the older i get, the softer i get when i’m sick. squishy, deflated, blue. chock full ‘o pity. no spine sick guy. curl up in the fetal position and wait impatiently for death sick guy. lonely.

pathetic.

no weekend parties. no beer. no stories. no drama. no guitars. no flirting. no dancing. no beer. no music. no driving. no laughing. no dog park. no drums. no jambalaya. no beer.

just gotta lay here and read john donne (it’s only divine right) and aristotle and grade papers and get woozy and drift off and wake up and read criticism on john donne and critiques of aristotle and take baths and walk the dog and wonder about when rhetoric becomes a discipline and not and tool and where science begins and god ends …

i feel like i’m missing something every second when i’m sick. is this normal? or am i missing something? and why can’t i just …

be?

and after all that god bless america and fly overs and generals doing the coin toss and hero flight crews taking bows and trillion dollar commercials and other such nationalistic melodrama that game better have been god damn good. (that’s two years in a row …)

a question for your prayers tonight: can kurt warner still mention jesus 200 times in every 30 second interview even though his team lost?

meditate on that one …

Anyway, I’m staying at a place with a 65 inch HD television. It is literally bigger than my apartment. When you have access to a piece of machinery like that, you take it for a spin. So in HD, I watched my first football game of the year tonight, cover to cover. Good game. Perfect Patriots.

I don’t know about these tv’s though. I mean, in a way they’re fascinating … Seeing all that detail in Junior Seau’s sweat. Sweat pours out of that man’s helmet with the force of urine. I’ve never seen anything like it. Marvelous. So in that respect it’s cool, I suppose … but it feels like a freakshow to me. An oddity. You’re still just sitting on your ass watching tv. It’s not anything more compelling than regular tv, it’s just big ole freakish tv with a big ole perspiring Junior Seau spraying sweat down the front of it. It’s like raising a permanent big top in the American living room. Night after HD night. Your own private circus.

Barnum and Bailey never saw that one coming.

Send in the clowns.