not enough? Try this one!

NOTE TO JOHN: 1. Get a life. 2. Get a girlfriend. 3. Stay off the internets.

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just one more. but this is it.

Colorado just dropped OU 27-24 in Boulder in a Big 12 opener. OU was ranked #3 in the country.

Once upon a time, I was a big sports fan and especially a big Sooners fan. I lived and breathed this stuff on the weekend.

OU-Texas was especially “big” for me. I went down to Dallas many years and participated in big watch parties other years.

The past few years, not so much.

I decided about the time I sobered up that I just couldn’t and wouldn’t let 22 youngsters I’d never met ruin my weekend and sometimes ruin a whole week.

Since then, I’ve been more objective, I’ve pulled back and been given a different perspective.

Tonight, all of Oklahoma City, even the Notre Dame fans and the OSU fans and the Texas fans, will be just a little “down.”

Too bad. Tonight’s the 12X12 OVAC show and it should be absolutely wonderful. Trust me, there as well as at RedPrime, the official afterparty, and the whole lot of bars and nightspots in town will all be just a little less than if OU had won.

Oddly, if OU had won, it would not have made things appreciably better in the sense that no one would be out of their mind party down who isn’t that way anyway. For OU to win is kind of expected, so there isn’t much in the way of celebration, especially amongst fans of alternate alma maters.

But, when OU loses, there’s a little bit of a pall. Really odd, if you ask me. And when it’s an unexpected loss, an upset, or a loss to a rival like Nebraska or Texas or Miami, it’s worse. If OU loses to OSU, then their celebration offsets OU’s mourning.

MCARP writes often about his non-attachment notions, but this is a social example of people unaccountably and non-rationally becoming attached to a college sports team. It’s fairly easy to see on this level that people who “follow” sports or a particular team bring unnecessary and uncomfortable drama into their life due to events over which they have absolutely no control.

Control, as it turns out, plays an important role in being a fan. Studies show that people won’t watch a football game they haven’t seen and don’t know the outcome if the game has already been played. Somehow, their inability to control the outcome by their magical, sentimental, “powerful” cheers and boos ruins the fun of watching the game. Their superstitions don’t get a chance to bring forth their special ability to determine outcomes at long distance.

So, let’s think about this. If you can see that attachment to sports means that the fans have more emotional turmoil in their lives as a result, can we admit that perhaps the same thing is true of other attachments?

I wouldn’t go as far as MCARP with this as to say we should be attached to nothing because I think we should be attached to our families and our health and other high priorities. I’m certainly willing to say that, based on my experience in losing attachments, that if you can distance yourself from football, television programs, and a lot of other unnecessary or low priority stuff that it has a double payback:

You won’t be upset and sad about a great many things you can’t affect anyway.

You can focus your thoughts and problem solving and money on things that matter a good bit more to you in your more rational moments.

If we take this a step further, there’s more gold to be mined, in my opinion.

As a result of being in the news business and also experiences with my divorce law practice, I’ve had to learn to make more dispassionate analysis of the importance of events around me. What I mean by this is that a lack of planning on your part does not create an emergency on my part. My rule about what constitutes an emergency has been changed by my life experience. Emergencies have questions like: is it broken? bleeding? dead? in jail? If the emergency is that Bill won’t call Kimberly (fictional names) about visitation, I’m sorry but it’s just not an emergency. If OU loses and you are a fan, I’m sympathetic only fractionally. Nothing is broken or bleeding about you, you’re just bitching about the universe not unfolding as you think it should. People get pretty worked up about their landscaping, their relationship ups and downs, the fact that people from whom they borrowed now expect repayment, and even more remotely about someone else doing something somewhere else. Most curious to me are those people who get all worked up by celebrity gossip and news.

Let’s say I do get myself attached to OU football. OU lost to Colorado in an away game. Not the outcome I wished for. Is it the end of life as we know it? Gimmeabreak.

All of this is epitomised, in my opinion, by the Mike Gundy tirade and the Oklahoman response. The top half of the front page of the paper, including color pictures? Has everyone lost their mind? WTF?

Folks, can we talk? It is a game. You are attached to something for no reason. You prioritize it for no reason. If it’s your son playing, then it’s important maybe. If it’s your job, then it may be important. To you, but not to me. Not to the rest of us. Not in the larger scheme of life on this planet. A football coach doesn’t like the coverage he gets from the local news media. WELL. That’s never happened before, has it? Except every damn coach in the country and every single news outlet.

Now, politics. There’s a grand obsession worth pursuing. Follows is a 5,000 word analysis of forward budget spending on capital projects. Please read on.

…

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or not.

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I started to just send an email to those few who might be affected, but I realized that my cc: list wouldn’t hold all the names.

