Cat Meat, The Sports Guy, and a Prediction About the Job Numbers…

1. Kicking It - Well now that schools out and I’m only teaching for one hour a day, I’m trying to find productive ways to fill the rest of my time. Today for example I spent three hours watching the gamecast of the NBA Finals, a few hours working on crossword puzzles, and even did a little house cleaning. For the next five weeks, I would say that’s probably about as productive as it’s gonna get.

2. Classic Text Message - After recently making the claim that Cambodian’s eat cat meat and having nobody believe me, my friend Billy just sent me the following text message: “Cambodians do in fact eat cat. My family is ceremoniously butchering one right meow.”

3. Co-Teachers – Two pictures, with the two co-teachers I’ve worked with for the last two years…

4. Marathon Training: Week 4 – I can run 3-5 miles in any weather, but trying to get in 7-9 mile runs in the Cambodian heat is close to impossible. At this point I’m having serious doubts about the half marathon I’m supposed to be running in 12 days. I might have to settle for the 10k.

I also decided this week that the rice diet, while good or staying slim and healthy, is terrible for running. It just doesn’t provide enough energy.

5. Twitter – I always thought that Twitter was kind of dumb, but now that I’ve spent a few hours playing around with it, I totally understand the appeal. It’s not all that different from the Facebook news feed, except instead of getting updates from the random girl in my high school English class, now I can follow my favorite celebrities, politicians, and writers and tune everyone else out. I’m sold.

6. The Golf Summit – Obama and Boehner aren’t the only two with a golf date. This Saturday, I’m teeing off at the Royal Phnom Penh Golf Club for 18 holes. I’ve been meaning to play for two years and can’t remember the last time I was so excited for something. Unfortunately, I know that as soon as I shank my first drive, the day will immediately stop being fun and turn into four hours of me smashing clubs and screaming at myself. Oh well…

7. Quote of the Week - Sebastian Junger on Tim Hetherington’s funeral: “They filed out of their pew carrying two folded American flags that had been sent by Senator John McCain, himself a veteran of Vietnam. The young men presented my country’s flag to the Hetherington family and then to Idil. I missed most of that beautiful moment because I was crying too hard, but later I did savor one comforting thought: this may be one of the few countries in the world where a senator would see fit to present the national flag to a woman of Somali origin in honor of an Englishman killed in Libya. Whatever criticisms one might level at our county, we are sometimes capable of including the entire world in our embrace. In the midst of our painful debate about immigration, about war, and about our responsibility to other countries, it is an important thing to remember. It was perhaps one of the reasons that Tim had moved here—to escape what he felt to be the stultifying atmosphere of London.” (You can read the whole article here: Hetherington Doctrine)

8. Bunga Bunga – Read Ariel Levy’s brand new New Yorker article on Silvio Berlusconi’s hedonism. (Basta Bunga Bunga) You think our country has ugly sex scandals? This guy makes what our politicians do look like childs play. “Berlusconi today is loved more than before… his greatest crime was at most, he had a fu*k.”

9. The Jobs Numbers – I don’t care how the White House tries to spin it, rising unemployment (even a marginal rise) is terrible news for Obama. I honestly think that if unemployment isn’t going down over the next year (even if it’s stays right around 9%), it’s going to be really hard for Obama to win in 2012. It doesn’t even matter how weak the GOP field is – that unemployment number is the single most important story of the next year and a half.

10. The Sports Guy – Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, ran an article on one of my favorite people – Bill Simmons, the ESPN Sport’s Guy. (Can Bill Simmons Win the Big One?) I haven’t been reading Simmons column for that long, but for the last year I’ve been listening to his podcast religiously and actually think he’s one of the man reasons I’ve gotten so into the NBA this year. There’s really nobody better at what he does…

Enter Simmons and his legion of imitators, whom you won’t find loitering in a locker room, trawling for quotes or sitting at the press tables of an N.B.A. game, where rooting is forbidden. At the center of Simmons’s columns is not the increasingly unknowable athlete but the experience of the fan. His frame of reference is himself. He might not be able to tell you how a ballplayer felt performing a particular feat, but he can tell you how he felt watching it, what childhood memories it evoked, the scene from the movie “Point Break” it brought to mind, which one of his countless theories — newcomers to his column can consult a glossary on his home page — it vindicates. There’s a vaguely metaphysical quality to this approach: the sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls it “the tao of Bill.”

Time to get back to work. Thanks for checking in.