Mascot Madness

[b]East[/b]
[spoiler]RO64

Buckeyes v TBD: I'm not entirely sure what a buckeye is, but at least it is decided.

Patriots v Wildcats: America, Fuck Yeah
Patriots

Mountaineers v Tigers: Giant axes and shaggy beards can take on any cat.
Mountaineers

Wildcats v Tigers: Tigers are a subset of wild cats, therefor tigers < wildcats
Wildcats

Musketeers v Golden Eagles: It is a federal offense to shoot a golden eagle. Can't play BBall from jail. Also, who uses muskets anymore?
Eagles

Orange Men v Sycamores: Ummmm, what? At least orange men are motile.
Orange Men

Huskies v Bulldogs: Big, wild, powerful dog v domesticated, inbred, half-blind dog.
Huskies

Tar Heels v Black Birds: True fact- nobody really knows where the tar heel nickname came from. The mysterious allure gives them the victory
Tar Heels

RO32
Buckeyes v Patriots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-2_Buckeye
Buckeyes

Mountaineers v Wildcats: Another cat, another win.
Mountaineers

Golden Eagles v Orange Men:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3n4qPpL8T0
Eagles

Tar Heels v Huskies: Completely original nickname v obvious ripoff of a popular SC2 caster. Huskies get sued for trademark infringement.
Tar Heels

RO16
Buckeyes v Mountaineers: It seems like buckeyes are actually a type of tree. So after trapping and skinning two cats, the Mountaineers fell some trees with their fists Minecraft-style so their axes don't get dull.
Mountaineers

Golden Eagles v Tar Heels
The eagles swoop in to carry the tar heels off a cliff. But their feet are stuck in tar and pitch from the booming colonial naval stores industry! The eagles ricochet off and tumble to their doom.
Tarheels

RO8 Tar Heels v Mountaineers: The mountaineers attack. But just like during the civil war, the NCians stand fast as if tar were sticking their heels to the ground. The mountaineers run away!
Tar Heels
[/spoiler]

[b]West[/b]
[spoiler]RO64

Blue Devils v Doesn't Have a Wiki Page for Their Athletics: As much as I hate to see it, Blue Devils win.
Blue Devils

Wolverines v Volunteers: Volunteering is a nice thing to do. Ripping someone's face off with your terrible claws and teeth is a winning thing to do.
Wolverines

Tigers v Wildcats: Wait, again?
Wildcats

Longhorns v Grizzlies: Herbivore v carnivore. Any questions?
Grizzlies

Bearcats v Tigers: Both Asian animals. Bearcats win on originality
Bearcats

Bison v Huskies: Bison are... kind of husky? Sure.
Huskies

Owls v Nittany Lions: Owls!
Owls!

Aztecs v Bears: Man v wild. Gotta root for the home team
Aztecs

RO32
Blue Devils v Wolverines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wolverine_(vol._1)_1.jpg v http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlueDevil1.jpg ? Come on.
Wolverines

Wildcats vs Grizzlies: Grizzly SMASH
Grizzlies

Huskies v Bearcat: Are you a cat, or are you bear? MAKE UP YOUR MIND.
Huskies

Aztecs v Owl: Aztecs are also stupid-looking cars. I worked at a place where we got a car-hit owl in almost bi-weekly. :-(
Aztecs

RO16
Wolverines v Grizzlies: Adamantium v calcium? It doesn't matter how big you are. This ain't no Timothy Treadwell here.

Huskies v Aztecs: Again, I've got to root for my home species.
Aztecs

RO8
Wolverines v Aztecs: Wolvie is a badass, but it is a bit much to expect him to take down an entire civilization. When the Aztecs discover that Wolverine's healing factor causes him to grow back a new heart each time they rip it out and offer it to the gods, they realize they don't have to sacrifice virgins any more! As a result they chill out, enjoy their new virgin surplus and conquer the world while Wolverine suffers a promethean fate of continual human sacrifice
Aztecs
[/spoiler]

[b]Southwest[/b]
[spoiler]
RO64
Jayhawks v Terriers: I once saw a hawk swoop down and pick up a small yappy dog. Only the leash saved it.
Jayhawks

Runnin' Rebels v Fighting Illini: I'd rather have fighters than runners.
Illini

Spiders v Commodores: Everyone's afraid of spiders. Even enlisted officers
Spiders

Cardinals v Eagles: In the air, being small and mobile is actually better than fast and strong. If you've ever seen crows mobbing an owl or a hawk, you know what I'm talking about.
Cardinals

Rocks/Bulldog v TBD: Strange
Rocks/Bulldogs

Boilermakers v Peacocks: Peacocks are mean and quite feisty... but they're peacocks.
Boilermakers

Aggies v Seminoles: The notoriously tough and warlike tribe takes on... some dudes who study farming and stuff.
Seminoles

Fighting Irish v Zips: Zips? Zips?!
Irish

RO32
Fighting Illini v Jayhawks: So I looked it up and apparently the jayhawks get their name from the Jayhawkers who were "guerrilla fighters who often clashed with pro-slavery "Border Ruffians"" during the Bleeding Kansas period. Bad. Ass.
Jayhawks

Spiders v Cardinals: There is no web strong enough, little spider. Just give up before you get etted.
Cardinals

Hoya/Bulldogs v Boilermakers: What rocks?
Boilermakers

Fighting Irish v Seminoles: This would truly be a battle for the ages. Unfortunately, Europeans [i]did[/i] come over and royally screw the Seminoles. Also, Andrew Jackson was the son of two Irish immigrants :-/
Irish

RO16

Jayhawks v Cardinals: The cardinals miraculously transform from birds into...... senior ecclesiastical officials, who can only move diagonally. The jayhawks set upon them and tear them to shreds with pitchforks and torches.
Jayhawks

Boilermakers v Fighting Irish: The two sides face off, one dressed in green and well beer-ed, the other armed with blowtorches and clad in heavy leathers. Suddenly, one of the Irishmen realizes: if there are no boilermakers to make distilleries, that means no more beer and whisky. The Irish back off, leaving the Boilermakers in stunned silence.
Boilermakers

RO8

Jayhawks v Boilermakers: The boilermakers approach the bloodied battlefield, looking on in horror at mangled corpses of the religious leaders, Illinois natives, and finally, small dogs. As they soak in the sight of the blood-suffused ground, they realize that their battles so far have included chasing off some peacocks, looking baffledly at some oddly shaped rocks, and having the Irish concede in good spirits and buy them drinks. They aren't remotely prepared for the horror that follows.
Jayhawks[/spoiler]

[b]Southeast[/b]
[spoiler]RO 64

Panthers v Bulldogs: This feels familiar somehow.
Panthers

Bulldogs v Monarchs: They combine to form Winston Churchill and smash through the rest of the tournament! But seriously- too many bulldogs.
Monarchs

Wildcats v Aggies: Wildcats also. Stop it. Also, Aggies would be good at catching wildcats that attack their livestock.
Aggies

Badges v Bruins: As the giant bear corners the hapless omnivore, he hears it start to hum a strangely familiar, repetitive tune. Suddenly, there are badgers and snakes everywhere, biting him from every direction. As he slinks into a venom-and-badger-bite-induced coma, Bruin the bear can't help but notice that the swirling colors remind him of the last time he did shrooms.
Badgers

Cougars v Terriers: Anyone who has lived in the suburban west knows what happens here.
Cougars

Red Storm v Bulldogs: The bulldogs bark a big bark, but run for the safety of an under-bed refuge at the first clap of thunder.
Red Storm

Bruins v Spartans: THIS... IS....a very stale joke.
Spartans

Gauchos v Gators: Fact- you can't put a saddle on an alligator.
Gators

RO32
Panthers v Monarchs: Stripped of his rank and his body guards, the king briefly wishes he had paid more attention in fencing class as the deadly, black panther creeps in for the kill.
Panthers

Aggies v Badgers: This time when the haunting tune starts up, the disgruntled farmer just throws a sack over the badger and tosses it into the river.
Aggies

Red Storm v Cougars: It's hard to see how a large cat could beat a meteorological phenomenon... until the polite and well mannered cougars shed their false mascot and take on their true aspect: the STORMIN' MORMONS. Their bodies billow and thin as they transform into ethereal air elementals that charge at the incoming red thunderheads. What happens next can only be understood after three meteorology degrees, ten years experience as a local weatherman, and quite a few drinks.
Cougars/Stormin' Mormons

Gators v Spartans: "Madness? THIS... IS...well yeah actually it's March Madness. Sorry for shouting at you. No, I'm fine. I'm just pretty embarrassed is all. Yeah, I think I'm gonna go."
Gators

RO16
Panthers v Aggies: Ugh. This is really killing my bracket. I just can't put the Aggies to lose against an animal commonly found and dealt with on a farm.
Aggies

Panthers v Gators: This is probably the first animal fight that would actually be interesting 1v1. In my extensive research for this blog, I found these two awesome videos. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/308780/jaguar_vs_crocodile/ (Attenborough- style violence)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-k2mCytq3Q (NSFBrain cells)
It seems like on land, panthers win, and in water the gators would. Panthers are probably too smart to engage on the gators' terms though, so I've got to give it to the big cats, which sets up...

RO8
Aggies v Panthers II: BYU has already used up it's one deus ex machina to avoid totally screwing my bracket, so by precedent and [i]bloggus decisis[/i], the Aggies are apparently into their first final
four in school history.
[/spoiler]

[b]Final Four[/b]
[spoiler]Aztecs v Tar Heels: The ancient Aztec civilization, brought back from extinction by a time-travelling Wolverine, faces off against the dreaded, the feared, the notorious: residents of the great state of Naaaawwwwwwwth Cackalacky. Both sides agree that coming battle would be far too devastating to carry out [i]in toto[/i], so they negotiate to each send a champion to fight to the death on neutral ground. The Aztecs choose their god of war: Huitzilopochtli. Conceived in a "shameful way," Huitzilopochtli was going to be killed in his mother's womb by his sister Coyolxauhqui. However, he managed to catch wind of this dastardly plot and "sprang from his mother's womb fully grown and fully armed. He then killed his sister Coyolxauhqui and many of his 400 brothers. He tossed his sister's head into the sky, where it became the moon, so that his mother would be comforted in seeing her daughter in the sky every night. He threw his other brothers and sisters into the sky, where they became the stars." This is one bad mother'.
The Cackalackians chose as their champion their favorite son: famous basketball hero and Nike spokesman Micheal Jordon himself. The match will be a best of three sets:one-on-one winners walk hoops; a game of good ol' fashioned Mesoamerican Ballgame; and one round of mortal combat. No, not Mortal Kombat- mortal combat.
The first set, hoops, quickly goes to MJ, as the average height of the Aztecs is around 5'3". Awkward. For the next set, each combatant must choose a teammate, as there is no 1v1 ballgame rule set. Micheal Jordan calls on Bugs Bunny, who owes him a favor from Space Jam. Huitzilopochtli chooses Olmec, from Legends of the Hidden Temple, hoping his bulk will make up for his immobility. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and the MJ/Bugs teams takes the set and match. Huitzilopochtli tears out yet another Wolverine heart as a sacrifice to himself in frustration.

Tar Heels.

