From Dust To Dust In 1990, Ohio Stadium embarked on a bold journey back to natural grass. I remember the "sod squad" of students that put divots back into place during games. I remember going to an amazing 1995 game against Notre Dame. I remember what former OSU president E. Gordon Gee called Ohio State's greatest victory, a 1992 tie against Michigan (never trust a man in a bow tie). I remember seeing the field torn up in 1998 after beating Michigan. And 2002 after beating Michigan. And 2006 after beating Michigan. I blocked out multiple losses to that same team on that same field. After seventeen years, Ohio Stadium is reverting back to artificial turf. As bad as the field looked the last couple of years, I can't totally disagree with the decision. At any rate, you can watch the transformation take place on a live webcam. Note: I can't actually get an image right now, but it was working a couple of days ago when I first planned on writing this entry. If you can't see it, just imagine them tearing out the field in the snow stadium below... it's so real you can't tell the difference. 
Link to this article Posted at 07:01:08 PM EST by copus
AK ROWDY I saw this car in a parking lot near my house the other day. 
Since the photo is so blurry, the license plate says, "AK ROWDY." This picture made me realize two things: 1) I should really take my time and do it right when I take photos with my cell phone; 2) I need to find myself a creative and original vanity license plate that shows off my civic pride. Link to this article Posted at 10:13:37 PM EST by copus
Birthday Trebuchet My friend got this trebuchet as a birthday present from a friend who works at this local restaurant. Incidentally, this was the first time I've ever tried to upload anything to YouTube. Link to this article Posted at 10:32:59 PM EST by copus
Separation of Church and Army I am amazed by the almost militant secularist segment of Turkey. Today, one million Turks rallied against their government out of fears that the ruling party's presidential candidate is trying to turn Turkey into an Islamist state. On multiple occasions, the military has overthrown governments they viewed as too theocratical and not "democratic" enough. My Turkish friend tried to explain to me the Turkish people's strange mix of religion, nationalism, and trust in their military. I still don't quite understand it, but in some ways it would be nice to see some other countries in their region (and ours) have such a regard for the separation of church and state. Although, using military coups to usurp a democratically elected government is probably not the best way to go about that. Link to this article Posted at 08:45:39 PM EST by copus
Cricket Obsessions Nobody ever call me a fanatic after reading Murder By Cricket. A cricket coach is potentially murdered because his favored Pakistan got whooped by Ireland. It was like "the Seattle Seahawks falling to a slightly above-average high school football team". I liked the article's description of the game of cricket: "Cricket is languid. Much like baseball, but on Quaaludes. Everything takes an eternity, especially the at-bats, which play out like Paul O'Neill working the count in hell's softball league. I fixate on a New Zealand fielder, a guy named Bond. Black shirt, black pants, black hat, black wraparound shades. He's dressed to fight high-tech vampires." Blade meets naptime. Link to this article Posted at 07:15:20 AM EST by copus
Cheerleading Terror I almost spit out my cereal this morning when I read this: Threatening notes complain of cheerleader coverage Some psycho is sending letters complaining about the exploitation of women and the way college cheerleaders and WNBA players are presented. But not in the way you'd think. From the article: "For the last 6 years, Ohio State cheerleaders have received more TV time than any other Division 1A cheer squad on ESPN, because they wear long sleeved red/white outfits. If they wore sleeveless outfits, they would not get ANY TV time. So, we are fed up with this constant exploitation," the author wrote. Wait, television favoring MODESTLY dressed cheerleaders? And I don't think the sleeves are what most people are staring at with the cheerleaders. As for Ohio State, I don't know about receiving the most television coverage... but over the last 6 years, they did go to two national championship games, winning one of them. It's not like modestly dressed (I would assume) Bob Jones University cheerleaders are racking up the television coverage. So very strange. Wait, what was my point again? Link to this article Posted at 07:10:19 AM EST by copus
