Author Archives: The Night Writer

I see Badmoud rising

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We had our annual fantasy football draft last night and despite having a bad draft position I think my team, Badmoud Ahmadinutjob, came out of it in pretty good shape. I chose that team name, by the way, for a couple of reasons: 1) most of the teams in my league don’t even bother to come up with a team name and just go by the name of the team owner (boring) so maybe I’ll just go by a first and last name as well, and 2) team names typically imply fierceness and intimidation and I thought this was a great way to keep my opponents off-balance and ineffective while I went about achieving my own objectives. Right now I’d have to say my strategy worked (and Mike Wallace assures us that the real Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is really a wonderful guy and probably won’t be offended).

Of course my strategy wasn’t as simple as selecting a team name. I also kept buying beers for the hot-head owner in our league who was sitting next to me, while I whispered to him some of the things a couple of the other owners across the table from him were saying about his draft. Believe me, the ensuing tensions distracted at least three teams while I scored scud, I mean, stud after stud for my team (which I formerly named “Weapons of Mass Distraction”). Whenever someone thought he knew what I was up to and called me on it I just said, “Who, me?” as innocently as I could muster. Then I’d turn around and proclaim death for the (Detroit) Lionists at the table (which didn’t stop me from drafting Roy Williams, however).

Oh sure, there was the usual ineffectual talk about “league sanctions” but I knew no one was going to do anything as long as I had control of the plate of chicken wings. Whenever things got too dicey I’d suggest that I might be willing to discuss passing a few wings around the table. Even at that things did finally begin to get a little rowdy and the bar owner threatened to call the police to act as a peace-keepers, but I know half those guys on the force and they’re not going to hassle me.

All in all it was a great night and an important step as we make our way toward the main event — the play-offs. I can’t wait!

Btw, here’s my lineup for you fantasy football fans out there (I know the non-fans quit reading this post a couple of paragraphs ago). In a 10-team league I picked, in order of selection:

Peyton Manning, IND
Willie Parker, PIT
Anquan Boldin, AZ
Roy Williams, DET
Thomas Jones, CHI
Tatum Bell, DEN
Javon Walker, DEN
Laurence Maroney, NE
Brandon Jacobs, NYG
Greg Jennings, NYG
Cedric Benson, CHI
Reggie Brown, PHI
Josh Brown, SEA

I know, by picking Tatum Bell and Laurence Maroney I’ve subjected myself to a season’s worth of mind-games from their coaches, Mike Shanahan and Bill Belichek, but what can I say? Bill and Mike are the masters of misdirection, and the official heroes of Badmoud Ahmadinutjob! Game on!

Children of the Night: The Fairest of them all

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MD: Hi guys! Y’all are in for a special treat today, even though its not on a stick. Co-blogging! Yes, that’s right, the Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly are getting together to share with you the delights of our fair state’s fair.

TL: Hello, everyone.

MD: There will be food blogging, as I took pictures of almost everything that we ate, and sometimes of what other people were eating.

TL: The most pictures she took were of people eating roasted corn.

MD: I did not!

TL: Did too!

MD: *Rolls eyes* Anyway —-

TL: We also went on rides. We went on the Zipper, which is this ride that goes upside down and around and around. I kept my eyes closed almost the whole time, and when I made the mistake of opening them, we were rushing toward the ground — face first! I screamed my head off and vowed that I would never go on that ride again. I think my sister is deaf now.

MD: Huh?

TL: I’m going on it again next year.

MD: We (including the Rev. Mum) went on the Scrambler. All three of us. In one cart. I am never doing that again. I sustained a severely bruised arm and a couple of cracked ribs.

MD: In one of the barns we got our handwriting analyzed. We wrote our names on these little cards that they popped in the machine. The machine popped them back out again and told us what we were like. Our results were eerily accurate. Did you know that friendliness is my greatest asset?

TL: Yeah, right. Mine says that I’m romantic.

MD: Yeah, right. Well, I am naturally quick, keen and optimistic, and my opinions are respected, so there!

TL: Oh, yeah? Well I am very observant and take in all that’s happening around me.

MD: Look! A chicken!

TL: Where?? Hey, that’s not nice! Remember, I am also sensitive and easily hurt by criticism; but I never give up and don’t like things to get the better of me.

MD: I am always ready for self-sacrifice.

TL: I am bored by routine and enjoy the unexpected.

MD: So you’re routinely bored?

TL: ???

MD: Here’s a good one:

TL: Nice. Like you’ve never eaten a fried candy bar!

We went to the animal barns. There was something missing. THERE WERE NO BUNNIES!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

MD: Oh, get over it. You made friends with the loud sheep, remember?

TL: Oh, yeah.

MD: We found our favoritest thing to eat in the whole wide world. It was even more expensive here than in Italy! “Gelato, Poppi!”

TL: This little kid is in training to be the Hulk.

MD: That was so cute.

TL: Hey, sheep in leotards — they must be ballerinas.

MD: They never danced for us, though.

MD: Guess what? We also saw triple_a wandering around. I don’t think he recognized us, though. I think he was keeping track of all the political candidates, like this one:


(Vote for me!)

MD: Well that’s all the time we have for today! I hope you enjoyed your virtual trip to the Fair!

TL: Ciao for now!

Back in the desk chair again

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That was refreshing! Taking a month off from blogging (or at least from daily blogging) was a great break and I’m feeling all bubbly and tingly — or maybe that’s just because I used my wife’s shampoo this morning.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting back in my rhythm and I’ve got a few story ideas and links that I’ve stashed while I was away that I’ll probably be getting into in the next few days. Of course, I noted that I wasn’t the only blogger taking time off and I laughed outloud last week when I got my copy of the Wall Street Journal and saw an article about bloggers on vacation (subscription required to read the link, sorry). The story talked about how the big name bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and Andrew Sullivan handled their vacations and the overall drop in readership despite lining up distinguished guest bloggers to keep the blog lamps lit. It appears that many readers have a distinct affinity for the person who’s name is on the blog and they may tend to visit less often when that person isn’t writing.

This interesting information leaves me feeling a bit odd, considering my experience. Of course, I have little in common with Malkin, Reynolds, Sullivan, Hewitt, Jarvis, et al, when it comes to the blogosphere. We all blog, but I’m a grunion to their whales even though we swim in the same sea. For example, their readership dropped by tens of thousands of visitors per day while they were gone; I can just barely say I’ve had tens of thousands of visitors stop by here in total in the 18 months since I put out my electronic “welcome” sign. Perhaps some of the uber-bloggers’ wayward readers were coming over here in August because my average daily visitors actually went — er, uh — up while I was on vacation. When I kicked back, I was averaging close to 80 visitors a day. That was great, and a heady change from the days when breaking into the 30s was cause for a celebration. Now, a month after leaving this blog largely in the hands of my daughters the Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly, the daily average is nearly 100 visitors (and now the Reverend Mother is about to make her much anticipated debut as well)!

Ooooo-kay. This is good news, right? But how long before they start lobbying for a change in the name of this blog? This makes for an interesting problem for me, and hopefully, more interesting reading for you.

Oh well, the family that blogs together … uh, fights over the computer.

Challenging Word of the WeeK: traduce

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Traduce
(truh DOOHS, -DYOOHS) verb

To traduce someone is to slander him, vilify him, malign, defame, and calumniate him, speak falsely and with malice toward him or his character; from Latin traducere (to disgrace), a variant of transducere (literally, to carry over; figuratively, to expose, “show up”). In Shakespeare’s Othello (Act V, Scene 2), Othello cries to Lodovico who has come to arrest him:

…In Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the State,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.

Whereupon, he obeys Shakespeare’s stage directions: Stabs himself. Things are tough all around and it’s a bloody mess; but getting back to words and definitions, avoid the common error of identifying slander or defame with libel. Without going into legal minutiae and ramifications, libel is slander in written form and “published”, i.e., communicated in that form to a third party or parties. Best advice: Keep your mouth shut and your pen in your pocket.

My example: In an election year, the end of summer means the weather is cooling just as the political traducing season is really heating up. That’s some good advice above, though.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Perhaps they’ll stay at a Holiday Inn Express

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Laura Lee at the Wide Awake Cafe has some thoughts about how former president Jimmy Carter might entertain former Iranian President Khatami when they get together to commiserate over their failed administrations (I commented with some ideas of my own). I don’t know what Carter gets out of this except for another chance to sanctimoniously crap on the administration while trying to push kitty litter over his own performance.

The appeal for Khamani is obvious, however. If you’d like to ruin the U.S. economy, decimate America’s defense capability and globally humiliate a country then it makes sense to talk to someone who’s already done it.

Who’s next — Ron Dayne?

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I’m not officially back from my August vacation from blogging until next Tuesday, but I had to post a quick take on the Vikings and their new West Coast Offense — or is that the Wisconsin Cast-off Offense?

I can understand a football coach wanting to bring in guys who already know his offense and/or are people he knows pretty well. Some of the moves by the Brad Childress/Darrell Bevell brain trust make me wonder whatever happened to the idea that familiarity breeds contempt? I mean, trading an undrafted free agent for the underwhelming Billy McMullen didn’t concern me too much; after all, someone’s got to be your fifth receiver. I tried to stay calm with the Mike McMahon signing, hoping that Childress had to know something more about the guy than what anyone watching him play on television the last three years could see.

After McMahon’s pre-season floppage I started to get nervous when Koy Detmer and Todd Pinkston were released by the Eagles this week. I mean, as bad as McMahon has been, why pick up the guy who was behind him on the Eagles quarterback depth chart last year? Detmer’s such a useless bottom-feeder I think he should change the spelling of his first name to “Koi”. As for Pinkston — or “Stinkston” as he known in my fantasy football league — the guy is around 6′ 5″ which is good, but he weights as much as the Mall Diva and he gets off the line with the same ease as a ’74 Pacer.

