POETRY
Day of the Katamari
Is it a star? Or stardust? by Kenton deAngeli
STORY
A Brotherly Love note
Check: [ ] YES [ ] no. by Kevin Clair
POETRY
Safety popes
Elegy for the forgotten men. by Daniel Wright
COMMENT
A man buys some shoes
And has an existential crisis. by Neal Schuster
EDITOR'S CORNER
The other day at work, it was Thursday, which meant there were afternoon baseball games I could listen to while I did whatever it was I happened to be doing at work that day. The game of the day was Brewers-Pirates, and for my purposes Bob Uecker was on the call for WTMJ in Milwaukee. I was expecting a typical mid-season tussle between one mediocre team and one kind-of-good team, battling it out in baseball's worst division. In short, not much. Nothing could have prepared me for what I got in the bottom of the second.
I don't remember the exact quote that led into this, but the sentiment I will eternally be able to paraphrase; Bob said, roughly, that for the previous two nights the Brewers had been sharing a hotel with "some people... 'furs?' 'furries?'" Up to this point, I had only been half-paying attention to the game—work, you know—but hearing that comment drew me back into it. Evidently the big furry convention takes place in Pittsburgh every July, and this year the Milwaukee Brewers happened to be sharing a hotel with it. And so for the next inning or so, I was treated to the Brewers Radio Network's take on fur culture.
Now, I've been a citizen of the Internet for some time, and I like to think I'm fairly nonplussed by the various sub-cultures it can throw at me. Penny Arcade can toss around a 'bearcake' joke for their most recent comic; we're all in on the joke, and good hearty laughs are had by all. It's pretty innocuous. But listening to the Brewers guys go on and on about being kept awake by animal sounds in the night, and meeting people in full costume in the lobby before heading out to the park, I was suddenly made aware of a heretofore unknown Internet truism; namely, that no matter how familiar one is with a particular fan community, having it explained to you by Bob Uecker makes its entire existence uncomfortable.
I can't communicate to you exactly how I came around to this realization without the express written consent of the Milwaukee Brewers, but I can link you to this photograph, which will hopefully explain what I mean:
image
credit: Kent Sommerfeld/Brewers Radio Network
So that is how baseball changed my life recently.
Enjoy Untrenchant #3; it improves with each go at it, thanks to the excellent writers who put up with me. We are going to fortnightly updates beginning with this issue, which we're quite excited about. -kmc