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Sunday, July 15, 2012

On Jeter

i think this community [Baseball Think Factory] sounds stupid when we claim that jeter was/[is] a horrible defensive shortstop given that:

--flies in the face of how he has been perceived by his peers/other baseball people his entire career
--that in his career he was and is one of the smartest players in baseball
--he was in the center of the action of what could easily be argued was the best team in baseball over the past 15 years
--he's still playing an every day ss at age 38 and he's not embarrassing himself by any stretch. there are no willie mays moments here

i want to believe in the metrics. and i understand the origins of how jeter is assessed 

but i think jeter and the metrics clash and we are missing something

- Harveys Wallbangers

Eureka: Brain Box Blues by Cris Ramsay

I finished "Eureka: Brain Box Blues" by Cris Ramsay, a novel based on the Scyfy series. In brief, I thought it captured little of the series charm, had a weak plot, and failed to find the 'voice' of the characters. I was not impressed. Grade: C

Mr. Polk's War

A week or so ago I finished reading "Mr. Polk's War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846-1848" by John H. Schroeder. This was a book I bought at a UWM library sale years ago and finally crossed off my TBR list. 

It's a story of the domestic opposition to the Mexican American war. It's a work strongly influenced by the era in which it was written (early '70's/Vietnam) so you have to allow for some bias in his POV, but overall I thought it was well written and informative. 

I will say it'd be a hard book to follow w/out some prior knowledge of that war, as Schroeder dang near *ignores* the war itself while still referencing domestic reaction to those events. 

I'd grade this a pleasant B+

A Great Quote

Progress doesn't come from early risers -- progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. 
~ Robert Anson Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long )1973)

Struggle

I continue to struggle with a two week long wave of depression, more accurately described as a wall of bitter despair crushing down on my chest. Yes, I continue to function as normal - I am, after all, Amazing - and yes, it is slowly diminishing, but for a day or two there . . . yowee. What's the cause you say? Maybe I'm stressed about the state of independent film-making, or the plight of the endangered kittywampus rat of the 12th moon of Jupiter. Or maybe it's biological. But I do know this: if an attention-whore like me wanted to discuss it, it'd have been plastered all over FB for weeks now. TY for your concern, but this will be the last discussion about it, online or in 'real' life.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Scuba

After work I took Gracie to a 3 hr SCUBA class at Juneau High School offered by the Milwaukee Rec Dep't. She LOVED it. No sooner was she out of the pool than she said it was a lot of fun, thanked me for suggesting it and signing her up, said she wanted to take the full certification course and - AND - on the way home said "I'm proud that you're my Dad". :)

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Andy Griffith

A much belated RIP to Andy Griffith. I was too busy to notice his passing on the 3rd, so my apologies. Matlock remains my ideal choice if I ever need a defense lawyer (with Perry Mason as his second chair.)

*****

Oh, and according to Redbox this is the 3rd anniversary of my first rental with them. 


Monday, July 9, 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

A Quote for the 4th of July

My friend asked if I was free this weekend. Of course I am, this is America -

 swiped from a Twitter feed of [domonique.@ObeyTomlinster].

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A Shadow of a Distant Life

This is the story that won me a public reading at a local library back in 2009.



It was three in the morning when the ghost  returned to visit Steven.

At first, shortly after moving into the house, there had had been  only the sound of heavy, careful footsteps in the night. Alarmed, Steven would leave the imagined safety of his bed and venture down the hall, terrified of finding an intruder. But it was always the same; the kids asleep and unaware, the doors bolted, the windows locked.

In the morning he and his wife found it amusing, a curiosity to liven up the anecdotes they told about their new home. Neither, of course, believed in ghosts.

That was how it started.

What followed was a lull, two weeks of undisturbed and blissful sleep. Then, an escalation: the footsteps again, this time breaching Steven's room and stopping just beside his bed.  After that the mornings brought no peace. The restless nights made tempers flare, and he grew angry each time his wife blamed it all on the shifting frame of a century old house.

Steven, for his part, was no longer sure what he believed.

Soon his wife let the news 'slip' to his mother. "I don't understand why you're worried," his Mom said, scolding him. "Our family has owned that house since it was built. The only people to pass away there are your great-grandparents, and even if they could come back, you know they would never hurt you."

They were words meant to comfort, but did the opposite. He felt no kinship with a couple dead and gone twenty years before his birth. Nor could he fathom caring about his own descendants, at least those he wouldn't live to see. If there were angry spirits in the house, why would they be obliged to tolerate him? For the sake of a relationship four generations removed?

That was the night the figure appeared. There were footsteps of course, loud enough to wake him but no one else (although, to be fair, he never really slept well at night anymore, surviving on catnaps scattered throughout the day). They came forward slowly but confidently, as if the spirit no longer cared to mask its presence, and again, they paused by the bed. Ignoring his fear Steven opened his eyes.

Before him stood a shadow, a man-but-not-a-man. While there was no physical form, the shifting darkness  worked to craft an illusion of strength and bulk. Remarkably, through the pressing, physical weight of his fear Steven felt himself begin to climb out of bed.

Not yet, a voice said, and he had no doubt it echoed only in his mind. Not yet.

That was the beginning of the end.

In the weeks to come Steven would stop trying to sleep at night altogether. His work began to suffer; his children, sensing something wrong, grew distant, and his wife, concerned, begged him to seek help. When he refused her pleas he found himself banished to the living room couch. For Steven it was a hidden blessing. His few nights on the couch gave him his first true rest in months.

                                                              A Shadow of a Distant Life  pg 2


On the night the shadow returned it there was no sound, only an icy shiver that wrenched Steven awake with a stunning abruptness. The figure stood at the head of the couch, leaning over and staring - if it had eyes at all - directly into Steven's face.

Now, it said.

