The birth of Mount Diablo:

Geologic Summary: 165 million B.C. Mt Diablo began as volcanic rock beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean and was scraped into a mass between the Pacific tectonic plate and the overlying sedimentary layers of the North American plate. As ice ages affected sea levels, sedimentation continued in shallow coastal seas. About four million years ago, the older, harder volcanic material from the sea floor forced its way up from between the two plates heaving the weaker sedimentary layers up an angle. Over time, younger rock above eroded and by 2 million B.C. the older rock we recognize as Diablo’s peaks was exposed as low-lying hills.

Human History: ca. 2000 B.C. According to one tradition, at the Dawn of Time, Mt Diablo and Reed’s Peak were surrounded by water. From these two islands the creator Coyote and his assistant Eagle-man made Indian people and the world. In a Plains Miwok creation account, Mol-luk (Condor man) lived on the north side of Mt Diablo. His wife, the rock on which he roosted, gave birth to Wek-wek (Prairie Falcon-man). With the help of his grandfather Coyote-man, Wek-wek created Indian people, providing them with “everything, everywhere so they can live“.

Yes sir, that’s my baby. Tiny little mountain, multiple history options. One is long, hard, and science-ish. The other one has talking animals, and magic! Guess which one I like more?

“…created Indian people, providing them with everything, everywhere…”

Later, a lot of that was reposessed, but it was a nice thought.

So far the highlights of my day have included a child abuse discussion with my boss and gnawing hunger pains. But tonight is baseball, salve of my heart.

Hey, I like you guys. All my normal, healthy, funny, charming, intelligent, wonderful friends. You too, Allen.

Hm. Is she coming down off her morning coffee and feeling clingy? Or just trying to get us to read her blog more often? We’ll never know.

Star Wars fans be warned: this will probably piss you off. Everyone else be warned: this is the most boring blog entry in the history of narcissistic websites, and that is certainly saying something.

Last night I had dinner with Jack and he finally gave me some perspective on why I hate Star Wars so much.

Up until now, I had been operating on the premise that a filmmaker should make movies which can sweep people up and consume them for the two point whatever hours that they last. Jack pointed out, though, that most of them (the good ones, obviously, not James Cameron) probably make films for the same reason any artist practices his work: for themselves. Ergo, while I can point to a hundred different factors which prevented me from gaining any enjoyment out of, for example, Episode II, it’s very possible that for Lucas, stilted dialogue, two-dimensional characters and a listless plot are the stones paving the road to Nirvana. In other words, he might just make crappy movies on purpose.

Whoa! Please stop throwing rocks at my head.

Thanks. Anyway, initially it seemed weird to me that I got so pissed off about the atrociousness of I and II when I am only listlessly unimpressed by films which are far worse (i.e. Scary Movie). But really, here’s me, fantasy reader and all-around nerd, going to see a sci-fi fairy tale: this should be a long-term relationship, right? But I just can’t get into it, so I get pissed off, especially since most people seem to have no problem. And I realized I got pissed off because I thought Lucas was just being a cock-tease, offering me a tasty film and then pulling a last-minute switcheroo and feeding me a heaping spoonful of foul-smelling marketing genius.

But I’m over it now, thanks to Jack. Because hey, Lucas isn’t a cock-tease if he thinks he’s delivering a great product. And I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m just not willing to give another $8.50.

End stupid Star Wars rant. Please feel free to pelt me with electronic vitriol, if you are one of the lucky few who knows me. And for the thousands of strangers who read this page, I guess you can just return to trying to kill each other in Tribes.

More photos of my pretty friend. I really liked this one. Please pardon the memepool-esque hyperlinks — I just learned how to do them a few weeks agone and they are super fun.

I’ve been trying to do one scary thing each week. That’s easy, considering everything scares me. Yesterday I found someone who also used to have a fear of shopping alone in grocery stores. Vindication! Now we need a clinical name and we’re set. Being that agoraphobia was (I think) originally “fear of the marketplace,” we may be well on the road to an extended medical leave and many happy therapy sessions. Maybe we could start a support group, where one person holds up flashcards of melons and boxed rice until the other person has a panic attack.

