I forced Claire to watch many, many Ronaldinho videos last night. Kid's got moves.

What better way to thank Toby than with a corps of Scottish pipers? There is no better way!



No, wait. I was wrong. I'd like to thank him with a corps of exclamation points.

Thank you Toby, for the marvelous profile photo
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

You know, searching for that photo (which came from guardian.co.uk) has gotten "Brave Scotland" stuck in my head. You too? What a coincidence!

Go all night long, editors.

In case you're curious, the title above is the kind of spam I receive in the editors inbox at work.

Anyway, it's appropriate because I am about to post a link to a story I've written. Who's excited?

This month's topic was Viagra. More specifically, how Pfizer's trying to keep people from getting fake Viagra by accident (that's pretty dangerous, you know).

Pfizer Fights Viagra Counterfeiters

Don't you worry... there are some sex jokes in there.

It wasn't Beckham, that much I know.

We were back to our regularly scheduled soccer programming this weekend, which was nice. I got super-antsy after only having one opportunity to struggle into my stirrup socks last weekend.

Anyway, Saturday we had a really stellar set of heading drills, taught by James, The Man Who Makes Heading Look Easy and Not Painful. Seriously, this man looks every inch the football hooligan. He is from Liverpool (I think), his head is shaved to stubble, and he appears to be unaffected by getting smacked in the forehead repeatedly with projectiles. Like the two other gentlemen who coach us through the basics of football each week, James is the bee's knees.

The funny thing about heading: one inch too high or one inch too low, and it really effing hurts. If you hit that perfect place in the center of your forehead, the pain dissipates almost immediately.

I did a couple of decent ones, even when we practiced heading for goals. My forehead is tender, and I have a minor bruise on my nose. Not bad.

The big news from Saturday, though, is the really sweet goal I scored in the scrimmage. A hard kick from the left that crossed in front of the keeper into the right-most corner of the goal. The pinnacle of my soccer career, unlikely to be repeated in a situation where it counts, but I was pretty excited. James said it was like Renaldo...or was it Reynaldo? Or Ronald(inh)o? (I hope it was Ronaldinho... he's kickass... hence the picture of him). Well, some cool footballer who does not fall on his ass from a standstill.

Sunday was a tough match against a team called "Purple Haze." They have the requisite large quantity of big dudes.... none of whom could be bothered to actually wear their jerseys. Two of them were into the showboating footwork. Next time, I'm going to employ a little psychological warfare in my man-marking technique. We'll see who's giggling in the playoffs, big wild-haired-fancy-footworking dude. We'll see. I'm going to make you blush. And hopefully slow you down enough to take the ball away. Also, you and your rocket-footed friend are dicks. And you can quote me.

Anyway, if you couldn't tell, we lost. Our GD is back to negative numbers, though we're going into the playoffs in third place. So, our elimination match will be against a team we've beaten before. Not bad. Not bad atall.

Aforementioned rocket-footed gentleman was a little, shall we say, overzealous. And we weren't enjoying his antics. Nora, shortly after scoring a beautiful goal, went in to block this guy's shot and badly twisted her knee, necessitating a trip to the ER after the game. Luckily, nothing is torn, it was just a nasty sprain. The guy was chastened, but they still rallied their spirits and kicked our asses.

Next week's the playoff game vs. Bleu Cheese. Paint yourself green and come cheer us on.

I got drunk and I fell down.

Yeah, so everyone's sick of the disappointment that comes with typing in your favorite url (cough), waiting for the page to load, and seeing a very old post. About apostrophes, of all things.

The shortened week made for a mad scramble at work, and I am sorry for making everyone's workdays just a little bit duller (not to embiggen my worth or anything). Lucky for you, I'm scrambling a little less, and have a goodly number of things to post about.

First and foremost, the events of Thursday. I worked late and met up with a coworker for a beer. The wife (not, ahem, in a New Paltz sense, so much as a we've-been-roomies-forever-and-we
have-three-cats-sense... these two things can be mutually exclusive, I swear) was catching up with a friend from nursery school for happy hour. I was home by 9:30, settled in for an episode or two of Slings & Arrows on the DVR.

