Another unforgettable soccer moment

See, there really is great inherent drama in this game. Sometimes it just needs a little help from the officials to emerge.

I am a bad person, too bad a person to feel like cheering for the Serbian underdog. Not after recent history. Then again, only-slightly-less-recent history gives pause in thinking about who they're playing against.

As it goes, I guess I'd rather see the world's pariahs and ex-pariahs work out their issues on the soccer field rather than the alternatives that made them pariahs.

So, in that spirit: Go, Serbia! Teach those Germans a lesson, you scrappy dudes!

Yes, the game does seem to improve when one takes into account geopolitical considerations.

Also, this notion of a subjective warning seems odd to me. I mean, it seems to me, that in most sports you are either violating the rules or you aren't.

*faxin SciTim some for-no-particular-reason-wink-wink confetti and party horns* :-)

Can we penalize the official two minutes for excessive yellow card waving?

I was lucky enough to see the greatest basketball player ever several times in Los Angeles during the 1990s. He wore red. Last night, however, was the first time I ever had that feeling we all used to get when MJ and the Bulls were down, backs against the wall and facing elimination: Confidence. Confidence in the MVP to get the job done in the end. This confidence was misplaced. Aside 15 rebounds, Kobe's numbers were dismal. He simply could not score so the team rose up and finished the job. Kobe did hit his freethrows during crunch time and seemed willing to give up the ball to collect a 5th ring. Nobody can do it alone, Pau Gasol and Ron Artest (can't believe it) played like true Champions. Kobe needs one more MVP performance Championship for reconsideration.

If you can't catch every match, here's the world cup daily goal roundup:

http://deadspin.com/5566555/your-culturally-insensitive-world-cup-goal-roundup-for-june-17

*sigh*

I have detested soccer/futbol for just about half a century now, so it's kinda hard for me suddenly feign anything other than contempt, especially for a bunch of countries who had/have historic tendencies to practice genocide (yes, I admit I tend to hold a grudge). Besides, soccer has one fatal flaw in it that cannot be overlooked: no hands. What kinda sport doesn't let you use your hands? How can the Youth of the World develop hand/eye coordination, to say nothing of manly biceps, when you run around with your hands tucked into your armpits?

So it will come as no surprise to many of you that I'm rooting only for the umpires, although I do wish they learn to grow a set and drop all this politically correct/ultra-polite yellow-card/red-card nonsense. No, in a "proper" sport, when a player or coach commits an infraction, the only proper course of action is for the umpire and the offending person to get into a good old-fashioned screaming match, faces two inches apart and spittle flying while they verbally abuse each other, their parentage, their sexual identity and practices, their mother's occupations, the proper location for inserting organs, until the offending player/coach says a magic word, and the heroic umpire gets the intense serotonin-skyrocketing, endorphin-rush-cascading pleasure of ejecting said miscreant in front of 20,000 or 30,000 people.

Now, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what sportsmanship and athletics is all about.

Pssst, 'Mudge...

Soccer stadiums generally have double or triple that many fans in the stands.

'Jes sayin.

:-)

But, Mudge, just the other day you said that I was your favorite soccer-coach-who-has-never-played-soccer-a-day-in- her-life....I am not alone in this, here in the land of football. I coached a rec team on and off, MOSTLY ON, for nine years in both fall and spring. We had fun. Five of the boys remain very, very close. Occasionally, another coach would come along to help and then decide we were not up to snuff for their precious and precocious child. They left for more intense pastures. No worries, go on, we will wave goodbye. We, oddly enough, were the first soccer experience for three goalies who went on to Olympic Development Pool levels....

Our greatest achievement? A boy with moderate autism played with us for four seasons. Center Mid was his position and the only one he would tolerate. He stood still until another team member entered his zone as he defined it. Then, woe betide that player.....in the last two seasons, said CMid would call for the ball to his team mates. He would dribble in this zone and then pass....amazing.

Mudge, I am with you, tried sometime in the seventies to like soccer Canada was in World Cup qualifiers, I watched, I cheered but ultimately I was bored. This really is not a reflection on the game, I love watching golf so it is apparent that I do not need high scoring or well frankly much action. Just a Canadian kid, with no ties to a home country and very little background in soccer other than watching recreational, think it is something you must be exposed to a lot to enjoy.

Having fun reading Joel's kits and everyone's comments though, you all are watching so I do not have to, thank you and enjoy.

In 17 years as an umpire, I never had more than maybe 200 people watching, Scotty, so the actual number of innocent bystanders is kinda irrelevant. I was thinking, morever, of the average attendence at a pro baseball game, which is actually a real sport with real umpires, who, when they make a mistake that deprives some poor kid of a no-hitter, man up and apologize.

Not that I have anything against soccer, of course.

Joe Barton, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter probably like soccer, of course. And Tony Hayward. Ted Bundy. Stalin. Joseph Goebbels. Chairman Mao. Hannibal Lecter. Richard Simmons.

Hitherto "insurmountable 1-0 World Cup lead" had been a googlenope. Not that it should have been.

Mudge, I'm not at all sure Richard Simmons wouldn't have put Hannibal Lecter on a diet.

I hold no personal grudge toward any of you soccer parents who have totally and utterly destroyed and decimated the All-Amwerican institution of Little League baseball, once the keystone and hallmark of everything that was once right and good and decent in America. Fine. Great. Sure, go send your children out to kick an object so large that even Michelle Bachman couldn't miss it--what a thrill!. Teach them to kick it into a target larger than a standard size sedan. Teach them color-recognition skills.

See if I care.

*sniff*

Slovenia has one of those "insurmountable leads" over the Merikans.

Oh Mudge, baseball AND soccer, surely.
But here is the thing about baseball. This is NOT an all-commer sport. I am not sure that it ever way.

In my semi-perfect world, all children run and play on a team. Soccer at mid and low levels offers this. Run, block, kick, run, block, kick,....and by forth grade PASS, PASS, PASS...rinse repeat etc.

Baseball -- all three progeny did this. CPBOy was an handy catcher but could not (can not) hit to save his life. And, guess what, baseball as it flags here in my land of basketball rules (PG county) means that by 5th grade, the baseball sport is elite only. ELITE ONLY. Blech on that.

Still CPBoy played with the one motley tag team through 8th grade. They were miserable the last two years...hitless for seven games....

So, be gentle about this. Really. Soccer and swimming -- at rec levels offer more opportunities for fitness and participation. And, perhaps, the creation of some appetite for life long fitness.

Just sayin'!

Mudge -- nobody plays catch in the front or back yard anymore....so, to bring back baseball you might have to take on that lost and fabled and misty moment.

Let the Boodle witness that I am actually watching the US/SLOV match, bees and all. Since S. just scored their 2nd goal it may be the first and last time.

...got road raged on the way to the grocery store... could it be my French flag that I put on my car just last night??? but the French are a losing team. What's the problem?

wish Zidane would come back :(

Howdy y'all. Thanks for this important soccer update.

Fencing has yellow, red and black cards, too, with about the same meaning: dubious character, bad person, outta here - meaning the tournament, the whole shebang, not just that bout. Mudge, the beauty of the card system in fencing is that only really stupid fencers and coaches argue with the referee. It is a guaranteed black card, and you're out of the tournament. One can disagree with the referee, but you learn to do it civilly, and to cut your losses.

The disadvantage, of course, is that sometimes the bout is only as good as the referee. A bad ref can completely botch a bout and there is nothing either fencers or coaches can do about it. Many is the time I have seen a touch miscalled, to no avail. Complaints to the bout committee are fraught with peril because if you lose, you may be worse off; complaints to the referee association may be effective for future matches, but not the current bout.

The Boy also played baseball as a small child. However CqP's observations also hold hereabouts. By about 5th grade, and certainly by middle school, there is no "relaxed", just-for-fun kid baseball. You either have good skills and are playing in a competitive league or you don't play. Even middle schools only take serious players.

We play catch in the yard! And practice batting!

DC plays baseball (she can hit like nobody's business, pays attention/makes some good plays in the outfield, but runs like a girl) for our local VFW. Yesterday, before her game, she noted that there aren't any girls on the big kids team, that they make big girls play softball, and that's not fair Mommy. A Great Big Ole Mountain Man overheard, and told her if she wants to play baseball when she's a big kid, he'd see to it that she's allowed.

She blinked at him a few times, tilted her head like the RCA dog, and then said 'Cool.' In her mind, problem solved. Of course, four years from now I'll be the wench at the meetings asking that my daughter be treated equally.

*SIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH* 2-0, Slovenia.

2-0 Slovenia at the half.

LiT and DC, saving baseball! An Army of One! Go!

And, I'll bring rhubarb pie to that meeting in a sisterly-wench way.

Taking a quick break to watch the US/Slovenia match through my fingers (palms on cheeks).

And I wish I hadn't - Team Charlie Brown ahead of the USA Big Blue, 2-nil after 43 minutes.

[I know the Slovenia jerseys are supposed to represent mountains, but to folks like me, that's Charlie Brown's shirt in white and green.]

Have to snort about all the soccer-griping -- as usual, the whole world's Wrong about something, 'cept for us Right Thinking Americans.

Seriously, I'm pretty fortunate to have grown up in a neighborhood that had a lot of boys near my age (including my brothers), and we played every game and sport we could, organized and not. I played football, baseball, soccer, basketball, tennis, golf (with yardsale clubs worth about $5), hockey (with borrowed equipment), rugby, lacrosse, varios frisbee games, boxed, wrestled, skateboarded, ran, raced yardsale bicycles and $50 junkyard dirt bikes, and even jarts. Raced cars when I could, later. More that's even slipping my mind at the moment.

I was never really great at any of them, but I developed an appreciation for all of them and more. Didn't have much money, but we sure had a lot of fun.

Still do, actually.

Yeah!!! *blowing my imaginary vuvuzela*
One more, guys . . . at least.

When starting in my two years as not-quite-but-close-to-the-worst player in our Little League, my father advised me to "keep my eye on the ball" while playing catch. Shortly afterward, I was treated to a tangible demonstration of why children should not take sports advice too literally from adults. However, it wasn't all that bad -- it only took a couple weeks for the shiner to go away. It took another year or so before it dawned on us that I was/am more than merely clumsy, I had no depth perception; then we realized I needed glasses; then I discovered for myself that the glasses made my depth perception only a little bit better.

I understand, Mudge, your hostility towards youth soccer. The whole mystique of kids and baseball is wonderful. But realize that this narrative isn't universal and never has been. There has always been a subset of youth who have been excluded from baseball because it is simply a more difficult game to play.

When I was a boy my inability to play baseball was legendary. Maybe if someone had worked with me when I was really little I would have been better, but I doubt it. By the time I had reached the advanced age of 9 I had fallen so far behind my peers that I was hopeless.

But I wanted *so much* to be on a team. I tried out for at least four local teams and was "cut" from them all. Scarred me for life. Now, maybe nowadays they would have made an effort to be more inclusive than they did in 1971. I don't know.

Outside of my personal little psycho drama, there is my daughter- who is also dreadful at throwing and catching tasks - and no amount of early intervention would have helped.

But she *can* run and kick.

Sorta.

So she was allowed to join our local soccer team. She got to wear a uniform. She got to be a member of a team. She has two little trophies on her shelf. Once, when she was playing goalie, she stopped a ball and people clapped. She remembers this years later.

Which, if you ask me, is better than being scarred for life.

WOW! U.S. right back in it with a goal just after 2nd half start!!! :-)))

Only in peninsular Florida: today's prognostication for storms by NWS. We have weather in miniature, with sea breezes serving as mini cold fronts:

"The primary focus will be the east and west coast sea breeze boundaries...with the highest storm coverage occurring across the interior. However...[Atlantic] coastal sections will have a chance for storms along the slowly inland moving sea breeze with some activity pushing back toward the coast late in the day."

My girls play catch with their dad, and bat in the front yard, street hockey as well and basketball. We have also been known to play some badminton, golf and throw the football.

Baseball is much more relaxed here, kids can keep playing whatever their skill level. There are Select or Rep teams for those with talent.

My rather checkered career at little league includes several seasons in left field picking daisies. If it weren't for the 'two inning rule' I would have never gotten at bat at all. At least in soccer you run around the whole time, no matter how bad you are.

When I was in elementary school, the local park and recs started a youth soccer league but could only field two teams, so we played each other every Saturday for six weeks. Man, how times have changed.

Even soccer has suffered from the 'serious players only' syndrome. If you don't have travel league/varsity high school ambitions, don't bother once your kid hits the double digit ages.

In fourth grade, we signed my son up for the Slacker Youth Soccer Organization knowing he couldn't cut it in the semi-pro HoCo/Columbia League. The coach took one look at him and traded him to another team the first day. The next team couldn't decide on Tuesday practices or Thursday practices, so they compromised on 'both.' The season stretched so far into October, the last two weeks of practices were conducted by car headlight.

There has to be a middle ground where we can get kids off the couch and have fun without turning it into a mini-World Cup.

I did my undergraduate studies at a small liberal arts college. We fielded men's and women's soccer teams (as well as basketball and baseball) because we were too small and underfunded for American football. I played forward for three years and loved it. This was '69 to '72. The guys from the northeast and from Europe and South America played soccer and were very exotic to a southern girl. 8-))

In theory, yes, baseball AND soccer both. But in the real world, it is undeniable that soccer has killed Little League baseball AND softball. Truly decimated it. Soccer is to baseball/softball what the Internet is to newspapers and journalism: a death spiral.

I think baseball gets a bad rap for allegedly not being an all-comer sport, while soccer supposedly IS an all-comer sport. I don't think that is true at all, CqpP. You seem to think all kids can run, kick and pass. I don't think that is remotely true, nor do all kids LIKE to run. (I can personally attest that when coaches made us run laps in football or baseball practice, not only did I hate it, but so did the other quarter of the team with me who always brought up the rear.) I think people who like to run assume that everyone else likes to run, too, but it simply isn't true.

I agree entirely on BLECH on elite teams. We have them in Southern Maryland, too -- and they ruin the regular teams. I was always extremely proud of Little League, because it has a mandatory play rule for every single player, no matter how bad and unskilled, AND it has a mandatory no-cut rule. Every kid who signs up plays, no matter what. Not only that, LL has a special "challenger" division for handicapped kids.

Soccer has killed all this, as has the insidious elite team business.

While I agree in theory about creating pattersn of fitness, I don't accept that as a very good reason for anything: it is basically the same as the notion that you should eat broccoli because it is good for you. "Good for you" is not an adequate motivation; it is Calvinist, and takes the fun and choice out of things. You shouldn't play soccer because it is "good for you." You should play because you love it, and for no other reason. If you don't love it, don't play it. We can make a tremendously long list of things that are "good for you" yet we would never gently coerce them into doing them. Chess is "good for you," too, every bit as good as soccer. Teaches strategic thinking, patience, planning, foresight, high-order cerebration, yadda yadda. Ain't nobody pushing chess as a valuable life skill. So is sudoku. Knitting. Collecting stamps. The best way to kill anything is to advertise that it is "good for you," even if it's true.

Alas, I would like to be gentle about this, but I can't. Soccer is killing baseball/softball, and the Internet is killing newspapers and journalism. I cannot do other than mourn.

An off topic note, that might interest some on the boodle, one of the bands playing the music festival this weekend is the surviving members of the New York Dolls, if I recall there was an a great conversation about them here one day.

Thanks, Ivansmom, for that info about cards in fencing.

I guess, in a way, this is like "rule of law" verses "rule of authority."

When you have a sport with a lot of detailed rules I can see a legitimate role for dissent. The thesis that an official is not accurately reporting objective reality can be enthusiastically discussed. So long as no touching occurs.

But with card system the emphasis seems to be more firmly on the personal authority of the official. In such a system, while there are clearly certain basic principles of "fairness" the official has much more freedom to interpret those principles in a way that he sees fit. And dissent would be considered disrespectful to his wise judgment.

I can see arguments for both.

YES!!!!!!

2-2 BBBBBZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

Wow, Joel. You pushed the rock almost all the way up that time! Excellent work.

Since I started it:
00s 1
10s 1-3?
20s 3-5?
30s 9
40s 7-8
50s 15-20
60s 35
70s 36-41
80s 29-31
90s 9
Some of those I read as a desperately bored child at Grandma's house and can't remember very well at all; over my head. I did tend to believe one must finish a book; now I no longer believe that. I DO remember reading Rise & Fall of the 3rd R. at about the same age at my uncle's place in similar circumstances. Funny, I tended to read the oldest books - 00s to 20s - when too young to understand them. Such as Goodbye Mr. Chips. By '65 I learned to stock up at the library so as to not be so desperate again.

WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO indeed!!! U.S. ties it up!!! :-)))))

I think the whole "yelling at the ref" meme is becoming a lot stronger as this match goes on.

*SIGHHHHHHH*

//We can make a tremendously long list of things that are "good for you" yet we would never gently coerce them into doing them.//

They say having a job builds character and is good for you, but I think I'd be okay without that too.

Since I'm off next week and working on the house, I'm looking at the Bose and Sony wireless music systems. Comments? Small house, 2 floors, downstairs tile, upstairs wood. A few throw rugs but no wall to wall. I really don't want one thing to carry around, a few speakers on each floor, maybe. I'd like to be able to play things off my laptop or iPod, I know it may come down to choosing, probably six of one, half a dozen, etc.

But ... but ... but ... Mudge -- I *love* broccoli ...

*muttering*

We wuz robbed.

Say, anybody around here ever read Booth Tarkington? IIRC, I liked his books.

I understand the narrative isn't universal, Padouk, nor should it be.

See, I am the opposite of your daughter. You say she couldn't throw or catch to save her life, but she *could* run. I could throw and catch just fine (well, acceptably), but could run to save my life. Many of you guys seem to have this "running" thing, and that's what I'm objecting to. You seem to feel running is some sort of universally available talent that *everyone* likes to do. Well, it just ain't. It ain't. (And I had shin splints.)

I'm not saying throwing/catching is "better" in some way or other than running. It isn't. It's just different. But the soccer propaganda is just as bad as the baseball propaganda--but is displacing it.

(And god knows, my own personal baseball career was by no means remotely stellar, not by a long shot. Ditto football and basketball and tennis. But at least I enjoyed playing them...badly. I can understand kids who didn't enjoy playing them badly. I despised every moment I spent on a soccer field. Every single blasted minute.)

It is simply that Sport X is strangling Sport Y, that's all. And I'm a Sport Y fan, and it is a shame anythime Activity X displaces Activity Y, and that's what's happening. And I don't like being told this is okay.

It simply is not automatically okay when something new/different displaces something old/traditional. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. In this case, not. Something good is dying. That some of you weren't part of that institution is fine...but it is not okay to dismiss it, or to dismiss those of us who feel its loss.

Not all change is good. Not all "improvements" are better.

Indeed, talitha, judging from the commentary I've seen, that ref totally robbed the U.S. of the winning goal. :-(

I am glad about that LL rule, Mudge. If only such a policy existed years ago I wouldn't have grown into such a tragic, tragic figure.

And Yello - you are quite right that hyper-competitive coaches and parents can suck the joy from any sport.

But I think there is another reason why lots of kids love to play soccer. In soccer kids who aren't very good simply don't get as involved in the playing. They just run around. This is especially true in "swarm ball" version that a lot of little kids play. There are fewer situations where a poor play of an individual is held up for the world to see. This makes the process of learning to play better just a tad less traumatic.

To be specific, kids seldom embarrass themselves by striking out, dropping the ball, or missing a throw as they do in baseball. Baseball really is a sport where mistakes are hard to hide.

And if one argues that these opportunities for salient humiliation are good for the kids because it builds character. Well, then we are back to broccoli.

Loved "Seventeen," ftb. And my wife collects old/antique copies of it whenever she can, and gives one to each grandchild when he/she turns 17. (Two, so far, with 8 to go. So need 8 more copies. Must be old, not some modern reprint.)

Well, once again, it is all about the officials, not the players.

Who knew so many male boodlers were so unathletic? And that boodlers in general are such voracious readers? Causality or correlation?

My son had a blast in Chess Club in elementary school even though he wasn't the best player. He remained a coach/volunteer with the elementary school club through middle school and high school. Not because it was cool and impressed the chicks (although that helped) but because he enjoyed the game.

And while we are on soap boxes, can I complain about how youth sports have killed Scouting? While Scouting has lots of other problems with the zeitgeist (homophobic, anti-atheist, the whole pervy child molesting Scoutmaster reputation), the insistence by coaches that sports come first every weekend all year round has destroyed a lot of opportunities for kids to spend weekends in the woods lightly supervised while playing with matches, throwing knives, and telling dirty jokes to each other.

Mudge - as I said, you are well within your rights to mourn the reduced emphasis on youth baseball. I'm just pointing out that there are certain reasons besides capricious fashion and sly propaganda that can explain it.

Well, Mudge, I'm into competitive knitting now. Hung up my running shoes a long time ago, if that makes you feel any better. But I never saw a soccer ball in my life until I went away to college and I DID enjoy playing those three years.

And yes, I can certainly understand that baseball emphasizes those who can hit and throw more than they can run. Heck, just watch the pros. So if this means that there are fewer opportunities for kids who have a hard time running, then that is unfortunate. No argument there. But I'm not convinced that youth baseball in America is an endangered species. Nor am I convinced that Soccer is entirely to blame.

Well, a tie means we ain't dead, but this does make the path forward pretty tough, doesn't it?

I acknowledge that your grief is real, 'mudge, but you are making the same kind of personal emotional argument against soccer that I would make for it. Baseball has no objective superiority over soccer as a pastime for young people; indeed, for all the reasons pointed out by others, just the opposite.

I grew up immersed in soccer, both playing and watching (falling passionately in love with Pele during the 1968 World Cup), and so cannot but be delighted by its world-wide ascendancy.

ftb, I read a little Tarkington but only Alice Adams, Women and The Magnificent Ambersons stand out in my mind. Of course, Alice Adams was made into a movie with Kate Hepburn and Orson Wells did The Magnificent Ambersons, which may account for my recollections.

But Padouk, to look at baseball as a game full of mistakes and embarrassments is completely wrong-headed. A better "makes a mistake" 75% of the time/he/she comes to bat, but nobody thinks like that. Striking out isn't necessarily an embarrassment, not if you are clearly overwhelmed by a really good pitcher (I speak as someone who has struck out more times than you'll eve know.)

A pitcher "makes a mistake" about 60 percent of his/her pitches, but nobody thinks that way either. It isn't an embarrassment to throw one low and away, or ven in the dirt; everyone does it. A couple of fielding errors per game is perfectly normal. Yes, baseball is just chock full of mistakes and errors. So explain to me a hockey game with 47 shots on goal by each team and a score of 1-0. How many bad passes are there in a typical soccer game (with a 1-0 score)? How many fumbles, interceptions, losses, dropped passes, bad play calls, etc., are there in an average football game?

It is a mistake to think about mistakes and embarrassments. But yes I agree about the broccoli thing. But talking about opportunities for error and embarrassment is the wrong way to go. It's universal...and irelevant.

I have two little boys and they play baseball and soccer. And am training for a 24° relay race in New Hampshire mid-September, six mile uphill run today, not every voracious reader is unathletic.

Grrrr, so mad about the soccer officials I'm not sure I can watch (listen to actually)any more games.

L'Équipe had a snarky comment about the denied goal: "The referee denies the goal but nobody but himself knows why."

I inhaled at baseball, I was always the last guy picked in friendly games. Serious astigmatism doesn't make you a better ball player.

I watched a bit of rugby once and they have blue cards. The player shown a blue card is sent for some time in the "sin bin" to reflect on his/her bad behaviour and the team as to play this time short of one player, exactly like in hockey. As in futbal a red card is a game expulsion. Red cards usually leads to animated discussions.

I attended a very large high school where most sports, even things like fencing, golf, tennis and soccer were played altho' some were just at intramural level. I didn't play any of them - except in gym class where we did fence, play lacrosse and tennis. I got into sports much later in life. I thank you Joel for the colored card explanation as I had no clue.

dbG, I'm partial to Bose products but might be 'cause I used to work for them. I had a built in system in my old house and the sound was excellent.

SCC has to play

Apparently soccer mania has its dangers-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/17/AR2010061702905.html

Shrink2, your post reminded me of when I picked my daughter up after high school softball practise, she asked if I could drive her friend home, of course. When her friend got out of the car I asked my daughter what position her friend played, she replied "she is on the girls rugby team". I noted I was a little surprised, and my daughter said, not only that but she is one of the "gifted" students, and noted "she is quite different than all the other gifted students".

I come from an athletic family that was also full of voracious readers, and myself excluded full of very bright people. One does not exclude the other.

"Just the opposite"? You're saying baseball has some objective inferiority to soccer, Yoki?

I would have said NO sport has any superiority OR inferiority over any other.

I would also argue that my position isn't a "personal" nor an "emotional" one; I think it is clearly statistical and historical. America has 150 years of baseball as a traditional instution; my own personal preference for it is ireelevant, as are my emotions toward it. I'm simply trying to argue that a 150-year-old, deeply embedded youth pastime is dying and is being displaced by one coming in from "outside." I would regard that as statistical and factual. What may be personal and emotional is that I don't like it, and the flip side of the coin is simply that someone else might like it just fine. It's not like my personal/emotional feelings are any different or any less (or more) valid than anyone else's.

Indeed, RD_P, the path forward is rather zig-zaggy... We pretty much have to beat Algeria to have a shot at advancing.

And hey, am I the only one totally and utterly underwhelmed by the Weingartens comic? *shrug*

Nope. I've not seen one original thought in two weeks, and the jokes, such as they are, are telegraphed *way* too loudly. Not impressed, especially given Weingarten's relentless self-promotion.

I'm giving the comic three weeks of my attention. It'll either grab me by then or not.

At this point, I'd say it's unlikely I'll stick with it.

No, Scotty. Not that I am much of a comics reader, these days, but I find the premise utterly uninteresting. Not to mention unfunny.

I'm not much of a team sports fan, as you all know. And I failed at anything athletic as a kid. The only thing I had any hope at was horseback riding and gymnastics. But my kid played LL baseball and had fun despite having no talent. He had a good coach who cared more about the kids than winning - and so when they did better than expected, it was a joy. I liked playing catch with my kid, and the guy next door plays catch with his kids, too.

That being said, soccer is popular here. The pro team is quite a phenomenon.

Mudge - I understand your point, and I agree that personal failure is intrinsic in all sports.

In baseball, though, responsibility for team success seems to be more sequential. While there are, clearly, coordinated plays, a lot of baseball is the stringing together of individual actions. A pitch, a hit, a catch, a throw - during which all attention is focused on a single player and the repercussions for individual failures are unforgiving. There are no rebound shots in baseball. Responsibility is passed from player to player during the game like a baton which cannot ever be dropped. Heck, baseball even assigns individual "errors."

Now, a lot of this is simply my perception. And my perceptions about all matters sportish are about as valuable as my opinions on fripperies.

But I really do think that in baseball there are more opportunities to be the goat. Of course, this is also why there are more opportunities to be the hero.

Putting my two cents in, a year in LL nearly turned me off team sports for good as well. It wasn't until a group of friends and I joined a flag football league in junior high that I played a team sport again. That led in turn to joining our HS football team.

I understand Mudge's point in his 12:08, but I think the opportunities for individual failure bringing down the team are heightened in baseball (if only in the perception in the player).

For engelsprout we like swimming and soccer.

RD, that may be true, but my experience in LL as the mother of a kid who struck out, dropped the ball, etc, was just the opposite. The coach and the other parents were so supportive, and so enthusiastic when he did make a good play, that it wiped out all the failures. LL standards are not and should not be the same as the majors.

Mudge, the other thing that's killing LL baseball is basketball...

Well, that makes five of us on the Weingarten comic. Much as I love him I'm truly struggling with even "like" on that. Makes me sad.

Mudge - I think there is a lot of emotion here. There is emotion for me regarding soccer as well. I mean, you clearly love baseball. You played it as a kid an devoted years to being an umpire. There is no shame in loving something and mourning its perceived decline.

Sort of like the way some people feel about the stick shift.

And speaking about Weingarten, I kinda like Barney and Clyde. The artwork is unfussy, and it seems smart. It has sort of an "Agnes" feel to it. I'm not saying it's the next Calvin and Hobbes, but I am willing to give it some space to grow.

I attended a very small high school. We could barely muster enough people to fill out rosters in the boys sports programs.

There is something to the argument that you can bury bad people on the soccer field. We had 12 guys for two seasons. Probably 4 were just atrocious. The result? One on the bench, and three up front.

It made for a very low scoring output for the home team.

We competed in the smallest athletic division in Vermont. That means we were up against the smallest programs in likely the least athletically-gifted state in the union.

We lost 35 or so straight matches before we managed a couple wins my senior year.

In summary, I played on the worst varsity soccer team in the US. It was fun, in a way. Definitely a character builder.

As a counterpoint, steveboyington, I played four years of varsity soccer for a reasonably sized school one state to the right of Vermont. I was a decent goalie, despite my stone hands.

Never finished a season with the team, though -- always got into some sort of argument with the coach (a great guy and beloved social studies teacher, BTW) and departed of my own free will. :-)

There are youth sports that are worse that others. You have to look at the risk of permanent injury. LOTS of parents won't let kids (particularly under the age of 12) play football because the other kids are just too dangerous. They don't have the skills or maturity to play safely.

Each sport has it's own quirks, but blown ACLs, head injuries, broken collarbones, etc. are all rites of passage. And don't even get me started on cheerleading.

When I had knee surgery a few years ago, a lot of my fellow early morning rehab patients were female high schoolers recovering from injuries.

A girl I dated in high school lost her softball career as a catcher to knee injuries. She had to go on to coaching instead. If rugby had been around then, I sure she would have played that instead ifyaknowhatimean.

I'm off to make a coupla gallons of gazpacho. We scored a passel of blue crabs yesterday and are planning a feast tonight (corn on the cob, etc.) with son and assorted friends and neighbors. Wish you could all be here, but drop by in spirit, please? :))

I agree with both Mudge and RD. I too mourn the passing of active kid baseball. However, baseball, to me, also presents huge possiblities for being the goat in a very public, albeit fleeting, way. For kids particularly, who are learning to negotiate all kinds of social situations, making a bad play (especially one with consequences) can have a strong effect even if it is overlooked by the spectators, coaches, or teammates.

Around here the scourge of competitive play long ago invaded all kid team sports. The YMCA leagues are the Little League equivalents, and perform a huge service for small children and elementary school kids who want to learn and play baseball, basketball, football (a little later) and soccer no matter what their skill level. Unfortunately, those leagues stop by about 5th grade and you either quit organized teams or join one of the competitive teams, which incldue rec teams here. This means in practice that you also have to limit your number and choice of sports. The schedules demand it. Soccer goes year-round and practice for the other games starts early. They all, in season, have constant practices and games every weekend and most week nights. As yello said, it hurts scouting and discourages variety.

This is why I like fencing. While it is an individual sport, it requires working with others in many ways similar to playing on a team. [And there is team fencing.] Good fencers can compete competitively, or not if they don't feel like it. Average, mediocre and bad fencers can still fence, attend local tournaments, and have a good time. You can start as a child or adult, and don't have to stop. Our coaches are competitive at a world champion level, so we didn't even have to trade up coaches as the Boy improved.

Wait, wait -- talitha, you were a student at a "small liberal arts college"? In the midwest, perhaps? Did something happen that you "never imagined might happen" to you?

Oh, my. I'm suddenly feeling rather faint.

Mudge, as a kid I liked running to base. No distance much further than that. I've been hospitalized for foot-related problems in the past, so my prejudice isn't about broccoli (which I really like.)

Looking at all the avid ex-runners who now barely can walk anywhere due to exploded knees, I don't feel like I missed out. Sure, I was in a wheelchair a couple months as a kid, but I can walk miles now and may do that until I'm ready for the grave. I have no desire to risk that just to become a medicore runner, as tempting as it is as a shortcut to cardio fitness.

I haven't seen more soccer than baseball or softball yet, though, and I walk past a lot of parks on my outings.

It's my experience that soccer is nice for little kids and then they generally find another sport they like better unless they're really good at soccer.

I have two young relatives. One is virtually an elite soccer player and also plays football; the other decided she'd rather pick flowers than run and switched to swimming instead.

So it goes.

Listened to the Bose possibilities. Nice, very nice.

I don't even see B&C as the next Agnes (I do like Agnes, although it's not C&H.) I'm with Yoki.

It's kind of like when I entered an apple pie contest in Cincinnati. A recently-retired OWG would not shut up about how he'd never baked until he retired bit how his apple caramel pie was going to win. . . I just threw out that prize ribbon last weekend when I cleaned the garage.

Nope, not in the midwest, SciTim. But many things happened that I never imagined might happen. ;) Let me pass you the smelling salts . . . no fainting this far from the bunker!

Oh, sportswise, this is all fascinating to read.

Well, yello, it may be true that Sport X has some higher risk factor than Sport Y, but I think by and large we have to discount them all equally, just as we ought to discount the risk of error/embarrassment thing, because all sports offer some sort of risk, and all sports offer some risk of error or embarrassing yourself, or not being suited to play it in one way or another. We kid around a lot on the Boodle and offer faux-insults at one sport or another, such as curling, but I doubt any of us really think curling is "inferior" to fencing, or that skiing is "inferior" to track-and-field, etc. We "talk trash" about stuff, but we're not serious. I have no earthly clue why one would want to be a shot-putter, or a fly fisherman, or a boxer, but at the end of the day I have no idea why people pick the sports they do. Culture, environment, climate, who knows. We see those stories on TV about some nun who is addicted to pro football, which seems to make no sense whatsoever...but there it is, Sister Margaret the sports junkie, and there's nothing wrong with it.

You can't look at risk, or injury, or fear of failure up front; you have to ignore all those things.You do what you can to minimize and mitigate the risk, but after that it's just a crapshoot, like the rest of life.

I should get you together with my dad Mudge. He has a long standing theory about a 'baseball mafia' having blocked the progress of soccer in North america. You guys would manage an entertaining discussion arguing past each other.

I had a kid who showed up to most of our indoor soccer practices at a gym. His dad was dropping him off early for baseball practice, and he would get an hour or so of soccer in before. We let him since it was better than just sitting there. We didn't try to recruit him, he didn't try to join and I imagine he's been enjoying himself on a diamond somewhere this summer. There's astonishingly little propaganda in our day to day interactions between sports.

Soccer is physically displacing baseball in the use of urban green space, fields replacing diamonds, but that's a lagging indicator that reflects demand. It offers another choice to kids as a summer activity (incidentally in most of the world, soccer is not a summer sport). Kids in general are much less active, so I have a hard time seeing this as a bad thing (warning internet cliche - 'studies show' - I've seen them but can't be bothered to cite - apologies). I agree it won't kill little league, even if it draws some off. I guess I'm not American enough to feel the sense of loss, but it's not clear to me the new reality won't be as culturally valuable or important.

I coach one of those competitive teams (and played a long time), not going to go so far as to call ourselves elite. My experience is philosophy varies widely from club to club and team to team, but they are trying hard to make it more developmental. Provincially we aren't even allowed to post standings until they're 11 so I'm essentially liberated to go with even play (which I do). But I know rec league coaches that will shorten their bench to win utterly meaningless games. I get to pick my kids, so I figure if I didn't want to play them I should have cut them (here that doesn't mean go home, it means you get assigned to a lower division or recreational (no-cut) team in the club). The win now attitude is something they are trying to change. It is one of the reasons we (Canada and US) still underperform teeny countries like Denmark and Holland. They do a much better job of developing the whole pool of players to find and then better their level. Even in competitive I think you need to teach enthusiasm, work ethic, and skills, in that order - assuming you care at all about life skills beyond manipulating a ball (that goes for any sport).

I can't think of a sport I don't like.

Maybe we don't have to plow the field about whether golf, bowling, horse shoes, ping pong, car racing, etc. are sports. [But last time I suggested avoiding a topic, it was a mistake...so, there are lots of activities in which fitness may or may not be beneficial that are not sports. For me sports are competitive games in which, in order to be competitive, fitness is a must.] Call me ancient Greek, but sports in general are not just wonderful, they are archetypal.

This is to say, I believe sports are built into our collective unconscious in the Jungian sense (he called it mythopoeic imagination). If you think I am going nowhere with this, you are wrong. I want to ask a favor of people who live in the DC area, which would involve a trip to the Library of Congress and which you might enjoy very much, voracious reader.

There are far worse comics on the WaPo page than 'Barney and Clyde'. That said, the strip is pretty much exactly what I expected, banal and a little self-important, but not awful.

The bigger meta-story to me is the subtle nepotism going on with a revered Pulitzer Prize-winning self-declared comics expert using his pull to get his kid a leg up on still valuable newspaper space.

Don't get me wrong, newspaper comics are very much family enterprises. The Walker-Browne Inc. conglomerate alone is astoundingly incestuous. But like any kid of a movie star, family connections can be a double-edged sword.

Far more interesting would have been if the Weingartens had started 'Barney and Clyde' as a pseudonymous webcomic ala Richard Bachmann and seen if it got any traction.

Like newspapers, the future of comics is on the internet. There are a lot of very good webcomics out there, but they are very different from the traditional print version. Weingarten et. al. are making a Preston Sturges movie right as Jean-Luc Godard is hitting the screen.

As an exercise in nostalgia, it's well-crafted and interesting, but it's not where things are headed.

Ahh, the old soccer memories. Things like "Hey, remember when we were so bad that most games were over by halftime, and the other team would convince their coach to let them move their goalie up late in the game in an attempt to have the goalie score?"

Those were the days. The lesson of those episodes: patience.

See, those other schools were really small, too. The same guys played all three sports. The goalies trying to humiliate us like that.... how could they know that the midfielder would sometimes pitch during baseball?

Fast forward to the pitching rubber. You step off, recall the performance by the opposing batter during the soccer season. You call off a couple signs, then hit him square in the ribs.

Mudge, I mourn baseball too.

Another reason soccer "works" is that the field requirements are simpler. In the raggle taggle team I assembled for soccer, we NEVER ONCE practiced on a soccer field. None available. We did use the way out field of a small baseball diamond that segued into another park and eventually into a woods. With soccer, you can develop short sided opportunities. I studied video tapes of what some people call the Dutch school of short sided soccer. This is how I learned to coach.

The same field was the practice field for the CYO baseball team that overlapped with this bunch. So, during the spring we actually scrimmaged soccer/shots on goal at the backstop. When the two baseball coaches arrived, we transformed ourselves into baseball.

About running, well the reluctant runners usually server as defenders. I taught my two goalies to direct these guys/gals, including the occasional midfielder. We had the most amazing player-led defense in our rinkydinkyfeetarestinky league.

shrink, the Boodle has had several spirited discussions on what qualifies as a sport and what does not. From my perspective, the figurative head-turns back and forth while reading the various arguments counts as a sport.

Speaking of sports I have lately taken up trying to shoot baskets. The Boy has been joining me at the gym. He decided to kill me by forcing me to play basketball, a sport I have never before attempted. I was astounded to discover what good exercise it is. While he is off learning to act I have been starting my gym time with a 10-minute basketball exercise. My goal: to get consistent enough to occasionally make a basket when I shoot, as opposed to never doing so. My best so far has been 20 baskets in ten minutes. Laugh by all means; I decided the only way to do this was to give up being embarrassed.

yello, I doubt it would have been more interesting if the Weingartens had tried the pseudonymonous route. I do, however, believe it would have been a much quicker experience for them. *shrug*

The only sport we have personally had a difficult time with ugly parents/coaches was recreational baseball. They were in the minority but it was difficult to see, children berated or over coached.

Since our children are not at the elite level we do not see some of the less attractive side of the sports, but rather the benefits of teamwork, friends, and the sheer joy of those times when you do something really good. There are times when you feel the goat, but in life that is not limited to sports and learning how to deal with that learn from it is a good experience for later in life.

My husband coaches a lot, and the number one goal is to let the kids have fun, he receives a lot of thank yous from the kids and parents and all enjoy playing on his team.

I played Rugby at Williams college for two years. I realized I had to quit not because of two broken noses (it still bleeds now and then for no particular reason over thirty years later, I have been told they can go in and fix the avm, but who has the time?) and a broken wrist. It was a bad concussion, actually had to be hospitalized overnight. Two years after graduation, the hooker I played with became quadriplegic, in a loose ruck, no one even knew it happened until he didn't get up as the play went on. Rugby is crazy, but I like it too.

Good points here about how many games and sports have such dependency on eyesight and hand-eye coordination.

I still play sports with the kids when I can (as teenagers, they're not so interested in such things as they were), and they roll their eyes when I walk up to kids riding skateboards asking if I can give it a try...

My eyes are still OK, and I still catch glasses that fall out of the cabinet before they hit the counter. And I realize that not only am I extremely fortunate, but that I won't have even the limited physical gifts I have now forever.

Mudge, a question -- were you this unhappy about the state of sport when jousting was supplanted by... I dunno -- large scale armed conflict? Punch and Judy shows? The Plague?

bc

steveboyington, that's a favour well returned.

sportsmanship=courtesy

Need I recall Heinlein's suggested penalty for bad manners? I'd say they got off easy ;-)

engelmann reminded me of a recent news story. Girls' high school flag football is popular, but it's being criticized for being a dead-end. There's no college flag football, nor Olympic. No nothing. I wish I could remember the precise wording about sports being a matter of ever-higher levels of accomplishment.

It sounded to me like "flag football isn't broccoli, therefore it's not qualified to be a high school sport."

Gazpacho weather here, for sure.

"Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy" just arrived. There's tomatillo (arrived with the tomato, but never entered Italian cuisine), Fascists, and even the origin of the "Roma" tomato (Beltsville).

Chico Harlan has an extraordinary story on North Korea reinstating private markets, which were so recently quashed. It fits with other reports of drastic measures to head off starvation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061802837.html?hpid=topnews

I suspect I'm likely to agree completely with your dad, qgaliana, since I was in fact a member of the baseball mafia, and not only that but a high-ranking "button man." As a chief umpire and umpire instructor, I might even have been a "don," who knows. But tell Michael I always liked him, and it was just business.

And, about boys particularly as they age, the mommy/daddy cheering eventually sticks in the craw of those whose Charlie Brown moments continue. Our CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) baseball team of doom (WE NEVER WON ONCE IN SIX YEARS!) had the bestest parents including Mrs.R. Oh, I love Mrs R. She made cupcakes with icing strands like red stitches....she dropped off an Easter basket at the house of each player with baseball candies and baseball-looking plastic eggs. Oh, Mrs. R., thy reward in heaven shall be great; enter in, dear Servant!

And yet, by seventh grade, Mrs. R's loud and ongoing exhortations drove the boys crazy. Samples (by Mrs. R):

Way to be, boys.
Way to hang tough, J.
Good effort, Good effort P.
Nice swing.

Great try.

And, on.

One day, player X looked at her in misery, "Mrs. R, please, that was not a good swing."

She toned down to things like:

Hustle.
Let's go.

----

Son(s) of Mrs. R were glad when the cheerleading shifted a bit.

Dunno.

As Yello pointed out, age does matter for when some sports are ideal to begin. Growth and coordination matters for sports success-- and also for injury risk.

Baseball isn't a game for people with poor hand-eye coordination or depth perception because it's not just about hitting or catching the ball; it's also about having the skills needed to avoid being hurt by a thrown or hit baseball... and playing with others with similar safety skills.

I like softball but I refuse to play coed. One guy thought throwing hard substituted for throwing accurately. Jack*s. Had I been remotely as lousy at catching as he was, I would have gotten a head injury from one of his practice throws.

Good question, bc. Actually, I was opposed to jousting as much too elitist, sexist, too expensive, and requiring too much expensive equipment such as horses, large pieces of tillable farmland, and fair maidens. Us common folk always got the short end of it, and the price of tickets to get in, then as now, was simply highway robbery. 200 ducats for a good seat on the 50-yard line, and a joint of meat and a flagon of mediocre beer cost you a month's pay.

You may be surprised to learn that given my highly nautical background, I am vehemently opposed to America's Cup sailing, all that really high-end stuff. I have no love for it and no respect, either. Criminally boring and criminally expensive. Not a sport, not a worthy pasttime.

I missed a couple of days of Barney and Frank, so I went to the WaPo comics page (which is infinitely inferior to the Houston Chronicle, the de facto standard source for online newspaper comics (except on Sundays)) to catch up.

I became highly amused (which I'm told is fairly easy for me) that each strip has a HUGE logo watermark on it. Are they really that scared that someone is going to steal it? It is just so emblematic of, well, something.

The secondary observation is that in two weeks they have gone to the Silent Penultimate Panel trope at least three times.

Great talitha -- it's the third house on the left after that 4-way stop sign, right? I'll bring a salad, k?

I used to be a huge baseball fan when I was in elementary school. Every once in awhile, a class would be taken down to Briggs Stadium (morphed into the (now) late, lamented Tiger Stadium) to sit in the outfield seats for a game. I actually remember seeing Charlie Maxwell (the Southpaw from Paw Paw (near Kalamazoo in the western part of the mitten)) make a sliding catch. Don't remember the score nor the opponent, but the catch? Absolutely.

But as I've become aged and frail (knee catching somehow right now -- Maggie O' will understand), and even as I've made several games at Camden Yards, it bores me silly. Nevertheless, I remain a Tigers fan. Ah, well.

As for Booth Tarkington, I can't imagine why I thought of him earlier, but there you go. I do remember being introduced to him by my father, who recommended *his* favorite books -- Penrod and Penrod & Sam. Those books are most likely written for young boys, but since there weren't any books (or at least *many* books) written for young girls that weren't awful, I read them. Very cool, IIRC, and of another "age" even if I were relegated to being that young in the 50s.

Hmmm no nibble on the bait, so I'll just beg...

Could someone please go to the Library of Congress between now and 8/18? C.G. Jung spent 16 years working on his Liber Opus, also called The Red Book (no italics...why is that?). It is 205 pages, including 53 images (art, illustration?) he created, 71 pages which have both text and artwork and 81 pages of his German calligraphic writing.

You could say it was his magnum opus. And yet it had never been seen by scholars until 2001, due to his heirs' concern for some of the deeply personal material therein.

I can't get there this Summer, but I'd love, dearly love for someone with even a passing interest in Jungian thought* taking in the display and sharing your impressions of this work.

*didn't I see a discussion of Bergman's Wild Strawberries awhile back?

Shrink, does it have by by 8/18?? Is this in an exhibit?

I have a card and I go in late August and January always....otherwise, am locked to the classroom....

Oy, reading some of those comments reminded me that I was occasionally drafted to serve as umpire for my daughters' LL games if the assigned ump didn't show.

I was probably a terrible ump -- coached kids a little bit as they were learning the game, clapped and cheered for good plays, gave encouragement and praise when kids had bad moments ("Keep it up, you're going great -- you'll get 'em next time, tiger."), asked parents to quiet down so the kids could hear their coaches, and called the games the best and fairest that I could.

Always shook hands with the kids and coaches after the game, and sometimes pulled some aside for some quiet words. Occasionally, kids hugged me, which made me think I was actually doing something right.

bc

"You may be surprised to learn that given my highly nautical background, I am vehemently opposed to America's Cup sailing."

I captained the Weatherly, last wooden boat to win an America's Cup, for two summers out of Seattle's Shilshole, back in the early 80s. An unforgettable boat, a precious delight (except that she drew 14': gunkholing prohibitive). There is something ineffable, the perfect beauty of proportion, about a fractional rig, especially when flying the kite. Of course by then, already the beer cans (aluminum) and plastic boats were winning all the races, after all, they were built to exploit the rules, or were the rules written for them?

Yes, my brochure says the exhibit ends 8/18.

