Nom de plume: Rivrdog

If you're Irish...

...and I'm one-eighth blarney-slinger, raise yourself a toast of Bushmill's (none of that pisswilly Jameson's in THIS house).

I'll have to double back, though, and raise another toast, it will be Beam and Coke, for on this date, 46 years ago, I raised my right hand, took the Oath of Enlistment, and began my USAF career, as an enlisted man, Officer Trainee (OT) in Officer Training School. I got on a plane and flew off to San Antonio, TX to Lackland AFB's Medina Annex, where that school was located, and worked my butt off for the next 89 days, becoming one of the last "90-Day Wonders" on 30 May, 1967. Shortly after my class graduated, the course was lengthened a month, 30 more days to earn those butter-bar insignia of a Second Lieutenant (Ensign for you squids).

So, even though I was to become a commissioned officer, for those 89 days in OTS, I was an enlisted guy. Had I failed the program, I would have been an Airman Basic (E-1) at the point of failure, sent across the road to Boot Camp at Lackland AFB. I passed though, graduating in the bottom third of my class, but I graduated, becoming an O-1. I eventually made O-4 (Major).

Yep, I will celebrate today. Life's a bit bleak around here with the gudwife in DNIMOA status (Duty Not Involving Much of Anything), but I'll have a couple shots anyway, after the Visiting Nurse leaves this afternoon.

Since the Oregon Ducks won the PAC-12 Championship last night in Men's Roundball, I might even watch some "bracketology" to see where they get placed with their automatic berth in the Big Dance. I will have to count the shekels to see if there might be enough to make some modest wagers...

Sportz blathering

Okay then, the big Spring Cleaning evolution is over for now, so here's my "get back in the saddle" blog: something that bothers the crapple out of yours truly, because I am a fan of many sports.

The general subject is sports blather, which I believe is grossly overdone. Don't believe me? How much blather goes into all the hype for the Super Bowl? You can't count the hours on all the sportz networks and neither could I.

That gripe is too general to be effective though, so I'm going to concentrate on the over-use and/or mis-use of certain specific terms in sports. Feel free to contribute your own. Here are a few of mine and their usual mis-uses:

1. "Hat-Trick". I've been a fan of ice hockey in bygone times, don't follow it now (didn't miss having it during the just-concluded strike), but I played hockey of the pickup variety as a yute in DeeCee, when winters in those dark ages of the Fifties almost always resulted in the Reflecting Pool freezing over and the Park Service letting the yutes play ice hockey when the ice got to 2" thick. The term "Hat-trick" then meant you scored a goal in each of the three periods of a regulation game. The term has since morphed to mean three goals scored in a game. The abuse comes when the term, "Hat Trick" is used for anything besides ice hockey. Yesterday, I heard it used to describe a Portland Timbers soccer player who scored three (soccer) goals...NONONONONONONO. This is blather-creep of the worst kind. The term applies to ice hockey, and ice hockey alone.
2. Next up is the term "Home Run". This is a baseball term, but I've heard it in football to describe a long running play, and car racing to refer to a driver with a good lead finishing first uncontested. NONONONONONONO, it's a BASEBALL term only, you worthless blatherers.
3. There are auto-racing terms such as "Put the hammer down" used to describe intense play in almost any game. We're almost immune to those gaffes by now. Do YOU know where "Put the hammer down" originated in auto racing? Answer in comments if you are a REAL sports smartie.

Bonus sportz trivia: did you watch the Azerenka/Williams match on the Tennis Channel tonight? I did, and the first thing that struck me was that both women wore some sort of hose covering their legs. The match was being played in Doha, Qatar, a Muslim country. You don't suppose those muzzies make the wimmen cover their legs, do you? I've not seen this anywhere else.

Thursday Thuds, Astrological Edition

Yep, there must be a conjunction that the horoscope didn't report:

The Constellation Ignoramus is in the Seventh House of the Moon, so we may call this Teh Stoopid Rising.

