a picture is worth...

a few folks expressed enthusiasm for the advent of pictures earlier in this blog, and now it seems there are a few who regret its departure. (not all the same folks, but go figure...) i've done a little ruminating on this, and i'm tempted to decide that fred r. barnard might just be a bit of a crank. ;-) my favorite part of his aphorism's etymology is his response to questioners that he claimed it to be "a chinese proverb, so people would take it serously". (you gotta love a marketer's marketer).

my sticking point today is over the not-always-so-subtle distinctions between editing and composition. (one irony is that here, at the great salt mine, they've just determined it necessary to combine writing and editing into one constructional step, ostensibly because it takes too much time to get writers and editors onto the same page when the subject is something that neither of them understand too well, so they figure they need to just put one literate person on it, targeting consistency over clarity and hoping for the best). but here, at the cranky crank's online blog, both the editor and the writer are intimately familiar with the goat's head soup of the day, but, yet, the concept guy STILL isn't satisfied that either of them add anything to the finished product, or are at all necessary to the "process". the theory, simply put: a picture is only worth 1000 words when you're either pandering, propagandizing, or trying to put something across to a disengaged audience. here, at the cranky crank's online blog (i'm kinda liking that name), we're just trying to put ideas to white space, to see what sticks with people who prefer things to get sticky. pictures, like terse, clearly and cogently expressed thoughts, seem a bit too close to "finished product" to serve as online thought-fodder for the truly thoughtful. the theory's corollary? if it takes a picture to "get it", then it wasn't being thought about very carefully in the first place, now was it.

so, sorry about the absence of visual entertainment these days. the publisher fully accepts the perils of a likely dropoff by digruntled readership, but it just isn't noodling unless the noodles remain characteristically tangled. i'd insert a photograph of a pasta fork, but you get the picture...

better hockey through surgery

i'm only disappointed i didn't get ahold of martin havlat... but between patrik elias, daniel briere, rick nash, ladislav nagy, marek svatos, and petr prucha, i'm betting i've snagged more than a few late-round draft steals. (behind my more-obvious picks like alexander ovechkin, jonathan cheechoo, marian hossa and henrik zetterberg).

some folks load up on last year's stats leaders. (kinda like investing in blue chips, though for every microsoft there's a general motors, and we must always be mindful that past results are an uncertain predictor of future performance). other folks hitch their wagons to rising stars. (worked for me with ovechkin and lundqvist last year, though folks cringing along with every twinge in evgeni malkin's dislocated shoulder are also aware that there are no sure things). me, this year, i've been channelling steve austin and investing heavily in modern medical science. we'll see how it goes.

it's ironically appropriate that i should be scheduling my own self for personal augmentation in just a few weeks too. of course, like the big money athletes, i'm timing things so as not to prematurely end my current season. and it'll be supremely interesting to discover how much of my current condition is due to age, and how much of it is just shredded cartilage to be excised and thrown out like so much kitchen waste. wouldn't it be a hoot to find myself careening about the pitch like a 30 year old next spring? (less than two years, and just three more seasons, until i'm eligible to move up to the deceptively entitled "over-50's", where 48 is close enough, and real open field opportunities await those who can still hobble about with any kind of speed).

i don't think i'll tell anyone that the real reason for delaying the surgery is that standing around on sidelines would also be verboten during recovery, and there's NO WAY i'm gonna choose personal convenience over the commitment i made to a couple of dozen kids this fall, who are all giving it their all like the good example i wish to always follow.

but the selfish story seems to sit better with people, and how cynical is THAT!?! (and they say I'M cynical...)

OH!!!

and, i just had to mention it...

i saw andy dorman down in cleveland circle this morning, and i was pleased to: 1) be on the same street with such a gifted athlete, 2) idly note that you don't have to be physically imposing in street clothes to be such a gifted athlete, 3) share the excitement of playing for a playoff spot this saturday night with a smile and a wave, 4) see that it's possible to be a sports hero and still get around in a regular car (he was getting out of a silver golf gti), and, 5) muse on the fact that there are likely to be very few people in this world who would be excited about any of points 1 through 4, let alone able to recognize him, but, hey, blogs are not about what anybody else thinks.

:-)

everybody's doing it

peter woit's recent "not even wrong" has fun with the irony of intelligent people being profoundly wrong about something. (in this case, physics and string theory, which he convincingly points out shouldn't even be called a "theory" at all, but i digress). the best part (for me, at least) is that he's actually relatively poorly qualified to be standing toe-to-academic-toe with the sheepskin-clad emperors of "science" he assails, (though i suppose being a mathematics professor at columbia does give him a certain amount of "textbook cred"), but he stands on the relatively unassailable ground of having a good point, and he happily makes the most of it. ("good on ya", as my english soccer buddies might say). i wouldn't have paid so much attention to the book were it not for my weekly schedule interruption by the acolyte of gurumayi (there's nothing like the interruption of having to be in the presence of someone who has been in the presence of someone who is in the presence of the "supreme self" on an "uninterrupted" basis, now is there) and how there's a curious similarity in my mind between the 10th, 11th and 12th dimensions (one through nine, i'm cool with those), and the place wherever all these souls go before being loaded into their next corporality.

anyway, the whole concept was reminded to me by the cheerful othopedist's observation that physically active men my age will likely all get "scoped" sooner or later. (and, no, he wasn't talking about being checked out in a bar by some hot babe in the corner). it seems, these days, and it's the same with the proof-less postulations of academia as it is with bum knees, everybody's doing it. i suppose it's a fair blessing that we get more of christy mihos' gen-yoo-ine massachusetts patios on the airwaves these days (you go, christy!) than we do the hopelessly contrived emotings of siddhic shills for shaktipat, so it can't be EVERYBODY... but you get the point. ("for a schedule of upcoming shaktipat/siddha intensives and retreats, contact a participating siddha yoga ashram, center or chanting and meditation group near you", and, no i didn't just make that up, i transcribed/paraphrased it from siddhayoga.org, and you can look it up if you don't believe me).

(just as an aside, in case you have an enlightened opinion, i'd love to ask whether or not i am forever damed for possessing the inimitable cynicism of the marketing professional, in the face of everything else in this world that does, indeed, boil down to money... i really would like to know).

anyway...

it's nice to know that smarter folks than me are just as frequently found about the world with their heads just as well up their asses...

inventory

i've been thinking about "oh" from my last week's skull session, and contemplating my wisest course of action for this. the instictive impulse was to challenge and to offer implied intellectual respect, but, as we've seen, this is viewed as combative and un-student-like, and is unlikely to lead anywhere good. (what's japanese for doormat?) the other extreme would be condescending "oh's" and wise-assed silence, and, i've got to believe, even direr prospects.

the goal is rebuilt trust and faith within a completely separate relationship, so i'm ethically ok with machiavelli's compromise regarding ends over means. so what's the play? (yeah, how's THAT for cynicism!!! yeay team!) :-)

reflecting on this past week's blog postings, i'm struck by the rich trove of pithy genuflections to introspection and humility. ironic that sincerity can be reworked for such insincere purpose, but, hey, even the great dr robert allows that sometimes in love you have to "fake it 'til you make it". (doubly ironic because i've found that "true love" means never having to fake anything, but i digress...) my take? i'm sincere about my love for my wife, and to repay my cosmic, karmic debt to her love for me, i'm willing to go every last mile and take every last assault upon reason to earn my chance.

so i'm struck by the importance of inventory. yeah, yeah, i know "just in time" is all the rage among car manufacturers and the rest of the lemmings that follow deming, but, remember, i'm the guy who's still using hardware inherited from grandpa who bought out an entire going-out-of-business store inventory because you never know when you're going to need just the right tool for a job. in the past week alone i've used three of his handy plastic wire-connectors to finish the rewiring of the front walklights, (and a 16lb sledge to reset the pavers that had to be dug up to replace the faulty conduit), a 1/2" paddle bit to breach the wall to the utility room to complete the cabling job for the downstairs stereo setup, and a judicious selection of washers, bolts and screws to do about six jobs around the house. who needs home depot when you've got INVENTORY?

so what'll it be? shall i thank the sensei for his patience, and discuss my penitent reflections on being a better person, making better choices about what and who fills my time, and then what the good doctor thinks about this year's boston bruins? (ya gotta have a fall back to fill time, in case the bs piles up faster than you can "oh" and "ohm" your way out of it).

:-)

past performance is not an indicator of future performance

readers of stock prospecti and followers of professional athletics have to live with this vexing truth every day. (having picked alexander ovechkin, henrik lundqvist and jonathan cheechoo out of last year's fantasy hockey free agent pile, i'm tempted to consider myself relatively well-educated on this subject). think matt carle can be the next bobby orr? stranger things have happened.

so it's interesting to observe people drawing their conclusions and making their decisions based on "experience". we all do it. we do it about our emotions (e.g. "i can only be happy with a lover who...") and we do it about our professions and home life as well. ironically, it seems we're often clouded most by our own prior success. if it worked once before, just count the number of people who are convinced, about themselves as well as about others, that it will work that way each successive time ad infinitum.

these days, my particular cross to bear is the one which indicates to everyone else the conclusions to be drawn about what i've chosen to do with my life up to this point, and what that says about its future. i'm learning not to try to confront these expectations with logic, as there are few conclusions more enduring than those based on an intuitive opinion.

my favorite example of heart over head involves statistics. quick, pick a major league baseball franchise, or a national hockey league franchise, and, sight unseen i'll bet you $20 that two out of their roster of around 25 players share the same birthday. (pick a national football league franchise and their roster of 50+ players, and i'll bet you $1000). don't you think that, out of 365 calendar days, that among 25 players it would be unlikely that two share a birthday?

of course, since i'm offering the bet, you'll likely balance your intuition against your suspicion and be circumspect about your choice. but it won't change what you intuitively *believe*, until you actually see the "proof".

well, the only proof available to me is a long run of time that has yet to transpire. if i were other folks, i wouldn't bet against me, despite what intuition might prefer to tell the heart.

subscriptions

more than in recent years, i'm taking the time to consciously choose the sources of information and entertainment i take in. though this results in an arguably better mix of input, it's still a struggle to find the time in which to do it all justice.

yesterday, a coworker remarked on her observations of my desktop reading material. she, too, has been evaluating the daily challenge of optimizing her dietary food for thought, and we each agreed that "the economist" seems to hold advantage over all other weekly news sources. among our reasons are the obvious and sometimes extreme bias of all the us-based publications that would otherwise serve as alternatives, as well as the economist's intelligent written style and editorial choices for "extra" content, as with their "science and technology" and "books and arts" sections. after all, what other publication, in their final-page feature, could or would highlight the obituary of alfredo stroessner one week, and then steve irwin the next?

for periodicals, in addition to choosing a weekly news summary (the economist), there's also a need for a daily news feed (bbc headlines via rss feed into my firefox browser) and, of course, hourly sports updates. ("footie fox" for soccer and "sports fox" for hockey, football and baseball in the browser info bar). i also peruse the boston globe sports and comics sections over my product 19 (with honey and WHOLE milk) in the morning, along with the local paper on friday, and, monthly, i treat myself to all the tech and flash in wired magazine. (guilty pleasure).

