Couldn't you just put a fat guy in front of the net?

It’s a question that goes through my mind every time someone scores a goal on the Minnesota Wild and if you watch hockey you’ve thought of it at least once. Why don’t they just get a really husky guy out there who could sit in front of the goal and block every single shot?

Don’t write this off as a stupid question, similar stunts are not without major league precedent.

There are some moments in sports where spirit of the game is violated regularly to great and acceptable affect. If you’re down by two points in the final moments of a basketball game then you intentionally foul to force the shot and turnover and give yourself a chance. If that blitzer is going to knock down the quarterback for a loss of 15 yards and possibly a knee injury then you hold him and take the penalty. These are acceptable violations of written rules.

Except we aren’t talking about written rules, we’re talking about acceptable standards of play, but again, it’s not like this kind of violation never happens in major league sports.

Though I wasn’t alive in 1951 to see it, the story of Eddie Gaedel’s major league debut is one of the great baseball legends.

Gaedel was a American dwarf–they weren’t as concerned with political correctness in 1951. On Aug. 17 of that year, Gaedel donned a St. Louis Browns uniform and stepped up to the plate, filling a small corner of the batting box with his unimposing 3’7” 65 lb. frame.

It was a bit of a joke, his number was 1/8 and he had popped out of a cake between games of a double-header, but he had a valid contract.

It’s already hard for major league pitchers to hit a standard strike zone, and Gaedel’s zone was only a few inches.
Needless to say he was walked and got a pinch runner upon reaching first base. The Browns went on to lose the game 6-2.

That’s a great story, but let’s get back to the matter at hand. Why doesn’t some hockey team hire an obese man to just sit in the goal?

I suppose it starts with the simple fact that hockey is a good deal more violent than baseball has ever been. While baseball sees the occasional bench clearing brawl or struck batter charging the pitcher it just doesn't have the raw ferocity like body checking and hockey fights.

Even great baseball moments like Robin Ventura charging the pitching legend Nolan Ryan–Ryan, 46, headlocked Ventura, 26, and hammered him with his right arm which was capable of fastballs exceeding 100 mph– have almost nothing on par with the standard of violence in a Minnesota Wild game moments after Derek Boogaard gets put in.

What would rogue players do to an opposing team who they felt was violating the spirit of the game.

Equipment constraints could also be a problem. Where would a team find pads to cover a goalie of such proportions that he could adequately cover a 4x6 net?

It is also the policy of the NHL to screen for health problems with a standard physical. Could someone with that kind of girth ever be described as physically fit to play a sport? I would put that in the realm of improbable and unlikely but not necessarily impossible.

Considering that Walter Hudson, at 1197 lbs.. might just barely have filled the net with his world record 9’11” waist, it’s going to take a lot of dieting–in the reverse of the conventional sense–to reach anywhere near that size. Since Hudson died in 1991 he’s not about to walk out on the ice even if he could get onto the ice through a doorway.

So let’s go through the particulars: vengeful opposing players, lacking appropriate padding, hardly able to move.

What we’re essentially talking about here is strapping–he would probably have to be tied to the crossbar in order to stand–an inordinately husky masochist in the goal and letting angry players slap hard rubber pucks toward him at speeds close to 100 mph.

I’m guessing he’d be in one of two places after the game. the emergency room or the county morgue. Either way he’s not going to be attending a press conference to tell us all how it went.

It’s not that the question is stupid–like my girlfriend told me–it’s just that most people don’t think through the consequences.

Wherein I prove that the worst day hunting is still better than the best day working

I’ve heard it said that the worst day hunting is better than the best day working and I think I proved the true over the first December weekend.

I took a day off so that I could trek down to Iowa and spend two days deer hunting with my dad and my brother.

When we were planning the trip we hoped for good weather. In the week before the trip we watched the forecast and sprayed water proofing on all of our clothes and boots. The day before we left I said a fervent prayer to the higher powers that control meteorological patterns and asked them to push the storm just a little bit north.

It is not an exaggeration at all to say that none of that did any good.

We woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, the opening day of Iowa’s shotgun deer season, in hopes of getting out into the field to see the sun rise, only to see gray skies and a quarter inch accumulation of ice on everything outside our windows.

We went out for breakfast, and then sat around for three hours. As my hunting party could tell you, I was less than happy that I had driven seven hours to sit in a hotel lobby and comment on the weather.

It was around noon that the rain weakened and we decided to try our luck. We went to the best land we had permission to hunt on. In years past, this three mile strip has yielded hundreds of trophy bucks and heavy does. That day our party of 17 people shot a single six-point buck.

I knew things were going to go poorly as we got to our starting positions for the drive. Five minutes after we arrived at our positions, the rain came back as if it wanted to make up for lost time.

Not only was it a lousy push, but the lack of sun meant that the walkers didn’t have a reference point to judge their position. Along with the rolling hills and dense brush, this set us up for disaster as practically everyone going through the timber got incredibly lost.

I myself ended up in a position that was about an eighth of a mile away from where I should have been when I made it to the end of the push. Other members of the party (my dad being one) got so turned around that they made circuits around the property’s two ponds.

Luckily, the lack of visible deer helped keep us from tragic accident, even with so many wayward hunters.

The walk, which usually takes an hour and a half, began at 1:15 and ended at 3:30 p.m. It took us an hour after that to round up our lost companions.

We were all soaked to the skin and the closest to miserable that I’ve ever seen a party of hunters who haven’t seen the injury of a fellow hunter.

Meeting back at the machine shed where we hang our deer before processing, it was generally agreed that one outing was enough for the day. It was time to go get dry and spend some time at our favorite bar.

Usually the tavern time is a chance for us to exchange stories about the massive amounts of deer that we saw but didn’t shoot. This time, however, it was a chance to complain about the weather and exchange anecdotes about how lost we had become during the push.

And wouldn’t you know it, the atmosphere was just as cheerful as it would have been if we had shot 100 deer.

What makes hunting worth the effort isn’t the actual hunt or the meat in the freezer afterward, it’s the camaraderie of
the shared experience.

In the tavern, we did one of the things we do every year–ordered shots of peppermint schnapps and toasted to my grandpa who passed away a number of years ago.

He was one of the original members of the group that I join to hunt the hills and woods of Southern Iowa, and the few who are still around from his time remember him fondly. Hunting with those guys gives me a feeling of connection to the past, a tie to a legacy that is greater than myself. Well, that and a freezer full of three months’ worth of delicious venison steaks every year.

Luckily for us, Sunday was a better day. The weather was warm enough to hunt but cold enough that I didn’t get overheated walking through the woods and over hills. The party had collected 10 total deer by the time my dad, brother and I had to leave at noon.

Driving back it seemed that all was right with the world. We were tired, two of us smelled like deer guts, but we were generally happy with the weekend and the time we had spent together.

Don't overspend this holiday season, it could cost you.

I did it last year and I’m afraid I’ll do it again this year. No, I’m not talking about getting too drunk at the office Christmas party.

Actually, the place where I work doesn’t have a Christmas party and I’ve never really been a heavy drinker. There was that one time, but that’s a different column that might not even be fit to print.

My holiday worry is over-spending, and who would blame me? There are great people in my life who deserve extravagent gifts. Except I don’t have the money for extravagent, so they ususally have to settle for nice gifts.

Last year I have to admit that I overdid things just a little bit. I’m not going to go into specifics of what I got for who and why, but lets just say it was more than my old job, which barely paid enough for peanuts and beer, could let me afford. This meant that Visa gave me the holiday gift of a hefty credit card debt which didn’t get paid off until August.

I actually forgot one gift until the last minute and ended up getting my girlfriend long underwear–definately not the type of undergarment a guy under 30 buys for a woman–because my financial situation could easily have been described as flat broke.

She accepted it graciously along with the story that it would “keep her warm when I wasn’t around.”

Since she’s probably going to read this the day after it comes out I’m expecting a rather frosty Christmas unless her gift this year involves gold and diamonds. That’s another joke, I’m well aware she prefers silver jewelry.

