Repeal Title IX : we're all just one happy sports family now

Andrea the giant and her sisters welcome all comers

Male transgender breaking all records in women's volleyball circuit

"Tiffany" spent years playing at the lowest levels of men's club volleyball, eventually landing on a tier three club team, the lowest level, in Belgium. And by "playing," as Joffre points out, "Tiffany" was achieving mediocrity. Take note: that's mediocrity at the lowest level in the men's leagues.

But she's a winner now, and isn't that grand?

Down in Texas, a girl hopped up on testosterone injections just completed a 32-0 season record in the girl's wrestling division, winning a state championship. To the girl's credit, she wanted to wrestle boys, but Texas doesn't allow that.

Current Olympic rules ban females who are even born with "too much" testosterone, let alone those who pump the stuff in.

Now that we've concluded that sexual differences are social constructs, unrelated to the now discredited "science" of biology, it's time to discard the obsolete idea of separate girl and boy athletic teams, and merge all into one.

You go, CIS!

Hasty diners: Molly the pot bellied pig rescued by ASPCA, butchered by her adoptive "parents"

They can always donate the sweater to Good Will and get a deduction

We all may yield to exigencies, I suppose, but perhaps the new owners were a bit hasty, and should have given Molly a chance to prove her worth. For instance, there's this, undoubtedly true, story:

A traveling salesman invited for dinner with a farm family notices a pig seated at the head of the table, adorned with three medals around his neck and wearing a peg leg. The salesman says, “Um, I see you have a pig having dinner with you.”

“Well gosh yes,” says the farmer. “That’s because he’s a very special pig. You see those medals around his neck? Well, the first medal is from when our youngest son fell in the pond, and he was drowning, and that pig swam out and saved his life. The second medal, that’s from when the barn caught fire and our little daughter was trapped in there and the pig ran inside, carried her out and saved her life. And the third medal, that’s from when our oldest boy was cornered in the stock yard by a mean bull, and that pig ran under the fence and bit the bull on the tail and saved the boy’s life.”

“That sure makes sense to me” says the salesman, “I can see why you let that pig have the place of honor at the table, but how did he get the peg leg?”

“Well,” says the farmer, “a pig like that — you don’t eat him all at once.”

(Yes, it was a dull day for real estate news today)

Not to accuse an innocent man unfairly, of course, but I can understand why cops would want to ask, even from simple curiosity, why a women's severed head was found in this man's suitcase

Related?

New York man being questioned by Japanese police about how his date seems to have lost her head. Was it really that good?

A New York man, Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar,  has been taken into custody in Japan following the discovery by authorities of a severed head inside his luggage, according to reports.

The disembodied head of an unidentified Japanese woman was found inside Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar’s vacation rental in Osaka Saturday, says local news site Asahi.

The rest of the 27-year-old victim’s body has not been located. Surveillance footage shows Bayrakter venturing in and out of the apartment several times carrying a large bag.

While additional footage shows the woman entering the apartment, she is not seen leaving.

The 26-year-old American tourist has been arrested on charges of “confining a woman.”

He’s denied any wrongdoing.

Well of course he has, bless his heart, and good for him: for the proper retainer, I'll be over there tomorrow to defend him.

A victory for the fat men of America!

A win for the rest of us

US Curling Team wins a gold.

You figure this out, then go have a double-chocolate milkshake to celebrate:

They saw Shuster convert a double-takeout for a five-ender in the eighth — an exceedingly rare score that made it 10-5 and essentially clinched the win.

Sweden retained the last-rock advantage known as the hammer for the ninth end, and scored two.

But that gave the hammer to the Americans for the 10th and final end. Shuster played it safe, throwing away one stone intentionally to keep the target area clear and avoid the traffic that can lead to big scores. The remaining rocks were used to methodically pick off Sweden’s until there weren’t enough left to catch up.

With two stones apiece left, Swedish skip Niklas Edin pushed off with a spin and a smile, and then conceded defeat.

I heard on the radio yesterday that a few years ago Shuster, the leader of these guys, was cut from the official Olympics squad, and went on to form his own team, self-titled "The Rejects". I so hope that's true.

Somewhere in America, Nick Foles is smiling.

Are we better protected in Greenwich than in Broward County, Florida? I think we are.

Aww, goddammit

News is out that at least four Broward County cops cowered behind their cars while the high school shooter was massacring his victims. I've never, ever, been in combat, and have no idea how I would personally respond to a deadly situation like this, so I can't judge these men (much as I'd like to imagine myself as some John Wayne figure, rushing in to save children). But, four deputy sheriffs, and a regular cop, also armed, who all declined to enter that school? Not a single brave person among them to lead them in? That's not good.

