Taking FAIL to a new level

Once again, there's a big college football game this weekend. You may have heard ESPN mention something about it.

I could care two Ratatouilles' asses about the whole business myself, but this part of it? I LURVE. When the top-rated college football team in the nation, LSU, heads into the stadium of the #2-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide later today, they are doomed to FAIL. 

Literally.


From the 2008 announcement of this ultimate Naming Rights win:

The University of Alabama is set to honor Mobile native James M. Fail by placing his name on a prominent fixture at Bryant-Denny Stadium. A donation by Mr. Fail to the Crimson Tide Foundation will result in the visitors' locker room being officially named "The Fail Room."

Not to be outdone, Alafreakinbama's arch-rivals, the Auburn Tigers, renamed the brothel on the campus's Fraternity Row as the "Whore Eagle."

Badum ching. But seriously: another of that ilk comes from my own alma mater Far Above Cayuga’s Waters.

One of the most populated and centrally located spots on the Cornell campus is the space between the main student union and the Campus Store, where fraternities and other organizations all post signs and chalkings for their events. Long after I graduated, I started seeing people referring to it as “Ho Plaza,” which I just assumed was a reference to all the shameless pimping going on there.

Erm, no. The authoritative site “Uncle Ezra” explains:

The Ho family have had four Cornell graduates since 1955. Hau Wong Ho received a bachelor's of engineering physics degree in 1955; his wife Christine received a bachelor's in chemistry in 1961; and their son, Jet King Shing Ho '91, has a bachelor's in physics. Mui Ho, Hau Wong's sister, has bachelor's degrees from Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (1962) and the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (1966).

Tours of the campus originate from Ho Plaza. Price? Twenty bucks, same as in town.

 

Screwed up in reverse:)

Eleanor asked me to fill the bird feeders just now. I'd been putting it off because the squirrels had made such mincemeat of all the anti-rodent defenses we've laid in out there, most notably a baffle which supposedly shielded the cylindrical feeder from their fat little faces.  They'd defeated its function long ago, managing more recently to completely separate the shield from the shaft, and I finally said, screw it and just pulled it off completely.  Not having it there also makes it much easier to fill the thing.

Moments later, Rocky Junior just made his first visit.... and was totally stymied. By the lack of a baffle.  The suckas had been using it to get purchase on the cylinder, and now they have to re-learn how to jump from the adjacent tree trunk straight onto the noms.

I stood there for a few minutes, hand on the nylon wire running to our porch which shakes the whole assembly, but I never got to use it. He just stared at the new assembly and, after a few moments, stormed off, as if to say, Fine, I'll go buy my OWN baffle.

Come back later, dude. You can see me pull a rabbit out of a hat!