"Regina, Regina: what rhymes with Regina?"

"Regina, Regina: what rhymes with Regina?" [Old Schoolyard ditty c. 1970s]

Be still my beating heart! Did somebody just offend Regina, Saskatchewan . . . again?

Gotta hand to Winnipeg's Bomber fans, they know how to get under the thin skins of the sod humping Saskatchewan Roughrider fan base. However, reports indicate that now they have gone too far! The latest episode in the saga has Winnipeg fans working Blue; using language so foul that Bomber president Lyle Bauer had to actually issue a "formal apology" on behalf of his team.

Given the history of the war of words between these two teams, what could possibly be so offensive as to necessitate a "formal" apology? Did someone call them "banjo-pickin' inbreds'' again? Dust-turds? Dimwits? Beer-swilling gopher fuckers? What is it that was said exactly?

Well, apparently Bomber rookie head coach Mike Kelly picked up on one fan's overly exuberant characterization of Regina as being the "crotch of the world" and went one step further. When speaking of his trading prowess, Kelly said: " We kind of raided the toothless, green, watermelon-helmet-wearing people from the crotch of Canada,..."

Oops.

That's not very nice.

And, because it was not very nice, the Bomber offices were peppered with emails from unsalted old ladies in Saskatchewan saying how shocked and appalled they were. Regina is not the kind of place one would ever see a 'crotch', said the toothless old babbling baba's from the Queen City.

"Don't ya know propriety and convention dictate that all oil lamps must be blown out before any dress is raised above the ankle in this town?" they wrote, "And while it is true one may occasionally get to feel a crotch in Regina - one most certainly never gets to lay their eyes on it! So take it back", their bony fingers typed, "we all know where the real 'crotch of Canada' is located. Stop lying. Apologize now. Tell the world you were wrong. Tell the world that here, in Regina, we are absolutely crotchless!"

Ah, CFL preseason silliness at its best.

Ya gotta give it to the Bombers and the Riders, they have perfected the verbal art of outhouse sparring. Equally cordial, equally graceless and equally absurd - the whole beauty of the exercise is that while everybody ends up throwing dung, nobody gets hurt. So, if life's "swine flu" is getting you down, have a listen to the machinations of CFL team's and their fans and you will be heartened to find that levity still surfaces in this economic shit storm we are calling 2009.

"Play Ball!"

[ ** To tell the truth, I can't wait for the first game between these two teams this season. Wonder how many hammerheads will show up wearing crotchless panties on their heads?]