matthearn.com

I’m not really a poetry guy; I’d much prefer listening to one set to music. (And if it hasn’t been set to music by anyone, it’s probably not very good.) Still, this poem, by Robert Frost, I find very appealing, particularly as Spring turns to May:

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long. You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long. You come too.

(It has, of course, been set to music, most famously by Randall Thompson.)

Been a busy day, so no significant updates, but here’s a few amusements for ye:

• I went to high school here. Fire! Awesome.


• One for the baseball fans; this killed me.


• You don’t have to be scared of vegetarians.


• Oh crap. Apparently this is real. Why won’t she just go away?

Sorry for the light day; I’ve been busy every night this week, which is when I write most of my posts and schedule them to pop up during the day. One more night of rehearsals and then I’m off until, you know, we have a baby next week. And whatnot.

The internet being what it is, my recent website alterations have led to a lot of spam comments. Even more than regular comments! This shouldn’t be surprising, since I have two readers.

So, I’ve added a plug-in that does some kind of magic involving hash strings and other crap I don’t understand, the end result being that humans should be able to leave comments, and spambots should not.

Here’s where I need you, my two readers, to help out: leave a comment on this post, if you would be so kind, so that I know that humans can still, you know, do so. Leave anything you want. “Hi, I’m a comment!” would be a good one, or “Ew, I found a pube in my taco.”

Your assistance is greatly appreciated. I will start the testing myself with an amusing comment.

Here is why I don’t normally watch American Idol: because of hacks like Allison Whatsherbutt, who deafened me for a while last night. She sang “Someone To Watch Over Me,” one of the best songs ever put to lined paper, like a pig in an abattoir. Good job, Allison: you can song really frickin’ loud. Is that all you have to offer? Really?

Here’s the thing that, if you’re lucky, you’ll learn somewhere down the line: singing is often about subtlety. Loud is merely the first step in learning how to sing. I know literally dozens of people who can sing loud. I know a very limited number who can sing softly, and more importantly, know which to do at any given time.

“Someone To Watch Over Me” is wistful, almost a bedtime prayer. Belting it out at the top of your lungs is like playing a lullabye on a piccolo trumpet directly into your baby’s ear. It’s like a Frost poem through a megaphone. It’s like waking up your sleeping spouse by kneeing him in the testes.

Sadly, <SPOILER ALERT>you’ll be there after tonight</SPOILER ALERT>, so next week perhaps you can commit voice rape on a Norah Jones song, or something. Color me “not watching.”

Chris Hardwick over at nerdist.com has an interesting post on confidence. The gist: know how to do something that you love, really well. Even if you’re in a situation where that expertise doesn’t really apply, the simple fact that you’re really good at something can be a subconscious morale booster.

You know what I need? Better hair products. I have acres, nay, bushels of various mousses, pastes, gels, and sprays, and not one of them really makes my hair do what I want it to do consistently. I’m sure many of you feel the same way, right? Right?

Back in the day, men used hair pomades, thick, greasy stuff made from pig lard and wombat tears. Look at this guy:

That’s Rudolph Valentino, heartthrob, actor, peritonitis victim, and all-around man-about-town. I’m not sure when that picture was taken, but it probably was in the early 20s (since he died in 1926). I guarantee he hadn’t had to comb his hair since he put in a fistful of Murray’s in it in 1914.

Why can’t I get that stuff? I want that slick, sleek look.

On second thought, Valentino was able pull of the sleek look because he was handsome; it’s in everyone’s best interests that as much of my hair be in front of my face as possible. So, uh, nevermind.

So the Phils have quietly and sneakily crept back into first place with last night’s win over the Natinals. Well, maybe not sneakily; Monday’s win was effected via two, count ’em, two grand slams, one from Ryan Howard to tie it up early, and then another from Raul “RBI” Ibañez in the bottom of the eighth to take a 13-11 lead. So not sneaky, but quite loud.

The offense has been en fuego for the last week or so, getting on base, hitting huge bombs. They’re getting on base 35% of the time, 5th best in the league, and slugging .472, topping the league. Most importantly, they have 118 runs, third in the league but only one behind the tied leaders. Woo!

On the mound, however, we have a different story. In 19 games, starters have gone 7 innings only twice. The bullpen is performing admirably (aside from Lidge blowing his first save as a Phillie last week), but they’re getting worn out. Hamels is off to a disastrous start, with an ERA over 7, and while he allowed no runs last night, he only faced 18 batters over 4 1/3 innings before spraining his ankle while fielding a bunt. He says he’ll be okay to pitch again next Monday, his next scheduled start, but frankly I’d rather they 15-day DL him so he can make sure he’s back to full health. The team is good again this year, and has a strong chance of defending last year’s title; I think it behooves them to make sure their ace starter is healthy, rather than risk injury on a game in May.

