Second Verse, Same As The First!

Well, after this weekend’s Snowmageddon, we’re all set to get another round later this afternoon through tomorrow here in Your Nation’s Capital.  The weather-wallahs are still calling for anything between 10 and 20 inches of extra white stuff to go on top of the two feet or so that certainly hasn’t gone anywhere in the past 48 hours.

We’re a bit better prepared this time around at the Port-swiller residence, self having hauled in an extra allotment of firewood and Mrs. Robbo having stocked up on foodstuffs that can be cooked on the stove-top (thank Heaven we put in a gas range this past summah!) or don’t need to be cooked at all.  As I have remarked elsewhere, as fond as I am of the great Commonwealth of Virginny, I have nothing but contempt for Dominion Power, which does not seem to have upgraded its grid since Reconstruction, and I have every confidence that we’re going to lose power again.  Over the weekend the outage lasted about 20 hours.  Who knows how long it will go this time around?

Also of interest – we have never been particularly happy with the back deck of the PSR. a rayther ugly affair “designed” by the previous owners.  At the same time, we’ve never been at a point where we felt we could justify blowing a big wodge of dosh to replace it.  The standing joke has been to hope that it might collapse on its own accord due to a storm of one kind or another, and we could get the insurance to pay for its replacement.  With three or four feet of snow heaped up on it, this becomes something of a greater possibility.  Fingers crossed!

Duck And Cover

A conversation between Robbo and the youngest (8 year old) gel this evening:

8YO:   Why should I do everything you say?  You’re not my ruler!

Self:   Well, as a matter of fact, I am your ruler.

8YO:  Oh?  Well come here then, Dah-tee:  I have something I need you to measure for me!

On the one hand, I admire the gel’s quick wit.  On the other, her impertinence makes my fingers twitch.

I already pity the poor fools on whom this gel sets her sights.  May the Lord have mercy on their souls, for she sure as heck won’t.

Snowmageddon!

By the way, I thought Chicagoans liked to sneer at us Dee Cee crybabies for our hyperbolic reaction to snowfall.

Missing The Point

Once the power came on at the Port-Swiller residence last evening – having been out for 18 hours due to Snowmaggedon,  Robbo sat himself down to watch Royal Flash and see for himself just how successfully the exploits of Sir Harry Flashman were translated from book to silver screen by his creator, George MacDonald Fraser.

The answer?  Not much.

I won’t bother with a detailed review.  Suffice to say the story was poorly done and needlessly punctuated with ridiculous slapstick gags.  Also, Oliver Reed could no more pull off Otto von Bismark than he could Queen Cleopatra.  It isn’t that he was a bad actor (in fact, he was a very good one), it’s that he just weren’t a Prussian.

Of all things that stuck in my brain, though, was a remark Flashy makes at one point about feeling like he’d sat in barbed wire.  “Half a tick,” says I, “This story is supposed to take place in 1848.  There was no such thing as barbed wire at that point, surely?”

Well, a visit to the Barbed Wire Museum confirms my suspicion:

THE INVENTION OF WIRE WITH POINTS
In 1867, two inventors tried adding points to the smooth wire in an effort to make a more effective deterrent. One example was not practical to manufacture, the other experienced financial problems. In 1868, Michael Kelly invented a practical wire with points which was used in quantity until 1874.

THE INVENTION OF BARBED WIRE
Joseph F. Glidden of Dekalb, Illinois attended a county fair where he observed a demonstration of a wooden rail with sharp nails protruding along its sides, hanging inside a smooth wire fence. This inspired him to invent and patent a successful barbed wire in the form we recognize today. Glidden fashioned barbs on an improvised coffee bean grinder, placed them at intervals along a smooth wire, and twisted another wire around the first to hold the barbs in a fixed position.

Exactly.  That anomolous gaff positively ruined the rest of the picture for me, I can tell you.  (Sorry, but my little mind is posivitely infested with hobgoblins like this.)

Now Fraser was a meticulous enough historian that he could not possibly have put this simile in by accident.  I can only assume that somebody else added it in order to connect with the audience and that Fraser was forced to grit his teeth and bear it (along with much else) in order to see his movie get done.