Baseball was improved last night with the advent of the “tag-ball” rule. If someone throws the ball at you and it hits you while you’re running to a base, you are totally out, cheesehead. This was helpful to me because a) I don’t like all the running involved with chasing people down and b) I can throw a ball but I can’t remember to throw it to someone. This way even if the ball winds up miles from my teammates, I still have a chance at getting an out.

Here’s who played:

Jacob (broken toe)

Michele (broken ankle)

Ellie (broken finger)

Dustin (intense heartburn and shitty day)

Jason (knocked down by Ellie)

Erica (also knocked down by Ellie)

Ash (knocked down by Dustin)

Me (4 hours of sleep for the week so far)

Dan (healthy, but very disgruntled about the new rule)

Don’t bother checking for updates this weekend because I’ll be asleep. Although my body has now moved past tired into that distrustful, grumpy wakefulness (word?) that you get when your whole corpus is thinking “Sure, lie down, nine o’clock at night. Lie down allll you want. But I know damn well in half an hour the phone will ring or something else and you’ll be up again, so no way in hell am I falling asleep until at least one a.m. You got it?” I am suffused with a false cheer, but behind the perky chatter my brain is emitting, I am hearing that song “Running on Empty.”

Fuck I hate that song.

Chapter the Twelfth, in which: I talk to Jack and no one is naked.

How delighted was I to see Jack’s ruddy, nervous face hovering in my kitchen? So delighted. At last, someone willing to discuss Elliott Smith’s albums with me at length without getting bored.

And it was nice to see the rest of you too.

That was the first party I’ve had since my eighth grade Halloween party. The Halloween party was a fiasco, due mainly to intense hostess paranoia. My parents were in the back of the house, no doubt just plotting the ways that they could leap out and embarrass me, and no one was allowed back there or outside. No one was allowed outside. I think to keep us from wandering off and finding alcohol just, you know, laying around on the street. People were intensely costumed — one girl came as a tub of popcorn, so I’m not the only one trying to live something down here — and boiling and unfashionable. Because, you know, eighth grade. Plus, after awhile my parents predictably enough got bored in the back and wandered out to the front. They caught one girl making out with some hapless lad in the study — my dad is still in shock.

Anyway, this one was better I thought. Mainly, getting to watch Ash romping around in the pool with whoever would join him was a delight. All week I’ve been going around saying “Is something wrong with Ash? He doesn’t have the puppyish enthusiasm that I remember him having.” Well last night he was not just a puppy, he was the whole damn cry. There is no joy like the joy of Ash and Dustin trying to drown each other. Sitting anywhere near them and a pool is like being in the front row at Sea World.

. . .

Okay, okay. I’ll tell you what I was for Halloween that year. I was the devil. With the vampy dress and the large plastic pitchfork. And the spiked heels. Oh, wait, I was still super height-conscious then. So did I wear heels? No. Did I, in fact, wear clumpy red slippers? The kind designed to look like plush red Smurf boots?

Yes.

Yes I did.

Enjoy your day; see you at baseball if you don’t suck/live abroad/have a life.

. . .

And some addendums.

1. I actually got to use “sesquipedalian” the very same day of that entry. Coming back from lunch with Tracy, we encountered a herd of wee children on a field trip. “Hey,” said Tracy, “What”s with all the–”

“Sesquipedalians?” I said. Seriously? That made my day.

2. Magpies destroy other birds’ eggs and young and kill sickly, wounded, or newborn sheep and cows by pecking. A group of magpies is sometimes known as a cure.

*King of the road is a registered trademark of Maggie, who is cooler than I am.

I’m reading The Professor and the Madman, which naturally is a book about the OED. It’s more interesting than I thought it would be, especially the part where I learned the word “sesquipedalian,” meaning either a word which is a foot and a half in length, or a person who is a foot and a half tall. I am itching to use this in a sentence, because I’m a pretentious chatty crossword-hound that way.

Last night walking back from baseball practice, I was yet again being mocked for my complete inability to drive anywhere in my hometown without explicit directions. “I’m book smart,” I told Ashley, “not street smart.”

“So, did you graduate yet?” he said.

“Well, when I say book smart — ”

If stupid was a team I’d be captain. Unlike my actual baseball team, where I am less a captain and more a hindrance. Speaking of which, we had a record number of eight people playing last night. We are gaining in popularity and sweeping the nation. It’s no spare tire bowling, but it’s a start.