Why the Commentator receives e-mails like this I will never know. But Jesus, I’m glad we do. All I can say is that the world is slowly getting dumber, one rogue at a time. I’ll let the e-mail do the talking:

While the former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate has achieved success with record book sales and support for a 2012 presidential election bid, she has also achieved something else few public figures ever have:   heroine status in a children’s book.

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Well, “health care reform” is on its way to the Senate floor. When it passes (not if, but when), it will amount to little more than billions of dollars worth of wasted money and one big “WIN” check-mark in Team Blue’s column… and make no mistake, this isn’t about the so-called “right” to health care, looking out for the disadvantaged, making things more “affordable*”, or any of the other noble rhetoric people are deploying — it’s about politicians being able to point to some astoundingly expensive piece of legislation and being able to say, “LOOK!!! WE DID SOMETHING!!” Period. Full stop. Democrats get to crow about their “big win” for the common man and Republicans get to strut around and talk about all that “fiscal responsibility” they forgot about between 2000 and 2008.

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Well the Ducks may get their chance at the Rose Bowl (or at least at Oregon State) after beating Arizona tonight in double overtime.

It looks like we also won our little challenge with the Arizona Desert Lamp, meaning they have to purchase 3 copies of our book, By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator with “Oregon Owns the State of Arizona” written on the inside cover. I’ll be looking for a check shortly from Evan and the crew at the Desert Lamp.

Overall it was a good game, even if there was some ridiculous moments (the non-facemask) and the Arizona fans got a little antsy for a field-rush. An OC crew enjoyed the victory at Rennie’s Landing as one big family, which is what college football is all about. It was an exciting game, and I’m damn glad the Ducks came out on top.

Now it’s time for the Civil War, and this year’s game could not have higher stakes. I’m ready for the Beavers.

Go Ducks.

“If you want, I can teach you how to make a bomb out of a toilet paper roll and a stick of dynamite.”

There was an interesting article published yesterday on boingboing.net about Britain’s new Internet laws that I think students (and owners of Utorrent) may be interested in.

The author of the article, Cory Doctrow, highlighted some of the law’s more ridiculous points

It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial).

Doctrow also describes the strain placed on Internet Service Providers by the law

A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).

Of course Internet freedoms, including censorship and file-sharing, has been a popular topic for discussion since its inception into mainstream culture. The question for Americans is now whether or not the law proves to be popular enough for this country’s legislation to run with the idea and respond in kind.

In any case, you know someone out there is trying to figure out a way to “Hoard me up some Internet cause the government’s gonna take it away”

Better head to Costco.

The student-produced “I Smell Roses” video has been getting a lot of publicity recently.  Its nationwide attention has garnered positive reviews, however Disney and the UO Athletic Department are not happy.

The Athletic Department has asked the University of Oregon rap group “Supwitchugirl” to take down the video from Youtube. The band has adhered to the demands, but anyone who has been on the internet knows once a video is put on the internet it is almost impossible to remove it.

The problem is that Disney lets the UO have our mascot be in the image of Donald Duck. They are saying that the unauthorized use of the Duck in the popular video may end up in Disney pulling the ability to use Donald’s looks, therefore getting rid of Puddles.

In all likelihood there is no way that Disney will pull the Duck’s mascot due to the excessive backlash that would come from the media. The video is not offensive. It does not portray the Duck in a bad light either – he dances in the background for goodness sakes. The video is what college fandom is all about. Now the corporate bigwigs at Disney and the Athletic Department are drowning the fun. The only thing that will come out of this is more exposure to the video.

Here’s hoping that the Athletic Department and Disney will recognize they are overreacting.

As a former DuckU executive producer I have to say that I am proud of the video’s popularity and exposure for DuckU.

Go Ducks.

In rebuttal to yesterday’s trash-talkin’ courtesy of Evan from the Desert Lamp, Drew’s post has been put up on the Desert Lamp site.

Obviously Drew has won the fight. Now let’s watch the Ducks win the battle on Saturday.

DREW’S POST

The following is an arranged cross-posting of trash talk between the Oregon Commentator and the Arizona Desert Lamp in preparation for Saturday’s football game vs. Arizona. Don’t like what’s being said? Feel free to trash talk back, and look for our rebuttal posting on the Desert Lamp website, www.desertlamp.com later today. Go Ducks!

