Odds and Ends Five
About Womens' Rugby Sevens, OJ Simpson and Introjection, and Ukrainian Halvah.
Once again, here are some short subjects, which I did not think were long enough or significant enough to make full posts out of.
Women’s Rugby Sevens.
I have been sitting here on a cold winter day in Canada watching women in shorts slam into each other on a hot summer day in Australia. Yes, the world rugby 7s series is grinding along. It is one of the female athletic leagues I follow closely.
Rugby 7s is not one of the best known sports, but awareness of it, and its popularity, is growing. There could not be a team sport better adapted for television. The matches are only 14 minutes in total, very intense, with very few dead moments.
World Rugby is being run by people who know how to operate something like this. There is the money to do it right. It is made reasonably convenient for people to find and watch the tournaments.
World Rugby is determined to maintain the ‘purity’ of the sport, avoiding the commercialization and corruption of most other professional sports. It has also been very open to women in the sport. Oh, no! Women must not play rough sports like that, they are too delicate! Ha, ha.
There is a single league for both genders. The league has its own broadcast system and male and female tournaments are played at the same time. Male and female matches are alternated.
If I can record, I fast forward through most men’s matches. As I never cease to propound, women athletes are much more entertaining to watch. Who wants to watch a bunch of hairy gronks slamming into each other when the ladies do it with so much more finesse.
This is in contrast to other sports, where there are wholly separate leagues, or where men’s and women’s tournaments are played at different times, or even in different years. It is not because of any political correctness. Women’s sports have audiences and make money.
One thing that saddens me about money is that rugby players still do not make much of it, and in many countries, women get less than the men. Sometimes, still, there are less resources spent on the women’s side. There are other gender problems within national establishments in world rugby, and I will get to a discussion of the issues with the Canadian team.
For those unfamiliar with rugby, and wanting more detail than I give here, go google. It was invented at Rugby school in England in 1841. Players carry the ball, rather than kick it, usually.
The ball has to be carried or kicked down the field, and if the ball advances one millimetre down the line by being thrown, it is a no no. Only the player carrying the ball can get tackled or otherwise inconvenienced mistreated. There are various rules limiting how that can be done, intended to prevent injuries. The other players have to stay out of each other’s way.
Rugby was originally played with sides of fifteen. It is ancestral to other games such as American football. Also, this “Australian rules” football, which I have never seen. Once upon a time it was a very brutal game but was cleaned up and made a test of skill, fitness, and teamwork.
In recent years the ‘seven a side’ version has eclipsed fifteens in popularity. It seems to have been invented by someone hung up on the number seven. It is played in two halves of seven minutes.
A goal is called a ‘try’, getting the ball over the try line, and gets five points. Then if they can kick it through the goal posts from the angle at which the ball went over the line, it is two more points. Lucky number seven.
I have noticed that most games are improved, made more watchable, when they are shortened and fewer players are involved. I would love to see more three on three ice hockey. But today I was watching seven on seven for seven minutes a set, for seven points a try, rugby.
I have been following the women’s international circuit since 2015 when Jenn Kish and the Canadians seven’s gals won gold at the pan American games in my home town of Toronto back in 2015. I was frustrated at being able to see it live. In fact, I have yet to see a live rugby game.
But I have been following world rugby since 2015. The games have gradually got easier to find and watch on the tube.
I have become familiar with the characters on the circuit. I have followed the troubles of the Canadian team in recent years. Just before the last olympics, there was a blowup and they rebelled against their coach and team management.
It is hard to piece together what was going on in these matters, for obvious reasons. It seems there has been a bullying culture in the Canadian rugby national team. This bunch runs its own show and is not connected to sports Canada, which could be good thing and a bad thing.
It seems some other older players were overbearing toward the younger players. There are some concerning insinuations that a lesbian clique on the team were being not nice to the heterosexual players. Some players were also into ‘woke’ identity politics, which irritated some other people.
The team sent complaints to the rugby management, which rejected them. The infamous tweet denouncing the women players got captured before deletion. “Go colonize ninth place. Karma is a bitch”.
Many of the older players quit for good. Others took a break until the grievances were dealt with. The old coach quit, vowing never to coach again. He seems to have had what might be called “old fashioned” ideas about coaching.
Eventually management realized that the grievances had to be addressed if they were going to have a team. Pay and working conditions have improved, and there are more training resources. The team has been rebuilding.
Just before the rupture, they were at number five in world standings. They dropped to number nine and it is a miracle they did not drop below ten and get ‘relegated’, removed from the world circuit. They are now back up to sixth place and have qualified for the next olympics.
In this latest Australia tournament, Canada almost made the finals. What is surprising is that the Irish beat Australia for the gold, and New Zealand finished way down. For a long time, Australia and New Zealand were the dominant teams in the women’s side of rugby 7s.
This was something like the USA and Canada teams in ice hockey. This is starting to change in both sports for the same reason; other teams are improving. It does get a bit dull when the same two packs of jokers are on top all the time.
As I said, many of the players on this circuit have become like old friends to me. Little baldy, Olivia Apps, is now captain of team Canada, but did not play much at this tournament. I did not catch just how she got the three game suspension.
Charity Williams is still my favorite Canadian player. She has the best smile in rugby. I love to watch it flash all white as she zooms down the pitch, her opposition trailing behind.
Kelter the belter is still on the USA team somehow. She is a red headed hulk, noted for her occasional weird behavior on the pitch. This time, she reacted to being sat on by a South African player.
She got up and gave the player a very hard shove and was lucky to not get yellow carded. The ref instead told the team captain to have a talk with her. The rest of her team were clearly disturbed by her.
I remember a few years back, when madam Alev Kelter lifted a New Zealand player over her head and slammed her into the ground. That got her a red card and a many game suspension. Also much booing.
The New Zealand player stayed motionless on the ground until Kelter was off the field. Then she did some push ups and jumped to her feet, just fine. This led to laughter and clapping from the stands.
I miss the Russian players. I am sure I will never see Khamidova play again. She is a monster from a cave in the Caucasus, with the longest arms I have ever seen on a woman.She is, or was, also blinding smart and fast.
The next tournament is in a month, in Vancouver. The olympics are later this year and this time the Canadian team is ready. The women’s team, at least. The Canadian men’s …..?
OJ Simpson and Introjection
I recently was in an online mini debate with someone about the world’s most famous scapegoat, OJ Simpson. Someone was using him as an example of someone getting away with a crime because of; what, was not clear. But I won the debate and so had to be blocked.
The persecution of OJ Simpson has always been a big topic of mine. It is a perfect example of something taken up by the public introjectively, meaning without any critical examination. It then becomes locked in, anyone contradicting it treated as crazy or having some ’motivation’.
The fact that Simpson is patently not guilty does not matter. A very competent lawyer took apart the case before a reasonably impartial judge. The jury took under an hour to acquit, for very good reason.
The case was clearly manufactured. Evidence like the bloody glove was planted on the scene. Simpson had very strong alibis of being elsewhere at the time.
Arthritic Simpson could not have overcome the much younger and fitter victim, Goldman, in a fight. The circumstantial evidence on the site showed that Goldman was grappling with two assailants. Goldman was known to have become involved in drug dealing, and owed money to criminals.
The police detective putting together the case was a known fanatic racist. A few years prior, he had been recorded expressing his hatred of black people, outrage at interracial marriages, and desire to create false cases against interracial couples.
The campaign to get a conviction against Simpson had been organized at a high level within the Los Angeles cryptocracy. The assumption of guilt had been established introjectively in the sociotropic public mind by the control media well before the trial. The exact motive for this is not clear.
