Posts by Jake Pollock
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Of course, all sport is about ritual. It's just that not all sports have pierogi races.
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Splutter. Baseball naysayers. What are you, Jake, some kind of *communist* or something? ;)
After my discourse on the Marxist vs Whiggish interpretation of history on Friday, I'm pretty sure seven classrooms full of rural Pennsylvanians think so.
I'm not knocking baseball. I don't follow it, don't have a TV so I can't watch it on a regular basis, and find it hard to get my mind around how winning half of your games makes for a good season, and hitting the ball one out of three times makes you an all time great, but my American friends stare in amazement when I explain to them that the most absorbing form of cricket takes place over five days, and is as likely as not to end in a draw, so I try not to judge.
But I really enjoy going to PNC Park a couple of times a year to watch the Pirates. My basic understanding of the sport has improved, and I'm not invested in them so I don't care that they suck. What I love about it is that every single game is exactly the same -- the same cheers, the same pierogi race, the same shooting hotdogs out of cannons into the crowd, the same fireworks, and the same song during the seventh inning stretch. They change it up for 'bring your dog day', but that's about it. The play might be different each time, but there's a real ritual surrounding it that those who are more involved don't even really notice. It's hugely entertaining.
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Though it is hard to hate a team that has a sausage race.
No love for the Pierogi race?
Ah, major league baseball. A hundred and something games a season, and every one of them is exactly the same.
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Fortunately for me, the knives in this case are just metaphorical. I say that because five Aucklanders and their families and friends are less fortunate than I -- five people including Austin Hemmings have died from real knife attacks in Auckland city since mid-July -- not to mention Darnell Leslie, stabbed to death in Invercargill on Saturday. Darnell Leslie was the fifty-first New Zealander to die at the hand of another New Zealander since the start of this year.
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What, no P lab?
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How much was Stalin's house worth?
Chairman Mao: his secrets to aging gracefully.
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Nevermind that Labour have been in power for the last 9 years and could have regulated if they chose to, it's John Key's fault.
How, exactly, would the New Zealand Labour Party have regulated the American financial markets that John Key was trading in? I'm a bit unclear on this point.
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As long as we're talking about conservative philosophers, the granddaddy, Thomas Hobbes, sees an 11 volume set of his collected English works on sale at amazon.com for US$15. Even with the shipping to NZ, that's gotta be worth a 98% discount.
Not that he can be meaningfully be described as conservative without all kinds of anachronism and simplification, but a good deal is a good deal.
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When I grow up, I'm going to build a New Zealand town exactly the same as New Zealand, right down to the ice cream, so Americans can get a taste of what New Zealand is really like.
If he builds it near Pittsburgh, serves flat whites and includes a Burger Fuel, I will be supportive of this endeavour.
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I spent two months in the Dominican Republic last year, learning Spanish (kind of like going to Scotland to learn English, only warmer). One of my teacher's families had a nanny/maid, who -- apparently -- they had bought as a little girl and essentially raised as a servant, and who is now in her forties. I think. She was only ever referred to as 'la muchacha'. To the Dominicans, it didn't seem at all unnatural, and they got very upset at the mention of 'esclavitud.'