Weekend Wrap-up 6-24-2006

“Mother of Champions” – Chinese superhero

In the DC universe is a new superhero whose name in Chinese translates as “Mother of Champions.” She is called “Mother of Champions” because her superhero power is… well, she can give birth to 25 children at a rate of every third day. I realize that superhero stories tend to push the concept of “suspension of disbelief”, but this is a bit much even for the superhero genre! Does this poor woman ever get to do anything normal, like going out to eat or visiting a theme park? Plus, a woman as fertile as she is, I can imagine telling any man who comes too close to her “Don’t touch me, or I’ll have 25 of your kids!” I can't imagine a man who wouldn't be frightened away by such a threat.

Sports

With basketball season over, now it’s time to get into baseball. Earlier in the baseball season, the Texas Rangers had a 5 game lead in their division, largely due to the fact that they are in the worst division in baseball. During that time, I had said that the Rangers needed to work on extending that lead while the other division teams were doing poorly. I had said that they needed to extend that lead to 10 games, then 15 and more while they had the chance. But did they listen? Of course not! Well, now the lead is gone, and they are battling the Oakland A’s for the division lead. So far, they’ve been exchanging the lead as one team wins while the other loses, and then changing places as the other team wins while the first team loses. This is the sort of thing that I had warned about. Sigh. Fortunately, there’s still more than half of the season to go.

Ozzie Guillen: The Mouth heard 'round the world

And speaking of baseball, Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen made news this week for uttering the "f" word to a sports columnist. No, not THAT "f" word, the other one -- "fag". I remember some years back talking about another sports figure who also made news about his comments: John Rocker. Back then, he had talked about not wanted to ride New York's subways next to undesirable folks, including "a queer with AIDS". Not surprisingly, he got grief for that, and he was ordered to undergo sensitivity training, as Ozzie was told to do. I can understand why MLB would fine players for saying such things, and I can even understand suspending them for a certain amount of time, but I think that the sensitivity training is largely going to be a waste of time.

Will this training actually help these players to be more sensitive, or will it instead teach them to shut up and let them stew in their juices? With Rocker, I had said that --while his speech was offensive-- he had as much a right to say it as anyone else has to say something offensive. Rather than try to censor Rocker, it's best to just let him mouth off so others can see how bad he is. Censoring would only make him a martyr, and he doesn't deserve such an honor. It's best to just let these players sink or swim in regards to their comments by respecting their freedom of speech, rather than come down in such a way that is more likely to create resentment rather than help them see the errors of their ways.

Also, others have a right to protest Ozzie's statement. That's the beauty of our freedom of speech. Others have the right to tell Ozzie that his remarks are offensive, and that they reflect poorly on the Sox, and on MLB in general. That way, he has to defend his remarks --or apologize for them. That's how this should play out; that's how freedom of speech should work. "Sensitivity training" is only for show to make it appear that the person in charge is doing something about an offensive person; but in truth it will accomplish nothing. I fully doubt that Gullien is going to come out of sensitivity training more sympathetic to homosexuals. If anything, he'll be more resentful --and NOT more sensitive.

News of our animal friends

Now for a couple of notations of our animal friends. First, this story of a goat named "Billy" (what an imaginative name!) in England, who got butted out for disorderly conduct during a review. The goat got out of formation and disrupted the review --all in front of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth! Horrors! Well, the goat got a demotion for that. I just hope that the other goats were paying attention.

Another disorderly creature is a pelican in this story, in which she ran into a car due to being intoxicated --but from possibly eating tainted algae, not from downing brewskis. In the story, it reports of similar strange behavior from other pelicans. Sounds more to me like the pelicans have learned how to party from the teenagers and college students who have parties on their beach. Or perhaps they watched too many episodes of MTV's Spring Break. Couldn't they have picked up other, more respectable habits from humans?

Blog ideas

Some of my more regular readers know that I've pretty much settled in on making these Weekend Wrap-ups. However, you also know that I tend to experiment with other ideas in order to push my writing and artistic talents into new, more challenging directions. Let me pop this new idea at you and see what you think. How about, once a week, I have "Topics Tuesday" or "Topics Thursday"? Once a week on Tuesday or Thursday, I shall discuss a certain topic and try to talk about it for the average length of a column -- usually 750 to 800 words. It could be a current topic in the news at the time, or it could be my take on a given issue that comes up once in a while.

I really want to work on the opinionating part of my blog entries, because that's the main reason that I made it. Plus, I want to get into the habit of writing on a consistent basis. If I set myself up to write a column on Tuesday or Thursday, then it makes it easier to motivate myself to write. Why Tuesday or Thursday? Because it's easier to remember when I stick the word "Topics" in front of it. Maybe I can come up with something earlier in the week and post my comments on Tuesday. Or, if nothing's coming on Tuesday, I'll wait until Thursday and do it then. I can also try to plan an editorial cartoon to go with it.

I'll still do my Weekend Wrap-ups on Saturday or Sunday, and maybe I can make Friday "Freaky Friday", in which I pick an unusual news item and talk about that. The other days of the week can be for other commentary, or for me to post some artwork or interesting photographs. This is a work in progess, as you can see. ;-)