Friends, Degenerates, and Countrymen, lend me your ears!

/No, Mr. Van Gogh, I didn't mean that literally.

Anyway, while Vincent is sewing his ear back on, allow me to explain. Each Saturday during the football season, we seem to have an official EDSBS meetup thread.

This Saturday, Ireland celebrates a feast day to their patron saint. In all places but Dublin, this day a solemn, religious, affair.

But we are not in Ireland. We are in America. And because America appropriates things in oddball ways, we will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day by punishing our livers in a manner reminiscent of how Cromwell punished the Irish for continuing to obey the Bishop of Rome. Therefore, I have created this thread, so all of us degenerates and drinkers can post our plans and locations. Perhaps some of us in the same city will meet up. Perhaps we will warn each other away from shitty/expensive bars. Or perhaps we will tell the Aggie members of the commentariat to visit dangerous places in hopes that they are knocked unconscious and their organs are harvested. To each his own.

For starters, I will begin the day at Temple Bar, 3001 N. Ashland, Chicago. The bar is showing all the six nations rugby games that day, concluding with the Ireland-England tilt at approximately 12:00. After that, it's off to my friend's party (where I have stockpiled New Glarus products), and then on to whatever bars the majority wishes to visit, as long as my mode of dress will not get me tossed out.

Put your awesome St. Patrick's Day plans below.

After the revelations that Will Muschamp buttdialed his way into some minor NCAA recruiting violations, you knew it was only a matter of moments before Mushchamp’s Butt joined Jolie’s Leg in tweeting their true thoughts to the world. Which, of course, begs the question, what SEC coaching appendages are next and what’s their story?

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In the middle part of the 2000s I was a grad student at Alabama. It was an important time to be in Tuscaloosa, or at least it felt that way. There were baby boys named Brodie everywhere. We still thought Prothro would come back. And Mike Shula was our crown prince, the returning hero who had led us out of the longest winter. We were 9-0 and it felt like 1992 was happening again.

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In order to fight cancer, I am showing solidarity with children who have cancer and typically lose their hair during treatment, while raising critical funds for childhood cancer research! Rather than sitting on my butt, I am deciding to fight cancer the best way I know how... by cutting my hair off at a bar!!

However, just like last year shaving my head is not particularly my style. I up the ante a bit. In the spirit of good fun and rivalry I have agreed to shave the logo of the college team, who's fans donate the most money, into my head (photos of before after and during will be posted). Color will be added if sufficient Kwan is raised

Last years champion NC State... with lots of e-bay late money.

Donations right in the linky below:

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/beau

Follow on the facebooks here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Beaudrick-Fighting-Childrens-Cancer-with-my-hair/176385735737588

Scoring after only one day is as follows...

Alabama $100 - Seeking their 1,945,786 Title I see

USF - $50 - See Big East has fans too

GT - $25 - Once again the ACC is just kinda here.

UNC - $15 - Just enough to make me worried about them catching fire.

B1G - NOT ON THE BOARD. Someone notify Delaney immediately this must stop.

Commence Alabama Auburn fight in 3...2...1

http://www.lostlettermen.com/2-14-2012-kansas-kansas-state-emma-kindergartener/

Yes, Emma, there is a Jayhawk. He exists as certainly as hate and rivalry and football exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no rival teams to hate. It would be as dreary as if there were no Clemson to fuck, or Purdue to ignore. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal heat with which football fills the fan's heart would be extinguished.

No Jayhawk! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Emma, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, Kansas will continue to to be hated by loyal K-Sate children.

Have you noticed that all conference realignment threads read alike...

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The USDA has updated something called the Plan Hardiness Zone Map. You can read about it here. Here is what the map represents:

Plant hardiness zone designations represent the average annual extreme minimum temperatures at a given location during a particular time period. They do not reflect the coldest it has ever been or ever will be at a specific location, but simply the average lowest winter temperature for the location over a specified time. Low temperature during the winter is a crucial factor in the survival of plants at specific locations.

And why is there an updated version of this map?

Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States.

What does this have to do with college football?

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Re: this tweet on Jeremy Lin.

I speak truth to dick. Black dicks think I'm a sell out. White dicks think I'm racist. My dick thinks I'm too honest. My perspective is for people unafraid to think and willing to challenge their own dicks. P.S. It also doesn't hurt to like dick.

