On Frozen Pond

So I'm back in Florida Tech after an almost month-long and very well-enjoyed break. (If you don't know where Florida Tech is, Google it; if you have to do that, you probably don't know me, in which case I'm honored you specifically chose my blog to help erase your sanity.) I've gotten a lot of flack for attending school here, on both sides of the border. Back in Canuckistan, the running joke was that I was abandoning the north for warmer winter climes; down here, it's mostly quips about my saying "eh" a lot. (Northerners, even if you don't think you say it often -- as I did -- chances are VERY high you do. I say I'm a proud member of the Eh-Team, and damned be the rest.) But, interestingly, my two worlds have very recently collided.

It snowed, however briefly, over much of Central Florida yesterday.

No, I don't mean someone accidentally dropped a cooler of frozen strawberry daquiri from the party plane; I'm talking genuine, White Christmas-making snow. And while the prospect of watching Floridians panic in anything below a 50F high warms my heart, it sorta negates all those cold jokes. Oh, sure, the highs are still about 30 degrees warmer than home, and it's gonna be 75 and sunny again by the weekend, but trust me when I say it's a different kind of cold down here. A single jacket usually won't amount to crap compared to a bunch of layers of thin clothing. Anyway, Central Florida gets flurries once every few years, but nothing's stuck on the ground since about 1976; usually the only place you see white powder in Florida is on a Miami hooker's back. (HI-yo!) Even my beloved Epcot saw some snow 'till about noon.

I can't tell you how many people I've heard this week making some "So much for global warming!" joke. Let me state very clearly: 1) Global warming affects long-term global climate patterns, and 2) It should be measured on a geologic, NOT seasonal scale. While it's very rare for Florida to have such a prolonged period of often below-freezing temperatures, there are just some things you can't fault Al Gore on. (I plan to do a special climate change rant edition of "LOOD" -- the newly-discovered and very descriptive acronym for the blog -- at some point before we all go underwater.)

Besides, we shouldn't necessarily worry; if we really want the ice caps to refreeze, we could always send Hillary Clinton to give 'em an unflinching glare; it worked for Bill.

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And speaking of unrelated topics...

I saw a brief newsflash on the Internets that caught my eye, and after reading further into it, I'm glad it did. Seems that Russia's Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) had a game yesterday that looked more like KGB.

You can skip to the 1:20 mark for the main event, but this chart is probably self-evident:

Summary Of Events

1	0:00	Fight	Svitov-Verot
2	0:00	Fight	Pervushin-Sugden
3	3:27	Line Brawl	10 players
4	3:27	Fight	Svitov-Sugden
5	3:27	Fight	Jagr-Verot
6	3:27	Fight	Belov-Sapozhkov
7	3:27	Fight	Yezhov-Litvinenko
8	3:34	Line Brawl	8 players
9	3:34	Fight	Orlov-Zuborev
10	3:34	Fight	Khramkov-Klimenko
11	3:34	Fight	Bondarev-Megalinsky
12	3:34	Fight	Pervushin-Koznev
13	3:37	Bench-Clearing Brawl	28 players
14	3:37	Fight	Perrin-Berdnikov
15	3:37	Fight	Averin-Komaristy
16	3:37	Fight	Ryabykin-Belousov
17	3:37	Fight	Vlasenkov-Kolesnikov
18	3:37	Fight	Klepis-Batyrshin
19	3:37	Fight	Kukkonen-Sergeyev
20	3:37	Fight	Ryabykin-Bakhriddinov
21	3:37	Fight	Kuryanov-Belokon
22	3:37	Fight	Bondarev-Litvinenko
23	3:37	Fight	Yezhov-Zuborev
24	3:39	Mini-Brawl	4 players
25	3:39	Fight	Klepis-Bobrov
26	3:39	Fight	Volkov-Bakhriddinov

Yeah, you read #13 right: 28 players involved. The most amazing part is looking at the times of these brawls: one happening even before the game starts, followed by about 207 seconds of "peace", with 7 seconds of play between fights, then 3, then a whopping 2. Keep in mind those times above are in minutes of play, and the fight stats end abruptly for a reason: literally everyone except the goalies were penalized, and the frickin' game was called FOUR MINUTES in due to forfeit by both teams, with an unprecedented (and non-typo'd) 691 penalty minutes incurred between the two rivals.

Needless to say, I'm pretty sure this new record of 3.16 penalty minutes per second of play will be a VERY long-standing record.

Dan