I Almost Watched Sports History In The Making Last Night
The Minnesota Wild became the first hockey team in history to come back from a 3-1 playoff deficit twice during the same playoffs. It had never been done before. Never. Until last night.
And I didn't fucking see it.
I'm a hopeless fair weather fan, as I suspect most Minnesota sports fans are. I love watching Minnesota teams do well, but I can't stand watching them lose. After being disappointed by your hometown teams with such maddening repetition, you just sort of become ambivalent. Our last great hurrah was the Minnesota Twins winning the World Series way back when. Since then, we've watched the Vikings blow a 15-1 season at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons and a Gary Anderson (a.k.a. Ray Finkle) choked field goal. We've watched the Timberwolves make a token appearance in the first round of the playoffs and then quickly bow out more times than I care to remember. We had the whole Gopher men's basketball fiasco awhile back. And the Gopher football team? Well, don't get me started with them.
Our brightest sports star is in the realm of wrestling (and not that professional wrestling BULLSHIT either), but nobody seems to care about the best sport of all time, for all time. Just so you know, wrestling is the greatest sport in the world, and I'm not just saying that because I was a wrestler, and my dad was my coach.
But, anyway. I watched the Wild fall behind 2-0 against the Vancouver Canucks last night, and I gave them up for lost. I clicked off the television and fired up Medal of Honor. I figured I'd soothe my frazzled hockey nerves by laying waste to a few Nazis. As Indiana Jones said, "Nazis. I hate these guys."
For the record, Medal of Honor just so totally rocks. I mean, I like first person shooters, but this game just sets the first person shooter bar way high. It's just incredible. The graphics are so richly textured, you swear you're in a war ravaged French village. And the sound is such that you literally jump out of your skin when you hear bullets whizz past you. My only compaint is that there's not enough gore. I know, I know. . . there must be something wrong with me if I want to see blood flowing from a freshly snuffed Nazi. But, it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with realism. It's just not natural to riddle an enemy body with bullets and not even see a trickle of blood. I'm not asking for brains and intestines splattering or anything. Just a little blood. That's all.
So, I finish my Medal of Honor mission and shut the game down. I then go online to see the final damage for the Wild game. fuck-a-duck-a-ding-dong! They came back to win it 4-2! I was stunned. I was happy! I was elated! I couldn't believe I fucking missed it!
It's enough to make me want to shoot a Nazi.
Ah, This Clears Everything Up
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Internet, but were too busy surfing the Internet to ask.
Ventura Channels His Inner Iraqi Information Minister
Former Minnesota Governor Insists Show Not In Trouble
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (Rhodes Media Services) -- Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota and current shameless self-promoter, has vehemently been denying rumors that his upcoming MSNBC television program is "terrible."
Standing in front of a hurriedly constructed, poorly lighted makeshift press room, as well as a stack of microphones, most of which weren't plugged into anything, Ventura spoke at length about the strength of his cable program and how he believed it would "crush the many headed snake" of other similar issue-oriented talk shows.
"Truly, truly I tell you that my show, the Jesse Ventura Show, is as strong and powerful as I, Jesse Ventura, the man who shocked the world, am," said Ventura while flexing his right bicep. "The great media Satan -- those jackals -- would have you believe that my show is doomed to failure. Do not believe them!! If you have fallen under the slithering charm of those despicable non-humans, I am here to tell you that you are too far from reality!"
Ventura continued to speak despite a cleaning crew working behind him, apparently clearing the set for what appeared to be a different talk show that will apparently be hosted by Gary Coleman.
"No! No! I have not been usurped by a has-been African American with stunted growth!" admonished Ventura, his chin quivering. "These are simply vicious lies and bad theater put on by a media cabal in the throes of desperation. I stand before you now and tell you, as has always been my opinion, I will roast their stomachs in hell and beat them about the head and face with smelly old running shoes!"
Pax Is Back
Salam Pax, the enigmatic Iraqi blogger, has re-materialized. Read him, at length, here.
And, I have to say, Pax is a lot more level-headed than people here in America who adopt either a blood-thirsty pro-war stance or a short-sighted no war at all stance. It would be great if we, as a nation, were able to see things as two-sided as Pax can, and he's LIVED THROUGH the war. An example:
Let me tell you one thing first. War sucks big time. Don't let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start dropping or you hear the sound of machine guns at the end of your street you don't think about your "imminent liberation" anymore.
But I am sounding now like the Taxi drivers I have fights with whenever I get into one.
Besides asking for outrageous fares (you can't blame them gas prices have gone up 10 times, if you can get it) but they start grumbling and mumbling and at a point they would say something like "well it wasn't like the mess it is now when we had Saddam". This is usually my cue for going into rage-mode. We Iraqis seem to have very short memories, or we simply block the bad times out. I ask them how long it took for us to get the electricity back again after he last war? 2 years until things got to what they are now, after 2 months of war. I ask them how was the water? Bad. Gas for car? None existent. Work? Lots of sitting in street tea shops. And how did everything get back? Hussain Kamel used to literally beat and whip people to do the impossible task of rebuilding. Then the question that would shut them up, so, dear Mr. Taxi driver would you like to have your Saddam back? Aren't we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq? Or are we Iraqis just a bunch of impatient fools who do nothing better than grumble and whine? Patience, you have waited for 35 years for days like these so get to working instead of whining. End of conversation.
The truth is, if it weren't for intervention this would never have happened. When we were watching the Saddam statue being pulled down, one of my aunts was saying that she never thought she would see this day during her lifetime.
But,
War. No matter what the outcome is. These things leave a trail of destruction behind them. There were days when the Red Crescent was begging for volunteers to help in taking the bodies of dead people off the city street and bury them properly. The hospital grounds have been turned to burial grounds when the electricity went out and there was no way the bodies can be kept until someone comes and identifies.
I confess to the sin of being an escapist. When reality hurts I block it out, unless it comes right up to me and knocks me cold. My mother, after going out once after Baghdad was taken by the US Army, decided she is not going out again, not until I promise it looks kind of normal and OK. So I guess the Ostrich maneuver runs in the family.
Things are looking kind of OK, these days. Life has a way of moving on. Your senses are numbed, things stop shocking you. If there is one thing you should believe in, it is that life will find a way to push on, humans are adaptable, that is the only way to explain how such a foolish species has kept itself on this planet without wiping itself out. Humans are very adaptable, physically and emotionally.
Zen And The Art of PC Ownership
I'm a very laid back individual. I don't flip out if they mess up my order at a fast food drive through, I don't suffer from road rage, I'm fine with standing in long lines, and I don't put my foot through the television any time another reality show comes on (despite every justification on earth to do so).
I wasn't always able to play things so cool. Things used to really bother me, to the point where I'd yell and scream and rant and rave, and that was never a good way to get through a first date. Then, I bought a personal computer loaded with assorted Microsoft offerings and I magically found that all my frustrations at life could be directed toward my computer.
When it comes down to it, when you really look at how Microsoft PCs operate, or refuse to operate, you really have to marvel at just how much frustration the average human being is capable of enduring.
What other daily item can you think of has to be restarted every so often to shake out irritating bugs? Well, besides bug zappers, I mean. Just the other day, I was happily surfing the Internet when a warning flashed across my screen informing me that "a fatal error has occurred" and that I would have to shut down immediately. A fatal error? Every time I see that message, I envision some sort of unseen digital car crash. A family of four bits, on their way to a vacation to DigitalWorld, smashed into an errant line of code and were all killed instantly. A fatal error had occurred, and to allow the computer a significant mourning period, the user must restart the machine and give it an appropriate moment of silence.