Luckily I have a plan this year. To begin with I’ve set myself a realistic spending cap. This is the absolute maximum I’m allowing myself to spend on combined gifts for friends and family.

I’ve also budgeted that alotted cash based on how much I like someone. Not really, it’s really based on how many times they’ll hit me in the head for being a cheapskate if I don’t get them a good gift.

As an added measure, all of my credit cards–all two of them–are safely locked away. Some of you may be asking how I did that and the answer is that I put them away last year after I went wild during Christmas and have forgotten where they are.
There is absolutely zero hours of window shopping planned in my timetable of gift giving. I’ve gone overboard before by walking past the ‘perfect’ gift for someone and buying it only to find a ‘more perfect’ gift minutes later.

Since this year’s plan was not formulated until after I was out from under the crushing weight of credit card debt it is still a bit rough. But next year I should have holiday spending down to a science since I plan to track how my spending plan works out this year and use it to create a new plan soon after Dec. 26.

Oh, one last tip for the concientious gift giver. Whatever that hot toy is this year, don’t start a fight over the last one. These days, you never know who’s packing heat.

Do you know how many people got shot over a Tickle Me Elmo doll? Actually I don’t know of any, but I have felt like shooting myself a few times rather than wait in line any longer.

Thanksgiving, the great American Myth.

There’s something incredibly wholesome about getting together with family and offering thanks for all the good things in life, even if the only thing you can come up with while you’re around the table is that you don’t have to have dinner with these people more than once or twice a year.

That having been said, I think everyone should know that Thanksgiving is a fake holiday. It’s not the most artificial holiday on the calendar, it’s more real than Valentine’s Day but less real than Veterans’ Day (which might be the most unfake holiday, tying for that honor with Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

I realize that most of you are probably angry with me at this point. I assure you that I have many reasons for feeling like I do, allow me to share them with you.

First off, Thanksgiving is supposed to be a commeration of the first colony to be founded in the new world. Putting the story simply, it was on this glorious day that the Pilgrims came together with their new native friends and celebrated the endurance of their new home.

This is a great story, but it’s important to realize it’s just that, a story, a myth, a pleasent fiction on which to base a cultural event.

If you were to read nearly any elementary history textbook, it is quite clear that the first lasting English colony on American soil was that of Jamestown (1607) in what would one day become the state of Virginia.

Prior to that the French and Spanish had already set up outposts in the new world, but these were mostly military and so mostly ignored. Jamestown on the other hand gets ignored because it was an economic venture.

The first Thanksgiving feast was held in 1621. It was a one time festival celebrating a successful harvest and lasted for three days. It wasn’t about family or religion for the Pilgrims, it was about being thankful to be alive. If it had been a celebration of family or religion then Native Americans wouldn’t have been on the guest list.

They probably didn’t eat turkey either. While corn and squash were probably on the menu there weren’t any cranberries. The only thing we know for certain was on the table was deer.

Of course, even though the pilgrims invited their native neighbors, they didn’t feed them. Oh they wanted to, that’s for sure, but they were ill-prepared for the number of guests that arrived. A Wampanoag chief named Massasoit was a gracious enough guest to send some men home for supplies. Boy, those Pilgrims must have been red in the face over that one.
Since the “first” thanksgiving was a one time affair, how is it that we still celebrate it today? You might say that it’s because of a president’s thankfulness that civil war hadn’t destroyed the nation.

It wasn’t until 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln appointed a day of thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November. Since his historic gesture, every president after him has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. It wasn’t until 1939 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the official day as the Fourth Thursday in November–though it took Congress until 1941 to ratify it.

It seems like everything we “know” about the Pilgrims is wrong. They didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, they made landfall at Provincetown. The rock story is just a fable repeated over and over since it was first uttered by Thomas Faunce 100 years after the Pilgrim landing. Faunce was 95 years old at the time.

Not even our images of the pilgrims are right, the funny hats and and shoes with buckles are merely illustrator’s images designed to give quaint feeling to the colonists. Buckles didn’t come into fasion until late in the 17th century, long after the colonies were up and running. Pilgrims might have worn black, but probably only to church.

