A Few Thoughts From On The Road

I've been busy lately...all right, that's a lie. Not the busy part, but the rest of the lie I was going to tell. Which was, "I've been busy lately, which is why I haven't written in a while..."

I've used that one already this summer, and though it was mostly true before, it's mostly BS now. Fact is, though busy, I have discovered that writing is becoming more and more of a September-through-May sport. Summer just seems to drive the writing bug away.

In any event, I've been on the road in the States for a couple of weeks. A lot's been going on. Olympics. Democratic Conventions. Florida floods. Tampa Bay Rays still leading the AL East.

A few thoughts:

I was watching Fox News, and Wyclef, a guy from the Fugees, told Greta that the Obama ticket shows we're living in "historic times." Obviously it sounded like a big deal to Greta, as she bobbed her head in agreement. My question: when are any times not historic? If a girl's pet gerbil dies, it's a historic time. If an old man farts on a lawn chair, it's a historic time. If an ex-lawyer interviews a rapper and asks for political insight, it's a historic time. All time is historic time.

Why is there no outrage about the Florida floods? And why was there no outrage about the Mississippi floods earlier this year? Thousands of homes destroyed, tens of thousands of people homeless. I thought storms and floods were all the President's fault, but it turns out it only matters if a state has a city named New Orleans.

I was at a minor league baseball game tonight and I was struck by two things. 1) the difference between a minor leaguer and a major leaguer is about .10 seconds, or a little shorter than the time it takes to say the word "seconds." It takes that much longer for a minor league third baseman to get a grounder over to first base. A tenth of a second is all that separates him from the major leagues, but he will probably never cut down that microsecond. That must be frustrating as hell. 2) When a minor league batter hits a ball into the outfield, you still hold your breath thinking the outfielder might drop it, no matter how easy the flyball. When watching the majors, a pop fly means it's time to go to the john. You don't even bother watching the fielder make the catch, because he almost always does. In a funny way, this makes minor league ball the better game to watch.

Everyone wants to know if Vancouver's Opening Ceremonies will be just as good as China's. Meanwhile, the Chinese political prisoner just wants to know if he can go home.

I saw that another kid went missing, and the news shows are having a field day. I think her name is Caylee, but I can't be bothered looking it up. With all of the kids that go missing every month, how do the media pick that one kid? I'm sure more than a few kids wind up dead or missing while people are on vacation, but why was that missing-in-Portugal kid the only one in the news? I feel bad for the parents of a missing kid that call the news stations and say their kid is gone, only to hear a news producer say, "Sorry. We've got our overseas-dead-kid story for the year. Try back in January."