Take me out to the ball game.

*(The first of a series of articles written for Whatacorker.com online magazine)

US Correspondent: gives an account of Baseball

A finer family day out could not be found in the entire United States. The national sport of baseball draws crowds in the region of 25 gazillion (metric,) every year.

“But why pay good green to watch a couple of dozen men smack a ball and jog around in a diamond formation!” I hear you cry.

But, little do you know, when you considered baseball, you forgot to count the myriad snack selection, and pre-game entertainment. You rash English! Perhaps you should listen for a moment before crying out of turn.

Have you ever been to a game of soccer that has a 35-millimeter cannon shooting t-shirts at you? Have you ever been to a game of tennis where a man, mounted on a novelty ostrich throws hot-dogs in your general direction? Have you ever been to a game of rugby where fireworks whoosh into the air every time there is a try? Well? Have you? Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to the knee-slapping world of Semi-professional baseball!

 

The Reading Phillies are a “farm team.” No. I do not mean that they play on a farm. They play in a stadium, but the team “sows” players, that are “harvested” by the Philadelphia Phillies, and swapped back and forth in the cutthroat world of Pro-Baseball. My family was privileged enough to accompany me to a game one evening, and I think it was a life changing event for them. Suffice it to say, I caught my dad on more than one occasion mumbling under his breath about wasted lives and opportunities in the new world, whittling down lumber to craft high-quality baseball bats.

“Oh say can you see!!! By the dawns early light!!!” Warbled a young girl scout (or a girly boy-scout with a frightening soprano). The national anthem of the United States of Whatever, echoed through the cavernous stadium, and through the standing crowd, (hats to chests). I chanced a sneaky peek at my mother, who shed a tear at the emotionally charged song. I chanced a peek, that is, and then pointed this out to my father and brother, and we quite rightly mocked her for it.

At times I could not help but get caught up in the jovial nature of the game, by smacking my youngest brother on the sides and top of his face in a gesture that mingled brotherly love, and manly camaraderie. With low level bullying and borderline psychosis. Oh the great American game.

The aim of the game is (much like rounders, a strikingly similar game from that bastion of sport creating excellence, England) to score as many runs as possible. As an interesting aside, baseball shares another similarity to rounders; the players must run around in a diamond. As another interesting aside, three strikes and you're out can also trace its origins to the fine art of rounders. In fact, instead of beating around the bush, this writer will just jolly well go out on a limb and say it. Rounders is a complete and utter rip off of baseball! I mean it, really! The sports are just too similar to ignore. Great Britain (yes, the entire nation,) must have travelled forward in time to the relatively recent period of the 19th century, stolen the American national past-time in its germinal state, and returned with it to 16th century England. I further suggest that they then knowingly and spitefully chopped half the length from the bat.

That, Gentleman, is just not Cricket.

 

Mostly Farmless.

  Ten minutes from my community something has arisen. They're just houses, they are not awful houses. People call them awful houses in their attempts to vocalize a feeling that such un-human objects are not satisfying. There is something not right about them.

  

 However, allowing each other the grace of attaching human qualities to inanimate objects is a slippery slope. After all, Slopes can be slippery but they cannot be naughty. They can be inclined, but cannot be inclined toward an end. The slope does not intend me to slip upon it, the slope merely is. A house is not awful, it simply is not conscious, it just is. The God awful people that design them are those worthy of such a title.

  They are the physical manifestations of the death of architecture, of the lack of imaginative capacities, of the precipice of materialism from which humanity has been teetering for the last 100 years. Of the scourge of an arrogant scientific community that is convinced that "particles" and their interactions can account for human qualities. And when a world is built on these principles that simply do. Not. Fit...

  These "Houses" or units, pull you headlong into a world where any trace of humanity has been cast aside. Yet no matter how often you bemoan their existence or curse their manifest crappiness they still stand. You're like the big bad wolf huffing and puffing at a shit brick house.

 

  The damned things went up fast. Used to be farmland you know. Most of the land around here did. bastard developers love to get their hands on our farmland, making farmers offers they cannot refuse, building a boat load of identical living units, hoping that there will be enough people to buy them!

 We buy a lot of food in now, as a country in general, something is always coming from somewhere else. Of course, we've much more important things to do with our valuable land than to grow food in it. We attach a monetary value to our own life support, this soil that is priceless. We replace every strip of land with identical shopping malls, that stock the food that used to grow on this very land. They hawk the leather jackets that come from cows that used to graze on that very spot! 

  

  A hellish future presents itself to me, where there is no land left in North America to grow our own food, it has all be petrified by concrete. As far as the nose can smell, Macdonald's hamburgers. As far as the ear can hear, Christmas jingles from early October. As far as my eyes can see, Smog and eerie neon lights. This is not a vision conjured up by myself alone. It is a frightful nightmare that others share, that such a terrifying prophecy could one day be the fate of a once, Twice, Thrice great nation. 

   human beings will retreat into the safety of their identical living units, drifting around the world wide web, living out their lives in a virtual paradise that harkens back to, well, better times.

 

  We should not let it happen you know.