Lazy Days

This is the first weekend in a long time in which I have had nothing but "me" time scheduled. Ahhhh...

We didn't do much Friday night. We knew we'd be getting up early on Saturday and other commitments this past week had been a little draining. Vegging at home was the right solution.

( Tubing on Antietam Creek )

( Photo Projects )

( And for my next trick... )

Back to some household cleaning chores for the late morning...

Lazy Days

This is the first weekend in a long time in which I have had nothing but "me" time scheduled. Ahhhh...

We didn't do much Friday night. We knew we'd be getting up early on Saturday and other commitments this past week had been a little draining. Vegging at home was the right solution.

( Tubing on Antietam Creek )

( Photo Projects )

( And for my next trick... )

Back to some household cleaning chores for the late morning...

Latest Sports Doping Blip

I can't bring myself to call the latest doping incident involving Floyd Landis a scandal. A scandal invokes images of betrayal, public angst & anger, a general sense of outrage against the participants, etc.. Somehow, I just can't work up a good head of steam on this one. Or any other sports event.

My sports-related cynicism goes back a few Olympics. For at least a couple of decades now, it's never been about the sport events: it's been my-pharmaceutical-industry-can-beat-up-your-pharmaceutical-industry.

I've always been half-way to this point anyway as I don't see public sports as contributing much to the world in general. People who actively participate in sports are at least getting exercise, but for those who simply read about it or watch it on TV, it strikes me as a waste of time & focus. Yes, there's an entire sports entertainment economy built up around vast mobs getting excited about their favourite teams, but this strikes me as being a demented feedback cycle, sort of like Paris Hilton being famous for being Paris Hilton while not actually doing anything useful or creative.

So here we are with Floyd. It appears that yet another celebrity athlete may have cheated --the second test is still in progress and it may contradict the first-- through doping. And I'm not surprised. I suspect at least half of the baseball industrial complex has been self-doping. As well as basketball, hockey and a dozen other sports I don't care much about.

Maybe I'm just getting old and no longer have enough outrage left to dish out to every cause on the planet as I did in my teens. Perhaps I'm just reserving my indignation for truly infuriating events where people die or suffer extreme injustice. A sports doping incident doesn't make the cut in my current emotional triage. It just seems so twisted that Floyd's doping seems to be getting equal coverage with, say, Darfur, the Iraq war, the latest Israel-Lebanon conflict and corruption in Homeland Security noncompete contracts. What strange judgment makes an artificially elevated testosterone count as important as a war where 30,000 have already lost their lives and --worse still--thousands more may yet die?

Go dope yourself up, Floyd. I just don't care anymore, if I ever did.

Latest Sports Doping Blip

I can't bring myself to call the latest doping incident involving Floyd Landis a scandal. A scandal invokes images of betrayal, public angst & anger, a general sense of outrage against the participants, etc.. Somehow, I just can't work up a good head of steam on this one. Or any other sports event.

My sports-related cynicism goes back a few Olympics. For at least a couple of decades now, it's never been about the sport events: it's been my-pharmaceutical-industry-can-beat-up-your-pharmaceutical-industry.

I've always been half-way to this point anyway as I don't see public sports as contributing much to the world in general. People who actively participate in sports are at least getting exercise, but for those who simply read about it or watch it on TV, it strikes me as a waste of time & focus. Yes, there's an entire sports entertainment economy built up around vast mobs getting excited about their favourite teams, but this strikes me as being a demented feedback cycle, sort of like Paris Hilton being famous for being Paris Hilton while not actually doing anything useful or creative.

So here we are with Floyd. It appears that yet another celebrity athlete may have cheated --the second test is still in progress and it may contradict the first-- through doping. And I'm not surprised. I suspect at least half of the baseball industrial complex has been self-doping. As well as basketball, hockey and a dozen other sports I don't care much about.

Maybe I'm just getting old and no longer have enough outrage left to dish out to every cause on the planet as I did in my teens. Perhaps I'm just reserving my indignation for truly infuriating events where people die or suffer extreme injustice. A sports doping incident doesn't make the cut in my current emotional triage. It just seems so twisted that Floyd's doping seems to be getting equal coverage with, say, Darfur, the Iraq war, the latest Israel-Lebanon conflict and corruption in Homeland Security noncompete contracts. What strange judgment makes an artificially elevated testosterone count as important as a war where 30,000 have already lost their lives and --worse still--thousands more may yet die?

Go dope yourself up, Floyd. I just don't care anymore, if I ever did.