Thursday, August 28, 2008 :::
Secondhand Rants will return on Tuesday, September 09.
Posted by Ben at 5:00 PM
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 :::
Four courses at 18 holes apiece, countless expletives muttered, 15 or so range buckets, and six to seven balls lost, the grand summation of which describes my golf career to date. In another dimension, slathered across another blog, I'd be telling you how my white-hot hatred for the game has since softened, giving way instead to acceptance and enjoyment of the sport. As far as I'm concerned, that blog can stay in that dimension because my golf rage continues to burn resplendently, the only bright spot on these large stretches of green.
I shot a 137 this Saturday, a tangible improvement over previous scores, but in absolute terms just terrible. The goal is 100, the layman's milestone, and I'm still resolved to reach it without professional help. Anything higher, especially to the tune of 37 extra strokes, is a real disappointment, because I'm not here to collect the "Most Improved" award or get a ribbon for mere participation. I want to win, which in this case means working toward an arbitrary number one slow, deliberate swing at a time. It's maddening, a qualifiable grindstone for patience.
The media well at Hulu has dried up, with recent additions Jackass 2.5 and "select" episodes of The O.C. exhibiting equal levels of appeal. I've since turned to more succulent--and also legitimately free--programming to fill the void, and in the process it feels like I'm earning a master's degree in appreciating offensive content.
Posted by Ben at 11:49 PM
Thursday, August 21, 2008 :::
When Pound Cake called yesterday evening to explain, in rather gleeful and triumphant terms, how she had discovered my doppelganger at her new place of employ, I immediately began collecting information. I've always maintained that, were I to meet my clone, I would probably strangle him at a moment's notice, so it wasn't individuality but homicide at stake here. The facts were plainly laid out: they met at a corporate diversity function, where he began expounding on a pivot table training session he had hosted, which I imagine was conducted with wild gesticulations of his Asian arms. Similar laugh, she recounted, and similar dry sense of humor.
Well, my humor may be dry at times, but it can also be moist. And delicious. I cancelled my pivot table tutorial. More importantly, my arms have essentially fossilized into the classic keyboard-mouse posture, rendering any limbic motion above the horizon physiologically impossible. Additionally I've forsaken my culture, imagining in its stead a Russo-Irish-Canadian heritage with a wee bit o' Nigerian, rich with historical anecdotes free of slaving over giant walls, or eating things the FDA wouldn't even pretend to ignore, or escaping the clutches of Communism to establish a small, polluted free-market island.
That pretty much answers whether I'd even show up at a diversity club. The verdict, then? Not a doppelganger. Certainly some parallels, though, and it makes you wonder what you would do if you met your mirror image, or what he or she is doing right now. In fact, even as we commune, he may be publishing his thoughts online. Typing away. In a blog. Possibly topshelfrants.com or--perhaps!-- firsthandrants.com. But you know better than to buy new.
Posted by Ben at 11:08 PM
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 :::
You should know the posts presented to you twice weekly hail from antiquity, literally so, and I'm referring here not to the quality of thought or anything pertaining to the content, but rather the text itself, which comes from a keyboard that may just be older than your house and dog combined. The computer connected to it is incrementally better, a hodgepodge of vintage pieces and inherited turn-of-the-century technology I cobbled together one Saturday afternoon.
The only newish component is the monitor I recently acquired, a shiny 19" affair with speakers and--heaven help us!--composite connections on the side. It's basically like a television without any channels, a conundrum I quickly resolved by hooking up my old Xbox, smacking people in face with a riot shield before shooting them, and then collecting, like, five Grand Slam titles in a row. I've since had a rude awakening to how much my hand-eye coordination has atrophied. You play a ninja fighting other ninjas, fair enough, but then heavily armed troops send a hail of gunfire your way, which you block with your sword, and then this helicopter starts launching missiles, and then these flying robots shoot lasers at you, and then--oh shiiiiiit--the erstwhile troops hop into a tank and blow you up. Suddenly you're standing on the corner of Fun and Stress.
I've wanted to jam the stupid disc into the stupid wall on a few occasions now, and it may just be the impetus to unhook everything. Keep in mind, too, this is the original Xbox, a relic from Chicago that I bought myself as a signing bonus when I landed this gig in Charlotte. There's a very real reason for why I embrace this technological ascetism. Sure, I'd like nothing more than to drop a few grand on a Voodoo, stroll out of Best Buy with a 60" plasma, and buy the latest Playstation Ultra 720 Squared or whatever. But then it'd be over. I'd be an unwashed, bloodshot mess, and in short order I'd find myself sitting in a circle at the Y, eyeing the snack table in the back while holding forth on how I don't have a problem. Honest.
Posted by Ben at 11:57 PM
Thursday, August 14, 2008 :::
A revenant, according to folklore, is a body resurrected to achieve some dark purpose, and although this imagery might not lend itself to pleasant simile, it does speak to how I resolve burnout. Sometimes I'll plug away at something, only to suddenly flatline, and reality will not afford the luxury of a breather. I mean, certainly it'd be nice, you know? To be able to clear your head and rationalize and start anew. But for the moments when you can't craft, like, a mission statement or something, one option is just to go. Blip the flatline, find virtue in motion.
It's been a month since we started the site. Honestly the very thought of reviewing another movie--in exactly 50 words, natch--makes me want to vomit and alternately bang my head on the kitchen counter. The immediate goal is to secure a consistent traffic stream, a baseline of eyeballs, and you'd assume a steady influx of fresh content yoked to the SEO benefits of WordPress would foster this. The Internet, however, is an entity seemingly immune to the strictures of statistics and trending, and marketing to this requires what I'd call adnosticism.
