Turn away if you're squeamish

I don't know about you, but I'm sick to death of all the talk of proposed re-alignment in the NHL.  Not because I don't think it necessary, but because the twiddling of thumbs by the league and its players is going to lead to another work stoppage in 2012.  As it stands now there are 3 teams who, logically need re-alignment Detroit, Minnesota, and paramount of the three, Winnipeg, who is currently in a division with teams in sunny south Florida.  Now the players yesterday rejected a proposed re-alignment plan from the league because the conferences would be lop-sided, and there'd be less chance for teams to make the playoffs and compete for the cup.

This solution is really very simple.  Although some fans might not like it (but if they'd go to games in the cities we wouldn't be talking about this.) Contraction.  Teams that perennially lose money should be folded.  This is an easy fix.  You fold Phoenix, Columbus, Nashville, Florida, Tampa, and the New york Islanders.  Thats 3 teams per conference. Then you hold a dispersal draft for the players left standing when the dust settles.  Then you draw a vertical line down the centre of a map of North America and the teams on either side of the line are in the appropriate conferences.  You then balance a schedule so that every team plays eachother home at home once, and the remaining games are played within conference.  Also with the folding of teams you can eliminate the rats in the league like Brad Marchand, Sean Avery, Matt Cooke etc.  Due to the availability of talented players left standing when their teams are folded the need for these rats will be minimal, if there's need for them at all.  So now I've fixed 2 problems.  I've fixed the conferences, and I've made sure that every arena will get to see Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin at least once.  The problem with my solution is that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will never fold the teams I've proposed because he's too stubborn to admit he made a mistake going into markets that should never have been allowed to have NHL hockey to begin with (Except for the Islanders.  That shit is all their owner's fault.).  As for the playoffs, you rank the top 16 teams based on pts. in the standings (do away with divisions and conferences) and keep a similar format to the way it is now. 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, 3 vs 14, 4 vs 13, etc.  Home ice advantage is determined by who has more points in the standings.  Neat, tidy, logical. 

But what do I know?  I'm just a dedicated fan who doesn't want to see another year without hockey, or another year of headshots and bitching and moaning about travel.  If everyone has the same amount of games against the same amount of teams nobody has anything to bitch about.

Enough is enough

What's your favourite NHL team?  How many of its players have missed games with "concussion-like symptoms" this season?  You know what concussion-like symptoms are?  A concussion. 

More and more it seems that players are going down with broken brains.  And even with Brendan Shanahan's new "stricter" rules for hitting players are still folding faster than Superman on laundry day.  It's time the NHL opened its old, bleary eyes and saw the truth:  the equipment is the problem with all the concussions.  But they don't want to admit that.  For what reason I don't know.  Maybe its because to do so would be an admittance that Don Cherry was right about something.  Cherry has been lobbying for years to remove the hard plastic from the elbow and shoulder pads, claiming it was the reason for the increase in injuries, specifically concussions. 

When you stop to think about it, it makes sense.  Wayne Gretzky wore almost nothing in the way of equipment, as did most players in those days.  You didn't hear of brain-rattling injuries back then. You wouldn't have had Sidney Crosby back in the line-up for 8 games after 10 months off, only to be out of the line-up again with "concusison-like symptoms", you wouldn't have had James Reimer out of the line-up for 2 months because teeny tiny Brian Gionta ran into him, and you wouldn't have Claude Giroux out for.........wait, his own player ran into him and kneed him in the back of the head?  Well there's nothing can be done about that.

The NHL says concussions are down 30% this season.  But the constant parade of players with head injuries suggests otherwise.

But what do I know?

Happy Holidays?

Very few things in this world bother me more than the phrase "Happy Holidays."  It's almost as though people have forgotten that Canada was founded as a Christian nation.  Not that that aspect really matters to me.  I don't think I could care any less what people believe in (as long as they don't throw it in my face.), but I do care about calling it Christmas for fuck's sake.  And seeing as Canada was founded as a Christian nation, can we please stop saying stupid shit like "Happy Holidays" and "Holiday Tree".  It is a Christmas tree.  It doesn't represent your time off work or your vacation to florida for a week.  It represents a children's fable about a fat guy in red, sliding down the chimney with a serious case of the munchies, looking for cookies and milk and leaving gifts behind when he's been satisfied.  And as he flies away on his sleigh he's been eard to womanize by saying "Ho Ho Ho"

What's my point?  Other countries don't change their traditions to accomodate landed immigrants.  You can't go to Iran and celebrate Christmas and get offended when people don't accomodate your beliefs.  And that's a 3rd world fucking counrty.  Let's keep our cultures and traditions they way they've worked for years.  It seems to have worked for quite some time with very little genocide or civil war. 

But what do I know?

Time for a Change

I just woke up from a long night's sleep.  I groggily made a pot of coffee and poured myself a bowl of raisin bran.  I woke up starving so I was really looking forward to this.  To my surprise, there were 3 raisins in my bowl of Kellogg's Raisin Bran.  3!  What the fuck?  Speaking of disappointments, Toronto Raptors GM Brian Colangelo hired a new coach yesterday.  Dwane Casey, assistant coach of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks.  Casey, a man with a career head coaching winning percent of a whopping .434%.  Now, I'll give you that the guy was in Minnesota, and the T-Wolves have been terrible since the dawn of time but, there were more experienced coaches available with higher winning percentages.

The Toronto Raptors have been a bad basketball team under the watchful eye of Mr. Colangelo.  And every summer he comes out selling fans on patience, telling them that it takes time to build a championship team.  How the fuck would he know what it takes to build a championship team?  Has he built one?  No!  Sure, he took a good team and added Steve Nash to it and won a bunch of regular season games, which eventually earned Nash back to back mvp seasons, but no championship.

