from Dave Eggers‘ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius:
“While temping, there are breaks, and lunch, and one can bring a Walkman if one so desires, can take a fifteen-minute break, walk around, read – It’s bliss. The temp doesn’t have to pretend that he cares about their company, and they don’t have to pretend that they owe him anything. And finally, just when the job, like almost any job would, becomes too boring to continue, when the temp has learned anything he could have learned, and his milked it for the $18/hr and whatever kitsch value it may have had, when to continue anymore would be a sort of death and would show a terrible lack of respect for valuable time – usually after three or four days – then neatly enough, the assignment is over. Perfect.”
let me just say that i find it very refreshing to read someone who openly knows about the whole temping process.
then again, i do like my job a lot. but i do appreciate the passage for what it is.
and i do bring my book and my iPod to work. because it is bliss.
Good says he believed the toy was a token of the real car he was to receive and expressed excitement and joy. That turned to anger after Good, who counsels troubled youths, found out it had all been a joke.
i wonder who’s more childish, the kids he counsels, or him.
everyday i step out of my house in the morning for the walk to the bus stop, it makes me feel like the day will be a good day (not counting the two or three days it’s been raining – but even that has it’s certain charms). this area, because it’s basically a swamp – even more so than Manhattan – puts on these visual tricks with some of the most comfortable and lazy haze you’ll ever feel caressing your cheeks, soon to be blown away by the slight breezes that manage to get lost at the Chesapeake, only to sweep down into the basin.
and this wonderful mist can portray so many different emotions – for example, the abject ferocity of the gods. ever seen the exorcist? the way that the fog surrounds karras as he approaches the hellacious house? the house and stairs with which the mist cloaks in mysteriousness are in georgetown, about a fifteen minute drive from my house. (and really, i need to get out and see this landmark of horror cinema, if only to indulge the fanboy inside.)
but this morning, the mist was a sublime thing to wake up to. the trees in my neighborhood cutting out parts of the sunlight, so that my walk was filled with the intermittent slices of warmth, letting me know that in a few steps my skin would be heated ever-so-slightly, but not so much as a hair over the comfy temperature of 65. now i know what dogs feel like when they nip at the wind as it blows through their hair outside of a moving car window. DC’s morning mist, oh so dewy sweet.
the bus was forty minutes late, but i didn’t mind.
just watching baseball tonight, and they ran down their top ten defensive plays of all time – and i guess i agree with most of their choices; but i must say, their selection process is a bit skewed. first off, honestly, i don’t know if you could have picked a larger category to pick from – the ten greatest defensive plays, as they put it, “ever caught on tape”, so meaning from about 1954 on. but let’s break that down. if they really meant that, it means that they were probably looking at about 25-30 games per year until about 1980, then about 60 games a year until the 90s, and then every game since then has pretty much been broadcast.
so, of the hundreds of thousands of games (just for the record, in this 2006 season alone, somewhere around 2,000 baseball games will be played, not counting spring training and the playoffs) that have been played since the dawn of baseball broadcasting on television, Baseball Tonight is probably looking at maybe 5%. and it’s probably a lot less than that. really, do you think that you could get a fair sampling of the “best defensive plays ever” if you only looked at 5% of the games? how about if you only watched 5% of the games this season? would you be able to fairly judge the best defensive plays of the season? i think not.
secondly, the list is populated with about 70% plays from the last ten years, which is patently ridiculous, of course. of the thirty plays on the list of each team’s best web gem (found here) only eight are defensive plays were made before 1988. in fact, there are almost just as many plays from the last two years as there are from before 1980.
i know, i know, ESPN isn’t the best source for an objective view of things, but i really think they’re off on this one in their method. who’s to say there wasn’t a fantastic play that wasn’t on TV? and as much as i love ozzie smith, there really shouldn’t be repeats for two teams.
that said, i did agree with their choices, for the most part. they chose willie mays’ catch in the ’54 Series as the top, and really, while i can’t argue too much, i would have definately gone with jim edmonds catch back in 1997. when i saw that catch, i knew that it would probably be the best catch i’ll ever see. and gary matthews jr. can try all he wants, but nothing for me will ever match up to that edmonds catch.
that is the best defensive play ever, no question.
there needs to be more of an effort in my life to write more. even if it’s of the totally-rambling-not even trying to make sense variety. just needing to get the writing going again. i was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal, and the basic gist was found in the headline, “Can’t Bloggers Ever Take A Break?” – which is unquestionably true. since i don’t smoke, i can only imagine that this is what it’s like to try and stop smoking, in some really backwards way. if you don’t do it every day, it’s oh-so-difficult to get started. you just accumulate material (i’ve got emails full of quotes and great little articles), but you’re never motivated to put it in here.
go northwest, young man. 