The Blackjack Strikes Back

I'll be honest. I, like Dave, sold out to the Xanga community. I might post stuff on here from time to time, but I think the days of Noshameinthat are finished. Visit me at

http://xanga.com/umassoesch

and sell yourself to get your own Xanga.

So long Suckers, see ya over there on the Xang master.

No, I didn't mean sell yourself as in sell your body like a prostitute does. Perverts.

As an out of state sports fanatic, there was something I admired about Red Sox nation when I first arrived at UMass last year. I grew jealous of the passion that consumed Massachusetts from March thru October, and was even more amazed that people could be so enthusiastic about a team that had lost for so long. These people had fought for so long hoping for a championship, and their team had let them down every time. I saw a connection among all of these fans like no other, along the lines of two completely different people being held together by virtue that they were both Sox fans.

Then I wondered why that same community didn’t translate into a great community at UMass. I wondered why UMass didn’t come together like Red Sox fans did. We all share something, don’t we?

It really started to bother me last semester after I attended the UMass-BC hockey game, where we lost 4-1. It was a decent game from a neutral perspective, as both teams had their chances to score, the difference being that BC put their chances in the back of the net. Regardless, the loss put a damper on the rest of my night, as I had been getting pumped up for this game for almost a week.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends of mine who did not attend the game, and they saw the look on my face and knew that the hockey team lost. Then someone mentioned to me that they were “sorry that my team lost.” I told her that her team lost too, which netted me a confused “What? My team?” look, as if to say that the hockey team losing only mattered to those who participated.

The greater meaning of this, however, pointed to something even worse.

I've often told people that the biggest problem with UMass is the size of the state. The fact that the majority of campus lives within a two hour drive of home is an absolute killer of community. I would guess that the average in-state student misses about five weekends a semester, which makes home an ultimate safety valve. Half of college is about growing up and being on your own for once, and people don't learn that nearly as well when they have that safety valve of home, with their old friends, family, and dog ready to greet them. People going back to their friends at home means that they aren't building friendships here, they aren't going to sporting events here, they aren't becoming part of the UMass community. College isn’t supposed to be people hunched over their computers in their rooms telling their friends on instant messenger that they’ll be home in three days. Every time someone goes home because they miss their cat or because they have to go back to their job means the University hurts a little more. And that just stinks, doesn't it.

Without question, college athletics are one of the best ways to built community within the university. They make you feel like you're a part of something, they give you a place to hang out with your friends, and most importantly, you start to identify with the school. UMass doesn’t remain the place where you take your classes, but the era where you spent some of the best years of your life. You might find yourself things like

“Hey, that's right you guys, I go to UMass, home of the Minutemen.”
“Yeah, I go to UMass, and our Mass Attack is going to whip your asses on Friday night.”
“I go to UMass and I love it here.”

Things that happen on campus aren't mutually exclusive. We will all feel the effects of our hockey team losing, we will all feel the effects of a certain department losing its best professor, we will all feel the effects of budget cuts, one way or another. Like it or not, the kid who lives down the hall who you never talk to will affect you somehow, and the same goes for the kids who got arrested for rioting after the Sox won.

The person who told me that she was sorry my team lost is missing out on something. Community at a university is much more important than sporting events or other extra curriculas; these things are a means of building it. Only when we come together will we ever be considered an outstanding university. It should never be said that "the hockey team lost."

My hockey team lost. Our hockey team lost. And man, are we ever going to whip your asses come Friday night.

It's good to be back.

The only thing bad about coming back was the whole "how was your break" conversations with everyone, to which I said the same thing, "it's good to be back here." I've seen all the people I've missed, and now I think a crew is developing on the 6th floor of John Quincy Adams hall, aomething I missed the first semester.

I've gone to all of my classes and I must admit they all seem pretty interesting. My Greek myth class is taught by a member of team misognyist, as he kicked out a certain female whose cell phone went off twice in class, and all 450 people saw her walk out the door with her head held in shame. To my amazement, my astonomy class has been actually interesting thus far. Filling out gen eds usually suck, but despite the professor being one of the bigger nerds I've met in my life, this really isn't too bad.