Then he comes to Toronto and ends up with the 1st overall pick in the draft, and who does he take?  Andrea Bargnani the 7ft player who refuses to play the game in the paint where he should.  He's a terrible basketball player and should likely consider taking up volleyball. 

So what is it about Colangelo that the executives at MLSE see that I don't?  Do they see some championship rings that I don't?  Do they even care about the basketball product at all?  They went for so very long not giving a shit about the leafs and letting that organization run into the tank.  But that’s the Leafs.  They could lose every game and still sell-out every game.  Raptors fans are sick of the losing, and the attendance decline last season reflected that directly. 

So I think we should fire Colangelo before he lets our best player go to Miami and get absolutely nothing in return.

But what do I know?

HEAT WIN!!!........Wait.........What?

Isn't that what was supposed to happen?  Weren't the Heat supposed to run rough-shot over the NBA this year?  Isn't that what "The Decision" was all about? 

Today, basketball fans throughout North America and the rest of the world are grinning in unison like one big Cheshire cat.  The bad guys have been defeated and left the arena with their heads hanging, and tears (Chris Bosh) in their eyes.  Basketball fans outside of Miami can breathe a sigh of relief........Until next season.....if there is one. 

The way that the Miami Heat managed to bring it together so very quickly this season is nothing short of remarkable.  Sure, Lebron James and Dwayne Wade are 2 of the 5 best players in the world, but in any profession where you work with others, there's usually a bit of a learning curve when it comes to getting used to playing together.  And seeing as how both players were entirely used to handling the ball all game, every game that makes it that much more impressive. 

You'll notice I didn't mention Chris Bosh in my praise of the Heat.  It's not because I'm a jaded Raptors fan, or because it’s easy to pick on him.  I just don't consider Chris Bosh to be as good as everyone else thinks he is.  He was more than slightly effective in Toronto.  But when you're losing most games 88-115 someone has to put the 88 pts. on the board, and that somebody who carried Toronto on most nights was indeed Bosh.  But his time has passed, the sun has set, a season has ended and now all of the NBA sees him for what he really is.  What did Shaq call him, The Rupaul of NBA big men?  Sounds appropriate.

Now headed into an off-season of uncertainty, Commissioner David Stern wanting to reduce salaries something like 30% or more, it seems that one of the big 3 may have to end up elsewhere.  And if I were running the Heat I'd likely go insane.  With Lebron checking out in game 3 of the finals, and Chris Bosh being an over-inflated, under-skilled small forward the question is which one do you keep?  Dwayne Wade is your whole team and one of the best players in the league.  Lebron seems to fold like Superman on laundry day when faced with pressure, and Chris Bosh was nowhere near strong enough to keep up with a Flu-riddled Dirk Nowitzki.  So who do you keep?  Would you rather have a superstar player who is amazing until the pressure is on?  Or a player who is consistently mediocre and shows sporadic flashes of testicular fortitude?

I know who I'd keep. 

But what do I know.

What do you do?

What do you do when you know that someone you love is doing something not only illegal but entirely un-ethical?  How do you combat the feelings of resentment toward someone that takes advantage of a system that you involuntarily pay into every time you get paid?

Do you simply ignore the problem in the hopes that the individual will see the error in his ways and make amends for the wrong they've done?  Or do you lash out at the individual, bringing his integrity into question in the hopes that fear of leaving a negative imprint on future generations will scare some sense into him?

The social assistance program in Ontario is a joke.  Dead-beets, drug addicts, alcoholics, and generally lazy social parasites are sucking the life-blood out of our economy, and honest hard working Canadians are carrying the load with over-taxation and not enough breaks, while the rich and priveleged are under-taxed. 

There's no choice in the matter.  There's no check-list when you file your income tax listing which social programs you want your tax dollars to go to.  If that were the case all my tax dollars would go to fund amateur athletics, and certainly not welfare or mother's allowance.  Not to pigeon-hole any particular group, but its my experience that a good number of individuals receiving welfare, disability, and mother's allowance benefits are fully capable of working (and often do work under the table) while receiving their assistance checks.  This is not fair to those people who work their hands to the bone on a daily basis, commuting for up to an hour at a time to a job they hate, only to pay the bills, and at the end of the day 40% of their wages go to these social parasites.  Not fair.

The time has come for welfare reform in Ontario.  The time has come for welfare reform in Canada.

I intend to write to my MP, my MPP, anyone who will listen, and so should you. 

But what do I know?

I'm just a blue-collar slob.  But just like you, I'm sick of my tax dollars going to waste.

Cellphones in the classroom?

Really?  Cellphones could be useful in the classroom?  Premier McGuinty, you are by far the stupidest man in this province if you believe that.  What do 90% of people use their cellphones for? TEXTING!!!!  And most of them can do it without even looking at their phones, I know I can.  Imagine this if you will.  Its test time, and little Timmy doesn't know the answer to question #4, so he sends a message to little walter and gets the answer he needs to pass the test.  Come on, give me a friggin break.  When I was in high school we had to work to cheat, passing notes, complicated hand signals, body language: that was cheating. 

Allowing cellphones in the classroom will make an already lazy society much lazier as they won't be able to recall the information from their memories since they'll be so used to doing it from their cellphones.

To me this feels like yet another desparate attempt to grab some more voters for his failing minority government, which, if the people of Ontario have been paying attention, will be out of power once there is another election.  Give it up Mr. Premiere.  It's not going to work.  It's a dumb idea.  And quite frankly, you should have much more important things on your agenda than cellphones in the classroom.  How about all the shootings in the GTA as of late?  How about cleaning up the mess of the healthcare system that you've royally screwed up?

How about being connected to the people who put you in power and see what they think, instead of your assinine attempts salvage a few votes for seats that you'll inevitably just lose in another election?

But what do I know?