Gift and A Curse

It is nice to have the sun out and the weather warm up, but summer is also the season when sleeping with someone in your bed becomes...problematic. Not for me though..I don't sleep. The heat does foster my one true favorite thing though..sleeping nude. I love PJ's as much as the next guy, but is there really a feeling better than being nekkie? Nope didn't think so. I have seen a lot more sun ups than I think I ever imagined I would. I literally thought today, long and hard about asking my doctor for Ambien. Partly so I can see what Tiger Woods was all excited about and partly so I can function on a normal schedule.

I wrote a while back about how I have a distaste for American soccer, and I very much still do. However there is one thing that makes me happy and that is seeing them win despite the blatant robbery going on. Soccer is probably my favorite sport to play but it is getting close to my least favorite to watch. It is like the rules say you have to overreact and bitch out at the slightest sign on contact. Soccer players get hit and hurt legitimately a lot, but there is an advantage to be gained by pretending you have when in fact you haven't and what's more is that players will forgo opportunities in the moment by flopping to set up a free kick and a new possibility later. I hate it. I can't stand it. It's pathetic. The best part of american football is that the play isn't over until the ball carrier is knocked or dragged to a stop. Falling is something to avoid. Watching players give their all to avoid falling or try to inflict the hit to make a tackler fall first is awe inspiring. Watching good athletes duck and dive is sissified and frustrating. The Americans have had to learn it to keep pace and I think to gain me as a fan they will have to learn a new fully American style. I want to see a team that plays through hits and gives just as much as it gets. I'll bet MONEY that this translates to more goals. It also depends on the assumption that ref's don't penalize this aggressiveness, but with 2 goals disallowed in a span of 2 games it doesn't seem FIFA or the refs could be doing anymore to fuck us over anyway. Oh well, at least I have this to cheer me up. 0 goals. 0 wins. A country that's #1 export is quite clearly....Losers.

Now let's have another story from my time in the clink:

I was taking a cocktail of pills for about 2 months and part of the regimen was a series of electrolytes. The balance of those vitamins in your blood are essential to the bodies ability to conduct electricity. I was under massive diuretic treatment so I was peeing more than I was allowed to drink back each day. The resulting situation was a "need" for supplements. Most pills are fairly uniform in size but I've learned to be wary of two types...the very big and the very small. Potassium is a very large pill. It also has a very distinct taste, an unpleasant one at that. So when it came to taking them I was never excited. I tried and forced myself, other times I simply threw them out. One day I was made to take a Potassium pill against my will and subsequently vomited. Needless to say I was feeling murderous and the nurse who forced me never got assigned to my room again. I swore then that I didn't care..I wasn't going to be taking any more Potassium. Weeks later I went in for a checkup in the VAD clinic and part of that process is to check the 'scrips list. We go down the list and make sure that what I'm taking matches what they have written down for me. We got to Potassium and as per my "do not lie to doctors rule" I said no...I've stopped taking Potassium. In fact truth be told I had never taken Potassium on a consistent basis. I had taken less than a handful of pills during the entire 2 months up to that point when I should have gone through at least a few bottles by then. Like I said...it didn't suit me. I fully acknowledge I can often be too smart for my own good and that makes me a horrible patient. But my reasoning is sound. People will tell you to do stupid things because the risk lies with you and not with them. Just following blindly like sheep works for some but not for me. It absolutely just sucks. And to top it all off my blood tests dating back to the start of all this revealed....that the level of Potassium in my blood had never been low. NEVER! The doc's didn't care the pills were huge, or that it made me vomit. They were blindly treating a symptom that wasn't even there.

And people wonder why I don't listen to anybody... SMH

Fulfill your duties young man

Some nights provide stories that don't need to be written. Mainly because they're all stories in the end. This one may happen to contain streaking at 3 AM after closing down the bar, or a mother in full cougar mode at a party after a few drinks, or perhaps best of all Sir CockBlockington III of Cockblockshire; who told me in plain english come nights end that he was staying with me because I was the only person left whom he knew. But so what, it's still just a story about a night. The night also included me getting the most legit ride home ever midway through my walk across town which does deserve some pub' so shouts to my girl Holly and the Oregon Taxi co.

Tonight was definitely a good night so don't get me wrong when I say it's nothing to write about. It was just nothing out of the ordinary. If anything it was as much like anything I've ever done as any night in my life...except for the streaking...yea that set it apart but that's a different story altogether. Speaking of things staying the same I have given up sleep for lent. It is neither Lent nor am I Catholic but what I do want to do is stop sleeping. I get a lot more done and though my daylight hours tend to drag at the end of a 40 hour pull or near the end of a week in which I've only accrued 20-25 hours of sleep, I still find it preferable. I also did most of my sleeping post coitus as a monogamous man but lately I don't see that as the end of my night. This night went well though I feel bad for leaving Sir Cockblockington at some random house party. Though then again not really. He and the tool bags at the door deserve each other. Oh by the way...I graduated today.

Gimme the night

it's an honor and a privelege

The world cup is soon upon us. I absolutely love soccer and the world cup in particular. The Olympics are cheesy, over produced, and mostly composed of sports and people you've never heard of. Unless I'm in the Olympic Village, partaking in the true "Games" I really have no interest in most of what goes on. There are just two teensie, tiny, little, problems that exists for me here.

1) I have no one to root for.

2) Soccer doesn't love me back.

My soccer career was short lived to say the least but the sport captured my imagination and every time I would pick up a new game I'd still look back on soccer with reverence. The reason I have no one to root for is because American soccer is by and large shitty. "100% Rat Ass" as they say. The ODP program in the states is meant to glean the best talent we have and turn it into the future of soccer here. Like most national programs in any country this one is by all accounts corrupt and largely useless. What we need is for all of our best talent to FIRST stop playing baseballbasketballfootballhockeyortrack and then we can talk about soccer. Right now simple market forces draw any talented young man into team sports like football and basketball because they have proven to be great ways for some kids to get to go to college for free. Soccer is the opposite. It takes a lot of time and money to support a burgeoning soccer star and even with success the payoff is minimal in comparison. I'm shocked even $250 million was enough to lure David Beckham stateside. If I was the British Michael Jordan of soccer I'd be DAMNED if I was going to sully my good name for less than a Billie.

Anyway American soccer in my eyes is cool except the star player is Landon fucking Donovan, the poster boy for entitled, boring, $50,000 a year HIGHSCHOOL soccer. I can't root for that. Clint I-Grew-Up-In-A-Trashcan Dempsey I can root for but Landon Timothy Donovan...? Naw man, cain't do it..that's right I caIn't.

The other issue, is one I can never seem to get away from. It is after all Happy Black Girl day and though I haven't even scratched the surface of my thoughts on race, this story works out perfectly for the occasion. There have been oodles of new posts popping up across the Net talking about the World Cup and trying to sell it. This one in particular caught my eye for obvious reasons, but it wasn't until I was done reading all the way through it that I realized why it was so eye catching. Now the title DOES say 7 women, 7 titles. But when there is that much pootie-tang staring me in the face I am even less want to read than I already am. So I perused the pages of the post linked above and finally got to the last page.

Perhaps the most gorgeous woman I've seen ever let alone the most gorgeous of the 7 was there staring me in the face alone...all by herself. Now I understand that there are those who could contend they were saving the best for last or that this was simply a matter of mathematics but I've seen plenty of ad campaigns and this is clear.

EVERYTHING in an ad campaign is planned out. You'll notice in the group shots Charlene is the only one who doesn't really overlap. (Read: crops out easily) She also happens to be one of only 4 women that represents a country whose won the cup in the last 50 years. So how is it she is a perfect pair for contemporary champs but gets left out of the greater display? I mentioned to start that this was a well thought out ad campaign and maybe now you're thinking it's simple matching. "She happens to be the only dark skinned women and so to match her up with a girl who looked so different might have thrown of the look of the shoot." Yea thats possible but why is that important? These girls are just eye candy we can drape jerseys and socks over. How they look should really be secondary and to be honest I'd be more concerned with the jerseys clashing than their hair or skin. Calling out racism is hard because it is so ingrained in the way we do things here on Earth that people can look right at it and not see it for what it is. It's sad really and the malice here is of the most benign sort. I'm sure the models were all treated equally well and they all had fun supporting their men and countries. What does suck is that someone at the back end of the process thought it to be more profitable to downplay the appearance of this one girl in particular because for some reason seeing an unimaginably beautiful woman who is a bit darker than your average European apparently might turn people away.

These Nights are haunting Me

Step aside Kim! Last night I was lucky enough to see Little Dragon perform live at Mississippi Studios. Shouts to my girl Ari and her backpack! Anyway, it was a show like most. The opener, Audie Darling was a great singer, her tempo was a tad slow for a room full of adults at 9pm on a Monday but her songs were good, and she had real talent. The interim was good, with an older crowd there weren’t the same antics of bum rushing the front that go on at other shows. Had Patrick been there I’m sure he’d have been upset we didn’t get in a fight. The lead singer actually caught my eye a few years ago when I saw her face in a blog post. She has freckles and looks a lot like Lucy Liu's foreign cousin which I suppose she is? Yukimi's mom is American and her dad is Japanese. The soulful voice she sings with though belies her tiny stature. She absolutely sings the brakes off of any song she does and without a hint of accent. Xenophobic as it may be when someone is playing your heart strings like that, it helps if it's in a tune you recognize. I went in thinking she would do a great job, but by nights end she had completely wound me up. I felt UNDER prepared for the dance show she put on. Just watch the video of their performance for Wink live and try to imagine yourself at the show somehow NOT transfixed by it all? Yes that indeed is a photo of 75% of the band playing the drums all at once.

