Random Thoughts XI: Listen to the Whispers

[Takhisis]

London?! I didn’t know the dominion was still run from England.

Ontario is in England?

 

[Broken_Erika]

Ontario is in England?

If Poland can into Africa, then Ontario can into England.

 

[Takhisis]

Actually, Polen has been of canning into Ingerland. Food for thought, eh?

 

[Samson]

Professional sports leagues should implement "anti-playoffs" where the teams with the lowest records in the regular season get put into a bracket. Only instead of the winner of the series moving on to the next round, the loser would move on. The losers would battle it out until only one is left to see who is the ultimate loser. You know those teams would fight tooth and nail to avoid the embarrassment of being the worst. Think about the fan interest it would generate via the schadenfreude effect. Think about the revenue from all those additional games. I just made you an extra $1 billion Roger Goodell. You're welcome.

Relegation playoffs are a thing. US professional sports leagues really need relegation to make the winning matter.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It’s weird to think some people who were complicit in the Holocaust are still alive to this day. The engineers, the propagandists, the planners, they were all born before the advent of the airplane or the radio, before the Bolshevik revolution, a time when the kings of Europe were absolutists of the same family line... all that past that seems so distant, but their “work” lives on, so to speak.

My step Dad (1917) and my mom (1918) both lived to be 100. Both had clear memories back into the 1920s.

 

[Takhisis]

Relegation playoffs are a thing. US professional sports leagues really need relegation to make the winning matter.

Yes, but the USians don't have integrated tier systems as football leagues do in notAmerica.
They don't have clubs, either, but franchises.

It's a bit of a slap in the face, but, given the status of FIFA's flagship product, it's also more honest, the USian way.

 

[Sofista]

Professional sports leagues should implement "anti-playoffs" where the teams with the lowest records in the regular season get put into a bracket. Only instead of the winner of the series moving on to the next round, the loser would move on. The losers would battle it out until only one is left to see who is the ultimate loser. You know those teams would fight tooth and nail to avoid the embarrassment of being the worst. Think about the fan interest it would generate via the schadenfreude effect. Think about the revenue from all those additional games. I just made you an extra $1 billion Roger Goodell. You're welcome.

Actually, at the Giro d'Italia (cycling) there used to be something spiritually similar: the maglia nera ('black shirt'), awarded to the last to finish the race. It was intended as a consolation prize for the most unlucky in the race, inclusive of money and free room and board. But... it became popular, to the point of attracting sponsors, and a handful of cyclists specialized in obtaining it while constrained by the rules (they had to cross the line a set time after the winner, manage to avoid accusations of unsporting behavior, and of course do it better than the competition). It only lasted from 1946 to 1951, at the request of serious athletes who complained it was turning into a mockery of the sport.

The immortal hero of this kind of racing was the late Luigi Malabrocca:

The 1946 edition of the Giro D’Italia was Luigi Malabrocca’s first. A young competitor with an exceptional ability, he would capture the minds of those passionate about cycling, but who embodied the “new” attitude to Italy’s belief, he worked hard, at losing. He would go on to place last in the general classification, nearly four hours after race winner Gino Bartali. The Giro organisers that year awarded the first Maglia Nera since di Cozzelli bore its birth in 1926. Italians had a new hero, albeit in an unorthodox manner.

Coming last had its advantages; prize money would be given by villagers as well as a free room for the evening along with food and drink as an act of solidarity towards the rider. When Malabrocca returned in 1947 he had acquired a fan base, people on the streets would hold banners “long live last place” as well asking “who’s first?” swiftly followed by “who is last?” Unsurprisingly, Malabrocca would finish last, again. His time nearly six hours after his friend and training partner, Fausto Coppi had won the general classification.

 

[amadeus]

You’d think at that point in history Italy would want to downplay their association with the black shirt.

 

[Sofista]

You’d think at that point in history Italy would want to downplay their association with the black shirt.

Retrospectively it was a lost chance. We should totally have used a yellow shirt, just to blow raspberry at the Tour.

Secondarily, it was meant as a consolation prize for the worst in the race. Quite far from a triumph with a laurel wreath.

As a historical digression, deciding what shirt you can or cannot have in your wardrobe attempting to avoid interwar far-right fashion choices can be difficult:

As you mentioned, you have to cut black: Italian fascism, and also Oswald Mosley's followers wore it.

