Radical Transparency

I hope Teddy Kennedy appreciated the fact that he was part of what might have been the greatest SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketch ever made...

My favorite, anyway. The origin, in fact, of my love for the word poop.

Peace, Teddy.

Maybe I'm extra special partial to this because I've fallen in love faster with Raul Ibanez than any other baseball player, and it's a little unsettling to see him react so angrily to what I consider to be an understandably suspicious, imperfectly presented, but ultimately harmless blog post, but maybe my rapture runs deeper. Maybe the debate really does provide a totally fascinating angle from which to look at press and rumor and the evolution of information flow...



Good for ESPN for hosting the discussion. Good for Jerod the blogger for participating with cool and humility. And good for Raul for offering stool samples if requested. Radical transparency, baby.

I think that'd be a good Facebook status message.

But only if it was (were?) true.
 
Which it's not, for me, at the moment, sadly.
 
Someday.

There's a bathroom in my uncle's house that's definitely haunted.  By a friendly and fictional ghost.  Which is another discussion for another day.

Today's point is that the last time I was in there, I had a few memorable thoughts; I started wondering if that bathroom might be a particularly good place for ideas; and I decided it probably was.

And that's my first place like that, my first place to go to think or get creative, my first geographical muse.

And I realize that a non-trivial percentage of idea places belong to crazy people.  But I also realize that a not even close to trivial percentage of crazy people, at least by my definition, are easily as cool as they are crazy, if you pay attention.

So, yeah, I have an idea place now.  Or I'll be testing one out anyway.  Testing it out next time I'm visiting my uncle and cousins and have to poop.

I think they've built a better mousetrap.  And I think cheese, the old school bait, the one they use in cartoons, does slightly more efficient work than peanut better.



8 traps set. 

4 cheese.  4 peanut butter.

4 old school style.  4 newfangled.  Peanut butter and cheese evenly distributed between types.

3 caught mice. 1 old school with cheese.  1 newfangled with cheese.  1 newfangled with peanut butter.

2 had their bait taken without snapping.  1 old school with peanut butter.  1 newfangled with peanut butter.

1 snapped but caught nothing.  An old school trap with cheese.

2 went untouched. 1 old school with peanut butter.  1 newfangled with cheese.  They were clearly placed on the wrong shelf and will relocate tonight.

I should have graphed or tabled that.  But that might have been a little overkill for a mouse catching experiment.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

My great grandfather grew up in rural central Sicily.  He was a musician.  There was some kind of dispute with the mayor of his town.  A parade.  A request for a bribe.  An assault with a clarinet.  So he fled the island.  And landed in New York City.  In the nineteen teens I think.

When he arrived, he found himself in a Little Italy situation.  He found some other Sicilians.  Rural people.  People like him.  And made some great friends.

And, every Sunday, he and a few of those dudes would hop on the Long Island Railway and cruise east, out of the city.

And, when they'd get where they were going, they'd wander off into fields or woods, separate, dig holes, squat, and poop.

They did it, they said, for the breeze on their balls.

I'm going to sleep on the eve of the election, and I feel like I ought to post a little Ween.

Maybe it's because I think my nerves medicine worked for the Phillies.

Maybe it's because my cousin Zach rolled down from NY today, and we discussed the fact that we expect our next Ween-inspired adventure to be even sillier than the last.

Maybe it's because, as a recent email just alerted me, my "mind has finally evolved into a child's circus land full of poop songs."

Regardless, Blue Balloon is track 2 on La Cucaracha, and I love it.

Click here to download:

02 Blue Balloon.mp3 (3612 KB)