I just now went and reviewed the whole run so far of Barney & Clyde. I am concerned by something Weingarten has said, that they have a whole year of B&C already written & ready to go. The problem, as I humbly claim to see it, is that they are telling us the whole story -- which means that even if you accept that it will get interesting, they are starting from the stage of not-yet-interesting-but -it-will-get-there (today seems to be my day for this hyphenated-phrase business (there I go again!)). Probably what they should have done was to prepare the whole year of B&C, then put it in a drawer, and start from that point. Drop us right into the middle of the story, let the characters all be aware of each other before we meet them, and pull out the old work as source material for recalling a never-before-published backstory. With a few glaring exceptions (Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side come to mind), I can agree with the notion that new comics tend to start weak and don't really get good until the authors have had time to live with the reality of actually publishing the strip, plus reacting to audience and editorial feedback. If Gene & Dan stick with their prepared material, then they cost themselves that opportunity to react and improve rapidly.

Also kind of goes to Shrink's point about coaching priorities and developing all players, not just the top players.

The ideal physical sport for me, coached and played badly, is going to be worse than another sport that isn't quite so ideal but done well to be pleasurable for even the poorer players.

Some past debates focused on the competitive aspect: judging vs score-making; clear finish line vs "performance" technique, etc. Also, the debates also have focused on the minimum fitness and physical execution needed.

Is chess a sport? I think it is because it involves motor reasoning similar to that needed to play sports, but others such as you might classify it as a game because the pieces aren't 20 pounds each.

Also, some sports used to involve human sacrifice or religious symbolism. Others involve animals, rather than humans, and so on.

The meaning of "sport" is a cloud revolving around multiple axes which can't be collapsed into a single point. It shouldn't be, really.

What you say by the importance of sport in the collective unconsciousness is interesting. Sport often recaptures and rehearses some key skills and allows venting of ancient instincts in play, and helps us test each others' abilities before crisis hits.

So, yes, sports have always been with us in some form, even if it's something as simple as a jumping or running competition, or just thumbwrestling.

Shrink (I have no life, really), I will use this an excuse to make myself go downtown to look. Need an excuse actually. Have two friends who work at LIBofCongress....

How about this -- perhaps every running of the America's Cup should be based on a random lottery of all current competitive sailing classes. It could be anything from realistic antique Chinese junks, to Sunfish, to the current technological terrors. You get one year's warning to prepare.

// after all, they were built to exploit the rules, or were the rules written for them?//

A question to be asked of many things today. :)

Gene and Dan chat about the strip on Monday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/06/18/DI2010061802447.html

Shrink, I read a whole article somewheres about that Jung Red Book book. I would love to see it, now that it has hit the light of day. If it ever comes anywhere near the south middle part of the country I'll definitely give you a report.

Shrink, I've been interested in Jung's the Red Book.

However, I am not too enthused by his assumptions on the female dream psychology; that is, men dream emotional issues repressed in the daytime, and women dream rational because they are so emotional in the daytime.

He couldn't have just written, "who knows?" Who's done more work on that particular dream front since?

CqP, and I was ready to suggest we do the BPH in proximity to, live Boodling our reactions.

For July, I do not have a life. I have installations and legacy turnovers.

Wilbrod, well put, if sports were only about entertainment, a pastime, or a diversion from important things, I doubt we'd be paying so much attention, or care as much as so many people always have whether Mayans, Masai or that guy in the stands with tears pouring down his cheeks after the US scored their second goal against Slovenia today.

|^^^^^^^^^^^\||____
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There was just a CSI in which the Red Book was featured. A rerun perhaps. Where's Mortifera? It was about a Goth murder.

Yes! The communal experience; the catharasis. A chance to show unity and take sides without violence (hopefully).

WG, I won't defend sexist thought, it is as pernicious as it is pervasive. Some of Aristotle is so odious in this regard it is astonishing how someone so smart could be so stupid. Work on the *dream front* (I like that) has stalled out since psychiatry came to controlled by the drug interests, to say nothing of managed care and "evidence based practices". If it won't make a quick buck, it is pretty much an anachronism.

Ooooohhh, TBG, you're good . . . . .

"CqP, and I was ready to suggest we do the BPH in proximity to, live Boodling our reactions."

A capital idea!
M. Burns

Would you? Could you? I'd be thrilled.

Really, Jung is a big part of why I chose psychiatry. I realized, I could actually get paid to think about mysteries, things that really matter, dive into ideas until your head hurts; the other medical specialties (hyperbole alert), you get paid to not think and that really does hurt your head.

Truckin', like the doo-da man!

Very cool, TBG. I was just thinking as I finished the gazpacho-blenderizing what an incredible boodle the World Cup has spawned and back-reading the entries since I left is proof positive. Amazing what this collective thought generates!

Shrink, didn't ask you to. Just pointed out that there's a lot of work to be done yet.

I guess the deconstructionists are right: we're all only as rational as our society lets us be. We function on so many assumptions we never question throughout our lives.

I bet that men do dream rational problem-solving dreams, though, despite Jung's claims.

The range of what Jung and Aristotle (and most other big thinkers) is wide and worthy.

I forgive them many things, particularly about gender.

And, WB, I find it fun to disagree with them! In my mind, my papers, my class discussions, etc.

I like Jung more than Freud.

On teaching (which includes coaching):
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. -- Carl Jung

"I bet that men do dream rational problem-solving dreams, though, despite Jung's claims."

Oh these are some of the worst nightmares; I wake up exhausted and angry for having tried so hard to find my way through these endlessly vexing, problem solving dreams. No terror, no heavy breathing panic, just one annoying complication after another. Some are even bureaucratic like Kafka's The Trial.

On the experience of faith and spiritual reality:
I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God. -- CJ

A number of people are coming to HdG for the 08/07/2010 BPH. How does everyone feel if we move it from HdG to near the LoC and go there first or afterwards? If you don't want to shout out, email me.

On dreams:
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach. -- Jung in The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)

Do any of you, gender-be-damned, ever dream solutions to daytime problems that, when applied, work? Sometimes I'll mull for hours while awake over a tapestry design, for instance, and dream the perfect finish for it. I often dream designs that I would never imagine when awake and they are the most satisfying when completed.

DBG? Fun if that would work....live boodle porching to boodle central by those with the coolkid phones?

Or would you prefer going solo, CqP, to see your other friends?

As for the talk about errors being more noticeable in baseball, the one extreme exception is goalie. It doesn't matter how many you saved, if the wrong one gets by, you're the goat. I've never understood why anybody would want to play that position.

Dunno, dbG. I'm still working on the HdG part but will keep you and TBG posted.

Strange as it may seem, talitha, I seem to think of wonderful and practical solutions to problems that have arisen when I'm asleep, or falling asleep. I remember most of them come morning. Fascinating.

DBG -- would love to see you too....let's see what others say.

If I play my cards right, I make myself have two days of life in one month...what concept! What boldness. What presumption in the face of the universe.

I'm assuming Mr. A is distracted by other things, like his job, so as a boodle service, I'll fill you in on the U.S. Open.

Graeme McDowell currently leads at -4 thru 16 holes in round 2 play. There are a lot of golfers at -1, Even and +1, many of whom have yet to tee off their second rounds.

Mike Weir's at -1, still waiting to tee off.
Phil Mickelson's at +4, ditto.
Tiger Wood's at +5 through 12 holes.

Question answered before it was asked. Tbg? Moose? Ricko'shea?

"I have no life, really"

Oh pulleeez.
Why did you say that, just because you are not chasing your tail, overbooked activities? CQP, you have mindfulness,
you have a life.

Meanwhile, Jung gave up all of his teaching and other professional positions to work on The Red Book. He understood his choice as absurd, I'll bet he feared for the trap of self indulgence.

Nice work, TBG!

Talitha, yes. Especially when it comes to creative insights and solutions.

Imagery is usually the thing, but sometimes the relationships echo what is occuring in waking life, only without the baggage involved, allowing you to see them more clearly.

Sometimes the flash of creativity is more a new perspective. (And yes, sports symbolism has occured.)

On the other hand, sometimes we have lots of boring, tense dreams whose sole purpose seems to be to make us even more miserable with a problem.

...primeval cosmic night...

I'm thinking Van Gogh

YJ -- we love goalie in our house. CpBoy and CpBoyNeighborFriend shared the duty for the last three years. Loved it, both of them. They tend to be nonplussed about failures. So, this helps.

They did run the defense, as I explained. Phase One of the goal is defense breakdown. Phase two is goilie-stuff. So, lots of blamieness to go around. Also, I was fine if defenders cleared the ball into the out of bounds routinely....meant another chance at getting it right.

CPBoy played goalie low to the ground (like a catcher) and very aggressively up and at shooting advancers. Little passing goes on in rec leagues here, so this strategy is not always death.

CpFriend played like a basket ball player with long and strong extension.

Both of them were better than average at reading penalty kick directions....again, in rec league, you can see this clearly on the faces of the kickers.Great to see the two strategies.

The exhibit close was changed to sept 25

Did any of you happen to receive my invitation to Crown Princess Victoria's wedding in error?

She's marrying a man she met at a gym. His name is Wrestling. At least his first name isn't Matt.

Talitha yes, sometimes I can't wait to go to sleep to figure something out. Not joking.
I wake up, I know what to do, I shake my head smiling, making the coffee. It isn't like I remember the dream, it isn't that I woke up and thought about the issue with a clear head (no coffee, no clear head). It just happens. There is nascent research into this, about how our thoughts get organized and connections get edited and reset, while we sleep. We need sleep to prevent delirium, but it is not because the the brain needs rest, not at all, it needs time to figure things out before new information comes in.

Thanks, shrink. To take it further, what happens with me is that I *see* the design as if on a panoramic movie screen. I immediately sketch it roughly and then apply it when I set to work with the loom and yarn or the needle and thread. I also record dreams, visual or not, and have gotten into the practice of remembering them. I dream in colors that don't necessarily exist in "reality", something I've been exploring all my life.

I got my invite, MsJS. You didn't get yours?

I have to find out where they are registered. Guess I need to get my cummerbund dry-cleaned.

Shrink, yes, I do have (a) life. But, the moments are scripted for me by others and I respond as best and as fast as I can. I work 70 hour weeks routinely on odd time frames that synch with overseas colleagues. Think smart person in-country sweatshops; we have these associated with most universities.

Is the BPH on 8/6 (Friday) or 8/7 (Saturday)?

Also, I don't know what LoC is, but I'm up for anything. :o)

Oh, I see what the LoC is.

(smacks forehead)

MsJS -- his name is "Westling" actually. He was her trainer and owned the gym. Stockholm has been cordoned off, so my friends took that latter part of this week off. The entire country has been close to hysterical for more than a year (since the engagement was announced, and especially since baby sister's engagement tore apart). There's gonna be a let down, I tell ya.

Mudge, I got mine, too. Just like I got the one for her mommy and daddy 34 years ago (on the same date, I might add -- those crazy royals!). Hope it doesn't rain. My hair will be a mess if it does.

Wilbrod, YES! Without the baggage is exactly the key. Perhaps when my back is sore from bending over the work I let that drag down the vision.

On the other hand, I hate those dreams where you're trying to reach a destination and your legs won't move. I understand that's when awakening is nigh and your limbs actually atrophy. (A-tro-fry?) ;)

Talitha, I once dreamed of a wonderful and elegant solution. As I eagerly began to describe it to my wife, it became immediately obvious that the only thing missing was my ability to define the problem.

Yello, as to being a goalie, there's just something about a puck (or a ball, I suppose) deflecting (relatively) harmlessly off your head or genitals into a place other than the net behind you after a defensive lapse. The occasional goatiness is nothing compared to the thanks the defence gives you once they re-dress themselves.

[I hereby stipulate that I may have an - *ahem* - unorthodox style 'tween the pipes.]

I notice 'Mudge has been quiet for awhile...

shrink, your 2:06 most likely has him lost in memories of sloops gone by. Either that or he's desparately Googling your home address in hopes of stopping by with a cask of grog to hear all your Weatherly tales.

TBG, well done with the truck! :-)

>to near the LoC

I always read LoC as Loss of Consciousness, so now I'm really thinking I'm missing a party.

Ah, that's where it is. Buried in wrong alphabetical order in my appointment file.

I've been reading a bit the last couple of weeks about the buildup to the big day. It's intense, that's for sure. Kinda fun actually. I was surprised the Swedish of the boodlers hadn't mentioned it.

I hope they are very happy together.

The movie review for "Jonah Hex" contains this, er, warning: "Contains frequent violence and brief sensuality."

Sensuality? That's a problem?

You are, engleman! Forgo that other US location and come with is.

LOC. I've been typing in code. Next, we shall all whisper.

Moose, Saturday. Bring some of your jewelry so we can exclaim over your skill.

Hey, TBG drew the GVan, the official boodle road trip conveyance.

Scotty, ever played soccer indoors? Most different. Very similar to hockey, particularly in the tendency for physical play. I was keeper in our over-30 indoor league in Connecticut. Talk about taking shots off your head and other more sensitive places.

Wilbrod, before I sign off again . . . . remember when I said I like to stand in the corner at parties for the better view and to watch my back? I don't feel that way here, anymore. And where's omni? He was sitting beside me in the corner before I decided to dance. :))

There is a BPH on 8/7/2010? What is HdG?

That's a good point SciTim. Part of the reason I am being a bit more patient with Barney and Clyde is that they are doing some exposition.

That said, I really am enjoying the strip. I don't find it brilliant the way I do, say, Cul de Sac, but I am consistently reading it and can see the potential. These things really do take time. Heck, to me, even Calvin and Hobbes started out a little lame until I got to know the characters better.

And, sure, the Weingarten name probably opened a few doors. But, like Philippe Cousteau said in a recent chat, any door opened because of a name will become closed quickly if you have nothing to contribute. If B&C fails to find an audience, no amount of name recognition will save it.

And, ironically, I think that if Gene and his son had decided to go the "Richard Bachman" route, this might have actually made things easier for them. Given the way Gene always plays up his role as Arbitrator of Humor - especially with regards to comics - I suspect that his efforts are being met with more hostility than would some unrecognized newcomer.

'Mudge, I think they're warning you about the "brief" nature of it, or something.

Algeria and England still scoreless after 50 minutes.

Byoolin -- one year a goalie of mine, still playing ODP (OlyDevPool) soccer now, ran smack dab into the goal post. He split his head open from eyebrow to widow's peak. It did not bleed much until his mother fainted at the sight. Then, he gasped and started hyperventilating and then the faucet opened. Oh my how the head wounds can bleed. Worked out fine but not after being out of sports other than swimming for six months. The news about Second Impact Syndrome on concussions was just emerging then.

Havre de Grace, Tim. Yes.

I don't know, RD. I'm no GW fan, but I suspect I'd have stopped looking at that cartoon after 2 days if we weren't discussing it here because it's his.

Mudge, come on, you know the rules: we show gasket blowing monkey EEX as well as chest sucking knife wounds on film. Not a problem...but sensuality or tenderness or sublimated desire or limmerent longing or heart on sleeves....better warn people about this.

The sun has set in the other land...so, I can and will mow my lawn because the grasses dicate that they must be geschnitten now.

The closest I came to indoor soccer was floor hockey, steveboyington, and that ended after a ball (thank goodness it wasn't a puck) found its way to the outer part of my right eye socket one afternoon.

Heckuva shiner.

SciTim, it's more "where" is HdG, as in a just a little south of Pa. and Del. :-)

"Talitha, I once dreamed of a wonderful and elegant solution. As I eagerly began to describe it to my wife, it became immediately obvious that the only thing missing was my ability to define the problem."

This reminds me of why I stopped *working* with mushrooms. You get a fantastic sense, the voyage of discovery, transcendent realizations, then, if you wrote it all down, next day you see trite, though sometimes as agreeably elegant as they are obvious, truisms.

Talitha, Omni is omnipresent, but not omnivocal. He sometimes lurks for weeks in between postings.

Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Love going there; best reading room ever. Haven't been in donkeys' years, though.

I loved floor hockey! There were about five of us in gym class who did, everyone else groaned at the very thought.

I played goalie. I got scraped, hit, fallen on, kicked, you name it. Every trip to the nurse's office meant one less English class cuz I had English after gym that semester.

Scotty, did you see what he wrote about that &^%$#@I(&^^ boat? It has a 14-foot draft. 14 feet. You couldn't even sail that damn thing in Chesapeake Bay except right down the heart of the ship channel. And I doubt there's a marina in the entire bay that could dock it -- water's too shallow. You'd have to anchor the thing out by Thomas Point Light or over the hole at Tilghman Island, and take a zodiac in to town.

Phil Rhodes designed her and Luders built her for Buss Mossbacher. (Luders was found by the late great Alfred "Bill" Luders, who worked at Elco from about 1900 to 1906, when they hired Irwin Chase out of U. of Michigan. Bill and his son, also a Bill, were mainly designers, but they founded their own boatbuilding yard after Sr. left Elco.)

Rhodes designed the Penguin class sailboats, and his Rhodes 18 and Rhodes 19 were quite famous. And he designed the Dyer Dhow for Bill Dyer's company. When I was a kid, we had a Dyer Dhow, and I almost drowned in one in Barnegat Bay off Forked River one afternoon (my fault, not Rhodes'; long story). The importance of Dyer and the Rhodes 18 is that they were both early fiberglass boats during the period of transition from wood to glass.

Rhodes looked a lot like the actor Kenneth Tobey, if that means anything to anybody.

He is one of the legendary giants among naval architects. Like citing, say, Monet.

she dreams in colors,
she dreams in red

Hmm. Could be that good old 'shroom vroom vibe at work, but sometimes the problems aren't so clear in our waking lives, byoolin.

Or when clear, still tough to explain to somebody else without getting into too much detail. That's when we hit the wall between language and inner experience.

So I thought, 'Mudge. But he CAPTAINED it.

shrink, meet 'Mudge. 'Mudge, shrink.

The beginning of a birds-of-a-feather friendship, methinks. :-)

"...the wall between language and inner experience..."

semiotics

CqP, is there a rating for tragic yearning? (q.v., see Chapman, A. T., Chaplain, also Shipman, R.O., Chaplian, both U.S. Army) Langor? Unrequited fondness?

Algeria and England STILL scoreless after 80 minutes... Shocking, really.

Well, yes, I did see that, Scotty. I think maybe I'm trying to block it out.

If he ever dated Natlie Wood I'll have no choice but to shoot myself.

I often come up with solutions to problems when I'm driving...or in the shower...Hope that doesn't mean I'm dreaming while driving, although you do get into that wakeful/dreaming sort of state. Knitting does that too. Weeding, even.

The Weatherly had a harmony in the relationship between keel, rudder and the rig's center of effort like I have never felt before or since. I have sailed the Chesapeake btw, my dad had an O'Day 27 on the South River, we went back and forth each Summer to DC, over to Oxford, all over the bay for several years. I worked stocking shelves at the Washington Marina the Summer of '71, is it still there? Summer of '72 I worked down in Deltaville, at a place where they were still building Skipjacks.

HJope you're all sitting down for this shocker: "Limbaugh defends Barton's 'shakedown' comment"

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/limbaugh_defends_bartons_shake.html

Bwahahahahahahaha

I think we need a warning for "nautical sensuality" rightaboutnow... *L*

Scotty, indoor soccer I wore prescription goggles complete with hard plastic faceguard for that exact purpose. The saving grace was that the ball was reasonably light and incapable of pointed damage.

Ai chihuahua!!! Scoreless draw for Algeria-England! U.S. is in a great position to advance!

My work involves a great deal of time of the phone (gets in the way of boodling) and weeding is a great thing to be doing when you are on the phone and you need to think carefully, helps you bear down and focus. But I do think the sleep state is different, no consciousness; unconscious means no editor, no observing ego, nor ego to be served, no defenses.

The term "Brief Sensuality" is part of the MPAA ratings code which qualifies the film for a PG-13 rating. PG films contain "Boxer Sensuality" and R films have "Commando Sensuality."

I hear things when I dream.

One excellent perk of a former job was stack privileges at the LoC. Also, I used to sing with a loosely-organized LoC choir, which did two-choir pieces from different balconies. Very cool.

I don't recall Ah-nold being particularly sensual in that one, kguy...

Aaaaaaaaand it's off to the weekend we go! :-)

That Republican tire fire, no one can put it out, but all that oily smoke sure stinks.

Oh, yes, Washington Marina is still there. There's a big fishmarket there, too, been thre for many years. Remember the Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham scandal? he lived there on a 42-footer. Also living there were disgraced/convicted GOP Cong. Bob Ney, and Sens. Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens and Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (at the Gangplank next door).

Had an O'Day 22, sold it about 4 years ago.

Knitting yes, seasea.
Weeding, never . . . never.

The Weatherly gig happened by bon chance.
A rich guy in Seattle was chatting up my girlfriend at a University of Washington (I'd transferred from Williams and started over, an undergrad majoring in Oceanography) gym one day and he realized I had the skills he needed to not have to deal with the scarier aspects of handling a boat like that (intensely powerful)...so he could just have fun. Well pretty soon, ah, tmi editor just went off, but it was luck, just great luck.

I used to find gardening wonderful for mind-decluttering. Nice walks are good, too.

As for Rush, he doesn't have to run in November, does he? Makes his life a lot simpler.

We got mega-storms with gale force winds heading our way. I may power down if it gets really nasty.

The smell must be something else at this marina...

Snow on May 29th, now the floods. Better bail out of town before the locusts and the boils afflict your city Yoki.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/06/18/alberta-flood-highway-closed-cardston-rain-bow-elbow.html

Faxing byoo a high quality helmut and cup :-)

Really? My dad Loved the Gangplank.
We (5 sibs) loved the crab cakes and all the other seafood we got at those boats a little ways away. I'll have to Goggle Earth that spot...not to mention Wilbur Mills escapade in the Jeff. Mem. pond with the first Republican Argentine firecracker, heh, heh.

Well, wife and kids just got home from Toy Story 3, they laughed, she cried. And I've gotta go. Mudge, I'll talk boats with you forever and ever. Once, on my brother's boat, Jost van D yke* was in the distance and there was this West Indian on board who said his family owned a Key nearby...

*WaPo's pretty words machine would not let this word come through connected

Dime-size hail and severe winds outside. Torrential rain.

I'm in great sympathy for those outside, but from where I am, it's pretty amazing.

That weather sound nasty and may affect my work plans tomorrow when the storms are supposed to reach us.

Will enjoy the hot glorious day here, outdoor concert tonight lakeside will be lovely, Lighthouse.

MsJs, I swear by walks for decluttering the mind of anger and such.

I'm actually late for mine due to actual physical decluttering. Fixing that now.

MsJS, I'm glad you're enjoying the show. I'd take some of that right now, though I suppose I'd prefer to leave out the hail and the severeness of the winds. Just a nice cool-you-down summer t-storm would be great. Would have been nice yesterday, too. We had one on Tuesday night, but I didn't fully appreciate it since the AC hadn't died yet. I've learned that we're pretty well insulated -- the downstairs has stayed in the low 80's, more or less where we keep it anyhow. I've also learned that hot air rises, and that we're lacking in cross-ventilation, at least when it's still and humid out. It was 96 upstairs when I got home yesterday. The upstairs windows were open and the fans on all evening. By 10 PM, it was down to 94. We've slept downstairs the last few nights. But the AC guy is coming back this evening, so I'm hoping maybe we can sleep in our bed tonight. We'll see. On the list of things to do earlier in the season next year, getting the AC serviced has now leapfrogged way ahead of dealing with the poison ivy and the dandelions.

Wilbrod_Gnome, I prefer a good lawnmowing to let the mind wander and repair itself. My yard is about a 1:15 chore by pushmower. It typically does the trick.

Looks like my career as a swimsuit model is over before it started. Eight days out, and the remnants from the laparoscopic cholecystectomy are a little jagged. No pain after about 3 days, and was in and out in about 4 hours. Amazing, that modern medicine.

It was fun while it lasted. I have healed to the point where the bandages don't even get me out of doing chores any more.

Hmm, mowing doesn't do it for me personally. Raking, maybe.

Here's one on Jung's Red Book I will read now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=1

Oh well, Strasburg has to allow a hit now and again...

And again. *SIGH*

Glad you're healing, steveboyington.

Strasburg's struck out two, he kept the ChiSox to a run (sorry MsJS). :-)

Scotty, Strasburg has reached a certain level.... he is now at the point where if I have other options, I bench all my fantasy baseball hitters when they face him.

