Dionysus: Death [part3]
Chapter VI: Dionysus Plays Golf, Dies
“A bad day at golf is still a good day of drinking.” –Ancient Golf Proverb. Unknown.
I discovered that Jordan was a kindhearted liar. By the time I was dressed and ready to go, it was only 7 AM. We had to be at the Beckham Golf Charity Event by 8:30 AM, and tee time was at 9 AM. Jordan got his morning prank in and it saved me from being late in the process, so I couldn’t be mad at him.
I met The Software Pantheon in the hotel lobby, which doubled as the breakfast lounge. I didn’t have time to sit and eat, so I took a travel mug of coffee and a bowl of cinnamon-something cereal to go in the taxi to the golf course. As I finished the bowl of cereal, leaving the hotel bowl and spoon in the taxi, my chest tightened up and I started to feel the fire traveling up my esophagus. The pain prompted me to remember that I had forgotten to take my heartburn medication and that this Beckham Golf Charity Event was shaping up to be a repeat of the first.
We arrived at the Heron Hollow Country Club at 8:45 AM. Wanda spotted me in the crowd and gave me a big bear hug. It had been over a year since we had last seen each other in person. She commented that I hadn’t changed one bit. I commented, in my head, on how thin she had become, likely a downstream consequence of her recent heart attack, which made me want to comment on the tall glass of thick red liquid that reeked of vodka that she was holding, which was probably something she shouldn’t be drinking at all, but I held my tongue because I’m nobody’s doctor. And I couldn’t judge her for drinking because I felt my own desire to drink bubbling up again; that desire to imbibe the ancient charismatic elixir. But I thought to myself, if I drank to fit in – did I ever fit in to begin with? Did the alcoholic elixir bring out hidden aspects of myself – the social aspects – or did the alcohol actually lock those aspects away only to be unlocked when under the influence? Like a liquid crutch. At this point, I was totally zoned out, lost in a sea of existential reflection, until Wanda poked me on the nose and said, “Everything OK in there?” And Jordan responded for me with, “He’s fine. He just drank too much last night.” And this prompted Wanda to recount the time I was four hours late to the 2022 Beckham Golf Charity Event.
The volunteers at the Beckham Golf Charity Event were already handing out free Bloody Marys,#42 a not-so-subtle admission that the sheer excitement of golf only starts getting exciting after a slight buzz, and the excitement rises in tandem with your blood alcohol level; because the whole golf thing is just not all that exciting without a drink or two. In fact, the golf thing is downright dreary. Since I didn’t bring my own clubs, I had to rent a set from the country club store; the inside of the country club was so clean that it bordered on offensive, so lacking in smell that it became a smell in and of itself, a smelly non-smell, an anti-smell that gets one acquainted with the smell of the inside of one’s own nostrils; every white wall was covered in gold plaques with some silhouetted golf man mid-swing all surrounded by green trim, and approximately zero plaques depicted women; the clothing racks were draped with the plainest polos you have ever seen and they dotted every inch of unused floor space; every shelf was covered in little rectangular boxes holding four golf balls#43 each for $25.99 a box, and I had to buy three of those boxes (and you better believe I kept those receipts to file on my expense report). This was nothing at all like the country clubs in Mario Golf, which were vividly colored locales bursting with thematic palm trees, cactuses, and swamps all complemented by chipper but not overbearing 8-bit chiptune softly blooping in the background; there was no music playing inside the real country club at all, it was almost deadly silent, only the light scrunching of khaki pants could be heard, people walked through the polo fields but they did so with the delicateness of someone who was one wrong step away from breaking a hip, or stepping on a landmine, or alerting a hidden guerrilla soldier hiding deep inside one of the polo racks, and this tracked because the clientele were all very white very old men who may or may not have seen a thing or two and likely preferred to be called “sir.”#44 This was a White Zone. If, without alcohol, I didn’t fit in with The Software Pantheon, I really didn’t fit in with these golf people; and this turned the volume up on alcohol’s siren song: “Just one glass and you’ll be talking Vietnam with the sirs in no time at all.”