Aggies v Jayhawks:
The Aggies like to farm. Farmers used to have slaves. The Jayhawks haven't forgotten. Neither will the lone Aggie survivor.
Jayhawks

Tar Heels v Jay Hawks
In the blue corner we have the soldiers famous for defending their rights to own other humans in the bloodiest war this country has ever experienced. In the darker blue corner we have the Kansans who were brutally killing people who claimed that right, and the war hadn't even started yet. The contestants are staring each other down as the ref steps into the ring. Wait, what's that? After all these gruesome conflicts and earth-shaking battles, after all the violence and terrible blood shed, the abstract concept brought in to referee the last bout is... History herself? The Tar Heels' faces fall as they realized the bitter truth: History is the final judge, and there is no way to bribe or extort her. The Tar Heels coach throws a towel into the ring, accepting the inevitable defeat. The Jayhawks are final victors.
[/spoiler]

Yogurt

Cleaning up my computer, and I found these two stories from the first couple weeks of Hungary, when I didn't have internet.

Two grocery related stories:
Since my default lunch is always sandwiches, I decided to try getting salami at the supermarket on the way back from class. Unfortunately, we have only been taught integers in my language class so far, so I couldn't ask for a half pound. I was surprisingly unsuccessful in miming out a fraction. "Edy" *slash hand through air "ket." Like the idiot at charades I am, I did that maybe five times varying only the angle I which I moronically slashed my hand through the air. I think I tried one more time holding up my fingers as I said the number, but I quickly realized that it wasn't my pronunciation that was the problem. Eventually I just gave up and said "edy" (pronounced kind of like 'edge' but more like 'edj'). She inquired, pretty amusedly, "Egy kilo?" Oh yeah. Kilograms. I responded, crestfallen, "Igen," and received my 2.2 pounds of salami. My bet: she works on commission an intentionally misunderstood me.

I also bought yogurt from the supermarket for breakfast. I opened it up, started eating, and immediately something seemed off. It just... didn't taste right. At all. And the texture was all wrong. I looked at the expiration date. It was well into the future. I checked to make sure my refrigerator was working. It was. I checked the label again. It said "Yogúr" and underneath that "tejföl." I remembered my Spanish teacher telling the story of being "embarrassado" and warning of the danger of false cognates. "But," I thought, "I didn't like greek yogurt the first time I tried it. Now I love it." I bet this is just Hungarian, or more likely Turkish, style yogurt. Yeah, I bet 'tejföl' is just Hungarian for 'Turkish style." This whole time I'm sure I had a Hungarian dictionary within reach, since everything is within reach in this apartment. But, with flawless logic, I plowed on forcing myself to be open to new styles of yogurt.
Today we learned food words in Hungarian class. I turns out that the "Turkish style" yogurt I ate was just sour cream. I ate about a half-pint of pure sour cream. I feel kind of sick just thinking about it. Yogúr is actually a Hungarian dairy company (thus the capitalization), and 'tejföl' just means sour cream. I think having read so much Sherlock Holmes in so little time has really made me think I'm a lot more clever than I actually am.


I have not been able to eat yogurt since that day.

Surreal

Probably the strangest exchange I've heard on the metro, between Farragut West and Foggy Bottom:

Dorky-looking guy "That's a nice crucifux"
Grizzled guy "Uh thanks."
DlG "What does it mean to you?"
GG "What?"
DlG "What does the crucifix mean to you?"
GG "It's just my chain, man, you know what I mean?"
DlG "Ah."
GG "Just my chain."
silence
DlG "I once met a Satanist. He was a pedophile too."
GG "Shit got real?"
DlG "I couldn't kill him and I couldn't put him in jail."
GG muffled
silence
DlG "Here. This is for you." Pulls something out of his pocket. Looks like a medallion of some sort.
GG "Uh thanks."
DlG "You better ask me what it is before you leave or you're never going to find out."
silence
DlG "Well it's the medal of St B...."

At that point the the conductor announced the stop, and the brakes prevented me from hearing the rest. If it were a movie, I know it would have been a super important clue, and I really felt uneasy at not having heard the end. So if anyone happens to have come across the patron saint of creepy metro wierdos and pedophile bashing, let me know. I'm pretty sure it was a 'B' but I could be wrong.

Update:
In the little bit of research I have done about 'B' saints, I have found that Saint Benedict is the patron saint of all of the following (ripped from Wikipedia, of course):

-Against poison
-Against witchcraft
-Agricultural workers
-Cavers
-Civil engineers
-Coppersmiths
-Dying people
-Erysipelas
-Europe
-Farmers
-Fever
-Gall stones
-Heerdt (Germany)
-Inflammatory diseases
-Italian architects
-Kidney disease
-Monks
-Nettle rash
-Norcia (Italy)
-People in religious orders
-Schoolchildren
-Servants who have broken their master's belongings
-Speliologists
-Spelunkers
-Temptations

Pretty awesome dude. Also, there are two patron saints of beekeeping.

Update 2:
I posted a version of this conversation on Reddit, which informed me that it was likely the Medal of Saint Benedict!

Tutoring

Modified e-mail that I sent the inestimable Christopher Micheal Young, with some parts removed to protect me from Google.

I've been tutoring to make some money while I look for more permanent employment.
Anyway, sometimes you have to tutor kids for really weird stuff. A couple weeks ago I had to tutor a six-year Chinese boy for his kindergarten entrance exam to some top notch elementary school. I ask him if he has any pets, and he responds that he has a fish. I tell him how boring that is and ask if he wants a cooler pet, like a snake or a tiger. He says no, he is quite happy with his goldfish. So I ask him "If you could have any animal ever, like a dinosaur or a dragon or a unicorn, what animal would you have." His response: "Maybe a bigger fish." It's going to be a long session

Since this is his first time at [redacted] I decide to just give him a varied run of subjects to see if there is anything he might struggle with. I hunt down some interdisciplinary packet "My Neighborhood" that seems long enough that I could ignore him for a while. When I tell him that he'll even get to draw a picture for me, he literally scowls and says that he won't. A six-year-old not wanting to color? That's effed up. So of course he aces all of the grammar and destroys the math and reads 80 grades above his reading level, but then he comes to a part in a worksheet where he is asked to come up with four words to describe his neighborhood. He looks up at me kind of lost and says that he doesn't understand. I tell him to write down any words that describe his neighborhood at all and turn my attention to some poor kid whose mother thinks that a 790 verbal is a disgrace to the family.

I come back about ten minutes later, and the poor kid has obviously written about twenty different word in the first blank and erased them. When I try to make out what they were, he suspiciously shields his paper from my eyes and tells me that he "doesn't have the answer yet". I try to convince him that there isn't really an answer, and that I haven't ever seen his neighborhood so he could just lie to me if he is having trouble, but he very firmly tells me no, he's going to get it. When I come back in another ten minutes, he has finally written something. And in twenty minutes, the only word at all that he managed to come up with that describes his neighborhood is "trees." Instead of telling him that I was really looking for an adjective, I decide not to overheat his poor brain and tell him to draw me a picture of his neighborhood. He tells me that he doesn't know what it looks like. Hmmm. Maybe, I think, maybe he is better at verbal communication than written or visual, so I flat out order him to tell me about his neighborhood. He says "It's boring." I ask him to be more specific. He says "It's just boring." Frustrated that I can't inquire if he has ever even been outdoors in his entire goddamn life, I say "Look. I don't care about your neighborhood. Just draw me any neighborhood. The best neighborhood. Draw me the place that you would like to live," and turn away again.

I come back to a long, orange rectangle protruding from an otherwise barren green horizon. I ask him what that is. He responds that it is a house. I ask him what is special about it, since this is presumably the best place in the world to live, and he proudly proclaims that it is "made of food." I figured that was a start, so I didn't ask him to explain what food had such amazing structural integrity, and by the time he left he had added a second, identical-except-in-color house that was "made of video games."

When I met with my boss, and she asked how it went, I told her that he was probably pretty far ahead of his peers in terms of the standard benchmarks, but that his creativity is startlingly undeveloped. I theorized that he would probably excel for a while in school until he was challenged to have and express his own, original, creative thoughts, at which point there was a good chance that he would fall short. He also, I told my boss, has already developed quite an ego, that he might end up isolated from his classmates, especially if the parents decided to try to bump him up a few grades. My boss nodded silently at all of this, and after I had finished expressing my concerns only added "Typical Chinese boy" and left it that.

Also, I was mercilessly mocked by a couple of Asian women who thought it was absolutely hilarious that I could possibly think that a red belt is a higher rank than a blue belt in martial arts. It's not.

An Open Letter to Microsoft

To Whom it may Concern,

Wow, so Microsoft finally got into the direct-to-PC gaming market. Congrats. I'm sure you are going to make a killing with all 18 games you have available. You launch right before the Christmas season, when thousands of kids will be getting games from their parents, and that's your library: eighteen games, half of which are casual and/or have been out for a year, and all of which you can get on Steam. Great business plan.

And it was really smart of you to sell all of your games at full price right off the bat, especially for the holidays. That's really going to encourage people to switch over to an unproven platform. I'm sure I have many reasons to buy the original Fallout 3 for $50 from you and then all the add-ons for another $30 when I can get the whole thing on Steam for $37.49, I just can't think of them yet.

Although I guess it's good that you only have eighteen games considering that you can't even search the library. You guys seriously launch an entire search engine, and you can't even include a search feature on your games browser. That's lovely. And then even as you so completely fail to provide any reason to use your client, you leave no way for people to suggest features or improvements. There is no e-mail support on the WindowsLive page, and Games for Windows is not listed under any of your support options. I had to Google "Windows Live Support" to even get a Microsoft address that even looks remotely helpful, and it's an invitation-only affair.

Good luck with this half-hearted venture, but I doubt you will make any money if this is your business plan.

-Reece

A lot of people will be surprised when I can't do some base calculations quickly in my head, and then will be equally surprised when I can do others almost instantly. The fact is that lots of mathy people aren't that much more skilled at... errr... numbers, than most, but rather are just more familiar with them. I know you're never supposed to reveal your tricks, but this is just a bit of insight into how certain problems have quick shortcuts.

Example:

15*39. On the surface this looks like any old two digit multiplication. But to a math major who is used to factoring and such, it instantly becomes 15*(40-1) = 4*15 *10 - 15 = 600 - 15 = 585. Each step is very simple and can be done very fast, but you don't necessarily see the shortcut if you don't work with expressions often.

Example:

16 * 48. Again, this becomes 16 * 16 *3, and any math major worth his salt knows his squares up to 25, just because he's done them so often. So 16 *16 * 3 = 256 * 2 = (250 +6) * 3 = 750 +18 = 768. Again, just three instantaneous steps, if you see them.

Counterexample:

32 * 37. This I would probably just do longform in my head, which I am bad at. No immediately obvious trick (to me at least) so I do the normal three multiplications and one addition.

Example:

Is x<100 prime? Well, I figured out a while ago that you only have to look for factors less than the root of x, so less than 10. This is because if z divides 100, and z is greater than 10, then z*10>100, so z's factor pair (that is, 100/z) must be less than 10. So to find z, you just have to find its pair.

Further, even x's are obvious not prime, and odd numbers are only even the product of two odds, so you only have to look for odd numbers under 10: 3,5,7,9. On top of that, the numbers divisible by 5 and 9 are immediately obvious. So all we have left is to check if a number is divisible by 3 or 7. Well. a number is divisible by 3 if and only if the sum of the digits is, so that is a quick test. That leaves as the only real test divisibility by 7. Thus the question, 'is 83 prime,' can be answered just by noticing that 8 is not divisible by 3, and 83 is 13 more than 70. So pretty much this entire paragraph is already coded into my thought process, which is why the answer will come pretty quickly. The same holds true for most numbers less than 200, you just have to test for 11 and 13 also, and beware of the dreaded 119, which should totally be prime.

http://www.ushmm.org/

Notice any language missing?