I mean, really, think about it. Imagine driving down the road, and all of a sudden the "Service Engine Soon" light comes on. Just how much sense would it make if, in order to fix the problem, you had to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the vehicle, wait a few seconds, and then turn it on again? That would make no sense at all. Yet that's pretty much exactly what computers ask you to do. And you just grow to accept it, as if there's nothing more natural in the world than constantly restarting your computer.
Right now, I own three different computers. I bought my first computer, a Compaq, for $3,000, in 1997. It became obsolete in 1998. I had a second computer built for me by a friend, at a cost of $1,200, in 1999. It became obsolete in 2001. I had another friend build ANOTHER computer, at a cost of $1,300, in January of 2003. It's scheduled to be obsolete sometime next year. Is there any other appliance in the world that has to be replaced with such maddening frequency?
My current computer runs Windows XP, which is a major improvement over its Windows 95/98/2000 predecessors in that it only requires 1/3 the restarts. My major gripe with Windows XP is that, just about one month ago, these annoying pop-up windows started appearing on my screen. They were much like the pop-ups that appear while surfing the Web, except that these pop-ups seemed to originate somewhere deep down in the Windows operating system underbelly.
The Windows pop-ups carried many of the same messages that traditional Web-based pop-ups entailed. I could grow my penis should I so wish. I could grow flowing locks of hair. I could seduce women instantly. All of these hold a certain amount of charm, I suppose. But the one pop-up that seemed the most odd asked me whether the pop-ups annoyed me (well, duh!) and offerred a $25 product that would stop them forever. Rather than cough up cash, I hit the Web, and with a few quick searches, I found out how to disable the embedded messaging system. No big deal, but again I have to ask, what other daily item rudely interrupts your routine to ask you whether you want a bigger penis? What if every time I turned on the oven to cook a pizza, it asked me if I was happy with the size of my manhood? I don't need such probing questions from a major appliance.
As computers become more and more advanced, and more and more complicated, it's almost a certainty that their level of irritation and annoyance are bound to increase exponentially. Given that, I just don't have the time or the energy to be upset with other aspects of daily existence. Forget road rage; I have a computer to worry about.
When Fate Intervenes And Shames You Deeply
During my second to last year of college, I lived in a party house in Winona known as the Shark Shack, so named because we had a life-sized plastic hammerhead shark suspended on one wall, in addition to a plastic marlin on another and what I think was a large walleye on yet another.
I shared the Shark Shack with four other roommates, and we held a steady stream of weekend parties, using the proceeds to pay some of our rent and other expenses. The Shark Shack was one of the cheapest places I ever lived, which was appropriate considering that it was also a giant shithole. Despite numerous attempts at carpet cleaning, if you walked through the living room with your socks on, chances are the bottoms would be jet black after a few trips to the kitchen and back. You just learned to wear shoes at all times.
During our Halloween Party, I hooked up with a girl (who we'll call Michelle) I met while sitting on the steps, drinking a beer. We talked for a little while, and then we started making out, and then she suggested we go up to my room, and I agreed wholeheartedly. For the next couple of hours, we engaged in certain acts, until her sister knocked on the door and said she was going to a different party. Michelle hurriedly dressed, scribbled her number and address down, and she made me promise I would call. I promised I would call. She then left, and I went back downstairs to re-join the party. I never did call Michelle back, and I didn't think anything of it. It just didn't register that I was being a dickhead. Actually, sometimes when I'm a dickhead even today, it still doesn't register.
The following year, as I put the final touches on my journalism degree while working as a grunt reporter for the Winona Daily News, I had all but forgotten about Michelle. That night had simply hazed over as one of many party evenings, and she had become just another fading face. Besides, I was happily involved in a year-long relationship with a different girl, Jerusha, so I didn't really want to dwell on past one-night stands.
Well, the Winona Daily News decided to assign me a special article in which I would go behind the scenes of the Miss Winona Pageant. At that time, Winona had spawned the last three consecutive Miss. Minnesota winners, so they thought a story about the Miss Winona Pageant would be interesting. I, of course, couldn't imagine a more stellar assignment than reporting backstage, all day, from a beauty pageant. Holy boners, Batman!