And three strikeouts through two innings... Lower pitch count, though. :-)

Well, steveboyington, your hitters would have a touch time finding a seat in Nats Park tonight. Not the complete sellout of last week, but pretty full anyway.

Tried to post...nuttin'. retrying

Right after my last post we lost power for a bit. It's now back and the storms are moving out.

So I can now see how the Nats and White Sox are doing.

Mr. A has a new article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061802887.html?hpid=topnews

Tony "Deer in Headlights" Hayward has handed Gulf responsibility to someone else.

Angry-as-hell question for Ivansmom: I know lawyers try to "shop" for judges when they can, but since when can a defendant like BP decide which judge it wants to hear ALL its lawsuits, and that judge happens to be a Houston, Texas, judge named Hughes who earns about $50,000 to $100,000 a year in oil company stock dividends?

And while we're at it, the big news on CNN is not so much that Joe Barton is a crackpot, but that the main criticism against Obama getting the $20 billion fund out of BP is that it is "unusual" as well as "unprecedented." That's the best the right wing can come up with? It's "unprecedented"???? "Unusual"??? Never mind that it is for the largest, most unusual, most unprecedented event of its kind. Obama asking and getting $20 billion from BP is "unusual." Heaven forbid.

Gee SteveB, I had one of those a few years ago and I can't even find the scar anymore. Glad you are feeling better.

Manny Ramirez just came up to bat at Fenway for the first time since he left two years ago. The crowd response was half and half but the loudest cheer was when he flied out on the first pitch.

In the Boston Globe's coverage of Ramirez's return, they're showing the score as "Sox 3, Manny 0" so far... *L*

Five strikeouts through three, including some 100-mph high cheese that Pierre swung through while bailing out of the batter's box.

Mudge, it's a brilliant kind of unusual.
Speak softly and carry a big oil rig beam...

Lower the boom on industry...

Seven strikeouts through four, and the pitch count is still low. :-)

Strasburg's set the strikeout record for first three major-league starts.

Strasburg is a beautiful pitcher to watch. I just wish, purely for the sake of novelty, that the Nats would score a run or two.

Nine strikeouts through five on 56 pitches. Now where's the offense?

For those of you who might be interested in following the royal wedding in Stockholm tomorrow (starts in the morning our time (on the east coast), go to www.svt.se and follow the links to Kungliga bröllop. No subtitles -- just a warning.

Me, I'll be at the farmers market and other markets. I'll take a look at the repeats later in the day.

Hmmmm... let's see if I get a double post:

Nine strikeouts through five innings on only 56 pitches for Strasburg. And the offense needs to step up.

Attention all pointy dancy headed types:
Liz Lerman will premiere a performance 'The Matter of Origins' at U of Maryland in Fall
(created in partnership with CERN and Space Telescope Science Institute).
http://www.danceexchange.org/performance/origins.html#cc

Any chance some Boodlers would want to see The Red Book twice? I shall be in the DC area at the end of July, and have it on my list of must-dos. Also, of course, an IBPH if possible. Maybe July 28?

Yoki, I'll be there in early July. Too bad our schedules won't cross.

Daughter and I just saw Toy Story 3. We both laughed AND cried.

It's as good as the first one. Great characters, great writing and wonderful adventure. And the emotions...wow.

Ok, very compluicated rule here. He swung, so it is strike three. The ball hit the dirt, which automatically makes it a droped third strike, even if the catcher had caught it (which he didn't). However, since the ball hit Morgan it immediately becomes a dead ball. So the fact it rolled to the backstop is nullified, as is the entire drop aspect. So he's out on a swinging third strike. No one can advance on such a dead ball.

Meanwhile, tie game!!!!

▄██████████████▄▐█▄▄▄▄█▌
████████████████▌▀▀██▀▀
████▄████████████▄▄█▌
▄▄▄▄▄██████████████▀

TBG! I am so impressed I can hardly breathe. I could not do that in a million years with an infinite number of monkeys at my command.

Wilbrod, this is clearly poor planning on both our parts. Whenever am I going to meet you?

My daughters (yes, both of them!) and I saw Shrek 4Ever in 3D this afternoon. Sooooooo fun. #2 is a hoot to see movies with, she laughs, cries, screams aloud, just as she feels. I know this is lame, but I'd never seen a 3D movie before, and kind of enjoyed the flinching when something was thrown right at me!

Standing "O" for TBG.

Thar she blows! TBG - love it.

The gazpacho is history along with the crabs. MmmMmm. The sci-fi crowd is watching District Nine and I'm gnawing my knuckles hoping for the Nats to break this tie.

yello, thanks for the link to The Red Book article. I scanned it and looked at the illustrations up close. Will read it in depth later. I'm intrigued now and ever grateful for this afternoon's boodle for making me aware of such a treasure.

I'm too old for a standing O

No biggie. I'm just very good at copy & paste, I guess.

:-)

*snort snort snort*

I don't much care for extra innings. Nope. Can't say that I do.

I doubt it, Yoki. How long are you staying? I might be able to come there for a few hours on the weekend, DOI (depending on installation).

TBG, I think you need to caption those in that upside-down way you have.

My iPod went swimming today. Not very successfully, so I was happy I'd purchased accident coverage with it. Walked into that large chain store, BB, walked out half an hour later with a "free" new one. Since my original coverage expired with the payout, I bought the same coverage on this one. . . slippery little things.

You sure about that, Yoki?

With a Sox relief pitcher named Putz, we've GOT to be in good shape here.

Yoki, I know!
My plans are not my own, or I'd change them.

And now that I'm catching up on Hax's discussion, there's a standing O there too.

Bowed out (almost) on that one, dbG.

JJ Putz? He played for the Mariners for a season or 2, I think. Not very successfully, I don't think.

And Omar Vizquel plays for the White Sox now? 3rd base? Hey, wait a minute, they're an American League team...I've never much liked interleague play...

TBG, you do amazing things with a computer. Wish you lived nearby. I took me half an hour today to remember how to back up my Mac. (Problem solving involved forgetting about it, walking around doing other things, then having a 'eureka' moment.)

Another whale of a job, TBG.

That's an interesting legal question Mudge. The short answer, if there is one, is that BP probably shouldn't be able to judge-shop to that extent, and it sounds as if the judge might have to recuse anyway.

*gloom*

Doom, but not really.

Swim team in AM. The lower division rec sort where we all support the correct stroke from wall to wall.

Good nite, dear boodle. Rain forest, check in dear PacRim boodler.

Hey, just got back from swimming with my two little creatures, wondrous ones.

Working on holding breathe as fun, not survival. Watching them go off the diving board is hilarious, hands in the prayer position, look over to me...mutual smiles, belly flop! it is all good. At this muni pool they have a brick, it took three motivational speeches and my eyes are burning (brought theirs but forgot my goggles), modeling the miraculous ease...

They can float, they can swim. The teenage instructors are pretty good. Someday, my boys may live or die by these skills. Fun is survival, that is my idea.

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=245

Jumper, apologies. I thanked yello instead of you for the link to the Red Book article. (too many crabs and beers)
Just finished reading it and can't thank you enough.

shrink, Jumper posted a link at 7:05 in case you haven't seen it yet.

Wasn't my link. The only Red Book I know is published by IEEE. I don't put any cotton into psychology ever since my high school teacher told the whole class I had an oral fixation because I chewed my pencil. Nevermind she was right. To either paraphrase or slightly misquote someone, psychiatry is at the stage that surgery was when it was performed by barbers.

Freud and Jung were just creating mythologies for a newly secularized society. Their theories tell far more about them than their patients.

Ah, but yello, that is false thinking. Psychoanalysis is not a science (though mainstream psychiatry is now a subsidiary discipline in the pharmaceutical sciences) but a philosophy. If you read Freud or Jung or Miller or any other analyst in the same way you read Plato or Nietzsche or Taylor, there are some startling insights to be gleaned and a lot of nonsense to be endured.

They are the modern version of shamans weaving tales full of mumbo jumbo and silly sounding nonsense to comfort their tribesman. They may make for intriguing reading but then so do motorcycle maintenance manuals.

I would love to see Liz Lerman dance. She is so great on TGS.

You are an engineer, aren't you, dear yellojkt?

I'm way behind, so I've only read comments up to about noon today, but I'll offer my (running/swimming/rock-climbing/hang-gliding influenced) theory about sports: All "team" sports are inherently communist and un-American. A good team effort is a fine thing, and that's how you win wars. But it's not how you...

Awww, forget it. I can't keep a straight face, let alone straight typing fingers.

By the way, I think this was a pretty great reply from Tracee Hamilton in this morning's sports chat:
++--++--++--++--++--++--

Q.
NBA - Do people really still care about the NBA?

A.
Tracee Hamilton writes:
Yes. - Don't fall into that "if I don't care about it, no one should care about it" trap. You're better than that! We are losing every bit of our "live and let live" vibe in this country.

Thank you talitha I did see it.

"startling insights to be gleaned and a lot of nonsense to be endured"

Exactly. And it gets better, the more you think about it, insights and nonsense run together, forever. It takes so much time and so many careful people to bring the collective consciousness forward, the collective conscience.

World War I was throughput when Jung was working on what some people think we can take for granted. Now, people are still beating the crap out of their loved ones, still torturing children, still...pretending we think mechanically.

About through with the Teddy Roosevelt bio. Wilbrod, you basically implied what I was just going to say: Obama's "unprecedented" action has been for me his most clearly Teddy moment.

You are cracking me up, yellojkt. I think your brush is a little broad, though.

People are fascinating machines.

Just back from a great evening with friend, lovely and warm this evening, park was packed with people, lots of boats anchored offhore, the band, Lighthouse was amazing, how often do you hear fluvle (sp) horn, sax, trumpet, xylophone and guitar solos. The new lead singer was great - after 40 years wasn't sure what to expect but it was the perfect music to listen to on a hot summer night.

Hope everyone enjoyed their evening as much as I, we are going back tomorrow. dmdspouse stepped in to break up a fight between some young teens, quite proud of him.

I'm looking at a PDF of Jung's Red Book, the 2009 W.W. Norton edition with all illustrated original pages plus w/English translation, right now.

Just so, shrink2. I always wonder where comes the nexus of consciousness and conscience. For me they are a continuum, started at the ness end and ending up somewhere around ience. But of course as a pure secularist I think consciousness and moral action are pretty much the same.

I think, therefore I care for others.

People are not machines, I don't think, only because we can change ourselves.

flügelhorn, dmd. Sort of trumpet-like, but with a big bell?

Almost never. It is like electric cellos.

For them that get a kick out of horny/jazzy rock & blues, I'll submit that the "Texas Chainsaw Horns" is always a good time. If you're in the DC area, sooner or later they'll play a joint near you.

http://www.texaschainsawhorns.com/

yello! :-)
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=1176

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Okay, TBG, spill it.

The latest Achenbach & Mufson. Anadarko (25% partner in the well) has turned on BP.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061802887_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010061805110

Economist has a strong review of "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" by Oreskes and Conway.

Science (June 4) has, if anything, an even stronger review by Phillip Kitcher of Columbia University, who among other things has been a scourge of creationists. What amazes Kitcher is that a small number of prominent right-wing scientists have been able to pose as principled opponents of everything from tobacco causing cancer (which was the first case of organized, effective denialism) to "star wars" and climate change. Kitcher commends the book to journalists.

I'd read David Brinkley's bio of T. Roosevelt the conservationist before calling anything Obama's done "unprecedented." Roosevelt's predecessors had mostly been mere administrators (OK, there were Polk and Lincoln), so that Roosevelt's boldness must have prevailed by force of surprise. An executive blitzkrieg, if you like.

These days, presidents have to worry about the Administrative Procedure Act and so forth.

I'm sorry this is so late, and may have been discussed already.

Did the BP people and the Congressional people ever straighten out the meaning of "fail-safe"? Clearly BOPs aren't fail-safe, given that this one failed, and the result was disaster. They probably meant something like "last resort". Fail-safe means that if there is a failure, the system reverts to a safe state -- for example Westinghouse air brakes on trains, where if the control system fails, the brakes are applied and should stop the train. So what's the verdict if the system in question doesn't actually work? Moot?

LTL

Dave, "Merchants of Doubt - ..." reminds me of a new meme I heard recently: doublethink-tank.

Well, what do you think?

Many have opined he was crazy.
I think he was trying to be crazy.

He worked with crazy (insane asylum) people, unlike Freud.

But of course he was heavily influenced by Freud (we all are, believe it or not), I think he thought he could get into and back out of crazy if he really tried.

Nowadays we know better, crazy is all neurons misfiring and dying off and so on.
Someday there will be SAE crazy. Then heirloom crazy will make a comeback. We put our trade mark on the symbols we use, of that, we can be certain.

The interest is not in all the make believe, some of it is ridiculous, just like engineering ideas that did not work, just like homeopathy, just like the religion you choose not to believe.

The interest is in the history of ideas. People now take for granted, settled science, what was for CJ Jung a walk on the wild side.

Anthropomorphosisizing machines could have unfortunate consequences, Bob-S:
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2308

i took up the round ball after trying football as an eighth grader. didn't like looking across the line and knowing that i'd likely be knocked a$$ over teakettle in a matter of seconds. having always been slight of body, once i learned the art of the soccer tackle, i preferred the odds of a hit and run. sat the bench throughout high school, and played div III ball only because the squad needed substitutes. we were the doormat of the sunyac. winless over two seasons, and finally beat oswego state 1 nil in a driving rainstorm. the only playable portion of the pitch was the rise in the middle of the field, as the sidelines and corners were in standing water. continued to collect splinters on the bench. early during the next season we had a scoreless tie going against plattsburgh, and killed them in ot. put 2 in the nets within five minutes of the whistle that opened extra time. won a couple of more matches that season. had an opportunity to get in the losing end of a 0-7 match against cortland. cold night, and i had my hands in the waistband of my britches and sweats to keep warm. when the call came i shed the sweats and headed to the coach for guidance, a native of ireland. he put his arm about my shoulders and said; "jackie, i know you're excited to get in the game, but you'd best go in with your shorts on." i swear that nobody in the stands noticed my birthday suit.

I first heard 'doublethink-tank' here, from rashomon

LTL - It was definitively determined by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico (after they took a vote and decided that the opinions of the Congressional people and the BP people were... uninformed in this instance) that "fail-safe" was a term being used a bit loosely.

Very nice, DNA!

Of course, my general theory goes the other way. I think it's cute how people like to think that they're not machines.

-jack-! Fantastic.

You are so programmed, bobsewell ;)

Here's another very, very late one.

A problem with baseball is it's too difficult for most kids. Do you expect a 9 YO 3rd baseman to catch a hard hit ground ball and throw to first? Both halves of that are very hard, and there's nobody to help him. Can't catch the ball, throw it over the first baseman's head, can't hit it -- all that spoils the game. In soccer, however, swing and miss or pass off target, and play continues with teammates covering for the player who may have made an error unless the ball goes out. So IMO it's a lot better for young kids and other players of lesser skill, such as the "average" player.

In baseball, the "average" kid or adult isn't good enough, so it's inherently elitist. Too bad that so many of the better baseball players I played with and against were idiot rednecks, but that's a cultural matter.

yeah, it was in every sense of the word.

Jack - I'm dying here, buddy! I'm not sure if I believe you, but in a couple of years I'll be telling people that I was there witnessing it. That's funny stuff!

Ooooooo, jack!

Baseball is hardly alone in this regard, but playing it well is exquisitely difficult. Many are called, few are chosen.

shrink, what do I think? I think I would spend the outrageous price that a copy of The Red Book fetches just to have Jung's illustrations at my fingertips whenever I wanted to look at them. Talk about dreamscapes!

Sorta like golf, then?

Aye, Yoki.

I don't think the machine analogy is right, Bob S. Unless it's a sort of art machine designed to produce chaotic output. Most machines aren't so designed.

our head coaches, we had two in 3 years, were bozos. the first was a wrestling coach, the second a swim coach. the mantra of the latter was: "...spread the defence, penetrate, and SHOOT!" we were practising one afternoon when this coach decided to join the fray. he caught a ball in the face, knocking him hither and yon, losing his glasses in the process. on his hands and knees, he was groping about and muttering "where are my glasses? " our goalkeep had picked them up and was waving his arms about in the inimitable fashion of the coach: "spread the defence, penetrate, and SHOOT!"
coach gathered up his glasses and wits, and declared, in a rather slurred tounge, that practice was over. we promptly headed for the bar. lots of laughs over that to this day.

Oh, ye slackers, I will do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS-QT49oL0A

Error Flynn would be proud of you tonight, Jumper.

i gave up golf the day i teed upon the first hole and saw a cart house at nearly my 3 o'clock. i told my mom that i'd hit it. she told me to stop being silly, and take a whack. i toed it and hit the cart house. tossed the driver to my nine. walked off the course and have only taken the links in a cart with a cool beverage in my hand.

Jumper, that's exactly the sort of machine!

I'm a bad machine! I turn to the left...

In a world filled with biological machines that mostly find their niche operating pretty much deterministically, people machines have found a niche by slinging it up against the wall to see what sticks, then trying out variations thereof. Language & mobility help a lot in these experiments.

Crazy old world, ain't it?

Wow.

Good night, dear Boodle.

She ain't walkin' around thinking in English.

Wow, indeed, Yoki.
I think one of my sensors must be kaput.
Nite, boodle.

tee hee,

We do wrestle with our fantasies.

Hey, can you say you dream in color? I mean is there really anyone who thinks they dream in black and white, like dream noir? They don't even make that film anymore.

sleep well,

Your comments about the "philosophy" of the brain are so true, Yoki. I was pleasantly surprised to find so much of psychoanalysis had its roots in earlier philosophy.

Which makes sense, I suppose; how can you talk about philosophy without having some sort of notion of how people are?

Recently read "The Boy who was raised as a Dog" by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz. He speaks to childhood trauma and how they can impede crucial developmental stages, and how to treat those parts.

What he says makes a lot of sense to me from a basic developmental/neuro viewpoint. I was really interested in what he had to say about the response to trauma, including dissociation. Difficult case stories to read, though; he worked with the kids from Waco among other stories in the book.

Jack, that must have been some driving rainstorm. I thought for a minute you were reporting a dream and had to re-read it a couple times to be sure.

shrink - While it's interesting, it's also trivial. I'm sure that "color" and "sound" have (in addition to their technically defined meanings and measurements) a vast array of connotations and flavors for each of us. Can someone who's been blind from birth have "visual" dreams? Can a trained (and more-than-usually-effective evocateur) wine taster/sniffer somehow convey to those of us with untrained palates a wine's spectrum of sensual pleasures? Can a deaf composer write good music?

In each case, I'm going to answer "yes". Not because I'm sure that's correct, but because I have an increasingly large body of anecdotal evidence to influence me that way. I'm prepared to entertain dissuasive testimony.

I dream in color. Not always bright color, except for a very few dreams, but never in monochrome; I don't think I could dream film noir if I tried. (Although that may have just double-dog dared my subconscious right now.)

Color is just not always the most salient feature of the dream.

Tomorrow, Bob S, we will begin to unravel these mysteries. I am up way past my bedtime, and my pumpkin is beginning to rot.

Me, too. I was sorta hanging out for our Pacific/Asian contingent to check in. Alas, mayhaps I haven't the stamina I had as a younger lad.

I don’t get to watch futbal ‘cause I don’t have cable. I can only read about it the next day. :-( My tai chi class has only half attendance ‘cause the other half is at home watching the World Cup.

I’m not good in any sports. I played a little netball in secondary school but didn’t like it because you can’t dribble. You can only pass the ball. Kind of boring to me. Netball looks like a tame sport but it is not. Those girls have very sharp elbows. Get your foot stepped on is part of the game.

I'm not a particularly avid sports fan. And for various irrational reasons I found myself long ago being predisposed to be resistant to the charms of Tracee Hamilton. [That too-cute spelling of her first name, which is presumably not her fault, was probably among them.] Whatever, I'm long since over it. She's bright & funny, definitely knows a little about word-smithery, and usually does a pretty good job of making a wonderful mish-mash of news, amusement, and skepticism about the whole sports-world menagerie. To wit:

"Eventually, of course, a lot of the hubbub over Strasburg will die down. On Friday the media contingent had significantly dwindled, which is as much a comment on the financial state of the media as it is on Strasburg, but still. The crowd was large -- it went into the books as a sellout -- but there appeared to be at least several hundred empty seats. Fans were Friday-night-baseball excited but not teenage-girls-seeing-the-Beatles-in-the-60s excited. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061806142.html?hpid=artslot

Howdy, rainy! I'd have thought that water polo was a fairly gentle sport, since it's mostly (theoretically) about egg-beating until the ball comes your way.

Very, very, very different game, it turns out. Biting, twisting, elbowing & kneeing nearby body parts (as vigorously as possible without actual referee observation & intervention) are generally known to be an inevitable part of any serious match.

Sometimes, I'm very glad that I mostly stuck to such gentle pursuits as long-distance running & swimming, and rock-climbing & hang-gliding. Sure, pain was inevitable, and death was sometimes quite possible, if not likely. But nobody else was actively attempting to injure me!

Hiya, Bob.

I'm still around. Just tired of reading my own excessive wind-baggery.

Aah, got a better offer. Good night/morning, all.

Hi Rainy. Swim team, natch.

Yoki,
You have me all figured out. Just put me in the bin marked Engineer. Then dismissively ignore my claims that the emperor has no clothes because you can see them just fine. He's got a big old red book showing them all and they look beautiful.

I have wonderful complex dreams that involve travel, my mother, my job, people I knew in high school, odd adventures. On the rare occasions when I remember them, I'll describe them to my wife and she will just shake her head in despair. One interesting pattern I've observed. Some of my dreams involve sexual situations except that I always wake up just a little too soon, ifyaknowhatimean. Just thought I'd overshare.

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Morning all.

Jack... I may have woken up the family with my laughing over your soccer tale. Or should I say tail?

Most kids may not be skilled enough to play 'good' baseball, but I'd rather watch a Little League or high school game than a professional one. Stuff actually happens! Kids make it to base! Kids make it home!

"Preview" is your friend, yello.

Dr. G spent many years teaching History & Systems of Psychology. His myriad books on the subject are all titled "A History of Psychology."

A history? Not THE history? Even the history of the subject is open to interpretation.

Good morning. I seldom watch the Nats when they go into extra innings because the success rate is too low. Besides. Anxiety makes me sleepy.

Well, at least the President got to see the White Sox win, and he probably needs a pick-me-up more than I do.

Good morning, all. This will just be a flyby, as there is much to do today. We got the niece graduated and had the small family celebration last night. Now we're deep into preparations for the big party tonight.

The disallowed American goal was the topic of conversation at dinner last evening. That is the extent of my knowledge of the World Cup at this point.

Later...

The Achenbach and Mufson article is especially good at describing the complexity of the situation. There really are a lot of moving parts involved. Some of which seem to be spewing things other than oil.

There are times that I just don't like Congress. The "all politics is local" aspect just bites me. It is a recipe for doing really dumb things in order to keep people happy that should have nothing to do with decisions on things. Like, say, making sure that any weapons systems that the Afghans use are Made in the USA, regardless of the reality of whether they will actually work, or if the Afghans know how to use and maintain them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061805630.html?
hpid=topnews

I wonder if the war hawks that screech about being in it to win it think winning it means doing stupid political things that will only anger the Afghans and make them question what we are trying to accomplish.... like forcing them to use stuff they don't want and don't know how to use?

Good morning, y'all.

Warm muffins, coffee and OJ on the table.

Lost power again late in the evening and missed the extra-inning White Sox win. Strasburg and Floyd both pitched very well.

While I appreciate the British press are upset over Congress' treatment of Tony Hayward, this may be a blessing in disguise for BP.

Remember how badly Rick Wagoner, the former GM CEO, performed before Congress? Whatever his talents, running a large corporation in times of crisis wasn't one of them. From President Obama's perspective, he was another of those "he wouldn't be working for me" people, just as Tony Hayward is.

A lot of corporate management weaknesses can be hidden as long as the money rolls in or the manure created by the weaknesses doesn't hit the fan. BP management weaknesses have now been laid out for all to see and the company could well benefit by taking a good hard look at their so-called best practices and emerge from this as an awesomely managed company.

