Is this what wisdom smells like?

• In certain cultures, hunger is personified as a wolf. When you get just a little bit hungry, then eat, it is like you ate the little baby wolf. How could you do it. If you get moderately hungry, you then kill the hunger by eating the adolescent wolf, a better adversary. But if you get really really hungry, then the wolf grows stronger. Too strong. Now the wolf is invincible no matter what you eat to kill it. Then you have no choice but to call upon the deity known as the Crazy Hunger, who alone is capable of dispatching this terrible wolf-beast. You set up a massive feast, I mean we're talkin' a competitive eating type of setup here, just neverending let's say hot dogs and apple pies, and you get down on your knees, and you shake your fists and call out to the heavens, 'Crazy Hunger, EAT THIS WOLF!"
  
• I noticed I waste a lot of time worrying about things that actually turn out to be just the problems I was worrying about. Like, e.g., waking up thinking about how later on I will have to pay some bills and find something to eat and figure out what to teach some kid on the piano. But this is such a stupid thing to worry about, because whether or not I worry, I'm still gonna pay those bills, find something to eat, and figure out what to teach some kid on the piano. So I was thinking what are better things to worry about. Of course the saints among us can probably worry about something unrelated to themselves, like global warming or hunger or that sort of thing. I tried that and it doesn't do the trick. Don't get me wrong, I care about those things, but I can't get myself to wake up too early worrying about them. I need some self-interest in there. So my new plan is instead of worrying about the inevitable and inescapable knots and obstacles of the everyday, I will start worrying about what to do in unlikely situations. Like for instance, say you were falling from a blown-up airplane towards the sea from not all that huge a distance. I figure if you are able to streamline your body into a perfect dive, you might not break all your bones and die when you hit. Or how about if you hear a nuclear explosion but it is a good ways off and you have like ten seconds to get somewhere safe from the shockwave, where are you gonna go? Or say someone wants to mug you, what sort of things are you gonna do to make them think you're too crazy to fuck with? Or what if someone decides to interview you about something you did, what are you gonna say to not sound like an idiot? What if you are driving across a bridge and there is an earthquake and you have to decide in like two seconds whether to try to slam on the brakes or accelerate enough to jump the newly formed gap in the middle of the bridge? These are the sorts of unlikely but possible scenarios that I want to waste my worrying energy on from here on out.
  
• Every single time I ever get annoyed with someone, and I mean EVERY single time, I then realize it is really something about myself I see in the someone. This goes for cats too.
  
• I taught a kid to play the drums. I am a dude who taught a kid to play the drums. If I didn't teach him, well, probably someone else would have. But still.
  
• Little kids like Buster Keaton because people falling is still the funniest thing.
  
• It turns out it is really easy to make delicious mustard at home with nothing but mustard seeds and water, and probably you want some vinegar or white wine too.
  
• It ain't no Hubble deep field, but when you look in ordinary binoculars, you are fucking looking back in time. I mean, not much, just a tiny little infinitesimal micro-nano-mini-second, but still.
  
• Our understanding of the things and relationships in our world can be favorably compared to the Hubble deep field. For one thing, we only see shit if we look really close at a spot. For another, things look 2D unless we use our brains and more evidence (like, say, the red shift caused by the electromagnetic radiation doppler effect from galaxies receding from us at varying rates) to figure out how they fit together in 3 d's. There's always gonna be more to understand the closer you look, and you're still gonna be wrong from the perspective of the dude in the future who gets a better look.
  
• You should google up some info on the Hubble deep field, I decided it is kind of ridiculous to link to general information like that in a blog post.
  
• If you're naturally curious, the internet makes you smarter.
  
• The most normal person you know is completely fucking weird as HELL.
  
• Keep your eyes on CERN, they are gonna discover some shit that will blow all our minds, even though it is just the shit that everything is made out of. Which fact itself blows my mind.
  
• I guess not all of these count as wisdom.
  
• I guess potentially none of these count as wisdom.
  
• Just because you're older doesn't mean you're wiser.
  
• It's not up to you whether what you say is wise anyhow.
  
• Just because you put things in topical bullet points doesn't mean they follow any sort of organizational pattern beyond the visual.
  
• Good bye.

The top four lines from "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger

• "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
  
• "Never worried about paying or even how much I owed."
  
• "I was living to run and running to live"
  
• "I found myself alone, surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends"

Also, the top concept from the song: the transition across the three verses from running to seeking shelter and back to running against the wind (first a youthful running against & not even noticing the wind, then with age noticing and seeking shelter against the wind, and then the final running against the wind as the conscious choice of the aging rocker burdened with worldly duties).

It's so surprising to finally listen to these lyrics that have gone in one ear and out the other my whole life, and find them so poetic.

Also, the piano solo.

One or more of these statements is true

Needing life is stressful. Life needs stress, but life puts stresses on one's capacity to need. Needing stress is a part of life, because stress isn't just needing life-- stress is also living need.

Recent revelations and sub-revelations

• Adults shouldn't have to say words like "panini," "sammy," or "yummy."
  
• If you think you're good enough, maybe you'll be just that. If you think you aren't, maybe you can be great.
  • Here are the particular memories which have led me to this startling conclusion:
    • When I tried out for the track team in 10th grade I was sprinting, and then suddenly for the first time ever asked myself if I could go any faster, and found out that I could, a lot.
    • When I was in 4th or so grade I was in music class and was singing along all bored when I realized by controlling my throat and mouth I could actually sing the actual pitches I had theretofore falsely imaginined myself to be singing.
• Somehow every previous time I listened to Bach's St. Matthew's Passion I just thought it was "pretty good."
  • Bach, as I have recently been told, as paraphrased by me, said writing invertible counterpoint was easy-- he would just talk to God and write down the conversation.
    • Bob Uecker, on the other hand, said catching a knuckleball is easy-- all you have to do is wait until it stops rolling and pick it up.
    • Charlie Lau, on the other other hand, said there were two theories on hitting the knuckleball, but unfortunately neither of them works.
• Doing the dishes is actually pretty easy, plus then you have something clean to put your food on.
  • Example: eggs.
• The right music, editing, and narration can make you feel sorry for planemos that have been kicked out of their solar systems by gravitational conflicts.
  • "...They're by themselves" -- a real honest-to-God scientist, not some wistful poet.
  
  

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?

Flannery O'Connor asked that question in the author's note to the 2nd edition of Wise Blood. Then she answered herself:

I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

I kind of hate it when good writers can just take four concise sentences and cut to the core of ideas I've spent a lifetime chipping around the edges of. The plurality of will, the complexity of freedom, and most importantly to me, the deadly serious task of living comedy.

Fuck you O'Connor. Fuck you to HELL.

It is hardest to lose what was never found

When I was a kid I used to cheat at Battleship sometimes. What I'd do is keep track of all the squares my opponent guessed and keep moving my ships around to the remaining empty spaces. You'd be surprised how many misses it would take to eliminate every group of five contiguous squares, to just the extent my brothers and friends were surprised at how many rounds it would take to get that first hit on my aircraft carrier.

I am trying to tell a story whose moral is this: it is much harder to let go of something that doesn't exist than something that does. Things that actually exist have edges and locations. Ghosts cling to every cell and will take up residence in any space they can find. Made up things are even harder to sink than that tiny little destroyer I'd keep moving around until I'd win.

Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.

Post number 211, in which I go from Point A to Point B

Point A: Anton Chekhov's The Student.

* * *

I was driving down to Lee's Summit on I-70 and I came to my favorite part of the trip where this huge valley just opens up out of nowhere. Whenever I drive into that hollow, I look to the crest of the next hill and think to myself, "that is where I am gonna be in about a minute," and then I try to remember to notice when I get there. Usually I forget. Like when you are pumping gas and you say to yourself, "make sure you pay attention as you screw the gas cap on, because otherwise you won't be able to remember if you did it or not." But this time I remembered, and it was cool.

* * *

My grandpa told me something a friend of his had said about music. This friend said that musical sounds are only there for an instant, then they're gone. If they were random and unconnected, you'd not remember them, and not be able to predict them, and it wouldn't be music as you know it. But if each tiny instant has some connection to the one before and the one after, we can entrain ourselves to this string of instants and share in a way of experiencing time. My grandpa then defined music as a way of connecting sound and silence in time.