think my days are full enough? not quite. for musical input, there's the 45 minutes to and from the office each day and the various drives for soccer practices, etc. which are filled mostly from the i-pod shuffle play, but also alternately from 92.5 wxrv and 88.9 wers. (honorable mention to 90.0 wbur, but npr isn't hardly musical, so just a parenthetical footnote for it here). slaking my thirst for video entertainment there are the occasional movie theater trips (most recently "the oh in ohio" and "over the hedge", and you can use your imagination which of my "best girls" i took to each of those) but mostly a steady diet of tivo-enabled, time-shifted television viewing interspersed with a random dvd rental. (had to cancel netflix for lack of time to make economic use of the variety, so, sorry, tony). right now the tivo is logging weekly patriots' games, and is set to season-pass "my name is earl", (naturally), as well as "scrubs", "boston legal" and a flyer on tina fey's new "30 rock'. snl didn't make this fall's cut, as didn't csi. lost, and a bunch of other derivative and/or forgettable zeitdiebs, but that's hardly any shame on them, given the extremely limited time to be divided.

the real challenge, despite the heavy contention at the periodical level, is on the book front. priorities were completely realigned this summer with my recent personal tsunami/katrina/ground-zero, but they seem to be drifting back again towards "normal" now that alterations are becoming more like altercations, and the weight of some of joseph chilton pearce's more "out there" claims begin to tilt the balance of reason already precarious among hendrix' and others' cacophonous interpersonal prescriptions. ironically, i feel that i have gotten more for myself out of studying gentleman johnny burgoyne's failed hudson river campaign of 1777 (too clever is dumb, as ogden nash would say, and pride and self-aggrandizement certainly do seem to goeth many ironic places before such falls as i have had) than i have most of the "self-help" blatherings that pass for literature at the bookstore these days.

which takes us all the way back to people. it occurs to me that we subscribe to people as much as, if not more so than, we do any media we read or watch or to which we listen. dr robert would like to blame me for seeking a position of influence over another under some less-than socially admirable terms, but i've honestly taken stock of my situation and concluded that i've less sought such as i have unethically exploited its convenience. for me, if i'm guilty of anything, it's failing to make optimum choices in how i've spent my finite and precious personal time. if that sounds like cold repudiation, then i guess i'll accept the coincidentally convenient benefits to be accrued to my "legitimate" love relationship, but, essentially, it just is what it is without any temperature at all. i don't think anyone can argue that my life in past years has been anything approaching optimal on the "trees by their fruit" scale. (nope, things don't taste so good on anybody's tongues right about now, do they).

so, to whom do you subscribe? i've most recently chosen an acrimoniously-divorced honduran indian with classic ex-marital and making-ends-meet problems, and a recovering alcoholic right wingnut who listens to rush limbaugh on his headphones while he works. believe it or not, all politics aside, they're each trying to be better persons, just like me, and if you'll take my opinion for it, they're doing a pretty damn good job of progress in the right direction. i'd be a man unable to learn anything from my past if i didn't find a whole lot to emulate among the two of them.

i wonder if there's any way to trace the etymology of the advice to "surround yourself with good people"... i would guess there would be fewer arguments with the sentiment than there would be discussions about who those people might be. pretty clear i'm not one of them on a lot of people's lists, and even clearer that i shouldn't be on a few of those where i am. i'm just forever grateful that i'm still on the big one (for me) that really counts, despite what i've done to prove to most others that i shouldn't be. sometimes, i guess, you just have to develop your own list.

meditation

i'll first give a nod to one of my wittier friends for observing that tuesday morning "alterations" might sometimes these days more usefully be re-monikered "altercations"...

but on to the main event: among the utterances earlier this week were a repeated reminder of the belief in reincarnation, the pointed inclusion of the personal meditation teacher among the list of exemplary beings that begins with jesus, the buddha and (grudgingly) mohammed, an admonishment that teachers (actually, the word used here was "masters") were not traditionally questioned by their students, and the general suggestion that my intellectual contentiousness was unlikeable in addition to being disagreeable to karma for being too much about the "i".

fair enough, but there was a moment where it all became crystal clear to me. in the part about contentiousness and students being advised to be more of the "yes, master" style, it was offered as an example that a better response to a pronouncement would be, simply, to say "oh", rather than follow it up with a rejoinder of some difference from the original point. my response in the moment? you'd have to know little of me not to guess... "oh".

so it occurs to me to wonder just how sensitive to sarcasm this self-appointed sage might think himself to be, and just how subtle an un-subtle person like me is capable to be.

the answer, indeed, is "oh".

the "me" in team

this one is going to be all over the place, so fasten seatbelts, please...

not that this has anything directly to do with anything, but i'm reminded that tom lehrer, (that was the year that was), in his spoken-word preamble to "national brotherhood week", observed that "i'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and i know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings, and i HATE people like that." the logical thread for you to pick at, if you even care to try, would be how quickly things can become about us.

anyway...

one of the side benefits to trying to be a better person is enjoying those rare moments that follow a (suprisingly) thoughtful word or gesture. i add the word "surprisingly" in parentheses, because there seems to be a decidedly different consequence when the thought is anticipated or, dare i say it, expected. (but that's off on another tangent, so let's stick to serendipitous sweetness for a moment, shall we?)

if you've been following my personal calendar, you might recall i was to spend part of this morning at the orthopedist's. (it's always nice to be first out of the blocks in the morning at the doctor's office, since there haven't been any predecessors to muck up the schedule and keep you waiting, isn't it?) well, between the early moments first in line filling out forms, to the simultaneous arrival down in radiology with the radiologist's coffee (dunkin donuts--i hear it's quite good), to the return visit upstairs to be the first of the day to gain an original diagnosis from the orthopedic oracle (yes, there is indeed something wrong in there), to the return trip to radiology to be first in line at the mri tube, it seemed that i had opportunity to be the first patient in everybody's day. it wasn't planned, nor even likely, observing that i had started my day not at the orthopedist's, but rather at my own personal version of mcartney's dr. robert's, but my sunny disposition seemed to play coincidentally well everywhere i went, and it was contagious--contagious to the point where i went out of my way to personally thank the likely-i-thought thankless office staff for how pleasant they had made my experience getting all poked and prodded and radiationally processed. i was sincere, and they were all smiles to hear it, and, i should add, they quite earned it, and it was the least i could do under the circumstances. (good karma can be fun).