Then you turn to blue. Sure, it's debatable how much the Irish Blueshirts were fascistic or not, and Portugal's National Syndicalists were a blip in history, but it was also the color of the Falange Española. Dammit!

Brown is also a no-go. The Brownshirts in Germany, but also Quisling's NS adopted it.

Further down the alphabet, here comes green. Sunshine, environmentalism, sustainability. One wonders if Hungary's Arrow Cross or Romania's Iron Guard shared these values.

Ok, one starts to think the wardrobe needs something neutral. What's more neutral than grey? Not in Latvia, where the Thunder Cross ('Perknokrusts') wear it proudly.

Now red, surely there were no fascists in red during those years? Mamma mia, there they are! They were Bulgarian (apparently known as the 'Ratniks').

And there you have it. Little more than white shirts prove to be... immaculate.

 

[thetrooper]

Red is def out then

 

[amadeus]

Thunder Cross

Awesome name! Sounds like Thor himself will come to bring righteousness!

’Perknokrusts’

Horrible name! Sounds like an Eastern bloc brand of coffee maker.

If you consider gray to be on the outs, that might also include the “Silver Shirts” American fascists of the 1930’s.

ENDUT!
HOCH HECH!

 

[Sofista]

If you consider gray to be on the outs, that might also include the “Silver Shirts” American fascists of the 1930’s.

Absolutely. I admit I didn't look beyond Europe, and also left out small-time movements like France's Faisceau (they wore blue, by the way).

 

[Takhisis]

Awesome name! Sounds like Thor himself will come to bring righteousness!

Actually, amadeus, the Perknokrusts is exactly that. ‘Perkon’ is an old thunder deity (whence, through borrowing, present-day Finnish ‘perkele’, a polite multifunction word). ‘Krusts’ is a cross (see the consonants: ‘krst’ - Christ).

 

[amadeus]

It still sounds like one of those creepy European folk tale characters.

Once upon a time, in a forest, lived a little boy Merric and his sister Greechun. While walking home from collecting apples, they see a squirrel. “Have an apple, little boy, you have walked far and it is not fair that you should carry these apples many furlongs without tasting one,” the squirrel insisted.
“Merric, my brother, do not listen to that squirrel! We must carry these apples back to the village,” said Greechun.
But Merric was a greedy little boy, and he ate two apples and was very happy. “The villagers will never miss just two apples,” Merric so surmised.
Merric and Greechun arrived back at the village and deposited the remaining apples in the village inn. The innkeeper questioned Merric, “did you eat any of these apples?” Merric replied that he did not, and returned to his home and went to sleep.
During the night, the Perknokrusts came and took out all of his teeth and he died of starvation because he could not eat any more apples.

 

[Takhisis]

What tale is the original?

 

[amadeus]

That is the original. It’s an amalgam of all those stories.

 

[amadeus]

You know what the Vatican travel agency should do? Call its tours PontiffVacations.

 

[Takhisis]

You posted that for the exact 777th post in this thread.

 

[amadeus]

Earthquake in Wakayama about 75km from me. Didn’t feel anything in my apartment, looks like it wasn’t felt outside the immediate area.

Last one in my recollection was the north Osaka earthquake a few years ago, which was much stronger and shook me awake.

 

[Kyriakos]

It still sounds like one of those creepy European folk tale characters.

Once upon a time, in a forest, lived a little boy Merric and his sister Greechun. While walking home from collecting apples, they see a squirrel. “Have an apple, little boy, you have walked far and it is not fair that you should carry these apples many furlongs without tasting one,” the squirrel insisted.
“Merric, my brother, do not listen to that squirrel! We must carry these apples back to the village,” said Greechun.
But Merric was a greedy little boy, and he ate two apples and was very happy. “The villagers will never miss just two apples,” Merric so surmised.
Merric and Greechun arrived back at the village and deposited the remaining apples in the village inn. The innkeeper questioned Merric, “did you eat any of these apples?” Merric replied that he did not, and returned to his home and went to sleep.
During the night, the Perknokrusts came and took out all of his teeth and he died of starvation because he could not eat any more apples.

The strange thing here is how the antagonist is only mentioned in the final sentence, and still obliterates the character.
I also like how then it is revealed that the boy could only eat apples.
Obviously you didn't mean it to be a real story, but the latter element is a nice trick.