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53

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#53. I learned at least one thing from every class in college.

Don’t believe me? Check it out — here’s a baker’s dozen of lessons learned:

Anatomy: The nephron is the functional unit of the kidney.

Calculus: It is possible to sleep sitting upright, and with my eyes open.

Chemistry Lab: Sulfur smells like ass.

Comparative Religion: Meditation is pretty cool, but it won’t get you laid.

Economics: I fucking hate Economics.

Government: Pork barrels beat checks and balances every time.

History: The Hundred Years’ War didn’t really last all that long.

Humanities: The two most important Greek columnar styles are Doric and Ionic.

Literature: Ozymandias was a badass.

Microbiology: Lactose-fermenting bacterial colonies have a green sheen on EMB agar.

Philosophy: We are all looking at shadows on the wall of a cave.

Physical Chemistry: Professors are not going to die, just because you wish it.

Religion: A literal interpretation of the Bible is inherently logically inconsistent.

So, I guess that money for college didn’t go right out the window, after all, now did it? Okay, other than the fact that I left biology to do software development, and use none of my training from college in any way whatsoever. Still — not bad, huh? Nephron? That’ll get me a pie wedge in Trivial Pursuit. And Ozymandias — very scholarly. The chicks dig that. And that Greek column shit? People eat that up. Yeah, that was so worth fifty grand to go to school. No doubt.

52

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#52. I’ve never watched the movie E.T.

I was always very proud of this fact. I thought that it showed that I wasn’t a mindless sheep, just going along with the crowd, no matter how foolish or inane the activity. More likely, it just proves that I’m a stubborn ass. Still, it’s an achievement, good or bad.

I suppose that it’s not that big a deal any more, either. After all, other movies have overtaken E.T. as the hey-didn’t-everybody-see-that? movie. On the other hand, for better or worse, I haven’t seen many of those, either. Never watched Titanic. (Well, okay, I sat through enough of the beginning to see the nude painting scene, then promptly lost interest.) Haven’t seen Lord of the Rings, though I’d actually like to. I used to try reading the whole book series when I was a kid / teenager. I would get through The Hobbit, and usually through the first book before slowing down. But I never made it through The Two Towers, so I haven’t even cracked the cover on The Return of the King. For all I know, my copy is blank, or it’s misprinted and I’ve got a bunch of recipes where the story should be. Maybe one of these days I’ll actually find out.

Anyway, I don’t end up seeing a lot of movies in the theater, anyway. The last one I saw was Chicago. Which pains me just a little bit, being a man and all. I did enjoy it, I suppose, but do I really want that to be the last movie I’ve seen? No. Not really. I need to go see the new Matrix flick or something, just to clean the slate, I think.

(Actually, it was even worse before seeing Chicago. Before that, I’m not actually sure which movie I’d seen last, but it’s a toss-up between The Mummy and The English Patient. Ick. Hell, I’d take E.T. over those two, just to get the taste out of my mouth.)

51

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#51. I have won four fantasy sports championships.

Hopefully, that number will soon be five, as I’m currently atop the leaderboard in my fantasy baseball league. But I’ve fallen from grace before (oh, you have no idea), so I’m not counting any chickens at this point. I’m not even counting eggs. I’m just crossing my fingers, and waiting. That seems to work the best.

Anyway, four championships isn’t really that impressive, once you know how many fantasy leagues I’ve played in. And kids, I’ve wasted more time and money than you’d want to shake a stick at in these leagues — oh my word, yes. I usually put together one or two football teams a year, the same number of basketball squads, and three baseball rosters. So maybe five chances every year to take home the gold. And considering that I’ve been playing since 1998 or so, that’s around twenty-five or thirty championships that I could have won. And I’ve got a lousy four. So it’s not like I’m Lance Armstrong or anything here. Hell, I’m not even Chris Moneymaker, and he’s only got one championship in his sport! Lousy lucky rich bastard…

But I try. Oh boy, do I try. I pore over box scores, and matchups, and injury reports. I buy magazines, and calculate averages, and build sophisticated projection algorithms. (Sophisticated? Yes. Accurate? Not even slightly. Bitches!) I evaluate, and trade, and cruise the waiver wires, looking for the next ‘diamond in the rough’ who’ll take my team to the promised land. Occasionally, it works. More often (to the tune of ‘eighty percent of the time), it doesn’t. But still, I press on, in search of that elusive title.

