ultra-violence

These two guys on the right are boxers. One of them’s Hatton and the other is Mayweather. I’m not sure which is which.

I gather they have a big fight coming up, probably in Vegas, probably for some sort of belt. There’s something on the Guardian.com about it.

It’s a bizarre sport, boxing. Grown men (mostly) spend months and months getting incredibly fit only to ruin it all in an hour of brain belting violence. Then they do it all again.

I’m not the first person to point out the homo-eroticism inherent in the thing, and if boxers insist on having their photo taken like that, I won’t be the last.

Hey ho.

Running
Skipped up to Mount Evelyn this morning for a jaunt along the Warby trail. Tiger Boy was there, as was Em, Jojo, Mark and PJ. The two girls turned back a bit early, leaving us blokey types to struggle on gamely until the water bubblers.

On the way back two things appeared as if out of nowhere – a great long hill that I swear wasn’t there earlier, and Mark’s sudden turn of speed. It was a struggle to hang on.

Anger
Morsey had a good question on Friday – how come “It makes me mad” is dying? Why am I not angry?

I’m not sure Sara. I think the anger was just a product of a very specific time this year. I was (not) dealing with the post-marathon blues, and equally failing to deal with severe sleep deprivation brought on by an extremely stubborn, extremely vocal youngster.

Both those things aren’t so much of a problem now. Thank god.

Not running all over the place

A brief note just to extend my sympathies to Em over at Running over the place. She’s run into a slight snag, running-wise. To be precise, a couple of stress fractures.

I don’t imagine it’s much fun, especially for such a dedicated runner, with so much to look forward to this AV season. I’m sure you’ll be fine though Em. Just let your body heal, don’t rush things.

mental vigour

***Newsflash****

Grant Hackett
My blogging fingers have been itching, reading about Grant Hackett’s hissy fit.

The jist of it, and correct me if I’m wrong, is he expected to win the 400 and 800 metres, despite not training as well as he usually does, because, well, he’s Grant Hackett “weetbix man” (or is it nutrigrain?). So now he’s going to:

..leave it right up until the actual swim and see how I feel

So he’s going to have a very public temper tantrum/drama-queen moment, and everyone else is supposed to wait until the last minute, presumably crossing our fingers and praying to the heavens that he deigns to pull on the togs.

Get over yourself, Grant. I don’t care. Bloody swimmers, they’re worse than tennis players.

We now return you to regularly scheduled blogging……

People who know me say (and I hear this a lot) that I’m a pretty bright, switched-on kinda guy. A mind like a steel er, what’s the word? This morning, the word is probably “sieve”. Yep, “sieve” is it – it lets an awful lot of stuff go through to the keeper, to mix a metaphor well and truly.

What am I on about? Oh, sorry, I’m dithering again.

Yesterday I lovingly hand-crafted, or rather burnt, a CD full of pictures to send in the post to my Dad. This morning I set out for work clutching the CD in a stamped addressed envelope intending to drop it in the post-box on the way to the station.

Well I dropped it in the box all-right. A big box with a hole in the top. But it wasn’t the post-box, it was the bin.

So Dad won’t get his pictures, at least not today. Sorry Dad, if you’re reading.

On the plus side, I’m sure the rubbish-men will enjoy pictures of my wedding. Also the post-men will enjoy reading 3-day-old copies of the herald sun.

Running
I passed someone who very strongly resembled Em, bounding along like a cheetah in human form under the Swan street bridge along the Yarra. I assume it was Em, if not it was someone who didn’t object to being called “Emma”.

At that stage I was feeling pretty chipper too. 2 laps of the tan later, one fast (no, really) and one including 6 Anderson street reps, the chipperness index had dropped rapidly. I decided to take the long way back to work, via Swanston street, just to make sure the distance was above 12k.

Program
I’m up to 366k for March so far. A 400k month is tantalisingly close. I’m sorely tempted to get out for a lazy 34k run tonight. Whaddaya think? An ideal Run for the kids warmup run, methinks.

leaving people behind

A double-barrelled post today, running and some thoughts of David Hicks.

Running
The main feature of the weekend passed was a jaunt along the Koonung trail from Springvale to Bulleen road and back. According to Em’s footpod/GPS/magic-whiz-bang thing it was 24.5k, which sounds allright to me.

The first half was quite relaxed and chatty; the return leg less so. That was mainly because the boys let Em drop off the back of the pack and pushed the pace up fair bit for a substantial negative split.

Others left behind – David Hicks
I’m not sure whether the weekend’s news on David Hicks qualifies as good news or not. I’m inclined to think it’s good news for everyone concerned. Not pleasant, but good. It’s like being in a dentist’s waiting room for 3 days, listening to the sound of drills and muffled screaming and then finally having your name called. It’s not good, but at least it’s closer to being over.

So David Hicks has been charged, finally. At least we know what we’re looking at now. Basically, one charge of aiding Al Qaeda. One count of attempted murder. Hmmm, I’ll come back to that in a minute.

A lot of people from my side of the political spectrum make the mistake of trying to defend Hicks himself. However much of a decent bloke his Dad is, David Hicks himself seems to have been an unpleasant, violent, deluisional, anti-semitic, brain-washed little prick. What’s more, he clearly spent a lot of time intentionally following around a bunch of lunatic mass-murdering fanatics.

As far as I’m concerned, if you can prove he’s committed a crime – murder, conspiracy, whatever – try him, convict him and lock him up. I have no problem with that. That’s justice.

The problem is, the US have never had much interest in justice in this case. They’re much happier to lock him up and throw away the key. And that’s an abuse of power.

Even now, I don’t think the charges are that impressive. In a normal court, with normal rules of evidence, would either of these charges stick?

Helping Al qaeda wasn’t a crime at the time. Can he really be convicted of something that wasn’t illegal? Attempted murder is iffy too. If he believed he was fighting for the government of Afghanistan (the Taliban) against another force, that’s war. It’s not murder. The US might want to define everything in the world as part of the “war on terror”, but I don’t think that would really wash.

Hicks’ lawyer, who’s no pushover, will probably appeal and drag the whole process out for a couple of years, until absolutely no-one wins.

The best thing to do is what they should have done from the start – try him in a proper court, or let him go.

The moral of the story is – even rabid monsters deserve justice.