So go goes the song, naturally we bought popcorn.

Saw my first game at the new Citizen’s Bank Ballpark Sunday with my brother and Dad. A true, old-fashioned American Father’s Day. What a great place! Open, airy, tons of vistas, lots of places to congregate and watch the game, not too many choke points – mid Ashburn Alley is a conspicuous one – comfortable seating, a beautiful field, the list goes on and on ad infinitum.

To add to the happiness, it was a perfect day and the game had all the elements of perfection. Thome hit two out of the park and Rollins hit the first inside the park homer in the new ballpark’s short history.

This weekend it’s the Phils in Fenway, I don’t know who to cheer for but I’m wearing my Red Sox hat so I don’t get beaten repeatedly by rabid Boston fans. What a great summer!

They did it!

For the first time, a private manned craft has gone into space. This is a mind-boggling achievement. China’s launch last year was impressive but to think that a group of people got together and built a reusable spacecraft is positively amazing.

Congratulations to the crew and workers of Scaled Composites. Good luck to the other teams as they ready for their attempts. I can’t wait for the X-Prize flight.

This is a big week if you’re a accumulator of esoteric knowledge like me. Monday, of course, was Flag Day. I always liked Flag Day. Never quite understood the point but enjoyed it nonetheless. Turns out it’s the anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as our national ensign in 1777.

Today is Bloomsday. That means absolutely nothing to anyone who doesn’t know something about James Joyce and probably still means nothing to many who have actually read Ulysses. I’m reading through the book now and I think this may be one of those instances where something is so deeply obscure that the self-appointed intelligentsia can’t bring themselves to admit it makes no sense and is incomprehensible so they instead enshrine it as genius. Like I said, I’m just thinking. I’ll reserve judgement until after I’ve read the book.

In any case, this is the 100th anniversary of the day Joyce met his wife and the character, Leopold Bloom, took a walk through Dublin. My favorite is the other main character, Stephen Dedalus, who spends his day wandering aimlessly and getting drunk. Suits me. I’d say a pint of Guinness is in my future this evening.

Finally, Saturday is Juneteenth, the anniversary of freedom for slaves in Galveston, TX. Why it took until June 19, 1865 for Federal troops to enter Galveston and inform the local slaves that they had been technically free since January 1, 1863 I don’t know but I’ll chalk it up to the war.

Ah, esoterica. Thou life-defining harlot.

The Federal Government and the Post Office is closed today for Mr. Reagan’s funeral. Presumably that means that enormous numbers of public employees get a paid day off.

How do you think Mr. Reagan would feel knowing those legions were taking a vacation on the public dime?

Some legacy.

Am I ever glad they sacked that sappy twerp who made the first two films and hired someone with some edge for the third. The Prisoner of Azkaban is ten times better than the first two Potter flicks combined – and it’s got Gary Oldman which improves anything ever put upon the screen. I fear for the next installment though, three kids that are obviously fifteen years old or older trying to play thirteen year olds just won’t fly. It won’t be the same without them.

Dark, fast paced, truly suspenseful: the book was my favorite of them all. The first book neccesarily delved into back story, examined the wonder of the world and set the stage. The second suffered from the typical sophmore slump, uninteresting, unengaging and nearly annoying. The third went on a tear, bringing out more of the secrets of the past and tearing into the story without slowing down for too much exposition – the fourth and fifth books have, so far, continued this trend.

The flicks have been much the same. The first dwelled on wonder, exposed the world and had lots of fun with scenery. The second was mostly boring, but the third – man, that’s what Harry Potter is all about. You know a film borders on greatness when even the end credits are worth sitting through.

From Mike Toole

Anyone who, on the subway or bus, plays a game on their cell phone, a Game Boy, etc. without turning the sound off, will have the item confiscated and replaced with a monkey (who is also mute) that will only be trained to punch you in the groin.

At the beginning of this year I thought to myself, “Now, old boy, is the time you ought to buy a woolen suit. Surely at your advanced age there will be funerals to go to if not weddings and baptisms. Wouldn’t you like to look sharp for these ceremonies that mark the passage of time?” Damn fine idea. Just wait until I accumulate some dough.

That day hasn’t come.

Instead I’ve spent every spare penny on travelling. I’d reckon that since the beginning of the year I haven’t spent more than half a dozen weekends at home. To tell the truth, that suits me fine. Things are getting boring. The spinning hamster wheel of doom is closing in. Time to do something other than sit ’round the domicile and get buckled out of my skull. No. Much better to sit ’round someone else’s domicile and get buckled out of my skull. Better still to find some esoteric far away place to get buckled out of my skull.

