Why I Love Sports

A quick bit of background. I'm originally from the LA area, spawned from a pair of Army brats that met and fell in love and Texas, and spent my formative years in Tulsa, OK, before moving to St. Louis as an 8yr old whose first baseball card back in Tulsa was a 1986 Topps Ozzie Smith. So, when my parents asked me if we should move to St. Louis or Chicago, I said St. Louis, because that's where Ozzie played.

Needless to say, I was nearly born a Cardinals fan. But, I also grew up in a household that cheered for the Cowboys and Lakers. Yup.

I've lived in St. Louis since 1987, with the exception of a brief jaunt to Chicago to get my undergrad and a wife, and baseball here is a religion. Okay, Catholicism is the dominant religion here, but you know what I mean.

The end of winter here is signaled not by the melting of the snow, but that hallowed day when pitchers and catchers report.

The start of summer is signified not by the end of school, but by the sights and sounds of the local children on their own ball fields, emulating their titanic heroes in red.

Fall is marked not by brown leaves, but by the hunt for Red October, and the dulcet tones of Shannon and Rooney on workplace radios as the Cardinals battle and plunge deeper into the playoffs.

Winter ... winter is a time of death and rebirth as the roster churns and we gaze south, to the gentle shores of Jupiter to give us a sign, anything, that lets us know that it's almost time to begin anew that trek to the next Red October.

Yeah, some folks are also pretty great fans for the Blues and Rams, too, for sure, but they're not woven into the local fabric in the same way as the Cardinals. In a lot of ways, the Cardinals ARE St. Louis.

I think that may be part of the intense animosity the rest of the country holds for the Cardinals and their fans. We really, truly love this team, and I think a lot of fans of other baseball teams view that as a commentary on their own fandom, when it's not. We don't really worry about the way other teams interact with their fans, but we're always surprised when teams are booed in their own stadiums. That just seems ... well, like something a bad fan would do. I dunno. That's just now how we roll.

This is the town that partially grades players by how much hustle they show getting to first base on a walk, and I'm not kidding.

So, anyway, that's the foundation of my love for sports.

Today, yeah, I totally get up for the Rams, even though current ownership hasn't earned it at all. And, fuck, this season is looking very, very grim. I have a feeling, though, the problem will no longer be ours very, very soon when the league and broadcast networks get their wish and the Rams are moved back to LA.

Really, though, I think I'm a bigger fan of the NFL than I am the Rams. I just like football. I think we should solve all international conflicts with games of football.

At least I still have Mizzou football. They're a blast to watch, and the college game is so much more watchable than the pro game, which has become addicted to penalties and theatrics. The college game is filled with risk-taking in the play-calling, and fantastic atmosphere.

But What Does it All Mean?!

See, I take weekends off. I'm working the first 40hour/week job I've ever had. Everything before this has been 50+ with more working weekends than not. Nowadays, I like taking an outdoor jaunt with the wife and boys and dog, then spending the rest of the time gaming on my laptop while watching the Cardinals, Rams, Mizzou, or whatever sporting event, and just losing myself in the relaxation.

I particularly enjoy playing MMOs while watching sports, since I can shift my attention back and forth. The single-player RPGs are much more a night-time activity, after everyone's in bed, and I can focus intently.

Red October

Now, once we're in the playoffs, the laptop is put away, the games shutdown, and the Surface tablet is set on the coffee table to act as a stat companion. It's also when the Khaleesi and I back WAAAY up on shows on the DVR.

In any case, go finish your work day, and enjoy your weekend. I plan to do the same.

 

GO CARDS!!!

 

-Blaine

 

Summer in St. Louis

St. Louis summers are brutal, apparently, to outsiders. Perhaps since my sister and I came here at such a young age, we're accustomed to it, but it's always interesting to see my wife cast off her outdoorswoman persona in favor of air conditioning. Yeah, the 90+ degree heat can be tough, and yeah, the humidity makes you feel like you're walking through a thick cloud of moist hotness all the time (that's not an exaggeration, either), but the intensity of the heat always makes me feel like home has come to me. Nothing reminds me more of being home than St. Louis in the summer time.

I keep expecting the sentimental part of me to fall off, wither, and die, and I kind of wish it would hurry up and happen. At first, it's hard thinking that your days of 'joy w/ no responsibility' are behind you, but then as you age and harden, and it becomes a certainty that you're never going to feel that way again, it gets downright traumatic. I know it's wrong and childish to feel that way, so I work at curbing it and making myself know it's wrong to feel that way, but ... it is there.

Feeling like you've returned home can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, yes, it's a relief to wrap myself in summer's oppressively hot and damp blanket, but on the other, it's hard to contemplate that your most joyful days are behind you.

I'm still trying to find that balance, though. Having a great family, great friends, and great job is helping, I think.

Dexter

Watching Dexter is the best therapy I've ever had. I feel normal when I watch it.

What's most interesting to me is how they deal with the fact that being a childhood trauma survivor isolates the shit out of you as an adult. While Dexter doesn't necessarily deal with it in the best way possible all the time, I relate to him more than I do any other protagonist I think I've ever seen or read. At first, that really bothered me, since ya know, he's a 'crazy serial killer' and all. He's not, though. Calling someone 'crazy' is just an excuse to not take the time to reason out why they are the way they are. If you watch the show, you're probably very comfortable with how he chooses his 'victims.'

In any case, it's a great show, and expertly written.

What About the Next Endless Wars Book?

There are 2-3 chapters in place, and the whole thing is on hold while I work on a record with a couple guys I used to play with back when I was at least semi-relevant in the local scene. It's amazingly refreshing to be working in music again, and I'm amazed that I still have so much to offer. It uses an entirely different part of the brain than writing does, which is very cool.

Depending on the potential permanence of the band, I may work on the two simultaneously, but we'll see. I've not been able to do that before, but I've also historically been an incompetment fuckwit, which is not true anymore.

Cool. Thanks for reading.

What are your summer plans?

-Blaine

Welcome to Not-Summer

I walked outside in my usual summer attire the other night, to grab a quick smoke (yes, I know, I know). I was wearing a t-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and bare feet. I stepped out onto the front step, and BAM! It hit me! It was fucking cold!

This is St. Louis, people, not Chicago. Chicagoans piss and moan about the alleged 'summer' they get up there, but having lived in both places, I can assure you that while they are experts on cold and losing, they don't know shit about heat. St. Louis gets crazy hot. 95+ degrees with 100% humidity is almost the epitome of uncomfortable.

Personally, I love it. I'm used to it, grew up with it, and don't feel compelled to spend a lot of time talking about it.

The cold, though...ugh. There aren't many things in this world that I don't like. Aside from cold, precipitation, dishonesty, Nintendo apologists, religious beliefs, those who are opposed to science, those that identify stringently with a political party, reality television, mustard, cloudy days, modern hip-hop, IGN, lobbyists, Dave Matthews Band, pickles, fans of the band 'Creed,' Ubisoft, Mac users, Windows, Gentoo snobs, people with hygiene issues, Miller beer, the Cubs, Cubs fans (I do like having sex with female Cubs fans, though), wholesomeness, non-organic food, young people, old people, people who don't like Pearl Jam, wheat bread, Faux News, Jack White, Roger Moore as Bond, Internet Explorer, people who pretend to like using Safari, people who refuse to use Firefox, people who pretend Chrome is secure and just as flexible as Firefox, late 90's pussy rock, people who replaced the word "terr'ism" with "comm'nism," people who argue on the internet, people who post long message board posts in an effort to argue on the internet, people who post long message board posts in an effort to argue about politics on the internet, people who post long message board posts filled with 'facts' taken from a Faux News propaganda blast in an effort to argue about politics on the internet, people who think a man's hand is cleaner than his cock, turkey on a sandwich that is not covered in gravy, people who get lazy when building a standard image, people who pay for non-gaming software, people who work hard at furthering a negative stereotype, Activision, subscription fees, being busy all the time, people that accept that this is all there is, and many more, I really don't have too many dislikes.

Chicago was a very difficult place for me to live. Mainly because it's cold 8-9 months out of the year, always cloudy, everyone's amazingly negative, and it's really like living inside a dome. A dome filled with cold and bad weather.

Aside from the miserable weather and environment, it was a damn fun place to go to college. The bar scene is amazing, and the women...my god, the women are beautiful and not nearly as uptight as the girls here in St. Louis. Chicago girls are better looking and much more liberal with their vaginas than St. Louis girls. I was so taken with them, I had to keep one for myself and marry her.

Anyway...

...things have still been crazy, though markedly less so. I'm in the middle of three straight days of no free time, in which I'm occupied all day and all night, and I am working to put a stop to this bullshit. There are few things I hate as much as having plans after a work/school day. If I've been busting my ass all day, I like coming home, hugging my family, climbing into a recliner, watching some sports, playing some games, running around with my son, some dinner, and then I like to molest my wife. I like being able to fall apart for a few hours after rigidly holding it together all day. If that makes you roll your eyes, please go choke on a spiked dildo and die of a hemorrhage while being skull-fucked. I'm old enough now to have preferences, and I'm probably a stronger man than you, anyway, which is why my life is considerably less complicated and compromised than yours.

Last night, it was the boy's b-day, tonight, it's my Java class (which is totally bad-ass), and tomorrow night, it's the Governor's Cup (Rams vs. Chiefs, final preseason game). My in-laws might be coming in town this weekend, which could be fun.

We'll see how the next two days at work are. Work is really the thing that either lets me post or kills it, since that's really the only time I have for posting right now. That'll change, as I get into a rhythm with each week.