An hour later, Claire saunters in and stands in the kitchen doorway, swaying like a sapling in the breeze. She makes the announcement: "I. Am very. Drunk."

The worm she turns, eh? I have been the one who's unsteady on the pins on a weeknight looking at a hungover commute, and nothing pleases me more than not feeling like the only one who misbehaves.

And what kind of pseudo wife would I be if I did not heat up some food, pour a big glass of water and force her to stay awake while I took a bit of photo-documentation? A pisspoor one, that's what.

So here for your pleasure is a photo of Ms. Claire and her spoils of war (that's right kids, she nicked four glasses from the bar):
After the initial hilarity of drunkenness calmed and I had scraped her off the floor, the de-drunkening of Claire went rather smoothly with only mild verbal abuse sustained by me. A representative sampling:

"I've got your water right here, bitch" (this was via IM after I shouted an inquiry as to whether she'd finished her current glass yet).

"Texas is my balls" (in response to me reminding her that Seth would be away for the weekend in, you guessed it, Texas).

"This water is tepid! What are you trying to do, poison me!" (apparently I did not run the tap long enough).

Those of you present for our formative months as freshmen at Vassar will remember The Night of the Fallen Soldier. These events were, to my thinking, rather similar, though I'm better equipped to help someone sober up nowadays (thanks, bartending school!).

I am pleased to take credit for Claire's complete lack of hangover on Friday morning. And I believe that Gus has gotten over being stepped on.

In case anyone thinks I'm posting this to be mean, I am not. Of the two of us, Claire experiences very few nights of heroic drunkeness and very few mornings of epic hangovers. She demurely retires from the bar at 1am. I go for that ill-advised fourth (or fifth if it's been a long night), followed by a late-night slice and final collapse at 4ish. It was mightily amusing (for both of us, I think) to return to the state in which we first existed, when she was drinking malt liquor and I was afraid of alcohol entirely.

Those were the days.

Maybe I should look into one of those....

I'm going to take a moment for punctuation health.

Poor innocent, abused apostrophe (click the cartoon to make it bigger, in case you can't see it). You're either adored enough to be thrown in everywhere, or languish forgotten.



The sad thing is, misused (or missing) apostrophes can make it hard for me to live my life. I am rankled by the coffee cart that offers "bagel's" and unable to enjoy a simple cartoon. Why don't they know? Why didn't someone along the chain of command spot this?

If I may quote Lynne Truss: "The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy." Yes. I do have an Eats, Shoots & Leaves desk calendar. It was on sale. It's quite delightful. I find its words of punctuation wisdom to be heartening, even inspiring.

We all make mistakes. But... really, though? Really? "It's affiliates?"

Is there an embassy at which I may begin a protest of some kind?

cartoon from Slate.com

whoawhoawhoa! WHOA!

Long weekends are great. You face the proverbial music for the rest of the week, it seems, but I do so love sleeping in on a Monday. Happy Presidents' Day Sale Week, everyone. Enjoy reflecting on presidents (of the non-crappy variety) and buying that new Toyota!

Anyway, as I mentioned, it's great to have a free day for no reason. And today was especially great, as we had amazing weather. It was cold, but sunny and pretty dry.

Claire and I kicked the soccer ball around in Prospect Park with Seth and Ian. I managed to fall on my ass both en route to the park and then while taking a shot on muddy ground in front of some strangers.

It was good to get out and run around a bit, though, as much of the weekend had involved eating, sleeping, drinking, and watching Footballers' Wives (sooo good).

After wearing ourselves out at the Park, we trotted on home to watch some women's curling. I have to say, I LOVE curling. It's riveting. The fevered sweeping, the yelling. The neat shoes. We found ourselves commenting animatedly to eachother: "What a great shot!" We watched the US team get trounced by the Brits (which was sad), and then we caught one heck of a nailbiter between Canada and Denmark. I am weirdly excited for the finals this week. I'm rooting for the Swiss women, and I'm sort of rooting for the Swiss men as well, even though our own Minnesotans are in it. This is mostly because I have a crush on Ralph Stoeckli, the "skip" of the Swiss men's team.

