http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-berry30.html
The farmer's quotes are awesome:
"I was devastated," Carlick, 54, said Wednesday. "It appears the netting was not really strong enough and one of the birds simply barged into it. It was my own fault. I just underestimated the strength of the pigeons and how smart they are."
Never underestimate the strength of pigeons, especially one that has been enticed by a steroid-enhanced blueberry the size of a human head. If I was this guy, I would have just painted a basketball blue and presented it to the Royal Horticulture dude in charge of verifying fruit girth. One has to wonder--was there a blueberry growing archrival out there somewhere, chuckling with glee, pleased with his sinister plan to hire a "hit pigeon" to eliminate the competition? Those Brits, they are a sneaky lot and they know their pigeons.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Boy, it's lookin' good for the Sox. The Yanks are reeling, the Twins are chokin', the A's and Angels are going to burn themselves out fighting for that last spot in the AL West. Autumn baseball is the best, too bad the Rockies won't be participating anytime soon. I predict the Twinkees will dismantle the Yanks, the Sox will cut through the Angels, crush the Twins and face the Cards in the world series. After that, I'm not too sure. The Cardinals are the best team in baseball, the Sox are the most likeable team in baseball (even crusty Yankee fans have to admit this--come on, who would you rather hang out with? Gary Sheffield and his little Hitler mustache or David Ortiz with his ear-to-ear grin?)Either way it's going to provide some good times.
On a far less exposed note, my Ultimate Team "Tom Sorearm and Huckleberry Swill" won last week, climbing back up to .500 (2-1-1). Practice tonight, game Sunday! My plan is to hike three 14er's on Saturday but I should be good to go!
Full (or fullish) moon tonight.
On a far less exposed note, my Ultimate Team "Tom Sorearm and Huckleberry Swill" won last week, climbing back up to .500 (2-1-1). Practice tonight, game Sunday! My plan is to hike three 14er's on Saturday but I should be good to go!
Full (or fullish) moon tonight.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
The coming of autumn resurrects bittersweet memories framed by the inevitable changing of seasons. Of all those nostalgic remembrances summoned by the crisp air and piebald leaves, the one that currently lingers in my head is that of the whiny, snivelling, cry-baby cadet from West Point who soiled his government-issued trousers when he got tagged in paint ball. I can still see his stunned face, his eyes glossy and pregnant with tears, his squeaky voice protesting his elimination.
A little background: Paul Lenhart had assembled a rag-tag group of Marist fellas to head off for a little paintballin' fun in upstate New York. About 30 of us comprised a team so militarily inept, we would have been easily vanquished by your average high-school glee club. Few of us had actually fired any sort of weapon outside of the Nintendo Light-Gun, though one of our members thoughtfully wore a plastic football helmet to intimidate our adversaries.
And it turns out our adversaries on this day were none other than a legion of Army cadets from West Point military school, just a grenade toss up the road in Newburgh, NY. It was sort of like pitting the New York Yankees against the 5-6 year-old division tee ball team.
We saw their camouflaged bus arrive, a homogeneous group of clean cut, unsmiling young men. All of them were "dressed for combat" with head to toe fatigues; moreso all of them brought their own personal paint-ball guns. Each carried a small booklet that seemed to contain strategies for warfare. The joke was on them however, because our group was operating on the chaos theory! Not only did we have no idea what we were doing, we had very little fear in our ignorance.
I believe we played three rounds against the cadets. Our goofball commandos giggling through the woods, our opponents yelling encoded formations, cursing with regularity, serious as heart attacks. The games were capture the flag themed; we were given a base to defend and when we got shot we had to go into the "pig pen", an area where the casualties hung out waiting for the game to end.
The first game saw Paul and I crawl through a swamp on the offensive, ready to sneak into the enemy base. When we got to the enemy base, it was fortified by steely eyed soldiers so we promptly returned to our base, the logic being we had scouted the enemy turf and could report our findings to our "commander" (whoever that was). Upon arrival at our base, our entire team minus Paul and I were in the pig pen, our flag ominously gone. The bad news was we lost the game, the good news Paul and I had made up the tally of survivors!
The second game I was posted on defense and that one actually ended in a draw, mostly because no one WANTED to go on offense and get shot again.
The third game led us to the incident in question. I had found an absolutely smashing sniper nest under a pile of sticks. I waited with bubbling enthusiasm for some poor sucker to wander by. It wasn't long before a grimacing cadet came stalking by, right into my line of fire. He moved like guys in the movies, his face painted green and brown, holding his weapon with urgent importance. Now I may not as precise as GPS technology, but when I fired at my victim he was at least 60 feet away--roughly the distance between the pitcher and catcher on a baseball field. I mention this because one of the only rules in the game was you cannot shoot an opponent within ten feet.
Pulling the trigger three times, I nailed the cadet three times in the back. To my utmost surprise he screamed and nearly started crying. He didn't know where the bullets came from and began screaming for an official to come over. I remained quiet in my hole. The official stopped play and asked the cadet why he was nearly bawling. The cadet said he needed to know where he got shot from because in his estimation, it was within 10 feet. Officials know these battlegrounds like the back of their hands, so he checked into my hideout.
"Hi" I said.
He asked me to crawl out and see if I had been, in fact, ten feet from the cry baby. The whiner looked utterly shocked to see where I appeared from--clearly more than ten feet. I almost wanted to apologize, he looked distraught and very upset. Perhaps a nice smooth cup of camomille tea and an afternoon watching Oprah might ease his hurt, I don't know. In any case the official got stuck in a two sided story and decided to let the whiner continue on play after being shot. This was most unfortunate because I was in enemy territory and probably in the gun sights of at least eight of my opponents.
The raw deal of all this was I didn't even have a chance to escape or a twenty second grace period. With a blow of the whistle, the official resumed play and I got hit by about 400 paintballs by my estimation. Worst off, the whine-n-cheese guy shot me about six times, tears in eyes and, mustering his shaky voice, called me a "fag" as I walked back to the pig-pen.
I realize this guy must have been the "Urkel" of West Point cadets. I can't imagine him in actual warfare saying, "No fair I got shot!! Whaaaa! You can't do that!" I don't think you get do-overs with real guns.
In any case, we lost that game and thankfully got to play against ourselves the rest of the afternoon. It was way more fun, especially the last game where I unloaded my remaining paintballs on Paul's face (who was on my team) as he executed a monkey-walk across no man's land. I had a great sniper's vantage from a two story platform above the melee. After plastering his mug, I felt a manly surge of adrenalin that prompted me to fire three victory shots in the air, leaving me out of ammo when he came up the stairs and returned the favor.
For the record, neither of us shed a tear or even got watery eyed.
Ah, fall what a great time of year!
A little background: Paul Lenhart had assembled a rag-tag group of Marist fellas to head off for a little paintballin' fun in upstate New York. About 30 of us comprised a team so militarily inept, we would have been easily vanquished by your average high-school glee club. Few of us had actually fired any sort of weapon outside of the Nintendo Light-Gun, though one of our members thoughtfully wore a plastic football helmet to intimidate our adversaries.
And it turns out our adversaries on this day were none other than a legion of Army cadets from West Point military school, just a grenade toss up the road in Newburgh, NY. It was sort of like pitting the New York Yankees against the 5-6 year-old division tee ball team.
We saw their camouflaged bus arrive, a homogeneous group of clean cut, unsmiling young men. All of them were "dressed for combat" with head to toe fatigues; moreso all of them brought their own personal paint-ball guns. Each carried a small booklet that seemed to contain strategies for warfare. The joke was on them however, because our group was operating on the chaos theory! Not only did we have no idea what we were doing, we had very little fear in our ignorance.
I believe we played three rounds against the cadets. Our goofball commandos giggling through the woods, our opponents yelling encoded formations, cursing with regularity, serious as heart attacks. The games were capture the flag themed; we were given a base to defend and when we got shot we had to go into the "pig pen", an area where the casualties hung out waiting for the game to end.
The first game saw Paul and I crawl through a swamp on the offensive, ready to sneak into the enemy base. When we got to the enemy base, it was fortified by steely eyed soldiers so we promptly returned to our base, the logic being we had scouted the enemy turf and could report our findings to our "commander" (whoever that was). Upon arrival at our base, our entire team minus Paul and I were in the pig pen, our flag ominously gone. The bad news was we lost the game, the good news Paul and I had made up the tally of survivors!
The second game I was posted on defense and that one actually ended in a draw, mostly because no one WANTED to go on offense and get shot again.
The third game led us to the incident in question. I had found an absolutely smashing sniper nest under a pile of sticks. I waited with bubbling enthusiasm for some poor sucker to wander by. It wasn't long before a grimacing cadet came stalking by, right into my line of fire. He moved like guys in the movies, his face painted green and brown, holding his weapon with urgent importance. Now I may not as precise as GPS technology, but when I fired at my victim he was at least 60 feet away--roughly the distance between the pitcher and catcher on a baseball field. I mention this because one of the only rules in the game was you cannot shoot an opponent within ten feet.
Pulling the trigger three times, I nailed the cadet three times in the back. To my utmost surprise he screamed and nearly started crying. He didn't know where the bullets came from and began screaming for an official to come over. I remained quiet in my hole. The official stopped play and asked the cadet why he was nearly bawling. The cadet said he needed to know where he got shot from because in his estimation, it was within 10 feet. Officials know these battlegrounds like the back of their hands, so he checked into my hideout.
"Hi" I said.
He asked me to crawl out and see if I had been, in fact, ten feet from the cry baby. The whiner looked utterly shocked to see where I appeared from--clearly more than ten feet. I almost wanted to apologize, he looked distraught and very upset. Perhaps a nice smooth cup of camomille tea and an afternoon watching Oprah might ease his hurt, I don't know. In any case the official got stuck in a two sided story and decided to let the whiner continue on play after being shot. This was most unfortunate because I was in enemy territory and probably in the gun sights of at least eight of my opponents.
The raw deal of all this was I didn't even have a chance to escape or a twenty second grace period. With a blow of the whistle, the official resumed play and I got hit by about 400 paintballs by my estimation. Worst off, the whine-n-cheese guy shot me about six times, tears in eyes and, mustering his shaky voice, called me a "fag" as I walked back to the pig-pen.
I realize this guy must have been the "Urkel" of West Point cadets. I can't imagine him in actual warfare saying, "No fair I got shot!! Whaaaa! You can't do that!" I don't think you get do-overs with real guns.
In any case, we lost that game and thankfully got to play against ourselves the rest of the afternoon. It was way more fun, especially the last game where I unloaded my remaining paintballs on Paul's face (who was on my team) as he executed a monkey-walk across no man's land. I had a great sniper's vantage from a two story platform above the melee. After plastering his mug, I felt a manly surge of adrenalin that prompted me to fire three victory shots in the air, leaving me out of ammo when he came up the stairs and returned the favor.
For the record, neither of us shed a tear or even got watery eyed.
Ah, fall what a great time of year!
