People love it when you lose, they love dirty laundry

First, I will start by saying that last night (while volunteering at Y-Nationals at the pool), I saw a very full moon rise, starting with peaking out of the fronds of a palm--picturesque. Sadly, it was way too far away to be effectively captured by my cell-phone cam, so, suffer with today's pic instead. It's probably just as well: yesterday was the Moon's weekly day; today is for Tyr (I like that his rune looks like an up arrow).

Alright, now the fun stuff:

• The other day at work I took a call from a gentleman who had just moved to Whakatane, New Zealand, which is on the North Island's north shore, on the Bay of Plenty. The reason for it earning merit here is that, apparently, the "Wh" is pronounced like a "Ph", making the proper saying of the town's name... interesting.
• Similarly--in a close-but-no-cigar kind of way--is the last name of the National Technical Director of the French Swimming Federation, Claude Fauquet (in French the "t" is silent... luckily; Court says it's pronounced foe-kay).
• Heard on the radio: 1-in-5 people send text messages while driving. This radio contest question was answered by a salesman from an auto insurance company, which makes sense that he would know the answer.
• This week's score (so far): bed-1, pool-1 (I hit snooze on Monday, and swam this morning).
  

And I will end with the fact that I've been avoiding reading commentary on the recently completed aquatics Worlds provided by Nikki Dryden on SwimNews.com (getting way technical, I know), mostly because they've irked me. Ms. Dryden isn't happy about the gender inequity she found at the Worlds (utilizing what appears to be a not very thorough examination) and even went as far as to make this final comment:

The last comment I will make on this quest for quantity over quality is the absurdity of recognizing countries that the IOC does not recognize. In order to pump up the number of countries participating, FINA has allowed 5 countries to participate in the pool events that the IOC does not recognize. So what exactly is the development objective of inviting athletes from countries that will never get to compete in the Olympics?

available here for viewing

Part of the point she seems to be missing is that sometimes participation is the thing. And, in the case of those 5 countries, maybe they're swimming at Worlds so they can be at the Olympics one day? I'm fairly certain that the IOC will not recognize a country until after it has participated in Olympic sports internationally, at events like Worlds.

And I will stop there before I go ranting away... hasta

We can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing
When it's said and done, we haven't told you a thing
We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry