The 13th Man

If any more proof be needed, it was provided tonight at Mosaic Stadium in Regina, Saskatchewan. If not for the influence of the present Rider fans, it is likely that the BC Lions would have won tonight's CFL matchup. Instead, Saskatchewan pulled out a 33-30 Overtime victory to remain tied with the Calgary Stampeders in the West Division.

On the final drive by BC, they were guilty of two illegal procedure penalties, which can be attributed to the crowd noise spewed forth by the Green-and-White faithful. The noise caused the Lions to modify their offensive line technique so they could get off the ball on time instead of relying on looking back to the football. On the final play, with a cacophony of noise avalanching upon them from the Mosaic stands, Casey Printers was pressured heavily by the Roughriders defense and threw a prayer into the endzone, which fell happily into the arms of James Patrick. All with BC in position to kick an easy field goal - if any field goals can be called easy with Paul McCallum kicking them - to tie mini-game number 1.

Also revealed pre-game were the "Saskatchewan Roughrider" Hockey Canada jerseys that the Junior team will wear twice for the World Junior Hockey Championships over the Christmas season. Count me in as one who is horrified by this decision. The team is national in scope. And why are we honouring a football team in a hockey tournament? Yes, the Riders are Saskatchewan's lone (semi) professional sporting club, but how do they connect to hockey again? Please! This smacks of a clear money-grab by Hockey Canada, pure and simple.

Politico in the making

A dear friend of mine recently reminded me of a music video making the YouTube rounds called "Canadian Please."  This spawned a wholly unrelated spin into the world of, well, spin. I started off on a suggested piece about from the Fox News network's satire show called "Red Eye" about Canadian troops pulling out of Afghanistan. An upsetting piece for us Canadians, to be sure. This spilled into a whole bunch of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson video evidences, along with some diverging into The Daily Show, particularly with the tete a tete he had with Jim Cramer of Mad Money over the economic meltdown. The merry-go-round of economic/political discourse I encountered did not merely contain such nuggets, of course.

Now, I am not writing to debate the intelligence levels of any of the parties involved. I most certainly have my opinion there. But this is not the point of my blog here: it is simply to share that a small bit of entertainment has created in me, well, striking levels of intellectual entertainments. I find myself thinking differently. I feel inquisitive. I have discovered something out of all these "experts" disagreeing with one another: it's called curiosity. I am searching, probing, analyzing, cross-referencing, back-checking, validating, counterpointing all over the place. This has been up to now a sadly lacking activity for me.

I also discovered something else: I feel more informed. It is an empowering thing, and the more informed I get, the more I feel enabled to form my own opinion, to defend that view, and to begin to help educate my peers on these things.

So, my dear friend merely attempted to entertain me for a moment. It worked. However, it opened a new sense of curiosity in me that has sprung open, for lack of a better metaphor, a pandora's box of consequence. I fully expect it to be a major positive influence in the road that lays ahead presuming that I shall continue to pursue this course of action.