My sport management classes are looking pretty sweet as well. I'm taking sport law and sociology of sport, and both professors are top notch.

My last class is history 381, US and the Cold War. This class means nothing towards my major; it isn't a gen ed or out of department requirement, yet, it's the class that I want to do the best in. The professor told us flat out the first day that he expects 25% of the class to fail, and I feel somewhat motivated right now to not only pass the class but to ace it. Usually first day classes are useless and filled with going over the sylabus and what he expects, and then we get to leave with thirty minutes to go. Not this guy. In addition to going over his expectations, I took three pages of notes, and now I'm pumped to kick some ass in this particular class. Weird how I would take an upper level history class tat meant nothing and now I want to nail it. Awwyeah.

I sent in my first column last night, to be printed Tuesday. I honestly wasn't all that happy with it, and I didn't like handing in what I felt was sub-par material.

Truthfully, I am very cocky when it comes to what I write for the Collegian. There are about 20 other columnists, and of those, I feel that 15 of them suck. I'm usually proud of what I put in there because I know it's a lot better than the alternative reading, but this column felt like I was sinking to the level of other crappy columnists. I've even told people that I don't have too much of a problem with handing in something I'm not totally happy with because I know it's still going to be better than the other columnists....am I sinking to their level? Ah well. I've realized that you can't hit a home run every time, so maybe in two weeks when my next column is due I'll have something to rock UMass's socks off, along the lines of banning sex for the good of the country.

That's all I got. The Super Bowl festivities start in a couple hours, and I've got my riot gear all ready for when the Pats win. That'll be the story for tomorrow, along with my column.

As for the rest of you, So Long, Suckers!

Face it Massachusetts. You’re gonna lose.

And it’s not even going to be one of those photo finish, heartbreaker, field goal to end the game losses, either. It’ll be the kind where you’re team goes down so hard, from start to finish, that you don’t even care anymore, and you only hope for next season to show up a little sooner.

The winner, of course, will be George Bush. He’s already laughing, along with the rest of the Republican Party, all of them knowing how much of a cake job this next election will be.

In truth, the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves, due to the increasing possibility that Howard Dean will win the primary among a group of other obscure candidates (let’s not even bring Al Sharpton into the discussion). The rise of Howard Dean can be attributed to the sole factor that he portrays himself as the man who is nothing like Bush, a tactic that wins primaries but doesn’t win elections.

In order to win a primary, a candidate must reach out to the most extreme members of a party because every vote counts that much more. Howard Dean’s strategy is to show America that he is the candidate who was dead-set against the war (the biggest topic in this year’s election). Since the pro-war vote is being split by the other candidates, this leaves Dean as the man who will garner up support from the anti-war voters. However, just because Dean may be able to grab 30% of the vote in the primary, it has no bearing on how he will do in the election, which is why the man who wins in 2004 will have supported the war.

By alienating the pro-war vote, Dean’s best chances for winning rest on something catastrophic happening in Iraq, which, despite what you may read in the Boston Globe, has yet to occur. The troops have nailed 41 of the 55 most wanted men in Iraq, Saddam’s capture boosted support for the war and morale (something Bush will milk until the polls close next fall), and the recent events of Libya disarming its weapons programs have proved that America’s new “kick some ass” mentality is much more likely to disarm a rebel country that appeasement or European diplomacy. Through all of this, polls have consistently shown that the majority of Americans still support the war.

This is why the people who scare the Bush campaign the most are John Edwards and Dick Gephardt. Unfortunately, since they have to share the pro-war burden with too many other candidates, their chances of winning shrink a little more, leaving the possible winner battered for his showdown with Bush.

Then there is what the president has going for him. I have already mentioned the war (although many of you disagree), but a rising economy, an ever present Bible Belt, and Bush’s campaign war chest of $175 million dollars make the incumbent even closer to invincible.

Bush’s steady support from the Bible Belt would make it even tougher for Dean and the Democrats to win in 2004, since Dean’s anti-war stance and the lack of religion in his life would easily give all fourteen states to Bush, making him only a few swing states away from re-election.