* * *

My uncle was talking about the pilgrims and how they believed in predetermination as far as who was getting into heaven. But their version of fate had this weird twist where earthly behavior, though it could not have any bearing on one's future after death, could reliably be taken as a reflection of that future. So if you go to church and live a pious life, it must be because you are one of those chosen few to begin with.

* * *

My grandpa told me about how amazed he is that the earth is in just the right place to sustain life. Not too hot, not too cold, enough water, and a good atmosphere. I told him I agreed, sort of, but also that the very basis of our conversation was the life that earth makes possible. The odds seem low, that is, but who could talk about those odds but us lucky few who are on a planet in which atoms can combine into people and not just rocks?

* * *

Point B: Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics.

No place, like home

I moved a lot as a kid. Rather than write a confusing paragraph, let me summarize with an unordered list.

• Born in Akron Ohio.
  
• Moved to Madrid, Spain in 3rd grade.
  
• Moved back to the Akron area (Bath, OH: childhood home of Jeffrey Dahmer!) after a year and a half.
  
• Moved to suburban Chicago for half a year or so in fifth grade.
  
• Back to Akron.
  
• Moved to Des Moines, IA in 9th grade.
  
• Moved to suburban Minneapolis, MN (pretty close to Prince's house) in 11th grade.
  
• Off to school in Galesburg IL.
  
• To St. Louis in 1999.
  

Moving a lot as a kid has its developmental perks. You learn how to get attention, you learn how to make friends pretty quick, you maybe learn how much people everywhere are the same and so you rise above most parochial attitudes, you learn that place never matters as much as people, you learn that people talk funny in different places, but that you will also talk funny if you live there even a few months, you learn to cut ties when you need to, you learn to re-invent yourself when you have to, you learn to get by without friends when you got none, which probably means you got pretty good at something like music or writing or drawing.

Sometimes I feel like moving a lot made me have some superpowers as compared to people who didn't: I can interact with people without a lifetime of personal history weighing us down, I can bridge social gaps that are invisible to me as an outsider, I can meet and understand people outside their cultural context, I can see what makes people great cut across place in ways that are hard to understand for those with firmer roots in their home soil.

Moving a lot as a kid also has some downsides. You develop a certain rhythm to your grasp of things-- every so often it feels like time to let go, even if it isn't. You sometimes have a hard time forming attachments. You often feel like an imposter. You start to have too many sports teams you consider "your team." You have a lot of trouble mattering to people the way the people they grew up with matter to them. You just don't seem to have clout. You sometimes envy people's sense of place. You are often cast in a role in which you have disrupted a garden of eden. There isn't a long enough time to live somewhere other than since birth to avoid a sort of mark, a mark which is generally ignored but often becomes important in times of crisis, when you are "put back in your place" of not-here.

Moving a lot has given me confused ideas of rootedness. Any claim I make to be "from" is usually based on fleeting memories and mythology. "From" just isn't a thing that I have the way more rooted people do. I swear to god sometimes this makes me feel like a ghost. As though wherever I might try to grow them, my ghostly roots would pass through the soil anyhow. I cannot move back X spaces and be "back home."

In a year or so I will have lived in St. Louis the longest I've ever lived somewhere. There was a time when I was convinced that living somewhere long enough would turn it into that kind of home I envied in people. Now I don't think that is true. But I don't mind too bad, because I have an idea of home that has worked for me since I was in high school, and it was cross-stitched against a white background, and in a frame, and hanging in the downstairs bathroom at some house or other, and it actually looked better than this one, but this was the only one I could find on the internet:

One or more of the following statements might be described as true or false.

• The hardest thing to learn is restraint.
  
• The hardest things to restrain are the learned.
  
• The most learned restrain what is hardest.
  
• The learned make hard that which is restrained.
  
• The most restrained make hard that which is learned.
  
• The restrained learn to harden.
  