Back in 2007, I wrote about the awful performance of the local Cheshire police force, who waited for a full half-hour outside the house of Dr. Andrew Petit while two awful, horrible people raped and murdered his wife and two daughters. I asked then whether our own police force was better trained to respond to this sort of horror, and I heard almost immediately from a long-lost high school friend, now identified on this blog as "GPD Folks", saying "we're trained to go through the walls, windows, and doors, and that's what we'd have done" (I may be paraphrasing, but close enough). That was my friend's first post, I think, on this blog, but he (and his wonderful wife) return on a semi-regular pattern. My friend has since retired from our force, but I know him, and I trust him to have left a great group of heroes behind him.

So thanks, buddy: I thought you were the dumbest fuck in our GHS class when you joined the cops, until I saw, years later, that you'd retired on a full pension, and grabbed a new job with a great salary. Who's the dumb fuck now? And, if my family was in danger, you'd be the first person I'd call, your arthritic knees or not.

Let's defund the FBI until it can explain why a single nickel of taxpayer money was spent on this investigation

Unpaid or hired help — who cares?

Sports agent and NCAA coach arrested for paying a kid to play basketball

Our overworked agents are too busy to follow up tips about mass murderers and terrorists, but they do have the time to investigate college athletic programs. Major universities make untold millions on their football and basketball programs, their coaches are paid multi-million-dollar salaries, and receive even more in endorsement programs by agreeing to dress their athletes in specific shoes and underwear, and it turns out that those athletes themselves want a piece of the action? The gall.

Something like one-tenth of one percent of student athletes make it to the NFL or NBA, while their chances of scrambling their brains or tearing apart their bodies are one hundred times greater. Our finest universities are running a minor league training program for professional sports teams and enriching themselves at the expense of poor, naive children who don't even receive the education they were promised, and no one in our country's education industry really cares.

Is there really anyone in America who gives a good goddamn if some of these kids are being paid for their efforts to enrich their employers? 

Aww, too bad — and I truly mean that

Dumpster Dust

Reader "Maybo" (hey, I don't choose these monikers; you guys do) reports that 180 Stanwich Road has a "Notice of Demolition" notice posted on the yard. I liked the house, a lot, but when the land value exceeds that of the house, off it goes. The house sold for $2.050 earlier this month, $2.6 in 2005. 

I just hope that the fad for neo-Victorian-shingle-homes has passed, and something different, maybe even better, will replace the worst of our builders' excesses of the past couple of decades.

88 Meadow Road

My guess is that the same fate awaits yesterday's new listing on 88 Meadow Road, in Riverside, a 1929 house that's been listed at $3.595 million. The sellers paid $3.4 for it in 2005, but that may be their problem, not yours. It's a half-acre on a great street, but if the floor plans are to be believed, it's got five-foot-wide bathrooms, tiny (for today's tastes) bedrooms, and a pretty dated kitchen, baths, etc. My guess? A $2.5 million land value, a $2 million rehab job. 

That doesn't make sense, to me: Gentlemen, start your engines.

Land contract on Round Hill?

121 Round Hill Road, 2 acres in the R-2 zone and last asking $1.695 million (it hoped for $1.995 million 522 days ago), reports a contract. It's a 1927 structure, and surely served its owners well over the past 40 years, but I'm guessing its days are numbered.

Not so long ago, a two-acre building lot on lower Round Hill might have fetched a price in the low $2s, which explains this one's original price, but apparently the street's seeing a decline.

The town's valuation of the property, land and building, is $2,372.500, so assuming a final sale price of, say, $1.5 million, the new owner may have some meaty weight to toss at the Appeals Board. 

Racist invasion squelched in Seattle.

A concerned citizen reported her neighbor's Confederate flag, worried that white supremacists had moved in down the street. Investigation revealed that the offending banner was in fact the flag of Norway, displayed by a Squarehead in honor of his fellow countrymen's efforts in the Olympics.

Especially in Seattle, you can never be too vigilant. 

Close enough to be a micro-aggression, surely

Oh dear, I so wish they wouldn't do this

This one won't last!

My colleagues in real estate are out there plugging a "sellers' market", and because our local ad whore, Greenwich Time, limps along almost entirely on the revenue those realtors provide, it's only too happy to publish this nonsense as news.

Here's the situation, at least as I see it, and you are entirely free to dismiss me as a ranting old curmudgeon: There are indeed plenty of buyers out prowling, and a well-priced home will be snapped up quickly. There are also many, many homes that have been priced at ridiculous levels, and buyers aren't stupid enough to listen to the listing agent's (or, and I blush to admit the possibility) their own representative's blandishments.

I've preached this for almost 20 years now: price it, sell it. Don't wait around for years for that mythical, "special" buyer, "who truly gets it", and don't dream that, if only the right advertising campaign were employed, someone will pay you more for your house than it's worth. If you want to move, move. Otherwise, pull your house from the market, stay put, and enjoy the relief of not having to keep your home fit to be seen by strangers on an hour's notice.

Grumpgrumpgrump.