Friday, June 11, 2010

France 0 - Uruguay 0

The French have good forwards who can’t score. Uruguay stinks at defense, and have a highlighter-yellow goalie. Uruguay received a red card, a bunch of yellows, survived a last minute penalty kick.

New Feature!

In my boredom of wisdom tooth removal, I have decided a new feature is in order.
For every World Cup game I watch, I will attempt to summarize the game in 32 words or less. Why? There are 32 teams in the World Cup, and I am notorious for writing significantly longer posts than anybody is every interested in. So here goes:

South Africa v. Mexico

The South Africans look like Brazil, because they wear yellow uniforms. Mexico has a sketchy-ass goalie. South Africa had a sick goal, and CBCsports.ca sucks balls and broke before we saw Mexico’s.

Stay tuned for the 32 word review of France v. Uruguay. I should have lots of anti-France ammo, don't worry.

Results!

The World Cup of Soccer has begun!
Game 1 between Mexico and South Africa occurred at 10 AM EST, and the result was 1-1 draw. Normally, this would not make any sort of news on my blog, because unless you have your head in a hole, you would have heard the news well before you come here.
But it is important, because in the World Cup pool that I am currently a part of, of the 8 participants, a whopping 0 people predicted either the outcome OR the score correctly.
Result: North Americans suck HARD at predicting soccer.
That is all.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Liveblog 1

I really hate to disappoint you folks, but this wisdom teeth thing is huge freakin' bust. I am not tuned, I can walk in straight line, and while my keyboard skills are sub par, they are a lot worse after a dozen drinks.
Overall verdict - they need to hand out harder stuff if fun is what the order of the day is.

All that's happened so far is that my mouth bleeds, some dude in the recovery room next to me snored like stuffed-up gorilla, and i wanted to peace out right after I got out of the chair. There was no crying, hysterics, freaking out, or anything. I can't talk, but I could never do that anyway.
Stay tuned for a complete recap. I'm hoping for a relapse involving some leprechauns and a liger any minute now.
Blammo!

Teeth!

Today I am getting my wisdom teeth out! Woohoo! I'm pretty sure that it means I'm going to be awesome now.
But the important part is that when you get your wisdom teeth out, they knock you out so hard with some killer anesthesia, which apparently makes you see seven different kinds of dragons playing bongo drums while eating avocado. Which I am terribly excited about!
So here's the deal - I am going to go straight to my computer when I get home at 3 or so today, and try to liveblog my entire teeth-removal experience.
Stay tuned for a whole lot of writing that makes absolutely no sense!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Olympic Photo You May Not Have Seen

After the unnecessary poorly written essay yesterday, we are reverting back to fun! And pictures!





Dirk Van Wijk and his course crew buddies making sure another Slovenian doesn't miss the corner and die a horrible death.
The hole behind where Dirk is standing with the blue gym mat contains the Grand Canyon of Whistler Olympic Park.

Monday, June 7, 2010

A Historical Perspective...

As many people should be aware, yesterday (June 6) was the anniversary of D-Day. For those who don’t have a degree in history, or failed to pay attention in high school, D-Day is kind of a big deal in the Western world.

Otherwise known as the Invasion of Normandy, Operation Neptune, or Operation Overlord, D-Day occurred on June 6, 1944. In less than 24 hours, 160,000ish American, British and Canadian troops assaulted the French coast via amphibious landing and paratroop deployment. The result was a return to Europe for the Western Allies, a sound ass-kicking of a bunch of Nazi’s, and the opening of a second front. It is regarded as the largest ever seaborne invasion, a master work of trickery, deceit, and awesomeness, and in the Western world is considered THE turning point of the Second World War.

D-Day has been turned into a huge production. It has been featured in films (Saving Private Ryan, which if you haven’t seen, you should), The Longest Day (also a really long movie, coincidentally). TV shows (Band of Brothers is the easy option here). Video games (Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault recreated the storming of Omaha Beach, as did Battlefield 1942, somewhat ironically because D-Day was in ’44). Basically, from a very young age what people learn about World War II history is two things: 1 – Killing Germans was good and 2; D-Day pretty much ended the war.