This full moon has me just absolutely clawing at the ceilings. I can’t stay inside. I can’t stay in one place. I’m as restless as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Earlier today, I was not just restless, I was also dissatisfied and more than a little cranky with people just trying to do their job but not in the way I wanted ‘em to. Something happened this afternoon whiling away an hour over ice tea at Flip’s with the Oz that smoothed me out a good bit, but tonight, I’ve been driving around with the top down, can’t stay any one place longer than about 20-30 minutes, no matter how congenial the company.

I knew I was in a fragile place when, sitting next to Ron at Isis, I watched MindOverMary’s favorite guilty pleasure pour a Crown and Coke and freaked. Now, I never drank those things when I was drinking and they seem far too sweet for my taste. If I were to order one, it would be for a certain type of woman (one who drinks mixed drinks, for one thing) and I’d have them garnish it with a marischino cherry, sort of like a cordial. (It’s those little touches that make me the man-about-town that I’m reputed to be.) This C&C looked good to me. Go figure. Sober all these years, not much going on in my life and I’m sitting at a familiar bar with familiar people, having a good time and the disease slaps my ass. I’d wanted to go down to the other end of the bar and flirt with a certain blonde who is leaving soon for Italy. Instead, I just hoisted my old, white, wrinkled ass right out of the way of harm. Took me 12 years to learn that.

I thought I might take a tour of the magnificant mile of bars up Western, but along the way I was waved down by a woman whose car broke down near Cock’O’TheWalk. Yeah, yeah, sad story. I gave her a $5 bill. I know I’m a sucker. I don’t care if I’m a sucker. She asked me if there was a way she could pay me back and I told her the next time she sees someone in trouble, be nice. You know what they say in AA? If you think you might like to have a drink, go help someone instead. It worked. Fuckers know something about not drinking, don’t they? Life is rather counter-intuitive for me as a recovering alcoholic, so I’m glad that they actually do know something, or I’d still be making that mistake over and over and over.

After that, well, I thought I’d just take my restless, irritable and discontent self right home instead of bar hopping. I drove past VZDs, Nova, Mushashi and, eventually, Flip’s and The Waterford. After deciding I’d be better off going home, it was OK and none of those places particularly appealed to me.

So, now, I’m at home but my libido is screaming at me and I’m doing this because it’s the best way not to think about a white horse. (only the zen may apply to understand that last sentence.

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Today at the Red Cup, I “braced” MCARP for promoting the “earworm” (I’m also trying to overuse punctuation in hopes of getting onto the blog I mention below) “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for posting a UTube vid of Lucy Lawless of hit TV lesbian fame doing the song on some celebrity talent contest. I even offered to whip his ass behind the church after school.

Well, he thinks he’s getting back at me by posting several videos of same by various, often hilarious, mimics, pretenders, wannabes and whatnots. There’s ironic, there’s German, there’s dance mix, a wide variety available. Every now and then, watching them, I would fall apart.

The one thing he doesn’t do is post the original 1983 video with its “Children of the Damned” eyes and a lot of other totally goofy 80s shit. Like, why are there ninjas dancing to this song in an English boys boarding school?

I especially like the irony and deconstructivism of the Pink Fuzzies, but the Hurra Torpedo version is the only one I passed onto another correspondent (I sent it to Rush in L.A. because I thought he’d appreciate the sensibilities of that particular “group” {I’m using all the unnecessary punctuation I can muster!}.). Los Diggas got hilarious from 2:30 to 1:00 to go to the end, the absurdity finally got to me. Eva and Jurgen (whatfreakinever) was mainly notable for the guitar break, some old long hair blonde guy rips it up. The dance remix and the little girl, not so much, by my lights, but feel free.

Am I the only one to notice that Ms. Tyler has a freakin’ speech impediment? Oh. Nevermind.

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P.S.

This is my personal favorite:

This really caught my fancy.  A “Blog” of “Unnecessary Punctuation”, in this case, quotation marks.  Thousands share this pet peeve, it seems.

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My little sister’s hilarious blog about her life in Charleston is officially restored to the blogroll as MindOverMary.  She’s not letting her children know she’s off the wagon, has a monkey on her back, that she’s on the down low with the blogster crowd, so, keep it to yourself.

I love you, Mary.  You’re my best friend as well as my beloved sister.  Yeah!

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    I’m not often sentimental like this, but you have to see this ear reconstruction for a little girl.  These pictures almost made me blubber.  I’d like to think there’s far more of this in the world than there is evil and danger and lions and tigers and bears, oh my.  I’m no pollyanna, so there are times when I need a little correction on that end to balance out my cynicism and angst.  I hope this little girl grows up gorgeous.  I hope she’s inspired to greatness in whatever field she tries.  For me, it’s just a good thing to have hope, much less such grand ones.

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We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy.  The amount of work is the same.

Post Secret (see link at right)

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