Fact: all Australians have poison fang dick. If you step on one on the beach you could be dead in minutes. Luc Longley killed everyone he ever slept with who wasn't Aussie. Those girls are immune...and freaky.

Side fact: Jordan sent girls who preferred Scotty to Luc. Competitors never stop.

Fact: If you are trapped in a car that is submerged in water, you should use a CO2-powered bolt to shatter a window and escape. If you do not have one, and you are in the vehicle with a Russian man, instruct him to use his dick. They have hydraulic power from their mothers carrying them around like frozen turkeys in a sack.

That's also why they drink.

I don't blame them. Not one bit, man.

Italian dicks. Yeah, they're proud of them. Most articulate dick on the planet, though. Interviewed Roberto Baggio's about the '94 World Cup. It was emotional talk. Real talk. Dick talk, but not weird talk. Best exclusive of my life.

Greek dick? Broke dick.

Spanish athletes use their dicks as change purses. Can carry like five dollars in each one. The Spanish World Cup celebration sounded like an earthquake of piggy banks. Coinstar needs to build a fleshlight into their machines in Madrid. You'd make a hundred bucks a week like that.

I don't know shit about Indian dicks.

Swedish dicks exist in some kind of uncharted dimension. To humans, it's like the IKEA dick matrix. Crooked grids of squares as the backdrop. Fluorescent triangles and rhombuses flying all over the place randomly. Oh, and five million Swedish dicks.

Some white boys think their dicks are all Dominican. Just because your manhood would rather shrivel up and hide in the shadows than get a real tan doesn't make it ethnic. Child please.

Finnish dicks kill Russians on sight. Guess Sexy Helsinki Nights ain't popular in Moscow. They also have a corkscrew built into the side. They say it's useful. I'm skeptical but open-minded on this point. You can't box me in.

If a Finnish man was unable to finish, then that would be sad. Racism has been conquered. You are a racist.

Armenian dicks are striped like a barber pole. They can't cut hair, though. Armenians are some lying-ass people.

Jeff George's dick never got the shot it deserved.

Peyton Manning's 'neck' is fine. He may never play again if #18.6" is still smarting from watching little big brother doing it up in his pussy palace.

Jim Irsay dick? It's got to get off Twitter.

Average white dude dick is like Bubbles on The Wire. It's got problems. It sells newspapers. It talks to the cops. Lives in a basement with its sister. But it's going to AA. It's trying. Best show ever.

Know why Tony Parker plays basketball? French dick only works indoors. Never won a war because they always have to go back home to piss. Hmm. French.

You ever seen an Antarctic dick? The hell you doing that far south, Werner Herzog?

Rik Smits had that Dutch dick. All wood grain. Classy.

If some dick just washes up to you in Miami, that's probably Cuban dick. Real talk. Hate if you like, but it's true.

Mike Lupica's an insecure, mean-spirited busybody. Credit where credit's due: little dude could hang the moon.

Kevin Garnett's dick is a pitbull with anemia. Like, an actual pitbull he has to give diet supplements to and stuff.

Yeah, you like to joke. "Serena's dick is huge." You need to recognize real beauty and strength when you see it. Expand your horizons. Serena's my girl. Any time, anywhere, any place, Ms. Williams.

Samantha Stosur, though? PACKING. Like a can of Monster Energy drink in the pants.

Jay Cutler dick is where you bow out mid-session and let someone else do your girl the wrong way.

Sudanese dick? Luol Deng would be hung like a Super Nintendo cartridge but having some British in him makes it more of a crumpet cock. Real talk.

Algerian dick is all curved. Like a bunch of jaundiced commas all walking out the shower at once.

Hedo Turkoglu and every other Turkish player has that ampersand dick going on, though. You know what I mean.

If some dick just washes up to you in Miami, that's probably Cuban dick.

Chilean dicks are all copper plated and have a decent jump-shot. Bet you didn't know that about Chilean dick, but I'm an educator, too. Respect to Chilean dick.

I don’t know where Kentucky football fans come from. I haven’t met very many of them. I don’t know what happens to them, whether they hibernate until basketball season or if they just kind of keep their peace and wait for the Music City Bowl to roll around.

When I got out of school I worked for a couple of years in a drug and alcohol rehab. It was the kind of job where I got to meet the people that I watched play on Saturdays and Sundays, but could never mention any of their names because of confidentiality laws. So it was kind of strange.

