manic sunday

I keep telling myself that an addiction to watching sports is ruining my life. Then the weekend comes and there's NLCS and ALCS games, college football, the Jets on Sunday...and I find my ass glued to the couch once again, waiting for Monday morning to bring a new week so I can have yet another reason to hate myself again.

Without a job, the weekends mean nothing. That's been established (see: Claypool circa 1993). However, the stress felt during the jobless week still exists, through behavioral patterns that exist in society and have been burned into each individual. Even to the most guilt free of procrastinators does the weekend bring some sort of refuge. It is really only then that the lazy can feel good about not getting things done. Because its the only time (besides Thankgsgiving and some other Holidays) when everyone else seems to be subscribing to the same rules of the game.

Enter sports. Baseball games that were once a little over two hours now average close to four. The tv volume mysteriously increases to brainnumbing levels during every commerical break. "TV timeouts" that are now built in to every major US sporting event, occur roughly every five minutes. Football games that mysteriously slow down in the second part of the fourth quarter and the next game, "bonus coverage" is always at a climactic moment when they pull the switch, right before you can pull yourself off the couch and make a getaway.

I should be getting better. With this knowledge should come action. I know I have a probem, that I admit and we all know that is the first step. The second step awaits me. But last night, as the White Sox beat the Angels again, drawing one win closer to the World Series, I flipped over to NBC, and they had Nascar on.

Nascar. The most popular spectator sport in this country. How could that be? Its a bunch of cars racing in circles for three hours. Where's the excitement? Where's the drama? You can't even see teh expression on the "athletes" faces...

Yet there I was...being pulled in. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do. My finger hovered over the power button on the remote. All I had to do was press down. But I didn't. I wanted to see the pink car sponsered by Target make a move. I found myslef rooting for it to pass that other car and take sole possession of third place...

Ah yes, sports. My worst enemy. My best friend. The conflicted man sits on his couch. Just another manic Sunday.

rainy days

Now for the first time since July, I have internet access from my home computer in my office (my bedroom, but hey, I got a desk and a lamp and a plant and now, once again, internet access) So here I am, connected in NYC, uptown baby.

It's been raining all week. This is the most rain I remember seeingat one time. Funny thing, when it started, it seemed like an Indian Summer rain, but now the Autumn seems to have caught up to it and the chill is in the air. Winter is round the corner, no denying that. That's a comforting feeling, the fact that the seasons will continue to happen like it or not. A comforting feeling sort of like when you're running late for the school bus as a kid. When you're heffing down the sidewalk, backpack weighing you down, brown paper bagged lunch swining in the wind, hitting your thigh with each step, PB and J starting to seep out the bottom, the fear of death in your heart and tearas welling up in your eyes as the bus starts pullin away...Yeah, that's the comfort I'm talking about. It's easy to forget as a kid that the bus will be back in just one short day.

days are short

It's taken me close to two hours to figure out how to create a new posting on this thing. You damn well better believe I'm about to be writing sump'in.

Here was the deal: Somehow, in my impatience to start a blog way back in July, I created not 2 or 3 usernames, but 7 usernames, that's right seven, all being of course variations on my name, nickname, surname and christian name combined with birthdays favorite numbers, days of the week etc and my blog was only listed on one of those dashboards. Of course it was the seventh, but the process of elimination it took to figure that part of it only lasted 2 or 3 minutes. It was the instant feedback based on the email I sent that clued me in to the fact that a person could have different accounts under the same name and passwords.

So in toto, the instant automated email message turned out to be my savior. Usually my worst enemy, the thing I dread most in this world other than stickers on fruit (and in the past, during my smoking days, gum in ashtrays) turns out today to be the end all be all answer to all my problems. And now that I can access my blog again, what do I do? When I have all this space for free and this platform to which I can scream my cyberlungs out until potentially the entire world can read, what do I have to say?

Thank you, blogger. Yes, thank you for the opportunity and keep doing whatever it is that is causing this to become what it is actually becoming. (Maybe it's not a great thing, for in a not too distance future, I see myself possibly never having an actual conversation with another human being again, but that's a topic for later blogging.) Now that I can post new thoughts, you best believe a postin I will be doin'.