As a Minnesotan I will be required to see A Prairie Home Companion.  As the least cool person in the room I will probably enjoy it.

Football (the soccer variety)

Every four years renew my attempt to enjoy soccer.  I’m still not getting it.  My issues are as follows:

Penalties

What the heck constitutes a penalty in this game?  I have watched several games and I was baffled how one player would get a yellow card for what seemed a fairly light act, and another player could elbow someone in the face with no penalty whatsoever, except the other game I see later where someone gets a red card for an equally intentional elbow . . . wtf?

I swear I didn’t see this much awkward refereeing four years ago.  Maybe I forgot.

Diving

I loath diving.  I watch sport to see people excel, not bait penalties on the other team.  I believe that diving in any sport should result in impaling the diving player.  I don’t know if football fans have accepted it or if it is just part of the game but I saw what I thought were several disgusting cases of diving.  Granted the diving wasn’t nearly as frequent as the odd refereeing, but it was even more off-putting when I saw it.

What the heck is going on?

I don’t think ESPN is doing the sport any favors in the US.  Yeah they’re giving it airtime but they need better commentators.  They’re not helping me appreciate the sport at all with most of the comments something like they need to make that pass and ooh that was a missed opportunity.  The commentary is barely equal to the level of American football commentators, and that bar is set way low.  I’d like to know who did what wrong, why, how they should have done it.  Get some fancy teleprompter stuff going on, tell me who is wearing what color outfits more than once a game, and point what player you’re talking about.  We’re not all watching the game from the beginning to end or are soccer fanatics.

Skillz?

This probably has something to do with the previous item, but it seems more often than not that scoring occurs when the opposing team’s defense screws up.  Granted taking advantage of your opponent’s mistakes is a part of any sport but it just seems so much a larger part of scoring in soccer that it takes some of the excitement I look for in most sports. 

Even so I must admit I saw some cool goals smattered about.  I just wish I didn’t have to watch two or more games to see them.  I think I’ll stick to youtube.com highlight reels for now.

Dear Democrats

When the republicans introduce stupid ideas that has little support from the populous and are doomed to fail in congress just to satisfy their frantic base . . .  take advantage of the situation by not doing the same stupid thing yourself.

If it weren’t for all those naughty videos I made of myself I wonder if I could do a better job than these dorks.  Is it so hard to let the other party’s failures just simmer on their own without making yourself look foolish as well?

Grrr.

June Fast

Did June go insanely fast for anyone else?  I think I need to adjust my internal chronometer.

Water Softener

A week or so ago water softener chose to continuously pump water thru itself despite the fact that it had finished its recharging cycle hours earlier.  It would not stop pumping water even when I disconnected power from the water softener.  Fortunately there is a handy bypass valve allowing me to force the darned thing to stop.

I had someone come out to take a look at it.  They wanted a massive chunk of change just to do “diagnostics”.  I said no thanks and sent him on his way.

There are some internet sites that seem to provide helpful diagrams of how to disassemble my water softener in order to diagnose possible problems.  That is essentially what the guy who came to look at it wanted to do.  Only if I did it myself it would not be at half the cost of a new water softener with no guarantee of fixing it.  Of course if I do it myself it could cost the entire price of a new water softener :P

I think I’m going to do some gentle poking at the water softener and if I’m not fond of the process I’ll find someone else to take a look at it.