Then, I read the contestant list. There, midway down the list, was Michelle's name. Oh, crap. There's an onion in the ointment. Well, maybe, I thought, she wouldn't recognize me. Maybe, I thought, she didn't remember the Halloween party. Maybe, I thought, I could run away to Alaska.
I arrived at the pageant in the morning and introduced myself to each contestant, taking extra care to shake hands with Michelle last. I was astounded when she didn't seem to have any idea who I was. I was also monumentally relieved. From that point on, my job was easy. I wrote page after page of notes while joking with the contestants and having just a grand old time. It was a great day.
That night, with the pageant underway, I hovered backstage, interviewing the women as they prepared for their talent segments as well as when they came off the stage. As I peered through the curtains, watching one of the women onstage, I felt a soft breath in my right ear, and then Michelle, who had snuck up behind me, whispered "You never called me back, you fucker."
I wanted to die. At that moment, I felt just despicable. My face was red and hot with shame. As I stood backstage in inky blackness, Michelle's voice could just have well have been the voice of every girl I ever made-out with at a bar or party and said I'd call but never did. I just wanted to leave the pageant, leave Winona, and never go back. Man, did I feel like shit.
Michelle went on to win Miss. Congeniality.
It was, without a doubt, the most difficult article I ever wrote.
Ashleigh Banfield On Rotation
Erik, over at Intellectual Poison, steered me to this speech by uber-hottie anchorwoman Ashleigh Banfield. Now, although I don't dispute Erik's claim that Banfield is very attractive (I would very much consider it an honor if my private parts were to intermingle with hers), I do take umbrage with some of her claims. As Erik pointed out, Banfield gets pretty longwinded during the speech, so I'll only excerpt those passages that stuck in my craw, thus becoming craw stickers.
That said, what didn't you see? You didn't see where those bullets landed. You didn't see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war.
Let's play a little game. Let's pretend that you're a reporter. You have the option of being embedded with a superior fighting force that is well organized, well trained, and it is widely believed that this fighting force is going to cut through the enemy like a magnified sun beam through a June bug. Or, you can tag along with a loosely organized band of fedayeen thugs who very likely would not hesitate to strap you to a bunker if it meant buying time. Which would you choose?
Granted, Banfied makes a valid argument that we don't see ALL the carnage left in the wake of a successful strike, but at the same time I think it's a stretch to assume that, just because we only see the puff of smoke of a mortar round, we're not conscious of the fact that the impact is more severe than it appears. I, for one, watched the news and realized that every explosion probably resulted in the death of an enemy soldier and possibly a civilian from time to time. But, hey, if Ashleigh feels it would drive the point home further by planting herself at the coordinates of a mortar strike, more power to her. Hope her flak vest is nice and tight, because shrapnel doesn't distinguish between enemies and reporters. Finally, if you really had a hankering to see the civilian death toll, Al Jazeera kept on top of every dead civilian it could find and photographed them several times from several angles for full shock and effect. This is the age of the Internet. You can find anything anywhere if you take the time to dig.
The other thing is that so many voices were silent in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon for speaking out, and her husband, and we all know that this is not the way Americans truly want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.
Of all the craw stickers, this stuck in my craw the most. Here we have a journalist, someone supposedly at the top of her game, apparently oblivious to the true meaning of the freedom of speech. Okay, class, can anyone see the flaw in Ashleigh's statement? Anyone? Yes, Mr. Rhodes, go ahead.