Isn't he cute and Swiss? I believe he's from St. Gallen. I am not overly fond of St. Galler wurst, but I quite enjoy Herr Stoeckli. Well done, St. Gallen! Go here for a wonderful photo of the Swiss team surrounded by large cowbells.

I know what you're thinking. Why on earth would people watch American Idol over this?

image borrowed from curling.ch

SA. TUR. DAY. NIGHT!

Here are a few photos from this Saturday's Tobypalooza festivites. We especially enjoyed the guy who took a cannonball to the stomach (or, if you'd prefer, tummy).

Claire gives a knowing look after Tobs relates his account of a game of tummy sticks "gone horribly wrong."

Seth needs one shot of whisky per mention of the word "tummy."

Gil demonstrates a hot new dance he learned down at the cracker factory.

Claire invades my personal space.

This is where I get a little bit meta. Gil takes pictures for a blog post. Oooweeeooooo.

The special treat of Saturday evening was a round of Irish cocktails, which involve a pint of Guinness with a newly dug potato in it.

Josh attempted to swallow his potato whole. He thought it would help to Irish him up. It sort of worked. His liver is strong, but he can't stepdance or make colcannon quite yet. We're working on it.

All in all, a fantastic night. Less the very nice Mainers behind us who talked some shit about New Hampshire. The things people will do under the influence of alcohol.

Happy happy happy happy happy Toby Day!

The mighty Tobysseus returns. There will be the traditional pouring out of libations onto our heads (I stole this photo from Gilhouse. Thanks, Gilhouse!). We will also party like it's his birthday.

Toby is cooler than Johnny Weir's wardrobe, mightier than Bode Miller's liver, and fiercer than the Japanese women's curling team.

Welcome home, Tobs.

Like victory.

I don't want to complain about the warm weather. After all, New York City relies on the sun to clear away the snow, a habit I find less than charming.

However, the sudden rise in temperature has reminded me of two things:

1. When you don't pay for heat, you can't control it. Thus, my apartment is currently like the bloomin' Sahara. I am a dried-out husk of myself. The heat was on full force when I came home last night, forcing me to open all of the windows nice and wide, which only helped a little.

2. Warm weather + open windows = Oh, that's right. New York stinks. It's that Essence de Gross (I've actually had the New York Dolls' "Trash" stuck in my head all morning as a result). I love this city and all its madness, but sweet Mary Mother of God.

It's all making me very twitchy. Slushy gray puddles, dirty trash-festooned snowbanks, and the reek of millions of people's garbage. And I'm pretty sure they all piled it under my window last night.

On the bright side, a few more days of the heat at full blast and my nose will be too dry to smell anything anyway.

Head. Over. Heels.

I am in love.

Convenient that I should fall in love on Valentine's Day, no?

Ian introduced me to Ask Oxford, a free resource from those sexy minxes who bring us the OED (the OED, you may remember, is a paid dictionary online, which makes me sad). The "Ask the Experts" section is especially fantastic.

Want to know what sealed the deal?

"Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes."

Faced with that, what's a girl to do?

You might say I'm feeling pretty maritorious.

Or you might say I should give up and get another cat.

I deride you, sir!

It's funny, I thought that I hated Scott Stapp for the video "My Sacrifice" (even more than I hate any other part of Creed's oeuvre, that is) and his weird Jesus-y nonsense.

No. As it turns out, I hate him for having named a poor, defenseless baby Jagger. What a tool.

Getting married and then getting wasted and refused admittance to a plane on the same day is pretty cool though.

In this Yahoo article about the incident, they refer to him multiple times as "the rocker," apparently without irony.

I'll be going back into my bunker now.

Dog Show!

Ok, so this is in part inspired by Josh's beedog, in part because it's cute and boy am I a sucker for cute.

Observe:
See how the mighty Chihuahua (whose name is Mouse) has conquered his enormous foe?

Awww.

AP photo from news.yahoo.com

Grey Skull update.

I was mistaken. Our forfeit win was 3-0. So, our GD is now an even zero. BUT, we're in second place, as the two best teams have tied it up at first.

Marty did say that we would play and win with a lot of heart. You can't teach heart, folks. And the Grey Skull F.C. has loads of it.

