Splendid Isolation

Doing The Right Thing

September 16, 2024 Kim du Toit Good Stuff, LGBTOSTFU, Resistance

Here’s some news that cheered me up over the weekend:

A girls’ field hockey team from Dighton-Rehoboth (D-R) Regional High School in Massachusetts has forfeited a planned game on September 17th because their opponent, Somerset-Berkley, has a male on their team.
Dighton-Rehoboth cited its new policy, approved on June 25, that allows players and/or coaches to opt out of competitions if the opposing team includes a member of the opposite sex.

And they’re aware of the consequences:

“We understand this forfeit will impact our chances for a league championship and possibly playoff eligibility, but we remain hopeful that other schools consider following suit to achieve safety and promote fair competition for female athletes.”

I actually know a lot about this topic.

You see, back in high school I played for the 1st XI hockey team for most of my time there — I was reasonably skilled but the fastest runner on the team, and speed made up for a lot of shortcomings.

Just for the hell of it, the coach arranged for a match against two girls’ high schools on consecutive Sundays, played on our field. Both were considered top in the field, perennial competitors for the girls’ area championship. We, in contrast, were no more than mediocre (we only had forty-odd boys to draw from, as most of the school played rugby).

So we approached the first match with some trepidation, because of course we’d never played against girls.

After the first five minutes we realized that our opposition was hopelessly outclassed. We were faster, more skilled and more game-savvy, and we scored three goals in the space of a few minutes. Thereafter we decided that we would only run backwards, and the flow of goals slowed to only a couple by half-time.

At that point, the respective coaches decided to split us up, five each of either gender per side (the goalies were irrelevant).

Only then did everyone start enjoying themselves, but even then we boys had a tacit agreement to slow down and make most of our passes to the girls (“to” not “at”, you bad people) rather than just playing to win.

And it was great fun. But make no mistake, there was absolutely no comparison between the sexes. Had we boys not altered the format and played like we were playing one of our bitter rivals, there’s no telling how badly we would have beaten the girls.

So I can tell you that having even one boy playing on a girl’s team is going to make a huge difference, especially if that boy plays aggressively, like the boy in the linked article did. (Shame on him, by the way. Even at my advanced age, I’d love to play against him and show him what real –but quite legal — aggression is like when you have it inflicted on you*.)

Some things cannot be changed, no matter how many “valid” arguments are made in favor of the change.

And good for the folks at Dighton-Rehoboth for acknowledging that fact.

*That’s a tale for another time, but someone remind me to tell the story of Kim And The Beauty Queen some day.

Monday Funnies

September 16, 2024 Kim du Toit Funny Stuff

I feel I need to give y’all fair warning:

Idiot: the French for “washing machine” is “femme”, so of course it’s feminine. And speaking of femmes:

More swimsuits, I heard you say? Oh, why not.

That’s the latest trend: completely transparent bikinis. More of these next week, unless someone complains.

Classic Beauty: Danielle Derrieux

September 15, 2024 Kim du Toit Classic Beauty

Here’s an actress we Murkins are mostly unaware of. But in her native France she was, and remains, a national treasure: Danielle Derrieux lived to over 100, and acted in well over a hundred movies. She survived both WWII and one-time hsband Porfirio Rubirosa’s (reputedly) elephantine manhood. A hero(ine) of France indeed. And as for her looks:

Oh yes, she had sensational legs.

And she looked just fine in color, too:

Call her France’s answer to Grace Kelly or Deborah Kerr, if you want; I certainly wouldn’t argue the point.

What A Year

September 14, 2024 Kim du Toit History, Music

Here’s a little (okay, hour-long) look at 1965, a year which changed, well, pretty much everything. (It’s horribly edited, but just go with the flow.)

Imagine releasing an album that had all these hit songs on it — from a band that nobody had heard of, and who have since been forgotten.

My favorite of that lot? Needles and Pins.

Never mind all the other more well-known stuff from the Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, Dylan, Yardbirds, Four Tops… and the list goes on an on.

Now let’s talk about the changes in fashion, and attitudes. My Generation, indeed.

And then came Rubber Soul.

Grown-Up Sippy Cups

September 13, 2024 Kim du Toit Guy Stuff

This is a silly topic to discuss, but whatever. Even though I am by no means triskaidekaphobic, it’s nevertheless Friday the fucking 13th, so here we go.

Back when I worked in an office, I always used a coffee cup with a lid, because knocking an open cup over your PC keyboard was not one of life’s pleasantries, both in terms of the actual mess, and the hassle involved in cleaning the gunk out from under the keys. Likewise soft drinks: never a can, always a bottle with the screw-off top.

It’s a habit I’ve carried into my private life too, not only for all the spill containment, but also because these thermal cup thingies keep my coffee hot in case I forget to drink it quickly. (I’ve talked about this topic before, under different auspices, but note the El Cheapo Magellan thermal cup I mention in passing.)

But it appears that this is no longer enough. Advancing age has brought with it advancing clumsiness, and the problem with all these wretched thermal cup thingies (as you will see) is that very few of them have a screw-on lid — they all, even the nosebleed stuff like Yeti, have a simple press-in lid with a rubber gasket to hold the lids in place should the thing be knocked over.

And alas, with continuous use do the rubber gaskets deteriorate and loosen their grip, which means that if you do knock your adult sippycup over, the result is the same as if you’d just been using a regular plastic glass filled with the drink and (if necessary) ice: a veritable flood of sticky liquid all over the floor.

Which is what happened to me the night before last, when in trying to move my tall Magellan sippycup over so I could see the beloved face of New Wife, I knocked the fucking thing off the side table and yea did the lid come off the cup, emptying the contents of ice and OJ all over the frigging carpet.

So yesterday was spent visiting various retail establishments, trying to find a container with a screw-on lid that wasn’t the size of a Thermos flask and resembled more a coffee cup, like the Magellan.

Total failure — and I went to Academy, Cabela’s and finally, Wally World, where I got what I was sorta-looking for, except that it’s tall and skinny rather than short and squat.

It’s also too capacious, at 16oz where I was looking for something in the 10-oz-12oz range. But at some point one has to resign oneself to what the world actually provides rather than what the world should provide.

Earlier on I did find (and purchase) one such thing with acceptable dimensions and the proper screwtop from Cabela’s, but it’s so fugly that I was worried that New Wife would forbid its use in the public domain, and confine it to doing duty as my night-time cold-water source on the bedside table. Surprisingly, she agreed that it’s kinda fugly, but likes its patriotic theme. So she agreed to let me use it.

(Yes, she’ll be becoming a U.S. citizen as soon as the DHS/State Department/whoever gets their collective ass in gear.)

All this could have been avoided, of course, were I just to apply a leetle care in the handling of coffee cups — I could use actual china cups or ceramic mugs like civilized people do, and not have to look like an overgrown child with an expensive fucking metal sippycup. But that’s the world I live in, and so it goes.

Anyway, having said all that, I’m off to make myself another cuppa in the tall black thing. And by the way, it works really well at keeping its contents hot — actually, a little too well, as my scalded tongue will attest. I might just go for the Patriotic Barrel instead… alert the media!

If I get too irritated by these two replacements, or if New Wife Puts Her Foot Down With A Heavy Hand© after all, they will be sent off in disgrace to live in our travel trunk, which we break out when heading for an open-road adventure and style is not a prerequisite. They will join the regiment of other utensils which have been found wanting.

Whereupon the whole bloody search for the impossible sippycup dream will resume and my irritation, never far below the surface, will explode once more, to the consternation of New Wife and the chortles of my Readers.

You bastards.