which is pretty cool
watching the tour de france i had this insatiable
urge
to figure out what those climbs were like

and to see if i could do it
[on a 95-degree day 'cause i'm an idiot]

now i know what it's like
and i just need to do it twice as fast
and in the middle of a 100-mile day

oh and my bike fits in my smart

about putting my personal life
in stasis
to try and coax life into
some misbegotten creation
that consumes my
time
sweat
and blood

when i do it voluntarily

over and over again

not really

but i'll do it anyway

i'd like to think that someday
i'll have a life that causes me to reprioritize
and certainly there are plenty of friday nights where i have

they just seem so few
and so far between
and so long ago

so fucking tired

of course part of that is a function of stuff not working
or in this case not working well enough
not knowing what's wrong exactly
or having the ability to fix it
eats at you

so even when you leave work
because you don't know what to do
you spend the rest of the time trying to figure it out anyway
not actively mind you
but it's in the back of your mind

so monday brings more work
more banging my head against the wall

but at least i'm not rested for it

i'm an idiot

further evidence for this

yesterday we had a rather premature
almost surprise
show and tell
for something that you could tell wasn't quite ready to be shown
two serious
really showstopping issues were evident

today we spent around four hours discussing
what went wrong and how we might fix it

in what was left of the day
we fixed one problem
and halfway fixed the other

but you know
the meetings were helpful
really

so it vexes me when i see human error's
inescapable effect on sporting events
which is to say the temerity of officials
to make calls i disagree with

but it's somewhat more significant than that
in all seriousness

this comes to mind in the wake of the boston area's
resurgent love of basketball
and the equally significant accusations of
referee bias
as an element that shapes a game to a particular
design

and i find that last notion to be most significant
as i'll explain

first of all i should state
that i was once a huge celtics fan
bird parish mchale dj ainge and of course greg kite
but over the years i grew disillusioned with the sport as a whole
the forty-odd minutes of preamble to a thoroughly unexciting
yet decisive final few
and moreover
the inability for a game designed for no contact
to be meaningfully arbitrated
in an age where that contact is fierce
constant
and necessary

in short i think that the balance of a basketball game
rests so heavily on the shoulders of officials that it
teeters between a tightly regulated yet unwatchable slog
or a free for all
and since so many calls manifest themselves directly
on the scoreboard
basically you are in fact paying to
watch the referees

at the same time i'm remiss if i don't point out
a similar issue with soccer
another highly-evolved sport
where the participants are well-schooled in
extracting every inch of advantage
a referee's control of a match is a frequent topic of conversation
and indeed they can fuck up and fuck up big
with a rash sending-off or award of a
penalty

but it's there that the difference is most crucial
those big
awful
decisions are there for everyone to see
and there is no hiding from them
you fuck up and entire nations may hold a grudge

whereas in basketball
it's more like the get-rich-quick scheme from office space
where the ref just keeps stealing from jerry's kids
and by the time they're done
they've affected the outcome of the game for whatever reason
for their own biases
for the mob
or for the mouse
and gotten away with it clean

maybe the solution is to not write rules
you can't enforce
nfl i'm looking at you

considering the obsession with statistics and the
archival video used by teams in practicing and training
why can't leagues of all kind use their vast riches to
hire an army of tivo jockeys
[creating jobs for slovenly americans to boot]
to re-watch every game and grade every call
baseball already does it with balls and strikes

and if we're lucky maybe someday robots will do it for us
and we'll argue with them too
and then they'll rip our arms off

once upon a time i used to sit down with the week's poly
and vomit up a dyspeptic rant
on a certain website of ill repute

and after reading the back-page article
by one john kolb
[himself a frequent target of the party
for his benighted policies on campus computing]
i found myself tempted to do the same

it's not on the web yet
but let's just consider the title

Education for Innovational Leadership

for fuck's sake
innovational isn't even a word

it goes downhill from there

mainly it's a justification for the multi-zillion-dollar
performing arts center on the hill as being good for
scientists and engineers too

far be it from me
given my own experience to argue that point

but that happens because of people
not because of a building
and this article is full of such specious argument
to justify the institute's giant impulse buy
that i can tell that though i've been gone from troy for a good long while

nothing has really changed

i got my new smart this week
and he has done nothing but make friends
wherever we go
be it a thumbs up or
a rolled-down window conversation
at a red light
or a lengthy walkaround and q & a
in the parking lot

today i had a guy trying out the drivers' seat
in the stop & shop parking lot
having stopped and blinky parked his jeep in the aisle
his wife came out and said
'oh no he finally found one'

in a practical sense too
he's a fun car to hang around with
once you get used to driving
almost like a standard
[not that i know how to do that]
you can merge onto route 9
lickety split
he turns almost as if pivoting in place
can fit a ton of stuff
and has plenty of room for me
and a nice loud stereo

now i'm looking for an excuse for a road trip

and to find an old friend a good new home