This skunk is retired

I was looking for a fresh blogging start, so check me out at:
http://nateisthebossoflife.blogspot.com/

Jealous Again

Following baseball is like following the stock market- if you are checking the paper everyday, you're gonna lose your mind or go crazy with every little up and down. Which is why it was nice to slip away for a week and not really be able to follow every single game, AND THEN come home and be sitting in a better position. Sweet.
Great week in the land to the north, who hate Chicagoans for putting so much money into their economy and being legal owners of property. Oh i feel sooooooo guilty. Dicks. But i felt like traveling to Scons is like traveling overseas. It's just easier to say yer from Canada than US, just like it's easier to say Minnesota than IllyNoise. But I had a great time reading, chilling, drinking, campfireing, grilling, Duluthing, arguing, sleeping, coffeeing, biking, boating, farting.
This Saturday is the beginning of the 13 holy days of the year: Notre Dame football. I'm stressing how i'll be able to watch the game from Minnesota (not because of what channel, thanks to the NBC contract, as to where i'll be able to see the game) but you cannot appreciate how gay i feel right now, and it will only get giddier every step towards kick off.
Yeah, sure, i guess you could say we balanced each other out. Al got to meet Dave on Sunday, and attend the best concert of the tour, but, hey, i got to eat pizza and listen to the live from fenway set in my underwear. So, yeah, sure, we broke even. Sigh.

Cheat the odds that made you
Brave to try to gamble at times
Well I feel like dirty laundry
Sending sickness on down the line
Tell you why

cause Im jealous, jealous again
Thought it time I let you in
Yeah, Im jealous, jealous again

Got no time, baby
Always drunk on sunday
Tryn to feel like Im at home
Smell the gasoline burning
Boys out feeling nervous and cold

Stop, understand me
I aint afraid of losing face
Stop, understand me
I aint afraid of ever losing faith in you
Never felt like smiling
Sugar wanna kill me yet
Find me loose lipped and laughing
Singing songs aint got no regrets

Dont you think I want to
Dont you think I would
Dont you think Id tell you baby
If I only could
Am I acting crazy
Am I just too proud
Am I just plain lazy
Am i, am i, am i, ever

I'm jealous, jealous again.

Hell No I Ain't Happy

Oh God, how can it still be a pennant race? We've played horrible ball the last 2+ weeks, but we're still in the game. Every day is agony, as we lose and lose and lose and finally win! WTF baseball fans. Anywho, I'm stoked to be heading up to beautiful Birchwood Wiscony on Saturday morning, for a week of...I'm not really sure, but I'll have a week off from work and the Cubs, so i'm please as piss.
FYI: listen to the new Okkervil River, then listen to it, then listen to their last 3 albums.
Just pre-ordered the new New Pornographers record, it comes with 3 extra cds of music. Goody Goody Goody. Follow that up with the upcoming Rilo Kiley & Ben Harper discs, and we're in good shape. As long as I stop looking at the scoreboard.

I would be overstating
If I said I knew you well
That I knew you at all
When you flew through that windshield
And your life passed reel to reel
Was there a bit part for me?
I made a wish for you
Blew out the sun so it’d come true
But the sun froze along with your heart

So give up, give up your love
Give up, give up your love
I promise its not gonna kill ya
And I need ya, Lord I need ya
And when they cut up your lung
You said it could all breathe easy

The hole swallowed your heart
When they drill holes in your skull
And screwed that halo to your head
Did you think you could fly?
I made a prayer for you
Then prayed some more that it’d come true
Don’t know about God but I believe in you

So give up, give up your love
Give up, give up your love
I promise its not gonna kill ya
And I need ya, Lord I need ya
And though you haven’t got a lot to give up
A good man is easy to kill well
Stop talking about the weather and say you’re getting better

