Strikeoutsh Base Hitsh Double Playsh

You know, I have to endue a lot of crap thanks to being a lifelong Orioles fan, but I have to say I am forever thankful that I can't count Scott Stapp as one of the Baltimore faithful. I can't imagine how awful it must be to be a Marlins fan, but having the former Creed frontman write an inspirational song for you (that you know they play at Pro Player Stadium every time they take the field) has to be a gigantic kick in the nuts:

My favorite parts: everything, but especially when he just takes random baseball terms, mush-mouths them in his own magnificent way, and then decides, 'yeah, that's a pretty good verse'.

That Poor Man

I seriously think that in about 25 years there will be a documentary made about Jeremy Guthrie, the hardest-luck of all the fantastically hard-luck Orioles pitchers of the last 4 - 5 years. I suppose he's had some good moments to look back on, but he just strikes me as the kind of guy that in the future will get a 20 minute spot on some news show where they show the cardboard box that he's now living in and him rambling and babbling about how good his FIP was over the years and how much he hated how much of a free-swinger Ty Wigginton was.

As I'm writing this, it's the top of the 8th inning in a 4-1 game against the yankees wherein he has pitched exceptionally well against an extremely strong lineup, only to get one run of support on three hits and four yankee runs thanks to two terrible plays by Mr. Wigglypuff himself. After the last game against the yankees where he hit Jorge Posada he basically broke down and cried about what a terrible pitcher he was and how much he felt sorry for Orioles fans.

I'm thinking that if this continues, the tears and apologies will eventually get replaced with sniper rifles and book depositories, but that's just speculation at this point.

Vintage J-Neb, Part I

Holy crap I just checked out my Myspace page. When was the last time you were on Myspace? Anyway, I took a second to find some old blog posts that I made there and I thought a couple were particularly interesting...to wit:

The Eternal Optimist in Me
Current mood: optimistic

Ah, late winter/early spring. Hope swells in the heart of the eternal Orioles fan. Why such optimism? Ask any true O's fan - this is the only time of the year that we can actually be optimistic and hopeful that our team will not be playing like a bunch of Jerry's Kids by mid-August.

The crazy part is, I'm actually genuinely hopeful about our chances. Not this year, mind you, I'm talking about 2010, dumbass. True, I was hopeful in 2005, and 2006, and 2007, but it was the the kind of hopeful like a guy with driving a 1987 Ford Escort hopes his car won't break down on the way to work - you know you're being an idiot.

We've finally committed to rebuilding by getting rid of Tejada (just in time) and Bedard (for a big haul). What tells me that I'm really excited about the future here is that I'm ready - nay, can't f*ing wait - for them to deal Brian Roberts. Anyone who knows me knows that Brian Roberts isn't just my favorite Oriole, he's also the center of the majority of my gay-baseball-related fantasies.

whoa tmi

What I'm trying to say is that I, once again, in the face of a terrible organization in the toughest division in baseball and a likely last-place finish, am actually excited about the Orioles' 2008 season.

They've put people away for far less than this.

Yeah, no shit.

My American Life

Here's a brief run-down of where I'm at right now.

I'm in Lovell, Wyoming, but just for the night. Tomorrow I'll be back in Billings, Montana, ready to get up at 4 AM to catch a flight back to Baltimore. My hotel is pretty trashy, but not altogether bad. The refrigerator is broken, which wouldn't be as big of a deal if I would have been able to eat dinner tonight. The only food in town, a Blimpie and Taco John's smashed into one gorgeous/awful conglomeration, closed at 8, exactly two minutes before I arrived.

I was late because I was at work. My work consists of me trying to get new audiovisual systems to work with outdated and possibly broken old lighting and sound systems that the National Park Service is trying to make live past their prime. In some cases, well past their prime. Many parks still use LaserDiscs as their main form of show playback. LaserDiscs.

Everything went well today. This morning at Yellowtail Dam went great - cleaned up and buttoned up well. The drive to Wyoming wasn't bad. I had a good lunch. Even stuff in Wyoming went well - the audio system now works perfectly, we were able to diagnose and fix a problem with a start button, and all of the equipment was in. Everything went well except for one thing. One small, and yet monstrously big, thing.

Their lighting system won't interface with our audiovisual system.

The idea is that when the movie starts playing, our video player sends a signal to their lighting system to turn the house lights down gradually, and when the movie is over, it tells it to come back up. Easy, right?

Well, it's not...but I won't bore you with the details, because, truth be told, you really shouldn't care. It's my problem. But my point for writing this whole thing is that for the next day, my entire life, reputation, and peace of mind will revolve around trying to make two electrical systems talk to each other - something that 95% of the population would happily shake their heads at and say, 'glad that's not me'.

But I don't have a choice - I'm responsible for the completion of the project and I'm the only one that has a stake in the outcome. I cannot leave Wyoming without the lights in the theater dimming when our movie plays. And yet, I have to leave two days from now because my ticket is non-refundable.