Not only are the Pilgrims painted wrongly, but the Native Americans are as well. In popular illustrations indians are shown wearing feather head dresses, which would be fine if it were the set of a John Wayne movie, but feathers were a tradition from plains indian tribes whom the Plymouth colonists could never have meet.

So, just to recap: No Turkey, No Rock, No Buckles, No Feathers, No first colony, No tradition lasting from 1621 until the present.

In the end, what is left? Only friends, family, a warm meal to share every year and lots of leftovers to snack on.

Speaking of leftovers, I’m starting to get hungry, time to reheat the mashed potatoes and stuffing.

Feral Pigs

If you’re out deer hunting this fall, make sure you don’t miss an opportunity to bring home some extra bacon.

The Wisconsin DNR has authorized the unlimited hunting of feral pigs in the state.

“If properly cooked the meat is safe to eat.  Landowner and hunters that shoot feral pigs are allowed to keep the carcass for consumption,” said Bradley Koele of the Wisconsin DNR

The pigs are classified as an exotic non-native species and can be killed on site by anyone with a small game license. Land-owners can shoot the pigs no questions asked, under DNR's animal nuisance control authority.

These feral animals look quite different from their common farmyard counterparts. They have elongated, flattened snouts and thick, coarse hair that can vary in color. Colors and patterns range from solid black, gray, brown, blonde, white, or red to spotted and belted combinations of these same colors. Their pointed ears stand up, rather than flopping over like their domestic cousins’.

These pigs can range from 80 to 440 pounds, with some trophy-sized examples reaching 500 pound and standing three feet high.

“Feral pigs can be aggressive and dangerous, but in most cases will run away from hunters or anything else they perceive as a danger to them,” said Koele.

The pigs have a prodigous reproduction rate, with fertility setting on in sows every 21 days. With a gestation period of 115 days, a single sow can give birth to four litters of four to 12 piglets in a year.

During the day, most pigs spend their time in mud wallows or thick brush, coming out in the morning and evening to feed.

They are totally omnivorous, and adaptable to almost any environment. Their diet can range from sea turtles and kelp in Florida, to ducklings and acorns in Wisconsin.

Though the standard range for a single pig is generally about 10 square miles, they have been known to cover up to 50 sqare miles if food is scarce.

Feral pigs are a growing problem in Wisconsin, as DNR officials and farmers are concerned that they could pass exotic diseases like pseudorabies, brucellosis and tuberculosis to domestic stock.

Farmers are also concerned with crop distruction from pigs rooting to find food. Feral pigs can be extremely destructive to recently planted fields and can damage pastures, facilities and fences, resulting in serious financial losses. In addition, the rooting is detrimental to fragile ecosystem and native vegetation.

The wallows pollute and muddy streams and ponds, contributing to erosion and algae blooms, and destroying aquatic vegetation.

The DNR continues to document declines in grassland and wetland birds and small mammals that is due to the pigs’ invasion. The Invasive Species Specialist Group lists feral pigs among the 100 worst invasive species saying, “Feral pigs like other introduced mammals are major drivers of extinction and ecosystem change.”

Pigs were originally introduced to the Americas by Spanish Explorers. Later, pigs escaped into the wild or were released. These roving populations then established themselves in the wild.

In the last few years, there have been local reports of feral pigs in Buffalo, Trempealeau, Jackson, Eau Claire and Clark Counties. The DNR has confirmed that there are feral pigs in Clark County and the WDNR website shows a pig carcass that was killed in Eau Claire County in 2004.

What Candidate Agrees With You?

This link is a simple reference for people to use in discovering which current presidential candidate agrees with them on the most hot-button issues. The issues are laid out quite clearly, some have options where others are simple yes/no or agree/oppose. Questions can be weighted for their importance to you.

In case anybody is interested, apparently my top candidate is Bill Richarson. He's closely followed by John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich. Rudy Giuliani is the only Republican to make the top 10 (I guess that's not surprising).

It should be noted that I got very different results when I skipped answering the abortion question.

To have a website determine the best candidate for you in an extremely arbitrary manner, go here: http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

Kentucky Fried Insanity

Today there are some people protesting at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Eau Claire. It’s really sort of cute the way they’re doing it.

