complete rubbish

[winterbadger]

Me, that is, and my fears and insecurities. My heartfelt thanks to all of my friends who have been tolerant and understanding lately. I'd say I'll try not to be such a twit again, but I'm reliably informed that it has to do with my chromosomal structure, so I shouldn't promise too much. Suffice to say that all is well.

Had a very nice dinner with N, and did a good bit of talking, before and afterwards. She's doing a lot better, taught her class Monday night and went back to work today. She's really looking forward to meeting those of my chums who are able to make it on Sunday. I promised there would be games played other than ultracomplex mmilitary games...Lest there be any question about her military geek creds, however, she was the one who reminded me, when we were discussing silly names for things, that the Nimrod aircraft is actually still in service with the RAF. She had good news and bad news for me. The bad news is that she's going to be travelling several more days in March than anticipated. The good news is that she's still up for the trip to Scotland later in the spring. Gosh I love that woman! :-)

My apologies to those who have found these pages a bit boring lately :-) I've been a bit distracted, and I'm on a course right now during the daytime, so valuable lunch hours that I could spend journaling are being spent somewhere without Internet access. Beleive me, it's not because there haven't been plenty of things in the world worth commenting on... The pope considering retirement? The Chief Shrub announcing a budget that doesn't include several trillion dollars of proposed legislation? Condi Rice saying somethign nice about the French? (Heck, Condi Rice being *allowed* into France...) DC United administering a 5-1 preseason hammering to Real Salt Lake? (I still can't type that without sniggering--for nonMLS fans, that's supposed to be pronounced "Ray-al", as in "Real {Royal} Madrid". *sigh*) It's all there.

Comments

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Y'know...I think it's a bit funny, too (particularly as "Real" indicates it's a Royal club, but anyway), I have to admit I like the trend towards more traditional footy team names in the MLS these days. They started off with that irritating stupid habit of naming teams with collective nouns: Chicago Fire, Los Angeles Galaxy. I hate that. But there are some good ones, too: DC United is an excellent example, and, to be fair, Real Salt Lake isn't bad either.

Now it looks as though they're building a new national soccer stadium in Toronto, at York University, which may mean we have a shot at an MLS franchise at some point. Problem with that might be the rules about imports: it would only really be useful to us if the import rules were set so that the team prioritised Canadian players...but it'd be cool nonetheless, and if they do come to T.O., I'll fer damn sure be a season ticket holder...:)

[winterbadger]

I actually like some of the funky MLS names. And I confess that I totally loathe Real Salt Lake and would probably think DC United was stupid if I didn't live in DC and love the club. The Miami Fusion FC (now deceased) at least *was* a football club. DC United makes for nice imagery, but it has nothing to do with the traditional usage of the name, which in England has always signified that a couple of teams got condensed into a single team (usually several clubs for odd sports, like rugby and cricket, back in the 1880s, getting glommed into a football club).

Real Salt Lake is just pandering and a blatant attempt to use the current popularity of Real Madrid to garner some carryover name recognition. It's "for the next five minutes" marketing, and the choice of logo and colours is really unimpressive too. Fans were brainstorming for months after the SLC team was announced, and while some of the ideas they came up with were dreck, they also came up with aton of better ideas than this. There's *no* connection to Spain, or Mexico, or any kind of "royalty" anywhere in Utah, let alone in Salt Lake. Red and blue? Could they have found a more uninspired colour choice? Let's see, how many teams in MLS do *not* have red or blue in their colours? LA? What about yellow, orange, purple? If they really wanted to ape RM, why not go with purple and white?

Sorry, didn't mean to rant. It's just that they're so...Disney. Checketts could have done sooo much better with only a little imagination. Tie-ins to Utah history, to other major sports, to local soccer traditions, to modern SLC and Utah themes... nothing, dreck. Ugh.

As for Canada, by all means, join the party! Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal have been playing in the first division for years quite happily, so I think the same exemption (no comparable domestic national league) could get them into MLS. (There were also 1st Division teams in Calgary and Edmonton, but I think they got axed in the off-season.) What's really the qualifying ticket these days is a owner-operator who's willing to sink the funds in *AND* can promise to build a soccer-specific stadium within a short, specfic timeframe. That appears to be the price of a seat at teh table these days.

[(Anonymous)]

Yay! The flippy penguin is back!

[winterbadger]

The flippy penguin is indeed back, thanks to my sweet love.

[robbysmom.livejournal.com]

Nice to hear from ya, and, hey, enjoy life! (which is not the same exact thing as journaling. . . :-)

[vikingcat.livejournal.com]

I've always has great affection for the Nimrod.

They live in Scotland, as it happens, so perhaps you can go see some during your trip.

[winterbadger]

I will have to check what bases they operate out of and see if we can synchronize that with our travels. It looks like this will be May at this point--Nora's reward for grading all her students' finals will be jumping on a jet plane to go walk heathery hills with me. :-)

[vikingcat.livejournal.com]

In fact it's RAF Kinloss, which is located conveniently to the GIUK Gap but not much else. But if you guys actually do take time out from touring distilleries and--well, whatever else it is that visitors to Scotland do once they leave the major cities, hiking the highlands and quoting Robert Burns to each other, I suppose--to admire maritime patrol aircraft, it will elevate Nora's military geek status to a level that few even in RAND ever attain.

[winterbadger]

Hmmm. That's east of Inverness, near Findhorn (I know my dad would love a postcard from there--he's a big fan of the Findhorn Foundation). I was thinking the Borders or the Western Isles for this trip, but the northeast would work too. :-) I was thinking maybe a quick detour to Gretna Green, but I think that's been vetoed for the moment. :-)

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.com/findhorn/findhorn/index.html
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.com/areane.html (my favourite Scotland touring website)
http://www.findhornbay.net/ (RAF Kinloss's link to local activity)