Some strange and rambling thoughts on Thoreau and the UFC

In what is surely a sign of a deeply diseased mind, one of my first thoughts upon reading the opening chapter of Walden was to compare Henry David Thoreau (unfavorably) with Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight Roy Nelson. Roy Nelson is what MMA fans call an "ambassador for the sport." He may be fat and (at least as far as professional fighters go) pretty bad at fighting. But people root for him b/c he comes across in interviews as intelligent and humble, and he spends a lot of his time helping underprivileged kids in Las Vegas. Contrast w/ Henry David Thoreau, who is widely regarded as one of the great American writers. Yet in Economy, the first chapter of Walden, he delivers blanket insults to anyone who didn't choose his style of deliberate living, and frankly (imho) comes off as kind of a dick. Maybe the reason so many people still lead "lives of quiet desperation" is that there have been too few ambassadors for the "sport" of alternative, examined, deliberate lifestyles. I am sure that there are better ways to live than the regular [go to college -> get a job w/ two weeks off /year -> get married -> retire] template that so many take for granted. But surely we don't need to insult the people who are living that life in order to demonstrate that there are better (or at least different) ways to do things.

Additional thoughts on the UFC, not wrt anything else: The Ultimate Fighting Championship is in a strange place right now. Its marquee divisions (welterweight, middleweight, and light heavy) all seem like competitions for second place. Georges St-Pierre has cleaned out the 170 lb. division to such an extent that challengers are being ported in from Strikeforce (his fight w/ Shields wasn't particularly close, and I don't see any reason to think Diaz will fare any better.) Anderson Silva has had exactly one close fight since he won the Middleweight belt in 2006, and he has looked like a monster* in his last two fights. It might be too early to say that Jon Jones will be as dominant as GSP or Silva, but after the way he destroyed Rua, I predict that he will be wearing that belt for a good long time. Full disclosure: I have been on this bandwagon since I watched him suplex Stephan Bonnar at UFC 94. But even when I try to think objectively about it, I just don't see anyone in the division with the tools to beat this guy with his 85" reach and his varied (and ridiculously unorthodox) skill set.


*Here is a great clip of Forrest Griffin talking about their 2009 fight at light heavyweight: "Every fight I go into, no matter what happens- it couldn't be worse than Anderson Silva."

We'll remember this when we are old and ancient, though the specifics might be vague...

I went to see the Decemberists today at the Botanical Garden. It was a great show. The opening act was a local band called Typhoon, and they were really good. Kind of like BSS, but with discernible lyrics. They had 13 people on stage, singing and playing horns and guitars and violins. I think the word is "soundscape." Then the Decemberists came on:

"This is Sam Adams, mayor of Portland, Oregon. This message is not prerecorded; I am speaking to you live. I am floating above you in a blue geodesic dome. Do not be alarmed."

The set list:
July, July
You Are My Sunshine (Seriously, Colin Meloy was called offstage here by one of the audio techs, and none of the other band members could come up with a joke to tell.)
Down by the Water
Calamity Song
Rise to Me
Shiny
*Pause here to borrow sun hats from various audience members.
The Rake's Song
We Both Go Down Together
Won't Want for Love
The Crane Wife (all three parts!)
All Arise!
Rox in the Box
("We're glad to be in Boise; you've all been so accommodating... that this next song is about imagined Latino gangland warfare in California.)
Oh, Valencia
This Is Why We Fight
The encore:
Raincoat Song
The Chimbley Sweep (Pause in the middle for Colin Meloy to trade places w/ the drummer, who proceeds to play a cowbell and then sing something you could probably call the Failed Cowbell Solo Blues.)
June Hymn

An Evening With Cake

I went to see Cake on Friday night at the Idaho Botanical Garden, along with Katie and Jason Keffer. It was a really good show. John McCrea does most of the heavy lifting, but the rest of the band seems to have really improved since they started putting out albums in the mid-90s. The set list:

Sad Songs and Waltzes
Opera Singer
Frank Sinatra
Arco Arena
Wheels
Stick Shifts and Safety Belts
Sheep Go to Heaven
Comanche
Rock 'n Roll Lifestyle
Long Time
Mustache Man
Federal Funding
Sick of You
--Intermission
Love You Madly
Haze of Love
Guitar
Satan Is My Motor ("I know there are probably a lot of religious fundamentalists in the audience. But this is just a metaphor, so you can still go to heaven if you sing along. Probably.")
--Brief pause here to give away a willow tree- apparently they do this at all of their shows.
Jolene
Pentagram
Never There (The trumpet player has gotten so much better since this song first came out. He used to sound like the first or second chair in a fair-to-middling high school band.)
--Encore:
Short Skirt, Long Jacket
The Distance

RSS Graffiti Test

test test test

I'm tired of Facebook

I heard way too many dramatic stories tonight about things that happened on Facebook. Between that and being creeped right the hell out by Catfish, I am starting to wonder if I really need to be putting myself online so that people can look at pictures of me in a Rocky Horror costume, or rag on me for posting too many stories from the New York Times. (Get it Matt, rag?)

England friends, Michigan friends, OK friends who are out of town: I want to stay in touch with you. But how about I give you an email address or phone number? I haven't made up my mind yet, but I'm thinking about deactivating the ol' FB account, and instead using this blog to post news articles and interesting musings.

What say you?

Some thoughts about the WBC

The Westboro Baptist Church came to Norman today, and Katie and I went to hold a sign and see what would happen. I've always kind of suspected that these people don't really exist, and someone has been photoshopping their signs into other pictures as a weird, elaborate prank. The fact that they do is a serious body blow to my faith in humanity. Apparently the WBC also protested in front of the Big 12 Championship last night. I find it interesting that the a super-conservative religious organization goes out of its way to offend conservatives and religious people: Baptists, OU fans, the military...

Suppose for a minute that you've bought into the Bill Maher, anti-theist idea that religion is bad, since people use it to justify all kinds of madness all over the world. Further suppose that you really want to help your fellow man escape the captivity of faith, how would you do that? I submit that if you were dedicated enough, you might get together with a group of like-minded friends and troll the world. You'd be as offensive as possible to as many people as possible, although probably stop short of actually killing anyone (since it's hard to effect social change from jail), and you'd do it in the name of religion. Not "I hate fags" but "God hates fags." You might come up with one or two issues, and take a stance that is unpopular, or better yet completely untenable. Better still if you can find some verses from your holy book of choice that seem to support these positions. After that you'd just make a lot of noise and harass people, but especially religious people, since they are the ones you'd need to convert.

Basically, if you wanted to convince people that religion is a bad thing, you'd found the Westboro Baptist Church.

This basically the deck that I took to Indy two weekends ago. I think it has a lot of potential, although my testing for that particular event was somewhere between insufficient an nonexistent. I won last week's FNM with it, and I am going to try again tonight.

4 crumbling necropolis
1 dragonskull summit
1 drowned catacombs
1 lavaclaw reaches
2 creeping tar pit
4 scalding tarn
3 swamp
4 mountain
3 island
4 halimar depths

4 spreading seas
4 treasure hunt

4 calcite snapper
4 sedraxis specter
4 blightning
2 chandra nalaar
2 cruel ultimatum

4 lightning bolt
2 terminate
2 earthquake

2 countersquall

SB:
1 earthquake
2 terminate
3 flashfreeze
4 goblin ruinblaster
2 countersquall
2 magma spray
1 chandra nalaar