stream of All-Star night consciousness

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.

stream of All-Star night consciousness

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.