Bullpen Catcher

I've spent several afternoons over the past months sitting here at my desk, at the end of a day. The light for most of the summer streamed through the windows that are straight ahead, and I battled that late afternoon light with baseball hats, pieces of cardboard taped to the window, my tennis racquet in its case, and odd body contortions.

The days are getting shorter and the light is not an issue any longer. Today it is making orange quavers full across the office and living room, and on the fireplace all the way over there. It gets me to thinking that I likely will not be here in this place next year, and in that I will not be here during this time, I will never see light quite like this again. I try to enjoy it for today. Try to take a picture, but although photos are really made of light, they never quite do it justice. The way in which you experience it in person cannot be captured. I am not sure whether that is good or bad. I would like to keep a little of this orange light today in a bottle to bring out and remember this place on days like this, in the early fall.

I am house hunting and will be gone within months if not sooner, and that new place will not sit on top of this hill just so, at just this angle, with those trees just there. Everything will be different, the light, my likely preoccupations, me in general.

I will have to see what the summer is like in this city from that place. Let this one be all those memories, mostly good. Remember this light; close eyes now.

Yesterday was the last for most MLB teams. Regular season is over, I've turned the air conditioner off. It's over.

Mo doesn't want me to tell you this, but I once had sex with his wife, before she was his wife, but while I knew he was in love with her, and I don't know if I can ever live that down. Now I am married, and happily I may add, and I don't want anyone other than you to know. I am a sonofabitch.

Today, he wants me to kiss his ass though, and I am not married to her, so I refuse. He wants everyone to bow down to the holy Clower ass, and we all rise up, and say no. Each and every one of us.

I am so sorry to you, dear readers, but not to him. He's an asshole and I just want all of you to know that.

It's hard to not love New York City, even after your twenties are long gone. In the approaching autumn of that year I found myself there again and was transported back to post-college-graduation. The world as a proverbial oyster. Surely, NYC would come, but the job was at a newspaper, back home, in suburban North Carolina; just a step on the road to the Times and a loft in the Village. So, in that year, my early thirties, I found myself in New York again, ostensibly for a tennis tournament, and a few drinks with almost-lost friends. A storm was approaching up the coast, skirting the coast with a bump and then back out into the water, where it would build steam and head back inland. Thousands south of the city, including those in the town I then called home, were without power, many without homes. I found myself in NYC oblivious to the storm except the blips of it on cable TV news. In my mind, the city was covered in a protective seal that kept out such things as storms and locust infestations (the last of which could be correct).

My name is Moses Clower, or Mo as I like to be called - gets past the biblical implications which I have come to find problematic, and once made for an immediate launch in to the realm of the "academically gifted" as a child when I became the first in my class to know how to spell his name. I have been divorced for four years, six months ago I jumped from the sinking ship of newspapers (my passion; my blood - I thought) to a job in online journalism for a major 24-hour news network. I am 37 years old and have no dog, no children, and I do have a retirement portfolio that would turn no heads: women at the bar, financial advisers.

That weekend, as the storm approached, Labor Day weekend, I spent in NYC feeling like a kid again. It's okay to say kid from this vantage point, because that is where the longing is - to be a kid again - but, what I really felt was like a young adult again (freedoms of an adult, no adult responsibilities) - what I would of called when I was actually a kid "an adult," or simply "old" which makes me wonder what I would have thought as a kid of myself now. But that's neither here nor there, or perhaps it is one or the other, but either way I was in NYC feeling like a "kid," drinking with old college friends who I felt had somehow found the holy grail, but, as it turns out, were in similar positions as myself and my non-NYC friends, and it made the city seem smaller. And in making the city seem smaller, it made it more appealing to me, as I had long given up on the notion of making it there, and through giving up on the notion, had soon given up on the desire. A NYC that was not so overwhelming, didn't feel like it could crush a person, alighted new fires of yearning in me - and those drinks, and those walks, and those views from that hotel room, and those women, all those different women, after these lonely past four years, seemed to sound the siren's call.

This storm thinks it's going to get the best of me, better think again. I'll fuck it up. This ain't no Katrina, harbinger of heartbreak; people standing on roofs while husbands die. I think they wanted husbands to die. Die drunk. New Orleans, best city in the country. Remember a spring break there. Met a girl and she sang songs to me in a courtyard. New Orleans has courtyards.

Take my fucking house, but you'll have to do it out from under my feet. I deny God. Been twelve years without church and don't know that I miss it. European friends think I'm an ass for even considering. That's right, European friends.

I got this house, and I got my dog, and I got my testicles and my dog has his too; fuck Bob Barker. Fucker lives in Burbank or somewhere and spent too much time with artificially colored hair to be trusted.

