2003-02-04 - 2:26 p.m.
"They never apologized, sent me a get-well card . . . nothing," said Maruszak, 27, of San Diego, who had persistent headaches, neck pain and black eyes that lasted for months."
That in addition to having her nose reconstructed.
Sorry about your widdle nose, lady, but was that the first hockey game you'd ever been to? Granted, this is California, and hockey isn't a hugely popular sport, but I knew 10 minutes into my first game that Rule Number 1 for spectators is: KEEP AN EYE ON THE PUCK. Don't gab with your neighbor. Don't flirt with the players in the penalty box. Don't sit there fixing your make-up while the puck is in play--a hockey puck has a mind of its own, and if it sees that you're not paying attention it will purposely fly off the ice and clobber you. The puck takes great pride in culling the idiots with no situational awareness out of the gene pool.
I love how she wants the Sports Arena to put nets all around the rink, too. You know, because we're all 2 years old and need to be protected from our own stupidity and inattentiveness.
A friend of mine once said it better than I ever could: We are now living in the United States of Pussy.
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I just finished reading The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassman, so stuff like this has been on my mind anyway. If the media weren't so busy scaring us into looking for terrorists under every bed (hell, I personally had to vaccuum up an entire al-Qaeda cell just yesterday--they're like dust bunnies, they are) I'm sure we'd be inundated with news stories about how an "epidemic" of hockey game spectators getting beaned with pucks "has experts alarmed." There's no problem minor enough that you can't get Americans frothing at the mouth over it if you give it enough airtime.
We've always been a nation of worrywarts--we just get more angst-ridden the safer we really are. And we've got a veritable army of journalists and elected officials whose whole mission in life is to keep us worrying. God bless America.
Anyway, The Culture of Fear. Read it, and roll your eyes every time a politician or anchordroid babbles about "protecting our children" again.
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Not much happening at the Lair of Doom today. I'm getting the March issue out the door, and after that comes alcohol and lots of it. Oh, and someone from the OI Foundation called today and said they're looking into San Diego for their 2004 conference--would I be willing to meet with them and look at the hotel they're considering? The guy on the phone sounded cool, although experience with OIF has taught me not to let myself get sucked in too deeply--for such a small organization, its internal politics would make Machiavelli run screaming for his mommy. I may appoint myself Ad-Hoc Chairman of Fun and Debauchery so that the adults with OI in attendance aren't bored out of their brittle little skulls, but that's as much of a commitment I want to make, I think.
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