tired of oil afghanistan and tea parties
enough that flipping the dial to hear
trade deadline talk on the sports station seems like
a good idea

yeah that bad

maybe it's a feeling of malaise in keeping with the rest of the country

last night there was a discussion of extending unemployment
benefits
or rather
why aren't we
that caught me though

never mind the disgust that using a service
that could keep people fed and in homes
as a political football
deserves

there's no clearer evidence that republicans are rooting for the nation
to falter until
or so that
they get what they want in november

more interesting though was the idea of reviving something else
republicans hate
from the new deal era

national service jobs like the ccc or wpa
we're faced with not just people out of work
and the prospect of paying them to be out of work to keep
the economy
crawling

but while we're doing that
these people are doing nothing
their resumes shriveling
skills atrophying

the reason i am a liberal moonbat
above all else
is that i've played too much of sid meier's civilization
which is to say that i believe that there are things that
societies
and humanity
have left to accomplish
and/or
must accomplish
which can only be done
when vast quantities of resources are entrained to such a goal

and sure there was a conservative nitwit on there who made a game
attempt
at arguing that these efforts didn't actually create jobs in the '30's

yeah i didn't get it either

but why don't we take these out of work people and use them to get
something done
something we always wanted to get done but didn't have the time

let's get unemployed people who can use excel to computerize our medical records
let's get idle homebuilders to insulate buildings we already have
or send them to haiti to build new ones by the hundreds with money that's also waiting
put the sum of the laid-off parts of the big three automakers to work on fast trains
laid-off financial industry workers can be employed giving the federal budget the
scrutiny we all want
see even conservatives can get behind this

it's idealistic as hell obviously
and politically dangerous not merely to evoke the great depression
and acknowledge we're in something nearly as bad
but to openly embrace the über-liberal solution to it

but what resonated with me is the waste
the waste of productive years of productive peoples' lives
of the free time that we all speak of such ambitious plans for
but never have

these people have it
smart people with abilities varied and useful are waiting
to be pointed in a direction

let's fucking go already

especially as regards sports

to play
it's one of those experiences that
even if rare
['cause i suck]
gets its hooks into you
and makes you want more

it's something about the ability
even if temporary
to make something fleeting and amazing happen
but to understand
recognize
control
and savor each detail of it

i had one of those in a game last night
triggered a counterattack
receive dribble
suck up the pressure
turn and lay it off
get it back
blow by a flat-footed defender
pull it back
one pass later it's in the net

it all slowed down
and i saw all of it

i'm off to south africa for two weeks on friday
and am hoping for a similar sort of calm
even as i seek out every bit of excitement i can find

both my loyal readers can
look for photos on flickr
and updates on twitter

hell no
i'm thrilled with that

no
it's the $75 in bullshit tickets i racked up
$40 for being a day late putting a sticker on my car
$35 for having a headlight go out

i'm guilty of both
obviously

but the bigger problem is the extent to which these are
revenue sources
not law enforcement

otherwise there'd be better things for cops to do than
run every car's tag looking for a reason to decorate the windshield
in the middle of the night
or stalk the back roads of west bridgewater
on a 'safety stop' he called it

don't get me wrong
I hope they take that money
and fix potholes
buy books
or even give jerky cops on a power trip a raise

but let's call this what it is
it's just another way to spell tax
applied arbitrarily and annoyingly
because we've all been made so afraid of the word

i'm fine with the ends
but the means is stupid

tax me all you want
just stop wasting my fucking time

it's not that we're fans of the sport
so much as that there is innate pleasure in watching people
who are just plain great at what they do
and appreciating their work

it's an added joy of watching albert pujols mash a baseball
or lionel messi curl a shot so effortlessly it seems accidental
it's part of why the world gets excited when steve jobs talks
or why movies with will smith always make tons of money

they're the best at the thing they do and people enjoy that

and maybe it's time to really appreciate the republican machine
in that same vein
really
have we ever in the course of our country's history
seen so much made from so little substance

billions of dollars
wars
the course of a nation
steered from the marching orders of
whatever cackling moustache-twirling mastermind
perfected the application of the simple axiom

repetition makes it true

the health-care debate is truly their finest hour
america
it can truly be said
hates it

because
it
has been so skillfully ambiguated
[i'm declaring that a word]
into the enemy other
through the repetition of old favorites like
death panels™ and
government takeover™
to the point where we need to
start from scratch™

