PRESIDENTIAL BERNESE MOUNTAIN DOGS
They'll never be royals; it's not in their blood. (They're dogs.)
STICK TO DOGS
We need to talk about Brรณd and Sรญoda Higgins.
Theyโre the extremely good boy and girl of Irish President Micheal Higgins, which means YES, there are officially Presidential Bernese Mountain Dogs out there in the world.
Befitting a Berner, Brรณd* greeted the visiting royal couple by leaning on Princess Kateโs legs and scooching his butt onto her feet. Itโs called the Berner Lean, they all do it, and reader I assure you: it is the best thing in the world.
*Sรญoda was not present for the greeting as she is recovering from an operation on her paw**, according to extra.ie. She is otherwise healthy. Yes, itโs very important that you know all of this.
**Pawperation.
All dogs are wonderful, and everyone is allowed to love their own the most. But if I can make a case for the Bernese Mountain Dog, please see Brรณd for exactly what you can expect. They are kind, attached, large, hairy, goofy, a little dim, and wonderfully expressive. None of these qualities are individually unique to Berners, obviously, and maybe your ideal dog isnโt every single one of those things. Thatโs great! Thereโs so many dogs to love that arenโt Berners! Some of them arenโt even a breed at all and theyโre amazing too. Iโm just glad a Berner got to sit on royal feet, and I think Brรณd was too.
STICK TO SPORTS AND SHARKS
Johns Hopkins recently announced that due to coronavirus precautions, it would host D-III menโs basketball tournament games with no fans present this weekend.ย As you can imagine, this is a potential precursor for larger divisions making the same callโespecially with D-I menโs tournament host city Spokane right in the state where those people are dying.
First, yes: this is the right call in any area with a substantial risk of exposure. Even if the health threat is likely limited for otherwise healthy adults, any spread of the illness puts children and immunocompromised adults at grave risk.
I, and I think most people, grasp thatโฆ intellectually.
But this is America. Weโre not keen to stop a damn thing.
In Jaws, the mayor* of Amity Island famously refuses to chose the beaches during the townโs tourist season, facilitating the gory mayhem that ensues. The field experts plead with Mayor Vaughn, properly sensing the danger these innocent souls are in, and his response is essentially, โehhh, yeah, but no.โ
*This is as good of an excuse as any to include one of the 30 good tweets that have ever been written. There are only 30.
For a while I thought the mayor was the only real villain of that movie. Sure, thereโs the animal doing all sorts of murders with its own teeth, but at the same time, sharks are gonna shark. Our expectation shouldnโt be that a better shark would be swimming up to the people and singing Beethoven for them or whatever.
[Editorโs note: Iโm sorry, โsinging Beethovenโ? Did I read that right?]
I said or whatever.
[Editorโs note: Just thought Iโd check!]
But if weโre keeping it a buck, the mayorโs refusal to disrupt the norm is one of the few relatable big moments of the movie. Iโm not proud of that, but thereโs only so many flu vaccine skippers and drivers with their noses in their phonesโthe last time you could claim ignorance on this is, like, 2007โthat you can encounter before realizing the sheer volume of Mayors Vaughn who walk among us.
This absolutely applies to me! I have touched my mouth and face approximately six thousand times since beginning this article. My laptop keyboard was last disinfected during the Reagan administration. I wash my hands thoroughly when I have the opportunity, but thatโs it, AND HONESTLY, I havenโt been praised for this fact in about 30 years and Iโm beginning to wonder if itโs even worth the effort.
(Spitballing here: Maybe an app that uses a fitness tracker/watch to detect time spent washing your hands and puts you on a leaderboard for Hygiene Points. Wait no, it has to be a made-up word. Yorbles. You wash your hands for 26 seconds, you get 26 yorbles. And your phone praises you with a push notification each time. It is a dumb, terrible idea and I think it would be much more successful than I want to believe.)
At least in Jaws there was a giant, humanbloodthirsty shark to protect (or not) the populace from. The mayor can have an olโ whoopsy-daisy moment with the grieving families. But unless you have children in the house, you probably donโt know when and where you specifically contract a communicable illness, or to whom you spread it. Itโs not a visceral experience. You donโt get to see the germs fall off your hands and down the drain when youโre collecting your yorbles.
So yeah, itโs going to have to take a strong, unilateral, deeply unpopular move to save us from the coronavirus, and more accurately from ourselves.
But yโknowโฆโฆ. when you put it that wayโฆโฆ a tournament game in an empty stadium just seems too far, right? Seems too weird! Sorry! I promise to keep washing my hands at least.
STICK TO SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
Over at the mothershipโฆ
We celebrate baseball coach Rick Hellerโs 900th career victory and a strong 2-1 showing against three ranked ACC foes.
Ross looks at Iowaโs chances to win the Big Ten wrestling tournament (spoiler: pretty flipping good).
There was allegedly a menโs basketball game held. No more details available here at press time, sorry! New phone who this.
STICK TO AFFIRMATIONS
Thanks for joining me today. Weโll always end on a kind word.
A wise man once said that nobody gets everything they want in life. So when life hands us a disappointing result, yes it hurtsโit should! But only the details of our struggles are unique; the overall experience is universal.
The difference, then, is how we respond to the adversity. Maybe you need a day or two. Maybe the most important thing for you is to keep moving, somehow, some way. Itโs up to you. And as a wise woman once said: our work continues, the fight goes on, and big dreams never die.
Thatโs all.
Just want you to know that singing Beethoven is absolutely on the level. He wrote lots of vocal music!