High-Sticked

Full size.  On Flickr.

Two for high-sticking! So, the right side of my face is feeling rather puffy, this morning, and that's because a careless fellow hockey player slashed me in the face.  Accompanied by the realisation that this must be my dumbest (in the sense that I shouldn't be doing it if I value my health) hobby, I've become used to the varying amount of pain that comes with playing hockey regularly.  I've bruised most of my body parts, already, and bled significantly from both my hand and my chin. 

Nevertheless, this particular incident was rather amusing.  Before getting hit, my play was lacklustre.  I was just missing "it".  But after shaking off the minor pain, I suddenly woke up.  I started out-skating, out-deking, and out-working (particularly on defence) everyone.  By the end, I'd scored two goals and denied plenty more.

Of course, by then, my middling play was too embarrassing to overcome, but it was quite a feeling to get whacked in the face, and not only shrug it off, but play better and more confidently than at any point in the game before.  I made good use of those two minutes.

Links: Good Guys Don't Try to Control You; They Hate Us for Our Freedom to be Frisked by Perverts; Learning to Play Hockey

Links is a segment focusing on providing you with links worth clicking.  These are articles, podcasts and radio programmes, and videos that shed new light on the world around you.  Links is not about promoting philosophies (although I reserve the right to slobber my commentaries with a heavy dose of opinion) and taking you in partisan circles; occasionally, you will find a piece with which I disagree and may virulently lambast, but nevertheless feel needs to be highlighted.  It's about staying informed and seeing through both eyes.

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In "Various matters", Glenn Greenwald links to a piece by Robert F. Worth that paints a horrific picture in post-Qaddafi Libya.  Without a government* and army, and almost no police, unchecked violence has descended on the country, with the rebels who were once tortured by Qaddafi loyalists hunting them down and returning the "favour", making the captors the captive.  Elsewhere, Worth recounts the stories of those who survived the terror of that regime's final days, who "kept [their] head[s] down and let others take the risks" and "adapted to a place where fear was the only law," before adding that, "Most of the brave ones are dead."

It's a distorted reality, and, truthfully, an expected one.  While much of Libyan intervention focused on the short-sighted goal of the capture and/or murder of Muammar el-Qaddafi, little thought was given to what would happen when the beast was slain and his domain was offered up to whoever had the temerity to take it.  At least until the world saw what happened when the rebels finally got their hands on him.