UMASS Outlaws Beer Pong

It is the first day of classes for the spring semester, here at UMASS. There is a special feeling in the air today. The undergrads are back, and will undoubtably put the "Zoo" back in ZooMass.

But just in case, they have any funny ideas about...oh, I don't know...partying, the UMASS adminstration wants everyone to know that even if they are 21, they are being watched.

So let this be a warning to all of you...Even if you are 21

• Beer pong and other drinking games are, henceforth, banned.
• Regardless of your age, you can not have more than 12 cans or bottles of beer in your dorm room.
• You can not have more than one bottle of liquor or 2 bottles of wine at any one time.
• No taps
• No funnels
• No more than 10 people drinking together in one place.

That's right, folks. Not only is this true, but what is so surprising is that it is national news.

I'm not sure what they hope to accomplish with these new rules. I spent my undergrad years on a dry campus (meaning NO alcohol regardless of one's age). That didn't stop anyone from doing any of the above listed activities. Heck, a few years ago, it was named the #1 party school in the nation by USA Today.

So what is this going to change? Really? They'll just smuggle cases of beer into the dorms in their suitcases and drink behind closed doors like they did in high school. Worse yet, they'll probably be more likely to drive to off-campus house parties.

And I don't think any new rules are going to tame Southwest.

photo by Doktor

As if we didn't already know that Steelers fans are crazy....

There is yet more proof.

Early this morning, my eyes popped open at around 3 AM. Do you ever have days like that? Where you wake up in the middle of the night and your body, for some unknown reason, thinks it's 7 AM? Well, that happened to me. After about 15 minutes of trying to will myself to sleep, I figured I'd turn on the television. The news was on. Which of course, did the trick. Within about 10 minutes, I was about to doze back off to sleep when I heard something on the news that woke me right up again.

A town outside of Pittsburgh has temporarily changed its name to Steeler, PA. You can read the Associated Press story for yourself.

The folks of Washington, PA don't want anyone to mistake them for Seattle Seahawks fans...you know, just because the name of their town is Washington.

"I know the folks in the state of Washington are rooting for the Seahawks, so we wanted to make sure everyone knows the city of Washington is fully in support of the Steelers." --Mayor Kenneth J. Westcott

So from now until Feb 6th, Washington will be officially known as Steeler. If you want to send a letter to any of these crazy Steelers fans, address the envelope to Washington, PA, though. The United States Postal Service doesn't recognize the name change.

More crazy news from Pittsburgh

Thank you to Scott at Blog Beat, for giving me evidence that Steelers fans are indeed crazy.

Here's the cliff's notes version of the story: A high school student in a Pittsburgh suburb named Joshua Vannoy made the mistake of wearing a Denver Broncos jersey to school during the week leading up to last weekend's Broncos/Steelers face-off. It was the day of an exam. His teacher pulled all the desks into a circle, made him sit on the floor in the center of the circle, and gave students extra points on the exam for pelting him with wads of paper. Which they, of course, commenced to do with abandon. When one girl refused, the teacher ripped the paper out of her hand and pelted the kid himself. Whoa. The poor guy was traumatized.

"Joshua said he was so furious his hands were shaking and he could hardly concentrate. He said he was lying flat on the carpet trying to answer essay questions about the Israeli Six-Day War and the Cold War while his face burned with shame."--Pittsburgh Post Gazette

So since I was in Pittsburgh last weekend, I can tell you first hand that the place is crazed for the Steelers. It's like mass hysteria there. Steelers songs play non-stop--not just on the radio, but on the street. Half the people are wearing black and gold. Women have black and gold finger nail polish. Black and Gold ribbons in their hair. Cars are adorned as if they are in a parade. The city is one big pep rally for the Steelers.


According to Sally Kalson, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the teacher had this to say about the incident:

"We won the game [Sunday] night, didn't we? That's all I was worried about."

You can't make this stuff up, people.

Public Service Annoucement: If you forgot to file your federal income tax return in 2001, just tell them that you put it in the mail.

They just might believe you.

I have been traveling a lot lately (one of the reasons I haven't been blogging much), and last weekend took me to Pittsburgh, PA. More on that later...But I share this tidbit because it was in Pittsburgh that I learned of an unbelivable event.

You know how at the hotel they leave the newspaper (in this case the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) at your doorstep? I don't usually read the local paper when I am traveling, but for some reason, I picked up the paper and started reading. And I was floored by what I read, so I must share it here.

Did you know that in April 2002, over 70,000 2001 New England tax returns were destroyed before they ever got to the IRS? How, do you ask?

