A Long Weekend in Reverse

“Elbammalf os erew sayapap that wenk ohw, wow,” flesym ot thguoht I, ria eht otni rehgih dna rehgih pael semalf eht dehctaw dna kcab tas I sa.


Psyche!!! I’m not going to write this whole thing backwards like you thought I was. That would take way too long and be way too annoying. So, instead, I’ll just write about a few things from this past weekend, which unfortunately did not involve any exploding tropical fruit.

First things first, that was just too much basketball this weekend. I can’t believe I ate three of them! The first one was nice and springy, with a flaky orange crust. The second one was a little over-done, but still good. I was already feeling a little iffy when I decided to go ahead with the third one. It was big mistake. First, I think it was raw. Second, I was already full. And third, and most importantly, it tasted terrible. Like a turd covered in burnt hair, wrapped in rice and seaweed and dipped in soy sauce with just a dab of wasabi. So, in other words, like week-old dumpster sushi. I ate the whole thing though. Finished it off last night at about 8:30. Upsets? More like upset stomach. Ugh.

On a related note, the Big 10 apparently sucks. Hard.

Okay, I give up. I really didn’t do anything this weekend other than watch basketball, so the rest of this post will be somewhat about basketball unless I feel like writing about something else. You’ve been warned.

Did you know that George Mason made the Sweet 16©®™? Did you know that George Mason is a real college? Yeah, it surprised me too. I always thought it was just the name of a metro stop, not an actual true thing! Did you further know that the original George Mason lived approximately 300 years ago and was the founder of the International Brotherhood of Masons? It’s true*. Of course, the Masons don’t do much these days. I think mostly they hang out in secret meetings and talk about what a good job they did with the Washington Monument and point out all the cool secret society symbology they have in their logo and pat each other on the back.

My good ol’ Huskies won this weekend. They beat good ol’ Illinois. It was a great game, but at the end, when they won, I think that the brickwife and I kind of scared the brickson with our shouting and cheering. He felt better when we involved him in the high fives though. That little dude loves the high fives.

But let’s think about this game. I talked to two people on the phone that evening who congratulated me on the victory. Me, the guy who graduated almost 4 years ago and only played organized basketball for one season in the seventh grade and didn’t score a single point the whole season and who, when he had one shining moment to score with a drive from the top of the key, proceeded to double dribble. So what exactly did I contribute to this team that makes me think it’s acceptable for me to accept congratulations on their behalf? Do I know the players? No. However, I do still refer to them as “We.” As in, “wow, we really pulled off a close one last night, didn’t we.” I’m not sure if this is an acceptable use of the word “we” which actually comes from the ancient Sanskrit** “Wuh” signifying the first person singular, and “Hhea” which means “some people that I know.” Based on its roots, I really don’t think I should be using “we” in this manner. Oh well. Some friends of mine from church tried to rationalize this idea of me having some connection with team by saying that I supported them financially and blah blah blah. But I don’t think it really pans out. Let’s look at the numbers here. First, I’ve purchased maybe $125 worth of UW apparel in my life. That’s not enough to consider it “supporting the team.” Besides, I bought that stuff to represent the football team back when they used to be good. I never went to one basketball game in my four years there. Now, what about the tuition that I paid? As an in-stater I paid, at the end of my four years, only $1327 per quarter. That works out to about $100 per credit. Now, when you realize that my average class size was only about 25, that means that the professors were only getting $2500 per quarter in tuition, or about $800 per month. You can’t live on $800 a month, so there’s actually a good chance that sports revenue was going to support my professors. You could even say that the football and basketball teams were supporting me, not the other way around. And speaking of tuition, that is a freaking cheap education! My records at UW only go back to winter of 2000, and that quarter I only paid $1213. So, for argument’s sake, let’s say I paid an average of $1275 per quarter for 12 quarters. That’s a total of $15,300 in tuition. Add in books at $1000 per year and you have $19,300 for four years of school. That is freaking cheap! I made all that back and more in the first 6 months of working! I guess that’s one of the benefits of getting a practical degree, not some floopy, meaningless degree in, well, let’s just say One Of The Liberal Arts. That way, if any of you have degrees in The Liberal Arts you can just assume that I’m not talking about you. And honestly people, you know going into it that those kinds of degrees do not lead to lucrative jobs and you still take out thousands and thousands of dollars of loans. Don’t come crying to me when you have to pay them back. Unless you’re a teacher. Teachers are required to get a lot of education and aren’t paid nearly enough. Teachers, you can come crying to me.

Wait a minute! I’m not writing about education, I’m writing about basketball, and we all know that no two things are more anathema to each other in college than education and basketball. Except for maybe education and baseball.

Anyway, one more basketball note. The Huskies are playing here this weekend! That’s right, UW will be playing UConn just down the street from my office at the MCI Center. Of course tickets are ridiculously expensive and are all being snapped up by GMU fans (please, GMU fans, cheer for my Huskies to beat the Huskies!), so I won’t be going, but I will watch them on TV! It will be a real clash of the titans, a mesmerizing display of roundball talent. UW will avenge its heartbreaking loss of ’98. If you don’t remember what happened, UW was leading 73-72 with seconds to play when, just before UConn came out for one last shot at the win, one of their players turned into a werewolf with ridiculously good basketball skills and made a full-court dunk as time expired. Wait, maybe that was Teen Wolf. Yes, yes it was. What actually happened was that U Conn missed their first attempt but made the put back when the actual U Conn Husky ran out onto the court and bit a UW player in the face preventing him from grabbing the rebound. No foul was called.



*May or may not be true.
**An Indo-European Classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism