Monthly Archives: January 2024

The NFL Blame Game

Posted on by under blog snax, Generic Rant

A BlogSnax© post

It’s football playoff time. Like a lot of guys, I spend (too) much of my weekends watching overpaid, overhyped, often overweight men pound each other into the artificial turf in pursuit of their big dream: dating Taylor Swift. No, not really. Well, yes, really, but the other dream: a Super Bowl©® championship, which entitles them to wear an immense, cumbersome, ostentatious ring causing their knuckles to drag on the ground for the rest of their lives. But at least they can flash them when making commercials for Subway©®.

One football scene that always amuses me is when there is movement at the line of scrimmage before the ball is hiked. The flags are thrown and action stops while referees confer about whether the offensive line had a false start or the D-line was offsides. Meanwhile, the players on the field blame each other. Seriously, it’s hysterical to watch mountainous men wagging their fingers at each other. “It’s not my fault, Mommy! He made me do it!”

Case in point (pun intended) is this screenshot from the Ravens/Texans game on 1/20/24:

No doubt the refs counted the number of fingers and made their decision based on that. Or maybe they responded as any frustrated parent of juveniles would, yelling, “Kids, stop arguing or we’re going home right this minute!”

By the way, on an only tangentially related note: Football was made for watching on TV.* At the stadium, it’s cold, it’s crazy, and you can’t really see the game. Unless you like to be surrounded by drunks painting their faces and chests and wearing pirate, S&M, animal, or other insane attire like rejects from a junior high costume party, stay home where you can eat anything you want anytime you want and at reasonable prices, see endless replays from every possible vantage point (including that of a slug crawling along the goal line), and you can easily get to the bathroom whenever you want. (Never underestimate the value of an easily accessible bathroom.)

[*On the other hand, baseball was made for viewing live. There’s nothing like sitting in the sun in a non-obstructed view seat, hot dog and favorite beverage in hand, while the greatest sport ever leisurely unfolds before you.]

Skimming off the photo pile

Posted on by under photos

Some more photos to share from my backlog. These are bicycle related:

Window boxes outside a great bike shop on Martha’s Vineyard:

The flowers aren’t doing so well but the sentiment is spot on.

Seen in the North End of Boston:

Can you believe some people put water bottles in this super convenient sub holder? What are they thinkin’?

For every temporary impediment to cycling…

…there’s a glittering invitation to go farther!

This is my favorite bridge in all of Massachusetts. Straddling Newton and Watertown, the Charles River Greenway Bridge is a beautiful structure spanning a beautiful river along a beautiful bike path. It has me dreaming of spring already.

Happy Gripesgiving!

Posted on by under blog snax, Generic Rant

A BlogSnax© post

In Disney’s delightful 1951 adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland”, the following discussion takes place:

Alice: I’m sorry I interrupted your birthday party…

March Hare: Birthday? Hahaha! My dear child, this is not a birthday party!

Mad Hatter: Of course not! Hehehe! This is an unbirthday party!

Alice: Unbirthday? Why, I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand.

March Hare: Its very simple. Now, thirty days have sept- no, when… an unbirthday, if you have a birthday then you… haha… she doesn’t know what an unbirthday is!

Mad Hatter: How silly! Ha ha ha ha! Ah-hum… I shall elucidate! Now statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday.

March Hare: Imagine, just one birthday every year.

Mad Hatter: Ahhh, but there are 364 unbirthdays!

The same can be said of Thanksgiving. It takes up 1/365th of the year. The rest of the year is spent complaining and griping. Why not make it official and declare every day except the fourth Thursday of November to be “Gripesgiving”?

All this is put forth with tongue firmly embedded in cheek, of course. But we probably do gripe about 365 times more than we give thanks, so this isn’t as far-fetched an idea as you might think. We should either celebrate consistent with our behavior or reverse that ratio. (Try this idea to get things started.)

[Confession: I thought I’d come up with this original thought but it turns out many others have used the same idea. Oh, well. It was new to me. And maybe to you.]

TV and toilets

Posted on by under Generic Rant

A BlogSnax© post

Random thoughts on a random day. One for every single day of the year! So far.

Have you seen the ads for the “Golden Bachelor”? They break new ground in hyperbole, hubris, and downright lying. It was proclaimed to “make history”. With such a status, you can understand why they claimed that it was “all anyone can talk about.” Is it all you’re talking about? I’m pretty sure I could watch it (God forbid) and not even think about it, never mind talk about it.

I’m not a fan of the vertical toilet paper holder as shown here. As Cynthia Tobias would say, “What’s the point?” As far as I can tell, it attempts to address only one problem: the controversy over whether the paper should come over the front or the back. Unfortunately, it merely swaps that dilemma for an even more perplexing one: left or right. (Yet another illustration of “Rick’s Law of the Conservation of Woes“.) That answer will likely depend on whether you’re a conservative or liberal. Meanwhile, the solution to the horizontal controversy is irrefutable: the paper should come over the front. End of discussion.

[As I typed the title of this post, it occurred to me that it makes an editorial statement in itself. Both of these household appliances are often filled with crap. Fortunately, the latter is rarely filled to overflowing. The same cannot be said of the former.]