Blink and you might miss it...

"Bull Durham" is one of my favorite movies of all time. Here are some great lines. They may not appeal to everyone, but I think they are great.

Coach: Excuse me... what the hell's goin' on out here?
Crash: Well, Nukes scared, 'cause his eyelids are jammed and his old man's here. We need a live... is it a live rooster?.... we need a live rooster to take the curse off Jose's glove, and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present. That about right? We're dealing with a lot of shit.
Coach: Well, ah... candlesticks always make a nice gift...and maybe you could find out where she's registered... maybe a place setting, or a silverwear patten. OK? Let's get two.

Crash: Relax, alright? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring, and besides that they're fascist. Throw some ground balls. They're more democratic.

Coach: You guys... you lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. Do you know what that makes you? Larry?
Larry: Lollgaggers!
Coach: Lollygaggers.

Crash: Well I believe in the soul... the small of a woman's back... the hangin' curveball... high fiber... good scotch... that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.

Other quotes about baseball:

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry

I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile. ~Tom Clark

No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined. ~Paul Gallico

Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that. ~Nomar Garciaparra

With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them. ~Art Hill

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America. ~Bruce Catton

Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem. ~Saul Steinberg

I have discovered in twenty years of moving around a ball park, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats. ~Bill Veeck

They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans. ~George F. Will, 1990

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. ~Ron Shelton, Bull Durham, 1988

Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in blackjack. ~Adam Morrow, quoted in Bill Simmons, "Letters from the Nation," 20 October 2003

For more, check out: http://www.quotegarden.com/baseball.html

The Living Is Easy...Across the Seas. Part Zwei.

Jams, thanks for making me feel not so far away. 31 days and counting.

The Living Is Easy...Across the Seas.

Fans,
First of all, I'd like to thank you for the outpouring of support for me and my endeavors across the seas. Second, I need to apologize for the complete lack of blogging over the last month. I am truly sorry. The internets are elusive across the seas. They are hard to find, those internets. When I find one, I usually don't have time to say something profound, and, as you all know, if it isn't profound, I don't bother saying it. Steve, I'd appreciate your criticism of the punctuation in that last sentence. Bryan, proofread. For reals. Terra, respect knuckles for the consistent and entertaining blogging. It gives me something new to read nearly every day, and that is worth it's weight in gold here across the seas. How are things? They are all cold. In what language are they being discussed? Name one. Finnish, Swedish, Italian, French, Türkish, German, Austrian German, Swiss German. Check. Apartment life? Solitary and, therefore, ideal. Food? Not very often. Walking? All the time. Spiritual growth? Growing. Trash? Four different kinds, picked up every day. Thank you for your interest. You are all just Disco. More to come, if the internets are willing.

Oh, the places you will go...

So in less than two weeks, I'll be in Austria. It's hard to say how I feel about that. If all goes as planned, it should be my final semester as an undergraduate. Which is scary. I'll be there for 5 months. Which is scary. I'm sure it's a lovely country with big green hills, big grey mountains and plenty of cows and beer. Which I'll admit does sound pretty great. It's just that right now, I think it would be better to be here. In some ways. But when I made these plans I didn't know that there would be a time where going to Austria might qualify as inconvenient. Which is a pretty fair description of the here and now. But there are things that make me think being alone in a foreign country for half of 2005 will be time well spent. Time spent on me and who I want to be. Get some work done. Once I get over the hills and mountains and cows and beer, I should be pretty free from distraction and be able to do some serious thinking. And if you know me at all, you know I like to think.

Big thanks to Landon for tuning up my computer. Big thanks to Terra for being lovely. Big thanks to Matt for being hilarious. Big thanks to Jamie.

'Tis the Season...

This is maybe the first year in my short adult life that I have looked forward to the holidays and enjoyed the shopping experience that comes along with them. I'm really excited about giving my Mom the things I got for her. I've decided to get Britton and Bryce books from now on. They have plenty of toys now and will get more every Christmas and birthday for the next decade or so. I don't need to be contributing to that. Literacy, that's something I can get behind. Besides, the more toys they have, the more cleaning up they will have to do. And the more cleaning up that needs to be done, the less cleaning up they will do. The less cleaning up they do, the more punishment they will recieve. I don't need to be contributing to that. So literacy is my new favourite charity. And I'd like to start by spelling favourite like this. Favourite. Apparently the old man is just going to give us a wad of cash for Christmas. Time to make an annotated list of possible purchases and the anticipated costs of each of them. That will feel good. Steve: Could you help me find out which digital camera would give me the biggest, brightest bang for my buck?

