So the reason I haven’t posted anything post-ECC is because I have this giant list of things to say and I was making the mistake of trying to finish writing each one before putting the post up on the site, which is difficult as I remain pressed for both time and functional brain cells. So I’m just going to start posting unrelated things in a disorganized fashion, because that is just how your Militia Cheerleader rolls.

Item: Backseat Coach and I want to go to Austin for the Superbowl so badly I cannot even tell you. Whether we can or not depends on a situation completely out of our control, but I will keep you posted since I know you’re all on the edge of your seats wondering who the hell else but BSC would be able to send out Twitter play-by-play messages so snarky that the IWFL had to edit his Twitter posts [ref]Yeah, I know they’re called “tweets”. I’m sorry, I just cannot deal with that.[/ref] before adding them to their own feed. (Oh I am SO not making that up. Details forthcoming.)

Item: Oh my God, Toin Coss Announcer Guy[ref]See end of second full paragraph here for reference.[/ref] You know those scenes in movies or TV where someone’s talking but they’re so tired that they keep falling asleep and then someone nudges them and they wake up and say a few more words before falling asleep again? My new theory is that that’s what’s going on with the announcer for the Militia games. I’m serious. There was a whole lot of this:

Announcer: And here are your Boston Milisher[ref][Seriously, he says “Milisher”. Don’t get me wrong – I was born and raised in Boston and am certainly known to leave my R’s off the end of some words, but I don’t think I do the thing where I then add them to the ends of words that didn’t have them in the first place. Incidentally, he also says “the D.C. Deevers”, but I’m leaving that one alone.[/ref] captains: Kelly Barker, Mia Brickhouse, Allison Cahill, and….
[pause]
Me and Barker’s parents: MOLLY GOODWIN.
Announcer: …and Molly Goodwin.

Item: Also someone should probably tell them they might want to switch to the radio edits of a few songs. Just sayin’.

And on that note, Item: Overheard at the ECC:

[M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” plays over the loudspeaker.]
Backseat Coach: Why are they playing this song?
Me: What? I like this song.
BSC: It’s all…gunshots.
Me: It’s not all gunshots. It’s gunshots and a cash register and a Clash riff.
BSC: OK, I guess that is a cash register.
Me: Of course it is. She needs it for after she takes your mon-ay.[ref]That line is a lot better if you imagine she’s saying “Monet,” by the way. Makes me think of Pierce Brosnan in Thomas Crown Affair. Yay![/ref] BSC: Well, I still disapprove.

Item: I can’t understand why I didn’t notice this as a problem before, but I became quite concerned early in the game that yelling “Defense!” in an encouraging fashion sounds a lot like yelling “Divas!” in an encouraging fashion. Or maybe just to me because I can’t hear worth a damn, which is why I had to ask whether we were “going to the ‘ship” or “going to the show” since in fact, what it sounded like to me was that we were “going to the shit” which, I suppose, could be considered accurate also.

So! Part 2 of this post will hopefully follow in a few hours, with extra bonus photos of Backseat Coach’s Crocodile Dundee hat if you’re lucky. And I think you are, my friends, I think you are.

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Seeing as how I am crazy excited for tomorrow’s game but am still trying to pull myself together from the past few sucky weeks and thus have exactly no actually helpful things of my own to say about it, I’ve decided to continue my tradition of posting completely ridiculous versions of other people’s legitimate pep talks.

Brief background of this one: I discovered a number of things while exploring the different websites of all the teams involved in the IFAF Women’s World Championship: one is that there are a lot more teams than I would have thought there were (with some seriously kick-ass names), and another is that Germans take this shit really effing seriously.

I’m not kidding, man. This site kinda gives the IWFL site a run for its money (well, from what I can tell, what with not speaking German and all), and here’s a blog that I think is mostly about the recent world championship. There’s a post from that blog that I’d like to share with you all now, because the fact of the matter is this: no matter what language you speak, no matter what team you play for, no matter what particular connection you have to the game of women’s football, at the end of the day there’s still nothing funnier than pain medication combined with online translation engines.

