Choosing Words Carefully

I've been having weird dreams lately. One dream involved my riding on top of a freight train, the train stopped way in the middle of a broad desert and I got off and walked around...and then I saw that another train was coming down the track...and I waved the train down and it was being followed by a path of fire...and the second train was actually being pushed by a 2nd generation Ford Econoline, a different color and style than El Conquistador but it wasn't on fire; it was setting everything on fire around it. And another dream involved internet comments and in the future everyone is only allowed a single quote that they can use for comments. I mean that you only get one quote and that's the only comment you can make on internet content. Some people have signatures to their internet identity, and this is an extension of that except all you get is your signature. You can not expand on your signature. Your signature quote is the only comment you can make. And it's strange but also not much different than people repeating themselves with different words. In the future you won't be given different words, you only get a certain quote to use and that's all. So maybe in 2015 I will only use a single quote...to stay ahead of the curve. And I have 6 days to decide on the only comment I will be able to make for 1 year. 
I doubt I'll be able to limit myself but it will be a game. Is there a quote that summarizes every comment I could make?

The quotes I'm leaning toward are these: 

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” F. Nietzsche

"It is men who take ventures who make the world. It is courage the world needs...launch out into deep waters. Half measures, trimming the shore in shallow waters, never pays anything."  Sir William Grenfell


"The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people. "
Cesar Chavez 

Those would look a little strange on an article about baseball but there's a lesson in that. I probably wrote something worth repeating but to find it I'll have to reread everything I wrote and that's not going to happen. 

A Christmas Card From A Gypsy in Guatemala

Actually this Tom Waits song is called A Christmas Card From A Hooker in Minneapolis. It's the kind of song that requires personality as it's being sung from the perspective of another person, down and out and in jail, lying about themselves like everyone seems to do nowadays on their status pages. No one wants to be in rehab or depressed so we dress our egos up in elf suits with a silk tie wrapped around our false smiles. A video is out there that has Waits start off and end with Silent Night and I ripped that approach off because I can't improve on it.

I can't really sing loud because the apartment building I've landed in actually has occupants and it's this open central courtyard and I know my piano echos through the halls and makes the Guatemalans wonder who is playing Barry Manilow or Nat King Cole. (I like to the everyone I wrote Some Enchanted Evening.)

I seem to remember being stuck in the mud in Northern Louisiana last year at this time, somewhere near Shreveport, where a new salt water disposal facility was being built. I tolerated it in hopes that one day I would be in Guatemala with a piano and a year later that has come true. The path is clear that I should only play jazz standards at fancy restaurants or cruise ships. I could play Ain't Misbehaving for hours consecutively and the pain in my neck is always worth it.

I have almost exhausted my bucket list. If I can spend a little more time writing about Santa Cruz then maybe I will silence my demons and finally have a silent night.

Merry Christmas to all.

Xela, named by Mayans after 10 peaks...and that's one of them. It's located over 7000ft above sea level which is why I must wear a coat.

Only Google Sent Me A Christmas Card This Year

Because I'm not already media saturated Google decided to quit edit my uploaded photos into a slide show and even added music. This kind of creeps me out because I know a person did not actually compile this slide show, so it was all a computer browsing my photos of Alligator swamp lizards in the high Chisos Mountains and Santa Elena canyon and my endless maintenance of my van. This is interesting because I've seen all and shared most of these photos but what's depressing are the photos and memories that Google is not aware of and thus virtually don't exist. You would think that watching this slideshow that you are witnessing my year in review but there were many pivotal events that I could not write about nor photograph as they were emotionally personal. I remember crossing the border into Mexico from Texas and giving spare change to a man with a club foot. Many people are bilingual near the border and we discussed my van. That incident is not in this slideshow. Nor is the 60 amp fuse that I blew because I didn't wrap a wire splice with enough electrical tape.

So this is the generic Oggy's 2014 Review as compiled by a loveless computer. It's incomplete, and yet, it's something.

Thinking Outside the Gridiron

This won't happen any time soon but as an example of a non-intuitive approach to problem solving I have a theory that the way to make pro football more safe is to double the schedule and have teams play at least twice a week. Maybe even three times a week. Instead of 16 games, the schedule would be 48 games long in the same time period from Sept to January. My theory is that like basketball and baseball which have 82 and 160 games respectively, the NFL players will pace themselves, the physical nature of the hits will have to be turned down. Every week you can decide to play utterly fatigued because you went all out during the last game, or you pace yourself, like NBA and MLB players. The reason the NFL is so violent is because the players have 6 days to lift weights, replenish their energy and they know they will have 6 days off after the game so they give 100%. This makes for a high impact/energy game but it's clearly too violent even for the taste of the owners as more and more rules are being made to protect players. Well, what the fuck? The rules aren't working because it's rarely a dirty hit that causes the injury and the hits that get the flag aren't the ones that cause injury. The extreme nature of the game has not changed at all because the players themselves have no incentive to go easy. The only way to give them an incentive is by punishing them with more games so they physically can not be as violent and careless because they know in three days they have to do it all over again. That is exactly how MLB and NBA get through their seasons, they pace themselves. The teams that don't pace themselves are without key players late in the season.

Bordering On Madness

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