And to think, we lost our first game 11-1. The Grey Skull is scrappy. Look out for us come playoff time!

Hey! You! Get offa my plow!

An update to my grumblings about New York's ability to deal with snow.

I figured that Brooklyn was getting shoddy plow attention because it's, you know, Brooklyn.

Nope. I'd have to say that Park Avenue South is far worse than 4th Ave in my 'hood. Which is funny because traffic flies on both roads. The plow method of choice here in Manhattan is to keep the blade about 3 inches off the ground, leaving a good coating of snow. Then, eleventy billion cars drive over it and pack it down. Then, when the temperature drops.... skating rink! Sweet!

Also, leaving enough room for people to cross the street in single file is ineffective. We only end up blocking traffic.

There's a man from my town, Bucky, who has about 16 earrings in each ear, some tattoos, and an extremely loud voice. He owns a sand pit and a giant commercial-sized truck and plow. I think Bloomberg should put him in charge. Bucky knows how to get this shit done.

image from biodiesel.org

The blizzard of 2006

So, we have had record snowfall in New York City, and everyone's talking about the Blizzard of '06. Which is funny, because all day I've been grumbling about how alarmist New York has been about this.

I'm going to come out and say it. This felt like a reg'lar old snowstorm. Sure, we got a shit-ton of snow, but I don't believe it's a blizzard until I feel it necessary to fill my bathtub with water. Because every good New Englander knows that when you're facing a mean storm, you fill the bathtub. And you take those milk jugs filled with water out of the freezer.

City living has desensitized me to a lot of things, and while this storm was intense in what it produced, it did not inspire the fear that came with the howling winds and ridiculous snow drifts that I remember from childhood in New Hampshire. One winter, our power was knocked out for just over a week. Another time, an army of Quebecois electricians decended upon the state to help restore power.

To me, a blizzard is scary. Howling winds, pounding drifts, flickering lights. Today was an inconvenience. Snow in my face as I trudged to the soccer match. But, the subway's running. See? It's genius. We can get around. Why are so many things closed? Pull yourselves together, people. In other parts of the country, if they can't drive they can't go anywhere. Here in New York, it's business as usual. You'd think. But you'd be wrong.

But damned if New York doesn't know how to plow a road or shovel a step. The subway steps here are several lawsuits waiting to happen. Street corners are impassable slushy drifts. Leading me, the taciturn New Englander to wonder "what in holy hell is going on here?" Where are the sidewalk plows? The armies of shovelers? The sand trucks? Commuters in New Hampshire are not told that they should expect slippery and snowy roads 12 hours after the storm has passed.

Sure, we may have fewer roads up theah in N'Hampshah, but c'mon. More streets means lots more seasonal workers. New York is, after all, in the northeast. Where they get, wait for it, Nor'easters. I mean, Christ. Give some of the damned NY1 reporters-who are so keen to tell us that yes, it is snowing, and pretty hard too-a shovel or a frickin' broom. Clear a sidewalk. Salt a step. We should be used to snow! Don't warn me about "drinking lots of fluids" (is this a snowstorm or a flu?).

And to think I sighed and complained when I saw a New Hampshire salt truck idling at a coffee shop. At least we were able to drive safely shortly after the thing was over.

Wilson Bentley image from wikipedia.org

Forfeeeiiiiiitttttt!

Castle Grey Skull F.C. emerged victorious yet again this weekend, this time against the number 1 team, Footlocker. Yes, that's right, we scrapped by them... because they did not show up. They let the inclement weather get in the way of holding on to their ginormous goal differential (which is still pretty big) and forfeited to us 5-1. So, now we've got a GD of 4. A positive number!

There were some folks from a few other teams, so we got our workout in and played some lively scrimmages.

As of this writing, the day's games are still going on, so we'll see how the standings shake out, but we're thinking we'll go into the tournament in 3rd, which would be cool.

AP image from fifaworldcup.yahoo.com

It could be the cabin fever...

This will only confirm my sister's suspicions that I'm turning into a frat boy, but man oh man am I excited for the World Cup.

It's ages away, I know, but in between Red Sox reading sessions, I'm visiting the FIFA/Yahoo site to sort out this enormous globally-ballyhooed sporting even in which I've taken no interest previously. It's weird and likely related to the playing of indoor soccer and subsequent association with actual soccer fans, not to mention the far away dream that is a season in which my skin does not become a dried-up husk.

It's especially funny because my understanding of the rules/positions/etc. to 11-a-side outdoor soccer is hazy at best. That hasn't stopped me from trying to work out which team I'll support (aside from the USA, I guess). Perhaps Switzerland. Kind of an underdog (they didn't qualify in '98 or '02). Argentina. Too obvious? Maybe Spain or Ghana.

I honestly have no idea what the shit is going on. Were my mother not 3000 miles away, she'd likely feel my forehead for a fever.

On a semi-related note, I had an epiphany in the radiologist's office the other day. I was sitting there, bored out of my skull, feeling all keyed up because I didn't really know what would happen next or how the procedure worked. And since I didn't have the insider treatment that I get at my mom's hospital in NH, I was left in the plebian waiting room without a clue, in the queue with everyone else (boy does that suck). And I realized that the main reason for my unease was that I'd never done anything like take a soccer ball to the hand before. Because the most strenuous thing I did as a kid was turn the page in a Civil War-era historical fiction novel. So, this is what it's like to be sporty (-ish... I mean, I'm not jogging every day nor have I swapped beer for Gatorade. Let's not get carried away). You hurt yourself, get X-rays, apply Icy-Hot. It's a whole new world.

AP image from fifaworldcup.yahoo.com

My Obsession With Gross Animals, Volume Something

I found out about this over at Elephant Larry (funny group, pretty good blog), and had to share, as it is right up my alley.

The Geoduck (pronounced GWEE-duck), is also known as the giant clam or the elephant trunk clam. They live for over a century. It's Evergreen College's mascot. They have an upsetting fight song.

According to Wikipedia:

Its large, meaty siphon is prized for its tasty (umami) flavour and crunchy texture. Extremely popular in Hong Kong, China and Japan, where it is considered a rare taste treat, Geoduck is mostly eaten cooked in a fondue-style Chinese hot pot or raw sashimi style, dipped in soy sauce and wasabi.

*gag*

The giant clams are going to eat the children! Help!

image from www.cses.washington.edu

Freyed not

Meghan O'Rourke's column in Slate today is an excellent discussion of what publishers should do given "readers' willingness to turn a half-blind eye if they feel that the fabrications smack of emotional truth" in works like A Million Little Pieces and James Frey's new book My Friend Leonard.

She suggests that the disclaimers in memoirs are perhaps insufficient, and that given the "flights of fancy" masquerading as memories of events, we need to rethink the categorization of the type of stories that are coming to rule the market:

Part of the predicament editors face, of course, is the continuing appetite for this type of overblown story. Sales for Frey's books may have dropped since the Smoking Gun allegations were made public, but it's not as though the marketplace has turned its back on Frey. Lerner's book is apparently being made into a Hollywood movie starring Liam Neeson. No one's fooled that all the confessional lore that claims big audiences and spots on Oprah is exactly true. But because of labels like "memoir" and "nonfiction," we have to pretend the spectacle is based in reality. So, perhaps instead of rigorous policing, we need a new name for this hybrid category. We're talking about stories inspired by gritty real life—stories that claim to be outrageously "authentic," like the best reality TV, while also playing up their own tabloid qualities. Maybe Doubleday didn't need an author's note; it needed Barnes & Noble to set up a new section in the bookstore. Coming soon to an outlet near you: "Reality fiction."

Not a bad idea, really. I mean, I don't buy the "if you can imagine it, it's real," argument. And it's certainly not because I only respect journalists. I'm just worried that eventually people will distrust both journalists (as they do because of Judy Miller and Jayson Blair) and writers of literary nonfiction. That eventually people will stop taking for granted that you lived it, saw it, and reported/wrote it. They'll expect that the writer is out for personal profit or fame, or that they're lazy or disturbed and untrustworthy. And that sucks. It ruins the whole agreement between writer and reader, whether it's a newspaper or a memoir.