Which is one of the main reasons I would never write for Hollywood.  (The other being that nobody’s ever asked me to, of course.)

In Which Robbo Is No Longer The Skipper

Well, I found out yesterday that I will not, in fact, be managing a softball team this spring.  Through a combination of mis-communication and (to be honest) some dithering on my part over what level the eldest gel would play, the league understood that this season I didn’t want the job and gave it to somebody else.

Instead, I will be serving on the coaching staff of both the eldest gel (who will be playing AAA again) and the youngest gel (who is just starting out and will be in transition ball).

The news came as a bit of a shock to me, as over the past week or two I had begun to get excited about the prospect of managing again, even going so far as to begin thinking about my introductory speech.  And as it sinks in, I find myself a bit torn.

On the one hand, I suppose I’m a bit relieved at the thought that I’m not going to be stuck with all the administrative burdens – keeping track of the equipment, setting line-ups and fielding assignments, planning practices, etc.  Also, it will no longer be incumbent on me to be the first one at the field and the last to go.

On the other hand, well…..I like managing.  There’s something immensely gratifying about building up the bond with a team, to have them look to you for leadership and guidance.   Helping out as a coach is all well and good, but I can’t help feeling that at the same time it’s one step removed from that special relationship.

Oh, well.  I suppose the only thing to do is to be an especially active coach, not just one of those dads who wanders in and out of the dugout.   Most managers appreciate the help, so that shouldn’t be a problem.   And Lord knows that between the two schedules I’ll see plenty of time at the field.   Plus, working under somebody else will provide good experience for when I get back to the managerial level myself.

Jaws

I was reading this story about Stephen Schafer, that poor fellah killed by sharks while kiteboard surfing (whatever that is) down in Flahrduh when these lines caught my eye:

Schafer’s friends told TCPalm.com they are shocked by his death.

“I’ve never heard of multiple sharks in this area surrounding someone and fatally wounding him,” said the victim’s childhood friend, Teague Taylor, 36. “He was the nicest person ever.”

On Tuesday, the day before the fatal attack, Taylor told TCPalm.com he was surfing near where his friend was attacked and he saw several sharks.

“You always think in the back of your mind that they (sharks) are out there,” he said.

Jordan Schwartz, who has known Schafer for five years, told TCPalm.com that Schafer was a very experienced kiteboard surfer.

“He was a super nice guy. Always mellow. I don’t think he had any enemies,” he said.

I don’t want to seem unduly curmudgeonly here.  Obviously this was a horrid thing to have happened and I’m sure the poor man’s friends truly are in shock but………what possible difference does it make to the attack that he was a nice guy without any enemies?  Would it have been any less horrible if he was a right bastard who kicked dogs and stole children’s candy?  If the sharks had realized what they were about, would they have broken off and gone to find a less saintly sort?

I bring this up simply because I believe these people are actually reverting to the mass-media stereotypes that we have adopted in order to help ourselves deal with violence in our culchah.  All crazed gunmen and other perpetrators of such violence are remembered as being quiet and keeping to themselves, all victims as popular and outgoing.

The sharks, which could not be reached for comment, will of course be described by somebody as misunderstood.

Going To The Source

Regular port-swillers will know that I currently am taking a pre-Lenten romp through the Flashman Chronicles of George MacDonald Fraser.  I’ve polished off Flashman, Royal Flash and Flashman’s Lady so far and am just starting in on Flashman and the Mountain of Light.

As is always the case when I read these books, I have been tantalized by the bibliographies set down in Fraser’s endnotes.   This time, however, I have started to do something about it.  Thus, to that end, I have just tracked down and purchased The Expedition to Borneo of H.M. Dido for the Suppression of Piracy: With Extracts from the Journal of James Brooke, Esq., of Sarawak by Henry Keppel, one of the sources on which Fraser bases his account of Brooke’s 1841 campaign against the Borneo pirates (in which Keppel participated) that is one of the major highlights of Flashman’s Lady.

