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Next Banned Word: Macho

Men & Women, Mocking Furriners

At least, this is the inference I get from the latest bit of governmental foolishness, Euro Division:

Spain has announced plans for an app that will tell wives if their men are doing enough housework. The new app intends to address the gender imbalance of housework and will log the hours a family member spends doing chores.

And which department is coming up with this lovely example of Big Sister snooping?

Ángela Rodríguez, Spain’s minister for gender equality and domestic violence, said her department was in the process of developing the free app.

One might argue that the rationale for even having a “minister for gender equality and domestic violence” is dubious (and one would be right — “gender equality” is a bullshit concept, and “domestic violence” is a police matter already).

The minister was speaking at a conference in Geneva discussing discrimination against women. The minister presented a report at the convention on Spain’s women’s rights. 

Rodriguez said nearly half of the women who took part in a survey by Spain’s National Statistics Institute said they did the majority of the housework in their home. 

Oh boo fucking hoo.

Wonder what the fat bitch would think of this little joke?

I can hear the Sisterhood’s wailings from here.

Anyway, Spain is pretty fucked up about all this:

A Spanish court has ordered a businessman to pay his ex-wife £180,000 for 25 years of unpaid domestic labour, based on the minimum wage throughout their marriage.

And oh yeah, the ruling was made by a female judge — like you didn’t suspect that already.

If the hapless Spanish businessman refused to pay the money and went to jail for his disobedience:  now that would be truly macho, Señor.

Never gonna happen, though.  Looks like Spanish men have been pussified like pretty much most Western men (to coin a phrase).

Bygone Broads 3

Drive Time, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Seems like the combination of bedroom-poster-worthy cars and women is becoming a fan favorite over on this back porch of mine, so here we go with another “pairing”.  This time, it’s the Sunbeam Tiger / AC Cobra 427 and Ann-Margret.

And another lil’ red thing:

And a little while later:

Lemme tell y’all:  it was pure hell trying to decide which A-M pics to feature here.  There may have to be a Part 2 at some point…

Peerless

Sports

When I swam the Atlantic in the mid-1980s, I knew absolutely diddly about American sports.  Basketball?  Buncha tall guys throwing the ball into a net thingy, like the “netball” which girls played back home.  Football?  Large men running into each other with little to show for it, and when not doing that, forward passes (illegal in the game of rugby) and matches which featured short bursts of action between long commercial breaks.  Baseball?  Sorta like “rounders” (another girly game).

Then I got invited to my first baseball game.  The Chicago Cubs were playing at Wrigley Field, against some other team (don’t remember which one), and the “starting” pitcher was a guy named Greg Maddux.

Remember, I knew diddly about the game of baseball:  how it’s played, the terminology, the strategy, and what constituted a “good” player.  When it came to that last, though, I learned that really quickly, because watching Maddux pitch was like watching a skilled surgeon performing a routine operation.  I’d never seen anything like it before, and I’m not sure I’ll ever see it again.  Only other players in different sports come to mind:  Shane Warne (cricket), Michael Jordan (duh) and Lionel Messi (soccer/football) ever came close — and in the case of Jordan, it opened up basketball for me, but only as long as he was playing.

Back to Maddux and that game.  I had a good seat behind home plate, and was blessed by having my boss — a serious baseball fan — sitting next to me, who could explain the game to me.  I didn’t need any tutoring when Maddux was on the mound, because greatness doesn’t need much explanation.  I didn’t know a curve ball from a slider from a two-seam fastball;  all I saw was batters swinging the bats like little kids, and seldom hitting any pitch Maddux threw.  As I recall, he pitched seven innings, allowed zero runs and only had a couple of on-base hits scored on him.  Cubs win.  Cubs win.  Cubs win.

Of course, at that time the Cubs as a team sucked bigly because the loathsome Tribune Corporation (the owners) didn’t need the team to win, only to make a decent game of it.  They didn’t spend money on great players because the fans loved the guys they did have — admittedly, some very good ones like Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace and Andre Dawson — but other than Maddux, their pitching sucked and nobody could hit the ball or even field the ball other than the aforementioned three players.

Of course, when Maddux’s (cheap) contract came to an end, the Tribune Corp. offloaded him like a bad smell, sending him to Atlanta where he amassed feat after feat, in the end winning 300 games, striking out over 3,000 batters, for a career ERA of some minuscule number, four Cy Young Awards and a first-round pass into the Hall of Fame.

I know all this about him because I wasn’t a Cubs fan but a Maddux fan — so when he was traded I quit watching the Cubs forever.

Anyway, this is not a post intended to promote a discussion of how other pitchers were “better” than Greg Maddux — I can hear the Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton supporters warming the engines as we speak — but an appreciation of the man himself.

When his Cubs contract ended, Maddux turned down the Yankees and went to the Braves for less money — because he thought Atlanta would be a better place to raise his kids than New York.

And who could argue with that?

Here’s a YooChoob video which does a better job than I have (unsurprisingly).