Sports events

If I'm playing in the game,(*) I'm excited about it. If a family member or friend is playing, I'll watch and stay interested. If I don't know a soul, I have trouble caring.

I'm just not part of our harmless ritual of belonging: fans rooting for their team.

I've been like that all my life. It's probably a deficit of character somehow. It's not at though I spend the time with more productive pursuits -- I manage to waste time other, generally less social, ways.

It certainly cuts down on the small-talk possibilities.

(*) My knees say playing baseball is much less likely than it used to be, and once I was out of school and away from PE, it was improbable even then.

UPDATE: For anyone looking back on this years from now, wondering what brought the subject up, the Super Bowl was a few days ago and the Winter Olympics is still on.

Different takes

Tonight we were talking over Luke 13:6-9, the parable of the fig tree being given one extra year. I'd thought of it as a warning that (contra the prosperity gospel), having lots of material and even apparent spiritual goods might be a sign that this was your last chance. Someone else looked at the context ("but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish") and suggested that the vineyard-keeper was the one repenting from not having done his job taking care of the fig tree.

First order pleasures

All I know of Scrooge McDuck is that he had nephews and he loved to dive and swim in a vault of money.

Never mind petty details about the density and viscosity of cash. He wants to swim in it because other people value it -- not because of its beauty or sensual pleasure. Gold can be pretty, but piles of it aren't terribly aesthetic, though perhaps Smaug might see it so.

Which makes the pleasure rather second-order; not that it is pleasant in itself but it's pleasant because of what other people think about it. You don't enjoy it directly.

One first-order pleasure is admiring the beauty of the refracting crystals in the snow as your headlights shine on them as you drive. Not that I want to swim in the snow, but it makes me happier to look at it, no matter what Vogue says about this year's flake styles.

That's not to say that "first order" is better. Some pleasures are greater when shared, and you can have joy in the pleasure someone you love takes in a gift -- child with a new puppy?

But ... Arm candy or a friend? Caviar or red beans and rice? Up until the xrays burned out my taste buds, I could truthfully claim that no restaurant made the latter dish as well as my mother did, or my wife, or even me.

Living by the calendar

I read an essay by someone who deprecated life "lived by the calendar" as mechanical and dead. I looked at our calendar. It's more a matter of living by the promises we made.

Distinguishing different types of concerts

Are the "nose-bleed seats" in the Sherpa-guided upper-upper balcony, or down in front by the wall of speakers?