Sunday, October 24, 2010


Welcome to the NFL, Sigourney

Step one, don't get bitten by one of these. Step two, there is no step two


Alex Kaseberg, Shark Expert


How do you like my new job title? Oh, I have decided I am, in addition to my other vast talents, I am also a great white shark expert. Why? Several reasons, A, I have been paddling within thirty feet of one, and B, I can provide ocean goers with just as much practical advice and tips on how to avoid a shark attack as can a shark expert. In other words, zero, none, nunca, nada, zilch.

Do you want to know what the experts know about sharks? D*ck. Experts used to say that great white sharks don’t attack in shallow waters. Guess where that kid, UCSB student, Lucas Ransom, was bitten off of Vandenberg? In relatively shallow waters one hundred yards from shore. He was boogie boarding, not surfing.

Shark experts also say your chances of getting bitten by a shark are about the same as being killed by a falling airplane part. Or that your couch is statistically a more likely place for you to die than the ocean. Statistically, I would like to see a shark expert go swimming in cold California waters with a bloody t-bone steak hanging from their neck and then they can talk to me about statistics.

Shark experts claim sharks mistake people for seals. What possible difference does that make if you’re the target that gets mistaken for a seal? There have only been eleven fatalities by great white sharks in California since the Fifties. Granted eleven in fifty years of California ocean swimming is not a lot. Do you know how many of those people would not have been killed if they had been on their couch instead of the ocean? You got it.

In fact, about the only way a shark expert can make a shark attack seem even worse than it is is to provide the eventual victim with the beforehand knowledge that his attack, as awful as anything can be, was also a case of mistaken identity and that they were mistaken for a stupid, useless seal.

Here is what I know about seals. They are nasty. They are loud. They bite. They stink and they poop constantly. There, now you’ve just had your leg torn off by the jagged teeth of a twenty foot monster, doesn’t it suddenly feel better to know that monster didn’t mean it personally?

What? It doesn’t? Gosh, my skills as a shark expert don’t seem to help much, do they? Well, as a shark expert, let me help you debunk some myths about sharks.

Sharks stay away from dolphins. Not true. Sharks love to follow dolphins because they are messy eaters and sharks are scavengers.

Great white sharks only like cold water. Not true. Countless great white sharks swim annually to Hawaii and the waters in southern Mexico.

Sharks won’t eat an entire human. Not true. They have and do its just usually humans are around other humans who pull the person to shore once they are bitten. A shark will gladly eat a human it just waits around for its victims to bleed out so they don’t get poked in the eye from a struggling victim.

Dolphins can kill sharks. Not true. If you saw dolphins in South Africa basically flying above the water to get away from great white sharks you’d know that isn’t true at all. Dolphins are not going to swim towards a shark. There are many, many accounts of dolphins protecting people – mostly surfers - from sharks. Sharks don’t want to attack a big, healthy dolphin, so they stay away from them. But a sickly dolphin or a baby dolphin? They get eaten by sharks all the time.

But give me one documented example of a dolphin killing a shark. There isn’t one.

Sharks only feed in the morning. Since when? Sharks feed morning noon and night. If you are lucky enough to come across a shark who has just eaten a big, fat, stupid seal, then the shark will probably only bite you rather than actually try and consume you, but either way you’re dead.

You can repel a shark by punching it in the nose. That is exactly what a South American surfer tried to do, now he dials a phone with a stump.

If you are in the ocean when a shark wants to bite you, your time is up very soon. Period. If you never ever want to be bitten by a shark, stay out of the ocean.

As an avid stand up paddle board surfer and paddler, I am not going to stay out of the ocean. But I am also not going to stop being afraid of sharks. Sharks are terrifying and deadly.

About the only useful piece of advice I’ve ever heard when it comes to sharks it that the few people who have survived an attack by a great white shark describe a very real and memorably eerie feeling right before the were attacked. If you, or if I, ever feel that, get out of the water.




NFL

There is a phenomenon in the NFL that doesn’t exist in any other sport and that is players who get paid not to play football. They manage to slip in between the cracks of being injured, playing briefly and being traded. Over and over again.

There was this guy on the San Diego Chargers, offensive tackle I think his name was Steve Phillips, but it doesn’t matter. He was a big guy, 6.5 around 260, liked to lift weights and take steroids. He made the team one year on the injured reserve list. Never practiced, when he finally suited up for a game he was all braces and pads, two huge knee braces and big elbow braces. He looked like that robot lift thing Sigourney Weaver used to battle the alien in “Aliens.”

When he finally went in during a game he sort of pushed players and ran in place. Never hit the ground and then he would come out for the rest of the game and go back on the injured reserve list. Got a bunch of tattoos magically makes the team the next year, goes on injured reserve. Lifts weights, takes steroids, wears his alien fighting braces goes in, kind of pushes a couple of people and then limps off the field.

Then he gets traded to another team for a huge pay raise and a bonus and begins not playing football all over again for another team. This cycle repeated itself, including his getting salary raises, for at least six years. The only time you heard about him was due to a couple bar fights and DUI's in the off season.

The guy is a highly paid football players who incidentally hasn't actually played football in years.

Just heard the announcer say Flacco had a flea flicker. On Thanksgiving, does Brett Favre starve before he carves the bird?

Not that I know very much, but I do know that if your Chicago Bears offense would be better off punting on first down, well, (doing my best John Madden) that, uh, that, that, that, uh, that right there is a problem.