Knock knock

"Who is it?"
"My name's Nick, I'm with the Sierra Club, we're the nation's oldest and largest grassroots environmental group."

It always sounded to me like such a disingenuous salutation, maybe because that's all it was: a formality between strangers. I wanted you to think that we were friends, or that we had something in common. That was the gambit. Because just like everyone knew, after the salutation was a diatribe waiting for them, at the end of which, there was a plea for cash.

That was the crux of the problem. I had to ask people for money to keep my job. What did that make me, a begger, a shill? I was doing a job, and as much as I'd like America to give up coal cold turkey, invest whole hog in renewable resources I didn't want it enough to lecture at other people, and make them want it too.

So I sucked at doing it. And I'm unemployed again.

Sinners and Saints

Let me tell you something. Striking out sucks, grounding into a double play is worse, but neither of those that bad compared to some other things in baseball. You could be the guy who gives up a home-run, you can commit a fielding error, you might even blow a save. Any base coach can tell you that you don't want your first, or your third out to come at 3rd base, because god forbid, you don't want to miss out on an opportunity to score. What I'm going to tell you right now is the sickest thing that could happen to someone.

I was out with my friend Kyle, who hasn't been to too many bars for some reason, in Fremont the other week. We met up with a couple of his friends (Ryan and Chris I believe, really nice guys). We were at a local bar, "The Sinner and the Saint," small place, little dance floor, DJ, pretty standard fare at the bar.

Kyle is, let's say, recently single. Not much experience hitting on girls at bars, or meeting people he's not connected with. So he's a little anxious, and I try to tell him that there's nothing to worry about. "Think of it like baseball. If you've got a .300 average, you're a great player, and you're failing seven out of ten times. You're going to strike out sometimes: that's just part of the game." He took it it, and he was visibly relaxed, but it was nothing like he would be after Ryan spilled a story about something that had happened to him a few weeks earlier.

The way the story went, Ryan met a girl at a bar and really hit things off. Hit things off so well in fact that she took him back to her place, which is great. Ryan though that he was gonna get lucky. That would have been awesome.

Here's the thing though, this girl was apparently really drunk. Not just like, 'bring a stranger back to your flat,' drunk, but more like, 'bring some dude home, then puke your guts out for a half hour drunk."

Ryan is a really nice guy though. I would have probably stuck it out a few minutes, said my condolences, and gotten out of there. Not Ryan, he's a nice guy. Also, it was really late, and the middle of winter, so I don't think he really wanted to walk home that late. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this, since, you know, he stuck it out and made sure this girl was alright. By the way, she wasn't alright.

When he finally got her to stumble into bed, he had to keep turning her on her side to make sure she didn't choke on her tongue or something. So Ryan wasn't going to get a good night's sleep, because that went on for, let's editorialize here and just say two hours. After two hours of tumble duty, Ryan finally got a chance to get some sleep when this girl gets up to run to the bathroom. He rolls over a little bit and feels a little wet spot. Maybe not a little wet spot, probably more like a large lukewarm wet spot. This is awesome.

The girl gets back with a large towel, makes some excuse to get Ryan out of the room, and changes her bedding. Smooth, like a secret agent protecting her asset.

That's pretty much as bad as it gets. I don't think I could make up a story worse than that. I described it at the time as being akin to getting thrown out at home plate for the last out of the World Series. I have a feeling this must have been worse than that, but it sure as hell let a load off Kyle's shoulders.

I love gatherings

Large public gatherings are probably the most efficient place to make first impressions. This is one of the best reasons to attend a live sporting event rather than watching at home.

I went to the UW/Stanford game last Thursday with my friend Justen and his girlfriend Haley. It was the first home conference game with classes in session which means that it was sort of a big deal. We were up in the nose bleeds which in cities like Philadelphia and New York would belong to blue blooded fans who traditionally prefer to get loaded and have a good time. In Seattle, they belong to D-bags who actually care about their seat numbers, and don't know that they're supposed to stay on their feet until the road team scores.

So while the ladies with high heels and novelty hot dogs shuttling themselves back and forth throw the rows of "assigned seats," might remember me for a foul mouth and short temper with our all-star Pac-ten refs, here's to hoping that someone remembers me for my Purple Heart.

You're not alone

I really appreciate Ed Hardy. I don't like Ed Hardy but I certainly appreciate it as a fun and easy way for D-bags to mark themselves, kind of like what professors do with tweet jackets, or like how the Nazis gave bar codes to all the Jews. It's usually pretty nice to have some high quality leading indicators like that when I meet new people, so I can approach the situation appropriately.

I wish there were something similar for girls who have boyfriends, because I have quite a knack for picking ladies who are spoken for to chat up, and it usually take at least 2 hours for that shoe to drop, if it does at all (read: it doesn't).

It seems to be happening more and more too. It's happened 4 times since April, which based on my rate of new meetings this summer was close to a 1.000 batting average. It's fucking stupid.

Put a fucking ring on it.