Roll Damn Tide

All I've got to say about the Arkansas game: whew.

Interesting statistic: Tuscaloosa's population as of 2006 is a little over 83,000 people, making it the 5th largest city in Alabama. Bryant-Denny Stadium holds 92,000 people, making Tuscaloosa, on game-day, the fourth largest city in Alabama.

Roll Tide.

What kind of bees give milk?

Boo-bies!

Okay, really. This is supposed to be a news story? I clicked on it not because I'm not above a second glance at a good set of life-sustaining mammary glands; rather, I clicked on "Exercise unleashes a bounce bras can't handle" because I figured that this had to be some kind of stealth ad for jog-bras.

No, it's real. Someone in England apparently found it absolutely stunning that during exercise, every woman's mammalian protuberances will--get this--bounce. They even went so far as to hook up biometric devices to measure the amount and pattern.

And just in case you fear to click the above link for fear of juggling jubblies on your work screen, allow me to quote the caption, "Study scientist Joanna Scurr records measurements as a participant runs on a treadmill. Eight sensors on her body revealed her breasts moved in a figure-8 pattern." (Credit: University of Portsmouth. Emphasis mine.)

MSNBC, you suck.

Dear Anonymous,

Please tell Miss MD that I wish her the best. This truly is a very small world. Oddly enough, if you talk to a law librarian named Anne at your distinguished university, she and her husband are dear friends of mine.

I hope I have been sufficiently vague.
-A. Bosch

Belated Book Review

I picked this up at a friend named Lance's suggestion, looking for something new now that I've read almost everything Dashiell Hammett has written. Yes, I realize this has been out since 2001, but I read "Neverwhere" a while back, and I was really disappointed.

Not so with this one.

Damn, this one's good. Not sure if I'm going to sit through "Anansi Boys," but this one has really got me going through the old college library. In fact, I think I'm going to go pick up a copy of "Hero with a Thousand Faces" post haste. This book had me pulling out Hamilton's "Mythology" and the encyclopedic set of "Man, Myth, and Magic," and I'm not entirely sure I kept up with all of the references.

Let me put it this way: I've been making obscure references to Norse mythos for the last three days now. In fact, I really geeked out when a young girl on exchange from Germany named Freya enrolled in one of my classes. Sure, it's not as cool as the year I had an Ulisses, a Nestor, and a Molly all in one class, but how often does one have the fairest of the Vanir attending one's every word?

Anyway, I'm moving on to the new William Gibson novel. Here's hoping it's not another "Pattern Recognition."

One-Liners Overheard While Hunting

• You can't drink all day unless you start in the morning.
  
• Boy, he was madder than a captured Jap. (Dont' remember the context, just thought it was a really funny phrase.)
  
• How do you put the magazine restrictor in this thing? (Uttered to a game warden while holding an over-and-under shotgun.)
• If the birds were always there and easy to hit, it wouldn't be hunting; it would be shopping.
• Wait--is the limit 12 or 15? (Asked by a fellow with 19 doves.)
• If you buy your girlfriend a license and bring her with you, your limit is 24.
• This is my wife. She's a retriever AND a bird cleaner, all in one.
• When a little girl shows up with her daddy, and she's got a .410 of her own that she's actually using to shoot birds, she's going to limit out before anyone else in the field.
• I've got three boxes of shells. If I can't get 12 birds in 75 shots, I've got other problems than low ammunition.
• It's not beer. It's aiming fluid.
• If you miss the first two shots, the third shot is just anger.
  

Death to Doves

Opening Day of Dove Season was better to me this year than it has been the last couple of years combined. We went to a VERY good outfitter near Hico, Texas called "Flying P Outdoors." These folks are, hands down, the nicest people I've met in Texas.

I did not limit out (the doves are still scarce for some reason), but I bagged two and lost one on the morning of the first, and I discovered the limits of my shotgun's range and my skill in the afternoon. (That's not entirely true: Dad and I both shot at the same bird at nearly the same time, and it went down; we counted it as an assist.)

Day Two: the morning hunt sucked. We were near some yahoos who could not tell the difference between scissor-tails, cattle birds, crows, hawks or doves, and who took pot-shots at everything that flew, dragonflies included. At least one of them had taken the restrictor out of his magazine, and was firing his semi-auto as fast as he could pull the trigger. I did not even fire my shotgun Sunday morning. The afternoon hunt, however, was fantastic.

That afternoon, after yet another great meal at the Flying P, the Senior Attorney and I adjourned to the Sporting Clays range. Great fun there slaying orange clay pidgeons. There was a fellow there named Jimmy Galindo from Houston who is an outfitter for duck hunts and a certified master instructor (I have the title wrong, but you get the idea), and he was offering pointers to the guests. I used his advice that afternoon and bagged six before the rain came. Galindo has a web-site, but I can't find it at the moment. Every time I look up permutations of his name and "Fowl Mouthed Hunter," I keep getting references to a judge in Houston. Anyway, he was a good fellow and an excellent shot to boot. Ironically, I think I learned more about coaching and instructing from him in an hour than I've learned from a degree's worth of professors, but then sometimes I deconstruct things a little too much. Suffice it to say that his style of instruction was impressive.

Anyway, to my Heathen brother I say this: you've got to come with us next year. We fully intend to go with Flying P again.

This Year's Schedule

I've been busy--very busy--these past few weeks. Here is my class schedule:

Zero Hour: AP Art History (before school, 7:50-8:40)
1st Period: AP English Language and Composition
2nd Period: Campus Instruction and Leadership Planning (CILT) Committee
3rd Period: AP English Language and Composition
4th Period: Planning
5th Period: AP English Language and Composition
6th Period: AP English Language and Composition
7th Period: AP English Language and Composition

I'm having to re-learn all of the art history. This is okay because I really like it, but I don't think I've prepared this much for a class ever, even my first year of teaching. Fortunately, the former art history teacher is kind enough to give me her lesson plans, and she has even gone so far as to extend an open invite to call her and clarify the slides. I fear that I may become annoying to her very soon.

CILT Committee means that every day I am pretty much on call 2nd period to do "department-chair-type stuff." Please read that last bit with your best Pee Wee Herman impression.

So, to you, kind anonymous contributor, that is why I have not posted in a while. I've been doing my best imitation of a one-legged cat trying to bury a turd on a hot tin roof. That having been said, please see the next post....