My Other Social Activities

coincidence…

I’m off for a week-long hiatus to do stuff that is definitely, mostly not about pool. Maybe. In any case, this week’s links section will be a deluxe edition to get you through that pesky work week.

procrastinate more effectively

A $2 Million Criminal

[ SLATE ]

How does the FBI set rewards for criminals like Whitey Bulger?

Why Is It So Hard To Get a Good Bagel Outside of New York City?

[ SLATE ]

Hint: It’s not the water.

The Beer Archaeologist

[ SMITHSONIAN ]

By analyzing ancient pottery, Patrick McGovern is resurrecting the libations that fueled civilization.

The Broship of the Rings

[ BLOG : HOW ARE YOU I'M FINE THANKS ] [ for my cousin who hates hipsters but loves LOTR ]

Lord of the Rings characters turned into hipsters and placed in hipster situations. High fantasy, high larious. (I’ll show myself out…)

Atop TV Sets, a Power Drain That Runs Nonstop

[ NY TIMES ]

One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.

All Azure: The Monochromatic City of Chefchaoen, Morocco

[ WEBURBANIST ]

Morocco is renowned for its colors, with its cities awash in vivid shades of red, purple, green and gold. But things are a little different in Chefchaoen, a town in the northwest nestled among the Rif Mountains.

Deep Cargo: An Ocean Of Lost Shipping Containers

[ WEBECOIST ] [ for my brother who will enjoy all the pictures of ships in this article ]

Up to 10,000 shipping containers are lost at sea every year, a number that may seem quite high but is actually just a tiny percentage of the approximately 50 million containers sent by sea annually.

Fore!

[ NEW YORKER ]

What kind of God won’t let me hit the ball? What did I ever do to Him? He took my hair, I didn’t complain. I joked about it! I was a model bald man.

raffle winners!

the winning numbers were

• 9. Ali
• 16. rope_one
• 27. Doug Wu
• 34. Miss Amy
• 45. cyrex

Congratulations!

In other news of the world, MexiNinja is still on a win streak.

May these warm and fuzzy keychains bring the same luck to their new owners!

Thanks to everyone else for entering and stay tuned, I’ll have another one before the summer is out.

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		C O M M U N I T Y . B L O G . S E R I E S
		You pick a topic, I write about it.
		This week’s topic [ MY OTHER SOCIAL ACTIVITIES ] was suggested by Michael Reddick.

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CBS mailbox

in reponse to the question, “What is your favorite memory of bacon?”

I lived on a farm and we had a smoke house. I can still remember going out into the little building and getting a piece of meat for my Aunt to cook. I wasn’t big enough to bring in anything bigger than a slab of bacon and anyway the hams and shoulders were hanging out of my reach. That smell was just unbelievable. If you are ever back east and get a chance to visit a small farm which has a smoke house ask if you can go into it and see what it is like. November and December is when most of the smoking is done. That’s BACON!

That’s certainly a great reason for me to go back east. Does anyone have a small farm, perhaps? With a smoke house I can live in?

life aside from pool

does it actually exist

let’s think about this for a moment

The request was

Tell us what you do socially in addition to shooting pool, other than beating up bad guys.

I take the term “socially” means “other people” and “in addition to shooting pool” means “practically nonexistent”.

Here is a sampling of sayings on T-shirts that have been gifted to me over the years by many people, divided into the two main eras of my life B.P. (Before Pool) and A.P. (After Pool).

B.P.

• LEAVE ME ALONE
• !@#$%
• Does not play well with others.

A.P.

• Sweet by birth, sour by choice.
• Does not play well with others.
• Nobody reads your blog.

It might be a stretch, but I don’t think people see me as a social butterfly and thus, do not think about me when they are looking to participate in Other Social Activities. At best I would be a social honey badger (that’s a future reader-submitted topic, by the way).

but, like, no man is an island

I, surprisingly to most, do have friends. However — and I think I’m not the only person in this situation — it cannot be helped that they are segregated into “pool friends” and “regular friends”.

I’m so far down the rabbit hole of billiards that it effectively defines and dictates my existence. Since I devote so much time to my hobby/life sentence, Other Social Activities are a rarity for me.

Nevertheless, I have been blessed with friends who understand pool (even to the extent that I understand it) but don’t play the game. This is important. In modern society, I get the impression that a friendship must be constantly maintained. You have to meet regularly with your friends and reciprocate invitations to events and such. My friends understand that is not possible for me. I have no set schedule and it’s completely normal for me to disappear for months at a time. Plus, I live in an apartment the size of a walk-in closet — I’m not going to be holding dinner parties there.

When I do have billiards overload (it does exist, even for me) I visit them for a refreshing defragmentation session — and it’s nice they don’t judge me on my inconsistent nature.

What do we do then? Not much. But, let’s take a look anyways.

eat

My two oldest friends are foodies. They enjoy eating and cooking gourmet meals, and nice restaurants are always part of their traveling itineraries. Whenever you see food porn on this blog, more often than not it’s because I’m hanging out with one of them.

Here’s the product of one of their cooking sessions — a very simple, yet delicious lunch.

Bruschetta of heirloom tomatoes on fresh-baked baguette with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Honey-garlic barbecued chicken.

Sauteed rainbow chard.

Fresh strawberries for dessert.

Later that same day, there was more food with a friend.

Black Forest cake.

Princess cake. I never had this cake before but it’s really effing good. It’s layered with cake, custard, apricot and raspberry, and then encased in marzipan. I’ll be snorting it next time.

I enjoy fooding as an Other Social Activity.

drink

I have been known to drink a little (or not) when it suits the occasion (or not). Although I spend an unequal amount of time enjoying this Other Social Activity with my billiards and non-billiards friends, the two different groups consume an equal amount of alcohol, even as one group contains hundreds of people and the other about a half-dozen.

I also enjoy tea, coffee, and Coke.

adrenaline

Before my non-billiards friends became all responsible and shit, we used to very much enjoy skydiving, whitewater rafting, shooting guns, Vegas buffet excursions, paintballing, deep-sea fishing, rollercoasters, running up the down escalators, and pranking our Asian mothers by telling them we changed our majors from science and economics to liberal arts (run away! run away!).

Except it wasn’t a prank when I told my mom.

That’s why I live many miles away from her.

Oh, hi Mom!

Recently, I did participate in a Diet Adrenaline activity: go-kart racing. Here are some not-very-exciting photographs.

The track for grown-ups (they actually let me on this one). There was a separate one for children.

Plugged into the charging station. These were electric go-karts.

This was a fun activity. Like in any activity, go-kart racing had its share of equipment-freak douchebags with HD video cameras mounted on their helmets. These guys kept bumping and cutting off everyone else so we shamelessly cackled with glee when they crashed.

 

One last picture…

Pool. It’s like VISA: everywhere I want to be.

in parting

That’s my life outside of billiards.

tell me…

Which of your Other Social Activities is the most exciting?

next topic in the Community Blog Series is Cooking Class

if you enjoy this series, post more topics in the comments section