what're you doin'? watchin' football?

 This is a thing we say in my parent's house and my sister and I say it to each other as well. The proper response to 'what're you doin? watchin football' is, "yep. watchin' football.' regardless of whether or not you're watching football. In fact, the answer is more correct if you aren't watching football. 

The way I remember this call and response coming about was one day I was sitting on the couch where my dad watches TV and he came into the room and saw what was on the TV which was clearly not football and asked, "what're you doing? watchin' football?" and I went along with it and said I was watching football. 

I think there's meaning in the ritual. Maybe there doesn't need to be. Maybe the silliness of it is enough. But one possible meaning is that "watchin' football" refers more to the general state one is in when watching football. That is to say, just sitting there staying at the screen. It's bit like the exchange of "how's it going" and "good". You aren't actually asking how someone is doing. And you aren't actually telling them how you're doing. It's an acknowledgment of someone else's presence and your recognition of them. It's letting both people know that you are both safe people who are abiding by the rules. That's a little bit at play in "what're you doin? watchin' football?"

Another element. And at the risk of reading too much into it. Is that my dad and I have pretty different tastes. I know a little bit about football and I've followed it off-and-on but I've never really been into it. Or into cars. Or other sports like UFC. It would be too far to say that my dad and I don't have any shared interests. There's definitely things we both like. But maybe, and maybe just for the sake of writing something interesting, maybe "what're you doing? watching football? yep. watching football" is a kind of way of bridging the gap. It's saying "what're you doing son of mine? the things I imagined my son might be doing?" even though he knows I'm not doing those things at all. And me saying, "yes Father. I am meeting your expectations." And the joke is we both know it's not true and we don't even laugh at it but we absolve ourselves of these expectations.

I don't know. It's mostly a goof.

I try to learn from the grass on the ground

 I try to understand the things it shows.

ah dang I'm just doing Walt Whitman again. I thought I had an original thought started but it's just Song of Myself.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

one thing I did when I was sick

was take an x-acto knife and scrape out all the grime around my keyboard keys. 

it was really satisfying

kind of my new favorite hobby actually

gently scraping away gunk and grime 

would recommend

my parking lot pumpkin

 

god bless ye parking lot pumpkin

 Let me say up top, the Earth is round. It's definitely not flat. It's round.

Now let me say--I think most people (or at least me) would be better off with an imagined antiquated sense of geography. 

I'm open to the idea that some people love to look at a map of the whole world or a globe and know that it's all there and accurate and except for tiny little remote pockets we've basically got it all in satellite images. Maybe to them it fills them with wonder and helps them to imagine what it would be like to go there.

Not me. You know this. I'm a dweller. I want an accurate map of the town I live in and then some extensions for the interstates and highways I know how to navigate. And then 'The Far Lands'. These are places I've maybe been to once or twice or know I could get to if I had to. I know for sure there's at least one ocean. Put a big serpent in the middle of it. Then a lot of 'Great Beyond'. 

I'm not saying I want to be willfully ignorant. It's important that we have this information. I'm just saying scale matters. 

I look at a map of the whole world, that's too much information. I don't live there. I know I do technically but the human animal part of me doesn't live there. 

I AIN'T NEVER GOING TO THE MALDIVES!

But! I did find this map of the place I live and it's not perfect but I feel like it's a good example of what I'm kind of getting at

This tells me something the human part of me wants to know.  This person's humor and viewpoint is kinda 'meh' but this does something for me that like 'maps for navigation' doesn't do. 

here's something that I feel needs addressing

 1- sounds the same as 'won'. perfect. 

2- sounds the same as 'too' and 'to'. awesome. surely the next number will feature even more homophones!

3- is its own unique word?! maybe equates to 'free' or 'tree' given the accent? ok fine. I guess we aren't doing number homophones anymore. 

4- 'for' AND 'fore'. 

And then NONE of the other numbers mean anything else. 

just kidding!

8 and ate!

I don't like homophones. We should do something about it. There's no reason for wildly different meanings to be mapped to the same sounds. It's not like we ran out. Make em different. Surely we can unite in this effort.

Some are okay. Some can stay. Like the word 'can'. But not 'some' and 'sum'. Or 'but' and 'butt'. Or 'not' and 'knot'. Or 'or' and 'oar'

you gotta spend money to eat money

 phrase for grocery store