Thud the First: The looney Kimmy is at it again, sort of declaring war, nuclear war, on the USA. What Teh Stoopid Norky apparently doesn't realize is that he is ALREADY at war with the USA. Way back in 1953, when I was playing sandlot baseball with my first mitt, a Rawlings Al Kaline, we ended the Korean War with an Armistice, not a Treaty. We're still under the terms of that armistice, and still technically at a state of war. One B-2 Spirit with a belly full of nuke AGM-86s ends this war. Might be as easy as a B-2 Spirit with a single Small Diameter Bomb detonating on the pillow next to Kimmy in his bed.

Thud the Second: Goes to State Rep Mitch Greenlick (D-33), Oregon. He's a white guy, but has made a political career of being a race pimp, creating a Diversity in Sports Hiring Law for Oregon a few years back, and steamrolling it through the Legislature. The Oregon Ducks just replaced Head Football Coach Chip Kelly, now coaching the Philadelphia Eagles, with Offensive Coordinator Mark Helfrich. Both are white. Someone put the bug in Greenlick's ear that Da Rulz had not been followed, and no person of color had been interviewed before hiring Da White Guy. If Greenlick had paid attention to the local sports press, he would have gotten all these facts, but he decided to shoot off his face anyway, and when caught short on his accusation, he doubled down on Teh Stoopid and bitched that the SPIRIT of the "Diversity" law was not being followed, apparently because a person of color wasn't hired. The law, of course, does NOT mandate hiring people of color, it is only there to see that they are given a chance at the slots that come up. Now Greenlick has to re-double down by holding a Star Chamber hearing on this boneheaded "spirit of the Law" crap. Of course, what he really wants to do is be appointed Diversity Potentate/Caliph for Oregon. Perfect Celestial Alignment of Teh Stoopid. Letter to the Editor sent.

Thud Da Toid: What can I say, it's a toss-up between outgoing Secretary of State Hildebeeste and incoming S.O.S.-Nominee John Effing Kerry. Hillary got ground up, chewed up and spit out by Sen. Rand Paul yesterday, and today, J Effing Kerry got a John McCain blow job. Perfect alignment of McCain's dripping chin with Kerry's belt buckle. GOPes rolled over on the Swift Boat Liar. One can only hope that the Liar will soon embarass himself badly enough to be consigned to the dustbin of history, or maybe better, he will invent his own foreign policy and completely screw up Obama's.

Thud the Fourth: Rocks and Shoals edition. Yep, as long as men go down to the sea in warships, some of them will have to suffer bad navigation/ship-handling, and will wind up on the shoals. Happened here. Ship had just left Subic Bay. Do you suppose all the quarterdeck crew were sober? Pretty cheap drunk in Olongapo...worse news is that the shoal is a world-recognized endangered reef.

Thud the Fifth: We don't have many Thuds in the Art World, but what good can happen to the Paris Ballet Corps now that their Chef de la Danse is a chap named Millepied? That translates directly to "1,000 feet"...(H/T to the RivrSis, my Art Correspondent).

Ah, well. Time and the stars march on, so soon this alignment of Teh Stoopid will be over. Maybe I should go back to bed and wait it out. Fighting off Teh Stoopid Rays is giving me a headache, anyway.

Watching ladies grunting

The Aussie Open is on. We watch tennis when there's no NFL or NASCAR. While we were watching the grunting, some tennis was played occasionally. I played this game myself for a few years, but back then in the late Steam Age, no one grunted when hitting the ball. The Rivrsis was MUCH better at it than I ever was, and of course, neither of us has the knees or grunts left to play.

Roll Tide

Tide will roll, snappers will fall by eight.

Slug-day Saturday

Yep, still in jammies, but that's how bloggers get noticed, right? It worked for a couple of blogger-babes, anyway. 

I was dressed long enough to answer the doorbell at 0900...couple of Boy Scouts collecting canned food for a food bank they run. You should have seen the look on their faces when I admitted them to my prepper's pantry, telling them they didn't have enough bags to haul away what I was about to give them...they went away VERY happy, and so did I. No, I didn't add it up, it was probably $50 or so worth of food, but I couldn't get THAT kind of Happy Ending if I'd just paid the best whore in town for a night's worth of her talent. I am SO delighted to be able to help out this beleagured outfit.

