Nerds For Words
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Texas' most dangerous game
I partook of one of my favorite hobbies this weekend, known to many on the Gulf coast as the sport of kings, the proving grounds of true sportsmen (who've grown a pair). I wrestled with the great calcified leviathan, the 8-armed dreadnought, the Texas blue crab. At times I was assisted by my wife or my in-laws, but for the most part it was purely man and dog (Shipley) against beast. For the most part, I was victorious. I sustained a few minor wounds while field dressing the great monsters, but I think they should heal.
Crabbing gets short shrift as an outdoors sport. I think, in part, it's because it's so accessible. You don't need a $30,000 boat or high-tech carbon fiber rods with neon lures to try your luck. All you need is a ball of string, some small pieces of metal for weight, a net, and whatever scrap meat (bone-in) is cheapest at the grocery store.
There's a definite skill in being able to detect by the way the line hangs down into the water whether or not a crab is chewing on your bait, and being able to gently haul the crab up to the surface without them suspecting your game is a veritable art form. Cagey quarry, the blue crab.
And yet, you never see a crabbing column in the sports section next to hunting and fishing. I've never seen any feature articles written on the best bait, how much weight to use, or how to look for the perfect crabbing pier. Instead, we get thousands of pages of ads for bass boats and bay boats, and reams of articles on how to hook redfish and trout.
What's funny, I think, is that crabbing is pretty much your best bet if you compare the odds of catching what you set out after with the amount of effort and expense required to play the game. I caught half a dozen big crabs with 4 lines and a few old soup bones, and I was multitasking in other projects the whole time. Not to mention drinking heavily. Beat that, you uppity lure-fishing snobs. ¶ 9:08 PM 0 comments
I partook of one of my favorite hobbies this weekend, known to many on the Gulf coast as the sport of kings, the proving grounds of true sportsmen (who've grown a pair). I wrestled with the great calcified leviathan, the 8-armed dreadnought, the Texas blue crab. At times I was assisted by my wife or my in-laws, but for the most part it was purely man and dog (Shipley) against beast. For the most part, I was victorious. I sustained a few minor wounds while field dressing the great monsters, but I think they should heal.
Crabbing gets short shrift as an outdoors sport. I think, in part, it's because it's so accessible. You don't need a $30,000 boat or high-tech carbon fiber rods with neon lures to try your luck. All you need is a ball of string, some small pieces of metal for weight, a net, and whatever scrap meat (bone-in) is cheapest at the grocery store.
There's a definite skill in being able to detect by the way the line hangs down into the water whether or not a crab is chewing on your bait, and being able to gently haul the crab up to the surface without them suspecting your game is a veritable art form. Cagey quarry, the blue crab.
And yet, you never see a crabbing column in the sports section next to hunting and fishing. I've never seen any feature articles written on the best bait, how much weight to use, or how to look for the perfect crabbing pier. Instead, we get thousands of pages of ads for bass boats and bay boats, and reams of articles on how to hook redfish and trout.
What's funny, I think, is that crabbing is pretty much your best bet if you compare the odds of catching what you set out after with the amount of effort and expense required to play the game. I caught half a dozen big crabs with 4 lines and a few old soup bones, and I was multitasking in other projects the whole time. Not to mention drinking heavily. Beat that, you uppity lure-fishing snobs. ¶ 9:08 PM 0 comments
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Grow a pair.
My wife and I were musing last night over the saying, "Cut off your nose to spite your face." It was weird because the more we started really thinking about it, the less we could figure out what it meant. And, then we weren't really sure the exact wording of it. Is it "Cut off your nose DESPITE your face"? Or, "Cut off your nose IN SPITE OF your face?" We both thought it meant something like, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," which is a strange way of saying that you make a kind of sacrifice to get something, but then the thing you get isn't worth the sacrifice you made to get it. Then we started musing over why anybody would rob Peter or Paul, and why they had to pay Paul so badly that they'd rob Peter, unless he was demanding a tithe or something. It's all so terribly confusing, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that every day we say things that we think we know the meaning of, but which in fact we certainly do not. By "we" I mean I.
