• Say it isn’t so!

    The forecast for Hades today calls for a high around twenty-eight degrees, with a chance for light snow flurries by evening. Those of you coming across the river (Styx) this morning need to watch out for some ice on the bridges. Otherwise, it should be a pleasant change from all of the hot weather we’ve been having over the last few millennia.

    I had an appointment with a chiropractor.

    To many this is not a big deal. To me, it’s like swearing that the Earth is really flat, taking two shots of snake oil for my tired bones, giving Elvis a call to see what he’s been up to lately, and laying down for some R & R on my memory foam bed.

    The actual appointment was everything I expected it would be. There was more snap crackle and pop than a cereal commercial. The session was more WWF than MD. There are precious few parts of your body that were designed with that kind of cracking and popping in mind; and your spine, that thing that makes a good 95 % of your motor function possible, is not one of them. Me? I like motor function.

    To finish me off he put me in a solid head lock, tensed up the muscles in his forearms, and said “don’t worry, just relax.” Faster than you could ask “have you ever killed someone?” my neck did some serious cracking. The doctor misread the look in my eyes as euphoria ala pain relief. He asked, “How do you feel?” He was expecting me to say I felt better. “Lucky to be alive,” I replied.

    O.K., O.K., that was the fantasy response. That’s what I would have said if I were feeling frisky yesterday morning. Instead I just lamely asked, “Is that it?” “Yes” he replied, “no more torture for today.”

    That has to wait for my follow-up visit on Friday.

  • On the radio this morning

    This entry started with a comment made on NPR. Frank Deford appears on NPR once a week to provide a piece of commentary on sports. This week he made an appearance in the studio for a brief interview in which he discussed the sporting events he’s following this summer. Near the end of the interview he was asked if he was following baseball, and he replied that he was following Baltimore, because he’s from Baltimore. He then made the statement which started all of this. I don’t recall the exact words that he used, but the gist was that he didn’t understand folks that moved to a different city and switched allegiances to the new, local team. He said something else that included the word “loyalty”, but my mind had switched channels at that point.

    What’s wrong with rooting for the local team?

    Folks (mostly older folks) like to talk about what is wrong with America today. Maybe it’s that everyone has a skewed sense of “home.” Maybe this “loyalty” to where we used to live is preventing us from making any emotional commitment to where we live now. I’ll bet it makes it a lot easier to ignore the problems around us if we have no more connection to our residence than a place to pick up the mail.

    We don’t have to forget where we come from to embrace our surroundings. We don’t have to give up rooting for our old favorites. Even if they won’t catch the Yankees this year, I’m still rooting for the Red Sox. (Yes, even if the Nomar deal was the worst thing to happen since The Curse.)

    Maybe, just maybe, if we can find a little room in our hearts for the local team we’ll all feel a little more at home.

  • Meeting thy maker

    If you have ever worked in a mirrored office building, you know that birds have a good deal of trouble telling whether it’s live or Memorex.

    You doubt me? Check out the Fatal Light Awareness Program. They are serious people addressing a serious problem.