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This world is mean, and awful.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. I just want everyone else to be happy, too. But when you are faced with negatives everywhere, it clouds and challenges your ability to be happy.

I've been beaten, and beaten, and beaten some more, and I don't know that I can continue to hold out hope that success is possible for me. And unfortunately, it's a repeating cycle. You'll never win in a situation where they can already tell that you think you'll lose.

Maybe it's because I refused to approach success from a competitive standpoint. I didn't want to believe that it was "me vs. them." I wanted to believe that we all could win.

It's as though nobody else wants you to find real, sustainable happiness, because they're not sure there's enough to go around. They don't realize the greatest maxim of love, that the more you give, the more there is, which, surprisingly, I still believe.

God, I feel worthless.

Yeah, I Know I'm a Crappy Blogger. Step Off.

TBS, what the fuck happened? You've been so good, and then you pull this stunt? The MLB Playoffs are still baseball games, not an episode of Lost. Stop getting fancy with all your camera angles, and zooms, and crooked closeups, and just show us the game.

Also, do the Cardinals have a facial hair police? Because they SHOULD.
Dodgers are going to rock this series.

All for now.

I'm Just Gonna Say It

The Rangers were better than the Twins and Tigers this year, and yet one of the latter two will be in the postseason instead.

I think baseball is structured better than just about any professional sport, but this illustrates a glaring weakness in the playoff structure.

All for now.

Here's One That Oughta Get'cha Talkin'

If you haven't seen this yet:
http://blogs.chron.com/talkingtolerance/2009/09/needed_petloving_atheists_in_t.html

Some ingenious entrepenuer has found a way to make a killing by offering to take care of your pet after the rapture. Chances are, if you believe in the rapture, you probably believe your dog can't get into heaven.

I'm not going to pass judgement on that opinion, but I will tell you that I don't believe it can be heaven without them, no matter what my Teachings of the Catholic Church class says about heaven and your memory of life on earth.

All for now.

I Think it's Worth Noting

...that sometimes things aren't my fault.

I don't like being held to a different set of rules that someone else doesn't have to follow. If you get to behave a certain way, then so do I. And if I don't, you shouldn't be able to, either. This basic principle will keep us from having to go to war.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ryan Reynolds is playing Green Lantern, which would've been fine if he were going to be Kyle Rayner, but making Reynolds Hal Jordan is something with which I will have struggles. If anything, anyway, Reynolds would've been a far more appropriate Wally West version of The Flash. You know this to be true.

All for now.

For Your Consideration

As we approach tomorrow's July 4th holiday in the United States, I would like to take a moment to write about a man who I think, among the living, most embodies the American ideal: Pete Seeger.

When Pete Seeger passes, I think one of his enduring legacies will be his insistence that we all sing along with him. A tireless environmentalist, civil rights advocate, supporter of peace and first amendment rights, he and his indelibly American banjo will be most remembered singing songs along with his audience - sometimes to the point where you got tired of his effort, but therein lies the core of the man. Playing the standard "This Land is Your Land," written by his personal friend Woody Guthrie (Seeger's 90, after all), Pete Seeger becomes every American - a creature obsessed with wants and infatuated with the promises that America holds. What's rare about him, perhaps unique among prominent public figures (particularly musicians), is that whereas many Americans in his situation want these things for themselves or their progeny, Seeger wants them for you. That's why he wants you to sing along. In Pete Seeger's world, you're the star of the show.

How fantastic is that? While we fret over the United States of America's slow morph from democratic republic to capitalist oligarchy, Seeger frets on the banjo and helps turn the latter into something for the former. And before you say it, I KNOW, I KNOW, it's much easier in music than it is in practical, everyday life, but if art is a representation for our ideals, well, then, it gives me hope.

Happy 4th of July.

All for now.

I Went to Camp!

And now it's over, hoss! Children are not the boss of me no more.

Every now and then, I consider going into teaching as a profession. Then I do camp, and I'm glad I don't do that nine months out of the year.

