Tuesday this and that- or yes, I'm still alive

What, no silly news post on Monday?  Well, I have a good reason- I've been streaming Olympic women's Rugby from Saturday through Monday.  Why rugby?  I got addicted to rugby 7s a few years back.  Until Saturday, I'd not seen the ladies play- and they rocked!  Why streaming?  Because NBC's TV born choices on events absolutely blow, and by streaming I get to choose what I wanna watch.  And the only problem I had was somehow or another, they had their streams mixed up Sunday afternoon, and I found myself accidentally with a choice I bet they never intended- either watch the games with commentators on a 20 minute delay, or live with NO announcer- and believe me, I took my sweet time on the silent side making up my mind, lol!  Another advantage to the stream was having a New Zealander announcer with rapier sarcasm versus TV's American announcers who were just as busy trying to figure out the game as they were letting you know you DIDN'T know anything about it.

USA's Jessica Javelet, who may just be the fastest human I'VE ever watched.

(Which is kinda the way I feel about the announcers on Laurie's current addiction- little league world series.  I've known how the ten-run rule works for about 40 years now, I don't need you to refresh my memory every time a team goes 5 runs up.)

Which puts me in mind- which is worse:  a reporter tweeting a story he got "from some guy who just walked up" about an Olympic kayaker who capsized after hitting a discarded sofa in the bay- or that the venue is so polluted most of the world BELIEVED it?

I had to laugh that NBC has convinced the world that their acronym stands for Nothing But Commercials with their non- stop ads* and all of their "personal interest" stories rather than showing the damn events.  But that last part is the fault of you women out there.  Who says?  Not me...


As frustrated fan Emily Donahue tweeted on Monday night, "is there a way to tell when gymnastics will actually be aired on TV? I've been waiting for almost three hours."

But John Miller, NBC Olympics chief marketing officer, claimed (a month before the Olympics) that the female demographic drove the pre-tape decision.

Miller said, "The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans. More women watch the [Olympic] games than men, and for the women, they're less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It's sort of like the ultimate reality show and mini-series wrapped into one."

A user with the Twitter handle Teresa fumed, "Saying women want the olympics to be a reality show is one of the most sexist things I have ever heard."


I think I can leave that one on the table as she sits.

*The most obnoxious on streaming is the one with Amy Schumer for Old Navy- which, annoying as it is, is STILL prolly the least annoying ad ever done by Old Navy.
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To those of you who may have heard, my son KC recently was a weekend resident of Parkview North Hospital.  Long story short, he was treated for colitis and examined thoroughly for evidence of Crohn's (which as of yet has not shown up).  He is home as of this afternoon, and finally able to eat solid (if low-fiber) food for the first time since last Monday.


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So I did scout the webs with an eye to perhaps a Newspage Go! post, but the world's newsmakers were pretty quiet.  I did find an odd story on the correlation between pet names and vet bills on The Mirror.  It seems, in the UK anyway, the pet name that racks up the most in vet expenses is Charlie for dogs, and Oscar for cats.  True story:  ages ago I had a dog named Charlie; and a little more recently but still long ago, Laurie had a cat named Oscar.

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The other eyebrow raising story I found involved a man named Chen in (where else) China who submitted to a background check in order to get a new job- only to be rejected because, according to the PD, he had been convicted of kidnapping- and EXECUTED- in 2006!  In a huge "you think you have stolen ID problems" moment, China is just coming off a huge campaign to eliminate the issuing of the same ID cards to different people.  When you consider China has approximately 93 million Wangs, 91 million Lis, 87 million Zhangs, 65 million Lius- and 57 million Chens- I guess this can be a problem if one isn't careful.  Anyway, the Ministry of Public Security has whittled the problem down from over 10 million "repeat identities" in 2009 to just TEN as of June.  Unfortunately, Mr. Chen # 56,640,000 was one of those ten, it would seem.

The real Chen #56,640,000- or IS it?