And for what? Cash? Trips? Fabulous prizes? Free sex? The adoration of my peers? Well, no. Not really.

You see, I typically play on ESPN’s fantasy site. Where you have to pay to play. Team fees run in the twenty dollar range. (Yes, I’m well aware that’s a hundred dollars or more per year that I’m flushing down the toilet. Stop bugging me!) Chances are, I’m only going to win one league a year, or none. And what spectacular bounty awaits me, should I perservere and sit atop the league at the end of the season? A T-shirt. A lousy, stinkin’, all-cotton ten-dollar ‘beefy tee’. Oh, Lordy, call in the doctor. I think I’m going to faint.

Yep, that’s it. At best — best, now — I’m going to get yet another shirt that I don’t need. (I get two or three a year from playing softball and volleyball in a city league, and they just don’t wear out that fast.) At worst, I’ll have wasted the cash and countless hours to come in second, or fourth, or eighth among a bunch of yahoos that I don’t know, and whose picks I laughed about at the draft four months earlier. Talk about your lousy risk-to-reward ratio… any way you slice it, I’m getting screwed. Even unemployed, the time I spend on this shit is worth more than the prize. I could collect aluminum cans for an hour a day and make enough for three of those shirts, and a baseball cap to go with them. So why do I play?

Well, the short answer is because I can’t stop. Really, I have a demented, debilitating illness, and I should be shot. That pretty much sums it up.

But the long answer — you knew there was a long answer, didn’t you? — is that I love the challenge. I play because I know I can win, because I’m willing to put in the hours and do my homework, and I have the knowledge and drive to show any group of nine strangers that I can beat their ass at fantasy sports. Even if they don’t really care. See, that’s where we differ — I do care. If I win, I care that I won. And if I lose — well, unfortunately, I care about that, too. I simmer in my frustration until the next sport starts, or until the next season of whatever it is I lost at comes around. And I hop back in there, to prove to myuelf and a new batch of whoevers that I am the king. My .200 or so winning percentage be damned.

And so, I’m probably stuck playing these wretched games for the rest of my life. If I win, I’ve got a title to defend. Can’t quit then. No, no. Might get another shirt next year; now I know I can do it. Gotta stay on top. And if I lose, then I’ve gotta get ’em next time. Can’t hang up the keyboard and call it a career after a loss. No way. That’d leave a bad taste in my mouth forever. (Like okra, or Brussels sprouts.) So I gotta jump back in and try a little harder.

It’s a vicious circle, and as it spins ’round and ’round, all it really does is drain my wallet and fill my wardrobe with shit that I can’t wear in public. (Who goes to work with a ‘1998 Fantasy Basketball Champion’ shirt on? I mean, c’mon, I’m a software engineer, but I’m not that kind of software engineer. I’ve still got some social graces left.) And so, I wear my shirts underneath other shirts — it’s all about the layering, kids — and pony up my money, and try to regain the glory that got me the stupid shirts in the first place. It’s just how my life is going to be, I suppose.

Yeah, you know what? Maybe the short answer was better, after all. Could someone just please shoot me now? You’d be saving me an awful lot of trouble. Just be sure to bury me with my shirts, would you? No telling who I’ll need to impress in the afterlife. Thanks so much.

50

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#50. I was a Features Editor for my college newspaper.

So, yes, for those of you naysayers, I have had journalism experience prior to this train wreck of a site. So nyah.

Come to think of it, my work at the paper is pretty similar to what I’m doing now. Oh, sure, I was in charge of layout then, and editing other people’s pieces to make them fit, or flow, or coherent. But the real fun came when we didn’t have enough features, and I had to dip quill into inkwell myself, and come up with a piece of my own. An original piece. An original opinion piece, actually. Mwah hah hah. Mwah! Mwah hah hah! Mwah hah hah! Mwah! Hah HAH HAH HAH!

Um, okay, so it wasn’t that good. But still, it was pretty cool being snarky about the school — and especially the school president — and getting it in print. ‘Cause at that point, there was no editor, really. Sure, there was a Features Co-Editor, but she wrote her own (bo-ring!) stuff, and we edited our own pieces. And there was an Editor In Chief, or something similar, too, but he really only cared about layout. So we’d print all the shit that fit. Not bad, eh?

