I spent all weekend searching for a non-political topic to contribute to Ade, something that doesn’t involve cheap shots, and egos. Now, get a load of this:

www.aaahockey.com/hockeyenforcers/

For those of you familiar with the Ultimate Fighting Challenge (UFC), this event will come as no surprise. For those of you who like to watch UFC, it may come with welcome arms. As for hockey fans, I am sure opinions will be varied.

Let’s throw this out in the open, right off the bat. The Hockey Enforcers Fight Challenge isn’t really about hockey. It’s more like UFC in costume. This is about pay-per-view television, and one man’s quest to dupe people into buying into an absurd spectacle. If dog fights were legal, you could expect to see it on pay-per-view. In my opinion, this is the same thing.

As anyone who has fought on skates can tell you, there is very little detail, or artistry, worth noting in the technique. Swing hard, hold on to your opponent harder. More importantly, hockey fights are seldom about winning, they’re four-parts defense for every one-part attack. Most game-time scrums are choreographed to end quickly. The players end up off-balance and lying on the ice before either of them has a chance to land a real haymaker.

That said, there is sanctioned bare-knuckle boxing in most spectator hockey leagues. It gives people like Eddy “the tool” O’toole, or Link “the missing link” Gaetz a chance to ply their talent at being a talentless hockey player who can fight on skates. It is a cross that hockey fans have to bear. Fighting is likely too much a part of the fabric of the game we love to be given up lightly. It is an organizing structure, and stratagem in the increasingly physical game being offered by the NHL.

Steve Moore and Todd Bertuzzi are the latest victims, Moore, because he was injured, Bertuzzi because he was coached. Recall Marty McSorley before that, he got too violent for his britches and whacked Donald Brashear unconscious with his stick in 2001. Both incidents ended up in the courtroom, but the former had far worse repercussions for both players. For many, the jury is still out on Bertuzzi. He may not deserve to play in the NHL, but he still does. For Moore, he simply can’t play until his spine heals.

The only bona fide NHL player on the roster at the HE Challenge, one with more than a couple of games under the proverbial ‘ole fighting strap, was 41-year-old Bruins thug Lyndon Byers. He didn’t even show. So, you can imagine the level of hockey austerity this event carries. Not even Lyndon Byers, with his 25 goals over 10 NHL seasons (as a right winger!) could be bothered to show up. He was probably busy signing jocks at Hooters in Boston.

I can’t imagine that the Hockey Enforcers Challenge will ever be able to capture a huge pay-per-view audience. Especially when the NHL is actually playing – and fighting. It’s true, when you tune into the NHL, you’re not guaranteed any blood on the ice, and when you buy a concentrated hour of hockey fights on pay-per-view, you know just what you’re gonna get. However, it’s like they say about sex: the anticipation is part of the fulfillment. HE Challenge is tawdry hockey porn, and little else.

Sami Habbas is an American army veteran who lives in California. He’s a native of the West Bank but has been living in the US for the past 51 years, since he was three years old. Apparently, someone thought it would be entertaining to edit his name in the credit bureau databases:

The address was his, but the name on the credit-card offer took Sami Habbas by surprise: “Palestinian Bomber.” “I thought it was a joke or something,” said Habbas, 54, a Palestinian American who served in the U.S. Army.

Habbas opened the letter, and the salutation read “Dear Palestinian Bomber.”

When he called the company, JPMorgan Chase & Co., provided his ZIP code and invitation number, two operators said to him: “Yes, Mr. Bomber, what can we do for you?”

“It’s very upsetting,” Habbas said. “I’m not what they are saying, a Palestinian bomber. That’s uncalled for. I have a name. My name is Sami Habbas.”

From this article in the Washington Post.

Word has reached me through the grapevine that a certain individual’s mother received a secretive late-night phone call from her son not too long ago. He was on a date and he’d run out of money. Mom understood that this was an embarassing situation. A quick electronic funds transfer of $20 and the date was back on track…

Correctly guess the identity of mama’s boy and receive a prize. Entrants with prior knowledge will be disqualified.

It’s a good thing there’s guidelines.

I subscribe to an email list from dictionary.com that sends me a new, generally uncommon word each day along with a definition and some example sentences. This helps me learn which words not to use if I want anyone to understand me. Which is helpful because I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t know what I’m talking about doesn’t mean they won’t pretend like they do. An acute disconnect in personal relationships is created whenever one person leaves a conversation thinking, “Wow, what a great conversation” while the other person leaves thinking, “What?”.

Today’s word is nugatory, which means “Trifling; insignificant; inconsequential.” It’s pronounced NOO-guh-tor-ee, which I think is pretty sweet. In fact, I can’t think of many cases where this word would not go well with dude. “Nugatory, dude!” just rolls off the tongue. Here’s a (made-up) example of how this word could actually be used:

The CN spokesperson introduced himself as JD. “Seriously, that’s my whole name,” he said. “I had it changed.” I asked him to comment on recent events in Wabamun.

“Here’s what you GOT to realize,” he said, tapping his desk with his pencil. “First of all, the amount of carcina…carcino… you know, cancer-causing chemicals, in the lake…” He trailed off. It appeared as though something on the end of his pencil had taken his attention. He peered closely at it and flicked at the eraser.

“Yes?” I prodded him. His head jerked up. He looked surprised to see that I was still there. “Where was I?” he asked. “You were talking about the amount of carcinogenic chemicals in the lake,” I reminded him.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. Yeah, so, there’s really only 80,000 litres or so that are actually IN the lake. I mean, the rest of it has been taken out of the lake by, uh, local residents and uhhhhh, their kids. I mean, what parent in their right minds would let their children touch a chemical that can cause skin cancer? Like, what a bummer for your kids, man!”

“No one knew there was a carcinogenic chemical in the lake until today,” I reminded him.

“Well, yeah, that’s a bummer too, right? I mean, personally, I’m sorry someone didn’t let everyone know about the carcinogenic pole oil a few days ago when the spill first happened, but like, how are we supposed to know what’s ON the train??? Do you know how long these trains are? And I mean, really, the chances of anyone getting cancer from this stuff are totally nugatory, dude.”

Then there’s parsimonious, a word which reminds me, unsurprisingly, of parsley and parsnips, but that actually means “Sparing in expenditure; frugal to excess.” Par-si-MOH-neeeeeeeee-usssss… The word has a niggling, irritating quality that suits it well, even though it does sound like a leafy green. Here’s another example:

I finally caught up to Larry Lucre, the CEO of CN Rail, on the tarmac at Pearson Airport. He was coming down the stairs of his Lear Jet carrying a bulging black briefcase.

“Mr. Lucre,” I called. “Can I have a minute of your time?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking flustered as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Ever since Canadian National was privatized in 1995, you’ve been laying off employees while increasing the length and weight of your trains. Some people think those polices are related to the environmental disaster that happened in Squamish, BC on August 5. Care to comment?” I asked.

“What you have to realize,” he replied, “is that we care deeply about the environment. And anyone can tell you that humans are bad for the environment. So the first step we took to protect the environment was to lay off people. Secondly, you have to realize that it’s not just the natural environment we have to be concerned with. The business environment we work in is also very important. And when I say ‘very important’, I mean, ‘very, very, VERY important’. In that environment, money is a resource. And it’s a very scarce resource. Very, very, VERY – ”

SPROING! His briefcase burst open. Stacks of $100 bills flew everywhere. “Damnit! Not again!” he exclaimed. “Give me a hand, would ya?”

I started helping him stuff the stacks of money back into the case. “So yeah, like I was saying,” he continued. “Money is VERY scarce here at CN. Here, take a stack for your troubles. Anyway, the business environment we work in calls on us to be parsimonious. Very, very, very parsimonious. Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost to fix that rail car?”

Another great word is malfeasance, which means “Wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior, especially by a public official.” This is one of those words I already knew but never got the courage to use, which is a shame, because it’s a great word. You can practically hear the slimy, official wrongdoing dripping off this word…mal-FEE-zuhn(t)s. Here we go:

CN has expressed outrage that US investigators have concluded that the fatal Amtrak crash in April 2004 was their fault. We asked CN’s Vice-President of Finance – and Safety, Barbara Parsnip, to comment.

“Assigning blame to us is an act of inspector malfeasance,” she said. “As VP of Finance – and Safety, I have have long recommended to US authorities that people living near our tracks take courses in train-dodging. Amtrak’s failure to ensure that Americans have this training, in addition to the standard Cleaning Up Cancerous Lakes course, can in no way be attributed to us. No further comment.”

So there you have it, three great words you’ll never use, unless you enjoy the smile-and-nod treatment. Enjoy!