the sloppy copy

I want a kid with the same amount of desire as I want an XBox: I think it would be cool, for a while – plenty of things you could do to entertain yourself with it, especially when friends come over – but I imagine that the novelty would wear off quickly, and it would eventually sit in the corner and collect dust / starve to death.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because the BFFF recently got herself a nephew, and this seems to be a reasonable compromise: hold it and play with it for awhile, but when it starts to malfunction / shit itself, give it back to its original owner.

Is this selfish? No. Not at all, because there are people in the world who will make good parents, and then there are those of us who are already keeping an eye out for teeny furry fedoras so that we can one day dress a six-month-old like he stepped out of  Pimps Up Ho’s Down.

By not having children of my own, I am saving potential human beings from a childhood whose sole purpose is to provide entertainment to its mother. But Julie, you’re saying, Didn’t your mother try to dress you up like Tina Turner and teach you the words to Proud Mary so you could entertain the family at Christmas? And didn’t you turn out “okay”- so to speak?

Yeah, well. Still: It could have gone either way. No sense in chancing it. And anyway- I was a strange child with a really fucked-up sense of what made me “cool.”

The way I see it, the world needs people like me: Fun “Aunts” who have no idea how to properly interact with small children and thus have no choice but to teach them stud poker and the words to I Like the Night Life. Were I tasked with raising a productive member of society with appropriate social skills, well, let’s just say I’d be in over my head.

Maybe one day I’ll change my mind, or it will be changed for me, but until then I recommend not leaving your small children alone with me unless you also happen to want an 8 x 10 of Junior dressed like Marky Mark.

Edit: Actually, Marky Mark isn’t much of a challenge. Bandana, no shirt, jeans all falling off like a fool. I really ought to just find a pair of children, and go for a Peaches and Herb kind of thing:

Really, the most important part here is Peaches' hair and Herb's sideburns.

Baby Brother and I were the inventors of many weird unique games when we were kids. There was Slap Ball, Carmen Sandiego (still don’t remember the rules to that one – I think it involved running around like idiots and yelling the theme song for the show), Roadway, Front Yard Baseball, the Toilet Paper Game, I’m Thinking Of A Person* and the pièce de résistance: Hallway.

Hallway was reserved for days that were spent indoors, perhaps as a result of some sort of airborne plague or hurricane (as almost 99% of my childhood memories take place outdoors**). For this game, we would lay a kitchen chair on its side to block one end of the hallway of our home. Then we would proceed to gather every pillow, blanket and sheet in the entire house and fill the hallway. For us, that amounted to quite the tonnage of bedding.

Then, we would….

…um…

Hmmmm.

Wait, what did we do?

Thinking back, the primary objective might have just been to gather up everything and then… I don’t know? Lie in it?

Maybe our goal was just to block others’ access to the bathroom?

Okay, so this sounds much more strange in the retelling.

Except you should try it sometime. Maybe not with your own hallway, per se, but with a dedicated corner of your home. Maybe inflate an air mattress, use all your pillows and blankets, and create a nest. Maybe do this in front of your TV. Maybe while TBS is showing, like, forty episodes of The Big Bang Theory back-to-back. And then maybe keep your setup there indefinitely because this is awesome! and why didn’t you think of this sooner?

And then maybe blog about it later.

If you need me, this is where I'll be until approximately ten minutes before I have to go to work.

* Obviously all of our imaginative powers went into creating the games themselves, not in naming them.

**I sure hope my hypothetical children are the same.

First: A couple names I found on some “Crazy-Ass Names with which Celebrities Have Cursed Their Offspring” list that I actually (kinda-sorta) like.
Harlow. Saffron. Sailor. Story.

I think they’re all girls, but I could be very, very wrong… which brings me to my next point:

Sometimes I wonder why people begin to associate certain names with one gender or another, especially names that (seem to be) created by stringing together a few pleasant-sounding* syllables. Say I told you that I had a friend named Jayleen. You’d probably say something like “Oh, how do you know her?” without giving it a second thought. The suffix -leen is, in my particular cultural circle, traditionally feminine. If I corrected you and said, “Actually, he and I share a parole officer,” you’d be taken aback. For several reasons.

But it’s not always so clear. There seems to be some sort of Naming Trend lately involving the suffix -den. Right now, I know children named Jayden, Jaden, Caden, Kayden, Hayden, Aiden, Braeden and Raden (see also: Future Names For My Sextuplets).**
Pop quiz: how many of these are boy-children? How many are little girls?
Could go either way, right? I mean, technically. Connotatively, we know people with these names and we automatically make assumptions: Duh!  A Jaden/Jayden is a boy, because that’s the name two of my friends have given their sons. But if my friends had  little girls named Jayden, would my Duh! would be different? I’m not sure.

Then there’s that whole thing about names that used to be for one gender, but have been appropriated by the other. A boy named Ashley nowadays? It must be a) a family name or b) the result of his mother’s displaced anger.

I almost typed “These are just my observations, I don’t have an opinion – good or bad.” But what if little Saffron from my opening paragraph turns out to be a little boy, after I assumed he was a she? I guess that’s some sort of opinion, right?

Even if that opinion is “Your mama is cray-cray, son.”
 

*Sometimes pleasant. Sometimes.

**Okay, I don’t know a Hayden personally; I know one who is a friend-of-a-friend. Oh! And Hayden Pannettenette–whatever. That girl. The cheerleader.

Hey – wake up!

Wake up!

Wake up wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!

DUDE!

Are you up? Good, you’re up.

Hey, yeah… last night – I just wanted to tell you that everything’s gonna be fine. It’s – seriously! – it’s gonna be okay. It was just a one-time deal, alright?

I mean, I thought you’d maybe be, like, upset about it. But seriously, man – it’s okay. It happens.

Do you even remember? I wasn’t sure if you’d remember. We were both pretty drunk. I mean – everyone was pretty fucked up, haha.

So yeah, you remember? Okay. That’s fine. Wasn’t sure. How are you feeling? I mean, I guess we could… talk? About it?

Or not. We could just not talk about it. That’s cool, too.

But – really – really, dude. These things happen. I mean, I think about it now, and it probably wasn’t a big deal. Overall, I mean. We can work through this. Right? Together.

See, personally… are you disappointed? I’m still a little disappointed. It just – that’s not really what I was expecting, going in. I mean, I really just built the whole thing up. Like – this was gonna be the night. It was gonna be fuckin’ glorious, dude.

And then… well, you know.

So, the whole reason I came over – I let myself in, is that okay? I figured it was cool – the whole reason I came over… I just wanted to check in, see how you were doing. Handling the whole thing. Because I was thinking about it, and I kinda figured we could, you know, just pretend like last night never happened. Like none of that stuff actually, you know, counts. Does that sound cool?

Okay, awesome. So… let’s agree to move on, forget about Thursday, and we can start fresh tomorrow.

I mean, we lost one game – so what? Three more wins, the Series is ours.

Sometimes I think I should have stuck with psychology as a vocation, but only if I could study arbitrary topics that interest me: Why white people give their children names like Paxton, for instance, or why some folks think that neck tattoos are a Good Idea.

More than that, though, I would loooooove to know more about sports superstitions: that great big crazy casserole chock-full of anxiety, fear and magical thinking.

The realm of baseball superstition is a vast domain, ruled with an iron fist by King Inside-Out Underpants and his Playoff-Bearded coterie. It’s a crazy little club where bats are tapped at precise angles at the plate, foul lines remain untouched (or in some cases, deliberately touched) and it’s a no-no to openly mention a No-No in progress.

This bracelet is Unlucky. This one is safely stowed away during games.

But this weird little world is not an insular one; we fans of baseball are big ol’ nutbars ourselves. If one happens to be picking Twizzlers out of their molars when one’s team scores or produces a great play, you’d better believe that the Twizzlers’ll be out for the rest of the game, at specific intervals, in order to guarantee a repeat performance.

A particular shirt, hat, undergarment or set of shoelaces might also be deemed “lucky.” And because everyone knows that soap is Luck’s Kryptonite, said garment must not be laundered – perhaps ever, but at least for the duration of the series/season/playoff stand.

This bracelet is Lucky. It must be out during games.

I personally know a few who will not wear team colors on game day, but these dieharders are far outnumbered by the red-wearing masses of Cardinal Nation. While most of these folks are likely wearing red to support the home team (and not superstition), I challenge you to find even a handful who wouldn’t feel a little off for not wearing Cards gear to a game.

Here are a few fun articles I’ve found on the subject:

10 Great Moments in Baseball Superstition History (The Seattle Times)

13 Baseball Superstitions 

Famous Baseball Superstitions

All of these came from a perfunctory Google search. It’d be relatively easy to spend a ridiculous amount of time on the subject (dissertation, anyone?).

Juanita sometimes complains that Hermano texts me much more often than he texts her, but
1) this is not true, and
2) our text exchanges lack context, complete thoughts and a point.

Exhibit A: an exchange from last night (keep in mind that the initial text was completely unprompted):

Brother: Bieber Fieber

Julie: Bieberitis

B: Biebonic Plague

J: Biebephylis

B: Scarlet Bieber

J: Bieber Simplex II

B: You win

First, the phrase “thought through” is kind of hard to read. And type. In my brain, it sort of smushes together as “thththththouououououghghghghgh.” Uh, anyway.

Second, I just read this, and felt the need to refute it in the quickest, most slipshod and groundless way possible: with an indignant response that makes up for in passion what it lacks in factual support.

If you don’t like clicking links,* the article is from The Business Journals’ On Numbers blog. According to their “analysis” of some “criteria,” St. Louis is the fifth-best in baseball fan support.

Fifth best? 

You gots to be fucking kidding me.

