Thursday Zeb

A very quick zebra for you today.

gotta run!

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Invictus

I don't go to the movies often, but I've been waiting eagerly for the opening in France of Invictus.
The story of Nelson Mandela, the end of apartheid, and rugby. What could be better?
I just hope this movie doesn't disappear without notice in the US. It's not that Americans don't like Mandela, or the end of apartheid, and a good triumph of the underdog story is always a winner. But Rugby? WTF? And the title. No regular American has any idea what “invictus” means. We don’t study latin any more. This movie may be doomed to obscurity from the start.
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I can’t help much with Latin, but having lived for a time now in a rugby-playing land, I can give you a few pointers concerning the impenetrable rules of that game.
First, it doesn't stop. No timeouts. No stopping the clock between plays. Minor injury on the field? Keep playing, just try not to run the guy and the medical team over. It’s a big field: go play on another part of it. Even the end of the half, or the game, does not stop play. Running and tackling and rucking (yes, it is a game with rucks and scrums and melees) continues apace, sometimes for several minutes, concluding only when a score is made or the ball goes out of bounds. Play can be stopped any time, however, if the referee's battery needs changing.

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Other rules: - No bleeding on the field. Anyone caught bleeding has to go off. This goes for the referee, too.
- No throwing a guy to the ground unless he has the ball. This rule is kind of flexible.
- Getting the ball into the end zone is not enough. You have to touch the ball to the ground. So don’t get all caught up in celebrating and forget to touch the ball down. In rugby you have to ‘touch down’, though in American football a ‘touchdown’ only requires the ball cross the plane into the end zone.
- Wear any shoes you want. Socks are part of the uniform, but shoes are up to you, so there are guys out there with any color shoe they can find. Which can be useful trying to identify guys in a pile. Same goes for headgear. If your wife makes you wear one of those funky quilted helmets to keep your ears pretty, it doesn't have to match anything else.
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As you can see from these rules, it’s a fast-moving, rough and tough game, a bang-up show of testosterone. Go see it.
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Friday Photo Shoot Out: Birds

Today's Friday Shootout theme is Birds, chosen by Scriptor.

Anybody home?

Up there? Anyone?

Yoo-hoo! Birds!

Most of our regular birds are on vacation today.

Pretty much the only birds hanging around my town these days are the ubiquitous crows, a magpie high in a tree,
and some fat doves. (They're not fat; they're fluffy!)

So from my secondary town, here's a San Diego Zoo inhabitant,
And a beach bum.
And from my parents' town of Mountain Home, Arkansas,
watching the birdfeeder scores plenty of birds.

At a lake a couple of miles from the folks, a pair of Bald Eagles nests every year. These are the 2009 fledglings just a few days before leaving the nest.

For a look around all the Shooters' posts, click here.

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Thursday Zebras

For your zebra viewing enjoyment.

Cat of the Month: Orange Bunny Baskerville

We just called him Basker, or Bunny, depending.
On moving to Los Angeles, we discovered that the fabulous Man O War needed a companion, now that the apartment wasn’t filled with people coming and going. There’s a place just off Venice Boulevard called Pet Pride that keeps cats. They have about 200 at any time, though many are not up for adoption due to health or behavioral problems. All the cats are adults, since the rule is that you must have had your cat at least a year before Pet Pride will let you leave it with them. That’s one way of limiting the new cats, by refusing random strays, which is sad for the strays but the place would just go under otherwise - too many cats, not enough adoptions. Last time I was there they must have relaxed this rule, because there were some younger ones.

Even after getting a cat, sometimes we’d go down there on the weekend, just to spend an hour or two petting and brushing and giving attention. Their collars were coded - blue for boys, pink for girls, white for the declawed (PP makes you promise not to declaw). I wish they had a fourth color, for those not up for adoption, so you don’t make up your mind for one it turns out you can’t have.

Out of the milling cats, many clamoring for petting and brushing and being taken home, others curled up sleeping, others just sitting around bored and resigned to their lot, there were a lot of candidates. Among the white-collars, we picked a large, very skinny, middle-aged, orange one. Bunny. Baskerville was my idea (hey, Man O War had been Bing in a past life). Orange was Tim’s addition. Like we might get this one confused with some other Bunny Baskerville in the neighborhood.

So Bunny came home with us, and was great friends with Man O War.
Only, he never did eat much. We discovered too late that was due to the woeful state of his back teeth, and sadly he died of an infection soon after. Unlucky cat number 13 in my life. Check your cats’ teeth!