The Philip Kitcher article (The Science version is subscription only):

http://c0524352.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/100606AAAS.pdf

Very erudite and comprehensive. One of the books reviewed is 'The Merchants of Doubt' by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway whose title echoes the 'Merchants of Death' invented by Christopher Buckley. Right on the money.

Good morning boodle. The AC repair guys didn't make it here yesterday -- I guess their other job ran later than expected. No problem so far; it's not even 80 out yet, and the upstairs eventually made it down to 85 overnight. Nice to get the fresh air into the house. I'm hoping they're willing to work over the weekend, though, since we're forecast to be bumping up against the triple digits for the next several days. And I really would like to sleep in my bed again someday.

bia, I will send boodle mojo to the AC folks to get them to hustle over to your place very soon.

Lots of chainsaw activity outside this morning. Several tree branches fell in the 70+ mph winds yesterday afternoon and evening. I'm grateful we have power cuz a lot of folks in greater TWC don't and it'll take 2-3 days to get everyone back online.

bia,
My condolences on your AC emergency. I hope the fix is quick and cheap. Keep cool. Go see a movie. I already have my tickets for Toy Story 3D this afternoon.

bia... I hope you sign up right away for a service contract with those folks. Having one usually means they go to your house first (and on weekends). You will be put on the list above "the small people."

OMG... listen to me, nagging like a mom. Sorry bia. What I meant to say...

bia... let's hope they show up today! In the meantime, fix another pitcher of iced tea and we'll be over for an imaginary porching in a few minutes.

I had some friends who lived in a big old house in Arlington and held out for years before getting AC installed. They used to sit every night on their back deck (which was salmon-colored stained concrete... just beautiful) and run the sprinkler nearby so that they cooled off while their garden was quenched. It was lovely.

yellojkt, thanks for the link. There's several recent books on bad science (Massimo Pigliucci's fine 'Nonsense on Stilts'), but Kitcher seems to be the first on the list.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?isbn=9780226667874

The mischief-maker in me says I should have Amazon send a gift copy of Kitcher to Focus on the Family's 'Truth Project' with a note explaining that conservative Christians have done poorly at propagating the truth about science, and should emulate the corporate world's successes with tobacco and so many other issues. They need some eminent retired physicists to promote Noah's Flood geology.

Morning, y'all.

Not surprisingly, I had my first boodle dream last night. I was sitting under a massive gnarled tree in full leaf. There were exposed roots all around. People who looked familiar at a distance were walking toward me, each carrying a small chair. The scene shifted to an old dockside and I said to myself in the dream "these are the boodlers". (Sorry, Mudge, but there were no boats.) Just before I awakened I saw small clusters of people talking, muttering, laughing, eating . . . and I knew immediately who you were.

bia, wishing cool air for you with all my might! Happy Saturday to all.

Service contracts are tricky things. I bought one one time because the price was structured in a way to make it cheaper than the repair without one. The primary value of a service contract (to the service firm) is to make routine visits and suggest other services and repairs.

That contract expired and at the next breakdown I called a small local firm that had come highly recommended. The fixed it within an hour for a reasonable price and never once suggested a service contract. I'm inclined to use them again. The AC is original to the house which is 20 years old. The inside furnace unit has had much of its guts replaced and is living on borrowed time. I'm due for a major replacement. The cobbler's kids always go barefoot.

Morning, y'all.

Not surprisingly, I had my first boodle dream last night. I was sitting under a massive gnarled tree which was in full leaf. There were exposed roots all around. People who were familiar even at a distance were walking toward me, each carrying a small chair. I said to myself aloud in the dream "these are the boodlers". The scene shifted to an old dockside. (Sorry, Mudge, there were no boats.) Just before I awakened I saw small groups of you talking, muttering, laughing, eating and I recognized you all.

bia, I'm sending cool breezes your way along with a hand-painted silk and bamboo fan. Happy Saturday to all.

(if this doubleposts it's because I wrote it once and it bounced back, not rejected but not selected either . . . like Arlo at the draft board. ;) )

Like I said! I guess that was my morning exercise in writing from memory and I failed. 8-]

TBG, you are so great. I knew there was a reason (or two or six or a gazillion) why I like you!

That's good advice, TBG. We're getting the repairs done through our home warranty service, which means that all the costs are covered once we pay the first visit fee. It also means that we can't pick our service people, but long-time locals have told us that these guys are good, so I'm comfortable with that. And they came really quickly for their first visit. It's just getting them back again... I could imagine that, whatever their good reputation, they're going to prioritize their private customers over the ones through home warranty.

bia,
At my first house, the owner included a home warranty. I had trouble with my AC three different times. There was a small refrigerant leak they couldn't find. Each time they did *something* and went away. The third time I was out of warranty and 90 days past the last visit, so they refused to follow-up.

Another AC contractor couldn't find the leak either. I had a coworker who had been a HVAC mechanic buy be some hoses and a can of Freon. Every month I just topped off the pressure a little bit and this worked for a year until I sold the house. This option is not for everybody. Especially since current laws prohibit not fully diagnosing and repairing leaks (that pesky ozone layer and such).

I didn't mean to unduly disparage service contracts, but they are only as good as the company behind them. It's like trying to find a good car mechanic, doctor, or fitness trainer. You gotta go with who you can trust.

I would recommend a service contract direct with an HVAC firm over a general third-party 'warranty' service. I put 'warranty' period in scare quotes because I used to work with a very persnickety lady who kept explaining that 'warranty' legally meant something very different from the way most people used the term in ways I still don't quite understand.

Did the Powers That Be at WaPo clear this with Liz Kelly?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/06/15/GA2010061504268.html

Update: he says they'll be here within the hour. Didn't come last night because his truck broke down. So I'll stop spreading impatient thoughts about his company across the internets.

bia... you've only said nice things about him and his company so far.

Yeah, yello, you're right that it's not really a warranty. It came with the house when we bought it last summer, and we used it enough to be worth it -- replaced the downstairs furnace, which was original to the house. So we renewed for this year. It has crossed my mind that we might get a new upstairs furnace (also original to the house) out of the current AC failure, since the pressure gauges they put on it at their first visit seem to be showing a big leak. Once all of the old appliances are updated (just that upstairs furnace and one of the two outside AC units left), maybe we'll let the warranty go.

bia,
Your plight reminded of staying at a nice London hotel in mid winter. It turned out the room's temperature was 80 degrees according to my worthy-of-Bond Casio watch. Nothing could be done about it.

We had an astonishingly cool dawn today, 69.

The Crinum americanum (string lily) in the back yard is flowering. A roadside ditch south of town has hundreds. Should be cultivated more.

Something else that might be cultivated more is the local version of American elm, which thrives as far south as Palm Beach County. We don't seem to have dutch elm disease in the state.

bia,
You are getting far more value out of your warranty than I ever did out of mine. Keep us posted. I'd like to know what the final diagnosis is.

bia, thinking cool thoughts and hope it's repaired quickly.

I've been focusing like a taser dream on getting whole house air next year. While the object of obsession can change, the nature of obsession doesn't--I'm crushing on space packs.

Have to do a little birthday shopping today, then out to dinner with friends. More garage cleaning, I'm sure. First day of vacation and I'm enjoying it.

Have a good day, all!

Vacation? Good for you, dbG! Any plans you can share with the boodle?

"I already have my tickets for Toy Story 3D this afternoon."

Last night I was remarking to my wife how we've past another developmental milestone with our boys. Used to be we worried about them crying at the movies. Yesterday, they thought the whole thing was hilarious fun, while my wife arrived home all traumatized, something out never giving away another toy (!? what the heck are we supposed to do with all that stuff, save it?).

Maybe you can full me in...the sad part. I am too grown up or just plain old old, (screed alert!) I find kid movies as unbearable as movies featuring psychiatrists in any role whatsoever, chick flicks ( *weepingly* "I thought you meant you loved me, but you were angry when you told me how your feelings were and so and so on...."), crime movies, action thrillers, man's inhumanity to man films, porn...yep almost everything.

Just always leave with the feeling I'd rather have that time back, with an empty feeling the industry is dedicatd to fool. It is all so blatant, contrived, unbelievable or obvious. But of all the things I can't stand in the movies, it is when they take a weak story, a plot line that can't sustain itself and chop into pieces, throw them up in the air and splice them back together again, so the audience is forced to try to figure out what the dickens happened when and why, to put the story back into the mess they made. Call me curmudgeon6.1 (since 6.0 is taken by another salt), but give me a good crossword, or even an old medical tome, a kitchen supply catalog...anything but a bad movie. There, sorry if I wasted a minute or two of your time.

Yup, the upstairs unit is shot -- lost all of its pressure over the couple days since he put the gauge on. He's taking it out today.

Birthday shopping, eh? If they have a good deal on "February 29th", pick it up for me, would you? My own birthday has gotten a little boring, and Leap Day has always struck me as kind of exotic.

shrink... Toy Story 3 (or 1 or 2, for that matter) is not a kids' movie. It's a grown-up movie in disguise.

De Niro and Crystal probably didn't do it for you then? Just teasing, shrink.

Agree with TBG about Toy Story(s). Wall-E, too.

Well gosh, shrink, if you're gonna get all ennui-stricken on us, there's not much we can do for you. There is, after all, very little new under the sun.

If we all gave up on cheaply manipulative entertainment, where would Hollywood be? There are enough out-of-work actors already. Do you want to create more of them?

Giant has snow crab clusters on sale today for $4.99/pound (rule-of-thumb): one pound per person is serving size).

It's what's for dinner.

I'm all for birthdays being special, BobS, so champeen shopper that I am, I'll find you a deal for February 29. How high can I go?

As for my friends (2 birthdays being celebrated today), it was easier when we didn't already have too much stuff, you know, like when we were 13-40. One of them still wears earrings I gave her when we were 13. The other is more practical than either of us.

I'm sticking around here, MsJS. Hit the house the way I did the garage last weekend. Destress, sleep, read, watch movies. Maybe picnic out at Washington's Crossing and take the dogs for walks in the woods. See friends. Garden. Catch up on a million things, breathe. All the good stuff. :)

Well, I know this sounds ridiculous, but why would someone pay money to watch a cartoon that makes them cry? Are we that numb? We pay money to feel bad? I mean, sometimes learning is difficult and even painful, but no one is saying Toy Story involves learning, right?

I understand, now that I looked at a review, that it is about the pain of empty nest syndrome. Ouch, yeah that smarts just thinking about it. So, why poke yourself in the eye with a stick and call it entertainment? Why don't they just kill the kid in a car wreck after his first frat party, that would hurt even more, right? These are rhetorical questions. Obviously I'm too far gone, I'll never "get it".

Bob, even though there is in fact nothing new under the sun (we do share a rigidly materialist view of reality, it seems) I never get bored let alone suffer the tragedy of ennui. If I were omniscient I would, but I am not, so for me new things are all around to explore all day every day. For example, today I am preparing a traditional paella, cooked outside on a wood fire, the correct rice and beans direct from Valencia, it will take hours, but it will be worth the effort, I know it will.

***faxing shrink2 the 'Love Story'/'Brian's Song' DVD box set.***

In high school a girl dared me to read 'Love Story' without crying. I lost.

Good morning, Boodle. I have confessed before about having dreams with various Boodlers in them (but not Joel, and not Boodlers I have met). We are weird.

TBG, love your "small people" reference!

bia, upstairs furnace? No duct work? I can't remember if the house I lived in in Houston had any heating devices at all...don't believe we needed any when I was there. I do remember not having any winter coats at all.

dbG, have a great vacation. I'm looking forward to a day off soon! Most likely followed by months of unemployment, with or without benefits...

oh...now...now you are just messing with me...you do that and I am going to come unglued and bust a gasket. I'll put out a torrent that puts BP's top o' the BOP chop to shaaame. Wait a sec...you, cried? You are not a stereotype, a heartless Engineer? And yoki thought she had you pegged.

Love Story. Aaack. Watching that crap I'd feel like Stanley Kubrick's anti-hero Alex, forced to watching ultra-v, his eyes wired open.

I'm rapidly falling into World Cup ennui, but Wimbledon starts tomorrow so all is well.

Federer and Nadal are seeded 1 and 2 in gentlemen's singles. Serena and Venus are 1 and 2 in ladies' singles and together are the #1 seed in ladies' doubles.

Off for lunch al fresco.

Oh, and I was going to comment about the movies. I have an aversion to most animation, so haven't seen Toy Story, Shrek, etc. I tried to watch It's Complicated the other night, and could not get through half of it - unbelievable and uninteresting, not mention unfunny.

What I do like - Coen brothers - I've seen many of theirs more than once. They have such an interesting approach. Try A Serious Man - hilarious and confounding. I like movies that take me somewhere else, show me things I have not and will never see. Or are pure escape, like Jane Austen or Lord of the Rings - now there's a combination! Pan's Labyrinth is one of my faves, so is Brokeback Mountain.

Where are kguy and rashomon when you need them?

One outside unit was leaking a little, the other a lot. So he says that both, plus the upstairs inside one, need replacing. Now the question is whether the warranty company will consider it enough of an emergency to let him use his own equipment, so we'll have at least one floor coolable this weekend, or if they'll insist on shipping their own (which they can buy cheaper). Still a bit of sweating involved, but yeah, the warranty seems to be paying for itself this year.

Funny apology for Joe Barton's apology:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127936742

Wow, bia. I had one of those warranties on my current house, they wouldn't pay for *anything.* When I didn't renew, I was sent an invitation to a paid focus group, which I attended for $300 and told them exactly what I thought. How often does that happen?

shrink, you blow a gasket, Yello can fix it. Mudge could too, although in a totally different manner.

Shrink, you made me laugh. While I will watch the odd bit of TV, I no longer have the patience to sit through any movies; I barely had it before I was rooming with a movieoholic who would rewatch the same movie ten times or more.

But then, I also feel the same way about watching sports most of the time. That's why horse racing is my favorite. 2-5 minutes and I'm done. An average commerical break during a NFL game lasts longer than that.

You know the ancient greeks talked about catharsis and all that, you know? Communal mourning or joy.

Purging of forbidden emotion... like the need to snicker hysterically at every cliche ever made in Hollywood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis

Of course, the Greeks knew war, and they never showed deaths on stage. That would be the Romans, who often made an orgy of sex and violence on stage. Also, they had huge sporting orgies and they founded the first rodeos when killing animals went out of vogue.

Our western drama and sporting events are far more descended from them than we dare to admit; Shakespeare lifted plots from Meander, I believe.

So bully for you for striking up against the patriarchial legacy of the Caesars, shrink. We need to do more pacifistic documentaries full of lotus eating and humming mantras with sensuous curtains and music with a few children staggering on and off to tell their stories, and then everybody makes daisy chains and dances around in a circle singing Abba.

No?

Here's a horrifying story on the consequences of "cleaning up" the Gulf.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-oil-spill-burnbox-20100617,0,641602.story

Biologist Blair Witherington, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, is an expert on sea turtles, turtology being a University of Florida and University of Central Florida specialty. He's co-author (with his wife) of "Florida's Living Beaches," a splendidly useful photo guide to nearly everything you'd encounter.

Zut. I just realized I basically described a very possibly real episode of "Glee" coming up. Abba and Arabia.

...Now I have to get the mental image of the entire cast wearing harem pants out of my mind.

Yes, a Serious Man is a very good movie, if you make the effort, you can lean into it and learn stuff you don't already know, gotta love that.

To set one more block on last night's project, what makes The Red Book so fascinating, is not that it is what it purports to be, it isn't. Criticizing its content is a meaningless exercise. Rather, its value (to me) is the position it occupies in the history of ideas and as important, their explication (semiotics again, rules my world), it is an outstanding period piece.

I have for example on the wall an extraordinary silk carpet from Dagestan about 150 years old. To me it isn't particularly beautiful, though it is intensely complex, painstakingly constructed, massive numbers of knots per inch and so on. But I've had a couple collectors tell me it should be in a museum because of its "importance", to the history of design, patterns, imagery, who knows?

seasea, Brian Unger's "apology" is priceless. Thanks!

I've become spoiled by the local art museum's film classes. Everything from A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) to serialized Mr. Moto in a series on Peter Lorre.

For all that, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" was a marvel.

You know what should have been in a museum? Once upon a time, after a ten-day hike in the Grand Canyon (ten days of exertion, dehydration and the consumption of much meat jerky and grain/nut mix) I finally got to settle onto a comfy toilet seat. I produced a ...

Well, it was quite something, I tell ya.

(Just doing my part to make sure we consider the aesthetic preferences of the small people, of whom I'm one.)

Why do we watch sad movies?

Catharsis. Check into it.

Movie tears come for many reasons. For me, it is any moment of heroic drama. Like, you know, the "That'll do pig" business in Babe.

And this is enjoyable for most people for the same reason that most (although certainly not all) strong emotions are enjoyable. You get a surge of powerful brain chemicals that heighten your awareness of and responses to the world. At such moments one, literally, feels more alive.

Ten days? That's a long walk. Thinking of Grand Canyon, the classic vacation book is "We SWAM the Grand Canyon," a tale from the 50s, when very few people had gone down the canyon in boats.

Don't go talking tapestry on me now, shrink!

Yes, every knot, every blamin', hand-dyed, eye-straining knot in that silk carpet from Dagestan was calculated to the square inch. It takes a technician to spin, dye, design and complete a rug. Museums collect primative papyrus weavings and the Bayeux Tapestry and simple samplers of schoolgirl cross-stitch. Just standing up for your rug's integrity. *smile*

Wilbrod beat me to it.

And not to be a east coast liberal elitist, but how do nearly illiterate idiots like Barton ever get elected?

Dave, I remember a "Readers Digest" treatment of that tale! Gotta find the original now. Over the years, I've spent almost a hundred days below the rim at the Canyon. It calls me still.

Are primative papyrus weavings produced by particularly proficient prosimians?

I dont' even know how to respond to shrink about the crying. It's not from sadness, but he knows that.

And now, for no reason at all...

_-|//
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oO Oo

Since Meander was a (mythical, i.e., not a real person) Greek god, I doubt Shakespeare borrowed much from him. His main Greek sources were Plutarch and the famous Greek dramatist Wikipedium of Plagiarisia.

Bob, aesthetes are a dour bunch, usually, narcissistic, their special sense of beauty, of nuance, well, lets just say the world is generally on the offense against aesthetes. They will come to psychiatrists and pay to complain about how they are not of the common folk, how everybody else is so boring and vulgar ad nauseum. So if a laying a fine pipe, if that is what turns your crank, if that is what seems museum worthy to you, well then that too has a place in the history of ideas and how people transact their reality through the use of symbols.

I happen to be quite surprised and impressed by much of the the current crop of large studio animated features; in many cases better written and more imaginative than much of live action I've seen lately.

'Cars,' the 'Toy Story' series, 'Wall-e, 'Up,' just to name a few.

Sure, there's plenty I don't like, as with any commercial artisic media, but I'd rate the first 10 minutes of 'Up' or the dance sequence in 'Wall-e' as good artistically as anything I've ever seen from Kurosawa, Kubrick, Jackson, Fellini, Spielberg, Bergman, del Toro, or anybody.

Even Bruckheimer (sp). Ha!

Of course, it's easy for me to fall prey to equating spectacle with quality storytelling...

Speaking of which, I'm disappointed that del Toro's not going to be able to finish direction and filming of "The Hobbit" for Jackson's production company. Had hopes for that.

bc

My ex-shrink used to complain because every patient was a healthy, interesting neurotic, but I think I still paid.

If you'll notice, bc, all those movies you named are from Pixar. It's all about the story at that studio.

Sigh. Wasn't, not was.

Back to the garage.

dbG - Thanks for the update. I was mildly befuddled!

:-)

Although supposedly Shakespeare based some of his rolls on Focaccia, and the the meat of several plays from Carpaccio, who was kind of thin when it came to layered characterization.

how do nearly illiterate idiots like Barton ever get elected?

Speaking of Greek, Plato has a fine section on the problem with Democracy in The Republic, Book VIII. ~2400 years ago, I guess things were not going that great in Athens (the savagery of the Thirty), for he pours a flood of derision on it, in his lines we can find the answer to the Barton question.

Dr G just looked outside at our herbs and our little tomato plant and its two small fruits and said, "How nice... the squirrel who gets those tomatoes will have it with some nice fresh oregano, cilantro and rosemary!"

Indeed, TBG. Forgot 'The Incredibles,' too.

Dreamworks' scripts for animated features are uneven comparatively and not really at the same level, but 'Shrek' wasn't bad.

Techncially, they're top notch, but I think they're short on actual story.

I have my eyes - behind Real 3D glasses - on 'Despicable Me,' though.

bc

For Plato, the foolishness of the common people, their vulgar display of power* in the electoral process was the problem. Here is one line, "Everything is ready to burst with Liberty...citizens chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority and at length, you know, cease to pay any regard to laws written or unwritten." Then, they turn to tyrants.

*also a fine Pantera album

Squished soccer ball, exploding

_
.-~\@/~-.
/ _|_ \
@\__/a@a\__/a
a/ \_@_/ \@
\__/ \__/
`a\___/a'

talitha, sorry to be tardy, yes, I absolutely get it, the integrity part. It derives from the purpose, what the creators of these objects were trying to do for others. The creative effort is a form of communication, often intensely pious, though not necessarily in a religious sense.

Kitty

/\_/\
/ o o \
\_=ø= /
(_)__m_m)

Darn you, 'mudge, now I'm hungry!

Bob-S,
The Grand Canyon book should be available through interlibrary loan (author is Bill Beer). It's available from his widow.

The two perpetrators of the vacation were Korea veterans, Stanford grads, and surfers back when heavy boards and cold water made the activity less appealing than today.

I don't expect a 60-year anniversary swim in 2015.

TBG -- I am flummoxed by your arty posties. Very fun to try. Back to the salted mines.

You cannot have spaces, CqP. Especially leading spaces. They must be filled in with something. These work: . - _ etc.

Also... "Preview" is your friend.

Sometimes it's the little details that make me laugh. In a story in yesterday's paper about the Times Square attempta-bomber, I noticed:
-----------
The new charges accuse Shahzad, 30, of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, of being armed with a high-tech 9-millimeter rifle and of committing an act of terrorism "transcending national boundaries."
------------

Now I'm no expert, but wasn't current rifle technology pretty much settled by the time of the Great War in the early 1900's, with only minor refinements since then? A laser beam that will melt your eyeballs is high-tech. A sonic wave disruptor beam that leaves your opponents sobbing in a puddle of their own effluent while clutching their burst favorite body parts is high-tech.

A tube into which you stuff a canister of explosive with a little chunk of metal at the end, then watch it go 'blooey', is decidedly not high-tech.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/17/AR2010061705617.html

Preview is always our friend, TBG :)

Helps you plan for Error.

Gotta wait till Monday to know whether we need to wait longer. A trade-off for the whole cost saving home warranty thing. So, time to leave the house. We're off to switch cellphone carriers to the local guys. I get mad at the AT&T ads bragging about how many people they cover, cause they don't cover us, and we've put up with it since we moved. But I'm done getting mad. Better to switch.

now I'm hungry!
Posted by: Bob-S

Well come on over, I'm cooking all day.
It is cool, rainy and windy again in Oregon, go figure. Hope I don't get any food on this here netbook thingy my wife put in the kitchen.

Just made a shredded raw turnip, blue cheese crumble, roasted red pepper sandwich on toasted 7 grain. That will make me healthy before I dine on the flesh of animals tonight.

Mudge,I'm checking my old notes from my theatre studies.

SCC: Menander, for the comedies. (Plutarch came later).

The major Roman influence on Shakespeare would have been Seneca; highly violent spectacle. He didn't use tragic flaws, but rather overriding emotion, more melodramatic. He also incorporated the supernatural (think the ghosts in MacBeth and Hamlet).
That guy probably was the same Seneca who was forced to tutor Nero, you know.

Terence pioneered the chorus-less, spoken plays. Terence also used double plots, which was unknown before, but has been used by Shakespeare through today.