For days, Richard has been reading the weather reports, watching the weather reports, researching weather phenomenon on the internet: wikipedia, NOAA, weather.com, various weather related blogs. Even before anyone else on the east coast knew anything about Nolan, old Dick was already buying canned goods, bread, bottled water, beer, whiskey, nudey magazines, a diesel powered generator, a prepaid cell phone. The weather radio already works on batteries, as well as AC.

Ashley left him back in the spring, long before hurricane season. His heart has never been the same, as anyone that knew the two of them would suspect. He has been obsessed with the things that he really cannot control since then, but they are all things that he thinks, through a more perfect understanding, he will be able to control. For him, it is not turning on and off the light switch an odd number of times, that's too easy. It's these weather phenomenon, and when a storm of this size and shape is on the loose, he is in his heyday.

Ashley left with the guy who designs the charts and graphs, the best he can figure, down at Channel 2. Said he's hung like a horse. Tells Richard, on the night that she walks out, that he never did shit for her in the sack. He always felt like he was attentive, if not overly so.

Nancy's in the cedar hall closet waiting for the storm. She hasn't seen a weather report in days - no weather.com, CNN, or newspaper either. There was just something in the way the clouds were moving when she got up this morning that got her worried, so she called in sick, took the dog to the kennel and is sitting in the cedar closet in the hallway, the one that still smells of cigarettes from when she and her husband used to spend time smoking in bars, and before he died. The cedar has tried, but the cigarettes have won.

It's the smell of the cigarettes that remind her of him, and thinking of him, and the smell of the cigarettes, makes her want to smoke - but mostly she wants to smoke with him, or be with him, and that's not a possibilty, so she wishes that she had picked up a pack on the way home from the kennel, before the storm clouds started churning too much, so at least she could smoke, even in the cedar closet. It would make her feel close to him. It looked like the storm would be long and powerful this time.

She didn't know why he lied to her, and about such easy things. She didn't know if he was dead, it was just easier to think of him in that way. The military jacket he had worn during the war still hung overhead in the cedar closet, so there was always a possibility. When she thought of the jacket she thought it might be nice if he were not dead, because the jacket was possibility and death was not. She had once decided to live and not the other. It wasn't taken for granted. The jacket. The cigarette smell. She hadn't felt this way in a while. If he were dead, surely his ghost was there in the closet. If not, she like to think of him as dead so his ghost could possibly be there in the closet with her.

There was one other storm. It came toward the end. She hid in the closet during that one too. He sat in the living room watching the TV and drinking until the power went out. Then he listened to the emergency radio, the one with the hand crank, and drank until he could not crank the radio. Then he started throwing dishes across the kitchen and yelling his mother's name. His mother had died the previous spring. His father was dead, or at least dead in the way that he was now dead to her, for many years. The father's name never crossed the mind. He thought of himself as an immaculate conception. He prayed at night, but the storm still came. His mother's ghost seem to live with him.

The Traffic Guru

At work tonight, covering the convention while watching baseball, I decided to delve into my daily reading for a respite and uncovered this article that has my head all afire right now. This is a fascinating article about a "radical" traffic engineer that decided that the best traffic controls were as little controls as possible. People would generally act more cautiously and intelligently if they were required to do so, and that structurally we can create situations in which people have to act in a better fashion by not prescribing the appropriate behavior in all situation, or as he states it, ""When you treat people like idiots, they'll behave like idiots."

Today, as I have been for many in the last few weeks, I have been working on an electoral college speculator map. In a presentation of the map I did today, I was asked to make sure we spell out exactly how the user should interact with the map. I think in doing that we fail or users or we fail in our efforts to do effective design, one or the other. I think if you let the purpose of the map be known, users will figure out how to use it, just as you don't need speed bumps or speed limit signs if the environment is designed in such a way that drivers can figure out the proper behavior.

I walk into therapy today hellbent on not crying like i have the last few weeks (Steve and I are set to discontinue our meetings next week so he can get on with taking care of his health issues and I can get along to whatever it is I will do next), so I don't. I tell him that am feeling more motivated, getting things done, not feeling like an impostor, not letting the women get me down. He says since I don't have much to talk about, maybe we should just let today be our last session. I agree, holding back tears. It just sneaks up on you.

Then I come home. Down the highway and the parkway, through the detour, and into my driveway. Coming up the steps and along the walk that borders the front corner of the house, right before the dogleg, hidden by those unruly shrubs, I find a man-sized pile of shit: first the smell, then the flies, then the visual. It's either from a man, a bear or a great dane, and I'm betting on a man. There aren't that many bear sightings in my neighborhood, and why would a dog find its way to that hidden spot when in my experience they would rather do it in grass where they can scratch? Dogs don't ever seem to have issues squatting and doing the deed right in front of god and the whole world.

The pile is right up close to the exterior wall of my house. Just where a man could've squatted and rested his back against the bricks, extending his legs out far enough so as not to get it on his trousers. I have shat in the outdoors before, just not on someone's sidewalk.

