Net Quotes

Really, Bruce? 

“Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 "Water is an individual, an animal, and is alive, remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is alive.

Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual - and yet each continues to be an individual - here was mute Nature explaining the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had labored to do it with speech and failed."

- Mark Twain

Okay... One more try here... 

ENOUGH!!!

Everything Has To Come To An End!

It is the World Cup - again.  You don't have to be a certified genius to attest that I am less-than-impressed by this latest ''huge event'' - yet again!  All the media hoopla over it is enough to make one chortle and vomit: as we are all friendly competitors, brother and sister athletes, in the Olympics (where the most important thing is to participate...!) however, now, it is the near-antithesis of that, with all media fueling the animosity, historical or not, real or fabricated, between 32 countries..

Pardon - it all started with the qualifiers: like, when Portugal defeated Sweden not once but twice just to ''qualify'' for this big dance, IKEA was encouraged by some to stop exporting linen and kitchen ware made in Portugal just as others probably encouraged all Portuguese to boycott that store...!

In this day and age, the media and the message are ever more just one: but now they've merged with all of fandom, too, becoming one huge attention-grabbing monster that will not cease until weeks after ''the huge event'' has become old news, really...  (And it is so because of the ''next huge event'' hogging the spotlight completely by then...! Of course.)

Now, I have not cared about the Stanley Cup Finals this year (New York-Los Angeles: the two biggest towns in the USofA! ''Finally'' said the NHL. Bo-ring is what I said.)   Just as I neglected (outright boycotted) the entire NBA playoffs: seeing as the two most storied franchises were not even ''qualifying'' (the Celtics and the Lakers - duh) and so many abominations were happening left and right , on and off court -or parquet- (what else do you call Paul Pierce playing in Brooklyn, of all places? The Harlem Globetrotters I would have understood: but not the damn Nets, come on!!!) so, what was the point of supporting this farce, hmm?

I don't care much about the ongoing MLB season either: the only good thing about it is that, for the duration of it, those broadcaster and commentators will have no choice but to talk of the Boston Red Sox as the defending champions.  Alas, of course, defending champs have been chumps in the last decade or so, and it already not boding well for the BoSox here, so I might as well not watch henceforth...

NFL? Don't make me laugh now...  To me, it just as laughable as the AFL was as the CFL will always be: once a mighty Patriot, Chad Johnson now being ''so desperate to play football'' that he will align himself with a team called Alouettes...?  HaHaHa - that is nothing!  All those former Pats that became NY Jets and started badmouthing their former coach on the spot: now that is a shame!  And all those former (they should remain off the gridiron once they get to a certain point) NFL ''playas'' who do all sorts of unsightly things on their own time - mistreat animals, shoot people, beat up women...  The only respectable NFL guy has got to be Tom Brady - thanks to his hot wife, Gisele Bundchen!  (This stated virtual-tongue-firmly-in-virtual-cheek - of course!)

All of these ''major sports'' have this in common, too: they are all majorly pushed down our collective throat by the media!  Heck, in some cases, it is the media that gave them their ''huge event'' even going as far as christening it: such was the case for Major League Baseball's ''World Series''...   The ''Super Bowl'' really isn't all that super; and I wouldn't even prepare a cheap salad in that bowl; it could be used as another kind of bowl, mind you...!  (Ditto for the Stanley Cup; alas that NBA trophy truly is completely useless - too big to be used as a bookend and too unnecessarily complicated to be practical for anything at all, ultimately!)

And now - it's the World Cup.  Not a care if the fanatics are known to be hardcore, as we know they can be: rival groups can start the mother-of-all-brawls in the stands, during any given game. Only rugby fanatics -be they players or spectators- can be worse here... Fans have been trampled all over by out-of-control crowds and such extremes have been depending entirely on the outcome of the game they were attending and if their team won it or not... No, that doesn't matter as much as the fact that this is THE WORLD CUP... So, let's push the ultimate passion here: kicking a ball into a too-wide-for-the-goalkeeper's-good netting - and forget about the effects such a trivial thing can have on people.

I stumbled upon a fine documentary the other night: it was about the 1950 World Cup and how one counter-performance... one momentary collapse... one show of human weakness made all of Brasil come to despise those they were, beforehand, hailing as the greatest champions ever... the champions of the world... the greatest futebol players to have grazed a playing field...!

