100th POST W000000000000T

Huzzah. This is the 100th post on this blog, just before its 1st birthday which is a week away. I would like to thank the Academy and all of my loyal reader(s) who made this possible.

Anyhow, I need to update on a bunch of stuff, including my trip to NYC. First, I will recount a few of the events from my trip to ND on Saturday...

MIA, D Fo, Brian, and I went down for the MSU game. We met up with P Knob and Grabbins. I got fairly drunk and belligerent. We started talking noise to some MSU fans on our way to the stadium. One lanky, strange-looking kid, rebutted by saying his team is going to win and we should meet up after the game so he could prove that he was right. I came back saying that we should go to i-hop and get some pancakes. It would be a fun outing. He had no response.

Notre Dame fans are waaaaay too nice to opposing fans. This dynamic really hurts ND's home field advantage. I proposed that all we need to do is stab one fan of the opposing team. That one small act would go a long way of creating a hostile atmosphere. I wanted to take a MSU fan out in to the woods, tie him to a tree, and stab him in the leg. On a similar note, during my drunken rampage directed toward MSU fans I claimed that we were gonna start "sacrificing people to Jesus." I'm normally not this rowdy. I'm not sure what got into me. Oh, yeah, I know -- SPARKS.

Notre Dame fans were pathetic during the game. People were sitting on their hands. I've decided Notre Dame is not a good football school. A good football school has fans that cheer loudly for their team no matter what. In the 3rd quarter when we were down 3 and obviously still in the game we held an MSU play to only a yard. I swear to God MIA and I were the only ones clapping in our section. I was nauseated. The fans are just. plain. lame. Part of it is that half the people are really really old. I will be a huge ND fan and represent for eternity, but Notre Dame, despite the history and whatever, is just not a good football school. We might win a NC in the next few years and 100 years from now might have 20 more NCs and an insane winning percentage, but until these fucking lameass fans get off their hands and start giving a shit about ND, ND wont be in the top 15 "football schools" in my mind. It hurts me to say it and it infuriates me how piss-poor the fans are. The students, to their credit, were very good.

Go Irish.

Catch-up, yet again

I've been really poor lately regarding updating this piece and I apologize to my 2 readers out there, whom I so affectionately refer to as the Blogation Station Nation.

I have a hard time remembering what exactly I missed (hence why I write this damn thing) but I remember a few points:

• My parents came to visit. Events include:
• They met B. It was exactly like Meet the Parents. Word-for-word. Event-for-event.
• We went out with D Fo's (extended) fam and MIA to a Greek restaurant. It was pretty intense with a lot of food and a couple "old world" people, if you know what I mean.
• I played beer pong with my Dad. He wasn't very good.

• D Fo and I went to Milwaukee to meet with S Dot
• We met with some of S Dot's pseudofriends. They. Were. Wastes. (For the record, S Dot realizes this.) They were the type of girls who are blonde, semi-tan, plain to borderline attractive, wearing tube-tops, and think that the previous qualities make them highly desirable despite their utterly vapid personalities. We walked around to a few bars in Trillwaukee while I made a futile effort to make casual conversation with these biddies. I gave up in short order. The night was fun and memorable regardless. The one main highlight is that I carried 7 solo cups of beer to everyone out on this deck-like thing. It was a glorious display of drunken dexterity and balance.
  
• There are no cabs in Milwaukee. None. There are also no people in Milwaukee. There is all this infrastructure, but no cars or people. I felt like I was in Stephen King's Langoliers.
  
• Milwaukee is far more diverse than Chicago. Perhaps "integrated" is a better word. Sometimes I think the Chi was carved out of the Brown v the Board of Education ruling.
• We went to a thang called Summerfest which is this huge concert thing which is not unlike Barnum and Bailey's Three Ringed Circus, except there are 12 rings and bands are playing in all of them. We didn't get all that involved in the music, but we instead focused on the activities which we do best. And that is a.) drink beer and b.) make fun of people. There was more than enough proletariat fodder to provide for an amusing night.

• I met B's Mom. It was exactly like Meet the Parents II.

I still have to write about my NYC trip and maybe about this past weekend. I'll leave that to another day.

Free Money

Warning: Possible football and gambling content to follow. Reader be advised.

During football season I declare "Free Money" games. A Free Money game is a football game where I declare a certain bet a 100% lock. You may laugh, but last season (the inaugural season of Free Money Declarations) I was 7/7. The chances of that being pure luck are (0.5)^7 = 0.78%. I will admit some of it was luck as there were a couple comebacks to cover. The key is to pick your spots and pick them early in the season when teams are mispriced over limited data.

Anyhow, Saturday is Free Money Saturday. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish versus the Penn State Felines of an Esoteric Sort game is free money. Take Notre Dame and give the points -- 17.5 to be exact -- and enjoy doubling your scratch. I know I will.

I won't get into details about why I think, nay, know this is free money but I will offer a snippet of an AIM conversation I'm having right now:

WeTalllDid: at the very absolute least we will cover
WeTalllDid: we aint bustas

For the record, I'm not an uber-homer when I lay down bets. I'm not proud of it, but I actually bet against ND back in 2003 against NC State because it was painfully obvious we were overrated. I'm not proud of that wager and I wouldn't do it again. It's just that I wasn't as huge of an ND fan as I am today and I needed the money really bad so it was hard to pass up.

PS the money line is a ridiculous 7:1

We aint bustas.