Number one? San Francisco. Okay, okay. I get that. Last year’s World Champions and all. Still riding the wave. Plus they’ve got one-quarter of Mystery Incorporated on their pitching staff** – I could get behind that.

But number five? Behind the Twins (fine), then the Brewers (ugh, fine), then – and this is where I really become irate- the Phillies. Yes, you read that right. Philly is ranked ahead of St. Louis for the “best fans in baseball.”

Philadelphia:  Where the fans vomit all over each other, throw glass bottles and batteries at an opposing team… and their own player!, and run around on the field til they’re Tasered.

Keep it classy Philly.

you cannot tell me that this is not a picture of some of baseball's greatest fans. Here, my parents sport their custom-made jerseys of Cards greats Julian Javier and Joaquin Andujar.

Granted, the article relied more on hard numbers and less on empirical, observational, evidence. They took a look at:

Average attendance.
Fifth-best? Still find that one hard to believe. But consider the breadth of the Cardinals’ fan base: prior to Colorado’s debut in the ’93 expansion, Cardinal Nation reached clear to the Rockies (reports are that, on a clear night, you can pick up a KMOX signal in Denver and I believe it. When my brother lived in north-central Minnesota, he could often pick it up in his car). With fans from Kentucky to Utah, they can’t all possibly make it each home game. Were this an age of teleportation, I’d postulate that our attendance at Busch Stadium would reach max capacity every time.

Percent of Capacity.
I’m just going to say that surely there is a computational error here, and that absolutely no adjustments were made for each stadium’s total capacity. I mean- of course they will come close to a sell-out when your place only holds, like, 40,000 fans.***

Attendance per win.
It is no secret that the Cards’ record this season belies how far we’ve advanced in the playoffs (NCLS? Seriously? Someone pinch me).  In 2006, we were 83-78, and we all know how that season turned out. So yeah, whatever.

Attendance per 100,000 residents.
Not fair. Are they counting “metro areas”? If so, helloooo! Ours includes two frickin’ states. And besides, the actual City of St. Louis has a population of approximately 79 people, compared to the St. Louis / St. Charles / Jefferson / Madison / Et Cetera County population of 9281 million-billion (Fact).

As you can VERY CLEARLY see, this “statistical analysis” is a load of horse-hocky. In the spirit of some lively scientific back-and-forth, I’d like to offer my own study, based off of carefully-noted anecdotal qualitative evidence.

Please, dear Reader(s), stay tuned.

* If you don’t like clicking links, I fear you don’t like this blog very much either.
** I’m casting Tim Lincecum as Shaggy and Brian Wilson as Scooby. Thoughts?
*** It’s been awhile since I took a statistics class. I realize this makes absolutely no sense.

The morning of my second day in Tulsa (I’m home now – you figured that out, right?) was hypothetically spent leaving teeny little notes all around Carynn and Jer’s apartamento.

Luckily (for her), Carynn took a short work day and was back before I could break anything (anything else? I’m sure I left some sort of damage in my wake and she is too nice to tell me hasn’t figured it out yet herself).

And then we got tattoos.

Have you ever looked through the binders of designs at your local tattoo parlor? I encourage you to do so. No, wait: before you go I want you to think up the five most bizarre, obscure, just-plain-fucking-weird things/people/characters your little brain will allow. Dino from The Flintstones? Or perhaps Dino from The Flintstones sipping from a little dino-flask, holding up a little dino-middle finger?*

Have you got your five ideas? Do you think you’re being original? Think again, Ace. Some weirdo creative type has already thought it up, printed it out, and stuffed it into a greasy sheet-protector for your perusing pleasure. Seriously: pages of Dennis the Menace? Really, people? Really?

yabba dabba doo, motherfuckers.

After our ink-adventure we stopped by the liquor store (I know some folks do this in reverse order, but there’s always next time) to pick out some pre-mixed margaritas (FYI: tattoos + margaritas = tradition) to go with some tasty soup Carynn planned on whipping up for din-din.

Sidebar: Have you ever tasted fire? Have you ever tasted fire in soup form?

Oh, nononononononono… that’s not related at all to the DELICIOUS meal she so lovingly prepared for us. I swear (after I regained feeling in my tongue and mouth-regions) it was good.

It’s just how I imagine it would feel to give Satan hisself a good lick-down.

But no, seriously: it was a good day.

*I actually didn’t see this one, but I’m sure my boy Psycho would have drawn it up for me.

…but first a few interjections:
1. Typing this on an iPad- holy poo this is neat!
2. My blog looks flippin’ awesome on the iPad.
3. Can’t get used to the autocorrect. Tried to add some extra syllables to the aforementioned “awesome” but it kept changing it to “sewer me” WITHOUT my permission

Back to business:
I’m leaving in about two hours and have about fifty thousand more things and people I want to see. More about that in another post, when I can misspell whatever the heck I please.

Excuse me, did I SAY that I wanted those Is capitalized????

Life is rough, let me tell ya.