Now, I'm watching the Georgia-Alabama game. It was tough getting through all the SEC-love being spouted by the sportz-blatherers before the game, but now the matter is being settled on the gridiron, as it should be. It will be further settled in Miami for the BCS Championship, where the upstart Snappers wait for the winner of this game. If Notre Dame wins that game, it will probably be the end of the BCS, and I agree with President Obama, that would be good riddance to bad rubbish.

Drink of the day is Starbuck's Dark French Roast laced with Colonel Lee.

Just confirmed a rumor I heard about the .410-ga shotgun, which I now have an example of, the Savage Model 24D. The survival-gun secret to the over/under .22/.410 is to have some way to reload the .410s. I just found that system: a hand priming tool, a 16-penny nail and a pencil. Yep, I just confirmed that .444 Marlin hulls are just the right size to fit the .410 chamber. The .444 Marlin is a long straight case that is about 1/8" short of a loaded 3" .410 round. There are some Brit cases from the old black-powder/early-Cordite days of Dangerous Game rifles that also work, but the cases are rare, and the .444 Marlin is still available. My TEOTWAWKI kit will have my RCBS hand-priming tool, .444 hulls, primers, powder, shot, wads, pencil and maybe some slugs (if and when I figure out the best boolit to load). The non-digital scale is already in there. I have to figure out if the hulls will need re-sizing, but I doubt it for the shot loads.In fact, my test hulls were fired under factory loads in a levergun, and they fit unsized even as they show a slight base-bulge. Since the shotgun load won't generate but a third or less of the pressure of a heavy rifle load, I doubt that there will be any sizing issue at all.

Here's an "Uncle Cliffy" warning. Preparing for the FearSome Cliff: #1: Pay your house payment and any loans due for 12-31/01-01 early. If the "cliff" causes a collapse, you don't want your obligations to get lost in the confusion. There are sharks out there planning right now how to profit from such a collapse.

It's almost half-time in the tied game, so it's time to think about sommething to put in the skillet for lunch. Later, maybe.

These MEN are athletes, remember?

...and star athletes are at least 50% ego to go with their 50% prowess. The ego helps them perform.

This sportz blatherer is out of line for criticizing athletes for smiling and winking at women reporters and using an inoffensive term such as "gorgeous". The downside for the women reporters is that they are a fairly new commodity in media, and should this friction between them and the players continue, they will wind up finding new jobs more suited to their attitudes of political correctness. PeeCee has ZERO place in athletic endeavor.

If I'm Jacoby Jones, I have my publicist release a statement saying that "Mr. Jones was just being polite to Ms. Tafoya. If Ms. Tafoya took that as anything but Mr. Jones' attempt at polite conversation, she isn't much of a judge of character, and she needs that specific talent to be a sports reporter at all. If Ms. Tafoya didn't originate the complaint, it is NOT appropriate for anyone else to have done so."

Should the incident go any further, such as to the brain-dead NFL Commissioner's Office, I would suggest that the NFL Player's Association write a sharply-worded note to the Commish stating that no one took away the players' First Amendment rights when they were hired, and lawsuits on such cases get very expensive for Management.

Oregon Ducks prove their mettle

If you've read this blog for long, you know that your Rivrdog is a major Oregon Duck fanboi. I got that way when I sent my youngest off to Duck U to get converted to a liberl ed-you-coated, and  I fell in love with the football team, which up until 1998, I had admired only from afar. You haven't seen much Duck fanboi stuff from me so far this year, because the Duck's strength-of-schedule thus far has been underwhelming. No more.

Fast-forward through the Belotti days to the Chip Kelly era (past 4 years), and my duck-love grew stronger, but I am a football realist. I knew that the young team that Kelly was going to field this year would be long on explosive offensive talent, particularly rushing talent, but might have trouble against really deep teams.

That all changed last night in Los Angeles, in the venerable Coliseum before 93,000+ fans, mostly USC people. USC was there to jump back into the national title talk, and they had their own offensive mojo with their world-class QB Matt Barkley and MASTER of the World Class receivers, Marquise Lee, Nelson Agholor (162 yds), and a host of lessers. Their RB corps isn't too shabby, either, but mainly it's Lee and Agholor on offense. When Barkley gets either of them the ball, and he did, many times, they caught almost all of those passes and made beaucoup yards after the catches. Lee is THAT good. He's big, and he's fast. He doesn't LOOK fast, but when the fastest CB or FS, with a good angle, can't bring him down, you KNOW he will play on Sunday, and he will play himself into the Hall of Fame when he does. If there was no pro draft, Matt Barkley would get 28 offers next year. He's as good as RG3, minus a bit of leg. Probably a better passer than RG3.

