Holiday Weekend

I only have a little time to procrastinate, so y'all will have to wait for the rundown on my weekend...I have an interesting set of insights about it. The short version -- ate too much, saw a lot of family (that was a good thing). Waves too high to charter a boat, so did some shore fishing. Caught two stingrays and two catfish (none edible, so they all went back to frustrate other fishermen). Also caught my sister -- since I first started fishing when I was 5, I've never accidently hooked myself or another innocent bystander until last Friday. I tugged on my line and the hook shot out of the water and imbedded itself in my sister's leg, through her denim overalls. After using my rusty ambulance skills for a while trying to remove it, I figured it was going to be impossible to do without a few cc's of Lidocaine, so I took her to the hospital. She was cool about the whole thing, knew it was a freak accident, but she wanted the thing out of her leg. So, thanks to me, she now has a puncture wound in her leg (small -- didn't even bleed), an update on her tetanus shot, a bottle of antibiotics, and probably a nice resulting yeast infection to remember me by.

I can still procrastinate a few minutes more, so here is the latest survey running through LJ (copied from Sanssouci, who copied it from.....etc)

1. Name: Peter
2. Your Nickname: Marcus
3. Your Birthday: August 22, 1967
4. Your Age Now: 33
5. Your Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
6. School Grade: BS in Electrical Engineering
7. Sex: Male, last time I looked down.
8. Zodiac Sign: Leo, cusp of Virgo

1. Real Hair Color: Medium brown, dyed black.
2. Eye color: Darkish blue
3. Skin color: Golfer tan
4. Height: 5'11"
5. Shoe size: 10 1/2
6. Do you care about the way you look?: Yep
7. Do you get tanned?: See #3. Usually, I burn once a season, peel off, then tan the rest of the year.
8. Do you have big ears?: No, they're kinda average. I can wiggle them, how's that?
9. Do you have contacts or glasses?: Contacts

Am I a....
1. Wuss: Nope
2. Class Clown: Yes
3. Goodie 2 Shoes: I can simulate.
4. Daydreamer: Yes
5. Drunk: No, my limit is usually 2 drinks.
6. Freak: I'll say borderline....too vague of a question
7. Bastard: Can be.
8. Angel: Can be.

Have I ever...
1. Eaten an entire box of Turtles?: I take it these aren't the reptiles? I've eaten a box of Pringles or a tub of Ben and Jerrys....does that count?
2. Gotten in a car accident?: A couple fender-benders
3. Watched "Punky Brewster"?: Yes, when I was little.
4. Hiked a mountain?: Yes
5. Death Valley on horseback?: No, but I did Sedona Arizona on horseback.
6. Stayed home on a Saturday night just because?: That's my normal weekend.

this or that
1. Paper or Plastic: Paper
2. Deaf or Blind: Deaf, by a nose.
3. Truth or Dare: Dare
4. Night or Day: Night
5. Beavis or Butthead: Daria
6. Ocean or Pool: Ocean
7. Cake or Pie: Chocolate cream pie
8. Chocolate or Vanilla: chocolate
9. Cats or Dogs: Cats
10. Love or Lust: Love
11. Pancakes or French toast?: French toast
12. Bitter or Sweet: Sweet
13. Silver or Gold: Silver, big time.
14. Smoker or Nonsmoker: Non, for four years
15. Diamonds or Pearls: Neither
16. Hugs or Kisses: Kisses
17. Bacon Bits or Croutons: Pork Fat
18. Shaken or Stirred: Shaken, with Stoli
19. Taco or Burrito: Taco, lotsa hot sauce
20. Complex or Simple: Complex, the more the better.
21. Armageddon or Independence Day: ID4
22. Batman or Superman?: Batman -- what good is being a crimefighter without a healthy dose of neurosis?
23. Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch: neither
24. Sun or Moon: Moon
25. X's or O's: Triple-X
26. Ice crushed or cubed: crushed
27. Showers or Baths: Showers
28. Ketchup or Mustard: Both.

In the past week have I...?
1. Cried?: No
2. Not known the answer at work but faked it?: Yep
3. Cut your hair?: No
4. Worn a skirt?: No
5. Worn a tie?: No
5b. Shredded a tie for the fun of it?: Nope, don't even think I own any.
6. Been mean?: Probably
7. Been sarcastic?: Yeah, right.
8. Gone for a walk?: Yes
9. Gone out for dinner?: Yes
10. Met someone new?: No
11. Taken a test?: Yes
12. Talked to an ex: Nope
13. Missed an ex?: Yup
14. Hugged someone?: Yes
15. Kissed someone?: Yes
16. Danced with someone?: Two left feet.
17. Had a nightmare?: No
18. Fought with your parents?: No, other than harmless, amusing bitching as my father and I tried to install track-lighting.

In the restroom, no one can hear you scream

So, someone in our office park decided a long time ago that 80's easy-listening music would make a perfect companion soundtrack in the office restrooms. Normally this consists of old Phil Collins duets and such, probably picked solely to distract one from the business that usually occurs in such rooms.

It's after Thanksgiving now. Instead of some forgotten gem from the Lionel Richie Museum of Ancient History, this nameless muszak company has switched to Christmas tunes. Can someone just shoot me now?

Pedantic essay #4739457 -- skip at will

Why do people watch or play sports? I'm asking a leading question because I have a multi-paragraph response that has been cooking in my brain for the last few days (yes, that's a warning....)

Sport is primal will. There may be intellectual guidance, but the focus is primal energy, otherwise we'd all be filling in crossword puzzles. Sport may be team-based, like any of the three sports called football, in which sport simulates warfare. Sport may be mano-a-mano, such as the martial arts or the 100m sprint, where it is one individual against another. Or, sport may be one against oneself, such as rock-climbing.

There may be debate about sport. There are sports like boxing that are deemed to be too brutal, or like American football which may be too warlike, or deer hunting which may be too cruel to vegetarian mammals. Haven't we, as a society, evolved beyond such brutality? My answer is no, we haven't. Such outlets for violence are healthy to society because we, as a species, haven't actually evolved. We're still the same Homo sapiens that have been banging around the planet for several thousand years. Part of our genetic makeup is that primal caveman violence that is required to survive as a species, and that is as much a part of us as an opposable thumb. It our intellect that can create computers and monitors and software. It is our primal flee-fight-or-fuck urges that convert blinking pixels into games that pump our adrenaline and make us believe we have to fight to survive, even though we're sitting in comfy chairs in air-conditioned homes. These urges also convert the gritty geometric fonts spelling out online words and sentences into emotion sensing a primal feeling of community, or lust, or respect, or even love. To cut out our primal nature is like cutting off our thumbs because they can't reach as far as the rest of our fingers -- it is a diminishment, not an improvement in symmetry. The more we try to bury this nature, the more it comes out in real primal activities such as war and crime and true violence. Sport brings us immunizations against primal violence, precisely because there is the possibility that someone or something will get hurt -- either physically, such as auto racing, or the primal mental/emotional dispair of having been beat, in sports such as chess.

Through participation in sport, actively or vicariously, we can safely control our primal urges to keep them from controlling us, in the same way we should strive to keep our intellect from controlling us (rationalization has started more modern wars than primal territorial urges).

Personally, I like watching sports during special events, such as the Olympics, Super Bowl, and World Series. Sport during the rest of the season doesn't interest me as much, at least as a spectator. As a participant, I'm drawn more to the sport of the individual. I've tried my hand at amateur rock-climbing, but I'm not an enthusiast. Mainly because I have a fear of heights and a healthy respect that I'm not enough of an athlete to trust my life to my fingertips. Rock-climbing appeals to me because it probably has grown from the primal urge to explore or escape ones surroundings, both of which seem to be hobbies of mine in one form or another.

Fishing. Like any other sport, there are those who enjoy it and those who find it mind-numbingly boring; a perfect human yin-yang of obsession vs. disinterest, spiced with the intellectually distasteful shame of inter-species cruelty. It's primal origins are virtually unchanged, though the modern fisherman does not starve on a day of slow nibbles. What draws me to fishing? There is a primal element of hunting one's own meal. Personally, I don't intentionally fish for anything I won't eat, but inedible catches are part of the game. There is a skill set that must be mastered; one must use the right bait, use the correct equipment such as hook size and shape, and know where to fish at what time of day. However, one can do all of this and still never catch anything, because one is basically at the mercy of the fish. I love this element of chance, because it evokes within me man's primal battle against the universe -- we can do everything correctly, and still not succeed because, sometimes, them's the breaks.

Fishing requires patience, and a hard kind of patience to learn as the outcome is not certain. Any lab rat can learn to wait patiently for the time to be fed. Waiting patiently when food may not come at all is something completely different. Because of this patience, fishing requires a comfort with oneself, or at least the willingness to try to learn that comfort. There is a true zen participation in the moment, to exist with no other purpose than letting ones thoughts wander while waiting for the universe to reveal the choice of the day.

And if the strike comes...the rush of primal energy is tempered by the will of the intellect in an adrenaline induced debate of human evolution: Fish Keep the drag light or the line will snap Will it shake the hook? Steady pull, don't let it slack too much. What is it? What is it? Heavy strike, could be a snook, could be a catfish. If the line snaps, all this waiting will be for nothing It's coming in, we're looking good. Is it edible? If it's a snook, it will taste great. I hate catfish, though. What is it what is it what is it...is it food?

There is a fish swimming in the ocean, right now...I'll catch it in the future. Maybe not. It's currently swimming far from me, but our random paths through life will cross at one point in time and space. Maybe not. Maybe each of these scenarios exist simultaneously in some Schroedinger cop-out. Maybe I should still be sitting by the surf, being stung by the wind and thinking of primal urges.