People didn't fight against the first amendment and free speech because we found Sarandon's mindless babble unpalatable. People spoke against Sarandon because her mindless babble was unpalatable. People used their right to free speech to rip on Sarandon's use of her right to free speech. We were fine with Sarandon speaking out, hell, more power to her. But, that doesn't mean we necessarily liked what she had to say. Celebrities are a funny bunch. They get to be famous because we lowly plebes elevate them there, yet they seem absolutely offended if we disagree with them, so they yell and scream that they're being denied their right to free speech. No. THIS is being denied their right to free speech: "Shut the hell up or we'll stick red pokers in your nostrils." So, I'm going to have to insist that Ashleigh consult the Constitution so she can brush up on her first amendment rights, both as a journalist and as a U.S. citizen.
Well, the message before we went in was actually weapons of mass destruction and eliminating the weapons of mass destruction from this regime and eliminating this regime. Conveniently in the week or two that we were in there it became very strongly a message of freeing the Iraqi people. That should have been the message early on, in fact, in the six to eight months preceding this campaign, if we were trying to win over the hearts of the Arab world.
Banfield conveniently seems to forget that the war in Iraq was actually just the next step in the continuing war on. . . anyone? Yes, Mr. Rhodes, go ahead.
The war on terror. Remember that? It was a U.S.-declared war on terrorism that included striking at regimes that harbor terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. True, we used WMD as the primary justification to try and convince the ineffective bureaucratic monolith that is the U.N. to please, please, please let us invade Iraq. Few people seem to remember, however, that the U.N. seemed unimpressed by evidence that Iraq supported terrorism. So, we went ahead without the U.N., and lo and behold we found terrorists, and terrorist training camps, and links to Al Queda.
As for Ashleigh's assertion that Iraqi liberation should have been our message early on, let's just assume for a second that Colin Powell went before the U.N. security council and asked for Iraqi liberation. Let's see, the U.N. Human Rights Commission is chaired by Libya, and Cuba is a longstanding panel member. How impressed do you think the U.N. would have been by a plea for Iraqi liberation? Exactly. Let's move on.
So I wasn't the least bit surprised to see these marches and these pilgrimages in the last few days telling the Americans, "Thanks for the freedom to march to Najaf and Karbala, but get out." You know, this wasn't that big of a surprise. I think it may be a surprise though to the Pentagon. I'm not sure that they were ready to deal with this many dissenters and this many supporters of an Islamic regime, like next door in Iran.
It's good to know Ashleigh is so enlightened as to the mindset of the Pentagon.
When you hear the word Hezbollah you probably think evil, danger, terror right away. If I could just see a show of hands. Who thinks that Hezbollah is a bad word? Show of hands. Usually connotes fear, terror, some kind of suicide bombing. If you live in the Arab world, Hezbollah means Shriner. Hezbollah means charity, Hezbollah means hospitals, Hezbollah means welfare and jobs.
Hezbollah, the organization, also means intolerance of the Jews, refusal to recognize anything but a pure Palestinian state WITHOUT Israel, and a drive to sacrifice its ignorant adherents through suicide bombings to scare Israelis and elevate their cause to the 6 p.m. news. In Ashleigh's world, Al Queda shouldn't be feared because, translated, it simply means "The base." That's so innocuous, it CAN'T be dangerous.
And that's some of the problems we have in dealing in this war in terror. As a journalist I'm often ostracized just for saying these messages, just for going on television and saying, "Here's what the leaders of Hezbullah are telling me and here's what the Lebanese are telling me and here's what the Syrians have said about Hezbullah. Here's what they have to say about the Golan Heights." Like it or lump it, don't shoot the messenger, but invariably the messenger gets shot.
Ashleigh is so damned cute when she whines. Listen lady, if you choose to say something, you had best be willing take responsibility for your flapping gums. Just as I take full responsibility for any D&D gamers who think I'm a prick for making light of their hobby, so, too, should you not be taken aback when you assert that Hezbollah "ain't so bad."
We hired somebody on MSNBC recently named Michael Savage. Some of you may know his name already from his radio program. He was so taken aback by my dare to speak with Al -Aqsa Martyrs Brigade about why they do what they do, why they're prepared to sacrifice themselves for what they call a freedom fight and we call terrorism. He was so taken aback that he chose to label me as a slut on the air. And that's not all, as a porn star. And that's not all, as an accomplice to the murder of Jewish children. So these are the ramifications for simply being the messenger in the Arab world.
I'm curious here, whether Banfield, who really gained national attention due to her ground zero reporting heroics on 9/11, considers the hijackers of those flights "terrorists," or "freedom fighters." I'm just curious. Calling her a slut may be harsh. Calling her a pornstar may be harsh. An accomplice to murder? Perhaps not, but by being a media cheerleader for groups that promote indiscriminate killing, you kinda have to wonder whether she's serving their hate-filled agenda more than she realizes.
>From there, Ashleigh pretty much goes on a whine fest about American attention spans, chastising us for not taking more of an active interest in Afghanistan and the unfolding situation in Iraq, augmenting her point by explaining that her beloved cable news channel has plummeted from millions of daily viewers to a few hundred thousand. Read her whining if you wish, or don't, it's entirely up to you. Myself, I'd rather watch her on TV. She's at her best when you can look at her.
Introducing. . .Fly Guy!
So, it's 4:30 p.m. on a Monday. You're bored, but you don't want to do any more work. What do you do? What. Do. You. Do. I suggest you go here.
Putting A New Spin on Tornadoes
I often wonder if the mass media newsrooms of today all feature huge wall calendars that roughly outline when the usual destructive weather patterns are expected to roll through. The hurricane season is marked in red, likely winter storms are tentatively shaded blue, and the tornado season is highlighted in gray. When a slow news day rolls around, news agencies scramble to the wall calendar to see if there's any weather-related news they can fall back on.
DAN RATHER: What's all this crap I'm supposed to read about a little boy being reunited with his sister after a week at band camp? What kind of news is this?
NEWS EXEC: That's all we got, Dan. It's pretty quiet out there today.
DAN RATHER: Oh, come on! Surely a Palestinian blew himself up or something. There must be a looting update out of Iraq.
NEWS EXEC: Nope. I guess we could consult the weather calendar. *tears down April, revealing May tornado season*
DAN RATHER: Huzzah! It's tornado season! Of course! Get me updates, man. I need updates.
NEWS EXEC: I'm on it! Hot dog! Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee were all hit: 32 killed, eight missing! Let's get you in make-up, Dan!
I certainly don't mean to make light of tornadoes, or hurricanes, or heavy downpours, but something on the Fox News Web Site (motto: Get Lost liberals; You're Not Wanted Here!) made me pause. Their lead item showed a picture of a destroyed section of a town (I'm guessing a trailer park), and the story headline was a quote from a resident: "It Was Absolutely Terrible!"
Really? A tornado was terrible? Who would have thought? Just once I'd like to hear a resident say something like, "Wow! That was fucking awesome! There was all this wind and noise and twirling and swirling, and there was the whooshing and howling and the mmm--GLAvin!"
But beyond that, I find it odd how journalists writing about weather events feel compelled to so liberally use hyberbole and personification. Consider the Fox News example:
PIERCE CITY, Mo — A swarm of tornadoes tore through the Midwest Sunday, killing at least 28 people in Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee.
Now, just for the record, tornadoes don't swarm. Bees swarm. Locusts swarm. Tornadoes are not riled up by a curious eight-year old poking a stick into a cloud hive. Tornadoes tend to coalesce at random spots at random times rather than attacking large areas to protect their queen tornado.
Houses across the region were knocked off foundations, trees were uprooted, power lines littered roadways and travelers were forced to huddle in underground tunnels at Kansas City's main airport.
This is actually a standard sentence interjected into all tornado-related news stories. Writers simply fill in the appropriate blanks. For exampe: "Houses across the region were knocked off foundations, trees were uprooted, power lines littered roadways and travelers were forced to huddle in ___________ at ____________ main ___________."
I really can't belittle any more of the article, mainly because it talks mostly about how people were killed and injured, and that's not all that funny.
