Cursed With Ambition

At Least One of These Should Get A Mild Chuckle

How's everyone's women's brackets turning out?

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I made a thirty second phone call that was worth $4,500.00 yesterday.

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I made my first student loan payments this month.  Only 157 more to go!!  I'll be 46 years old when I make my last payment.  Sweet Jesus.

Typical Blog Entry (SDB Format)

My message to all people:  "Recognize your impact on other people and the environment and act effectively to minimize the negative consequences of it."

This message springs from the oversensitivity I have to being impeded by other people.   Examples: traffic is the biggest, waiting in lines or in a phone cue or any situation where another human being thoughtlessly robs me of time.

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Last week's dart match was a wake up call.  We got our asses handed to us 11-2.  The team that we played won third place in the A League last season.  Personally, I threw slightly worse than average.  I had one good game where I played the other team's second best player in cricket.  All three legs were tight.  I won the first one after hitting an insane number of bulls to get back into it.  On my final throw I was less than 25 points down and needed one 15 and two 16's to close.  I threw a single bull-single 15-double 16 to win.  It was awesome.  I love the glory double in cricket.  In the third leg I threw two seven marks back to back and thought I had it won.  I relaxed and the guy snuck back in and won.  I violated my "Don't take your foot off their throat" rule and paid the price.

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The NCAA tournament bracket contest has been a blast.  It's been exciting.  I never thought I'd refresh the score on a game between Nevada and Creighton so obsessively.  As it stands, I'm in 4th place.  Looking at it from the number of points possible remaining, I'm in 2nd.  My Elite 8 is still intact, so I've got a legitimate shot, especially if Georgetown loses to Vandy or UNC and/or Ohio State makes it to the championship game.  After the scare against Xavier though, I don't know.

Up Next:  Scrabble Dabbler; College Retrospective

Favorite Players, Preceded By Some Other Shit

Google Earth is the single most fascinating and time consuming thing I have ever seen.  It is also the single greatest procrastination tool ever conceived by the human race.  I'd like to shout out a big sarcastic THANKS! to Snake Diggity for bringing it back into my consciousness.

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The worst part of new relationships is having to hold your farts in all the time.

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Favorite Current NFL Player:  VY (surprise, surprise)

Favorite Past NFL Player:  tie Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, Tony Dorsett & Emmitt Smith

Favorite Old School NFL Player:  Bob Lilly

Favorite Current NBA Player:  Steve Nash

Favorite Past NBA Player:  Michael Jordan

Favorite Old School NBA Player:  Wilt Chamberlain (he publicly admitted bedding over 20,000 women)

Favorite Current MLB Player:  Craig Biggio

Favorite Past MLB Player:  Jose Cruz

Favorite Old School MLB Player:  Babe Ruth (probably logged more hangover innings than any player in history)

Surfing

One of the only knocks I have on Texas is that it's not a state with an active surfing culture.  For good reason.  The Gulf of Mexico is a shallow ocean as they go.  The continental shelf off the Texas coast extends several hundred miles in most places.  These two geologic features mean one thing:  small waves.  An ocean wave is much more than just the trough and crest that you can see on the surface.  A wave is a column that extends a long way down until it is interrupted by a bottom feature or by undercurrents.  The larger the column, the larger the wave on the surface.  The shallowness of the Gulf and the width of the continental shelf undercut these columns and cause smaller waves.  Plus, the winds that sweep over the Gulf to help create waves are interrupted by the land masses of Florida, Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula.  Lastly, the characteristics of the Texas coastal shorelines are not conducive to clean, big waves.  In most areas there is a series of troughs and sandbars with a very gradual depth change extending seaward.  The waves break for the first time over the second of (usually) three bars in about five feet of water.  The break is almost always small and choppy.  I'm sure there are a few spots on the Texas coast where the right set of conditions comes together to achieve respectable surfing waves, but they are few and far between and not enough to sustain a permanetly thriving surfing culture.  At least not for proper mainstream surfers.

I've always been fascinated with surfing.  As an aquaphile and Piscean I'm drawn to the sea.  For me, there is no greater example of a human being in rhythm with the earth than surfing.

I've only tried it a few times; and only once where there were any real waves.  But I've always felt drawn to it.  I've always felt like I would have been good at it and that I would have belonged out there.

It's too late for all that now.  The moment has passed.  Sure, I might buy a board someday and surf whatever there is to surf nearby, but I'll never be immersed in it.  No days-long offroad excursions to some secluded surf spot.  No pilgrimages to surfing's Meccas around the world.  No sitting around a beach campfire with a tribe of like-minded dudes smoking ganja and telling stories about shallow reefs and shark sightings while waiting for the surf to come up.  No permanent tan and sunbleached hair, board shorts and surf wax.

Every now and then I'll allow my mind to drift and think about what would have been.  Most of the time it's right after I see surfing competitions on TV or a surfing movie.  Probably the greatest surfing movie of all time is the documentary, Endless Summer.  Also good are Endless Summer II and Step Into Liquid.  Even movies like Blue Crush and Point Break will take you there if you can get past the cheese (and Keanu Reeves' bad acting).  You also can't forget the surfing scenes in Apocalypse Now.  The availability of inexpensive portable video cameras along with the growth of the internet and advances in video-playing software have created a very large body of surf footage on sites like Youtube.

Notable too are the icons of surfing.  I'm not much of a surfing historian, so I don't know the names of the pioneers in the late 50's and early 60's when the movement began.  The two most prolific surfers of the modern era are Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton.  I don't say things like this very often, but if I could be anyone in the world other than myself, I think I would be one of these two guys.

Can't forget about surf music.  More info about surf music on wiki.  My favorites would be Dick Dale and Jack Johnson.

I'll wipeout with a quote, "Surfing, alone among sports, generates laughter at its very suggestion, and this is because it turns not a skill into an art, but an inexplicable and useless urge into a vital way of life." - Matt Warshaw

33

Exactly one year ago today I wrote the following post:  "I was born at 1:14pm on March 9, 1974 in Austin, Texas.  Today I turn 32 years old."

It's been a year, so now I'm 33.

As a result of last year's post, I got unbelievably, uncannily lucky when a certain girl came into my life.  Here's how it happened:  She is into astrology and the information I posted happens to be the exact information someone would need to do a complete astrological workup.  She had just been given a link to a website to do astrology charts.  She did my workup and I got an email entitled, "Apparently We're Soul Mates."  The body of the email had a lot of really technical astrological stuff in it and started with, "ahem, you don't know me from adam but your blog is linked to *my* friend's blog...and you're fucking hilarious.  sometimes.  anyway, pine away...."

To which I replied, "Is this serious or are you trying to get me to buy something?  Or join a sun-worship cult?"  I also asked, "Who is your friend?  Which blog?"

That led to a weeks-long email string.  We went out for the first time on April 28th and the rest, as they say, is history.  We just signed a year-long lease on a house two days ago.

Crazy, huh?

The Practice of Law With a Hangover, Katie Couric Sucks and a Truckload of Girl Scout Cookies

Had our first A-league dart match last night.  The team we played won the A-league last season and the best player in the league, who may be the best player in the city of Houston, was on the team.  If anything, I was excited about last night just so I could see him play.  It was a total letdown.  First of all, the guy had little to no personality.  He also was either having a bad night or very good dart playing just isn't that impressive.  He lost his first match against our team's best player, which was a major coup.  I played him in a doubles 501 game and we took 1 out of 3.  I was pretty happy about that because I took a 48 out with a 16-8-double 12 to win the second game.  Still, the guy finished the night with an amazing 16 QP's (for perspective, I had 5). We lost the match 9-4, but it was a moral victory for the team to be competitive against the defending champs.

So that means that today I'm hung over at work.  I had a meeting with a couple of people this morning.  I represent a creditor who just accelerated the note on a piece of property they own.  I tried to make a joke about how I felt like the grim reaper to lighten the mood, but they didn't think it was funny.  Anyway, I got through the meeting.

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I derive a slight bit of satisfaction from seeing Katie Couric fall flat on her face.  I don't like that bitch.  She seems fake and plastic.  Upwardly mobile cheerleader type.  I get the feeling she's probably fucked over a lot of people to get where she's at.

