Merry Christmas (we get twelve days, right?) to Teresa and Patrick and everyone here.
Re the magi: I don't know what theologians say, but I've always assumed them to be inserted as a literary device to provide a larger context for the birth (as Ted Curtis and Marilee said above), but I've also heard it said that shepherds were considered very unclean because they handled and lived among animals, and so their replacement with magi might have been to appeal to those who would otherwise look down their noses at this nascent religion.
I'm in the sucker-for-sappy-Christmas-music camp. Just not the hideous versions on easy-listening radio stations (played in shops, salons, malls, waiting rooms) performed by pop singers who either lack the vocal skill for the songs they've chosen or feel the need to put their stamp on a song by making it barely recognizable. (Same syndrome as many pop singers doing the National Anthem at sporting events.) "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" sounds downright artful by comparison. (People don't seem to do covers of that one, for some reason . . .)
We go to church on Christmas Eve so we can belt carols without regard for our own vocal insufficiencies. This is a family tradition of long standing. My sister and I used to call around and find out what carols were planned at various local churches and then decide where to attend service. The church I went to last night listed the music schedule for all their Advent and Christmas services on the internet, bless them.
I got "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"--the real one, not the lame-ass movie one; songs and narration both--at the iTunes music store and have been playing it on my iPod, my laptop, and in my car all season. Just because Christmas Day is over, I don't plan to stop.
FWIW, type is small for my taste. It's nice not to have to scroll, but I find I can't read it for long without having to take a break. Must be getting old.
Well, the Red Sox have cost me a short story. (It's no longer marketable because of the reversal of the curse. So I posted it here for friends who grow nostalgic for those bad old days.) Small price to pay for a Red Sox victory.
A bump on the head is, however, not a good price to pay. Hope you feel better, Teresa.
Indeed, next year in Chicago. Cubs vs White Sox. That MasterCard ad about what Red Sox fans would give to see their team in the World Series? As a Cub fan, I am making my list.
Ah, TexAnne, but what if the one in Florida is a doppelganger? The same doppelganger they used for the later debates . . .
Once you get into the swing of it, this conspiracy theorizing just comes so easily.
Further caveat re spring training games: for some players, particularly pitchers, they're more about practice against live players than about game. That's why you may see, for example, a relief pitcher starting the game, or a split squad game (half the team is playing this game, while the other half is somewhere else playing against a different team). But it's fun to go to, because the tickets are cheap, and the players more accessible. We were at a game in which a minor-league up-and-comer was pitching a couple innings, and all his fellow pitchers came and sat in the stands to cheer for him.
Then there's Arizona Fall League, where up-and-comers in AAA go to get some specialized training in preparation for moving up. And winter ball in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and probably other places, where major leaguers and promising minor leaguers play with Latin American players to keep their skills sharp in the off season. So, in theory, it is possible to go to baseball year round, if one is willing and able to travel. (This is my fantasy, to spend an entire year travelling to baseball games.)
People have tried to rig elections before, and we know how to stop them. These are well-known tricks, and the counter-moves are also well known. And they can be countered, so long as Democrats aren't spending time and energy fretting about some sort of cackling-supervillain "October Surprise" super-trick.
Chad, thanks for the reality check. Might as well spend our energy fixing what we can fix, i.e., making sure the votes get cast and counted as fairly as possible. I still think there is some kind of October surprise in the works, but your point that energy is best spent where it has a chance to have a direct effect is well taken.
veejane, I did say "ways to get to first base without a base hit". :-)
CHip, while I don't disagree with you from the standpoint of whether the batter has to run, I would suggest that a walk is not necessarily a freebie, or at least not entirely: it depends not only on the pitcher not throwing strikes but also on the batter not being fooled/tempted to swing and miss. (Exception: Barry Bonds, who just has to show up to get walked.) I suppose you could say, too, that some players increase their chances of getting to base on a HBP or catcher's interference by the way they occupy the batter's box, but that's such a slim proportion of those cases as to be negligible.
To whomever far, far upstream posted the link to Peter David's Red Sox rhyme: thank you. I enjoyed it, and so did my friend who works at the Baseball Hall of Fame. I imagine it is well circulated in Cooperstown by now.
BTW, Garrison Keillor did a "Casey at the Bat" some years back from the point of view of the opposing team's fans; he never said Boston, but that was clearly the intent. My husband can't listen to it in the car anymore, because he laughs so hard he can't drive.
I've posited elsewhere that the October surprise will be an announcement that they're on the verge of catching Osama and it's a sure thing as long as no one dares mess with the team in charge, cf. Kissinger's "peace is at hand" announcement close to the 1972 election. (Will people fall for this? Why not? They've been falling for all the other crap this administration has been shoveling at them.)
