I sat down here to harvest my pumpkins in Farmville before they go bad and tell you about the All-Star Game, and my softball game before that tonight. Somehow before I got the window open to do this, I got to thinking about how some people in my acquaintanceship weren't too happy to see me align myself with fat activists, and fat activism, not entirely unlike how, before that, Barry, for instance, wasn't too happy to see me aligning myself with the lesbians, with the lesbianism. (I was like, dude, how slow can you be for a smart guy? The lesbians rule! As does the lesbianism. I mean, too bad for you, I'm sorry, you can't play, but you're not gonna talk me out of it.)

I'm not sure how I got onto that idea. Trying to trace the thread. Holly used to be a keeper of the thread, which she would (to the great amusement of the droppers of it) hold up literally in the air, its imaginary self. I think maybe I got onto it because I was thinking how the blog is more in my inner circle than is facebook. It's closer to my heart. I'm more me here. Particularly with respect to matters like the fat thing. This is one way you can tell the fat thing is a more radical thing than the lesbian thing. It's touchy in different ways. Touchy and touch-and-go.

Reminds me again of the concentric circles of "we" among the oppressed. (That was the biggest thing I learned while studying sign.) (It was huge to get that, finally.)

Anyhow, this livejournal space is a different sort of space from fb, mainly because lots of people don't know about it, particularly strangers from high school and such, but even people I've just become acquainted with. It's a more intimate virtual space I play in. And I dunno. Stuff like that.

Isn't it weird, the different relationships these places have with us, on some scales of intimacy? And they do their fluctuating.

So tonight I had a softball game, which was a good softball game. We lost again, to the halfway house women, who are the other most sucky team in our division, which is the lowest division of women's civic softball in these parts. We two most sucky teams play each other both this week and next week, for it is the playoffs, and while the other teams "duke it out" (as the team email told us), we'll be playing for the one-step-above-the-basement. Or for the basement, as the case may be.

We like playing these folks. They're the grungiest team. They're so much looser and varied and dykey, however many dykes may be among 'em, than, for instance, the church team that has dominated our little division --- Grace. Grace actually plays in two leagues, so right there they get more practice than we do, as we don't practice. Plus they're all neat and wear pink and look respectable. I like them, too, don't get me wrong. They were so good as to keep playing with us once the ump walked with almost half of our time left because we were behind by more than the mercy margin. One of our players---the statuesque Jen, who is smart as the dickens and has a beautiful DNA tattoo that goes from one of her shoulders to the other, in all its spiralling glorious color, by wrapping itself around the top of her back and the back of her neck--- no, wait, it wasn't her, it was Heidi, who wasn't here this week, but who is the proponent and instigator of a bit of infield razzle-dazzle, with another teammate, with whom she was doing this little switch-aroo of positions between pitches--- yes, Heidi, on that occasion with the mercy ruling, just jumped up and volunteered to ump in the place of the game-calling ump, who stood by and watched while Grace and we continued to play and enjoy ourselves for another inning, at least. That was one of the best parts of the season.

But the Home of New Vision women, or the Homers, as I've heard them call themselves, rather cheatingly, but okay they can have that, they are our kind of opponents. There are two of them who share socks during the game. I suspect you don't know what I mean by that right off. I mean they have two pair of striped jockette socks, the white knee socks with two colored stripes around them---they have two pair of these of different stripe colors, and they each wear one of each. One red and one blue, I believe it is. This is an excellent style variation, and it connects them on the field in an interesting way. Tonight one of the Homers had a bright blue bandaid on her cheek. A big fat one, like when a kid gets a bigger cut than just a papercut, maybe. It had some kind of cartoon characters on it or something. I never got a close look at it. But it was funny, and stylish, in a distinctive sort of way.

We may be having a wrap party of sorts at the intentional community--- cohousing, actually--- at which two of our teammates reside. That'd be groovy. There's talk of kickball at that function. Did you know Rec & Ed does kickball? They do. Or so I heard. It's hard to strike out at kickball. I don't think anyone ever does. Kickball was one of my favorite games as a child.