i'm pleased to observe that things being about others can be emotionally constructuve (or, at worst, pleasant for everybody concerned), while i'm also reminded that things being about us are quite often emotionally destructive (or disaffecting at best). for fun, i think i'll replay all the things i've thought, written or said this past week, along with all the things suspected, read or heard from others over the same span of time, and imagine both how things could have been, had they been handled differently, and also what this might offer for learning experience. i'm suspicious i'll wind up musing about how we all remain the quarterback of our own personal life's team, and the agents of our personal life's milleu. nope, i'm not in the business of handing out any sort of advice, feedback or criticism--you all can draw your own conclusions--but i'm just saying that karma seems to me this morning less a promise about reaping what is sown, and more an admonishment to DO (or accept what's done by others and/or ourselves), rather than to dwell upon and/or lament what's already been done.

for example, take yon knee. (the orthopedist at least acknowledged that what remains of it still resembles such, so i'll use the word). i stepped foot on the soccer pitch, but my opponent crashed into my knee. some might want to weigh the karmic balances to determine a "winner" in the explanation/blame sweepstakes, but i've felt, regardless, that the knee is what it is now and there's little point having emotions or philosophical discussions about it--it is what it is. had the positions been reversed, perhaps there would be a guy walking (limping?) around cursing me and what i had done to him, but there isn't, and there IS a guy walking (i don't limp ;-) around feeling pretty good about himself even while he's learning all sorts of new things about menisci, and how their avascular portions lack the means with which to repair themselves or regenerate. nope, nobody's going to get me to feel sorry or regretful or negative about what has gone on before, (which isn't to say i don't regret or forget the wrong that i have done to countless others), and i'm resolved to follow a little more mcartney and just "let it be" once it's been, whatever "it" might be. what i choose to do from this moment forward is what really matters in any given moment anyway.

i'll pause for a second to observe the irony that, being the agent of so many others' destruction, i'm now surrounded by a plethora of people for whom everything that is important has happened TO them, and, even more than that, happened to them in the past. it's as if, by being sick, i've infected everyone with whom i've come in contact, while the process of transmitting my disease to others has left me in a state of remission. they all seem to want me (and perhaps certain select other people in the world) to know of their pain, as if achieving a confirmed diagnosis of cause along with a confirmation of suffering, even if it can't help cure, somehow ratifies or recognizes their condition and thereby does something for it. or something like that. i'm sure were i to share this theory with others, the responses would set me straight on how badly i've misread all this... (and what's that all about?)

of course, you know what (and who) *this* must be all about...

;-)

ice hockey

some random thoughts on ice hockey:

among international team sports, after giving soccer its due, there's nothing like ice hockey. the best of the best among yanks, canucks, russkies, khazaks, finns, slovaks, czechs, swedes and even the occasional german and swiss, all play together in one top league. (think kofi's a fan?)

in addition to providing the nhl's backbone, i envy canadians their shared national experience. saturday night is hockey night, and with apologies to the silly little monday night contrivance down here in the lower fifty, there's no other national experience to which it compares. (lucky canucks...)

ironically, for those whose impressions were raised on the pugilistic excesses of the 1970's era NHL, demographics studies of american professional sports fans show higher household incomes and better college graduation rates among hockey fans than those of baseball, football and basketball. (and don't dis the intellect and success of those who came in second, as sports fans as a group handily outscore non-sports-fans, tyvm).

the stanley cup is the oldest professional sports trophy in the world, and the only one to bear the names of (mostly) all those who have enjoyed a share of winning it. lord stanley's daughter, isobel, played the game back in the 1880's, along with her seven brothers, two of whom were members of the first team to win the cup in 1892. (no, no family bias in deciding to award the first trophy to the league during that particular year).

i don't care what anyone says about gretzky, bobby orr is the greatest of all time. (contemporary bumper sticking odes to phil esposito that, though "jesus saves, espo scores on the rebound" notwithstanding).

and you can take this as gospel, coming from a habs-hating bruins fan, that one canadien or another has to be number two. pick one from henri richard (you don't get your name on the cup almost a dozen times for nothing) jacques plante (the masked goalie about whom his coach, toe blake, was rumored to have once said that he didn't want anyone in his nets that was not man enough to take a puck in the face had his name engraved on the cup six different times, all spelled six different ways, besides literally inventing modern goaltending) or jean beliveau (though who would decline an appointment to be governor general of canada?)

gretzky wasn't such a bad player either. (take a chill-pill--nobody should be worried about any potential disrespect, since he still gets to go to bed every night with janet jones no matter what i say or don't say about him).

you know what they say about hockey players being a lot like computers--that you have to punch information into both of them. ;-)

use me up

bill withers has to be one of the most underrated singers going, don't you think? (but that's not what this is about).

going on six months since the knee was wrecked, and as you've read, it's still not right. well, tuesday it's the orthopedist, and, car troubles never being quite the same when the car is in front of the mechanic, it occurs to me...

no reason not to go out and tear it up good today and give 'em something of which to take pictures with their fancy machines. i'll let you know how it goes.