The text book more or less says the Yanks showed up, threw some grenades, took a few bullets and saved the free world. Oh, and Brits and the Canadians helped a little bit, so there is a paragraph about that part. Mostly they screwed things up though, because the Canadian version of D-Day is called Dieppe, and it’s famous for being the biggest gong show in World War II – that’s right, even worse than anything the French OR the Italians did.

But back to D-Day. I would like to set the record straight here, and remind everyone that D-Day was actually useless, in terms of overall war impact. I do not wish to anger veterans, or disrespect the members of our armed forces who served in the Second World War, or participated in D-Day. But the facts do not change – the end of the Second World War and the fall of Hitler was guaranteed by the time Tom Hanks wandered around the Norman countryside looking for Private Ryan (which is complete BS, by the way).

A quick tour of statistics will give you an idea of what I am trying to convey. While the exact numbers are still debated, most historians agree the total number of deaths during the Second World War was roughly 60 million. Of this 60 million, US war deaths are about 360,000. Or if you’re into percentages, about 0.6% of the total deaths. On the other hand, the Soviet Union suffered 27 millionish dead, which is about half, and more than any other nation on the face of the earth. In return, the Soviets inflicted roughly 5 million deaths on the Axis powers. While it is impossible to truly evaluate the number of Germans killed by American GI’s and B-52 bombers, trust me, the Soviets killed more.

Moving beyond pure numbers to a timeline, we find that the Soviet Union was invaded on June 22 1941, convenient, because it is almost 3 years to the day before D-Day, and the arrival of the Americans on the continent. The Soviet Union absorbed the entire brunt of the German armed forces alone for 3 whole years. While the Red Army and Stalin were getting dusted from Odessa to Novgorod to Voroshilovgrad, the world-saving Red, White and Blue were still debating about whether to lend the Brits some shit-ass boats, and thinking that perhaps letting the Russkies and the Nazi’s batter each other a bit would be good for the post-war world. Which lasted until the Japanese flattened Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Why it took the U.S. another 3 years to get to Europe to save the free world and give Hitler his just desserts is a story for another day, but I will give you a hint and say it wasn’t because Joe Stalin didn’t ask once or twice.

So then we arrive at June 6, 1944, D-Day, the day the Western Allies return to France after being shown the door ignominiously four years earlier. Steven Spielberg is set to make millions, the plot of an entire level in Call of Duty is about to be constructed, and the American boys will roll across France and occupied Europe like a kid on a Razor scooter. Hitler finished, Nazi’s vanquished, dragons slain and all that, right? Wrong.

As of June 6, 1944 the Red Army had punished Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and were rolling up Finland like a carpet. Furthermore, they were sweeping through Poland hell bent on getting to Berlin to Adolf himself. Massive advances tend to happen when you’re motivated by the fact that the enemy has no interest in taking prisoners, and did their best to wipe out your entire population and nation when they had the upper hand.

Recap: The Americans land in Normandy with 160,000 soldiers and are stuck on a tiny strip of beach while the Russians are ripping forward with thousands of tanks, millions of battle hardened troops, thousands of planes and shots of vodka, killing anything that even dares to utter the word bratwurst in front of them.

Despite what you may have seen or been told, the Americans did not change the course of World War II on D-Day. The war was decided – the Allies (actually, mostly the Russians) were going to win. Hitler was going to lose. The fate of the world was not decided on the beaches of France, it was decided at Stalingrad, at Kursk, and across the Eastern Front. The Western Front was created out of post-war considerations – the Western Allies needed a say in how Europe was divided, and they needed to get in on the action. The men who took part in D-Day are without a doubt brave heroes, but in this post-Cold War era, I think it is high-time we give the Russian and associated nations’ men and women their due. For starters, make a movie better then Enemy at the Gates, which is piss poor.

I Went On the Internet and Found This...

Okay, that's a total lie. I was actually just going through my pictures and found this epic one from last summer. A couple of my friends and I went to the Adirondacks in upper New York State, and found some mountains, some trees, and a whole truckload of rain.









Aaron, with the trail that we're supposed to be hiking up, which is currently doubling as a waterfall.