And so the spinning hamster wheel of joy begins anew: Philly, Philly, Boston. By then it’s the Fourth of July if you can believe that. My God, where has the time gone?

I’m not sure whether to sing Invader Zim’s Doom Song or Ren and Stimpy’s Happy Happy, Joy Joy.

A moment of zen, courtesy of Primal Purge

Approximately one hour after consuming [plantains], you have the ability to shit through a screen door at forty paces. Which, you know, could be an excellent power if you’re inspired to become a Superhero.

They’re also exactly what you’d expect the color green to taste like.

That was some kind of eventful weekend, eh?

I spent my time in the damned cold mud playing at Royal Air Force circa 1940. A damn fine time. I slept under the wing of a Spitfire, clambered about on a Hurricane, drank entirely too much of a vast assortment of liquors, listened to some great tunes, played on a perfect thirty foot mudslide, helped push two aircraft out to the flight line, and won a raffle. Not bad for a couple of days and nights.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

Ronald Reagan died – Found out at about 630 or so on Saturday evening as we were all gathered in our finest for the Mess. I was thunderstruck, felt like I needed to sit down but fortunately the port was flowing so I was able to carry on.

I’ve never been able to properly sort out my feelings about Ronald Reagan; just as I suspect I’ll never be able to properly sort out my feelings about George W Bush. If you get the big thing right is it OK to get many of the little things wrong? In the grand scheme of things I think it is, but I am a very black and white kind of guy and doing the wrong thing for the right reason never sits well with me. It is much better when you can do the right thing for the right reason: building up our defenses during the Cold War to defeat the Soviets or invading Iraq to get a beachhead in that wicked hive of scum and villainy we call the Middle East.

Smarty Jones lost at Belmont – Found this out about 10 minutes before I found out about President Reagan. Talk about a one-two punch to the gut. Guess Bucks County ain’t so concerned that Smarty’s not a Philly horse now. Oh, he’s a Philly horse alright. Only a Philadelphia horse – or sports team – could rule the roost right up to the last game before the championship and botch it entirely. Flyers? Eagles? Anyone?

D-Day happened – While we were all enjoying the cold, rainy, March like atmosphere I remarked, “Fine English weather we’re having.” Then it struck me, God was just reminding us all of the day. I read an article today about the 50th anniversary commemoration of D-Day. In 1994 the weather was hell right up to the day itself, then things broke a little just in time for the ceremonies: same as it was in 1944, and 2004. Hurrah for the men of June 6 and for all the men on all the D-Days in that war and every other. As a nation we have been blessed beyond measure with generation after generation of men – and now women – who will go anywhere, anytime and at any price to defend our “national pasttime” of freedom.

I wonder if, in 60 years, the Iraqi people will be so settled in their freedom that they too will feel free to desecrate the graves of their liberators? It may be that the very acts of French vandalism and hubris are the greatest monument that could possibly be devised for the men who died to set them free. In 60 years will there be some little cafe in the Iraqi desert near the Kuwaiti border where the proprietors happily serve the local hooch for free to veterans of the Coalition forces on every March 20th? If so, the proof is in the pudding.

This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.

We are becoming a crazed culture of cheap criticism and pious moralizing, and in our self-absorption may well lose what we inherited from a better generation. Our groaning and hissing elite indulges itself, while better but forgotten folks risk their lives on our behalf in pretty horrible places.

Ain’t it the truth? I have long felt that Iraqis need a George Washington. Now, I am beginning to think we do too.

I was going to make some mention of today in reference to D-Day. 60 years ago today, soldiers were loaded into transport ships and paratroopers were kitted up and ready to load the planes when the order came through postponing the operation to June 6. All well and good, but I had no idea June 4 was such a momentous day for other reasons:

June 4, 1940 – The final boatload of troops left the beaches of Dunkirk en route to England ending Operation Dynamo. 338,226 soldiers were brought away from the Continent by a motley fleet of sailing vessels and survived to train and fight for the June day four years later when they’d return, reinforced, to liberate the Continent they were forced to leave.

June 4, 1942 – Aircraft of the carriers Enterprise and Yorktown found the Japanese fleet attacking Midway Island in the midst of refueling and rearming their air squadrons and rapidly disabled three of four Japanese carriers. This action smashed Japanese naval power in the eastern Pacific and put the Japanese on the defensive where they were to remain for the rest of the war. Oddly enough, this great American victory came almost six months to the day after Pearl Harbor – making Admiral Yamamoto eerily prophetic.

