Ask Carter Hall anything, part 2

I had a question meme post, still active, where you can ask Carter Hall anything you like. So now we continue with the quizzing of the fictional hockey player.

What do you do with the hats after a hat-trick?

Me? I'm on defense. If I ever got a hat-trick, I would keep all the damn hats, because that is just not in the cards for me. Hell, if my plus-minus for the game hit 3, I would call it awesome. But I think mostly we give them to charity. I guess. I don't know. Hjalmar the janitor cleans them up, I think. He comes out with a broom, and unless one of the guys wants something special of it, I never think of it again. He and Cindy in the office handle it.

Oh, Tommy Heikkanen says you grab one and wear it inside out on your way out of the game and then the other team can't hex you on the way to your car? Because it's really bulky to turn your parka inside out? Hell if I know. Heikkanen is always on about crap like that, and I used to think he was nuts. Now I think it's even less useful to have somebody who is not nuts and could not get any more cryptic. I mean, it's not like I want him to talk about his feelings. It's not like I want anybody talking about their feelings. But just a little bit more information might not kill us, you know, Heik? Maybe? Sheesh, dude.

Will the Cubs will the World Series (or even the pennant) in this century?

Like, if I got out a turban and went into my Gypsy fortune-teller woowoo routine, Janet would whack me for being ethnically insensitive. So here's what I can tell you: one, I only really care about baseball when the Twins are in a pennant race. I mean, not that I won't catch a game from time to time with my buddies over some wings and some beer. But it's not my sport. I know, I hate the guys who don't know shit about hockey until playoffs and then are all like, "Woooo, Nicholas Backstrom!", and you are like, learn his damn name or shut your damn mouth. But that's how I am with baseball, I guess, except I'm not all, "Woooo, Joseph Mauer!"

But anyway: Cubbies. Here's the other thing I know. Some teams are cursed. Some teams are hexed, some teams made bad deals with magic powers, some teams just can't fight off the crap that's going on in the places where they have to play. Or in order to fight off the crap that's going on, the game gets sacrificed. But nobody knows anything like that about the Cubs. The Cubs are where the universe reasserts itself and says, "Dude, somebody's gotta win and somebody's gotta lose, hexes and magic powers and guiding spells aside. At the end of the day statistics will bite somebody's ass." So far it's been the Cubs'. Half the spare magic in Chicago has gone to trying to fix curses that just aren't there on the Cubbies. It's, like, quantum mechanical or some shit. You know how the lady says it's a long season and you gotta trust it? (I know, I said I'm not a baseball guy. That movie is about sex. I never said I wasn't a sex guy. I mean, damn.) The Cubs gotta listen to that, only, bigger than the season. I hope that helps.

Also, you know what, Cubs fan? There's this thing you know when you play minor league long enough, when you realize that hope is not this bird poem Janet tried to tutor me through in high school. Hope is this thing that shows up with a hammer about two months into the season and beats your heart and then shows up with paddles in the post-season. Because anything can happen then. That's what you know playing in the minor leagues of any sport. And I guess it happens to Cubs fans, too. Your cheerful message of the day, straight from Carter Hall.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if wood were what a queen would want?

Dude. First of all, it is a Gopher, not a woodchuck, and second, if she could get through this by chucking wood at the damn queen's head, don't you think she'd have tried that? This is Bemidji. We are not short on timber here. She still has to go through the hold-fast-fear-not-baby's-father crap, and Janet is going to be one Gopher who is in a bad, bad mood after grabbing that snake-fire-whatever thing. And it's not going to get better if you call her a freakin' woodchuck.

And other insects.

I smashed a wasp against the library window yesterday. That did not thrill me. Then this morning there was a dragonfly in my kitchen. A dragonfly. Not acceptable. I do not smash dragonflies. They are our friends. They eat mosquitoes and, unlike spiders, do not bite us. So I have now joined the ranks of people who trap insects inside glasses and plates and carry them outside. I've never done that before, but: dragonfly. I mean.

Michele Bachman's campaign called to ask us to donate. In my best Polite Angry Minnesotan voice, I told the person that we were not in her district but would be donating heavily to her opposition if we were. Honestly. Michele Bachman. Of whom the rest of the far right wing wears T-shirts with arrows reading, "I'm not with Stupid -->." And it's only September. For awhile I was thinking that having a fixed election cycle was better because we would have guaranteed non-election seasons, which other systems might not allow, but no, no, I no longer believe this, they are invading everything, just everything, and I want the ability to have votes of no confidence, because I would have them all the time. Except in our library board. Oh, library board. In you, at least, I have confidence.