Well, Crap!

I tried not to care.  That lasted 11 games.  I’m totally wrapped up.  I love this team.

I love Roddy Buckets.  I love the 85 year old PG we have who just does every thing right.  I love Dirk’s new drives to the basket and his weird combination of FU attitude and WowdidIreallyjustmakethatclutchbasket face, I LOVE Carlisle’s hair-I mean it’s never out of place and yet it doesn’t look all Jimmy Johnsonish, I love that we win without half our team playing, I love that Drew Gooden upheld his reputation as a goofball by falling down on the game-winning play last night despite NEVER GETTING TOUCHED.  I love it all.  JJ, the Jet, even Damp (so far).  I especially love the other half of STN’s favorite player-Bowflex.

I know.  I know they’ll let me down.  Rationally, I can look at this team and understand that they’re NOT going to win the championship.  That our realistic ceiling for this year is the second round of the playoffs.  But I tell you what, I’d rather root for this team, that I love but won’t win, than I would for the whiney arrogant bitchy Celtics or the ego driven Los Angeles Kobe’s and God knows I’m not going to root for any team with Shaq on it or the shit-don’t-stink Spurs.

I know one of those teams will win.

I don’t care.

MFFL!

Dispatches from London V

What you’ll notice in the picture above is that it’s late afternoon (long shadows), and it’s a public park.  What is important about this photo, however, lies in what you can’t see.  First, this photo doesn’t provide quite enough detail to show you that nearly everyone of age in this park is drinking.  Bottles of wine, glasses of beer, a little champagne.  It’s 6:30 on a Friday afternoon and many groups of people have headed to the park to have a little end of week happy hour.  What you also can’t see, because it doesn’t exist, is the entire social fabric of Britain being ripped apart.  You don’t see young people losing their morals.  Nobody is having sex in the park, the sky is not falling, Armageddon has not occurred.  Yes, that’s right.  People drinking in public places and everything is okay.  Well ho-lee crap.  There’s like no place in the U.S. where you can do this (save N.O.).  We’ve been told it’s because it creates too many problems.  Well I suggest that relegating alcohol consumption to marginalized spaces and cordoned off areas is what creates the problems.  I mean for god’s sake, if the Brits can figure it out, we should.  We’re the greatest country in the history of the world.

On a related note, are all my posts from London about alcohol?

Chanter of Pains and Joys

This is the beginning to a much longer poem, or “reminiscence,” by Walt Whitman.  I know there’s a lot of great Whitman stuff, but this might be my favorite.  The way he situates my favorite line, line 20-”I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,”-makes it sound like being a poet is the greatest thing on earth, and I’m not sure he’s incorrect.

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,	5
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother—from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,	10
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,	15
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,	20
Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

I should have seen this coming…

Just so you know, what you see on television could possibly be embarrassing and hazardous to your health should you attempt to try what you’ve seen.

Take ‘The Dog Whisperer’ as an example. In the first season, Cesar takes a dog out roller blading. The dog burns off his high energy by pulling and running alongside Cesar on the suburban streets. It looks like a lot of fun, so I decided to try it.

After figuring out that I didn’t have the traction needed from two sturdy feet on the ground to correct my dog’s pulling behavior, I still attempted to roller blade around the neighborhood. We crossed a busy street and headed down a hill in the bike lane. As we picked up speed three cars decided to pass us, and wouldn’t you know it, an ambulance with its sirens blaring was coming the other way. I wrapped the leash around my left hand to keep her close, but as I picked up speed down the hill, I had to let out more of the leash. It seems as though I was going faster than she could either keep up, or she was just unsure of all the activity. Either way, she ended up crossing behind me and over to my right side, which of course knocked me off balance!

I remember thinking, “Wow! This is really cool!” as I was going down the hill. Then as she crossed behind me, and I thought, “This isn’t going to end well.” And indeed, it resulted in my feet flying out in front of me, and a landing on my backside and left wrist. I wasn’t hurt bad, and I could only laugh as the dog came over, wagging her tail, as if to say, “What are you doing? Get up!”

As I recall, Cesar didn’t roller blade with that particular dog on a hill. Now I know why.

We’re learning

It’s been almost two full weeks since I brewed my first batch of beer. I’m hoping that this batch will taste good as Seventonine plans a get together in a couple of weeks. The beer is a wheat beer, and it’s my first beer to brew by myself.

Here’s a couple of things I think everyone should know, should they plan on ever homebrewing themselves.

1) Ship your dog off somewhere for a couple of weeks. I don’t care how much fun they are to have around all of the other times a year—but when it comes to me homebrewing, my dog has become my number one nemesis. From hair, to stealing the ingredients, to chewing up some of the plastic pieces of equipment—my dog has certainly hindered the entire process. If you have a dog, ship it off somewhere for a couple of weeks while the initial process is going on, or at the very least quit storing your brewing supplies & ingredients on the kitchen counter.

2) Bigger isn’t always better. Consider the stockpot. Your fear is that while brewing, the contents will boil over onto the stove creating a sticky and stinky mess. So, you figure that you’ll outsmart the laws of physics and get a bigger stockpot, one that will have more room for the contents to boil inside. What you don’t consider is that the size of the stockpot will make it more difficult for your electric oven to heat the mixture to a boiling temperature. You try to position the pot onto part of two burners, and discover that this doesn’t really help. Then you get smart and position the lid over most of the pot, which enables the mixture to boil. Problem solved, right? Wrong. What you didn’t consider was that the stockpot won’t fit into the kitchen sink. And that’s where you planned on cooling it off with a sink full of ice water, just like the instructions advised.

