Mascot Challenge 2011!!!

It's not that I don't know anything about college basketball. It's more like: The NCAA tournament is such a wonderfully bizarre, unpredictable sporting event, I don't know how a person could enjoy themselves if they actually sat down and tried to predict what 'should' happen. So I just try to figure out what mascots would win in a fight. I've been doing this for years - and fully committed to it the year the Wichita State Shockers pulled exactly as many upsets as I'd predicted, based on the awesomeness of their mascot.

And also: yeah, I pay almost zero attention to college basketball during the regular season. Currently, I'm 8th out of 71. But I have no shot unless the Gators take the whole thing. I really, really counted on the angry drunken Irish mob mentality to show up and defeat the Seminoles. So close to St. Patrick's Day! Damn my sentimentality towards my heritage. I should have known those bastards would be too hungover on Sunday to get much of anything done.

Winter 2010, Nutshellized

"Right behind lack of confidence, and right before lack of knowledge about general American History, lack of manners is one of my ultimate turn-offs." - March 10, 2010

One of my favorite things about GMail is how easy it is to play 'One year Ago Today'.

Last winter was so weird. I wrote that to J + S (our on-going three-way journal, coming up on it's second anniversary) after cutting off relations with one gentleman companion after he displayed an egregious intellectual error. A few weeks later, I was sort-of email dumped by a guy I hadn't really been dating.

The first incident occurred after Gentleman #1 made the mistake of asking whether the Pilgrims and Columbus were contemporary travelers. No, he didn't say it like that. I think he said 'didn't they happen at the same time?' Which, I guess if you look at them both like diseases, isn't completely off base. We were driving down the highway, and I don't even know what inspired the comment. I just remember being really, really startled. Like, dude, we grew up in Massachusetts. It's like, Pilgrim Central. And Columbus? Did you not attend elementary school? You didn't learn the rhyme about 1492? No?

It wasn't like I demanded that he pull the car over right then and there. But I never saw him again after that weekend - and we had been hanging out a lot. In retrospect, it was a pretty shitty way to handle the whole situation.

A few weeks later, I went out with a friend-of-a-friend. He wasn't much like the dudes I usually hung out with, and I figured it was worth a shot. We had two of the chastest dates I've ever been on. Tuesday night dates with plenty of beer and zero sparks. This was in early February. I'm forever getting involved with people at the beginning of February, and making that whole Valentine's Dilemma all the more awkward. Anyway, a week or so after our last date he sent me this relatively convoluted, totally indirect email about how 'something happened' with someone else and how he hoped I wouldn't be mad at our mutual friend, because 'he was the dud'. Dude, obviously you're the dud. You're referring to people as 'duds'.

Then I started sleeping with my roommate. That was actually the least awkward of all of the above situations. There was a while where I felt like I should teach a class on How to Sleep With Your Roommate and Have It Not Be Awkward. One time we even high-fived over the not-awkwardness. Lesson One: Make sure your roommate is someone you're cool high-fiving over vague social relations concepts. Lesson Two: Make sure there's a shelf-life on the roommate situation. Preferably, one of you should move out of the house (and the city, and the state) within three or four months. Lesson Three: Have other roommates. Lesson Four: Don't tell them.

Anyway, that's what was happening one year ago today. 2010 was crazy.