The figure walked away, heading for the kitchen. Steven's mind and body screamed caution, and he resolved to stay where he lay. To his surprise  he found himself following the shadow.  They entered the room together, and in time it took Steven to blink his eyes the figure disappeared.

Once again Steven's head screamed retreat, but instead he searched frantically around the room, as if instead of vanishing he'd simply lost sight of the figure in a crowd. After a moment he heard the familiar footsteps coming from the basement stairs that lay off the pantry.  He followed the sound without thinking, and without bothering with the stairway light.  His eyes had grown accustomed to picking out human forms in the dark of night, and they came quickly to rest on a figure below.

At that same moment he noticed the broken basement window, the strangely unfamiliar shape of the shadow, and the glint of a knife in its hand as it rushed up the stairs. Before these thoughts could raise an alarm the intruder slammed into Steven, slashing at him in a frenzy. The first blow missed and struck the wall, but the intruder never hesitated.  A second later the man was on him again, pushing him down against the stairs before raising the knife for a final blow.

Steven's eyes went from the knife, to the eyes of his assailant - and then to the familiar figure emerging from the dark behind him.

Pitch dark arms ignored the blade and encircled his neck, leveraging him up and off of Steven. It was then, only for a moment, that Steven saw the face of the shadow. It was no face as we know it, simply the impression of one, but in its imagined features was not one face but many; his great-grandfather and his father before him, his sons and his future grandchildren.

Even in the surreal chaos of that moment he knew that  in the end the fight would be his own. Now the shadow said, and Steven struck, knocking the intruder unconscious and sending him tumbling down the stairs.

He would see the shadow only once more in his lifetime. Many years later, babysitting his grandchild, Steven stirred and wandered into the baby's room, sitting in the  rocker alongside the crib. From the corner of the eye he noticed a shadow distinct from the darkness, but did not turn to meet it.

Together, the pair was content to admire the future in silence as it slept peacefully in the crib.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Tennis did not go well

After we picked the kids up from rec all six of us went back to the tennis courts. It was a disaster, as most family outings are. Junie refused to pick up a racket until we were ready to leave, LuLu had a fit the first half of the time we were there, and YaYa took over that gig for the last half. Only Smiley was behaved (and not half bad). It was still better than dealing with most of the adults I know. Afterwards a trip to Home Depot and then on to Woods Cemetery to visit my grandparents' grave.

Tennis Anyone?

Just back from playing tennis in the park. Mayhaps not a great idea in this heat . . .

Quote

Why do I exist? That is a question very few ever ask themselves. They would not have a ten cent gadget in their homes for five minutes without knowing its purpose, but they will go through life without knowing why they are living. Until we answer that question there is no question worth answering; and the way we answer it determines our character in this world and our destiny in the next.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (True Liberty – address given 1/15/1939)
I find it humorous that JSOnline  has an article about Brony's - men who love My Little Pony - and chooses to link it to a published statement by Anderson Cooper announcing that he is gay.

Three Books for You to Pick up - Or Not


I'm a fan of the USA Network's Psych, and yes, for the record, shame on CBS for ripping it off for The Mentalist. The great thing about "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read" is that author William Rabkin accomplishes the near impossible for a TV tie-in novel. He not only make it readable, he captures the characters to a 'T'. The dialouge is spot on and literally LOL. 

I grade this a personal A, and an objective B/B+. 


Book #48 of the year


I am also a fan of A.Lee Martinez, and I did enjoy  his latest novel, "Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain". But . . . it ain't his best work. Not his funniest. Not his most original. Not the best plot. Not, in short, my favorite.

Grade: C+

Book # 49 of the year.


For the Pysch tie-in novel  The Call of the Mild you can second most of my praise of author William Rabkin. But I ID'd the killer long before Shawn and Gus did, and I wasn't pleased with the way the subplot of Henry's protege worked out. This was the weaker effort of the two.

Grade: C

Book # 50 of the year.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

A New Door

I spent a lot of my day off today installing the new rear entry door with Socialist. Surprise, surprise, fitting a modern door and frame into a 120 year old entry isn't the easiest thing to do. Replacing the old door with one of equal size would have meant removing wainscoting and the unique trim around it, so we went down to a 32" door but that provided its own challenges. Anyhow, it's in, it's locked, and all that remains is to put the storm door back on and pretty it up. That will wait for the 4th.

Bull

All Star game rosters are out, and Braun didn't make the starting nine. That's bull.

My bit of the office


I thought you might like a glimpse into my cubicle at Job Current. No? Too bad, so sad. 

The pic above showcases not only a stunningly handsome man, but a wee bit of my two monitors. God Bless 'em both. Some folks at work have only one on their desk, something that seems guaranteed to reduce efficiency if you ask me. 

Anyhow, I've decorated my cubicle for a number of reasons. To bring a bit of home to work. To express who I am. And because I have an illogical hope that the decorations will sway any lay-off decision in my favor. 


Here's the wall behind me. There's the Nirvana and Doctor Who posters, a self portrait of LuLu, a turtle she made in art class, and a wonderfully colored 'dog on skateboard' she crafted at a local restaurant. 


Here's the wall just to the left of my monitors. Our 2012 Christmas card, a drawing by Ginger, a note from a co-worker that's covering up an ink stain from a pen that exploded ("best mapping response of the season goes to Dan: I'm not sure I can properly map a hop, skip and jump") and an "I love you" card Smiley gave me after a day he and I argued start to finish. :)


To my left is an abstract drawing by Ginger and an age-old art and creative writing project from YaYa, back when she was in K3 or K4 "The bright caterpillar, worm, and butterfly jumped quietly to their home". I love it. 

Last but not least, my computer tower itself, decorated in the holiest of holies, the trinity itself: The Yankees, a Tardis, and the Match Game logo.