It strikes me as wrong...

...that I should have to clean a vacuum cleaner in order to keep it in working order.

I don't know if that falls under "ironic" or "counter-intuitive" or what, I just know it's annoying.

This made me feel good about myself

I just looked at Rotten Tomatoes "100 Worst Movies of the Last 10 Years" and I've only seen three of them, and only paid to see one of them- and I'm pretty sure that I confused it with another movie when I was buying the ticket.

I am not, however, going to name any of the movies- nice try!

The Poor Guy

It's World Series time...the Red Sox didn't make it and the Yankees did, so clearly, I'm pulling for the Phillies. In that sense, I don't have it too badly, my choices are clear.

And there's Tommy.

I work with Tommy.

Tommy and I talk baseball a lot.

Tommy is a really nice guy and a really big Mets fan.

Tommy has a problem.

Does he root for the hated crosstown rivals?

Or does he root for the hated National League rival?

Well, luckily, in addition to being a nice guy, Tommy is a smart guy, so let me say it for him:

GO PHILLIES!!

Soccer As It Should Be

I played "real" (outdoor) soccer today for the first time in, I'm guessing, 2-3 years thanks to randomly running into one of my indoor soccer acquaintances a few days ago.

I'd almost forgotten how much superior it is to indoor "soccer." And, since this is my blog and everything is "about me," I have to say that I did well. I am in no shape to running around like a crazy person, so the ball did most of the work, but I was happy to see that my touch, both in terms of close control and being able to pick out teammates with passes both short and long, was still there.

What a tease, though, it was the last outdoor pick-up game of the season due to the impending changing of the clocks that will cause it to be dark out at, oh, noon, here in the hinterlands of New England. For what it's worth, though, playing soccer in the dying afternoon light of a crisp fall day is one of those simple pleasures that cannot be overrated.

Oh well, indoor soccer starts back up in the first week of November, so I'll not only be able to work myself back into shape, but I'll also have something to do 1-3 nights a week.

An Accidental Discovery

By not watching what I was doing I just set my microwave for...3:80.

Needless to say, I was to scared to actually press the "start" button for fear of what might happen.

Explosion?

Time machine?

Miniaturization?

Gigantism?

Sterility?

Super power?

I think all that remains now is to trick somebody else into doing it first...

It went down to the final half of the final match...

but the New England Revolution are in the playoffs for the 8th straight year!

It's all "gravy" after this!

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

Do you ever wonder why you like the things that you do? I actually spend a lot of time mulling this over, as well as a related questions- If I like all of these things, surely they must have something in common? And, if that is the case, surely there must be a concrete connection between them? Well, as it turns out, there is at least one case where there is a tangible and specific relationship between some things I like.

If you've spent any amount of time reading this blog, or if you've even just read through my profile, you may have picked up on the following.

• When it comes to literature, I like "hard-boiled" crime fiction. The work of Dashiell Hammett, for example.
• When it comes to film, I like "spaghetti westerns" (especially those featuring Clint Eastwood) and samurai films (especially those by Akira Kurosawa and/or featuring Toshiro Mifune).

Well, check this out:

Hammet's novel Red Harvest is considered by some* to have been the inspiration for Kurosawa's film Yojimbo, which, in turn was the direct basis for Serigo Leone's A Fist Full of Dollars, starring Eastwood. This isn't just the speculation of critics and scholars either, both Kurosawa (privately) and Leone (publicly) acknowledged the connections.

So, the connection between these particular things that I like is concrete, but what do they have in common? They all deal with "moral certainty" of the kind discussed by Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics, not in the legal sense. Why I'm so intrigued by moral certainty is a whole different question...

*Others contend it was based on the novel, The Glass Key, but that's by Hammett too, so my the argument remains valid.

Is this ironic?

The people I want most to leave me alone, won't.

The people I'd most like be in touch with me aren't/can't/don't or are to a lesser degree than I'd like them to be.

Huh.

Also, I need a haircut.