Things that don't matter

I once heard of a reporter who was sent to the local house of ill repute to get the, um, inside story about what was really going on in there. The employees were suspicious and refused him service. And, yes, he became known as "The Guy Who Couldn't Get Laid in a Whorehouse With Someone Else's Money."

Great domain name: mamasaidgetajob.com. Mama perhaps should have added, "But not in the telecom industry."

Baseball. Go on strike. I don't give a flying fuck. I was worried for a bit that I had been an enabler for major-league baseball, having attended several games since the Strike to End All Strikes in '94, then I realized that I had not paid for admission to any of those games. The last game for which I purchased a ticket with my own money: Dodgers at Reds, Aug. 11, 1994. The last game before the Big Strike. A guy named Flea and I bought $3.50 tickets for the "Top Six" -- the upper reaches of Riverfront Stadium -- and made our way down, eventually winding up behind home plate. We heckled Brett Butler mercilessly. I'm not sure why. Baseball has received my interest as a sports fan since then, but not a penny of my money. I feel a little bit better.

I'm ditching the public-transportation experiment. Turns out I really don't have time to save the planet. On a bad day, my Very Long Commute runs 50 minutes, maybe an hour. Taking the train, I guarantee myself a trip of an hour and 20 minutes, and that's if my arrival at the train station coincides with that of the train. The next expansion brings the northern terminus of the line to within 12 miles of my house, instead of 18. Maybe I'll try again then.