Funny Friday

If you are a regular reader of ye olde bloge, you'll know that yesterday I generously offered up a case of viral pneumonia free to the first taker. Well, Albuterol-induced insomnia aside, she does seem slightly better today. So, if you took me up my offer, THANK YOU and I'll leave the Hello Kitty doll outside the front door. Goodbye Kitty! Speaking of Hello Kitty, check this out:

Hu Han-yan of Taipei got Hello Kitty shaved into his hair to cheer up his elderly father. That's such a great idea! For Mother's Day this year, I want the Boy to get a picture of a jar of Nutella shaved into his hair. That would totally cheer me up! Of course, I might be tempted to lick his head. I think the Boy might be okay with that since licking isn't on his list of "bad touches."

Bully Pulpit

Why can't someone at Rutgers win a Nobel Prize? Whenever my alma mater is in the news it's about a student committing suicide because his homophobic roommate spied on him via webcam or because the University paid Snooki $32,000 for a student center speaking engagement. Today it's a video of Rutgers men's basketball coach, Mike Rice screaming gay slurs at players, hurling basketballs at their heads, and generally acting like a total tool. In case you don't want to watch the whole thing, here's a still from the video:

Rice is in the black shorts, pushing the player.

I've never played men's varsity basketball at a collegiate level, so I'm not the best judge of whether this behavior is in the normal realm for this arena. But, I did go to law school and even thought I only have vague memories of first year, I'm pretty sure I saw some examples of intentional torts in the video. Also, here's what LeBron James (who knows waaaay more about basketball than I do) tweeted:

Even though it's slightly unclear from James's tweet, I'm pretty sure he's "gone whoop on" the coach and not his son. I'm learning that Twitter's brevity sometimes leads to confusion.  My favorite tweet on the subject from some random guy on Twitter:

I know, right?

Non-Sporty Spice

My favorite quote from a Spice Girl who is not Victoria Beckham (who is, actually, hilarious) is from Melanie Chisholm aka Sporty Spice who said that being dubbed Sporty Spice was a burden and that sometimes she wished she was Fat, Lazy Spice instead. Poor Sporty, it is a lot of pressure to live up to that name. At least she is British, and, let's face it, when we think of England our first thought is not, "Athletes!" The United States is a sporty country and for the non-sporty among us, it can be difficult. In fact, the last time I wrote anything of any length about sports was in law school when I wrote a comment for the Bankruptcy Developments Journal entitled, "It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Declares Bankruptcy: A Debtor's Right to Season Ticket Holder Status." It focused on section 365 of the zzzzzzzzzz. Yes, I know. If you missed that issue of the BDJ, I will send you a copy because I have about 50 sitting in my attic.

While I exercise so that I won't get diabetes, I am not much of an athlete and I generally won't go out of my way to watch sports not involving my children. This is probably because I did not grow up in a normal sporty family. The mainstream American sports are just too mundane for my father. He probably knows all the rules to cricket, can fence like a musketeer, and knows his way around the buzkashi field (click - hysterical list of obscure sports), but I don't think he's ever played a pick-up game of basketball. Okay, he has been known to don a blue and red scarf and take in the Princeton-Penn football game with one of his Ivy League friends, but more for the plummy experience, not to actually watch the game. 

I love the picture on that program because: a. The Penn Quaker looks like Rudolph Valentino channelling the little Dutch boy, but inexplicably wearing a fedora and a knickers sailor suit, and b. This Quaker's the angriest looking pacifist I've ever seen.

I Feel Fine

By the time you all read this, I may already be gone. Of course, so will you all if the Mayans are right. Nothing puts you in an apocalyptic frame of mind like listening to end of the world songs. Did you all know that there is a Wikipedia entry devoted to apocalyptic songs? Not to be confused with the more specific songs that are better for the zombie apocalypse which you can find here. That's a perfect example of a "distinction without a difference," as we said in law. If we're all annihilated, who cares if it's by zombies or meteors or Biblical prophesy?

I think my favorite apocalyptic song is "It's the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine)" by Athens, Georgia's own R.E.M. Did you all ever hear that the lyrics contain a reference to the University of Virginia? About 1 minute 20 seconds into the song, the official lyrics are: "Watch a heel, crush, crush/Uh-oh this means no fear, cavalier..." A law school friend of mine (and UVa alum) insisted that the real lyrics were a reference to the former UVa president, Robert O'Neil banning alcohol at fraternity rush parties back in 1985. So, the lyrics are, in fact, "Watch O'Neil crush rush/Uh-oh this means no beer, Cavalier..."

I'm going to admit to being a smidgen jealous if this turns out to be true because R.E.M. certainly had no songs about Rutgers, unless "You Can't Get There From Here" is a reference to the byzantine bus system at RU.

Sister went to UVa for law school and had a far more enjoyable law school experience than either the K or I did at our respective law schools. Did y'all know that at UVa law they have a themed party every single night for the entire month of February? When Sister was there one of the parties involved some epic beer pong contest, with a twist. One of Sister's classmates had no given middle name. So, the winner of beer pong got to bestow a middle name on no-middle-name guy. The winner chose the name "D'Brickashaw." So, no middle name guy went the next day and legally changed his name to Joe D'Brickashaw Smith, or whatever. (D'Brickashaw Ferguson was an offensive tackle for the University of Virginia at the time Sister was in school. I would go into how he got his name, but that may be too long a tangent, even for me. Read about it here.)

You know what we did at Emory law school parties? People got really, really drunk and made foolish decisions. That's it.

So, I figure that a lot of bloggers and websites will tell you what you should be doing before the world ends. But, I'm going to tell you what not to do on your last day on earth:

1. Clean the oven, or the fridge, or the toilets.
2. Get a colonoscopy.
3. Start a diet or skip dessert.
4. Stop sniffing glue:

5. Exercise.
6. Start reading "War and Peace." (Did you know that book is over 1,400 pages long??)
7. Make cookies that require the dough to sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours before baking.
8. Go to Utah. (That's my second Utah dig in this blog. I'm sure it's a great place, but I just remember seeing a bumper stick when I was young and impressionable that said, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may be in Utah." My prejudice has been with me ever since.)
9. Go out to a bar in hopes of "meeting someone." That would be the beginning of the most depressing story ever. I'm sure Nicholas Sparks has written a book with that plot.
10. Write a really long blog post that most people won't get until the day of the apocalypse...Hey, wait a minute! See y'all...maybe!