After all, there’s nothing quite like having an Advent calendar that portrays a serial killer.
Archive for the ‘In the news’ Category
This would certainly put me in the holiday mood
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007For Veteran’s Day
Sunday, November 11th, 2007While I’ve been in the military, I’m not a milblogger. Others are, though, and this Veteran’s Day, I’ll just point to BlackFive’s “Someone You Should Know” archives. These are stories you’re not likely to have heard.
You sure that wasn’t a basketball game?
Sunday, November 11th, 2007Navy played a football game in Denton against North Texas yesterday. The home team scored 62 points.
Navy won. Did both teams leave their defenses in the locker room?
Image from NavySports.Com
My sixteenth birthday was not this memorable
Friday, November 9th, 2007Gaius points to a story from England about what can happen when a mother wants to make her son’s birthday memorable.
She hired someone in a gorilla suit to show up and embarrass her son during class by chasing him around the room. She even provided a camera to the teacher and requested film of the event.
Unfortunately for her (and this shows the dangers in delegation), she did not deal directly with a buffoon in a gorilla suit, and the individual who actually showed up in the classroom dressed and behaved somewhat differently:
But – thanks to what has been put down as a booking error – a female stripper turned up in place of the gorilla-suited man the unnamed mother had apparently asked for.
The stripper, who arrived on cue halfway through the lesson, first walked the birthday boy around the classroom on all fours.
Then, gyrating to the sounds of Britney Spears, she spanked him before stripping down to her bra and knickers and insisting the “naughty” schoolboy rub cream all over her body.
At that point, the teacher – who had not been told what the surprise would entail – called an immediate end to the show.
Why did the teacher let it go that far? Why didn’t the mother have to clear it with the school administration beforehand? Shouldn’t the entertainer have had to check in with the school’s office on entry?
Ah, well. Enough with the “I’m a responsible adult but there oughta be a law”-type questions. I’m both envious and horrified by this. Given how I was at sixteen, I’d probably have died of embarrassment or run away from home if something like this had happened.
Yesterday in History
Thursday, November 8th, 2007Gaius noted yesterday that it was the anniversary of Galloping Gertie.
Sweet!
Sunday, November 4th, 2007Navy beat Notre Dame! The last time Navy beat Notre Dame was 44 years ago, which would put it in the 1963 season when Roger Staubach led Navy to the national championship.
The service academies haven’t been really competitive with the top football schools since the early-to-mid 1960s. That’s when a combination of factors (Vietnam, growth in NFL salaries, the five-year commitment to the service after graduation, etc.) changed things so that the academies became much less desirable to the top high school football players. Because they aren’t competitive, the only reason Notre Dame kept Navy on its schedule is that the Notre Dame-Navy game is the longest-running continuous rivalry in college football, even though it’s been very one-sided for most of my life. Very few players at the academies can hope to make the NFL a career after being away from the game for five or more years. I can’t speak for graduates of West Point or the Air Force Academy, but one of my classmates had a tryout with the Detroit Lions as a punter, although (so far as I know) he didn’t make the cut, and, of course, Napoleon McCallum (who attended after my time) played several years for the Oakland Raiders.
I’ve attended a couple of Navy-Notre Dame games. One was at the Notre Dame campus. The highlight of the trip for me was attending a Paul Simon concert that evening – he appeared with the Dixie Hummingbirds and Urubamba as backup groups. The other thing I remember was all of the Notre Dame students I met (it seemed like all of them, anyway) importuning me to buy them drinks with my “free government money.” As I recall, at the time I was getting an allowance of $10 or $20 per month out of my salary; USNA didn’t trust us to budget.
The other game was in Philadelphia, so the entire Brigade (apart from those in the hospital or working off too large an accumulation of demerits) attended. I was convinced, watching that game, that the entire refereeing staff was Catholic, and going to the Notre Dame bench between quarters for confession: when the Navy ballcarrier was stopped, it seemed as though he would be held in place while several Notre Dame players smashed into him. If he lost the ball, it was a fumble. When the Notre Dame ballcarrier was hit and lost the ball, there was no fumble, the play was blown dead.
Some of that is just poor memory, partisanship, and sour grapes, I’m sure, but it’s been shown in more sports than one that the stars and favorites are given more slack by the refs, and Navy hasn’t been a star in the football world for a long time. I’m glad to see them take this one. I wish I’d been there.
Some Halloween costumes look better than others
Sunday, November 4th, 2007I guess they did not
Monday, October 8th, 2007Here is the video I wanted to see last week, although it doesn’t show what I’d hoped.
Beep … beep … beep
Thursday, October 4th, 2007California falls into Pacific
Thursday, October 4th, 2007Well, not quite. But the Transportation Authority of Marin County got the state government (the entire ca.gov domain) knocked off the internet. What with propagation delays in the DNS network, they were able to recover before there were too many errors, but still …