the meaning is not in the words but in their association
bad with health care reform
good with some ambiguous republican brand of health care reform
[that will never occur because everyone forgot about it and they don't want to anyway]

it's flawlessly executed
taking something that has the potential to prevent someone you or i know
from going bankrupt in a hospital somewhere
and turning it into something evil
[thanks to these same people we now only understand good or evil]
evil enough to get people foaming at the mouth
haranguing public servants and
shouting
shouting
shouting

so why can't i appreciate it for what it is
a tour de force of lying

why
because albert pujols isn't killing baseball
nor is messi killing soccer

republicans are the death panel for meaningful discourse

while i too lament the ironic possibility
that the victory of a centrist-liberal president
and his
'radical'
moderate-liberal agenda
may turn out to be exactly what the
increasingly insane republicans
[note i do not say conservatives]
need to burrow deeper inside
more americans' empty heads

where was i

oh

i could give two shits about a lack of kennedys

actually i take that back

i'm glad they're gone
for the same reason i'm glad the bushes are
temporarily off the radar
and for the same reason i'm glad clinton wasn't elected

regardless of individual qualifications for or against
it's a sad byproduct of the media-dependent
nature of politics
that names such as theirs become
in effect
royalty
dynasties
the exact sort of thing our founding fathers fled

even if it is more akin to brand names
bush being shorthand for 'compassionate conservative'
kennedy for 'actually compassionate and will spend to prove it'
clinton for something between the two
convenient
but
it is still nothing more than a further way that voters can stop
thinking
about what policies mean
and rely on the news to chew and regurgitate it
directly into their mouth

so while i thank them for their service

i'm glad they're gone

but even they have a tendency to beat things to death
like every other peddler of
the twenty-four hour news cycle

this week it's non-stop toyota recall
updates

and just like every other safety story
it spawns others

a 737 goes down for reasons unknown
and suddenly we're hearing about
rudder problems
landing gear issues
before we even know what happened
lacking real substance
these things fade promptly
but we enjoy the panic for
a few days
the thought that machines to which we
entrust
our lives
are made so shoddily
by evil corporations
that the revelation of one problem
is the proverbial tip of the iceberg

it's not that i have faith in corporations
hardly
but i have faith in their fear of
lawsuit
of regulation
[back when we had that sort of thing]
and faith in the idea that they have
a thousand engineers for every
moustache twirling
fat cat ready to weigh the decision
on cost alone

i have no love for toyota either
i've mentioned before that their advertisements
reach that transcendent point of annoyance where they
inspire antipathy
for their brand

but let's look at it in simple terms
a small problem with a gas pedal
that has not yet resulted in mediagenic fiery wrecks
is being conscientiously fixed
and the next logical thing is to start airing out
speculative 'problems' with other parts of their vehicles

cars are complicated animals
that have design flaws
and are sometimes put together imperfectly
just like everything else
probability suggests that the combination of circumstance
does not result in fiery wrecks very often

if we start digging under every problem
we're going to find more
they almost certainly exist
remember
humans design these things
and humans build them

humans also drive them
in general when they kill someone it's operator error
in the event the design increases the likelihood of something
bad
happening
something should be done

which it is

so why isn't it the end of the story

to cause me to vote for a republican

no

i'm not considering it right now

rather i'm thinking about just why it's so

unthinkable

and maybe that's the key

thinking

i don't mean to say that republicans
and their voters
don't think

but listening to them
to what they say
and moreover what they don't say

it's clear that they'd be just as happy if you didn't

think, i mean

it's all gainsaying
all destruction
eliminate this
cut that
vote this down
stop that

tell me what you want to do
i may still disagree with it
as for the few of them who do bother to articulate it
rest assured i do
wholeheartedly

but listening to that porn star scott brown
just drives the point home
bereft of ideas short of a slavish devotion to the status quo
ante

which finally does make it clear to me what would be a start

let's hear a republican
stand up and unequivocally renounce
everything bush and cheney did

wait
let me think

no let's just say all of it

i'll listen to the first republican who's willing to tell me
those guys were a bunch of
condescending patronizing fucktards
who succeeded so well at addressing
facile dipshits with prepackaged code words
catch phrases and human caricatures that they
were able to get away with
shaming my country
and despoiling its citizens

also robbery conspiracy torture war and some other stuff

scott brown is self-evidently not that guy
he's just another fucking tool
with no ideas other than to use a pavlovian response
[who slobbers more voters or the politicians themselves]
to the words
'tax cut' to get elected

they haven't ruined democracy
they've ruined discourse

i'm waiting for an adult
an adult republican
to try to talk to me and convince me they're right
until they take me seriously though

why should i offer them the same courtesy

shamelessly cribbed from the feltron annual report
his fault for coming up with an
awesome idea
also i am too cheap to pay for daytum

looking back on 2009
particularly in my crude graphical format
as you will see
i can't help but think i could have done better

but let's get started anyway

travel

this is most disappointing

while the map shows a lot of red
it doesn't mean that i went a lot of places

four countries [france spain russia usa]
fifteen states [many of which are airports [yeah i count that]]
i slept in fourteen cities or towns
and visited thirteen airports
[BOS CDG BCN JFK CMH ORD DME MDW LGA DTW BWI SLC JAC]
via plane car bus and train
[interestingly at no point this year was i on a boat]

this is what i get for blowing so many vacation days
so early in the year
and working basically all through the summer
again

activity

most disappointing this year was that i only bicycled
seventy-three more miles than i ran

run 176
bike 249

both numbers are pretty sad and pathetic
but can be explained by two things

soccer
as in i played 72 matches this year
[and scored zero goals]

and the pmc
as in i didn't do it last year

i did run five 5ks and a half marathon too

also i bicycled through twenty-five cities and towns
in our fair commonwealth

other stuff

i saw a paltry four concerts this year
[efterklang cut copy
moderat depeche mode]

saw sixteen movies in the theater
two of them twice

i went to four red sox games
[they were 3-1 when i attended]

also i went to eighteen soccer matches
[in foxboro chicago washington columbus barcelona and moscow]

i took two thousand eight hundred twenty six photos
and uploaded 176 to flickr

reviewed 71 places on yelp

tweeted 1604 times

and wasted two hours this morning compiling this

next year we will do better

i assure you

it's going to snow
you can just tell
by looking at the sky
so gray that it devours the sunshine
with a persistent wind
that somehow fails to cut deeply
with the promise of fluffy snow
making up for any discomfort

but i wonder if
a hundred years ago
when people have weather forecasts
people still said the same thing all the time
but were mostly wrong

at any rate
it was cold enough that i had the
shiny new fieldturf field in the fens
all to myself
to hold one last personal soccer practice
before the 'grass' disappears
a huge expanse of green plastic
black shredded tire bits
all to myself
nearly silent except for the
ice-skating music at fenway

nothing but me
a ball
my bad aim
and the anticipation of snow

not knowing what to buy for anyone
i resorted to the old tactic of walking through
random stores

it turned into a nasty day for it
with the wind whipping cold rain
through the south end

a few shops were ones i'd had
some success with in the past

others were stops i'd made purely on a
whim

and what struck me was how the people
working in the stores made sure to greet me
and say hi

of course it's not like they were busy
but because i'm such a sap
maybe i looked a little harder at their wares

[oh get your mind out of the gutter]

maybe i wanted to buy something
even if it didn't fit any of the checkboxes on the
list

because maybe it's a nice store
run by nice people and such things
should be
encouraged

and this is wholly different from
the impersonal
get me in
get me out
get me my stuff
experience that marks so much
of the shopping world

don't get me wrong
it's well known that i'm a big
fan of straightforwardness
and not of unnecessary niceties

but it strikes me that absent
that human interaction
the decision of whether or not to purchase something
becomes purely financial calculus

and maybe it should be you might say
and maybe you'd be right

but beyond the decision of buy or don't buy
this also affects whether people buy cheap products
or pay somewhat more for
quality
for good design

and perhaps by complicating the purchasing decision
so to speak
by adding another term into the equation

the whole function of consumer confidence
so important to us all
while remaining fickle and unknowable

is damped just a little

maybe being a savvy customer isn't the
end-all
maybe it's not so bad a thing to get sold

not in the sense of getting ripped off
but having the balance tipped to
'sure i want it'
rather than simply
'not at this price'

or maybe i'm just a pushover and am making
excuses

lamentably my nanowrimo novel is stalled
at 11k words
and i don't know when next i'll get to write