I’m pretty sure this post is about the German players’ observations of the motivational posters put up by the Canadians in their shared lodging, most of which seem to involve metaphors about geese. As with the earlier post, I highly recommend that you read it out loud (or get someone else to):

Although on the plant four teams live here, one gets oneself only rarely to face. Either one is on the way or the others. With all one can converse, at most contact has one however to Canada, because they divide with us most houses. So we must come from the Staff each time by a Canadian corridor around to our rooms.

The Canadians we hung many Motivationsspüche up. So for example the picture from Friday Night Lights with the saying “CAN you fuel element perfect?” or Al Pacino with “inches”.

In addition also hand written articles for motivation over two Canadian game geese, which that saw to coach here. Geese ensure for each other, work in the team. Who cannot do no more, can be dropped back and the Führungsarbeit** takes over the next whole. If it needs a break, a goose remains with it. When eating one watches out, while the other one eats. The usual motivation saying. The geese do not make however, because they are geese, but Canadians!!!

But we found most beautiful still: My more better is more better than your more better. Good, more better, stock it is not sufficient to want to be only better. We will give today our BEST in order to win.

Fuck yeah, we will.

** As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I know absolutely nothing about the German language so I have no idea what “Führungsarbeit” means, but is that not, like, the scariest thing you’ve ever heard? A bunch of geese are flying together and one drops back and gets TAKEN WHOLE BY THE FüHRUNGSARBEIT? Holy shit! Attention, all Militia running backs: tomorrow, run as if the Führungsarbeit were on your heels. You have the admiration and support of the Backseat Coach, me, and possibly Al Pacino.

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So I had a whole post all ready to go about the IFAF Women’s World Championship but I realized that if anyone actually followed the links I put in there, it might ruin the game that’s been amusing me to no end over the past two weeks or so. So let’s get to that now and I’ll post the other stuff later. Deal? Deal.

OK, so: what follows is a list of absolutely real women’s football team names from different parts of Europe, plus a few that the Backseat Coach and I completely made up. Guess which ones are which! (NB: Team USA members who may actually know this would normally be disqualified, but if they’re all still jetlagged and spacey I’m willing to let it ride.)

1. Antwerp Harpies
2. Berlin Kobras
3. Budapest Wolves Ladies
4. Cologne Crocodiles
5. Duesseldorf Blades
6. Helsinki Gargoyles Ladies
7. Krakow Mean Cats
8. Lower Austria Titans Ladies
9. Minsk Express
10. Mülheim Shamrocks
11. Neuss Frogs
12. Nuremberg Hurricanes
13. Stockholm Mean Machines
14. Stuttgart Scorpions Sisters

I’ll post the correct answers tomorrow; in the meantime, feel free to debate in the comments section…extra points for actually posting your guesses. Answers below!

(more…)

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Please note: the last link in this post goes to a site that might not be great to look at in a conservative work environment or around kids or your grandma (unless your grandma is a fan of MAXIM magazine-style imagery, in which case: rock on, grandma.)

Hey, all…seriously long time, no post and for that I apologize. Life pulled a Vicky Eddy and your Militia Cheerleader has had a crappy past few weeks, including the discovery that “drowsiness may occur” can also mean “this shit will mess with your brain so badly that you’ll literally be unable to write and will spend large portions of the day staring at things and vaguely remembering what it felt like to be coherent but too bad, you have to stay on it anyway.” I am seriously pissed that this had to occur during this particular time in the IWFL season, since now I have to try to catch up on everything I wanted to post about the Women’s World Championship (ok, not that I didn’t expect us to dominate, but an aggregate score of 201 to 0? Holy crap, USA) and the upcoming epic game against DC this Saturday. (Wait, can you call something epic before it happens? I mean, like, other than another Lord of the Rings movie or something? I totally can’t remember. Goddammit.)

So I am going to try to get to all that over the next few days – as well as sneak in another Meet Your Militia or two if possible – but first, I have to talk about some way less-fun stuff.

I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I could skip right over every hateful bullshit comment made by every asshole that I come across when reading about women playing football – ’cause damn, man, there’s a lot. I save links to almost all the articles I find, positive or negative, and I organize them into categories in the hopes that someday I will have both the time and the ability to actually post and discuss them; there’s a whole horrific section comprised exclusively of articles and comments (lots and lots of comments) so nauseatingly hate-filled and degrading that I remain torn about whether or not to even post links to them.

