nonpretentious

15 of 23

It’s about time.

Question #15:

Someone builds an optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it’s essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed.

The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?

Continue reading…

Dear Graduate Student: An Exchange

Dear Graduate Student,

If you haven’t realized by now, you are not welcome in the student gym, the undergraduate libraries, or anywhere else on campus that I could possibly run into you.

When I go to the gym, the last person I want to see climbing the Stairmaster next to me is you. In fact, when I leave your class, I don’t want to see you until our next class together.

You should probably know (and spread the word to your other grad student friends, will you?) that hanging out at undergraduate spots is not okay. We don’t want you there.

Go home, write your thesis, and leave the undergrads alone (this means, don’t wave to me when we are passing each other on the street. I don’t want people to think I’m friends with a greying, sweater-wearing, messenger-bag-carrying, thesis-writing loser). I have a life.

Thanks,

Undergrad

P.S. Will you write my letter of recommendation for grad school?

[Ask a Sportsdoc] Sportsdoc Speaks about McNabb’s Injury

With a mere 16 games before the playoffs, every point counts in football and so does every injury.

Want to know more about the sports injury of your favorite player? Want to know who to draft on your fantasy team? Send your sports injury questions to Sportsdoc.

This week, Sportsdoc answers questions about Donovan McNabb’s injury for Ali Gorman’s report on the ABC news.

Where Is The Surly Teamster?

The Philadelphia MLS team finally has a name and a logo, which, as it turns out is actually pretty cool.

If someone told me beforehand that the logo would incorporate an angry snake, I would probably have been pretty wary of how it would turn out. This angry snake, however, has thankfully been subtly designed to cultivate and air of casual spite. Of course, this logo is only provisional (as is the name) but I think the snake will stick around regardless. If the snake goes, however, I think the only other logical choice for the Union would be an overweight teamster refusing to work until his bribe is paid (if they can make the snake look good, they can do this too).

I am a big fan of the chosen colors, blue & gold. Strangely enough, every school I’ve attended has had the same colors. Therefore it is only right that the MLS team I will now support will be the same. In South Philly they will refer to the team as the Oroazzuri. In every other MLS city they will refer to the team as “PU”.

No word yet on what the jerseys will look like, although I would imagine blue & gold stripes is a good bet. I have no idea who the shirt sponsor is going to be, but my suggestion is to keep it local. Tastykake, WaWa, are you listening?

All in all, I’m feeling more and more excited about the return of professional soccer to Philadelphia. Ever since the team was announced, I put off following MLS until I had a team I could support, and that day is almost here. The team will start playing in 2010, but in the meantime, let’s take a quick look at some of the Philadelphia professional soccer teams of old…

– read.  like.  support.  –

– read. like. support. –

Continue reading…

Lapse of Judgement

In one of the funnier, yet strangely serious news stories to break this year, Michael Phelps was caught at a party taking hits off a bong, a glass pipe most commonly used to smoke marijunana. The major problem with this is that Olympic athletes under the World Anti-Doping Agency can face a 2-year ban for first-time drug offenses, and up to a 4-year ban for major infractions. Now, the photo isn’t enough proof to charge Michael with anything, but pot can be detectable in the body for up to a month after using, so if he were tested in the next few weeks, he could wind up with some serious consequences. Yes, that’s right, taking a few hits off a bong could cost the best swimmer in history another few gold medals at the next Olympics in 2012.  This proves one thing–our friends at the WADA are, in fact, the dopes.

Continue reading…

The Marathon: Entry 1

And now the news you’ve all been waiting for: I’m going to run a Marathon.

Probably the New Jersey Marathon on May 3, 2009.

If any of ya’ll want to run it and live in NYC, I’m going to see if I can put together a group of friends to train. Or perhaps to train with a formal group in Central Park or somewhere else in the city.

We’d have to start fairly soon (by early January) because the race is only about 23 weeks away. I think it generally takes 16-20 weeks to train for a marathon. You probably should be able to run at least 4 miles without too much difficulty before beginning to train.