According to Amazon, this book ranks at #1,962,493 in its sales list, so I’m assuming there isn’t all that much interest out there in it, but I will let you know what I think.  For myself, I expect to enjoy it thoroughly both in and of itself and also as the first step on a quest that may well last me many, many years – namely, to read as much of the source material laid out in the Flashman Chronicles as possible.

Loose Lips

The other day the eldest gel received an e-mail containing an anti-Obama joke.  (As a matter of fact, it was really an anti-incumbent joke that I’ve heard before relating to other presidents.  The punch line involves throwing the president out of a plane and the satisfaction such action would bring to disgruntled citizens.)  Being still in the first, heady stages of email addiction, she immediately flipped it over to a group of her little friends.

Well, amongst the recipients was a gel whose parents are libs of the bluest sort.  A short time later, her mother wrote directly back to my gel, pointing out the thoughtlessness, tastelessness and potential racist implications of the joke in some detail.  The gel was appalled when she got the note back.  I don’t think she’s going to be forwarding any more political jokes any time soon.

Of course, being Dad, I only found out about all this after the fact.

Now I have no problem at all with the gel learning about civility in general and prudence in what is said to whom in particular, even if the lesson is a bit of a shock to her.  Burned hand and all that.  Nonetheless, I’m a bit miffed that the mother felt she should take it upon herself to administer said lesson.   She did so on the grounds that she has known the gel for a long time and therefore felt it was “okay” to deal with her directly, but the more I think on it, the more presumptuous this seems to me, particularly since I believe her “message” was thin-skinned, fussy and over the top.  (Plus, I’ll go bail she wouldn’t have sent it had the subject of the joke been Sarah Palin.)

Anyhoo, when the gel came to us in tears, we spoke to the friend’s mother, thanking her for her concern but suggesting that next time she has a problem with our child, perhaps she ought to speak to us about it first.

Memento Meowi

I see where Oscar the Cat is back in the news.

Who he?  Well, a couple years ago a story appeared about this cat attached to a Rhode Island nursing home that seemed to have an uncanny knack for sniffing out which patients were on the verge of shuffling off this mortal coil and cosying up to them.   Apparently since then, he’s accurately predicted another 50 deaths.

Dr Dosa and other staff are so confident in Oscar’s accuracy that they will alert family members when the cat jumps on to a bed and stretches out beside its occupant.

“It’s not like he dawdles. He’ll slip out for two minutes, grab some kibble and then he’s back at the patient’s side. It’s like he’s literally on a vigil,” Dr Dosa wrote.

Dr Dosa noted that the nursing home keeps five other cats, but none of the others have ever displayed a similar ability.

In his book, “Making rounds with Oscar: the extraordinary gift of an ordinary cat”, Dr Dosa offers no solid scientific explanation for Oscar’s behaviour.

He suggests Oscar is able – like dogs, which can reportedly smell cancer – to detect ketones, the distinctly-odoured biochemicals given off by dying cells.

I recall posting about Oscar the first time he came to light and I’ll say the same thing now that I said then.  Everybody is marveling at what a sense he has for predicting these deaths.  Nobody seems to be considering that he may actually be causing them.

I mean, ask yourself this question honestly:  If a cat has to choose between saving a human life and protecting its own reputation, which do you think it will do?

‘Zactly.  And as a matter of fact, not only will he pick the latter, he’ll consider it a win-win, too.

UPDATE: Here’s my original post on Oscar.  I see that my memory is a bit fuzzy after all and at the time I actually borrowed my original line from somebody else.  Credit where it is due, of course.  But I also like what I wrote in following up:

I suppose I’m willing to accept (simply for lack of proof) that Oscar isn’t murdering the poor blighters outright, but that doesn’t really cause me to warm up much to him. If this had been a story about a dog, I would have assumed that his purpose in seeking out those about to die was to provide them comfort and sympathy. I’d be willing to bet that ol’ Oscar does it just to gloat.

Heh.  Yeah, back in the day I used to be a halfway decent writer…..

For Mr. FLG

Carson Holloway writes on Tiger Woods and Plato.

I don’t know if Mr. FLG cares about golf or celebrities very much, but I do know he likes him some Plato.