No, USC would be #1 right now if they had a defense to match their offense, and, pre-season, they were expected to be #1. A couple of gritty/lucky teams have taken them out before Oregon got there, but those games might have been laid off to momentary lapses into sloppy play, and an offense that got stuck in a lower gear.

Not yesterday. Oregon struck first, in 65 seconds, as frequently happens when #24 Kenjon Barner gets the ball and puts his outstanding football head to work commanding his matchless football legs. But USC came right back, with the Barkley/Lee combo, mostly. USC kept coming back, shortening the score at the end of Q3 to a measley 3-point Duck margin. I'm glued to my TV, and when I could force myself to draw a breath after the first 45 minutes, I told the gudwife that the first offense to have to punt would lose the game, and with about 9 minutes left, USC punted.

I was right. USC's offense began to tire Both teams were sucking plenty of smoggy air by then, but the Ducks kept up their blistering no-huddle pace on offense. The Ducks continued to score, getting back up by 18 points, but with a couple of ticks left, USC scored on a running play (by that time, Lee was sufficiently tired that the Oregon CBs had his number, and also Barkley had gotten a bad dose of inaccuracy, too). The USC RBs hadn't had a lot of use in the Barkley/Lee/Agholor game, so they were fresh enough to score one last, futile time. BTW, I have never seen 3 plays run in any football game before, with one second left on the clock, have you? That NCAA timekeeper was wearing a Trojan helmet, I think.

When it was over, Kenjon Barner had amassed 321 yards rushing and 26 receiving. That rushing number blows away the old school record of 288, set by LaMichael James (NFL: RB/SFO) a couple of years ago. Mariota flung 304 yards worth of completed passes, was 20-23 with zero INT. Barkley flung 35-54 for an unbelievable 484 yards, but was INTX2 (those INTs stopped obvious scoring drives which might have given USC the game). Oregon ran up 730 yards total offense on USC, and those yards plus the 62 points were the most that school has suffered in 124 years of intercollegiate football.

It could be reliably said that it was Barkley vs. Barner, and Barkley's arm ran out of fling before Barner's legs ran out of zoom.

Another note: the fabled Howie Long has a son, who played offensive Right Guard for the Ducks yesterday. In fact, he never took a snap at that O-line position until 5 days ago. His pulling blocks were so good, two of them sprung Barner for TDs, and by the second quarter, he was consistently double-teamed by the USC D-line. Chip off the Long block, I'd say.

Whatta game!

Oh, and don't look now, but the Oregon State Beavers beat a pretty decent AZ State team last night in Tempe, AZ, came from behind to do it, and did it with their #2 QB. The Civil War game looms large on the horizon, as both Oregon teams are that good. The Beavs got edged by the Huskies at the Fish Bird house in Seattle last week for their first loss, but it didn't get them down, and the Beavs could still wind up in the Rose Bowl if the Ducks go to the BCS title game. If both teams achieve those goals, and win their games, there won't be a good high school player in the country that doesn't want either the Duck or Beaver logo on their college unis. Can you say twin dynasties of different swimmers? I knew you could.

It's a great day to be an Oregonian. Well, at least until Tuesday night...

Thursday Thuds, TeeVee Edition

There's so much wrong with today's TeeVee, that it needs a special Thuds volume to list it all. Not in the mood to pen a whole volume, though, so I will just write a usual five-thud column.

Background. TeeVee is a major part of my life at the moment, because I have suffered some relapses of my back injury, and must sit quietly in a neutral position frequently. So, the old RD sits on his comfy couch, with the right kind of pillows propping me in the right places, with remote (and usually) adult beverage to hand. Just recently, being an Xfinity (fka Comcast Cable) customer, I find I can control everything nicely on the 42" Samsung Smart-TV with my smartphone or tablet, so I do that.

