GodsendJen

In terms of on-ice success the first refreshing phrase I've heard in a while came out of today's pregame skate for the Thrashers, from Micah Hart at the Blueland Blog 

Marian Hossa said he expects the team to play with a little more puck possession now and not do as much chasing, but that's about as far as anyone went in terms of discussing what will be different.

Don Waddell addressed the media afterwards as well, and you can listen to the full Q and A here.

Waddell sounded confident that the team could still get on track for this season, and though he may make some changes going forward it appears tonight the lines will stay mostly intact. He did mention, like Hossa did, that they will be attempting to play more of a puck-possession game, so perhaps that will be something that will help get this team off the schneid.

That's right, tonight we might play less dump'n'chase and do that crazy thing where we skate the puck into the zone and maintain possession.  So far Kovy and Enstrom are the only players who've been willing to skate in with the puck, but I'm excited to see what happens when everyone else starts doing this as well.  My only concern is that dump'n'chase could be a hard habbit for the vets to break.  But who knows, maybe there is a patch to cure that. 

I've been a bit busy for posting lately.  But I have gotten around to uploading some photos from my cruise. 

Some lessons are learned the hard way, others are learned the hard and bloody way.  The photo doesn't do it justice, but I sustained my first bloody in-game injury a mere week after being so blithely stupid as to make fun of my klutzy non-game injuries. My glove and stick got in the way of a slap-shot and even through the monstrous finger padding of a hockey glove the puck managed to split the tip of my finger, turning it black and causing it to spew blood all over the previously white palm of my gloves.  Amazingly I didn't break a nail.

An expected side effect of my great hockey experiment is the occasional ever-present bruising.  Last night I cataloged yet another of these little joys.  Typically these bruises show up after 3 on3 games when someone else can't stop and consequently hits me--in the beginner league this is frequent--or when I fall because I get tangled up with someone's stick while fighting for a puck. (Note, this also happens in the beginner league.  In the other league everyone else just takes the puck and leaves me in their snow.)  However this bruise is part of a disturbing new trend--bruises I get for being a klutz.  It seams a new one of these may arrive after every Rec-League game.  Last week I had one from the most comedic part of my game--trying to go over the wall on my way to the ice for a shift change. But last night I rose to a new height.  The bruise you see here I got because I fell...while stretching before the game.  I guess I'm just the kind of uncoordinated bafoon that can fall stretching. It didn't photograph well, but I'm particularly impressed with the solid deep purple line at the top of this bruise.  That line corresponds with the end of the side-padding in my breezers. Without padding I believe I'd either have avoided a bruise altogether, or I'd have one twice this size.

It's always fun when pop-culture recylces itself.  I grew up watching The Karate Kid over and over on video tape.  An upbeat soundtrack, classic good vs. evil storyline and cute boys...what more could a pre-teen girl want? Skinny little Daniel was a great hero, but we all secretly wanted bad-boy Johnny with his perfect hair and glistening muscels.  My how times change.  The Phat Phree dug up a video from the group No More Kings called Sweep the Leg Johnny. Mr. Belding has stepped into Mr. Miyagi's tiny shoes but Cobra Kais all showed up to play themselves.  You can see for yourself that Johnny and the boys were much hotter in highschool.  On the other hand, Kreese and Daniel haven't changed that much.

At work I usually refocus by taking a few minutes to read random internet writings to clear my mind.  Often I read about sports, but occasionally I end up reading the chronicles of expats who are living overseas.  I find their stories of adjusting to life in a different culture fascinating, especially the stories from people who find themselves living in Asian cultures.  The small details are fascinating.  The Wall Street Journal chronicles these frustrations in a column called The Expat Life, but some of the best stories are chonicled on blogs.

One of these is Captain Japan's Sake-Drenched Postcards. The captain provided a seven-part series on Japanese Hostess Clubs. It is a fascinating concept--men paying for the pleasure of a conversation with women.  For many women this sounds like one of the only routes to finacial independance they have, "It is no secret that the allure of becoming a hostess usually comes down to one thing: money. The chase for brand-name goods and the chance for an affair with a successful corporate executive provides all the motivation necessary for a girl to take up work in one of Tokyo's thousands of hostess clubs."

I've had a bit of free time this week and have spent some of it crawling through the dark recesses of the internet. Imagine my surprise when a Google Image Search turned up this Saturday Evening Post magazine cover.  The artist is Ellen Pyle and from looking at the contents listing the art doesn't relate to any particular story.  I just keep thinking about how women playing team sports is portrayed as a bit unorthodox during the 1940s in A League of their Own, but here we have an attractive woman playing hockey in 1927. It turns out Women in Sports is actually a recurring theme in the Post's cover art that began in 1923.

You can order prints of The Saturday Evening Post that are ready to frame from Curtis Publishing. I'm not sure where I'd hang it, but if I can think of the right spot I might have to acquire this. Would filling the space between my kitchen cabinets and ceiling with the Post sports art be strange?

This comes to us from geek blogger Phil over at Haacked.  It's a father's day advertisement from condom-maker Durex.