I also coulda whooped your ass at tetherball, even if you were my brother who was 2 years older and much taller. For the brain is mightier than the how tall you are. And I developed a technique. Which I developed. I did not read about it in a book. I was not coached to it. There was no freakin' internets yet, not even as a glint in Al Gore's eye. This was the Lisa A. Ncsofhaojes (name disguised to protect the not-so-innocent) Tetherball Technique.

But I digress.

Oh, I reached base twice tonight. Just FYI.   :o]

Thank goodness Ryan Howard didn't reach base in the bottom of the eighth tonight, trying to put the Nat'l League, behind by one run, ahead, with very little game left to go. That was the ballgame moment, tension-wise-speaking. McG was over here, to pick up eggplant recipes, of all things, that Bert gave us, after we all waxed poetic about baba in the driveway the other night. She watched the game with me, gamely, as a nonbaseball person, and it was good to have somebody to watch it with. And she got a bit of a reward, when the President did his inning in the pressbox, announcer booth, whatever they call that place the two or sometimes three people who aren't as good as Jon Miller unless one of 'em's Jon Miller sit. Yes, Barack Obama was there---Barack Obama, American League fan, whose first name I sometimes like to pronounce as they do on the BBC, in their perverse "We still call it Burma godsavethequeen" way: BEARuck.

But I digress.

The American League won. I enjoyed how they were wearing their pant legs and some catches and that one guy's beautiful two-tone stained bat and that the American League won, and that that now means something since they've been doing this World Series home field advantage thing, and other things too. I enjoyed watching with somebody. Apart from when the Red Sox did their thing recently, and when Detroit knocked off the Yankees in that glorious ALCS, I haven't done much sports watching on my own. Not with much enthusiasm. And it's much more fun to have that enthusiasm.

It's a social thing, baseball. I got away from it when I was no longer around people who followed baseball. Lotsa lesbians don't follow men's professional sports, even when/if they like the sport being played, and like watching it be played. But baseball is the poetic sport. Baseball is a leisurely sport. Baseball is all that shit George Carlin said, and then some. Baseball makes you forgive, or want to forgive, the aesthetics in something like Field of Dreams. Baseball makes you want to like Field of Dreams and take care not to see it too much cuz now that you hate Kevin Costner, it already feels like a miracle he can't retroactively ruin Bull Durham for you. He can stink it up just a tiny bit, but it's immune to him, as is the whole church of baseball. I dunno. It's a cultural product, it's a capitalist ploy, it's a flag-waving arena of despicability, it's sexist, it smacks of the kind of loyalty that fascist nationalists enjoy, and it plays out class warfare for us, in some ways, thus helping keep us from playing it out in other more effective ways. There's a whole lot wrong with it. But I have enjoyed this cultural product with people who have mattered to me, and it has been not just a social MacGuffin but a framework for emotional release and simple, broad bonding through the arbitrary hoo-ha of fandom, and I do hate the Yankees, and you know how the hate thing and me--- I'm right there with you politically, hating, but personally it doesn't come so easy. And the certainty of hate, the purity of hate, these are cathartic forces. I love to hate the Yankees because they are the constructed sum, in the baseball world, of so many things I hate in the "real" world. No doubt you're not burning with the desire for me to run down the list, if you're still reading this far into these sentences. But if you want to see me go off on something, and you haven't seen me go off on that (already so many times you're sick of it), I'm available, free of charge, to detail for you what is evil about the Yankees.

I align myself against them.

Except I decided Mario Rivera could get the last three outs tonight. I made a modified exception for him, on this occasion, cuz it helped (in very un-Yankee style) the whole team, which in this case was the whole league, finish off the game.

Now I wonder whether any of you find it even near as interesting as I do to hear about why people like certain players in certain sports we watch on television. To hear what they like. I like it very much, when I shut up long enough for them to tell me.

Bedtime now. Last night was maybe 5 hours, if that. That's not enough. Not for nights in a row, like this.

 

 
.



'cept the sun's come up now.

 

 

uncanny!

 
 

 

Apparently I do, in Second Life. Cuz I was. I got a laugh, asking that there.

Also, speaking of looking like you were born yesterday, I've been invited in RL, as part of the exclusive and elite few---just 1% of the U.S. population---to apply for the new Black Visa card. The card itself, patent pending, is made from carbon. Along with the prestige comes a 24-hour concierge. The annual fee is just $495.^oo.

