make a habit of discussing my status in such matters with my readers, but most of you have been around long enough to figure it out (and I'm sure those of you who haven't, won't have to wait very long for the next opportunity to find out, unless you're the random guy from Rose-Hulman who's got me on his blogroll.  If that's you, thanks and have a Vanilla Coke on me).  Besides, concealing these things to the blogosphere is apparently not considered virtuous; in the phenomenon I like to call vPDA you can usually take a rough median of 6.3 posts on any one journal to figure out of the protaganist has himself or herself hitched up to a wagon or not.  Anyway, that's a lot of rigamarole about nothing.  Here's my point (completely unrelated to the tongue-in-cheek irreverancy taking place a few posts down; anyone who's ever seen me can vouch about that being horseradish.) Now, here's where you probably expect me to break out the pity confetti about how I've trudged through three-plus years at this university without having as much as a coffee date, or how I haven't been more than slightly intrigued by anyone for over two years (I've probably written about that before somewhere...).  Well, you're partially right.  And, I'm somewhat pleased to present, the density of the whole thing has lessened somewhat over the past three years from "Dire Straits" to the "gee, wouldn't it be swell" division.  As I've mentioned previously, I'm sometimes given to chiding myself with the rationale which says that I have no business being so pretentious in my search for a mate, cognizant of how many more deserving gentlemen there are wandering unhooked in the pond.  This is, of course, a fallacious line of reasoning.  Romance isn't a meritocracy, of course, even though there's an inclination for all good capitalists to make it one, much like we do everything else.  Think of it more like puzzle pieces, or a rubik's cube. There also exists the possibility, (or even probability) that my low stock value on the IU Male Exchange is just another symptom of my larger disease.  I have, much to my chagrin, come to agreement with my high school health teacher in believing that women are, in the end, hopeless prragmatists.  We men don't give them much credit for it, but our actions confirm its accuracy.  Personalities don't pay bills and drive kids to school on Mondays.  I feel somewhat ashamed that I can write at such length about this and such brevity about more pressing issues.    2:16:14 AM    comment [] Jealousy? I'm a pretty self-assured person; I like to limit my exposure to those things that I believe are level or below my scope of quality or ability (in my opinion, at least, your mileage may vary) but periodically I get drawn in to a blog that is so agonizingly good that reading it never fails to humiliate me (and remember kids, the root of that word is "humble").  I'm sure you, my bright readers, rarely feel that way.  It's good though, to make me feel squeamish about my naivete and crudeness.  So I'll probably keep going back.  1:00:43 AM    comment [] After midnight... FallenSnow02: unlike me FallenSnow02: i'm super hot AnonMelancholic: you're scalding AnonMelancholic: I'm so hot the girls turn their heads and quail FallenSnow02: you're so hot that steam is coming out of my computer screen AnonMelancholic: I'm so hot, I serve dinner on my eyelids FallenSnow02: i'm so hot, when i go swimming, the water vaporizes AnonMelancholic: I'm so hot, the janitor hooks my neck up to the water pump FallenSnow02: oh boy FallenSnow02: alright, you win FallenSnow02: you're hotter than i am 12:40:57 AM    comment [] For crying out loud... I can't believe I haven't officially plugged the new Over the Rhine double-album "Ohio."  It came to me in the mail this past week, and I've already nearly worn out disc one.  It's different in approach than "Films for Radio" (very few programmed loops and electronic effects, a lot more acoustic-piano based stuff) but in my opinion it eclipses "FFR" in quality.  The first disc is straight solid, top to bottom, and is definitely stronger than disc 2, but there are a few winners on that side as well ("She" and "How Long Have You Been Stoned?" to name a couple) Oh yeah, I got a signed copy as well.  Looking forward to (hopefully) seeing them here in Bloomington on Oct. 3.  12:08:25 AM    comment []

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