A Blogpost

I haven't blogged here in a while, and I feel bad about that. I think about blogging a lot, and I always tell myself that I should discipline myself to write everyday. But I don't. Right now, I'm so behind (and anxious about being behind) that I can barely see straight. I'm teaching every day this semester--well, Monday through Thursday. So, each day I have a prep to do, which I tend to prioritize higher than everything, even my own school work. For that last few weeks, my focus has been solely on teaching (or on preparing to teach), so I've had a bit of writer's block when it comes to this blog. I've made a few posts on my academic blog, and my intermediate comp class's blog, but none here, which really frustrates me. (I really admire any blogger who posts everyday. Mustering the discipline and generating enough material to write everyday is a huge accomplishment.) I keep telling myself that I'll get it under control soon, and start posting regularly, but I know that if I don't start forcing myself to post often, this blog might be in trouble. I don't want that. So, in the next few days, my posts will be forced-posts. I'm going to force myself to write...something. If I can discipline myself to blog when I'm busiest, maybe it will turn into a habit.

LOL

Why didn't my commencement have John Stewart?

Read it now. It's funny!

A billboard on highway 121

I know that any successful business must identify and target a specific clientele, but, wow, something's a bit unsettling about this!

Football anyone?

Update:
***Okay, since it seems that there might be some interest in fantasy football, I've created a league on espn.com. But, I need email addresses to send invitations, since I set it up as a private league. So, either leave an email address in the comment section or email me if you're interested. (Email link it upper right corner.) Also, contact other people who might have some interest. We need 10 teams!

Oh, and the league won't draft until August 31, so we have some time.***


I've haven't played fantasy football the past few seasons, and as a result, I haven't been a great football fan. Once the Cowboys ware out of it, I seem to have little at stake, and I quickly become all but disinterested. Add to that all that I have going on from week to week, and it's easy to see how keeping up with football slips down the list of priorities. Fantasy football helps me keep football a priority. It may be pathetic that I need to trick myself into following football closely, but, unfortunately, it's true. When I'm playing fantasy football, I enjoy the season so much more.

I've had good and bad experiences with fantasy football, and as with so much in life it's all about balancing between extremes. Even at my most enthusiastic, I've never been a stats geek. I've probably never even spent an hour per week looking at my team. The polar opposite approach to fantasy football is to join a league, build a team, and then neglect the team completely. This tends to ruin the league for those who might want to have some sense of competition.

All this to say, I want to play fantasy football this year, and I would rather not join a league of total strangers. So, if anyone who reads this blog regularly (or who might have just stumbled upon it today) is interested in some moderately competitive and free fantasy football, the challenge has hereby officially been made. I think it could be a lot of fun. Let me know.

Six Feet Under

I envy those who will be watching the finale of Six Feet Under tonight. As we've done with several HBO series, we've seen most of the series after it has come out on DVD. (Season 4 comes out Tuesday, so most likely, my week is shot to hell.) Anyway, we started watching Six Feet Under when we were going through Sopranos withdrawal, but we were quickly hooked. Six Feet Under has come up in a handful of coversations lately, and it's got me doing some serious reflection on the series as a whole. In the three seasons and forty or so episodes I've watched, I've cringed a lot. The show is gratutitous in just about every category. Its take on the American family is a lot like Cormac McCarthy's portrayal of manifest destiny--it's painful, bloody, quirky and erratic, but even so, it rarely feels overblown. And, even when the show goes to its most uncomfortable places, it's gripping because each character is so complex, with so many demons, just a family of good people struggling to deal with the nuances of their lives.

As I've thought about the show the last few days, I'm can't help thinking of The Sopranos at the same time. I've always felt that Sopranos was the best show on television. But, really, I think Sopranos appeals to a completely different set of sensibilities, mostly machismo and my penchant for mob movies (The Godfathers, Goodfellas, etc.) But pound for pound, I think Six Feet Under is the best.

FYI

Gas is 12 cents a gallon in Venezuela, $6.48 in Amsterdam.

A Post for the Sake of a Post

I haven't posted anything to this blog in a while. I say this blog, because I do have a secret blog. Well, it's not really that secret, actually (if you really want to read it, email me and I'll send you the url). It's just a blog that no one reads, and that's sort of the way I prefer it. It's a completely academic blog where I keep a teaching journal, freewrite about ideas, respond to academic reading and classes. I take my qualifying exams in about a year, and I think that blog will help me prepare if I keep it up. So, I have posted a couple times on that blog since I've been trying to get my butt in gear, writing syllabi and whatnot.

My other excuse is that my computer crashed three days ago, and the guy just came out and fixed it today.

And, the combination of everything starting back up again has given me a good case of writer's block when it comes to this blog.

So, that's all for now. Rest assured, the blog is not being abandoned, just neglected.

Denny Crain!

I ripped this off from Tammy because I think it's absolutely priceless. Hope you enjoy it as much I as I did.

