CBEB’s

A quick apology to those of you who tried to visit last night. My hosting company was moving a server, so the site was down for several hours. No one tells me anything…

Stinky, a.k.a. Stench Joseph the Third

This is going to be my only post today, as I’m in mourning. Yesterday we had to take our cat, Stinky, to the vet after he was found collapsed on the sidewalk. It turns out he had leukemia, lymphoma and a host of other problems. Rather than let him suffer, we opted to euthanize him.

I feel like shit about this.

No one knows how old he was. Stinky was full grown when he showed up Christmas day, 1999. We didn’t take him in; it was more like he chose us.

Everyone loved him. He was indifferent to the multitude of small dogs that reside in the area, and he liked being petted by young children. Stinky preferred to live the life of a stray. He would come in to eat, and when it was cold or rainy he’d sleep inside, but his favorite pastime was lounging in the flowerbeds, eyeballing the grackles and squirrels.

We have a serious stray cat problem in the area, but Stinky was always exempt from the numerous “sweeps”. Since he was fixed, he wasn’t contributing to the problem, and the neighbors liked having him around.

We knew Stinky was getting old. He had lost his fangs a few years ago; it took him a long time and several ass-whippings at the hands of younger tomcats to realize he was no longer cut out to be the Alpha Male.

What we didn’t know is that he was so sick. To the very end, he was the same old Stinky. In a sense, I’m grateful for that. That’s the Stinky I’ll always remember.

I have photographs of Stinky, but my favorite image of him has always been the drawing above, which was done several years ago by the daughter of a former co-worker.

It’s times like this that it’s difficult to come to terms with the finality of death, but no amount of wishful thinking is going to change the fact that Stinky is dead. That doesn’t mean he is no longer with us, though. He gave us a lifetime of memories, and he will always be fondly remembered.

Rest in Peace, Stinky.

Over at (un)Reasonable Kansans, FtK has posted her thoughts on the Governor Spitzer scandal. She states:

Lord, the only way I’d stand next to my husband like that would be if I’d beat him black and blue before hand[sic] and he wore a sign around his neck that said, “My wife has a mean right hook”.

I like the way she prefaces the threat of violence with, “Lord”. But that’s not really what caught my eye.

Is For the Kids a southpaw? Bragging about her “mean right hook” leads me to believe she is, but I’m not going to pick on FtK; instead, I’m going to give everyone a short boxing lesson (along with a bonus rant/movie review).

There are five punches in boxing. The jab, the straight, the hook, the cross, and the uppercut. One could say there’s six, because there’s a hook-uppercut hybrid known as the “upperhook”, but it’s rarely seen. With the exception of the uppercut, the punch you throw depends on your stance. For example: If you fight orthodox (right-handed), jabs and hooks are thrown with the left, straights and crosses are thrown with your right. The reason it’s called a “cross” is because the punch has to cross your own body before arriving at its target.

Although uppercuts can be thrown with both hands, an orthodox fighter will generally throw uppercuts with the left hand. Timing is crucial in boxing, and the extra milliseconds it takes for a right uppercut to arrive at its target creates more potential to either miss or be countered by a punch that takes less time to connect.

Also, an orthodox fighter can throw right hooks, but they have to be “squared up” (both feet and shoulders at an equal distance from the target). Fighters will sometimes square up during intense inside fighting, but it has a negative effect on balance and creates a larger target, so a good trainer will scold his fighter if he spends too much time squared up.

Okay, today’s lesson is done… on to the rant/movie review. I should give a spoiler alert as well, but I think what I’m doing is more of a public service than it is a spoiler. I just might prevent a few people from wasting time on a shitty movie.

I really like Omar Epps. I’m not big on football movies, but I thought he was great in The Program, and he was fantastic in Takeshi Kitano’s Brother, so it was Omar’s presence in the film Against the Ropes that made me want to watch it.

Against the Ropes is based on the true story of Jackie Kallen, one of boxing’s first female promoters. Omar Epps plays her star fighter, Luther Shaw (who, from what I understand, is supposed to be James Toney).

