Don't Know What You Got, Till It's Gone- (#Best09)

I don't have to post every day. I don't have to post any day. Every day, I think I should-there must be something funny, or soulful, or soulfully funny, or funnily soulful, that I can mock or comment upon or agree with or disagree with or argue with or throw my hands up in frustration at. Most days, I do. Some days, I don't. And the Earth just keeps on turning, heedless.

The inescapably marvelous and inexplicably single Katie wrote today about the Best of 2009 Challenge , which is the End of Yeary (and End of Decade-y) thing that the media usually does, assessing and evaluating. What were the Top Ten stories of 2009? Top Ten books, movies, TV shows, plays, actors, writers, golfers, tennis players? Political bloggers will give you the Top Ten Outrageous Things The President Did in 2009, and Basketball bloggers will give you the Top Ten Dunks of 2009. Pause, reflect, look back-because after all, we're about to go buy new calendars.

That's too harsh, really-there's nothing wrong with this trend. I just don't have the patience to try to come up with my ten favorite books from 2009. (That's really the only list I could populate, unless it was Top Ten Things I Said That DMarks Disagreed With or Top Ten Inappropriately Salacious Comments I Left On Katie's Blog.)

This article suggests that social networks, ironically, spread loneliness-that a lonely person, who is bitter or snarky or nasty on a social network to his or her peers will propagate this loneliness to others. Or, as my lovely and deeply patient wife puts it, "misery loves miserable company". This is the reason why I don't spend more time on Facebook, and this is the reason why I don't get more personal on here. I'm sick of scuba diving inside my own head, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, and I can't imagine anyone else finding it pleasant.

So this is a roundabout way of getting to the point-Katie's point today is about her lesson-what learning experience or lesson did you learn in 2009 that changed you?

I'll let Tom Keifer of Cinderella explain:



Life is too damn short, and it gets shorter every day. I will miss my father's presence, as much as I couldn't seem to make any time for him while he was here, every single day I am alive.

More Flash Fiction: Sneakers

Yet another rejected piece (flash fiction, 200 words or less) from dogzplot.blogspot.com : "Sneakers"








"When he left, she put on her old sneakers. They are white, with some faded blue panels on the side in a checkerboard pattern. They are cut, sliced in places, and worn- friction from curbs and floors and cars and grass revealed in a thousand scuff marks. She wrote on them, once, a long time ago. You can't see what she wrote, but she remembers. They were faded, beaten, forgotten-shoved into the corner of the closet. She had other shoes-flats and sandals and flipflops and loafers and heels that she wears by herself, relishing the way her calves bunch and tighten in the mirror when she has them on. She wasn't trying to look down market and bohemian. She wasn't giving up. She wasn't backing down, or allowing him to dictate how she looked or how she felt.
She put on her old sneakers and wore them because they had been through a lot together, and it was time to rescue things that were forgotten. They looked like she felt, used and ignored and tossed aside in favor of newer, shinier things. She put on her old sneakers, and she walked out the door."

Hotel Illness

This was recommended by @ordinaryart, the magnificent Kel, who can be found writing here . As I have said, and will continue to say, if you're not reading her, you're missing out on someone special.



This is the Black Crowes performing "Hotel Illness". I am home from work trying to recover from another leg infection, a illness my body appears willing to succumb to about once a year. The last time this happened, exactly none of you will remember, the Celtics were in the NBA Finals playing the Lakers, making it June 2008. The reason why I remember things like that, I do not understand. Assuming the antibiotic takes hold, I should be back to normal very shortly. If I never post again, I'm probably dead. In that case, I would expect the number of posts to drop off dramatically.

How Quick The Sun Can Drop Away

First off, if you haven't been here yet, then you're missing out. The post called "Hymnal" is gorgeous beyond my poor ability to describe.

Secondly, I think this is a really cool site. Dramatically NSFW, but cool. If you disagree, I can probably see your point, though.

Thirdly, these are ten questions I wish my company was smart enough to ask. 

Fourthly, seriously , Tiger? Wealthy beyond my capacity to imagine, married to a gorgeous woman, two beautiful children, and arguably the best practitioner of your craft who ever lived, and that's still not enough?

Fifthly, sometimes the simplest messages are the best. Thanks, @ericjfisher!

Sixthly, Tom Heinrich died yesterday. For a blog that is so slavishly baseball centric during the summer months, I have uttered barely a syllable since. Heinrich was a outfielder/first baseman on Joe DiMaggio's Yankee teams from 1937-1950. A feared clutch hitter, Heinrich was one of those "other guys" that never get the big money or the lion's share of the fame, but you don't win without them. He helped bury my Red Sox with 2 RBI in the deciding game of the 1949 season, sending them home with a 5-3 loss. (Boston entered the Yankee Stadium for the final two games of the 1949 season, needing one win to reach the World Series. Naturally, they lost them both.)

Seventhly, I have not given nearly enough love to my pals and brothers from another mother, Eric and Rob at WBRShow. Go here  for more information.

Eighthly, this is the always interesting Charlie Pierce's take on l'affaire Tiger. 

Ninthly, this guy grew up in the same town I did, and now he's the CEO of a major company. Sigh. 

Tenthly, for the funniest, pop culture oriented, NSFW tweets , follow her

Black

I meant to add this story as a comment to someone's post about Pearl Jam's latest album, but now I've forgotten what blog that was on. I may have told this story before, too, so if I have, I'm sorry.


Back when I was in college, I commuted every day on the subway. The subway line I took also connected to othercolleges-Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art, Harvard Medical School, along with Boston LatinHigh School, so at typical commuting times (pre-9AM, say), the train would get fairly crowded. C'est la guerre, right?


So, when I was either hopelessly lost or otherwise bored while in class, I would write little cartoons and such in the margins. Sometimes band logos, sometimes song lyrics. Whatever. Anyhow.


One morning, I'm studying for a test, waiting for a train. A particularly stunning girl comes nearby, waiting for the same train. (On this train platform, the trains share the same track, and where you stand on the platform determines what train you intend to board. Confusing, at times, for non locals, but we cynical college students, half asleep, pretty much do it without much thought. ) Now, this happens 50 times a day-I used to fall in love quite readily, and being around 18-22 year olds a lot of the time, your odds of seeing someone attractive are astronomically high. So not exactly a news flash.


The page I'm studying has the last verse to Pearl Jam's "Black" written on it. Which, as I'm sure you all remember, is: "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life/I know you'll be a star/In somebody else's sky/But why/
Why/Why can't it be/Can't it be mine"



So I tear the strip of paper off of my notebook, and roll it into a cylinder. The train comes, and I maneuver myself to be behind the fetching girl. She is carrying a backpack. I slip the cylinder of paper, without being detected, into the aforementioned backpack. She leaves the train at some point, and I never see her again. 


Now, questions that has tormented me for almost 20 years now: Why did I do this? And, more interestingly, how did she react to finding it?