CUT!

"With great power comes great responsibility." - Ben Parker, Spider Man #1

If you know me personally, then you're probably friends with me on Facebook.  If you are, then you've probably noticed that I really don't say much on there.  I play a few games, and the people who play on my team (crew, whatever) are a big percentage of my friends list also.  I post the occasional check-in from work, with a snarky comment, or from my weekly Tuesday night trip to Super Wal-Mart so I don't have to go food shopping on my rest days.  This is also usually accompanied by something like "Cover me.  I'm goin' in!"  Other than that, I'm pretty quiet unless I see something online I want to share, or somebody else shares something interesting.  There are three VERY good reasons for this.

First, I'm not famous by any stretch of the imagination (the Greatest Writer you've NEVER heard of).  And even if I was, I don't think I'm that important that I need to keep people updated to my comings and goings.  I think it's annoying when I read in the paper or online about what restaurant George Clooney or Derek Jeter ate at last night, and I wouldn't want to subject people to a constant stream of that from me.  My ego isn't THAT big.

Second, I'm basically a simple person.  I wake up.  I go to work.  I do my job.  I come home.  I go on Facebook for a while.  I write.  I go to bed.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  My life is actually pretty boring.  Or at the very least, not that much different from anyone else's.  And after you've read about it once, I'm sure that's enough for you.  Pretty much like real life, I only speak up when I have something to say.

Last, and probably most important, I read what some other people put up, and to be honest, it's kind of scary sometimes.  One person in particular (no names) posted about... well... long story short, he shaved a veeeery sensitive part of his body, and felt it necessary to share with all of his friends that he was bleeding.  Now any normal person would look at something like this and either a) do a double-take and ask "did I really read this?" or b) laugh their ass off.  This particular guy's friend list was split about 60-40 to the laughing side.  Through a very strange (to say the least) Facebook "conversation", it came to light that this guy shaved himself with a straight razor (obviously he missed the Billy Connolly concert where he said you have to be kind to yourself), and had himself cut badly enough that he had to go to the E.R.  Six stitches later, he was back on Facebook again taking abuse from his pals (I guess somebody stitching that particular part of his body wasn't traumatic enough?).

I like to share sometimes, but I wouldn’t have the balls (no pun intended) to share that much.

Just to get their attention.....

I love my wife.
Michele works as a medical assistant instructor at a tech school in the next town.  One of her students is handicapped with a prosthetic leg.  Class was on a break one day, and Michele's student went out for lunch.  Michele went out in front of the building for a smoke when a student from another class parked her car in the handicapped spot that her student had just pulled out of.  She didn't have handicapped plates or hang a tag, so Michele asked her if she had one.  The student responded "Yeah," and breezed past her into the building.
When Michele's student came back from the store, there were no more handicapped spaces open, so she had to park out in the lot.  Michele's truck was in a spot near the building, which she offered to her student, but she wouldn't take it.  Michele was annoyed about the whole situation, but held her temper (which is impressive, if you know her).
This same person did the same thing again last night, but this time, my wife decided to be an advocate and do something about it.  She approached her student, and asked to borrow her leg (yes, you read that last sentence right.  She asked to borrow the woman's leg).  After giving her a strange look and hearing what she planned to do with it, the woman reached down and promptly removed the leg (I kid you not).  So Michele then the leg down the hall to the other classroom (I never thought I'd ever write that sentence).  She tells the teacher of the class what happened, and the teacher agreed with her that the student needed talking to.  When she saw the leg in her hand (something else I never thought I'd write), she knew what my wife had in mind and agreed with that too.  In fact, she offered to take the leg and do it for her (gotta love teachers, lol).
Michele went into the classroom and set the leg on the desk in front of her, and at that point, you could have heard a pin drop.  She asked who had parked in the handicapped spot, and when the student fessed up, she announced, "This is my student's leg.  She has a handicapped placard and needs to park in the handicapped spot in front of the building.  If you don't have handicapped plates or a handicapped placard, please don't park in the handicapped spot.  Thank you."
With that, she picked up the leg and marched it back to her student.
Of course on the next break, someone from the class had to approach Michele and tell her that she was offended by the way she handled the situation.  Her response?  "My mother in-law is disabled, my parents are disabled, and I'M offended that someone who doesn't have a handicapped placard would park in a handicapped spot when there are people here who need them."  She also reminded the student that she could have just called the police and gotten her car ticketed.  This was cheaper, and visual aids make a great point. 
Did I mention that I love my wife?

DAMN, I MISS PAUL O'NEILL

News flash, baseball fans...  Detroit beat the Yankees last night, so no 28th World Title for them this year.
As a long time Yankee fan, I'm not even upset so much that they lost.  The Tigers are a great team.  And they're young, so they have all the potential that the Rays had before they blew up against the Phillies a few years ago.  The way they played last night, they deserved to win.  So here's my problem: what happened to the emotion in baseball?
Sure, guys get upset when a pitcher throws inside, and once in a while they'll get really upset and charge the mound (not condoning, just pointing out).  And when a team wins a playoff series there's the obligatory dogpile on the pitcher's mound.  But what about those little moments?  Here's the best example from last night's game:  bases loaded on the seventh with one out.  Who's up but my least favorite Yankee of all time, Alex Rodriguez.  I refuse to call him A-Rod, and I'm not even going to pretend I'm sorry, either.  One swing, a single over the infielder's head, could've put two runs across and change the whole game.  Other times I've seen him just stand in with the bat on his shoulder and take the strikeout.  But to his credit, he was swinging last night.  He at least made the pitcher work for it, but he struck out all the same.  In Game 5 of the ALDS.  With the bases LOADED, and a chance to put his team ahead.  So what does he do?  He walks back to the dugout, gingerly puts his bat back on the rack, and goes along on his merry way.
I can't help but think back to older Yankees teams, when they had guys like Don Mattingly (my favorite player ever), Dave Winfield, or even Paul O'Neill.  He was the most interesting one to watch, because if they were AHEAD and he struck out, he was knocking the water cooler over and breaking chairs in the clubhouse.  Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not condoning tearing up the clubhouse, but when those guys messed up or had a bad game, you could see all over their faces that they were pissed off about it.  You could tell that these guys cared about what they were doing, and you could see that it mattered to them when they didn't do well.
What I see now is that everybody is swinging for the fences every time up, instead of trying to move runners.  And if they don't hit one out?  Oh well, I'm still making millions guaranteed, so keep it moving.  Guys like Mattingly, Winfield, Willie Randolph, Pete Rose (no matter what he did of the field, he was still one of the best players ever, but that's a subject for another day), and a lot of others from that time, cared about the game.  And watching them made me care about it too.  I just don't see that in a lot of guys they have now, like Rodriguez.
But then again, Mattingly, Rose, Randolph and O'Neill weren't making 30 million a season, either.

MOW, MOW, MOW

I just want to start this stream of consciousness by acknowledging that I must be one of the worst bloggers on here, as I don't write in it regularly.  I know how terrible I am, and maybe I'll blog about it someday : )
(Now if you smiled or chuckled at the irony in that, congratulations.  You're one of the people I'm writing to, and welcome.  Anybody else... you may as well click off me now, because I don't get much better than this... lol)
Anyway, I just got finished cutting grass (what an exciting day, right?), and I noticed something.  I couldn't have been running the mower for more than five minutes when I looked up, and two of my neighbors had brought theirs out and started too.  Now I realize that it's been at least three weeks since anybody on my block has mowed, what with the hurricane, and the tropical storm, and then just crappy weather in general.  So this is the first time in a while that it's been sunny on my day off (not from writing, from the job that pays..lol).  So all our front yards had that 'vacant lot' look about them.  But the timing of this was just weird.  And it's not the first time this has happened.  I thought about it, and I remember that every time I've come out to cut my grass, at least two other people come out too.  It's kind of creepy.
Did I get elected the mowing captain of my block or something?  Do these people sit by the window and watch for me (or anybody, for that matter) to go out and do something, and then feel like they have to run out then and there too?  Does my mower put out a signal to the other homeowners on the block that it's time to mow?  Or is it me?  Am I psychic like the Mara character in my books?  I wonder if I think really hard, can I make my neighbors do other things?  <closes eyes and puts finger to temple>  Buy Augustine Agenda.... go to Amazon.com and buy Augustine Agenda....
Ha ha... I didn't really think that would work. <checks Amazon.com.>   Right.  I didn't really think that would work.  Ha ha ha.
But I degress.  The timing of it is just so weird.  Has this happened to anyone else?  I've driven through other neighborhoods and seen three or four people out mowing at a time, so I'm sure it has.  But what is it that causes this?  Is it a social thing?  Is it instinct?  Did the cavemen mow their grass in packs too?  What is it that drives people to mow in groups? 
If you're reading this, President Obama (and I know you are.  You bought both of my books, right?), I have an idea.  If you guys in Washington really want to blow a few million of our tax dollars on another study, I think the next one should be on the "Group Mowing Phenomenon of Suburban America".
Think that's silly?  Of course it is.  I meant it to be.  But think about this:  NASA spent 10 million dollars in R&D back in the day to design something for the astronauts to write with in the zero gravity environment of space.  They designed a pen that employed a pressurized ink cartridge and could be used at any angle, even upside down.
The russian space program had a writing implement that could do the same thing.  It was called a PENCIL.