3/12/02
Softball: Thread (A Rare Excursion in Shameless Promotion)
Dear People,
My heartfelt condolences to all of you for yet another day of aerobic release denied. Of course, lest you forget that this was also a grievous loss for me, I should tell you that I arrived at Codornices at 9:22 AM Sunday, just in time to see a surly Berkeley City Parks worker closing our beloved homeland due to the scattered presence of malarial bogs and river sturgeon. I must have slept through the torrential rains of the previous night, for I was so startled by what I saw that my spleen nearly self-desiccated into a twisted clump of pure granular bile, my heart cleaved in three, my tummy ached fierce, and as I prepared to email you the news, I felt the gnawing guilt of a thousand widely popular historians whose best known works were in fact verbatim copies of entries from the 1965 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. No, I don’t send out cancellations because I "like to suffer," or even because I like to make you suffer (although truth be told, I do). In fact, I send them out because I have to, and I think it’s time to accept that bitter but simple truth.
In any case, since there’s nothing aerobic to report from last week and I’m not feeling particularly inspired, I was going to cut this short and just announce the time and place of the next game. I mean, ultimately, these letters are about softball and nothing more, and thus I’m not about to start promoting favored agendas or causes just because there are now more than 250 of you out there. Indeed, to stray from the aerobic thrust of these missives would be to violate your faith in my integrity, and that’s something I simply don’t intend to do.
Which is all the more ironic, because just yesterday I happened to be talking to Wendy about her new seamstressing business, which she opened a couple weeks ago in the Ovation Clothing store at 3206 College Avenue (just off of Alcatraz). I casually offered to mention the new biz on the softball list, suggesting that a little good press could only help. She then looked up at me with those piercing Cantonese oculi, and told me that it wasn’t a good idea. Puzzled, I asked her why, and suddenly her eyes began to fill with tears. "Your friends, uh,….they’re nice and all….but they’d just bring their stupid little buttons, and…." Wendy suddenly stopped and tried to regain her composure, and then she slowly mustered the words. "Ray, it’s just that, uh, that’s not me any more" she gently wept, finally adding that "it’s different, cause, uh, you know…now…I, uh…I do leather."
Frankly, I had always thought of our community in a variety of disparaging ways, but it had never occurred to me that you were just a bunch of button people. Be that as it may, I suspect that some of you could actually use an exceptionally talented seamstress for some of your more respectable clothing projects, and thus you might want to check out SewMuchTheBetter.com. Still, and just to be clear, while she is extremely good at what she does, she’s not cheap, and as best as I can tell, there’s no point in showing up and saying that you’re a friend of mine, since she’d probably just view you with tacit pity. And therefore, there will be a game at Codorncies this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning….Raymond
3/14/02
Softball: Shrooms
Dear People,
There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, but alas, as of now there are no longer any slots available. As always, feel free to call for late cancels.
Please bring $2 for the field, which for this week only includes a fresh braised crawfish and exotic garden truffles in a delightful dill beurre blanc….Ray 845-7552
PS: Unbelievably, there is once again loose talk of rain and scourge; Check email/voicemail Sunday at 10ish if necessary.
Softball: Sunday 8:58AM: Screwed
Due to the pelting rains, bitter cold and contemptible anti-aerobic tone of the current climatic reality, today’s game must be cancelled.
.…Ray
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