Category Archives: BLOG (2009-2010)

Transitions. Movements.

This past winter’s labors were light by any standard.

The fresh bag of snow melt, opened late last year and used only a handful of times, yearns to understand its neglect.

The snow shovels still propped against the tool shed yawn from boredom as if to say, “Put us away for another season already!”

The still naked deciduous peer down on the dry ground, look up at the cloudy, ambivalent sky waiting for something wet to fall.

Stripped and cut branches hang out along fences’ edges, serving as a playground for bored cats and reminder of yard work yet to be done.

Spring’s labors are but a compensation for winter’s idle, cold, dryness, a reaction to last year’s inattention to detail and order and beauty. Continue reading

They saw it and it was good…

I didn’t do much work in the yard last year. Mostly mowed the lawn. Didn’t trim bushes or prune trees. But pruning and trimming were activities I contemplated off and on during the winter because trees were gradually transgressing, going beyond their limits.

They were overhanging onto neighboring roofs, encroaching other trees’ reach, scraping the top of my 5′ 7″ height when I would walk underneath them.

So I took the plunge in order to make the work as easy as possible.

I purchased a telescoping tree pruner with saw and limb cutter. And I went to work and couldn’t stop until I’d fully addressed the sins of my trees! Continue reading

Booyah II

NCAA hoopster junkies:

I’m enjoying the games this year, more than usual. Maybe because I actually tried my hand at predicting outcomes in a formal format.

My outcomes yesterday improved over Thursday’s by three.  Only two incorrect picks: Oklahoma State and Marquette lost. Also, one more of my picks, Louisville, won’t reach the sweet sixteen making that total two, for now.

Through most of the evening I thought I might get all sixteen games right.

My standing in relation to overall contestants improved quite a bit: points/250; pct/96.6; rank/160,151; PPR/1560. (leader so far is: pts/310; pct/100; rank/1; PPR/1600)

As for today’s games: Continue reading

Booyah!

For basketball fans of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament:

Best time of the year for basketball viewing! Despite the big money involved and exploitation of student athletes, it’s still pretty pure, really intense competition. It’s great to see smaller schools compete favorably against larger, big money schools.

I haven’t paid real close attention to college hoops nationally this year, focusing more on regional competition.  When I decided to enter the ESPN bracket contest 45 minutes prior to the first contest yesterday, I had no clear sense of the various team profiles and strengths/weaknesses. I took ten minutes to fill out the bracket and crossed my fingers knowing that in some way it’s something of a crap shoot as it has been historically. Continue reading

My Happiness Creed!

Note to reader:

I wrote this piece about six weeks ago and submitted it to the “humor” page of a prestigious magazine that deals with important cultural and historical issues in the United States. Their announced acceptance/rejection time line has passed so I’m guessing that it wasn’t quite as “genial” as the writer’s guidelines advised it should be.  But I will let you, the reader, decide if I need to work on my geniality.

This is also a prelude to a piece I’ve been working on in my head for the past few days dealing with another “scientific” study that finds self-control is also contagious.  I don’t know if that piece will be satirical, but it will be critical in a thoughtful, creative way.  (I hope.)

Enjoy… Continue reading

Tiger and the Buddhist Path

“I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it. Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.”

Tiger Woods

From his public statement today:

2-19-2010 Continue reading

Tiger Woods’ body found!

(I found this piece while searching for up-to-the-minute news on the internet about Tiger Woods.  For people who want to know, indeed, who need to know, this will answer all your questions about our last, great [brown] hope.  Prepare to be stunned into pure goofiness by the following revelations! Above all, enjoy and “learn something,” as my father likes to advise me.)

By Doscats

February 18, 2010

ALGÚN LUGAR, Arizona.  In a stunning reversal of metaphorical meaning, Doscats Investigations reports that forensic linguists, cultural symbologists, and historical semiologists have discovered what appears to be the remains of Tiger Woods’ body embedded superficially on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Continue reading

My humor place…

This past Sunday I read in the NY Times “internet” section about a social/dating website called okcupid.com. It was started by four mathematicians who were dissatisfied with all the other social networking/dating websites.  They did some number crunching to figure out what really works in successfully finding and starting friendships and relationships and it wasn’t cute, flirty compliment crap which I detest, but stuff that initiates a conversation.

On that note I have my doubts about experiencing any “conversations” on the site–I’m not not much of a texter, IMer, chatterer, etc.–but I really like the openness of the site including all the fun little questions one can answer to refine values, interests, and limits and quirky and bizarre tests to gauge one’s personality, perspectives, and so on.  And one doesn’t even have to necessarily contact a person of potential interest; one is notified who has looked at one’s profile. So there are a variety of options for engagement which is unusual for a “free” site like this even though there is a premium (paid) membership which I’m unlikely to pursue. Continue reading