Cuparius.com

Thursday was not a good day. I awoke with the flu, and the less said about that the better. My misery only abated as I watched a hockey game that happened to be on: the Columbus Blue Jackets versus the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. I haven't been watching NHL games since I decided I had had enough of the escalation of its commercialization (I still say the boards ought to be bare of advertisements... the way they used to be...) and the migration of hockey teams from their homeland to points in the hot and arid or hot and humid South. Well, it is when I am ill and least able to find alternative distractions that I watch unlikely television programming -- in this case, the Columbus vs. Anaheim game. Columbus, of course, is the capital of my home state of Ohio, and although I was pleased when Ohio finally had a team in the NHL, and although I was elated that the team was named the Blue Jackets, I was crestfallen when I discovered that they were downplaying the meaning of the team's name by creating a mascot of all things (I abhor mascots in hockey), and an inaccurate one at that. The mascot is apparently supposed to be a blue yellowjacket, whereas the team derives its name from a white man who was adopted by the Shawnee Indian tribe and became one of their celebrated warchiefs, a man the Shawnees named Blue Jacket. It's a bit of local history, because the Shawnees were largely located in Ohio and were amongst the fiercest opponents of westward expansion by the colonists (Tecumseh being the best known of the Shawnees (and a native Ohioan)). Instead of a blue cartoon wasp, the appropriate logo of the Blue Jackets ought to be something along the lines of, say, an iron calumet tomahawk with two crossed arrows. (For those of you who don't know, a calumet is a peace pipe, and some Americans and Europeans made iron peace pipes that doubled as a tomahawk for trade with Indian tribes.) I was, however, pleased to see that they have the Ohio flag (or burgee) as part of the uniform (a patch on the sleeve). Anyway, getting back to the game, I found myself rediscovering the reasons I consider ice hockey to be one of the only two spectator sports worth watching (the other being women's soccer). I swear it's the closest thing to World War I aerial dogfights that team sports have to offer, and I have always been fascinated by World War I aerial dogfights. (Speaking of which, when are they going to release a restored version of The Dawn Patrol on DVD?) The game ended in a 1-0 victory for Columbus, with outstanding goaltending on both teams, punctuated by two back-to-back fistfights between players. I know other hockey fans love the irrelevant violence, but I just love the game. Yes, that game was my single moment of comfort in an otherwise miserable day.

The following day, today, was little better because I had to rise at 4:00 a.m. in order to be at one of my jobs by 6:00 a.m. I ought to have been in bed convalescing, but I forced myself to rise at that ungodly hour and prepare for eight hours of toil. I hadn't eaten since Wednesday, so I was weak, but once I ate lunch my condition improved. I feel a little less dead now.

This has been a Cuparium update, the 27th in fact, tying the 2003 record. When I post my annual New Year's Eve update tomorrow, I will have surpassed that record. Huzzah!

Of course, it means almost no one will see this update except in the archives, but what the Hades.