My next post is going to be my hilarious email conversation with EA. You're not going to believe the shit that we've been saying to each other. I still think that there are some very cool folks who work there, but their bloated structure really caused some problems between us. I'm going to get that up before the week ends, so make sure you check it out. It's nearly the best 'awful' thing to happen to me.

Gotta head to my next class. Word.

-Blaine

Randomness Organized

Late post, I know.

Drove my wife to the airport at 0'dark 30 and spent the day lounging with my son. We hung out, wrestled around, practiced counting, went to check out my buddy's new baby (though the baby wasn't there, conspicuously), then came back, made some of my homemade organic pizza, chilled and watched some Cards-Cubs (which the good guys, the Cardinals, naturally won), as well as some NBA playoff action. I looked over to him at one point to explain who Lebron was, and little dude was passed out and had burrowed into the couch cushions.

Three is a much better age than two.

So, yeah, a day with just the boy and me was one I didn't want to spend banging away at the keys (even if I did sneak a little Mass Effect here and there.)

So, he's asleep, today's sports action has subsided (how 'bout them Magic?), I've gotten Wrex and Garrus to tell me their innnermost secrets, so now I present to you a blog.

GFW Live and What Should Be
Every time I log onto one of my computers at home, I launch Steam and Xfire, as well as Gmail in a browser. I like to open myself up for a few moments for folks to contact for some action, if there's any to be had. [editors note - that's gaming action, not the type-fwap-type-fwap kind]

What's funny is that if I launch GFW Live, I get a marketplace in which I can spend space bucks on now-fixed Fallout 3 add-ons, and little else. No friends list, no profile editing (aside from an option to delete my profile from this machine), nothin'. I've used it to get exclusive Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 DLC, and that's it.

Now, if I want a slightly more robust GFW Live experience, I can launch Dawn of War 2, and actually access my friends list, but I am resistant to having that run in the background all of the time.

Why are these two seperate apps? One need only look at the excellent Steam service to see what's possible. I am ostensibly running Steam, and it is damn near the only thing for which I use Windows (as I sheepishly type this from my Windows partition.)

I mean, after Apple purchased Xerox's GUI all those years and turned it into the Macintosh OS, Microsoft turned around and shifted from DOS to Windows, which was based on Mac. Microsoft launched the Zune to compete with iPod. Microsoft has some skill when it comes to recognizing good ideas and aping them (and I'll take Windows 7 over Mac OSX any day, though I am an Ubuntu man most of the time.)

So, why not launch something that functions similarly to Steam, but ties into XBL? Something from which I can launch games, see who's online doing what, and coordinate with them? Where's that service that truly supports cross-play between 360 and PC?

I know the lack of actual 360 servers must be an issue, since a lotta PCs are utter shit, and couldn't handle doubling as a server, but tell me you haven't been in a 360 multiplayer game that was being hosted by some dude in Buttfuck, Montana with a connection resembling 56k. You find a way to change hosts and move on.

It just seems to me that one could attract a lot more PC players to the GFW flag if you promised that they would be supplied with plenty of console FPS players to devour mercilessly. And, yes, I happily play CoD4 and CoDWaW on 360.

What really burns my ass is that Microsoft announced that they wouldn't be announcing anything regarding GFW at E3 this year. I don't know who is in charge of GFW over there, but either they suck, or they're being told to suck.

Maybe this is being held back for the next XBox launch?


Glee
I am many things, but one of the things I am, first and foremost, is a man.

I'm not saying I'm one of those terrified-of-my-own-homosexuality mouth-breather fucktard screeching-on-XBL bigots that pretends to hate anything gay. I'm saying that I'm a comfortably married heterosexual that revels in certain masculine traits. I'm a problem solver, I loathe weakness, I yell at TVs when the Cardinals or Rams are on, I pester my wife for free sex, I eye laundry duty suspiciously, I maintain the yard, I'm obsessed with old wars, I scramble for cover when my wife and her friends get emotional, I think beer is awesome, and I idolize George S. Patton.

I'm also a mature adult. You might call me 'old.' I'll turn 31 this July (eesh, if I was an NFL running back, my career would be winding down.) Most bands I listen to are made up of members that are in their mid-40s now. I am shocked every time I think about the fact that Star Trek: the Next Generation is now 22 years old.

HA! You were just shocked by that, too! Fucked up, isn't it?



As you can see, I have excellent taste in television.

Almost everything I watch is science-fiction, aside from a smattering of 'about a writer' stuff, Law & Order, and anything fictional about a catering crew (I was restaurant manager/catering manager for a LOOONG time).

So, when my wife, who has 75% excellent taste in TV, suggested we watch Glee, I was curious. All I knew is that it had Jane Lynch, who is the funniest woman ever, so I was in.