To my surprise, after purchasing three $26 rectangles with balls inside, the man behind the counter dropped a small key into my palm and said, “Here’s your key.” I promptly responded with something like, “What for?” and he replied, “Your four-seater golf cart, sir. It’s number 26.” Then I thought to myself that these golf guys are handing out free Bloody Marys while also handing out keys to motorized vehicles, and someone thought this was a good idea, so I just went along with it, figured when in Rome, nodded as if I knew what I was doing, and walked out with my twenty-pound bag of clubs, three rectangular boxes of balls, and golf cart key dangling from my mouth because I had momentarily forgotten about pockets. It dawned on me that I must have looked like the most goofy person within a twenty-mile radius: floral-pattern aloha shirt, khaki shorts, maximum cow-licked Robert Smith hair, excessive golf paraphernalia, and a blank smile like that of a child just pushed out into the wilderness with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife, a box of matches, and a “Good luck kid, when you return: you’ll finally be a man.” And, man, at that moment, I was wishing hard for a Bloody Mary to help deal with the weird eldritch anxiety of the whole thing, but before that alcoholic wish could be granted, Wanda hurried up to me and said, “We’re going to miss tee time! Did you get the key? What about your balls? Did you get any tees? No? OK – that’s fine, I’ll let you use some of mine. Did you get yourself a Bloody Mary? No? Too bad. There’s no time! You know I’m taking Doug’s spot on your team, right?!” and then she started hacking real loud and I stared at her with a should-you-even-be-here look on my face.
*leaving the White Zone. (the kid from Mario Golf looks way more presentable than I ever did).
After I nearly crashed the golf cart into a birch and ran it off the narrow golf cart path,#45 my foursome made it to the first hole. Anders said I was no longer allowed to drive the golf cart, and the fact that I was the only sober person didn’t seem to convince the group otherwise. Jordan then got very serious and asked each of us if we had played golf before, to which both Wanda and I replied a very quick no. Jordan explained the rules of the game: we were playing some casual version of foursomes, where each golfer hits the ball from the tee zone,#46 and then everyone hits from the location of the best ball, which is the one closest to the green, which is the area of immaculately cut grass surrounding the actual hole marked by a flagpole.
As Jordan was explaining the rules of golf, I noticed that there was another foursome waiting behind us. The thing about golf courses is that there are often multiple teams playing at once, so you have to wait on the team ahead of you to shoot their balls before you shoot your own. What this means is that you will often find yourself waiting around for upwards of twenty minutes with nothing to do other than talk to your partners because you have to wait on the team ahead of you. Golf etiquette dictates that you allow a team to complete the entire hole before you even make your tee shot; otherwise, you run the risk of accidentally hitting the golfers ahead of you with your ball. It’s also acceptable to make a judgment call and take your shots if you feel the team ahead of you is far enough away to not get hit by your ball. This was something that Jordan explained in great detail during his golf lecture.
Jordan kept going on and on about golf, the team behind us was growing impatient, and I zoned out for a moment, taking in the scenery of the surrounding course. The golf course reminded me of a computer game, but not necessarily Mario Golf. The course we were on was reminiscent of a huge empty space in one of those SimTown or SimPark games, the moment in which you’re just starting a new game and have nothing built on your allocated flat mono-green-colored land space; it’s just flat grass for virtual miles, and you have the choice to plop down little patches of trees and bushes and ponds and marshes and maybe populate some deer and chipmunks with the animal wand all right there in the scenery UI; because that’s what flora and fauna are on a golf course: scenery for humans to feel like they’re actually in a natural green space. A golf course is a virtual reality, and it’s easy to be fooled at first, but the more you look at that little pond with the mini-waterfall, the more you start thinking something like: what the actual fuck. What I’m trying to say is, golf courses are unnatural abominations that plowed over countless gophers, snakes, and bunny rabbits to perpetuate the human desire to hit little balls around masquerading as natural green spaces.#47 And sometimes these little aforementioned golf balls we love to hit so much hit animals outright; for example, the term “birdie” was coined after a golfer straight up knocked a bird right out of the sky with their golf ball. It follows that Golf is hostile to all life.
