Weekend Wrap-up 7-29-2006

If it's Saturday, then it must be time for the Weekend Wrap-up! Onward!

Jockey apologizes for head-butting horse

This article talks about a man who head-butted a horse in a fit of anger. Apparently, the act got him in so much trouble that he had to later apologize for it. It seemed a dumb thing to do, anyway. Have you seen how much bigger a horse’s head is to a human’s? It’s good thing the horse didn’t head-butt him back! He would have gotten more than just a bad headache!

Rubber sidewalks

Are rubber sidewalks the wave of the future? It’s not quite what you think; these aren’t made entirely of rubber, but a mix of ground-up car tires plus cement. This combo apparently has more durability than standard concrete because it has a flexibility to it that standard concrete does not. It won’t crack as easily as concrete will. Plus, the surface is easier on the feet and knees of joggers. But don’t think that you can just slam someone onto a rubber sidewalk and expect them to bounce up real high like in a Warner Bros. cartoon. It’s a sidewalk, not a trampoline!

Cindy Sheehan to Crawford: I’m baa-aack…!

Cindy Sheehan, the most famous protestor who lost a child in the Iraq war, has purchased land in Crawford, Texas, and plans to start protesting there again, much to the annoyance of the Crawfordians (Crawfordites? Crawdaddies?). I don’t much blame them, as Crawford is a small town, and all those protestors last summer really disrupted things. And besides, Sheehan has pretty much worn out her gig. Don’t get me wrong—I am both sad and sorry that she lost her son in this war, and my heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to her. But her son knew the risks of serving in the military - sometimes you make the ultimate sacrifice for your country. In fact, she knew these risks as well.

I had chalked up last summer's protests as a mother grieving for her son. Her pain, and her desire to let Bush know about it were understandable, especially given that she also happens to be a liberal who was against her son serving in the military and who was also against this war. But Sheehan is not the only woman who has lost a child in this nation's wars. She's not the first, and she won't be the last. Her protests have gone beyond grieving and into self-promotional stunts to keep herself in the news. In essence, she is using her son much like she says that Bush used her son. Watching her efforts to keep her name on the news has become a study in psychological pathology rather than a demonstration of pathos.

In short, it needs to end. Her last chance at making a decent impact was in January's State of the Union address, in which she managed to get herself thrown out before Bush even got out to speak. She wore a protest t-shirt that she was told to turn inside-out, or that she would be escorted out. She did not do so, and was led away, wasting what was probably her best chance at making a poignant stand of the sacrifices that many parents of soldiers make in this nation's wars. If she had managed to keep herself in that auditorium, what news media could have avoided showing her when Bush got to the point of discussing the sacrifices that soldiers and their families make in wartime? It would have taken nothing for her to reverse that shirt so that she could stay in the auditorium, but her desire to protest got to the point that it overrode her logical thinking, and she got thrown out before she could make her ultimate act of protest - thus she ended up not making any protest at all.

Her fifteen minutes of fame have been used up much more than fifteen minutes ago, and she needs to go back to whatever she was doing before she started her protests. The above news article talks about her wanting to make the land she purchased in Crawford into a park named Spc. Casey Sheehan Memorial Peace Park once she's done protesting Bush. I say that she should go ahead and stop protesting now and get that park set up for her son. Maybe then, she can finally let go of this obsession of hers, and her son can finally rest in peace.

Sports

Okay, I haven’t talked about sports since the Dallas Mavericks’ run in the NBA Finals. Well, there’s a good reason for that. Basically, I’m waiting for football to come around, because the Texas Rangers baseball team is not doing well. They are a streaky club, that is, they’ll do well for a while, then they’ll turn around a lose several in a row and lose whatever progress they had made, then add two more losses on top. I’ll always support the Rangers, but dang, it gets so frustrating to watch them play. Like yesterday against the Royals. In the second inning, suddenly the pitching gave up 5 runs. The Royals ended up with 11. Granted, any teams’ pitching is going to have bad games, but these explosions of runs in one inning happen too many times for my taste.

As for football, the Dallas Cowboys’ training camp opens up as of today. In a month, the regular season will follow. However, one loyal fan I know –whom I’ll call Kokomo Joe – has sworn off the Cowboys until Terrell “Terrible” Owens (a.k.a. “T.O.”) is no longer with the team. Kokomo Joe thinks that TO is a bad influence, and he does not want his kids to watch this guy. So for the first time in Kokomo Joe’s life, he will be Cowboy-free this season. But he won’t be football free. There’s still the Texas Longhorns. The National Champions, in case you don’t already know.

And speaking of national champions, I also look forward to going to see my local university’s team play, the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs. They have been a surprising team in recent years, thanks largely to Coach Gary Patterson. He also agreed to a multi-year contract, leaving open the possibility that he might live up to the promise he made of trying to bring home TCU’s first national championship since the 1930’s, when the name Davey O’Brien was on the playing field rather than on a trophy. Ah, what a grand, glorious day that would be if it happens. Hey, stranger things have happened! For instance, who would have ever thought that the Cowboys would sign TO, the very guy who had stepped on their star?

Abortion and the death penalty

Someone asked me if I could put my opposition to both legalized abortion and the death penalty into one sentence. Although I don’t normally like “sound-biting” my arguments, I gave it a shot. Here ya go:

“Any society that can execute its unborn is not responsible enough to execute its criminals.”

Feel free to quote me, and note my blog address while you’re at it. :-)

Blogcasts

Soon and very soon, I will experiment with making podcasts. This blog site allows for making podcasts to post here, and I’ve also come across info on making podcasts. Won’t it be cool to actually hear me rant about something instead of just reading me rant about something? I shall be keeping you good folks up on my progress on that regard. :-D

Have a great week!