Tuesday, November 13, 2007

I have two things to say

  1. A Baltimore story. Someone I know was walking down the street at night. She saw a man attempting to cut down a tree (planted by the city in an interstitial sidewalk space) with a handsaw. The man was determined. Then (suddenly, out of nowhere, without warning, etc.) a man jumped from a third-story window onto the would-be lumberjack. The jumping man's leg hit the ground with a sickening crack, and his head slammed against a wrought-iron gate. The jumping man allegedly shouted, "Don't cut down my fucking tree." The lumberjack proceeded to beat the shit out of the jumping man (who presumably had little shit left in his system after the jump), and also attempted to beat the shit out of the observer's male companion. This is on good authority.
  2. Jason Elam, the placekicker for the Denver Broncos, has written (with his pastor) a "novel" called Monday Night Jihad, in which ex-football players battle radical Islamist terrorists in the Middle East. One may infer that football metaphors ensue. One may also infer that the hero kicks a ticking time bomb through an impossibly narrow window from 52 yards, saving a buxom but devoutly Christian cheerleader from death-by-shrapnel. Please, please read this link. It is AWESOME. Teaser quote: "If Osama bin Laden himself were to pick up this book and read it, I'd want him to say, 'Yeah, that's why I do what I do.'"