about.com

I bitched and complained. I begged and pleaded. I sold myself shamelessly, taking advantage of the loyalty of all of the swim friend connections throughout my email accounts and facebook.

I really whored myself out to get votes in the About.com Readers Choice contest.

Apparently I am not even a part of the voting. We only get to vote on the top 5 nominations and I never even got the email that would have said I am in the top 10.

Don't get me wrong. I might play like I tie my self esteem to things like this, but honestly I was just hoping for some blog fodder to come from it. I was going to trash talk all the other bloggers because I will do anything to get a blog fight going. I don't get a dime for this. I get paid in comments. Blog fight comments are worth the most.

When I send out bulk emails about swim blog stuff, I always try to include some of the high profile people I have never met but harass the most. I got a few good responses from the friends I didn't annoy to death with my email bombardments, but the best reply is what one person equated to a "unicorn sighting," and another called "the shortest piece of prose from SwimNews ever."

This is, word for word, the email I got from Craig Lord:

Mr Viking,

The dye and the vote is cast ... may your online ego grow in tune with the length of your horns, yon warrior...

Regards, J. Jonah Jameson

Come on, guys... you gotta give him credit for being a good sport and playing along. Ha!






I must say that while searching for the right picture to stick Craig Lord's face on, I marveled at how many pictures are out there of Barack Obama and Robocop riding unicorns. Go ahead. Google it. It's crazy.

You can't heckle this guy...

I was once boo'd by the parents of the University of Cincinnati as I walked past the stands for relaxing the final of a 400 IM and taking 8th to rest up for my upcoming 100 breast at the National Independent Champs when I was a college freshman.  I have to admit it felt kind of cool to be a target.  I almost felt like I was in a major sport for a second. 

While I don't allow my swimmers to talk trash or taunt other athletes, I can totally get into it if it is fun-spirited.  In case you haven't heard the story of Ohio State's Jared Sullinger and the cool sign his non-fan in Minnesota made him, click here.  Way to show some class!

From the "I think about swimming way too much" file:

I have been around swimming long enough that I think I can spot talent pretty quickly. When a new fish walks in to join my high school team, I look for all the signs: the broad shoulders, the floppy ankles, the turned out frog feet, the long torso... sometimes I can tell what a kid's best stroke is gonna be before I ever see them swim.

This kid is definitely gonna be a breaststroker.

I mean, when you see someone whose knees hyper-extend, you think "I bet that kid could be a really good dolphin kicker...".

We all do that right?

Well, yesterday I went to see The Kings Speech, which is excellent by the way, and when I saw a man on the screen hyper-extending his elbow I immediately thought, "dang, that guy would have been a hell of a backstroker!"

The sad part is, this is the image I was referring to:

"ze drill ist done like zis, except I am balancing a cup of vasser on mein forehead"

Yeah, I am so swimming obsessed that when I look at the man who is arguably the most evil man in history I immediately wish I could have coached him.

I am sick. It's a disease... and I know I am not the only coach who has it.

Even if Adolph Hitler did represent Germany in the Olympics, I know that the other swimming Adolph from those days, our own Adolph Kiefer, would have put him to shame American style.

After retiring in shame over his medals being taken away for having competed in illegal swimming attire, Adolph Kiefer moved on to a successful career as a florist.

As a matter of fact, the picture below is a scene in the new book I am writing because I want to be just like Chris DeSantis. It is called A Completely Made-Up History of Competitive Swimming, and in it Adolph Kiefer kicks Hitler's ass in the 100 back at the Berlin games and then kicks his ass again (in full costume) in the parking lot after the medal ceremony.

"BEAN!"

Another chapter in my book follows Jason Lezak's career after overtaking the French on the anchor leg of the Beijing 400 Free Relay. In my telling, he commits the next three months of his life to personally taunting and bullying every citizen of France, setting Franco-American relations back two hundred years.

Violence against mime's was up 4000% during the "Jason Lezak intimidation tour" of the fall of 2008.

Please look for my book to be released in about 10 or 15 years, or however long it takes Chris to finish his. I want our dates to coincide.  The only reason I blog anyway is so that I can beat him at something since he is too scared to race me. Apparently he is too scared to blog lately too.

Of course, you can pre-order my book for fifty bucks. Email me and I'll set you up to give me your money through paypal.

More Horned Helmet Envy...

A friend sent me this awesome Viking helmet pic this morning:  

I have to say, I have never wanted to sign up for a knitting class so badly in my life.  Of course, if I took the time to learn to crochet, I would probably be stupid enough to attempt to make one with horns like this:  

Damn, that's awesome.  That would take a lot of yarn.

Horned Helmet Envy

Admit it. You are jealous.

I sure the hell am. That is just awesome.

I can't believe no one told me about this App!

Waitaminnit!!  Do you mean to tell me that I have seen that little "available on the App Store" icon on the TYR/Collegeswimming.com banner all this time and I just didn't figure it out until now? 

I had assumed that it meant you could buy the TYR Tracer through some online swim shop that had an app.  I am an idiot.  It is actually an app for Collegeswimming.com itself!  I can access the top times list optimized for my iphone!  How did I not already know about this!


I hope they can eventually add the articles and straight up meet results to the app.  PDF's would be good enough, but if it could be somehow done like the Live Results app it would be even better. Conference Central would be amazing if it were optimized for the iphone, expecially with video and all of the great coverage they seem to be networking hard to get. 

And then there are the message boards...  If they could add that to my phone, I can only imagine how much more time I would spend ranting and bickering with the rest of the lunatics.  Please Coach Earhart!  Make it happen!

"Academic" Salaries- found this on Reddit

This is an article about a college swimming program that has been cut. If you are interested in helping to save college swimming for future generations, please support Swim Blogs United and GoFor5.org as we try and keep college swimming, $5 at a time!

...well, it's not really about a swimming program specifically, but that is what I thought of when I saw this picture and read the comments below it when I found it on Reddit.

What gets me the most about the comments is how vehemently so many people defend football spending.  Even if the info is not 100% accurate, we all know what the trend is.  There is hardly any mention of recruiting budgets and the number of coaches these institutions have that are being paid tremendous amounts of money and all of the other extravagances attached that are unjustifiable in our down economy.  They all say that football pays for everything else because it brings in millions... yet hardly anyone mentions that the majority of schools are not keeping up with the minimum dollar amount it takes to be competitive.  As college football income increases, the spending seems to increase at a higher rate.  How else could Olympic sport cuts be explained?  More money providing less opportunity just does not add up!

Oh well.  We like to watch football, so I guess it is worth it.  Right?