:-)

unseemly

one of the more provocative moments of the past weekend occurred during the girls' soccer game. as i may have mentioned, the contest was a trifle one-sided, though one of the opponents had decided, a la dylan thomas, not to go quietly. anyway, my questionably-intended assistant took the liberty of exhorting his own daughter, within earshot of the entire field, to "elbow her back", and that pushed a very clear button with me. (i'll digress to say that i IMMEDIATELY steered him aside and very abruptly told him that it was NEVER ok to say something like that on my sideline, or any other as far as i was concerned, which pissed him off, but we'll cover more of that another time).

anyway, efforts to respect an opponent by reducing effective field strength while continuing to kick the bee-jeezes out of a team can have a perverse and opposite effect, and my first thought was to try to imagine how it would seem to the other coach and parents to have the team running circles around yours begin to whinge and complain that the contest wasn't being conducted fairly. i coach my players to rely upon the referee for relief from foul play, and should none be forthcoming, to bear up against it as a compliment to superior ability, and to play through it. (i'll digress again to mention that the team was so adept at passing the ball away from the fouls that the poor would-be aggressor winded herself within minutes, and she was removed from the field by her fair-minded coach, for whom i now have the utmost respect, not least reason for which being his comments after the game at how impressed he was by my team's unwavering sportsmanship through it all).

there are countless other situations in life where human nature proscribes behavior in a conditional manner. if someone is getting the short end of the score, they are to be spared complaints about the level of the playing field. right? yet i live my life in closest proximity to someone for whom there can be no wrong greater than the one already endured, and i must become, by association, party to whatever potential actions and comments will be decided to be made. essentially, i lack the standing (will i ever regain any?) to declare the social rules of my sideline, and it tears me up to know the potential that boils beneath the surface.

my only hope is to continue to point out that such fouls as have been committed have been committed by one man, and he should be the correct focus for retribution. even so, it would gall her that anyone be spared intimate knowledge of the anguish and heartbreak, and to be unsure it is realized by all, it may never soothe her soul to heap all ire and bile on only half the equation of her torment. how can she ever be helped to know that guilt and remorse are universal?

for me, in addition to a question of seemliness, it is a bit like kevin seeing the charred fragment pulled from the microwave of his shattered life. (time bandits, for those not up on their python derivatives). he knows that no good can come of it, for anyone. but you know that, like the hot plate brought to the table, there is an even stronger human compulsion to touch things, and to pick at scabs...

there aren't ever enough "i'm sorry's", nor time to distribute them to where they deserve to go.

i'm sorry.

you reap what you sow

long views, visualization, and my favorite aphorism to judge trees by their fruits, all suggest strongly that there's a lot of truth to the old saw that you reap what you sow. spending this glorious fall gorging on fresh peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden, it's clear to be just as literally true as it would be figuratively. but rather than inquire as to everyone's preference for cold cucumber sandwiches (cream cheese or mayo; crusts on or off?) perhaps we can muse on the figurative side of things:

one of the most memorable schticks from last season's episodes of "scrubs" was perry employing laverne's church group to sing a rousing full-gospel-choir rendition of "payback is a bitch" to highlight one particularly humorous come-uppance. though my marital fall from grace didn't enjoy such elegiacal musical accompaniment, i think the lyrics still would have been apropos. hell, they're still apropos almost five months later.

hardest part is facing every day those consequences reaped from my sowing by each of the innocent family members around me. proverbs didn't exactly offer any advice on that part...

head or heart?

reflecting on this morning's mental joust, i imagine i now have an inkling of how wolfe may have felt to see montcalm's troops, ceremoniously stepped out from behind the fortified walls of quebec city to meet his army mano-a-mano on the plains of abraham, emptying their muskets at 400 yards. james did take a stray (and lethal) one in the chest during that otherwise ineffectual volley, but he had already successfully ordered his lads to load up with two balls in each musket in order to deliver from 40 yards what has often since been described as "the most beautiful volley in the history of warfare".

yes, if you will recall last week, the paragon had tipped his hand about bobby and sara, and like the premature ejaculation of french lead upon abraham martin dit l'ecossais' picturesque and dramatic piece of quebec farmland, the metaphorical muskets of cynicism were timely double-loaded for return fire even before today's forces took the field. i never even had to get to the trivial detail of the divorce within two years of the supposed paean to true love, which this morning's montcalm had cued up on the cd player with which to spend the first five of my fifty minute hour.

yes, it was a beautiful volley: the teenage apprenticeship to stravinsky... rolling stone's hailing of the eponymous first record as a "masterpiece"... the participation of both saint dylan and pope springsteen on the recently-released tribute recordings... the relevance of the sage's (my anointment, not yet his, but give me time) fall from grace and struggles for love and redemption...

i am invited next week to educate.

at first, i think to myself we will have to first reach back for the grim, cynical nod to karma, in the case that california might slide into the ocean, that indeed the motel will remain standing until the bill is paid. and then also forward to the last breaths, while the fallen remain tied to love as the buttons upon a blouse, even though, "trust me when i tell you / i'm not good enough for her", and the incorrigible do indeed learn to say "please stay", and "tu eres el amor de mi vida". quell convenient that "enjoy every sandwich" (for the most part) polishes off the rougher edges, and except for a vain attempt by the pixies, and a more valiant, even if similarly short of the standard, effort by david lindley and ry cooder, speaks more eloquently to the idealist than to the cynic. just what the doctor ordered...

but then, perhaps also like wolfe, i am reminded of the ultimate price:

"you're supposed to sit on your ass and nod at stupid things
man, that's hard to do
and if you don't, they'll screw you
and if you do, they'll screw you too

when i'm standing in the middle of the diamond all alone
i always play to win
when it comes to skin and bone

and sometimes i say things i shouldn't,
like..."

the long view

evaluating long-term performance based on short term data is tricky, at best.

for example, my fantasy football team lost one of its star running backs before the season even began, then laid an egg this first weekend while its star quarterback essentially had his head knocked clean off, but if you look at my recent free agent pickups (the top back on the top running team in the league, along with the top receiver on the top team in the league) and consider the overall depth of quality players already on the roster (including the top performing qb of the week it was my misfortune not to have started), it would be hard not to feel optimistic. but people will often panic on far less-dire evidence than this, and i wonder why they can't see the bigger picture.

it works with optimism as well as with pessimism too: my daughter's soccer team (which i coach) had the run of the field on saturday. after 15 minutes and three quick goals, we voluntarily completed the game with one fewer players on the field, but still managed to score another four times without giving up a single quality scoring chance, let alone a single goal. lots of happy, yet, dare i say it, overly optimistic parents were very congratulatory of the girls' efforts. you KNOW it's not going to be so easy next week. yet, the indications beneath the trivia of a lucky day were also extremely good, and the parents are, for none of the right reasons, not wrong to feel good about the upcoming season. but i'm still struck by how easily people will jump to unfounded conclusions.

actuaries and statisticians will often refer to "the law of large numbers". whether you prefer it in its weak form (the larger the sample, the closer its average approaches that of the whole) or its strong form (the larger the sample the closer the probability of its average matching the whole's approaches 1.0) it's still a pretty useful observation. play one game, and beware premature conclusions. play a bunch of games, and you pretty much have what you see. Trouble is, people change, and the law of large numbers hates inconsistent samples.

so, if you knew me to be a cloistered, emotionally reticent and supremely self-reliant old swamp yankee, (or was that a cloistered, emotionally reticent and supremely self-reliant old german lutheran?), how are you ever going to resolve the incredibly large, and therefore statistically valid, sample of reserved stoicism against the emotionally open and humbly willing-to-be-dependant-when-it's-important-to-be man i'm hoping to evolve to be?

the hardest part is the humility, but i'm learning it's the most important. i've been wrong for much of my life, (basically all of the adult parts), and it's quite a shock to many that i'm both choosing to see things that way, as well as acting upon that perspective. in many cases, (starting with but certainly not limited to the euphemistic "OW", which is indeed how other women are experienced by both wives and their marriages), it's required a complete reworking of my whole life's social structure, from the ground up. in other cases, i'm proud to say, as with my wife, i don't have to start at absolute scratch, even if the good comes with a whole lot of challenges it may take my entire life to meet.

just don't make me give up fantasy football yet!

mind and body

an interesting thing is also happening to my non-soft-tissue areas as well. last spring, in a violent on-field confrontation, necessary to recover from having missed a tackle at the back, i had to throw my body into the path of a charging attacker, and the result was to feel that inimitable twinge of tearing connective tissue as my extended leg bore the full brunt of his determined momentum against my obstinately extended knee. (oh, yeah, i stayed in that game, and played the next two 'cuz i was actually the least hobbled of my defensive teammates, and, well, that's what teammates do, and, yeah, yeah, i've heard it from the medical professionals, i shouldn't oughtta ha' done that, but, hey, what can i say).

so, fast forward a few still-not-fully-recovered months, and conclude that either a) 45-year-old bodies don't knit together the way that 35-year-old bodies do, or, b) something ain't quite right in there. you see, at first, i had concluded that the inimitable twinge was the twinge of ligament(s) giving way, and knowing that i wasn't completely debilitated, i figured it could be, at worst, only a partial tear, and that my body was going to have to pull itself back together with stretching and exercise, and i was going to have to wait while it did. but then, five months later, my primary care physician, who is actually my favorite and only massage therapist, pointed out that the connective tendon at the top of my gastrocnemius still seemed remarkably tight and that a portion of the muscle was still in virtual spasm...

think about that.

i had originally visualized, out of complete ignorance of how a knee is really laced together, a connecting ligament with a little tear in its side. (anterior cruciate, or medial collateral, or who knows, and, actually, all this aside, it's still not an improbable conclusion). i had never thought of the top of the side-of-the-calf muscle where, now that i recall it, the brunt of the impact was received. and something has been happening.

in the week since my last massage, and through my now-regular massaging and stretching of that specific point in my anatomy, the pain and immobility in the knee is, i swear, to a small but perceptible degree, receding. i'm still doing the same stretches and exercise otherwise, but i've got a sneaking suspicion that being able to visualize the (possibly) true nature of an injury, and focus my attention upon it, is having a definite effect on my body's ability to repair itself.

sure, sure, after five months, maybe the healing process has just gotten to the point where the corner has been turned. but i'm of a mind that my MIND is the active agent of my rehabilitation, and now that it's pointed in the right direction, good things are happening.

kinda like emotional relationships: see the problem for what it is, even after a decade of misdiagnosis, and remarkable things become possible. (yup, before i gave the old gastroc a little attention this morning, i made tea, the bed, and got the paper and laid it out in loving testimony to my devotion, went to work, and, lo and behold, here in my inbox is the most sexy and loving note you ever did see).

so, i gotta figure, everybody's got something balled up somewhere on their physical and/or mental persons... i wonder what they're thinking about?

the way to a man's stomach

vacationing from the bow deck of a slow boat to utica is hardly the recipe for fitness, but today's confrontation with the irrefutable balance scale in the locker room has presented a fascinating irony:

they say, as i'm sure that you're tired to hear, that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. indeed, the face of my previous indiscretions appears to lend credence to the impression, with a constant parade of fatty butter and cream and butter-and-cream laden comestibles to accompany my many equally fatuous sins. it's true that, through it all, my weight never did climb in inverse proportion to my moral descent (eat your heart out, jenny craig) though, if you fast forwarded a few distraught weeks and cut out both the sin and the sinful samplings, you could cue the swift plummet of mass in apparent correlation of the aforementioned aphorism.

or could you?

somewhere around rock bottom, where abject disconsolation and absent appetite combined to dissolve the weight like so much reduction sauce in the heat of a hell-fired kitchen, you could still have raised a case to suggest the connection between calories and corpulence. yet, where the misery curve finally returns heavenward, and the emotions begin to finally begin to repair themselves, an interesting thing is happening.

i'm not eating anything more than i ever used to, and less if you subtract the duck confit and the double creamed confections with which i had become familiar, but i'm gaining weight. not a little weight, like the temporary expansion to accommodate a particularly rich weekend of binging, mind you, but a lot of weight, like the cream was on a dietary time delay and i'm suddenly absorbing four years worth of calories in a fortnight.

