My Ayn Rand Fan

When I was your age fifteen dollars could really get you something. Which, is why, two days ago when I made a passing offer of fifteen such dollars to a man in an Ayn Rand tee shirt I was surprised at what bounty such an offer would wrought.

My naïvety astound even myself. How could I have expected when giving an older gentleman in an white tee shirt which read Ayn Rand Fan an opening like "nice shirt" that it wouldn't have draged me into a conversation I was not prepared to have in the middle of my work day. For me the most difficult part of discussing Ayn Rand with a stranger is hiding my disgust with her- as much as I may enjoy a fraction of her work the over arching philosophy which she began and her group of fanatical followers have since perpetuated is just too much for me. If you don't know about Rand's ideas I will not get into them here and leave you siting through my own ranting and ravings over her. I will only say I agree with her as much as any other animal might; in the state of nature Ayn Rand would have been the first and only Queen.

I digress. Upon complimenting my A.R. fan's shirt he made me an excellent capitalistic offer- my very own Ayn Rand tee shirt. After several minutes (twenty) of listening to the fan's stories about his personal Rand experience, his communist brother working for Castro, the 25 part book sets he's bought for each of his twelve grandchildren and the monetary bribery with which he encourages them to read her work (home grown capitalism if I've ever seen it) he left with plans to return the next day with a shirt of me.

I had no idea what I was in for. Here, I give you, what fifteen dollars of Ayn Rand looks like-

1. Two Ayn Rand Fan tee shirts:

He gave me two shirts with the promise that one would fade and the other would flake. As you can see the front of the shirt read Ayn Rand Fan- Reason/Egoism/Capitalism/Life on Earth. The back of the shirt carries a length quote from Rand's 1939 novella, Anthem: "At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled."

2. Ayn Rand: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (book):

The book is a classic Rand work and fully thought out explanation of her philosophy which doubles as a bible.  The copy I received is severely worn, with tattered edges and beautifully worn pages.  On the inside cover the fan gave me his contact information.

3. Health Care is NOT a Right by Leonard Peikoff (pamphlet):

I read through this pamphlet with gritted teeth.  Here, in its purest form, is the problem with Rand- the death of altruism.  The death of altruism in modern, civilized, society.  The pamphlet does make some good points though about constitutional law but nothing which could cure my liberal fever backed brain.  The inside cover information about the pamphlet says that it is a transcript of a talk delivered "under the auspices of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine as a Town Hall Meeting on Health Care. Red Lion Hotel, Costa Mesa, California, December 11, 1993." Merry christmas 1993.

4. 22 pages of propaganda (group ads, information, reading lists, articles):

This gathering of leafs includes an Objectivist Summer Conference booklet, an article from The Undercurrent about free speech (accompanied by that cartoon of Allah which got so many people killed,) The Twilight on Freedom on Speech,  and Ayn Rand institute book list,  Take a hard Look at the Nazis, Harry Binswanger's Must Memorize Definition List, and a free trial offer for HBL, which as I gather is a mail order set up where they send you Harry Binswanger in a box like a Russian bride.

One gem among the pages and pages of propaganda is a single simple sheet entitled 'Introducing Objectivism.' Along with a picture of Rand and and an easy explanation of her works philosophy there is a quote by her which I can, for the most part, agree with- it in many ways embodies the best parts of her life's works- "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productivity achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

And that's it.  Pretty good deal huh?   I feel as if I really lucked out on this chance encounter, I met a nice man, I got some cool swag, and a good story.  I just hope when I wear the shirt I'm not mistaken as an Ayn Rand fan, but what are the chances of that?

Looking back on that quote though, I have to say, when it's all said and done my more prefered Rand quote is not by her but about her-

"Atlas shrugged... and said 'Who the fuck cares?'" -Carroll, my mother

The Moon, a Preview

"Lately I've found my thoughts, my soul, and my every meditation losing themselves from me and ascending away to the cool-black seas of the moon. My beautiful lady Luna, my final peace."

"the harsh bright soil of Luna"

But that is neither here nor there. Just a quick heads up, Matt is gone, I'm in charge, so.... MORE MOON. So sweet. Other than all that I don't have much for you, but thanks for all the comments on the Wendy's letter; I'll post a response from the corporation if I ever get one.

What's next? More book reviews, more letters. Love you beautiful sonsofabitches.
best,
CML

God's Country

It should firstly and plainly be said that I move in all those most respectable circles which all other atheist do as well.

I got up early this morning so that I could go out while the sun was still rising. It’s very often that I’m still awake when the birds begin to chirp but not so common that I’m actually awake and moving about outside with them as they do. I took a bike ride around the neighborhood and ended up down at the corner store. Everything looked fresh and clear in the morning-wet air. A crystalline blue sky filled full with misty cloud-whispers covering a heavy and damp dew humid air. It’s so clear out though. The sun is up but not out yet, not yet high enough to shine over the thicker clouds that coat the Midwest horizon in faux white cap mountain peaks.

Traffic is only a low rumble still and the loudest noise around me is the hydraulics of a truck cab and the hum of it’s refrigerated load. “Rolling Rock” it says in big beautiful letters above a panoramic blue-green rocky mountain scene I’ve never been to. I’d like to go out west, to the real west that lies past this old thought Midwest. I don’t especially like the idea of the West Coast, but I’d very much like to see the Pacific Ocean and those mountain ranges. The idea of the ocean doesn’t particularly impress me because of its size and grandeur, the great lakes ruined that for me at a young age. Never again will any body of water be anything more than a lake to me; I’ve peered out across lakes and seen nothing but more lake on the other side. And, I’ve done it from both Chicago and West Michigan looking back across at myself. I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean because of the name I imagine. I’d like to see a peaceful sea and imagine the orient on its other side. Worlds divided I guess. I’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean already and when I did I had all the salt that’s ever been a part of it stuffed right up my nose and down my throat. When I swam in it I was still so young that I had trouble opening my eyes underwater and it sure didn’t help me any. It was nice though, like going to a grandparent's house; someplace you know your family came from, seeing where your father slept and shared a closet for a room with his brother, seeing that vague place where your mother’s mother’s mother sailed over and on. In all the pictures I’ve seen of the west the mountain line in the background is what strikes me the most. Frontier land doesn’t stretch out forever in every direction; it’s cut up by ridges and pitfalls as far as I can see. Seeing pictures of those blue and white mountains is deceiving when you’re a child; there isn’t any way to tell where they end and because of that every town you see can give off the impression that it’s in a cradle of American bounty, set up and protected in a basin of God’s country’s very own best rocks. Where I grew up things looked to be in a basin themselves, surrounded on all sides by old industry. Steel mills, salt hills, burning blue-flamed oil towers; after a while it starts to look like the rest of the land, like it too was thrust up from the soil and rocks when the earth was still young and eons cooling. It’s hard to say if it’s any older than the rest of this place, especially when it was all already here by the time I showed up.

I rode my bike back home and left it in the garage on its kickstand. Looking at the red-lined clouds is like looking at the delicate red blood veins in a milky white eye. Everything just looks so clean and clear before that. The sky is infectious and all the air in my world is the same muted pale blue it’s been all morning and I start to wonder, “Is this God’s country?” Walking back inside I notice one last thing: those same road side gnats I picked off my shirt last night after running are stuck all up and down my arms now in the red blond downy hair. I pick them each out, one by one flicking them back in the direction of the road before I walk back inside and begin taking off my shoes in the front room of my parent's house. Oh happy new day.

caleb

Do the homeless drink our blood at night?

There is a point when desperation stops being French and romantic and becomes something much more real and scary. Is it so surprising to think then that maybe the homeless, displaced, and down trodden of the streets just might drink our blood at night? And if they do, is that so bad? Can you really blame them?

Sure, maybe they’re a little dated. It seems that the dark, horny, beauty of draculas in the 90s has been replaced by the swashbuckling flamboyance of pirates in the 00s. As Anne Rice made room for Roller Coaster rides the importance of blood and blood drinking was lost and now may be found in a less desirable place, on the dirty and dry lips of those retched wrecked souls called the walking homeless, those modern day street roaming nomads, those transient vagrants, the homeless.

