Much of my knowledge of hockey comes from Disney’s Mighty Ducks trilogy. No, I’m not going to watch Slap Shot… an actual good movie about hockey. I prefer my skewed Emilio Estevez vision of hockey, thank you very much. Now if you want to talk about whether or not D3 was better or worse than D2.. then that’s a conversation I want to partake in.

Even with my Disneyfied version of hockey, I got some things to complain about the game.

It seems to me that many penalties in hockey are just natural parts of actually playing hockey. When you’ve got sticks and legs everywhere and all of them are moving about whacking each other at fast speed on slippery ice… how do you even avoid hitting someone with a stick, elbowing the guy behind you or accidentally hooking someone?

But hooking, tripping, elbowing, high sticking are all penalties in hockey.
While I can understand that intentionally doing these things deserve to be considered a penalty but doing it unintentionally shouldn’t.
It’s similar to my soccer experience in which the “no hands” rule applies. I get it. It’s soccer. You use your feet so you don’t use your hands to pick up the ball and toss it around. BUT if the ball bounces off someone’s knee and it just so happens to hit the outside of your hand… why is that considered a foul? I didn’t want to touch the ball with my hand.. it was the ball that hit my hand. It’s the bully who says “stop hitting yourself” when he’s forcing your hand to hit yourself.
The same rules go for hockey and I think it’s wrong.

Speaking of soccer… why can’t you kick in hockey? You can angle your foot.. but you can’t kick the puck in the goal? It’s already hard enough as it is to even get the damn puck in the goal. You’re lucky if you see a game where a team has scored 5 times within an hour and 15 minutes.
Maybe the sport would even be better without sticks. It could be Ice Soccer.

So there are all these minor penalties that seem to occur just by the nature of the game itself….BUT if you want to start to punch a guy straight in the face that’s OK in hockey. You can start whaling on a guy until he’s bleeding on the ice but accidentally kick a puck in the goal and everyone gets pissed.

But what is interesting about fights in hockey is that you can actually beat each other up… but my God.. you don’t want to be rude about it. There’s an etiquette to fighting in hockey.
Some toofless Molson-Drinking bearded Canadian skates on over to his fellow enforcer and they set a time to have a fight together (5 minutes into the third period good for you?… I’m gonna be busy triple deking, could we try to make it earlier?). Once the schedule is all figured out you can have at it.
The  loser is expected to accept his loss graciously… God forbid you start screaming when you’ve lost teeth and your bloody nose is staining the ice upsetting the Zamboni man who’s watching in the corner and is the only guy who really “gets” you.

What’s bizarre when two guys on slippery ice are fighting is that they have to hold each other up because otherwise they’d fall on top of each other. So they’re purple nurpling each other through their jerseys and punching each other in the face in this kinda beautiful ice dance of, “I want to kill you so bad… but at the same time I hope you don’t fall down on the ice cause then I’d fall down too…so be careful.. don’t fall down.. cause if you do I am so going to kill you on this cold slippery ice.”

What I do like about Hockey penalties though is how they punish you for them.
How different sports treat penalties is as diverse as the way different parents treat their fighting kids.
Say, an older brother fouls his little sister when they fight over some ice cream.

In basketball they reward the person who was fouled by letting him take a free throw shot. So it’s like the parents giving the little sister even more ice cream because the older brother fouled her.

In soccer, there a lot of the “I’m warning you mister!” with their cute little cards..
“Don’t make me do it… don’t make me do it.. If you don’t listen to me.. I’m going to show you a red card… OHP! That’s it.. RED CARD buddy.. RED CARD.”

But in Hockey, if you commit a foul you have to sit in the penalty box.
It’s the equivalent of the parents saying, “Sit in this box and think about what you did,” while all the rest of the kids are out there tongues waggling madly over the ice cream. It is essentially a “timeout.”

This seems like the best way to penalize someone and is generally  considered good parenting. Empty warnings or rewarding the offended individual does not help them to learn their lesson.

This post is hopefully the beginning of a series on special relationships.

There are special relationships in a boy’s life that affect him. Sometimes you don’t realize the significance of the relationship until it’s over.

I started noticing him in the office…

We would always arrive at the bathroom door together at the same time.  We would have the politeness struggle of trying to open the door for the other person first. Then we’d arrange ourselves in front of a urinal, always following the standard rule that you always take the urinal farthest away from the other person.

It’s a good rule. You avoid any potential of urine splashback and decrease the chance of an accidental glance of what kind of heat your neighbor’s packing.

No words are exchanged, only the sound of tinkle.

A wash of the hands, out the door and on with our days with nary another thought about what just transpired. These brief anonymous encounters occur every day in the bathroom and no one thinks of anything about the other person peeing at the same time as you.

I certainly didn’t notice anything about him.
Until something happened.

I noticed that during the course of the day, with every single trip I made to the bathroom, he was there with me.

Maybe it”s just a fluke…Maybe it’s just today.
But it turns into a week.

Maybe I’ll drink more today. That should throw him off. Yet there he was.

Two weeks…. A month….Always there peeing at the same time. Every awkward side glance filled with his presence.

This can’t be happening!
How could our daily rituals of liquid intake always occur at the same rate. How could our bladder sizes be the same?

At some point you can no longer deny what is going on between you two.
You can’t fight it. Give in.

You are Pee Buddies.
Somehow fate conspired to have the  two of us reach complete pee synchronicity.

Instead of being ashamed, it should be embraced.
Women have synching menstrual cycles amongst their closest friends. For men,  pee synchronicity is the closets thing we have.

I felt like I needed to say,”hi” to my pee buddy. Was he even aware that we always pee at the same time? Does he even think about me as much as I think about him?

How do I even broach the subject and express these feelings I’ve never felt before toward another man?

I started out by changing the standard urinal selection rule and decide to go one less further than the farthest urinal. I’m one urinal length closer to him. What a thrill! I nervously side glance to make sure he’s cool with it.

He was.
Each time I was 1 urinal closer. Each time the sound of his pee tinkling against the white porcelain urinal louder and louder. Until, officially you become Pee Buddies.

It was never spoken but was well understood by both of us that our Pee Buddy relationship only exists in the bathroom. Outside the bathroom, we did not acknowledge each other.

But such a restriction doesn’t matter because he was the coolest pee buddy ever.
We’d give each other high fives after a good pee. I remember one time, my pee buddy thumbs in the direction of the douchebag in the urinal far over who pees like he’s being frisked by a police officer (both hands against the wall, leaning forward). My Pee Buddy then proceeds to do a hilarious unflattering impression.
He completely deserved the coveted PeeBuddy Award for that.

But now he’s gone.
I’m in a new office now.

I generally end up peeing alone…
I’m sad.

I never had the guts to tell my Pee Buddy that I was leaving to find work elsewhere and that we could no longer pee together….
or that I dreamed that one day we would be in a world where we could pee together all the time…
or that I thought maybe one day we could reach a point where we could hold hands together while we pee….

or ultimately share the same urinal where our two pee streams could becomes one.

So if you find yourself peeing at the same time as someone else, or even pooping at the same, take notice. Treasure the time together. Hold your hand up to the connecting wall of the stall…

and CHERISH it

for it may gone in an instant.

Awwww! Look at the cute little ducks in love.

Wookit the adorable widdle duckwing!

Lookit all the lovable Rubber Duckies!

Bath time is lots of fun now!

WELL YOU KNOW WHAT..

What Ernie doesn’t know is that duck in the tub is a rapist.
(Pssst…don’t tell Bert that Ernie’s in a tub with a rapist!)

Ducks are Rapists.

Don’t believe me?
Here’s video of a female duck being raped:

Please notice that after they’re done, they just leave the female out there….Like a Christmas tree. So special. Tinsel still clinging to it.

Two videos not enough? How about an entire playlist (78 videos at time of writing).

We humans have many stereotypes about animals that affect our judgment when dealing with them and this has got to stop now!

These stereotypes are misleading and do not truly characterize the nature of animals.

Recently, these stereotypes are not only applied to ducks but other creatures as well.

In the land of China, they have adopted the Panda as their Nation’s animal ( ironic that a nation of a billion people likes an animal that is such a failure at procreation). Over centuries of panda stories, dolls, cartoons in the media have led to the development of stereotypes that make panda bear seem cute and huggable.

One 20 year old Chinese student could no longer control his unbelievable urge to hug a panda so he climbed over the fence at the zoo to hug one. The Panda attacked him biting his arms and legs.

And yet the impromptu poll of people who read this news article  of a vicious panda attack shows that over 70% of humans STILL harbor desires to hug a panda.

In a world where we can go beyond stereotypes to elect President Obama, it’s time that we get beyond animal stereotypes as well.

And we should start with the most heinously false stereotype there is: That ducks are cute.

Here’s something everyone needs to know:

DUCKS ARE RAPISTS.
Male ducks force sex onto female ducks!

Don’t be fooled by the media.
They are not wacky lovable screwballs.
They don’t hop around going Woo-Hoo Woo-Hoo.
They are not cute little waddling water fouls who make hilarious quacking sounds!

Daffy, Donald, Disco.. they all lied to you.
Disney’s Duck Tales lied to you.
Not Duck Tales Woo Hoo. Duck Tales BOO hoo.

RAPISTS!!!
They have the longest penis in the world among vertebrates, which they use only for RAPE.

Now you know why Donald doesn’t wear any pants. Its just more convenient that way.

We need to ban together, get the word out on ducks and teach those rapists a lesson.
The next time you order some foise gras, savor it baby. Savor it.

In Today’s world, one blog post is not going to have any effect. In order to get the message out, you have got to use the Internet with the most immature response possible.
What you need is an Internet meme.

So here I go.. The next LOLcats.

DuckRAPE:

Note: all photos abused under the Creative Commons Attribution-noncommercial Share Alike License
which means you can further abuse them if you wish.

Is it just me or does the current state of neuroscience seem completely reliant on severe brain injuries?

At least this is the impression left by Oliver Sacks (a famous neurologist).

The man seems to be the ringmaster of a freak show of three stooges-like victims of violence done to the head. He’s seems to be the goto guy whenever you need to find a man with a violent brain injury.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Oliver Sacks. I find the man completely charming. He’s got a delightful nasally British Elmer Fudd/Bawaba Walters style of speaking (which you can hear inbetween his heavy mouth-breathing) describing beautifully horribly mangled minds in an interesting way. He can quote Proust!

I can understand why brain malfunctions help neurologists figure out the functions of the brain.

But I can’t help thinking that his study of neurology involves just sitting around waiting for the next guy to have herpes eat his brains so he can study him.

That maybe… it would be more effective to further the study of neurology by going around slamming nails into people’s skulls rather than sitting around waiting for the next guy to get his brain electrocuted by lightening.

This proactive, go-getting, Ensure-drinking neurologist decides to take action instead of idly waiting by the telephone!

“The Mad Neurologist” they’d call him. Please consider this character for your next Halloween costume or horror novel.

I do hope, that neuroscience will get up to a point where we don’t have to wait around for the next guy to shove crayons up his nose into his brain.

Here’s where you can hear Oliver Sacks (and his mouth breathing):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10115666

Or hear him on RadioLab (where they have fantastic editing to remove the mouth breathing):

This may only apply to Southern California….

but I have a theory that on the end of a Saturday night after midnight (Sunday), if you are listening to the radio, you will hear at least one station play The Smith’s song “How Soon is Now” at least once before sunrise.