Also, Born Yesterday the movie was on TV today. I'm about a third of the way through it. Saw it a few years ago but, as has been happening lately, I watch it and feel as if I'm in a much better place for taking it in.

I caught my old friend the eaglet in the nest just now, as I was closing windows at the end of the workday. Hadn't been to the site in a while. A parent soon landed in the nest and that made Hidey squawk-chirp like the billy blue-eyed, and loud. Hungry!! Still hoping they'll bring her fish. It's kind of nice to know she's not grown up completely that way, already.

As I opened this page to post, livejournal offered me the long draft I scrapped late last night, in which I went on about my date, and other dates, and my thoughts about those, and my relationship to my thoughts about those. I'd decided I didn't trust my 2 a.m. judgment on what I wanted to share.

I did say how I'd heard the news about Michael Jackson from my date for Sharon Jones. As we walked to the Power Center she mentioned our having just lost a figure from popular culture. I thought she meant Farrah. After all, she's big into "Charlie's Angels." When she'd asked which one (of the Angels) I was into and I said "the smart one?" she'd said they're all smart. And she's smart. So go figure. Anyway, no, she meant Michael, whom she referred to as a pedophile. Then she helped me remember that he was actually older than I was. I should have known that, even though it's close. Like I know how old I am compared to the children in the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch.

Later, at the show, when I was wondering whether my companion was having a good time (she doesn't dance) (and, as she said later, she's not demonstrative), Sharon broke the news about Michael to the audience, then said all the Michael haters could stop now, now that he's dead, they can stop. Then she said something about Farrah, too, and that being sad, and Michael---well, it's just hard to believe, these people we grew up with being gone. Then it hit her that they should do a song, and it took half a minute to get it going with the Dap Kings, but pretty soon the bass player was starting up, and then the rest jumpin' in, and then Sharon sang the bass line for a few bars to pull them together, and then she went into the first-verse vocals of "I Want You Back." It was a mighty rendition.

That's a great song, that song is. The verses are better than the chorus, too, which I like. I like when they're at least as good, and I maybe like it even more when they're better. You expect a bridge to take you to a higher place sometimes, but if there's a usual spot for throw-away, it's the verses. Anyway that song has great rhythms, perfect for the funky soul rhythm & horns.

I'm not here to give you a Michael Jackson memorial, though. I'm here cuz Hidey's still futzing around the nest, and I thought I might stick around a minute and see if I can catch her taking off. But I'm about to take off myself.

I'll give you a little parting Sharon that shows her at the piano, since we usually see her singing and dancing. And hey, Hidey just flew off too.

Good weekend, ya'll.

Nor is it, if you prefer, "hyper--air-conditioned."

I didn't get much sleep last night.


Tonight:



 
But I betcha a nickel she'll be in a dress.

also maybe i strung together too many days on which just getting along with things seemed fine. getting along with as in getting on with it, letting it go along.

probably it's not the too many days in a row with that. probably it's something else. but i feel like i have a limit. like a high score in a game you just can't get past, or a personal best in, like, track, or whatever they have personal bests in, cf. that bad early lesbian movie, where i mean early as in one of the first spate in which the lesbians don't have to suffer because of it from anything more than from being lesbians.

do you have any psychic habits that refuse to go into remission for more than a certain approximate number of days?

That's from Cristina,  , in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

- + = + -

Softball team got shut out, pretty badly. So far we've won only when there's cowbell. This week we were whupped by an undefeated church team, so you could say they're cheating, kissing up to God and all, but they're also better softball players than we are. We did hold 'em to no runs for the first 2 innings. Almost 3. Then all Heaven broke loose.

Had just enough players tonight to field a full team. I fouled out with the bases loaded. Did get to field the ball a little, but didn't throw anybody out. I actually charged it pretty good, once, and maybe stopped one of their many runs from scoring until the next play. Another time I didn't move to back up the play as quickly as I might have. It was fun just to be in a game that I was sometimes keeping my head in & sometimes not.

