Jason's Untimely Thoughts

If you haven’t noticed yet, and judging by the empty seats many haven’t, basketball season is fun again. Defensive effort, all around hustle, and an alley-oop per game have made MU an exciting team to watch. Currently 5-0 on the season, come get it while it’s hot.

On football, the losses have sucked. Over-reactionary fanaticism now rules the day. Get over it. We had the ISU game won, no matter how bad we played, but were nailed by a now admitted bad call. Some will say it doesn’t matter, the Tigers should never have been in that position to begin with. They’re right, except it does matter. The Tigers made plays to win the game. It’s the final home game of the year, against the shoebirds, and Senior Day. Come to the game and cheer for the Tigers.

Below is a link to Dave Matter’s Columbia Tribune football blog with quotes regarding the jacked-up holding call.

Behind The Stripes

missouritigers.com

MissouriTigers.com is funny again occasionally.

One of the many reasons I opposed the bastards at SMS stealing the Missouri State name is that I believe that leads down a road that ultimately harms higher education for Missourians. By giving ‘equal names’, they’ve created two allegedly equal universities in the eyes of most citizens, and more importantly most legislators, when by all reasonable standards MU is the premier (public) education institution in the state.

To quote a high-ranking MU official, “You invest in us and it will pay. If you lump us in with those who are not our peers, water down our identity and obscure our reputation, everyone loses.”

Here’s a commencement address to Texas A&M students by Robert Berdahl, Chancellor of UC-Berkely and former President of UT-Austin dealing with the issue of poor state planning and the potential result for flagship universities.

Some folks are probably wondering why Sarah hasn’t had photos from the last two games. No worries, no problems. Had a friend visiting from out of town for the first time in 7+ years, so planned on missing Friday’s game. Last minute chatting, decided to miss Saturday as well.
I’m typing this while watching the UT/K-State football game. I wonder why I don’t yet have a job as a sports commentator. These guys are awful and ill-informed.

While a 14-0 record is sadly no longer possible, 13-1 is still very much in reach. Win # 8 comes when our beloved Tigers take on the original cheaters, the Sooners from Oklahoma University, this Saturday, at 11:10 a.m. with the game broadcast on ABC. While not as bad as the mythical shoe-wearing birds, who chose to honor lawless, honorless vagabonds with their nickname, the OU wisehats presumably gave considerable thought to their choice to honor land thieves.

It’ll be a wild and crazy day Saturday, complete with a wedding, a wedding reception, a football game, a tailgate party, and a victory celebration in some order and in various order of importance. Friends from Mizzou days, Tom and Stephanie, are flying to Missouri this weekend, to get married on campus Saturday morning. Tailgate will serve as the reception, then, with festivities to begin at 9:30 a.m.

All normal tailgating activity and crowd are expected and encouraged. By “all normal tailgating” activity, of course, I mean standing around, making fun of people, drinking various items, watching the US Cellular plane drone around, and talking about how the Sooners have no chance. Lots of food (from Hoss’ Market) and beverages, due to the wedding reception aspect of things.

I’m currently at an imaging conference in California… Day one of the conference focused on how much cell phone cameras suck. It’s that sort of insight you just can’t get from home. The plus column includes the fact that my hotel room directly overlooks the Pacific, with waves crashing just underneath the room (literally, hotel is on stilts). For some odd reason, though, the seals barking outside at night tend to remind me of the beakers. can’t figure out if it’s their cheerleaders or their coach. on a side note, screw ku.

Tigers 34, OU 16,

Jason

Sarah and I went to College Station last week for the Tigers’ game against the Fighting Texas Fighting Aggie A&M marching band Aggie university Aggies. Despite being warned, I was feeling poorly Friday night and had a drink of water in College Station. I’m convinced that’s how the cult starts to suck you in, as I’ve been unable to get their damn fight song out of my head since. Overall, our experience at A&M provided a ridiculous amount of material for making fun (whoop!), but I’ll mostly decline since they were generally polite and beat us.

The Tigers are back in town this week for a contest against the Wildcats from k#~$#$ State University. Kickoff is at 1:00 p.m. with tailgating scheduled to begin by 10:30. Since it’s raining, it must be Homecoming week, with those festivities going on all weekend. Bryan Ninichuck, of Wingate Pest Control fame, is taking care of the food this game with Buckingham’s bringing the fare. Call Wingate for all your pest control needs.

You couldn’t possibly find a better contrast between going on and not-going on in football tradition than comparing A&M to K-State. A&M has songs relating back to their days as TAMC and the afore-mentioned fight song which was written in a World War I bunker. K-State, in their illustrious 10+ seasons of success, have managed to string together the letters K-S-U in a cheer, led by their dope of a mascot who just wears a head. Our ridiculous too-long jinx against the purple kitties and their purple camoflauge wearing fans will end this year, in a big way.

Hope to see you & yours at the tailgate or soon otherwise. If you’re at the game and see a helicopter flying around near the opening kickoff, smile and wave at Sarah as she’ll be in there taking photos. On a side note, screw ku.

KU, after recently receiving positive press for being home of a “a “near absence” of innovative research” with “an ‘alarmingly low number‘ of publications, and lack of teamwork,” received more good news today when the NCAA released their report on KU’s cheating.

KU was found guilty of academic fraud in the football program, providing improper benefits to basketball players, both “major violations”. Total (lack of) effort resulted in beakers being cited for Lack of Institutional Control and entire shoebirdville placed on probation until October 2009.

Probably the best tidbit was the KU compliance offer stating she was told by the Athletic Director that “compliance doesn’t sell tickets.”

More detail and other highlights:

• Booster gives more than $5,000 in benefits to two basketball players and their families.
• Former head coach liar Roy Williams telling boosters it was OK to give money to graduated players, saying he asked compliance officials, but strangely not remembering who he talked to and none of them remembering that he asked them.
• Football graduate assistant coach providing test answers to two recruits.

Penalties (partial list):

• Three years probation for athletic department
• Loss of three initial scholarships in football for each of the next two years.
• Accepting KU’s self-imposed sanctions on women’s basketball, while taking time to point out the preposterousness of those sanctions when compared to what the beakers self-imposed on men’s basketball.
• Loss of one scholarship in men’s basketball for each of the next two years. Also reduce the number of official recruiting visits.

For any KU fans who have given MU fans crap over the past few years, say you’re sorry, admit your cheating was exponentially worse than anything we were ever even accused of, and move on.

On a side note, screw ku.

Sarah & I are headed to College Station, Texas, later in the week to watch the Tigers take on Texas A&M. Can’t wait, both to see their craziness and then to see their craziness dejected as Mizzou improves to 7-0 on the season. Before that, though, thank you Aggies for beating the shoebirds.

Fantastic game on Saturday as MU beat Texas Tech 38-21. As a fan, hard to imagine a better game to watch for pure excitement. Fun, fun, fun, and congrats to the Tigers.

Prior to the game, Tech coach Mike Leach had the following to say about the Tigers (as quoted in numerous papers):
“The hard thing to tell about Missouri, I don’t totally identify with anybody they’ve played,” Tech coach Mike Leach said early in the week. “I don’t know much about the teams they’ve played. Missouri’s obviously done a good job against all of them. Just trying to figure out how good they really are, it’s hard to tell. But they look like a real good team in all the games I’ve watched.”

Thank you Tigers for solving Leach’s identity crisis. He now has five (and counting) other souls from this season that he can commiserate with.

On a side note, screw ku.

Random Thoughts on a hot October Monday afternoon…

• 94 degrees on October 2!!! Crazy.
• I went to the Rams/Lions game yesterday. First NFL game I’ve been to in 7-8 years. It’s amazing how fast those guys are. Also amazing how much less interested in the game I am when I absolutely couldn’t care less who wins.
• Cardinals fans (of which I’m one) are supposedly the best fans in baseball. When the team is playing poorly, though, those best fans sound an awful lot like the bad fans the rest of the country has.
• Tigers are 5-0 with games at Texas Tech and Texas A&M before returning to Faurot Field. First time MU is 5-0 since 1981. The downside of all this is lost produtivity all over mid-Missouri. The weeks are unbelievably long between games now. I’m ready to go to the next game by Tuesday.
• Speaking of going to the next game, if anyone has an extra seat to Texas Tech, preferably on something that flies, I’d be happy to accompany you.
• A friend was telling a story at the last tailgate about doing military training years ago with Canada’s Princess Alexandra Light Infantry (or something very similar)… I’m no military expert, but I’d suggest renaming that group.
• By “the last tailgate” above, I didn’t mean to imply that there were no more tailgates. “Most recent” would have been a better choice of words. Thankfully, though, it was the last tailgate of the year with my co-workers.
• KU got beat by Nebraska. Hooray for them. If only Nebraska could have lost also.

On my last SEMB update, I mentioned that things were going well with the Sandostatin shots and there really wasn’t much to report. One of those things have changed, and in a good way!

Sarah went for another round of bloodwork and CT scan on Tuesday of this week. While waiting to visit with the oncologist afterward (while he was likely reviewing the just completed scans), Sarah looked at me and said “Wouldn’t it be great if he came in and said they were gone?!” Not quite that good, but the absolute first words out of his mouth were “They are shrinking.” After a few seconds of nervous laughter and not idle thoughts of felonious harm should he be kidding, we were assured he wasn’t kidding and were of course overjoyed.

He indicated the full radiology report would be coming soon. He couldn’t put words in their mouths but wouldn’t be surprised to see words like “suprising”, “astonishing”, etc., in relation to the differences from a few months ago. The official report arrived today which said, among other things (revised below to my layman’s understanding):

• Of the multiple masses that had appeared in Sarah’s liver on the first CT scan, only one was now visible. It is approximately 9mm and “has decreased in size from the previous exam”.
• Mass near adrenal gland has decreased in size from 3 x 2.2 cm to 2.7 x 1.4 cm.

It’s almost certain that there are still other spots on her liver, but they’ve been reduced to the point that they’re no longer visible on the scan. All along we’ve heard/read reports that the Sandostatin has shown to halt/decrease tumor size, but there’s simply not enough medical evidence to ‘prove’ that it can. We’re extremely happy that Sarah can add to the proof.

As I type, Sarah is headed to Portland, Oregon, to attend a carcinoid patient/physician conference over the weekend. There was some debate about whether she wanted to skip that event in order to stay in town and photograph the MU-Colorado game this weekend. The conference won, but we did postpone the next CT scan for a week when they originally suggested Jan 3 as the date. Sarah correctly pointed out that we’ll likely be traveling to/from a bowl game that day, so wouldn’t want to have to reschedule.

I also feel the need to report that my faith has been shaken. We recently found out a new acquaintance of ours is a KU grad. We really like both her and her husband, but are struggling with how to proceed. This now makes three female friends who attended the land of shoe-wearing birds, so the continuation of a trend. On a side note, screw ku.