So if it is a man, I think, why would they do it there? Perhaps they are homeless and have nowhere to do it. Perhaps it's Leroy and he's mad at me for some reason.

I guess it doesn't really matter. It appears a man decided to come and shit on my sidewalk and now I have to fight the flies and the stench and go clean it up.

Those of you who know me will think me up all night on a drunken bender, but my life is filled with profound sadness this evening.

There's the one friend whose love of his life is leaving him, and another that just wishes that he had such a love of his life.

It's early and the morning birds are singing and my tongue is tired.

Tom Waits at the Fox Theatre

Okay, this one is not like reading either, but like intake, but listening to Tom Waits is like reading, if your really listen, right? THis is the July 5 concert that I went to here in Atlanta. So excited to find the document. Read it. Love it. If not... you call yourself MY friend?

So long and not much noise here. My therapist may very well be dying of lung cancer. Not the type of lung cancer that builds and builds, but the little nefarious sonofabitch that gets right in there next to your aorta and tries to take it all out of you. The guy's skin is turning gray and his hair is already gray and I feel like it's any day now, and I ask why him and not me.

We've got two weeks left of this experiment that we started three years ago: three more weeks of therapy and then I got to do something else. He says he thinks it might be good to pursue a woman therapist since that's where my problems lie, with women, and that she may teach me how to trust the universal her.

We talk lots of how I am feeling. I guess that's what therapy is. We have been especially keying in on how I feel about the separation. He asks if I feel anger, and I guess I do. The adult part of me understands the state of things, the child feels abandoned - the worst and constant fear. I cannot talk to him about it until he tells me to talk to a third person in the room that is not him.

I tend to cry a lot during these recent sessions.

Are you going forward? Then stop now

This piece, apparently written for on-air delivery, is pretty hilarious. As one, like many of us, who has spent days upon days listening to the chipper clichés of managers and the like (remember the days of "synergy" and "out-of-the-box thinking"), it led me to believe that all that an MBA granted you was the ability to use, misuse, coin and abuse such hackneyed tropes.

This article is a grand skewering of such business speak and a fine critique of modern business languages inability to really say anything at all.

Favorite excerpt:

If love has no place in the language of business, neither does passion. Passion, says the dictionary, means a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Christ at the crucifixion. In other words it doesn't really have an awful lot to do with a typical day in the office - unless things have gone very wrong indeed.

What the World Eats

This only marginally qualifies as reading since it is a photo slideshow with brief captions. It's fascinating to see the families in their homes with food piled all around. It's also interesting to llok at the facial expressions of the people. It's also amazing to see the differential in the amount of packaged foods from family to family, and how it relates to monetary food expenditure.

In the Sicily photo, I am not sure if the husband knows it, but those three kids are not all his.

The older man in the Konstancin-Jeziorna photo is not so happy his wife hoodwinked him into participating in this project.

For the Melander family of Bargteheide, I have a suggestion: family counseling. Dad has a drinking problem and no one in the famuly is very happy about it.

The Chameleon

This article in this week's New Yorker is simply fascinating; the stuff of which movies are made. Don't want to ruing the plot for you, but be prepared for several twists and turns.

The most fascinating thing about the whole plot to me is how persistent the guy has been, even after serving time in an American prison, he returned to the same behavior when he got back to France. His insistence that he was always looking for love and a family is supported by his troublesome relationship with his blood family.

There are times when I am depressed that I will look upon children jealously, seeing a simplicity to their lives (that may be an illusion) that do not feel in my adult existence. I don't think I am alone in this feeling: it's been written about time and time again. How many books are filled with longings for childhood, to be like a child?

Bourdin's inhibitions just were not great enough to stop him from taking the next step that at least I know I have pondered before: time machines, magic potions, Tom Hanks in Big.

I can't really put my fingers completely on why the story touched me so much. There are plenty of reasons not to desire a return to chidlhood, or to being a child, I guess that's what keeps me sane, but if the genie granted me one wish...

10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List

Throughout my life, I have been surrounded by one form of worry wart or another. It's very entertaining most of the time, but when it boils down to being told what vessels to drink my water out of, and where I should carry my iPhone, it is going too far. I have planned many times to do hours of scientific research to debunk the worries of my wartish friends, but like so many things (like taking out the trash and washing all of my dirty clothes) I just can't find the time or energy.

Lo! Today I see this article on NYTimes.com. A lot of my legwork has been done for me, and in a very few, short paragraphs too. Now I don't have to worry about compiling this list anymore.

My favorite quote (and this one is for my old boss):

Nalgene has already announced that it will take BPA out of its wonderfully sturdy water bottles. Given the publicity, the company probably had no choice. But my old blue-capped Nalgene bottle, the one with BPA that survived glaciers, jungles and deserts, is still sitting right next to me, filled with drinking water. If they ever try recalling it, they'll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Now I need to go refill my bottle that I keep on my desk, that I will never take camping.