yet there remain things that demand more than
140 characters
even though like everyone else in the world
i've gravitated to being tersely talkative
or talkatively terse
what does it say about us that we reduce our thoughts
to sound bites designed for people
to read while ignoring
other people on the subway
traffic while jaywalking
other vehicles while driving

speaking of which i caved
and replaced my trusty
day-1 iphone
that thing went to a dozen countries
found random crappy soccer fields throughout the 617
and kept no one posted on stuff that did and didn't matter
kept in or out of touch with people who are or aren't still around
until a downpour at rfk stadium rendered part of the screen
a bit less sensitive
it allowed me
for better or worse
to always be on
i expect no less from this one

ironically it was only after i took up residence
in the hub of the universe that i got around to
a couple of key tourist
activities
like the head of the charles
and the observation deck at the prudential tower
i'm kicking myself for not trying the latter sooner

early in the fall i was positively buoyed by a spectacular run of
form
playing soccer
running freely
never tiring
with good vision
good decisions
and good results
i was as shocked as anyone
i just wanted to keep playing endlessly
because i knew it had to come to an end
a couple lackluster games later
i've got goose eggs on my shins and
frustration

my apartment is too warm
and too dry
and i can't sleep
and i'm sick
and i need to stay late at work but i also need to go out but i also need to make potatoes but i also need to play ball but i also need to run but i also need to do laundry

and unfortunately the opposite days
where i'm focused
keenly aware of my senses
seem to correspond with pretty crappy days

but at least after a long day at work
and some other shit happening
i got to go for a run

and while barreling through the streets of boston
at a grouchy pace
at least i got to have one of those nights when
the music was loud
and spurred me on

a blistering version of orbital's remind
pacing a glorious swerving run down boylston

and even though i was tired and hungry
i just wanted to keep running

fortunately thursday night was a return to earth
as i struggled to mark a really talented girl
who then smashed my fingers with a shot off the post
while i was in goal
(do you think that means she likes me)

(no)

before that i had done the following

drove to baltimore late at night
ran 13 miles fueled entirely by chicken mcnuggets on four hours' sleep
drank 8 pints of guinness afterwards
flew back to boston ass-early the next morning
played 65 of 70 minutes of a 9:30 game
spent two days visiting users and spending face time with the client
got on a plane back to baltimore
watched the usa draw costa rica
flew back to boston
directly to work
played another game

i keep saying that fall is so short and goes by too fast
but really
there's just too much fun stuff happening
and we don't notice it

so today i took a walk
and got some sleep

the fun starts again soon

naturally there are some days when i'm just looking
for some exercise
trying to get through it and go home to a delicious
frozen dinner
but i wonder what happened to all the perfect moments
where the right song hits
loud
with a burst of energy
powering downhill

the sort of thing that makes you feel unmistakably alive

as opposed to the normal state

where i'm so scattered
so attention-deficient
that things that should register clearly
indelibly
are dulled
background processes

it's not to say that this is a universal thing
goodness knows that there remain a few things that
seize undivided attention

but i feel like there should be more

i feel like my eyes should be wide open
while the sun rises over the back bay on my way into work
or when i'm pedaling in a good groove
or while leaves rattle down the sidewalk on my street

maybe i should cut back on the caffeine
maybe i should take some focusyn
maybe i should turn the volume up
maybe i ought to take a deep breath every now and then
maybe i need to drink more
maybe i need to get my ass on a plane and go find something
that will make an impression

yeah
let's do some of that

that's the kind of month it's been

i've often said that some of the best parts of trips to
far-flung places
is not the stereotypical tourist destinations
but the simple pleasures of watching the sun set
or sitting on a park bench
or having a beer in an outdoor cafe
so part of the thrill in finally getting to move into the city
is in being able to finally use my own town
as my living room
in all those ways and more

not of course that i'm still not jonesing for a trip somewhere

i was in a record store last night
for the first time in a while
and not only was it hard to find anything
i wanted
but i realized that i could just as easily have bought anything
i did want
from my phone
in my pocket
for cheaper
without having to deal with a silly physical artifact that i don't want
but despite all that
why do i still feel like something's missing

despite having just turned 33 and
all my protestations
i don't usually feel old
unfortunately after a glorious 120 minutes of hard-played soccer
last sunday
i really fucked up my lower back for a week
it sucks to be full of energy
but have it hurt to walk
it's better now
but it was a sobering week.