On a positive note, Raul “RBI” Ibañez is close to joining Chase “Sloppy Splinter” Utley on the official “Matt Hearn Would Go Gay For These Men” list. They’re neck-and-neck in the stats: Utley’s batting .357, with an OPS of 1.142, and Ibañez is batting .355, and his OPS 1.143. Utley started hot like this last year but was slowed by his hip injury, but whichever of them can maintain a pace like this is your NL MVP, and I guar-on-tee it.

I’ve figured out the financial situation.

Well, that’s not true. What I’ve figured out is why a pure free market economy, with no regulation, has no hope of working. Or rather, I’ve figured out a way to explain it in terms that makes sense to me.

(I guess I haven’t figured out a damn thing, if I had to be honest. Still: this makes sense to me. It makes sense to me! That counts for something, right?)

Here’s how I break it down. The free market economy is like a car. Back in the 40s and 50s, cars were simple. Drum breaks, carburetors, rear-wheel drive, manual transmissions; anybody could work on ’em, and most folks did. Anybody could change the fluids, gap and replace spark plugs, tune the engine, etc. You might take it in for the really complicated stuff, but I think my father once told me he replaced the piston rings in an old Mustang he had, hardly a simple job.

Along the same lines, for most of history, investing was simple: you found somebody you trusted who needed money to start a business venture, and you gave ’em a few bucks and hoped to double your money. After a while, it was formalized into stocks and bonds, buying and selling. Pretty tame; you bought a stock, it paid dividends, the price went up or down. Hard to predict, but easy to understand, and over the long term, things tended to go up.

After a while, cars got complicated. Front-wheel drive, automatic transaxles, fuel injection, computer-controlled ignition. I’m pretty mechanical-minded, but all I can do with my Saab is change the oil and brakes. There’s something wrong with the turbo; don’t know how to fix that. Check engine light is on; I could probably get the code, but Lord knows it’s probably an oxygen sensor buried deep in the engine that I can’t get to.

Same deal with financial products: around the turn of the last century, people started “selling short,” which means betting on stocks to fall. This isn’t particularly dangerous on its face, but the problem is if you’re buying stocks, you can only buy as much as you have money for. When you’re selling short, you basically BORROW the stocks and then sell them to someone, and buy ’em back to return ’em to the guy you borrowed ’em from. (It’s slightly more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.) The problem is, unless there’s a regulation preventing it, there’s no limit to the amount you can short sell, because you don’t have to actually own the stock to do so. End result: October 1929. Stock market crash. Depression. Immediately after this, regulations were put in place such that you can only sell short a certain amount, based on how much cash you have laying around.

And then again, in 2008, after years of deregulation, banks are allowed to move money around in ways few people understand. Lenders are allowed to make loans to people who are high credit risks, because they can then turn around and sell the risk off to some investor in a credit default swap. No average person can be expected to understand all this himself, so he hands his money off to an investment professional, just as the average American takes his car back to the dealership for basic service.

Now here’s where the analogy breaks down: imagine you paid your mechanic and got your car back after service, and a few days later the entire car fell apart, Bluesmobile-style. You would, rightly, be very angry with the mechanic, right? You would expect him to repair your car, and probably get you a rental to drive around for your trouble, right? Of course you would.

Unfortunately, if you give your money to an investment professional, and he blows it all on credit default swaps, he can blame it on an economic downturn. All the while, he’s taking his usual commission.

If your car starts acting funny, you know it right away. The check engine light comes on, or the brakes squeal. Something like that. You know to get it fixed right away. With your investments, you mostly have to rely on our investment professionals to tell us, something that they are loathe to do because they know if we knew how incompetent they were, we’d take our money away. Sure, they send out quarterly “statements,” but most Americans throw them into the trash unread. Why would they worry? They’re years away from retirement! So most Americans had no idea what was going on until they watched the S&P 500 lose 50% of its value and called their money man to ask, “Hey, I’m doing okay, right?”

Um…no.

I guess what I’m saying is that giving money to unregulated investment professionals is like giving a Ferrari to these guys. I’m all for the free market, and whatnot, but perhaps maybe just a little government oversight? Maybe? You think?

[Disclaimer: I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Take all of the above with a grain of salt the size of my head.]

I’ve decided that my name should be a pejorative adjective. For example: Man, how clumsy do you have to be to cut your finger on a piece of fashion jewelry? You’d have to be Matt Hearn clumsy to do that.

(Indeed, I managed to cut my thumb on silver ring my wife bought me for our anniversary last year. You may be interested to know that the ring in question is not worn on my thumb. Nor is worn on the hand belonging to the thumb that was cut. Why yes, I do often have bruises and small cuts all over my body from walking into [walls|trees|fences|interior linebackers].)

Another good one: how dumb do you have to be to mow the lawn on a 90-degree afternoon? Man, you’d have to be Matt Hearn dumb. (Or perhaps Matt Hearn busy.)

It totally works.

Oh…oh god. Yes. YES.

(Yes.)

(Hat tip: The Llij.)