I went to my Biological Anthropology class exactly six times this semsester. I got a B in the class. Something feels wrong about that. I also squeezed a C out of my European History class. Amazing. I thought I was "headed for the Big D don't mean Dallas" for sure. Maybe Dr. Bukey was feeling generous. No, that can't be it. I got a B in my German Literature class, which will in turn get me a shake of the head and a sigh from Dr. Condray at the next Stammtisch.

Movie Reviews

So last Saturday, Jamie and I went to Fiesta Square and saw Closer. It is the first movie I have ever seen in which I disliked, and even hated, all of the main characters but still liked the movie. I use the word "liked" liberally. It was entertaining and, as far as I can see with my very limited understanding of film-making, well written and directed. The movie jumps forward in time at several points, bypassing some important changes in the relationships between the characters and then shows the characters dealing with those changes after they have taken place. It only took one or two of these leaps forward to realize they were a specific tool being used and I came to expect them every so often. Clive Owen is a dick. Natalie Portman is a scalding hot hot hottie, albeit a very screwed up hot hot hottie. Jude Law is a weasel, again. Julia Roberts is an all-new Julia Roberts, and I really enjoyed her character. So I take it back, I did enjoy one of the characters in the movie. I left the theater depressed and very suspicious of the female I had seen the movie with. Is she scheming and manipulative? A passive-aggressive bi-polar psycho- sex-fiend? Is she going to going to ruin my life and go back to being a stripper? And then I was relieved. It was just Jamie. Aside from making me never want to become emotionally involved ever again, the movie was good. I give it an A. But I give every movie I ever see an A. It had a few Damien Rice songs in it, so I give it an A. Ha.

And then...
Landon, Jamie and I went to Razorback and saw Ocean's 12. It was big funny fun. It was pretty entertaining. The one thing I didn't like about 11 and don't like about 12 is the movie-goer has almost no chance of guessing how it is they are going to pull off the heist until it's over. Sure, you see them preparing for it and getting all ready and making plans, but in the end you realize you had been shown %11 of the plan and they did it in some other way. And that's fine I guess but this time around I wanted to guess, get it right and pat myself on the back and tell my friends I knew it all along. Anyway, Matt Damon was hilarious, so was Julia Roberts, I hated Catherine Zeta-Snooty-Stupid-Jones again and seeing Bruce Willis was just odd. His head looked like it had been Turtle-waxed. Twice. Get some popcorn and some M&Ms and enjoy. It's light, it's fluffy, you'll forget a lot of it, but it's entertaining. I give it an A. It had that French guy from Le Pact de Leux and I liked that and I thought he was good in 12. I give The Brotherhood of the Wolf and A too.

But the week before that...
She from the past let me borrow that French movie Amelie and that was just plain awesome. Seriously cool and entertaining. Funny, sweet, colorful. I give it an A. It had that short guy from Alien Resurrection. Seriously. Man, Alien Resurrection was downright horrible. But it had Winona Ryder in it, the love of my life. So I give it an A, along with Amelie.

Get your head out of my toilet, I want to go to bed...

Well tonight was Jamie's Christmas party and it was a great time. Finding and cutting down the tree was a good time, and it was refreshing to spend so much time outside in such nice weather, especially with someone so easy to walk and talk with. We finally found a tree and it was pretty nice looking, albeit a litte big. About 4 feet too tall, as it turned out. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into until it was time to take it through the front door. I trimmed and trimmed and trimmed. And Jamie trimmed. And Kayla trimmed. So finally it was whittled down to a respectable size. The ladies made cookies which were delicious, we decorated the tree, we played games, snacked, made fun of eachother, and once again, the guys, outnumbered, beat the girls at Trivial Pursuit. We didn't even take much advantage of the Sports category. If I can remember correctly, the partiers included: Jamie, Sarah, Joni, Katie, Lauren, Anita, Ashley, Lauren, Erin, Chris, Brian, Josh, Travis and myself. It was a good time, I really like those people. Terra was missing though. She'd like those people, they'd like her, and she would have had a good time. Maybe next time.

So I get home and I hear vomiting. As I'm walking to the bathroom to find out what's going on, I glance into the kitchen and see and empty bottle of wine and a near-empty bottle of vodka. I immediately deduce that one of my inexperienced rommates and/or their friends have mixed booze. The easy stuff with the hard stuff. Fruity easy stuff, no less. So I walk into Kindle's bathroom and all I see is brown hair surrounding a toilet. Turns out it's Kimberly and Landon 's doing the same thing as her, only he's doing it in my bathroom. Poor kids. What were they thinking? Lesson learned the hard way, the only way a lesson is learned when liquor is involved.

Funny inside joke quote for the day: "KFC don't sell pot pies?!?"

Spin the Black Circle...

Not much going on around here. Just trying to slide through to the end of the semester and not fail any classes. You don't care, and I'm ok with that, but I can't even count how many things I have to do in the next week. Still, I refuse to sacrifice my "free time." I will have my free time. And that includes Christmas parties, dinner engagements, video games, football, movies, etc. School isn't important enough to me to make me miserable, even for a day. And my grades will prove that to anyone who doesn't believe me.

One More Cup of Coffee for the Road...

So I'm only one class away from Thanksgiving break. I'm really going to try to get caught up with all of the things I've let slip behind. If you see me, and I'm not doing anything constructive, please, please remind me.

Tada!

So I got my hair cut and I look gorgeous! No, really, I look fantastic. Big thanks to Mindy at Shag.

Brought Down Like An Old Hotel...

Faster than a pendulum could swing from one side to the other. It's hard to think the four brightest days of this semester have already come and gone. So close, but still so far out of reach.
Beata Solitudo
Sola Beatitudo

Oh Simple Thing, Where Have You Gone?

Listen to this: Keane "Somewhere Only We Know"

Twist and Shout...

I sprained my ankle last Saturday while playing basketball. I almost never play basketball. And it looks like I might not play it again. I tend to stop doing things that cause me pain. I tore some ligaments, it swelled up and it looks really gross. I've got this cool, black air splint thing that looks like something Darth Vader might wear if he sprained his ankle. Plus, I got some percodan. So it will be just like old times here in about 30 minutes. The Parking Department gave me a handicapped pass once I shelled out $37 for an off-campus pass. Ugh. Every time I have to give them money I feel like less of a human being and more like a drone. And then I ate Chinese food. So I give today a five for bad and a three for good.

It's Not Me, It's the Disease.

The 19th Century European History test wasn't as bad as I thought. It was actually so simple that if I had actually read the books assigned, I'm certain I could have gotten an A. But that's not my style. My style is to put everything off until the last minute, and then to go one step further and half-ass the cramming. But it's over now and I am in a much better mood. The weather also picked me up a little today, after sending me to the basement the last couple of days. I am lucky to have people around me to make me laugh and I am quite thankful for that. I've already apologized to my European friends about the outcome of the election. Hopefully I will be left alone this spring. It's hard to defend yourself against stereotypes in a foreign language. I got a $40 parking ticket today. Glad I didn't bet on that one.

The Adventure of a Lifetime...

What an exciting time to be me. The Red Sox won the World Series, I got a killer deal on a jacket this weekend, Jamie's 21st birthday extravaganza was an absolute riot (complete with karaoke and drag-queens), I got an A on my German Literature test, and today we are choosing the next President. I think I'll just close my eyes and hope November goes by as fast as October did. Ugh. This semester. Definitely going to hurt my GPA.

Happy Birthday Jamie!

Happy 21st Birthday! Drink plenty of water today!

Full circle...

Sure, you could say "It's just baseball." and you'd be right. It is just baseball, it is just a game. I've only been to Boston a couple of times, and I've only seen one game at Fenway, but while watching the Red Sox win last night I was overcome with a sense of relief for the people of New England. Now they can relax, for at least a month or so, and not have to worry about when their chance will come. It came. It's here and now. And my friends and I have been watching and cheering the Sox and we too feel like we belong to something special. It may be just a game, but it is a historic one. We are part of a lucky group of people who, for maybe just once in our lifetimes, have seen the Red Sox win the World Series.

To whom it may concern...

Hey. So I've been hearing that my blog, particularly my profile, says too little about who I am. So I'm going to dedicate some time in the near future to filling out all the tid-bits and FYIs that might interest you. Please check back again soon.

Update: I've added some things to the "About Me" section and I'll tackle the interests, favourite movies, etc. when I have some time to ponder those types of things. "Y'all come back now, ya hear?" Ah, the Beverly Hillbillies. It's like watching my family reunion in black and white.

What did I say?

Red Sox win. Christmas comes early for Red Sox Nation.

I thought I told you that we won't stop....

The Red Sox have won each of the last two nights in unbelievable fashion. These are the types of wins that simply don't happen to the Red Sox. It is the job of every Red Sox player to break the hearts of the fans that adore them. We are fully prepared for that. So what's going on? Two extra-inning wins. A perfect preformance by an "inferior" bullpen. Schilling is back. Mark Bellhorn got two base-hits. Something is going on here. I don't know what it is. But I like it. I'd really like to see it two more times.