Dean has recently tried to “prove” to people that he is a man of faith, by showing his track record of sorts for church attendances, and speaking about his beliefs on God. This really isn’t fooling anyone about what he really believes, and his chances of impressing Southern voters these days are nearly nil after his “I am the candidate for the Southern redneck” speech blunder.

What it comes down to is that liberals like Dean don’t win elections. Dean will mortally wound himself in the primary by appealing to the extreme left wing of politics, and conservative voters will remember that at the polls. The best candidate for Democrats in winning elections is a moderate one; someone who can attract members from both sides of the party without resorting to extremes. Look at Ronald Reagan, both George Bush’s, and Bill Clinton, and show me the liberals in the group. If you really want to beat George Bush, you had better hope that Howard Dean loses in the primaries to someone who has a chance of winning the election. Unfortunately for you, Massachusetts, all I see is a scoreboard with you and George opposing one another, and you’re the loser.

There I sat.

Hidden away behind the back seat of a Chevy Venture I waited for them. I had heard that they would be reaching me at the time of 9:00, so I crouched and waited for their arrival.

It wasn't pretty. Imagine four of the longest men you'd ever seen, the shortest of them sat at a lanky 6'5, who went by the name Darnay (who also had a secret alias with the term "sweet" thrown in there). The rest of them stood at 6'8 and two at 6'10, respectively, although one of the 6'10 gentle giants who went by the name of my favorite basketball player must have had a 53 inch waistline, and I could tell that all he did was gorge himself in a gluttonous manner on everything sugary, sweet, and Southern. The one who was 6'8 obviously threw his wallet around, because everytime they called on him, the idea of "Money" made it's way into the conversation. And then there was the last character, a beachgoer who obviously enjoyed the thought of his hobbies giving him names, as they called him "Ocean." I must say that after passing my eyes over this beautiful creature, I had never been questioning my sexuality more.

Away we went. The beautiful one was driving, and sad laments about a certain movie not being played were solomnly cried upon. The guy flashing the cash sat shotgun, and the fat one and short one sat right in front of me, and I am still stunned that they didn't hear my heavy breathing throughout the night.

Apparently these men played a lot of Poker, because the car ride started with a lot of talk revolving around "the wild card." At first I thought of these men as perverts, and wild card was just a codeword to talk about strip clubs or foxy women, but I was sadly mistaken. As this talk dissapated the car slowed down, and they all exited for a party at the place known as "the Homo's," and I waited for their return.

To pass the time, I made some haikus.

The biggest problem
with a Chevy Venture is
the tight trunk space.

Finally, after an hour at the Homo's, they returned, with a little man in hand, known as the Cloak. I'm not sure how he received this name, since he wasn't wearing a thick jacket, but rather a red shirt with a stripe across the front that was definatly from the Gap. He sat near the back.

There was something different about this car ride, and I noticed right when the car started. The ride was noticably different and much more bumpy and much more uncomfortable. I peered over the Cloak's shoulder and noticed that the Fat One was in the driver's seat. He made his best efforts to keep the car going foward, but his belly would often bulge from beneath his shirt and steer the car to a different path. The good side to this was that the tall foxy one was now sitting in the back, and I had an extroardinaryly good look at his beautiful eyes.

Five turns and two near-misses later, the car stopped was back near where the night started, and they all piled out. I started another haiku, but all I got was

"That beautiful man
is one specimen who"

and didn't finish because they all were back in the car within minutes. The Cloak seemed to be in a hurry, but the others laughed in his face.

A female named Sally was the culprit. Apparently the Cloak had been caught in one of her devious traps, like a fly stuck in a web, and he couldn't escape. After a two quick stops at a restaurant and at the Homo's to drop the Cloak off, I was convinced that this Sally figure was the one and only Bride of Satan.

The original four and myself left the Homo's, with the fat, porky one still driving. His gut flopped out again and took control of the wheel, and only the screaming of the other three could stop it from taking their lives with it.

Something was missing during this ride. An important event apparently had happened during this portion of the ride, and I longed to figure out what it was.

The next stop was at some sort of bread and breakfast, and all that was seen as the car pulled into the parking lot were the bountiful breasts of a hideous woman flowing in the wind. The four exited the car to see the commotion, and returned fifteen minutes later, much to the chagrin of the fat one, who loved the sight of hideous women having less than six teeth. I heard them arguing back and forth, and then they left the car again. During this time I finished my haiku.

The beautiful man
is one specimen with whom
I cherish a lot.

In retrospect, I think that one needs retooling.

This time, coming back from the hotel, there was a lot of screaming. To my fright, they opened up the back where I sat, and threw in a very feminine looking man, who was blindfolded. Luckily, it was too dark for them to spot me, so now I had company. The four gentle giants in front, me and this strange character in the back.

They drove off, and stopped not three minutes later, and grabbed the feminine man from the back. I sat and pondered who this man was, and was thankful that they again didn't see me.

After five minutes of waiting, they returned, with the feminine man now wearing a turban. The hurled him in the back, said something about killing, and resumed their seating positions, driving off in the search of some delishious Candy.

The talk swirled the car about this man "Phi", like the Greek letter, who eventually took up the name of the wild card. They stopped the car and talked to him, and through the panels of the car I could barely hear his words, although the feminine man kept trying to seduce me after taking off his blindfold, and eventually his pants. I listened hard for the talk of what would happen next, when it hit me: Phi was code for the word "pedoPHIle." This man was a sick, twisted bastard, and I felt very afraid. Relief set in when the four returned and drove off to the Ocean's house.

This voyage took a turn for the worst, and they went right past this foxy man's house for some diner. When these words of the diner came up, they all turned giddy, as if these were old stomping grounds. The all left the car, leaving only the feminine man and me. The next twenty minutes changed my life.

He started to talk to me, in a very subtle way, and all of a sudden, he jumped on me. Covering my face from his lips did I, and smooches fell onto my short arms. But his war tactics were overpowering, and he kicked me in the crotch in the same was a feminist defends herself. I thought all was lost, when I saw the turban laying on the seat. I lunged for it and managed to wrap around his neck, and slowly choked him. He lashed back and forth, until he muttered his dying words to me, and I cried knowing the irony of killing the man who thought I loved him. He laid on the flootr, and right as I stopped crying the four returned, all in a huff over having to drive quite a distance to another diner.

The ride was much quieter this time. There wasn't much laughing, the night seemed to be winding down. Twenty minutes of this and the car stopped again, and they left me and the man I had just killed.

I waited for them. I wanted this day to end, and I wanted sleep. But I couldn't stop thinking about the feminine man. His lust for life (and apparently me). His undying good nature. I wondered aloud why killing a man in the heat of battle was called heroism, but killing this man in the heat of passion was called murder. I wept. They came back two hours later.

This time there was no talking. The shorter sweet on actually slept, and the other three stared. I continued to weep, and after they dropped off the beautiful tall man I stopped. We drove off to where the night had started, and I fell asleep.

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" was the sound I heard when I woke up? The three remaining tall men stared me down, and I said nothing, and then cried and told them everything. Instead of being angry, they looked at the lifeless man sitting next to me, and then picked me up and hugged me. I had made their night, they said, and when the big fat man hugged me and put my face directly into his armpit, I knew everything was going to be okay.

Without question, everytime that I see the name "Steve Spurrier" in a column or scorecard or whatever, I get really angry. Not angry in the sense of me being a Tennesee or Florida State student, or angry in the sense of my team being a rival of the Redskins. What made me so angry about Spurrier was just how awful of a coach he was in the NFL.

Bill Parcells has done quite a job in Dallas this season with players he has hated. He's always been known for loving big linebackers, and Dallas' LB's are among the smallest in the league. He definately didn't want guys like Quincy Carter or Troy Hambrick as huge pieces of his offense, but there they were at his disposal. So did he gripe and whine about it, and beg Jerry Jones to ruin the salary cap and sign someone else? Nah. All he did was steer that team to a 10-6 record, defying the odds and making the playoffs.