One last pitch for Tim Drew

I heard this piece on NPR this morning and sought it out when I got to work. It made me shed a manly tear that nearly caused me to blow through a traffic light. This page has an audio link to Frank Deford's audio story as well as a transcript of the same story.

For a little over a week now, at JT's encouragement, I have been reading this blog that is ostensibly a critique of how the press covers baseball. It being a critique of baseball journalism, I didn't think of posting it here as I imagined it would be of little interest to the average BPC reader, but, lo!, today I spy a piece that we can all get a chuckle out of. It's a pretty funny sideswipe at ESPN commentators doing their best Siskel & Ebert on the new Batman movie.

Enjoy!

My uncle Willy died last Friday. He was 78. While alive, he was the wiry, hairy-chested type of old man of which the world does not make any more these days. He's the first of my dad's siblings to die and I believe that it has affected my dad in ways that even his mother's death over ten years ago has not. When I got the message I was sitting in a park listening to indie rock music in Chicago. I couldn't help from imagining how strange Willy would have thought the whole scene to be, and in imagining that I thought of how far I have come from my family: that thing I grew up with, and as, that I spent much of my adolescence trying to outdistance, and have spent much of late 20s and 30s trying to figure out how to get back to.

What I knew of Willy is that he farmed a bit: sweet potatoes and the like. He worked for several years at the Nu-Tread tire company, just behind the outfield wall of the old Durham Athletic Park; the same park where the Durham Bulls play and where the movie Bull Durham was shot. He also bought cords of wood in the fall the at he would cut, split, and deliver to houses nearby for winter heat. On the property that he owned there are two ponds that my brother and I frequented on weekends for fishing. Bass and bream could be caught in such aplenty, with bobbers and worms or crickets or grasshoppers, that one would think that Willy stocked the pond, but that was just not him. It's almost as if the fish were there because a man like Willy could only have a pond with such plentiful fish.

In the fall, my brother and I (and sometimes father and mother) would help harvest the sweet potatoes. It seems that I even remember gathering bailed hay at some point as well. When a tire went flat on one of the cars we would go to the used tire and repair shop that Willy and a friend had established in a building on his property.

He had a wife named Nelly and a daughter named Patricia, my cousin, who lived across the street with her husband. I would not know Patricia if she were to walk right up to me. Probably wouldn't recognize Nelly anymore, maybe not even Willy in his last few years.

Beware the ides of July, the day before you leave for Chicago and the day where every minute will be twice as long as they were yesterday. And the day after... before the airport, every minute thrice as long as even today. Logarhythmic expansion.

And at work there's too much to be done. Self-imposed deadlines the I am trying to shirk. Trying to just cruise into it all, to not have an all-nighter like I seem to always have when getting ready to depart for a few days.

The upcoming New Yorker cover and its consequent fallout is a shame. I would totally expect the reaction that the Obama campaign is having from a conservative candidate in his shoes. After all, they have done all that they can to discredit the "liberal media" (i.e. media not controlled by conservative owners and organizations) over the last decade or so, so much so that people are not sure what is real information and what is purely myth, as attested to by the purely-myth, conservative mass email that was forwarded to me today about all of the ways the Democratic party has screwed the American people over Social Security over the last few years.

Hollywood's Hero Deficit -- The American, A Magazine of Ideas

The article's basic gist is that "true" heroes have disappeared from American cinema in the last few decades, or when they do exist, they are relegated to "a world far, far way":e.g. Star Wars, Superman etc. It downplays what it calls "victim heroes," which it says characterizes all of the heroes from films in recent years: e.g. Erin Brockovich, Michael Clayton... The author states that Hollywood fails to give us such "true" heroes, even though audience obviously want such heroes, although the author fails to provide a source for this matter of fact.

If you cannnot tell from tone here, I think this is a load of horseshit. So, tipped by the add for a Newt Gingrich book on the same page as the article, and remembering my college conservative news rag's (The Duke Review) proclivity for printing photos of John Wayne, I decided to do a little research.

What is poetry? And does it pay?
This story in Harper's may call into question all of the most recent statements I made about poetry and its importance. The writer goes to an annual meeting of the "Famous Poets Society." One which happens at the Gold Nugget in Reno, of all places. Top prize: $25,000. I laughed out loud several times while marveling at the author's ability not to completely come unglued at certain of the goings on.

I'm having the after lunch cigarette and reading my book about the 60s around-the-world sailing race, when he walked up, looking like he had taken a hammer rather than a toothbrush to his teeth.

"What's that book about?"

I show him the cover, A Voyage for Madmen.

"Ah... vo...age...for...madame... What's it about?"

"About these Europeans who raced each other in a solo non-stop sailing race around the world in the 1960s."

"Sailing?"

"Yeah, with boats that have sails on them?"

"Oh yeah, that reminds me of... what's his name?... You know who I am talking about... What's his name?"

