These are transient thoughts; there is no continuity between one thought and the other. Now one of these transient thoughts has to do with baseball. For many years, Sunday afternoon professional baseball was banned. So you can imagine the thoughts that would go through a believer’s mind as he encountered a team nicknamed the Angels.
As a matter of fact, this year, the team that was defeated by the New York Yankees before they became the top team in the American League was called The Los Angeles Angels. But no one seems to have noticed.
A few years back, certainly within my lifetime, Sunday baseball was banned because of the serious damage to our souls. I can imagine that in those days when Sunday baseball was barred, a team nicknamed The Angels would have drawn condemnation from pulpits throughout this nation. Now we have The Angels playing baseball and we have The Devils playing hockey on a major league level. I can assure you that the end of the world is near and that Hell is our next stop.
 
A long time ago, I had a friend who worked for AT&T in St. Louis who went by the name of George Knickerbocker. George is the person who insisted that the word “miscellaneous” should be pronounced as “miss-kell-aneous.” He was serious about this stuff and at the end of the baseball season when the World Series was involved, George had an appellation for that series as well. He referred to that as the “world serious.” They don’t make them like George Knickerbocker was and, for all of his mispronunciations, I hope that he is still around.
 
Now we turn to the Afghans. In the run-off for the Afghan elections, one of the contestants was called Abdullah Abdullah. I have been missing a bet here that I could have run for office using the name of Ezra Ezra. How I could have missed a bet like that I will never know.
 
These days, I have depended heavily on the advice of preachers and other do-gooders. They have counseled me to quit thinking about girls, shacking up and one night stands. Now that my mind is free of those thoughts, I suggest that in the future, there will be more transient and random thoughts. As they occur to me, I will attempt to write them down so that they are not lost to the memory of man and may be shared with those who are hungry for random and transient thoughts.
E. E. CARR
November 2, 2009
Essay 419
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Kevin’s commentary: I wonder if George has any relation to Bruce Knickerbocker, my Chinese teacher for several years.