Apparently a bunch of PETA members have taken it upon themselves to dress up as skeletons and stand around in the rain to protest the cruelty of killing innocent chickens.

The protesters are carrying signs that read, “I’d rather be dead than eat Kentucky Fried Cruelty.” I’ll grant them that the slogan is just a little bit clever, but what are they honestly hoping to accomplish other than proving that they’re crazy enough to put on costumes and dance around like jackasses?

I can attest to the cruelty. I’ve seen chickens killed. When I say that I’m sure people picture a chicken factory or a man with a hatchet. To tell the truth, my grandmother used to do it with her bare hands. She’d break their necks then spin them and pop the heads off.

The other chickens watched her do it. They didn’t seem overly disturbed, not even to the degree that I was.

I ate that same chicken later, after it had been plucked and gutted. It was delicious.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hate PETA. For the most part, it seems like they’re a bunch of self-righteous asshats who value animal rights over human rights.

I can’t help but think that child sweat shop labor in third world countries just might be a more valid reason for protest than the killing of an animal with a brain that weighs less than my fingernail.

These people need to understand that extremism (like dressing up as a skeleton) is not the proper way to win the hearts and minds of a moderate public. If anything, it seems to me that they’re probably scaring more people away from PETA than they are from KFC.

I was speaking with a vegan friend of mind the other day who is amazingly open minded. I say that her open-mindedness is amazing because, in my experience, vegetarians and vegans tend to be very snooty about their eating habits.

There is an undercurrent in the vegetarian community that seems to always be saying, “I’m more pure because I use less animal products than you.” This has always disgusted me. It’s one thing to take on the challenge of avoiding animal products and quite another to hold yourself in a superior air for doing so.

Your diet and clothing choices do not make you better than anyone else, they just make you different from the majority of the American population.

While speaking with the vegan friend whom I mentioned earlier, I was pleased to find that her beliefs were well reasoned. She calls herself a vegan, but is not one in the strictest sense. When I asked why she uses the word if she isn’t a strict non-user of animal and animal tested products, she responded that the label is quite useful when doing things like ordering at a restaurant. People understand what it means and thus she doesn’t have to explain her exact dietary specifications.

I was surprised to find that she is accepting of meats that come from hunted game and family farms. Her main objection is to the factory farms which, over the last few decades, have come to provide greater and greater amounts of the meat, milk and eggs that we consume.

In that sense, she and I are in agreement. She, unlike myself, has put her belief into practice, which I respect. Even more than that, she is not a mouthpiece for her own school of thought. While she might suggest that a person try to consume less animal-derived items, she would never look down on or chastise anyone just because they chose not to.

I find this same general attitude to be applicable in many walks of life. Take religion for example. I have no quarrel with any person of any faith, so long as they avoid trying to sell it to me.

I find this example to be particularily illuminating since it seems that these types of dietary choices are practically a religion for some people, and one of the things my grandmother (the one who killed chickens) taught me, it’s that you shouldn’t talk about religion among strangers because you never know who you’ll offend.

The skeleton KFC protest reminds me in a way of an anti-war protest I went to when I was a freshman in college. I was lucky enough to be at a protest where counter-protesters (war supporters) were present to represent an opposing belief.

Of course, many of the anti-war crowd didn’t feel as blessed as I did that we were part of a representative democracy in action.

What happened is that both sides shouted at each other. The pro-war side held up pictures of soldiers in combat and called the anti-war side traitors. The anti-war side held up pictures of dead babies and called the pro-war side murderers. It reminded me alot of watching senate debates on C-span, only a little bit more civil.

It was as if the two sides were standing on either edge of a canyon. Each was yelling at the other to get to work building a bridge, but no one was picking up tools.

I mentioned converting moderates earlier and think that this is really the key point. In my metaphor above, the moderates would be at the bottom of the canyon wondering what all the shouting is about. Some of them may want to climb the walls, but everyone up top is too busy making noise to reach a hand down and help them. Most are probably just tired of people making all that noise in what was once a peaceful canyon.