Parsimonious Possum

Game Report

October 26, 2006

Fully aware that it had perfected the Possum Strategy in its two previous ice tilts, the Killer Strawberries, master re-inventors and baiters, last night embarked upon its newly minted “Parsimonious Possum Strategy”, whose major aim was to totally shut down the opposition. The club succeeded in spades by triumphing 9-0 over a team with the mysterious moniker Paydro. While no one was quite certain of either the origin or meaning of the moniker, every Strawb was in partial agreement that it was probably an obscure reference to something vague and possibly uncertain about which none of them knew, or cared to know, a damned thing. “Ignorance is bliss” mused Magnesium Boy, bliss’s poster child and chief spokesperson, at least on this planet. When asked what his unexpected ejaculation was supposed to mean, Magnesium Boy said he didn’t really know but it sure made him feel better just to say it and did anyone have a cigarette he could bum.

Philosophy was not Mag Boy’s only contribution on the evening. He also scored 3 memorable goals that no one could recall, bringing his net total for the year to -2. His on-ice exploits earned him the game’s third star, just behind Jesse “The Leak”, who played like he was under the threat of another demotion. The game’s first star was The Vice Ice, Rob “The Torch” Greenfield who, at game time, was known to be skulking about various hot tubs in the Kemptville region. No one could understand the curious choice until it was pointed out that the game would have been much much closer had the hapless ancient mariner actually laced them up for the match.

While the Strawbs play at the rink was exemplary, Freight Train 444 Laronde committed a very rare error at the Terminal Tavren (yes, tavren). Acting on bad information, shaky assumptions and too little sleep, 444, for the first time in Killer Strawberries history, ordered way too much draft, even by his bacchanalian standards. Despite the incredible consumption efforts of the post-game revelers and promiscuous promises to take taxis home, one jug was almost given away by a delirious Dr. Thug before sanity prevailed and the superfluous libation unintentionally (?) spilled onto the carpet. “I thought Gumby was coming” cried the penitent defenceman. Alas, Gumby did not make the post-game trek, preferring instead to get a good night’s rest in the company of freshly delivered reading material cloaked in plain brown paper. Turns out 444 was both right and wrong.

6 jugs, 7 chicken wings, 1 plate of spicy nachos (and a little off-site pornography) were consumed

Pickled Possum-Oct.23,2006

Game Report

Beer Barons 7, Strawbs -4


If there is anything to the idea of too much perfection, then it must be admitted that the Strawberries were perfectly guilty of epitomizing the concept in last night’s game against the swift skating Beer Barons. The hapless Strawbs, in their quest to assure the avoidance of a berth in the higher of the Canadore intramural hockey leagues, certainly went well beyond what was required to attain their goal. They were whitewashed, slammed, creamed, crushed, beaten and roadkilled into submission in a game that, in retrospect, ought not have been played. The score should have been mailed in and summarily forgotten.

While team management has always been loathe to look for expedient excuses, it did, in this instance of hyper-perfection, succumb to the irresistible temptation to do so, at a post game press conference held at the Aloha Baby Compound in Oahu. No punches were pulled, no rock unturned, no carpet unlifted, no dust bunnies unfound. According to management, who viewed the game via satellite feed in the ElectroGlide Room, the forgettable performance can directly attributable to the following:

1. Achilles Perron’s current wife had unnecessarily yelled at him before the game for forgetting to place the cutlery in an upright position in the dishwasher. Achilles was so upset, he refused to take his usual pre-game medication, a fifth of Cutty Sark.

2. Dr. Thug, fresh from a session with the team’s sport psychiatrist, Trish D’lish, refused to mug either of the two girls on the Beer Barons squad, thus reducing his on ice aggressiveness to that of a disgruntled palace eunuch.

3. Rob “The Torch” Greenfield had, earlier in the afternoon, pulled a muscle in his back while twisting around to pull out a sarsasparilla from the cooler located just behind the driver’s seat of his yacht, The Tail Of Whoa.

4. Pyjama Man had to show up to the game dressed in a pair of his wife’s discarded pantyhose, his wife having had the unmitigated audacity to wash his usual pre-game garb and to then attempt to line-dry said garb in a raging snowstorm, a mere one hour before the game. Wethinks all is not well in Pyjamaland.

5. Magnesium Boy, feeling slightly ill before the match, botched his self-administered appendectomy because he had forgotten to test the potency of his homemade anaesthetic prior to the operation. Needless to say, his on ice performance was adversely affected by his lack of foresight. Not that much is ever expected of him in any event.

6. Jesse "The Leak" developed a temporary latex/rubber allergy, causing him to slam his eyes shut every time a piece of latex/rubber came within the purview of his sensory detection system. Because this occurred so often at last night's game, his eyes were welded shut by the end of the first period. Oddly, enough, his second period was the best we've seen him play all year. Butcher Brophey gallantly offered to slice open his eyelids with his stick, but "The leak" wisely declined the generous offer.