It sucks either way, you know? I mean, who wants to say to their friend, “Oh, hey – did you see over here where some guy saw a video clip of one of your games and then wrote some shit about you that was so violent and graphic that it literally triggered a PTSD episode for me? Oh, and over here, too. And here. Oh, and here…”

On the other hand, if I don’t link to those…if I decide to ignore them, and write them off as just some jackasses who don’t know enough about football to understand that a 45-yard field goal is friggin’ badass regardless of the kicker’s chromosomes, and I don’t talk about what it means that these things are being written and posted and shared and promoted…what then? Well, for one thing, the Backseat Coach checks to make sure no one performed a surreptitious lobotomy on me while we were sleeping since he is aware that I am apparently physically incapable of NOT starting shit when there’s shit to be started, but more importantly, I lose the potential opportunity to explain all of this to people other than a) those who already agree with me and b) fucked-up jerkoffs who will never agree with me. By this “other” group, of course, I mean the vast majority of America’s sports-watching population.

Here’s where I start pulling generalizations out of my ass, so feel free to tell me if you think I’m off-base on any of this. But I believe that the aforementioned vast majority of America’s sports-watching population would agree with the following statements: one, that women should be allowed to play whatever sports they want but two, no one has any interest in watching them when they do so it doesn’t really matter. And then there’s a third statement, sometimes unspoken and sometimes put right out there, that since women nowadays CAN play sports if they want to, they no longer have any business complaining about gender inequality in the arena of athletics.

The WNBA is the obvious hallmark example of this. I came across an interesting exchange between a guy who’s a vocal supporter of the WNBA and a guy who staunchly believes that the only reason the WNBA has vocal supporters of any gender is because women really dig playing the victim card. Link to full text is here; the basic gist is that Ben the WNBA Supporter Guy says supportive stuff about the WNBA and then Chris the Not-So-Supporter Guy complains that it’s all much ado about whining, and Ben the Supporter Guy says that WNBA fans – and I would extend this to include fans of any women’s professional or semi-professional sports – are in a lose-lose situtation: “If we defend it, we come off as ‘juvenile’ (as you put it). If we ignore it and don’t address the issues, they keep occurring. So…I choose to at least talk about the issues rather than sit idle.”

Chris the Other Guy then responds with this: “I really don’t understand why you think there are ‘issues’ to address. If you ignore ‘what’, then ‘what’ keeps occurring?”

What keeps occurring?

This, motherfucker. People write shit like that and fuckin’ Sam Adams and Jerry Remy’s sports bar fall all over themselves to advertise right next to it. Perhaps it’s my victim card talking, but I’d say that qualifies as “an issue.” And that is why I write.

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In my last game recap, I forgot to mention that the Militia Truck was nowhere to be found at the stadium, and I found that terribly distressing. I heard later that it was possibly getting even more Militia bling put on it, but irregardless, it had better be at the game today. Dammit, Militia Truck, you have ONE job to do!

***

The answer to “What to make with the shiny Militia fabric?” turned out to be “Nothing, because I had to work later than I thought.” Sad, I know, but it’s still sitting around waiting to be made into something ridiculously awesome (or at least ridiculous).

***

For your nonsequitur enjoyment, here are some phrases found in the IWFL Facebook thread regarding the games today printed completely out of context:

• We’re taking the ECC and the SHIP!
• BLEED PURPLE OR GO HOME!!!!!!1
• Hold the Rope.
• don’t get your knoickers in a bunch…
• BLURPLE!!!
• dont get ur KNOCKERS in a bunch.
• THERE’S GOING TO BE A FISH FRY IN BOSTON TONIGHT!!!!

***

Verbatim chat message I wrote yesterday to someone who is also on the IWFL mailing list and thus got the All-Star roster delivered to their inbox:

6:03 PM raise your hand if you are totally dorking out on IWFL all-star data (namely, the formation of same into arbitrary and statistically meaningless charts indicating outcomes which are at best misleading)

6:07 PM just me, then.

***

Black fingernails, red tips. Playoffs, baby!!!

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So hey! I’ve got a whole mess of shiny red and black skull-and-crossbones fabric, a fairly high aptitude for crafts, no sewing machine and no plans for tonight. Got any ideas about what should be made?

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