Someone stop this madman.

Only real explanation is here.

Someone stop this madman.

Only real explanation is here.

No, he didn’t shoot anybody in the face, neck, and torso, like all the cool kids in the news these days.

My buddy Jono and I spent this weekend at the IRB Sevens rugby tour stop in Los Angeles,
screaming our lungs out alongside a bunch of Aussies, Kiwis, Kenyans,
Argentinians and whatever else you’ve got.  It’s always a great time. 
This year, the bloody Poms beat the Flying Fijians in the final, but it
was still worth two solid days of hollering and singing and learning
cool new cheers.

Kenya supporters, incidentally, do a fine little song to the tune of
"My Darling Clementine" whenever there’s a questionable call:

The rest of this is only marginally repeatable, but you can see where
it’s going.  This is exceptionally fun to scream with about 1000 other
people.

At one point, while our beloved Wallabies were struggling ("our"
because Jono is from Perth, and I still intend to be from Sydney one of
these days), some of the ribbing coming from the Kiwis behind us caused
me to erupt in the infamous "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" cheer, resulting
in a vigorous round of Oying in the surrounding stand.  This was almost
involuntary on my part, like speaking in tongues, if your deity is a
beery Australian with poor self-restraint.

I mention this because the Olympics are on, and here in America we only
get to see NBC’s coverage, which is all about which American pulled
which muscle or smacked into what or went down the wrong side of which
hill, instead of just showing the best performances from athletes
everywhere.  This is true in many countries, unfortunately, and it
always strikes me as in direct opposition to the true Olympic spirit.

This precise spirit is floating around in abundance, of course, all the
time.  Jono and I just had a whole weekend of it, cheering for other
countries’ teams as vigorously as ours, and being joined in our cheers
by friendly folks from five continents.

Come to think of it, right this minute, I’m sitting here working with
the final match of the VB ODI cricket series, live from the Gabba,
where Sri Lanka are attempting a last-overs push.  This has been yet
another marvelous competition, barely marred by the South Africans’
complete inability to catch anything airborne, probably including
viruses.

So anyway, point is: if you’re watching the Olympics and thinking, wow,
cool, neat that we do this every four years, the fact is, most of the
rest of the planet does it all the time. 
Right this minute, in rugby we’ve got the Sevens and the Six Nations
and the Super 14 and the Heineken Cup, all going all at once, and all
of which are international in nature.  The soccer World Cup is in just
a few months, and the rugby and cricket World Cups follow shortly.

It’s a pretty darn friendly planet, if you take your eyes off the news sometime.

So if you’d like to feel more connected to the rest of the planet, I suggest finding out who William Ryder is, or his equivalent in any international sport you think you might enjoy learning.  (Short version: an electrifying
offensive player and spectacularly bad defensive player.)

Be happy.

UPDATE: Also, Andrew Symonds.  Becoming a fan of Andrew Symonds will make you very happy.  I guarantee this.  (And for Americans, the zinc is for sun protection, nothing unusual in that part of the world.  Don’t freak out from what his appearance would mean if it was, like, Ted Danson or something.)

Site Meter says this will be accurate sometime in the next day or so, anyway.

Colin, who knows such things, says we went past that long ago, but that Site Meter and similar counters miss a lot of visits on everybody’s sites for technical reasons involving a lot of words that make my ears go all blurry.

Either way, hi, welcome, hurray, and please do not shoot me in the face, neck, and torso.

Just to review, in the wake of Tricky Dick’s 18-Hour Gap:

• It is perfectly sporting not to shoot at quail in the air, but near the ground — at roughly eye level, in fact.
• It is also responsible to fire at eye level when you do not know where a member of your party is.
• There is no reason a hunter should be expected to know what he is shooting.
• If you are shot by the vice president, it is your own fault for not first shouting, "Mister vice president, sir! Please do not shoot me in the face, neck, and torso!"
• Being wounded in the face, neck, and torso by a shotgun is something that happens to hunters all the time.
• Shotgun wounds are inherently minor.
• People also go into intensive care with minor wounds all the time.
• There is no reason to worry about a 78-year old man who has been
  shot in the face, neck, and torso and has been in intensive care for
  days.
• A 78-year-old man who has been shot in the face, neck, and torso is
  obviously healthy if his eyes are open and he is able to speak.
• It is perfectly respectable to kill animals not because you need
  to put food on the table, but for fun.  It is good that our leaders
  take pleasure in killing.
• Shootings by vice presidents are always reported by local newspapers, who learn a few carefully-chosen details from a friend of the vice president, after she has spoken with Karl Rove.
• When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, there
  is no reason the president of the United States should immediately learn exactly what happened.
• When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, there
  is no reason the public should find out about it until the next day.
• When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, there
  is no reason he should be interviewed by local law enforcement until
  enough time has passed for his body to metabolize any alcohol in his
  bloodstream.
• When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, he is not subject to any of the relevant state or local statutes.
• When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, he does not even need to face the press or public in person.
• When the vice president of the United States shoots a 78-year-old
  friend in the face, neck, and torso, putting him in intensive care for
  days, after negligently firing a weapon for the sheer pleasure of killing, he can insist that he has done nothing wrong and go to bed
  with a clear conscience.

Well, glad we got that all cleared up.