At some point between reading the Wikipedia article on “Pete DeFazio” and the UODPS Security Report, I realized that Oregon is absolutely useless and boring and a waste of anyone’s time. The state is known for “mail-in voting” and Portland, which makes Idaho’s “We got dem potatoes!” marketing campaign sound almost appealing.

But the deal was already set. A submission was due! Cry “Havoc!,” and let slip the hounds of gin.

1.PIRG-loving schmucks

Oh, I can already hear the Commentariat whining in protest – “We’ve fought them for years! We exposed them for what they really were! We gave you all of the background material so that you could stop them in Arizona!” Whatever. Somebody had to give them a sense of legitimacy when they were still babes suckling on Nader’s sagging teat, and that somebody is the state of Oregon.

Speaking of taking shit from the worst entities on the face of the earth. . .

2.You gave the world Joey Harrington

As a Lions fan and Detroit-area native, there’s a lot to hate, generally. But Joey Harrington is definitely up on the list.

Look at this fucking love connection and its fucking love child

3.Sartorial “Shma-shmortion”

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

~University of Oregon Athletic Director Mike Bellotti Oscar Wilde

Stupid people on the internet say, “OMG rly originall making fun of Oregon’s jerseyz.” And of course, being the Internet, this comment is supposed to be sarcastic, and is made in Mom’s basement while wearing battery-acid-colored pajamas.

But look: this is not a matter of originality, or trying to be cute. This is a serious issue that needs addressing. If Congress is having a commission on the BCS , it sure as shit needs to have a commission on this Ralph Lauren fever dream. Where is the FCC when you need them? (Protip: Finding strangers in the Alps .)

4.Duck-Tape

“So, dude, for Halloween, I duct-taped fucking wings on my shirt sleeves!”
“Uh, why’d you do that?”
“My mom made me. She thought I might get hit by a car at night.”

This is the college football equivalent of this shirt:

Minus, of course, the whole “bad-ass” aspect. In other news, Nike is in the process of designing a duck-beak shaped mouth guard.

5.Back-Brain Stimulants

Something about these uniforms reminded me of this quote:

In the control room the Technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand: “God damned tenor’s a brown artist!” he mutters sourly. “Mike! rumph,” the shout ends in a belch. “Cut that swish fart off the air and give him his purple slip. He’s through as of right now . . . Put in that sex-changed Liz athlete . . . She’s a full-time tenor at least . . . Costume? How in the fuck should I know? I’m no dress designer swish department from the costume department! What’s that ? The entire costume department occluded as a security risk? What am I, an octopus?

OK, not really. I just got this from flipping to a random page in Naked Lunch . Works though, doesn’t it?

This is what happens to the Notre Dame helmets after Charlie Weis is done with them.

6.Make your own offense-to-all-that-is-decent-in-this-world!

This is a good idea, if potentially dangerous.

Seriously: what the fuck is wrong with your state? Washington has the purple-gold Huskies, and the scarlet-gray Cougars. Kinda butch-femme, but whatever. Meanwhile, fucking Oregon has to go out and have the Chernobyl-yellow-green Ducks play the construction-worker-orange Beavers. Shit like this is why health care is so expensive in this country.

The one thing that hasn’t been said, though, is the fact that UO has only adopted the all-white get-up (white unis, white helmets) on games before Labor Day. Which means that they actually care about shit like this.

Oh, you sad, sad shards of existence.

7.You bastards legitimized Boise State

Everything you needed to know about politics, you learned playing backyard football. And everybody knows that there’s that kinda obnoxious kid, who’s kinda big and probably pretty good. But the kid’s a real fuck – it doesn’t matter why, he’s probably Mormon or something – and nobody wants to hang out with him.

So one day you’re playing football and he says, “Hey, you mind if I play?” You don’t say, “Gosh, gee, sure thing Jimbo! Line up on the left side.” You say, “Fuck you, asshole, we’ve got even teams.” If he plays, and he’s good, you’ll never be able to get rid of him. Ever.

Boise State is that kid of the college football world. They wanted to play with the big kids, and the rest of the country said, “Fuck you, you’re from Idaho.” But not Oregon – nooooooo. So goddamn special. They just had to give the blue-fielded coxswains of the football universe a chance to prove themselves against a “real” team, and they did it – twice.

They were already yesterday’s news – after all the hooplah about beating Oklahoma, they lost to TCU in the fucking Poinsetta Bowl . But like that asshole Brendan Fraser, you just had to bring this national nightmare back from the crypt. (No, it’s not quite as shitty as the Mummy . But it’s close.)