Go Cubs Go + ramblings

Here we go:
Pretty solid summer, lots of great Cubs games, although they seem to be trying NOT to take 1st place lately. I'm loving it, though. I've always hated the Mets, and I am proud to call them my baseball nemesis
Deathly Hallows was brilliant, had a blast getting it, even more delightful reading it, heavy depression afterward, made me think of an Elvis Costello song.
Wrigley Field is awesome, but here's a secret you might not know: Cub fans are huge jerks. I cannot stand them. And neither can you. But we make do with what we got, and everyone should head to Wrigley at least once, but after that, if you get a chance to listen to Pat Hughes & Ron Santo or Len Kasper & Bob Brenley, it mighty better.
Got my new bike, got my new bike tubes/tires, got my new lungs. Not yet, but went for a pretty good ride on friday, and I was dying.
Miller Chill is such a good deal, I can't not recommend it. Also, I make a killer Sangria.
Tsk Tsk Tsk: all the suckers who are doubting ND are idiots. Just wait...
If the Chicago Bears have taught us anything, it's that a great anthem/fight song can carry you a long way. A folk singer/troubadour/musician by the name of Steve Goodman (excellent geetarist) wrote a song in 1984 that blasted at Wrigley and on WGN (radio home of Cubs) and this year, they've taken to playing it after each home victory. Folks are singing along, and now you can join in:
Baseball season's underway
Well you better get ready for a brand new day.
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
They're singing ...

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

They got the power, they got the speed
To be the best in the National League
Well this is the year and Cubs are real
So come on down to Wrigley Field
We're singing now ...

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

Baseball time is here again
You can catch it all on WGN
So stamp you feet and clap your hands
Chicago Cubs got the greatest fans.
You're singing now ...

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

F U

How much of a ginourmous asshole do you have to be to leak & read a leaked copy of HP&DH? I don't know, but it is crazy huge. I would love to read it today. Hell, I've been looking forward to it since the afternoon I finished the HBP, but this is like saying "screw you, Jo." It pathetic and disappointing that people can't play by the rules after she & co have given us such entertainment.
Vacation was awesome, a week on the beach, the private beach, swimming/burning/swimming, grilling, bonfires, sunset over the lake, epic. I wish I was there right now. But I'm glad I'm back, so's I could get Spoon's GaGaGaGaGa, maybe not there best evah, but got some beauts for the summer.
Shut up.
It's like my buddy Mike Cooley always says. He says, "Nate, life ain't nuthin but a blending up of all the ups & downs."

oh man, what's going on?

I have no idea. Summer is just washing over me like a pool of my own sweat. First the Cubs sucked, then the Cubs started getting awesome, and I'm just waiting for my heart to get broken. The Sox started iffy, and just went south. I've been in and out of town, got 3 cases of Ale-8-1, drank 3 cases of Ale-8-1, went rafting, went to a Pirates game, ate a bunch of pizza & chicken, spent a week in an abandoned ghostpital, watched most of the Baseball doc & Band of Brothers (again), getting ready for a week in Michigan on Lake M, playing video games, and letting a general sense of apathy run my life.
screw dylan, darnielle rules

the sun came up above the strange white plain.
blood red flowers all wet with rain
and the spirit wasn't really willing anymore, but the flesh was very very strong.
and i've got very little money left, and i've got no sense,
but I'll have none of your god damned impudence.

the sun came up above the new white fields, everything was new again.
pure power, stripped of meaning, sky burning, spring cleaning.
daisies on the hillside like cancer on the skin.
pretty little yellow eyes that flutter in the wind,
I'd be grateful my children aren't here here to see this,
if you'd ever seen fit to give me children.
and my defenses may be working with a skeleton crew,
but I'll be skinned alive before I'll take this from you.
the sun came up above the ocean out west, all the colors of the rainbow.
stand up straight, you can see the house leaning.
day breaking, spring cleaning.

Holy Balls

I spent the last 10 minutes of Lost with my mouth wide open, just eating it up. Un-be-lieveable. I guess it could be the beginning of the end, in terms of both the coolness of the show and it's time on tv (it def is for the latter). It kicked every other finale's ass, though I thought "Heroes" was good, impossible to live up to the hype of the entire season leading into this one hour. And I love that I have no idea what is up with next season.

I always look forward to these weekends so hard, thinking that they are some how going to fix everything that goes wrong in my life, which is a foolish way to live, and it never lives up to the hype, but almost nothing does. I do promise to watch a lot of long movies, eat a bunch of unhealthy food, and waste more hours than I should playing video games and reading comics, but I'll also try to get a bike and shoot a few rounds of disc golf. And listen to DBT.

I am giving out 3 scholarship awards tonight at a local high school for graduating students from my former college, and if they knew I was doing it, I'm pretty sure they'd revoke the $ and denounce the kids.

Between the champagne hand jobs and the kissing ass by everyone involved
What used to be is gone and what ought to be ought not to be so hard
So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one
They always told me when you hit it you'll know it
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating