Inspiration

I've been wanting to do a tile mosaic table for awhile. So I looked around for some inspiration. The pic above is what I came up with, along with this: The first pic is horrible, I know, its from a mosaic book I have. I'll replace it with a better one soon. Quit fussing.

So anyway, I've started this project, and as soon as I can control where the pics show up on this blog, I walk you through it step by step. Now stop bothering me.

Battle of the Blogs

There is a war going on. A war of Blogs. Or, more accurately, a blogging tool war. I'm trying to decide between using blogger and using wordpress for my blogging.

Blogger is much easier to use, but not as flexible. Wordpress is visually better, but has a higher learning curve. To look at my blog on wordpress, go to CalDelicious.

I'm new to wordpress, so I'm still trying to figure out how everything works. Leave a comment if you have any.

Or don't. Whatever.

About the title

What's that you ask? The title? How did I come up with that title?
I'm glad you asked.

"The anger and the eloquence" is a line from a song by the Counting Crows. The song is called "Daylight Fading."

Waiting for the moon to come and light me up inside,
I am waiting for the telephone to tell me I'm alive....

Daylight fading
Come and waste another year
All the the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear
Moonlight creeping around the corners of our lawn
When we see the early signs that daylight's fading
We leave just before it's gone

You should check out the complete lyrics.

I love that line about the anger and the eloquence. It sums up so much about the music of today, and for the times we live in, for that matter.

Yay Oregon!

It's not the NCAA Championship tournament. It's not even the NIT. But the Oregon Ducks won their game in the CBI tourney's Final Four!

Oh. I forgot the weirdest one:
The Gauchos!

The Madness of the Madness of March

Why is it that I only come around to add new entries to this blog during March Madness?!? Weird coincidence? Some kind of strange karma? I dunno. Can't explain it.

Did someone mention March Madness? (Should that phrase have a little trademark symbol next to it?) How about some of those games, huh? There's been some great ones so far! Some nail-biters. Some supposedly controversial calls by the refs. For the most part though, I think the referees have done a spectacular job with some pretty weird plays. They are under as much pressure as the players and coaches, and I think they do an amazing job. For the most part.

Not as many weird nicknames this year. Lots of bears. Several Wildcats. A couple of Aggies. The Zips - they're always great. There are some strange ones, though. Bison. Terriers. Monarchs. Blackbirds - you gotta love that one. I'll make fun of them a little later.

The Madness of March

They don't call it March Madness for nothin'!

The NCAA Tourney started today and already there have been some mild upsets. That's what makes it so entertaining. Also entertaining is the next installment of the nickname article. If you'd like to see the original article in it's entirety (minus the pics!), you can visit my old blog called Moniker, man.

One of the weirdest (and believe me, the competition is tough!) is the Southern Illinois Salukis. What the hell is a Saluki? Apparently, I am not the first one to ask this question. When Walt Frazier was leading the So. Illinois team to an NIT championship in 1967, sportswriter Jerry Isenberg wrote the following:


Princeton has its Tiger. B.C. has its Eagle,
Rutgers is the Queensmen, a title truly regal.
But from frigid New York City to Kentucky's old Paduchee,
There's just one burning question – what the hell is a Saluki?

Ok, for the record, please note that Rutgers used to be the Queensmen?!? Ugh.

Well, the short answer is, a Saluki is nothing more than a fancy name for a dog. For the long answer, you can visit SIUC's website. Basically, it's an Egyptian dog, and Salukis were accepted as the finest animals a family could possibly possess. Known for their speed and hunting skills, Salukis are the oldest pure-breed dogs in the world with records dating back to 3600 B.C. That's great. And very historical. Not to mention very biblical. And much better than their former name – the Maroons! But, don't you think they could have come up with a better looking representative of that fine animal?

This reminds me of the dog on the Simpsons. Hellooo Santa's Little Helper!



As a resident of Oregon, I cannot, in all good conscience, have a blog such as this without mentioning the University of Oregon Ducks. Ducks. How is that supposed to intimidate another team? Has anyone lately been mauled by a duck. I know it's a Northwest animal, but for pete's sake, there are bears and mountain lions here. It's not like all of the good names were taken by other schools in the state (Oregon State Beavers). It's bad enough to have a wimpy nickname like Ducks, but then they used a symbol ripped off from Walt Disney of Donald Duck.

Yeah, they tried to make him look tough, but what do you expect from a mascot that doesn't wear pants?

Fortunately, they've made amends by:

a) coming up with a much better symbol:

b) finding a meaner duck:







and c) getting cool looking helmets:

Go Ducks!





Next weird one: The Manhattan Jaspers. While it has a nice ring to it, I caught myself wondering again, what the hell is a jasper? Oddly enough, the fine folks at Manhattan College, just as at SIUC, have found it necessary to explain the whole thing. (Yeah, that's where I want to go to college – someplace where you have explain the nickname!?)

It's not even as exciting as the Saluki, because, ah-hem, it was named after, uh-hmm , a, errr, a person. Named Jasper. They don't even have a symbol, just the words:


There's the Liberty Flames:
(Hey, that's not a flame, that's an eagle. They need to take the same zoology class as the students at Southern Utah!)

And there's the University of Illinois – Chicago:



Yeah! That's more like it – now that's a flame!