The Boys of Summer

Another incisive article by Jayson Stark here.

Stark shows that we (sports fans) are quite fickle when it comes to what we label "cheating" in baseball. And, he argues that there's a pretty hypocritical sliding scale of reproach in the court of public opinion, too.

But again, this interests me because it's something I think I should be ashamed of. I can't muster the required amount of outrage by the bad behavior in sports. It entertains me, but it's not angering me. I still like Palmeiro, McGwire, and even if they were juiced, man it was fun to watch. I guess I'm just not a upstanding sports fan.

But what really astounds me is how seriously Congress is taking this whole thing. They got involved before when Raffy did his (now famous) finger waggle. Now, it's looking like they're taking measures to call him on perjury. If Raffy lied, I don't have a problem with him being called on it, but 1) I would think Congress would have better things to do; and 2) it's a hunch, but I seriously doubt they would care this much about cheating in football, basketball or (good lord) hockey. No, The homerun is revered. Baseball purists come out of the woodwork when the sport is being tampered with. It seems to me baseball's still the national pasttime, despite what ratings may say. It's interesting to watch all this drama.

In other news I ashamedly enjoy, Kenny Rogers's arbitrator got him off 7 games early. He pitched tonight, in fact. He really only missed about 2 starts. The shock-jocks on sports radio were livid (which, really, means that everything was quite normal in the world of sports radio. All day, I heard generic-sport-radio-diatribe #2 entitled, "There's no more honor in sports"). The veins on the foreheads were almost popping through the speakers. But, again, that kind of thing entertains me.

Then again, all this is coming from a guy who feels that this was baseball's finest moment:

sitting in a trailer, wearing no socks

Today, we visited the new Ikea store. Absurd. (see #3 for more details) We also visited my friend Larry (best man at wedding, no less) who works in a goodwill truck. Larry sits forty hours per week in the back of a trailer and accepts new donations, guards old donations, and writes receipts for those donators who think about their taxes outside the month of April. I sat there with him for a couple hours today, talking about baseball and music and each of our lives. Larry's probably the most overqualified person to ever man a goodwill trailer. He has a master's in English from a prestigious program, and he's probably one the most intellegent and best educated individuals I know. He's worked there since he left academia, almost two years. He sits in a truck for eight hours a day, five days a week. For most of those forty hours, he reads, and reads, and reads. He reads about 2000 pages per week, every week. Though the job has recently been wearing on him, it meets his two-fold criteria for an acceptable job: 1) He's not required to wear socks; 2) He rarely has to talk with a "boss."

In grad school, Larry grew tired of the "academic games" (the hierarchies, the competition, the sycophantic students, the publish-or-perish attitude, the 'second-rate, trendy' scholarship 'being shoved down his throat'), and he abandoned any plans he might have had to pursue a job in academia. He had no interest in feeling pressured to publish, build a CV, teach apathetic students, or fight for tenure--to turn his passion for literature into a job. Although, it took me a while to swallow that pill--that he had come so far, only to become embittered and disinterested--I do have special admiration for him. There's a lot of pressure in life to fill a mold that is socially acceptable, and Larry has no doubt raised some eyebrows with his choices. As a culture, we tend to look at college as job-training--valuable only insofar as it lands you in the professional world, making a livable wage. Most of our life-situations demand this, too. But Larry decided not to sacrifice his love for literature and art for financial security or social status. I think he would view that as some academic prostitution (actually, I think he would prefer the word "whore"). Regardless, staying in academia wasn't worth it for Larry; it wasn't even close. He knew it would only make him angry and bitter. He would rather sit in trailer and have Wordsworth and Dickens to himself and enjoy it. He can write if he wants, and he does, I think; but, he writes for himself, according to his desire. He's living life on his own terms, something few do. And I admire his resolve.

Recently, Larry's been working to get his massage therapy license. As a massage therapist, he will work for himself and there's no one to make him wear socks. And, he seems really excited about that vocation. The air conditioning will be a step up, as well. (Unless he sets up shop in an unairconditioned trailer. But I don't think he will, really.)

This blogging thing is really catching on.

In June at a workshop I attended, some one cited a statistic that really surprised me. They said that only 2% of the world's population has access to the internet. With that in mind, this article is even more mind-blowing.

Is this a fad for a few years? Will it die down? slow down? Increase? Will literally everyone be doing it in a year or so? Will it become the most important, or most relevant, medium soon?

Interesting to think about...

Some thoughts about baseball...

Notice the picture of Rafael Palmeiro there. It's not just any picture; it's the 1987 Topps baseball card. Why choose this picture? Well, it's the only year I collected baseball cards. That year, I obsessively collected Topps baseball cards. I collected the entire set by buying the 20 card packages with the crunchy piece of bubblegum inside. (Even though the gum was disgusting, I still chewed it everytime. It was a matter a principle. It was just the right thing to do.) Though I collected the entire set, that still wasn't enough for me that year. I bought the complete set, which to this day remains sealed in the long, green, rectangular box it came in. In 1987, I knew that such foresight and discipline would make me a millionaire in just a few short years.

Sometime during 2002, I came across this complete, still unopened 1987 set. (Over the fifteen years, I had actually forgotten about the treasure.) Upon finding the sealed green box, I went to the local card shop to see how many hundreds, even thousands, of dollars I might get. I expected the clerk to start salivating and make me a generous offer. After all, the set contained rookie cards for McGwire, Bonds, and Bo Jackson.

So, I casually walked up to the counter and told the clerk of my unopened complete set and asked if he had any interest.

He gave me a kinda annoyed and unapologetic "No."

Shocked, I asked what such a set might be worth.

He thought for a minute, and then, with a very pensive look on his face, said,

"If you put 'em in the spokes of your bicycle, it makes a pretty cool noise."

A part of me died that day. Needless to say, my cards were/are worth nothing. In fact, you can get a 1987 Topps set on ebay now for less than I paid in '87. Since then, I've been told the 1986 set is actually worth some pretty decent money. But, apparently everyone had my idea in 87.

Why did I think of this sad, sad story? Actually, I was looking for any picture of Palmeiro on google when suddenly I was attacked by nostalgia. As you might have heard, Raffy tested positive for steroids recently. Palmeiro has always been one of my favorite players; I love watching him bat. I think he has the sweetest, purest left handed swing I've ever seen. And, I was shocked when I heard he tested positive.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a pretty loyal listener to sports radio. I used to like it a lot more than I do now, but old habits die hard; if I'm in my car, and if I'm not listening the Kidd Kraddick in the Morning,
I'm most likely listening to some blowhard bitch about what's wrong with sports. I used to really like listening to these guys, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that most of them are really pretty bad at making a point. I would call most of the hosts "shock jocks"--that is, talk show hosts that express extreme opinions just to be controversial, and, ostensibly, to garner an intrigued listening audience. Because these guys tend to be so extreme, they generally tend to be wrong on most points, and really annoying to boot.

But anyway, today they were bitching about Palmeiro, which was no big surprise. (You should have heard them after the Kenny Rogers tantrum. It was hillarious.) Again, I listened to half a dozen "it-wasnt-like-this-in-the-good-old-days" and "baseball is doomed" arguments (I have satelite radio, so I have four sports channels). I've come to expect this these diatribes.

But what really made me want to talk about Palmeiro here is that most thought that he ought not be allowed into the hall of fame. Essentially, the argument is that his 500 homeruns and 3000 hits are voided by probable steroid use. I completely disagree.

Now, I am not going to make an argument that seeks to justify steroid use or alleged lying to congress under oath (which Palmeiro might have done a few weeks ago). I'll even allow that Raffy's numbers might be inflated by various factors. My deal is this: I don't really care if he used steroids. If it were my choice, I wish he wouldn't, but regardless, I still love watching Raffy swing the bat. Steroids are inconsequential to me.

Professional baseball players do things that I could never dream of doing. It's an amazing spectacle of skill and instinct everytime the take the field, whether juiced or not. I marvel, and they entertain me. That they might have been on steroids or otherwise banned substance doesn't diminish their achievement for me. I didn't miss "my shot" because some ol' boy chemically altered his body. Nor am I related to Roger Maris or Babe Ruth; I never even saw them play. What I have seen (Palmeiro, Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Griffey), I've enjoyed from afar. I remember how great it felt in '98 watching McGwire achieve the unthinkable, hitting 62 homeruns, with Sosa giving him a run for his money up until the very end. It was great to watch, whether they were juiced or not.

Baseball is entertainment. I have no other stake in it. For the last fifteen years, steroids have been all but allowed. I'm quite sure that more people used them than we will ever know about. I think the playing field was quite level. (I feel similarly about the salary structure. I really don't care who spends what. I just like seeing great teams. Great teams are entertaining.)

So as for Raffy making the Hall of Fame? I think he absolutely should. He played in, perhaps, a juiced era of baseball, but, in it, he accomplished amazing feats that distinguishes himself from the rest, and he was one of the more likable players in the game.

I did find one journalist who went against the grain on this issue. Jayson Stark argues that Rafael Palmeiro should unquestionably go into the hall. As a voter, he declares that his ballot will vote for Raffy the first and every time.

...it's not my job to police this sport. It's the sport's job to police itself. And for 15 years -- maybe 20 -- baseball's police station was a place where the cops just sat around, played cards, smoked cigars and let the inmates hit 900-foot home runs.

Baseball's idea of policing itself in the '90s was to allow a whole generation of players to play -- without testing them, without punishing them, without preventing them from bulking up however they wanted.

So if they "cheated," it wasn't because I let them cheat. It was because baseball let them cheat.

...So all I know is that Rafael Palmeiro had a Hall of Fame career on those fields he was allowed to play on.