Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 10/28/11
I was 10. Our subdivision was just being built when we moved in. We were one of the first houses. Every other lot seemed to have a house-in-progress going on, complete with giant piles of dirt in front of each. As miscreant kids (sorry for the redundancy), we didn’t understand anything about the Roofing construction other than these piles, because these piles meant one thing: dirtball fights.
You remember those. You had those too, back in your days of innocence and endless summers and experimentation with rudimentary ballistics. You remember tossing little dirt nuggets at your chums, squealing “Heads up!” and “Lookout, sport!” or whatever idiomatic expression you preferred well into the twilight hours. Well, I’ll lay ten-to-one odds that your dirtball fights paled in comparison to ours. See, real dirtball fights don’t fit neatly on to Norman Rockwell posters. If there wasn’t a very good chance of the dirtballs having stray roofing nails in them, well, you probably were doing it wrong.
I look back on the Great Dirtball War of 1979 and wonder how we didn’t all get tetanus. Or become blind. Or dead.
There were six of us. One afternoon, went to a house-under-construction with two enormous dirt hills, split up into teams, and picked our respective mounds. Right about now you’re thinking, IS THIS GOING TO HAVE A GROSS ‘STAND BY ME’ MOMENT? and the answer is no, so relax. Well, it depends on what you mean by gross, but there are no trains involved. Or dead bodies. Anyway, we spent a ridiculous amount of time gathering dirtballs and stacking them into ammo piles — often the ‘gathering’ process required us to separate dirtballs from nails and shards of Mountain Dew cans — before starting the war.
One of my jerk friends began the hostilities, and the result was a hazy, adrenaline-soaked battle. I don’t remember much because I was in the fog of war, but I do remember taking dirtballs the size of an adult fist and throwing them at genuinely good friends with my ridiculously strong 10 year old shoulder. And they — those imbeciles on the other mound — were doing the same to me.
It was comical how often we missed one another, but when we hit, we hit big. Head, neck, chest, back — there was nothing off limits. About a half dozen times someone began crying because he got some dirt or a nail or a beer can in his eye, and we all stopped for a few minutes to relax and call him a whiner crybaby. Soon, hostilities began again, and to this day I remember a few things very clearly:
- In our scampering around the hills in an effort not to be hit by incoming dirtballs, we wound up cutting and slashing ourselves every which way. No, the irony was not lost on us, even as young and stupid as we were. And yes, that’s the gross part, so you can relax now.
- I still remember cars passing our scene on the street and the passengers waving. To this day, I can’t imagine what they were thinking. We were six unsupervised, visibly-bloody kids going all Lord of the Flies on one another at a residential construction site, and these cars were passing us and waving like they were either watching unicorns dance on rainbows or addicted to Halcyon, possibly both. I never did figure that out.
- Stephen got pegged in the neck so hard by a dirtball thrown by Big Mike that he had a golf-ball sized welt for two weeks and everyone joked it was a second face trying to come out to tell him how stupid he was.
So, you guys should take away the following from this story: (a) it’s amazing I’m alive to write this today, and (b) that’s called living life, baby. Don’t be jealous.
Here are some links for you to ease you into the weekend:
What’s the most scary part about mountain biking? Being attacked by antelopes, of course.
Bloomberg TV+ for the iPad — it’s the full Bloomberg news channel, at no cost, on your iPad. As John Gruber notes, apps are the new channels.
The mantra of the optimist: it always seems impossible until it’s done. Worth hanging on your office wall.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
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More links:
MIPRO Consulting main website.