When Brazil lost to Uruguay (2-1 - no biggie. Somehow it was echoed, many years later, in 2004, when Portugal let the Euro Cup slip and Greece stole it right in their backyard; just as they did the Golden Fleece, eh?) they became uma vergonha nacional: the shame of the entire country. Mere minutes after the game ended, people had jumped from their upper seats, plummeting to their doom; it was that serious for them, yes!  They would rather end their lives, right there in the stadium, rather than come home and have to digest this defeat for the rest of their lives...  People were devastated all throughout Brazil; they were sad for a long, long time. They would never forgive that year's national selection of players for having let them down like that - after the huge build-up, that is (completed by a speech given by the mayor minutes before the game; a speech in which o prefeito speaks of the championship as if it had already been acquired; a fait accompli. The saying of it not being over until it is over had not gotten to this one's ears, apparently...?  Quereida!)

And the goalkeeper complained of it in the documentary: ''the maximum sentence here is thirty years. Me, I have paid the price for allowing those two goals for 43 years now - and counting!''

Wanna bet he didn't endear himself to anyone after coming out and saying that, either?  Bill Buckner was forgiven in Boston: but only after the BoSox reversed the curse...!   Brazil did win the coveted championship and then some, soon enough - but those who remember that 1950 desfeita simply will not forgive it, exactly because they cannot forget it, nor the terrible feeling that came with it...

Thus, with examples like that, given to us by recent history too (it could not be otherwise, for sports as we know them now are a recent human conception indeed!  Maybe it was less involving in the days of gladiator contests...? Maybe not!) - with sad, sad examples like these, do we really want to adhere to it?  Do we really want to buy into any of it now - buy into the ''huge event'' - inject all of our leisure time cash and pocket money into this type of great ''innocent fun'' (the worse it can get is if we gamble on the outcome of the game - right?)   Do we really want to bring our entire families to these places where sports events are taking place, surrounded by the rowdy crowds that could turn hostile in a split second, over almost anything, really...?  Do we? Are we foolish enough to?

There are 32 nations in the world right now chock-full of fanatics like those right now: the rest of the world would be mere ''observers'' - however, through lineage, some dalliance or some other unholy rite, we all have our allegiance, and as such, the entire world is ''engaged'' by this!  Who the hell said only religion could bring out the worst in people?  Who is the fool?!?  We can easily see or hear about, in these coming weeks, of any given ''nationalist'' breaking a bottle of beer over the head of another one such - all because of a penalty goal or well-delivered butthead on the field...!

How many freaking Frenchmen tried to emulate Zidane on a not-so-poor, not-so-unsuspecting, nutso Italiano, do you think - hmm?!?

The way I see it, it is a toss-up between too many countries when it is ''Mundial'' - and there are too many x-factors that can throw a monkey wrench into any team's chances...  Otherwise the same powerhouse ''system'' teams would always win!

A system can work once, twice, for a while - but there comes a time for it to fail, too.
And here we have Brazil, Germany and Spain as three persistent examples of that: they have won too much already (especially the latter one, in recent times) and the law of averages should come into play, finally, at this time...

Not that anybody wants to see an upset like the Greek Heist of 2004 again...

Still, the Netherlands, Argentina and Portugal - yes, Portugal, of course! - should be the ones to take over from the old guard.

Ultimately, however...  Isn't it all so darn ridiculous to have entire nations so passionate about a bunch of guys pushing a ball across an entire field and getting it past a certain line made on the grass (oftentimes not even real grass either!)

If all the nations of the world were equally passionate about the real issues in the world, in their own backyards: who knows what could be accomplished?  Poverty could be circumvented; children might not die of hunger or mistreatment; true justice may yet be meted out...

It would certainly be a greater accomplishment -truly of the media's attention now- than having pushed a measly rubber ball past a goal line; past a doomed-to-be-contemptible for the rest of his natural days goalkeeper...

Sports Unearth The Most Barbaric Side Of You...

Modern sports seem to unleash the beast within; whether you like to admit it or not. Just try talking to a so-called sportsman and see how he reacts, especially when he doesn't like your question, you or when things have just not gone his way at all in the preceding ''sporting event''...

They attack the referees (granted, many of those deserve it, had it coming and should have never been given the power to decide the outcome of any sporting event ever - but still... we ought to leave the zzzebras alone, no? They must be endangered species - for other reasons, that is!) for to do so (again, attacking the refs - mercilessly!) is effectively giving the masses the wrongest of examples as they do not respect so-called ''authority'' at all pretty darn easy enough already...
And then peeps wonder why it is chaos and outright anarchy everywhere in the world... HA.

But no matter how bad people get to behave at sporting events, one thing is for damn sure: damn good (as in unique) pictures get to be snapped at those darn things - every time!



Hence... Onwards with the barbarism! (Hmm; don`t we actually have a blog devoted to just that, too...?!? Somewhere, out there - in the Blogosphere! In this TLB Prime Network of ours...)

Here is something to feel lukewarm about all right...!

The kind of art you associate immediately with a time and a place in the past - back when you were more naive, more of a rough draft of what you essentially are...! How amazing it is, too, noticing the similarities between the artists that you supported as a youth - and yourself just a couple of decades later. It was projection indeed as you've become so much like those that you admired from afar: somehow, one senses that it is what we are to become ourselves, the same style, the same type of individual... It is also a reminder that youth is not eternal, of course - that nothing ever stays the exact same...

A source of mixed feelings, if there can ever be one such...!

Enjoy the ride back in time with me...!

Biased Media = Lousy Broadcast

It was painful to listen to, most times; but one had simply to turn off the sound and enjoy some fine classical music instead while watching the action on ice as the mighty Boston Bruins defeated in dominating fashion the hated Montreal Canadiens. Alas, for me, my location had me forced to tune in to the RDS broadcast (or worse yet: the CBC's!) and not the NESN broadcast - and so it was more of the same biased crap that I had to listen to, game after game, before I wised up and tuned out...!

An example: game one, right after Phil Kessel accepted the short pass from Milan Lucic to seal the B's victory by scoring the insurance goal into an empty net - what happened then, hmm? A frustrated Canadien (the Komi, I do believe) dared ruin the celebration of the sealing-of-the-deal goal by roughing Kessel -Kessel! The finesse guy! You don't rough up a finesse player, pal; it's an unwritten rule and a time-honored one at that- and he brought Kessel all the way into the boards too, as all that young Phil wanted to do was the same as when he scored all of his goals in the last two years; celebrate it with his teammates. But no - the Habs think they have a right to avoid their just desserts and thought they do unto their rivals what they would never accept them doing it unto their own guys, be it Kovy or Saku-Le-Fou! *lol*
(Sorry - couldn't resist!)

And so, the goal celebration -and game one win celebration, be it temporarily- were ruined by the unsportsmanlike behaviour of those execrable Habs... And what does their local play-by-play guy call, at that point? "And now Milan Lucic attacks Komisarek FROM BEHIND..."
WHAT THE...?!? How many games has this guy called, let alone seen, over the years...? Is it customary then, you so-called expert you, to see an NHLer celebrate his team's scoring the insurance goal by jumping an opponent from behind - for no reason at all?!? The fact was, all Lucic did was step in and defend his smaller teammate, a teammate who doesn't do any of that rough stuff usually, and he grabbed Komisarek and threw him off his teammate with conviction, as to say "you want to "dance" - do it with someone like ME!"

As it is, of course, Komisarek fears Lucic and loathes him with a passion for it: Lucic kicked his butt earlier in the season, showing him up big time then... The Komi was so badly beaten, he missed a considerable amount of playing time after the scuffle. Ever since, he's dreamed of some kind of chance for revenge - and he knew his teammates, tough guys Laraque and Stewart, would never get the job done either... So he tried to avenge himself, at first, by picking on Lucic's smaller goal-scoring linemate. When that didn't work, he tried his darn-best to mount the courage to go for a rematch - and with his team all but eliminated, he thought it was time to do just that in game four. A single punch to the jaw and Lucic had won the rematch as well. Finally, out of exasperation, The Komi made his last pathetic appearance of the season (and most probably as a hated Hab as well) when he high-sticked himself out of the game, the series and surely out of town as well, in the last few minutes of game four - he couldn't match Milan Lucic's brawn, so he used his stick instead! He got an automatic five minutes and ejection from the game, as Lucic was cut on the left cheek then - 'tis the only way The Komi could ever put a single scratch on Milan Lucic, I tell ya! PATHETIC.

But even more pathetic of all, was again the play-by-play description of it all! Aye, I confess, I'd stopped the music (much in my own disfavour - but at least, I'm doing it to myself, so it's okay then!) and "peeked" at the commentating that was being done by the so-called "impartial experts"... No underlining whatsoever of The Komi's pathetic attitude - instead they spoke of the refereeing...! Right...
I went right back to Beethoven, right there and then!

The Boston Bruins deserved to win LAST YEAR's series against these pathetic Habs - and they deserved to win both playoff encounters during the all-around sad Joe Thornton era (sad with unfulfilled expectations, quite inexplicably at that...! The San Jose crowd knows all about that now - eh? Bwah-ha-ha. Keep him, your Joe; we don't want him anymore!)