And plus, Jesus Fucking Christ:

This is worse than what Keith Jackson sees in his ketamine binges. (You thought he just ‘retired’? Please.)

8.And you know keeping water fowl, for uh, domestic, you know, within the stadium. . .

Look at these two fucking love-birds

Arizona might have taken away our mascot’s guns , but at least they didn’t cut his balls off and turn him into a Chinese knockoff of a second-rate cartoon:

The nickname for Oregon’s first sports teams was “Webfoots,” coined by longtime Oregonian sports editor L. H. Gregory. The name originated from a group of fishermen from the coast of Massachusetts whose descendants settled in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. When the University of Oregon was founded in 1876, Webfoots was the natural choice for the school’s nickname, because of Oregon’s reputation for wet weather.

Sports reporters later changed the nickname to “Ducks,” and by the 1930s, a small white duck named “Puddles” began to appear to sports events. Beginning in 1940, cartoon drawings of Puddles in student publications began to resemble Donald Duck, and by 1947, Walt Disney was aware of the issue. Capitalizing on his friendship with a Disney cartoonist, Oregon athletic director Leo Harris met Disney and reached an informal handshake agreement that granted the University of Oregon permission to use Donald as its sports mascot.

When Disney lawyers later questioned the agreement in the 1970s, the University produced a photo showing Harris and Disney wearing matching jackets with an Oregon Donald logo. Relying on the photo as evidence of Disney’s wishes, in 1973, both parties signed a formal agreement granting the University the right to use Donald’s likeness as a symbol for (and restricted to) Oregon sports.

‘Webfoots’? ‘Puddles’? Fucking adorable. Too adorable, apparently, for the psilocybin-addled Nike “scientists,” who had to bring in “Mandrake”:

As the story goes, the idea behind the new mascot, which Bartko and other athletics officials call “Mandrake,” spawned from a spring basketball game. When Oregon was in Sacramento, Calif., playing Montana in the NCAA Tournament, athletic officials noticed advantages of having an agile mascot.

Creeps. Apparently, “Mandrake” looked like this.

Nightmare Duck will haunt your local Chinese restaurants

I was hoping that it’d look more like this.

9.They’re gonna kill that poor woman!

Look, I appreciate a good rivalry like any beer-blooded American. But I also understand that there is a certain line in those rivalries. Where that line is depends on what sort of hard liquor is on hand, but no matter what, “kidnapping of women” is on the other side of the line. Apparently, no such line exists in the state of Oregon:

Maybe the most ingenious stunt of all took place in 1957 when four Oregon student athletes, all members of Theta Xi fraternity, decided one night (when they were all bored out of their minds) that wouldn’t it be clever if they could show up at Oregon State’s Homecoming game with Washington State and actually kidnap their Homecoming court.

Which is exactly what they did. Posing as reporters from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, allegedly sent to Corvallis on assignment to do a story on OSC’s game with a Washington school, the three ladies of the court accompanied the “reporters” for a short car ride to Avery Park south of town to shoot photos. Almost right away, the car began heading north toward Salem.

For the next 12 hours the group stayed tucked away at the home of the parents of one of the kidnappers, enjoying a large meal and delighting at how much national publicity the whole story was beginning to generate, including reports that the entire Oregon State football team was out looking for the court. Because Homecoming Queen Pearl Friel was native Hawaiian, it was also rumored that football players from the University of Hawaii were threatening to travel to Oregon to deal with the situation.

This, mind you, is from the Oregon State write-up – topped only by this OSU Alumni summary:

However, the prank of all pranks took place just before OSU’s Homecoming game with Washington State in 1957. Posing as journalists from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, four UO athletes “kidnapped” Oregon State’s Homecoming court members and took them to Salem, where the home of one of the “nappers” was used to entertain the three coeds (the parents of the student had dinner waiting) for over 12 hours.

Because it happened in the ’50s, kidnapping is OK? Actual quote from one of the kidnappers: “We phoned our president’s office and were told that the prank was OK, provided we didn’t break any laws and if nothing ‘physical’ happened.”

You fucking people. Stay the hell away from our women.

10.Your bullshit trail killed Kenny

You bastards!

May you rest in pieces.

250 copies of “By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator” fresh off the press.

Well, my friends the day has finally come. 12 boxes of our book, By the Barrel: 25 years of the Oregon Commentator arrived this morning and god they look sweet (and heavy!).

