Vince, The Pack & Mrs. Olsen

I'm sure looking forward to the Packers/Cowboys game tonight. I hope the Pokes can beat 'em, and I think they will. (probably jinxed 'em, right there)

I thought it another one of those insignificant - but cool - coincidences that a day or so ago there was a Vince Lombardi quote on the Quote of the Day feed in the right-hand column. Lombardi was the coach of the Green Bay Packers and is considered to be one of the best football coaches of all time.

I had a coach for the first couple of years in h.s.; he hadn't been out of the Army for very long, had a wife and a young girl. He was fresh off his first coaching job, having some success, so his gung-ho atttitude was still fierce...but I think my home town drained him of a lot of it in the short time he was there.

Anyway...he was fond of Lombardi quotes and had them plastered all over the locker room, a few nicely printed out and framed in his office. There were a few I thought silly, such as

"A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall."

What a crock. So self-serving...of course if your life is football, you'll defend it even with nonsensical "facts".

There were, however, a few that I've remembered all my life and thought them profound then and still do:

"Fatigue makes cowards of us all."

And "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."

During my sophomore year I injured my knee and was out of practice for a game and a week's practice. My mom bought me Jerry Kramer's book, Instant Replay to read while I was recuperating. I admired Kramer; we played the same position, both of us were pulling guards, but I'll go to my death thinking he beat the snap on the winning touchdown in The Ice Bowl.

(4:27 on the video, it's certainly debatable, I'll admit)



My pop and this coach became good buddies, but that sure didn't curry me any favor with the coach. If anything, he seemed to go harder on me, almost more than I could bear. One time when I was at my breaking point, ready to quit the team crying, he told me "Mike, I wouldn't be so hard on you if I didn't think you had good potential." Looking at it from that perspective, I could see that he didn't spend nearly as much time (especially yelling time) with most of the other boys as he did with me. I think he realized that I was one of those guys who needed to be pushed, but also appreciated. I think most people are like that, actually.

I remember a time when we were playing basketball in Booker; I rode with my folks and we were early by quite a bit, even for my sister's game which came before mine. We rode around the tiny town for a while, then Dad saw the coach and got him to get in the car with us; we drove a couple of blocks away from the school to a burned-out house. Dad pointed at it and with a snicker told him:

"That's where last year's coach lived."

And now for my Green Bay Packers joke:

Mrs. Ollie Olsen, a Scandinavian immigrant to the U.S. was drawing attention because of her size, 6'8", 345 lbs. Reporters were interviewing her, asking her questions such as "Gee, Mrs. Olsen, how'd you get so big?"

"Ah, from eating dot gud Svedish cheese." she replied with a good-natured smile.

Another reporter yelled out: "You're big enough to play for the Green Bay Packers, Mrs. Olsen!"

Turning serious, she grimly replied:

"Nein, I play wid nobody's packer but Ollie's."

50 More P

Found this joke in a Joke of the Day feed I tested (and rejected) for this blog. Gotta love that Brit humour.

---

A man walked into a bar after just being dumped. The person serving at the time was a woman. She kept on giving him free drinks the whole night. When the bar had closed she went up to him and asked if he wanted to go upstairs for a quicky. He of course said yes and they went upstairs.

When they got there the women asked if he had any protection. He didn't have any and answered no. So she told him there was a chemist across the road and gave him £ 1.

When he got to the chemist there were a selection of condoms to choose from:

There was a tramp one for 50 p.
There was an apple flavoured one for £ 1.
And there was a metal one for £ 1.50.

As he only had one pound the man bought the apple flavoured one.

During the the night of fun the condom slipped and the lady got pregnant. The couple married and raised a son.

When he was 5 years old, he went up to his dad and cried: "Daddy why do I have green arms? This is not fair."

To this the dad replied: "I would count yourself lucky my son. If I would have had an extra 50 p you would have been Robo-Cop"

---

At the current exchange rates, 50 pence is about a quarter.

Happy Together - The Turtles

Noticed a hit on this, and as I've been prone to doing lately, checked to see if the video still worked. The original one had been removed by the poster, so I found this one.



Wiki on The Turtles

Some interesting stuff there on Wiki (for what that's worth) about the band. I was trying to think of at least one other song they did, but I couldn't name one with any certainty. After looking through my mp3 library, I saw I had "She'd Rather Be With Me". YouTube also has Some Girl

This song reminds me of a girl (girl, hell, she's probably a grandmother now) who always liked this song when we were in school together. I liked it too, and maybe it's the things we have in common with others that hold on longest in our memories.

mizprize

Word of the Day feed from Dictionary.com

misprize \mis-PRYZ\, transitive verb:

1. To hold in contempt.

2. To undervalue.

---

Boy howdy, do I know this word!

Every time I buy a lotto ticket, play the grocery store games, enter a contest on the 'net, I always mizprise.

Prairie Dog Comic

Cute little vid



Used to be a lot of prairie dogs around here, one large town near the Cabot carbon black R&D plant, but I believe they were poisoned when it was found that some had died from and others carried bubonic plague. The rodents, an important part of the prairie ecosystem, also can carry tularemia. (my ex-wife's uncle died from tularemia)

I saw a documentary on prairie dogs a few years back; in one of the northern plains states, they were killed as sport from long distances with high-powered and scoped rifles. I know they're a nuisance to ranchers, cattle and horses sometimes breaking their legs in the holes that dot the landscape where they make their "towns" and according to Wiki, they are also accused of damaging crops and spreading brush.

tintinnabulation

From Word of the Day:

tintinnabulation \tin-tih-nab-yuh-LAY-shuhn\, noun:
A tinkling sound, as of a bell or bells.

---

If you put bells on a German Shepard, it would be a rintintinnabulation.