Those involved in this were clearly enraged when it was defeated. A redoubled effort was made to harass Simpson. He was subjected to a thoroughly rigged civil trial intended to ruin his life and remove his means of defending himself further.
Those are the facts. Yet attempting to communicate them to people who have unquestioningly absorbed the false narrative usually just generates abuse against the truth teller.
In this is the problem with conventional ideas about democracy and free speech. In it is why propaganda and cognitive social control is usually so effective. Most people are not able to manage independent and critical thinking.
Most people develop their ideas introjectively and sociotropically. That is, subconsciously and bypassing any critical faculty they may have. Enforced beliefs are also keep in place sociotropically; really just fear of being ostracized, ones personal relations harmed.
Most people are really afraid of standing out. They are sociotropic; over committed to personal relationships in a way not really good for them. I believe this is something mostly learned and not innate in humans.
This is the way artificial narratives and belief systems, useful to pathocracies, are kept in place. The LA cryptocrats need the Simpson story kept in place, first as a warning against interracial marriage. Second, to cover their vendetta after their initial attack on Simpson blew up on them.
In the same way, the Zionists need the attempted extermination story to cover the real aim of their forced displacement of Jews. The more it unravels on them, the more vicious they get.
Ukrainian Halvah
I have a story which should amuse people interested in the Ukraine war. Even more, those who seem interested in what goes on in Canada that relates to Ukraine.
I was at my local market on New Year’s eve, getting a few things for New Year’s day. One of the shop keepers asked me, “Were you looking for halvah? There’s a shop on the lower level that has some.” He gave me the aisle and kiosk number.
Yes, thanks and happy New Year, and I headed down there to look. I wanted some halvah for Christmas but could not find any nearby.
When I was a kid, halvah was a Christmas thing in Canada. Now people do not eat it anymore. Young people do not know what it is. It is hard to find, except in some shops catering to East European people. That is strange because halvah was originally a middle eastern thing.
So, downstairs was a shop with a nice display of halvah out front. Inside were Kolbassas, sausage, and cheese, and jars of pickles and Salo, and other glories of Ukrainian cuisine.
‘Xxxx Ukrainian store’ it was called, and they had a little Ukrainian blue and yellow flag with a maple leaf in the corner. It is a little out of the way and I had never noticed it before.
“This should be interesting,” methought.
I found a nice looking block of chocolate covered halvah, which did not look dried up. It had Cyrillic writing all over the packaging. I brought it up to the checkout, behind which were two very tall blonde girls who had to be sisters, probably twins.
I started doing the debit card ritual. Of course I did not think this was a place to get political. However, I noticed a sign in clumsy English asking for donations to “help Ukraine”.
That did it. I started chuckling through my N95. I am one of these weirdos who still wear masks.
I have never had covid, how about you? Also, I have not had any type of sniffle in four years. How about you?
I have noticed more people are starting to wear them, and finding good ones. I think more people are getting sick of being sick. Also, deciding that ‘long covid’ will interfere with their lives a lot more than will using a little sense.
But back to the story. The two tall girls looked at me quizzically. I got my straight face back and finished the transaction. They put the purchase in their little plain baggies and I put that into my big yellow bag.
While performing these operations I noticed the display of tiny ‘Roshen’ chocolate bars. Roshen as in Poroshenko. I do not hear much about him anymore.
This got me chuckling again. I picked up a Roshen bar, examined it, and put it back.
The look on their faces was too much! It got me snickering audibly now. But I just wished them “Happy New Year”, waved, and turned to go.
The nearer one mumbled a “Happy….” And managed to raise an arm briefly.
As I went toward the stairs I could see their reflection in a mirror, staring after me and then at each other. A couple of people looked at me, clearly wondering what I was chuckling about under the mask, and what just happened. I flashed a ‘V’ sign at one and disappeared up the steps.
But you really had to be there. Ha, ha.
The halvah was very nice.
A safe, peaceful, and really happy 2024, all who read this. May this year bring peace to Ukraine.