Is there anybody out there?

Watching Professor Cox on the rather magical 'wonders of the universe' two things occur to me.

One, how did someone so interesting and intelligent have anything to do with a song so execrable as 'Things can only get better'?

Two, how can we take life seriously when we (by we I do, of course, mean incredibly smart chaps like Cox) know virtually nothing about the universe in which we live?

Certainly the mindbending knowledge already in human possession is a laudable feat; space time, relativity, quarks, gravity, atoms and the rest, but the shortfall is astounding. For example our galaxy revolves around a black hole and everything in existence will eventually be sucked into it, or not, or we will never get close to the event horizen to find out, or we will, or we'll be destroyed by something hitting the planet, or not, or the planet will get rid of these beastly upstart human beings, who've only been around for a few hundred thousand years, and continue happily on it's life journey (over four a half billion years and counting) with barely a moment's hesitation.

I'm beginning to see why some people believe in a invisible man in the sky who threw it all together for his own amusement in 6 days (the 7th was presumably used to catch up on his Sky Plus recordings).

In an infinite universe amongst infinite universes it seems unlikely, why bother? However, I can see that having a nice little delusion to hide behind rather than go through the head-scrambling alternative as us athiests have to might give some relief, whatever gets you through eh?

Now, as a man whose grasp of astrophysics is chiefly made up of watching Red Dwarf I love the fact that Professor Cox and his ilk hand us this information in easily digestible chunks. What I don't enjoy is the nagging feeling in my mind that occurs at least twice daily that all in all nothing is important, nothing has consequence, there is no great scheme and we are adrift with nothing but hope, bizarre belief systems and fledgling space exploration for chums.

A feeling that is only intensified after watching a clever bloke tell me that indeed we are doomed, the planet is doomed, the whole of human history will one day soon mean absolutely zip, nada, nothing.

I guess that means I can have another beer...


Listening to: The Galaxy Song - Monty Python
Reading: K-Pax - Gene Brewer

Obsession

We're a curious bunch us men. What is about us that makes us so prone to obsession?

Sure, women can be capable of the same proclivities, try Valentino, The Beatles, Take That, shoes, but ultimately women have a stronger grasp on the ridiculousness that true obsession brings. Maybe it's the fact that they can grow new people inside them or something. No, to truly grasp the horror of obsession we need to look to the male.

Certainly many men avoid the curse of the obsession too, wisely continuing on with their lives as if unimportant transient things were just that, but for the rest of us? Forget about it.

The soon-to-be Mrs. L will gladly tell you of the months spent eating Italian food, drinking Italian wine and trawling Bristol for cannollis during my Sopranos phase and my recent trip to LA was marred somewhat by my need to tick off 'Entourage' locations.

I wont even begin on Liverpool, That is for a whole blog of it's own (once and only once I promise).

For those of us with the curse there is nothing to be done, whether it's Dylan, Zappa or Neil Young, a sports team or sport itself (cyling, mountain biking, snowboarding, climbing, you get the idea), traction engines or the complete works of Alan Moore, once gripped a man stays gripped.

My formative years had a few: Spiderman, The Smiths, The Doors, 2000 AD, alongside the aforementioned Liverpool, but I thought in my later years I would be free, or at least able to free myself.

Apparently not.

My new obsession is all-consuming, ludicrous, wonderful, exhilarating. It has taken over. It is baseball. Major League Baseball. A new world designed perfectly for an obsessive.

RBI's, the bullpen, pinch hitting, strikes and balls and bunts and grand slams. ERA, boxwrap, National league, American league, relievers and closers, fly balls, pop ups, ground outs, double plays, wild cards and walks, bench clearing rucks and reversing the curse.
There are no end to the rules, the history, the rivalries, the players and coaches, the wonderful ballparks, and the not-so-wonderful (Tropicana Field anyone?).It's the obsession that keeps on giving.

I know it's daft, I know it's ridiculous, I don't care. Sure, you can trace this new obsession back to me getting a Blackberry for the first time, with its built in MLB app, or you can point to the future Mrs. L letting me keep ESPN America on the Sky package. You might even, if you knew me well, see that the pain, consternation and utter contempt in which I hold my old true love, football, has left a chink, a door ajar, in need of exploration. My obsessive nature needed somewhere to go. Whatever. I am hooked and the very fact it is slightly mad only adds to the joy.

Obsession should be unfathomable to everyone else, that's the point, that's one of the best things about it. Only those obsessed with the same thing get it. It's a club, a secret society, something of our own.

And as for Fenway, the Green Monster, Yawkey Way, Pesky's pole, Sweet Caroline and Dirty Water, the Curse of the Bambino, winning it all after an 86 year wait, Schilling's sock and Manny being Manny, staying faithful, and everything else Red Sox: I'm in.

Someone once said, love the game and it will love you back, I agree unconditionally, whole-heartedly and without reservation. Take me baseball and do with me as you will.

Listening to: Neil Young - Le Noise
Reading:Bright Shiny Morning - James Frey

A writer's life

Well, I've finally gone and done it. 
One might imagine that as a writer the last thing I need to do is to give myself MORE writing to do. That is, however, erroneous.


The more a writer writes the more a writer writes. 
Let me explain. 
Many of the greatest writers have talked about procrastination, the feeling that anything is preferable to actually sitting down and writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald struggled to convince his wife that staring out the window for hours was writing. Douglas Adams said he loved the sound deadlines made as they whizzed by.

Indeed from my own experience there is no surer sign that I am not writing than an emptied dishwasher, a clean floor, a tidy bookshelf or a good honest weekly shop at Tesco. A full fridge and freezer is testament  that no words have left my head and made it to the page that day. Conversely a slovenly front room, dirt trodden into the hallway and an empty biscuit tin mean that I am off, away in my flight of fancy machine from which I need to be shot down, if I'm to rejoin the rest of you people in what we loosely describe as society.

And there's the rub, the more I write the more I will write. Ergo a blog is a natural facilitator of the process, a loosening of the muscles if you will, a warm up.

So I hope you will bear with the self-indulgence and let me continue to search for the right words by laying down some wrong ones before the main event.
Toodle pip.

Reading: Faithful by Stuart O'Nan and Stephen King 

Listening to: Mozart, The Magic Flute