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Home, Caroline, home
Jun. 5th, 2007 11:59 pm
Currently at UW: 7.8. High today: 16.7, early in the morning. There's a frost advisory out--it's been about as cold a day as you'll find for June, since the bottom fell out of the air this morning. But not as cold as it was last Tuesday in Saskatoon, when it didn't break 10 all day long.
I forgot to take my camera to Saskatoon; otherwise, I'd have pictures of pelicans. (And gophers.) I didn't know there were pelicans that far north--but it turns out that the American white pelican breeds mostly in the prairies. Who knew? A lot of prairie folks, I guess.
I was planning a detailed report on What I Did On My Spring Vacation, but, well, I hear eljay is now deprecated. The cool kids are all going to usenet--pass it on! (It's a meme.) Anyway, maybe I'll get to it one of these days....
For now, I got two things that you got to know. One: Aaron Hill began and ended an inning by walking tonight. I would bet that that's the first time that's ever happened in major league baseball: a leadoff walk and a walkoff walk by the same guy in the same inning. (As Mike Wilner noted in the postgame show, the walkoff walk is the second-most exciting play in baseball, after the walkoff balk.)
Two: the reason that yelling behind a guy who's set up to catch a pop-up is NOT THE GADDANG SAME THING as the hidden-ball trick and all that other bullshit that people have been spouting is that messing with the system of calling for fly-balls is unsafe. If you can't trust that the guy yelling behind you is calling you off, you can get killed. Nobody ever died from the hidden-ball trick, fer cryin' out loud. I've kept waiting, but I haven't seen a single person point this out anywhere. One columnist I saw said that the Jays got burned because they "didn't communicate". Well, what the hell do you want? You want, after Alex Rodriguez yells whatever he yells (and look, "HAH" and "MINE" are pretty indistinguishable when yelled and when you're not expecting anybody to yell anything monosyllabic at you from close range except "MINE"), someone from the Jays bench to yell out to Howie Clark, "That noise you just heard behind your head was not in fact your shortstop calling you off but was rather Alex Rodriguez being a jackass so carry on catching the ball!"?
Another thing you oughtta know is that I learned on the plane to Saskamatoon that a philosophy guy of my heretofore vague acquaintance (who is, you know, one of those people who I suppose might be my friend if I went around making friends) was at all three shows on the Rheostatics' farewell tour, and another philosophy guy of my heretofore even vaguer acquaintance was at the Horseshoe show. This is not mere coincidence.
And I might as well note that the long saga of the Meno paper has come to a happy-enough ending as it has found a home in the Southern Journal of Philosophy. I dunno, the worm may be turning. I dunno. God's paths run across the sea and the snowy mountains, where man's eye sees no track. I also read, here and there between here and Saskatoon and back again, Peter Erb's book about murder mysteries, which may be of interest to at least one more of you than might currently suspect it. Or one less than I might suspect. We'll see, maybe. That's why ya play the games....
I forgot to take my camera to Saskatoon; otherwise, I'd have pictures of pelicans. (And gophers.) I didn't know there were pelicans that far north--but it turns out that the American white pelican breeds mostly in the prairies. Who knew? A lot of prairie folks, I guess.
I was planning a detailed report on What I Did On My Spring Vacation, but, well, I hear eljay is now deprecated. The cool kids are all going to usenet--pass it on! (It's a meme.) Anyway, maybe I'll get to it one of these days....
For now, I got two things that you got to know. One: Aaron Hill began and ended an inning by walking tonight. I would bet that that's the first time that's ever happened in major league baseball: a leadoff walk and a walkoff walk by the same guy in the same inning. (As Mike Wilner noted in the postgame show, the walkoff walk is the second-most exciting play in baseball, after the walkoff balk.)
Two: the reason that yelling behind a guy who's set up to catch a pop-up is NOT THE GADDANG SAME THING as the hidden-ball trick and all that other bullshit that people have been spouting is that messing with the system of calling for fly-balls is unsafe. If you can't trust that the guy yelling behind you is calling you off, you can get killed. Nobody ever died from the hidden-ball trick, fer cryin' out loud. I've kept waiting, but I haven't seen a single person point this out anywhere. One columnist I saw said that the Jays got burned because they "didn't communicate". Well, what the hell do you want? You want, after Alex Rodriguez yells whatever he yells (and look, "HAH" and "MINE" are pretty indistinguishable when yelled and when you're not expecting anybody to yell anything monosyllabic at you from close range except "MINE"), someone from the Jays bench to yell out to Howie Clark, "That noise you just heard behind your head was not in fact your shortstop calling you off but was rather Alex Rodriguez being a jackass so carry on catching the ball!"?
Another thing you oughtta know is that I learned on the plane to Saskamatoon that a philosophy guy of my heretofore vague acquaintance (who is, you know, one of those people who I suppose might be my friend if I went around making friends) was at all three shows on the Rheostatics' farewell tour, and another philosophy guy of my heretofore even vaguer acquaintance was at the Horseshoe show. This is not mere coincidence.
And I might as well note that the long saga of the Meno paper has come to a happy-enough ending as it has found a home in the Southern Journal of Philosophy. I dunno, the worm may be turning. I dunno. God's paths run across the sea and the snowy mountains, where man's eye sees no track. I also read, here and there between here and Saskatoon and back again, Peter Erb's book about murder mysteries, which may be of interest to at least one more of you than might currently suspect it. Or one less than I might suspect. We'll see, maybe. That's why ya play the games....
