Category Archives: sports

bshirley

February 9, 2014

“You finished in 8th, what happened today?” (to Bode Miller) – he should have said “shut up, B—-“

bshirley

February 9, 2014

NBC Olympics dot com tv listings page keeps refreshing and taking the listing back to 10:00am … it’s not 10am!

Houston NFL

Oilers AFL LogoI’ve always enjoyed sports.  Participating and watching.  Drama can be found in every step (and yet TNT “We Know Drama” doesn’t show sports).  I, of course, grew up loving the Columbia Blue “Love ya Blue” Houston Oilers.

As I’ve aged, and the number of hours in a day seems continually less available, many of my interests have had to make way for others.  Most of the sporting teams I have followed have become more of a background interest.  On top of that, either my perception or reality has come to give me the view that many professional athletes are whiney spoiled asses.  (More so in basketball than football.)  This has tended to push my interest down to college sports over professional.

In 1994 I moved to Calgary.  At the time Bud Adams was trolling for a new stadium; the City was in an economic lull and saying “no”.  It was foregone, it seemed to me at the time and obviously in retrospect, that the Oilers would leave.  As it was, Canada didn’t have much coverage of the NFL and I just started ignoring the league entirely that year.

The next two years I spent in Washington and didn’t pay too much attention to the NFL except when I spent a sunday with friends.  I did attend one Redskins home game with my good friend Bill Cavender which was an awesome experience.

Texans LogoBack in Houston years later I rode my bicycle downtown for the NFL Franchise mascot announcement.  My preference of Toros was passed by for the Texans.  I went to several early year (sometimes preseason) Texans games.  I remember being deafened at one of the first games there.  I’ve enjoyed some tailgating there (something always lacking at an Oilers game).  But I’ve never scheduled my fall sundays according to the Texans’ schedule.

Now, after almost a decade, today is the Texans’ first playoff game.  To say the least: this city is excited!  I no longer have even a television I can watch live sports on.  So, I will be joining some friends at a sports bar a short 5-block bicycle ride away in the ‘hood.

Go Texans.

The Five Mascots of the Apocalypse

fivethings.jpg

What are these things?

The short answer is they are the cute salable mascots for the 2008 Summer Beijing Olympic Games.

The longer answer is they represent The Olympic Flame, The Giant Panda, The Tibetan Antelope, The Shayan Kite, and The Chinese Sturgeon.

The most recent answer is that they are The Bearer of Incendiary Strife, The Lord of Angry Earth, The Creature of Righteous Unrest, The Bearer of Unfortunate Wind, and The Bringer of Torrent and Flood.

Those are much more fun, don’t you think!

It seems the more superstitious of the Chinese suspect that these mascots are the causes of recent strife in China, respectively, the most problematic and protested olympic torch relay in history, the Sichuan earthquake, Tibetan protests, a train crash, and widespread flooding.

I am sympathetic, to these natural and man-influenced disasters, but I am quite humored that these cute, neo-corporate, marketing tools may be at the root cause of it all.

Somehow life is easier to bear for humans when there is some supernatural power causing all the problems.