Further investigation confirmed my suspicions that the film’s writer, Cheryl Edwards, knows nothing about the sport of boxing. Here comes the spoiler…

Omar Epps has a falling out with his promoter (played by Meg Ryan) and during a championship fight, he’s getting his ass kicked. Epps’ character fights southpaw, and his opponent (played by Juan Carlos Hernandez) fights orthodox. Epps is getting schooled by the other fighter when Meg Ryan rushes the ring and starts yelling at Omar to “switch to orthodox”. When he takes her advice, the camera zooms in on his opponent’s face and he’s got this “OMG! What the hell just happened?” look on his face. Then Epps proceeds to open up the proverbial can of whoop-ass on Hernandez, who is apparently helpless against another orthodox fighter.

The casual fight fan may not see the massive problems with this, but that one scene turned a passably mediocre film into quite possibly the worst boxing movie I’ve ever seen. Let me explain…

Never in a million years would an orthodox fighter be confounded by a southpaw switching to a right-handed stance. It would have been more realistic if Epps’ opponent had removed a glove and tried to shake his hand and say, “Thanks for switching to orthodox; now I’ll kick your ass even harder”. Even another southpaw fighter would express relief at his opponent switching to orthodox stance. Furthermore, I’ve watched thousands of fights and I have never seen the course of a fight changed by a fighter simply changing his stance. For the most part, fighters switch stances to play mind games with their opponent, which may or may not lead to an opportunity to land a great punch. I don’t consider myself any type of authority on boxing, but I know as sure as the sun sets in the west that a southpaw fighter switching to orthodox stance would not in any way confuse or befuddle his opponent: if anything, it would have the opposite effect.

What was supposed to be a dramatic climax was rendered laughably stupid, because a movie studio thought that sending a screenwriter to a couple of live boxing matches would result in a believable story. Did this movie even bother to hire a technical adviser?

My computer bit the dust yesterday, and it’s going to be about a week before I can do anything about it, so I’ll be away for awhile. I’ll try to get things up and running as soon as I can.

Unless you’re reading the front page, every other post and page on this site is generating a 404 error. For the past three days, CBEB’s has been the target of a rather feeble DDoS attack, but it looks as if the database for this blog has been screwed up.

Be patient… things will be back in order soon enough.

This is kinda old, so some of you might have already seen it: it’s The Smoking Gun’s Legal Document of the Year of 2003.

A Colorado teenager was accused of Smokin’ in the Boys Room by the assistant principal and as teenage boys are wont to do, he called his accuser - among other things - a “fucking fag”. The unruly teen was charged with disorderly conduct and “interfering with the staff, faculty, or students of an educational institution”.

The public defender assigned to the kid’s case filed the following motion:

MOTION TO DISMISS: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF FUCK, “FUCKER” AND “FUCKING FAG”

It’s a very entertaining (and informative) read… the whole thing is here.

So far, I’m fairly pleased with the way the blog is looking, but there’s always room for improvement. Here’s a few things I plan on tweaking over the next few days:

• Get the “Post” and “Preview” buttons at a uniform size
• Get the comments to alternate background colors for easier reading
• implement a Random Quote feature so visitors will be greeted with some vintage Tard
• add more links to the blogroll
• give readers the option to watch videos at a higher resolution

I’ve checked out the site with Firefox and MSIE and it looks okay to me, but if anyone is experiencing glitches of any sort, by all means let me know. I’m especially interested in knowing how the site looks on non-Windows machines.

Thanks and a big shout-out to JanieBelle for the site plug.

There will be updates in the next 24 hours, but in the meantime, perhaps you can help me…

I’m going to add links to Uncommon Descent, Young Cosmos, (un)Reasonable Kansans and a host of other non-church burnin’, non-ebola spreadin’ blogs to the Blogroll, but I’m undecided on what to call the category under which the links will reside. So far, I’m thinking of “$20 Cover Charge” or “Somebody Call the Bouncer”, with a preference for the latter.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Also… if you’re a church burnin’ ebola boy (or girl) and want to get on the Guest List, holler!

* bonus points for those who get the reference.