Afterwards, at Paula's, the little baby (mascot) Sarah had me melting more than the strawberry velvet ice cream all over her face. She pulls that stuff to her with a clear-cut sense of purpose, lemme tell ya, that little one does. Grabs it with both hands. Sometimes when she's tasted it, she gets this very direct expression of pleasure, with the giddy smile and the lighting up twinkley eyes, and the laughing, and the little pumping arms. She looks at us with sheer glee. I look at her and think, and try to know, she's the same species as me. Such a direct thing. I dunno. I ramble at you. I don't know how to say it. She is so happy. We sit watching her love love love it, and there's no better entertainment in the world.

Among the household commodities one may have on hand, I like bird seed. It's cheap, one stocking-up of it lasts a good bit, and (here's the special part) I usually have some ready to dispense, but if I run out for a while, it's no big deal. I get it when I get it.

Other commodities, such as fresh kitty litter, have a higher degree of pressure associated with them. Pressure not to run out, or not to run out for long.

These are my observations for you all this afternoon. A pleasant Tuesday evening to you. Wish me luck following my softball team's Rule #1 and Rule #3: "Don't get hurt."

(Rule #2 may be "Have fun," but I'm not sure. People don't seem to need to be reminded of that one so often.)

Why am I unsubscribing from email from you, President Barack Obama, on the occasion of your second attempt this week to get me to give you money to back a half-assed bandaid on the way health care works in this country?

"Single payer health care! Not this nonsense, and asking us for money to help with it.

Some going back on campaign declarations is to be expected, but the overall air of compromise of the Obama administration so far is beginning to give off the scent of mediocrity. Just cuz you're so much better than the last guy, that doesn't mean you're doing well enough."

Hot on the heels of the Obama Justice Dept's crappy brief about DOMA, tomorrow the President's gonna come out with this supposedly good news, but with a caveat: the homo partners won't get all of the benefits. Only some. Like, not all the health insurance benefits.

What fraction of them do you suppose they'll get? Perhaps 3/5??

<\endsnark>

"Compromise" sometimes is a dirty word, Mr. President.

It costs too much, see.

Then tonight I paid over $250 for ice cream. And companionship.

My car got towed while my softball team was socializing, see.

See.

Believe it or not, I liked the guy at the tow place.

I don't know the woman who gave me a lift very well, though I knew her enough to know I like her. She seemed to expect me to lay into the tow place person. She was sweet. I like sweet. I think she has pluck, too. I also like pluck.

I liked the brownie batter Blizzard as well, but not quite $250 worth.

This week I've been nursing a messed-up knee. Twisted it somehow. Hurts when it bends, and knees like to bend. I'm making a point of bending it. Stiffening up could present its own problems, even if the pegleg walk is less painful. I think I can say it's coming along.

The knee and I drove past the opening night of the A2 Summer Fest this evening, but we didn't stop to wander through. We decided we'd come home instead. We were gonna have to park pretty far away, and we'd left our sunglasses at the office anyway.

This week I've also been saying magic words over a kitchen sink clog which has, at this point, made it pretty clear I'll be going to liquidplumber.com to get the refund they promise when the chemicals don't work. And I'll be following instructions I've just been reading about online to open up & clean out the bend in the sink's drain pipes. The "trap," homeowners apparently call it. It's going to be messy and require precautions; the prospect has me wishing I hadn't poured the chemicals in there. Then after that, as one website says, "if the steps above do not work, you'll need to snake the drain, which is gross, but thoroughly entertaining."

It was considered entertaining to watch the aftermath of, was snaking, by some lesbians regarding this one actress supposedly having just done it in a bathtub, in the movie Bound. I am a bad lesbian. I can't remember her name. Plus I didn't want to get in the tub with her & the grossness.

- + = + -

kercov's dad died yesterday, after a period of illness, as they say when reporting things like this in newspapers. She was down there with him.

I have to remind myself sometimes that I'm not actually acquainted with other members of her family. She conveys a lot with her stories. Not just in the what, but the how she tells.