What's more, the Boston Bruins deserved to win more oftne than 22 times on Montreal's rink, all-time, during the playoffs... The winning streak they have going against the Habs currently (all but one game in the regular season and the four straight in the playoffs that amount to a sweeter-than-sweet sweep and nine straight wins overall) deserves to continue next season and the NEXT FEW SEASONS in fact! Verily, it should reach the 20-to-25 games plateau, I say; just to TRULY get the B's even! One has no idea the amounts of INJUSTICE ON ICE that the Boston Bruins have had to swallow down over the years against various opponents (Buffalo in 1993, New Jersey the following year and Florida the year after that, I do believe... If memory serves me right!) but none, NONE moreso than this hated rival: the Canadiens! A team with the most moronic fanbase of all: they actually boo their own when they lose to a far superior team like the 2009 Boston Bruins! And one year earlier, after stealing victory from these same Bruins, they were moronic enough to go on a rioting spree throughout their city, one that rose to the astronomical amount of in excess of 2 MILLION DOLLARS IN DAMAGES...! The Canadiens employees are saddened to see their team lose and make such an early (and so well-deserved) exit this April - but I am 100% sure that every other Montrealer with a business, city employees and insurance brokers alike too, are TRULY ELATED that they lost and had NARROW A MOMENT OF JOY for their stupid fans this year - giving the latter no cause to RIOT in the process, as absurd as it sounds!

But absurdism is found in every nook and cranny of the Montreal Bell Centre, I tell ya: starting with the spelling there (it remains english, no matter what; but they still feel they are complying with the silly LOI 101 and other restrictions by spelling both Canadians and Center with an "e" at a most strategic place: "centre" is French, but only if you pronounce it that way... But anyway...!)
More absurdism: the fans, in their incoherent chanting and booing; they cheer the rough stuff their Habs do on the ice, and boo the ensuing penalty it cost them! But then they will also boo when the B's are not penalized for doing much less than the Habs did - that's logical, eh. Thank God none of these people is actually refereeing the game; impartiality would rule the proceedings - not! It would fly out the window, rather!
Even the mascot is incoherent: Youppi was seen cheering when the Habs were called offside?!? Is he HIGH, underneath that orange fur?!? At least Blades The Bruin knows what's going on...!

And so do I...!
And in the light of this second sweep of the Canadiens by the Bruins in recent years -remember 1992! I sure do; and Shane Hnidy appears to me now as the second coming of... Jim Wiemer! But I am digresisng again-and so I can honestly say that we need to see more of this in order to be reminded that YES - there is still some JUSTICE in this sorry world of ours... sometimes!

The Bruins' coach was a true class act: he spoke of no malice, no revenge plan, no ill feelings towards the organization that kicked both him and one of his star players, Michael Ryder, out of town - by the way; thanks, CH, now both are serving the BOSTON cause very well! In fact, Julien hesitated to even use the word JUSTICE in both case, especially in Ryder's case... Of course I just did use the word, without any hesitation at all, but it is in the BOSTON BRUINS' case against the rivals they've had, especially the Habs - after all, Ryder and Julien are only two individuals implicated in the larger picture which is, itself, but a tiny reflection of the much larger picture that is the neverending (but soon to end anyway - by the Grace of God!) battle between GOOD and EVIL...! But I am digressing, aren't I? *lol*

The Bruins can target the Stanley Cup next: and no team, no organization deserves it more than they do. They've had seven magnificent twenty goal-scorers this year (eight, I say: after all, Zdeno Chara got 19 and scored his 20th on the very first playoff game he played - and it was the game-winner too!) but it is true that, under Don Cherry, the Bruins established the record "never-to-be-broken" as he always says: ELEVEN twenty-plus goal-scorers on the roster, in the late 1970s! And that team, though dominating too, was robbed of a championship. Still, the fanbase in Boston is so classy it stood and applauded the enemy camp, the CH, when it paraded with the Stanley Cup in the venerable Boston Garden (maybe not the same year though - gee, I hope not!)

This year, Marc Savard, Patrice Bergeron, Chuck Kobasew, Phil Kessel, Milan Lucic, Blake Wheeler, Zdeno Chara, Mark Recchi, Steve Montador, Tim Thomas, Michael Ryder, David Krejci, Chuck Kobasew, Shawn Thornton, Stephane Yelle, PJ Axelsson and the rest of this formidable line-up can aspire to accomplish what that other great Bruins team, somehow, wasn't fortunate enough to accomplish themselves.

Me, of course, I wanted to see it done back in 1993 - when Dave Poulin (not Krejci) was in town. The hired guns were Dave Christian and Brian Propp - not Recchi or Ryder. The pillars on defense were Ray Bourque and Don Sweeney, not Aaron Ward and Dennis Wideman. And the main man was Cam Neely - not... well, this 2009 edition of the B's is well-balanced and they rely on a total team effort to get it done (that is why it is so impossible to counter them too!)