Plautus's work is lost, but he wrote chorus-less comedies, something like musical comedies. Both Shakespeare and Moliere used his plays as models.

Horace the poet and critic also pioneered the concept of the five-act drama, three characters speaking at a time, no deus ex machina, and the idea of decorum; that the characters should act somewhat realistically. That influence we see in Elizabethian drama, but not the strict separation between comedy and tragedy.

The idea of unity of mood (either tragic or comedic) was in force in France at that time-- "neoclassical drama," though.

Thus ends the brief piece on how much plot hackery we friggin' owe to the Romans, good and bad.

now I'm hungry!
Posted by: Bob-S

Well come on over, I'm cooking all day.
It is cool, rainy and windy again in Oregon, go figure. Hope I don't get any food on this here netbook thingy my wife put in the kitchen.

Just made a shredded raw turnip, blue cheese crumble, roasted red pepper sandwich on toasted 7 grain. That will make me healthy before I dine on the flesh of dead animals tonight.

Oh, thanks. Now I'm really hungry. Several times over.

bc.. all of the previews at TS3 yesterday were for animated movies. There were at least two with lovable evil villians. Despicable Me is Steve Carell.

But there's another one, called Megamind, with Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Brad Pitt that looks even better...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JM1H1zfj9E

I'll fax you some of this paella later on. We are using Emergo beans, not favas, for some reason, I don't like fava beans anymore, even with Chianti. The wine will be an Argentine Malbec, flinty and substantial like a Bordeaux; a wine has to pretty robust to stand up to a mixture of apple wood fire roasted beans, rice, garlic, peas, chicken, fish, pork marrow bone, chorizo, clams, saffron, carmelized onion and so on. No pinot gris tonight, no way Jose.

Just learned that the elderly horse #2 and I gave a bath to last week is very sick with colic. A bit of boodle mojo would maybe help. Thank you in advance.

I never cry at movies that try to manipulate me into doing so. However, I saw Steel Magnolias on TV around the time I put my mom in a nursing home and I cried like a baby at the end. Catharsis indeed.

Gorgeous day here, hope your A/C gets fixed bia. I love living near the ocean as it rarely gets so hot that we can't cool off with a sea breeze. We have window units but I told "S" to hold off another week as I love 'fresh' air and the unit goes into the window that helps provide cross ventilation. We do have a ceiling fan in the bedroom, so it's far from uncomfortable.

Sorry, Scc: Plautus's work is not lost. It's still around, but we can only guess at how they were staged from the information floating around.

Shrink, I think those people would find SOMETHING to be elite about.

In a different situation, it could be religion through the mystery of toenail hygenie. Or could be magic through the fine art of diddling kitty entrails about to forecast the future... whatever society regards with near awe as "high-falutin'" and doesn't care to pry too deeply into.

But... I've also met people who err too much the other way, like Gradgrind in /Hard Times/, but they'll never go in a therapist's office unless forced to, and won't cooperate even then.

Shame, really, because they mess up far more people in their way and probably are responsible for the aesthetes feeling persecuted for liking anything that doesn't have an obvious purpose.

SCC José

Once you've seen "Fritz the Cat" and "Slippe press fra kattens anal kjertler" (from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science) most other animated films seem to lack a certain urgent focus.

That paella sounds really tasty, Shrink.

Seafood for us tonight, though.

Now, do you slow-roast the Emergos individually on a spit, or do you take the lazy way out?

"Shame, really, because they mess up far more people in their way and probably are responsible for the aesthetes feeling persecuted for liking anything that doesn't have an obvious purpose."

Yeah, exactly. We agree a lot...have you noticed that?

Yikes, I'm out of boodling time today, but if anyone wants, I'll set up Catharsis and knock it down (just for fun) later on.
Or just leave it at that.

I'm going back on-kit for a moment, so feel free to skip right over the post if you'd like.

I understand the round robin system of play and generally agree with it, provided ties aren't permitted.

Take WC Group C, featuring England, Merika, Algeria and Slovenia. Both England and Merika have no wins, no losses and two ties. England has scored only once. Yet a 1-0 England win in its next match will propel them into the elimination round. Two lousy goals might be all that's needed. And in other groups a decidedly average record of one win, one loss and one tie could be enough to advance.

This is supposed to be a world class sports competition. In certain other world class sports we distinguish performance by one-one hundredths of a second or tenths of a point. Surely after 90+ minutes of kicking a ball around we can get beyond the "meh" of declaring the match a draw.

So here's my plan. In the event of a tie, the teams each drop a player, widen the goal a bit and continue for five minutes. Another player from each side sits down and the goal is widened a bit more every five minutes until someone scores.

I'm guessing ties will be broken within 20 minutes of play.

And now, back to your off-kit programming.

Hmm. Didn't see that as agreeing, just filling in an ambiguous phrase with my perspective.

My experience is that not all aesthetes are hung up on being misunderstood in their love for the arts-- purposeful, productive ones, anyway.

But I also know about the deeply neurotic ones who can't break past their own inner crap to integrate function and beauty into an higher whole.

Oh, just refer us to who knocked down Cathrasis, so we can arrest him.

Oh.. sad news... Manute Bol has died. He was only 47 and died from "complications from Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare skin disease that he contracted from a medication he received in Africa."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/19/AR2010061902214.html

"Mr. Bol, one of the two tallest players in NBA history, was also one of its most exotic and endearing -- and surely the only one to have killed a lion with a spear. "

And to reinforce a commitment to excellence, perhaps the dropped players could have their anal glands expressed on the sidelines as overtime play continues?

That might almost drown out the vuvuzelas.

Vuvuzelae?

Bambi traumatized me.

Here's some good info...

World Cup tiebreakers: Where the U.S. stands

Here are the scenarios for the United States to advance to the World Cup round of 16.

IF THE U.S. DEFEATS ALGERIA ON WEDNESDAY
It will advance to the round of 16

IF THE U.S. TIES ALGERIA
It will advance if Slovenia defeats England on Wednesday. It will advance if Slovenia and England tie and England finishes with fewer total goals than the United States. The United States will not advance with a tie and an England win over Slovenia.

IF THE U.S. LOSES TO ALGERIA
It will not advance.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/soccerinsider/2010/06/world_cup_tiebreakers_where_th.html

Hiya, or as we would say in Sverige, *hej*. Yep, the crown princess and her (now) prince got hitched today. I watched the ceremony off of my Mac, in full screen. Very, very cool. They're pigging out right now on a multi-course banquet before they dance the night away. Most of the guests are other royalty, and most of them are related to the Swedish royal family. Hmmmmm. In-breeding. Explains a lot.

But the crown princess was radiant and gorgeous. I guess there's something about the gene pool that was generous to that family. The Queen has been lifted so much that she's meeting herself coming and going, so to speak. She was very pretty when young. Not any more. Too bad about that compulsion.

Shrink, I shall partake of that paella from afar (fewer calories that way, yanno).

I agree, TBG, very sad news about Manute Bol. He was so young. It reminds me that the average life span for an African man (depending on the country) is about 42 (for women, about 45). In some countries, it can be as low as 35 for each -- primarily due to AIDS.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. It's gonna be like a furnace all week. I'm getting to the point where I look forward to complaining about winter. *puh*

Lots of pickled fish at the royal wedding fest?

Tales from the Census:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/19/AR2010061901896.html?hpid=topnews

Nothing like that happened to my crew, thank goodness. Some did get yelled at or had doors slammed in their faces. (And that's when we talk to the neighbors.) One of my guys came in one day with a bandage on his arm, and I thought he was going to say he had been bitten by a dog, but it was his first tattoo!

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Unpickled Fish

Nice!

For Talitha:
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2763

I just read this - probably most of you already have:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/17/AR2010061706694.html?hpid=artslot&sid=ST2010061706768
GeneW is a terrific writer, even if I have nothing but disdain for the comic strip.

No really nasty people on my census crew either. One rather upset young man, one older one who's boycotting the gubmint. Most, extremely nice. It's an area with high participation, not too many people to check.

Maybe someone already asked him this, but if Gene and his son wanted the strip to look like Cul de Sac, why didn't they get Richard Thompson to draw it?

Maybe Richard Thompson refused, TBG.

Drawing be hard work.

That is a lovely article about Dan and his son.

seasea - Disdain? Really? Wow. I'm amazed the strip prompts that level of hostility. I mean, if it doesn't work for you it doesn't work. But for me disdain is reserved for "Bobby the Happy Little Nazi" or, maybe, "Prickly City."

Regarding Barney & Clyde, I don't find any of the characters likable, not even Clyde. Today's intro of the trophy wife and resentful daughter was beyond trite and cliched.

I am still going to give it the promised three-week trial run, but only through sheer determination and willpower. As an aside, I wonder how many female readers the strip lost with today's installment.

RD:
disdain, noun: a lack of respect for something regarded as unworthy or inferior
(Merriam-Webster)

Yes, that's pretty close. Especially after today.

Goodness MsJS. I'm sorry that strip failed for you because I found it intriguing. To me the daughter/wife strip made me think about the way we subtly use language to distance people.

Now, does this make it a knee-slapper? No. But it did make me chuckle, and it did make me think. Which is a lot more than most strips on the comics page do.

SCC: way back there. I meant Gene and his son Dan. An article about Dan and his son would probably get everyone's attention too.

RD, if you like the comic, go for it. I have yet to crack a smile. The only thoughts I have after reading it are "it's still not original" and "it's still not funny." So far it relies a lot on us finding humor in others' misfortunes and in stereotypes, and my brain doesn't work that way.

In other news, the White Sox beat the Nats again, this time 1-0.

MsJS - See, the problem is I don't see it relying on other's misfortune's and stereotypes, because my brain certainly doesn't work that way. Clearly it fails for you. But the reason it works for me has nothing to do with misfortunes and stereotypes, at least not grotesque ones. For me I see lots of interesting subtleties and philosophical nuances.

But you didn't write "Menander" in your 1:07, Wilbrod. You wrote "Meander."

Who was a Greek god. Viz.:

Meander (mythology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meander or Maiandros (Ancient Greek: Μαίανδρος) is a river-god in Greek mythology, patron deity of the Meander river (modern Büyük Menderes River) in Caria, southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey). He is one of the sons of Oceanus and Tethys, and is the father of Cyanee, Samia and Kalamos.

RD, I don't think the strip failed for MsJS because you found it intriguing.

I think it's kind of cute and a few of them brought a smile to my face. I didn't really find today's strip to be offensive. Let's see what the wife is like before we judge today's dialogue too harshly.

I mean, it's not like Mr. Pillsbury is a wonderful person and the wife is a contrasting shrew.

RD,
Once again, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Nazis can be very funny if treated the right way (e.g. The Producers or Hogan's Heroes). Prickly City, however, is petty and vicious and beyond redemption.

I meekly yield the point to your superior logic Yello. Hogan's Heroes is the definitive counter-example.

One of the karmic paybacks that will hit Weingarten is his derision of comics that get in a rut. If he and Dan have spent five years gestating this strip and have a year of material in the drawer, they will run out of new strips in fifteen months and five days at that pace. Now that they are in print they need to pick up the pace and they will learn what real deadlines mean.

boomslang - I didn't say that. What I objected to was the implication that since I like the strip I must, therefore be a fan of "misfortunes and stereotypes."

And TBG is right. I don't think it is fair to dismiss a character as a stereotype until you get to know the character a bit more.

This is good stuff...

On Father's Day, hypocrites are all in the family

By Colbert I. King

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061804320.html

The kids just left for the late IMAX showing of Toy Story 3. Daughter declared as we were driving home from the show yesterday that she'd get her brother to take her again today.

Nice to see them go off together. Five years apart, they get along great, but at 16 and 21 years old, the social opportunities they can share are few, really. I mean the ones they choose normally.

Yello... what did you think of the movie?

I never dream about people's shoes. But it's not quite right to say I always dream of shoeless people.

The other issue as writers they will have to face is what I call the Louie De Palma Problem. It's tough to have a bitter cynical central character without softening him up. Barney is clearly a jerk who divorced the mother of his daughter to marry a trophy wife (unless Wife 1 conveniently died). So if Clyde reforms Barney, why should Barney stay with the 'rhymes with witch'. At this point I'm mostly interested in watching this train wreck develop.

Yello - we don't really know the subtleties of the relationships in this strip. We don't know how the characters will change and develop. I'm intrigued to see how things evolve because I do not presume to know what is in store.

TBG,
Of course I cried. I've lived that movie. As a kid I had nearly every toy in that movie. My son went trick-or-treating as Woody in first grade. We still have his Buzz Lightyear in a box somewhere.

Last month's Wired had a story on Pixar on how the take up to a year storyboarding a movie before they even bring in the voice actors. The spend a lot of time getting The Story right. TS3 is masterfully plotted. There are absolutely no loose ends or plot holes that I can find. Yet.

RD,
I agree. This could go either way. Gene and Dan are telling a long-form story and it does need some time to develop. I'm just predilected to think of Gene as an asshat. His pretty touching story of how B&C came to be as a father-son bonding exercise runs against my established prejudices. Damn him.

I understand completely, yello. And I freely admit that I am willing to be a bit more patient with this strip because I have great respect for Gene's ability to be humorlike.

Of course, I think we can both agree that if Barney decides to start calling consumer representatives to ask dumb questions an intervention is warranted.

Yello... College Humor's Jeff Rubin, who I follow on Twitter, said today of TS3, "... I think the funny stuff during the credits is just an opportunity for people to compose themselves."

Those calls to consumer reps always struck me as a knock-off of The Lazlo Letters (which, of course, was true genius, especially the letters to 'Roland').

Jumper, your 8:30...I know there's a lesson in logic there, yet I get lost right out of the box. Maybe if you didn't dream about people's hats....

Have a happy night all.

"Goodness MsJS. I'm sorry that strip failed for you because I found it intriguing."

Fun with words.

Ahh. I see now Boomslang. Fun with words indeed.

LostinThought, I have two words for you: "Keep dry."

Dave, are you working for the Census too? We'll have to swap stories sometime! I cannot believe the amount of paper involved...or what a good little bureaucrat I have become. I'm suppressing my cynical, subversive ways, because I know it will be over soon.

RD, disdain was hyperbole. Indifference is more like it. I read only 2 strips in the Sunday paper - Doonesbury and Pearls Before Swine - and none online. Miss The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County terribly. I seem to need animals in my comics - read Prince Valiant as a kid because of the horses. And Pogo - loved Pogo.

TBG, thanks for the laugh. That one stands out, as does Timex (I think it's mine!) and NASA (if you leave now....). And Sammy Davis Jr (how's the ole ticker?)

Stand by our president!

Happy Juneteenth!
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/06/19/Obama-marks-Juneteenth/UPI-34201276982047/

I don't think I've laughed as hard for as long as when I first read The Lazlo Letters. In case anyone hasn't read it, you can read some of it here...

http://tinyurl.com/22mbskv

For seasea:
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3501

And thanks TBG:
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=790

Lazlo Toth also being Fr. Guido Sarducci, finder of the receipt for The Last Brunch.

http://www.fathersarducci.com/pagetwo.html

Thanks DNA Girl!

That was about dreaming in color, discussed earlier. I mostly dream in fiction.

I am (fairly regularly and quite justifiably) criticized for my fast & loose toying with stereotypes, usually for no greater purpose than my own amusement. Actually, I generally have a larger point that I'm trying to make, but as long as I'm amused I don't lose too much sleep over the fact that the broader point will require more clumsy attempts on my part.

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Good comedy is damned near impossible.

DNA_Girl, I am honored - thanks!

Love Don Novello. I hadn't heard of the Lazlo Letters. Thanks, TBG and LiT.

seasea - I seldom fling serious remarks into this forum, but I'm not kidding even a little when I say: I'm with you.

When certain folks recognize my (generally trite) contributions here, it's an honor. DNA_Girl is among those folks. There are quite a few others.

I think the LoneMule once grudgingly admitted that a Kit and some of the first few comments didn't entirely stink.

That was high praise, indeed.

Hi, Bob S. I enjoy your remarks, although I often don't know what to make of them! Not that you're the only one - and the trouble lies with me, not with the remarkers.

Forgive me Don Novella
I couldn't stop typing.

Maybe that was because he finally had his anal glands evacuated, Bob S.

// His pretty touching story of how B&C came to be as a father-son bonding exercise runs against my established prejudices. Damn him.//

Meh. It's still flacking the (dull, cliched) strip.

Had a great dinner with friends.

Exactly, dbG. When Gene wants to tug the heartstrings he goes all out. I'm just waiting for Clyde to start speaking in double dactyls.

I finally got around to watching the premiere of Top Chef 7 which was filmed in DC this spring. My man in the competition is Timothy Dean who was raised in DC and owns a steakhouse in Fells Point. Here I am with him as well as my review of his restaurant:

http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2010/05/team-dean.html

Ten words or less: Small and intimate with Southern flair on the plate.

Bravo 9 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Now I feel compelled to put together a heart-warming retrospective:

{Lonemule offers constructive criticism}

No wonder you people keep looking to the stars...Nobody on planet earth can stand this BLOG......Because......

This BLOG stinks!!!!!!!!

[Posted by: The Lonemule | January 25, 2006 ]
- - - -
- - - -

{Lonemule discusses political theory}

How 'bout this for a gimick: Inspire us to great things or at least something greater thant this Blog....

That STINKS!

Posted by: The Lonemule | January 31, 2006

[Note to fans of "The Lonemule" - This was a classic. Poems were written in his/her honor! If you're interested, it's here : http://voices.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2006/01/bush_needs_a_gimmick_1.html ]
- - - -
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{Lonemule discusses silly pop culture issues}

That kid needs the same thing as this BLOG...A good 'ol fashion hot coffee enema!!!!!!!!!!!

Man!!This Whole Thing STINKS!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: The Lonemule | January 24, 2006
- - - -
- - - -

{Lonemule discusses critically relevant political issues}

The only thing more pathetic than Cindy Sheehan being manipulated for the amusement of the I-HATE-BUSH crowd is the constant "where has the America that I've known and loved gone?" B.S. coming from the losers on this BLOG.

Please take a moment to say something that doesn't STINK!!!!!!

Posted by: The Lonemule | February 2, 2006 12:53 PM
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{Lonemule discusses responsible journalism}}

Is there anything in or associated with the Washington Post that is not anti-American, anti-Christian, or anti-Heterosexual ??????????

Posted by: The Lonemule | October 24, 2005
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- - - -

{Lonemule discusses planetary astronomy}

The only thing that stinks worse than Titan is this Blog.
B.O.

Posted by: The Lonemule | December 2, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/fashion/17BFF.html?ex=1292385600&en=1f98ff3e99bbc8f3&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=ST-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M154-ROS-0610-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click

Kids taught to not have a best friend: have many.

Provocative aerticle

Yello, you might like the restaurant we were at tonight. Villa Barola in Warrington. Boar was the special exotic tonight; I had the ostrich, always good.

I'm also bothered by condescending to a small child.

happy father's day to all. just in from feeding the dogs and watering our roses and the newly landscaped flower beds. yard work is the bane of my existence. to this point nearly everything we plant succumbs to the heat. then we discovered lantana and knockout shrub roses. we planted nearly 3 flats of plants, each in about a pound of potting soil,at least 15 shrubs, added composted manure, mulched and hoped. 64 cf of mulch, and enough water to float the ark. it's not quite dead yet.

always liked the alfa marque. an alfa was a prominent getaway vehicle in the day of the jackal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/automobiles/collectibles/20ALFA.html?hp

dbG,
Thanks for the tip. Now I have an excuse to go through Warrington some time.

just because.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPKbCRkMlUM

seasea,
I left the Census at the end of May mostly because I was not at all good at the meticulous paperwork details, no matter how carefully I attempted to check my own work. This sort of difficulty crept up on me over a long period.

seasea…re. your 11:11pm….me too.

I dreamt of four o’clock flowers last night. We had a lot of them in our family home when I was growing up. I didn’t know it as actually call 4 o’clock flower and not a name we gave just it until I accidently came across it while googling for flower images (Every time dotc named a flower or plant, I’d google for the image to see if we’ve got them here.)

I was especially pleased when I came across the image of pedilanthus tithymaloides. It’s flower look like tiny slippers which I thought was really cute. As a kid, I used to just sit in the garden and study the tiny slippers and wonder why they were shaped so.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.killerplants.com/media/images/potw/20050523_full.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.killerplants.com/plant-of-the-week/20050523.asp&usg=__3pyt1efM0gUEDff3rB04kiVtcjE=&h=505&w=640&sz=50&hl=en&start=6&itbs=1&tbnid=vMFJtKg9BYdZzM:&tbnh=108&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpedilanthus%2Btithymaloides%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1

Last night's dream:

We were on vacation in a city very much like London but even more Victorian. We were at a lecture or performance that was running long so they announced that the talk would be continued the next day at 7 p.m. This was going to cause problems because we already had dinner reservations at 8.

We had to wait a very long time to pick up a package we were expecting at the post office. My wife had used the wrong social security number on the form and it was misfiled. The young clerk was very polite but firm that there was little he could do.

As we came back to the performance hall (which may have been Albert Hall if I knew what that looked like) the cobblestone drive aisle was lined with short bollards. Each bollard had a small monkey crouched on it. Since it was about to rain each monkey was holding a small blue and white umbrella that it didn't have the night before. I suspected that these monkeys were really the henchman of a James Bond style super villain.

There was more but I can't quite remember it all. No sexual content.

seasea, forget about my "me too." Didn't mean to make you feel bad or making assumptions that your English comprehension is at my level which is pretty low.

I find it astounding that none of us have brought this unifying-several-threads item up yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vV3QGagck

And of course I've a lot of backBoodling to do (forgive any redundancy), but may I just say two things:

Here comes Tiger:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/19/AR2010061900362.html

R.I.P. Manute (wiping away a tear):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/19/AR2010061902214.html

And... I'm sorry, three, let me say THREE things...

Happy Dad's Day to all the BoodlePaterfamilias!!!!

*it's-too-darn-hot-but-the-chores-just-won't-wait-dagnabit-where's-my-coffee Grover waves* :-)

Rainforest!!! :-) *HUGSSSSSSSSSS*

Not that I know of. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

Good morning all.

And a happy Father's day to my fellow Dads everywhere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG-iVJpJXkc

The recording and styles are dated, but the message's timeless. Seeing this old video reminds me of why I love his live performances, and have for, well, since around the time this was recorded.

Was sad to heard of Manute's passing, used to see him around Bowie all the time, in and out of a little townhouse and driving a big Mercedes with the seat all the way back, and swear I could still see his knees through the side windows.

bc

Gotcha seasea. And indifference I can see. No comic strip works for everyone.

I did really enjoy this mornings B&C because it really surprised me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/comics/barney_clyde.html?name=Barney_Clyde

Of course, maybe I am the *only person* who thinks this is funny. My wife implies that about me frequently.

The guy in Barney & Clyde looks just like the kid in Cul de Sac:
http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac/

Happy Pater Day, y'all.

Warm muffins, bacon, eggs, hash browns, coffee and OJ on the table.

Au contraire, I don't like B&C specifically because RD finds it intriguing. ;-)

Three rounds of US Open golf have been completed and zounds! Mr. Woods is in 3rd, five shots behind leader Dustin Johnson and two shots behind Graeme McDowell.

Over in Merrie Olde England, Wimbledon play starts in about 22 hours.

Down in South Africa Paraguay leads Slovakia 2-0 late in the 2nd half. Nice to see that a Group F match no longer has to end in a 1-1 tie.

Speaking of ties, do dads still get them as Fathers' Day gifts?

Happy Father's day to everyone who has a daddy.

From Wendel Berry's "The Gathering" from his 1973 book The Country of Marriage (fragments):

At my age my father
held me on his arm
like a hooded bird
and his father held him so ....

. . . . . . . .

My son
will know me in himself
when his son sits hooded on
his arm and I have grown
to be brother to all
my fathers, memory
speaking to knowledge
finally, in my bones.

Three poems at Garrison K's Writer's Almanac. Take a listen:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/#

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Led WaPo story/headline: "Dems spend big to lure Obama one-vote wonders."

