all-time win percentage among pitchers with 1000 or more innings:

mussina promptly retired after recording his first 20-win season at the age of 39.

I just was blowing my nose and both my ears popped, and now I can hear everything, probably for the first time in weeks.  It’s like my ears got laser eye surgery.  I can hear all these new things in my surroundings, appliances outside and such.  it’s like my ears have become mixed metaphors and are flying nicely at the state fair.

hopefully now that I did all those tasks and things and went and drove and housesat and things, and got caught up with work and things, now I can just work some light days and get some rest and my complexion will improve and this rattling in my chest will subside along with the nasal congestion and I can get back to what I do best, which is have parties in a normal, regular way.

I washed my face just now in the kitchen sink which is where I wash it, and then moved to the bathroom and shaved which I sometimes do at night, and as I was shaving, tugging on my face and noticing things, getting the skin in the right shapes for the razor, checking my work and repeating, it occurred to me what a strange kind of access to have to a body. how strange to go around with this one body and shave it and things. no one else can, unless I asked someone to shave me or, more likely, paid someone. it is an amazing thing to have this constant access to one and only one body. and strange. the body is a stranger. it is what one is, as far as I can tell, but when one looks at it, it’s a stranger. or not. not always a stranger. I mean, I do things in the presence of my body that are quite personal, but nonetheless in the mirror it is often as strange a stranger as ever was. it is the only one to which I’ll have this kind of access.

* * *

what follows is the text of an email I received today, which I think is a very effective event announcement:

Please come celebrate poets, CAFÉ, and their life together, on Thursday July 2, 5-8:30, in the café at The Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Poets Lee Ann Brown, C.A. Conrad, Mel Nichols, and a host of other will be on hand . . .

Dear Poet,

When poets met CAFÉ, it was love at first sight. Soon they moved in together. The romance goes on.
Poets sit, read, eavesdrop, write, or hide in CAFÉ; CAFÉ’s mood is set by its poets. Words are skimmed, penned, typed, exchanged, gathered and discussed.

Come and do what poets do: read, eavesdrop, play, eat, write, hide, or – whatever you like. There will be no requirement to read or to listen, and no open mic. There will be plenty of poets and opportunities to be poetic.
We also invite you to bring a book for donation to our BOOK collection: poetry or not, whatever you’d like to read in a café.
Please RSVP to db@dbfoundation.org if you can come, and we will put your name on our POET list.

Yours,
dBfoundation

If you can’t make it on July 2, but would like to donate a book, please write to db@dbfoundation.org

***

At The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street NW, Washington DC 20009, Phone: 202.387.2151. $-FREE-$

***

About CAFÉ:

CAFÉ operates inside, outside, and alongside the establishment. CAFÉ is considered responsible for the birth of Romanticism, the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia Project, and the Stock Exchange. It has helped fan the flames of countless insurgencies, while also providing a day-to-day refuge. CAFÉ is built in the space between: between art and institution, structure and idea. It is a place for the development and cultivation of living ideas — not nostalgia, but unformed notions and half-conceived plans. It is an invitation to contemplation, and each of its elements is a means to examine a broader question. CAFÉ is both the work of art and the scaffold used to build it.

CAFÉ [this is not that] starts with the intersection and commingling of four basic but mutable artwork-elements created by dBfoundation members Annabel Daou, Elaine Tin Nyo, Greta Byrum, Danny Snelson, Kareem Estefan, and Tom Russotti:

WALL bounds the space with posters that are and yet are not reproductions of works in the museum, including the artwork CAFÉ.
FOOD explores ideas of desire, possession and satisfaction, offering items available and unavailable for consumption.
BOOK reaches outside CAFÉ to writers and thinkers, inviting them to join the conversation inside by sending books.
GAME bends the rules of play, offering newly invented board and parlor games that players may change along the way.

***

CAFÉ is open: Tuesday-Saturday 10AM-5PM; Thursday 10AM-8:30PM; Sunday 11AM-6PM.

The first Thursday of each month an evening is dedicated to one of CAFÉ’s elements.