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My office is right next door to the Girl Scout headquarters for the City of Houston.  I can look out my window and see it.  There has been a tractor trailer parked in the parking lot for the last week or so filled with Girl Scout cookies.  If I was this bitch that might be a problem.  There's nobody guarding that truck.

Next up:  Surfing; On Deck:  Favorite Players; In the Hole:  Don't Know Yet

March 2nd, Kickers, Clods and Inner City Youth

Well, March 2nd came and went.  Again.  In my opinion, March 2nd is the most under recognized holiday in Texas.  It's Texas Independence Day goddammit!!  It's the July 4th or the Cinco de Mayo of Texas!!  On March 2, 1836 at Washington on the Brazos, delegates from Texas settlements met, drafted and signed Texas's Declaration of Independence from Mexico.  The 13 Days of Glory at the Alamo ended four days later on March 6th.  The La Bahia Massacre occurred 25 days after the declaration on March 27, 1836 between Goliad and Victoria.  Then, Sam Houston's troops defeated Santa Ana's army at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21st.

I've been saying for years that I wanted to throw a Texas Independence Day party.  I like obscure holidays that have personal significance.  That, and my overly inflated sense of Texas pride make the day the perfect reason for me to throw an annual party.  Barbecue, Shiner Bock and Lone Star, Texas music and a constant DVD loop of The Alamo (John Wayne's, not Ron Howard's) would be key ingredients.  Maybe next year.

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Along similar lines, I went to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this weekend.  We didn't get tickets to the rodeo itself or the concert though.  Instead we walked through the livestock show and saw cattle, goats, chickens, pigs and even a couple of llamas.  I really enjoyed looking at the animals.  Made me really want to buy a little spread and raise a small herd of breeder stock cattle. 

People-watching was also very interesting.  Being Houston and being that the gate admission to the livestock show a paltry six dollars, there were a lot of inner city urban lower socioeconomic families strolling through the pens.  Teens and adults alike would contort their faces and screech and groan every time they'd see a cow take a shit or a piss or they'd see a cow's vagina or a bull's nutsack.  Of course, the ranchers themselves were there too; covering their faces and muffling their laughs at the people walking by. 

The funniest thing I saw was at the children's petting zoo.  It was generally amusing to watch little kids feeding a herd of voracious goats and pigs.  The animals were aggressive and most of the time the same size or bigger than the children.  Each child or small group of two or three was accompanied by an adult in the pen.  But it was such a melee that even the adults had to struggle to keep the small handful of feed from being taken from them instantly by the hungry animals.  This one group in particular caught my attention.  There were two black women with at least three children.  Two of the children, a boy and a girl, were very young - probably between 2 and 4 years old.  As soon as they walked into the pen both children had looks on their faces that were a mixture of serious concern, uncertainty and horror.  They held it together pretty well by squirming in between their mothers' legs to avoid the animals.  Pretty soon though, the mothers got preoccupied and the children got separated a little.  Safety not assured, the poor kids started to scream every time an animal would come close.  A wet nose would bump them and they'd recoil and scream, backpedaling.  Then they'd bump into an animal behind them, turn and scream.  Since they were so small, almost all of the animals were larger than them.  I'm sure from their perspective they were in an enclosed area with a bunch of huge monsters.  The children were horrified.  Goats especially can look a little creepy.  The screaming got so plaintive that eventually one of the workers in the pen picked one of the kids up and out of the scrum of animals.  Seeing this, one of the mothers finally picked up the other.  I had been standing right outside of the pen laughing the whole time.  Tears were streaming down my face.  I mean, the looks on these kids' faces.  The GF was watching too; horrified at the poor parenting.  She was about ready to reach over and pick up those kids to get them out of there herself.  I would have done something myself, but I knew they weren't in any danger.  I never saw any of the animals nip or butt anyone the whole time we were standing there.  The kids were just scared.  I'm sure they'd never seen anything other than a dog or cat, much less been in a pen with dozen of strange animals that were all larger than the biggest animal they'd ever seen.

