Sunday, November 29, 2009

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Oddities abound!

:: Having gone to college in northern Iowa, I interacted with more than a few Minnesotans, all of whom had elder relatives who insisted on trotting out lutefisk every year. This despite the fact that no one in their right mind could possibly want to eat the stuff. Here's a description. I'd sooner eat haggis than that.

:: Don't look at this article if you're in any way squeamish! The 10 Most Horrifying Sports Injuries is just that. Faces pulverized by objects in flight, limbs bent in directions they're not supposed to bend and in places they're not supposed to be bendable, and one that longtime Buffalo Sabres fans will almost certainly remember.

I was actually watching the Monday Night Football game in which Napoleon McCallum destroyed his leg. I recall that it wasn't clear what the injury was until ABC put up a replay, no one having any idea of what had happened -- and all three guys in the booth (this was during the Al Michaels, Frank Gifford, and Dan Deirdorf) simultaneously going, "Ooooohhhh...." You can hear that moment in the YouTube vid over there. If you want. It's pretty gross.

:: If ever we needed evidence that some folks out there have way too much time on their hands, I give you...shudder...a Seinfeld/Star Wars mash-up poster.

I feel dirtier just looking at that.

More next week!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

He was such a kind man. It was pre-Internet days, and I wrote how much I admired his books.... and my love of a local 'swamp' where I went for long walks under the dense canopies of trees, through a field of dead boughs I called the bone forest, and through the prairie grass... it was a timeless place where you heard no sound of the modern world. He wrote back that he had just finished a book with a swamp and if he had known, he would have named the swamp after me. He was a slow writer, which annoyed him, but possibly that explained why his words were so polished, the text so intimate. He was thrilled to share in a love of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who at the time was not as popular in recordings as he is today.

Lovandyss is such a magical book, exploding with imagination, and taking you deep into the dark realm of Ryhope Woods where the little girl Tallis seeks her lost brother... it was tactile, fascinating, and ultimately heartbreaking in its narrative.

'I am an old man writing you on a cold December night. I wonder if you will love the snow as much as I do? And regret as much the way it can imprision you. There is old memory in snow... we bring alive ghosts... they are wise in ways that are a wisdom we shall share but have forgotten. But the wood is us and we are the wood! You will learn this. You will smell that ancient winter... '