"I don't know."

"You know!... What's his name?.... It's uh... It's uh... Oh, that's right... Columbus!"

"Well he was an explorer and sailor. Not really in a race around the world. But I see what you are saying."

"Yeah, Columbus. Just like him. Have you ever raced an ostrich?"

"An ostrich? No."

"What about an elephant?"

"No not an elephant either."

"A horse?"

"I've ridden horses before, but not in a race."

"I've raced all three."

"Really!?!?!?"

Yesterday I heard a co-worker that sits near me, who I don't really know, was speaking frankly with someone on the phone. From the best I can tell the person on the other end asked one of those simple questions like, "So, how are things going?" I guess we most of the time fall into the pleasantries of saying, "Things are going fine," but that's not where Peter went:

Well, Katie and I are getting a divorce, and my brother calls everyday and he's losing his mind. Says he needs to check into a psychiatric ward. Wants to know what I think, but won't tell me what all is going on.

Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens
I don't know how I missed this story, but it's good one. Just reminds me that I am not the only one who acts like a child some times... but these guys aren't drunk, or at least they are not supposed to be.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
Interesting essay by a Yale English professor that has been known to not mince words when giving his opinions. I didn't go to any of the Ivys that he mentions in the article, but Duke is close enough. I agree with much of what he says about the state of the academy, even back when I was in school. I especially find his idea that elite schools are virtually becoming glorified vocational schools now. I don't agree with the part that elite education making a person an elitist:

The story that broke over the weekend about Bush/Cheney escalating covert activities in Iran, possibly indicating a build-up to armed confrontation with the country is not surprising, is it? Especially interesting is this quote from the article:

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

Haven't we heard it all before? The President's logic seems to be, "I understand that we spend big bucks on all of these intelligence operations, recruiting and training smart people to carry them out, but in the the end, Dick and myself and our buddies are a lot smarter than all of them." It's infuriating to see the U.S. embroiled in the war in Iraq, having gotten there on false pretenses put forth by the administration, and then to see the same thing happening again now. Now, just as with the Iraq invasion, you can't help from feeling that ulterior motives are involved.

In this case, it's hard to believe that the November election is not fully part of these new activities. So far the polls are pointing to a decent Obama popular and electoral lead. The rhetoric coming from both sides of the race is the same that we have always heard. The republicans will try to paint Obama as too inexperienced to handle military matters, McCain's veteran status and tenure as a politician will be cast as the obvious antidote.

I have a VHS tape of me winning the silver medal in a wrestling tournament in high school before the nerves got to me and stopped that sport, I never could do anything like this though.

Outside the morning birds are singing:

Doo ree doo, doo ree doo, ree doo, ree doo, doo, doo, ree, ree, ree.

Not trailing off in a doppler way, but in a song of their own. I should not be up this late. Should be asleep. Faced too much art market, divorce market, break-up market, make-up market. Too old to spend this time in bars. In bars, as most of us, looking for connection, love, acceptance, novelty.

I start with birds. I end with me. Women can do anything that the boys can do. Insulate me from this world. Show me your paintings. Let's love one another in a melting igloo, or at least, let's love each other.

My therapist has not called me back. It's not that I need it. It's like a friend said, "you go to it because you like it more than you need it." I agreed at the time, but I cannot underestimate the benefit of a weekly unloading of all of the "snakes in my head." There's always a peaceful serene feeling when leaving, even when I am leaving in tears.

He hasn't called though, and I am worried. I guess you may thing that's selfish. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a couple of years back. Has been receiving aggressive therapy, and generally seems to be doing okay. I guess it wouldn't be right for him to let on otherwise. I just don't know.

I went so far today as to search the obituaries on the newspaper web site to see if there was any news there. I was glad to find none. Even given my problematic relationship with God, I have spent time praying for him on my nightly rituals recently.

Today I daydreamed as I was driving home, dog-tired, what I would feel like if I found out he was no longer with us (can't even say the words). I started to weep in the car. Like I had lost a friend. I pay to go see this person once a week and he knows more about what goes on in my head that anyone else in the world (including myself), I know nothing of him except I think he has grand kids, and a daughter, possibly a wife, and this growth in his lungs of which I am not sure the state. Yet, I am crying like my best friend is gone.

Leroy came by today. He fixed the flat on his bike so he's back rolling rather than walking, although he still hasn't started to put on weight. I gave him a handful of change because he said he was hungry. He's always hungry. I guess that's the nature of living like he does.

We also finally interviewed the woman from Houston today, and when Kristie wrote, "Do we love her?," I responded, " I believe we do." That might mean some relief at the job if it all works out. I just don't know how long it takes to get someone to Atlanta from Houston. How long does it take to pick up your life? She's younger, less encumbered.