Jordan decided to take the first shot. He slid the driver#48 out of his golf bag as if removing a sword from its scabbard, stepped into the tee box, pushed a little wooden stake into the grass, placed a golf ball atop the stake, then started shaking his lower half like Shakira as if preparing to get into a stance of some kind. He started calling out his actions to me like a father would his son: “Alright, Forrest, you see how I’m standing here? Pay close attention to the tips of my toes. The tips of my toes are always forming a line in the direction I want to hit the ball. Now, look at my hands. You see how my hands are in the middle of the grip? And do you see how my left hand is snug above my right hand? This is a proper golf stance. This is what the pros do.” Jordan paused, then looked over to me to make sure I was paying attention, and I was. (Mario Golf didn’t teach about stance, only hitting the ball, so this was all new to me, and I had already resolved myself to write about this experience, so any mechanical knowledge was good knowledge at this point.) Jordan continued, “I’m about to hit the ball, but before I do, I’m going to think of nothing but the ball. I am going to look at nothing but the ball. Watch as I raise the club and then…” Woosh! My head immediately turned toward the direction where the ball should have gone flying off to, but Jordan’s vocal expletive refocused my attention, and I realized that he whiffed entirely. “OK, that was just a warm-up. Watch this one.” And the second time he swung, he really did hit the ball, and it was quite a good shot indeed. Jordan was pleased with himself, and he showed this in his swagger back to the golf cart. Next up was Anders, who hit a competent if unremarkable shot. And then Wanda, who, to my confusion, traveled several yards further down the hole and started teeing off in a separate tee box. Jordan then told me that this separate tee box was called the “ladies tee box” and was located closer to the hole so that “ladies would have a better chance at winning.” I had a hard time believing something this sexist existed in today’s social climate, so I pulled out my phone as Jordan was talking to search the term and found that “ladies tee box” was now frowned-upon terminology used by old-school golfers that referred to player handicap (not specifically gender), and that the modern politically correct term was “forward tee box.” Then it dawned on me that, as everyone was in agreement that Wanda was indeed using the “ladies tee box,” including Wanda herself, they were all, in fact, old-school and archaic themselves, which wasn’t much of a surprise but did put my company in perspective and prevented me from correcting their verbiage for fear of being ridiculed as a woke liberal (which, from their perspective, I certainly am indeed).
Then it was my turn: I stepped up to the tee box with a heart full of what might as well been literal fire and placed my dimpled white ball atop my wooden tee and grabbed my breast for a moment to contain the ever-worsening burning sensation swirling in my chest before copying Jordan’s position: pointed toes, left on right, focus on ball, audible gulp of stomach acid. And then, in one smooth motion, I swung my driver’s face into the golf ball. The ball went flying. It seemed like a very good shot. I then assumed the pose of a knight observing the battlefield after a hard-fought victory, I held the club upright on the grass with the palm of my hand, leaned on it a bit, and visored my other hand above my brow, watching as the ball traveled through the air. The ball soared for some time before landing in the nearby pond with a sploosh that echoed my failure across the green. I could hear the rest of the foursome chuckling as I returned to the golf cart. I shrugged my shoulders as Jordan said something mildly insensitive like, “Hey! Better than Wanda’s shot at least!”
*pictured: yours truly (floral aloha and all), glingos.
As we reached the third shot on the first hole, a volunteer in a golf cart rolled up. “You boys want some drinks?” They had bottled water, soda, and a full assortment of alcoholic beverages on demand in a small wheeled cooler trailing behind them. I grabbed some water, gulped it down, hoping it would alleviate some of my heartburn, but it didn’t help; the pain was becoming unbearable. In the past, drinking had helped me forget about this pain (while paradoxically becoming a source of this pain later on), and I began to consider “just one drink.” That’s when Jordan turned to me with that Lokian look on his face, holding out one of those mini-bottles of wine. “It’s cabernet, your favorite.”
