No time for a real post here, but since I popped into an internet cafe, I figured I should at least take the opportunity to show you what most of my HBWT administrative matters boil down to. Basically, this blog has nearly 200 posts, but it’s already attracted over 10,000 comments. You’ll notice that only […]
No time for a real post here, but since I popped into an internet cafe, I figured I should at least take the opportunity to show you what most of my HBWT administrative matters boil down to. Basically, this blog has nearly 200 posts, but it’s already attracted over 10,000 comments. You’ll notice that only about 300 of the comments currently appear on the blog, however, because the other 9,700 come from spam programs that try to sell you the typical array of phentermine, penis enlargement pills, and bestiality porn. (At this point, it remains unclear how they got such a precise demographic study of my readers.) They tend to show up in bunches, by which I mean all of a sudden, I’ll get 45 comments within 3 minutes on a post that I wrote in March, all of which are more or less along the lines of this:
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[URL=”http://hersones.beeplog.com”]cheap tramadol[/URL]Edit | View Post | Delete just this comment | Bulk action: Approve Spam Delete Defer until later
In any case, know that I spend up to an hour every week deleting these comments so that you never see them. Just one of the many things I do for you, the reader, in lieu of actually posting.
On the subject of just that (i.e. my failure to post), I will tell you that I’ve got several posts waiting to go on the World Cup, and also that I’m currently in Dublin, about to head out for a pint in the Temple Bar district. I’ll also tell you that on a curious turn of luck, I managed to find myself today with a single-admission ticket for both Gaelic Football and Hurling. I’ve halfway written a post about the day, but I’ll give you the blurb version now, which is to say that both kick terrifying ass. Gaelic Football is everything that soccer should be- frequent scoring opportunities, scores in the twenties, occasional massive collisions and the ability to use your hands. (Oops.)
Hurling is another story altogether. My friend Chuck once posited that the origin of Valhalla, the Viking conception of nirvana- where warriors were rewarded for virtuous existences with an afterlife in which they literally a) spend all day fighting and then b) spent all night drinking before strapping the pads on again in the morning to return to part a- was really just the result of typical Viking bragging after overindulgence of mead. He insists that well into the wee hours of the night, when all the Vikings were arguing about how badass they were on account of the extent of their love for fighting and drinking, one basically threw down the gauntlet, claiming that spiritual paradise, to him, would be a sleepless existence in which he were able to do only one or the other until the end of time. Cowed, the rest of the Vikings had to agree, and so an afterlife myth was born, which may sound silly, but frankly it beats the St. Peter and harps bit that I’ve heard elsewhere.
Anyway, the point is, hurling is such an impossibly violent sport that I can’t help but imagine that a few lacrosse players were once sitting around, trying to impress eachother with their love of carnage.
“You know, I love Lacrosse, but I just wish that our sticks were blunter and more lethal, and we could be more indiscriminate in hitting our opponents with them.”
“Totally right. Lax is great but I hate that you goalies actually wear helmets and there are restrictions on tackling, cross-checking, slashing, and tripping.”
“If only we could invent a sport to circumvent such rules!”
Basically, hurling is that sport, and I will go out on a limb right now and say that it’s absolutely fucking awesome. If you love the grace of the floor routine or the pageantry of equestrian, do not come to a hurling match. If you like watching players smack each other with wooden hurlies (sticks) so hard that the clacking of hurlies, wrist bones, and teeth can be heard across the soccer field-sized pitch, believe me when I say that you will not go home disappointed.
The league is sponsored by Guinness, which leads to two great scoreboard-watching moments. The first is that the competition was the finals of the Guinness Hurling Championship. I point this out only that longtime readers of the blog (which is to say, my roommates) remember a different Guinness Hurling Championships from my freshman year in college, a championship in which I was unanimously declared not merely champion but also “Emperor For Life.” Second, the sponsorship motto is “Immortality Beckons.” It’s quite impressive, with the ads that they run with a man leaping across a gaping ravine with a hurley at the ready, reaching for the championship trophy, but I can’t help but think that a more accurate reading would be “Immortality Beckons; Mortality Looms.”