if it's friday, it must be random

1.) First of all, lemme just tell you or remind you that Ubaldo won another game yesterday. I am hoping the rotation works out such that he will pitch against the Sox when they are in Colorado next week, but I haven't stopped and figured it out yet. It has been suggested to me that I price plane tickets to Denver, but alas, I have neither the budget nor the lifestyle to consider such things. More's the pity. Also, I need to register a complaint. When Ubaldo was 12-1, I read some list of pitchers who had started out their seasons thusly. The one that stuck in my mind was Roger Clemens 1986 (and as Mr Barma said to me, "And look how that turned out." Ha!) Then when Ubaldo won number trece yesterday, I read that Roger Clemens started the 1986 season 14-0. Both of these facts cannot be correct, and one would think online sports news sources would have better fact-checking. Boo! I wish I knew off the top of my head, but at the beginning of the 1986 Sox season I had a newborn baby and was getting approximately three hours sleep a night. That fucks with one's ability to form long term memories. (Except I know Chernobyl was in the spring of '86 because I was home on maternity leave following it. Did Roger Clemens's stellar pitching help those poor Ukrainians? NO.)

2.) What else happened in the spring of 1986? Celtics won an NBA championship. Unlike last night. And that's all I have to say about that, except to note that it will have made both my son and Our Lil MILF very sad. Which, y'know, I think is a good thing overall. These kids these days have become too used to the Pats and the Sox and even the Celtics winning stuff like playoff games and championships. They need to learn the heartbreak of a crushing loss like we Boston sports fans of old. It's character-building!

3.) I read an article yesterday about "disposable clothing" and the environmental and social impact of that, the moral being buy less and if you do buy, buy this fairly expensive and pretty damn ugly clothing made by these few designers who are actually "green" and socially responsible. Can I just say, I am sick of feeling guilty about everything I do. Every action that we do has far-reaching consequences, and thinking that if I do x which is a good thing without considering that also means y which negatively impacts something else is stoopid. Like, yeah, I've bought some of my new work clothes from the Gap recently. Yes, they were probably made in sweatshops. Yes, the textile factories that produced the cotton they are made of use lots of energy and pollute the water. If I and people like me didn't buy them, however, probably those sweatshops slaves would lose their jobs and a crappy, crappy abusive job is preferable to STARVING. Plus the college kids who sell me those Gap clothes would lose their jobs, and where would their beer money come from then? And if the college kids don't have beer money, the local drinking establishments tank, which means more job loss. And if there are no bars and clubs, where do the up-and-coming musicians play? Do I want to be responsible for the death of live music because I didn't buy a cheap cardigan to cover up my cleavage? I mean, hopefully I don't need to give you all an irony alert tag, but you see my point. The economic, social, and environmental impact of everything we do is so complex, it's impossible to do some mythical "right thing." Also, let me say this: yes, I wouldn't have to have bought all these new work clothes if the ones I bought 3 years ago hadn't fallen apart, but I cannot help that either. I didn't save all my well-made clothes from 1980 which didn't fall apart when you washed them 20 times and my workplace probably frowns on me showing up in garments with visible holes in them. It's not in the dress code but I think it is implied. (Side point: in the comments on this article, a bunch of women suggested the green answer to all this is buying vintage. I can only assume they are all college students, because as much as I love vintage, you cannot wear it to a regular job. Vintage looks vintage. Okay, if you're a hairdresser or a record store clerk or that extremely adorable waitress at the Gulu that I have a girl crush on, but most professional people can't dress like that at work. Real life slaps your idealism upside the head once again.)

4.) Remember how I bitched in here about that Tom Myers fascia film commentary/lecture that cost $50 to attend? Well, I saw M2 this week and while she did not attend either, some other friends of ours did. One of them left her a message about it afterwards, which I will paraphrase. "He said everything we know and everything that he was about to tell us is wrong or will be wrong in five years, which made me wonder why I was sitting there listening to it." Ha! Glad I saved my fifty bucks.

5.) Read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. Then report back. (Maybe the science in that will all be proven wrong in another ten years, but for now it's pretty compelling.)

6.) Have a great weekend. It's gonna be hot, hot, hot. I would like to go to the beach, but I cannot eat potato chips. How can I reconcile those two things?

xoxo