(Hint: they are all true)

Two tips for the attentionally challenged

People, all my life I've had this thing where I'm not very good at paying attention to stuff. "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening," while honest and heartfelt, doesn't always cut it. "Huh?" gets really annoying after you use it once or twice in the same conversation. "Mmm hmm"s and head nods can help, but can also backfire, as you may find later you've agreed to something you never even registered in the first place. Randomly switching between confused shrugs (as if to say "heh, how about that crazy shit"), "amens," and various "ssss" or "clucks" (meant to denote understanding) can sometimes work in a pinch, but can also make you come off as, well, aribitrary.

Through careful research and a lot of trial and error, I have arrived in my older age at two short phrases that can actually make sense if said in response to quite literally ANYTHING ANYONE might say, EVER.

1. "Nobody said it was gonna be easy."

2. "There's only one way to find out."

Not only do these phrases fit anywhere, but they often come off as insightful and/or hilarious.


Figure 12: Example Conversation

Dude, wanna watch the game?
-There's only one way to find out.
Wait, I can't tell if that was a yes or no.
-Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
Do you or don't you want to watch the baseball game?
-Huh?
Fuck you.
-I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention.
I'm gonna watch the game. You wanna join me?
-There's only one way to find out.
Ya, asking you. So what do you say?
-Mmm hmmm.
Cool, I'll be over in a bit.
-Wait, what?
Were you even listening to me?
-Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
[CLICK]
-(to self): Nobody said it was gonna be easy.

so sayeth the boss...

You can't start a fire...
You can't start a fire without a spark.
This gun's for hire...
even if we're just dancing in the dark.

The Stupidest Thing You Could Possibly Ever Think About Doing At All Awards

Let's hand these out this year.

Matt Morris

Matt Morris got cut by the Pirates. I always liked him as a pitcher, and as a Matt. There were very few famous Matts in sports when I was a kid. Looking back into baseball history, the closest thing might have been Matty Alou, but he retired before I was born. Nowadays you can't throw a plastic beer bottle onto the field without hitting a Matt-- just talking more well-known players, you got your Holliday, your Clement and Cain, your Lawton, Belisle, & Murton, & plenty more. Matt Morris really opened the door for Matt to be an acceptable name for a baseball player. I thank him for his courage.

Figure 12: The Man Himself, back when he was a Cardinal



Figure 12b: Wisdom
"I'm proud of my career. I didn't mean or want for it to end this way. I've always said the other team will let you know when you're done."

In my older age I have figured out these things about spring.

I don't remember ever caring about the seasons that much when I was younger. I don't remember feeling all that different in the winter compared to the summer. I knew old people liked to talk about the seasons as though they made that much of a difference, but I always just though that was old-people talk. Well now I have a little age, a little wisdom, and I realize:

-In the spring I really do get extra horny.
-Two of the seasons' names are verbs (Spring, Fall), and two aren't, and there's a way that makes sense.
-It really is pretty when stuff starts having flowers on it. For real.
-In the spring it really does rain a lot. That isn't just something they say. Last week it rained for like 62 hours straight.
-In the spring I have vast reserves of hyper energy, even more than usual.
-Springtime always seems like a good time to produce stuff. I mean to toil at something that leaves a tangible result.
-Some kind of plants that bloom in the spring can elicit an immediate, fixed emotional response. E.g. redbuds=wistful.
-Girls who were already beautiful look even more beautiful in the springtime. This is not just a clothes thing, or a corollary to spring fever, I am convinced this is some sort of chemical factor with the air and the skin.
-There is something different in how light diffuses, or else something different about our eyes, or maybe both. I think if you didn't know if it was fall or spring you could tell by looking at anything.
-Certain types of music sound better a little quieter in spring.
-People's hair looks better in the spring. Also the spring wind blows people's hair differently, and it looks great. People look great in the spring.
-The springtime is the hardest time to collect and focus one's hate. That shit just doesn't seem to matter as much in the spring.
-It feels way better to get really really hungry before you eat in the spring. I think this may be a learned response to poorly planned BBQs that turn out just right.
-My heart will be stolen and my breath taken by a girl walking in the spring. She won't know she has stolen my heart and taken my breath. This will happen up to seven times on a spring day, each time as catastrophic as the last.
-One thinks more with one's hands in the spring. Take that how you want, I give it honestly and lewdly.