And the wart that's been gone from my left upper arm for several years now is coming back. WIth the workplace stress, and some of the issues going on in friends' lives, it very well may be a worry wart. I am chock full of the old "imposter syndrome" lately. Feeling that I haven't paid my dues, nor do I have the skills and training, to be where I am. It just feels like I work hard and a lot, but I don't feel like I accomplish much. I am not sure how to measure success as a manager. I talk a lot to people. Make long-term plans. I seem to stay bogged down in the day-to-day grind. The list gets longer. Never shorter. Maybe if we can get the Houston girl, since I hunted her down, that will be some small victory and will put things into place for better progress.

The screaming you hear is coming from me, down here, on the first floor of the news room. The terrorist stands on the mezzanine level and she, yes SHE, begins to speak. The voice bounces off of the ceiling and even a whisper can be heard as in the Capitol Rotunda. The threat comes and sounds like this:

I went to a baseball game yesterday, and I did not watch one play of the game, I cannot tell you who won, or who was really playing, but it was really fun. It was just like a big party.

Please! Let the terror stop! Workplace waterboarding, 8-hour-a-day Mexican pop music, or every-minute spoonfuls of wasabi would be more welcome.

Getting into the shower tonight I had a flash of junior high. The humidity and temperature the last few days has been mild. Today's temperature was too, but the moisture built up throughout the day and made it so that the temperature clung to you, inside and out. Impossible to not immediately sweat while outside, shivering inside in the conditioned air. Getting into the shower with a chill and feeling the contrast of the hot water and cold skin took me back to when I was a child, showering at night in preparation for school the next day. I could smell the hallways, feel the fear of girls, the rubbery smell of the wrestling mat, the taste of trough water during football practice. It's an emotion that is discomforting and nostalgic at the same time.

Sometimes I forget what those days were like. I think my life to be so complicated now in comparison. During the flashback, I was reminded of the complex internal and external negotiations that made up everyday school life. The fear of girls mixed with the hormonal longing for them. The lack of any experience to that point that would allow me to navigate through those rough waters. The chuckle that Coach Webb got when I called my lower body garment "breeches." Now I realize that the joke was largely on him. He was a gym teacher after all. I wonder what became of him. Probably 30 years old at the time. Younger than I am now by 4 years. If that was 1988, he would be 50 or so now. Does he still torment his players? Does he have players? Did he know that I skateboarded 10 hours a week despite his prohibition of such things? We were never state champions. Never even close. Beat Lowes Grove once on a day when I got to play defense as well.

Did he and Ferko realize that I would still laugh at the embarrassment they inflicted upon me while reenacting me getting plowed over on kick return during the previous weeks game? An even that was played out three times: once on the field when it happened, once when we had to watch the video of the game (yes, we had video of junior high football games), and the third time when the coached did their little act, full with description of the large grass stain left on my ass from the contact and subsequent contact with the field. I tell the story to get a laugh, but that it stuck with me for so long is not purely because of its humor potential. It's not even that funny of a story. It's how you tell it.

I had to work today. The normal Sunday guy couldn't be there so I was covering the desk today. In on the bike by 9 a.m., leaving around 5 p.m.. Bicycling in after taking last week off from the bike commute even though the weather was much more welcoming to such a thing. Lungs still straining on the hills and the constant replay of, "I must quit smoking! I must quit smoking!," only to arrive at the office and realize I did not have any cigarettes, all of them having been consumed last nigh - birthday party, beers, pizza, back home, conversation, cigarettes and cigarettes and cigarettes. I had to launch a search for nicotine in downtown on a Sunday morning. Amazing how addiction works. How easily your mind can change with absolutely no conscious effort.

The excursion took me by Sean, who I just met today. Fresh out of 7 months lock up at Fulton County Jail where, apparently, he awaited trial, failing to make bail, until the identity theft charges were finally dropped. That was his story. It all started with him helping to fix a guys car. There was a check that bounced, and then the trouble came. That was about as much as he wanted to tell. He had come back to God in jail as many inmates do, or so we are told. He had been praying a lot lately, explaining that 7 months is just long enough for you to lose all of the life you had before you went in.

He told me that $33 could change his life. It would get him a state ID card that would allow him to get out of the bad shelter and into the Salvation Army shelter where they would help him get a job, and would let him work in the thrift store until he found solid employment. The usual Korean market was closed, but he took me to another store that he walked past earlier that he knew was open. He waited outside. I bought the Winstons with a twenty dollar bill and gave him the $15 change. I tried to shake his hand, which he grabbed and used to hug me. He told me that he had prayed about this and talked to a preacher friend. The friend had told him to go today somewhere where there was people and that the Lord would provide. He told me no one had stopped until me, that I was the answer to his prayers. The weight of that I would rather not think too much about.