7. Butcher Brophey

On the plus side, Gumby did not play and new addition, Golden Fleece Saint-Pierre, proved to be one of the two bright lights in an otherwise dim arena. Everyone in attendance marvelled at how effortlessly he slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter’s silvered wings. Sunward he climbed to join the tumbling mirth, of sunsplit clouds. High flight indeed.

And lastly...the Ice Marshall played so well, one reporter was overheard to say he thought the flawless wingman had, on this night of the Pickled Possum, “put out his hand and touched the face of God”.

0 jugs and some crow were consumed.

Strawberry Possum

Strawberry Possum

Game Report October 19, 2006

It was not lost on The Strawb’s management that the team’s overwhelming victory of Monday last could result in an unrequested slotting into the Canadore NHL, the higher and more vulgar of the College’s intramural leagues. While the Strawbs love a good hockey game, they equally loathe having to toil so hard on the frozen pond that there remains insufficient energy for the proper performance of strenuous post game activities. Consequently, without great fanfare, the team huddled down into its newest game strategy, the Strawberry Possum.

As the Strawbs ripen to a beautiful lusciousness on the inevitable road to imagined glory and comfortable senescence, their opponents remain mired in a post-pubescent storm of overactive hormones. They tend to skate too swiftly, shoot too hard and whine too much about getting beaten by a bunch of “dastardly old men without scruples”, to quote an unnamed source. In a word, Strawbs’ opponents are too competitive, and thus miss out on much of the beauty of a game characterized by the subtle pass, the whisper of a well tuned blade carving the surface of a newly laid veneer of frozen water and the quiet, heroic moan of a stalwart defenceman as he shakes off a courageously engineered but ill-advised shot to the nuts.

Oh no, Constant Reader, the Strawbs are not a team to be suckered into hyper competitiveness. What is sought is more akin to a religious experience on ice, where the mysteries of karmic existence are perfectly in tune with the game itself. The Strawbs’ philosophy has always been “play as hard as you can without really hurting yourself cause we got some socializin’ to do after the game.” With this philosophy in mind, the Strawberries deliberately cobbled together a very good game against Hank’s Ice Men on Thursday night, purposely losing by a score by 7-4. The manufactured loss will allow the team to claim its rightful place in the Canadore OHL, where it will be free to pursue its goals of near-hockey excellence, competitiveness appropriate to the circumstances, and karmic harmony with universe.

One Strawberry did manage to take the new Possum strategy to an unrequired level. Let’s chalk it up to his quixotic quest for perfection or better still, gross stupidity. Yes, you have correctly guessed who it was. The orange-socked defencemen, still reeling from the vapors, thought it would be a good idea, at game’s end, to soften up one of the referees by pointing out that the game would be better served in future if said referee would “engage in intercourse elsewhere”, or words to that effect. The rash suggestion has resulted in the fact that the Strawbs will have to play the next two games without the services of one its top 10 rearguards. The first round next week will be on him.

Oh ya.. The Vice Ice turned 52, but played a lot older on Strawberry Possum Night. He knows the meaning of subtle strategy execution.

3 Jugs, 5 Guinness, 1 Bud, and an uncounted yet deadly number of Tequila shots were consumed. The Vice Ice may have thrown up in the cab on the ride home.

Rust, What Rust?

October 16, 2006-Game Report

Strawbs 9, Aviators 2


In an impressive display of teamwork, legerdemain and artistry, the Strawbs opened the 2006-2007 season with a subtle reminder to all the teams in the league that they continue to be an unignorable global hockey force. The Strawbs lineup from last night must have struck fear in the hearts of the less than nattily attired squad from the Aviation campus. Opponents’ heads were swivelling like Linda Blair in a movie gone bad, as the B line of Pyjama Man, Mag Boy and the septuagenerian Dr. Thug gave the Aviators fits, scoring 6 times, seemingly at will. The A line, centered by the Vice Ice, Rob “The Torch” Greenfield, galloping like a frisky colt between his fleet wingers, Achilles Perron and the indescribable Ice Marshall, played a solid 2 way game, scoring two highlight reel goals and went a combined +121 on the night. The Ice Marshall thought the line was closer to +99, but he is not one to argue with anyone, especially the offficial scorer. When it was pointed out that there was no official scorer, the intrepid team leader simply shrugged, as Atlas did in Ayn Rand’s famous book.

The Strawb’s defence tested out rookie Whoa!horny Richardson by putting him into some very tight situations and the newcomer did not disappoint, scoring on a beautiful Greenfieldesque butterfly lifter from the blue line. 444 Laronde teamed with Gumby and HE (444) could not be faulted for any of the goals against, as he often found himself defending alone, with Gumby fraternizing with the hapless goaler at the other end. Apparently, the latter two share a love of C++ coding and arcane Mott The Hoople minutia.

Butcher Brophey, in what amounted to a rare stroke of genius, had taped the blade of his stick red for the game and thus eluded at least 4 penalties for unauthorized spleenectomy. Jesse “The Leak” was workmanlike and effective between the pipes, but he did complain at game’s end that he had a hard time seeing the puck throught the haze of rust particles emanating from the Butcher’s blades.