It's sad, his coming to the end of life. A fundamental loss, no matter your familial configuration, state of relations, situation. For them and, of course, for him. Maybe in the next few days she'll be hearing new stories about the man, such as people come up and tell you about your newly dead loved one, or stand up and tell everyone. But all the ideas in the world about the end of suffering, and part of nature, they're no comfort, regardless of how many times someone suggests they are, or could be, or wishes they were, or asserts them at you, and regardless of the fact that they're entirely true.

not just the kitties but the two houseguests who love kitties are snoozing away, as i write. i'm burning some sharon jones to send on the road w/the latter, who leave first thing in the morning to drive back to the farm in west virginia to pick up bessie mae mucho before heading the rest of the way home.

i've seen one of these two for 2 hunks of days within the past month, and the other i've seen for 3 hunks of days in that time. lee ann & i walked about a lot today (near campus a little, then around the arb and down by the river, and then over to the re-use center to meet the boy), and somewhere in there we spoke of how it gives the impression we don't live very far apart, all this being in each other's company. and laughed. these guys are the best "no tearful goodbyes" buddies. it can feel so easy with them. and being easy with them can make me feel not crazy, no matter how crazy i am.

through an odd set of circumstances, i ate at the zingerman's roadhouse twice today. both those meals were good, with good company. during the first one there was a woman a friend of mine has had a thing for at a table across the room, seemingly on a date. i looked over that way now & then to try to figure out if it was a date, and if so how far into the relationship the two are. they left right as we did, and did get in the same car to drive off.

recently the times i've been trying to guess whether people were on a date have been when i was on a date. being on a date is every bit as weird as i ever thought it would be. i think i thought it would get less weird after i did it some. maybe i just haven't done it enough yet. but i don't think i like the idea of doing it a whole lot, enough for it to become a matter of course. cuz part of me hates it and is, i believe, always gonna, even when it's a good one.

instead of "dating" we should call it something like "bogusness." as in "i have some bogusness tonight with this woman InsertNameHere," or "gotta go---i'm meeting someone for bogusness in an hour." then if it were exceptionally good bogusness, you could acknowledge that, even celebrate it, but without having to pretend it wasn't fundamentally bogusness, which it is.

Big annual neighborhood yard sale. Lotsa stuff to look at. Good weather expected tomorrow, too--- cool, partly cloudy.

Woke up this morning with a belated Eight of Wands certainty. Just a little too late (which isn't very Eight-of-Wandsy). Hadn't grabbed that bull by the horns; hadn't realized I could, or should. I'm gonna say that the "present" of that middle card is a swath of time, not just a snapshot from the time of that reading. I'm not giving up on the window for grabbing power in the moment.


I believe the lawyer I went out with a couple of times has dumped me. Or, maybe more accurately, it just fizzled. Like a coupla Alka-Seltzer^®s in an old-fashioned glass.

That's a glass they serve an old-fashioned in, not any old old-fashioned glass.



(Just add water.)


Tomorrow 3 coworkers and I, in exile while our office room is redone, will be sharing a small, windowless room, at computers elbow-to-elbow. It actually figures to be fun, believe it or not. That's how I'm envisioning it. Then after work I'm heading to Ypsi. It'll be a weekend.


I left the TV on in the other room. I can hear that it changed its channel to record a "Greensburg" I've already seen. Kansas forgive me, all the "green" sincerity and phoenix rising business is making it hard to stay with the show. Irony gets tiring, it's true, and it's a relief to re-learn being sincere, allowing sincerity, after youthful immersion in irony. But when the only ripples in earnestness are of the "gee, gosh" variety, well those aren't really even ripples, are they? Then a bit of cracking wise is relief all over again.

According to yahoo:

Sun, May 31

1B Joey Votto finally was placed on the DL Saturday with what the team described as stress-related problems. His problems began three weeks ago when he left a game in Arizona with dizziness. A few days later he left another game in San Diego with the same dizziness. After several tests, the team determined that he was suffering from an inner ear infection and after three days of treatment he returned to the lineup. Then on Friday night in Milwaukee, Votto once again left the game, this time in the second inning. After the game he spent 45 minutes in manager Dusty Baker's office with general manager Walt Jocketty and trainer Mark Mann. The next day he was placed on the DL and Jocketty said, "It's basically something that Joey needs time away to deal with, and we gave him that time. It's not a big deal, but something that was affecting his ability to play at the level he wants to play." Votto was hitting .357 with eight homers and 33 RBIs and had missed 12 games with flu-like symptoms and the inner ear infection.