At least the trade for Brooks Bollinger, who Childress and Bevell know from their Wisconsin days, eliminates any concern that Detmer is on the way (and Bollinger actually showed brief flashes of competence last year playing for a horrible team). With Ron Dayne expected to be released this weekend by the Broncos, however, the threat level is still at Badger-Red. With Dayne’s size you might think he’d be a good goal-line back, but his career has demonstrated that the only line he has a nose for is the one at the post-game buffet. It’s going to be a long weekend.

Update:

Aaarrgh!

Trivia Roundup

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One more week of blogging vacation for me, but I thought I better get my summary of last Friday night’s Trivia Challenge up and on display.

As you can tell from the photo below, Team “Three Weddings and Funeral” showed up at the Friday night trivia event ready to play and with fire in our eyes. That’s Jeff and Leo in the front (left to right) and myself and Ben on the opposite side of the table.

We were in the thick of it, but we had trouble with names, losing a point because we could only come up with half of the name of the Irish president, and missing an easy lay-up on the name of the proprietor of Keegan’s due to an epic brain-fart (to be fair, the Twins had runners in scoring position against the White Sox on the TV over our heads at the time). Those are points you just can’t let get away in rarefied air of such a heady competition. We did know, however, that Damascus is the longest continually inhabited capital in the world (for a few more months, anyway).

Congratulations to Terry Keegan (see, we know the name) for coming up with some truly worthy questions (unlike the People magazine trolling that has characterized more recent Thursday night contests) and to our local Fraters Libertas team (fortified with Atomizer’s mother) for keeping Hugh Hewitt and his All Stars from coming into our house and making off with the hardware. Best of all, the event raised a couple of grand for Soldier’s Angels, the MOB’s official favorite charity (next to Keegan’s, that is).

Beware the Bumpuses!

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Ok, the real reason I’ve been on blogging vacation is that I’ve been cramming for this Friday night’s All-Star Triva Throwdown and fund-raiser for Soldier’s Angels. Our team of Jeff Kouba , Leo Pusateri, Uncle Ben and myself will mix it up with national talk-show host and Blog-father Hugh Hewitt, the Fraters and many other minutiae-minded precontenders. We’ll be “managed” by the Mall Diva who, if this devolves into the expected Wrestlemania brawl, will leap into action, squirting hair-spray into the eyes of our opponents (either that or traitorously turning on Ben).

Our captain entered our team name as “Three Weddings and a Funeral”, but since there’s usually a Hewitt-inspired Ralphie-Christmas Story theme to this competition I’ve suggested we call ourselves “The Bumpus Brothers.” I can just hear Chad the Elder cursing “those %$#@* Bumpuses” as we hound the competition and run off with the prize!

Anyway, the event starts at 9:00 p.m. so come on down and cheer (or heckle) your chosen squad. While you’re at it, please make a contribution to Soldier’s Angels, a great organization dedicated to supporting our troops and their families. Hope to see you there!

Brigham for State Senate!

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Not content with trying to get his pro-life, pro-family, pro-small business points across in his blog or through his work as official graphic designer and tee-shirt maven to the MOB, my friend Derek Brigham has decided to run for the Minnesota Senate in District 45. The 45 is a deep-blue bastion and current fiefdom of long-time DFL incumbent Ann Rest.

If you want to help Derek to join the State Senate and change our government towards more conservative leadership (especially within the Republican Party), please go to his site and make a FULLY REFUNDABLE (up to $50 if you live in MN) donation. He needs to make his donations goal before the end of August, so the time is now. Please help if you can. It won’t cost you a thing through the MN PCR donation plan.

Giving the finger

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I’m still on blogging vacation, but a recent event got me to pondering comparitive cultural approaches to crime and punishment. I will meditate on this during my time off. In the meantime:

Four young men broke into an apartment in South Minneapolis last week, only to be wounded and chased away by an intended victim wielding a samurai sword. Three of the attempted robbers have been arrested: Hossem Chalbi, Iman Ahmed Abdelhakim and Mohammed Khalil. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’m guessing that these youths aren’t Amish.

Chalbi was slashed on the arm and Khalil was slashed on the abdomen and also lost a finger. Assuming Khalil isn’t a wayward Amish who has forsaken his religion of peace, but is perhaps a follower of the Islamic law of Sharia, then he got off relatively easy: the Sharia penalty for theft calls for amputation of the whole hand.

(Interesting but unrelated sidenote: the attempted robbery took place in the 3100 block of Lyndale Avenue S. I used to live just two blocks away, in the 3100 block of Harriet Avenue S. I didn’t have a samurai sword, but I did keep an old bayonet around the house.)