Did I make the right choice in letting such a trivial thing shape my happiness and schedule? Should I care less or more than I do about this? Would anyone else worry enough to write a blog post about it at 10 PM in a lonely hotel room? I have no idea. I do know that I take enough pride in what I do and the work that I do to work my ass off to get the thing to work, but really everything that I can try right now will be a leap of faith and a hope for some luck.

In some ways, I really wouldn't wish this situation on my worst enemies.......and yet, this is my life and I'm proud to live it. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Blogging for the Man

So I've been told that I'm not blogging enough. That I should get out there and blog. That I should blog it 110%. That my blogging to this point has been underwhelming. Well, I say to you, Mr. McBlogNaySayerSmith, that blogging ain't easy. I mean, I have to sit down, open up my computer, think thoughts with my mind, and type them into the computer. And don't get me started on the whole logging in thing. Sometimes it actually makes me type in my username.

So just to show everyone that I'm still alive and blogging, here's my list of interesting things about today, Friday, April 16, 2010 (AD).

1. I ate two Thin Mints for breakfast today.

2. I also ate a fiber bar later on.

3. I will eat the Chicken Tikka Masala we made last night for lunch.

4. And possibly another Thin Mint.

5. I wanted to ride my scooter to work today, but the Weather Channel said it was going to storm and that a 'serious potential for wildfires' exists in the area today. No scooter for me, thank you.

6. I'm going to play golf tomorrow morning, and will probably have to contend with ground that is soaked from the storms today, and 30-35mph winds. And probably wildfires.

7. In Orioles news, they lost last night to the Oakland Athletics, 6-2. Felix Pie, astonishingly enough our most productive hitter these days, left the game in the 7th inning with a sore shoulder. Also, Nick Markakis' head fell off and Peter Angelos sold the team to the Yankees. Plans to demolish Camden Yards are already underway. And Cal Ripken came out and said he never liked playing for Baltimore anyway. And Sidney Ponson is still alive.

8. I mean seriously, I haven't experienced a start to a baseball season that has ever been quite this depressing. And especially after all the talk this offseason about how good we were going to be - I actually had started drinking some of the Kool-Aid myself. These guys look like they absolutely don't care and don't want to be faced with the arduous task of playing baseball for a living. Right now, in April, they already look the way we are accustomed to seeing them play in August-September. It's going to be a long year.

Alright, that's enough. You know I'm still alive and kicking. I'm heading back out to Montana and Wyoming on Sunday, so you can probably expect some interesting stuff to happen out there that is worth blogging about. Plus, I am writing a travelogue of sorts about our recent trip to England and Scotland, and I suppose I'll put that up here in the coming weeks. Unless I have to remember my username and password.

Fridee...

No new post for this most beautiful of Fridays, just a picture of my father, John Guise Rossman III at Little Bighorn, more than 25 years before me:

The World as I Know It

I am a staunch believer in relativity, that is to say, that all things are relative and that there are no absolute truths. You may find my writing style to be offensive or beautiful; I'm not the one to say. I happen to enjoy writing the way I do, and it makes sense to me. Enough people have told me that they like the way I write that I no longer particularly care whether or not I'm following particular standards of style or form.

I'm the same way about music - I care equally deeply for the music of King Crimson and Yanni, of Springsteen and the Dismemberment Plan, of the Rolling Stones and the Baseboard Heaters. If music moves me and makes me feel something, it is good. I simply cannot believe that there is a single, universal truth as to what makes good music or bad music, or what makes good art or bad art. I'm also not confident or selfish enough in my tastes to pretend to espouse that I know what is good or bad - I've been wrong more than enough times in my life to realize that taking such a hard-line stance on any art is a foolish proposition.

Truth be told, I once naively thought that everyone innately knew this fact to be true - no one could be so blind to actually think that there was a right art or a wrong art. But in my second year of college, I played in a band and lived with a person who literally thought exactly that, and told me so. I point-blank asked him if he thought there was such a thing as good music, and such a thing as bad music. And he looked me straight in the eye, and said yes.

Although this happened close to 10 years ago, it has been something that has stuck with me for a long time. How could someone whom I actually regarded as an aware and intelligent individual actually believe that there was no relativity in art - that art was objective, rather than subjective - and above that, that he actually knew what was good and what wasn't? It seemed more than pompous, more than arrogant. It was wrong.

Recently I read a short essay by Chuck Klosterman that put the whole situation into perspective. He, as he is so often wont to do, explained the situation in a way that I had been attempting to do for nearly a decade in a short, concise paragraph that was so precise and perfect it was scary. He was explaining why he hates the term 'Guilty Pleasures' because he feels as though there is no such thing - if something gives you pleasure, you shouldn't necessarily feel guilty about it:

'What the authors of 'The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures' (and everyone else who uses this term) fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of "universal taste" - in other words, a consensual demarcation between what's artistically good and what's artistically bad - are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else's art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it.'

And there you have it. Thanks, Chuck. Your art is hereby deemed 'GOOD'.