“A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.” - Lawrence Lovasik



(stolen from Mackey's site, and posted here without prior permission, but.....!!)

I have a whole raft of topics that I want to chat about today, but I guess they'll all have to wait for another day, except one of course.

The only one of any significance (what means this word 'soccer' that I heard someone mutter embarrassingly under their breath?) is "THE GAME". The world stops here.

So, tonight is do or die night. The fate of the free world depends on what a bunch of focussed, fit, premier athletes do with a sheet of ice, a stick of wood and a disc of rubber. Can the tension get any thicker.

I predict that within the next 12 hours there will be at least 300 arrests made on Whyte Avenue in the grand city of Edmonton Alberta. I predict that within the next 12 hours the consumption of beer in Canada will more than double over the previous 36 hour period. I predict that one team or the other will win the game. I've always been known for sticking my neck out when it comes to taking a stand.

I was in to see my doc this morning (one of the other things I wanted to talk about....all the chemicals we let someone like a doctor tell us is ok to shove into our bodies, assuming they know of what they speak, then letting politicians, who clearly do NOT know of what they speak, decide what other chemicals, i.e. pot, we need to have big brother protect us from for our own good...sorry I had to get that off my chest!).

While I was waiting for him, I was glancing through the paper. There was a huge picture on the front page of a police officer apparently slapping a woman on Whyte Avenue after Sat. night's game and knocking her to the sidewalk, causing a cut on her chin (her hands were fastened behind her with the plastic cuffs, so she wasn't protected when she fell). There was a full, detailed story about the incident, and a whole series of 10 or 12 pictures on page 3 showing the "take down". It actually looked to me like he was more or less guiding her down as he kept his hand by her head as she was going down. It didn't say what she was in custody for, but there were 394 arrests on Saturday night, most of them for either stepping off the sidewalk (yup!), drunk and disorderly or having open booze in cars. All were held overnight and released except 6 who were charged, 2 for outstanding warrants, 2 for resisting arrest and 2 for assaulting a police officer (sounds reasonable to me).

I say all that because, you know what? My first reaction was to be pissed. Not with the police (although personally, I think they're a bit heavy-handed), not with the woman (I have no idea of the circumstances, so can't pass judgement), not with the over 30,000 fans that gathered to have some good, old-fashioned, neighbourly, traditional civic fun. No, I'm pissed with the Edmonton Journal with making that the focus story of the whole evening. Just because one of their photographers happened to be there at the moment and got a series of shots (some of them terribly out if focus, BTW) it became the story's focus.

That's not what Saturday was all about. That's not what hockey's all about. That's not what the Stanley Cup is all about. That's not what Edmonton is all about.

I'm ashamed.

P.S. [several hours later]...but I'm only ashamed of our newspaper! I was just over to pick up my medications (which I didn't get...a story for another day!), and decided to do a little survey. One of the "Oiler Pride" marketing schemes has been to sell flags that clip over car windows. When you drive around, it seems like at least every second vehicle has them, so I decided to check it out. I checked 100 cars in the parking lot at the shopping centre where my pharmacy is. 62 of them had at least 1 flag, 25 of those had 2, and 16 of them had 4. Curiously enough, none had 3! Some entrepreneur is cleaning up on that one!

Something else also occured to me. I was fortunate to be at the final game of the championship series when Gretzky and company won their first Stanley Cup to begin "The Dynasty" (I had a share in seasons tickets that year). Now, it's truly the turn of the next generation. Holy crow! An entire generation has happened since then. I'm getting old.

PEACE.

Posted by Evydense on Monday, June 19, 2006 at 1:41 p.m. | Permalink