In my home theater, the sounds are amplified by an older, but still good, Dolby 5.1 system, with wall and ceiling speakers and a huge floor-shaking subwoofer, all driven by the last non-digital receiver made, the Pioneer 702. The Samsung TV does a decent job of streaming off of Xfinity's 20mbps Internet service, too.

The Thuds, because after the honorable equipment, honor stops with TeeVee.

Thud the First: TeeVee, of course, is designed to appeal to those who never finished High School. Sure, there are a few exceptions, and I watch all of them. Fox News is designed for High School graduates. I watch that. Jeopardy is designed for thinkers at all levels above the 8th grade, I watch that. I watch some of the Military Channel, mostly for info on advanced weapons systems. I watch a LOT of Sportz, because it shows little of the inanity of the rest of the medium. I watch the occasional travelogue. You can dump the rest of it into the garbage, as far as I'm concerned. The talent shows are entertaining enough, but it's always about the judging, not the contestants or the material/talent they showcase. Why can't they make one without ANY judges, only an MC? Oh, wait! That's a bygone format of the 1950s and everything old is to be reviled, not promoted or reprised with reverence.

Thud the Second: Has to be the Socialist bias of all the news except Fox, and strangely enough, Russia TV, which can present straight news with NO lefty slant (but there is usually a pro-Putin slant). We bloggers are all over the Lefty-Newsy format and content, but even when caught in direct lies (example: the Romnoid "47%" tape, which we now know was heavily edited before presentation as a SCOOP! by Mother Jones News, a lefty TeeVee blog. What it all boils down to, dear readers, is that you write off the TeeVee and print news, and use the Internet blogs for your information, if you have ANY smartz, that is.

Thud the Third: TeeVee thinks we are all victims who want to be led to lawyers. My (absolutely) last resort in conflict resolution would be a lawyer, primarily because I feel that for the most part, they are leeches on our productive society. One of these days, I am going to see Dave, the Mesothelioma Victim's face one time too many and I will have an apoplectic fit and croak on the spot. More than once, I have shut off the TeeVee in disgust after starting to view an ambulance-chaser commercial. There are WAY too many ambulance-chaser commercials, all financed by the hugely corrupt legal system. I suspect that this issue will dog this Republic to it's dying days, which appear to be NOW. Hopefully, in the Second Republic, which I now believe I will live to see, we will finally decide that Free Speech has become, in several respects, a False Icon that we worship to the detriment of our society. Hopefully, there will be a way to stifle the ambulance-chasers.

Thud the Fourth: Years ago, I would have put TeeVee Preachers next, but they are way down the list now, and don't get a spot on my list of Thuds. Next comes Infomercials. Yes, there is info to be had in infomercials, but after you've seen how the MagiK Boolit works, and you decide you can do without one, why should you have to see this on one of your channels for the next two months? The answer of course, is because the TeeVee management couldn't sell the time to anyone else, so they sell it to the infomercial people. Commercials are a necessary part of TeeVee, they pay the cost of bringing us our choices, and in return, they get a minute (or four, now), every 8 minutes, to sell us something. Why can't I pay a premium to Xfinity to opt out of infomercials and see, say, old movies on those channels? For that matter, why hasn't someone come up with a network TeeVee commercial detector that not only kills off the commercials, but substitutes bandwidth in a queue that you have set up? If I'm watching Dancing with the Stars, and I did, last year, and the commercials come on, why can't my computer whisk me to the NFL channel during commercial breaks? Or the Weather Channel (except it carries less weather and more Discovery channel crapple on it now, so I don't watch it much anymore). Gin up this technology for me, TeeVee techno-whizzes, and I'll watch more TeeVee, but in the meanwhile, the Thud you hear is my boot connecting with your wooden head.

Thud the Fifth: "Reality TeeVee", generally. Generally speaking, "Reality" TeeVee is the worst thing to happen to Television since it was invented in the 1920s. Anything makes the grade in "reality" TeeVee, no matter how stupid, no matter how devoid of value, if it's "reality", some TeeVee manager will pay for it, and some idiot will film itand some channel will show it. In the name of "reality", we get TMZ, we get the Kardashians, we got Octomom, we get all sorts of "hold my beer and watch THIS" video. We need exactly NONE of these items on TeeVee, because they all have a negative impact on the culture, that is to say, they Dumb Us Down. Aren't we dumb enough already?