3) They weren’t kidding about the hydrometer. That tool which measures the density of the liquid is evidently pretty important. It helps you to see how active the yeast is while brewing, and will help you determine when the yeast is finished doing its job. According to the books and directions, if you bottle before the yeast is finished working, your bottles could explode, which in all likelihood is a pretty bad thing. With this piece of equipment, you can diagnose any potential problems (i.e. stalled fermentation), but only if you take an initial reading after you’re done brewing. By the way, the hydrometer is not included in the basic brewmaking kit.

I’ve spent a couple of nights awake until about 3:00 AM brewing and transferring. As I’ve said, I’m hoping that this batch will turn out ok…given all of the things I’ve discovered during my first solo brewing, I’m just that—hopeful. We’ll let you know how it all turns out in a couple of weeks.

NFL is Anti-Capitalism

The following the text of a complaint I just sent to the NFL.  The NFL policy for years has been that you only get the local games plus two others on Sundays.  The networks are required to stay with the local broadcast even if it has long since been decided, only switching to bonus coverage after all the kneeldowns in a 21 point blowout.  On top of this, they are running banner ads on ESPN.com advertising that if you live outside of the U.S. you can stream all NFL games over your computer in HD.

WTF?  Why can’t we do this?  Why wasn’t this possible for us like two freaking years ago.  The crazy thing about all of this is that it’s not like I’m ripping off the NFL or trying to abuse their product or steal from them in some way.  I, and lots of others like me, are just trying to consume their product.  Yes, I know, Marxist cultural theorists are probably spinning in their graves right now about how I’m participating in my own oppression by even getting this worked up about a sporting event, but it’s less my desire to watch the Titans and more my desire to resolve this paradox that drives these comments.  arrrggggh.

Wait, let me get this straight.  My tax dollars are used to subsidize NFL stadiums.  Players salaries and owner’s profits are derived in part from what I spend on tickets, merchandise and watching advertisements, and yet anyone outside of USA can watch my team in HD, but I can’t because I don’t live in my hometown anymore?  Oh, this makes tons of sense.  Wake up NFL.  You might be the only business that tries to dictate to its users when/how they can consume the product.  I understand that I could pay however much money it costs to break my cable contract and then pay more for internet and phone all so I could switch to directtv and have the privilege of paying for Sunday Ticket, but that’s not a realistic option.  I honestly just don’t understand why this is so damn hard.  All I want to do is give you my money in exchange for a product you sell.  Why is this so difficult?

Renewing Minds, Renewing Spirits

Please, we implore you, stick around to watch the dance solo at the end.

Who’s Scared of Palin?

Random Thoughts

I don’t know that these things are connected, but something tells me that they are somehow:

1. I have no idea how I could sustain this energy level for 20 years, or an entire semester.  Class takes so much energy and also provides so much in return.  I want to give as much as I can in a sustainable way.  I think the trick is to push it right to the limit so that I leave with just a little more energy returned to me than I gave.  The difficult part, aside from trying to make such a calculation, is that what I get out of class is directly related to what I put into it.  The more I give, the more I get…but there is a point of diminishing returns-otherwise known as burnout.

2. It is, I think, the greatest frustration in my life that when I look at other people, they do not truly understand the depths of my love for them.  I wish there was some way to communicate these feelings better.  I wish my students, coworkers, the girl running the register at the grocery store, could understand in some way the way that I feel about them.  But then, to tell them would just be creepy.

3. Carbon Leaf is really, really underrated band.  Seriously, check out their myspace page for some samples.  I’ve got a thing for lead singers who don’t play instruments yet still manage to pull it off.  I think it’s so much more genuine than most of the lead singers who just learn a few chords and use the guitar as a prop more than anything else.  Shit or get off the pot, you know.  Anyway, Let Your Troubles Roll By and Life Less Ordinary are great songs.

WTTW VI: Ice Cream

It has recently been discovered that there are unspoken rules concerning the etiquette of making and eating ice cream.

First, if you have an urge to get any kind of ice cream, you MUST ask all of those in your presence if they would like some too.  This goes for ice cream bars, pints, bowls, dots, and cones.  Evidently, it is downright rude to get yourself some ice cream and not offer it to everyone in your *vicinity.

Second, if you decide to make ice cream, it is most helpful to use all the parts that are included in your ice cream maker.  This includes the agitator (that waffle-like apparatus that stirs the mixture as it freezes).  Not doing so will result in a poorly mixed, half-frozen concoction that others will taste and grimace once they heap a spoonful into their mouth.

Third, you must be aware that the liquid mixture will expand when frozen.  This is important to know just in case you offer to bring homemade ice cream over to your friend’s house, and need to borrow their smaller ice cream maker because you didn’t use the agitator in your own machine.  Though the half frozen mixture may fit into their smaller container may fit at the beginning, it will most certainly overflow into the ice & rock salt mixture.

Any other words of wisdom regarding ice cream etiquette may be left in the comments.

*Vicinity includes if you are in a state where one of the spouses of seventonine currently reside.