A basketball trade secret that can help

Along with a billion other riveted viewers, it was with great interest that I watched Yao Ming ceremoniously open the first game versus the United States by zinging through a three-point shot. During a break from the game, the TV featured a brief documentary of how popular basketball has become in China and as a lifetime basketball aficionado, this also enthused me.

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With the economic development of China, with thousands of new basketball courts in the land, I would like to make an observation from the viewpoint of aspiring school-ground players.

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Every bouncing kid knows that when they come upon the court, if the net is torn or missing, this takes some of the wind out of their sails. With the great expenses of new courts, poles and baskets, the net is usually first to go bad. And with the nets gone, children will often go off to play a different sport.

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Nylon nets attached to heavily used basketball hoops often wear out within a few weeks. A way to remedy this is to soak the net in boiled linseed oil for a day and then let it dry out for another, before hanging it from the basket. Preparing a net in this way increases its life tenfold. Soaking a net in linseed oil sometimes shrivels it up a bit, requiring maintenance staff to shoot swishes for stretching it back out.

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In this manner, the workers will have achieved what many amateur basketball players dream of, as they will then be receiving pay for shooting and making baskets.

Letters and Blogs

Slug: Plague of cliches

Initials:

Headline: Why to Avoid Cliches like the Plague

My advice for the Writers Conference

By Jim Banholzer

Something was new under the sun in this land of milk and honey when I tiptoed on eggs into work. Knowing the jig was up; the board of directors confronted me, “Jim we would like to know what’s new in your brave world of Banholzerian Hieroglyphics. Which begs the question; can you spare us more than a few nanoseconds of your attention span for some whys and wherefores?”

They led me through some flowery purple passages to where we circled up for a meeting. This would be no kid glove treatment. But, what the hey, no pain no gain. One kind-hearted central Idaho scrutinizer remarked at length, “Son, your imagination runs riot, but I’ve told you a million times that you’re prone to hyperbole. By the same token, some of your sentences are so very long that by the time reader’s get around to your end point, few remember what you were writing about in the first place and believe you me with the instant gratification expectations that today’s world has developed for digests, buzzwords and Internets, your style is going to come off sounding like a bunch of half baked ideas grasping at straws.”

“I catch your drift and don’t forget the memory hole”, I retorted, “prions pouring right down the drain”. Perhaps I should even out my long-winded lexicon with some good old hackneyed phrases. I think we see eye to eye that the man I’m replacing has some hard shoes to fill. Harder than Chinese Algebra -without an abacus. But let’s dream the impossible dream and say I’m able to keep the ball rolling between the lines for readers. What then? Need I develop an algorithmic formula that does the trick to blow them away?”

“Well”, one of my mentors suggested, “you’re not out of the woods yet. It’s more than wishful thinking to say that if you were to modify several cliches and hang them from a string together, you could come up with something original. Like pinning your hopes on duck soup. Many trite expressions are used because the author is lazy as a dog. Certainly not every word spilling out of your keyboard can be a spud-sparkly gem, but you should at least strive for some originality in this state.”

So, I’ll put my money where my mouth is, starting with one red cent. By and large it will become easy as pie to roll in the dough from that sweetened pot at this end of the rainbow. I’d bet my bottom dollar that if I’m to write commentary on subjects like “Sun Valley Was Not Built in One Day” then mixing bolt from the blue cliches with saucy language could become the technique to get ‘er done. We’ll run it up the liberty pole to see who salutes it.

The Bossman walked in and shouted, “Eureka! Young (middle-aged) James you’ve solved it again! It’s refreshing to see beyond the end of your nose that while you couldn’t beat conformity you didn’t join it. Otherwise it would have been back to the drawing board. You’d have been writing on the wall methods for putting toothpaste back in tubes and genies into bottles no place like home. Best to not have to open that can of worms.”

“Well, you do have to be a pretty early bird to snag a silkworm and pull the wool over my eyes with it.” Seeing it through, I knew that the sun always shines after a hardscrabble rain, even if it’s pitchforks. A real cat and dog gully washer always makes it fun to watch the sage grow.

I was happy as a clam that the board didn’t pop a vein while having a mad cow over my unconventional efforts. They didn’t consider this bunch of blather to be over the top! I wouldn’t want poor planning on my part to create an emergency on theirs and get swept under the rug. So while I’m burning midnight ethanol worth its weight in gold and shooting for the moon, I’ll apply these newfangled methods during crunch time, hoping my verbiage doesn’t get caught between a rock and a hard place. This straight from the mouth of the horse of a different colour, who laughed last at himself for trying to be too clever by halfsies.

Modified ending by Brad Nottingham:

Well, you have to be a pretty early raven to get the segmented earth dweller and pull the Polarfleece over my eyes with it. I knew that the sun always radiates after a significant episode of precip, even if it’s common farm implements. A period of raining tabbies and terriers always makes it interesting to watch the sage grow. I was happy as a hermit crab that the board didn’t pop a plasma conduit or have a spotted bovine over my toils towards originality and consider it a bunch of hooey.

I didn’t want lackadaisical planning on my part to create a 911 episode on theirs and get brushed under the Berber. So while I’m burning midnight dinosaur juice worth $49.23 a barrel and shooting for our planets natural satellite, I’ll apply this method over the next few weeks hoping my verbiage doesn’t get stuck between a chunk of granite and an impervious substrate. This, vectoring out from the equines oral cavity, which last laughed. (Well, brayed.)