Kings English I read this on a website today: "We have no king to establish the King's English; we only have the President's English, which we don't want." I misunderestimated the humor of that remark.. Link to this article Posted at 11:35:33 AM EST by copus
Dawn of the Rent I saw Rent tonight. I decided it's probably bad form to shout out things in live musicals. Specifically, near the end of Rent when a main character seems dead but then wakes up, don't yell, "OH MY GOD, SHE'S A ZOMBIE!!! KILL IT! KILL IT!!!" Yeah, I guess that's considered rude. Link to this article Posted at 12:15:37 AM EST by copus
High in Calcium Here's the last strange picture from the Alabomination. At the Birmingham airport, I ordered a barbecue rib sandwich:  Now, I didn't really think about what I should expect, but it certainly wasn't a slab of ribs, bones and all, in a bun. Maybe I should have known, but... how exactly was I supposed to eat this? Pick out the bones? Chew REALLY HARD? Good thing I didn't try to eat it on the airplane. Link to this article Posted at 10:08:12 PM EST by copus
Licensing the Good Fight Today I'll continue on with my photo gallery from the Alabomination. Since almost everyone went home early Sunday morning and I had a whole day to kill, I did a little bit of hiking at a nearby state park. The only thing really notable about this is that I found out that Alabama sells license plates like this: 
It's quite fuzzy here, but the motto is: "Global War on Terrorism." I wonder if the proceeds go directly to the Department of Homeland Security? The Alabama National Guard? The Confederate Army? It just struck me as a strange "vanity" plate. Link to this article Posted at 03:18:19 PM EST by copus
Rugged Mountain Men Jay and his dirty hippy compatriates have taken the plunge. Their beard growing competition is called "reverse lent" (or "tnel"), since they start at Easter and go for about 40 days without shaving. I was kind of creeped out by their "before" pictures.... I'm not sure who took the photos, but some of them look slightly homicidal. Link to this article Posted at 07:03:38 AM EST by copus
Fruit Or Vegetable While relaxing by the television tonight, I had this idea for a new TV game show. It would be called Fruit or Vegetable?, and contestants would be shown a list of 1940's and 1950's era actors and actresses. The winner would correctly figure out which ones are currently in a vegetative state, and which ones are homosexual. Judging from the other shows on network television, I think this has a chance. After thinking about this for awhile, I realized that this idea is loosely stolen from Viva Variety, which had a running gag called "Plant or Animal," I think my idea is much crueler, which would make it a lot more suited to current television trends. Link to this article Posted at 08:44:23 PM EST by copus
Be Prepared My friends always come prepared for hotel parties.  You never know when a pickaxe will come in handy at La Quinta. I think La Quinta is Spanish for "full of zombies." Link to this article Posted at 02:19:16 PM EST by copus
Red means STOP So, my lovely company convinced me to cancel a return flight from "vacation" in Birmingham to Cleveland and go to St. Louis instead. Now I have this credit with Southwest Airlines that I figured I'd use for some vacation time this year. The problem is that of the three cities I want to visit (Boston, Austin, and San Francisco), the $138 credit would barely cover a one-way trip. And other carriers have cheaper rates to those cities, so a round trip wouldn't cost a whole lot more than my airline credit. Note that I also have a free roundtrip anywhere in the continental U.S. that I've accumulated from credit card frequent flyer miles (that's probably going to be used for San Francisco). Does anyone have any suggestions on how to efficiently use my airline credit? Note: trips to St. Louis are definitely OUT. In other news, here's another photo from the Alabomination.  Not only are there EIGHT normal red lights on this side of the intersection, there are also three red *strobe* lights. I wonder if anyone EVER runs a red light at that intersection. Link to this article Posted at 09:07:34 AM EST by copus
Ten Years of Progress I took a few completely random photos this weekend during my whirlwind tour of Birmingham and St. Louis. At the Nashville airport, I noticed some trouble with the arrival and departure monitors.  I'm not sure what worried me most: 1) The software had shut down; 2) They were using Windows 98; 3) They still hadn't gotten Windows 98 to work reliably. Link to this article Posted at 11:14:26 PM EST by copus
Link to this article Posted at 11:09:49 PM EST by copus |