Gone is the once kind playfulness of the run down tramp, and replacing that once romantic life of freedom and carelessness a life overflowing with the horrors and sadness of vampirism, night walking, and the curses of the changeling. No more can we look to shelters and parishes to protect and feed our lost brethren. No, oh no, for now no soup but blood soup can sustain these crazed people and fill there sickly stomachs teeming with maggots, rat fesses, and the skin from some poor souls neck. If anything these shelters have become the breeding grounds in this epidemic of homeless blood sucking terror as much as the streets of each and everyone of our great cities has. Gone I say, gone is the tin can and billy goat beard, gone is the train depot, the “sacked lunch” and the homemade fishing rod. All gone, all of them, everything, gone.

Do the homeless drink our blood at night? Sure they do, and why shouldn’t they, wouldn’t you? There’s nothing left to lose, and the sweetness of fresh blood is equal to any peppermint schnapps or three day old muffin crumbs. When you’re at the bottom of the income bracket it’s nice to know you’re at the top of the food chain.

Do they? Hell yes they do, or at least the ought to.

Cml, scared

Fences

Once you have a fence you can’t really get ride of it easily. I’ve been trying to think of a way that you could, but I can’t. I think that’s because no fence is really yours. It’s your fence, but also three other peoples’ fence too. Whoever lives next to you, on either side, owns part of your fence, and the same with the person living behind you. The gate is yours, the rest of it is only partially yours, a fraction yours, a third. And like anti-ballistic missiles in a peace agreement no one wants to get ride of their fence first. And in fact with a fence you can’t. Maybe if you convinced your neighbors on all three sides to take their part of the fence down with you, had mutual permission to remove the fencing from around your property a person could do away with fences. But that doesn’t seem very realistic. Even so, if your fence were gone then the three other properties and your own would look like one great big green inverted T or like one of those Tetris pieces that’s shaped like two perpendicular lines. Even if you convinced the surrounding five properties to your home to each remove a portion of their fence, so you and the neighbor across the backyard would lose three fences and those homes which bookend the two of you would only lose two fences, one which they shared with you and the home across the backyard from you and the other which they shared with the other respective bookend homeowner on their end of the six properties there would still be the upset that six garages would be left scattered seemingly aimless through out an expansive green lawn made from six different and before individual plots. Maybe though, if a neighbor on one side were to move and you were to act in the dead of night and quickly remove one third of your entire fence, the fence shared with the emigrating neighbor before the home was bought but while still vacant the problem of fencing could be dealt with however slowly. And, if you lived in that one home long enough then maybe, just maybe, eventually there would be no fences; at all, anywhere. It’s possible. After all, each fence does lead to next.

Where I live now there aren’t any fences. I guess I just got lucky. I know one day though I'll probably live in a place that is more fenced in than this one now and I don’t know if there will be anything I can do about that. Hopefully I’ll have really nice neighbors, or neighbors with the same sense towards fences as I have and we can take our fences down together on some sunny summer afternoon; mow our lawns and water our grass and respect the boundaries our lawnmowers and hedge clippers carve into the earth instead of using the ugly aluminum and iron fences that were there before. But then again maybe that’s wishful thinking, or maybe it’s just passive aggression, and maybe it would just a quitter way of separating myself from people around me. What’s better, an unspoken fence, or a real one you can lean on, climb over and build a gate in?

He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
-Robert Frost

Caleb, prospective home owner

Finals Week

It's getting around to that point again. There is a reason why Matt and I list our occupations here on BSD as "student." It's so that when finals week draws around there is an explanation for why I don't have much new to say. There is so much I want to write about this week, but I think instead I'll just fill it with star wars content. Please enjoy, and I'll see you on the light side.
The Alderaanian

part 1
The Boondocks:

A Serious Moment...

There’s something really magical about sitting around at two in the morning the night before a big test, in your underwear, slamming down milanos, pounding the keys and rocking out to sympathy for the devil. It’s a wild a feeling when you’ve left the windows open and there’s a shiver rising up you, straight from your belly and jittering legs. "Please to met you, hope you guessed my name."

Singing in the shower is all right, but sometimes I like to dance too. I know it isn’t a good idea, because I could slip and fall, but I don’t mind, I do it anyways.