I believe this to be true because at this time of the night, its only people who have not found someone to love them who are listening to the radio.

That their night went something like:

There’s a club if you’d like to go
you could meet somebody who really loves you
so you go, and you stand on your own
and you leave on your own
and you go home, and you cry
and you want to die

Alone….again….. driving home on the freeway to cry and want to die.

The song feels good on the late night freeway… mostly desolate and shrouded in weird orange lights with the wailing vibrating guitar sounding like a passing car…. Like time zooming past you ….reminding you that you will probably die alone.

I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does.

Onesadmonkey.com? Why is it one sad monkey?

At least you didn’t think it was “One’s Ad Monkey” which someone actually thought that’s what I meant.

One sad monkey is in reference to a thought I had about the origin of humans, very much influenced by one of my favorite movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It also is related to a monkey character inspired by a friend’s web site.

It Begins with Why

I thought about what separates human beings from other animals on the planet.

Our human brains allow us to create technologies that help us survive even though we should be dead with our hairless bodies and watermelon on a stick physical structure. While lions are busy evolving giant claws and teeth to rip us apart, humans are thinking up how to build traps, use weapons, work with each other and invent high heels for babies for future prostitots.

In order to have technology, we have to use scientific thinking which tries to explain why things happen and then apply this knowledge. The question of Why brings forth causal reasoning.

So I started thinking… other animals don’t ask, “Why?”

A dog only knows he’s got peanut butter on his nose.
He doesn’t ever think why he just licked his nose for the last 20 minutes trying to get that nummy yummy peanut butter off his nose or where the peanut butter came from or why the peanut butter even exists.

Louis XIV from Marty Bower on Vimeo.

So I imagined very early man as a monkey…

and yes… I know that humans are actually apes, not monkeys (ya nerd!). Monkeys are much more evocative and the word just sounds better than ape. Ape rhymes with RAPE!

And this one monkey started to ask “WHY?!” Because He was Sad

Well a monkey who asks,”Why?” has to be unsatisfied with his current situation otherwise he wouldn’t ever ask why things are the way they are. A contented monkey would be happy with being a monkey…. jumping around, throwing feces, hooting and having lots of freaky Bonobo casual sex.

I imagined that this monkey would be sitting alone in the jungle, sad about the way things are and suddenly begin to ask,”Why?” thus setting off the first steps to becoming human. This is the one sad monkey that set forth everything that is beautiful and horrible about being human.

I imagined other monkeys thinking, “Man! He’s one sad monkey.”

Asking why allowed us to figure out things about this world. It allowed us to build tools based on the rules we discovered by figuring out “why” things happen the way they do. With these tools, man flourished on this planet.

I think this behavior is still ingrained in humans and especially in anyone who is unsatisfied with jumping around, throwing feces, hooting and hot guilt-free Bonobo sex, staying in on a Friday night writing a blog post with some tea and introspection.

But that one sad monkey left inside us the need to always ask “why.” With this behavior, humans will never be satisfied because each answer only brings more questions. It is part of the human condition.

Any easy way out from endless why’s is to say it was all done by God.”That peanut butter just tastes damn good and I’ll lick it til its gone. Why was it on my nose.. well I guess its cause God put it there and peanut butter exists because it is a gift from God.”

I imagined aliens looking at Earth, watching foolish humans thinking about their existence and then saying to each other about mankind, “Man… he’s one sad monkey.”

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I do hope to eventually complete a children’s book about this idea. No it will not have any illustrations of freaky guilt-free Bonobo sex.

JoJo is One Sad Monkey

At around this same time, a friend created a web site involving a Hall of Ennui and a picture of a monkey who was grabbing a ball with an angry face. The caption said something about the monkey being named “Jojo” and that he was unsatisfied with his life.

This lead to the birth of “JoJo” a depressed monkey character who was/is to have his own comic strip and animated series.. but I’ll have to talk more about him in other posts.