Here's a picture taken this evening from Mt. Helix, just a mile and a half south of the George McFly's Left Hook Headquarters.
This is the "Harris Fire," the smaller of the two big fires in San Diego County, about five miles Southeast of Mt. Helix.
Please pray that the winds continue to weaken and the fires are contained, so that GMLH can continue to to bring you quality analysis of local sports and animal news.
The Arizona Cardinals will travel to play the Washington Redskins at "FedEx Field" in Landover, MA tomorrow. Considering that the term "mail it in" is commonly used to describe a sub-standard effort, then the news that the Redskins play at "FedEx Field" is a story in and of itself. Anyhow, due to injuries to starter Matt Leinart and backup Kurt Warner, the Cardinals could be relying on their third string QB Tim Rattay and newly signed QB Tim Hasselbeck. Tim Hasselbeck is not only the brother of Seattle's Matt Hasselbeck, but also the spouse of "The View" co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck. As everyone knows, Elizabeth Hasselback has been at the center of some controversies lately over at "The View", and gotten on the wrong side of such dignitaries as Barry Manilow, Rosie O'Donnell, and Whoopie Goldberg.
It is not easy to say who Barry, Rosie and Whoopie will be rooting for. If their dislike for Hasselbeck stems mostly from her relatively conservative opinions, then it is hard to imagine them supporting the Washington "Redskins" either. Maybe they will have to root for Washington, but take great care to refer to them only as the "Washington First Nations People".
I don't think that "The View" should ever cross paths with the NFL. Hopefully Kurt Warner will recover in time to make the start at quarterback so we can avoid this whole ugly situation.
The Cleveland Indians are a single win away from the World Series. Should they advance, they will meet the Colorado Rockies for the championship. The Rockies have won 21 of their last 22 games and are looking pretty tough. It is entirely possible then, that the Indians could advance to the World Series and lose all four games to the Rockies.
Earlier this year, the Cleveland Cavs were swept in four games by the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals, so if the Indians get swept, then Cleveland teams will have appeared in a remarkable 8 professional championship games - during a span of just months - without winning any of them.
Furthermore, if you are a college grad in Cleveland then you probably went to Ohio State, and so most Cleveland sports fans pledge their allegiance to OSU. This is interesting, because during 2007 Ohio State made it to both of the largest college athletic events of the year - the football championship and the basketball championship - and lost.
If the Indians can take one more game from Boston, Cleveland sports fans will have an excellent chance to witness 10 crushing defeats of their favorite teams in less than a year. With any luck, the Browns will catch the fever and get to the Superbowl in January to complete a perfect sports year for Cleveland, losing at each of America's most hyped athletic events.
This is the closest I've found to a reverse of the scenario in my last post. There are no known accounts online of persons receiving snout-to-mouth resuscitation from dogs. Back in May, so the story goes, a Golden Retriever performed a "modified Heimlich" on a choking woman by pushing her over and jumping up and down on her. As I recall, my family had a dog once who was also familiar with the modified Heimlich. He used to try it out on lots of people when they weren't expecting it. We usually just yelled at him and told him to cut it out, but if we were choking it would have been pretty nice having him around.
By the way, I first found the story listed at "dogsinthenews.com". I am pleased to announce that "dogsinthenews.com" is now an official link from this blog.
LIGONIER, IN: Meet Samo, a member of the Ligonier Police Department's K-9 Unit, who enjoys playing with a tennis ball "to stay active" when he's off duty. This of course raises some questions about the nature of Samo's work with the police department; does Samo have a lot of paperwork to do or something that keeps him from staying active? Is the K-9 unit turning into more of a desk job these days? Does Samo send out emails to "All" with forwarded youtube links and joke lists?
Whatever the answer, it all would have been over for Samo were it not for his quick-thinking partner, Officer Josh Halsey, because while Samo was playing with a tennis ball last Tuesday evening, the unthinkable happened: he swallowed the tennis ball, and began choking.
Fortunately, Halsey found Samo just moments before the dog collapsed. In a Today Show interview, Halsey explains what happened next:
HALSEY: When I get to my police car, I put him on the ground, wondering what's a matter with him. Not breathing, tongue's purple... So I start CPR on him and...
REPORTER: Wait a minute; when you say CPR, do you mean, actually, mouth-to... -nose... resuscitation?
HALSEY: Mouth-to-snout, yes.
