10 thoughts on “I met the guy who invented the 2nd set of chains”

1. …..chains?

   My brain is unable to reconcile the concepts “disc golf” and “chains”. It conjures up mental images that are just altogether too wrong.

2. All games are crappy to some extent, and to someone; and I have to admit, disc golf appears to require a helluva lot of skill. It surely seems less crappy to me than, say, baseball, which I still do not understand after having lived for several years in the US (although I left the US now).

   1. Disc golf appeals to me because it looks like it’ll demand much the same kind of mental focus as shooting and other martial arts, while being a not-overly-strenuous form of exercise.

      Baseball is easy to understand. Now, cricket…there’s an incomprehensible game…

      1. I agree on the appeal of disc golf.

         I understand cricket, weird as it may seem. Baseball, however, has always eluded me. Football (the american version, which curiously involves only small amounts of kicking the ball) is also very weird, but after vigorous studying at sports bar, connected with imbibings of copious amounts of inhibition lowering beverages, I’m starting to understand the basics (having to do with gaining ground expressed in imperial measurements). I’m still hazy on some concepts though, such as exactly when kicking is supposed to be done, but give me a few years.

         Maybe it’s a cultural thing.

         1. On kicking, in football.

            It’s very simple, really.

            Ok, now that I’ve got the traditional introductory lie out of the way, it’s sort of like this. There are three types of kicks — the punt, the kickoff, and the field goal. (The punt is when the ball is tossed to the kicker, who then drop-kicks it. The kickoff is when the ball is placed on the ground, and the kicker runs up to it.) They happen at different times, and ought be considered separately.

            Punts are, in fact, pretty simple. There’s no regulations on when they have to be done — they’re a tactical strategy choice thing, done when you give up on the “keep possession of the ball” strategy and have to go to plan B, which is “get the ball as far downfield as we can before those other buggers can have it.” Most useful on “fourth down” situations, when you’ve used up all but the last of your four opportunities to move the ball the next 10 yards, and you still have a long way to go. If you don’t make the rest of the 10 yards on the upcoming play, the other team gets the ball where you fall, and so in most cases it’s a much better strategy to get the ball way off downfield rather than risking letting them have it where you are.

            Now, sometimes when you get into a fourth-down situation, you’re close enough to the other team’s goal that you could just kick it all the way there and through the uprights on the goalpost. So you do, or try to; if you succeed, you get 3 points, which isn’t too shabby. That’s a field goal. Pretty much the same ideas about when to do a punt apply to when you want to do that.

            Finally, the kickoff. This is the only “required” type of kick in the game. It happens after you score a goal, or when play starts. They could have made it simple, so that when you score the other team gets the ball, but no — when you score, you still have the ball, but you have to kick it to the other team. The ball’s put at the middle of the field, and the runner runs up to it and kicks it downfield. Most of the time, you want to get the ball as far downfield as possible, and the other team catches it, and things are as normal. However, the rules don’t say it has to go to the other team; they merely say it has to go forward. You can sneakily do a little tiny kick, and have someone on your team try to pick it up, if you’re in a desperate situation.

            And that, I think, is pretty much all there is to it.

      2. There’s an LJ group for Disc Golf.

         There’s an LJ group for Disc Golf. I joined. No traffic there since my first post last night.

         –Howard

3. *heh*

   Baseball=rounders for men with added statistics to make it seem important 🙂

   *ducks and runs*

   Now football (US football) that I can get behind.

   As a Brit I apologise for inflicting cricket on the world, before anyone makes the same rounders comment 🙂

4. American Football in the Schlockiverse

   In the Schlockiverse American Football has become “Armorball.” Let’s face it… that’s what the game is already. You dress up in body armor, and 90% of the effort going into any give play on the field is the line of scrimmage which is a battering of the armored line in front of the quarterback.

   We tune out the scrimmage and watch the recievers and the QB, but that’s all window-dressing. Granted, that’s how you SCORE, but it’s window-dressing nonetheless.

   –Howard

   1. Re: American Football in the Schlockiverse

      If you get the chance to catch “Tripping the Rift” on TV, scifi parody-ish, thirteen episodes so far, you’ll see a very interesting take on basketball which involves chainsaws. And, I swear it has taken inspiration from the same sources as Schlock – or actually *from* Schlock. Except it’s a lot more superficial.

      If not, we could excercise our fair use rights some. 😉

5. Personally, I prefer rugby to American football. Those guys are freaking violent, and no pads. Heard about a player recently who went to the doctor because his calf had been hurting him. He had an infected wound–because another player’s tooth was broken off in it!
   When it was removed, he mailed it back to the other guy.
   On another note, I was trying to explain the idea of disc-golf to a friend. He didn’t quite get it. Maybe I need to direct him to the website.

Comments are closed.