Born To Be Mild

I thumped a pit bull in the testicles once.  I was young, innocent, and hadn't yet learned about the equal and opposite reaction caused by pressurized contact to the testes.  Blue was the name of my grandmother's pit bulldog, and why he didn't rip my throat out after I did that, I'll never know.  He was enjoying a nice summertime snooze, lying on his side on the linoleum floor with his back legs crossed.  I wondered to myself - what's that dangling between Blue's crossed legs?  I calculated my aim precisely, followed through with the fiercest thump I could muster, and heard three distinct sounds - the "whoosh" of my finger whizzing through the air, the "fwap!" of impact, and a cartoonish series of "yelps" as Blue ran from one corner of the house to another exhibiting that mixture of pain, shock, and fury that males of all species can appreciate.  It was the closest I'd ever come to a potential mauling.

That lone incident aside, I'm not a dangerous person and have never taken to rough-housing or staring death in the face, but lately I've been considering turning over a new, harder-nosed leaf.  Gangland, a documentary-style series on the History Channel, has given me this new inspiration, and each weekly episode plays as a de facto recruiting tool.  The burning question, though, is how do I, with no "bad boy" experience, find the gang that's right for me?

Ethnically, I'm barred from the obvious gangs - Crips, Bloods, MS13, etc. - and am too much of a pansy for the streets.  I'd probably gravitate toward the gangs that offer incentives, such as motorcycles and cool leather vests.  The list quickly dwindles here.  The Mongols almost always require at least some fraction of Hispanic background.  The Hell's Angels are too chic and trendy at this point.  They're like the department store of motorcycle gangs, when what I really want is to be a part of a mom-and-pop club.  I thought I'd finally hit paydirt when I saw an episode of Gangland featuring the lesser-known, homegrown motorcycle gang the Devil's Diciples.  Everything sounded great - Harleys, chicanery, ol' ladies - but then I looked a little closer.  They spell their name wrong.  It is literally D-i-c-i-p-l-e-s, and everyone knows it should be D-i-s-c-i-p-l-e-s. 

As the 1986 Spelling Bee champion in Mrs. Simmons' 4th grade class, it's really my obligation to be troubled by the fact that they've left the "s" out of 'diciples,'  More importantly, shouldn't it bother the 'diciples' themselves? Has none of them noticed such an obvious grammatical faux pas?  As polarizing as their morals (or lack thereof) might be, there's still somebody somewhere that's responsible for at least a tiny bit of PR work.  Is the guy at Kinko's too intimidated to call their spelling into question when they drop their pamphlets off?  Does the sweet old lady that sews the patches onto their vests not have the courage to point out such an egregious error?  Allegedly, the 'diciples' misspell the name intentionally, but when I tried to copy an image from one of their affiliated websites, the warning window below popped up, proving that they're not only habitually poor spellers (carefull?), but they don't know their contractions.

And so, the Diciples  represent yet another gang of which I can never be a part. In the end, maybe it's a safer option to be a one-man gang, bound by both the laws of man and the King's English.  I hereby proclaim the inception of the Grammatics. Grrrrrrrr.

Go Ahead, Bite The Big Apple

If you've never taken a moment to peruse the FDA's Defect Levels Handbook, then you'll probably never want to.  The Defect Levels Handbook is a government publication that lists levels of contamination (mold, insect parts, filth, hair, etc.) in food that are acceptable and pose no health hazard.  For example, pizza sauce may safely contain either 30 fly eggs or 2 maggots per hundred grams (just not both, which is nice).  If you'd rather remain oblivious to what you might be ingesting, then steer clear of this link that contains a complete list of incidental contaminants.

I've Seen It All In A Small Town IV

Rolling Out Of Vancouver

I'm a much bigger fan of the Winter Olympics than I am their summer counterpart, primarily because the winter games consist of events that, from top to bottom, I could never participate in.  I'd love to ski, sure, but I'm 6'5", and my center of gravity is precariously high. Snowboarding looks fun, but my shoulder hurts when I sleep on it, much less if I were to fall and slam it into a mound of snow.  Could I go on about other winter sports for which I'm duly unsuited? Sure. But I'll spare you.

And yet, every 4 years I enjoy sitting on the couch and watching people do all the things I can't.  The athletes and the competitions in this year's Winter Olympics were as entertaining as ever, but I came away with a few unanswered questions:

• What are the long-term effects of mogul skiing?  I have a genuine concern for the mogul skiers.   There's no way that hitting those bumps at downhill speeds can be anything but detrimental to any joint located at or below the hip.  I just know that in 20 years, every mogul skier is going to have graham cracker bones like Sally Field.
• Where has aerial skiing been?  I don't remember ever seeing this event before this year's Olympics.  Hurling oneself fifty-some odd feet into the air on skis is brave enough, but performing loop-do-loops and whirleybirds during the descent back to earth is downright ballsy.  I'm now obsessed with finding an aerial ramp and pushing someone toward it against their will.  Y'know, just to see what would happen.
• How many entertainers must have said "No" before Anne Murray seemed like a good feature performer?  The opening ceremonies featured the Canadian Songbird, but there's arguably no singer more irrelevant in 2010 than Anne Murray.  If I could put it in terms of American talent, I'd say it'd be the equivalent of having the Crystal Gayle performing at an Olympiad on U.S. soil.
• How do you really pronounce "Olympic"?  It's basic knowledge that it should be pronounced as /əl'ɪmpɪk/, but this rule was thrown out by Morgan Freeman.  Freeman's voiceover for the Visa spot touted it as the official card of the O-lympic games.  There has never been a long "O" in Olympic.  Consider this a pretty bold statement from someone who grew up hearing lazy Southern drawls for words like go-rilla and mo-ron.
• Is Bob Costas afraid of Father Time?  I want to tell Bob Costas that it's okay to age. Really. He doesn't need that awful dye job that looks like someone spilled furniture polish on his head.
• Is anything less exciting than curling?  My first instinct when I try to write about curling is to hold the "z" key down on my computer.
• Is Lindsey Vonn hot?  Call me hard to please, but I don't think so. Her eyebrows are too manly.  Not terribly thick, but much too wiry.  To me, it makes her look sinister and untrustworthy.  A woman's eyebrows shouldn't look like Snidely Whiplash's mustache.
• Does hockey matter to Americans?  I average watching one hockey game in it's entirety every 2-3 years, and I'm not in the minority.  I'll admit that it's an excellent sport to watch in person, and it would've been awesome to see the US beat Canada, but no one capable of tanning in the sun follows this sport closely.  So, now that the games are over, Americans can go back to not caring and Canadians can go back to not mattering.