Kansas (Kansas!) whomped Nebraska last Saturday, 40-15, in Lawrence. As my eldest cousin from Salina said, "Rock, chalk, Jayhawk!" Or, as I said, "Ick poo."
The general tenor of the letters to both the sports and main editors of the Omaha World-Herald is that if Frank Solich, 9-3 in his last season as Nebraska head coach, with a bowl game to show for it to boot, was mediocrity, what in the heck is this? After all, this is the first time Kansas beat NU in Lawrence in something like 36 years. The team is now in serious danger of going 5-6 two years in a row. People are saying that the 40+ year Memorial Stadium sellouts record will go next. Nevertheless, a stadium addition is already under construction.
Athletic Director Steve Pederson says that fund raising for the addition is on track, even though only about 40% of the projected total has been pledged. The director of fund raising, whose name escapes me at the moment, is complaining that the fans aren't supporting the team. Head Coach Bill Callahan is under so much stress that he got fined and reprimanded for making a throat-slashing gesture to an official during the Oklahoma game. (Could you see Tom Osborne or Frank Solich doing that? I don't think so.) The current crowd running NU football is living in a fantasy world weirder than even the one Dubya inhabits. And NU is the poorer for it.
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Speaking of fantasy worlds in football, Philadelphia Eagles receiver (and all around pain in the neck) Terrell Owens finally apologized yesterday for both physically and verbally beating up on his teammates last week. Or, at least I think it was supposed to be an apology. All he seemed to say was that he was a complex person, yada yada yada. His agent had to get up to the microphone and explain that Terrell was in fact apologizing.
I got news for you, honey--if you have to explain that it's an apology, it ain't no apology.
(Pardon the bad grammar there; it was intended for effect/emphasis.)
At least the Eagles have (finally) seen the light, and will not have T.O. play for them ever again. The real sorrow of the situation is that there is some team out there in NFL-land desparate enough to win to think it can put up with T.O. and his bulls*** to get victories. Don't these people ever learn?!?!?!
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And now for something completely different: after seeing a repeat of an "Austin City Limits" broadcast a couple of weeks ago and after having listened once again to "Mellowgold," "Mutations," and "Odelay," I have come to the conclusion that Beck is either channeling Jim Morrison or is Jim Morrison reincarnated. He even looks like the infamous Doors' frontman.
Maybe you had already figured that out, but it was a revelation to me!
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One of the more amusing local controversies lately has been all about reported sightings of mountain lions--IN town, be it Omaha, Papillion, Ralston, wherever. Every single sighting was unconfirmed, however. The police and the Humane Society personnel responsible for dealing with the reports have pooh-poohed every claimed sighting, too, saying in print that people were most probably "see[ing] a bobcat or a big dog like a retriever."
Right. Now that a dead mountain lion (hit by a car or truck, most likely) was found over the weekend along I-80 by the Gretna exit, all those who reported sightings feel vindicated, and the police and Humane Society personnel are saying they really do "take every report seriously." But given their earlier published statements, that's hard to believe. Further, the cop who went to get the mountain lion carcass on Sunday admitted that while he was on the way to its location, he was sure he was going to find a dead deer. With friends like these, . . .
In case you'd like to know, the mountain lion was a young male, around 2 years old, 6 feet, 6 inches from nose to tail, and weighed about 100 lbs. He had porcupine quills stuck in his legs, so the police believe he traveled all the way in from Colorado or Wyoming. Porcupines are not common in Nebraska, you see. Hmm . . . neither were mountain lions--or so I thought.
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And now for something else completely different: recent scientific studies confirm that men's and women's senses of humor are quite diverse. As the Associated Press reported yesterday, "[a] research team led by Dr. Allan L. Reiss of the Stanford University School of Medicine reported its findings in [the November 8] issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The researchers were surprised when their studies of how the male and female brains react to humor showed that women were more analytical in their response, . . . with the aim of determining if [something] was indeed funny. . . . Men [use] the same network in the brain, but less so . . . . Men are less discriminating."
Dr. Reiss went on in a telephone interview with the reporter to note that men love the Three Stooges, while women gravitate more toward humor in narrative form and stories.
I wish I could talk to Dr. Reiss. I think he's onto something, but has missed the exact center of the target. I like slapstick as much as anybody, but I don't care for the Stooges. They're not funny--they're mean! Compare them to Laurel and Hardy, who could put together extreme slapstick themselves. The Stooges don't have any underlying caring or affection for one another, unlike Stan and Ollie, who obviously cared about each other even when Ollie was in the midst of smacking Stan upside the head and giving him holy hell about something.
Besides, some of our greatest humorists in terms of narrative and story-telling have been men: Mark Twain, Bill Cosby, Garrison Keillor--even Steve Martin has grown into it, with stories like "Shopgirl."
I dare to suggest that further research would probably show that it's factors other than the type of humor per se that mark the differences in the sexes' reactions to same.
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While we're on the subject of humor: (1) Dubya's command that everyone in the White House, even Karl Rove, take an ethics refresher course. That's a knee-slapper! I've taken a few ethics courses. Most of the guys in them have seemed to be more interested in finding out how to skirt their ethical obligations without getting into trouble than in learing how to live up to said obligations in the first place.
(2) Dubya's nomination of Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court. There's a real "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it" moment for everyone who opposed Harriet Miers's nomination--other than the neo-cons, that is. George Orwell would have loved those guys. Black is white, up is down, striking down laws passed by Congress is not judicial activism . . .
As I have said before, judicial activism takes place only when the judges involved rule counter to your wishes. When they agree with you, they are interpreting, not legislating from the bench. Yeah. Would you like to buy a bridge in Brooklyn? I have one for sale . . .
(3) The creationists are at it again, trying to insert "intelligent design" as a required teaching element of science classes. Eight of the nine old white men who tried it back East somewhere (I apologize for being fuzzy on the details--I wasn't fully awake when I heard the news this a.m.) got voted out of their school board positions as a result. The ninth was not voted out only because he wasn't up for reelection.
And it's back in the curriculum in Kansas . . . will these people ever realize that "intelligent design" by definition is NOT scientific and therefore has no place in a science classroom? ("And yet the Jayhawks stomped on the Huskers, so what does that say about us Nebraskans?" she added, tongue planted firmly in cheek.)
Do the proponents of "intelligent design" even have a clue as to the damage they are doing to the future of this country? If we raise a generation or two of people who can't tell religion from science, we are going to lose our place as a leader in research and technology . . . talk about stupidity in action!
Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. These are, after all, the same people who say that just because the exact phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, it is not a constitutional mandate. And then they quote the First Amendment part that says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" ostensibly to prove their point.
I'd sure like to know what drugs they are taking. I could use a break from reality myself.