yeah, i'm still hyperactive, with two different two-hour youth soccer team practices (truth be told i don't coach, really, i just like to play as much as any 12-year-old and use coaching as my excuse) and my regular all-out assault on the over-the-hill league opposition (which, i'm proud to say, is going well so far this season) so it's not a drop-off in activity so much as a precipitous increase in the amount of positive husbandly time i'm fortunate to enjoy every week.

which suggests to me that the way to a man's stomach is through his heart. touch mine, and watch me swell...

got a theme song?

sharing sox seats with a couple of music junkies, (one the founder of a major area CD retailer, and the other simply an incorrigible collector of everything sonic), i was pleased to at least be able to make one small musical contribution to the evening in explaining where the little black sabbath riffs kept coming from. (nods to mike lowell, and weren't those three more gems at third base last night, even if the olde towne team wasn't at their best).

yep, mike's always good for some good stuff, from sabbath to classic clash, and i've always enjoyed musing on the musical choices of the rest of the lineup too. "if i go crazy then will you still call me superman" IS jason varitek, and there's something apropos about the quintessential dirt dog's rotation of gems like "folsom prison blues" and "ring of fire". (trot, it's been quite a ride). there's been no mistaking "big poppa" (notorious b.i.g. for big papi) and i miss war and "low rider" for mark low-retta, (why the change?), but you gotta love a 25-year-old fireballer going deep for the 40-year-old troggs classic. (did you know that chip taylor is angelina jolie's uncle?) "wild thing, you make my heart sing". and you make jimi hendrix light his guitar on fire, and that's what i see whenever jonathan hits 95 on the juggs gun.

"tessie is a maiden with the sparkling eyes"

"and sometimes when the game is on the line / tessie always carries them away
up the road from third base to huntington / the boys would always swing and sway

two, three, four...

tessie..."

head on the block

let's say, for the sake of argument, that you believe something that social convention does not.

if you were really lucky, a la thomas jefferson, you might earn a pass on the details (questions about race and gender being such an inconvenience to the greater point of all folks being equal), be elected president, and eventually have your schnozz shined on a nickel. if you weren't quite so lucky, but still on the right side of the cosmic karma bus, a la galileo, you'd still earn a pass on the details (neener neener about those circular vs. elliptical orbits, johannes kepler) even if you had to endure conviction for heresy as a down payment on all that posthumous veneration. either way, all things being considered, not a bad rap on the reputation.

but let's say, for the sake of cynical advocacy for the devil, that your beliefs aren't quite so historically convenient. the name shays jumps to mind as an interesting case in point, his eponymous rebellion following much the same politics (freedom from unjust taxation) and means (wholesale civil disobedience among a vast majority of the local population) as the 10 years previous rebellion about which we all say such complimentary things every 19th of april and 4th of july. but somewhere along the line, someone puts a foot down (sam adams, one of the original rabble-rousers, equivocated quite hysterically and hypocritically that "in monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of republic ought to suffer death.") and all that "freedom" hooey winds up under someone else's paid bootheel. ("militia" my ass, they were hired express for the purpose). if you think about it, daniel shays deserves credit not just for standing up for a point of view, but also for having precipitated the kind of strong central and militarized government that was necessary to suppress the secession of 1860 and coincidentally emancipate all the races, even if not yet suffrage all the genders. but i digress...

yes, the true inconvenience is to the poor soul who harbors a belief that offends against convention, and hasn't sufficient means with which to defend himself.

so, to the original point...

do you recant?

it's a troublesome point, since heresy is rarely tolerated absent of a recantation, and even then poorly so. in my mind, it becomes a question of which belief might be worth how much inconvenience to support. in shays' case, unjust taxation calls for armed resistance. hats off to him. in my case, though the belief remains here unspoken, please take my word for the fact that it is not nearly so high-minded nor useful to the world to defend.

me and st. peter, we're pragmatists.

the trinity

it's been observed that i may have issues related to cynicism, power and sexuality.

cynicism? duh. yet i don't imagine it will be easy to convince me that this constitutes a real issue (does that make me cynical?) so you'll have to stay tuned for more on this as the months and years progress rather than expect a resolution on this anytime soon. for now, count me obstinately cynical, and spare me the battle. i'm dug in, and well stocked for a siege.

but power? now you're onto something. see, i've lived my life if observation and disillusionment at the excesses of power wielded for power's sake. i've seen the weak and disfavored unfairly passed over, cast out and abused. hell, i've BEEN the weak and disfavored unfairly passed over, cast out and abused, as have many of us here. and i'm nothing if not most frequently the burr under the authoritarian's/bully's/you-name-it's saddle. (just ask the now-ex local school superindentant about the subtleties of massachusetts' open meeting laws). doesn't mean i don't also quite frequently fail hypocritically to be perfect in such an analysis, just that i think that i hang on to my hardest edge precisely because i've seen the meek disinherited on a daily basis, and i'm not patient enough for jesus and john wayne, who are indeed staying at the marriott, to do something about that. not only do i see myself in these cases as karma's bitch, i also imagine myself to be her self-appointed, even if completely myopic, unqualified, impotent and self-ignorant, squeaky wheel. and don't tell me it doesn't matter that there would be nobody else to stick up for the interests of the athletically dis-favored among the local soccer youth, because there's good use for the youth soccer association's powers-that-be to consider me a nasty s.o.b. where issues of fairness and fair play are concerned. and i sleep better knowing that they come to their team and playing-time assignment decisions with my proverbial verbal boot poised to swing up towards their asses.

so how do we unravel this? does it have to be mild-time in the once-spicy world of me? perhaps i'm not inclined to be as resolutely inflexible over this as the cynicism, but let's just say i'm also wondering who is going to claim the authority to say anything about it.

(the sex stuff, well, i know you're all waiting for more on that, but we'll just have to pad the ratings and leave it as a teaser for future exposition).

bruce springsteen or warren zevon?

i observed first thing this morning to the erstwhile agent of my rehabilitation (note potential for cynicism loaded within the preceding phrase) that bruce springsteen was a little too sincere for my tastes, and that i rather preferred warren zevon. backing up a step, i should mention that the subject of bruce the bruce was broached upon the recounting of my somewhat-less-than-forty days in the wilderness of upstate new york, and the coincidence of his most recent recordings and the now musically re-famous ee-rye-ee canal, and, no sacred cow being allowed to be skewered that happens to be sacred among the easternly religious, i committed the karmic faux pas of registering less than prostration at the bruce's attempts at resurrecting forgotten folk standards...

anyway...

did i know that the bruce really loves his wife, because you can just tell by looking at the two of them in recent video footage? (isn't it ironic how digital video no longer has any feet, yet we still refer to "footage"? or do i just do that because i'm old?) he's kinda like dylan that way (though i sat on my chance to observe how dylan kinda toured around with old flame joan baez the last couple of years before his fairly acrimonious divorce from his playboy bunny wife, and that it's hard to see how professing without ability to quite live the pure life of devotion would count very much for a guy like me, but i, as i frequently do, digress...) and isn't "sara" a pretty devoted piece of songwriting? shame on me for sporting at bruce's sincerity (add gratuitous homage to dylan) when warren is, by contrast, both cynical and dead. (quod erat demonstrandum).

i'll interject because my personal imperfections compel me in their weakness to point out that "tied to you like the buttons on your blouse" remains one of the singularly devoted and perfect protestations in my limited and subjective appreciation of music, and i hardly consider it a show of enlightenment to dis what springsteen himself is on record as referring to as "one of the great, great american songwriters" without consideration for "please stay", "reconsider me", "el amor de mi vida", and the afore-quoted "keep me in your heart", and though one could ask other musical questions like who, exactly, had studied with stranvinsky, it was still fair to ask what it meant that both the bruce ("my ride's here") and the bob ("mutineer") were "cynical" enough to record tribute to the cynical, but again here i go on that digression thing...

there was a Moment (yes, a capital letter from your humble correspondent) at the conclusion of the 50 minute hour where the intent of the admonishment to beware false prophets was questioned of the "prophet" by yours truly, and not some small satisfaction was gained by the acknowledgement of imperfection in the imperfect answer. he can light all he wants in the wilderness, but i don't have to go wandering in the desert to reject any notion that any of this is about perfection.

"you bravos you'd better
be ready to fight
or we'll never get out
of east texas tonight
the trail is long
and the river is wide

and my ride's here"

geek gods

somewhere along the way, i lost complete track of cool. oh, sure, many folks still think i look a bit of the part, but those folks just don't get it. i'm the guy who just finished reading yet another book (ketchum this time) on the saratoga campaign of 1777, and even before i could pick up anderson's short history of the french and indian war as a chaser, i became distracted by my email inbox, and had to ensure my registration in both an nfl fantasy league, as well as TWO (count 'em) nhl fantasy hockey leagues. (what do you think? should i spend a draft spot on brad boyes, or should i rely on the other teams passing him by, and grabbing him for free off waivers before the season starts?) see you on chessclub.com?

38. stole beer from a golfer

i love to collect historic quotes, useful aphorisms and the odd one-liner from quirky pop media. for historic quotes, things like john's ego-centric appraisal of his wife molly's potential bedtime prospects are irresistible. among aphorisms, judging trees by their fruits remains one of my most frequently-relied-upon, even if most folks fail to be entertained by anything so useful. though, as a source for sheer quotability, nothing seems to compare to an inspired writer's off-beat muse.

my pantheon most definitely starts with monty python and the holy grail. ("oh, let me have just a little bit of peril?"). it certainly includes animal house ("she should be good looking, but we're willing to trade looks for a certain... morally casual attitude"). and as hard as it is for me to convince the world, it's rife throughout the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the 8th dimension ("wherever you go, there you are"). but, these days, carrying the torch for the whole world until the next incarnation of northern exposure ("this is cicely. she and roslyn founded the town 97 years ago. rumor and innuendo notwithstanding, they were just good friends") is "my name is earl".

yes, #38, stole beer from a golfer is a classic. as are even simple things like "hey crab man". don't think greg garcia is a genius? tell me how anyone follows up the seemingly inimitable "wakey wakey, hands off snakey" with the even-more-inspired "herky perky, hands off jerky" and isn't among the greatest minds of the 21st century. ("is his sister getting married? is she? 'cause if she didn't ask me to be a bridesmaid i swear to god i'm going to march down to that club chubby and wrap her neck around that pole").

being karma's bitch myself, it's hard not to hang on every word.

there are the redcoats, and they are ours, or molly stark sleeps a widow tonight

there is a marvelous power to unequivocal conviction. how many moments in our lives do we feel not one lingering conflict or doubt as to what we believe, or what we must do, or whether or not there is any chance we might alter our course?

yes, i spend too much time with my nose buried in a history book. but when a moment can be described, and a person's actions so clearly understood that they shine a light on our own lives, then there is something to be said for that. and when a man like john stark can muster fully 10% of the men in the entire state of new hampshire to march to the defense of their countrymen over the river in "the grants" on just a moment's notice, and then lay their plans for battle in such clear and compelling terms that all can act as one across a battlefield of miles, we must all take pause and reflect on whether we can ever suitably take his example to heart. for the 1500 men engaged at bennington on the sixteenth of august in 1777, they had the benefit of such leadership as is rare in the history of the world. for us who must serve as our own captain with far less of life on the line, yet sometimes still a way of life at stake, it is not always so easy.

john stark stands proudly in marble before an impressive monument to his achievement--from its peak one can see the rolling farmland of three states forever indebted to his action. as could be repeated almost without end upon stones from one end of the world to the other, "a grateful nation remembers..."

yet no one is likely to be erecting similar remembrances to the turning points in our lives. does this diminish them?

here's a nod to yours, and to mine, whenever and wherever they may have been, and may yet be again.