Post #700

I'm a baseball fan, so all numbers around 700 have to do with home runs. Ruth already had 714 when I hit the planet, and that number, 714, refers/means that and only that. There is absolutely no other use for the arranged numbers 7, 1, and 4 other than to refer to Babe Ruth and home runs. Those with a street address starting 714 should officially have to change the number to something else. It's like the 13th floor in a hotel, only instead of bad luck, it simply means no person/place/thing deserves the numbers 714 in that order except Babe Ruth.

Then Henry Aaron came along, and became a big part of my youth as he crossed 700 on his way past 714 and, eventually ended up at 755. Yes, I can remember Milo Hamilton's call of 715. Yes, I remember who Hammering Hank hit 715 off of. I even remember which Dodger pitcher caught the HR ball in the Fulton County Stadium bullpen. I remember those long-haired, good natured young guys patting Aaron on the back as he rounded the bases.

The 700 numbers mean a lot to a baseball fan.

Unfortunately, also in the 700s is a number many baseball obsessives don't count, some juiced up loser hitting more than 755. I can't remember his name off-hand. I honestly don't even remember the number of HRs this loser hit. His existence and the fact the number of his HRs is, I think, in the 700s taints the whole 700s to an extent. About as much as the "700 Club" television show, I suppose. Which is quite a bit.

And now, furthering the taint of the baseball sacred and theologically profane 700s, Burque Babble arrives at its 700th post. What started sputtering in March 2005, in a land before Twitter and Democratically-controlled branches of the federal government is now 700 posts old. I guess that means something, I just don't know if I want to know what it means.

If you know what I mean.

One thing it means is that I've spent quite a bit of time staring at this little WYSIWYG word-processing/html box in Blogger. Why? It also indicates that quite a few words have been put into the little WYSIWYG box over the last five years of so. Again...why?

One of these days I'm going to get around to wasting time copy/pasting all my Burque Babble posts into Word instead of simply wasting time writing a Burque Babble post. The purpose of the copy/paste will be to get a word count for all the detritus thrust into this little WYSIWYG box since '05. How many words? 250,000? 300,000?

Is 300,000 words longer than Anna Karenina? À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu? Probably not War and Peace, but we're still talking serious heft here. All these words..and for what?

And now you know why I'll probably never get around to that copy/paste into Word. One thing that hasn't changed since 2005 is that the majority of folks still say the sentence/question "You have a blog?" in the same way they might say "You have a drinking problem?" or "You still wear Crocs in public?" We bloggers are interesting in that not only are we out of fashion, we have still yet to be in fashion. We still wear the Internet equivalent of plaids with stripes.

Oh well.

At times over the last five years, in an pretty much predictable cycle, I've decided to quit doing this. Once or twice I actually stopped, only to have something (a news item, boredom, a feeling of mortality) compel me to the little WYSIWYG box. Also, speaking honestly and without the, almost self-destructive degree of, irony and sarcasm common here, I've also considered you, dear reader in that calculation of whether to really stop this worthless madness.

Perhaps the most considerate thing I could do would be to stop writing this crap. But I persist in the delusion that there is a purpose here, one that somehow exists beyond my own, notorious, ego-centrism, and actually has some sort of strange, ill-formed reason for being.

I dunno. I could be wrong. A significant part of me thinks I'm probably wrong about this. Just not enough to completely, finally shut this mofo down.

Thanks to those who have continued following this worthless madness over the years, whether in a single visit or, poor souls, through a majority of all 700 posts . I've tried writing a last sentence here about nine times now...but can't come up with anything other than: thanks.

So thanks.