James and I went to a Tucson Sidewinders game last night. The Sidewinders are the Triple-A minor league team of the Arizona Diamondbacks. I had never been to one of their games, and since the season ends next week I figured I should go. The fact that it was $1 beer night was not a discouragement, either.

The stadium was mostly empty at first pitch (which helps explain why the team is moving to Chandler, AZ). We tried to sit in the box seats behind home plate only to be chased out by an usher. Fair enough — we took our beers to the general admission area, field level behind first base.

About midway through the game, a Portland player hit a sharp line drive foul. From my perspective, the ball wasn’t really moving as it flew, just getting larger.

Oh fuck… it’s coming right at me.

It never even crossed my mind to try to catch it. As hard as it was hit, I imagined it would break my hand, bounce off, and end up in someone else’s lap anyway.

Instead, I tried to dive out of the way. Except it ended up being more of a girlish flinch, with my body twisted away from the ball and halfway out of my seat.

And so the ball hit me in the ass.

Well, okay, on the back of my thigh just below my ass. But isn’t the first description funnier?

My first thought after it hit was, “The ball is still in my seat. I should grab it.” So I did.

My second thought was, “Ow. No seriously, OW.”

My third thought was for my cell phone, which was in my pocket three inches away from the spot where the ball hit me. Close call.

Finally, I noticed every single person in my section was staring at me, and that for some reason I was laughing. I held up the ball and shyly waved, and they gave half-hearted applause. Some guy behind me brayed, “You’re supposed to catch the ball with your hands, not your ass!” Yeah, like I saw YOU diving after it, douchebag.

An usher came down to make sure I was all right and if there was anything she could do. James shouted, “He wants a hat and t-shirt! NO! FREE BEER!” I assured her I was okay, I would just have a nice bruise tomorrow.

Sure enough, I woke up this morning with a tender, purple bruise on the back of my thigh. It’s slightly painful to sit on, but nothing awful.

The Cardinals are coming to Arizona to play the Diamondbacks next weekend, around my birthday. I’m thinking of going. Ah, baseball: it abuses me and I keep coming back for more. It is the Ike to my Tina.

In this post, Shaenon re-imagines “The Trouble with Tribbles” in the style of Edward Gorey after discovering Gorey was a big Star Trek fan. (If you’re unfamiliar, Gorey was creator of a famous series of macabre children’s books.)

I was getting around to linking to Shaenon’s post when BoingBoing beat me to it. Here come the multitudes…

I really need to start paying more attention to the blog. There may not be much going on in my life — Kristie came down with a cold/flu over the weekend and right now I feel like I’m trying to fight something off, too — but I could write about all the recent political and economic news or my indecision over my next creative outlet.

Those will come shortly. In the meantime, I’ve added two items to the Blogs of Note that you should check out:

One is Zero Punctuation, a gaming video-column I wrote about last week. It updates every Wednesday.

The other is How the World Works, which has slowly become my go-to outlet for the boring stuff that nobody else finds quite as fascinating as I do — the housing bubble, the debt problem, peak oil. It’s a bit brainy but well worth reading. You might want to start with Andrew Leonard’s recent attempt to explain the meltdown of the financial sector in layman’s terms. I know it helped me.

Welcome to the doldrums of August. Kristie starts teaching three classes at Pima this week and is feverishly banging out syllabuses… er, syllabi?… but otherwise there’s not much going on. World War Z is a great book, Superbad and the ID4 Rifftrax are funny, it’s been pleasantly rainy this summer, and that’s about it.

Oh, and there are links:

• Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is my new favorite video game columnist. Check out his reviews of Fable and the PS3 demo of The Darkness, then head over to his new weekly gig at The Escapist. His latest targets: the upcoming Heavenly Sword and Resident Evil 5.
• This guy from 1994 sounds pretty prescient about Iraq. Whatever happened to him anyway? Naturally, Jon Stewart has more.
• Speaking of fake newsmen, Colbert covers the dustup between Daily Kos, of which I am a longtime member, and the ever less sane Bill O’Reilly. And yes, he really posted that comment.
• Finally, The Comedians of Comedy: Live at the Troubadour comes out on DVD on Oct. 2. This is mostly notable because the DVD covers two shows on consecutive nights at the Troubadour in December, and one of them was the show where I met Kristie.

Co-worker James came into work this morning with a smile and about 20 copies of the NY Times. After all, it’s not every day you get a credited photo on page 1 of the NY Times Style section, and a total of three photos in the online version of the story.

Things have been so boring around here that I haven’t had much to blog about. That sounds like a complaint, but believe me, it isn’t — after a hectic couple of months, I’m glad for a spot of boredom.

I’ve been on two different kinds of steroids for the last week to clear up the allergy-based coughing fits. I’m done with one set, hopefully for good, and will take the inhalant-based ‘roids until the allergy shots take full effect. I’m feeling surprisingly good right now, and as a side benefit I’ve hit 73 home runs since last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s amusing me lately:

• I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: They Are All Gay. And as with Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Jim West, Jeff Gannon, and Glenn Murphy Jr, Allen couldn’t just have a normal, healthy affair with a dude — it always involves teens, chat rooms, public restrooms, and/or prostitution. I have to admit, though, as far as excuses go, “I’m not gay, I’m racist! I offered to blow a black guy in self-defense!” at least has the virtue of never having been tried. Ant has more.
• The Yangtze River Dolphin has gone extinct. Douglas Adams wrote about the dolphin in Last Chance to See twenty years ago. You can read passages here.
• TPMtv has been posting videos from last week’s YearlyKos convention in Chicago. I miss last year’s coverage from CSPAN and Air America, which offered live feeds of entire panels instead of focusing on the main speakers and debates. Yes, I’m such a nerd.
• Creator interviews from Joss Whedon and Matt Fraction have me pondering my next creative endeavor, now that I’m settled and relatively healthy. I also stumbled upon Jim Butcher’s blog, where he offers in-depth thoughts on the craft of writing.
• I snagged a copy of the Pushing Daisies pilot episode, a new series from Wonderfalls creator Bryan Fuller. Sharply written, although it remains to be seen whether it will resonate with me as deeply as Wonderfalls did. Debuts Oct. 3.
• Shaenon writes about the Comic-Con that was: “Once again, Seth Rogen failed to stop by my table and realize that he must produce and star in the television adaptation of Narbonic. I don’t know what’s up with that.”

As promised, here’s the Zombie Kristie portrait we got at Comic-Con last weekend, courtesy of artist Stan Yan. Click through for the larger size: