“I liked to sit up front and ride the fast ones all day long, I liked it when they brushed right up against the buildings north of the Loop and I especially liked it when the buildings dropped away into that bombed-out squalor a little farther north in which people (through windows you’d see a person in his dirty naked kitchen spooning soup toward his face, or twelve children on their bellies on the floor, watching television, but instantly they were gone, wiped away by a movie billboard of a woman winking and touching her upper lip deftly with her tongue, and she in turn erased by a—wham, the noise and dark dropped down around your head—tunnel) actually lived.”

Your four-point guide revealed to me some inner truth to me about my own writing, in that my penchant for lengthy, dependent-clause-dependent and em-dash-laden sentences — the kind I’m writing right now, with as much ease as a Greg Maddux painting the corners — are in fact not only a form of digression but of procrastination, delaying my arrival at the point of whatever it is I’m saying, and yet prolonging my happiness for imparting this particularly tangential piece of information which reveals my deeper understanding of the topic at hand (poor Cliff can attest to this, having edited some of my Baseball Prospectus 2007 ramblings).

Why hurry to Point B when the meandering road between there and Point A is so damn fun?

Tantrum fest? Boy, even though Hal’s got the video backing up his claim to the crown, I’ve gotta go with Lou. Then again, if it was a competition, I think Billy Martin would be willing to keep ranting until his eyeballs fell out of his sockets.

10: “I’m glad I’m not the only one who googles old girlfriends.”

I’m sure you’re not, spudrph, but in my case I was googling a girl who was as close to being my girlfriend as I am to being able to fly.

Also, in case anybody is wondering about the lack of posts the last few days: I’m hoping to provide the conclusion to this creaky saga of happiness, platoons, tantrums, substance abuse, and the subversion of the American democratic process sometime this weekend. My time’s been drained this week by my desire to actually finish a short piece of fiction I am working on. OK, and laziness. Always laziness.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who googles old girlfriends.

2. I have slept under my desk at work. There is a technique. of course if you have an office with a door, just sleep on top of the desk.

Who would win a head-to-head tantrum fest?
Hal McRae. Lou Pinella. Billy Martin.

2: Napping at work is a tough one. Someone should come up with clear fake eyelids. I’d buy them, at Walgreens if necessary.

3: That’s an interesting (and disillusioning) theory about inside-the-parkers, Cliff. I guess I haven’t seen enough of ‘em to really weigh in, but it seems that the one’s I’m most familiar with, at Fenway, hinge most often on the wild bounces that the jagged fencing sometimes produce. It’d be hard to assign an error for those liners that pinball around down by the Pesky Pole before scooting out toward centerfield.

(And on that note, if all inside-the-parkers in the last few decades had been error-fueled–and so nullified–then Bill Buckner wouldn’t have had one of the more improbable moments of Fenway redemption, tallying his last career home run in what must have been the most time-consuming inside-the-park job ever.)

Sincerely,

Tucker
http://auctions.yahoo.com/i:1979%20TOPPS%20TUCKER%20ASHFORD%20NRMT:237857032