ball of lightning [dot] com

So tell me what the fuck this dream means…

I’m in Las Vegas– I’m not sure why. We’re lying on the ground way outside the cities– there are no buildings nearby. We are then for a while; it was sunny, a thunderstorm rolled through (I remember being pissed it moved mostly to the north) and was on it’s way out. While I’m busy hitting on this very cute local, I hear shrieking, and see (to my horror) two girls fall through the cloud deck clutching each other, as well as one balloon and one beer (can of Miller Lite). They are wearing blue and gold dresses and heels. They hit the ground about twenty-five feet away from me with startling force. I race over expecting the worst, but one girl is kind of groggily moving around on her hands and knees, while her friend seems to be twitching and rolling her head, but seems unconscious. I tell everyone not to move either of them, and have them remain as still as possible until the EMTs get there. The Las Vegas chic was also a volunteer EMT or something, so she jumped over them and I’m not sure what happened. I went off to call 9-1-1 because for some reason I needed to run like a mile to get service. I got through, and remember telling them the address was MY street address from Ithaca– some sort of weird Las Vegas coincidence, or my brain isn’t witty enough to think on it’s feet during these dreams. I got transferred 3 or 4 times; to the hospital, police, and fire and rescue services and I think some administration department for someone. Finally someone went, but not for like a half an hour (I later looked at a digital clock, it was 1:18 AM, this accident happened at 12:27 AM according to a police officer). I’m not sure how it happens, but I end up at a hybrid police department/hospital where the police come in to get a statement (although people who greet me at the front desk are administrators from Cornell). The police walk in– one black, one white– both with crazy-ass walking sticks. We get into this discussion about how I wasted their time, and the department’s money, and that they only thing they cared about was the death count on the wall (which stood at 115– no clue over what time). I kept saying “Wait, are you fucking serious?!?” They kept responding, “You should have just waited ’til tomorrow. I mean, she was gonna die anyway” (they only mention one, I assume this is the unconscious one). Right on cue, a doctor (who looks like the Colonel from KFC) walks in and with a chuckle says “oh yeah, she’s dead.” The police officers laugh and look towards me and go “see, kid– you just need more seasoning,” at which point everyone disbands laughing. I’m irate and confused at this point, but get up to leave and find my friends since it’s now very early in the morning. As I’m leaving, I see that girl, with an expensive silver necklace I had been looking into buying for someone (I don’t know who) around her neck. She smiles, winks, gives me a little wave, and gets in an elevator. I’m not sure if she wanted me to follow, and my waiting caused the door to close. Then I woke up.

This was seriously the most vivid, crazy dream I’ve had in some time. I almost never remember ridiculous details, but this one I do.

No drinking on planes I can fall out of.

Apparently, some kiddos from Bristol (obligatory shoutout to Mark at Bristol Ten Pin; bring back “Bowl Your Head Off”) were at Fenway today (yesterday, since it’s 4 AM) when some girl was randomly attacked by a red-tailed hawk. Which I’m like “well that blows, but it’s kind of funny.” It went from being “kind of funny” to “really fucking hilarious” once I found out her name.

BOSTON — A 13-year-old girl touring Fenway Park on a school trip was attacked by a resident red-tailed hawk that drew blood from her scalp Thursday.

She wasn’t seriously hurt, but some observers saw an omen for a certain New York Yankees slugger in the attack at the home of the Boston Red Sox. The girl’s name is Alexa Rodriguez.

Vince Jennetta, a teacher who chaperoned her class trip from Memorial Boulevard Middle School in Bristol, Conn., told The Boston Globe that Alexa is “a little shaken, but OK.”

The hawk was perched on a railing in the upper deck behind home plate while the group toured the stadium. The hawk flew at the girl and swooped with its talons extended, scratching her scalp.

I mean, if there was ever a case for intelligent design (or God having an awesome sense of humor), this is it.

A game thread on SoSH brought this back to my attention; Frank Francisco’s famous chair throwing incident from freshman year…

“Frank is best known for participating in one of the ugliest incidents of fan violence. On September 13, 2004, Frank threw a folding chair into the crowd in a game against the Oakland Athletics. The incident initially escalated when Rangers pitcher Doug Brocail charged from the Rangers’ bullpen to confront a fan, Craig Bueno, who, members of the Rangers later claimed, had been heckling the Rangers pitcher about his stillborn child. The chair thrown by Francisco hit Jennifer Bueno in the face and caused a cut, which required stiches. Frank was arrested and on June 30, 2005, he pleaded no contest to charges. He was sentenced to anger management classes and a work program. A civil suit brought by the woman hit with the chair was settled on January 12, 2007. Terms of the settlement included an undisclosed payment and a public apology.” - Wikipedia

The funny thing is not the chair about to hit the obese woman in the lower right corner– no– it’s the looks on the people’s faces in the section.

Some are clearly horrified that this burly Dominican was whipping folding chairs around like a frisbee during a Brown hippie-off. But better are the faces of people who are enjoying the fracas. “Yeah, take that, bitch!” My personal favorite is the Asian at the top– man, he clearly is enjoying his decision to immigrate to the Bay Area.

The back of the packet of complimentary pretzels you get when you fly AirTran…

So apparently people in Berkeley want the Marines out. And the city council applauds residents who “volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley.”

So the federal government threatened to take away $2 million in federal funding for the city and Cal-Berkeley and appropriate it to the Marines. Now Berkeley claims that’s not fair and an abuse of power– that they NEED the funds from the GOVERNMENT to help run the city and it’s institutions.

I’m all for dissension, but not when you act like spoiled fucking brats.

Along the way, Patriot fans lost their humility and turned into the very thing their region despised for the last fifty years– Yankee fans. “Fuck the world, we’re the greatest ever, who gives a shit about class if we win.” The fact that some of you still cannot shake your sense of entitlement and take a loss with grace and without profanity or shitspewing means you don’t understand the true nature of sport. Get off the fucking bandwagon; no true fan wants to see a drunk, arrogant frontrunner sitting next to him at the game or on the sofa screaming “we’re killing you with middle fingers a’blazing!” Sorry, Pats fans– tonight you got a taste of your own medicine. Learn something before you share the bleachers with me at Fenway this year. I’ll be the one that’s not a total douchebag.

Following mild tradition…

January: thecanucktruck@hotmail.com
February: Ohmygod! A lightboard! Holy shit! Bomb!
March: Note to self:
April: Keith, you’re killing me man…
May: The feelings disappear…
June: Grades’up…
July: Notes on spam…
August: Only if you’re (REALLY) bored…
September: Fuck flirting, seal the deal…
October: Control?
November: It was really more than five years ago?
December: Brick walls are there for a reason…

Goodbye ought seven, hello ought eight.

Bowled in the Christmas tournaments down in Allentown and Cherry Hill. Pretty much sucked ass in both of them. I had actually bowled in a scratch sweeper in Poughkeepsie the Sunday before Christmas, and had this hideous mental breakdown in the first game– I only shot 149 with six opens– five of them were very makable. I had similar spurts of that all week down south; ironically, a lot of low scores were games I grinded, and just couldn’t string strikes, and a lot of the bad games were ones that I should have put up big 240+ ones and would open three times like an idiot to hit a low deuce. Lot of people keep asking me what I’m planning on doing with it out of college, and I honestly don’t know. Technically, I still have one more year of eligibility left, so I could technically bowl for my grad school (Stanford, Illinois, Penn State, and Florida State all have teams) but I’m leaning towards no. I don’t want to be the kid who just shows up to one practice and goes to a tournament over a kid who worked his ass off and gets left off because I decided I wanted to go one weekend over him. It has gotten less fun each year too– my first year of competition (sophomore year, since I didn’t join the team until the end of the season freshman year) we won a tournament (ironically my first) and while we sucked after that, we still had fun during and after tournaments. Last year, I started to take more control with planning, organizing, running, etc. and we still had a pretty good time, but there was a lot of work involved. This year we have a completely new group of people for the A team (myself and Brian being the only full-time holdovers from last year, let alone two years ago) and we just haven’t gelled to the point to be successful. Which sucks, because we have a lot of individual talent, but we just can’t put it all together at tournaments. One point I note is that our team is terribly professional (i.e. not very excitable), which, I’m sure is an effective tactic to prevent against suffering mental implosions (a.k.a. myself) but it also is really hard to get a good stream of energy to the team. Of course, these guys never did team sports in high school (or even something like intramurals at the college level), so I suppose I have infinitely more experience there. I suppose when you are trained in individual sports (like bowling or golf), you are trained to keep your emotions in check, and not get too excited about anything so everyone merely is doing what they’ve always done, but it can be somewhat of a drag sometimes when everyone walks back shot after shot with a blank expression on their face, and sit in a chair quietly until their next shot.

What a shitty post and a waste of your time. Sorry.

While wandering around The Shoppes today…

Woman 1: “Hey, do you remember… what was the hand cream the gardener said he used?”
Woman 2: “Oh, I think it was something by Ahava.”
Woman 1: “Oh yeah; Ahava. (pause) His hands are so soft.”
Woman 2: “Tell me about it.”

I mean– do they randomly say stuff like this to fuck with people like me who overhear them, or are all those awful television shows based on a (every) true story?

As mentioned a couple months ago, The Price is Right Live! came to Foxwoods last night. Performing a pilgrimage that served two purposes (three if you count the buffet), we took the ninety minute drive to Ledyard to partake in some poker and some Big Wheel spinnin’.

While the poker was spectacularly uneventful (after a roller-coaster day, ended up being down only $25 after 6 hours of play– in large part to some ridiculousness that involved an ace hitting the flop on three separate occasions after I had raised preflop with KK, and managed to get called by everyone and everything every time) we did manage to hit up the buffet (fan-fucking-tastic– even if it costs $18) and got down to registration for the 7 PM showing of TPiR Live (the last showing of the Foxwoods run). We moved into the registration room pretty quickly. Had to fill out some slips, and then were given name tags and sent to the line for seating for the show. Now, keep in mind, we got there at like 5:15, got out of registration at 5:30, and the line still wrapped all the way around to some of the shops (from the doors to the Fox Theater), still ninety minutes before we start. Lucky for us, we managed to get reasonable seats (we were way on the right, but only 5 rows back from the stage). Roger Lodge (of Blind Date fame) hosted the show, and it actually was much closer to the TV show than I thought. Music, cues, games, etc. were all the same, all the way down to the flashing light border when contestants were called down to Contestant’s Row.

Couple nuances. One, they called down four new people before EVERY pricing game (as opposed to four at the beginning and one every game after that). Two, the prizes were much smaller than on the the TV show (expected). Bidding prizes were anywhere from $60-$220, with stage prizes generally totaling $250-$1000, I’d say. Contestants did have a chance to win up to $2,400 playing It’s In The Bag and $2,500 playing Plinko, although they only won $600 (guy stopped even though he would have won $2,400 had he risked it and kept going) and $750 respectively. Only five pricing games were played (as opposed to six on TV) and the Big Wheel was only spun once (after the third game) and involved three people being called randomly to spin it– the person who “won” got $250, and if they got a dollar, would have had a chance to spin for $1000. The Showcase also was different– two people were called down to the stage and shown one showcase (that had a watch, a refrigerator, a massage chair, and trip, and a Honda Fit). Both contestants had to bid separately on the same showcase. The person who came closest without going over won the trip– if someone came within $100 without going over they won the whole kitten caboodle. Of course, both people double overbid in spectacular fashion (ARP was $20,000 and change, one guy bid $21,000+ and some woman bid $26,000+).

Yours truly did not get called down, which is unfortunate, since other than a guffaw with the last two prizes of “It’s In The Bag,” I would have won every game. All in all, it was entertaining, and a passable substitute for being in the TV audience. For now.

The first game, The Race Game. Was a little worried, since it was a pretty hefty woman playing a game that involved running, but she managed to prove doubters wrong by merely walking to the prizes but matching up all four price tags on the first try.

The Big Wheel. Complete with “beep-beep-beep” and everything. No $1.00’s, won by a guy with $.85.

Plinko! I reiterate, my life will not be complete until I am standing atop that board. Played by a big dude whose actual name was “King,” the slots were $500, $0, $250, $100, $50 as opposed to $10,000, $0, $1,000, $500, $100 like on the show. The King pulled down $750, landing in the $250 slot 3 times, $0 once, and failing to get one Plinko chip beforehand.

More awful camera-phone pics in the gallery here.