As I stared at the mini-bottle of wine, I started thinking to myself: A touch of wine would certainly make this whole golf thing more exciting. It would make the pain in my chest bearable, at least for now. Everyone else was drinking; Jordan and Anders were both sipping beers; Wanda was nursing her Bloody Mary. And while I was never much of a day drinker, this was a special occasion. When in Rome. The adult-industrial complex practically runs on beer and wine. Corporate drinking culture and all that; it’s part of the American Way of Life. You are expected to drink with the boys. That’s just how it is. I am Dionysus. I may have blacked out the night before, but that was only because I didn’t get enough sleep; that was an unusual circumstance, and it wouldn’t happen again. I’ll just have one drink, then I’ll stop. Just one drink.
I stood there silently staring at the mini-bottle; my mind swirling with excuses. Jordan was standing in front of me with a puzzled look on his face, mini-bottle of cabernet still outstretched. “You OK, man? Did last night freak you out or something? You’re still drinking, right?”
Dionysus overcame me. My lips curled into a grin, and I said, “Hell yeah, man – I still drink.” I snatched that mini-bottle from Jordan’s hand, enthusiastically lost in my excuses. As I twisted the bottle cap, I heard a whizzing sound, as if a fly were circling around my ear, so I turned to swat the thing, and that’s when a white blur crashed right into my forehead with a loud crack. My body launched backward. My hands flew up. The mini-bottle of cabernet went spiraling through the air, spitting a scarlet tornado on its way down, dyeing the once-green grass dark red. I landed hard on my back. Everything went black.
I haven’t heard from Dionysus since.
Epilogue
“It might sound dodgy now, but it sounds great when you’re dead.” –Hitchcock, Robyn. “Sounds Great When You’re Dead.” 1984.#49
Before we begin, I want to try to justify the existence of this essay as something more than just an egotistical rambling about my own life and how “not like the other girls” I am. I wrote this piece not only to chronicle my own alcoholic misadventures but also in the hope that it might help someone like me – someone contrary, stubborn, and skeptical of self-help – to come to grips with their own addictions by offering a (hopefully) relatable account from a (maybe) kindred perspective.
Since I reached drinking age, I’ve made hundreds of excuses for alcohol. I’ve even reached the point of saying, “I’m never drinking again, for real this time” multiple times; this time being one of those times. But like the finest of clocks, I eventually succumb to the excuses and start drinking again. The strongest (or worst, in this context) excuse I deploy isn’t covered in the main text of this essay; hence the purpose of this epilogue. The excuse I’m referring to is most effective because it’s irrational and egocentric. It goes something like this: “I know drinking is terrible for me, but I’m a tortured artist, and drinking adds to my character, charm, and mystique. Besides, hundreds of successful artists before me were addicts.” It’s one of many variants of “I want to be Cool,” and it’s toxic as hell; and knowing that it’s toxic as hell doesn’t help, that only makes the excuse more potent.
I’ve always treated substance abuse with a problematic level of romanticism. In fact, I think Western society as a whole has romanticized substance abuse since the 1960s, making substance abuse something of a fashion statement. You frequently hear about “artistic geniuses” who were also addicts: Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Thompson, etc. Each of these examples are now beloved cult figures, and whenever someone writes about them, the words “tortured genius” surely show up somewhere, with the very real mental health disorders underlying this tortured genius often ending up as a footnote at the end of one of many posthumous biographies. My point is, people love these tortured-artist stories, often turning the subject of these stories into near mythological gods; a celebrity pantheon of sorts; and people try to emulate their gods.
I wanted to be seen as one of these tortured artists. I wanted to be seen as someone who created great beauty whilst also being kind of ugly and broken in the most intriguing way possible; a prolific paradox; a consummate contradiction; a god in the pantheon of tortured artists; Dionysus. Even knowing that most of the aforementioned examples died by suicide or overdose, it didn’t matter to me; the flaws – the substance abuse – of these tortured artists made them more complicated, more human, more relatable, more interesting.