They’re hardback, gold foil embossed, with a dust jacket and 24 full glossy pages of color smack dab in the middle. The book is 300 pages of fun and for only $10 it’s an absolute steal (seriously, can you go to Borders and get a book like this for $10?)

Once again– $10… e-mail us, go to the bookstore or mosey on down to EMU room 319 if you actually want to see us face to face. Get an autograph, why not? (Not from me. I’ll make someone else sign it so it makes no sense)

If you’d like to send a check, please make it out to:

Oregon Commentator

1228 University of Oregon

EMU Suite 4

Eugene, Oregon 97401

Last time: You can purchase them from us by e-mailing us at [email protected] or look for them in the UO Bookstore very soon!

Apparently LaGarrette Blount was reinstated today.
My opinion is, and always has been, that his suspension should have been a game, two at the most. Anthony Reddick, the player who used his helmet as a weapon and sparked a humongous brawl in 2006, was only suspended for four games.

If we are to take the FIU-Miami incident as precedent, LaGarrette punching one fat asshole and responding to racist Boise St. fans never warranted a full season suspension (at least not from a major football university like Oregon).

Then again, you could make the argument that no fighting should ever be tolerated and that both Reddick and Blount should have been tossed off their respective teams–meaning Reddick’s example and precedent is false.

It is my opinion, as a realist, that not only are emotions bound to run high in a setting like collegiate sports, but more importantly the universities make an insane amount of money off of our student-athletes. They don’t want to suspend these players.

Dare I ask you, the Duck fan, what your opinion is?

Don’t make me regret this now. Play nice with each other.

I’ve got a lot of ground to cover in this post, so I’m going to use the bulleted format that’s been so popular in the past. We had several rejections

• Our top story (Things people who read the blog might actually care about edition): After discussions with ASUO President Emma Kallaway and her staffers, the Athletic Department has scrapped its ticketing system, replacing it with a “tiered” one in which students will log on to get tickets at different times based on their class standing, like the one for the 2008-09. At least for the Nov. 14 Arizona State game. They are still open for suggestions about how to do the Civil War on Dec. 3. If you have any ideas, send them along, because I’m pretty sure they’re desperate. (READ MORE BELOW THE FOLD!)
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I drove up to Salem today and got my first five advance copies of the Oregon Commentator book By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator.

I have to say, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Josh McCormick did an amazing job with the cover, David Frohnmayer’s quote is still hilarious and the 24 glossy pages of color in the middle really showcase the artwork/debauchery we’ve been privy to during the last 25 years.

Look for it to be widely available through this website, our office and the University of Oregon Bookstore sometime next week when I receive the full batch.

The book will be priced at only $10 – Not bad seeing as how it’s hardbound, has a dust jacket and contains 25 years of the juciest campus goodies available.

Taking it to the CN conference this weekend to rub it in the noses of the Ivy League kids.

See you on the other side.

P.S. By the way, I have to send out my thanks to Mrs. Delgado’s 5th grade class at Robert Frost Elementary School in Silverton, Oregon. They were so excited about the book one kid wanted me to autograph his face. Little kids are funny.

(From EDSBS and LSUfreek)

As we approach Saturday let us take into account that Halloween has been a historically bad day for Eugene. Riots in the early 2000’s and late 90’s on Halloween night have been a catastrophe–just wait until you mix in a night game at Autzen coupled with the emotional high/low of the potential outcomes. The Commentator is no stranger to the riots. A former unnamed staffer is on the front cover of a late-90’s Daily Emerald ripping up a stop sign. It’s fun for the whole family.

It doesn’t help that, according to today’s front page article in the Emerald, the Bias Response Team was called when a student organized a “blackout Autzen” facebook group. Reactionists and non-sports fans alike came together to question the student’s motivation for the event and its “racial implications”.

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According to Tomcat down at the Ol’ Dirty, the grievance filed against Emma Kallaway for failure of her duties was dismissed.

I’ve remained unimpressed with the stated greivance against Kallaway since it was filed this summer. Really, I could care less if she turned in her stated goals on time. I don’t expect much out of the ASUO and I’ll be damned if they don’t deliver.

Also, the grievance was obviously filed out of spite and the entire chain of events has been blown out of proportion–did anyone really think the ASUO would remove a sitting president? Especially when the newly appointed judges were chosen by her own office?

If this is what is going to stand for controversy in the ASUO this year, I will welcome it with open arms. (But I doubt that will happen)

Let’s get back to business in the ASUO, shall we?

All expenses paid student conferences in Hawaii for everyone!