A calendar of all events and more information can be found at the following sites:

www.thisisnotthatcafe.com

www.dbfoundation.org

www.phillipscollection.org

dBfoundation is dedicated to creating and fostering imaginary edifices and intangible sculptures.

for the first time that I can recall, I purchased an air freshener. two. glade plug-ins. my agent insisted that I do this.

someone comes tomorrow morning for a look. ya never know. could be the one and true purchaser. or one in a line of several not ones.

I get excited when an agent calls and says they want to bring someone for a look. it has happened twice.

I like the air fresheners. they smell nice.

was surprised to see today that mike mussina ranks #19 all-time in career strikeouts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_strikeout_pitchers_of_all_time

Mussina’s stats are quite remarkable, considering his career neatly coincided with the steroid era, and he pitched his entire career in the AL east.

timeline of the steroid era: http://www.baseballssteroidera.com/

anyone can do whatever they want, starting… now.

I got an extra cookie.  I bought a pb cookie w/ lunch and there was a broken one in the case, so they gave me that one too.

“I was from the future, but I’m not anymore, obviously.”

his youtube videos get fewer views than my videos of frogs.

here are three songs from his album “let me go, let me go, let me go.”

it’s sunny out, so god loves me.  I can’t help but feel that way.

today I watched the michael jackson superbowl performance.  it is notable for the many-seconds-long statue pose before he begins singing/dancing.

judging by the video, the pose lasted about 1 min 12 seconds, tho it’s impossible to know because of video edits.  As of now, the wikipedia entry says he remained motionless for “several minutes,” but that seems extremely unlikely.

hitler was also known to do that.  take the podium and stand still for a minute or two before speaking.  I think.  that’s what my prof said.  I’m not equating mj with hitler.

the superbowl performance is also notable for being the first where audience was higher than during the game.

I didn’t know mj had vitiligo and lupus.  that accounted for the pale skin… vitiligo + makeup to even out the blotches.

how is jason molina not famous.  is he famous.  I don’t think so.   that ‘everything should try again’.  lawd. and the whole album.  this album is just so dead on.  lordy.

AND.  porch sittING now.  AND.

sights and sounds.  what I’d give for a ..this is great-in the treetops, said

that was the year I stopped thinking critically.  ant by “Word count: 25″

thirty.  there is a white caterpillar with what looks to be the covering of a conestoga wagon or a loaf of very pale bread on its back but only above the middle third of its back.  a mohawk.  giant wasp go

there are a lot of interesting things to think about, such as the idea of “full circle”.  I had a feeling like, it’s good to know that I can go back… oh, I see it has long furry & diagonal protrusion or horn, trailing in the air like one a those electrical pickups for a streetcar.

so, here… got that down.

There seem to be tunnels trailing.  tassels graphically.  down slow..

I got up about 5:30 and worked til 2:00

I was concerned about the tick on the case, then I put my hat on.

I am in w.va.

it’s nice here.  I’m relaxed and deeply tired.  frog sounds and sounds of dogs lying and licking.

good to see the dad, who departs with wife tomorrow for kentucky to visit his 92-year-old mother.  she still lives alone without any kind of nursing.  she has a neighbor who calls her every day.  a childhood friend of my dad’s.

my dad was talking about his stepfather, who died in 1978, 6 years into his marriage with my grandmother, from injuries sustained during WWII.  he had a lot of shrapnel in him from a land mine.  it would work its way out of his skin sometimes.  one day he went for a walk and returned home and sat on the corner of the bed where my dad’s mother was lying down.  he said “it’s a beautiful day out and you’re missing it,” then he slumped down and died, as a piece of shrapnel had gotten into his heart.  he was 58.   he was never drafted.  his older brother was drafted and was bigger and stronger and thus was needed to stay home on the farm, so he went he went to the war in place of his brother.

it’s a good time for me to be here.  it will be a working vacation of sorts.  I will have to work tomorrow and perhaps much of the weekend, but I don’t feel like I’ll have to work.  I feel insulated… no phone calls, and no expectation of emails returned, on a weekend.

earlier I turned on the computer and saw that michael jackson died today, and I told my dad and then went in the next room and told my stepmother.  she said, oh, we’ll have to show you our dance.  she said it was inspired by michael jackson.  then she came in here and told my dad they had to do their dance to honor michael jackson.  I sat on the couch and they did a little dance that was kind of like a slow, clumsy square dance, side-by-side.  she said michael jackson has nothing on us.  I said not anymore.