Limited Perspective

Honestly, it’s not rational at all, and maybe a little bit pathetic, but sports moments can mean so much. I moved to western Washington for good in 1989 but was never really a Mariners fan. I maintained my loyalty to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I was busy with other things. Also, the Mariners were terrible, and it seemed like a fool’s errand to invest anything into an awful team, especially after having endured a decade of futility and heartbreak from the Pirates. In 1995 when the Mariners went on a crazy run and made it into the playoffs, I was sickened by all the fair-weather fans and their complete misunderstanding of the game of baseball. At the time, one of the Seahawks (I think it was their punter) denounced them all as “frontrunners.” I remember he said something like “every city has them.” I did not join the fan frenzy either. I’m not proud of that teenager-like, oppositional-defiant stance, but it was what it was. Then in 2000, for whatever reason, I decided to try to get into...

Yesterday, a welcome invitation from a friend had me drag myself out of my apartment to meet her at Shelter, a new (-ish, I guess) restaurant at Green Lake. It was wonderful catching up, talking about life, and all the other things that come with being in-person and out on the town. Just this week, I read complaints online lamenting the use of QR codes, as Shelter does, in place of menus. I sympathized because it’s nice to browse and even to hold a menu in your hands, like when it’s got metal covers or is made of bamboo or something. But forget that. The QR code is great. You just scan it into your phone. There is no craning your neck looking for your server, joking with your mates. “Did they quit in the middle of their shift?!” or any of that. You just order, pay, and the server brings it. Like magic. Same thing if you want another drink, you just punch it into your phone and voila. When you’re done, there’s no bring-the-bill, sign-the-bill, bring-back-the-credit-card tango. You jus...

I have been eating a lot of brie lately. I don’t really like it. I do things like this this a lot. I still don’t know whether I like mushrooms. But I will intentionally order pizza with mushrooms and sometimes put mushrooms in my spaghetti sauce when I make it. I draw that line at, like, beef stroganoff or risotto with mushrooms because that’s just too many mushrooms. Coffee doesn’t, most of the time, taste actually good. Beer? Not good. Tequila? Not good. Roasted jalapenos? Actively painful. And yet. What is this about? In a philosophy class, if I recall correctly, we were having one of those abstract discussions of pleasure and pain. I raised my hand and sparked a discussion of how humans are the only animal (maybe?) that intentionally seeks out things that are painful to it. We eat, as I said, hot peppers, defeating eons of pepper evolution that were supposed to make them anathema to any animal foolish enough to chomp it. We sit in hot tubs and saunas in temperatures that ought to m...