June 4, 1944 – While men and supplies were readied in southern England for the imminent cross-Channel invasion men of the Allied 5th Army entered the Eternal City – Rome – as the German army retreated northward. News of Rome’s fall was entirely overshadowed by the biggest news story of the century two days later.

June 4, 1989 – Pro-Democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, were fired upon by Chinese army troops. Thousands died and whatever hope there was for the anti-Communist “Velvet Revolution” to spread east was wiped out.

What a day.

I love to screw with time. Even as I write this on a Friday morning web-log-ing tear I am already planning to make you think I wrote it Thursday. I feel bad for being so utterly useless this week so I’m padding things a little. Hey, if girls can fool us with padding so can I. Dammit.

Why was I so useless this week? I think getting things gathered together for this weekend’s silliness coupled with trying to recover from last weekend’s silliness is part of it. I also blew a whole evening tinkering with my new iPod and trying to bend iTunes to my iron will. One other semi-interesting thing happened this week but I’m not saying nothing. I have a reason.

In fact, the reason is this. After years and years of annoyance I have come to the realization that talking about great good things makes them go bad. I have a multitude of examples. I can think, off hand, of at least three women with whom things were progressing nicely until I allowed myself to think things were progressing nicely and to mention them in conversation at which time things went entirely to hell. The same goes for jobs, vacations, new toys, etc. If I talk about them, they get screwed. And so it goes.

So, I’ll talk about useless things. I’ll bitch and whine and moan. I’ll tell you about the ghosts of drunks past and the echoes of drunks to come but I won’t talk about anything that really matters. Amazing what getting old will do to you. Wisdom and patience, I pray for you every day.

But on to today’s (yesterday’s) rant. I sat through a goddamned green light this morning because some jackass decided to be nice and let a dude make a left turn out of a gas station and across three lanes of traffic at an intersection. Call me crazy but: 1) can’t you tell whether dude has any chance of making the turn and then determine whether or not to wait for him? and 2) don’t you notice there are eleventy-hundred people behind you who are unimpressed by your samaratin ways and just want to get where they’re going? Jackass.

Did someone declare June 4 the day of the yard sale and forget to send me a memo? All the way down the street to work I rode behind a gaggle of old and crippled and morbidly obese bargain hunters doing half a mile an hour while drooling on their steering wheel and weaving calmly down the street ogling the unbroken line of yard sales. Useless, annoying, idiotic, goddamned Americans. I love my country. It’s the people in it I can’t stand.

I have often toyed with having my very own moment of Zen feature on this site but always got hung up with the need to make it my very own patentable variation of angry Zen.

Bollocks to that. I prefer funny to angry although I do believe strongly in angry Zen. So, I’ll throw up some things to contemplate from time to time: some funny, some angry. You decide.

Here’s today’s installment:

No longer need mankind open the door to get ice. The ice comes to you. . . And here is a switch for the light, in case you wake in the middle of the night with a desire for clean, fresh ice, which you will probably dump in your pants because you are sleepwalking.

Now, if that’s not something to meditate on, I don’t know what is.

Another Memorial Day come and gone. I didn’t reflect too much on sacrifice – I was too busy trying to keep up with my obligations – but I did meet a number of very cool vets who had some amazing stories to tell. One fella was walking around with his son and came upon a small display with a BAR. “I carried one of those for three years,” he said and told his son to pick it up. He almost started laughing as his son staggered under the weight.

Another guy went to Canada to enlist in the RCAF and was bombing the Germans from Lancasters before the United States even entered the war. He wore an Air Force uniform with his silver US wings on his left breast and his RCAF wings on his right breast.

It’s mindboggling what people have done, and are still doing, for this country of ours. It’s more than a little humbling. In the movie Ike last night on A&E, Eisenhower says something to the effect that he can’t ask the men to die for people they’ve never met but he can ask them to die for freedom and the fact they’re willing to do so makes them heroes. In the end, isn’t that it precisely? Americans are very rarely threatened. In fact, apart from internal rebellion we’ve only actually been attacked once in our history, but we have warred for others countless times; not always out of disinterested motives of course but always mindful of the interests of others backed by our own.

To the proud few who have stood up for the right of all humans to be free and to aspire to the dizzying levels of freedom and prosperity we citizens have achieved I offer my thanks – and my deepest admiration.