Tea for Two

Last night's Yankee Stadium debut of Matsuzaka was abolutely surreal. I am more or less aware of trends of Asian thought, including various baseball and business comic books and anime (w/o actually having read the comic books for any length of time); it was such a big deal. "He's in Yankee Stadium!" on and on, into the night. I am surprised he didn't just leave the game halfway through the 5th inning by claiming "emotional euphoric exhilarated fatigue"; it was so grand. Mega. I am surprised he wasn't overcome, it was such a good experience for his fans back home. It was windowopening.

Just like there are English words we use for hitters and pitchers and teams, there are now Asian words that start to figure. For instance, Mr Rodriguez, the Yankee record-setter, is, plain and simple, into the 提 --- "ti", that is.

提

提出

提高

提供

提倡

More on this later as I get smarter. For instance, if one takes the top half of the word, one gets:

坦

Notice how 出 looks like Pat from "It's Pat" on Saturday Night Live.

Words have meaning, especially if the opposing player doesn't even know they are in play. A Rod is high on life.

Asian words can be quite hypnotizing. In order to effectively trail off into another subject, one normally writes some (science) fiction about what one is looking at:

- I think he's proposing that we use the sun's light to get our work done during the day.

- As communism is to Earth, so sunspots are to the Sun.

- I think he wants to present his batting statistics to Starship Federation.

- I think he's squeezing lemon juice out of the sun.

Tell me when to stop. Don't you have some work to do?