SwampLog 3.0

Out Of Retirement

If I ever decide to come up with another charity event, I wholly endorse the use of the Narn Bat Squad to pound some sense in to me.

For that matter, any time I decide to post half-drunk, as I did Tuesday night, the Squad will get to do their job as well.

Let's try this whistle out, first...

<wheet!>
tramptramptrampTrampTrampTRAMPTRAMPTRAMP.....

*WHAM!* *WHAM!* *WHAM!* *WHAM!* *WHAM!*

...

Yep.  Works fine.  Sorry, Marty.

Like You Need Another One

Life Lesson (remedial version) Number Nineteen:

No matter how long you look or how many times you give up the search, there's someone out there for you.  You need to be receptive to that fact when it happens.

(It didn't happen to me, natch -- but to one of my good friends, Thea, who deserves to be happy after all.  Good to see in action.)

She tells me that I'll find my match one day.  If I do, great.  If not, I may not care anymore.

I don't feel a lot of anything anymore.  What I do feel is negative -- anger, rage, remorse.  Time to either work out an alternative, or face the consequences.

Synchronicity

I'm at Humperdink's, because I know they have free Wi-Fi and I won't be pulled aside to answer a question or change a TV.  They have the Bush Inauguration parade on the big screen, on FOX News, with sound.  So, I pop on the headphones and let my iPod drive.

So, I had to stifle a guffaw when they showed Bush at a podium speaking, and my iPod chose to play Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World."  Brilliant.

Wonkette is documenting the huge pain in the ass security around Washington is causing.  Is there a president who has been more insulated from the people he's supposed to be representing?

Cooking With Teflon

The logistics for the blog marathon are coming together.  There's a name I want to use for the event (I won't use Blogathon, since that's Cat Connor's baby and I refuse to diminish the work she's done), but I need to get approval for it first.  So, I'll hold off for now.

The date, however, is firming up.  We'll either hold the event on a Saturday, either 6 March or 13 March.  It'll run from 1400 GMT Saturday until 1400 GMT Sunday (for those of you who need it Americanized, that's 9:00 am EST).

If you are interested in participating in the event, e-mail me at [email protected] with the subject [Charity Blog Event].  This is going to explode in the next week, so I want to get a head start on the head count.

If you know any bloggers who would be interested, send 'em on.  Everyone who can help, needs to.  Simple as that.

Finding New Ways To Get Into Trouble

So, I'm looking at all of the different folks who are doing cool, inventive things to aid the survivors of last month's tsunami in Indonesia.

And a voice in the back of my head, which pipes up at the worst, most inopportune moment, says, "Wouldn't this be a good time to get the Blogathon back up and running?"

The Big Blogathon site -- the one I worked with when I participated in 2003's insomnia fest -- says that there'll be more information in May on the next Big Deal.  I don't want to wait that long.

So, I'm putting the call out.  This needs to happen, and it needs to happen in the next month - six weeks.  Since there'll be one beneficiary, it should be easy to get the foundation in order.  (I say this knowing Cat, who organized 2003's shindig, was doing this close to full-time and it damn near killed her.)

I have feeler e-mails sent out to the people I know in the Blogosphere to get the ball rolling.  Let's see what trouble we can stir up.

For your perusal:

Blogathon 2003 FAQ
My Blogathon 2003 Site

Canary in a Coalmine

Off.  I'm actually off today.   I have a full day where I don't have to be anywhere -- okay, it's a lie, since I have to go in to Rawlings and do some R&D stuff... but at least I don't have to get into character.  The whole adrenaline rush of knowing I don't have to go in today and get my ass kicked by the people I manage isn't there, so I'm kind of dragging ass this morning.  But, hey!  It gives me time to catch up with current events on the good ol' Swamplog.

...

So, um.

Yeah.

It's not that things haven't been happening, it's just that everything's been at such a lightning pace lately, nothing really sticks.  I move from issue to issue, crisis to crisis with very little down time.  So, when it comes time to document everything (from the server who is so adamant to work a party of frat boys that she calls me a "fucking dick" to my face -- didn't fire her, though I had every right to -- to the bartender that tells me that she feels like we take advantage of her availability by tossing extra shifts her way instead of looking at it as a way to make extra money in the slow times of the year -- had to use my inside voice on that conversation), I'm just spent.  It's all a damned blur.

