Think of the Fine Times, Pushing Down the Better Few

Once upon a time I used to think that this song was a lot of corny fun. Damien and I were far enough away from the early 90s when we were 14 that we thought that the video full of 90s fashions and sideways hats was an amazing piece of retro pop culture.

When Brian, Konrad, Pat (and Mark), and I moved into our first house in our second year of university it was a period of transition for all of us. We knew we were being thrust into adulthood and weren't kids anymore, but we also didn't realize that we were still behaving like teenagers for the whole year. Actual responsibilities were still a ways off from us, so we were free to fuck around a lot and (mostly) not worry about it.

Brian and I were attached at the hip that year and did everything together. He had brought his mom's old Ford Windstar, affectionately called "Mama Link" by all of us because of its "LA LINK" license plate, and we drove all over Guelph in it. We were usually pretty high while doing so. Using Brian's ancient iTrip to hook our ipods up to the stereo, we would try to put on the most ridiculous music we could to make each other laugh. I have many memories of us listening to "Unbelievable" while driving at night in a big minivan.

Now I'm able to recognize that "Unbelievable" is really great song and I like it unabashedly. Maybe I always did on some level. It's also nice to think of how good it is now, while remembering the life it used to have with us in 2008.

I Tell Myself

Somewhere in an alternate universe, this post would be about how Greetings and Salutations is the last good Less Than Jake release because it seems to me like the last time that Vinnie was really driving the creative direction of the band.



Instead, it's about how this song has been sticking the side of my head while I think about finishing a giant pile of work. In the past I would have been anxious and stressed about whether or not I would finish everything, and what that would that would mean for my future, but I have better work habits and a better perspective on school now. I know I'll get everything done and I know it will turn out okay at minimum. I'm still stressed and anxious, but I start working earlier and have better ideas about how to organize myself. Only took me like 10 years!

Even though every line of the lyrics doesn't necessary hit perfectly, the whole thing encapsulates me slumming around my office in Zubaz pants and trying to work through some ideas.

Let's Keep It That Way

A strange thing that I often do is try to convince myself that I'm starting to care less about baseball, my favourite sport, which I talk about constantly. This usually happens when I'm feeling burnt out at the end of a disappointing Jays season and, understandably, do follow each game with the same zeal that I do in April. Maybe I feel guilty about not watching every game? On some level, I definitely do think that it is my duty as a fan to give each Teoscar Hernandez at-bat my full attention, which is ludicrous.

These fits of self-inflicted paranoia about my devotion to the sport are always brief and I feel a huge wave of relief once I realize I'm not a piece of shit or, worse, a bad fan.

During the off-season, I try to fill the void left by the World Series ending by consuming baseball in different ways. In general, this means either playing as a fictional shortstop named Tony Balony in MLB The Show 14, which I haven't done much lately, or reading books about baseball.

My love of baseball literature is something I inherited from my dad, who gave me his copy of The Summer Game by Roger Angell to read as a preteen. This then developed into a fascinated with Jim Bouton's Ball Four, Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, and, doing his nationalistic duty, W.P. Kinsella.

Recently I've had a hard time reading for pleasure since reading for school takes up basically all of my time. After struggling through a D.H. Lawrence book, I decided to read something about baseball to get my reading habits back on track and picked The Iowa Baseball Confederacy off of my shelf. In high school, I did a project on Shoeless Joe well before I saw Field of Dreams, and then read the short story collection The Thrill of the Grass (one of the all-time best book titles) a little later, so I was well-acquainted with the Kinsella oeuvre. I was surprised then to find this book appealing to me much more than his previous work. Already, I'm getting that deep feeling and can tell that this will be my favourite of his and that rush of relief that I am in fact still very invested in baseball washed over me.

"I saw my grandparents only once. When I was about eight my father and I drove to spring training in Florida. I saw Curt Simmons, Robin Roberts, Allie Reynolds, Vinegar Bend Mizell, Yogi Berra, and my grandparents.

They lived in a very small house on a side street in Miami. There was an orange tree in the backyard. The house and my grandparents smelled of Listerine, peppermint, and Absorbine, Jr.

They left Iowa irrevocably behind them when they retired. They never returned for a visit, never invited anyone from Onamata to visit them, including us, I suspect, although my father never said so.

What he did say, on the drive back, as if he was trying to explain something to me but was not exactly sure what, was, "We are haunted by our past, which clings to us like strange, mystical lint. Of the past, the mystery of family is the most beautiful, the saddest, the most inescapable of all. Those to whom we are joined by the ethereal ties of blood are often those about whom we know the least." I think he was talking about much more than my grandparents.

I listened to my father's tales with half an ear. I knew he was obsessed with something no one else cared about. He wrote letters, articles, talked of a book, which he eventually wrote. Complained. I didn't pay half the attention I should have. Children, thinking themselves immortal, assume everyone else is too. He died when I was a few months short of seventeen."

W.P. Kinsella. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Don Mills: Totem Books, 1987: 25-26.

Flat on My Face, I See What It Takes

I'm now entering the heavy part of my first semester as a PhD student. So far the semester has been a lot f work, but relatively smooth sailing. There have been stressful periods, but my work habits have improved significantly since I was an undergrad student and I've gotten better at planning out my work and (mostly) getting going on things ahead of time.

Now that the major work is starting to come to a head though, it feels like I'm running up against the limits of that. It always feels like there's more work to do than there is time to do it. I know that's not the case, because it will get done one way or another, but it does feel that way. There's some huge dark spectre of yet-to-be-completed academic standing behind me and I'm always looking out at nothing in front of me, trying to acknowledge it without turning around.

It's hard to talk about how much work I have to do without sounding like an entitled shit. "Oh, a PhD student has stressful deadlines? Not shit." I know that, but it feels like there's a stress valve on the side of my neck that needs to be released, or else my hair will start falling out.

The school tells us all to not be too hard on ourselves, to think of mental health strategies, and to take breaks from work so we don't overwork ourselves. But when you take a break, all the work you weren't doing still is sitting there? How do finish all the work that's assigned and take breaks to stay sane when there's already more work assigned than you can finish?

It's starting to feel like old times again, where I'm laughing at the insurmountable mountain of writing and research I have to do and getting pissed at myself for not being able to climb it. When I look back to writing all morning in the Guelph library to finish something due that afternoon, or staying up all night in my office, I think about them fondly, but boy did they ever feel like shit at the time. Maybe I'm subconsciously addicted to this feeling, and that's why I keep doing it.

Trying hard to remember that I always find a way to get things done and they'll turn out okay. Hard to think that way now though.