Athletic Dysfunctions

Today's New York Times:

Dementia Risk Seen in Players in N.F.L. Study

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the no rmal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

No prizes for noting the link between that news item and the picture, above right, and deducing where Malcolm is going here.

The minor thesis

This is a matter of continued dissension in the extended Redfellow clan.

Number one daughter, now residing in the Garden State (though well away from the poison belt) has taken to referring to "Soccer". Number three daughter (Saracens supporter) recognises just two variations of the ball game: football (round stuff) and rugby (prolate spheroids). As for Malcolm, he just drools and mutters along the lines of:

Football: a game for gentlemen, played by gurriers;
Rugger: a game for gurriers, played by gentlemen;
Gaelic: a game for gurriers played by gurriers.

A Malcolmian aside

In passing, it is curious that "gurrier", a word well-known in Dublin, is totally absent from the Oxford English Dictionary. One suggestion, from elsewhere, is that it is derived from the French "warrior" (guerrier).

Malcolm would venture a connection to the good English word "gurry", which could be cognate with "slurry". For example, just as Montezuma's Revenge (which term is in the OED, with a citation from the Church Times of 21 June 1996, locating its prevalence in ... the Kalahari) is a well-known ailment in central America, so Cromwell's troops in Ireland justly suffered from "the gurry".

Back on the pitch

Among the cis-Atlantic side of the Redfellow tribe, nobody has a clue about the rules of "American football", but suspects it is to proper football as Americano is to real Italian coffee.

The major thesis

Once again we have conclusive proof of the wit and wisdom of the late Lyndon Baines Johnson (obviously that does not extend to his involvement in South-East Asian affairs).

He, it was, who diagnosed the mental capacity of the (uniquely unelected) 38th President, and his successor but one:

Gerald Ford played too much football without his helmet on.

Apparently untrue (though the picture, right, seems to confirm the observation), but acute and mordant. As was LBJ's other remark, often bowdlerised:

Gerald couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time.

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