I've been de facto management before in several of the places I've worked, but have never had the actual title of manager until last year.  After three months of it, I can now safely say the following:

It blows.  Christ, does it blow.

Perhaps it's a product of working where I do, with the motley cast of characters whom I can't fire without going below the "skeleton crew" watermark and the owner who can't stop figuring out ways to tinker with what we're doing as a business.  The crew of managers we have is solid, and we all have our own quirks.  The bunker mentality doesn't have time to set in, though, because we have a long way to go in 83 days, when Opening Day 2005 hits the ballpark, and everything we do to prepare for it today gets put to the test.

...and there's my happy place.  Less than three months until Opening Day, and less than a month until Rangers pitchers and catchers report to Surprise, AZ.  While the thought of everything exploding inside the restaurant on Opening Day is wholly terrifying (and, trust me, everything will), knowing that it's baseball has a balancing affect on me.

I had my first taste of baseball this year when the Newberg Report held its first Release Party at Rawlings on Saturday.  Jamey talks about the event in his report from Sunday, and he's not kidding when he talks about the coolness factor of it all.

A Lovely Spring Day...

...in the first week of January.

Two days ago, the temperature didn't get out of the 30s.  Today, the high at the ballpark was 73 degrees.  Phenomenal blue skies.  Would have been a great day for a ball game.

I love living in Texas sometimes.

On A Monday

So, yes, I was watching the debacle last night.  Not so much the USC / Oklahoma game -- once the Trojans got ahead by 21 points, you knew it was over.  No, the halftime show was the real train wreck.

First, when the hell did bowl games get musical halftimes shows that didn't involve marching bands?  I mean, I like Lenny Kravitz as much, if not more, than the next person.  But, does anyone really care?  Will the musician get exposure to a new market if their agent pimps them out to the Whatever Bowl Halftime Show, Sponsored by MegaConglomeriCo?

On top of it, the production was simply horrible.  Only the singers were really, live, and the "musicians" backing them up were ALL playing air guitar to track.  The worst victim was Kelly Clarkson, whom I like more and more with each new song I hear from her.  She fought through a wireless mic meltdown and had no monitor whatsoever, and still managed to be somewhat on key.

Trace Adkins?  Couldn't care less.

Then came Ashlee.  And her banshee howls.  And her faux punk backup "band" with their immaculate liberty spikes and Anarchy drum head.

I have never gotten Jessica Simpson.  I watched 10 minutes of one of the first season 'Newlyweds' before relegating it to the same pile as the 'Anna Nicole Show' and anything resembling 'Who's Your Daddy?' in makeup.  And, now, you have someone who's raison d'être célèbre is that she's the dingbat's sister?  Where's my shotgun?

The boos that greeted her "performance" was the highlight of my evening, and others' as well.  I would refer you to Tony Pierce's treatise of it, since he explains it a helluva lot better than I ever could.  And he's wholly right.

I have repeatedly decried the "pop machine process" as something that has utterly destroyed what used to be entertaining music.   It's good to know I'm not alone.

The Proverbial Watched Pot

To those who have asked:

The comment "still waiting" is more for my own benefit than anyone else's.  If I say what I'm waiting for, it would ruin the surprise, and damn near jinx things.

And, yes, I'm still waiting.

Scene 46

Still waiting.

Her name was Anita.  I met her while working in St. Louis, at the sports bar that hired me away from Dallas Alley.  The only people I knew up there were my co-workers and my roommate, whom I moved to Missouri with.  We started dancing -- I want to say we danced to some Bob Seger slow song, but I might be horribly wrong.  She came home with me, and we sat on the floor of my living room on the 20th floor, overlooking the river, with no lights on.  She looked amazing in the lights from the river and streetlamps.  She looked just as good the next morning.

We dated, fell in love.  She told me of her horrible experience with nationalized medicine, when an earring lodged itself in her ear canal as a child and she had to endure surgeries and therapy to get her hearing back.  We watched Waco burn, and I told her that religious fanatics were, sadly, par for the course in Texas, so it didn't surprise me.  She looked at me and told me I was the most amazing, confusing man she had ever met. 

I had the most amazing woman, and I fucked it up.  I wanted to come back to Texas, and she couldn't leave her family in St. Louis.  We went out one more time, got incredibly plowed, and had phenomenal break-up sex.  And then, she was gone.

There's no record of her now.  I look for her from time to time, but come up snake eyes when doing any sort of Google search.  With any luck, she met someone who makes her deleriously happy.