I wanted people to know that I wasn’t just some writer; I was a writer with problems – mental problems. And I drank. I drank a lot. But that was OK because I was still busting out hits. I was still writing those super deep and honest introspective essays. I may have been getting into all sorts of trouble and causing problems for the people around me, but one day someone (probably me) would write about that stuff in the past tense, and it would all be very Cool and interesting and just serve to add to my Dionysian mythos. “The serious mistakes that I’m making right now will make me seem more interesting later on; in hindsight, my substance abuse will add another layer of complexity to my character.” I told myself.
I wanted to be interesting, and flaws are interesting; every author knows this to be the basis for writing compelling characters in fiction. For a character to be interesting, they must have flaws. Readers need something to relate to; they need vulnerability; they need damaged characters; they want to know the dirty secrets of the characters; they crave tabloid-like scandals and dramas. This makes characters more relatable, more realistic, and sometimes more “well, at least I’m not as bad as [insert character name]!” You can’t have an interesting character without flaws. Following this logic, you can’t be a celebrity and a well-adjusted person simultaneously; this is the paradox of celebrity. Popularity is suffering. Art is difficult without trauma to fuel it. And as a writer, I must suffer for my writing to be genuine. I can’t hope to be even a mediocre writer without indulging in my flaws; that’s part of what makes me interesting. Woe is me. I suffer for my art. That is what I told myself. But I got it wrong.
We are more than our addictions. Everyone has flaws, and substance abuse doesn’t have to be one of them. I’m more than my substance abuse. I’m incredibly bubbly and unfocused; I’m dismissive and withdrawn to the people around me; I get jealous easily, especially when someone is better than me at something I pride myself on; I don’t call my family enough to tell them that I love them; I have body image issues; I don’t spend enough time with my kids; I have stupid superstitions and compulsions; I procrastinate on the important things in favor of my niche hobbies; I get highly frustrated when I can’t express myself adequately with words. I have more than enough flaws to fill a short novella. Why do I need to pile on substance abuse?
Whenever I stop drinking, this tortured-artist justification slowly creeps its way back: “Just drink! Who cares! Stephen King was an alcoholic too; he can’t even remember writing Cujo because he was so high and drunk!”#50
Stephen King eventually got help, but those other tortured artists weren’t so lucky – they fucking died; tortured themselves to death. And while the reason for these tortured artists’ deaths cannot be solely attributed to their substance abuse, it certainly played a large role.
Maybe it’s time that I get over it before I accidentally kill myself.
After that golf ball hit me in the head, I realized that there’s nothing Cool about drinking; there’s nothing unique about it. Adults everywhere are drinking, and they’re all drinking for similar reasons (most of which are already outlined in this essay). If the status quo is that it’s cool to drink, then drinking isn’t Cool at all because “status quo” has never been Cool to begin with. If you are a natural contrarian, you owe it to your recalcitrant nature not to drink; otherwise, you are betraying yourself. Rebellion is Cool, and not drinking is rebellion. If you truly want to be capital-C Cool, one of the Coolest things you can do is swim against the current, especially when that current is literal poison.
As of writing this, it has been over a month since my last drink; this is the longest I’ve gone without drinking in over ten years.
If you happened to read all this, thank you; I hope it wasn’t a complete waste of your time. And if you also happen to struggle with addiction, know that you are not alone. But you have to get over it, or one day the blackout will never end, and you won’t be around to know just how Cool you really are.
Our addictions do not define us.
Footnotes:
#42. A Bloody Mary (named after Queen Mary Tudor of England, supposedly) is a mix of vodka and tomato juice, spiked with a dash of hot sauce, lemon, salt, and pepper; usually topped with a stick of celery or a lemon wedge or sometimes (if you’re really unlucky) a pickle. Bloody Marys are as disgusting as they sound, believe me. They are often thought to help cure hangovers (which is not backed by any real science, of course). The Bloody Mary has become sort of a staple drink at golf events, maybe because of the anti-hangover myth, or maybe because they needed a drink as off-putting as golf itself? (Although I would say that Bloody Marys have more character than golf considering their bizarre mix of ingredients and bright red coloring, while golf is just kinda carting around from hole to hole hitting balls; in fact, people need Bloody Marys [apparently] to even get in the mood to play golf, yet another strike against the quote-unquote sport).