End transcript. Halsey is absolutely correct to make a distinction between 'nose' and 'snout', because a snout includes both a nose and a mouth. The experts at pgaa.com say to "place your mouth over the dog's nose and mouth making sure the seal is tight" when performing CPR. Blowing air into a dog's nose alone will accomplish nothing. So don't try it. Especially if the dog is not requiring CPR, and is merely sleeping. That situation is addressed in the first step of the mouth-to-snout procedure listed at veterinarypartner.com:
"Make Certain the Animal is Actually Arrested and Unconscious: Talk to the animal first. Gently touch and attempt to awaken the pet. You could be seriously injured should you attempt to perform CPR on a pet who was only sleeping heavily and was startled awake".
Officer Halsey proved that he did all of his homework during the "Dog Care and Medical Care on Your Canine" portion of the his Canine Academy training, and Samo has recovered. He (Samo) was, in fact, scheduled to return to the office late last week. Samo's inbox must be stuffed after taking sick days, and at this very moment he's probably sorting his way through a bunch of voicemails.
Thanks to the alert reader who brought the story to my attention. Like Isaac Newton, if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Which is a way of saying that if I have blogged about a dog who got CPR, or "seen further", it is by standing on the shoulders of large readers who forward the stories to me.
A moose has been caught posing as a member of a herd of cattle. Ernie and Beverly Fischer made the discovery during a roundup Wednesday at their ranch in Cannon Ball, ND. According to the Bismark Tribune, "[t]he moose followed the cattle all over during the roundup until they were brought into the corral". Just recently, the story reports, Sam Gross of Emmons county made a similar discovery of a moose amongst his cattle. So there appears to be a developing trend of moose attempting to infiltrate cattle populations by masquerading as cows. This, by the way, is what makes the papers in Bismark, ND.
The moose has been captured, and is currently being held in custody by the Fischers, but the
real struggle will be releasing it. According to the story, Ernie had a "difficult task getting the moose away from the cattle", and he speculates that the moose is "probably going to break some more fences his way off the ranch". The story notes that "[p]roblems can occur when letting a moose go, but most of the time the moose should move on".
That, with all due respect, sounds like wishful thinking. This moose clearly is obsessed with the cattle lifestyle; to the point, as Bev noted, that he actually "thinks he's a cow". The Fischers can't just expect the moose to let all of that go and "move on". Unfortunately for the Fischers though, a moose is a well protected animal in North Dakota, and in fact, there is no moose season in the Cannon Ball area, so we'll just have to hope for the best.
Today's word is "bead" [beed]; noun. Origin: the 'hood.
First, courtesy of webster's online, we have definition 19): draw or get a bead on, to take careful aim at: The marksman drew a bead on his target.
Now, courtesy of members of the "Way 2 Real" 6'2" and under basketball team we add -
definition 20): in basketball, particularly basketball in the 'hood, the blocking, or rejection of an opponents field goal attempt: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIUUUIIGH Nice bead yo! NICE BEAD!
The Marauders suffered crushing defeat at the hands of "Way 2 Real" on Monday night. Their opponent was, in fact, Way 2 Real - as opposed to the Marauders, who are kind of "real" but with more of a healthy moderation. The game itself was for the most part an unremarkable blowout. The most noteworthy development came during a Marauders' timeout, when Victor announced to the team that he had appointed a coach, and we were to do as the coach said.
I personally enjoyed having a coach. There was no discernible improvement in any aspect of the team's performance, but the coach spoke English as a second language, and his vocabulary had some limits, in which great entertainment value was to be found. For instance, coach divided our team into two player categories:
1) Forwards. It is the job of a forward to "get dee boards"
2) Guards. The guards are the players who get to "bounce dee ball, ok?"
During timeouts, he would use this terminology to lay out the game-plan. Coach wanted me to get the boards, but I assured him that I was both able to get the boards, and bounce the ball - much in the manner Magic Johnson was said to have possessed the ability to do. Coach accepted this - in fact, he embraced it and appointed me "point guard". I later learned from coach that it is among the duties of the point guard to "yell" at the other guards "when they bounce dee ball wrong".
From that moment on, I was on the lookout for instances in which the ball was bounced improperly, fully prepared to yell at the perpetrator. To make a long story short though, the Marauders fell on the losing end of a 50-72 final score. For anyone interested in playing "point guard" for the Marauders in their season finale, it will be on Monday, at 6:30. Bring a blue shirt and $3, and just tell them George sent you.