One-vote wonders? What kind of half-a$$ed characterization of a first-time voter is that? The phrase appears nowhere in the story at all. Nowhere. Zilch. Nada.

That's just simply outrageous. And proof, yet again, of the quality of desk people on the weekend. The weekday copy staff are bad enough, but the weekend crew are just unbelievable.

It's sure not a common political term--if you Google it, you quickly see it has almost no currency whatsoever, and certainly not in a political context.

I hope the 15 million "one-vote wonders," who are basically young and/or black, flood the ombudsman with complaints. They damn well ought to.

Since when does a headline diss a voter, especially before he/she has had the opportunity to vote a second time?

I am so angry at this headline I cannot see straight.

*faxing new glasses to Mudge cuz I value his ability to see straight*

Happy Fathers Day to all Boodle Dads!!!!!

And to my own, who I imagine is flying eternally in his beloved Stearman high above the clouds just beyond my sight.

Scottynuke, the Philosopher's World Cup is my all time favorite Monty Python piece. Thanks so much for a much needed laugh this morning.

DNA girl, I was honored by the Sinfest you sent to me. The tree was perfect! *hug*

Don't know about fathers getting ties for their special day, MsJS. Mr.talitha got an antique metal speckleware pitcher and washbasin (for camp) and a bunch of dark chocolates, his favorite.

I got red wine and dark chocolate.

Works for me.

What a night. Red wine still on the table cloth and the floor, always an auspicious start to a Sunday. I can't tell you about my dream, it wasn't like yelo's...content.

Can't wait to check out the three poems and DNA_girl's selections from last night.

The paella was sublime, if you want to grab the keys, I'll tell you what the Spanish exchange student who stayed here once taught me. Sometimes I think Spanish food is the best, apart from Indonesian naturally, which is a fusion of all that 400 years of slavery and colonialism can add to an ancient culture (think Bali).

Anyway, I think Frank Rich is correct on every point (since of course I have made all of those points at one point or another in the past few weeks). I especially liked the its not just a disaster its an opportunity tack he took. Heh, heh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/opinion/20rich.html?hp

And yeah, he should have fired Salazar, not Birnbaum. It is all there, great stuff.

Will you be consuming them at the same time, RD?

talitha, those sound like thoughtful "just for you" gifts. I hope they get lots of use.

Neither Mater nor Pater Day is celebrated here by mutual agreement, so I like to hear what others give/receive.

Italy and New Zealand tied 1-1 at the 'arf.

Absolutely!

While the GOTV strategy is new for a midterm election, GOTV strategies have been changing radically over the past 20 years or so (WJC on Arsenio, BO on the net), and this new tact is worth a look-see, with those voters being tracked pretty closely (Reagan Democrats were catnip to pollsters for a really long time.) But it is pretty condescending to refer to anyone as a one-vote wonder, especially when so many of them have only had one opportunity thus far.

Off to liquid brunch with Dad. We might toss a doughnut or an omelet with real eggs or something else not on his heart-healthy diet into the mix just for the decadence of it.

Have a happy day all, and to you fathers of daughters, know we think you're aliens too, and love you all the more for it. And thanks...we now understand how much ribbing you took from your buddies because you wore those ugly ties all those years, and that you did it just to make us feel good. You guys are gems.

Not at all, MsJS. He's had his eye on the ewer/washbasin because he's always afraid he'll break the small ironstone set I use. And I don't eat his chocolate . . . unless he offers, of course. ;)

Oh, never mind. Sorry, I misread that and thought you meant I gave them to him because 'I' wanted them. I'm feeling very dense this morning after a tense day yesterday.

Happy 148th birthday to the state of West by god Virginia!!!!!!!!

Happy father's day to all you boodle dads!!!!!!!!!

Happy anniversary to my parents!!!!!

And Happy Summer Solstice to everyone,be sure to spend the day on the river with someone you love!!!!!!

Yeah, I guess I am pretty HAPPY!!!!!

I got a band saw. (Skil brand.)

And what band are you going to saw with it, Mudge?

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, grandfathers, children of fathers, friends of fathers, step-fathers and fathers-at-heart!

This is the day I feel bad for the rest of the world because they didn't get to have my dad or Dr G for a father.

Of course, if they've got any of you, they're still pretty lucky.

Happy Father's day to all the dads out there and to all the children of fathers who are no longer here to celebrate with them. Remembering my dad is bittersweet but still makes me smile - and I'm sure he's smiling too.

Red Wine + Dark Chocolate = Good

Red Wine + Bandsaw = NotsoGood

Dark Chocolate + Bandsaw = Well, an awful mess actually.

Not sure, yet, MsJs, but it'll almost certainly be some maudlin, twangy, rightwing, sanctimonious country-and-western band. Anybody who sings mournfully about maw and paw and Jesus and the flag and Becky Sue's pigtails and how wonderful it is to be an ignorant, pickup-truck-driving, faithless, feckless, alcoholic country boy from a state whose racial tolerance and regard for Hispanic immigration is an embarrassment to the nation.

Most likely one of them.

Although Boy George isn't out of the running.

Doesn't really narrow it down much, mudge.

Mudge, is a band saw to be used in the percussion section?

Happy Fathers' Day to all the BoodleDads out there.

I have gotten so behind on organizing my vacation photos. Last week one of our boodlers got back from England (my memory is going too, so forgive me for having forgotten who) and went looking for my pictures of Bath online. Stonehenge-check. Winsdor Castle-check. Bath-missing. So here they are:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellojkt/sets/72157624192086899/

Which is a distraction because I really should be organizing my pictures of Yellowstone from LAST summer. Yikes.

Speaking of Yellowstone, the shot and killed a grizzly for killing a hiker a few hours after it had been tranquilized, collared, and let back loose. Something just isn't fair there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/19/AR2010061902469.html

In yet another reason to ban ties from WC play, I present Group F. In the four matches played to date, three have been 1-1 ties.

I move FIFA issue red cards to all the teams involved for excessive unproductivity.

And people say there are too many government jobs...

"Chris Servheen, grizzly bear coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service..."

Is coordinating grizzly bears anything like herding cats?

More like wrangling sharks.

Um, yes, Fish and Wildlife has coordinators for a number of animals (I can't think of any plant coordinators).

Sea turtles, Florida panther, plovers, maybe Aleutian geese. Coastal coordinator would be someone in charge of a Coastal Program, normally an extremely rewarding job, but I don't envy anyone working in the oil spill area, and I suspect that Chesapeake Bay must be getting frustrating.

For all of that, some really useful things have been done for turtles, plovers, and beaches. Not that turtles and plovers use the same beaches.

rainforest, I knew just what you meant, no offense taken! Sometimes the conversations here go way over my head.

http://shirleybassey.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/20060129_royal_albert_hall_photo_large.jpg

Seasea,
That is close, but the one in my dream was more rectangular. And with monkeys holding umbrellas while crouching on bollards in front.

But do we know how many holes it takes to fill it?

I'm going to blatantly violate my son's privacy and post a Facebook thread that developed from him doing a status update about a test he was about to take:

My Son: is going to take an Ethics test.

Friend 1: Don't cheat or you'll fail the metatest.

My Son: Actually we haven't learned why cheating is unethical. It doesn't violate, simple subjectivism, emotivism, Utilitarianism, or Kant. It may violate cultural relativism, but that is a flawed theory. Maybe social contract theory, but we didn't learn that. It is in fact supported by ethical egotism. So yeah I am confused.

Friend2: Dude, wtf. It does violate Kant's universalizability and deontology in general - cheating is by definition breaking the rules.

My Son: Not if you define cheating as an acceptable universal rule.

Friend 2: Yes, but relatively few people do. More importantly, Kant is just one case of a deontological ethicist.

My Son: True. But its not like I am a philosophy major. I am just getting a humanity credit out of the way.

Friend 2: Someday your sloppy ethics will cause the devices you build to kill everyone.

Friend 2: At least try to make their deaths hilarious.

My son: I will probably not build devices. I just upscale chemical reactions. I suppose a major focused ethics instead of a general one would give more insight into that. Of course I could just pull a BP.

Friend 3: BP is so much more unethical than other major Oil Corporations. It is structured and fundamentally motivated differently than ExxonMobil, Dutch Shell, et al. If we just remove evil BP than everything will be right as rain. No other oil company could possibly have a disaster like this; I mean they are all looking out for our best interest putting safety and the environment over squeezing out a bit more profit.

yello, loved the photos of Bath. Was photography banned inside the Jane Austen House? Would love to tour that myself someday and to get a closer look at the period dress the men and women were wearing. Looking at your photography is a real pleasure.

Here's kind of a Jeopardy question/answer: The G stands for Gorelick.

Father's day poetry:

Victorian alert! Here's something from around 1850, by a deaf poet called John Nack, who is still in print now and then.

"She calls me Father"

She calls me father! -- though my ear
That thrilling name shall never hear,
Yet to my heart affection brings
The sound in sweet imaginings;
I feel its gushing music roll
The stream of rapture on my soul;
And when she starts to welcome me,
And when she totters to my knee,
And when she climbs it to embrace
My bosom for a hiding-place,
And when she nestling there reclines,
And with her arms my neck entwines,
And when her lips of roses seek
To press their sweetness on my cheek,
Or when upon my careful breast
I lull her to her cherub rest,
The heart to which I hold my dove
Swells with unutterable love!

A Day in the Life.

Your son's friend is making me snort, yello. Nice optimism about your son's overall goodness, eh?

Lovely, Wilbrod.

Happy Father's Day to Joel and all the boodle fathers - enjoy your days.

Fabulous day here, eldest was just coerced into going clothes shopping with her Dad for some father/daughter time. She had this really great look on her face some where between "Save me" and "Kill me now" wish I had had the camera nearby.

Went to the music festival again last night (The Arkells), friends had VIP tickets which they shared with us, this is a free festival so VIP means tents and our own private port a potties and beer service, plus a meal.

Just after the show a brief monsoon came through the area, thankfully we had the tent and could reasonably comfortably (1-2" in about 20 minutes) watch the storm go over the lake. The images just as the storm was passing with the late afternoon sun hitting the bridge, pier and boats, highlighting them in gold against the dark louds was so beautiful, as were the rainbows. After the rain passed it was a beautiful clear night

With children up in
the cherry tree, I wish you
Happy Fathers Day

Sounds heavenly, dmd.

yello, great pictures, as usual. Did you release your Winslow video already?

I see Tony H. has gone sailing. Replaced, but still a PR disaster.

Ah, the joys of live TV...

Following the Kiwis truly stunning draw with Italy (an even bigger upset than Switzerland beating Spain), the ESPN crew was talking to a L'Equipe reporter about the French team's meltdown. A star French striker was sent home after an argument with the lame-duck coach, and Bob Ley, the ESPN anchor, asked the reporter what had been said.

The reporter (replying in his second language, to be fair), described the striker's reply to a suggessted demotion with a direct translation to English. Including the F word and the somewhat risque "son of a B" phrase.

Ley felt the need to apologize twice to the audience during the remainder of the postgame show. *L*

Ahhh, first poolside boodle of the year.

That's an interesting article about the best friend dynamic, but I wish it was more deeply done.

I've seen some best friends who were so nearly exclusive they only talked to other girls when they had fights, which in itself could be pretty unhealthy, and others who had best friends but hung out with other friends too. Even Tom and Huck hung out with other boys.

I think there's a difference between a best friend and being joined at the hip with your best friend to the exclusion of even another close friend, which can set up controlling behavior later on in romantic relationships and also impede social learning.

I also think that some kids have extra emotional needs that others don't, so go figure.

Were you dreaming of Swayambhunath, the Monkey Temple of Kathmandu?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_temple

'Course, there's this:
http://www.fineantiquesstore.com/images/stories/lamps/antique_lamps_DSCF9454_2.jpg

Jumper, I thought Yello was dreaming that he was being monkeyed with by an Imperial male bureaucrat about to rain on his parade (i.e. personal plans with his wife.)
Maybe he's wary of something about to happen at work to affect his vacation plans. Only he knows for sure who Goldfinger is or what the monkey's paw is.

Jumper,
Excellent lamp. Except the monkeys were more like capuchins instead of chimps (which are actually apes)

talitha,
Thanks. The Jane Austen 'Center' wanted just a little too much money to tour for the time we had, so we did tea and scones in the restaurant instead.

dbG,
The Winslow Video had its world premiere Friday to two coworkers to whom I was showing off my new travel camera bag. The didn't think it was embarrassing at all and displayed my singing (and dancing) talents to their fullest.

Those England photos were taken last spring and seem to have been overlooked. For example, here is my wife practicing her Royal Wave in front of Buckingham Palace.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellojkt/4717817916/

SCC: Centre

dmd, I frenvy you! We just got back from a walk along the waterfront in Plymouth. Lots of tourists but still fun. Met a man sitting by his '57 Chevy. It was all restored and had a new and bigger engine etc., but what a beautiful car! The man owned a body shop so the paint job and the chrome were magnificent. We used our willpower to avoid the fried clams (Scotty would know where!) but I did buy "S" a happy father's day ice cream cone. There are t-storms threatening so we are home to nap and enjoy whatever.

Still no definitive word on the sick horse #2 cares for, I am feeling apprehensive and sad about it.

100,000
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10964694

So...off-kit, but Mudge...you out there?
Yesterday, an 11/12 year-old baseball game. Everybody-plays let's-all-have-some-fun league. One team, smaller 11 year olds; other team, puberty had hit and hit hard. Bigger kids up 17 to 1 in the 5th inning, and their coach *still* had them stealing bases. Shouldn't the ump have taken a minute to talk privately with the coach? It's not like the point difference gets them a higher standing in the league rankings, or anyone's getting a scholarship. Had I been the parent of a child on either team, I think I would have said something. But isn't maintaining a high degree of sportsmanship part of the ump's job?

We read all about it, encouraged you, laughed with you. Do we get to see the video? :)

Father's Day is difficult for me. I have about a dozen pictures and the few remaining members of my/his family, his friends, have never talked about him much, no matter how or when I've asked.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I understood that some still felt guilty they hadn't visited more when he was sick or helped more when he died. His sisters and parents, now all gone too, saw it as a tragedy which hurt them too deeply to speak about.

There's a good article here today, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061104795_5.html?hpid=artslot

where the author says, "But when you have lost a parent, you are walking backward, still moving away but always looking to the past for clues and hints about the separation." That's true for me.

About a decade ago, when a friend's dad received an invitation to a WWII Seabee reunion, I also realized it wasn't only how much of my life he'd missed, he'd missed so much of what his should have been.

So, for Father's Day, I'm asking that if you know someone who dies leaving behind small children, please write something for them telling them about whomever they've lost. Share whatever you have in honor of your friend. Thanks.

dbG, I remember my friend who lost her father to cancer on Father's day. I'll mail her another card wishing her well in her grief process.

I think your idea is an excellent one to remember those who can't celebrate this day for painful reasons.

Hope you remember today that you are part of the legacy your father left this world.

I thought that Toy Story 3, as with the entire Toy Story trilogy, was utterly brilliant. To dismiss it as exclusively a "children's story" because it is cast in the motif of the relationship between children and their toys is incorrect in many aspects:

(1) that attitude denies the humanity of children. I think that there is no story worth telling that cannot be told in a mode that children can comprehend and appreciate. It is possible (easy) to choose a storytelling mode or motif (e.g., depraved sexuality, overt pornography, horror) that is developmentally inappropriate and/or that serves an adult need for greater nuance or richness of imagination or factual depiction, but the portrayal is fundamentally empty if it values the mode of depiction over the story being depicted.

(2) that attitude denies the significance of allegory as a mode of communication. Toy Story is successful because the toys are us, serviceable avatars for all aspects of human emotional growth: selfishness, selflessness, individualism, solidarity, love, hate, betrayal, forgiveness. Who was it who suggested that an excessively literal understanding of communication is a characteristic of schizophrenia?

(3) that attitude denies the concept of empathy -- that your experience matters, even though it is not my experience; that I can comprehend your experience, even though you, and your experience, are not identical with me and mine.

(4) that attitude denies the purpose of storytelling -- to intentionally undergo a version of experience that I have not had, either to gain perspective on experience that I HAVE had, or to gain practice with experiences I have NOT had but can expect to have, or to develop an understanding of the validity of the experience of others. The toys in Toy Story have the personality traits assigned to them by the humans that play with them. Andy uses Woody and his other toys to explore the range of human experience, including experiences he has not had. Andy has made Woody into the best parts of himself, the positive traits that he most admires. What makes Woody admirable is that he does not automatically do the right thing because he cannot do otherwise; he does the right thing because he can imagine choosing the easier path, the world in which he makes the other choice, and he rejects it.

I feel strongly about this.

-- StorytellerTim

LiT: Yes, and yes. Or perhaps, absolutely yes, and absolutely yes.

No way 11-year-olds play with 17s (not if the 17s don't pull their effort and just fool around, which it doesn't sound like they did). That borders on criminal. And somebody can get hurt.

Thanks, dbG. I was so lucky to have my parents for so long, but I'm selfish enough to feel like it wasn't enough. At 77 and 81, the loss was sad, but not tragic.

dbG - Thanks so much for that thought! I just called the mother of one of my world-wandering buddies. Haven't spoken to her in years, probably only once since her husband (my friend's father) died in the 1990's

I told her that I just wanted her to know that I was thinking of her, and of the great dad that she and my friend had lost. We had a really nice & fun conversation, and it almost certainly wouldn't have occurred to me to initiate it without your urging.

[By the way, said world-wandering buddy is currently bicycling through Canada. If I figure out where he is, I'll try to arrange a get-together if it seems to work. He's one of my favorite folks, you'd probably like him.]

LiT, it depends on the league rules, but I'll tell you how it worked in my area leagues.

Some leagues have a slaughter rule, although it is known by a more politically correct name these days. In those cases, kids and coaches are free to score as much as they can until they rule gets invoked and the game ends.

The ump's role is to enforce the rules. Outside the rules, he has no jurisdiction and can even be written up if he attempts to push his personal judgments into the game. Unless the league has limits on 'how badly can a team lose', the better team is free to pile it on. This is part of competition.

One of my nieces was on a softball team that regularly lost by 12 or more runs one season because the best players all had to drop out for various reasons. She learned that year that pity was for sissies.

I will look forward to, if not actually anticipate, a call saying "Hi, I'm Bob's friend, and I'm in your fair City." And I'll think for a just moment, "Bob? Bob? Ah! Bob-S!"

Mudge, two teams in the same age bracket, score 17-1. But I did think about that too, that one of those hits really could have done some serious damage to the kid playing shortstop. I think I'll ask the league guy about this next time I run into him.

For badsneaks, and anyone else who might be interested sights and sounds from the festival this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ZNBv5tvZ4

dbG - Hugs!!!

For extra fun credit, his name is Rob!

That's pretty easy to remember!

Not too long ago I was playing in a dart tournament, playing a game where piling up points is one of the possible strategies. An onlooker (also involved in the tournament but not my opponent at that moment) criticized me because I wasn't taking advantage of the opportunity to do so.

Because God is good to me, I played him later in the tournament. Had to beat him twice to move on in the tournament. Told him before we started our first game that I would not (in that game) score any more points than absolutely necessary to win. I won without scoring any points at all. He was evidently distressed and frustrated.

Before the second game started, I told him that he'd better have his point-scoring shoes on, because he'd made me feel compelled to show him that I actually know how to score points even though it's not generally my favorite strategy.

He lost. By a whole bunch of points. Be careful what you ask for.

Yoki?
Bob's Rob?
(nods, nods in a do se do)
Rob! The Rob of Bob!

And, to think, no last names needed.

Boodle-passes.

Easy come, easy go.

Dustin Johnson's three-shot lead after three rounds at the US Open evaporated with a triple-bogey on hole 2 and a double bogey on hole 3. He's now two shots behind co-leaders Ernie Els and Graeme McDowell. Mickelson and Woods both still very much in the hunt.

Sorry, LiT, I misread the question. No, in theory, the ump should not intervene. But that's theory. He *might* have said something "unofficial" to the coach between innings. If he does that and gets an unsatisfactory response from the coach (such as "Go stuff it in your ear, Blue"), the ump can begin calling people out kind of capriciously, to make a point.

In Little League, 11-12-year-olds are allowed to steal, but they may not "lead" off base, and may not depart the base before the pitch crosses home plate. I have been known on occasion in similar circumstances to what you describe to "see" runners "leaving early" and sending them back.

There is also a rule disallowing players "making a mockery of the game," so that if one side starts show-boating and deliberately humiliating the other, the ump can start doing things to stop it. But running up the score, all by itself, while generally thought to be unsportsmanlike, isn't an infraction, per se. But the onus is on the coach to control this, not the ump. One can complain, but to the league, and about the coach's behavior. We have had that happen a few times during my tenure, and our league president has called a few coaches over the years, and told them to straighten up. They almost always do. In a few cases, we have yanked a team away from a coach, but not in mid-season. They just don't get invited back.

MsJS, I'm watching while grading homework (don't tell my students; they'll think I don't care about them). Feeling so bad for DJ -- dramatic crash and burn. Is it cheating to send him boodle mojo? Just to help him keep a drive or two somewhere near where it's supposed to be.

I might be rooting for Ernie Els now, but I haven't decided.

Bob's Rob, CquaP, since that works Bob and S together nicely, don't you think?

In softball for that age group, I think the slaughter rule is around 20 runs by the 5th inning-- I have a hazy memory of games ending early when we were 24-2.

Those slaughter games actually can last longer than usual games, so it's always worthwhile to stop 'em by the 7th inning if necessary.

Yoki and CqP are too clever for me.

I think I'll go start dinner.

We are heering for Els.

Seriously, when you think about one team going through the entire batting roster twice or even more in a single inning and the strain that puts on the other's pitching...

Sometimes it's not really the winning team's fault that the slaughter happens. I can remember one inning where we basically got four runs on constant walks-- that's 7 hitters walked in a row. Or, the defense is simply not good enough yet to deal with a batting roster who can actually hit hard doubles, triples and homeruns.

Pity may be for sissies, but there comes a point where you do ask "why prolong this?" Seriously, when you think about one team going through the entire batting roster twice or even more in a single inning and the strain that puts on the other's pitching, I'm not a fan of letting a full-on slaughter last the full number of innings. 12-run lead, you can sometimes catch up on. 20 in 3-5 innings, no.

Sometimes it's not really the winning team's fault that the slaughter happens. I can remember one inning where we basically got four runs on constant walks-- that's 7 hitters walked in a row. Or, the defense is simply not good enough yet to deal with a batting roster who can actually hit hard doubles, triples and homeruns.

Pity may be for sissies, but there comes a point where you do ask "why prolong this?" It's a big strain on both teams to keep playing when the outcome is long since known.

But as Mudge says it's not the Ump's call, unless Little League changes their rules. Glad I never played that.

SCC cheering, but you all knew that :-)

whoa, somehow I double-posted in one post. Sorry about that.

dmd, that looks like a very good festival, pretty setting too by the lake.

dbG, Hugs from me too. A cousin and I have been researching our ancestry and we get so frustrated about the things we don't know because relatives didn't want to talk about painful things. It would help with our understanding of people if they could be brave, but not everyone can be, alas.

Sometimes it's easy to know when lots of winning is a bit too much. Sometimes, not so easy. I'd like to think that I'm a good judge of the difference, but I know that I'm not always.

Thanks Mudge. Hard to know sometimes if it's just me being me. I'll wait until the next time I see the League guy with a beer in his hand.

Final score I think was something like 27 to 2. It's just a small local league, with one set of fields for all the games. An early morning game, so not a whole lot of people around yet. I'm pretty sure rules are made by a handful of people who report to no one. They strike me as reasonable guys. They must have an "unofficial" way of dealing with this.

There is no slaughter rule in regular season play, only in tournament play. It kicks in at the start of the fifth inning, if one team is winning by 10 or more runs.

Games only last 6 innings at that age level, Wilbrod. And only 7 innings up to age 15.

Properly administered, LL is never cut-throat. If you want cut-throat, you should see how the "elite" teams play.

I think you are all waaay too focused on slaughter rules and mad blow-out games. In the grand scheme of things, they are pretty rare. The vast majority of time, things go well and there aren't any horror stories. To focus on the horror stories is wrong.