This is one of the fundamental things that is wrong with Spurrier. He came into Washington bragging about how he was going to use a fun 'n' gun offense taylor made for players he didn't have (and taylor made for a completely different game as well). Instead of taking what he had and working with that as an excellent coach like Parcells would've done, he stuck to his original plan, and what could've been a halfway decent team stayed in mediocrity. He claimed he could make Danny Wuerffel a star (and my idol, Peter King, believed him). He signed Jaquez Green, because he knew "the system." And what he did, or didn't do, depending on your point of view, was just let Stephen Davis pound the ball twenty-five times a game. He ignored his best weapon and tried to make a couple third stringers become legendary gunslingers.

This is the primary reason as to why I would never believe the rumor about Spurrier taking over for Dave Wannstedt in Miami. The old saying goes, you trick me once, it's your fault, twice, it's mine. The Dolphins letting Spurrier take over the reins and do the same thing he did in D.C. (that is, try and make Jay Fiedler a star and give Rickey Williams about seven touches a game) would have been a travesty.

The next big mistake Spurrier made was forgetting about the future. Instead of holding to his word about making Patrick Ramsey the starter for the rest of the season, he kept inserting Shane Matthews and Wuerffel into the game. Spurrier lucked out on this one because Ramsey has a head on his shoulders, and didn't let Steve's stupidity get to him.

And then, lastly, Spurrier's biggest mistake of all was essentially ignoring everyone on the team who wasn't named Matthews, Wuerrfel, or Ramsey. He forgot that he was the head coach of the team and not the assistant coach, and it's now being reported that Marvin Lewis, not Spurrier, kept the team together last year. The sad thing was, Lewis still had to bend over for Spurrier even though he was the guy holding down the fort.

So finally, Steve resigned. He proved to himself he couldn't coach in the NFL, and he further proved the fact that Dan Snyder, the Redskins owners, is a douche. What a pair.

At least one of them knows how bad he sucks at life.

It's been said before, and I'll say it again: the world is way too PC.

My beef with this comes from the NFL, where Detroit Lions president Matt Millen got an entire espn.com article devoted to his calling of Johnie Morton "a faggot."

Who cares?

As the articles put it, what Millen really meant when he said that was "you're a homosexual. I hate homosexuals, and I can't get over how gay you are. Die, slowly and painfully, you fag."

Really now, is that what he meant? Yes, it was something he shouldn't have said, considering he's an executive and he has to know that he will have a mic around him after a football game. But for one, Matt doesn't hate gay people, and two, the word "faggot" isn't even a derogatory insult towards gay people anymore.

We all remember American Pie, don't we? The word that sprouted out of that movie was "MILF" (a Mom I'd Like to F___). Clearly, in 1999 if you said "milf" you might get a few looks, because five years ago it had a very dirty connotation (and for good reason). Now, today, it's almost a term of endearment, to say, "hey, for a mother of two, you're not doing too bad." You aren't saying "wow, can I be the father of your next child?" The meaning of words change over time, what we say today doesn't mean the same thing if we said it ten years ago.

The same goes for fag or faggot. We would call someone a faggot in sixth grade, and the retort we'd all hear was "wow, so I'm a bundle of sticks," which was actually the word "fagot," with one 'g.' Being sixth graders, we really had no idea as to what to say back, and would just think to ourselves if that's what it really meant, when all we were truly trying to say was "you're stupid."

Consider today how often you call someone a fag. I won't lie and pretend that I don't; the word arises out of my mouth almost daily (and for all of you who played sports, during a game, anything went in terms of insults). And all of you know that I work at a flower store, I have many gay friends, and I even support gay marriage on a constitutional basis, yet, if I went on national TV and the word fag slipped out of my mouth, I would be denounced as a homophobe and a real jackass too. It all comes back to the world being too PC.

What is really ironic about the situation is that if Matt Millen had been caught on TV twenty years ago saying calling someone a fag, when the word actually was a gay slur, nobody would care, because being gay back then was still a faux pas. Now, he calls Johnie Morton a fag, and everyone thinks he's terrible because it's okay to be gay nowadays, yet, the word doesn't mean what it meant twenty years ago.

I think we all need to ease up on the guy...and if you don't believe me, remember when you weren't allowed to say "that sucks?"

As for the rest of you, So Long, Suckers!