Monday, July 31, 2006

It's the End of the World As We Know It ... and here's why


Last week I got a brochure in the mail. Like all brochures, I threw it in the growing pile of my unread mail. Well, yesterday I finally got around to looking at it. The title of the brochure was "What's Next? - Are You Prepared?" I thought this had to do with preparing for the next big earthquake, which is expected to happen sometime soon. So I thought, finally, the local government is being proactive. They are taking steps to ensure everybody knows what to do in case of an earthquake. Of course, I could also be living on a remote desert island, stranded with Claudia Schiffer.

Not to disparage Oakland anymore than it already has been, but this was not a case of good local government. Instead it was yet another example of an obscure religious organization with money which seeks to influence impressionable and uneducated people. This brochure explains all natural calamities and tragic occurences of the past decade or so in terms of the Bible, particularly placing the blame for everything bad on "Satan". Here is an excerpt:

"While appearing to the children of men as a great physician ... he will bring disease and disaster until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations .... in every place and in a thousand forms, is Satan exercising his power."

Satan in Oakland? True, we have some bad crime rates. In fact, I am scared to walk around alone at night in a lot of areas. But, if I were to get mugged, something tells me they're after my wallet, not my soul. The authors of this brochure do not understand the East Bay. Despite tbe presence of some sect-like churches (like my own), this is not what I would call a "god-fearing community". So why do they send us stuff like this? Here are 3 possible answers.

1) People will always look for "the easy answer" to their problems
2) Some churches use #1 to their advantage
3) Paper is too cheap in the Unites States

Solution:
1) multiply the price of paper by, say, 3 times
2) repeal tax-exempt status for all "non traditional" churches that have enough money to send out "free" info-propaganda (i.e. if they're rich enough to send me a brochure, why are my tax dollars supporting them?)

Something tells me the Scientologists are behind this. Then again, there was no picture of the egomaniac L. Ron Hubbard in this brochure.

Next cult please?

Monday, July 17, 2006

Lake Seseganaga (Northwest Ontario)

About a month ago I went on my first ever fishing trip to Canada. It was with some cousins from Minnesota and Ohio to a place in northwestern Ontario called Lake Seseganaga. My cousins have been doing this for about 8 years with their sons and know the lake well (it's a huge lake, with thousands upon thousands of acres of water). The closest town to the area that is listed on the Internet is Sioux Lookout. We passed it on our way in from Minneapolis. Here is a map of the trip route we took.



Note that the lakes up there are accessible only by plane. The geography of the region prevents good roads from being built. So we rode a 1944 prop plane 20 minutes to the lodge and back. It was pretty neat, even though I didn't always feel that safe. But, whenever I got a feeling up being unsafe, I just thought of how many trips this plane had made since 1944, and that this could not be its most dangerous or its last one.



The area up there was formed by glaciers and looks pretty unspoiled - at least, until you see the cleared patches of forest. There are areas of water 10-40 feet deep (in some places down to 100 feet), separated by limestone rocks and cliffs and a mossy type of vegetation and soil.



The fishing at Ses Lodge, as we call it, was pretty good. I would not say this lake has never been fished - we pulled out fish that had hooks and jigs in their mouths from previous encounters - but it certainly has a healthy population of game fish, guaranteeing pretty much anyone with the right tackle a couple of large adult fish every day (or more, depending on skill and conditions). Speaking of skill, we ended up catching 75% of the fish (mainly walleye) on jigs tipped with minnows (the leeches didn't seem to be bringing them in this year). All the rest of the tackle we bought (mainly at Cabela's giant super store near Minneapolis) was not used. However, the Rapala deep tail dancer lure - a balsa wood imitation minnow which dives to the depth of 30 feet - was the one that brought in Roman's trophy northern on the third and last day of fishing.

Speaking of which, the best fish story was no doubt Roman's trip record northern pike. We were trolling around a certain spot that the lodge owner had pointed out as being a good area to catch fish. We were talking about relatives we both know, just passing time, when Roman's rod bent double and he said "this one is a fish" (often when you're trolling you don't know if you have a fish or a snag). Seeing how he was bending the rod so hard to pull the thing out of the water, I got my net ready. The fish seemed very tired. Roman did not lose much on the drag. He was using "spider wire" which no doubt did make a difference in how fast he could reel it into the boat. The fish was pretty exhausted by the time it reached us. When the fish saw the boat, and we saw the fish, we were at first kind of dumbstruck at seeing such a large thing attached to a fishing line (it was after all almost 4 feet long!) The fish then dove once, and not very far away. When it came back to the boat, it paused next to us. I leaned over with the net and "scooped" it into the boat like a bale of hay. It flopped around a bit until we managed to pin it down. Both of us were breathing pretty hard.

The next task, getting the lure hooks out of this large fish's mouth, seemed like it would be tricky. But luckily, this one had not really swallowed the lure too much (also I think it's easier to remove hooks from bigger mouths). I then took the honorary photo of the fish.