I don’t especially like Tricks cereal. Also it turns your poop green. Superman ice cream has the same effect, but I can’t help but eat it for the sake of childhood nostalgia. And it makes me feel little less like Clark Kent.

When I hear tornado sirens it makes me wish I was having sex with a beautiful and caring woman. Someone I really loved. That way, if we died at least we’d be happy. At least I know I would. Also, I would have died the way I lived, wishing that I was having sex with a beautiful and caring woman.

-Caleb, that silly rabbit.

The Gauntlet

Remember when video games were hard? Yeah me too.

People complain about video games now, but there is nothing bad that can be said about any game that you didn’t have to pound on just to get it to play. The hardware error that companies like Nintendo, Sega, and Atari built into there cartridge platforms bread a whole generation of wife beating children who, even before you could kill whores and steal cars in Liberty City, were reverting to violence to solve their problems. I pounded on Donkey Kong harder than Mario did to Princess Peach, or King Kong did to Fay Wray.

Looking back it occurs to me now that besides being harder to start these games were also harder to play than anything on the market today. The controls for some of the classic and super Nintendo games are alright, but that’s easy when all you do is run and jump. But in the original Donkey Kong even athletic great Mario jumped like a ballet dancer on acid. Once you get to Jurassic Park on the Genesis, the one place you really need to run and jump, those abilities kind of fall apart in your hands as you wake up in a shady, monster filled, government occupied Pitfall.

If you see what I’m driving at here, you’re better off than I am. These games were hard, even if you didn’t utilize the one option they designed the menu for: the difficulty setting. But difficulty? Difficulty? Is that even an option in these early games?! I understand easy, normal, and hard, but what about “playable” as an option, or how about, “application of the natural laws of physics” on/off switch? How about some “difficulty” settings that would actually allow the game to slide back and forth on the spectrum of skill level, and not luck. I don’t know how many Italians, scientists, monkeys, and marines I’ve killed hoping that they could make it across a two foot jump and not trip standing up or face plant themselves into an invisible ledge. These games had one real setting- suckyhardtryagaingoodluckbastard. But the games were fun and challenging in a way TV hadn’t experienced since the introduction of the presidential debates and then much later and more predominantly with American Idol. It wasn’t just that we were young, with undeveloped hand eye coordination, or that these games were really, really, badly programmed (which they were), that made this games so hard. They were designed intentionally to be hard, and because of that worth playing again and again.

Looking past the insane logic of the story lines, the poor programming and resulting complex paradoxical game play that introduced games like “Schrödinger's Cat’s Bowl-a-Tron”, and sadistic game developers dreams of blind, nubby fingered children, the video games of our youth were pretty damn amazing.

Now, I’m not going to lie, I once I had to have someone remind me that Sonic wasn’t Mario, and that rings weren’t coins. And, for a long time when I’d play Mario in my uncle’s basement with all the cousins crowding around I had no idea what was going on. I mean there were dinosaurs, and manila colored nipple men, and a guy that could spit fire, and an arrangement of different mushrooms. And, sometimes my brother would give me the second player remote and tell me I was playing when I wasn’t, and for a long time I couldn’t tell. But eventually I got a “big” just like Mario did, and I grew up and understood a few things about video games.

The things that video games have taught me almost seem like universal truths to me now, things I was born knowing, natural rights intuit in every child. So, here they are-

What video games have taught me:
-That no matter what modern concepts of physics tell us, there is such a thing as a double jump. That is right, one jump on top of another, a mid air miracle, pushing little men a little higher.
-If something or someone changes color, they’re probably a zombie. If they bounce up really high and then off the screen, they’re probably just dead.
-Even little mustached plumbers can find the love of a beautiful princess, even if they can’t find her.
-Health is everywhere.
-And so is lava.

Seriously though, isn’t art supposed to relate to real life? At least a little. And I’m pretty sure that a huge part of life isn’t about getting eaten by raptors and falling off cliffs. But then again, I could always be wrong about that too.



-Caleb, true ninja

And as I am Peering down Springs Blouse...