It's hard for me to imagine that $33 could change someones life, much less $15, but it seemed like he thought it meant that his whole life would be different in just a matter of days. He told me I would not see him on that corner again. I told him I better not. I try not to think too much of what the real story might be. I would prefer to believe his story, to believe that the hug was sincere, to believe that God was watching over him. I am trying to live outside the cynicism that has characterized much of my adult life these days, to live in the world as I would like for it to be, even if the evidence and accumulated facts seem to point to something different.

Ultimately it makes things different, less stressful, and less complicated. Talking to girls is easier now, and I don't have to deal with junior high school football coaches any longer. I do what I want and feel mostly good about it. The nostalgic simplicity that I imbue my memories of childhood with seem false. On the bike ride home I did not regard those children leaving the basketball game with the jealousy that I normally do. I wouldn't want to go do it all again. I am fine where I am.

The days are getting shorter, and as this one came to an end, there was the threat of thunderstorm that ultimately never came.

1) Grateful Dead - some of the songs are classics. If you think I am a fool, you are not listening. You are more afraid of being considered a "deadhead," being part of that culture, than just plain disliking the music. Most people who claim not to like the music cannot name a single song even though they know 20, much less say why they don't like it. We're too old for this. Get over it.

2) Dirty Dancing - I was forced to watch it as a teenager by my, now dead, chorus teacher on days that she did not feel like teaching. Saw it again over the weekend and it's a good movie. The main characters all show substantial growth. They are all sympathetic. And it's a coming-of-age story: Jennifer Gray's character has to deal with growing up and dealing with a world that she know nothing about. I prefer my coming of age stories to be about boys, as it is easier for me to identify with, but thankfully this one is not a male coming-of-age story.

She said she liked patriotic marches, so he bought a sousaphone. They marched around the backyard, sometimes naked, she the drum major, he carrying on the bass line for a melody to be imagined. It could irritate the neighbors. He liked to drink while they played these games. She put up with it as long as the marches could continue.

It was then that she decided that bluegrass was the new sensation. He grew a beard, wore overalls, bought a mandolin that would keep the neighbors up all night.

Next it was jazz and the laborious move of a grand piano and the purchase of a used baritone saxophone. During this phase they entertained more. The neighbors, once their enemies, became newfound friends.

Soon they started going to galleries and museums and she read artist biographies: Van Gogh, Gaudin, Picasso, Raushenberg, Warhol. They filled what was supposed to be the nursery, or so they thought when they bought the place, with canvasses. She took to drinking. Posing nude for him to paint her. Hours-long sessions would end with sex on the drop cloth. They talked of buying land, starting a commune. They didn't see much of the neighbors during this period. When they did choose the be around others, it was always with the new friends in the city.

My landlord's got a new girlfriend and I can tell she's trouble. I saw them walking down the road tonight to get a slice of pizza. She was in these black skin-tight shorts and he was in that same old baseball hat that hugs the skull like balding dudes like me and him like to wear these days. She kept on having to pull the little black shorts out of her crack as they walked ahead of me. I just paid the rent yesterday, so now he acts like he doesn't know me.

My experience with the landlord is that he has a bluebird made of plaster on the back wall of his front porch. He also has a kitchen sink, and easy chair, and a large roll of copper tubing on the same porch. Once a month I go to his house across the street, usually in the cover of darkness, and leave the largest check I write every month in his mailbox, in the process committing a federal crime.

His experience with me is that I leave that check and he let's me live in this house that he got for a steal, and that he occasionally fixes a leaky faucet.

Under my landlord lives a British guy named George of whom I know little. He loves Princess Diana and hate Charles and Camilla. He takes my recycling out to the curb, usually three days before the city picks it up.

George works for the landlord and, according to the neighborhood homeless guy, handed in his two-week's notice a few days ago and is moving on to greener pastures. What I know of George, he was likely semi-homeless once as well, and he is recovering from colon cancer.

After being beaten decisively in N.C. and not winning by the desired or expected margin in Indiana yesterday, Hillary Clinton today vows to fight on, stating in so many words that "she must continue to stand up for what she believes in."

Is it me or has what either of the candidates "believes in" become more and more difficult to discern as this campaign has gone on?

We know that both candidates are solidly "democratic" in most of their stances, but, as far as I can see, there's little that separates either of them on most of the issues. They have similar approaches to many issues (e.g. health care), and both have yet to propose any substantive plans for other issues (e.g. the economy).

As the campaign has gone on longer, issues have taken a back seat to personal attacks. The energy put forth by both campaigns is purely being used for spin, media manipulation and smear. That energy could, and should, be being put toward developing a real platform and agenda that can be used to defeat McCain in November.

It's time for Hillary to step down and let the general election campaign to begin in earnest. It's time to start making plans and figuring out how we are going to really handle the mess in Iraq, the failing economy and it's international ramifications, the economic disparity between the rich and (increasingly) poor, environmental protection, etc.