 
It's worth the clicks.
 
 
 
 
[Photos by one Todd Harless, earlier this afternoon.]

This is my neighbor down the street, Roberta:



I happened into conversation with her today. She showed me her backyard garden, with its extensive irises, among other meticulously cared-for growing things, gravel, mulch, walkways.

She gave me some bleeding hearts she wanted to thin out. They're bright pink, and I'm not sure I'll keep them going, if they take, where I stuck 'em; I like the way the flowers droop down, but that pink is not my favorite. I inherited a fair amount of bright pink at this place, and I don't so much dig that color being all over. Boy, I am likin' the orange of the poppies that cropped up this year in quite the cluster, in the glob of greenery over under the pines pretty much directly out the window in front of me.

Roberta may be an old-school dyke. At the neighborhood function years ago at which we met, she was pretty butched out, but for one detail: the rounded, lacey collar on her white shirt, neatly folded down over the top of her sweater. Still, it was the butchest lace you'd ever see. It's hard to see in this picture, but her hair is usually pretty close to the slicked-back 'do you see on old butches in pix from the '50s. She's slight of build but has a cool pickup that she must have to climb up into. It's a seriously cool pickup. I think her job at a local office supply store is working the stock room, all 85 pounds of her. She's not working summers now, but it sounded as if she hasn't retired completely.

She took off her glasses to pose for the picture, asking me where I wanted her, helping me situate the shot with the sun behind me. She seems to take pride in her appearance, and I feel like saying "and well she should," cuz she's really got it together with that, like with the yard.

She doesn't like viney, climbing plants, the way they grow all over. She put one in a while back and then took it out. Part of why she works so hard, even sweeping the wispy snow away before the deeper snow falls, is to keep moving, because the body wants to keep moving. "I'm 80, you know. Born in 1928." The only difference now is that she gets tired faster than she used to, and then she just stops and goes in; it'll still be there tomorrow.

When she was talking gardens with me, she did mention several times how the moisture and the temperatures have contributed to this year being a good one for flowers. But it was only once she said that the decision about what you plant where (and what you allow to grow where) is one of the few places we get to decide how it's going to be. Have dominion, if you will. I took that to heart more than I did the plants she gave me. The power of that point may spell the end for those bleeding hearts, or the relocation of them to the care of some friend who wants 'em.

Roberta is probably the most thorough tender to a yard I've encountered. I feel like she let me in on the secret that, for her, that's cuz it's the exertion of her will, her power.

She told me not to thank her for the flowers, that you shouldn't thank people for flowers. You should just take them. But she did let me bless her heart, and tell her I was glad I found her out front & stopped to talk to her today.

It happened in the wee hours of the morning.

Walking back from catsitting at the neighbors, I saw a baby robin hopping along in my yard, cheeping, flapping wings. Sure didn't look like a creature who could fly. I stepped within 5 or 6 feet of it a couple of times, and each time it'd hop hop hop off. Then I saw a grown robin, a way's away, with a beak fulla worm. I couldn't help but herd the little one in that direction. Grown bird and baby soon hopped closer and closer to each other, and lunch was passed on.

The ducks, who'd been waddling right up around neighbor Tom as he fed them this morning, did a beautiful synchronized fly-off a bit ago, skimming no more than 3 feet above the ground, quite horizontally, all the way down the alley, while the cats and I turned our heads to follow.

Long-time nest watchers watching my eagles' nest suggest Hidey (the baby fledgling!) will return to the nest, probably with a big crash landing the first few times, and hang around for a few weeks, furthering her education, if she's okay, and if she behaves somewhat typically for her kind. They also point out that she's been an only child, which is not typical, and her 11 weeks have been with no sibling competition, a possible reason for variance.

What we all speculate about the reasons and motives for the eagles' behavior is probably just as informative about us as it is about them. Lately I've been thinking on how they communicate with each other. Wordlessness. It's terribly attractive.


Karaoke tonight. I'm in an eight of wands time, but I don't know that that sensibility will come across in my choice of number. Maybe I oughta give some thought to what I might sing, but I'm more of a mind to wing it.

 




                           
 
 
 

I seek opinion yet again.


Poll #1407807 Campsite Name
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

"CampLickaCrotchie"