Thuds that got by: Sportz blatherers, award shows (oscars, etc), Rush Limbaugh (glad he's gone, he never learned how to say it briefly) and his ilk on the Left with THEIR bombast, PeeCee kiddy toons, womyn's victim channels, televangelists, day-long charity appeals, public TeeVee pledge breaks, too many Spanish channels (why are there over 150 of them on Xfinity and ONE, each and only French channel and ONE Russian channel?), fifty percent of local news being CRIME news...EVERYTHING qualifying for "Breaking News" both locally and nationally. A murder in Pawtucket, RI is NOT news in Portland OR, so why should we have to listen to ten minutes of coverage? Ditto a police chase in Shaky-town.

There must be more, but I'm about thudded out.

Thursday Potpourri

Item: The Right comes up on the wrong side of this idea, that all OTC (Over The Counter) drugs are a better deal than prescription (R/X) drugs of the identical formulation. Example: Omeprazole, aka, Prilosec. It's been out for decades, and it's been OTC for at least a decade, but the price is still on the order of a dollar per pill, when by now, it ought to be down to a dime or less. There are other examples. What is going to happen with this FDA ruling is that some widely-prescribed drugs that are losing their patents (patents timing out) and would have become very inexpensive for sufferers to use, will now NOT get cheap, and their OTC prices will be maintained at artificially high levels. So, just moving a drug out of the R/X class and into the OTC class is not a guarantee of saving anyone any money, and in fact, some of these patent-expired drugs will show steep price rises when they hit the OTC counters. Mostly, the drug companies benefit from this, not the patients. Oh, and that thing in the article about having to go to see the doc every time a R/X is adjusted? BullTweet! You CALL your doctor's charge nurse, and the nurse handles that. I do that all the time and there is never a bill for it.

Item: The case against Roger Clemens. If you know baseball, and I'm a fan, you know that there was a sea change in top-line pitchers about 10-15 years ago. The very best pitchers, like Clemens, USED to be "location" pitchers. They could consistently put the ball within a couple of inches of where they wanted it, and scouting told them where they wanted it. Now, the best pitchers are "power" pitchers, who have the ability to throw 95 mph fastballs and sliders, at ordinary accuracy, for 6 innings or better. "Location" pitchers are now closers, who only have to throw for two innings at most, never more than 35-40 pitches total. That just the evolution of the game, but Clemens was caught up in it. As the best "location" pitcher on the mound, the game passed him by because he couldn't toss the screamers time after time. He tried to pump himself into better shape via chemicals, so as to prolong his career at the top of the heap. I can't blame him for that, and the idiotic doping trial is just that, idiotic.

Item: Afghanistan. I had occasion, night before last, to listen to a local college Professor expound on the 'Stan. Very knowledgeable guy, Prof. Grant Farr of Portland State University, spent a lot of time over there, including through the Soviet occupation. His take, in a nutshell, is that Obama's Grand Plan won't work. Why it won't work is that Obama doesn't understand the nature of the country. First of all, Afghanistan is NOT a "country" in any real understanding of the term. It's a region of three main tribal groups, each having major problems with the other, and each being unlikely to ever cede ANY authority to the others within it's own tribal influence area. If that wasn't bad enough, our whole "nation building" exercise in the 'Stan is based on building a modern national Army which can hold it's own, and hold the Nation together. The major problem is that there is 70% total illiteracy in the 'Stan, and of the Army recruits, maybe one in ten can read and write, but probably not. You simply can't raise a modern Army from recruits who can't read or write, and expecially from those who not only can't read or write, but don't want to learn to do so, lest they be labeled as blasphemous by their local imams, who DO read and write, and want to hold that over their parishoners' heads. It all adds up to FAIL, just as it added up to FAIL for every major nation which has tried in the past century (we are the third world power in the past 100 years to try to "civilize" the 'Stan).

Item: STFU, Christie. Yep, others look at Tubby and see the same potential horror story I've seen.

Final Item: I realize that Zoos are places where humans may learn about other animal species, but you have to have just a LITTLE smarts before you go. Consider NOT dressing your little tyke to look like a baby zebra (prey animal) and parking him in front of the lion's den...