I started thinking more about sayings, and I thought of the phrase "Grow a pair" for some reason. This got me to pondering off in a new direction - why we equate qualities of aggression with testicles... When someone says, "Grow a pair," they are suggesting that a man should be able to stand up for himself, get his way, bully others around, and be aggressive. That's manly, right? So, conversely, a woman is characterized by submission, weakness, acquiescence and quiet. That seems so un-PC, so backwards in thinking, and so offensive to both men and women that I'm kind of surprised how popular it is - because one does hear it frequently on TV and in movies - and people in real life say it all the time. It's a good example of how old modes live on even in times of real change and upheaval. And when people talk of paradigm shifts and start labeling whole decades or milleniums by different names (are we postmodern still, or something else?), or when people say things like "modernism started in October of 1911," isn't that just a ridiculous over-simplification of time and the way trends in human thought *actually* work?
Well, you can ponder over that. Let me know what you think. I'll leave you with this from phrases.org.uk, which gives an explanation of the phrase, "Cut off your nose TO SPITE your face." I've read it, but it still seems wrong. Shouldn't it be "Cut off MY nose to spite YOUR face"?
"Cut off your nose to spite your face"
Meaning:
Disadvantage yourself in order to do harm to an adversary.
Origin:
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists this proverb as "mid 16th century - mid 14th century in French". I wouldn't doubt them but the earliest citation I can find in print is much later. Grose's 1796 edition of the 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' explains it thus:
"He cut off his nose to be revenged of his face. Said of one who, to be revenged on his neighbour, has materially injured himself."
J$
PS: There were a number of different ways I could have gone with the picture that accompanies this blog... what do you think of my choice? ¶ 7:55 AM 1 comments
My wife and I were musing last night over the saying, "Cut off your nose to spite your face." It was weird because the more we started really thinking about it, the less we could figure out what it meant. And, then we weren't really sure the exact wording of it. Is it "Cut off your nose DESPITE your face"? Or, "Cut off your nose IN SPITE OF your face?" We both thought it meant something like, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," which is a strange way of saying that you make a kind of sacrifice to get something, but then the thing you get isn't worth the sacrifice you made to get it. Then we started musing over why anybody would rob Peter or Paul, and why they had to pay Paul so badly that they'd rob Peter, unless he was demanding a tithe or something. It's all so terribly confusing, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that every day we say things that we think we know the meaning of, but which in fact we certainly do not. By "we" I mean I.
I started thinking more about sayings, and I thought of the phrase "Grow a pair" for some reason. This got me to pondering off in a new direction - why we equate qualities of aggression with testicles... When someone says, "Grow a pair," they are suggesting that a man should be able to stand up for himself, get his way, bully others around, and be aggressive. That's manly, right? So, conversely, a woman is characterized by submission, weakness, acquiescence and quiet. That seems so un-PC, so backwards in thinking, and so offensive to both men and women that I'm kind of surprised how popular it is - because one does hear it frequently on TV and in movies - and people in real life say it all the time. It's a good example of how old modes live on even in times of real change and upheaval. And when people talk of paradigm shifts and start labeling whole decades or milleniums by different names (are we postmodern still, or something else?), or when people say things like "modernism started in October of 1911," isn't that just a ridiculous over-simplification of time and the way trends in human thought *actually* work?
Well, you can ponder over that. Let me know what you think. I'll leave you with this from phrases.org.uk, which gives an explanation of the phrase, "Cut off your nose TO SPITE your face." I've read it, but it still seems wrong. Shouldn't it be "Cut off MY nose to spite YOUR face"?
"Cut off your nose to spite your face"
Meaning:
Disadvantage yourself in order to do harm to an adversary.
Origin:
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists this proverb as "mid 16th century - mid 14th century in French". I wouldn't doubt them but the earliest citation I can find in print is much later. Grose's 1796 edition of the 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' explains it thus:
"He cut off his nose to be revenged of his face. Said of one who, to be revenged on his neighbour, has materially injured himself."
J$
PS: There were a number of different ways I could have gone with the picture that accompanies this blog... what do you think of my choice? ¶ 7:55 AM 1 comments