Why will I continue to search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe? Why must I reject those beautiful bouts of chaos? They hit me like pleasant strokes, bubbles in the brain-at the park last summer they floated through that cramped air and sun streaked sky.

Sitting in the tub I am four and my mother’s blowing bubbles over my head and they stick to the white tile walls and the water is getting cold and the bath is full of mountains of white that keep popping and a hair floats by and I get scared. When the water is too chilly for me to take and the heater in the basement is already dead from exhaustion mother fills a pot on the stove. Pouring it over my toes I know she loves me.

But then it was summer again and for some odd reason music sounded better then it ever had before. Something in the air had changed and what more than that, Spring had crept out from 45 degrees of rain into a stuffy car and suddenly its 63˚ at the city airport. And that damn it all to hell April 6, 2006 or was it 2005 or 1994-0r-2 had pumped me full of thoughts of perfect folds of red summer blouses and divine bosoms with perfect playful cleavage as a girl asks me to turn in her paper for her because she can’t be bothered by the niceness of the day to leave her seat and I’m peering past her name in the upper corner and seeing her smile and the shrug of her shoulders on the same depth of field while her breasts pull daisy stalks into that V you see when two leaves or petals or legs or parts of summer met.

And then I am back at the park and that damn it all to hell April has set girls on every thought and emotion and sense I have. And there’s something in the air where I breath that causes something inside of me to feed and I can’t tear any bit of my over worked mind away from the breasts I see floating across the sky and over my bath and then I realize that they're bubbles I am remembering and I was four in that tub again.

And sometimes, we just have to be happy that summer and winter are so set in their ways. Spring and Fall, no matter what month, have a way of going either way, running a bit cold or feeling un-restfully warm as the wind blows. But, there is something about the middle of summer, something which is absolute, solidified by the heat of a July day which only summer has. Summer time is strong and sure, letting itself be known in every drop of sunlight into sweat, shouting out it’s presence like a boy with his ball in every long hour of the longest days. Summer burns a memory into your mind so surely that your brain peels. So definite that every blade of grass ever plucked up and rolled between your fingers, pulled at from the ground till it burst out singing dirt into the air as it gave to you is locked away in your mind. Summertime brings on emotions so dormant that even the bugs shoot off electric joy as they dance through the night, little thunderstorms so soft they could mock the lull a baby’s sleep. And, what’s more there is the memory of the first smear of that galvanizing green against the pavement where it is smeared into the heart and the soul of you the first time you see a fire fly die. Summer brings all the calmness of a nap, all the comfort of grass hugged feet, all the joy of nights so dark the sky is filled with lights that out shine cities and so warm that the day might not ever end and summer will just last forever.

And then I realize that it is April again and I’ve set out to get myself and there are a million pretty girls I’d love to kiss before I’ve lost my sense of Spring-supple breasts and supple heat that reaches inside of me and turns my chest up to the nth˚.

A Couple of Blog Links and Rambling

Due to several startling accusations that this blog is beginning to resemble a "livejournal", I feel I need to respond. Firstly, the whole point of this endeavor was for Caleb and I to write about whatever the hell we wanted to, and I'm sticking to that point. Secondly, I don't ramble on about my problems or whine about anything. Anything that I write is going to have shades of my personal experiences in it, because, well... I wrote it. But, if I did want to complain about my love troubles or how I sunk a really sweet jump shot in basketball the other day, I will. Lastly, don't take offense to any of this... I enjoyed the comments and know they were not meant with any ill will. You know, to be safe, just don't be offended by anything I ever say.

I have a couple of blog links today of a literary nature. Both sites are really hilarious (at least if you find bad grammar amusing).

The first is Left Behind at the Fishbowl. Paul found this somewhere and I came across the link on his blog. The premise is that readers find random writing and submit it, then it is corrected by the author and posted. The writing is just atrocious and the blog author's corrections witty and funny. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys writing at all, but I'm pretty sure most people would get a good laugh out of it... unless you're a terrible writer. It might not be quite so funny then. Plus, I think the author is from Michigan.

The second blog is Passive Aggressive Notes. Just go to the site if you want to see what it is about, I'd rather not fumble around with too much of an explanation. Just believe me when I say it's funny. "Is that a question of a command!?!?"

