How To Fight Loneliness

1. Smile all the time.
2. Shine your teeth 'til meaningless.
3. Sharpen them with lies.

...sorry. Like I mentioned before, I've been listening to Summerteeth a lot lately.

The real point is this: I've been in kind of a weird, anti-social funk lately. It's hot and sticky and I haven't been getting enough sleep, and things in general have just been kind of blah in The Life Of Raquel lately. Boo.

The good news: Today I saw something that completely brightened (literally) up my day. A guy got onto the 86 bus today wearing THE ugliest, brightest, most aggressively attention whore-ish sneakers I have EVER seen. I spent forever on the New Balance website trying to find a picture of said shoes, unsuccessfully, but honestly, I don't even think that any picture could truly do justice to the yellow-ness, the mesh-ness, the be-drawstringed-ness, the utter absurdity of these shoes. They were gloriously, unabashedly hideous. The guy, by contrast, was a fairly average-looking dude: tall, decently handsome, dark hair, conservatively dressed in gray shorts and a black polo. But he was wearing these COMPLETELY INSANE shoes. They GLOWED when he walked. He CUT A SWATH OF FLUORESCENT YELLOW as he strolled, it being a humid and overcast day here in Beantown. In fact, I like to think that he took account of the gloomy weather as he got dressed this morning, thinking to himself, "Man, what a gray and disappointing morning... wait! I know! I'm going to wear my BRIGHT YELLOW SHOES. My feet are going to RADIATE LIGHT. Ha! Take that, crappy August weather."

I literally had the biggest smile on my face the whole way to work because of this guy's shoes. Thank you, Anonymous Yellow Shoe Guy. You are truly an inspiration.




[Reality check update: As it turned out, the guy actually got off the 86 at the New Balance factory in Brighton. He may, in fact, only have been wearing the shoes because it's his job to test new products, not because he awoke with the overwhelming urge to defy the weather with his passion for brightly colored footwear. On the other hand, it is fully possible that this gentleman is actually a product DESIGNER for New Balance. Thus, he could, in fact, be the fevered genius whose bold vision and devil-may-care attitude actually brought about the conceptualization, execution, and, finally, the wearing of those magnificent sneakers.

It boggles the mind. I must find this man. And marry him.]


Sox notes coming later... it's an exciting day for the Scarlet Hose!

HOLY CRAP HOW DID I MISS THIS

Oh my god. It's finally happened. And I was AWAY when it happened and I MISSED it until I finally, finally finished washing all the bug spray out of my clothes and detangling my hair, and sat down to catch up on my sports reading.

RICK ANKIEL IS BACK IN THE MAJORS.




As an outfielder. Oh man. In fact, on Saturday he hit TWO home runs. This is like a movie. Like a dream come true. I literally cannot come up with anything insightful or even a little bit snarky to say about this. Just... oh man. Rick Ankiel, baby. They are going to make a movie out of this man's life. And I am going to buy it and watch it 3 times withing 48 hours of doing so, just like I may or may not have done with Dreamgirls. Long live Rick Ankiel.

I will most likely write more on this later. Right now, I just need to sit and think happy thoughts.

Canada was awesome

Just came back from a week of camping with my family in beautiful New Brunswick at Fundy National Park. It was killer. Spectacular hiking, great weather, minimal bugs... and, of course, a learning experience. Among the more valuable lessons I learned:

• Everything is cooler in the metric system. You can drive 110 km/hr on most highways and gas is only $1.09/L. I think I would enjoy life considerably more if it were measured on the metric system.
• Smores get EVERYWHERE. In your hair. In your sleeping bag. Under the cap of your toothpaste tube. Who invented these things? Damn the Girl Scouts and their nefarious plot to take over the world by gluing everything together with a thin layer of burnt, syrupy sugar and graham cracker crumbs! DAMN THEM!
  
• In a pinch, you can make cornbread in an iron skillet. This is less successful if you don't grease the skillet beforehand.
• No beer is quite as delicious as the one you crack open after a 14-km hike. (See? Isn't that more impressive than if I said "a 8.69919669-mile hike"? Hooray for the metric system! Also, hooray for Google Calculator!)
  
• Not a lot of cute men in Canada. My sister and I counted a grand total of 7. I was kind of expecting more hockey player/lumberjack types, preferably shirtless. Disappointing. Maine men, on the other hand, are delicious. Note to self: plan next camping trip in Maine.
• "Summerteeth" is a great driving album. Especially "A Shot in the Arm."
  
• Bats are pretty cute. Like furry little squirrels with wings. Until they FLY IN YOUR FACE.
• No matter how old or jaded or crushingly cynical you may become, you never truly lose your capacity to be absolutely awestruck by unfathomable, indescribable natural beauty.
  
• A week without Facebook is a long, long, long time.
  

And, to be honest, I couldn't have left at a more opportune time. It was CRAZY hot in Boston, plus the Sox were sucking it up while the Yanks were on a hot streak. The stress of those two things combined might very well have killed me. [Please note, however, that I stand by my prior lauding of the Gagne trade, despite his recent woes from the mound (so very, very unfortunate, is it not, that his name is strikingly close to "Gag me"?), and will thus not engage in any Gagne bashing in this forum.] I'm very happy to see that Jamie Moyer got his 11th win, though; hooray for hometown boys! (And hooray for the Phillies! Hi, Justin!)

Tonight, by the way, the headline on the Red Sox homepage is "Wakefield, Sox happy to see Devil Rays." I mean... there's just something so gloating and vaguely menacing about that headline. I feel like it's the MLB.com equivalent of the gleam the tough kid in the cafeteria gets in his eye when he sees that the skinny nerd's mother has packed a cupcake in his Battlestar Galactica lunchbox. Then again, it's August. Bring it on, Tampa Bay. Lord knows our wins column could use a little padding. Any chance we could get a little interleague series against the Nats going next week?

Toodles

Off to Canada. Joe Mauer will keep watch over my baby blog for the week.

Only one more post today, I swear

Then I'll be away camping in Canada (eh?) until next Friday, thus sparing the world (i.e. the 2 people who read this... Hi, Mom and Dad!) from further bitching, moaning, and general inanity.

But this is really funny. And, since laughter is the best medicine, almost makes me feel better about the fact that I started both Clemens and Garland yesterday. Almost.

http://dugout.progressiveboink.com/archive/nick150.htm

And as long as we're on the subject of twits...

This is bizarre

So I've been at work for 3 hours and thus far done nothing but read sports blogs. Whatever. Should you aspire to waste time at the epic levels I do, there's a crazy map up of how different baseball loyalties break down geographically here:

http://www.withleather.com/post.phtml?pk=3525

Needless to say, it's complete horseshit how small Yankees territory is... the Jerz is owned by those lousy pinstripers. Also, I think the map should be shaded somehow to represent fan density and/or intensity. For example, that whole Toronto region is really just a bunch of people eating french fries with gravy and waiting for hockey season to start. I doubt any of them have, say, a Lyle Overbay poster on their walls... thus their relatively large area of geographical dominance is visually deceptive when compared with, say, the localized but devoted nutters that are White Sox fans.

Back to "work," I guess. I promised my mom and sister (hooray for devoted readers!) that I would write about something other than sports, so I'll brainstorm something nice and rant-y later.