Baseball in January

It's January but I'm watching a baseball game thanks to the magical wonder of MLB At Bat. Paid meh twenty bucks and now I'm set for the next year. The Braves spring training games start on April 3 so now I won't have to miss a single pitch. By god. By god.

Today I've been watching San Fran Giant Matt Cain's 2012 perfect game on the classic games option. I'm now in the seventh inning and the crowd and the commentator's are just beginning to mention the fact that Cain hasn't allowed a base runner. I wondered in what inning they would start this up. Also, it's just amazing to hear and watch a baseball game in January.

My plan is to watch classic games from now until the first week of April. The Braves are going to fucking suck, yes. I don't care. They're my team and I will watch them every chance I get. I don't need them to win every game. I want to listen to commentators chatting each other up. I want to tune out to the pops of leather and cracks of the bat. I just want to watch baseball and chill.

I AM THE WEIRD BEAR, I AM THE WEIRD BEAR

I Won't Get To Read All the Books I Want To Read Before I Die

It's horrible. A devastating thought. I will not get to read all the books I want to read before I die.

Right now, this second, I have 567 books on my "to-read" list at Goodreads. I currently average reading about 70 books a year. The math is discouraging.

A couple years back I wanted to become a better reader. I still want to become a better reader, but the temptation to skim is strong in me, too. And I'm going to admit it here in this place that I have started skimming.

For years I've been able to anticipate and immediately recognize a passage from a book that is pretty much nothing else but the writer enjoying they way they write, how they can turn a phrase, etc. It's like standing in the mirror and appreciating how you have good hair that day or making your profile picture one that's really flattering, etc. Once upon a time I would read through these bits and pieces but not anymore. I'm moving right along and feeling less and less bad about it.

Anybody else doing this? Or am I just the worst person on the planet?

I deleted this post and didn't feel like deleting it from the post list

On Mortality

It's more than an unhealthy dose of self-pity, I'm aware. But then concerns about the level of self-pity innate to daily life are concerns for other people now. I'm not other people anymore. I'm the more quickly dying, the organic specimen fully graduated from the slowly dying bestowed upon all of us at birth. All that's left for me to do now is live here at The Farm in these replicate hours until someday soon, and without realizing it, I begin to live my last one, sixty minutes of which I will only live twenty-three or forty-seven or twelve. I'm not unhappy, despite what it may seem. I'm only preparing for the end, the great mystery. And when a human begins to turn their gaze to the unknown, I suppose the known, the reality of life, diminishes, becomes an outro that one listens to but doesn't really hear because the life of the song has already been born and died.

Everything Shane Jones Has Written

Just bought Shane Jones's books LIGHT BOXES and DANIEL FIGHTS A HURRICANE. Loved CRYSTAL EATERS, so I thought, well, I might need to read everything Jones has written. Soon as the mail runs, I'll have that taken care of proper.

Relax, It's a Lit Roundup 4

No need for a tightly written introduction. That's not what you came for at all. Here's the list:


1. Three Prose Poems by Michael Chin - @ Word Riot

2. Bri and You: Brian Oliu Says Enter Your Initials and Means It by Pat Siebel - @ Hobart

3. Katie Moore's online journal The Legendary is back with a new issue. Visit now.

4. I Am Your Damager Now (latest dream) by Jeff Vandemeer - @ His blog, The Southern Reach

5. Episode 272, Jeff Bridges: It’s Gonna Be Okay (feat. Donora Hillard) - @ Gobbledygeek

6. A Portrait of Coal Town on the Brink of Death by Jacob S. Knabb - @ Vice