is it just me?

First I would like to acknowledge that Friday was the six month anniversary of this blog. This means I have gained approximately one reader per month. Outstanding.

I was just reading an article about beer pong in the New York Times. Why the Times was talking about beer pong was a little unclear. Anyway, Budweiser has started marketing a game called Bud Pong which they give to bars in college campuses. (Apparently now there are many different kinds of beer pong tables, I always thought you could use any table and some cups.) Anyway, they are getting all the usual criticism about how this promotes binge drinking. My response, if I were the Bud spokesperson, would be that they are going to binge drink anyway, so at least we can encourage the simultaneous development of some eye-hand coordination. But the Bud Lady said "Well, the rules say that you're supposed to play with water." Yeah, we know it's called Bud Pong, and it's played just like beer pong, but really! All the kids play with water. We swear. I mean, honestly. Where do they find people who can say things like "As far as we know, Bud Pong is always played with water" and keep a straight face? I really think that publicists or press secretaries or spokesmen or whatever you want to call them are really a special breed. I mean, they always have to say things that other people tell them, and they have to stay on message at all times or risk being fired. And the fact that they can say some of this stuff with a straight face is really kind of creepy. Maybe they're all robots.

match made in heaven

I laughed harder on Friday night then I have laughed in a long long time. I just tried to tell the story of why twice on here, and it doesn't work. I think you have to know at least one of the people involved. But just so I don't feel like I failed entirely, the gist of it goes like this: a young crazy japanese graduate student declared his love for the middle aged department secretary, his friend confirmed that he thought she was glamorous, which we figured out translates from japanese as 'curvy' with one of them asserting she had "big booboos" and the other one referring to them as "sizeable tits" (not bad for a non-native speaker). Anyway, this led the crazy student to report that he has not had any action in a long time, and the last time he did he was in japan and he had to pay for it. wow. I laughed so much I cried.

on Wisconsin

People here love the badgers. They really, really love them. A lot. 70,000 people go to home football games, and they all wear red. The ladies have badger earrings. The kids wear cheerleading costumes and mini football jerseys. It's quite remarkable. I watched the Wisconsin-Minnesota game in a bar on Saturday. After the game, the bar has the music that they play at the actual game all cued up. People danced. Then they played a song everyone sings along with. I mean, why wouldn't you sit there, linked arm in arm, singing with people you hardly know in a bar at 2 in the afternoon. This is Wisconsin. Today I saw the Bucky Truck. This is an old fire truck that they ride around campus for special occasions (I think the special occasion is that Homecoming is this weekend, but for those keeping score at home it is, for the record, still Monday). Anyway, the cheerleaders and mascot (Bucky) ride around on the back of the truck and wave. It has a horn that plays the school song. When I saw it it drove by an actual fire truck. The real fire truck honked its horn and played its siren. Cars got confused. Pedestrians cheered for the Bucky Truck. Much fun was had by all. Go Bucky.