The information superhighway seems altogether unknowable. Our visitor count spikes when it shouldn't, plunges when it should rise, and is a phenomenon powered by randomness. I've heard Internet traffic likened to a trading floor, but even that generously confers intelligible patterns upon it. It's more like there's a trading floor, and tons of people are milling around, and then suddenly fireworks go off, but that's okay because the clown arrived, and now he's dead, plus a yawning pit opened up, after which the two priests threw up all over themselves, and now the clown is back, praise be, but all the chickens disappeared and somebody pooped in the corner over there. Or something.
What can you do, though, except pull the levers available to you? The first few months make up that critical period when most blogs fizzle, so we're on the block, and all we can really do is keep publishing. There's no time for a pep talk about passions, or why I enjoy movies, or how I can rekindle the interest. I've got to be the revenant and just will this keyboard to start clacking away.
Posted by Ben at 11:54 PM
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 :::
Legacy data suggests drinking only improves my spelling, and with 1.5 mojitos down the chute, I fully expect tonight's post to sing as adverbs fly off the assembly line in fine fashion. One refrain I've heard in the past few months claims alcohol, much like coffee, is an acquired taste, though in this case I'm not exactly sure what I'm acquiring, or whether I can possibly give it back. Coffee at least smells good, which biologically informs my other senses, but who can argue with 10-proof logic?
What I'm trying to cultivate is the illusion of enjoying alcohol, a simulation of normalcy that requires, I imagine, being able to enumerate two or three beverages I "like." Unfortunately most drinks have that rich, oaky shit flavor, circa 2008. A very good year, I'm told. People deal with far more dire problems, however, and I'm well aware of this. I'll keep you appraised of my findings.
Figuring out what can and cannot be imbibed aside, this whole skill acquisition campaign has been draining, and after you mix in golf along with the new site, I'm certifiably burnt out, apathy coursing freely through my arteries. It's a terrible feeling made worse by constantly thinking about it, and what I'm intent on finding, here at these tired crossroads, is renewal. I'd like nothing more than to take a long nap and then, two to three weeks later, wake up refreshed, a completely different person. Perhaps I just need a vacation. But how do you take a vacation from yourself?
Posted by Ben at 11:20 PM
Thursday, August 07, 2008 :::
There I was, standing on the fairway under a darkening sky, wondering whether any scenario existed in which it'd be intelligent to wave shards of metal around as lightning loomed nigh. I didn't have much time to ruminate on this, however, because my thoughts promptly turned to what would happen if I were electrified mid-swing, and how depressing it'd be to die on a golf course playing the sport I hate most. The best thing to do in this case would be to float me out onto a water trap in a burning rowboat, trusty 7-iron laid across my chest, in the style befitting Viking lords.
Tonight was my second golf outing, and whereas the first time was an unmitigated disaster, these 18 holes were slightly better. Let's call it a local crisis, then. Folk wisdom says the amateur golfer can traverse the godforsaken wasteland in about 100 strokes. This round clocked in somewhere around 150 to 175, so you can only imagine how I performed previously. It occurred to me this was the textbook case of doing something for its own sake rather than for some purpose. If I were learning golf for enjoyment, the equity of blood and sweat would be willingly invested, not extracted.
I'm in too deep now to quit, though, and to this end I've established some short-term goals. First, always drive past the women's tee box. Second, get half my shots into the air. And finally, arguably most importantly, to refrain from shouting expletives that rhyme with "fuck" whenever I trade my Tiger for Farmer Fitzgibbons and begin harvesting the grass with my 5-wood.
Posted by Ben at 11:37 PM
Tuesday, August 05, 2008 :::
Nature, I told King Calm in the thick of Frisbee golf today, is best experienced in screensaver format, and to this assertion I hold. My ninth-grade social studies teacher once expounded on the idea of culturally specific hells: whereas creatures of warmer climes envision a roiling inferno, for instance, Eskimos believe in a terribly cold place. I'm neither an Eskimo nor a fan of the sun, more of a devout proponent of air conditioning, and so my personal torment resembles precisely a 12-"hole" trek through the woods.
Secretly I had hoped the layout would be similar to a golf course, since the game certainly shares the etymology, albeit with unkempt grass and maybe a rattier clubhouse. It's free to play, though, and accordingly it's a hike through a forest, with concrete slabs as tee boxes, ancient caches of empty beer bottles, strange plants, trunks scattered every which way, and inclines greater than 45 degrees. Nature, in a word. A place filled with the weeping of birds and gnashing of branches.
And you know what? After adjusting my mindset, the hiking part was exactly what I had always imagined hiking would be like, path barely discernible, ambient insect noise interspersed with silence, sun flitting through the trees. Pound Cake used to reprimand me for not being more experiential. She would argue that any experience, this one included, is a treasure trove of self-discovery, during which I would clutch my compass and walking stick resolutely at a fork in the path, perhaps in the throes of revelation or something.
I would contend there are no truly unique experiences these days, simply by virtue of physical law and the amount of experiences documented, and most events can be imagined accurately. It's a hike, you know? Not a realm of infinite possibility. There will be dirt, bugs, and a predictable spread. Best-case scenario? Some chick clothed entirely in AMEX giftcards dislodges from a tree limb up high and falls into my arms. Worst-case? A bear in a frock with a scorching case of the clap leaps out of the shrubbery and mauls me.
Posted by Ben at 11:08 PM