My coworkers were by and large Christians, which is to say, Alabama fans. There was also one old Kentucky fan who had worked at the facility for a long time. He looked like Floyd the barber from The Andy Griffith Show and he was quite odd. His name was Hiram, if that helps color the picture.

One day a gentleman came into rehab who was not ready to get clean. We’ll call him Buddy. I can’t remember for sure, but it seems like Buddy was an Auburn fan. He dressed like one, anyway, with a Ron Jon t-shirt and camouflage pants and a frayed visor with sunglasses hanging around his neck.

Buddy was trouble. He broke dozens of rules and we finally decided to discharge him. It fell to me to deliver the news.

I found him on the smoking porch, arm around one of the female patients, trying to convince her to provide "therapeutic services"* in exchange for some pills he had smuggled in. (*IMPORTANT NOTE: I MEANT SEXUAL STUFF)

"Hey Buddy, can I talk with you for a second?"

Buddy put the negotiations on hold and joined me on the walking path. With every step he took, the vial-shaped bulge in his pants pocket rattled like a box of Tic Tacs.

"I don’t think it’s working out for you, Buddy." I said diplomatically.

"Whuh?"

"You can’t bring pills into rehab and give them out."

"What pills?" he demanded, without even flinching.

"The pills in your pocket. I can see them. And hear them."

I informed Buddy that we were going to discharge him, but that if he ever reached the point of getting serious about recovery, he could come back. He left me to go pack his belongings. I concluded, incorrectly, that things were going well.

A few moments later, I walked into his room in time to witness Bill W.’s blue Big Book of AA sail out the open window, cutting an arc through the empty air and vanishing into the woods.

"FUCK THIS BOOK AND FUCK THIS PLACE!" he screamed.

In the span of a minute or so, Buddy had worked himself into a frenzy. In his bent perception, his discharge from the facility had grown into a vast, punitive conspiracy that included all the staff and other patients. Everyone was out to get him, and he was going down swinging.

Buddy grabbed his suitcase and stormed from the room, brushing past me as if I was invisible. Outside, his AA book sat face down in the dead leaves.

"I’M GOING TO GIVE THIS PLACE A PIECE OF MY DAMN MIND." He shouted in the hallway, to no one in particular.

I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.

Buddy found a lecture hall and burst into the room. As luck would have it, the presenter was Hiram, the Kentucky fan.

Buddy strode out into the middle of the floor. Patients of every age and gender looked up from their AA books. Buddy took his time, sizing up the dozens of people in the room.

"There’s some snitches up in this bitch!" he bellowed. Several women in the room gasped.

Buddy stuck out his finger and pointed it at one patient after another. The threats flew out of his mouth fast and loose, bouncing around the room like bats out of hell.

Then, just as things felt like they might turn violent, a second voice captured the attention of the room. This voice was different—an easy, mumbly bluegrass drawl. The small, bespectacled counselor in the blue Wildcat jacket pawed at his silvery white hair and stared straight through Buddy.

"Son, it’s time for you to leave."

Buddy took several steps toward Hiram.

"I’ll kill you, old man." He seethed.

Hiram did not seem troubled in the least.

"No you won’t." he said simply.

Then Buddy issued a frightening missive, a blanket threat that he would murder and rape every staff member in the facility. Or maybe it was rape and then murder. Either way it wasn’t pleasant.

Hiram adjusted his glasses. The two men were toe to toe now, their noses perhaps an inch apart.

"Son, if you’re going to rape me you’re going to need to wear a rubber."

Buddy’s face trembled with rage.

"Do you think I’m joking?" he screamed.

Hiram’s eyebrows flickered.

"Do you think I’m joking? Son, you don’t know where I’ve been."

Then, for reasons I will never understand, Buddy’s internal constitution fell apart. His confidence crumbled into pieces right there in front of the entire room. He glanced around, at all the sets of eyes watching him. He inched backwards. And then he was gone, out the door and down the sidewalk, dragging his suitcase behind him. We never saw him again.

Hiram stood there, all 5’6" of him. He had won. He took off his glasses and wiped them on the front of his shirt. The old man sighed. He walked back to the whiteboard and picked up a marker.

"…Hmm, where were we? Everyone turn to the chapter How It Works. Now, the interesting thing about Bill W. was…"

As if you probably couldn't guess by the fact that I went to Mizzou and some information in my profile, I'm a journalist. And like most journalists, I'm unemployed. But there is a chance to change that--and the most important thing is, YOU CAN HELP ME ACCOMPLISH THIS.

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