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After the livestock show we went outside for food.  I got a sausage on a stick and a beer.  Total price:  $12.50.  The 16oz. bud light was $7.50, which is completely fucking ridiculous and a new record for how much I've paid for a single beer.  (Old record was $6.00 at the UT-Rice football game at Reliant Stadium in October 2003.)  I didn't get a corn dog or a funnel cake or a caramel apple, but it was all there and more.  I even saw fried Oreo cookies and fried Twinkies.  I'd like to think that people only eat that poorly once a year at the carnival, but by the looks of all the future diabetic clods walking around, the menu at home is similar.  There were basically two classifications of people:  children/teens and fat asses, which was anyone over the age of 18.  Kind of depressing.  Anyway, we played a couple of the sucker carnival games to get warmed up.  Amazingly, all of the games are exactly the same as the games at the last carnival I went to over 15 years ago.  The water gun game, shoot out the paper star with the BB gun, toss rings over coke bottles, pop balloons with darts, break bottles with baseballs etc.  My favorite is the racing game where you have to roll the balls into little holes to get your car/horse to move.  The main differences, though, were the carnies.  These were the most clean cut looking carnies I'd ever scene.  I only saw a couple without their full complement of teeth.  Anyway, I knew the GF wanted to ride some rides.  She's into things like carnival rides and bingo, which I find endearing.  I haven't ridden a carnival or amusement park ride in at least ten years and I've grown out of the stage in life where I willingly put my life in danger for a short thrill.  Hookers notwithstanding.  I was willing to play along at first just to humor the GF, but I really didn't want to ride anything too scary.  We looked over all the rides before deciding which ones we wanted to brave.  Just kidding about the hookers by the way.  First up was the obligatory ferris wheel ride.  We stood in line for a while and I got in some good people-watching time.  There were many, many teenagers there.  There were a lot of teen-aged couples too.  All of the hugging and groping and smooching made me fearful of the teenage pregnancy rate.  The ferris wheel is actually just a mobile make-out booth.  That's part of the reason teenagers go to carnivals - it's cheaper than a motel and safer that your parents' house.  Even though each gondola could hold at least four, if not six people there were some unwritten rules.  The carnies knew these rules:  teen-aged couples get their own gondola, older couples get asked if they want to share with strangers, families go together.  The GF and I got our own gondola and we made out a little just for kicks.  For an instant I remembered what it felt like to be fourteen.  Next up we were going to have to go on a more harrowing ride.  Baby needed her fix.  I was reluctant - partly because of the danger I perceived (Are these fucking rides inspected?  Do these carnies really know how to put these things together?  Look at that bolt!  It's rusty as fuck!) and partly because I was wearing a $250 cowboy hat.  I didn't want it lost, stolen or damaged.  Even though the carnies looked okay as carnies go I really didn't want to trust them with my Stetson 4-XXXX Silver Belly Beaver with the perfect creases.  Nor did I want to set it down on the asphalt/grease/cotton candy/vomit splooge that coated every horizontal surface.  But it was either that or draw the ire of the GF.  There was no way the hat would stay on during the ride, so no way I could wear it.  What're you gonna do?  Fortunately for my relationship, the hat was not stolen, lost or damaged.  But you can bet your sweet ass that the fixed point on the ground that I focused on while trying not to lose my $12.50 carnival meal was right where I set my hat down.  I think we rode a total of four scary rides all named shit like Whizzer or Scrambler or You Should Know Better.  We did stay away from the ever-present Zipper, which used to be my favorite one when I thought I was immortal.  We rode the one that is essentially a big wheel that spins and the centrifugal force pins you to the wall and then the whole thing rotates 90 degrees.  We had the obligatory rednecks who tried to impress girls by fighting the centrifugal force and getting out of their seats.  Those are the guys who if they had a little black box inside their trucks with the big tires, it would record "Hey, hold my beer and watch this" right before they died.

So, I recommend going to a carnival.  Especially if you haven't been in a really long time.  I also highly recommend taking your kids if you have them and if they are old enough.  But I recommend taking them during the day to avoid the longer lines and teenagers.