Making It Up As I Go Along #322

MONDAY...
— Work 9:30 to 5:30... it’s fine. I’m a bit slow stats wise... after coming back from vacation... but pick up as shift goes.
— Go from work to the ball field. We win tonight but I could play better. One at bat (an out) and two easy plays at 3rd base. But at least we won.
— A bite and a beer after the game with about eight of us.
— Groceries... and I just get back in time before a quick, yet strong, thunder storm.

TUESDAY...
— Drivers licence work to be done. That is, I go to get a new picture for a new licence.
— Work is okay. Cindy with me for the first half and Claudio for the second.
— Nap on the sofa before heading to bed around 2:00 AM.

WEDNESDAY...
— Watch Cinderella Man on DVD in the morning.
— Work is alright. Alone for a while and with Cindy for the second half of the night. Supper is a shwarma with Megan.

THURSDAY...
— Do a walk in the morning. Two laps around the pond near my place. Lots of birds, ducks, ducklings, chicks, loons, muskrat. It’s pretty good.
— Work is fine. Claudio is there half the shift. And Jon is there for a couple of hours at the start.
— Get home to see my Monty Python has arrived. The set of the Flying Circus shows. Should make for some good watching.

FRIDAY...
— Up early for softball. It’s a tournament for the Children’s Wish Foundation and my first game is at 8:20 AM. Giving 45 minutes to get there in traffic and it’s an early start.
— The games are pretty fun but I get hurt in the second one. Torn or pulled hamstring for me. So it’s hobbling around for the rest of the afternoon and evening and a steady diet of ice once home.

SATURDAY...
— Some movies and pizza delivered and some hockey and baseball on TV. I’m being pretty lazy icing down my hamstring and resting. It’s improving already... hoping I dodged a bullet with this one but I’d say I’m not playing ball for a few weeks.


Three Strikes, You’re Out
Today I’m without any real story. I started one about playing softball but I didn’t like it. I tried a poem, also about ball, but after one stanza, I decided it wouldn’t go anywhere all that good.

And with two failed attempts today, I’m hardly in the mood for a third. So a quick run down of the week... well... a little less quick than the weekly portion above but quicker than a written out story.

Softball was my main story maker this week. Playing in a game on Monday which was fairly forgettable for me personally but still a bit of fun. And then the tournament on Friday with me getting hurt in the second game. The hamstring still doesn’t feel great but it is getting better all the time and I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet. I mean really... I have a home with two sets of steps. Having me on crutches around the house would be a pain in the you know where. Not to mention driving a standard transmission car with my clutch leg barely able to move. So maybe I’m a quick healer when it comes to the hamstring, or maybe the original problem was just not as bad as it first seemed. Either way, good.

My Monty Python collection is complete. I can’t think of what else I could put in there. This week I got the complete DVD set of their old weekly show, “The Flying Circus.” Seeing the Monty Python work, it’s easy to argue that, like with music, the world of comedy has gone downhill in recent years. The greatest rock music came from the 1970s. I think the greatest comedy did as well. At least I can be thankful that the incredibly bad Royal Canadian Air Farce is soon to be off the air. It just should have been disbanded some fifteen years ago.

My local pond is either rat infested or a wildlife compound!

I went for a walk around the pond this week. My first one in many months actually and it was pretty impressive. Ducks with ducklings. Loons with baby loons (what do you call them anyway? Loonlings?). Nesting birds trying to buzz walkers in order to keep them away from their nearby chicks. And, what I hope to be muskrats. Four times I saw what looked to be a muskrat swimming through the reeds or crossing from one shore to another. Seeing one, as it hit a clearing, I was struck by how close to a rat it had looked. Then I remembered the rats of Wedgewood Park, swimming across the river in the quest for food. And I wondered... are these muskrats? Or just more rats?

Funny how quickly a thought can change the entire image of an instance. I see the same creature paddling through the water and into the grasses and reeds along the shore. And one minute I think it’s neat and interesting... while the next minute I’m wondering if we need to call someone in to obliterate them.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is a politician to stay clear of. And I’ve also come to the conclusion that the western media and legal system, when it comes to politics, go hand in hand in not wanting to actually make things better. They want to keep the status quo. They expect that the status quo is what politics is all about. And they’d rather sensationalize the current ways then to fix it so that things are actually better.

We’ve seen claims that George Bush has lied to go to war. That he’s fabricated the reason for his battles. Yet nobody has seriously talked about trying him for war crimes.

Hillary Clinton lied about being shot at by snipers in Bosnia. But it’s a blip on the radar and she’s let off the hook when she said she may have just misremembered the situation.

But worse still, how can it be that Hillary Clinton, of all people, can try to proclaim herself as the one in touch with the hard working white middle class. She’s paid $11 million towards her campaign out of her own personal bank account, yet she’s the one to represent the views of the common white people? Just the fact that she’s even bringing up the idea of the common white people is a lack of political leadership. She’s going out of her way to intentional create division in class and race of people... hoping it’ll get her votes. I’m glad it looks like it isn’t working. And I hope Obama really does represent political change. Because the western world could sure use it.

This year’s Stanley Cup Final has been the most overhyped hockey final in recent memory. Even the Canadian sports media seemed willing to say that three straight years with a Canadian team in the finals was a bad thing for hockey. That those finals lacked excitement and now that we have the young guns of Pittsburgh going up against the veteran professionalism of Detroit, we’d finally see the good hockey like those Cup finals of the mid 1980s, when Edmonton and New York fought each other for the championship.

The NHL has become too desperate to market Sidney Crosby. I like the guy, he’s a fine player and I enjoy watching him play, but the league has to stop hinging it’s very existence on his success. The NHL has to return to marketing the team over the individual players. The world’s greatest team sport isn’t made to be marketing only the individual components. It simply sets itself up for a letdown.

And for God’s sake! Stop personalizing the Stanley Cup as some sort of cartoon figure named Stanley!!! It’s a trophy named after Lord Stanley. Attempts to market the championship as a cool thing has even had Canadian journalists, who should know better, blathering on about Sidney Crosby, or the Detroit Red Wings “wanting to get their hands on Stanley!” When you literally consider what’s being said, Lord Fredrick Stanley, the 16th Earl of Derby and a former Governor General of Canada would be grateful for being dead. Otherwise he may be afraid of the homoerotic implications of having a load of grown men all dying to get their hands on him. Bottom line is the NHL, and those who cover it, should stop trying to talk about the Stanley Cup as if it was Peter Puck. They do nothing but belittle the greatest trophy in all of sports by doing so.