Next week sometime BSD will return to regularly scheduled programming.

...which means I'll have something a bit more substantive to post than news articles, blog links, pictures and generic rambling about the blog itself.

Box Score

“I’m reading the box score, Scully. You’d like it; it’s like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box, and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny, summer day back in 1947. It’s like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me, they tell me even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same.” –Fox Mulder

One day, Mulder reminded me of something my dad once told me, something about how I should love baseball because of how much I enjoyed statistics. My seven year old self never really understood that, because things like wins and losses, points and touchdowns, goals and assists were so much easier to understand than ERAs, batting averages, WHIPs, or slugging percentages. But, not understanding all of that stuff never stopped me from loving the game, and it never stopped me from playing second base, or debating All-Star team rosters with my grandpa on lazy weekday afternoons. And when I grew, and my knowledge of math increased (though I will never admit again that math has ever helped me better understand sports), I began to get what my dad had been trying to tell me all those years before.

Baseball is the game of statistics, the game of numbers. I learned what all those funny acronyms and abbreviations stood for, and what they meant. I learned all the little intricacies of the game, and I fell in love with it all over again. It wasn’t just whacking a ball with a stick and running bases or catching and throwing, it was strategy and numbers that stretched back into the foggy reaches of time, numbers that meant something, that could restore something. I might never be able to recreate a summer day in Boston in 1920, but I can damn well know what happened at Fenway that day. So, I think back and wonder what it was like to watch Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth or Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown, and I dig up all those charts filled with numbers and abbreviations and marvel at the order and simplicity of it all.

Once at a game at Comerica Park a blonde in the row in front of mine caught my eye. She had her hair back in a pony tale and a baseball cap on her head, and to my amazement she was filling out a score card as she watched the game from the bleachers. She was recording for posterity that day in time. It was quite possibly the most attractive thing I had ever seen in my life. Just watching her slender fingers marking outs with a pencil and seeing her rapt attention at every movement of the game was intoxicating. I understand if that makes me seem crazy to most of you, but I’m sure that someone out there understands. I know Mulder would, at least.

Ballparks themselves are intoxicating… the rumble of the crowd, the call of the vendors, the warm smell of hotdogs and the freshness of the air, the warm sun shining and the inviting sky spreading out in every direction. There is just something about them that is different from all those places called Arenas, Bowls, Domes and Coliseums. They are parks, they are fields… they are expansive and open. I feel sorry for those cities that don’t have a true ballpark, but are forced to share a facility with some other sport. It just isn’t the same. I’m lucky enough to have two of them, though one is a haunted shadow of its former self.

It has been a long time since I was last in Tiger Stadium, but I’ve went past it many times since then and I know it’s still sitting there at Michigan and Trumbell, just waiting. No matter how long it has been, though, I know I’ll remember those long, claustrophobically low tunnels that must still be there, and the field where so many of my heroes and my father’s heroes roamed for summers stretching back decades. I still know those steep bleachers that made you feel as if you were right on top of the field and I can hear the seagulls crying out in my mind. I can still remember sitting along the third baseline, cracking shells and popping peanuts into my mouth, the mitt on my left hand just itching for a foul ball, and my dad next to me keeping track of the game on a scorecard.

Comerica Park is newer, more open, and perhaps the grass is greener now, but I know it will never replace Tiger Stadium. No park can ever replace that old warrior in my heart. But, CoPa is a good park, and the skyline from it makes me think about how much I love the city, despite everything. It’s funny how those surroundings gave me so much courage, how thousands of people around me brought me comfort. It’s odd that friends chattering away and the thrill of a potential comeback victory made me do something that I probably would never have done otherwise. So, I talked to the blonde girl with the scorecard and the Tiger’s hat. I told her that she was beautiful, and she smiled at me. I talked to her, and my heart thumped at her smile and the look in her blue eyes. I felt alive… and it didn’t matter what she said, how she responded, that was never the point. It was only the movement of her lips as she formed the words, not what she spoke, that mattered, the gentle curve of her jaw line and the happiness that I knew my words brought her. So, we talked about the game and ourselves, and it was unbelievable. We talked about filling out scorecards, four seam fastballs and our lives. And it didn’t matter that she had a boyfriend, that I never got her phone number, or that she lived in Cincinnati, because I was happy. Nothing but that one brief moment mattered in the end. Of course, as with all good love stories, the night ended with fireworks, brilliant streaks of neon color lighting up the cool Michigan night. I haven’t seen her since, and know that I never will again, but all that is important is that I was there, watching baseball in a park, speaking to an angel with a scorecard, and that the Tigers won it in the bottom of the tenth. It was exhilaration, it was pure joy, and it was a moment that will live forever through the pencil marks upon a piece of paper. Sometimes, things just seem to come full circle, I guess.

“Shut up, Mulder, I’m playing baseball.” –Dana Scully

An Intro to the Introductory

Alright, this isn’t ideal, and was not according to the complicated plan of action that I thought up and forced Caleb to agree to, but “the best laid plans of mice and-“, okay, I’m going to stop there. For the time being, I’m just here to write a quick introductory post that will probably be all substance and little style. I apologize, but with classes, the insane amount of essays I have to write in the next month, and the… well, whatever you do at art school (drawing and sculpting and building giant tank turrets, I think) doing that Caleb is currently caught up in, our real intro for this blog will come later, though it should definitely be within the next month or so. We are writing the true introduction together, and since we are currently separated by about 150 miles, there are some barriers to speedy writing. Anyhow, I was just chafing at the bit to get this thing started, and to post an essay that sort of has a deadline coming up fast, so here we are…

I’m Matt, and my partner in this intrepid endeavor is Caleb, who will be along eventually. That will have to do for introductions of us writers for now, though I doubt it really matters, since I’m going to assume anyone reading this at this early stage knows at least one of us.

I guess the main point of this blog is to get a chance to write more and to actually get our stuff out there. Speaking personally, it’s already gotten me to start writing things not related to dead Greek guys or the Salem Witch Trials, which is always a good thing. It’s wonderful to have a reason to write again, and such a release to be able to get my thoughts out in a medium like this. Now if I only had something to record the thoughts I get before I’m about to fall asleep, I’d be all set. I always get the best ideas for things to write about when I’m wanting to go to sleep, and if I got up to write them down I would become an insomniac like Caleb… is that too close to home? I don’t think that it’s even funny. Ah, well, I write what comes to mind. Anyhow, I’m getting way off topic.

There isn’t any main focus to our writing, though I hope I speak for both of us when I say that we enjoy writing about the human condition. Which, I realize sounds pompous as hell, but I don’t really care. I’m sure half the stuff will be rambling pieces about emotions and events with references and quotes from across the board. And while I can’t speak for Caleb as to what else he’s going to write about (probably Superman, though), I plan on inserting some less literary tidbits (movie reviews, complaints about stupid pop-cultural topics, articles about video games, television shows, books and other things I happen to think of, and stuff on various sports related topics), and whatever else comes to mind.

The last order of businesses has to do with the layout, which is crap in my mind, at the moment. I lost the knowledge (which wasn’t much) of html that I ever possessed, so I need some help with getting rid of that prefab header and inserting a header that a friend (thank you again, Marc) made for me. If anyone has any knowledge of html, or blogs, or can direct me to someone or somewhere that does contain that knowledge, it will be much appreciated. Get a hold of me however you know how, or drop me a line at blastshieldsdown@gmail.com. Thanks in advance.

Finally, I just want to thank everyone who bothered to come here and read through this. I promise you it will get better soon. Caleb is a master storyteller and has the silver tongue of a bard, so I know you will never be disappointed by anything he writes. And if you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written, then you’ll like this blog. Thanks once again, we’ll be back soon.

EDIT: If you're going to criticize my writing, please make it constructive. I appreciate constructive criticism, but (and I know this may be hard to believe) I don't care whether or not you think my writing is "forced pseudo intellectual fiction". Frankly, that phrase itself is forced pseudo-intellectual fiction. I'm almost inclined to believe that was a joke, but I figure if it was a joke, someone would've left a name. If you don't like what you're reading then stop reading it, it's not that friggin' difficult.

By the way, thanks to all the people who commented with something to actually say.