The cannonball referred to in "Cannonball Viz" is of the off-the-diving-board into the pool splash-causing variety. In the bridge, there's a kind of therapeutic visualization in which I do a cannonball off the high dive into the swimming pool of my own unspoken anger and unexpressed sorrow, a symbolic owning of it all, I guess.

That visualization—"viz," could also mean "example"—is the Viz part of the song title. An artful extravagance, the song title. It probably should have just been called "Jokes."

I love jokes, of course. Make 'em all the time. Still. But, I was shocked the first time I heard that joking belongs in the "aggressive acts" category of human behavior. Makes sense, though. We know smiles are acts of submission in the primate world, after all. So really, loving comedy and being a boxing fan isn't terribly different.

Small note: the "Country Club Hills of my mind," I refer to is a swimming pool my family used to go to in Virginia when I was a kid. Now insiders know that I spent far more years being a member of Cardinal Hills, than Country Club Hills, but the difference is that I was way young when a member of Country Club Hills, and so had never gone off the terrifying high high dive. Cardinal Hills' high dive, I did that one a lot, as I was older. The act of cannonballing off the Country Club Hills high dive, therefore, was not a part of an actual memory, and so much better for this particular visualization.

We did wear Speedos then, too. Everybody did. My whole family was on the swim team, and that was the uniform. Tiny little banana hammocks, and we thought nothing of it. Seems strange now, huh?