Following the game, at the new terminal tavren (yes, tavren), Gumby was effusive in his praise of the team’s efforts and suggested that Jawn Jon Jean, recently relocated to Owen Sound, should be renamed Gawn Gone Gon. A committee was struck to study the proposal at a later date, when someone actually cares to act on a Gumby-initiated opinion.

8 jugs and 7 sad chicken wings were consumed

Ice Marshall Walpole

Pre-Season Report 2006-2007
Killer Strawberries Hockey Club

At the summer meetings of the Killer Strawberries’ Executive at the Aloha Baby Compound in Oaha, the club’s shadowy and morbidly secretive brain trust sought to resolve some major pressing issues which could only be described as massive untreated hangovers from what had been expected to be a promising 2005-2006 season.

To say that the season ended in disappointment is an understatement of the same ilk as “Gumby might benefit from a little therapy” or “Butcher Brophey is a lumbering, slumbering, bumbling sociopath who kicks puppies for fun”. The brain trust spent an exhausting 167.6 hours compiling a list of the ills which plagued last year’s underachievers and requested that the Ice Marshall and the Vice Ice Marshall take immediate steps to remedy those ills. While taking frequent breaks from escorting the Olsen twins, Pamela Anderson, Angelina and Paris Hilton to various red carpet/shag carpet events in Oahu, this intrepid duo once again created a sustainable, transparent, accountability-laden, outside the box blueprint for change.

Below, is an unofficial excerpt from the report filed with the brain trust. The full, official report will be released as soon as President Stephen Harper declassifies the document and removes his head from W’s ass.

Hangover #1

Lack of scoring from the B line (B as in Bungling and Bloated)

Remedies

Send Pyjama Man to the Ray Charles Net Recognition Remediation School for the month of October.
Wean Dr. Thug off his daily dose of Viagra, which, instead of increasing his touch around the “net”, tends to keep his shaft a little too stiff in scoring situations.


Advise Jean Jon Jawn that his services would better be suited to a team where any shooting inaccuracy is seen as an excusable flaw. We hear the Leafs are looking to replace Tie Domi.

Hangover #2

A defence so clueless, they believe that the word “gullible” has been removed from the dictionary.

Remedies

Return Smokie Hill, the human cigarette, to the Nasty Cupcakes, the Strawb’s farm team’s farm team, recently relocated to Buttface, Alaska, in an effort to stay one step ahead of the law.

Duck tape Butcher Brophey’s arms to his sides so that opponents do not become surprised organ donors any time they find themselves in a foreign corner of the rink. The move is expected to cut down the team’s total penalty time by 94%.


Advise Gumby that game night has been changed to every other Sunday, in Bonfield.

Move Freight Train 444 Laronde to a new position which leverages his major strengths…frying pickerel and buying draft. He has been promoted to the position of entertainment coordinator.

Hangover #3

Magnesium Boy

Remedy

Since no centre or winger or defence partner can be found to offset Magnesium Boy, he will be left to play with himself.

Hangovers #4, #5, #6

Remedy

Put Magnesium Boy and Jesse the Leak between the pipes, simultaneously. This move has numerous advantages. Blame can be sloughed off to the other guy. The net will be stuffed with the equivalent of 95% of the BMI of a Butcher Brophey, at his peak summer form, leaving very little for the opposition in terms of scoring openings. Moreover, Magnesium Boy will get to repeat, ad nauseum, his “Carl Sagan Invented The Universe” story to someone who can’t easily run away.

Hangover #7

The Strawbs have developed a reputation as a drinking team with a hockey problem.

Remedy

More post game Guinesses to brainstorm solutions to this nagging problem.

Hangover #8

Early retirements in 2006

Remedy

With the forced early retirements/reassignments of Smokie Hill, Rusty Vik Erickson, Jean Jon Jawn and The Love Glove, the Strawbs have been presented with an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen the team with new additions. Unfortunately, it appears that the unfathomable remedy imposed by the brain trust (not to be confused with the Ice Marshall or the Vice Ice) may backfire. On the dubious advice of some of the permanent and shady guests at the Aloha Baby Compound, the team , in October, signed unknown quantities Whoa!horny Richardson and Jason “The Golden Fleece” St. Pierre as well as the recently rehabbed and revived Achilles Perron, whose glory days, if he ever had any, are probably behind him (along with the extra 40 pounds he is carrying). Ah, but the boy can drink his share!

The Bright Spots

Rob “The Torch Greenfield, Vice Ice Marshall and bon vivant extraordinaire, who recently set a Guinness Book record by spending the entire May to August period on full Code Orange Liver Alert, without spillin a drop or burning any holes in guitar.

Ice Marshall Walpole, the Strawb’s spiritual guide and conscience of moderation, who found God on the off season, disguised as a permanent guest of Aloha Baby Compound.