OK, I'm actually laughing out loud about the prospect of my friend becoming known across a wide swath of Canada as "Bob's Rob".

I'm pretty sure that if he was aware of this conversation, he'd be even more amused.

"Because God is good to me, I played him later in the tournament."

Afterward, first I'd love to know what he was drinking and whether He let you win, but did you get his take on your idea, about how cute his machines are?

I just wanted to know if the coach *and* the ump were being buttheads, or just the coach. I now know the answer is 1/probably just the coach, and 2/there's probably something going on behind the scenes to address this.

Yes, Sneaks, I know. Hope to get back there soon, but not before NukeSpawn starts her annual visit Tuesday!!! *Snoopy dances* :-)

Pebble Beach is really messing with everyone today. I'm waiting for the seagull-mistaking-the-ball-for-an-egg routine.

Horrible end to the Brazil - Ivory Coast match, with Kaka sent off for a second yellow after a Tony-award winning acting job by a Coastian who RAN INTO Kaka. *SIGH* ESPN is really pushing their "Man of the Match" promotion, and I have only one answer to that:

Jimmy Buzzard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRKYsao2ciY

"I hit the ball first time, and there it was in the back of the net!"

:-)

Yes Scotty, I am sort of watching golf and it is amazing how all the 'name' players are missing putts and drives. In the weeds, on the cliff by the ocean, yikes. Of course, having seen the layout, that is one nightmare of a course! Then again, my golfing skills are seriously minimal. One hole is a 505 yard par 4. When I heard that I just laughed.

Pebble Beach (or any other US/British Open venue) is fully intended to mess with people.

Nukespawn! Any chance the tadpole would join us for a dry (well, at least for the larva) BPH in the last week of July?

The Open has sent everyone to head-scratching. I'm rootin' for Ernie Els, myself, I think. Ah, well, who(m)ever. Tiger Woods has lost all focus. Things just ain't what they used to be, eh?

Gonna be an early night. I'll try to drop in on the morrow. Toodley Boodley.

Sadly no, Yoki, she'll be back home after only a couple of weeks. *SIGH*

Yes indeed, Bob S., yes indeed. Kinda amazing they haven't resodded the greens, though. "Freckled" is a kind adjective to use.

Awww, Scotty. Sorry to hear that. Just remember, it isn't that different. The breakaway just came a few years earlier than it might otherwise have.

Scotty, the stage acting on fouls in the WC and in futbol in general is an embarrassment. It does allow for dozens of punchlines about how the land of Marcel Marceau is so good at it, though.

They should adopt some type of instant replay on fouls. If the replay official determines the player is faking, HE gets the yellow or red card.

Done and done.

In the Yahoo! sports "predict the World Cup" competition I have been predicting the scores of each game. You get points if you pick the outcome correctly, and a bonus if you get the exact final score.

I joined a subgroup of competitors that are "Fans of the Dutch". Of the 329 Fans of the Dutch, I currently am in first place.

In your face, Dutch Boys!

The Red Card on Kaka was bull kaka.

Tiger Woods is not a machine.
Love can be a bad thing.
He lost it and he lost it.

I don't think that was love.

Mudge, while I agree with you on principle, blowouts weren't rare when I played on my team long ago.

I think half of the team were at the upper age limit and also qualified for elite play, and the top girls went on to championship play in greater leagues.

I'd say there was at least one player on that team that was good enough to try out for Olympic softball had it been available during her career.

What I was doing on that team, I'll never know.

He loved his father, he loved his wife,
I don't know if he loved his child.
There is a lot of love lost, no doubt about that.

Yes it is a great event sneaks, their record attendance for the 4 days is 190,000 which I think may be broken this year, 4 days of glorious weather have brought huge crowds. There are 5 or 6 stages, plus the main street downtown is shut down to traffic, restaurants extend their patios onto the road. Music ranges from local youth garage bands, to a parade, swing, jazz, rock, country and children's music.

Last night I was amazed to note the age range everywhere from young babies to senior citizens, very nice community atmosphere and a highlight for the teens.

Saw the Carole King/James Taylor concert last night. Man, did they knock our socks off. This song was one of the highlights. I did not realize that King had cowritten it. It apparently was her first song to hit the charts. I think she has written over 100 songs to hit the Billboard charts in her career. Amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB8Mu_rnbLc

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-Shakespeare-

Yoki here: I don't think this is quite true, except parents for children. I think love sometimes has a natural lifespan, and it would be false to say it wasn't true just because it didn't last.

But, I have been blessed to get and give such love from and to friends, lovers, husbands, sibs, my parents, as well as my children over the course of my life. So I don't for one moment believe that Love can be bad even if it dies, nor that Tiger's problem was one of love.

Of course it doesn't matter what we think,
but I'll bet he'd trade a lot of tomorrows for a single yesterday. So what do you think, he needs a new swing coach? Does he need to get back on HGH? Or do you think he is just fine and he'll be #1 again...pretty soon?

It doesn't matter, he is just another celebrity. It is your fearless prediction I'd like. I am saying he is toast. I am saying, you trash family, you trash yourself.

Very envious Steve.

Just finished looking at the photos from Princess Victoria's wedding, need CP to give the official descriptions of the clothes, but her wedding dress and the gold dress she wore to the dinner were gorgeous. She married Clark Kent!

Also noted that her brother is seriously hot, alas way to young for me.

Very envious Steve.

Just finished looking at the photos from Princess Victoria's wedding, need CP to give the official descriptions of the clothes, but her wedding dress and the gold dress she wore to the dinner were gorgeous. She married Clark Kent!

Also noted that her brother is seriously hot, alas way to young for me.

HDTV is not being kind to the Pebble Beach colf course this week.

Precisely, shrink2.

I do NOT have a friend named "Mug" who will be visiting anyone. So anyone claiming such, you can shoot them.

We're Canadian! We don't have guns. We might, you know, 'snub' him, even 'cut him dead,' but that's about it.

dmd, regular TV isn't being kind to the course either, my lawn looks better than that. It's nice that you have such a great event with all the various attractions for different ages. How very Canadian (warm and friendly).

I don't have any idea how Tiger feels about his wife or children. Having just seen him interviewed, if you can call it that, I do think he's lacking quite a lot as a 'normal' human being. He didn't win, so what, crack a smile, be a good sport for heaven's sake, no one has played very well today, it isn't always 'all about you'. / rant over ;-)

Semiotics at work.

truly

I agree about Tiger, however, what a moment between Graham and his Dad and brother, such a lovely Irish accent.

I'll do most anything, within limits, to hear an Irish accent. And without, for the Italian.

You have chainsaws and poutine, Yoki. Guns aren't necessary.

The wedding finery was beautiful, but I would have liked a close look at some of those tiaras.

One of my fellow database engineers has a Natasha accent. Her English is excellent and I love her accent. What I love most of all, however, is hearing her tell someone how she *fixted* something. In our business, that may happen several times a day.

Howdy y'all. Have driven 5 hours for lunch with the Boy, well worth it. Yesterday I went to the Red Earth festival & Native American art market, and had a lovely time. This was a fun weekend but not very restful.

The U.S.Open grass on the greens grows like that. Ivansdad, who is a golf maven, explained to me that it is a type of grass often used on California greens, called colloquially po'anna (I have no idea how to spell it) which grows in what looks like green and brown patches. When we lived in California Ivansdad played a lot of golf, though never Pebble Beach.

I played some intramural mixed-gender softball in college. We had a couple ringers, and then there were the rest of us. I was probably middle of the pack for the quality of the non-ringers, which speaks poorly for our all-around level of ability.

We played one game, against a fraternity/sorority team. They were totally slaughtering us. Everyone could see it. We were all just struggling toward the mercy-rule termination of the game. What stays in my mind was that the guys recognized that they were way out of our league, and so they slacked off a bit -- they still played, and played well, but they weren't intense about it. The girls on their team, on the other hand, grew progressively more and more aggressive and talked nastier and nastier smack. When our team captains and the ump talked to their team captains to try to get them to settle down and just finish the game quickly and quietly, the women on their team acted even more unsportsmanlike. When we met that team in a later game, their guys actually came to us to apologize for their team's earlier behavior. They still trounced us, of course, but in sportsmanlike fashion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV6wTXeCzy8&feature=player_embedded

Thanks to ScienceTim for your comments on "childrens'" movies - I find the same to be true of childrens' books. Thanks also to yellojkt for sharing Son of Yello's Facebook conversation. That was great.

Yes it was, yellojkt

Wow. I'm a good bit older than Tiger and haven't made mistakes that were quite so dramatically costly as his, and I should be valuing my dwindling supply of days quite dearly. But on certain days, I suspect that I might be willing to make some sort of trade involving "unused days" for a chance to revisit my "poorly used days".

I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying that there are occasions when I'd be willing to entertain the notion.

Most excellent, dbG! *Laughing*

Dear Yoki,

On Colm Toibin's voice:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2009_06_014545.php

Colm speaking in Catalan, with an Irish accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTlgdTFo3dE&feature=PlayList&p=73817AFBF7EAA8C0&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=97

Thanks, Ivansmon and Jumper. How my son got to know things I can't even understand escapes me. I did get a Father's Day call from him. He said it was the least he could do. Literally. I said he could have not called at all. I was genuinely overjoyed that he did.

And, a twofor: Colm and Tomas Kinsella on Kinsella's poems about Wexford and Enniscorthy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBupySCesJ0

Yoki, Colm is a Southie, as in the Irish Riviera south of Dublin. Let's go to that Northern voice of the nine counties:

Liam Neeson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j88LMhDpzow

Have you seen Undine, the new Neil Jordan movie? The accent is so thick you will have trouble understanding....

Winslow Arizona is live. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E884hMIosBg

I take no responsibility for broken eardrums, retinal burns, or permanent loss of the ability to appreciate music.

Neil Jordan and Colin Farrell on Ondine....set in Jordan's home of Castlebarre near Sligo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVYcoqfMaV4

I've often said that movies filmed in Britain or Ireland should be released in US with subtitles.

And Galway, Cuz, in the South, still has the Spanish warehouses and piers for the ships that went all the way to India (but avoided the cuncmw villages, 'cause they were wild).

What I love *most* is that everything we know comes together.

Yoki, see Ondine. Complex and rich and interesting between fairy tale and real tale.

My dad always called my mother Selkie. I thought he was saying Silky. Her dark dark hair was so astonishing to him, of the blonde-ginger type. She was also an Audrey Hepburn/Mary Tyler Moore lacey Irish gal on the prairie. And he? Well, the first time he saw Bono he said, "Now that is one pug-Dublin of a bouncer." My dad is more that. Think Daniel Craig not Pierce Brosnan. When she loved him, he was never, ever so proud to have won the heart of this lady.

YJ -- perfect and so fun. I will sing with you anytime. I sang that song briefly with a friend at the pool this evening..also, Connie Francis' Where the Boys Are and even, Crazy, the Willie Nelson song that Patsy Cline made her very own.

I had to email AND call my kiddo to remind him to call his dad today, which he finally did. Mr seasea gets hurt more than I do when he's forgotten. I figure it's par for the course, especially for boys, judging from my brother and Mr seasea himself (Himself!). Apparently the kiddo was helping his girlfriend move today...he's never told me he has a girlfriend...

And the Selkie is the seal-person, from Celtic lore. Dark soft flowing (or shiny any colour) hair, and at play in three dimensions. Almost the demon-lover.

I know your Dad loved your mother fully, that he called her the Selkie, or Silkie.

I once went, as a teenager, to Italy-fest, and a dark young man first asked my mother to dance, and then me, and stroked my waist-length hair as he asked my mother's permission to dance with me; he said, "Your daughter is as beautiful as a Black Swan."

My Mum and I both broke up laughing and I danced with him. Just once.

Oh, SeaSea, will CPBoy do that too? Boys, oh dear BOYOS, do reveal such things to us somehow!!!!!

'tis not so different with dots. For us to decipher.

Breaking News!

"Much of the flopping, flailing and falling in soccer is little more than diving to the turf in an effort to dupe the referee..."

O-M-G. Who knew this!? Here I thought every time they carried one of these pansies off the field on a stretcher only to see him reappear, running faster than the speed of light one play later...I thought it was a frikin' miracle. I though God did it.

"Referees say that it is difficult to penalize a player for simulation because it is akin to calling him dishonest..."
NYT

Well, at least its only "akin" to calling it dishonest. We wouldn't want to cast asparagus on posies.

Wow.

CqP when I visited the Mucha museum (Prague), I wondered how he might have seen Ondine...I don't think he ever did.

http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=B6FB95EAEC77F915

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_424121842_202362_alphonse-mucha.jpg

Some of you all may remember those times when I've admitted that I've occasionally been accused of playing a little too fast & loose with stereotypes? An example:

In 1991, I motorcycled to & fro amidst the Northern Counties. At a particularly jovial moment at a randomly selected pub, a southerner (a gentleman from the Republic) took what I considered to be a cheap comic shot at me. In my silly way, I decided that silly is as silly does.

Very exaggeratedly I gave him a look, then I finished my pint. Then I ordered, received, and took a couple of sips from, a new pint. Then (with the most innocent look I was capable of mustering, and the thickest Georgia accent I could bring to bear) I asked (somewhat loudly), "They tell me your family is good with sheep & goats. Which is for usin', and which is for eatin'?"

The pause throughout the joint was a beautiful thing. I really thought I'd gone too far. Nope, not. Once they started laughing, they didn't stop for quite a while. The (genuinely angry) fellow who'd started the exchanged was basically shamed into treating me like an old friend.

I know I say it too often, but it really is a crazy old world.

That's the fun of soccer-- the drama queenery.

I had to look up Northern Counties, otherwise that story was hilarious, Bob S.

So you don't like getting 45+ minutes of continuous play without commercials? Or are you annoyed you don't have time to go make more drinks and dip? A proper planter's punch takes a while to make. The ref issues are a corollary of soccer having continuous play. NFL has 17 officials for the 22 players, and everything stops every few seconds anyway, which allows for analysis of a replay or a commercial if there is no controversy about the call. If you prefer that, then please watch it and don't complain about soccer.

We kid because we love, LTL-CA. And if all the commentators are saying the Mali ref was out of his league and the Ivory Coast player's flop was even more over the top that usual, who are we to argue? :-)

*hoping-the-transformers-behave-themselves-this-morning Grover waves* :-)

Hello boodle! Was waiting for the boss to post a new kit before jumping in, but I see he wants some mudging before working it into his busy schedule. Here's my attempt at moving things along.

In Tampa, doing my part to eat as much Gulf seafood as can be purchased and safely consumed.

Good morning, all, and happy Monday. I see the World Cup has been a topic, as has love. We survived the high school graduation and the party to celebrate that followed. I told the graduate I probably wouldn't come to her college graduation, but I will attend when she graduates from med school.

Now, back to reality. Which, around here, is hot, hot, hot. I'm so glad it's summer.

Ham biscuits and appropriate hot and cold beverages on the ready room table to hold us over till MsJS arrives.

Good Morning, dear quiet Boodle. *waves back*

TBG, in answer to your Jeopardy answer/question, G stands for Gorelick ----- Who is Jamie?

I say (ask?) that in reference to the WaPo story "BP Taps a Well of Lobbyists" by Dan Eggen. The headline doesn't go far enough because it cites Washington lobbyists hired by all the corporate players in the Deepwater disaster whose a**es need coverage. I leave it to boodlers to draw conclusions.

Hot and hotter for the week ahead with highs of 98 predicted by Wednesday. Call the iceman.

Later ........

fb,
Have some rock shrimp for me. I had a bad batch as a teenager and can't eat them now. All the more for you.

Your best yet, Yello.

I rated it a perfect 5.

Off to declutter.

Thanks, dbG. I was watching the movie Adventureland the other night and there was a cover band singing 'Hot Blooded' poorly. Made me so jealous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npIvWNheSeo

Recently we had another couple over for dinner and they brought their teenage kid, so the three guys broke out the Guitar Hero World Tour equipment including the karaoke microphone. I had bought 'Hot Blooded' and 'Born To Run' using NintendoBucks and they were big hits. My wife was amazed I hadn't gotten 'Take It Easy' yet.

Soon. Very soon.

Next kit predictions:

a) Gulf oil spill up to 100k/day.
b) More world cup.
c) Golf. Golf. Golf.
d) It's so dang hot/global warming.

Is TOM (trepidation of mudging) available as a nom de boodle? Not that I'm worried. ;)

Well, if I don't have the magic touch when it comes to being mudged, no one does. So here goes.

Happy Summer Solstice, Boodle. It began exactly 90 minutes ago (7:28 a.m. EST).

Prediction: Fertilizing tomatoes by hand

Hot Blooded. :) I remember that one. I thought you'd be a natural for Bon Jovi's *I'll be there for you.*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0AlSn6nSK0

Good morning, y'all.

Warm muffins, coffee and OJ on the table. Also fresh strawberries.

Happy summer!

No early upsets yet at Wimbledon, although Federer has dropped the first set of his opening match.

Portugal has scored 3 goals in 10 minutes and leads North Korea 4-0 about halfway through the 2nd half.

Much baking to do today. Will share later.

Happy first day of summer everyone, eldest has completed classes (well technically she is skipping the last half day) and tomorrow has her final exam. Still two weeks for the younger one.

Another great day here, off to work for a lovely English woman, her gardens are a throw back to a previous style, formal rock gardens, perennial beds, shade gardens really lovely. Last week she showed me how she wanted her hedge pruned, she is frail (Parkinsons) had some complications after hip surgery, and now uses a walker, with full time nursing and there she was taking the clippers to explain exactly how she would like it. Thought the nurse and I were going to have a heart attack, then she topped herself by trying to hoe the garden a little.

You know you love your gardens when! Could be me in a few years.

Have a great day everyone, back later hopefully I won't have sunstroke :-)

EDT, lovely mudge.

I know exactly how that story goes, seasea. For the past six months to a year, my son (who theoretically still lives at home, i.e., 3 days a week, on average) has been having an affair with a much older woman who works the same place he does. My wife is completely unaware of this, and since I have been reluctantly sworn to secrecy I can't tell her, which puts me in a very uncomfortable position. The problem is that the girlfriend is a (distant) business colleague of my wife, and the Mystery Lady doesn't want my wife to know she's sleeping with our son. Routinely, he doesn't come home four nights a week, and usually says he's staying over at the house of friend X, Y, or Z (and sometimes he does).

One day we were discussing this relationship, who knew about it (nearly everybody) and who didn't (apparently only my wife), and I said, "So, I guess you're the Boy Toy, huh?" And he said, quite proudly, "Yep!"

What happens in Father-Son Talks, stays in Father-Son talks.

Hehehe what a great day to go late to work. Portugal are beautiful. I feel for poor NK, but...

Oops, yes, quite right, talitha: EDT. Thanks.

My 21-year-old niece has graduated from college and is about to move in with her boyfriend. My mother-in-law is in shock and wants my wife to do *something*. Like what? Every twenty-something she works with lives with their boyfriend/fiance/whatever. My wife is also wondering why her mother has never done the math on the nine months between when she graduated and when we got married.

The only salacious part of mudge's son situation is the cougar aspect. The rest is Life In These Modern Times.

Cool, windy and damp out here in the Oregon Territory. Summer will start someday, we're pretty sure. But oh, I do remember those Summers in DC. Don't stay thirsty my friends.

///I said, "So, I guess you're the Boy Toy, huh?" And he said, quite proudly, "Yep!"///

Reminds me of this classic exchange from the Natalie Portman movie 'Beautiful Girls':

Paul: So you're the little neighborhood Lolita.
Marty: So you're the alcoholic high school buddy [excrement] for brains.

An affair? Overnight at her house, must be a really dumb husband. I hope he's rich.

Since you seem to do well with a roof over your head and actually care for your wife, I'd recommend encouraging him to clue Mom in, and start dropping some hints (I wonder where he's really going? Sounds like the boy's got some outside interests he doesn't want to share...that kind of thing). Because she WILL find out, she WILL know you knew, and she WILL say I would have preferred to learn about this from (choose one, you/your son). This way, you can claim rock/hard place and point to efforts to wriggle free.

Of course, your wife strikes me as a smart woman. Chances are, she's known since Day One.

Didn't want to step on authoritative toes, sir. You've honed my quasi-editor eyes and ears over the last months. *salute*

Sol - stice. The day the sun stands still.

I'm not sure what Federer had for breakfast, but he's down 2 sets to none at Wimbledon.

Someone better fax him some Wheaties.

Look. It's 666 - the number of the Beast.

Wait .... wait!!!
Have I stumbled into a Hax comment page here? My sympathies to all. I'm dealing with a son in dire emotional straits due to a lovely lady with issues. Mercy!!!

Portugal 7, North Korea 0.

Ow.

*back-to-the-grind Grover waves* :-)

Ummm. How is it 666? I can see 6/21/10, or 21/6/10 (depending on your preferred nomenclature for dates). Only one '6'.

Well, we only have 644 comments, so...

Husband? There's no husband, LiT. Where'd you get that idea?

No, she doesn't know. I know she doesn't know. She'd have said something. And I'm already way ahead of you, LiT. Have had several discussions about "You need to tell your mother" and "You know I don't like keeping secrets from her." The sticking point isn't my son, it's The Cougar (as yello has just called her). And I'm slowly making progress. Anyway, my butt's covered.

I show 671.

I think Padouk was referring to the number of comments.
Yep, the Dear Leader's boys were whupped. Not as bad as Saudi Arabia 0-8 loss to Germany a few years back but a bad whupping anyway.

In blue, no doubt... :-)

I was referring to 'Mudge's 9:49, of course, and OK, so I transposed a 7 and a 4...

Timely for me. The Dunning-Kruger Effect, or how our incompetence keeps us from recognizing our own incompetence.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/?hp

One of the projects I'm working on is a legacy system conversion. For the non-tech, this generally involves bringing over all the data from the old system to the new. It's mainly excruciating because you have to find the correct place in the new system for the old data, field by field; you map it or lose it. In its simplest form, a field may be something like a last name or phone number and there are tens of thousands of them in many databases.

The report writers on the team have assured the manager that they can do this. Everyone on the team with the exception of the report writers and manager know that they not only don't have the skills, they don't know they don't have the skills, they don't have the tiniest understanding of the skills this takes. The manager believes their assurances implicitly, it'll save a lot of time and money.

The best we've done is insist the data they convert goes to a separate reporting database and is not transferred to the new system. This will inconvenience future report-writing, but will not impugn the integrity of the new database.

And you all thought my job was tedious!

Yes, my comment was, according to the total I see, number 666.

I find such thrills when I can.

6/21/2010

According to numerology it's all a "3" -----
6+2+1+2+1 = 12
1+2 = 3

3
The trinity and all that carp.

dbG, you might be interested to know that today is "Throw out your Waste Day".

Sounds like you're going in the right direction, mudge.

There you go, Talitha, thanks.

LiT,
Mudge does not specifically say that CougarLady is married, only that they are having an 'affair', which may merely be a euphemism for non-(pre-/post-)marital coitus and not be adultry in the Ten Commandments sense.

Both my dottirs share living space with their significant others. I got over it a loooong time ago. Mr. T is old-fashioned, it rather bothers him. I tell him that the only reason WE didn't live together before we married was that my mother was living with me, and neither she nor his mother would have countenanced it.

Of course, my mother once commented to me that it would have been better if my brother had lived with his first wife before they were married. He might have discovered her emotional issues earlier and spared himself all the grief. Coming from her, that comment surprised me.

Good morning, boodle! Son of G and I are up and getting ready to head the beach for the week.

We'll be there with, off and on, most of my sisters, their kids and--sigh--my great-niece, who is 19 months old and the current Light of My Life.

Talitha... the answer/question is Kenny G.

OK... prepare to be mudged in 1... 2... 3...

BOO. mudge already addressed this. It's a consensual sexual relationship between otherwise uncommitted adults, commonly known as none of anybody's dang business.

My pappy and stepmom lived together briefly before marrying some 31 years ago. Their friends thought it was a hoot.

New kit!

New Kit! And it's golf. I get partial credit.

Finally!