Roman put this one back in the water and went about reviving it. It took a long time - like 15 minutes. Long live the great northern!

In the end, we caught a total of 181 fish. For all 6 people, that averaged 30 fish per person (or 10 per day, more or less). With concentration and effort we could have caught more (using the fish finder more, less trolling / more jigging, etc.) But it was not all about the number of fish. We were sometimes trophy-hunting, sometimes trying to catch lunch, and sometimes, sleeping in the boat (Matt). The last day we wanted to fill our limit, esp. for walleyes, which are good eating fish. Here is a picture of that night's catch (I am holding up both my fish and my boat partner's) :



What other animals did we see? Unfortunately, no moose or caribou, which apparently sometimes like to swim across sections of the lake. However, we did see plenty of loons (which are loud at night - makes you think of wolves), a couple deer and a bald eagle. One day, one of the boats threw back a small injured northern, which was on its way to expiring in the water (we tried to avoid this happening but invariably it does, esp. with barbed treble hooks). Anyways, after about 3 minutes, the bald eagle dove from the sky and plucked the 14 inch fish right out of the water. An impressive sight.

Well, those are my fish stories for the summer. I would like to hear some of yours!

Monday, July 10, 2006

World Cup Wrap-up

Dear Sports Fans,

I would like to publicly apologize for belittling the Germany team 3 weeks ago in my last post on this blog. Since then they have proven me quite wrong. Not only did the team play entertaining soccer, as I first gave them credit for, they established themselves as legitimate contenders, which I did not at first believe possible.

Furthermore, after watching several games in which the German team was not involved (several games involving Portugal and Italy), I will give that team further credit for not "flopping" around on the field whenever they wanted to slow down the action. This habit seems to have gotten around like a bad virus and many teams, including the now-world-champion Italian squad, seem to be employing it as legitimate strategy. It was also refreshing to watch the German team play well and not complain to the ref at every call that went against them (well, they did maybe complain a little, like all teams will, but not overly so). Good job to Juergen Klinsmann, their new coach and to the players.



As to today's final match, I watched it at the French Consulate in San Francisco. This is a building right downtown in the Financial Distric (Bush Street, next to the Goethe Institute). I was invited to go along by a friend who may eventually read this blog so I will refrain from too much honesty (because I might want to go again next time there is a soccer game being shown there!) It was quite a patriotic celebration, with seemingly all the French expatriates in the Bay Area turning up (there were about 200 people there - and I'm sure there are many more expatriates, too, I just don't see them). People were whistling and yelling like they were at the real game. I could not however bring myself to join in the chant "Allez les Blues". I object to all patriotic chants and anthems, including our own. And the host consulate, once it finally opened its doors to the impatient crowd on the street, even gave us complimentary snacks and beverages, which I appreciate.

To get to the action on the screen, that is, on the field: the game started out really sloppy, with the French star Henry having to recuperate with smelling salts from a mild collision on the field in the 2nd minute. The Italians were trying to be too much gentlemen, or whatever, I thought, and dilly-dallied in this situation. Then soon after, the French regathered and in one of the first attacks their striker basically flopped down in the box. The ref awarded a penalty kick, which Zidane (the big star, more on that later) converted. I was at first mad that the ref made such a bad call, even though the hosts at the French consulate were ectastic. However, I was glad soon after, when the Italians finally started to play serious soccer to catch up to the French lead. They scored eventually, in about the 20th minute, to make it 1:1, and I thought this would be a good match all the way through. However by about the 30th minute, I was disappointed, with both sides, especially the Italians, simply kicking the ball back and forth with no real threat on goal. The game went into overtime after 90 minutes still tied 1:1. Then in overtime, the French kept trying to press, and the Italians got tired and simply stood around playing defense, which they did very well.

Eventually then, the confrontation happened which I'm sure everyone who gives one iota of a hoot about soccer has read about. Materazzi, the Italian man of the match, started to trash talk to Zidane while patting him on the belly. I believe those soccer players have gotten quite slick at trash talking nice and quiet, like talking to their girlfriends. In any case, Zidane eventually lost his cool and head-butted Materazzi, which though we may never know for sure, I believe he fully deserved. On the udder hand, though, Zidane did himself and his country a diservice by taking his revenge right there on the field. It was like inviting bad karma, I thought, to do that, and the French eventually lost in the dreaded penalty kick.

This made me think of Charles Barkley, the basketball player we Milwaukee fans used to love to hate turned fun-guy basketball TV commentator. I believe it was "Sir Charles" who in a famous quote once said, "I am not a role model". I wonder if Zidane will say anything like this. What a way to go out.

I have this daydream now, which involves Zidane helping coach some school kids, or something nice in a little French town, and then one of the smart-ass kids does an imitation of the Zidane head-butt. I don't think he'll ever live it down.

Overall it was a pretty ugly match, which I did not particularly enjoy watching. However, the operatic drama of it all certainly did entertain me. I'm interested to hear what my 2 readers think!