I'm all achy and creaky and all I want to do this weekend is sleep.

Anyway, there's nothing like not being able to blog that makes you want to blog, but then you can't remember what it is that you wanted to write about in the first place, so *fart noise.*

Do you think living in the 18th century would be cool? Then come visit me for a week and I'll convince you that it certainly was NOT. Oh, sure, you could find clean water, but the teeth, my friends, the teeth! And jobs and nature were plentiful and there was no need to worry about being blown up by a nuclear nuclear, but there was no asteroid defense system in place! We didn't even know we needed one. And sure there was no urban overcrowding in the American colonies, but then again... bears. And there was no baseball yet, so I don't really know what you're talking about when you tell me you'd like to be a wood turner and live in Philadelphia in 1775. Chances are you'd have a soldier quartered at your house, doing your wife and eating all your food, so *fart noise.*

*Fart noise* on the whole bunch of it!

All for now.

Jingo All the Way

I feel like the media is trying to fire Cecil Cooper.

The Houston Chronicle's Jerome Solomon and Richard Justice, and 790 AM's Ted DeLuca and John Lopez have been talking about nothing but the firing of Cooper for the last two weeks, speaking of it as though it were a foregone conclusion.

In the last decade or so, sports media has been building to something, that until recently, I did not realize was really starting to bother me. There are no "sports reporters" anymore - they've been replaced by sports editorialists, who are more often than not personalities.

Look at Richard Justice's blog, for instance. At first, I was going to complain about how the blog, which started out as a(n intended) humorous side project between columns had morphed into a blathering irrelevancy that started to bleed into his proper columns, but then I realized that all blogs are basically that, and having a blog as part of your official workload is the problem in the first place. Some editor somewhere (I'm sure Houston is not alone here) decided that the cult of personality was going to be the savior of print media, and started requiring columnists to keep blogs.

Thing is, we don't tune in to sports media for their opinions the way we do entertainment and dining critics. Sports reporting used to be news with a little bit of analysis thrown in. Now it's all - I can't use the word analysis because it seems too lofty for what these guys do - criticism. Non-constructive at that.

Of course, we don't need Sports news the way we used to. We DVR the games so we can see what happened for ourselves, and now even the most casual fan can use the internet to get the latest on Brandon Backe's rehab assignment or the pitching staff at Salem that's supposed to be on the rise. But boy, do we love to discuss it.

So sports personalities help us facilitate that. The good ones (like Charlie Palillo) stand apart from the pack, stating the facts and letting them vent, and when they do offer up an opinion, it's reserved and backed up, and it almost never feeds into the hype. The Chronicle and the Monsters go it the easy way, by picking up a big stick covered in gasoline and sticking it into the embers, igniting a huge fire out of something that was simply meant to keep our feet warm.

This leads me back to where I led off: I'm sure discontent within the organization has led some to question the security of Cecil Cooper's job. But I would bet you dinner at Fogo De Chao that it was far from a foregone conclusion, and that cooler heads might have prevailed before guys like Solomon and DeLuca stuck their big gasoline-soaked sticks into the mess and made it an issue that couldn't be avoided. Now everyone who follows the Houston Astros has been innundated with the nonsense of "Cecil Cooper should be fired" to the point where half or two-thirds of them believe it to be true because this is their sports *news,* after all, and they start clamoring for Coop's head, booing him at home when he comes out to make a pitching change or something. And Drayton McLane, one of the biggest sheep in the flock, hears this, and decides that the manager has to go.

Maybe Cooper needs to be fired. I don't know, and I don't want to discuss it. My beef is with the sports media for creating a situation in which he has to be. They've made themselves a part of the story. It's irresponsible journalism, and I am sorry that it had to end this way for a decent, hard-working guy, a guy who will probably be a lot more forgiving towards his transgressors than I would be.

All for now.

Save Walter White

I've mentioned this a few times already on this page, but if you haven't seen "Breaking Bad," you've got to see "Breaking Bad." If you like your shows about crime and drugs and cops and dealers, and refracted views of money and family and the American idea of success, this is your show.