For Hillary to continue the contest at a point in which it is mathematically impossible for her to get the nomination (unless she manages to pull strings within the party and gain an overwhelming majority of the remaining superdelegates, which would run the risk of alienating voters by making them feel disenfranchised), is just an act of too much pride on the part of Sen. Clinton. Sen. Obama has the lead in pledged delegates and overall delegates, his speeches are more inspiring (and despite this being downplayed by his opponents, inspiration is sorely needed in the current domestic environment), and there's not much that separates either candidate on most of the issues.

It's time to stop the insanity, save that $6.4 million of her personal money, and get on with the business of beating McCain in November.

Please, Hillary, please... just let it go.

A man walks into a bar; this not a joke. He first asks the bartender for a glass of water, at which point, the bartender explains that if you ain't paying, you ain't drinking. The man bursts into tears. The bartender asks why the long face. Really, this is not a joke.

It seems that the old guy's wife had run off with another guy, leaving early this very same morning while he was still in bed. If that wasn't enough, the Camaro-driving sonofabitch ran over his what-would-be-best hunting dog, if only he ever hunted. The dog could climb a tree and throw the raccoon to its death, or say he said.

So his old lady is gone, and his favorite dog is dead, and all he can think to order is a glass of water, because she took the money in the Maxwell House can in the kitchen that they had been saving for a trip this summer to Panama City Beach, and she took the bank card from his wallet on the dresser, and the checkbook which was also on the dresser, and the credit card was long overdrawn, and to top it off, it's Veteran's Day, a fucking bank holiday, and the old guy fought in the first Gulf War, and through much VA therapy had just learned to manage his PTSD, but he couldn't get any cash out to buy a drink after his woman ran off with another man, who ran over his favorite dog, as they made their getaway.

Lord knows how he's going to afford the colonoscopy and all, especially after being laid off down at the factory.

This wasn't the shittiest day ever, or even week. This is the shittiest life on record.

The bartender acquiesces and gives him the glass of water, and a shot of Kentucky Gentleman chaser on the house. That was about the time the Asian geisha-style siamese twins walked in with the midget, but we will save that one for later.

Then this leather fag walks into the bar just like it's 1980 and it's San Francisco, which it isn't. He's got brass knuckles on one hand, and a cricket bat in the other just to increase his odds. He stomps over to the guy, who's now in the middle of his first house gin and tonic, and smacks him square in the jaw with the knuckles and then square on the knee with the bat as he descends from the stool to the floor.

The dude asks what the fuck did you do that for, and the queer says that's because your daughter ran off with my old man.

The midget with the four gold rings in each ear plays a song on the juke box.

He says that wasn't my daughter, that was my wife. Mr. Castro feels so bad he buys the guy a Grey Goose martini and they spend the next half hour licking wounds and talking about what they lost. Then they talk about church and childhood. Then about the rough start the Astros are off to. They talk about the midget and the siamese twins, and Mr. Tightpants says he almost switched sides for some Arabic siamese twins that he ran across while trying to figure out something to do during the first Gulf War. The two realize they have something in common - the Gulf War - not the siamese twins or wishy-washy sexuality.

The homo says he has to leave to throw his ex's shit out into the street so the whole neighborhood will know what an asshole he is, and thus will know that a period of mourning will ensue behind the doors of his house. Don't come asking for a cup of sugar.

That's when the ducks come in, and man were these some rich ducks. They start ordering rounds of drinks for the whole house, but being ducks they were lightweights, and most of them started passing out under tables, on the bar, in the toilet. One was even found asleep floating around in the bathroom sink. He was a small duck.

The bartender brings three of the leftover duck drinks to the old guy and he drinks them all: peach schnapps, amaretto sour, shot of Jaeger from the duck with the frayed Astros hat.

About this time the bartender says something along the lines of last call, only to be followed by you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here, or if you don't work at the bar, or you are not fucking someone who works at the bar, get the fuck out, or something like that. The guy thinks briefly of propositioning the bartender - a feeble attempt at eeking out a few more moments here and a few less moments at the house that was once their home.

The siamese twins leave, each trying to weave in an independent direction. The midget follows trying to push his face into the unified ass of the twins. The ducks all start to awake and stir and depart the bar in a V formation. Quack, quack.

Then there's the veteran, the man, now alone. He thinks of the street girls out on the boulevard. He thinks of the all-night liquor store. He thinks of his 10-years-his-junior wife on the way to Panama City Beach with his Panama City Beach money and a guy in a fucking Camaro, with t-tops. He thinks of how easy it is to be a drunk when your life has gone to the crapper, and how being drunk at such times, can make the whole world seem new again.

He thinks he shouldn't have mixed all those drinks, but beggars can't be choosers.

Tornadoes tore through downtown and a few surrounding neighborhoods here in Atlanta last night. My experience with it was just of some hail falling at my house with heavy rain, a cancelled trip to the bar, and not much else so far. Apparently my office, the CNN Center, was heavily damaged, but when I checked my work email just a few minutes ago, I was told that we would be back open