Happy thoughts

[cosmolinguist]

I catch myself longing for things today.

I miss well-delivered speeches by the President of the United States. Sure, Clinton didn't necessarily have good speeches all the time, but he gave them well. When I hear clips of them now, I marvel at how much nicer they sound than what I've been inundated with the past couple of years.

I miss my laptop. Occasionally I'll forget that I don't actually know anything about Linux and want to play around with it anyway. This is one of those days.

I miss "The West Wing." Not as much as I used to--I've gotten to the point where I almost forgot about it, now that I can't even watch reruns this summer--but today I do. It's the onlly TV show I bother to specifically watch on a regular basis. It was nice to pretend, if only for an hour a week, that our country's leader is intelligent and good (not to mention he can give nice speeches).

I miss Katie's teddy bear. She has this huge, furry bear (a present from her boyfriend, of course--I think 99% of all huge furry bear sales are guys buying them for their girlfriends) and I would occastionally steal it and hug it until she noticed and asked for it back. I said it wasn't fair; she had a big furry bear and I had none, so she should share. She told me to get my boyfriend to buy me one. I said that wasn't his style. I have a different boyfriend now, but it's not his style either. And it's especially not mine to ask for things. Especially silly ones like a big furry bear.

I miss playing Risk at the Xaviers. Where it's okay and even expected to say "Damn you Gulag archipelago inmates!" and "Die you stupid feminists!" Where you're not green or red or yellow, but Greenpeace or communists or the banana republic. Where Egypt is The Egypt, Ural becomes The Urinal--because the word's pretty close and it looks like a urinal--and Afghanistan is The Country Nobody Wants--just like in real life! Where, if I was lucky, we'd get DiGiorno pizza, and it may not all be pepperoni.

I miss the 1999 Mets. Their infield especially ...

I miss having a TV in my room, so I can curl up on my bed and watch a movie or something.

I miss E.G.A.A.D. being updated.

I miss anime, a little. Part of me cringes that another part of me misses anime, but I guess I should be used to encroaching geekiness by now. I liked some of it, Lain especially. Not enough to buy it though--especially now that one of those DVDs would constitute a significant portion of my current funds. Still, it's the principle of the thing! I'm not that much of a geek! I just like being around people who are! (Yet another reason I miss soltice, besides the techno music and going to St. Cloud.)

I miss the days when I wrote fun stuff on a regular basis in my journal. It used to be better, I swear!

And yet despite missing all these things, I am not sad for the lack of them. Thinking of them still makes me happy.

Comments

[kwakhed.livejournal.com]

i suddenly have a greatly reduced desire to ever see or smell the urinal URAL mountains...

Re:

[cosmolinguist]

It's not the moutains fault, don't take it out on them. :-)

You just find a Risk board, and look at what they call Ural, and tell me it doesn't look like a urinal (having had a new and a 20-year-old version of the game, I can say the old one is truer to the urinal shape).

I-lliterative

[5-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, for a prevaricating president who pronounces personal pronouns perfectly in public :-P

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

the '99 mets? hell, i miss the phillies from two weeks ago!

Re:

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, the Twins were more fun a couple of weeks ago as well. Sigh.

a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

wow, i didn't know minnesota still had a team. is kent hrbek running things these days?

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

"Didn't know they still have a team ... "I should punch you in the nose for that.

But I can't, because you actually know who Kent Hrbek is, and can spell his name and mention him so long after everybody else stopped doing so. I like him a lot.

The last Twins game I remember going to was the day they retired his jersey. They gave out replicas of it to the first some-thousand kids. I was still a kid, and got one.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

wow, i take back my wiseass tone, you're definately on the level with late 80s Twins players. does the replica jersey still fit or was it a little kiddie thing.

frank viola would be proud of you.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

It was a little kid thing. I wore it once or twice and then my mom said I should put it away and save it so it stays nice. I didn't get why at the time, but now I'm glad she did that. I was as hard on clothes as any boy when I was 12. Or whatever I was.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

I forgot to tell you: I loved Frank Viola. His fake signature was on the first baseball mitt I had--or the first one I remember anyway. Probably because it was a left-handed glove; we have that in common.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

wow this is getting weird.
i used to stockpile kirby puckett rookie cards when i was a kid. he, eric davis and tom gordon.

my current mitt has andre dawson's fake signature. i'm still not sure where i got that glove from.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

Two Christmases ago, my then-boyfriend got me a stack of baseball cards. Some Robin Ventura (rookie cards, mostly) because he knew that guy's my favorite, some other random things, and a couple Tom Gordon cards since I was doing a speech that included stuff from the Stephen King novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. My boyfriend knew this because he was in speech too; it was how we met actually. So somewhere I have a couple Tom Gordon cards, from back when he was playing with Kansas City, I think.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

TG was highly touted. i had 90 of his cards, praying he got moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation and traded him to NY.

i believe i'm a few years older than you; i had the cards before the book came out. when happened, i thought, 'this is it, they're finally going to be worth something.'

no dice.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

You could be older than me, or you could've only been paying attention longer. :-) The few baseball cards I have are more for sentimental value than monetary--I'm too apathetic for such a hobby as collecting them. I checked your bio; it doesn't give the year you were born--though I suppose you already knew that ... So I can't say if you're older than me or not, but if you're really interested, I'm 21.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

yeah older, late 20s for me. i got rid of all my cards long ago, before i went to college.

i like to leave my age off so maybe people assume i'm younger and therefore smarter for my age, as opposed to average intelligence for someone staring at 30.

you guys need a new stadium.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

If it makes you feel any better, I thought you were closer to my age. :-) Of course, I have no actual reason or logic for why I thought that ... I tend to leave the reason and logic to other people.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[g-nice.livejournal.com]

thanks. i look sort of younger also. its a compliment when speaking with folks younger than me, but a hinderance when trying to date older women.

Re: a refernce only as true baseball fan will appreciate

[cosmolinguist]

One of the reasons I haven't been to a baseball game since Hrbek retired is that my dad hates driving downtown in Minneapolis, and doesn't really like indoor baseball. I'm with him (though at least Minneapolis makes sense; it could be worse, it could be in St. Paul), but too many people aren't. And now we've got a crazy Republican governor and no money, so no one even talks about a new stadium any more.

[autumnsshadow.livejournal.com]

ahh Risk...now that brings back memories...ours was usually "Die you stupid nudist!"