I appear to have quite the affinity for Swedish Rock #NoABBA. I don’t mean rock like the Beatles or the Stones but Rock like the Rock n Roll hall of fame. Rock as in the coolest shit we got going right now. For the most part people call it Indie Rock because the shows are frequented by Tom’s wearing Indie kids but in reality this stuff is Synth driven, electro pop with a grown and sexy twist to it. I could never be a music critic or even a music reporter because the way genres continue to grow and intermesh makes things hard to accurately describe. Anyway, the Swedes really know how to bang a drum and so there are many acts that I enjoy. Yukimi and her fine ass as well as Lykke Li, Miike Snow, and of course Peter Bjorn & John all hail from the great music Mecca surrounding Stockholm. Just typing that list leaves me a little speechless. I feel like that lineup would murder West Coast rappers as far as quality and relevance right now. The band played great and I had a lot of fun. It’s been a while since I’ve been out in Portland and I won’t soon forget the trip.

I hope everyone enjoys the first post for today which should appear below. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while so this month is my chance to debut my involvement. I have been neglecting my new job so I need to get on that and turn in some work =( But don't fret, I will be doing a post here EVERY WEEK for the rest of the year. Thats right, starting today we will have a New post each week so you can count on steady updates.

We are already half way through the 4th month of 2010!! This year is flying by and I don’t have much to say about it. It hasn’t been a great year yet, and hopefully for you it hasn’t been a horrible one either. I can't wait to see where we end up next.

Blinking Pigs

Sanka... you dead?

I have a lot of new posts, many new tidbits, and a lot of new ideas. So if you’re not caught up go back now, and take a peak. I did a special tribute to my Grandmother who passed away last Monday and took the week off out of respect but now I’m back. Though I’m never up to watch SNL when it airs, I think It’s taken a definite turn for the better this season. This cast doesn’t have a lot of names you can assume will be stars later on which makes it better to watch in my opinion. All the cast members really go all out for their bits because lord knows…there isn’t a big time movie roll on the other side of the door for them. I love Kenan’s “What’s up with That!?” and the recurring digital shorts done so well by Andy Samberg. And of course Kristen Wiig can do no wrong on the SNL stage in my eyes. The only thing I can find issue with is the casting. Nasim Pedrad and Jenny Slate look exactly alike. Like Exactly! It’s uncanny because they were hired at the same time and play similar roles. I don’t understand and I don’t mind. I’m a big fan of both, especially Nasim and her portrayal of any and all “dark” skinned ethnicities; namely her Kim Kardashian impersonation. She herself hails from Tehran so shouts to all my Iranian people.

Also in the news is the Winter Olympics. Making Xenophobia cool once again! I love to make completely irrational statements about how much I hate Canada, but really I just like being able to take a stance which I don’t have to defend. Being a Patriot is all the defense I need. So far the Canadians have botched the opening ceremony, before today had never won a Gold at home, and there’s one more thing…oh yea, Somone DIED! I’m upset about it, not because it happened but because it happened in practice. The Winter Games to me are beyond stupid. Skiing, snowboarding, even curling are alright. But Ice dancing, short track speed skating, and the Luge are all seemingly stupid sports that defeat the purpose of games. Finding 4 guys, a bobsled and a track to race on not to mention competition seems much harder than just 4 guys a ball and a hoop? Who thought these things up? And with so little athleticism involved in some of these events are they really even Olympic in degree of difficulty. Don’t get me wrong I love watching Apollo Ohno and his nearly 30 year old goatee but I love it because as in his Silver medal winning race two guys collided and if they crashed in a manner just 6 inches different one way or the other we could have seen someone lose their head…literally. Basically, when the difference between good and bad is to far apart the sport stops being fun. In Luge for instance the Georgian racer who lost his life has two options at the top of the hill. He could either do really well and top out at over 90 MPH or he could do really poorly and carry that speed into a concrete post. I wish that had he done it in a competition, in front of fans (a live T.V. audience is now a thing of the past in this post-Janet Jackson society of ours), perhaps then we could put a stop to this nonsense. Until then I will continue to watch each short track race just wondering when someone will lose a finger, and each Sled based race and wonder how long it will be until we tire of seeing people hurtling across ice? Talk about cultural differences, if not for these made up competitions in the Winter Games, we may never see anyone of Nordic decent atop a medal stand. Is there any amount of money someone could pay you to partake in the winter Olympics right now? I’d have to say no. One run down the ice or snow and I may not live to spend my riches. The Canucks by the way have won their first gold but not before I got to witness an American snatch one away from them on the last run of the day in Women's Moguls!! MINDLESS CHANTS!! MINDLESS CHANTS!!