*MILD SPOILER*
In tonight's episode, which is one of the most arresting hours of T.V. I've ever watched, Walter's son launches a fundraising website called "Save Walter White," and it's the most poignant damned thing, because every week it gets clearer and clearer that this man cannot be saved. One of the major themes of The Sopranos when it was on is that people can't change, and AMC's two big shows - this and Mad Men, which is brilliant for a variety of other reasons - pick up that mantle and run with it in a big way. If you couldn't get into Tony Soprano because he wasn't identifiable to you, then Walter is the man with which you need to start spending your Sunday nights.

*LESS MILD SPOILER*
It's a a little premature since the Season 2 finale is next week, but I want to celebrate the show's ability to create moments with a list of my ten favorites from this Season. So, yeah, maybe this will change in seven days, but for now:

10. The cold open with Badger and DJ Qualls
9. Tio and the Burrito
8. Skinny Pete gets robbed by Spooge and the Skank
7. Saul talks his way out of being murdered
6. Hank's Brewery - both scenes
5. Walter, Skyler, and the facial mask
4. Walter shows his baby the money
3. The tortoise explodes
2. Walter confronts the up and coming dealers outside of the home improvement store
1. The last scene with Jane

You let me know if you want to watch this show, and I will watch it with you. Be warned, though - I'll be half watching you to see your reaction.

All for now.

A Bear in a Studebaker

I've been thinking about that part of The Muppet Movie where Rolf & Kermit are singing "I Hope That Something Better Comes Along," which, if you haven't seen it, what? Okay, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IctDbZ-t1I

Anyway, after Rolf sings, "the pitter patter of soles, the little feet of tadpoles," and Kermit corrects him by saying "Um, Rolf, tadpoles don't have feet," Rolf says "Oh, sorry about that," which is very polite of him, because I would have looked Kermit right in the eye and said, "I AM A TALKING DOG, PLAYING A SONG THAT I JUST MADE UP FOR YOU ON THE PIANO."

That would've shut him up.

All for now.

Underwhelmed

A couple of things:

W. Mark Felt, "Deep Throat," died today. History will remember him as the man who disappointed more conspiracy theorists at once than any other single person in history.

"Mark Felt - really? Couldn't it have been Kissinger, or Gene Rayburn, or someone else?"

Second - Aaron Boone? Seriously? I really don't like the message our free agent signings are sending. I've heard the whole spiel, of course, the economy and Drayton and what-not, but Aaron Boone is a white flag with a third baseman's mitt. I'd rather bring in Chris Johnson a little early and let him mature at the big-league level.

That said, if we concentrate on developing a couple of middle infielders, we could be kind of awesome in 2011.

All for now.

Mark Me

A fellow we'll just call The Admiral once chided me for dealing in absolutes after I launched into a diatribe about the woefully wronged Best Original Song category at the Academy Awards (someday, friends and lovers, this will make a blog all its own), telling me that just because something was my opinion, it did not instantly become the gospel truth.

In matters of grave importance, perhaps. But for trivial stuff like the Best Song Oscar, I think I can comfortably state that my opinion is worth more than Gregory Peck's corpse on this one.

Regardless, I felt the need to disclaim all my further stated opinions as just that whenever we spoke of things.

And then one day I mentioned that the Pope was getting pretty old. Less than a month later, he died.

Henceforth, in any disclaimer of my opinion, it should be noted that while my opinions are not country, and therefore cannot harelip the Pope, they are sufficiently powerful enough to deal a death blow every once in a while.

Since B16 has been a fairly inneffectual pontiff up to this point, I'm gonna leave him alone. I also like calling him B16, and referring to the Pope-mobile as "B16's Hoopty."However, the minute he starts showing aggression towards Jews, homosexuals, or Super Earth, you'd better believe I'm gonna have to give him the "your life depends upon my view of you" look.

All for now.