At least, if the 2009 edition of the Boston Bruins does win it all, Cam Neely is still a part of the club - in some function... So are Bourque and Sweeney. They'll get to hoist the Cup - as Bruins - yet...!

Onwards - with the opposition likely being pesky Rangers, Penguins and... hmm... Ducks or Canucks, the rest of the way...!


+++

Dubya's Last Dance

WHO CARES?
WHO GIVES A RAT'S ASS?
WHO GIVES A SHIT?!?

Nothing is going to "CHANGE"
just because there's a
"new administration"
behind the has-been
greatest power on the globe
leader of the "free" world
land of the used-to-be-brave...

Dubya's FINALLY GONE...
FINALLY...

So what?

The seeds of Armageddon were his to plow -
simply not to harvest...

Boston... Boston...

Aye, it is time, once again, for yet another one of those infamous lukewarm-&-lugubrious simultaneous posts of mine... Buckle up, grin and bear it - for it is going to be another bumpy ride folks; hell yeah!

As much as I enjoyed seeing the Boston Red Sox win it all just now - as I also had enjoyed it back in 2004 - I got outraged at the sight of this headline:

(AP) Police in riot gear prepare to withdraw after finding themselves between two groups of celebrating Boston Red Sox fans... Full Image

"Boston Ready to Paint the Town Red for World Series Champion Sox"

Now, I know that it wasn't meant as "red as..." anything other than the red in "Red Sox" (then again - there was the famous bloodied -heck, bloodsoaked- red sock worn by Curt Schilling in 2004 - as much as anyone can hope for genuine modern-day stuff of legend nowadays, that one - even if I am sort-of lukewarm about it and all...!) But really now; just in the light of world events happening currently (as the Sox won the "World Series", bloodshed sure was prevalent across the globe - as they scored runs, HUNDREDS met violent demises in Iraq, Pakistan, all over the REAL world...!) and in the light of what happened, also, the last time that the Red Sox won it all, I have to say that THEY REALLY SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE WITH "PAINTING THE TOWN RED" AS A STYLISH, tongue-in-cheek PHRASE THERE... Really.

Victoria Snelgrove died in 2004 - not due to a car-bomber in the Middle-East or even a terrorist attack in the USofA, but because the festivities surrounding the Boston Red Sox victory and, more specifically, the measures taken to subdue the rowdy crowds back then were found to be quite INADEQUATE. Personally, even if I had been in town that day, I would not have gone on a rampage just because my team won - come on people! Did you bet money on it or something?!? Even so, you'd have to bet on an underdog who somehow DID prevail for the payoff to be worth making a violent ruckus about...! And, likewise, the riot squad was a bit overzealous with their new toy - a certain pepper-pellet gun...

To be fair, let's mention that the author of the above so-tastelessly titled article did mention the 2004 death - but left it a NAMELESS VICTIM. That, coupled with the mere choice of a title for the article here, is quite distasteful indeed I think and inadmissible.

We at the lugubrious and lukewarm blogs HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN at least.

Victoria Snelgrove died an unnecessary death.
She had a future ahead of her - snatched away by pure folly, momentary euphoria over what is, ultimately, no big deal at all... (Not diminishing the Boston Red Sox feat here; all the championships won by all the franchises in our modern society - since the inception of pro-sports leagues and associations - NONE of those mean SQUAT in the Grand Scheme of Things; is that clearer now?)

Was this demise the price to pay to lift the alleged Curse of the Bambino, as I remember asking back in 2004? (As it did occur between the Red Sox historical comeback against the Yankees and the first World Series win in 86 years for the Sox, if you'll recall...)

Once again, the answer is a resounding NO, as no sports result could ever possibly equate a life, with all its dreams, hopes and aspirations that dwarf any championship, any title, any crown that any competition can offer.

At least this year, they did not kill anyone because the good guys in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse did come out on top in October...

Good.


Still, there was a death shortly after the Sox won it all and partied hardy too -
Massachusetts lost one of its favorite sons, Robert Goulet.

Goulet had performed the national anthem at the Red Sox season opener at Fenway Park back in April, in what was to be their most dominant year ever and his final performance on a major platform...
One wonders if the cool Boston air in April was not good to him...

He was diagnosed with a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis and had been awaiting a lung transplant in Los Angeles - where the Red Sox began their post-season dominance by sweeping the local Angels.
Goulet's famous baritone voice was stiffled in the end by the presence of a breathing tube - and time ran out on him as no lung donor was found in time.
He was 73 - the age my dear father would be.

Why is there always to be some tragedy attached to a Boston triumph?

Shades of the Curse...