Blogworld Connects and Disconnects

Connections
Can be beautiful things
Springing to life, out of nowhere
Started on a smile, stirred by a sentence
Sparked by images and imaginations
Seeded by alluring avatars and high-speed harmony

Brought on by an idea, by a story
By boldness, by baring a soul
By sharing a moment, by shedding a tear
By opening a heart, by setting aside fear
By wanting and wishing and waiting

By a melding of me’s at 100 Mbp's

BUT

Connections
Can become Disconnections
With wrong expectations and hopes too high
With words blurted out, with pushes and prods
With pressure and prying and glaring of eyes
With feelings too strong, words all gone wrong

With hopes unfulfilled, proposals rejected
With desires ejected, words recollected
With misunderstandings or stating of truths
With values questioned, beliefs on the line
With offences taken and feelings flambed

The connection can wither and die on the vine

BREAKING NEWS FROM CMN'S SNITUATION ROOM

THIS JUST IN

TO THE CMN (CABLE MUSE NETWORK) NEWS DESK

Now over to Wolf Schlitzer in Warshington...

Thanks Lou...

CMN has just learned that U.S. President George W. Bush will address the Nation and the world this week and announce that he's withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and sending them to Iran.

Sources tell CMN the ongoing detainment of 15 British sailors is now being seen by the Bush administration as a politically convenient development that could allow him to finally remove troops from Iraq.

With every additional day the sailors are detained -- Bush has now called it a hostage-taking -- comparisons are being made to the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980.

Analysts contacted by CMN say Bush, suffering at the polls as a result of his Iraq policy and almost every other of his policies, increasingly sees the Iran situation as the perfect excuse to invade.

Such an invasion would be billions of dollars cheaper because Iraq and 170,000 U.S. troops are right next door to Iran. Sources say the 170,000 troops would cross the border into Iran and be joined by 300,000 others.

Some pundits say such a move could be Bush's last-ditch attempt to try to rescue his presidency from the ravages of public opinion while at the same time boosting the Republican ticket for next year's presidential vote.


Others close to the scene in Washington say an invasion of Iran would also keep the massive military industrial complex humming along at high gear while also expanding the U.S. oil interests in both Iran and Iraq.

Bush supporters also apparently believe that Iran's suspected buildup of nuclear arms could be curtailed, although Democrats cite Bush's Weapons of Mass Destruction fiasco in the invasion of Iraq.

Plus, a successful invasion of Iran would put the U.S. in command of a country that is closer to Afghanistan, the suspected home of Al Quaeda and the domain of Osama Bin Laden, analysts suggest.

The Whitehouse refused to comment on the speculation.

They also refused to deny it was possible.

LATE-BREAKING UPDATE

The invasion of Iran has been averted -- for the time being -- after Iran agreed to release the 15 British sailors on Wednesday...

The View from Mars

I STILL MARVEL AT THE WONDER OF THE BLOGWORLD

13,990 VISITS IN 11 MONTHS

THANK YOU...

I know I come and go

But I want you all to know

How cherished is our meeting

How I'd hug you in our greeting

I value your ideas

And your jokes and meat-filled pitas

How you stimulate my thinking

And my feelings and my winking

You're from all over the planet

Can't get better than that, can it?

From Australia to New Zealand

Belgium, U.S...it's a whirlwind

You hail from Britain to Biloxi

From Montreal to Mississippi

Montana's mountains to Pikipsee

Manitoba west to B.C.

You're all worth more than treasure

Knowing you has been a pleasure

Your lives have touched my own

It's just a gift I've been bestown

Sports and Life

For those of you who sometimes read this blog, you'll know I'm a sportswriter and have recently spent several days with the Canadian women's hockey team in Dauphin, Manitoba.

I have joked about the 5-foot-2, 890-pound coach and the svelte, strong, female athletes who could eat me alive and bench-press me 100 times if they wanted to. I've made light about it all.

And I've had fun doing that. (besides that, it's probably true)

I've now returned from that training camp, and have a day or two off before the World Women's Hockey Championship begins in Winnipeg April 3, which I'll be covering til April 10.

And I had a lot of time to meet these women, some of whom I knew before and had interviewed.

And I marvel at who and what they are. And because of that, I still marvel at the beauty of sports -- REAL SPORTS.

As far as I'm concerned, after doing this for roughly 27 years, amateur athletes are the only athletes who are like you and me.

They're at the top of their sport, but they DON'T GET PAID FOR IT.

I don't care about Barry Bonds, I don't care about Peyton Manning (although he was super funny on SNL recently), I don't care about any of the 7-foot NBA stars like Shaquille Oneal.

I don't even care about the National Hockey League's Sidney Crosby.

Or this guy, whoever he is...

I DO care about Hayley Wickenheiser (below), Jennifer Botterill, Angela Ruggerio (of the U.S.) and many other elite athletes who compete in their sports just because they love competing in their sports...

...Without the million-dollar contracts they might earn if they and so many others were competing in sports that are all about TV and deemed professional and made into commercial entities rather than sport.

Sport, at its grassroots, is a beautiful thing. Some of my best memories are of playing hockey, football, baseball, basketball, at the local arenas or fields or courts or diamonds, with friends.

I wish it's the only sports we had. The people are real, like you and me, and don't just spit out stupid cliches for seven-second TV sound bytes. They care. And for the past week, I've loved writing their stories.

For them, it's not about earning money or huge sponsorship deals, necessarily, but about representing their countries. And doing the best they can and being the best they can be.

If only sport could really be about sport, with nothing but sport and winning and losing a part of it. Amateur athletes are beautiful people.

The Olympics is still one of the few events that hasn't sold itself out to a title sponsor. I hope it stays that way.

When the Visa 100-metre sprint or the BankAmerica Olympic Gold Medal Game become the norm, I'm tuning out. Sport is one of the things we still can truly call our own, if we want to.

And nowadays, I think, that's what we need.