Re the DH and pitchers being pathetic at bat: Pitchers aren't necessarily lousy batters. That Ruth guy, for example, who used to pitch for Boston, he could hit some.
Re ways to get to first base without a base hit: There are seven of them:
- Walk
- Hit by pitch
- Dropped third strike
- Catcher's interference
- Fielder's choice
- Error
As a pinch runner (this last one's a bit of a cheat, in that it's not the same guy)
For the uninitiated/newly initiated, Wikipedia has a nice explanation of these terms here.
A.B. (which is the same as a B.A., just more pretentious that way) in History, Philosophy, and Social Science of Science and Medicine, with a specialization in late nineteenth century astrophysics.
Now what business wouldn't leap to hire someone with that kind of background?
There's a cadre of familiar strangers who work in the Starbucks I go to. One is a professor, I think, based on the books he usually has spread around him; not sure what the other guy is doing on his laptop; and there are two elderly men, father and son, who share the newspaper every day. And me. Others come and go, but we are the regulars. We greet each other with a silent nod, buy our coffee and chat with the counter staff for a minute or two, then settle into our regular spots and work without distraction. More than once, a troupe of teens has come in and started to settle at a table near me, and the manager has politely asked them to relocate to another table: "She's working, please don't bother her." What more could one ask?
Monkey sex in the bathroom? Thanks, no. Too much of a distraction.
I like to write on trains, too; the Acela is great for it, but I do it with a laptop or notebook (the paper kind) balanced on my knees on any train. Something about the rhythm of the motion and the white-noise clatter and rumble.
Pubs are great for writing in the UK; bars in the U.S. tend to be too social. In busy hours, too much loudness and distraction; in off hours, too many lonely people who came there for someone to talk to.
Home is okay, but the phone rings, the FedEx guy buzzes, the Jehovah's Witnesses stop by...I can ignore all that, but the act of ignoring it is in itself an intrusion and distraction. Once I figured that out and went to Starbucks, my productivity went way up.
But Scalzi's right about everything else. :-)
McDuff wrote:
> Hell, I think any progressive voter who has a choice of Centre-Right Candidate A or Centre-Right Candidate B has a right to complain that there's nobody on the ticket who adequately represents their views.
Stephan wrote:
>This is true. However, I also have the right to complain that my hairline isn't what it used to be, and blueberries tasted better in the old days. But I have a *responsibility* to vote for the candidate who *best* matches my views.
And I write:
The logical conclusion, then, is that if the major party options included, say, a George W. Bush-like candidate and a Pat Buchanan-like candidate, liberals should vote Bush? Obviously, that particular race isn't happening; my point is that in 2000 there was NO major party candidate who "best" matched my views. And I am old enough to remember when there were, and the Democratic Party was fielding them (and I worked actively for many of them); my views have, if anything, become more moderate with time, so it's not that I've left the party--the party's left me. Some may think that everyone who doesn't like the direction of the Democratic Party is a far-left nutter; I don't think that's necessarily the case.
My hope in 2000 was that with a high-profile candidate perhaps the Green Party could begin to become the party for all of us the Democrats who feel left behind. No luck, but it was worth a try.
I am also old enough to remember (boy, am I feeling old!) when Reagan was elected, and there was a lot of doomsaying on the left about how he would drag us into nuclear war, abolish minimum wage, etc. We lived through the Reagan years. And in 2000 after Bush was anointed, I figured, well, we survived Reagan, we'll survive Bush.
Might have been a bit too sanguine there.
But I still don't regret using my vote for the candidate who best represented my viewpoint.
I had to laugh at Joe Lieberman's approach: that the Republicans couldn't attack him in the same way as the other candidates, because he agreed with them on the things they criticized the rest of the Democrats for. At least that didn't fly.
Meantime, everyone jumped on the Kerry bandwagon as "the guy who can beat Bush." I've nothing against Kerry, but I do think the premature finish to the primary season deprived us all of an opportunity to hear multiple viewpoints and approaches debated and tested.
And let's not forget all those people who voted for Bush in the first place. I know a guy who votes Republican because he felt it was the major party that most closely represented (before now) his libertarian views. He's not happy. But the rest of the Bush voters I know are perfectly happy with W. I can only shake my head.
I think Charlie is right on the money about the romantic-identity thing. I've never read slush, but I've evaluated resumes and job applications in quantity...it's the job applicant's livelihood at stake, and yet they don't as a rule get nearly so worked up about rejection. (And, incidentally, it's pretty easy to weed the vast majority of resumes, too, for many of the same reasons one rejects manuscripts.)
In American culture, a lot of weight is ascribed to what one does as a living, so a job might be called an identity. But work is then about who one is, whereas the "being a writer" notion is about who one wishes to be.
And deny people their fantasies, and oh my will they get touchy.
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| 2004 | 15 |
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