By the way, the New Jersey Marathon is supposed to be a beautiful, well-organized marathon with a lot of runners (check out the reviews here). It’s less than 60 miles from NYC along the ocean.

In any event, I’m also going to write about the marathon. So, stay tuned.

My *Most* Serious Injury

I have a problem.

I want to contribute to this site, but I never know what to write. I am not the most creative out of the bunch, nor the best well spoken, nor the smartest. I am just me and sometimes *I* think that is a little boring. I read my fellow contributor’s posts and am in awe. I wonder, “How did they think of that?” or “What a great idea!” I guess you could say this was a sign of a low self-esteem. But who doesn’t have that? I just want to be interesting, so I thought I would try this out for awhile.

I googled “writer’s block” and after a few tweeking moments, I came across this site. I read down some of his list, and thought that this would be a good place to start. In the end, you can’t get better at writing without writing, so as long as I am writing, I should get better at it? Ha. I’ll let you be the judge of that one. Continue reading…

Thank You!!!

Sorry, but this is a big day for me so please excuse my selfishness…

The Milwaukee Brewers are in the playoffs for the first time since 1982.  This is big news to me and I thought I’d be nonpretentious about it.  Favre also threw for 6 TDs and Aarond Rodgers had a back injury and couldn’t quite play the game all the way….Things are starting to make sense here.  I love Favre’s quote…’we have potential to be a good team, but I don’t recommend any Jets fans buying playoff or superbowl tickets anytime soon.’

The Milwaukee Brewers are in the playoffs for the first time since 1982 and they are playing the Phillies….

peace,

i think i’ll sail around here

the bears are dancing in the street

What is going on?

Online dating…does it exist?

Presidential election…who’s running, Goldman Sachs or Foldem Sachs?  Why did the Milwaukee Brewers fire Ned Yost two weeks before their first playoff run  since 1982?  Why is Brett Favre running around in a New York Jets uniform?

Here is a message I got from a girl on match.com, who has been sending me random emails and phone texts for a good month now but has never actually met me or “dated me.”  She has canceled on two ‘dates’ but has proceeded to up date me with her life with her dog, her grandmother, her job, her apartment, her neighbors, her family get-togethers, oh and finally…her niece.

Here is a sample email… Continue reading…

Ask A Sportsdoc

Dear Sportsdoc,

Last weekend, Charlie Weis, head coach of the Notre Dame football team, was injured on the sideline. I witnessed the injury live on television, it looked painful. He is reported to have torn both his MCL and ACL in his left leg. As these are common injuries in sports such as football I am not really interested in his recovery time from such an injury. I assume he’ll have to have surgery fairly soon. My question regards the prospects of such a surgery on such a large man. He weighs approximately 350 lbs and I don’t think is particularly healthy. In 2002, he underwent gastric bypass surgery, initially lost 90 lbs, but appears to have gained it all back. My question is this. What are the chances he would actually not survive surgery to repair his MCL and ACL, primarily due to his obesity? Sorry if this morbid, but I’ve heard that major surgery is more risky for severely overweight patients in regards to anesthesia and general complications. Is this true?

And though I do not root for his death, I do hate Notre Dame (I went to Michigan).

Go Blue!
Kiren

…

Hi Kiren,

Knee reconstruction for ACL/MCL injuries are performed mostly under general and occasionally spinal anesthesia. Generally, in patients over 50 years, treatment of choice would not be surgery but rather bracing and physical therapy. Rarely, in a physiologically young high demand healthy and fit patient who expects to maintain an active life style, such as skiing and activities which require a stable knee, surgery will be undertaken. So, yes, Kiren, as with any surgery, obesity and unfit patients are at a higher risk to develop post-operative complications such as infection or blood clots that can be limb and life threatening. Also, specifically, as pertains to ACL surgery, a difficult and lengthy rehab may be compromised in a morbidly obese patient. My recommendation in an older, morbidly obese patient would be not to elect surgery but rather to proceed conservatively even though outcome may not be equal to surgical repair.

Sportsdoc

—

Want to know more about the sports injury of your favorite player? Want to know who to draft on your fantasy team? Send your sports injury questions to Sportsdoc.