#43. The modern golf ball consists of three main components: the cover, the mantle, and the core. The cover is typically made from ionomer resin, which is some sort of polymer or other. The mantle and core are typically synthetic rubber infused with even more polymers. It’s pretty much polymers all the way down. You may be asking, “What about all the little dimples?” Well, I asked Jordan about that too, and he said something like: “Those little dimples help the air cling to the ball, cutting down on drag, giving it a nice backspin, and helping lift the ball higher into the air.” The Heron Hollow Country Club sold the following brands: Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade, Bridgestone, Srixon, Ping, Wilson, Mizuno, Vice, Nitro, Snell, and Top Flite. Jordan said the best brand is Titleist; Anders said TaylorMade because, apparently, TaylorMade balls have three mantle layers instead of one, and this somehow makes the ball better or something.
#44. I shouldn’t joke about Vietnam Veterans. That’s on me. I do respect the troops (or whatever I need to say to not get backlash for this).
#45. The standard golf course is 18 holes; a typical par-4 hole is about 400 yards and will take up around 10 acres; this means that a typical 18-hole course could potentially fill 180 acres of land depending on the layout; to put that into perspective, an American football field covers approximately 1.3 acres of land; which means that the average golf course is around 138 football fields in length, which is about 8 miles or so; basically: golf courses are huge. It follows that you can’t just walk from hole to hole; you need a mode of transportation, and that mode of transportation is the golf cart. A typical four-seater golf cart is electric-powered (although some are gas) and can reach speeds of up to 14 miles per hour, and you have to drive these things on very narrow paths between holes, all while watching out for other golf carts. The golf cart paths themselves are perilous, almost hedge maze-like affairs, often unkempt, uphill, backwoods, and sometimes you have to go through the course green itself to bypass hazards such as fallen logs and holes in the path. And while I know how to drive a car, driving a golf cart on a very narrow path at 14 miles per hour because Anders keeps saying “go faster!” is a whole different story; it would be an understatement to say that I was scared shitless while driving that golf cart, and the “almost hit a tree” bit was not a one-time thing but a many-times thing, which is why the keys were taken from me (probably for the best, too).
#46. In case you forgot the contents of the second footnote, the “tee box” is the starting point of each hole. A golfer sticks a “tee” (wooden stake) into the grass and then places the ball on said tee. The golfer then hits the ball with a driver club (see [48]). Worth noting because it doesn’t come up in the story: a golfer will often hit the grass when taking a shot, and this will cause a patch of grass to dislodge from the ground; the dirty dent in the ground is called a “divot,” and “you must always cover your divots” by picking up the dislodged grass and shoving it back into the little hole you made (golfers are very concerned about the look of their artificial green space, far eclipsing the concern they have about the actual habitats that were destroyed in the making of their artificial green space; for environmental tangent, see next footnote).
#47. Golf courses are not environmentally friendly, although the United States Golf Association will tell you otherwise. I took the time to tackle each eco-friendly argument they (USGA) made in an article on their website titled, “The Environmental Benefits of Golf Courses.” (Obviously not a conflict of interest at all.)
Claim 1: “The total land area devoted to golf in the U.S. is relatively small, but courses can offer substantial environmental benefits – especially in developed areas where green space is increasingly limited.”
Counter: Rewording the claim makes it sound ridiculous (which it is): “Golf provides a small patch of much-needed artificial green over land that would otherwise be a concrete parking lot.” Or: “Golf courses suck, but at least it’s not cement, right?”
Claim 2: “Turfgrass and other vegetation on a golf course help cool highly developed areas during hot weather.”
Counter: So would natural woodlands and fields – why not just leave those? Oh, that’s right: you want to hit balls around.
Claim 3: “Golf courses provide important habitats for native wildlife and vegetation and can help support threatened species.”
Counter: “In case you needed another source, this claim is also backed by Golfweek!” In truth, this claim is a huge stretch at best and entirely dubious at worst; the USGA seems to hinge all their points on, “If a golf course wasn’t here, this land would be a parking lot!” and that’s fair, but this is like saying, “Hey – you think me stabbing you in the leg is bad? Well, that guy over there would be stabbing you in the gut!” Additionally, the placement of turfgrass destroys the natural habitat that was already there to begin with, such as woodlands, marshes, prairies, etc. You may see chipmunks, hamsters, squirrels, snakes, some deer, and birds on a golf course, but these animals are only using the turfgrass as a crosswalk into the sparse trees and bushes that the golf course overlords so generously left as decoration for humans. The fact is, placing turfgrass destroys the robust natural habitats that were there first and replaces them with unlivable turfgrass crosswalks.
Claim 4: “Golf courses can help manage stormwater runoff, aiding in flood prevention. They also recharge groundwater supplies and filter surface runoff.”
Counter: Huge stretch, and the use of the word “can” instead of just “golf courses help …” is telling. Note that across the US, golf courses use 1.5 billion gallons of water daily, so if they “aid in flood prevention” it’s really only by aiding in drought promotion.
Claim 5: “The vegetation on golf courses sequesters atmospheric carbon and helps improve air quality, especially in urban areas.”
Counter: Another if-we-didn’t-put-up-a-golf-course-this-land-would-be-a-parking-lot argument. Same thing applies: the natural habitat that the golf course destroyed would have been better at sequestering atmospheric carbon and improving air quality than some turfgrass.
#48. To understand how golf clubs work, you have to understand lofts; loft is the angle of the clubface that controls the trajectory and affects the distance of the shot; higher lofts create higher/shorter shots, while lower lofts produce lower/longer shots. (Note that the number before the iron is not necessarily the loft angle indication; instead, the 9 in the name “9-iron” refers to the club’s position in the set of irons. The 9 does indicate a higher loft angle, and therefore a shorter distance compared to clubs with lower numbers, but the 9 does not indicate “9 degrees” or anything like that. To make matters worse, loft numbers can be hidden; a driver has a loft angle but there is no number before the name of the driver to indicate its loft angle—you’re just expected to know that a driver has a lower loft angle, which produces a longer shot). As for the different clubs: Drivers are used for long-distance shots off the tee, with a loft of 8 to 12 degrees. Irons are numbered 1 to 9, with lower numbers (1-4) for long shots and higher numbers (5-9) for shorter, more precise shots. Wedges (e.g., sand and lob wedges) have higher lofts for short, accurate shots around the green. Hybrids combine the features of woods and irons, useful for long approach shots. Putters are used on the green to roll the ball into the hole. I learned all this not from Jordan or Anders, but from Mario Golf, which has an excellent interface showing you the different clubs and their lofts, all accompanied by a dotted line showing the distance the ball will travel; this was an excellent tool to come to grips with which clubs work for longer/shorter shots and how the numbers (which can seem kind of counterintuitive) work in reference to those longer/shorter shots.
#49. One of my favorite songs ever (not exaggerating).
#50. “There’s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don’t say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.”
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner, 2000. ↩︎
(Originally published on 7/19/2024)
*while neglecting all worldly responsibilities, you may be charged telephone and provider fees
*character creation in utero
*psychic ragnarok in the dream within a dream
*David finds great comfort in the magical techno elf pinned to his cubicle wall
*David dreams once more
*the Holy Grail; the Psycho Wand
*you could not be connected to the server
*eyeball-window-skeleton-hand-tree dynamic with The Boy and The Father and The Gundam
*the cockpit of The Gundam
*Char and his crimson Z’gok
*The Boss evaluates your Pizza Performance; he is not impressed.
*something resembling an oval with pink eyes rams a man wearing a prison jumper
*ancient violence consumes the LAN tournament
*Iori rushes Ken in the digital equivalent of a samurai honor duel