Remember, I knew NOTHING about it. I am fucking GRITTY, man, GRITTY, and then I watched this:



I think I hated it. I'm not sure.

I mean, I LOVE music, in all its forms. I'm just as likely to listen to a Pearl Jam album as I am the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack as I am the latest Uematsu-san OSV as I am the latest Nelly (all he has is a .net? Really?) record as I am the soundtrack to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.

This shit, though...this shit was unlike anything I'd been exposed to. I really felt like high school glee club nerds had written it, which I suppose is to capitalize on that High School Musical series of films. I've not seen them, but I've gathered from my wife and sister-in-law that they are fairly popular with tweens.

What's interesting, though, is that there is a teacher who is married in the show, and the portrayal of his marriage is so...off. Any married man who's watched television can tell ya that no one quite gets it right, in terms of portrayal, kinda like the birthing process, but that there are some reasonably okay approximations.

The marriage shown here is a hypo-realistic horny tween girl's fantastical mental diarrhea. I don't think it's supposed to be realistic, but the problem that creates is that I don't give a flying fuck what really happens in that relationship.

Anyway, I am so clearly not the audience for this show, but I was shocked that my wife LOVED it. Well, no.

Now that I think about it, she eats this kinda shit up. I love her dearly, but she's still into the whole high school thing, and still hangs with a lotta her high school friends, whereas I picked a select few with which to maintain contact. Any high school story that doesn't involve hardcore realistic drug use or fucking induces an eyeroll from me.

STOP
I wanna talk more about my PC Mass Effect playthrough, but I'll save it for another day, as this has probably gone on a bit long-ish.

Sorry for the late post, but I was really enjoying some 'man' time with my son. I'll be back at my regular time later today.

-Blaine

Bah.

Got some difficult things outta the way, as far as ending the semester goes, and it's only Tuesday, so I'm pretty pleased. I don't have a lotta time today, so here's some rapid fire stuff for ya:

- went to the Cardinals game last night, and Rick Ankiel had an incredibly scary moment. He was running for a flyball in left-center and then crashed head-first into the wall. At that moment, his entire body went "rag-doll" and he collapsed to the ground, motionless. As they were carrying him off in a stretcher, he did manage to give a thumbs-up. He's going to be fine, but it scared the shit outta me. He and I are about the same age, and watching him overcome the things he's overcome has always been inspirational to me. I really want to see him come out okay and kick some serious ass the rest of his career. Also, that last link is to Bryan Burwell's column about the incident, and I suggest reading it. He's been my favorite sportswriter for a while, and this is another great example of why.

- played some Quake Live at work today. I had been meaning to do this for a while, but I'm fairly conditioned to work while I'm at work, and play while I'm not. I rarely cross the two, but I really needed to blow off some steam, so I went ahead and fired that bad boy up. After I finished all my initial work, I played for about a half hour, and had a great time. My work machine is a piece of shit, and while it ran a little choppy, it still ran. The other browser-based shooter game that's in beta that I'm on (and cannot discuss) did not run, but I also haven't really looked at why yet. Anyway, Quake Live is great fun, it's in open beta, so hop in and have fun!

- it's my wife's birthday today! She's only 27, and I'm now hearing her bitch about her age for the first time. Kinda interesting. I've been doing it since I was 16 or so, and I'm 30 now, so I actually have an excuse to bitch. She was remarking to me that she's "not jailbait anymore, and that sucks." I'm sure I said something crude in reply, but I don't remember. Either way, it's her birthday, and we'll be celebrating it tonight, which I'm looking forward to. I got her the new Sookie book and True Blood on Blu-Ray.

- I have kind of a quiet day tomorrow, but we'll be going out with my folks tomorrow night for dinner (for the Lady's b-day.) I have a mega-giant Statistics exam on Thursday, followed by some mid-day beta testing, followed by a little day-job work, then I'm hanging out with my son while my wife works, then John and I are going out for his birthday, and seeing the new Star Trek @ 11PM on DLP. RAWK. Friday, I work a bit, then this weekend is devoted to studying for finals, and blowing off steam through either sex or gaming.

- After 5/13, I'm done with finals, and then it's time to focus on day-job work and personal project work. I think I'm going to first turn my attention to pushing the 10-year old first novel out the door, so that I can focus on something new this summer. There's also the question of what kind of relationship E3 and I are going to have at the beginning of June. We'll see. I'm doing some coursework over the summer, though that only lasts 8 weeks or so. I'd really like to do a mod for Quake Wars this summer, or maybe Neverwinter Nights, but we'll see. I keep saying I'm gonna teach myself Python, and this summer is a great chance to do exactly that. Again, we'll see.

So, I'm getting ready to head out for the day. How's everyone else's week going? Any crazy plans for the summer?

Also, thanks for the linkage, Laurance! Go check out his blog, everyone! Much more quality shit than you'll find here!

-Blaine