It's hard to believe, but this is what happened: The IRS contracts externally to process the returns. In 2001, Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh was one of those processing centers. Every year, Mellon Bank hired temporary workers to help process the returns. Problem was, they were trying to save money, and instead of the usual 200 extra people, they hired about 70. Surprise, surprise--as their late April deadline approached, they still had over 70,000 returns unprocessed.

Did they call the bigwigs at Mellon and tell them what was happening? Noooo. People under stress will do crazy things. The supervisor was afraid he'd lose his job. So what did he do? He told the staff to box up the unprocessed returns and bring them to a storage closet to hide them. When they ran out of room, they started putting the returns in big canvas bags. When they ran out of those, he sent an employee to the supermarket to buy big black trashbags which they filled with the remaining tax returns and sent to the dump!! I'm not kidding. It really happened.

"(Workers) were under pressure to meet the deadline or they would lose their jobs," Picking said. "And that's what ultimately led to the crime, in our eyes."

In the short-term, mission accomplised, they didn't lose their jobs. In the long term? Not so good. They are going to jail. That has got to be the most extreme example of short-sightedness I have ever heard of.

So if you are chastising yourself for doing something stupid today, like locking your keys in your car, or sending out a business letter with a typo on it, just think about these people.

Feel better already, don't you?

Meet Craig

While purusing Craig's List have you ever asked yourself: So who is Craig? Or perhaps you've wondered: is there even a "Craig"?

Well, wonder no more. In New York Magazine there is a profile of Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig's List.

His motivation for starting the site? "We wanted to give people a break"

I love this guy.

1-800-555-FEMA

I got a call from a friend of mine today. We hadn't talked in months, and we had a lot of catching up to do. She is a firefighter in a relatively dangerous city. She generally kicks ass. I want to be like her when I grow up.

Anyway, my friend told me that she had been out of town for a great deal of the fall season. She was dispatched by her fire department to New Orleans almost immediately after the hurricane. She wanted to help rescue people. She is a rescue worker. It is what she is trained to do.

I asked her what it was like. Did she help rescue people from flooded buildings? Nope. FEMA assigned her (and every other rescue worker she knew) to hand out brochures with FEMA's contact number on it. That's what she did all day. Kind of like those annoying "flyer guys" on Manhattan street corners who won't let you walk past without taking a piece of paper.

No rescues.

At night, she would go home to her hotel room, turn on the TV, and watch Sean Penn rescue people from flooded buildings.

FEMA sucks.

Someone sure does have a lot of time on their hands...

What would you do if you bought a bag of nuts at Wal-mart, brought them home, started eating them, cracked open a nut and a condom popped out? Yes, that is what I said: a condom.

A Colorado couple had this experience recently when they bought a bag of filbert nuts (aka hazelnuts) . How did this happen? According to today's Associated Press story, the mystery was solved when the police looked it up on the internet.

"The couple took the nut — and its contents — back to Wal-Mart, where an assistant manager photographed it before the Geists took it to the police. Whether someone thought it was a joke, we take it very seriously," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burk. "This is a food-tampering issue."

Apparently, someone had drilled a hole in the nut, emptied the shell and then plugged the hole with wood putty after the condom was inserted.

Someone sure does have a lot of time on their hands.

Turns out, though, that someone else thought of it first. You can actually buy a condom in a nut. The nuts are walnuts, though. The genius who punked the couple in Colorado broke from tradition to choose the hazelnut.

It turns out the "surprise a stranger with a condom in a nut" prank is nothing new. Oslofoodie, a blogger in Norway had the same thing happen to her on Christmas back in 2004. You can read about it in her blog (complete with pictures of the culprit walnut and its contents) here.

Unlike the couple in today's story who went to the police with the offensive nut, Oslofoodie just laughed and admired the prankster's "patch-work." What a refreshing attitude. I think I'll add Norway to my list of places to visit.

I'm famous!

Ok...not famous. But my ego was certainly inflated a bit recently when Scott Brodeur requested an interview with me. Scott was the founding editor-in-chief of www.masslive.com, the online arm of The Republican. Although I will admit I'm not a Republican subscriber (sorry, Scott), I check out masslive.com often, and as some of you know from my blog entries, one of my insomniatic habits is to check out the campuscam featured on the site. He is now the managing editor for website development at Advance.net and also writes two blogs, Blog Beat, and the Blog Beat Northampton, which are hosted on masslive.com. I'm a fan of his blogs, so I was very flattered that he even knew about mine. If you haven't read his stuff, you should check it out. I love following some of the links he discovers. If it weren't for him, I never would have read about the grandma who did a three story beer bong before a college football game this fall.

And now is as good a time as any to check out Blog Beat, because he published his interview with me yesterday (January 3).

I feel like a celebrity. Well, a little bit anyway...