- CCHC is a Baltimore Orioles blog; like almost any "passionate" fan (I'm talking manly-passionate, not Nicholas Sparks kind-of-girly passionate), I like to express my opinions; even more than that, I like getting worked up and jawing to other not-girly-passionate people about the crap that I care about (baseball... and food).
- No. It has absolutely no real-world significance. I just think it sounds cool.
- A buddy of mine (Peter) said something about Janis Joplin during work one day, and the whole "Big Brother and the Holding Company" thing wormed its way into my brain. Once something gets in there, I have to use it somehow, or it mutates and chews it's way out on it's own.
- You ever see a mutated idea explode out of someone's brain? I don't have enough paper towels to handle that. And my wife would kick my ass for staining the carpet.
- Good question. By nature I lean towards Major League Baseball and the Baltimore Orioles, obviously, and I like statistics, a lot.
- I tend to write about some combination of those three things, plus I like to comment on any relevant news, scores, transactions, tweets, etc... All the usual crap that bloggers glom onto.
- I also really like Top 10 Lists. Sometimes even Top 20, Top 30, or (god forgive me) Top 100 Lists. There is something cathartic about taking raw data like names, scouting reports, stats, news articles, etc... and converting that information into a ranked list that practically screams: "Here's my f'ing opinion, bite me!"
- To me, creating a Top 10 List (or writing in general, for that matter) is similiar to the manufacturing process: you take raw materials, you hone them to the best of your ability with a combination of skill and process, figure out who wants to consume your product and how to deliver it to them, and... SHAZAMM! You've produced value. At least, value for somebody (even if only for yourself). You're now a productive member of society. You Rock.
- Unless something unusual messes with my schedule (like my children, both of whom could be considered unusual), I usually post at least once per day. Sometimes I'll post two or tree times; it just depends on what's going on.
- Absolutely. Well... kind of. Actually, no. Not really. Not at all. Not even close. I don't even like to talk to people. But I read A LOT of stuff online, you know? I feel plugged in. And that's what matters; my ability to deny the reality of any given situation.
- Honestly? They sleep. I don't. It gives me a competitive advantage.
- If I simply ignored the playstation console and dedicated myself to blogging, I could produce 8-10 pages of absolute nonsense every night if I wanted to. But that's really hard. I don't really do hard. So I write less than that. Not sure how much - figuring that out is also hard.
- Ppppphhhhhh...... No.
- I have made money writing before (not blogging, mind you) and it changes what you produce, believe me. When you have an editor and deadlines and you've eaten way too much of the pressbox post-game spread and are bordering on a food-coma, but still have to get something out for the morning edition, you tend to compromise. It's harder to be funny.
- I like OPS. It's a cool stat, for two reasons.
- One: it's relevant, meaningful, and simple to calculate.
- Two, it does that while conceptually being the statistical equivalent of a ham-fisted kindergardner doing the New York Time crossword puzzle in crayon.
- I mean, really? Trying to measure offense by taking two kinda-sorta related "percentages" and mashing them together like last Friday night's leftovers? Did someone expect that to work?
- But it f'ing DOES. It's actually a good measure of batter productivity, better than most, really. A happy accident.
- I have worked one billion jobs in my life. Many of them menial, most of the meaningless.
- The worst was being a member of the sewer department (yes, sewage) in the Department of Public Works, in Weymouth, MA. Or maybe being a manual laborer in Vallejo, CA. We threw rocks. Not kidding. My kids do that for free, I know. But it's hard to explain how much it sucked.
- The best were the summers I spent in my early 20's, as a waiter/bartender in a beach resort in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Those people got so ridiculously drunk, they would literally throw money at you. Hard to beat that.
- Now I work in marketing. Nobody throws money at me anymore, but I'm not crawling around underground in a poopy-proof suit, either. And it pays better.
- I've lived in 9 states, also - but that's a story for another day.
The best way is to use one of these:
- fatbaltimore@gmail.com
- @FatBaltimore