So, I laid into the prez a couple of times. He was a smarmy bastard, worried about getting fat-cat money from the trustees, but not so concerned about actually using it for the students’ benefit. Rather, he set about sprucing up the administrative buildings on campus and throwing big parties. (For the trustees, with their own money. Sheesh.) So, I wasn’t much of a fan, and I got to tell the whole campus about it. Well, the four people who actually read the school paper, anyway. And that was enough.

But after a year, I decided I’d had enough, and I quit. I forget now whether I just got bored, or graduated, but I think it was the former. I really don’t remember much in the way of extracurriculars my senior year, so I’m pretty sure I wasn’t writing for the paper then. Or maybe I was — my memory’s pretty well shot at this point. Just pick whichever scenario you like better, and we’ll move on.

Picked one? Good. Here we go.

Anyway, it was fun while it lasted, and probably paved the way for the crap you’re reading right now. Lucky you, right? If I’d only had someone looking over my shoulder, maybe you wouldn’t have to go through this. But here I am, annoying you with post after post after post. Hey, I guess my liberal arts education is coming in handy, after all!

49

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#49. I’ve seen three operas performed at ‘The Met’ in New York City.

Just don’t ask me to name them or anything. Oh, wait, no — one was called La Traviata. Or La Travolta, or La Tortellini, or something like that. Yeah, let’s go back to not asking me, after all.

My wife worked at this one place in Boston for three years. And every year, a group of them would get together and ante up money to buy two season passes to the Met. The tickets would come back, and be stuck in a hat or a bowl or something, and everyone would fish out a random pair of tickets for the year. (Well, okay, I think the girl who actually put the ginormous charge on her card got to pick for real, but the rest of us were at the mercy of fate. Apparently, willingness to put yourself deep in debt has its privileges.)

So, three times we got tickets, and three times we trekked down to Manhattan, and saw a show. Luckily, we had friends living in the city, so we had a convenient place to crash-for-no-cash for the night. Not a lot of time for sight-seeing or anything, but we didn’t get mugged, either, so I’d call the trips a wash, overall.

And the operas? Well, the Met is impressive, I have to admit. And it’s kind of fun to watch all the people parading around in their monkey suits and monkey ties, with their little monkey wives wearing their monkey tiaras and carrying their monkey Gucci purses around. Okay, so that’s exaggerating a little bit — most people just go in a nice suit or dress. But everything’s more interesting with monkeys, now , isn’t it?

Anyway, I don’t remember a whole lot about the shows, I’m afraid. One was about a hooker, or a madam of some kind, who shacks up with a well-to-do kid, and then… um, something. The guy’s dad gets pissed, I think, and tells her off. Or something. I don’t know; it was all in Italian. I may have fallen asleep at some point.

And then there was another one about a general of some kind. Somebody I’d heard of, from way back in history, but the guy’s name didn’t quite sound right, because it was in Italian, too. Anyway, there’s something about this guy’s daughter — she falls in love with a guy in the town they’re attacking, or something equally unlikely — and at the end, they reveal that some of the people involved are related, and a bunch of them die, and kill themselves, and all the other opera crap you’re probably used to. It was very dramatic and heartstring-tugging, I’m sure. Or would have been, if I could have kept straight which fat lady was which. I guess I’m not very good at opera.

The nice thing is that they have this little LED screen (or is it LCD? I can never remember…) in front of each seat that shows the English translation of whatever the people onstage are bellowing on about. So at least you can follow the plot, and — if you’ve read the program — figure out how much longer it’ll be until the intermission, when you can go get a damned drink. So that makes it a bit better. It’s a little like watching one of those over-the-top soap operas on the Spanish-language channel, with English subtitles to tell you why Guillermo is screaming at Juanita, or who’s the real father of Maria’s baby. Only at the Met, somebody always dies at the end, and takes twenty minutes to explain why. It’s Shakespeare with soundtracks. Really, you should try it once. And I do mean once. When you’ve seen one fat lady belt out a high C, you’ve seen ’em all. Trust me.